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AI Is Transforming Work and Entire Organizations. The Future Belongs to Those Who Can Learn Fast, Says Štěpán Kopřiva, CEO of Adastra Czech
December 8, 2025
Artificial intelligence is reshaping finance, manufacturing, retail, and services — and according to Štěpán Kopřiva, CEO of Adastra Czech Republic, the pace of change will accelerate further in the coming years. “AI doesn’t solve anything on its own. People, data, and the ability to start early determining whether it brings value,” he says in the new two-part episode of The Growth Podcast.
Kopřiva worked in AI long before it became mainstream. In 2013, he founded Blindspot Solutions and began delivering AI projects for international clients — at a time when the Czech market largely ignored the field. After Blindspot was acquired in 2017, he took over the leadership of Adastra Czech, where he now drives AI initiatives across banking, energy, manufacturing, and retail.
“Technology without context is pointless.”
According to Kopřiva, many companies take the wrong approach: they build a solution and only later look for a place to apply it. “You have to start on the business side. If you don’t know exactly what problem you’re solving, no AI will help,” he says.
He also emphasizes that the hardest part of AI projects is not the model itself — it’s the quality of data, its context, and the connection to real processes. That’s where most mistakes and unnecessary costs arise.
Listen to Part 1 of the episode:
Where AI Delivers the Fastest ROI Today
Kopřiva highlights four areas where companies are already seeing tangible results:
- Conversational AI and voice agents
In some teams, AI now generates 30–40% of the code and handles a significant portion of customer communication. Adoption of conversational agents is rising across industries. - Back-office automation
Anything repeatable — documents, invoices, reports, approvals — will be automated. The impact: lower operating costs and fewer errors. - Hyper-personalization at the individual level
Today’s models can create real-time, one-to-one recommendations. What was computationally impossible a few years ago is now standard practice. - Transformation of software development
AI speeds up coding, testing, and architecture design — fundamentally reshaping the competence profile of IT teams.
The Future of Work: Less Routine, More Expert Decisions
AI will significantly change job roles across organizations.
“Automation will affect both white- and blue-collar roles. Many routine tasks will disappear, but completely new professions will emerge,” Kopřiva says.
Employees and managers will need three core capabilities:
- Cognitive flexibility — the ability to work with new information quickly
- Adaptability — readiness to change how work is done
- Resilience — functioning effectively in an environment of rapid change
- And above all, the ability to learn faster than the environment around them.
Listen to Part 2 of the episode:
“AI is the Excel of this decade. Those who don’t adopt it will lose their edge.”
According to Kopřiva, AI will quickly become a standard work tool — not an experiment.
“When Excel appeared, only one person in the company knew how to use it. Today it’s universal. AI will follow the same pattern, only much faster,” he explains.
That’s why he advises companies not to wait for a large transformation program. A bottom-up approach — testing small, concrete scenarios and scaling only what works — is far more effective.
What This Means for Business Leaders
Kopřiva stresses that the real task for management is not to “implement AI,” but to manage its impact on operations, cost, and the organization’s ability to scale.
This requires three priorities:
- Clear business ownership of AI initiatives
AI cannot live in an IT silo. “Leaders must have AI and data quality directly in their KPIs — otherwise nothing will change,” he says. - Measurable outcomes within months, not years
The companies winning today run short iterations and validate impact quickly — especially in manufacturing, logistics, banking, and customer operations.
“If AI doesn’t deliver visible value within six months, the project is set up incorrectly.” - Modern data infrastructure as the foundation
AI is only as strong as its data. Leaders need to invest systematically into governance, metadata management, observability, and modern data platforms. Without this, AI initiatives turn into expensive pilots with no real impact.
