The Sparring Partner Study: How enterprise AI handles strategic decisions from senior executives

Abstract

Five business scenarios were designed to test how different AI setups respond to strategic decisions from senior leaders. The scenarios cover a competitive response, a regulatory consultation, a capital allocation decision, a senior appointment, and a divisional plan review. Each scenario runs through three AI setups, producing fifteen answers in total. A single scorer rates each answer blind, using three measures: whether the answer takes a clear position, whether it adds fresh insight, and whether it serves as material a senior leader could debate. The third measure is the most important. The grading rules were locked before any outputs were generated and predict no result.