The strategic planning work ahead requires a rethinking of how system designers and consultants, integration firms, and AV manufacturers perceive the role of AI, workplace culture, and the evolving expectations of clients.

In an industry where competitive advantage is increasingly defined by speed, insight, and adaptability, the winning firms in 2026 will be those who refine not only what they plan but how they think about planning.

My musings in four emerging themes—radical optimism, role clarity, human connection, and net-new value creation—offer a foundational roadmap for the year ahead. Seen through the lens of strategic planning, they reveal both the challenges and the opportunities shaping the next era of AV.

1.  AI Strategy Is Still Reactive—Not Visionary

Across many markets, AI conversation remains constrained by fears of job loss, cost efficiency pressures, and productivity substitution. This creates shallow, incremental planning. Meanwhile, market sectors looking ahead such are building AI-forward creative economies, empowering entire populations with enhanced access to tools like bespoke agentic AI LLMs. Their AI strategy is future-first, not fear-based.

This paradigm exposes a dangerous gap in many AV firms’ 2026 planning: focusing on AI for optimization instead of transformation.

The Solution: Build AI-driven creativity into the core of the 2026 strategic plan—not as a task, but as a mindset.

• Design consultants should plan for AI-supported conceptual design, scenario exploration, and compliance modeling.

• Integrators should include AI-enhanced project workflows, proposal intelligence, and risk mitigation tools.

• Manufacturers should prioritize “AI-native” products with robust metadata, APIs, diagnostics, and self-identifying capabilities.

In your 2026 strategy, replace “Where can AI save us time?” with “Where can AI help us create something no competitor is offering?”

As a result, AI becomes not a defensive posture but a catalyst for differentiation. Firms enter 2026 positioned as innovators instead of laggards, shaping new categories of value rather than merely defending market share.

2.  Lack of Internal Role Clarity Will Block AI Integration

Only 44% of U.S. workers report fully understanding their roles—a decline that impacts the AV industry acutely. Blurred job boundaries between design, engineering, programming, commissioning, and service undermine operational efficiency, training, and client confidence.

This ambiguity also undercuts AI integration: you cannot automate unclear tasks.

The Solution: Bake role clarity and AI workflow integration into the strategic plan.

• Define which aspects of each job AI can augment, accelerate, or validate—before implementing any tools.

• Redraw workflows around human–AI collaboration (e.g., AI-generated design options, automated documentation checks, predictive service analytics).

• Align marketing around clear expertise, showcasing how the firm’s people + AI produce superior results.

This clarity must be organizationally codified in the 2026 plan—not left to ad hoc interpretation.

As a result, teams work with confidence, training becomes more meaningful, adoption improves, and clients gain trust in the firm’s ability to integrate AI without sacrificing quality or accountability.

3.  AV Strategies Still Assume People Want the Old Workplace

Workplace loneliness is at an all-time high—even though people continue to gather enthusiastically in restaurants, concerts, and travel. The demand for connection is real. The desire to return to corporate office structures is not.

This misalignment has direct implications for AV planning. Many 2025 roadmaps still anchor on meeting rooms and RTO rhetoric. But clients in 2026 will be seeking environments that feel emotionally resonant—not just functionally equipped.

The Solution: Recast AV messaging as the foundation of new “third-place-inspired” environments.

• Design consultants should model hybrid collaboration spaces that feel more like studios, lounges, labs, or creative commons.

• Integrators should emphasize experience design over equipment design—framing themselves as connection architects.

• Manufacturers should invest in responsive, sensing, adaptive technologies that create presence, belonging, and immersion.

This means explicitly including “connection-first design” as a strategic pillar for 2026—not merely a marketing angle.

As a reult, AV firms position themselves at the center of workplace reinvention. Instead of competing as technology vendors, they rise to the level of strategic partners shaping organizational culture and human experience.

4.  AI Resistance Is High—Unless It Generates Net-New Value

In one legal-industry case, AI adoption only succeeded when it was applied to “work no humans had the bandwidth to tackle.” The result was high-margin revenue and immediate cultural buy-in.
This lesson is vital for 2026 planning. Most strategies aim AI at core processes (design, engineering, documentation) where resistance is highest. Few aim AI at new opportunities no one is currently pursuing.

The Solution: Identify the firm’s “unclaimed work” and make it the first frontier of AI in 2026.

• Integrators: New microverticals (immersive learning labs, esports, XR collaboration environments).

• Design consultants: AI-generated feasibility studies for emerging space typologies.

• Manufacturers: AI-guided application bundles and market-specific deployment playbooks.

Make “AI for net-new value creation” a formal element of the 12-month strategic plan—not a side experiment.

As a result, AI becomes culturally desirable, not feared. The firm enters new markets, creates new revenue streams, and demonstrates leadership in categories competitors haven’t yet discovered.

Plan for Better Thinking, Not Just Better Execution

The most important strategic recommendation for 2026 is this: Your thinking—not your technology—will determine your competitive advantage.

Across these four musings, a deeper pattern emerges. Successful 2026 AV strategies will require:

• Optimism over fear
• Role clarity over ambiguity
• Connection over proximity
• Value creation over displacement risk

These aren’t operational decisions. They are mindset decisions.
2026 is not a continuation of 2025.

It is a new cognitive landscape.

The AV firms that thrive will build strategies around how AI can enhance creativity, how hybrid work reshapes space, how role clarity enables automation, and how innovation emerges from unclaimed opportunities.

2026 is the year to think about thinking—and the year to plan like the future is already here