According to God of Prompt, the Harvard and BCG research on 758 elite consultants and its 2026 follow-up identified exactly three types of AI users; as reported by Harvard Business School Working Knowledge and Boston Consulting Group publications, the original randomized field experiments found that generative AI significantly boosted task quality and speed for consultants on creative and analytical tasks, while follow-up analysis segmented practitioners into three adoption archetypes with distinct performance patterns. According to Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, consultants using GPT-style assistants showed larger gains on ideation and writing tasks but faced higher error risks on complex strategy problems without guardrails; the 2026 follow-up, as reported by Boston Consulting Group insights, indicates firms should tailor enablement to each user type with targeted prompts, verification checklists, and workflow integration. According to BCG, the three archetypes differ in prompt rigor, verification habits, and task selection, creating clear business opportunities for role-specific copilots, compliance-by-design review layers, and KPI-linked AI governance playbooks in professional services.

According to @emollick, the team’s AI-and-work study that coined the term jagged frontier has now been formally published in Organization Science, confirming large productivity gains from GPT4 in real consulting tasks. As reported by Organization Science, pre-registered experiments at Boston Consulting Group found consultants using GPT4 completed 12.2% more tasks, worked 25.1% faster, and produced 40% higher-quality outputs, highlighting measurable business impact in knowledge work. According to One Useful Thing by Ethan Mollick, results varied across task types, illustrating the jagged frontier where GPT4 excels on many structured, knowledge-intensive tasks but can underperform on tasks requiring up-to-date facts or specialized judgment, guiding enterprise deployment strategies. As reported by Organization Science, the findings support scaled augmentation approaches (centaur and cyborg workflows) and suggest clear ROI opportunities for firms that identify GPT4-suitable task portfolios, invest in prompt processes, and implement evaluation guardrails.