Research gains do not automatically become sales gains

Evidence from one work setting can inspire a useful experiment elsewhere. It cannot simply be copied into a sales claim. A study showing that assistance improves customer-support productivity does not establish that the same tool increases consulting revenue.

The 2023 NBER working paper "Generative AI at Work" examined a support setting and reported heterogeneous effects across workers. Its context and outcome measure matter. Treating it as a universal percentage improvement for commercial teams would go beyond the evidence. [R3]

Translate the mechanism into a local question. Could easier access to approved examples help newer staff prepare? Could suggested responses reduce avoidable omissions? Which parts of the workflow might become worse through overreliance? These are testable possibilities.

Choose measures appropriate to your work. Preparation time, factual accuracy and reviewer effort can be assessed sooner than revenue. Revenue depends on many additional factors and may require a longer observation period and a stronger comparison.

Include experienced staff as well as novices where practical. A tool that helps one group may interrupt another. Average performance can conceal those differences and lead to an unnecessarily uniform rollout.

Research is most useful when it improves the questions you ask. The disciplined move is to preserve the original finding's boundaries, then investigate whether a related mechanism appears in your own setting.