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Many organizations rely on cross-functional teams to drive critical initiatives, ensuring each function is represented and able to provide input. Yet cross-functional experts often focus disproportionately on their own areas—understandably so, since these are the domains they know best—resulting in limited connections to other parts of the business. A recent working paper explored whether AI can help address this issue through a randomized controlled trial of 776 Procter & Gamble professionals—commercial and R&D experts—who worked alone or in cross-functional pairs, with half given access to GPT-4/4o. Without AI, specialists proposed solutions aligned to their own domains, and only teamwork produced more balanced outputs. With AI, however, both individuals and teams generated integrated solutions that blended technical and commercial perspectives, effectively dissolving traditional expertise boundaries. One reason is that AI introduced knowledge and perspectives beyond participants’ functional silos, enabling them to integrate ideas they might not have surfaced on their own; in fact, even less experienced employees performed at levels comparable to more seasoned teams when assisted by AI. Beyond implications for teamwork, these findings also highlight how organizations can utilize AI to develop broader capabilities in their employees, such as enhancing business acumen and fostering more holistic thinking across functions.
