Vegard Kolbjørnsrud wins Best Article Award from California Management Review

Kolbjørnsrud’s article ‘Designing the Intelligent Organization: Six Principles for Human-AI Collaboration’ has been selected as the Best Article in 2025. In the final round, reviewers described the article as “extremely timely and practical” and “well written, with clear implications for practice,” praising its ability to bring clarity to one of today’s most important management issues: human-AI collaboration.

“This is a great honour. What makes it especially meaningful is that it comes from a journal that is known for bridging the gap between research and real-world application. Knowing that the research has relevance beyond the ivory tower of academia is incredibly rewarding,” says Kolbjørnsrud.

He is Associate Professor of Strategy at BI. His main research areas include strategy, new organisational forms, and digitalisation, and he is also recognised for his expertise on the impact of AI on management.

“This is an incredible achievement. Kolbjørnsrud won this prestigious award in competition with some of the world’s leading management scholars. It’s a great example of how research at BI contributes to the research frontier while also clearly communicating implications for business practice,” says Birgitte Grøgaard, Head of Department for Department of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at BI.

The future of human-AI collaboration

In his article, Kolbjørnsrud presents six principles and practical guidelines for how managers can grow the intelligence of their organisations by harnessing the complementary strengths of humans and artificial intelligence.

1. The addition principle highlights that organisational intelligence increases when more intelligent actors—human or digital—are added.
2. The relevance principle stresses the importance of matching the type of intelligence to the nature of the task; while AI excels in structured, data-intensive domains, humans are better suited for ambiguous or cross-functional challenges.
3. The substitution principle explains that replacing humans with AI may improve efficiency, but not necessarily make the organisation more intelligent—unless the AI is more capable than the human worker it replaces, or the freed-up human capacity is redeployed to more meaningful, value-creating work.
4. The diversity principle underscores the value of combining different types of intelligence. Diverse teams—comprising people with varied backgrounds and different types of AI with complementary capabilities—are better equipped to tackle complex problems and generate innovative solutions.
5. The collaboration principle focuses on interaction and the collaborative skills required from both human and digital actors. Effective human-AI collaboration depends on intuitive interfaces and AI literacy among employees. 
6. The explanation principle emphasises the importance of being able to explain how AI systems arrive at their conclusions—critical for accountability, learning, and responsible use.

“Building truly intelligent organisations is not about replacing people with AI – we must combine the best of human and machine capabilities. Managed well, this can both boost business performance and enable human workers to do more interesting, impactful, and meaningful work,” says Kolbjørnsrud.

Read the full article here: Designing the Intelligent Organization: Six Principles for Human-AI Collaboration