The Solo Superpower: How AI Transforms Individual Workers into Team-Level Performers

"A single person with AI assistance can produce solutions at a quality level statistically identical to what you'd get from a traditional two-person team," explains Dr. Fabrizio Dell'Acqua, lead researcher at Harvard Business School and the Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard. "This represents a fundamental reshaping of how we should think about collaborative work."

The striking finding emerges from a first-of-its-kind field experiment involving 776 professionals at Procter & Gamble, End of Miles reports, where researchers measured the quality of new product development solutions across different working configurations.

Redefining the Value of Teams

The researchers found that individuals working with AI showed a substantial 0.37 standard deviation performance increase over the baseline of working alone without AI. By comparison, teams of two professionals working without AI only demonstrated a 0.24 standard deviation improvement.

"This suggests that AI can effectively substitute for certain collaborative functions, acting as a genuine teammate by granting individuals access to the varied expertise and perspectives traditionally provided by team members.", Harvard Business School

These findings arise from a rigorous experimental design where P&G employees tackled real innovation challenges in four configurations: individuals working alone, traditional teams without AI, individuals with AI, and teams with AI.

The results challenge decades of management theory emphasizing the irreplaceable nature of human collaboration for achieving high-quality outcomes in knowledge work. While teams have traditionally been valued for their ability to integrate diverse perspectives, catch blind spots, and solve complex problems, the experiment suggests AI can now provide many of these same benefits directly to individual workers.

Beyond Mere Productivity

The research goes beyond simplistic productivity metrics. According to collaborator Professor Ethan Mollick from The Wharton School, the findings show that AI isn't just helping people work faster – it's fundamentally changing work processes.

"Unlike previous waves of technology that primarily automated explicit, codifiable tasks, GenAI can engage with tacit knowledge – the kind of implicit understanding that traditionally could only be shared through direct human interaction. It's not just a tool but an active participant in collaborative processes."

The experiment measured solution quality using blind evaluations by independent domain experts, who consistently rated AI-assisted individual work at levels statistically indistinguishable from traditional team outputs.

Organizational Implications

These results suggest potentially massive implications for how organizations might structure teamwork in the future. Professor Raffaella Sadun, who co-authored the study, points to several critical considerations.

"Organizations may need to fundamentally rethink optimal team sizes and compositions. The fact that AI-enabled individuals can perform at levels comparable to traditional teams suggests opportunities for more flexible and efficient organizational structures", Harvard Business School

Yet the researchers caution against simplistic interpretations. When examining top-tier solutions – those ranking in the highest decile of quality – AI-augmented teams showed unique advantages, suggesting different organizational configurations might be optimal depending on specific goals.

A New Science of "Cybernetic Teams"

The researchers propose that their findings necessitate a new framework for understanding collaboration. They introduce the concept of the "cybernetic teammate" – where AI functions not merely as a tool but as an active collaborator capable of providing feedback, bridging expertise gaps, and influencing emotional dynamics.

While a single field experiment can't answer all questions about AI's organizational impact, the researchers believe they've uncovered a fundamental shift in knowledge work. The study represents some of the first causal evidence that AI can replicate key collaborative functions traditionally provided only by human teammates.

"These findings challenge the notion of AI as merely an advanced search engine or convenient text generator. By contributing to decision-making, creativity, and even emotional responses, AI is reshaping the conditions under which teams form and function."

The researchers note that their participants were relatively inexperienced with AI prompting techniques, suggesting the observed benefits may represent a lower bound of potential gains as users develop more sophisticated AI interaction strategies.