I still open Google Maps every single day. Why?

It’s no longer about being lost. What matters now is efficiency. The fastest route, the least traffic, the best alternative and the dynamic adaptation to changing conditions in real time.

Last week, during the 20th anniversary celebration of Google Maps in Spain, I was invited to speak. Afterwards, I found myself reflecting not only on what we built back then, but on what Google Maps has actually become today.

When we launched it, the transformation was obvious. Before Maps, moving through the world contained enormous friction: You printed directions before leaving home, stopped at gas stations to ask where you were, got stuck in traffic without knowing it, or simply got lost trying to reach somewhere new.

What we helped build at Google fundamentally changed that. We connected the physical world with real-time information and created a system that dramatically improved how people navigate reality itself.

What struck me after the anniversary was something different: Today, most of us no longer use Google Maps because we do not know where we are going, we already know the destination. I know where my office is. I know where the airport is. I know where the doctor’s appointment is. I know where my home is.

Google Maps quietly evolved from a navigation product into a real-time efficiency engine and I believe that same transition is about to happen across every company in the world.

The AI shift is not about tools. It is about operational efficiency at massive scale

As I’ve discussed in several pieces before, right now, we are living through one of the biggest technological shifts of the last decades.

AI is fundamentally changing how software gets built, how teams operate, how decisions are made, and how knowledge flows inside organizations. Code is being generated faster and iteration cycles are compressing. Individual leverage is increasing dramatically while entire workflows are being redesigned in real time.

And this is no longer limited to technology companies. Every industry is becoming a software industry and every company is using AI company, whether they like it or not.

That is why efficiency suddenly becomes existential. Because when the pace of change accelerates this much, the companies that survive are not necessarily the ones with the most people or the biggest budgets. They are the ones that understand faster:

• what is working,

• what is not,

• where friction exists,

• where time is being lost,

• where AI is genuinely improving performance,

• and where complexity is actually slowing the organization down.

Everyone knows the destination: ship faster, improve quality, increase productivity, operate more efficiently.

However, very few companies truly understand whether they are taking the best route to get there and that is becoming one of the most important problems of the AI era.

If you do not measure efficiency, you will not survive the next decade

I am obsessed about Pensero’s mission because I have seen before what happens when technology creates a completely new layer of visibility and real-time understanding. Google Maps did it for the physical world and it changed how we move, adapt, optimize, and make decisions while conditions constantly evolve around us.

I believe companies now need the same capability internally: A real-time understanding of how work actually happens, where efficiency is improving, where bottlenecks emerge, and how organizations adapt while technology itself keeps changing underneath them. And that’s exactly what Pensero does for software.

Because the reality is simple: if you do not measure efficiency, you do not understand efficiency.

And if you do not understand efficiency in a world being reshaped by AI at exponential speed, eventually somebody else will operate better, adapt faster, and replace you.

That is the real shift happening now.

AI is not only changing how companies build.

It is changing how companies survive and you can not improve what you don’t measure.