In recent years, global business leaders have increasingly embraced the power of the cloud, with its 24/7 availability, scalable performance and variable costs. But the merger of these on-demand capabilities with artificial/machine intelligence (AI/MI) is a new phase in digital innovation that has not yet been sufficiently appreciated by senior management. New research from the Leading Edge Forum (LEF) shows how the combination of cloud computing and machine intelligence is shaping the business models of the future, marking a new phase in digital innovation. AI advances used to stem mostly from academic investigations and the expert system initiatives of large organisations, but there's been a fundmental shift in recent years and progress is now driven by the consumer marketplace. See also: The droids you're looking for: the AI tech that will make up the intelligent enterprise'Virtually every type of human intelligence is becoming the basis of a scalable, cloud-based, global business model.