Are AI agents sustaining or disruptive innovation for B2B SaaS?
Steven Forth is CEO of Ibbaka. Connect on LinkedIn
There is a lot of speculation on the impact of AI agents on B2B software. Will these agents complement existing applications, replace them, or create a parallel space that functions differently.
Some recent statements …
"The business logic is all going to these agents... Once the AI tier becomes the place where all the logic is, then people will start replacing the back ends." - Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO
"By 2025, autonomous AI agents will emerge as strategic partners capable of orchestrating entire marketing processes." Melisa Kolbe
“Autonomous agents will transform user experience by automating interactions, making traditional UI design obsolete, as users stop visiting websites in favor of solely interacting through their agent.” Jakob Nielsen
In one reality, business logic, user interactions, and orchestration of the customer journey will all be handled by agents.
Ibbaka and Maxio are collaborating in research to understand how value, packaging, pricing and billing will work in this world. Please contribute by taking this survey and sharing your insights.
Take the Maxio | Ibbaka Survey on the Value, Monetization, and Billing of Agentic AI
Poll and survey results
One frame for understanding how agents will impact the B2B SaaS sector is Clayton Christensen’s framework of disruptive innovation. In this framework innovations can be sustaining or disruptive.
Sustaining Innovation: Sustaining innovation refers to incremental improvements to existing products or services that enhance performance along dimensions valued by mainstream customers. It focuses on meeting the needs of a company's most profitable customers by offering better value in existing markets.
Disruptive Innovation: Disruptive innovation describes a process where a smaller company with fewer resources successfully challenges established incumbent businesses. It often starts by addressing overlooked segments with simpler, more affordable solutions, and gradually moves upmarket, eventually displacing established competitors.
Are B2B AI agents an example of sustaining or disruptive innovation? How does this impact go-ot-market strategies? What are the implications for pricing?
We posed this question on LinkedIn, posting the poll on the Professional Pricing Society, Design Thinking, SaaS and Steven Forth’s persoanl feeds.
Results of a poll asking “How will AI agents impact B2B SaaS software?” posted February February 20 to 22, 2025. N = 90
About 60% felt that AI Agents would be sustaining innovation and 40% that they will be disruptive. Digging a bit deeper, pricing experts felt AI Agents are more likely to be sustaining innovation (100%), while 38% of people in the Design Thinking Group voted for disruptive. The people who are perhaps closest to this, and most impacted, in the Software as a Service - SaaS - Group, went 45% for disruptive innovation.
We asked a similar question in the Maxio-Ibbaka survey. This survey is still open (please participate) but as of February 22 the 168 respondents had answered as follows.
Agentic AI - Value - Monetization - Billing Survey Question 1 results as of February 22, 2025. N = 168.
This group leans slightly more towards ‘disruptive.’ As these are the people who are actually building AI Agents it is important to understand their perspective.
Sustaining or Disruptive or Both?
Could AI Agents be sustaining or disruptive depending on how they are deployed?
We are seeing thee basic approaches to how companies are deploying agents:
Embedded - the agent is part of an existing solution, making it easier to use or more effective
Complement or Extension - the agent complements or extends an existing solution, but requires the solution if it is to do its work
Independent Agents - the agent does not require a pre existing solution but can perform its job and make decisions on its own
Embedded agents and complementary agents are generally sustaining innovation, they extended the current value proposition for existing users.
Independent agents are more interesting. It is here that there is the possibility of disrupting an existing category or even creating an entirely new category.
Implications for pricing AgenticAI
The approach to pricing depends on whether one is taking to market a sustaining innovation, a disruptive innovation or trying to create a whole new category.
Category Creation: New Value Drivers; Disrupt: New Pricing Metrics; Sustain: Copy Alternative Pricing
When designing pricing it is also useful to layer in whether one is targeting new customers or existing customers and whether the value drivers are new or enhanced.
The four quadrants for value based pricing.
Enhanced Value Drivers for Current Customers
Sustaining innovation. Pricing should follow established patterns that buyers are used to. In most cases some version of hybrid pricing will be used. If you meet the requirements for outcome based pricing (which is getting a lot of attention for agents) then go that direction. The requirements are
The outcome can be clearly defined
Attribution is clear and can be agreed to
Outcomes are predictable so that cost (for the buyer) and revenue (for the seller) are manageable
Enhanced Value Drivers for New Customers
Expand the market. The goal here is market expansion. As there are no new value drivers (by definition) the pricing tactic will be to focus on building a business around the value drivers most important to these new customers. Pricing can leverage this, but you have to be careful not to kill the goose that laid the golden egg by taxing the forms of use that are creating the value.
New Value Drivers for Current Customers
Capture market share. When new value is created for customers there is a real change to disrupt incumbents. They will generally be deeply committed to their pricing and have optimized around it. It can be very hard for them to change which will give you the davantage time to use some Judo strategy.
Judo Strategy: As conceptualized by Yoffie and Kwak (2001), revolves around three pillars: movement, balance, and leverage. In B2B software, these principles translate into:
Movement: Rapid market entry through niche specialization. Smaller firms avoid direct competition by targeting underserved verticals or unmet technical needs. For example, Judo (a Toronto-based startup) initially focused on sports franchises’ mobile app needs before expanding into FinTech and retail, exploiting gaps left by generic app-building platforms.
Balance: Maintaining operational flexibility while neutralizing competitors’ counterattacks. This involves modular architectures (e.g., microservices) that allow quick pivots without overhauling core systems.
Leverage: Turning incumbents’ strengths into liabilities. Open-source platforms like Judo’s low-code toolbox exploit larger vendors’ reliance on proprietary ecosystems by offering interoperability and reduced lock-in.
New Value Drivers for New Customers
Build a new category. This is the hardest place to play, but when successful it creates the most shareholder value. You have a new solution (new ways to create value) for new customers. Not for the faint of heart, and it can take deep pockets to execute (but not always and AI is reducing the costs). It is where new pricing metrics are most likely to be needed and where they can thrive. But with a new category, before you worry about pricing, establish value.
