For the majority of his professional career, information was one of the greatest competitive advantages one could possess, according to Robert Knakal. Those who knew more than their competitors had a decisive edge. They knew ownership details, planned refinancings, sales intentions, achieved purchase prices, rental developments, and were informed about upcoming events. This information enabled them to make better decisions and identify opportunities that remained hidden from others.
This informational advantage, in many respects, formed one of the foundations upon which Knakal’s former company, Massey Knakal, was built. The company invested enormous amounts of time in collecting, organising and analysing market information. It possessed more knowledge about New York investment properties than anyone else because its goal was to know everything about a specific segment, rather than something about everything. This knowledge became an immense competitive advantage and ultimately helped build the most dominant investment sales company in the history of the United States.
The world, however, is changing. Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly commoditising information. Today, practically anyone can ask an AI platform a complex question and receive an intelligent, comprehensive answer within seconds. Market statistics, legal precedents, financial models, zoning plans, demographic trends, and research findings, whose accumulation once took years, are now almost instantaneously available. The cost of obtaining information is drastically decreasing. Economics teaches that the value of something that is abundant inevitably declines.
This does not mean that expertise loses value; on the contrary. It means that the source of expertise is changing. As information becomes a commodity, judgement becomes the new competitive advantage. Judgement is the ability to look at the same information as everyone else and arrive at a better conclusion. It is the knowledge of which facts are actually relevant and which are not, which risks are hidden beneath the surface, when to act aggressively, when patience is appropriate, and when conventional wisdom proves wrong.
The fascinating thing about judgement is that it cannot be 'downloaded'. AI can provide information, summarise articles, recognise patterns, and even make recommendations. However, it cannot replace decades of accumulated pattern recognition, intuition, and contextual understanding that arise from repeated decisions, observing outcomes, learning from them, and refining one’s thinking. Judgement must be acquired – one decision, one negotiation, one success, one failure at a time.
Unfortunately, many people confuse seniority with experience; however, the two are not the same. Someone can spend 30 years in an industry and merely repeat the same year 30 times over. Another person can tirelessly study every transaction, every conversation, every negotiation, and every mistake for ten years, drawing lessons from them, and thereby develop far superior judgement. Experience is not measured by the number of years worked, but by the number of lessons learned. This distinction will be crucial in the age of AI.
The most successful people Knakal knows possess insatiable curiosity. They constantly ask questions that most people never ask. They question why a strategy worked or did not, which assumptions proved false, or what was overlooked. Every meeting, every transaction, every presentation, every success, and every disappointment becomes another opportunity to strengthen their judgement. Top performers with excellent judgement do not simply experience events, they study them. Over time, these lessons accumulate. This accumulation creates intuition, pattern recognition, and judgement – and judgement is becoming increasingly valuable, as it is one of the few things AI cannot commoditise.
As the era of artificial intelligence continues to advance, the shift in professional value creation will be immense. The winners will not necessarily be those who have access to the most information, as everyone will be able to access extraordinary information. Instead, those who consistently make the best decisions with that information will win. Professionals who remain tirelessly curious, constantly question the 'why' behind things, and refuse to learn from their successes and failures, will consistently set themselves apart. Information becomes cheaper every day. Judgement becomes more valuable every day. Those who dedicate themselves to building it will become increasingly indispensable.
