A leader’s guide to five essential AI prompts

Many successful CEOs are using AI to gain a competitive advantage, but are still leaving value on the table. While simple requests like "help me understand my market" will deliver generic insights, strategic prompting can transform AI into a thinking partner that accelerates decision-making.

Skillful use of these five prompting techniques can compress months of strategic analysis into hours. While others wait for consultant reports, leaders with these skills are already making their next moves.

1. The market opportunity decoder

The prompt: "Research adjacent markets where our core capabilities could create value. Analyze market size, growth trends, key players, competitive dynamics, and entry barriers for [specific adjacent market]. Identify companies successfully applying similar capabilities and highlight areas requiring strategic investigation."

Why it works: This prompt expedites market expansion research by gathering foundational intelligence, reducing analyst time and reliance on multiple data sources.

Business impact: A data analytics firm can quickly research industries using predictive modeling, gather competitive intelligence, and identify market entry points, turning weeks of research into focused planning.

The strategic advantage: Faster, more comprehensive market research enables better decisions about expansion opportunities while freeing up team resources for execution planning.

2. The strategic threat detector

The prompt: "Analyze emerging competitive threats in [your industry] that traditional competitors might miss. Focus on non-obvious market entrants, business model innovations, and technology disruptions that could reshape our competitive landscape within 18 months. Identify early warning signals."

Why it works: This prompt encourages AI to think laterally about disruption patterns, cross-industry innovations, and weak signals that traditional analysis might overlook.

Business impact: A logistics company could leverage this to anticipate a fintech startup's delivery plans, gaining six months to reinforce customer ties and devise competitive strategies before their logistics platform launch.

The strategic advantage: While competitors respond to threats after they materialize, you're building responses to disruptions that haven't yet emerged into public view.

3. The board narrative builder

The prompt: "Transform these quarterly metrics and operational updates into a strategic narrative for board presentation. Highlight our progress toward [specific strategic goal], connect current performance to long-term value creation, and identify the three most critical strategic decisions needed from the board."

Why it works: Crafting data into narratives is time-consuming, requiring team input and iterations. This prompt speeds the process, linking performance to goals and identifying board decision points.

Business impact: Gemini rapidly crafts board narratives from diverse data, synthesizing complex performance into compelling storylines, saving time for high-value work.

The strategic advantage: Faster, higher-quality board preparation means more time for thinking and execution, while consistently strong board narratives build confidence in your leadership and accelerate decision-making processes.

4. The scenario stress-tester

The prompt: "Evaluate our current strategy against three scenarios: economic downturn reducing customer spending by 30%, a major competitor launching a disruptive alternative, and accelerated market growth exceeding our capacity. For each scenario, identify our biggest vulnerabilities, required strategic pivots, and critical success factors."

Why it works: Planning for only one future scenario limits flexibility. This prompt enables comprehensive scenario planning that reveals blind spots and builds optionality into your planning.

Business impact: Companies using scenario-based planning can pivot faster because they've already identified alternative suppliers and pricing strategies for various market conditions.

The strategic advantage: Resilience and pre-built optionality let you turn market volatility into competitive advantage while others develop responses.

5. The M&A intelligence accelerator

The prompt: "Assess [acquisition target] for strategic fit with our core capabilities, market positioning alignment, integration complexity factors, and realistic synergy potential. Identify key due diligence priorities, highlight critical business model considerations, and outline areas requiring deeper human assessment."

Why it works: This prompt fast-tracks due diligence by assessing market positioning, business model compatibility, and integration needs, streamlining human efforts to high-value areas.

Business impact: Consider how a company could use the Gemini app to analyze their own due diligence materials – internal assessments, market research, and other publicly available competitive intelligence – to rapidly evaluate each target's strategic fit across multiple criteria. This would allow for completion of a preliminary assessment in days rather than weeks.

The strategic advantage: Better deal selection and integration planning improves M&A success rates and accelerates time-to-value from acquisitions.

Making strategic AI work for you

These prompts work because they mirror strategic thinking frameworks. Each one requires you to provide specific context about your business, industry, and goals — transforming AI from a generic advisor into a customized thinking partner.

The Gemini app is particularly effective for this type of complex reasoning. Gemini can process multiple documents simultaneously — your board decks, financial reports, competitive analyses, and market research — while maintaining context across all variables. This means your prompts work with your complete business picture, not isolated data points.

Take a deeper dive: Read the full story on the Google Cloud Transform Blog.