Building the Infrastructure That Serves Both: Where Strategic Investment Creates Dual-Purpose Value

Image: Google

February 23, 2026

I am watching a fascinating shift in which companies attract strategic investment. The pattern: organisations treating operational data as infrastructure, not just compliance. From my work, these investments are creating value for human customers whilst simultaneously making companies discoverable to AI agents.

Last month in a board strategy session, someone asked whether we should increase digital marketing spend. I found myself asking a different question: what if we are undervaluing the infrastructure we already have?

What if the operational data we generate daily could serve customers in ways we have not yet imagined?

The Pattern I Am Seeing in Investment Decisions

Through my Innovation Gamechangers work, I evaluate emerging technology investments across agrifood sectors. Here is what I find compelling: the companies attracting capital are those discovering new value in their existing operations.

Deloitte's research shows executives expect the highest AI deployment returns from customer experience and operational efficiency (Deloitte 2026 Consumer Products Industry Outlook, 2026). What makes this interesting is how these connect.

Better operational efficiency creates data. That data, when structured properly, enhances customer experience for both humans and AI agents.

Consider the magnitude of opportunity: retail traffic from AI sources jumped 1,200% (Adobe Digital Economy Index, 2026). These are purchasing decisions happening based on structured information companies already possess but may not be presenting in discoverable ways.

What Creates Value for Both Customer Types

Here is what I find exciting about AI agent shopping behaviour.

• AI agents value the same things humans increasingly demand: transparency, verification, and reliable information. They just access it differently.

• They look for structured product data, real-time inventory verification, and machine-readable certifications (McKinsey, 2025). Not instead of human-readable information, but in addition to it.

• This creates opportunity. The same transparency systems we build for human trust become discoverable to AI agents when structured appropriately.

The Infrastructure That Creates Dual Value

Through my experience scaling operations across Mars, Fonterra, and Mondelez in 40+ countries, I learned that the best infrastructure investments serve multiple purposes.

Here is what I am discovering now:

Traditional brand infrastructure served one purpose: human persuasion through marketing narratives, loyalty programmes, brand positioning, advertising spend.

Dual-purpose infrastructure serves both: structured product data (schema markup) makes information clear for both humans and machines; API-first architecture enables both consumer apps and agent access; machine-readable certifications provide verified credentials both can trust; real-time inventory and pricing create reliability both value; transparent provenance with verification builds confidence for both.

The strategic insight: these are not alternatives. Building the second enhances the first whilst creating machine discoverability.

The Opportunity in Governance

What I find most interesting about boardroom conversations now: we are starting to govern data infrastructure with the same strategic attention we give brand reputation.

From my governance perspective, boards are asking better questions:

What value does our operational data create when made accessible? How do we measure infrastructure quality as strategic capability? Who ensures data serves both customer types effectively?

Deloitte's research shows 69% of companies are shortening supply chains to build resilience (Deloitte, 2026). This creates opportunity. Supply chain visibility for resilience generates the real-time data both humans and AI agents value.

Where Strategic Investment Creates Advantage

Co-founding Monash Food Innovation taught me that breakthrough impact comes from building connection infrastructure, not just individual innovations.

Here is the investment pattern I am seeing in successful organisations:

• Continuing brand building, marketing, and customer engagement whilst adding data infrastructure, verification systems, and transparent operations platforms.

• The companies doing this well are not abandoning traditional marketing. They are enhancing it with infrastructure that makes their authentic stories verifiable and discoverable.

• This matters particularly for agrifood where farm-level decisions generate data throughout value chains. From soil health metrics to carbon footprint verification to provenance tracking, operational truth can flow through systems that both humans and machines value.

The Strategic Opportunity

What makes this transformation exciting: the same transparency that builds human trust creates machine discoverability. Investing in verifiable operations serves both customer types whilst building advantages competitors cannot easily replicate.

Where is your organisation discovering dual-purpose value from operational infrastructure? What systems are you building that serve both customer types?