Harken Sweets is working with Lightswitch to use AI to assist with basic tasks such as purchase orders.
Harken Sweets
Sunny Israni always seems to be on the cutting edge of AI. Whether he’s teaching Python to MBAs at Columbia Business School, training companies on AI adoption, or posting AI videos on YouTube, he’s always looking toward the next thing.
And as Israni sees it now, the future of AI means a return to basics. Rather than focusing on how AI can create the next high-tech unicorn run by a single employee, he focuses on how AI can help companies with very basic tasks across the broader economy.
“The tech industry operates on a completely different level,” Israni said, adding that he also knows that most companies aren’t using AI for anything other than a glorified Google search. “We have the opportunity to help them with all kinds of things. We focus on operations and help them with supply chain management and things like that.”
That’s why earlier this year, Israni and co-founder Monica Villar stopped catering to the four-year-old startup. light switch into the world of technology where I had previously built monetization software. They find themselves constantly trying to keep up in an industry obsessed with cutting-edge uses of AI. It was also a world far behind the rest of the economy in terms of adoption. And they wanted to share with other startups how they learned how to use AI to help lean businesses run more smoothly.
“There are new releases every week, and the pace of innovation within the technology continues. AI has reached a point where it’s almost like an eternal whiplash,” Villar said. “When we saw the implementation of AI in our company and how much it was changing other companies, we wanted to go back to the drawing board.”
In January, Israni and Villar decided to start helping consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies incorporate small amounts of AI to automate relatively outdated systems. They essentially replaced their work with the technology industry with work with companies that sell products like candy.
In early March, they headed to Expo West, the nation’s largest trade show for the natural, organic, and health products industry. Instead of getting pushback from small business owners about AI, we’re finding that businesses are incredibly receptive to using a little bit of artificial intelligence to help them run their already lean businesses. In fact, they finished the tournament with 30 meetings.
“We are having a great time in CPG Land,” Villar said. “We have a lot of interest and ambition in how companies can bring AI internally because there are so many tedious tasks. What these companies are overloaded with is the computer and email parts of their jobs. There’s a tremendous amount of value that we can apply to companies based on what we’ve learned about applying AI internally.”
wider adoption
Israni is not alone in embracing AI in the broader industry. Something similar is happening at educational institutions, which are realizing that AI is being reshaped and not just in Silicon Valley. Iona College, where I teach an Introduction to Entrepreneurship class as a resident entrepreneur, has started a summer session. program It’s called “Education in Real Life.” Starting this summer, students will be able to interact with the construction and hotel industries and learn how they are using AI.
“It is no secret that AI is having a profound impact on workplaces in almost every sector of the economy,” said President Seamus Carey. “It will change the outlook and perhaps even the meaning of work for the future our students live in.”
learning gap
The gap between how technology companies are adopting AI and the rest of the economy appears to be widening. In fact, AI is already taking over in many technology companies. EY March 2026 Technology Pulse vote We found that of 500 U.S. technology leaders, 97% consider fully autonomous AI a “high” or “essential” priority for long-term competitiveness, and more than half of department-level AI initiatives are already being implemented without formal approval.
But that doesn’t apply to other parts of the economy. The International Association of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA and CIMA), in collaboration with North Carolina State University’s Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) Initiative, also recently investigation Targeted 1,735 executives across eight industries and geographies. The study found that most organizations still lack the systems and governance to effectively implement AI. Industries like construction and retail are further behind because they have too much legacy infrastructure. The study found that less than 20% of small and medium-sized enterprises have the “people and systems” needed to implement AI.
When Israni started working with companies in particular, he realized that many companies simply needed AI to move their business beyond the clutter of spreadsheets.
“Often it is simple automation that unlocks the most value,” Israni says. But when these companies incorporate even a little bit of AI, they seem to work even better. “These companies are doing a lot of work building spreadsheets. The big success metric is just automating those spreadsheets.”
Using a light switch already helped Harken Sweetsis a three-year-old company that makes classic candy without sugar. The company has fewer than 10 full-time employees but has expanded sales to Walmart, Amazon, and Kroger. Alex Wittenberg, director of operations and finance, hired Lightswitch to help with time-consuming manual tasks such as retrieving information from purchase orders and updating inventory levels.
“We have a lean team and need to keep up with the growth of the business,” Wittenberg said. “This will enable smaller businesses like ours to set up more mature systems and processes, such as checks and automated flags, increasing efficiency without making large investments in technology.”
Villar also feels that AI is giving small and medium-sized businesses a chance to thrive that otherwise would not have had a chance to succeed.
“Before AI, you could build businesses and products that didn’t make economic sense, but now they might make sense,” she said. “We’re seeing a lot of interest in industries that have probably been overlooked in the past. This completely changes the way opportunities look.”
