The Digital Edge: A Systematic Review of AI-Driven Competitive Advantage

Although the interest in artificial intelligence (AI) within business contexts is rapidly expanding, there remains a gap in understanding how AI drives competitive advantage. This study addresses that gap through a systematic literature review of 81 high-quality articles from the Web of Science, analyzing how AI contributes to business performance and strategic differentiation. The findings provide a comprehensive overview of AI’s role in business, identify its competitive benefits and adoption challenges, synthesize theoretical perspectives into an integrative five-category framework that illustrates AI’s contributions, and map dominant theories and emerging research gaps. Achieving AI-driven competitive advantage requires aligning internal capabilities (structure, resources, and business models) with external enablers, including governance, ethical regulation, and market conditions. The study underscores that digital transformation, data quality, and decision-making agility are crucial drivers of advantage. It advances theory by consolidating existing knowledge, proposing an integrative model, and identifying future research directions on AI-driven competitiveness.