Stanford University's Graduate School of Business has featured Dr. Lamia Youssef, founder of Jazz Computing, as the protagonist in a new Leadership in Focus video case focused on AI transformation; a format used by leading universities, Fortune 500 corporations, and institutions across 85 countries to train the next generation of executives.

The case centers on a high-stakes platform engineering challenge Dr. Youssef navigated firsthand: an experimental MVP that had quietly become a significant revenue engine, held together by a team of seven engineers, with the organization facing a critical strategic inflection point.

Her framing of the situation is characteristically direct: "It was like trying to change the tires of a racecar going 200 miles per hour, without stopping!!"

The case walks through three strategic options she identified:

• Protect and patch: defend the legacy architecture, maintain revenue, and accept a slowdown in innovation.
• Rebuild from scratch: re-architect entirely with a new team and new technology stack. High ambition, but a historically low success rate.
• The risky middle way: pursue both simultaneously: keep the lights on while building the future in parallel.

Beyond the strategic framework, the case surfaces leadership lessons that Dr. Youssef argues are consistently underestimated in AI transformation contexts: that technical execution is rarely the hardest part, that empathic listening is a strategic tool for mapping organizational resistance, and that the engineers sustaining legacy systems through nights and weekends are not a footnote, they are the foundation.

The full video case is forthcoming. It will be available through Stanford GSB's case library upon release.

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