Dunford distinguishes three things that get conflated in AI-era positioning conversations:
Her rule: positioning should describe today's product against today's competitors, not the vision. Confusing the two means selling against a future state the product hasn't reached yet, which the market will eventually catch out. This sits alongside How Far Ahead to Position (Current vs. Anticipated Competitors), which is the same problem restated as a competitive question rather than a product-maturity one, and relates to Mission → Vision → Strategy → Roadmap Hierarchy.
A three-way distinction useful for keeping positioning honest: product vision is the long-term, often investor-facing aspirational story; the current product is what actually ships and can be evaluated today; product strategy is the sequenced roadmap of steps that bridges the two. Marketing and sales messaging should be built on the current product and today's real competitors (per Competitive-Alternatives Mapping (Status Quo vs. Shortlist)), not on the vision — product strategy is an internal artifact for explaining the path forward, not a customer-facing positioning input. See How Far Ahead to Position (Current vs. Anticipated Competitors) for the companion rule on how far ahead to position.
In AI-era positioning specifically, overhyping a distant AI-native future product backfires: customers respond by delaying purchase of the current, sellable product ("come back in two years") rather than getting excited. The fix is not to suppress the future vision but to pair it with a staged, non-scary pathway (see Meeting Risk-Averse Buyers Where They Are: An AI Maturity Model) that also delivers value today.