abstracted out to the c-suite level, cars are just faster horses. the ceo needs an item moved from location X to location Y, and it will cost Z dollars and take T time. doesn't matter if it's by car or boat or train or horse or donkey or a person on a bicycle.

Or say, the logistics of, say, warehouse management. it costs V dollars for a team of people to do the job by hand, W dollars for a forklift, X dollars for a forklift operator; compare V to W + X. If there's a machine that can do the same for office jobs, the math will be done.

Based on my experience with large corporate transformations, I'd be amazed if it were done that way. Usually, (simple) math isn't really that important.

not doubting your experience, what is important then, that you've seen?

Very roughly: where the future business is coming from, what the future capabilities should be, how a new organisation should look like, what change can actually be accomplished, how to manage that change, required skills & infrastructure, how to get them. Then there is a whole legal ans compliance arc somewhere.

Only when the change is small and local is it getting close to a math thing, but a large rollout of technology is a big thing already today.

The canonical example isn't forklift workers, but car recalls. If the cost of the recall is X, and the cost of settling wrongful death lawsuits over the defective part is Y. If X > Y, don't do the recall. How true that is, idk, but the cynic in me believes it.