Brian Solis Blog

I had the privilege of keynoting UserTesting conferences in San Francisco and New York. It was my third and fourth UserTesting event respectively, which I guess makes this a situationship now. 😍 The theme was experience innovation in an era of AI. The real message wasn’t really about AI. It was about people. It was about how human beings are changing faster than the experiences designed for them.

We proudly launched ServiceNow Futures this year. We are a future-forward team of futurists, innovation officers, and futures engineers inside ServiceNow. Our mission is to help customers “see further and act sooner.” As part of our charter, we translate emerging signals and trends into actionable insights for C-Suites.

Jeff Gritchen / MediaNews Group / Orange County Register via Getty Images AI has a trust problem because they understand the future they were asked to accept. For the last three-to-four years, AI was introduced less as a platform for human potential and more as a force of inevitability: jobs would disappear, entry-level opportunities would shrink, organizations would flatten, humans would be removed from the loop, and efficiency would become the new north star. That story did not write itself.

What a wonderful experience! I had the opportunity to keynote Western Digital’s “Built to Win” Sales Leadership conference in beautiful San Diego. The message to explore “how to win” with AI as a force multiplier not an automator. Everyone received a copy of Mindshift too! What an unforgettable experience! Book Brian to keynote your next event! Read Infinite: How Visionary Leaders Transform Today’s Businesses into AI-Forward Companies. ai built to win keynote sales leadership wd western digital

Brent Leary and I have been friends for many, many years. So whenever we have the chance to sit down for a conversation, it never feels like an “interview.” It feels like two longtime friends exploring what’s next, asking bigger questions, and challenging each other to think beyond the obvious. In this conversation, Brent and I explored ideas from “Infinite,” the new book Dave Wright and I wrote to help leaders rethink what enterprise organizations can become in an AI-forward world.

Brian Solis shared a cautionary tale in Forbes about what happens when executives replace people with AI vs. empowering them with AI. His article explores the stories of Ford and Klarna and what CEOs should do instead of replacing people with AI. Summary Ford initially replaced quality inspectors with AI, leading to significant quality issues and a realization that AI alone couldn’t replicate crucial human judgment.

You can’t cut your way to growth. You can’t automate your way to innovation. AI is forcing every organization to reveal what it really believes about people. Do leaders see AI as a way to shrink the company into a more efficient version of yesterday? Or do they see it as a way to expand the organization’s capacity to learn, imagine, decide, create, and grow? That is the fork in the road.

Brian Solis contributed an article to The Future Economy that explores how companies are investing heavily in AI but most are only seeing productivity gains not real transformation. His research shows that they lack the unified platforms needed to connect intelligence workflows and governance. Every week, another enterprise and frontier company announces a new AI model, another copilot, another assistant, another agent.

Via Bloomberg Ford rehired over 350 veteran engineers referred to internally as “gray beards” after an aggressive AI adoption strategy backfired. Ford had been increasingly relying on AI-driven inspection systems to streamline production and address quality control issues, however the firm acknowledged that AI lacked the nuanced judgement when it came to complex problems.

via Vicki Salemi, Tribune Content Agency, published in Yahoo! Tech DEAR READER: In the age of AI, what does it mean to become “infinite?” Inquiring minds need to know, so we checked with Brian Solis, head of global innovation at ServiceNow and coauthor of “Infinite: How Visionary Leaders Transform Today’s Businesses into AI-Forward Companies.” “Becoming ‘infinite’ is about employing an intentional mindset where AI, in its current and evolving forms, will automate and augment work perpetually,...