Bernard Marr is a friend, someone I’ve known for many, many years. He’s also a best-selling business author and strategic advisor to companies and governments. I wish I had known he was at the World Summit AI event in Amsterdam. I would have loved to spend time with him. At the same time, I was relieved not to know he was in the audience. That would. have increased the pressure to deliver! 😅

Following the event, Bernard shared his thoughts about what he heard here. Selfishly, I’m proud to share his takeaways and ideas from the session I delivered.

In Bernard’s words…

Businesses Need To Stop Automating Yesterday’s Processes

One of my favorite presentations came from Brian Solis, Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow.

He challenged businesses to think beyond what he called a finite mindset, where AI investments focus primarily on efficiency, cost reduction and doing existing tasks faster.

Instead, he encouraged an infinite mindset, where organizations rethink their operating models and explore entirely new opportunities.

I couldn’t agree more.

Consider a company that uses AI to reduce the time spent creating marketing campaigns but leaves its approval, distribution and decision-making processes untouched. It might save hours creating content, only to create another bottleneck further down the workflow.

Solis argued that businesses need to redesign end-to-end workflows with AI at their core.

This is something I regularly emphasize when working with organizations. The biggest opportunities come from asking how we would design our businesses if we were starting from scratch today.

Otherwise, we risk spending billions on sophisticated technology to make outdated processes run slightly faster.

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Thank you, Bernard. 🙏