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.

The question is no longer, “How do we use AI to become more efficient?”

That’s important, of course. But it’s also defensive.

The bigger question is: How do we use AI to create new value, new capacity, and new possibilities for growth?

That is the difference between a finite company and an infinite company.

Finite companies use AI to optimize yesterday’s work. They automate legacy processes, reduce costs, and improve productivity within the same operating models.

Infinite companies use AI to reimagine how work gets done. They reverse-engineer workflows for 2030 and beyond. They move from org charts to work charts. They think about people and agents working together in new ways to drive exponential outcomes.

In our conversation, Brent and I explored several ideas shaping this next chapter of enterprise reinvention:

• Why companies must move from playing defense with AI to playing offense
• Why you cannot automate your way to innovation
• How cognitive Darwinism changes the way we think about work, learning, and competitiveness
• Why leaders need to ask whether today’s workflows are worthy of 2030
• How AI-native companies think differently about ROI, risk, and exponential growth
• Why the “SaaS apocalypse” is really a warning about future tech debt and AI slopware
• How technology is moving closer to business operations, not farther away from them
• Why HR and IT will need to work together to design the future of people, agents, roles, and workflows

One of the most important shifts we discussed is that innovation does not mean simply applying new technology to old processes. Innovation means creating new value.

That requires a different mindset, a different set of questions, and a different kind of leadership.

This is also where my work in digital anthropology and futurism comes together. Technology does not just change systems. It changes behavior. It changes expectations. It changes how people work, how customers engage, and how organizations compete.

AI is accelerating all of that.

And yet, many companies are still looking at AI through the lens of productivity gains, cost reduction, and short-term efficiency. That is understandable, but it is not enough.

As Brent and I discussed, the companies that thrive in this next era will be the ones that use AI to increase capability, capacity, and imagination. They will rethink roles. They will break down work into tasks and outcomes. They will design new human-agent ratios. They will ask what work should become, not just how today’s work can move faster.

That is the foundation of the infinite company.

An infinite company is not just AI-enabled.

It is AI-forward.

It is designed to learn, adapt, reinvent, and grow continuously.

Thank you, Brent, for the friendship, the thoughtful conversation, and the many years of pushing the future of business forward with curiosity and heart.

🎥 Please watch the conversation here

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