CX Network announced its guide to the top 50 AI leaders to follow in CX for 2026 and Brian Solis is on the list! his year’s list highlights individuals from across the globe who are redefining how technology and human insight come together to elevate customer experiences. As artificial intelligence (AI) accelerates across industries, its promise to transform how we work comes hand-in-hand with very real concerns about unemployment: recent data from the National University suggests that 30 percent of…
IKEA AI Customer Service Story Goes Viral Because The Company Reskilled Staff Instead of Laying Off Employees
On March 31st, 2026, Brian Solis posted the following on X. IKEA deployed an AI chatbot named Billy to handle level-one customer service inquiries. It reportedly resolved around 47% of those engagements without human escalation. Most companies would have celebrated the labor savings and stopped there. Cost takeout right? But the more interesting move was to study the other cases Billy could not resolve. Those unresolved inquiries pointed to customer demand for interior design help. IKEA responded by spinning up…
AI Business Reinvention Starts Where Legacy Thinking Ends
I recently sat down with Geoff Nielson on Digital Disruption, produced by Info-Tech Research Group, for a conversation that went far beyond the usual AI headlines. We talked about what AI is actually changing inside the enterprise, why so many organizations are mistaking activity for progress, and what leadership has to do with whether AI becomes a force for optimization or reinvention. Please do watch the conversation (video embedded below). It’s fun and rich with insights from the frontline of…
AI Is Eating the World, Are We Ready to Dream Bigger?
At Integrated Systems Europe, I had the opportunity to continue the conversation after my keynote, “AI is Eating the World,” in a candid video interview with Rise TV about where artificial intelligence is really taking us, and where we’re still thinking far too small. AI is often compared to the discovery of fire, the invention of the wheel, or even electricity. Those comparisons are dramatic, but they’re not entirely wrong. These weren’t just inventions. They were enabling forces. They expanded…
SXSW 2026: cognitive darwAInism, AI Slop, the Hidden AI Tax, and a Futurist Coming Home
This is a thoughtful piece by Danny Devriendt. Thank you, my friend. 🙏 Brian Solis is far from a neutral observer in my SXSW story; he’s a friend I’ve known for a long time, and one of the people who helped me -and a whole generation- see the social web for what it really was back in the day. Long before social media became a relentless ad machine, he wrote The Social Media Manifesto, arguing that this wasn’t a new…
Economia: E você, importa? SXSW discute ‘o que sobrará’ dos humanos na era da IA
Via Economia, Renato Pezzotti Os assuntos sobre os avanços da inteligência artificial foram tratados de forma transversal no SXSW deste ano, que aconteceu nesta semana, nos Estados Unidos. O antropólogo digital Brian Solis reforçou que líderes precisam deixar de usar a IA apenas para “automatizar o passado” e pensar em como as novas ferramentas devem ser utilizadas para redesenhar o trabalho que só humanos podem fazer: ter sua inteligência “aumentada”, construída com empatia, curiosidade e criatividade.
Worth Magazine Covers Brian Solis Keynote at SXSW 2026 – Augmentation Is the New Productivity
via Dan Costa, Worth My social feed is filled with ads telling me “Most people still use AI like Google….” and then they try to sell me some online course or collection of prompts. But there is truth to the cliche. Here at SXSW, the distinction between the AI-augmented and the AI-clueless keeps coming up. “Most people use AI to do what they already know,” Brian Solis, digital anthropologist and head of global innovation at ServiceNow, said on stage at…
Mindshift Hits Amazon #1 for Business Management Books
My friends at Wiley Publishing called me today to let me know that Mindshift is officially a “#1 best-seller” in the Business Management category! Every company needs leaders who can spot and seize on opportunities at a moment’s notice. Every organization needs leaders who can rally teams together around new opportunities. Those who can see important, emerging trends foresee the coming disruption and harness those forces, translate them into actionable insights and motivation to fuel their company’s march into the…
Forbes Publishes Brian Solis’ Latest AI Research: The Biggest Mistake Companies Are Making With AI Agents
Industry analyst Joe McKendrick broke-down Brian Solis’ latest ServiceNow research report, “Work Reimagined: The Human + AI Blueprint for Exponential Performance,” in his latest Forbes column. Business leaders need to consider the possibilities of human-AI collaboration beyond simple task replacement, urges Brian Solis, global head of innovation for ServiceNow and a highly regarded digital analyst and anthropologist, in a compelling thought-leadership piece. He makes the point that he sees many companies attempting to simply slap on AI or associated agents…
Why AI Darwinism Needs a Mindshift, and why You Can’t Automate Your Way to Business Model Innovation
When Richie Cotton asked me on DataCamp’s DataFramed podcast how I stay afloat with everything happening in AI, I joked that I wear “AI floaties.” Thirty tabs open. New “state of AI’ reports I need to read. Breakthroughs I need to understand. Every day, there’s a new model, a new breakthrough, a new viral article with a new “this changes everything” or “this is the end of…” headline. Honestly, I’m struggling to keep afloat too with all the AI advancements…