By Gustavo Meirelles, Futuro da Saúde After a few years of enchantment with artificial intelligence, 2026 begins to impose an adjustment of expectations. At SXSW, in Austin, the discourse changed: less dazzle, more questioning. One of the most relevant provocations came from anthropologist and futurist Brian Solis, in the session “Augmented IQ: Scaling Human + AI Potential”. Solis went straight to the point, and brought a necessary annoyance to the audience: we are using AI to automate the past, not…
CX Network Names Brian Solis a Top AI Leader in CX To Follow
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…
Beyond Digital Transformation, The AI-First Business Revolution
via Avasant As companies worldwide grapple with AI implementation, a critical gap has emerged between executive ambitions and organizational reality, revealing the urgent need for a fundamental shift in how we approach AI-driven change. At Avasant’s recent Empowering Beyond Summit 2025, Brian Solis, Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow and nine-time bestselling author, delivered a compelling case for why businesses must disrupt themselves to fully realize AI’s transformative potential. His insights illuminate the path forward for organizations seeking to move…
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 Reshaping Business, Yet Most Leaders Are Investing in the Optimization of Yesterday
If AI is eating the world, you could also say that it’s also exposing leadership. The companies that win next will not be the ones that automate the fastest, but the ones that learn to imagine bigger. That’s how we’ll start this story. Also, my keynote is below if you’d like to jump straight to the video. At Integrated Systems Europe in Barcelona, I talked about AI in a way that made some people nod, some people uncomfortable, and others…
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…
Most Companies Are Using AI to Cut Costs, Smart CHROs Will Use It to Rebuild Work
Everyone is talking about AI as if the future of work is just a headcount story. It is not. That framing is too small, too reactive, and too dangerous. The real shift is not that AI will simply replace jobs. It is that AI is forcing companies to rethink what work is, how value gets created, and where human contribution becomes even more important. That changes the mandate for CHROs completely. CHROs cannot stay in a reactive HR role. They…
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.