Maybe we got digital transformation wrong. Not slightly wrong. Fundamentally wrong. Instead of transforming, we digitized. We took legacy models, legacy processes, legacy thinking…and made them faster. We optimized the candle instead of inventing the light bulb. That was the argument I made on stage at ServiceNow’s Knowledge 2025 in Las Vegas, in a keynote I called “Goodbye Digital Transformation, Hello AI-First Business Transformation.” Here’s what the data tells us: 70% of digital transformations fall short of their objectives. 51%…
Fear is rising, Trust is falling, and the AI industry has no one to blame but itself…and what to do about it
Fear is rising. Trust is falling. And the AI industry has no one to blame but itself. For the last two years, the loudest voices in AI have sold the future through a mix of inevitability, disruption, and dread: AGI is near, jobs are going away, the economy may collapse, and somehow this is all supposed to inspire confidence. It doesn’t. It creates narrative debt. And now that debt is coming due, especially among the very people who are supposed…
AI Is Changing More Than Work, It’s Rewiring Executive Decision-Making
The most important AI shift in business right now is not happening in the tech stack. It’s happening in the mindset of leadership. As executives lean more heavily on AI to guide decisions, a bigger question is coming into focus: is AI expanding judgment, or slowly replacing it? A March 2026 report highlighted by The Register, citing Confluent’s survey of 200 UK private-sector leaders, found that 62% of leaders use AI to make the majority of their decisions. Not some…
What it means when CEOs Step Down Because the Future of AI Arrived Faster Than the Role
When major CEOs begin framing succession around AI, it signals something larger than a changing of the guard. It suggests that the leadership model itself is being redefined in real time. This is not about becoming more efficient with new tools. It is about whether today’s leaders can redesign work, decision-making, and value creation for a world shaped by intelligence at scale. Recently, two iconic CEOs announced that they’re stepping aside and called for a new genre of leader in…
Forbes: Why Leaders Are Prioritizing AI Platforms And People To Reinvent Their Business
Via Brian Solis, Forbes Every week, another enterprise and frontier company announces a new AI model, another copilot, another assistant, another agent. And yet, when you ask leaders whether their organizations are actually operating differently, whether decisions are faster, outcomes more autonomous, models of work truly reinvented, the honest answer is often a hesitant, “no.” This creates an enterprise transformation gap between AI that thinks at the individual level and AI that can execute across workflows. Companies are investing billions,…
Cointelegraph: Reality of AI’s impact on employment clashes with C-suite optimism
via Via Cointelegraph, MSN, by Aaron Wood In a recent Cointelegraph article, “Reality of AI’s impact on employment clashes with C-suite optimism,” the story argues that the promised benefits of AI are colliding with a more difficult reality in the workplace. While executives remain bullish on AI’s potential, the article points to weaker entry-level hiring, uneven employment growth in tech, and growing evidence that AI tools often create extra rework instead of clear productivity gains. It also highlights research suggesting…
CEOs Say AI Is Making Work More Efficient, Employees Tell a Different Story
What will they do all day Wish list for diana Two Wall Street Journal stories got me thinking. When you read them together, they explain why so many companies feel stuck with AI, or feel further along than they really are. One story quotes tech leaders arguing that what a CEO does might be “one of the easier things” for AI to do. Sundar Pichai said it. Sam Altman doubled down and talked about an AI running divisions, even entire…
Future of Health: Why Health and Communication are at Risk with AI, and without Augmented Intelligence
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…