Brian Solis, Head of Global Innovation, ServiceNow, 9x Bestselling Author | EBS25 - The AI Factor

0:00 Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you so much, Anapon. That was brilliant. I am ready to disrupt myself. Actually, I've been I've been been doing that for the last few decades because I live in Silicon Valley and that's that's how you survive every tech revolution. But as he said, this is a time for courage. It's time for vision. It's a time for courage. And you heard in my bio that I have studied and I've worked in digital transformation. Well, I think when the term itself got popular, which was around 2012, 2011.

0:35 But this isn't about digital transformation any longer. This is now about business transformation. Going back to fire, going back to the internet, going back to the iPhone, artificial intelligence represents the first technological revolution that challenges us to do more than just simply iterate. to do more than scale, to do more than take out costs, to do more than execute faster. That's part of it. But where the vision and where the courage comes in is that artificial intelligence also asks you to imagine entirely new ways forward. And that's innovation.

1:23 And so now today already we have to iterate and innovate in order to transform our businesses and nothing says innovation like PowerPoint slides and these are not AI generated so they're not even that innovative. One of the things that I have studied as a futurist, as a digital anthropologist, but also as just a strategist and helping companies transform over the years is that the appetite for transformation actually isn't there. Most leaders want to improve yesterday for tomorrow and that isn't transformation.

2:15 In the era of digital transformation or so we call it, it was actually more about digitization of previous processes, previous workflows. This is why so many studies found that the actual idea of ROI from transformation wasn't widespread, nor was it delivering the returns that executives had expected. This is why you see headlines like this in the Economist. What happened to the artificial intelligence revolution? Well, it's hard to claim that we're witnessing a revolution when, as Anopom said, we had been using AI as a co-pilot. We used artificial intelligence to do what we did yesterday better today and tomorrow. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. But the best you can get out of that is time back, costs cut. That's not a revolution as much as it is iterative. And so what my research has shown, what articles like this are finding is that we're not being bold enough. We're not being visionary enough and we are falling into the habits that we have had during every technological revolution, which is to fit it into the box of business as usual. Why? Because that's the box we know. It's the work we know. It's the challenges that we faced and not have overcome in the past. And it's the guard rails in which we operate. It's the risk of which we tolerate and don't tolerate.

3:57 And in a world now with waves of generative AI, agentic AI, AGI behind it, quantum behind it, we're actually now entering a world where we do not know what's on the other side of these revolutions. So in the absence of knowing, it's human nature to lean on what you do know. I have probably had 1,000 2,000 concussions in my career from banging my head against the wall. I'm sure you have had the similar amount, maybe more. Because when you talk about new possibilities, when you explore new horizons, when you ask different questions, as we heard in the video at the beginning about what if or why can't we or what how might we? When you ask new questions, the other side of those questions are usually met with, "Oh, we could never do that. We don't have the resources for that. We don't have the budget for that.

5:04 Haven't you been watching the news? We have to take things cautiously. We don't know what we don't know." So there can be no revolution if we don't persuade ourselves to disrupt ourselves to explore new horizons in ways that uncover new opportunities. I don't know if you know this is a funny stat. In 2023 2024, the term generative AI was said almost somewhere between 30 and 40,000 times in earnings calls, usually by CEOs and CFOs. And unlike digital transformation, we now see business leaders and executives touting artificial intelligence as a performance advantage, as a competitive advantage, as a street advantage. And so when you ask them, well, how's your progress on artificial intelligence? They will say behind the scenes that they are either ambivalent or outright dissatisfied with the state of their AI transformation, the state of their AI efforts, and the state of their ROI around AI.

6:21 And that is held back by the same challenges that we saw with the economist headline, we're not thinking big enough. CEOs are promising ROI to the street. They want to see, unlike digital transformation, they want to see returns. And returns are going to take bigger, bolder initiatives than just taking out costs or increasing efficiencies. Don't get me wrong, we have to do those things too, but we have to move through iteration and innovation in parallel. I just read this story in Axios and it is yet another example of the disconnect, the gap between organizational leaders and the rest of the organization.

7:14 The dark blue bar is representative of employee feedback. The purple bar is representative of sea levels. So for example, 73% of business executives feel that their company's approach to AI is wellont controlled and highly strategic. But don't talk to your employees about it. They might not know what you're talking about. 75% of executives feel like their company has been successful in adopting AI over the past 12 months, but not those employees.

7:52 90% say that their company has an AI strategy. But if you ask employees, they don't seem to know what it is, if it is something. And of course, executives believe that their organization has high levels of AI literacy. There is an incredible gap just even in what we're doing with AI or what we should be doing with AI, let alone vision and strategy. In one of the research reports that we just published, it actually comes out officially next week. We had found that of all of the companies that are investing in AI business transformation, there is an elite group of what we call AI paceetters who are operating with an AI vision. And that sounds fantastic. But when you go deeper and you look at what the vision is, it's not terribly visionary. It's iterative.

8:52 So as an industry we have to raise the bar. As an industry we have to challenge ourselves to think and dream bigger to imagine new possibilities in a state of the unknown in a state of uncertainty. We've got a long way to go especially when 1% of companies believe that they are at AI maturity. The consensus is that the biggest barrier to scale isn't employees. It certainly isn't the technology. It is the executives leading the effort. They're not steering fast enough. They're not thinking big enough.

9:39 But when they talk to the street, boy are they promising AI business transformation. when you talk to them behind the scenes or if you talk to boards, boy are they saying they're not happy with the progress that they're making this far. But at some point leaders have to lead. And I think that's where you come in. They don't know what they don't know. So as a leader, they lean on what they do know. And when they don't know what they don't know, it's hard to imagine use cases.

10:12 It's hard to imagine innovation if it's not tangible, if it isn't roadmap, if it isn't tied to some type of performance or metrics or milestones along the way. I've worked with my fair share of enterprises, but I've also worked with my fair share of startups and venture capitalists. And one of the reasons why I stayed close to smaller companies, why I stayed close to investors is because I wanted to understand how to speak their language. You think about the language of a venture capitalist and a founder or an entrepreneur. They're not coming to you with use cases that are usually proven on how much they're going to take out costs. They're talking about stuff that doesn't exist or that you didn't know exists. Venture capitalists have a formula for assessing their investments. I would love to say that founders have a formula for pitching their companies, but that's always something that has to be improved. But still, venture capitalists have to see through a bad presentation to recognize the promise of a new technology or a new company. And they're not looking for 5x or 10x returns. They're looking for a,000x return over the long term. And so the formulas that they have, the processes that they have, the methodologies that they have to explore the unknown and assess risk and assess opportunities for returns exists. And I believe in order to move forward with big bold ideas, we have to not only challenge ourselves, but we have to challenge our conventions. We have to challenge our business logic. We have to challenge our road maps and our strategies. Are they big enough? Because if they're not, we already know what that's going to yield.

12:12 AI is just another incarnation of what we realized with digital transformation or digitization because everything is going to change. As Adam Pal said, the industries as we've known them, that era is over. Business as usual is evolving into something entirely new that doesn't even have a playbook. I'm pretty sure over the last two weeks you have heard about Box, you've heard about Shopify, you've heard about Dolingo with each of their CEOs publishing memos about becoming AI first and that's kicked up a lot of debate. What do they mean by AI first?

12:53 Are they replacing jobs? Are they reimagining the org chart? Well, in many ways, yes, yes, and yes. But it isn't as dire as it may sound. It is an opportunity for us to imagine then what do we do differently? I just read this incredible stat right before I came on. 55% of executives have replaced employees with AI and regret the decisions that they made.

13:32 Good. But we now have to imagine if I free up hours of your time, if I give you a collaborator to execute, what are we going to do that we couldn't do yesterday? What are we going to do with that free time? How are we going to create new value? These are all questions that need to be asked because then I can start making decisions about strategy. I could make decisions about talent. I could make decisions about iterating and innovating. I can now start to reimagine what my operating model can look like for the business of the future starting right now. This is Venode Kosla. He's one of the most prolific investors, venture capitalists out there.

14:25 He posted this on X because I guess you can't say he tweeted this. Most businesses have no clue what is about to hit them in the next 10 years when most rules of engagement will change. I saw this and I kind of stopped in my tracks and said, "Well, that sounds pretty dire. What does he mean by this?" Cuz he didn't follow it up. Well, actually, he did follow it up. He got even more abstract. Only 200 people in the world understand what's about to happen. All right. I guess maybe let's make it 201. I'm going to try to think about this because when people say things like this, it's very easy to just move on.

15:11 But when you start to then look at what the box CEO or Shopify or Duolingo CEO are doing or when you're looking at investors who are asking their startup investments to come to them with org charts to see how many seats they can fill with AI before they put in headcount. Well, we got to start figuring this out. Well, how are customers going to change? How are behaviors going to change? How is purchasing and and service going to change? Because those are the rules of engagement.

15:41 So trying to even answer the question is a good step. So it brings us to a crossroads. Do we do what we did yesterday with this incredible new technology or do we dream bigger? Yes. Yes, it's both of those things. But dreaming bigger is hard when it's not something that we as leaders, as employees have been conditioned to do.

16:15 Even though we have had our brainstorming sessions, even though we've probably attended design thinking workshops, we haven't really changed our conventions or our beliefs or our values. So, we're sort of rooted in the thinking that's still in the box because we actually haven't removed the box. This is why you'll hear things like psychological safety when it comes to innovation and culture change. I don't know if you heard this this study out of Google. They wanted to understand why their highest performing teams dramatically outperformed everyone else within the company because they thought they had a standard to be a Googler or I guess they had a standard to be googly since that's an adjective. They thought it was because of the education. They thought it was because of the experience. But after the study, it turned out that the highest performing teams out innovated everyone else, outperformed everyone else because they felt psychological safety, which means that they felt the opportunity to take risks. They felt the opportunity to challenge conventions and to ask questions that weren't being asked and to pursue different answers. That's the construct. That's the foundation for thinking bigger. So, we have to change the narrative.

17:42 We can't just talk about this as a technology. We can't just talk about this as cost takeout or scale or efficiencies. Those things are important. But in order to change the future, in order to create a future that wouldn't have otherwise existed, in order to unlock the full potential of these technologies, we need to ask different questions and empower ourselves and one another to give each other the space and the safety and maybe even the incentivization to think differently about what our organization looks like, how we create value, how we deliver value to our stakeholders and to our shareholders and really start having those uncomfortable conversations. Yes, AI is going to sit in your org chart. So, where what's it going to do?

18:38 How's it collaborate with other employees? How does it augment you and me and our teams rather than automate and replace? It's the augmentation piece that we're not talking about enough because that work doesn't exist yet. And that's where leadership comes in. So the way I think about things and I try to break it down simply because everything's moving so fast is I'm now breaking out my road maps. When I work with other companies, when I work with other leaders, I'm evaluating what's the top down, what's the functional investment, and are we operating independently? Are we operating in silos or are we operating with a top- down vision? Because I need to understand if that AI is iterative which is going to supercharge yesterday's work tomorrow.

19:29 Cool. But now I also need to explore the node Kosla's post about the rules of engagement changing. Am I investing in the things that are going to change tomorrow? Am I investing in the things that we didn't do yesterday or that we couldn't do yesterday or that we didn't even know to do yesterday and finding that balance between the two because it is innovative AI that's going to disrupt business models and entire industries and that is going to happen to us or because of us. That's the choice. That's the opportunity.

20:12 This is research that I've been leading over the last two years. I'm already starting to find high performers, risktakers, big thinkers, game changers, people who are circumventing everything that held them back in the past in order to explore new horizons and deliver net new value to the organization, all while earning seale support and board support. And look, I'll tell you the truth. Most of the time, the boards that I'm talking to, they're not even thinking big enough. They're just putting the pressure on sea suite without having the answers. So, someone's got to have the answers. I think that's why we're here together today. By the way, if these slides are going too fast cuz I see some of you taking pictures, I will send these to you. Don't use up all your film. That's a real bad joke.

21:05 But I think there's a there's a parallel though for with Kodak in this conversation. But what we're seeing now is when we can think big enough, when we document the attributes, for example, in the way that a venture capitalist breaks out their investments, when we rethink work, when we rethink outcomes, when we rethink aspirations, we actually can trace investments back to business performance. And at the end of the day, that's all shareholders want. That's all boards want. That's all stakeholders want. We don't want to be threatened. We don't want to be automated away. We actually want to grow through all of this. There's plenty of uncertainty and anxiety in other parts of the world. Let it not be AI. Let it not be our business transformation. So we do need to step up that vision. We do need to think not just about isolated technologies but more of a platform approach towards business transformation. We do need to focus on rethinking talent. We do need to root ourselves in data and AI governance for sure. We do need to think not just about agentic AI as performing yesterday's workflows from beginning to end, but asking if these are even the right workflows. Could we reimagine workflows towards bigger and better outcomes now that we have infinite scale on the horizon? What does that even look like?

22:42 A 247 company with infinite agents, moving to aentic enterprises, then eventually moving to AI employees. All of those things need their dreamers. So this is what it means to disrupt yourself. to give yourself permission to ask different questions and give yourself the space and time to find those answers. A lot of times when I'm challenging my strategy, I refuse to cheat with chat GPT or Perplexity or any of the other tools. My challenge to myself, where I disrupt myself is with this hashtag WWID. Should get t-shirts made for this.

23:28 What would AI do? Because when I think about it that way, I'm now challenging my own conventions. I know what I would do. It would probably be based on what I've always done, the things that worked, improving the things that didn't work. But what would AI do? And so, embracing that AI first mindset allows me to expand my thinking. It allows me to reimagine capabilities, outcomes, business models. It pushes me from automation toward augmentation, places I hadn't really explored before. Because an AI mindset is going to drive exponential thinking and growth. Whereas if we applied our legacy mindset, our digital transformation mindset, we will improve things on a linear scale. This is why we need both because our competitors are going to at some point unlock true business transformation to create what an AI first business would look like if it started from scratch.

24:42 So when I study iterative AI versus innovative AI, what I'm looking at is what kind of performance gains can I expect from my organization so that I can have seuite conversations changing the narrative from a digital to a business conversation. So if we take out costs, if we increase margins, those are good things. We will get those from automation. But if we start to unlock the things that we couldn't do by exploring new workflows, tied to new outcomes, tied to new org charts to support those outcomes, tied to augmentation, partnering humans with AI, we now start to introduce gamechanging use cases that wouldn't have existed without WWID, without new strategy, without new thinking, without bigger bigger dreaming. Because the companies that invest in both of those will create a disruptive layer that's productive. They will create net new revenue, net new gains, and those companies that solely focus on the iterative AI, the linear line, will start to see themselves fall behind, not just linearly, but exponentially.

26:02 So we now have to think about our strategies for combining iterative and innovative AI for bolder use cases for reimagining org charts and operational models to reimagine the potential for human capacity to explore what augmentation looks like in the job description so that when we're putting AI in the org chart we're also updating our human job descriptions to show how they partner with AI to measure new things that they can do and reward them in new ways. I think about artificial intelligence as augmented intelligence now unlocking things that I couldn't do yesterday that I couldn't do without AI. I don't know if you've heard about the IKEA story, but it's fascinating.

26:55 They deployed a chatbot named Billy, named after its most popular bookshelf, I learned, because I wouldn't know. I couldn't put one together. I'm not that smart. But Billy was so effective in first case deflections. I think the number was 57% that they had to have real conversations about what to do with the human agents that were underutilized. And what they did was rather than cut the headcounts, they started to study, well, what's happening with the other 43%. What are these calls asking? Why can't they be served by Billy? And it turns out that a lot of the calls that they were getting, a lot of the inbounds that they were getting had to do with interior design, whether it was for your office or for your home. So they took those agents and they reskilled them as interior designers, launched a new business out of it and in the first year it generated€1 billion euro automation augmentation cost takeout business growth. And now as we move toward this realm of agentic I want to give you hope for the future for those who use dating apps.

28:04 You will now have AI agents who are out there dating other AI agents at scale so that you can be introduced to the two or three human beings you should actually date. But think about that for employees or think about that for customers as intelligent digital twins. What could they be doing all day? We now know that on the cusp here we have dark factories. We have dark warehouses. We have agents who could work 24/7 a day. We have we have businesses that can operate 24/7 a day. But like what are we really measuring in those cases? Because I read this Wall Street Journal article that came out just a couple weeks ago and boy are they just talking about the simple dimensions of time and productivity focused on automation because even the Wall Street Journal isn't thinking big enough. The Economist isn't thinking big enough.

29:00 This is an unprecedented moment with no playbook. We don't know what the business of the future looks like because it doesn't exist yet. But that's what we get to design by dreaming bigger, by asking you questions, by embracing an AI first mindset that challenges beyond the how could I do this faster or how could I do this with less effort or how can I do this less expensively to increase efficiency to getting down to first principles thinking or to root causes or to innovative thinking so that We can reimagine work.

29:39 We can reimagine outcomes. And we could reimagine performance. I put a whole bunch of these questions in here to maybe act as like a starting guide for you. So, we'll make sure you get a copy of this deck, but the point is is that these are questions that I'm asking in the work that I'm doing. There's a lot more that I have, but I wanted to share with you the ones that seem to get the conversation going. ones that seem to to diffuse the politics and the critical thinking, the things that get in the way sometimes of of the desired outcomes, the desired conversations, the psychology of culture transformation in addition to business transformation. But another thing to challenge ourselves on is how we talk about this stuff. It's I'm a geek, so it's very easy to get caught up in the tech, but it's also very hard for business executives to get caught up in the tech. They're measured differently.

30:32 They speak differently. Their stakeholders are the streets, the shareholders, the board. So, I learned everything to have those conversations by hanging out with venture capitalists and investment bankers and tying that those words, the terminology, that thinking into my work so that I can uplevel the things that I'm doing, not just at a communication level to these business executives, but also in my strategy, in my road maps, that I'm thinking about my initiatives and my use cases at a different level.

31:07 And that's what I would leave for you. This is about business acceleration versus digital transformation. So I'll leave you with this. You are that voice that every leader needs to hear. You have that vision that every leader needs to see because otherwise they wouldn't be able to think about this, see this, or do this without you. You are the leader behind the leader. A great leader delivers a better future that would not have otherwise happened without you. Thank you very much.