Category: strategy
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Using synthetic personas and research to explore ideas
One of the areas of my work which has been truly eye opening recently is the application of synthetic research (using AI generated data and personas to simulate real-world research scenarios) to explore ideas and open up new thinking. Various pieces of research have shown how accurately AI engines can replicate the responses of human…
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Using AI as a thought partner
A lot of the focus on the benefits of AI are (perhaps naturally) focusing on efficiencies right now. But one of my favourite ways of using these tools is to challenge my own thinking, to open up new lines of exploration, and to originate new perspectives and ideas that I hadn’t even thought of. If…
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Gigantomania and why big projects go wrong
This weeks news about the further delays and overspend costs associated with the UK’s HS2 high-speed rail project had a distinct air of inevitability about it. Government infrastructure initiatives and large corporate projects that don’t overrun and exceed budget are a unique kind of rarity. Oxford academic Bent Flyvbjerg, who co-wrote the excellent ‘How Big Things…
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Superagency: Amplifying Human Capability with AI
There’s something very attractive about the idea of ‘superagency’, the emerging concept that sits at the intersection of AI, organisational design, and talent. It refers to the amplification of individual or team capability through AI, allowing people to operate with outsized influence, speed, and creativity. The idea is that we’re creating a compounding effect where…
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Integrating AI into the strategy workflow
I’m a big fan of the idea of AI amplifying human capability and have long been working to fully embed AI into my strategy work. For me it’s been a real game-changer. It’s not just about efficiency, although it is like having a mini-team of researchers always on hand which is amazing. It’s also that…
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Tar pit ideas
I liked the concept of ‘tar pit ideas’ that is talked about in this StartupMBA TikTok that I came across. These are common startup ideas that multiple entrepreneurs have come up with before, which continue to attract a lot of focus, but which end up going nowhere. Tar pit ideas form around a common problem…
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AI, and inflection points in the creative industry
AI has generated a real inflection point for every sector that involves/uses/hires creative thinking and talent. For many creative businesses it can easily feel as though they are facing an unprecedented level of uncertainty or even an existential threat. I’m doing a talk at an upcoming event on AI for creatives and production folk and I’m theming…
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On Changing the System
I wouldn’t call myself an ardent football fan but I am a fan of exceptional innovations and innovators from the world of sport and how they help us to challenge our own thinking. The other day I was talking to a client about systems thinking and change, and they mentioned the example of Johan Cruyff,…
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Decoding the real value of AI
When it comes to developing a strategy for AI implementation there seems to be a lot of rabbits in a lot of headlights right now. How do you make sense of all the potential that AI brings to so many areas of the business? How do you understand where the real value is? The myriad…
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Innovating employee experience in the age of AI
I was lucky enough to give the keynote at the CIPD Change Management conference the other week and one of the speakers there referenced how they’d used change personas to help deal with the variety of different responses to a change initiative. It reminded me of a fundamental principle which I’ve always stuck to when…