MarketingRecon

Marketing Recon partners with executive teams to create stronger strategic linkages
between a company, its clients, and partners – laying the groundwork for new market growth
and designing custom programs to support the growth initiatives.

An AI Evening of Energetic Learning & Sharing with WAAI

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Storytelling

Somewhere over the rainbow is the AI pot of gold and a very special group of women are out to find it!  I was quite fortunate to attend a lovely, high energy event hosted by a Boston newly anointed non-profit called Women Applying AI  at a smart venue compliments of CBT Architects.   Just over a year ago, I met one of the organization’s leaders, Pam Boiros at an MIT Boston Tech week event when she gathered a number of us during lunch to celebrate being together and wow, how this group has grown!  The evening was anchored by an uplifting book talk entitled, Winning with AI by co-authors Charlene Li and Dr. Katia Walsh.

Why women?  Why AI?  What’s it all about? 

The mission of this group is to enable women to learn and lead with AI.  The group’s activities create opportunities for collaboration, dialogue, and problem solving in a no-judgement zone.   The membership has grown so rapidly that one could easily call this a movement, according to the remarks last night.    

At the heart of the evening were several informal “storytelling” segments from professionals using AI in completely different ways – one in her practice as a psychotherapist another as a non-technical leader in a technical environment.   The goal – to learn so we can teach others. 

As to why women – there’s strong belief that women will work toward keeping the critical human-centered benefits alive during this AI revolution.  One way to think about it is to leverage AI’s efficiencies to allow for more time to do other human to human activities and pay attention to those around us.  The CEO presenter, Jenn Azar from Stellix emphasized the importance of learning to work differently as one of the keys to success.

The Book

Charlene and Katia worked together at Forrester in the late 90’s and collectively have lived through several major technological tsunamis.  The main takeaways from their talk and the book itself were as follows (excuse my over-simplification):

  • AI pilots and testing simply delay starting to use it – implementation in some form has to be a priority (don’t end up in “Pilot Purgatory.”
  • Start small and scale fast – speed is the new moat
  • Value will come from scaling
  • AI has to be part of a business strategy – not a standalone “AI Strategy”
  • Data should not be a road-block – work with what you have – clean data is like a clean house – it might happen for a few minutes “until the dog tracks in the mud,” according to Charlene
  • Good governance is critical
  • Find a good place to start and grow from there.

At this point, the membership to WAII is free and all interested are encouraged to join and become part of this growing force.   I can’t imagine where it will go from here!  Many thanks the CEO, Luda Kopeikino to the team that has taken it this far.

 

 

A Marketing Hypothesis on Talent| Re-Energizing Recruitment and Retention Together

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A Marketing Hypothesis on Talent| Re-Energizing Recruitment and Retention Together

While I am not embedded inside large HR organizations, my recent work alongside them has led me to a marketing-based hypothesis about today’s talent challenges.

In prior engagements, I focused on strengthening the talent pipeline through a rigorous TVP/EVP research process. What began as structured research quickly evolved into something more powerful: authentic employee storytelling.

Employees—often long-tenured, middle managers—were asked meaningful questions about their experience for the first time since being hired. Their responses were candid, minimally edited, and strikingly human. As the interviewer, I observed genuine appreciation for simply being asked. What started as research became engagement.  We not only learned what was important to employees about the company as a whole but also what energized them by department – something quite important for the hiring process.

The Current Talent Landscape

Recent industry reports reinforce the urgency of rethinking talent strategy.

  • Workday notes that while hiring continues, promotion rates have fallen across most industries. Internal mobility is slowing, reducing advancement opportunities and weakening engagement. Compounding this, unclear AI strategies are increasing anxiety about job security.
  • Korn Ferry observes that rigid RTO policies are eroding trust and engagement, negatively affecting productivity and culture – impacting recruitment and retention.
  • Deloitte emphasizes that organizations must rethink their EVP in an AI-shaped world of work if they want to drive both human and business outcomes.  Individually, these trends are concerning. Collectively, they reveal something deeper. 
  • A 2025 Talent Trends SHRM report highlights persistent applicant shortages, competition, and candidate “ghosting,” leaving critical roles vacant and driving operational strain – citing, “Over time, these pressures can weaken market position, damage your employer brand, and undermine sustained competitiveness.”

Re-Calibrating the Keywords

Acquisition. Retention. Engagement. Disengagement. RTO. AI.

These are not separate issues—they exist on a continuum. Recruitment and retention are often treated as distinct functions, but they are deeply interconnected. Organizations market aggressively to attract new talent yet often fail to generate the same excitement and intentional communication for those already inside.

It is the equivalent of offering attractive incentives to new customers while overlooking loyal, long-standing ones.

An Employee-Centered Acquisition & Retention Program

There is an opportunity to use the TVP process not only as a recruitment tool, but as a strategic engagement engine.

By inviting employees to help redefine the organization in light of RTO shifts and AI integration, companies can:

  • Clarify and modernize their EVP
  • Surface department-level differentiators that matter to both candidates and current staff
  • Reinforce internal mobility and growth narratives
  • Reduce AI-related uncertainty through transparent strategy and use cases

In many organizations, Talent Acquisition and Employee Engagement operate in parallel —often under-resourced and loosely connected. Yet both can benefit from a unified, authentic storytelling program that celebrates employees and reflects the evolving reality of work.

When thoughtfully executed, this approach does more than fill roles. It strengthens culture, reinforces loyalty, and injects renewed energy into the workforce.

In an AI-infused environment, organizations that align recruitment and retention through genuine employee voice will not only compete more effectively for talent—they will keep it.

The Next Generation| Building What Moves the World – Observations from the HBS Tech Club Annual Conference

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The Next Generation| Building What Moves the World

Once again, it was a privilege to attend the HBS Tech Club Conference this past Saturday.  Coincidentally it was Valentine’s Day which didn’t escape the speakers who admitted only a group of techies would plan this event on this holiday!

The bookends of the event were keynotes from Boston Dynamics and Amazon Prime.  Clearly both spoke directly to the theme “building what moves the world” but in very different ways. My overall conference observation was that AI is no longer its own topic (as in the past two years), but assumed to be part of every tech operation and strategy as a key tool for doing more and redistributing human tasks.  Since the conference is student-oriented, the emphasis is on highlighting the skills needed now in the workplace and where and how to apply them – whether as operators, leaders, or investors.  What’s special about this event is that it is clearly welcoming to those outside the academic community.   As a local business advisor in marketing – I am grateful for its generous spirit!

The Future of Autonomous Mobile Robots

The first keynote, Marc Theermann, CSO at Boston Dynamics presented use cases for three different types of robots used to “amplify human potential.”    Robots are helping solve the massive labor shortage for many “dirty” jobs that humans are not filling.  More importantly, there’s no argument as to the massive number of critical tasks that can be taken on by robots -but the investment is clearly very long term.  To use robots properly requires massive re-tooling of factories to capture the immense amount of data generated from the tasks at hand. 

SPOT, the anthropomorphistic “dog” robot was a huge hit on the stage and in the lobby where I was lucky enough to have an interaction.  On screen, we were treated to videos of SPOT at work in dangerous situations.   This type of robot is being used in hostage situations, nuclear waste situations, evaluating fire damage, and many more amazing applications.   Similarly, the other two types of robots – STRETCH the logistics robot and ATLAS, the humanoid were shown in various iterations of their development and applications inside factory environments.  What stands out is the use of AI to train the robots to accomplish more through creating massive databases for each task and learning experience.   Using AI, training has for many tasks has been reduced from 24 months to 12 hours!

Additionally, the hardware is constantly being re-thought to make parts that are more universal and interchangeable.  Thus, the front and back or upper and lower leg will look the same.  The improvements are geared toward having nearly everyone on the shop floor being able to both use and maintain these mechanical co-workers!  The progress is inspiring and the applications are limitless as these early deployments become more affordable and accessible.  As per an audience question, however, the limitation is ENERGY to power robotics.  

This session was followed by a Q & A with the founder of Thinking Machines CTO, Soumith Chintalla  as per their website “Emphasis on human-AI collaboration. Instead of focusing solely on making fully autonomous AI systems, we are excited to build multimodal systems that work with people collaboratively”

One of the key discussion items here was privacy and turning AI into more of a local tool to be used on your own device as a virtual assistant through applications like Open Claw.

To build on the discussion of the future bank of job skills – he argued that technical skills will become less critical and being able to meet people where they are with technology will become more important.  He encouraged future product managers to spend time “understanding the world in a deep human way” in order to design AI products that truly meet human needs.

Health Tech & Wearables|

I chose this breakout to learn about the news in this field. The speakers were from IXANA, Neurable, and OZLO.   These companies are attacking everything from the field of bandwidth around your body to how to sleep better.   Advice to fellow makers of consumer products – try to find out how your customers are hacking your product and you will learn a lot about what users want.   

There was a healthy discussion about “agency” and just how much you would like to actually know about what’s going on in your body.  Neurable’s products are striving to detect neurological issues before any actual symptoms are obvious.

As for product development, manufacturers traditionally hate to make product changes, it takes a lot of research and data to push these wearable products into the next generation.   The GTM models are also challenging in that many are “wellness” vs. “health” and that’s the difference between FSA and HSA payments.  User data is also critical to acquire the HSA status.

AI Tools for Consumers|

Following another consumer trend, this panel consisted of speakers from Plaud, Suno, and Otter respectively discussing voice capture dictation at the desktop level, music making, and meeting note-taking.  Both Plaud and Otter are being used inside of many familiar apps like Zoom. Suno is bringing together the larger creative community to use technologies in way no one expected.   At the center of this discussion – voice is KING and surfacing as the key tool for online interaction even going so far as to say we will never need to write again. Wow – what repercussions could this have?

Food for Thought Before Lunch

HBS alums from BELI shared their success to date launching a NYC-centric food app that acts as a private online home for foodies to share their reviews and experiences among friends.  Acting almost as a “club” this app brings together its members through special FTF events as well. Building user traction with 100M ratings and a focus on TRUST, the business model is evolving.  Lean and mean, the pair of co-founders is operating with a modest budget and small team.   The key is data and identifying and leveraging all the transactions leading up to and following finding a great place to eat.  Just now expanding beyond NYC – it will be interesting to see how this evolves.

Careers in Tech Business Roles:

This panel breakout featured speakers I heard before and they were quite informative about what skills will stand out for the new alums as they get back into the workforce.  I recognized two of the panelists from last year from Amazon and Rippling – both impressive as they were the first time but with similar advice.  Ndonga from Aprio added a new dimension have been in her new role as Sr. Director of AI transformation (due to being acquired) for just a few months. Having gone from a startup where things were always moving forward – being acquired by a larger company required her to take a step back to do internal selling and education on the value of AI.   Her biggest challenge was to balance between the naysayers and the extreme – those who think every problem can be solved with AI.  She was highly engaging and on point! Collective advice – ask the right questions, focus on improving your judgement, learn to recognize patterns, focus on industry knowledge, then function.

Industrial Tech:

This area certainly does not attract the same crowds as other tech, but has incredible potential to solve serious problems.  Panelist represented Pensa Technologies; MIT’s new manufacturing initiative, TAKT, and an MIT Advisory/Investor.  Among the key topics were the shortage of manufacturing engineers, challenges in the supply chain, and the intersection between design and manufacturing due to the fact that design was left in the U.S. and manufacturing went overseas.  This disconnect has created a gap in meeting user requirements.  Using AI and multi-model technology, the hope is to reduce some of the more burdensome aspects of manufacturing such as testing, accounts payable reconciliation, and other non-sexy tasks that are hurting ROI in the sector.

Prime takes the Stage:

The final keynote was well worth the wait!  With presumed 100% of the audience as Prime Members, Jamil Ghani  unlocked the secrets to customer loyalty – defined as “ongoing commitment to and consistent preference for your product.”   But he distinguished first that Prime is not a loyalty program.  It’s a paid subscription with the goal of getting members to use it more.   He cleared up a series of myths throwing out “breakage” as a broken marketing ploy and advocating for delivering fresh value regularly with every day being the first day of the rest of your customer experience!  He focused on PRODUCT as being 80% of this equation followed by timely relevant PROMOTION, and appropriate PROGRAMS that focus on specific geographic or demographic targets. With 8B item delivered same or next day and average $550 savings in delivery per member, the points were well made.  He finished up by giving away ten Echo Dots and exiting in a splash.

 

 

 

 

Vying for attention in a busy seasonal market| The StoryBrand® Approach

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I had the rare opportunity to attend a session of the PRSA Gulf Coast while on a visit down south in Naples, Florida and it was particularly interesting to be present with a community that experiences the “visitor economy” in a very BIG way! Living in Gloucester, MA our economy does indeed swell during the summer for a few months with a combination of summer residents and visitors, but nothing compared to the impact of snowbirds arriving in Florida for a 6-month stay. The challenge is that everyone is vying for attention from the same market, so how does one prepare to stand out?


The session was geared toward empowering the PR leaders in a burgeoning Naples community to tune-in to messaging in their communications using the StoryBrand® framework. The last slide truly summed up the most important takeaway of the day, “Customers don’t read your story – they read their own story through your brand,” a tenet of Donald Miller, the founder of the StoryBrand® framework.
The approach reinforces some basic elements of “story” focused on clarifying the message, positioning the customer as the hero, increasing engagement in meaningful ways, and making sure that the message is consistent across channels. At the core, however, the website remains a key starting point. With a few poignant examples, the speaker, David Wildman, a StoryBrand® certified guide, demonstrated how easy it is to miss these guidelines.
Presenting stats upon stats about how many people visited your venue isn’t nearly as powerful as describing the experience that your customer is seeking or answering the question, “how does this make my life better?” Equally important is nailing the Call to Action for the audience you are addressing. Using a golf course as an example, in a city that has over 200 private golf clubs, showing a photo of the clubhouse isn’t going to draw much attention to either of the two audiences – the members and the prospective members. Understanding the problems your hero may be trying to solve and putting yourself in his shoes – is where it all begins.
Thanks to this lovely group of professionals who represented many important industries – #real-estate, #arts and #culture, #non-profits, #radio, and more for sharing their challenges working hard behind the scenes to create a vibrant and welcoming community.

 

From mining Asteroids to the Tax Code – Authors & Innovators 9th Annual Forum has something for everyone

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A round of applause for Larry Gennari and his partners at GALaw Partners in Needham for organizing an engaging and educational day for the faithful and new followers of the Authors and Innovators conference.   Larry’s choice of authors and thoughtful panel discussions were further enhanced by practical breakout sessions and a “working lunch” in this year’s conference.  The overall connecting theme was “The resilient entrepreneur.”

Though I could not be there for the first session, I walked into the breakout on M & A – benefiting from the expert discussion on how to prepare to sell a company – particularly focused on smaller private entities with owners that need to lay the groundwork and then get into the right frame of mind to no longer be their own boss.

My first author session was an interesting two-person panel “Creating Space to Grow” – juxtaposing two authors with widely diverse points of view on the role of government in stimulating private enterprises and the workforce.   The “space discussion” with author Matthew Weinzierl, Space to Grow provided a clear distinction of the benefits of risk-sharing in this arena – opening up space innovation to the private sector while keeping appropriate funding in place from the government – citing that things like “basic science” the need for competition, and long term ROI are not in the interest of the typical venture capitalist or private investor. On the other hand – private investment has brought forward new ways of thinking and cost savings for key space building blocks such as launch pads, space stations, and asteroid mining.

The session on de-mystifying kicked off with a series of factoids about the US National gap between income ($5 Trillion) and spending ($6.8 Trillion) and the fact that the top 1% of wealth owners are worth $50Trillion and there’s no way to know how much of that number is taxable based on the labyrinth of outdated tax code.   While Ray Madoff’s book,  The Second Estate seeks to unbundle this conundrum, the other two authors on the panel were focused on the secrets of creating wealth via business building.   Easier said than done, Mike Magliochetti (Dancing Between the Toes of Elephants) crystallizes entrepreneurial success with three key attributes: having a “foundational” idea, a sustainable business; and having key growth levers.  But also deconstructs the “insiders” language of investors.  John Abrams (From Founder to Future) presented the concept of “worker cooperatives” as his choice for growing past the founding partners phase of growth.

The last two sessions featured 1:1 interviews with authors who focused on resiliency and innovation (Scott Anthony, Epic Disruptions) and Experimentation (Jeff Bussgang, The Experimentation Machine).  Anthony discussed various case studies both written and “to be written” to demonstrate that innovation requires “conviction grounded in data” whether it’s Florence Nightengale transforming nursing or Elon Musk transforming transportation.   Bussgang studied the “10X” founders and in his book he distills the “timely tools” and “timeless methods” behind businesses that have scaled successfully.  For example, finding the non-obvious opportunities.

Naturally, this discussion evolved into a robust debate about AI with an argument that if businesses don’t adopt, then their competitors will simply create AI native businesses.  

 

 

By comparison, in terms of technology growth:

  • It took 80 years for electricity to be ubiquitious
  • It took 7 years for the internet to reach 80M users
  • It took 2 months for ChatGBT to reach 100B users.

And for the first time, a technology feeds itself – so there’s no telling how these numbers will explode! 

This is a very brief snapshot of a rich day of learning.  This is one of the most valuable days of eye-opening thinking you can enjoy.   Many thanks to all the authors,organizers, exhibitors, and sponsors.

 

 

Imagination in Action| A little AI for everyone at the MIT Media Lab

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Many thanks to John Werner and his colleagues who put together an amazing event at the MIT Media Lab yesterday. Despite the fact that my brain is still a bit sore from absorbing all the rich panel discussions, I am optimistic about the evolution of the community surrounding this movement.
The format of 30-minute “speed” panels was impressive and the flexibility and authenticity of the panel made conversations fluid and accessible. Speakers ranged from the highly scientific and technical to those focused on the organizational and behavioral impact of AI on the workforce.

The informal gathering of sub-groups, such as the newly formed “Women in AI” made it collegial and convivial! It would be impossible to summarize each panel and likely all will be available on video. But here are a few of my takeaways from a cross-section of panels and panelists that I was fortunate to observe.

• With less than 10% of the workforce using AI, there’s still a lot of confusion about what it “is” and “isn’t” so education and skilling up is still critical.
• Many would say that the adoption of AI depends on the person next to you. Most people are more comfortable learning from their peers.
• There’s some debate about “shadow IT.” With so many solutions out there to solve problems, the biggest challenge is really understanding all the tools available to solve them and choosing the right ones. What’s out there in the stack? AI is truly about problem solving.
• Organizationally – AI needs community along with subject matter experts. It requires cr4oss-functional communication and expertise.
• There’s still much to be learned across modalities. Whereas “text” is well on its way – images, video, and voice – particularly speech recognition still has work to do.
• Selling AI into enterprises is still challenging (especially since much of the expertise is in smaller entities). Relationships matter in order to influence leaders to adopt. Entrepreneurs need to rely on strong boards with good track records with larger companies.
• Agents will start to diversify into many shapes and sizes and business models/pricing will evolve according to just how sophisticated a task the agent is accomplishing.
• There are many efforts to understand the “agent workforce” and what it means for the economy and the 163M jobs. Still many unanswered questions. Most people/companies are not ready for the potential impact.
• The idea behind decentralization of AI is to assure that all the economic power doesn’t end up in the hands of a few companies.
• Cybercrime is on the rise and the professionalization of such needs a strong response. AI has an important role to play. Companies large and small are being attacked “at machine speed” and need to learn to DEFEND at machine speed.
• Leaders need to provide “psychological safety” for their organizations to enable experimentation with AI. It’s about learning to act more like scientists who have the opportunity to fail without huge consequences. It’s critical to create a learning environment. It’s more akin to research and treating it like an investment in research.

The last panel that I attended with distinguished academic and industry leaders was asked for their advice on leadership imperatives. The advice is for leaders to help people “get curious” and share their learnings along the way. Understand that complexity and curiosity go hand-in-hand. Counteract any negative feelings by encouraging their people to find good in what they are doing with AI – and/or ways to use it to make a better world, or free up time to do good in other parts of life.

The 2025 HBS Tech Club Conference Takeaways| Behind the Bubble: Ushering in the new Era of Technology

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Takeaways from the 2025 Harvard Tech Club Conference| Behind the Bubble: Ushering in the new Era of Technology

 Saturday was an exciting day on the HBS campus if you were part of the 2025 Tech Club annual conference. As a member of the “greater tech” ecosystem in Boston, I felt privileged to hear industry leaders and a wide range of “doers” share their insights. It was advantageous to have attended the 2024 event to see where the conversation would go on the impact of GenAI. Appropriately, the theme was cast as, “the AI revolution, uncovering the transformative shifts redefining industries today.” The following blog is intended to provide highlights and my personal takeaways from the keynote sessions and breakouts that I attended. Hopefully, this will benefit those who could not attend and reinforce some key points for those of us in the room. Many thanks to the HBS Tech Club team and the generous speakers and panelists for sharing their insights.

Opening Keynote: Tom Eggemeir, CEO Zen Desk

Tom’s down to earth presentation and tone made the auditorium feel like we were having a comfortable face-to-face chat about the impact of AI on the customer service sector. Truly Zendesk has fully embraced all aspects of AI and is bring their customers along while meeting them in their comfort zone. 30% of their bookings are related to AI and he considers this the biggest revolutions since e-Commerce.
Tom’s slides told the story of adoption, but the talk spoke to understanding the demographics and human reactions behind it. In their recent survey of 50K respondents, it became clear that age is a huge factor with people under the age of 40 being most positive about these applications for AI and over 60 being the most skeptical (no surprise!). Behind the data, customer interactions are seeing less friction which translates into stronger resolutions. Banking on this, Zendesk is implementing an aggressive business model driven by resolutions.

In terms of human agents, making them friendlier, authentic, casual in tone, enthusiastic and knowledgeable increases consumer confidence. Adding personalization creates yet another key dimension for success. He gave a great example of a private jet company using personalization to anticipate and recommend leisure activities and resources to a client that had previously booked a trip to the Master’s.

There is no doubt about the cost savings of doing this right. CSX spend for human labor costing $5-$15 vs. $1.49 in the automated realm. Tom does not believe this is a bubble. It’s here to stay and in 3 years, nearly 100% of customer service will be in the hands of AI other than for VIP’s. In his estimation, many of the companies are underestimating just how fast this will happen. Hold on to your hats!
 
Nicholas Harris, CEO Lightmatter and Professor Andy Wu – Fireside Chat

Lightmatter’s Harris opened with a riddle. What did Alexander Graham Bell consider his greatest invention? It wasn’t the telephone! It was the photo phone – obviously ahead of its time. With a $4.4B valuation, Lightmatter is blowing up the chip landscape using light vs. electricity (for example) to move data between chips. Nicholas did an amazing job demystifying this highly scientific physics lesson into something that made sense to the mere mortals (like me). He articulated the many advantages of “innovating at the speed of light” from the ability to send many signals with different colors to the higher bandwidth nature of optical wires. The end result is the more efficient movement of data.


Even more fascinating were his views on AI vs. Quantum. Quite the contrarian, he does not see a clear future in Quantum Computing as the writing of programs for Quantum is hard. He proports that AI can write the algorithms and create the same benefits with a broader based of engineering support.
When asked about where the opportunities are in the chip sector – he suggests that innovation in hardware is falling behind. He gave a shout out to the engineers to focus on this area. Prompted by the amazing interviewer who asked what his boldest, way-out, predictions are – he visualized data centers on MARS or perhaps in Antarctica!

Ed Tech Panel Discussion: Mary Strain, AWS ; Siya Raj Pirohit, OpenAI, Marta McAlister, Google, Joe Bennett, MBS Moderator

Two of this dynamic panel, Mary and Marta began their careers as teachers in the Bronx. Their observations of students – using technology the wrong way or not at all – or pure fear of completing assignments incorrectly – drove them into their current roles. Fast forward to the application of AI, what is unfolding is a complete redefinition of the roles of key players in education.

Impact to the Educational Sector:
Each of the panelists are focused on different parts of the educational spectrum, but all had in common the goal of more deeply engaging their target audiences from early childhood through higher ed. A common concern is to find ways to strengthen critical thinking. Whereas AI (like “search’) has made some things easier to do, putting in “effort” to achieve an end goal shows progress. Moving forward, the skills that will be needed are critical thinking and judgement – the same that will be required in the workforce and will not be provided by AI.


OpenAI has a relatively small number of its team devoted to education. They are scrappy and entrepreneurial. Their focus is on visualizing the output to help up-level all the AI products by spending time with experts in the field – noting that “teachers are the best prompters.”
Acknowledging that only 60% of the population actually goes to college, AWS is focused on creating architectures that create lifelong learning opportunities. A likely outcome is more decentralized learning. In higher ed, AI will challenge each university’s value proposition. If you are paying for a top-notch university, stakeholders will demand that the “end product” measures up – placing more urgency into the discussion of competency-based assessment.

Evolving Skills, Tools, and Roles:

OpenAI (through ChatGBT) is also focused on providing tools to make it easier for the influencers (aka professors) – so they have recently added 800 help numbers and a WhatsApp number to provide help to classroom superusers. The panel agreed that the role of the professors will have to shift considerably as more knowledge can be acquired through AI. Professors may be come curators or assessors – forcing a massive change in the way education is managed.


With AI replacing or enhancing many of the mechanical learning tasks, the superpowers of the future will be empathy, curiosity, and the ability to learn and be “coachable.” Additionally, be able to lead a team, inspire, and connect with others. In other words, the “soft skills” of the past will be the critical skills of the future. Other differentiating factors will be: domain expertise and the ability to solve real world problems.
Among the bold predications for the future – personalized tutoring stands to become a huge opportunity as it’s considered the “holy grail” of education. But overall, the panel agreed that overall, the fundamentals of pedagogy will not change and what we should be hopeful for is reinforcement of good, teaching best practices.


Health Tech Panel Discussion: Jack Sallay, Amazon; Derek Streat, DexCare; Jeff Liu, Assort Health; Chris Fank, Hippocratic AI; Moderator, Amna Hashni, MBA

Sector Focus:
Each panelist opened by citing their unique value proposition for AI in healthcare through the prism of a 2 x2 quadrant – Clinical, Administrative, Consumer, and Provider. The first panelist from Amazon believed all four quadrants could be impacted but consumer, non-clinical is where he sees a huge opportunity to unravel and clarify cost and services for health care procedures. DexCare (a Kaiser partner) helps providers become more efficient (founded inside of Providence), Assort Health is focused on AI agents for the health care practice with a focus on safety; Hippocratic is focused on closing the gap on the worldwide shortage of healthcare professional.


Adoption:
The sentiment was that the overall category was in the early majority phase of adoption with providers further along but pharma, life sciences, and the payer space lagging behind due to compliance and other factors. One of the panelists put it in the context that the health care system as a whole lean into being skeptical as the downside risks (loss of human life) are much higher. The non-clinical side, however, (payers) need to move up the adoption curve – noting that 11K people a day age into Medicare!
Human Interaction in Healthcare:


The question was raised as to whether there would always be human interaction in healthcare. The answer was “yes” but the job of the human will change considerably. With the scarcity of nursing and other health care staff, more information will be shared through vertical AI agents which are working from strong foundational models.


Other trends and models will include:
• The emergence of “pay-buyers”
• Return power to private practices (like dentists)


Overall, the problem that needs to be solved is to create a more sustainable, transparent health care system and one that reduces the cost to patients. Patients are consumers and have choices and there will be more competition for these customers.

Pre-Lunch Fireside- Linda Sheng, GM, Minimax

Minimax AI is an advanced AI-powered video creation tool that transforms text into dynamic video sequences with precise control over composition and camera movements. The CEO is an ambassador for AI and believes her role is to showcase what AI can do as a positive force.


This discussion centered around the overall threat/opportunity of AI and the role humans will play. The CEO clearly believes that a successful founder must be AI-equipped and somewhat technical but does not see a clear threat or “red button” that would blow up humanity.

Use cases will drive AI success. For example, the largest freelance network, FIVR adopted AI to generate IP protected voices of their freelancers to save the actors from having to repeat voiceovers over and over. Now they get paid for use of their voice more frequently and more efficiently.
Speaking to AI “morality,” Minimax is highly sensitive to content. Areas such as local customs and religion and social “red lines” are closely watched. Another key area of focus is “access.” Making sure that great creators/superusers can use AI for free if they are making important contributions. The Open-Source model provides this access and its important to support freedom of code.


NLP and Generative AI Panel: Aravind Suresh, OpenAI, Shashank Chaudhary, Google Gemini; Uriel Kejsefman, Duolingo; Avijit Ghosh, Hugging Face

The opening discussion focused on the unique challenges of AI – in particular the building blocks and infrastructure precedes the product/applications. Duolingo’s product lead provided an exciting use-case on all the ways that AI had enhanced their offering – creating entirely new ways of teaching, content development, and impact on productivity through use of new tools such as notetaking. Role playing, transactional writing, and features such as “explain my answer” are all part of the new level of offerings. It was also noted that AI can help create many more exercises, and courses and help modularize the curriculum.

The discussion broadened to talk about the socio-economic impact of AI. One of the areas of consideration is making sure that small companies have access- pointing out that that’s one of the advantages of DeepSeek.

There was also an interesting talk track pointing out that not all AI will come from the same point of view. For example, the group has seen analysis that demonstrates bias against the US. It can also be biased for another region or country – reflecting the local “mindset” foreign policy or other national biases negating neutral guidance or responses. The bottom line of this discussion was encouraging US companies to invest in US-based models reflecting American value systems.
Evolution of the PM role:

The Product Manager has to uplevel skills to include:
• Prompting
• Creating a product that works but still needs humans
• Develop and socialize data strategy because bad data is devastating
• Break down outputs

And continue to enforce product/market Fit and A/B Testing which is still relevant.

AI Tools for Enterprise: Austin Johnson, Zapier; Nic Moralis, Cohere; Drew Bent, Anthropic; Tejas Pathak, Scale AI; Alisha Bhanji, MBA

Most of the panels and keynotes were superusers of AI, but reflecting on the general climate was a bit more sobering – especially as AI investment is growing inside the enterprise. Noted by one of the panelists, today’s environment dictates that we show ROI one quarter after Capex. Therefore, CIOs are getting disillusioned with AI as they do not see the usage of GenAI tools increasing at a rate that justifies the level of investment. The major call to action here is to move from a top-down implementation to a bottom-up adoption model.

Fluency in AI:
Delegation (automation of tasks); Description; Discernment (understanding outputs); and Diligence (responsible use of AI) were suggested as the four key pillars to achieve fluency. One of the panelists brought up a point of view – “Do unto others (in AI) as you would have others do to you,” using employee evaluations as an example of something you may not want to delegate to AI!

Use Cases & Best Practices:

Cohere discussed business value using an enterprise database software company as an example where 200 AI features have been implemented across its applications. With data at the center of AI’s validity – citing sources is more critical than ever.

The further discussion on data was to respect the existing rules on data. For example, asking the question – would my customers be happy with where the data is going? Generally speaking, security, compliance, re-thinking workflows and workforce dynamics vis-à-vis AI agents is still evolving. Additionally, different size models and pricing will evolve to accommodate different size entities and usage of the Cloud.
Looking ahead, AI knowledge, data gathering, and analysis has to have parameters – it cannot just be “let loose.” One speaker used the analogy – we just invented single brain cells, now we have to string them all together.

Business Focused Roles Panel: Maggie Yang, Amazon; Fadzi Makanda, Google; Jannis Woelk, Rippling, Cindy Fan MBA, Moderator

This panel was heavily focused on helping the student audience define non-technical roles they can seek out in tech with an emphasis on AI. Two of the panelists represented corporate development and one was in a business operations role.
The corporate development roles required top notch research on trends and the ability to make a clear case for expanding into new areas – working closely with product managers, engineers, and other key stakeholders across the company. Each faced a different set of challenges. These included:

• Build vs. Buy
• Identifying differentiators in highly competitive markets
• Defining and meeting success metrics

Key skills for these roles are varied, but being able to bring perspective/judgement; gaining the trust of peers cross-functionally; bringing high quality ideas to the table; listening and having empathy are needed alongside good, solid general knowledge of the technology.

Closing Keynote: Diego Lomanto, CMO Writer

The final keynote appropriately represented a company that addresses the full stack of Generative AI. As such, Writer has enjoyed success shepherding their customers on the journey by identifying “the most miserable parts of the job” and using AI to automate them.
The full stack, in Writer’s terms addresses: The brain, context, control, workflow, and impacts (see slide). Diego presented some key findings from the Adore.me use case to demonstrate how AI was used at each interval to improve the experience of the product managers and the end users. Two key tasks truly stood out of this overview. One involved using AI to write thousands of product descriptions – an excruciating task for a retail product manager. The second involved mining customer 200,000 insights from across all media videos, case studies, interviews, testimonials, etc. to create compelling content using the Knowledge Graph. Finally, he addressed Agentic AI – applied to an exploding inbox. When deployed well, an agent can understand content and context in the email so that responses are tailored and appropriate to the severity of the situation.

Companies are finding it hard to put all the pieces together and there’s clearly a role for intermediaries, full-service providers, and partners to act as catalysts and consultants to guide adoption. My takeaway for the day is that everyone one of us has a chance to be an AI ambassador. It’s clearly as big as any phase of the internet roll-out. AI emissaries are needed in each sector, at every level, and across all functions of business. Being proactive will ensure that we uphold business ethics and keep the technology accessible to all types of businesses.

[For the record, this blog post was NOT AI generated – you had to be there].

Lessons from Life, Leadership, and Loss with Kip Hollister| Highlights of a special evening

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Lessons from Life, Leadership, and Loss with Kip Hollister| February 19, 2025

An opportunity to free up our potential

When was the last time you walked into a room full of people you barely know (or even total strangers) and shared your most intimate fears and dreams? That’s what happens when you attend one of Kip Hollister’s leadership events and she asks each of the attendees to identify the inner voices that hold us back from reaching our full potential. I was fortunate to be in one of these gatherings last night at the Hollister Group’s State Street Offices. The event was a primer for one of several of Hollister’s Culture’s divisions intensive leadership workshops – Unlocking the Mind.

How it works
In this two-hour session, Kip shares her own stories going back to the all too familiar parental influences that we all share. Each story is followed by an opportunity for each of us to turn to the person/s sitting next to us to open up a conversation. Kip wants us to separate fact from fiction – fiction being all the falsehoods we accumulate based on life’s biggest inhibitors – fear of failing, judgement, age, self-doubt, imposter syndrome, lack of self-worth, to name a few.

Going into the basement


One of the many wonderful analogies used in the session was a trip down to our “basement.” Most of us are afraid to go down there for fear of what we might find. Though often true of our actual homesteads, it’s even more important in the basement, or subconscious of our mind. Things are buried so deep we tend to forget about them until triggered. But if we don’t start there, we cannot ultimately change our story.


Stripped of false beliefs, difficult stories, and too much judgement we can finally start to bridge the gap between beliefs and desires for positive outcomes. But this is an iterative process as life continuously presents us with events that challenge our beliefs about ourselves. The framework that is used in this workshop is a combination of many years of real-world experiences as a CEO and intense, intentional training with some of the greatest thought leaders in the leadership space. By sharing some of her most challenging and vulnerable personal stories, Kip demonstrates how one can choose to brighten the light around us versus getting lost in the dark.

Key takeaways

• Separating who we are from what we “do” is a key starting point for achieving self-awareness.
• Don’t let circumstances and conditions define who we are and lock us in
• Loss of one thing can create space for something bright if we allow it
• Take time to identify what we need to “shift” to ignite our psyche and connect with our desires
• Ask the question – who believes in you more than you believe in yourself? And likewise – in whom do you believe in more than they believe in themselves?  (when you find out – be sure to let them know)


To get a taste of this workshop firsthand, you can participate in an upcoming two-hour session on March 19th or be in touch with Hollister for the next scheduled workshops and off-sites.  To obtain an invitation for upcoming events, please contact Michelle Hanna -mhanna@hollistergroup.com.

 

Context is King in pursuit of influencing a positive AI future!

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The Kendall Project is educating and inspiring Boston businesses and professionals with its thought-provoking workshops

I think I speak for most professionals who are trying to navigate AI opportunities and challenges. Where do I begin? What’s working? How do I get started? Am I already too late? Thanks to the generous effort of the team at the Kendall Project, some of us can breathe a momentary sigh of relief after attending their AI workshop for marketers at the Cambridge Innovation Center earlier this week.

The Host:

The Kendall Project has a clear mission “to empower companies to rapidly identify opportunities where AI can solve real business problems and create a positive impact, without compromising jobs.” But the important first step is to form a community and common language. By attending the workshop, each of us began the journey. In this case- most of us were independent marketing advisors or agencies – coincidentally one the very top areas where AI is being applied and enjoying the highest growth rate.

The Content:


After a brief introduction to AI basics – level setting terms like Large Language Models, Context, Persona, Vector Databases, Nearest Neighbors, and Hallucinations – the Kendall team (Brendan McSheffrey and Kevin Gulley) introduced the fundamental rules of AI engagement and excellence – including these top three:

• PROBLEMS ARE AI’S FUEL
• AI IS A TEAM SPORT
• AI PLAYS BEST WHEN IT KNOWS THE RULES – WHAT’S IMPORTANT AND WHAT’S NOT

Context:
A key message of the day is that AI relies on context – defined as “what we know.” It can be mundane or strategic. In any case it helps inform the agent about the focal point or “what to pay attention to.” Prompting is a type of context as are personas. These translate into instructions that tell the LLM how to act and become an expert.


Hands-On


The workshops, organized into various peer groups lay the groundwork for introducing AI into different types of businesses. The hands-on portion of the workshop offers a step-by-step approach to problem identification AI-style – using logical components – role, capabilities, problem, and processes worksheets voting to flush out priorities of each sub-group. Yes, we had to actually do work and articulate problems to be solved in our individual businesses. Voting helped distill priorities for each group. Though many concerns were common among marketers – challenges like reconciling all the data coming from different marketing applications came out on top. The purpose of doing the workshop was not only to populate an AI marketing utility to solve today’s problems but also to lay the ground work to understand AI’s future problem solving capabilities. Technically speaking, the goal was to create “controlled structured data.” All the data is collected and the group will receive the output of the data collection as part of the process. Seeing the output from previous workshops helped us visualize how the data starts to form an AI utility. I am looking forward to seeing how our discussions came together!


The Eco-System:


Being co-located in the CIC with AI startups and investors is purposeful. The Kendall Project is dedicated to its investment in the local tech economy and Governor Healy’s stated opportunity for Massachusetts to be a global leader in AI. The leader of C-10- Labs, Beth Porter (a venture studio and eco-system of founders for applied AI companies) finished off the day sharing some of the work being done with her cohorts at the CIC – building solutions from scratch or customizing existing ones. Per Beth, agents are like the millions of semi-conductors in our phones – each has a unique relationship with the other. Therefore, the potential for custom AI solutions is limitless.


Call to Action:


This project is important, ambitious, and a somewhat altruistic effort. Similar to the early days of Open Source and Cloud Computing, AI will have to iron out the misunderstandings, concern, and/or barriers to entry for the industry or specific sectors. It’s a clear case of a community coming together to raise awareness and education, putting aside individual motives, so that the entire industry can benefit and move forward. I fully recommend to my clients and colleagues to sign up for one of the future workshops. Better yet, invest in a company-specific one as a very practical and useful “off-site” for their team. The time to jump on this bullet train is now while you can still catch it! Find upcoming workshops here and become part of this exciting new community.

Takeaways from the 8th Annual Authors and Innovators Business Ideas Festival

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It’s always a welcome adventure to participate in Gennari-Aronson’s Authors and Innovators event.  Just the venue alone was a great discovery – the Mosesian Center for the Arts in Watertown was a pleasant surprise.  I love being greeted by great art on the walls!

As per Larry Gennari, the voracious reader who thinks up the festival each year, the theme was “The Persuasive Entrepreneur: leveraging the power of storytelling to explore your own journey, grow a brand, raise money, motivate a team, sell a business, and inspire change.  Stories matter and the most successful leaders are the ones who know how to develop and share an effective narrative to inspire willing change in others.”  This helped cast a wide net to encompass many interesting and timely reads that kicked off on Thursday evening.   My blog, however, will cover Friday as I was in the audience live on that day.

Time, Talent, and Treasure: The opening conversation between authors Archie Jones and Jennifer Tosti-Khara focused shared many common findings from both personal experience and research.  If only 1/3 of people are happy at work, what’s happening with the other 2/3?  Many are disengaged or trying to follow a path of what they think they “should” be doing.  The goal of this conversation is to understand and help close the gap of engagement at work – whether it means changing your line of work or finding a way to leverage superpowers in your current role.   A lot here for leaders to absorb and take under advisement.

Changing the Story:  The sole panelist here was Christopher Marquis, author of the Profiteers speaking directly to leaders about moving beyond shareholder primacy to finding a purpose in what they are leading.  In a world where climate change is REAL, what is our level of accountability toward this and other externalities?   He used many examples from companies that have built their brand based on their social responsibility – but then found out they weren’t entirely true to solving the problem.  Patagonia was used as an example – identifying its externality as impact on agriculture and then creating its “provisions” division to give back in this arena.  A second example is a Dutch chocolate company,  that fought the child labor abuses by creating a healthy supply chain

Spin in Business, Politics, and Beyond: This one was a bit unsettling.  One can only describe Phil Elwood as quite a character, a self-names PR Operative.  Doug Banks of the Boston Business Journal appropriately conducted the interview to add the journalistic “spin” to the interrogation. Elwood kicked off by reminding us that Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, but his legacy will be the Nobel Prize for Peace.  This is what he defines as spin.  If you even wondered how the US lost out on hosting the World Cup to Qatar where many workers ultimately died of heatstroke – this book reveals the story.   If you ever wondered about the impact of “sportswashing” and “greenwashing” – this is the playbook.  Candidly, Elwood uses these stories of his colorful PR work to force each of us to answer the question – “should I do this?”

All the Feels: Throw way traditional brand marketing and research, Leslie Zane a leading behavioral research and advertising executive has explored the power of instinct and how to tap into it. She shared her guidelines for the five promises a brand needs to keep – Empower people to do things; know your people/audience in a non-creepy way; reach the audience, show me something that I can see (literally), delight me and make me better.  She eschews all the “scores” out there for brands and suggests a brand must BE LARGE; more positive than negative; and distinctive in order to reach the instinctual level of the brain via brand connectomes.  A lot has changed since the early days of consumer behavior and Leslie gives us serious food for thought.

Alongside Leslie, David Edelman introduced Personalized.  David provided a detailed example of how he was persuaded through personalization.  He and Leslie riffed on the subtleties of reaching the consumer in a world of constant messaging and believes that AI will create unlimited opportunity.  An internet pioneer, he believes we need to look at AI’s disruption in the same way

Presidential Stories:  Just in time for election season, this curious wealth manager, Megan Gormon, explores an uncanny topic – how former Presidents made and managed their personal finances.  Professionally, she has studied the “psychology” of wealth accumulation, so it’s a fascinating way to complement her professional portfolio. As part of her talk, she discusses how slavery played into wealth accumulation – citing 12 presidents who were slave owners.   Fascinating details emerge and pique one’s interest. One in particular was how Gerry Ford used the Franklin Mint to create presidential medals – something we now take for granted.   Her hope is that by humanizing presidents we will come to know them and relate better to who they are as people.   This book and talk are both timely and relevant and a perfect match to the storytelling theme.  We can all stand to learn more of our country’s history and what a fun way to do it.  Megan was delightful.

On the whole, this event provided a congenial and comfortable way to meet authors, learn from them, and enjoy the exhibit of innovators who are an integral part of its format.  What’s truly outstanding is how the curator, Larry Gennari is able to distill the vast array of current business topics into those that are truly top of mind regardless of industry or size of company.  Many thanks to Larry and his team for their hard work.

 

 

 

 

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