Will big corporations stay on top in the AI Industrial Revolution?  Or will a new breed of entrepreneurs gain unprecedented leadership?

Another week, another AI story hits the headlines.  Actually – what am I saying? – another day another multitude of AI stories hit the headlines.

BBC news  reported “ChatGPT told to stop talking so much about goblins, gremlins, trolls, ogres and (also) pigeons and raccoons.”  Apparently alongside telling it to avoid platitudes (something that several people posting on social media might like to consider) it said that it should never talk about the aforementioned creatures “unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user’s query”.  So that’s ChatGPT told off.

Meanwhile AI’s tendency to flatter is doing users no good, as I suspected.  Aside from encouraging an unnatural addiction to robot compliments The Oxford Internet Institute reports that the warmer and friendlier the response to a query is, the more likely it is to be prone to inaccuracies.  Just like an over sympathetic friend in real life then.  The best of friends instead must have a warm heart but a cold mind to help you keep perspective and understand how to sort through problems. 

And currently AI is expensive.  The VP of Applied Deep Learning at Nvidia, Bryan Catanzaro, says that AI is adding to costs rather than improving efficiency for his team at the moment: “The cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees”.  Fortune, who reported this, also reflect on a 2024 MIT study that found that the AI automation is viable in only 23 per cent of roles.  In the rest of them people are cheaper, and at the moment more trustworthy.

At a recent and excellent Deloitte round table discussion: “Powered by AI – the future of consumer enterprise” the speaker Deloitte Managing Partner and Gen AI leader, Stacey Winters, showed the results of their 2025 EMEA research.  There is a gaping gap in one statistic in particular.  The survey among nearly 2000 executives showed 100% belief in the positive impact of AI.  Convincing faith then in the power of AI’s transformation of their businesses.  But only 13% of those respondents were currently seeing a return of investment. 

We are at a moment when business models will need to pivot, will need to reinvent in order to get the best outcomes for profit, and for their people. It is a moment in time resonant with the dotcom boom in the 2000s when there was a rush of optimists towards digital platforms, a rearguard of pessimists who resisted change, and a large number of opportunists who made money and gained promotions and prestige from purporting to know more about the unknown than others.  And this led in some, in fact perhaps many cases, to expensive missteps and wasted time. Millions spent on websites that no-one used, divisions launched and then closed down because the business model wasn’t right.  Grand new meaningless titles and board positions that led nowhere.

There is a real need for experimentation in organisations as they navigate what seems to many is the next Industrial Revolution, an era where there are fast technological changes and a radical shift in how people work and what they get paid. And yet, it is difficult to sustain investment in change at scale when there is no return for shareholders and business owners. And you should beware anyone who says they have all the answers because they don’t. All anyone has as far as AI’s future impact on business, (especially autonomous agentic AI), is a set of potential scenarios.

There is one scenario where the first winners in the AI Industrial Revolution will be start up entrepreneurs.  As one startup chair has said to me, you don’t have to worry about changing people’s existing roles if you’re starting again, and you don’t need to cut thousands from your payroll if you’re starting from scratch.  If you can leverage creativity and innovation without having to employ at scale there is a huge opportunity.

Are we entering the new era of entrepreneurialism where scale is irrelevant to success?  Or will big corporations swallow the costs of change, and if so how deep will their resources need to be to ensure they do not get left behind?

“Respice post te, hominem te memento”

“Look behind you, remember you are human”.

According to Tertullian, an early Christian theologian writer from Roman North Africa, writing in about 197 CE, this was spoken in the ear of conquering heroes in Rome to ensure that they didn’t get carried away with all the adulation they received on a triumphal procession through the city, the ancient equivalent of the open top bus ceremony for football and other sports champions today.

Tertullian wrote that a slave sat in the chariot behind the hero and whispered this in his ear.  The intent was to keep the hero grounded, and make sure that he didn’t succumb to hubris : a mighty sin which meant that you might expect the vengeance of the gods for your arrogance and pride.

Does any leader today take steps to keep grounded in this way?  Or has the cult of the supposedly infallible founder/entreprenur/ceo/politician prevailed?

This question came to mind when I considered the account of the Murdochs, “Bonfire of the Murdochs” recently published by Gabriel Sherman. 

According to the author, and reflected in the Netflix documentary about the family, Rupert Murdoch is very hands on with his senior team.  “I didn’t come all the way from Australia not to interfere” he told one of his editors.  Sherman cites “telephone terrorism” calling and faxing staff day and night.  In response to this those working for him did their best to predict his response to give themselves as much respite as possible.  One underling calls this “anticipatory compliance”.  This is a great term to describe the moment in discussions or meetings where senior executives switch from debating what is the right thing to do in any instance and instead start speculating instead about what the boss will think about the decision.  From deciding what they think is right to guessing what the boss will like most. 

These are very different things, especially when you have a group of experts discussing a strategy that they have to present to the generalist ceo.  Working out how to communicate the decision, that’s one thing, and very valid.  Working out which decision will take their fancy, that is another thing entirely.

Not only can this harm an enterprise, it will inevitably result in good people leaving because they do not want to spend their valuable time guessing the mood and whim of the boss, who has to keep justifying their own infallibility to themselves.

If you are entrusted to make a decision because of your expertise and experience, but end up needing to guess what the boss will like on a particular day, then you are not being valued.

If you have to wrap your decision in layers of flattery for the boss, before you get to the logic and direction of travel then you are surely spending time on the wrong priorities.

Today of course we can all get flattery for our every decision from our ChatGPT friend who faced with the most mundane of questions might reply:

“You’re asking really insightful questions, its clear you’ve thought deeply about this”

“You’re putting yourself ahead of most people who are just starting to explore this topic”

“You have a great instinct for what is important”

“You’re thinking like a pro”.

“Great question!”

Too soon to understand the result of this on all of us, especially those of us who need external validation (the “E” in Myers Briggs personality types, which is common for leaders).

Will it perhaps eliminate the need for the boss to need layers of flattery and mean that decisions made by their team can be just that, a decision made by the team?  Or will it just feed the need for flattery instead and make monsters of us all?

Impossible to know.  But if you are leading a team, running a business or mentoring, remember: you are human.

The use of images in advertising is powerful and effective.  Images using universal archetypes are supercharged.   

Archetypal images are very ancient pictures that have been shared over millennia and which have hidden meaning for the unconscious mind.  Carl Jung believed that they live in the collective unconscious and that they have power beyond the superficial.

The use of archetypal images in advertising has been chronicled by Margaret Mark and Carol S. Pearson in their book “The Hero and the Outlaw: building extraordinary brands through the power of archetypes”.  This led to innumerable workshops where brand managers and agencies debated whether their brand was in fact, hero, outlaw, magician, king, jester or mother.  The role of the archetype is to link the brand story to an ancient narrative which gives it layers of meaning.

The authors write: “Advertising has always used archetypal imagery to market products.  The Jolly Green Giant is, after all, the archetype of the Green Man, a figure associated with fertility and abundance.  The judicious use of such symbolism can fuel a leading brand.  Brand icons go further.  It is not just that archetypal symbols and images are used to position the brand, but that, over time, the brand itself takes on symbolic significance.”  A powerful tool then in the arsenal of brand building.

In one example the book cites Apple’s logo, saying that it evokes the first act of rebellion in the Garden of Eden, “a powerful distillation of the brand’s iconoclastic identity.”

In 2022 Professor Islam Issa hosted a documentary feature on BBC Radio 3, “Forbidden Fruit” which explored the imagery of the apple in the Garden of Eden, (and by the way claimed that the forbidden fruit wasn’t in fact an apple!) and discussed with me the use of the apple in advertising and branding.

I was reminded of the power of the archetypal image when I recently saw the “Enough” campaign to deter stalking and harassment against women and girls.  The Home Office is to be congratulated for investing in this important issue.  This campaign is going to raise awareness of the importance of relationship boundaries and hopefully act as a deterrent to violence which statistics show is increasing.

The images in the posters running in my local gym use snakes to show abhorrent and inappropriate behaviour.  The snake is often wrapped around a woman in an everyday scenario waiting for a bus or at work, in order to highlight controlling and abusive behaviour like constant texting and sharing intimate images. 

The snake is a complicated, even nuanced, archetype.  A snake was guilty of enticing Eve to taste forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.  It makes a victim of Eve, who however, still took the blame for the ending of paradise.  (I personally think that Adam would have been bound to try the apple himself anyway.)  In Genesis the snake is the bad guy, to blame for the fall of humanity.  However, across other cultures the snake’s practice of shedding its skin makes it a primal symbol of immortality and growth. Carl Jung’s serpent archetype is of unconscious and personal transformation.  In “Thus spoke Zarathustra” Nietzsche links snakes to wisdom, renewal and growth.  It appears both as a loyal companion to Zarathustra, offering support, but also as a dangerous creature that thrusts him into extreme confrontations.  Nietzsche’s depiction is of creature that represents the bravery that is required to navigate the complexities of life.  At the recent “Le Mystere Cleopatre” at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris there was an entire room dedicated to paintings of Cleopatra and the asp showing how fascinated the masculine gaze of artists has been over hundreds of years by her and her death by snake.

So, a nuanced image in archetypal terms.  I’d like to see a cockroach representing the hideous and dangerous practices in the “Enough” ads.  Or a rat. No complexity there. 

There are four stages of adult competence according to a study from New York University in the 1960s. 

The first stage is unconscious incompetence.  It’s when we arrive at a new workplace, it could be for your first job, or it could be starting somewhere new.  You think that you know what you’re doing, you may even believe that you know a much better way of doing things, or so you imagine, than the current ways of working, but you do not.  Sometimes this is pointed out to you by a kindly mentor or work buddy.  Sometimes you find out the hard way by screwing up, as I did back in the 1980s when my then boss Christine, shouted at me because she thought I had made a mistake.  (For the record I actually hadn’t made a mistake at all.  However, I didn’t know how to explain that I hadn’t.  I learnt then a valuable lesson that it isn’t good enough to be right, you need to know how to explain it).

The second stage is conscious incompetence.  We are aware that we need to learn how to do something, but we are not sure exactly what it is or even sometimes how to learn it.  It can feel really mysterious.  Many women in the workplace have recounted their experience of being told that they cannot be promoted yet because despite their technical skills they “lack gravitas”. If you’ve ever been told this, you might remember that no-one is particularly clear about how you obtain it or even what exactly it is.  It certainly does not come same day delivery on Amazon, or Ocado.  It can feel very uncomfortable to be in this stage at work.  You are doing what has been asked of you, and you are doing it well, but there is something missing, and you just don’t know what to do about it.  A good mentor, or manager, or buddy will help you through the process, or you will figure it out eventually, but it is frustrating all the same.

The third stage is conscious competence.  Now you have learnt some new skills, and perhaps these are the soft skills of how to get stuff done in your organisation, how to manage up and across and an understanding of the hidden rules of work.  You might be required to negotiate the politics of a new merged mega corporation or find your way around a start up.  But you are new to these skills, they might not come naturally to you in the way that technical ability does.   Or conversely you have the softer skills nailed and you have learned new techniques in AI or the creator economy.  You’re on top of the tools, information and ideas but you are not yet expert at using them.

And finally the fourth stage: unconscious competence.  You have internalised the new skills and tools.  They have become routine and you do everything without having to think about it every time.  This final state, which not everyone is going to reach, shines out from people at the top of their game whatever that game is.  Those people, be they actors, surgeons, athletes or advertising executives, have achieved this level of learning.  And they make complicated and difficult things look deceptively, even annoyingly easy.

They have worked hard to reach this level.  They have fought for it.  It is not achievable simply from a training or coaching course (although they can help).  It comes on the back of significant experience.  If you want to see it in action, watch Francesca Lollobrigida winning her second gold medal in the women’s 5000 metres ice speed skating at the Winter Olympics.  It is her fourth Olympics, and she was significantly older than her rivals, but also significantly more experienced.  (For film buffs out there she is the great niece of the film icon Gina Lollabrigida.)

I think you can see this unconscious competence too if you watch Claudine Collins interview candidates on The Apprentice.  She makes this look like a walk in the park. Which it is not. It takes confidence, skill but especially experience. She is now clearly standing out from her interviewing colleagues on the show for her warmth, intuitive understanding and also her ability to see through well practiced facades to the real humans being hiding beneath, a characteristic that I experienced while working with her for so many years. 

It is not expertise or learning alone that shapes your impact at work.  Experienced people are an asset to our business, even in a time of disruption and change, or, in fact, especially in a time of disruption and change. 

Its not just opinion it’s science.

January has, of course, become a month for improving health and wellness after the excesses of the holiday season.  The gyms are packed with enthusiastic reformed characters, promising themselves that this year will be different.  Many people trudge their way through Dry January with February 1st coming as a huge relief to those that have given up alcohol. At which point some people more than make up for the drought.  There is a notable rebound and surge in alcohol sales (28% more wine bought versus Jan.)  Veganuary sees a boom in launching new vegan products: this year has seen La Vie Salami Sticks, Aldi’s vegan salted caramel choc spread, Richmond’s veggie sausages, Wagamama Vegan Carbonara and Juicy Marbles Umami Burger among many others. 

How many people though are turning to culture, creativity and art as a health booster?

According to data from a new book, Art Cure: the science of how the arts transform our health by award winning scientist Daisy Fancourt, everyone should be.

Professor Daisy, (yes, she is an actual prof.) has trawled through years of research in neuroscience, behavioural science and epidemiology, to pull together a wealth of evidence that proves the power of art to improve health, including evidence that participating in the arts improves the functioning of every major organ system in the body.

So going for a run or sweating at the gym is great.  But pop to a museum, see a ballet or join an art class.  That’s even better.  Even reading this blog, if you are doing if for pleasure, contributes to your health.

Or do some knitting.  A study of 8391 people who crochet found that 75% reported a sense of being useful and making objects that could bring joy to others.  I’m not sure how much joy a crocheted object will bring you (I guess it depends on what it is), but making one apparently will.

The author says that her research is like a jigsaw where every study design contributes a piece. In an explanation of her process, which sounds a bit like many media research studies she writes “when the pieces of the puzzle align we gradually build up a clearer and clearer overall picture.”  The outcome is a triangulation of findings.  And the findings in this respect are a multitude of reasons for increasing your creativity.

In our latest book, A year of creativity with co-author Kathryn Jacob OBE, we urge readers to break the normal patterns of their day to day lives in order to exercise their dormant creativity muscles.  That is why there are 52 techniques across the calendar year.  January is a good month to begin boosting innovation and inspiration at work.  A time to burn bridges, strip things back and just to make sure that you go outside convention, outside heritage practices and literally outside.  Sometimes it can feel like January is a month for hunkering down and getting through things.  Especially when the industry at large is undergoing so much disruption.  And sometimes, it is true, you should go with the flow.  But sometimes, and perhaps more often than most people do, you should consider uprooting your current work routine, to follow your heart.  If you have a dream, what is stopping you?  Who is stopping you?  Consider this, question it, and then push ahead.

My co-author Kathryn Jacob and I cannot yet cite a body of medical evidence to prove that more creativity at work specifically will lead to a healthier 2026.  But there is plenty of evidence to show that it will make you happier and more motivated.  Analytical thinking practices are important, but creativity needs to counterbalance the conclusions from known data to take you, your life and your work forward.