Stratagem Weekly
AI more consequential than you think
While my portrait shared with this post is AI‑generated, there’s nothing artificial about the intelligence shared by 43 speakers at the recent UW's AI Hub for Business 2026 Summit.
Researchers from Google, Kimberly‑Clark, Abbott Labs, Uber, Grainger, Kohler, Bain, and others shared how they’re testing, perfecting, governing, and gaining competitive advantage with AI.
Here are eight gems from the Summit:
The AI we use today is the worst we’ll ever experience. Capabilities double every six months.
Unlike math calculators, AI is an “everything” calculator — producing answers in seconds.
AI is now like electricity: widely available, fundamental, powering everything.
2. While much tech hype is just that, AI's impact is real and consequential.
AI is transforming scientific discovery, health care, education, government, and transportation — and reshaping what it takes for brands to win.
AI literacy is becoming essential for every person and every entity
3. AI is accerlerating your customers' journey of discovery and activation. People are readingly using shopping agents like Amazon's Rufus.
4. AI is critical for competitive parity — but strategy is required for advantage.
Advantages compound quickly. If your AI initiative starts six months before a competitor’s, in a year you’ll be eight months ahead.
Executives waiting for AI to “mature” before adopting it may find the delay to be a death knell.
5. To capture AI's potential for value creation:
Integrate AI with a cross‑functional team — marketing, HR, finance, compliance, legal, and more.
Have your team ask:
+What data do we need?
+How do we ensure data quality?
+What unique data do we have?
+Which bottlenecks can AI help us overcome?
+What should our roadmap be for learning, testing, and adoption?
Apply AI to existing workflows, not idealized ones. Asking people to learn new tools and new processes simultaneously is too much.
Focus on workflow activities, not roles. Transactional tasks are easily automated, freeing people for higher‑value work.
6. Because AI suffers no consequences for bad decisions, humans are vital to its design and deployment.
7. Spend your AI time wisely.
70% on open‑ended experimentation
20% sharing and discussing findings — what’s needed for parity, what creates advantage
10% on the training that matters most to achieving these things
8. Intimidated by AI? Just 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲 with it.
Try different platforms and capabilities — visuals, copywriting, research, presentations.
Use AI as a thinking partner.
Use the Socratic Method. Don’t know what that is? Ask Claude.
Conference speakers showed AI can be unsettling, daunting, messy, and yet consequential in its benefits to companies, individuals and society.
