The Mindshift to AI Augmentation — Opening Keynote by Brian Solis

Julia Nimchinski:
And we are live. Welcome to the Agentic Singularity Summit! AI is now moving faster than GDM can absorb, creating a live operating environment with no stable assumptions. So across the next 3 days, we’ll look at how this shift rewires revenue systems, reshape buyer behavior, and forces new organizational models. B2B’s leading operators, analysts, and investors will map the emerging architecture of Gentec workloads and AI-native GTM. Well, 2025 was about next step management. 2026 is about next-gen innovation. A fundamental GTM mindset. Brian Solis, Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow. 9 times best-selling author, keynote speaker, digital futurist, ex-Salesforce exec, ex-Google advisor, and author of the new bestseller, Mind Shift. makes the case that AI-first, AI-native leadership starts with imagination, challenging routine, and understanding that AI doesn’t replace people, but leaders too. Brian, great to have you back. How have you been?
Brian Solis:
Thank you, Julia. I’ve been well. I see you’ve been keeping busy, and it’s a privilege to be part of this community today.
Julia Nimchinski:
It’s a privilege to feature you. Thank you. Let’s… let’s get started. Before we do, we’re gonna ask one question. Every session today and the next… the next day of the conference. I’m curious your, just, top AI prediction, AIGM prediction for 2026.
Brian Solis:
Oh, boy, I had this really fantastic conversation last night about the power of spatial intelligence and spatial models, like the one that Dr. Fei-Fei Li just launched called Marvel from World Labs, and It’s more… it’s less of a prediction and more of, like, a hope or an aspiration, and I would love to see… I would love to see experience become part of GTM, meaning that We’re always so busy trying to get attention and sell something, and we forget that there are human beings on the other side, and there’s so much AI slop out there that it’s getting ridiculous to even get anything that means something or feels like something that would be worth my time. And so this idea of spatial intelligence made me realize that AI can make us more human. And if we stop trying to use AI to go faster, if we stop using AI to reach more people, and take a step back and use it in a way that creates an experience, a moment, something, an exchange, I guess, you know, going back to the name of the organization here. Then I think that’s going to make people, pay attention more. And rather than buy and sell, we might just get back to the old-fashioned, The old-fashioned art of reciprocity, where somebody feels grateful and thankful that you took the time to do something special for them, and that they’ll reward you with whatever way you will measure your rewards.
Julia Nimchinski:
Love it. What a beautiful way to start the keynote.
Brian Solis:
Thank you. Well, nothing follows up beauty like PowerPoint slides.
Julia Nimchinski:
Let’s do it.

Brian Solis:
Let’s do it. So, I’ll launch into this. I realize that, julie, do we have a hard stop at the half mark?
Julia Nimchinski:
Yes.
Brian Solis:
Okay, well, we better get to it then, because I want to save some time for conversation. Alright, well, let’s just jump in. I want to talk about the mind shift of 2026. That is the name of the book, so this is not a commercial as much as it is, a plea to think about the importance of mind sets. And the thing that prevents a mindset from opening up the door to imagination, which is the foundation for innovation, is ourselves. We get in our own way. We… don’t necessarily embrace the self-awareness necessary to see new things or to unlearn old things, but that is really what innovation is about. It’s about creating new value that did not exist yesterday. And where we get locked into, missing these opportunities is because we believe that we’re using AI to achieve our goals, our, you know, make our numbers, whatever it is that we’ve promised to other people or to ourselves. But if we don’t take a moment to explore how we can create new value. What ends up happening is that we use AI for iteration, which is doing what we did yesterday, better, faster, cheaper, at scale. tomorrow. And what I’d like to share with you is the real fact that it isn’t just an opportunity to change your business models or your GTM. It is a requisite. It is a mandate. It is an imperative, if I can just break out the thesaurus and use every word that says the same thing. It is absolutely A point in time where… your competitors are going to make the mistake of using AI to flood the market or flood the zone with slop. And it’s already happening, and it is an opportunity for you to demonstrate net new value. I’m pretty sure that for the next couple of days, you’re gonna hear the MIT study that showed no value, in many, or 95% of AI pilots, but I’ll just spare you the details. I read the entire report. I broke it apart and realized that, at the end of the day, what they found was a pile of slop around doing what we did yesterday, trying to do it better tomorrow, and not invoking imagination, or curiosity, or asking questions like, what if, or why do we do this? And how do we think about tapping into the power of AI to reimagine our entire workflow, our entire GTM process, our entire model for that. AI can help you do what you couldn’t do yesterday, and that is the hardest part of all of this, because we don’t know what we don’t know, and that feels weird to experiment out there. So we lean on what we do know. And what we do know is if we use AI to be faster, to be cheaper, to be more efficient, we are, by default, creating an AI status quo. And I don’t think anybody wants to be part of the status quo, nor does anybody want to be associated with it. That’s why you’re here, that’s why we’re here right now. I believe that it’s a moment to dream bigger. And the risk for leaders is not thinking too big, but thinking too small. And that’s exactly what that MIT report is… finding, and it’s not the only report. It’s that we’re thinking with yesterday’s logic. We’re thinking with yesterday’s standards, and more importantly, we’re thinking with yesterday’s measures. But… The irony of this is that we’re all getting smarter. We’re all… more capable And Julie, if you want to share these slides afterwards, I’ll share them with you, and everyone can download them, because I’m going to fly through these. people are learning more, but what’s happening is that they’re not gaining new knowledge. They’re not becoming wiser. They’re not embracing creativity and imagination to unlock new things. And therefore, it creates not only slop, but this sort of crisis of confidence, of… Who do we… who do we believe around us? If I can use this tool to tell me something that challenges my own conventions, then why aren’t we using it to challenge our own models? Because you’ll see, I spent the last two and a half years studying how companies were and were not transforming with artificial intelligence at the business layer, at the core operating system of how a company works. And what I had found was that you see in the… first 3 to 4 stages of AI maturity was that a lot of this was starting with what the MIT model found, but then at some point, we’re recognizing that the more you can reimagine how work flows, or how it could flow, or if you start with different outcomes and work backwards from there, you actually start to become a transformer, which is this innovative state of using AI to Do the things that you should still do. better, cheaper, more efficiently, but also unlock new value creation. By the way, there’s… this report is available for free. If you just Google, maybe, AI Index ServiceNow, you’ll find it. It’s a wonderful report. But what was interesting is we had found that last year was the first year we ran this massive survey to see where all the companies were in their stages of maturity, and this year was the second report, and interestingly, what… I’ll use Australia as an example. The average maturity was 36 out of 100 in Australia, with 100 being the most mature. The… I think the global score was 35, so not much… not much difference. But the interesting thing about it was that in Australia and in around the world. That’s 10 points lower this year than it was last year. So in Australia, the average score was 46. Around the world, the average score was 45 out of 100, so they went backwards. And… we asked why, and what we learned was that In just one year, we had gone from generative AI to AI agents to agentic AI, and it became overwhelming. And it became overwhelming because we weren’t taking a step back to challenge our own conventions, we were trying to bolt it on to everything. Write better emails, design better presentations, write my LinkedIn posts, which, please, stop doing that. Edit it, put your voice in it, everybody’s now starting to sound the same. But… A mind shift has to start with clarity. If you’re not taking the opportunity To ask deeper questions. To think about who’s on the other side of the screen you’re trying to reach. To create a vision around that that’s going to be more meaningful and impactful. Then you get caught up in a cycle that… whether you… Know it or believe it. contributes to that AI status quo. And if you’re not going to take the moment to do it right. right now. When are you going to do it? This shows that most companies are not taking that time, most people aren’t taking that time to rethink the opportunity. So… what… I really want… you to take away from this, if it’s one thing. is that in order for innovation to succeed, you have to be willing to disrupt yourself. And so that means, and this is very hard, that you have to embrace humility. to accept that you do not have the answers right now. And I believe that we are here, together. To inspire one another. But to keep each other company in an In an area that’s outside of our comfort zone. Because the more that we can explore what we don’t know, we don’t know, the more we will actually start to make the unknown tangible. The more that we can make uncertainty Fun. inventive. and turn those unknowns into opportunities. I mean, I just want you to think about Just even at a very human level. everything that’s happening with how we’re using AI wrong today. Is making us sound and act. like AI, which is ridiculous, because there are so many headlines that are talking about how AI is going to take people’s jobs, and yet we’re willingly giving up our persona, our personality, our character, our voice. to these things. I mean, just pay attention, look at the comments you get on LinkedIn, or look at the posts on LinkedIn, or look at the stories that are out there, and you can actually see that it is all written by the same models, and it sucks. And… Why it sucks is because I can’t hear you. I can’t see you. That… if you think back of… I know this is gonna sound strange, but you think about… COVID. And the one thing that… I’ll never forget, during those years where the world was shut down, was everybody Got to see, well, except for those with backgrounds, what someone’s home looked like, or someone’s kitchen, or someone’s closet, because that was the only space where they could find some privacy. And for a moment in time, we were all human beings going through this disruption together. And we found solace in actually just communicating in new ways, and now look at us with AI. Not only is it making us sound the same, but it’s actually hurting your ability to create. to invent. And to imagine. It… it is actually not unlike these things. The more you scroll, the more you spend time on TikTok or Snapchat, the same thing happens. So… be mindful of how you work with AI. Challenge yourself. Be creative. Do what you didn’t do yesterday. Because if not, You’re not only losing the ability to think deeper and more creatively, you’re not only sounding like everyone else, but you’re literally becoming dumber as a result. And I say that with all of the love in my heart. It’s just that you have to challenge yourself. So that as you do work with AI, you are unlocking what you didn’t know. You didn’t know. So, for example, I have this hashtag that I like to use, which is WWAID, and so if I think about anything before the prompt. I’m thinking about, well, I know what I would do. I know what I would say and what I’m looking for, I know the outcome that I want, and therefore I’m going to use the prompt to expedite my arrival towards that outcome. So it’s, in that scenario, it’s what would Brian do? But WWAID is what would AI do? And so I have to force myself to think about, well, what is possible right now? I know the outcome I want, but what other outcomes am I not considering, and how might I get to those outcomes? And so I start with different questions, and that little mental model of WWAID, of what would AI do. Challenges me in a moment, immediately uncomfortable. It immediately stops my progress. But it exponentially increases the result. And also. It prevents me from falling into all of these traps that your competitors And our colleagues, to be honest, are falling into. So, with that public service announcement. I would like you to shift your perspective, to open your mind. And to open your mind, you have to believe that it is not open right now. Because it isn’t. We need a beginner’s mind, With… think about a child, childlike wonder. Everything is possible. Everything is magical. Because without a beginner’s mind, we automatically bring the expert’s mind to any moment. Our success, our failures, our lessons in life. But the saying goes that in the beginner’s mind, anything is possible. In the expert’s mind, very few things are possible. And so it makes me think of this… This is not the actual quote, but it’s the spirit of the quote, right? The electric light bulb did not come from the continuous improvement of candles. It was a special fracture. In thinking, and experimentation. So we’re not… doing better candles. We’re not using AI to make better candles. We’re looking for our light bulb moment. I ask myself, not just WWAID, but am I about to use AI to improve the past, or to invent the future? Because the more I track these things, I start to see patterns, and I start to see cycles, and so I invite you to do the same thing, to join me, to embrace an AI-forward mindset that starts with what would AI do? So it’s prioritizing AI to explore possibilities that are not achievable without AI. But more importantly, those outcomes could not be achieved by AI without you. Meaning. you and AI are working together to do what wasn’t possible without either side of those equations. That’s augmentation. Not automation. And that’s powerful. So, for example, I’ll hear people say, like, oh, well, I use Copilot to write these incredible emails, or I use Copilot to summarize those incredible emails. That is automation. That is not augmentation. And… The difference is, is that on one side of it. you’re optimizing the right things. On the other side of it, you’re creating entirely new products, or services, or GTM models, whatever it is. It didn’t exist yesterday. Therefore, it is new value. And that is the definition of actual innovation. And why it’s so important is as we start to augment It is the innovative AI that will disrupt business models, not the iterative AI. And how that looks, in practice, is that these things are joint. These things are collaborative, and these things are operating in parallel. Starting with you. So the idea is, if we use AI to optimize We can create a linear line of growth, of profitability. market share, all the things that are important to you. But as we ask, what would AI do? It’s a wonderful moment where we disrupt ourselves in the most positive and productive way. Because if we’re not disrupting ourselves, disruption is a gift that is inevitably going to be given to us by someone else. But more importantly, it’s a performance model. Linear growth, exponential growth. You are creating a new trajectory for yourself, where that positive self-disruption is unlocking new opportunities over time. And so, to help, and then, Julie, I’ll probably just take a pause in a couple minutes so that we can get to some questions before the time runs out. These are some questions that you can think of To help you optimize. And these are some questions to help you get started around. value creation. Because these things, essentially.
Unknown:
Audio shared by Brian Solis: A 22-year-old.
Brian Solis:
I gotta, I gotta show you this.
Unknown:
Audio shared by Brian Solis: The first ChatGPT homework machine. This machine will write out all your assignments in your own handwriting. All you have to do is position the paper in the right spot. It even turns the pages for you. As ChatGPT use becomes more common among students, tools like this might make it harder for educators to determine what’s real and what’s automated. Personally, I feel like if you’re smart enough to build an entire machine that automates your homework, you should never have Audio shared by Brian Solis: I have to do homework again.
Brian Solis:
So how, like, how rad is that? I mean, it’s so, so creative. and inventive, but it is an example of iteration. It is using AI to do someone’s homework in the same way that they’ve done homework, just actually not getting smarter as they do it, because AI is doing it. So, I use that as an example because we get so confused with how amazing all of these tools are that We forget that it is the prompter. the prompt. that defines the outcome. And that is for you. to define. That is that WWAI moment for you. And I’ll just leave you with this, and Julie, I’ll turn it over to you. This is my attempt at humor. But it is also, the message I want to leave you, and it is one of motivation. This page is intentionally left blank because there is no playbook right now. There is no playbook for WWAID, because that is an experience that… and I’ll say it, a gift that you can give yourself. The playbook isn’t written. The pages are blank. You can use AI to fill in the page, or you can use AI to imagine a page together. In a way that wasn’t possible before. So, I’d love to leave you with that message, that the future is yours to shape. It is yours to define. And let’s kick off this conference, and let’s change the world together.

Julia Nimchinski:
Wow. What a phenomenal presentation. Thank you so much, Brian. Our folks are just raving in the chat, and really resonate with your, premise. Curious your thoughts, since this is a Agentic Singularity Summit. But by singularity, we don’t mean, obviously, you know, the AGI and all of the futurism. Rather, this new reality of unpredictability, as a C-level and manager and GTM leader. You have to steer the ship, but there’s no playbook, to your point. And what would be your advice transitioning to 2026? How do you do it with, you know, with every LLM update, with every LinkedIn crazy post, and all of the anxiety that you’re so behind compared to all other revenue leaders.
Brian Solis:
Well, it’s a race. But it’s also a race to the bottom. And I say that, with all sincerity. We’re allowing ourselves to get caught up in all of this. It’s always gonna be a new model, a faster model, a better model. You’re probably gonna start getting whiplash. trying to figure out which model this month you’re gonna pay for, and which one you’re gonna not pay for. Is it Gemini? Is it Perplexity? Is it ChatGPT? Is it Claude? Whatever it is. these tools are just tools. It is… What your imagination, what your goals, what your ambitions, Is what you want to do and why. That’s what matters. Doesn’t matter which tool you use, quite honestly. It is which tool works for you to help you achieve your outcome. You gotta make time. Look, I’m gonna show you this, this is fantastic. This… this is a blank sheet of paper. I have a blank sheet of paper with me every single day, because I take… I force myself to take moments. Even though my inbox is overflowing, and I’m in back-to-back meetings, I force myself To get a pen. And just write down ideas. I dedicate time to those ideas, things I hear, things that might inspire something new, maybe something to think about later, or to embellish upon later. And the more you make time to do that, and the more you exercise that, You’re literally exercising the art of creativity. You’re rewiring your brain to allow yourself for potential that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. You give your space. You give yourself space for it. That’s where I start, as an answer to your question. And then. whatever the tool is, I can collaborate with it to get towards that outcome, because it’s not about what the tool is doing for me, it’s about how I’m using it to achieve what I imagined.
Julia Nimchinski:
100%. Brian, you’re obviously steering innovation and service now, and advising so many other companies. I’m just curious, what’s the… if you could just give it one example of the most AI-native, innovative workflow, reimagination of work you’ve seen just this year.
Brian Solis:
Oh, boy. Well, I’ll tell… I know we’re gonna run out of time here. There’s a study by McKinsey, Quantum Black, if you could find it. I think it’s called The State of AI. the thing that they had found, they were trying to measure the ROI of AI in business transformation, and they came up with these 25 attributes. The number one impact on earnings before interest and taxes was reimagining end-to-end workflows. So you pick one that is. Instrumental to your organization. and you say, if this was AI-native, meaning that it couldn’t exist without AI, what would that workflow look like? And it’s not an easy task, it’s not an easy… it’s not an easy question to answer, but it is transformative. And so, the answer to your question is… Don’t look for all of the use cases that are… that everyone else is doing. I mean, if you need to do that as a means of making yourself feel better and getting some quick wins and some buy-in, then by all means, please do. But it is this end-to-end transformation that is… Literal on the word transformation. it changes you, and it delivers the type of performance necessary. And the last I’ll say, or it’s 2 years old, but it’s still my favorite example, is Google the IKEA chatbot story, and it is wonderful how they transformed their service model and their workflows as a result of their experimentation. It’s a great story.
Julia Nimchinski:
What an amazing half an hour. Thank you so much, Brian, and what’s the best way to support you? Where should our community go?
Brian Solis:
Oh, please, mind shift, read the book, join the community, because it teaches you how to open your mind, change your mind, see things differently, but most importantly, the last part of the book teaches you how to open and change the minds of those people you work with as well. So, that would be great, and you could just follow me on your favorite social, or LinkedIn, or BrianSolas.com, thank you.
Julia Nimchinski:
All of it. Thank you so much, Brian.