An Interview With Chad Silverstein
The best future for AI is the intelligence part, human and artificial, expanding what’s possible for everyone. That’s true leadership right there!
In today’s tech-driven world, artificial intelligence has become a key enabler of business success. But the question remains — how can businesses effectively harness AI to address their unique challenges while staying true to ethical principles? To explore this topic further, we are interviewing Brian Solis.
Brian Solis is Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow, where he drives vision and strategy for ServiceNow Futures, a global network of Innovation Officers and Futurists who study emerging technologies, business transformation trends, and customer insights to understand the shifts reshaping organizations and the markets they serve. A world-renowned digital futurist, 9x bestselling author, and international keynote speaker, Brian is one of the world’s foremost authorities on corporate innovation, digital transformation, and AI business reinvention. Brian’s writing has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Forbes, who heralded him as “one of the more creative and brilliant business minds of our time.”
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into our discussion, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share the backstory of what brought you to your specific career path in AI?
My path into AI began long before generative AI became a boardroom priority. I’ve spent my career studying the intersection of technology, business, and human behavior. Prior to joining ServiceNow as Head of Global Innovation, I published research and advised C-Suites as a digital anthropologist, futurist, and analyst with the aim of helping leaders understand how disruption changes markets, customers, employees, and culture. AI became impossible to ignore because it wasn’t just another technology trend. It was the first technology I’d studied that could create, act, and eventually collaborate with humans and machines. When my colleague Dave Wright and I started to work together a few years ago, it was on the heels of the ChatGPT launch that changed everything! It changed the conversations. It changed the questions we were being asked. It changed how we think the role of technology in organizational transformation. It changes the meaning of work and the role of leadership. And it changes what a company can become. Dave and I spend so much time with executives and sharing what we learn with each other, that writing our book Infinite together was something we felt would help the very people we work with.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started working with artificial intelligence?
It’s incredible to see the reinAIssance that’s spurring creating and innovation everywhere, including with us at ServiceNow! Dave and I didn’t have a book on our to-do list until it was inevitable! For me, the most interesting moments happen we stop seeing AI as a tool and start seeing it as a mirror. In workshops, I’ll ask executives, “If you were starting this company today as an AI-native company, what would you build differently?” The conversation gets interesting. But it’s when I ask “what legacy are you protecting?,” that’s when the mood changes. That’s been the “mindshift” that’s been most interesting to me. People stop defending old processes and begin imagining new possibilities. We have had these conversations at ServiceNow too! When we let it, AI forces us to confront how much of what we do is inherited behavior. It’s that AI gives us permission, and urgency, to question whether those tasks or work or measures should exist in the first place.
You are successful leaders in the AI space. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
I’d say curiosity, empathy, and courage. Curiosity is what keeps you from accepting the obvious answer. With AI, the first use case is usually an old process wearing new technology. Empathy keeps the work human. Every transformation affects people, their identity, their confidence, their sense of value. And courage is what lets you move beyond optimization into reinvention. In my work with executives, the breakthrough usually comes when someone is brave enough to ask, “What if what got us here is the very thing holding us back?” That’s when meaningful conversations begin.
Can you share a specific example of how you or your organization used AI to solve a major business challenge? What was the problem, and how did AI help address it?
At ServiceNow, the challenge wasn’t simply, “How do we answer questions faster?” It was, “How do we redesign the experience so people get resolution without unnecessary friction?” When AI can understand intent, initiate workflows, resolve issues, and learn from each interaction, the organization becomes more responsive and more intelligent. At ServiceNow, the lesson has been that AI creates the greatest value when it is connected to workflows. I think the other example that we’d like to see more of is the example of asking, “if we free up time by automating existing workflows, what can we do with freed up time and resources that wasn’t possible before AI?”
I often tell the IKEA story because it’s one of the clearest examples of what happens when leaders use AI to reduce costs and unlock growth at the same time. IKEA introduced Billie, an AI chatbot, to handle first-level customer inquiries, and it went on to manage 47% of the questions that would have otherwise gone to call-center employees. By resolving 3.2 million interactions, AI generated ~ €13 million in savings. For many companies, that would have been the whole story…automate the work, celebrate the savings, and quietly reduce headcount. But IKEA chose a more imaginative path. They asked different questions like what we propose. Leaders asked what customers still needed when AI handled the routine work, and they discovered something more human. They learned that people wanted help designing spaces that reflected who they were becoming. So, IKEA reskilled 8,500 call-center employees into remote interior design advisors, turning a cost-reduction initiative into a new growth engine that generated €1.3 billion in net new revenue. AI should not only make yesterday’s business less expensive. Used wisely, it should create capacity for people to do more meaningful work and for the business to create value that didn’t exist before. Someone has to think differently, ask different questions, and explore new opportunities. That’s curiosity, empathy, and courage in action!
What are some of the common misconceptions you’ve encountered about using AI in business? How do you address those misconceptions?
One misconception is something I remember my colleagues and I would talk about early on. So many conversations with C-Suites, Boards, and tech leaders operate as if AI is the strategy. AI is not a strategy. AI is an enabler of a new strategy, a new operating model, and a new relationship between people, agents, data, and work.
Another misconception is that adoption equals transformation. It doesn’t. Oftentimes, it leads to iteration, making a faster, cheaper, more efficient version of yesterday. You can have thousands of employees using AI and still be using it to make yesterday’s work faster, but still not innovate or create new value.
The final misconception I’ll share (there are so many, it could be its own series!) is that AI transformation is a technology project. Its true potential is a leadership transformation. The companies that win will redesign themselves around “infinite” intelligence.
In your opinion, what is the most significant way AI can positively impact businesses today?
Meaningful impact is the result of redesigning work around outcomes rather than tasks. For more than a century, organizations have been designed around departments, processes, handoffs, meetings, and approvals. AI lets us ask a more human and more strategic question: what outcome are we trying to create, and what is the most intelligent way to get there? That’s where the real value lives. It’s not in making every task faster, but instead in removing unnecessary friction, augmenting people, and creating experiences customers and employees can actually feel.
Can you please share “5 Ways AI Can Solve Complex Business Problems”? These can be strategies, insights, or tools that companies can use to make the most of AI in addressing their challenges. If possible, please share examples or stories for each.
1. Ask Better Questions
Before AI solves complex business problems, leaders have to change how they frame those problems. I always say think beyond “how” toward “what if?” and “how might we?” For example, don’t just ask, “How can AI make this faster?” Ask, “Why does this process exist this way?” “What outcome are we really trying to create?” “What would this look like if intelligence were abundant?” Those questions move AI from automation to imagination.
2. Design For The Human Outcome
Every AI initiative should answer two questions at the same time: what value does this create for the business, and what capacity does this create for people? If AI saves time, but leaders don’t intentionally reinvest that time into better customer experiences, innovation, or more meaningful work, then they’ve only created efficiency. They haven’t really transformed anything.
3. Change What You Measure
Traditional ROI looks for cost savings. We believe “Infinite” leaders will also measure time-to-outcome, learning velocity, customer impact, employee capacity, and how quickly the organization can turn insight into action. AI is not a one-time project; it is a learning system. The more the organization learns how to learn with AI, the more value compounds, which ultimately can drive exponential growth.
4. Make Governance Part Of The Workflow
In “Infinite” companies, trust is part of the AI stack. It’s designed into how agents act, escalate, explain, and improve. When governance travels with the work, companies can move faster and safer at the same time.
5. Become Customer Zero
Don’t wait for perfect use cases from someone else’s company. Instead, pick a meaningful workflow, redesign it from the outcome backward, involve the people closest to the work, and learn in the open. That’s how you become the company that everyone has to chase or follow.
How can smaller businesses or startups, with limited budgets, effectively integrate AI into their operations?
As we were writing our book, my co-author Dave and I realized that with AI, small companies could act like much bigger companies. The fact is that small businesses have an extraordinary opportunity now because AI changes the economics of ambition. In the past, scale required headcount, infrastructure, and capital. Now, a small team can use AI agents to research, design, market, sell, support, and operate in ways that once required entire departments. We saw this in our research with AI native companies. They start with human:agent ratios. The measure “RPE” or revenue per employee. They start with exponential scale in mind. Start with one meaningful outcome: faster customer response, better lead generation, content creation, invoicing, support, research, or product development. Then ask, “What can AI do with us that we couldn’t do alone?” Small is no longer a limitation. In all honesty, for the more creative leader, it can be a design advantage.
What advice would you give to business leaders who hesitate to adopt AI due to fear, misconceptions, or lack of understanding?
Fear is natural. I guess the same is true for ignorance. The unknown always produces hesitation. But in this moment, the greater risk is not experimenting with AI. Waiting until the market changes around you is a certain path to irrelevance. We often advise leaders to name the fear or share the concern. Is it fear of job loss? Fear of failure? Fear of not understanding the technology? In conversations with CEOs recently, one of them said that the concern was not having the answers. “As a leader, everyone expects me to know what to do, but this is the first time I can honestly say that I don’t have the answer,” one CEO recently said. This is not uncommon. CEOs who recently stepped down at Coca-Cola and Walmart said basically the same thing. Once you name it, you can lead through it. Start small, but don’t think small. Learn and unlearn your way forward. Courage is not the absence of fear. It’s choosing to move with purpose anyway.
In your opinion, how will AI continue to shape the business world over the next 5–10 years? Are there any trends or emerging innovations you’re particularly excited about?
As a futurist, 5–10 years used to be the horizon. Now everything is moving so fast! The idea of a self-driving enterprise will evolve one workflow at a time. We’ll see the rise of companies that operate less like static organizations and more like living systems. AI agents will sense, decide, act, and learn across workflows. In fact, we’re seeing that play out now at ServiceNow. Human teams will increasingly orchestrate portfolios of agents. Business will move from calendar time to event time, from tasks to outcomes. I’m especially interested in human-agent collaboration, new measures such as human-agent ratios, RPEs, and time-to-outcome, and the emergence of entirely new business models. If it’s ok to plug the book here, I would like to believe that in the future, bold leaders will create “infinite companies!”
How do you think the use of AI to solve business problems influences relationships with customers, employees, and the broader community?
AI will test the integrity of every relationship a company has, and that’s a good thing! Used poorly, AI can make people feel invisible, reduced to automated systems, data points and statistics, or routed through systems that remove care. Used wisely, it can make companies more human and more customer- and employee-centered. Customers can receive faster, more personal, more relevant, more dynamic support and engagement. Employees can move away from repetitive work and toward judgment, creativity, empathy, and invention. Communities can benefit when organizations use AI to expand access, improve services, reduce waste, and solve problems at greater scale. The technology doesn’t determine the relationship. But the intent and purpose of a new generation of leadership will!
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people through AI, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Thank you! I would start a movement around human-centered augmentation. It’s not in the book, but it was the focus of my SXSW presentation, the concept of AIQ: Augmented Intelligence Quotient. But the book goes into, in depth, the value and advantage of augmentation vs. automation. The purpose of AI should not be to automate people or make people obsolete. It should be to help people become more capable, creative, and confident in a world that is changing faster than any of us expected. I’d want leaders, educators, employees, and entrepreneurs to ask a different question: “How can AI help us become more human, not less?” I’d like to see leaders become and encourage their teams to be more curious, more imaginative, more empathetic, more experimental, more capable of solving meaningful problems. The best future for AI is the intelligence part, human and artificial, expanding what’s possible for everyone. That’s true leadership right there!
How can our readers further follow you online?
Thank you for getting this far! I hope to connect with you in any one, or all, of these online communities: LinkedIn, BrianSolis.com, Instagram, X, Threads, Youtube, TikTok, Blue Sky, Facebook, or via my newsletter on LinkedIn or Substack.
Thank you so much for the time you spent sharing these insights with us. We wish you continued success!
About The Interviewer: Chad Silverstein is a seasoned entrepreneur with 25+ years of experience as a Founder and CEO. While attending Ohio State University, he launched his first company, Choice Recovery, Inc., a nationally recognized healthcare collection agency — twice ranked the #1 workplace in Ohio. In 2013, he founded [re]start, helping thousands of people find meaningful career opportunities. After selling both companies, Chad shifted his focus to his true passion — leadership. Today, he coaches founders and CEOs at Built to Lead, advises Authority Magazine’s Thought Leader Incubator. Learn more at www.chadsilverstein.com
Brian Solis Of ServiceNow On How Artificial Intelligence Can Solve Business Problems was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.