Live from the floor of DPW in New YorkI had the privilege of joining my old friend. Marcos Perera in it DPW Podcast. We explore the future of technology, business, and leadership, while remembering our roots in Silicon Valley during the rise of Web 1.0, Web 2.0, social media, and smartphones.
What made it really special was not just the set, but the conversations I had with procurement leaders, innovators and partners beforehand. stepping forward to speak in the name of Service now. Hearing their challenges, their questions, and even what they hadn’t thought about yet fueled what I brought to the stage, to the podcast, and beyond.
I have studied disruption and transformation in Silicon Valley and its impact around the world for a long time. Time and time again, I’ve seen the same pattern: new technology arrives and companies use it to optimize what they already do, but faster, cheaper and more efficiently in the future. That is necessary, but not transformative. And these times need transformative strategies.
Excuse the plug, but your intention is honest. My last book, Mindshift: Transform leadership, drive innovation, and reshape the future,It’s about breaking that cycle. It’s about giving ourselves permission to think differently, to anticipate change and what comes next, before disruption forces us to act. Furthermore, it shows how to do things differently.
The change: from what we did to what AI would do? – #WWAID
Throughout history, companies have applied every major wave of technology to optimize the past. We make existing processes faster, more efficient, less expensive and more scalable. That is progress and it is valuable. At the same time, it can also force us to iterate, with the goal of doing what we did yesterday better tomorrow.
AI, however, asks a different question: What if the goal was not just to improve yesterday’s processes, but to invent the possibilities of tomorrow?
that’s where I ask WWAID or What Would AI Do?
It is a mental framework that I use to free myself from my own biases, experience and assumptions. Instead of asking “what would I do with AI?”, a question tied to my perception of the world, I try to explore the unknown for growth and ask: “what would AI do right now?”
This subtle change changes everything.
For example, in the case of DPW, we could ask (but it is easy to adapt the questions to any industry or space):
- Rather: How do we make acquisitions 10% faster?
- Ask: What would procurement look like if designed natively with AI at the core?
- Rather: How do we reduce costs in supply chain management?
- Ask: What if AI could redesign the supply chain itself to deliver on customer promises, sustainability goals or brand values, and not just save costs?
- Rather: How do we train employees to use artificial intelligence tools?
- Ask: How can humans and AI collaborate as partners, each amplifying the other’s strengths, to create results that neither could achieve alone?
Beyond 10%: Unlock Exponential Value
Many organizations focus on incremental gains, “the 10% mentality.” They deploy AI in their pockets, see some efficiencies, and check the box. But the real opportunity lies in connecting workflows across silos. We could also call this group “the 95% team” if you read the recent MIT reportwhich claimed that 95% of generative AI pilots fail. As I shared in a recent analysis of that study, if you want bigger and better results, you have to be bolder and more imaginative than in the past.
If you do what you’ve always done, how can you expect different results? Yet we do it.
McKinsey’s QuantumBlack He recently studied a number of generative AI use cases and found that the biggest returns did not come from isolated projects. Of the 25 attributes tested for organizations of all sizes, redesigning workflows had the greatest effect in seeing the impact on EBIT. Put another way, instead of AI improving one function, it made the entire company smarter and more profitable.
For procurement, that means moving from being a cost optimizer to being a strategic value creator. But I guess this is true for all industries and functions. Imagine that AI not only automates sourcing steps, but also orchestrates how procurement ties into the supply chain, product development, sustainability, and customer experience. Again, this is true when you reimagine work and workflows. It is no longer about an incremental improvement, but about unlocking the reinvention of the business model.
Escape the iterative mindset
One of the biggest barriers to innovation is psychological. Even when leaders are asked to “think outside the box,” they bring their own industry with them. Any brainstorming is still limited by prevailing biases and assumptions, just disguised with new buzzwords.
To truly innovate, we need to temporarily suspend experience. Look at the most innovative companies outside your industry. Study their culture, their organizational design, their use of AI. Ask: What lessons can we borrow? And ask, what aren’t they doing?
When you change your frame of reference, you stop seeing AI as just another tool for efficiency. It suddenly becomes an ‘AI status quo’. You begin to see it as an invitation to reimagine what your role could become in service of growth, customer value, and future relevance.
Platforms, agents and the future of work
At ServiceNow, we consider ourselves the platform for AI-powered business transformation. AI alone does not transform companies, it needs a foundation. And that foundation is rooted in mentality.
The future is agent-driven. Imagine workflows where the interface is the agent, where AI agents wander around isolated systems, extracting data, orchestrating processes, and delivering business results without a human clicking on screens. In the process, they are also learning, improving, and scaling in ways that traditional IT stacks never could.
For leaders, this requires a mindset shift: stop reinforcing legacy processes with new technology. Instead, design workflows and strategies for the AI economy, a world where scale, speed, and creativity are no longer limited by headcount or historical silos.
My personal change of mentality
I live these conversations every day with companies around the world. Experiment with wearables like the Unlimited pinwhich records and structures conversations into small language models that I can refer to later and then connects to larger models for information. I use Meta’s AI glasses not just as hardware, but as an extension of my real-world capabilities and cognition as well, translating languages in real time, narrating historical context as I walk through cities, and heightening my curiosity in ways I couldn’t before.
Each of these experiments challenges me to think differently. They remind me that AI does not have to replace us, with vision, it can expand us. The results are efficiency gains and entirely new ways of living, working and creating. But that depends on you. Start by asking WWAID.
A call to leaders
Now is the time for leaders to stop chasing incremental optimization and start defining what is possible in an AI-driven future. Ask What would AI do if it designed my function, my business, my industry from scratch? #WWAID
That’s where the transformation begins. That’s where disruption becomes opportunity. And that is the change of mentality every leader must accept.
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🔗 Please listen to my full conversation with DPW to hear these ideas explored in depth and start asking: What would AI do? #WWAID
🎥 Watch my keynote speech at DPW NY.
change of mentality | Speaking | Fact sheet
#Rethinking #Enterprise #Procurement #Transformation #DPW
