“We’ve seen a lot of technological innovation over the last few hundred years. I think this is the last invention.”

In this episode, Dr. Michael Housman – Wharton-trained data scientist, founder of AIccelerator, and bestselling author of Future Proof – cuts through the noise on why most organizations are failing at AI adoption. The problem isn’t the technology. It’s the people. We dig into what leaders consistently get wrong, how to architect real behavior change inside organizations, and why the ability to tell a compelling story might be the most durable career skill of the AI era.

What You’ll Discover:

[00:00] Why OpenAI Was as Surprised as the Rest of Us→ An insider account of how ChatGPT caught fire – and why even its creators didn’t see it coming.

[06:26] Technology Is Easy, People Are Hard→ The cautionary tale of hiring software that worked perfectly and changed nothing – and what it taught Housman about the real barrier to AI ROI.

[08:49] Carrots, Sticks, and Lightbulb Moments→ The practical change management playbook for getting a workforce to actually adopt AI – and why incentives alone aren’t enough.

[11:40] From Pilot to Production→ How to bridge the gap between “AI wow moment” and systematically redesigned business processes that stick.

[20:49] Stop Using AI as a Better Google→ Why the real unlock is using LLMs as a thought partner – and how to force them to stress-test your ideas instead of flattering you.

[22:43] Can AI Fix Your Cognitive Biases?→ The nuanced truth about AI bias, why classification models outperform doctors, and how to prompt against your own blind spots.

[29:13] Follow the Interesting→ Career advice for a world where developer jobs are already being disrupted – and why storytelling may be the last skill algorithms can’t touch.

Key Takeaways:- Successful AI adoption is a change management problem first. Without behavior change at the frontline, the technology is irrelevant.- Don’t use AI to do your work for you – use it to pressure-test your thinking. Ask it to beat up your ideas.- The most future-proof career move is leaning into distinctly human skills: storytelling, relationship-building, and judgment.

About Dr. Michael Housman:Dr. Michael Housman (House) is the founder and CEO of AIccelerator and author of the #1 bestseller Future Proof: Transform Your Business with AI or Get Left Behind. A Wharton PhD in applied economics, he has spent 17 years building and deploying AI platforms across Fortune 500 companies and high-growth startups.

"If you show me a company that succeeded with every experiment, I'll show you a company that's very poor at picking their experiments." — Jason Goldberg

In this episode, Jason "Retail Geek" Goldberg — Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis Group and co-host of the top-ranked Jason & Scott Show — makes the case that most companies are asking the wrong question about AI. A 30-year commerce pioneer who launched Blockbuster's first e-commerce site in 1995 and has since driven billions in online revenue across hundreds of clients, Jason brings rare long-view perspective to the agentic commerce moment. We dig into why Walmart went from banning AI to hitting a trillion-dollar market cap, why fast followers beat first movers, and what the one question Doug McMillan asked in every meeting has to do with all of it.

What You'll Discover:

[02:16] Is Agentic Commerce Real — Or the Next Blockchain?→ Jason's framework for separating genuine disruption from hype, and why he thinks agentic is one of only five true disruptions in 6,000 years of commerce

[08:27] The Walmart Story: From "AI Is Illegal Here" to $1 Trillion→ What a single question from Doug McMillan — asked in every meeting — unlocked inside the world's largest retailer, and what it reveals about the job of a CEO in volatile times

[14:16] Efficiencies vs. New Behaviors: The AI Trap Most Companies Fall Into→ Why optimizing what you already do will save you money this year and cost you everything in five — and the consumer behaviors that will disintermediate your shelf entirely

[19:06] The Gartner Hype Cycle as a Leadership Tool→ How to use the trough of disillusionment to your advantage, and why being unrealistically optimistic about the future is just as dangerous as ignoring it

[23:11] The ROI Trap: Why You'll Always Choose the Oak Tree Over the Acorn→ The structural reason most companies starve their best future bets — and what exceptional organizations do differently

[25:15] Why Ivory Tower Innovation Almost Always Fails→ The REI green vest story: what happens when the scientists solve the wrong problem, and where the real innovation instinct actually lives in your organization

[32:43] The Fast Follower Advantage — and the Regret Question→ Why you haven't missed the agentic window, what AltaVista vs. Google tells us about timing, and the one question to ask yourself before leaving any strategy meeting

Key Takeaways:

• Being first rarely wins. Being prepared to move fast when the signal is clear almost always does.
• The CEO's real job in disruption isn't picking products — it's being the chief change agent for 1.6 million people who learned from their predecessors.
• The ROI framework will always favor your existing business over your future one. Exceptional companies build a different budget category for experiments — and expect most to fail.

About Jason Goldberg:Jason "Retail Geek" Goldberg is the Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis Group, where he advises the world's largest retailers and brands on digital transformation. He co-hosts the top-ranked Jason & Scott Show podcast and has been named a leading global retail influencer by Rethink Retail for six consecutive years.

What happens when the cost of intelligence drops to zero? The only thing that matters is knowing how to give the right instructions.

In this episode, Andreas Bachmann – co-founder of Adacor, a managed cloud and critical infrastructure provider serving banks, automotive, healthcare, and energy clients across Germany – shares what 22 years of deliberate, founder-led growth actually looks like. We explore the real tension between innovation and zero-tolerance uptime, the co-founder crisis that almost broke the company, and why Andreas believes the primary job of every knowledge worker in five years won’t be doing the work – it’ll be managing the agents doing it for them.

What You’ll Discover:

[00:01:19] Innovating When Failure Is Not an Option → How Adacor runs experiments for critical infrastructure clients who can’t afford a single hiccup – and the mental model that makes it work

[00:05:30] The Sustainable Growth Playbook → Why Andreas chose deliberate, step-by-step growth over hypergrowth – and how that decision made Adacor more competitive, not less

[00:13:49] The Co-Founder Crisis Nobody Talks About → At 40–50 people, Adacor fractured into silos and the founding team needed “marriage counseling” – what they decided, and who stepped back

[00:17:34] Self-Organization Without Chaos → How Adacor implemented OKRs, dailies, and retrospectives in a high-stakes environment – and the one thing that makes retros actually stick

[00:23:37] Building a Human-Centered Tech Company → From family compatibility programs to volunteer firefighter support – why Andreas treats the company as the strong one, not the individual

[00:27:26] The AI Question: Bullshit or Real? → Why Andreas went all-in on AI in 2022, how Adacor hacked EU innovation grants to build an AI team years early, and why he skipped the GPU commodity race entirely

[00:34:16] The Future of Work Is Managing Agents → Andreas’s thesis on what happens when intelligence is automated and essentially free – and what human value actually looks like on the other side

Key Takeaways:

• Sustainable growth is a competitive advantage in high-trust industries – adding people too fast breaks the thing clients pay you for
• “Fast fashion software”: non-developers are already using AI to write and discard code; this is a glimpse of where all knowledge work is headed
• The best retros are useless without a committed “what do we do about it now?” – every retrospective at ATCO must produce 1–3 actionable initiatives
• The co-founder transition from parallel silos to one clear direction is one of the most underreported breaking points in company building
• The new leadership superpower isn’t having all the answers – it’s knowing when to step back and trust the people who do

About Andreas Bachmann:

Andreas is co-founder and CEO of Adacor, a German managed cloud and critical infrastructure company he’s been building for over 22 years with a deliberate focus on stability, human-centered culture, and innovation that doesn’t break things. He’s also a founding force behind Media Monster, an initiative supporting mental health and work-family compatibility in tech.