Adam Brotman and Andy Sack are co-founders of Forum3. Adam was a Chief Digital Officer at Starbucks where he helped lead the creation of their mobile order payment and loyalty programs. He has also served as co-CEO of J.Crew, and today he works with companies navigating their brand, digital strategy, and AI strategy. Andy spent over two decades as a tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He had the privilege of serving as a Senior Advisor to Satya Nadella at Microsoft, where he led digital transformation and innovation of new products.
What’s the big idea?
Our AI moment is a time for business leaders not just to adapt to the new wave of technology, but to imagine something new and lead with it. To help start shaping your company’s next chapter, AI First is a real-world playbook based on conversations with top AI builders and business executives making their transition to the AI era. It lays out action points that every leader needs to be thinking about right now if they want to stay in the game.
Below, co-authors Adam Brotman and Andy Sack share five key insights from their new book, AI First: The Playbook for a Future-Proof Business and Brand. Listen to the audio version—read by Adam and Andy—in the Next Big Idea App.
1. 95 percent of marketing as we know it will be done by AGI.
When we sat down with Sam Altman, he shared a perspective that completely reframed how we think about the future. Within five years (and granted, this was 18 months ago at this point) he believed that 95 percent of what marketers rely on agencies, strategists, and creative professionals to do for them will be handled by AI: free, instant, and nearly perfect. Sam was talking about marketing, but this applies to every function of a business.
As long-time brand builders and innovators, we took that seriously. This isn’t about some distant possibility. If you’re leading a team or growing a company, now is the time to experiment and start getting fluent. The real risk isn’t that AI will replace your people. It’s that others will learn how to use it faster and more effectively, and replace your company. When we spoke with Sal Khan, he reflected that his only regret about adopting AI at Khan Academy was not doing so sooner. We hear versions of that all the time. Companies that act now will leapfrog the competition. Those who wait will be playing catch-up.
People ask, “When will AI start really changing how we work?” Our answer is that it already has. The companies that we’re learning the most from aren’t on the sidelines. They’re experimenting right now, using and learning with AI today.
2. An AI first enterprise starts with an AI first leader.
Culture moves at the speed of the CEO’s own AI “holy shit” moment. When leaders model curiosity, learning, and AI-powered thinking, that growth mindset spreads across the company. Teams grow braver, experiments happen faster, and AI fluency goes viral.
We’ve seen it firsthand. At Moderna, a C-suite podcast and internal prompt contest helped pull 5,000 employees into daily AI use. At Suzy, the CEO took a build-it-yourself approach by showing, not telling, what it looks like to lead with AI. These visible examples build trust and break down skepticism of AI.
“People don’t need to be pushed into AI.”
Being an AI first leader isn’t about mastering every tool. It’s about creating the conditions for your organization to move with confidence. That starts with a belief in the usefulness of the technology, but even more so in your people. People don’t need to be pushed into AI. They need permission to explore it in ways that feel relevant to their work. You can’t outsource this mindset. If you want your company to be AI first, you have to go first.
3. AI is the new utility.
One of the biggest mindset shifts is treating generative AI not as a tech initiative or bolt-on project, but as something foundational to how your business runs. Like electricity or the internet, it will soon be impossible to imagine doing your job without AI.
Brice Challamel, VP of AI Products and Innovation at Moderna, said it best: Nobody asks for the ROI, electricity, or laptops. AI belongs in that category. It’s becoming an always-on cognitive layer across how work gets done. Organizations that move the needle stop isolating AI as something experimental and start baking it into their systems, workflows, and expectations. It becomes part of how the company operates.
The technology is evolving quickly. Scaling laws suggest we’ll see multiple generations of improvement over the next few years, each bringing stronger reasoning and more agentic capabilities at every turn. This moment demands a dynamic mindset, as the landscape is changing in real-time. It’s not just about whether AI will integrate into your company. It’s about how thoroughly and how fast.
4. AI copilots for every role.
Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, Manas AI, and Inflection AI, often describes the shift we’re seeing as the steam engine of the mind. A future where every function—finance, operations, legal, creative—has an AI copilot by its side. Not replacing humans but augmenting them and enhancing judgment, speed, and imagination. This is what makes AI so powerful.
“The payoff is real.”
Hoffman said it will be like having a 10x multiplier on every key function in your company. We’ve seen companies use copilots to help less experienced team members ramp faster. We’ve seen internal assistants generate legal summaries, polish executive communications, build financial models, and follow up on sales leads all within the same week. The payoff is real. Studies have already shown productivity gains of up to 25 percent and quality improvements of nearly 40 percent when people work in tandem with generative AI tools.
More than anything, copilots create leverage. They help you move faster with fewer meetings, test more ideas with smaller teams, and get more done with the same headcount. That’s not just efficiency. That’s a competitive advantage. The question is no longer whether AI will show up across your business. It’s whether you’ll structure teams and workflows to take advantage of it.
5. You can pick your approach, but you can’t wait.
There’s no one-size-fits-all model for rolling out AI. But one thing is clear: doing nothing isn’t a strategy. Effective AI transformation is ultimately about people, culture, and leadership, which means the right approach depends on understanding your team and how change occurs within your organization. After speaking with hundreds of leaders, we have observed that different paths can be effective. Here are three that stand out:
- The run approach, a fast company-wide push. Leaders like Eric Vaughan, CEO of IgniteTech, took this path of immediate company-wide activation. It was gamified, fast-paced, and intentionally designed to encourage every employee to engage in hands-on experimentation from day one.
- Start small and prove fast. Alicia Parker at Tishman Speyer began within her marketing team, rolling out AI tools and training, capturing quick wins, and using them to build momentum and influence the broader Tishman organization. It was focused, fast, and designed to scale.
- The top-down pilot approach. Matt Britton, CEO at Suzy, began by building and demoing internal tools himself. Instead of selling AI to his teams as a transformational idea, he showed what was possible and let the results speak for themselves.
No matter where you start, the first unlock is going to be AI literacy and education. People need to understand how these tools work, what they can do, and how to use them responsibly. Without that foundation, you can’t govern well, spot good use cases, or build with confidence. And you can’t afford to wait.
Sam Altman said AGI might be five years out, and he said that 18 months ago. This wave is gaining speed, but it’s not too late to catch up with it. The companies that win in this era won’t be the ones that have the most resources. They’ll be the ones that move first, learn fast, and scale what works.
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