Jeremy Utley’s Post

These numbers are bananas. First paragraph stunned me, and then the next one knocked me off my chair. Full NYT article in comments. One: "Boston Consulting Group... now earns a fifth of its revenue — from zero just two years ago — through work related to artificial intelligence." Next: "About 40 percent of McKinsey’s business this year will be generative A.I. related, and KPMG International, which has a global advisory division, went from making no money a year ago from generative-A.I.-related work to targeting more than $650 million in business opportunities in the United States tied to the technology over the past six months."

Here’s one of my all-time favorite interviews. It was too short!! There’s simply no way to cover everything when you’re talking with an Academy Award winner who not only invented computer animation, but also worked closely with Steve Jobs for many years. Thank you, Ed, for speaking with me, and for sharing your wisdom with us all. “Creativity, Inc.” is undoubtedly one of my all-time favorite books.

You can now hire a world class tutor — not for $20/month — but for free. Check out how Juan Carlos turned ChatGPT into his person GPTutor. SUCH a fantastic example of getting enormous value out of Generative AI. Henrik Werdelin and I continue to be blown away by the examples folks are sharing with us on Beyond the Prompt (link below). Would love to hear what other kinds of GPTutors folks have “hired” to teach them cool things?!?

I don’t think any single individual influenced my identity as a designer more than Scott Doorley. He’s a fantastic teacher, collaborator, mentor, and friend, and has been the beating heart (“show me your soul”) behind so many of the great things the The Stanford d.school has put into the world over the last 20 years… including this fabulous new book alongside super-teacher and -administrator Carissa Carter Thank you, Scott and Carissa for this, yet another fantastic gift to me and the world. Super happy to see this influence and inspire another generation of breakthrough innovations. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

This is so so so so so so important to realize: the best ideas are going to come from the fringes of the organization… if, and only if, those folks are enabled and ennobled to imagine possibilities. And right now, either because of ignorance or fear, most people’s imaginations are blocked, and possibilities for true transformation lie dorman and untapped. So important, thank you Ethan Mollick Christa Stout Kevin Williams Henrik Werdelin you’ll love this one.

I asked legendary futurist and WIRED co-founder Kevin Kelly the secret of his insatiable curiosity. His answer made me nearly fall off my chair. "I want to do something useless every day." This counterintuitive advice challenges our conventional notions of productivity. When he shared this insight with me and Henrik Werdelin on "Beyond the Prompt," it resonated deeply: we all nod our heads at admonitions to be useful… but useless? Could embracing seemingly useless moments actually be the key to unlocking innovation and creativity? Amos Tversky, the brilliant researcher who collaborated with Nobel Prize winner Danny Kahneman on a series of wildly inventive experiments debunking long-held conventional wisdom, echoed a similar sentiment when he shared their secret: "The secret to doing good research is to always be a little underemployed. You waste years when you can't waste hours." Tversky’s advocacy of "underemployment" aligns perfectly with Kevin Kelly's advice to "do something useless every day." By giving ourselves permission to waste hours, we open up space for groundbreaking ideas and insights to emerge. I've experienced the power of useless moments firsthand. Two of my biggest recent ideas—a novel structure for a high-stakes keynote to a bunch of CEOs, and a radical generative AI product that will double my client’s revenues—came to me while relaxing in the hot tub. I often reject the urge to soak, thinking “I can’t afford to stop working right now,” but that’s faulty thinking! These moments of unstructured thinking, far from my usual work routine, allowed my mind to wander and make unexpected connections. Research shows that engaging in activities without a clear purpose can offer significant psychological benefits. Psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik found that our brains continue working on unsolved problems in the background, even when we're not actively focusing on them. This "Zeigarnik effect" suggests that stepping away from a task and engaging in unrelated activities can actually help us find solutions more effectively. Additionally, studies have shown that daydreaming and mind-wandering can enhance creativity and problem-solving abilities. There’s a reason folks say “The history of innovation is the bed, the bus, and the bathtub.” Embracing the useless, as Kelly and Tversky suggest, is not about being lazy or unproductive. It's about recognizing the value of unstructured moments, of giving our minds the space to wander and explore. By incorporating seemingly useless activities into our daily lives, we open ourselves up to the possibility of groundbreaking ideas and insights. So go ahead, take that walk, daydream, or soak in the hot tub—you never know what innovations might surface. How have useless moments sparked creativity in your life? Share your experiences in the comments below. Practical examples give us all the permission to celebrate the power of unproductive moments in fueling innovation.

Wonder what the future of authorship might look like? Check this out! (Yes, I’m still pinching myself after interviewing a hero earlier this week.) Writing is evolving into a collaborative dance with technology, akin to conducting rather than traditional pen-to-paper. Henrik Werdelin and I got to visions of the future with Steven Johnson, bestselling author of 13 books, including three of my all-time favorites. It was an incredible privilege to explore the product he's been dreaming of for decades, now brought to fruition thanks to generative AI, Google’s “NotebookLM.” In our discussion, we dove deep into how writing is evolving into a collaborative dance with technology. Authors will increasingly use AI tools not just to assist in writing but to actively shape and guide their creative process. Steven shared fascinating futures on how AI can suggest structures, outlines, and even drafts, transforming the creative process while raising important questions about authenticity and quality. However, we also discussed the potential downsides of this technological advancement, including the ease of generating content with AI could flood the market with material that lacks the human touch, prompting concerns about maintaining originality and artistic integrity. What are your thoughts on AI's role in writing? Do you see it as a tool for creativity or a potential threat to originality? Drop your comments below! Missed out on our chat? Don't worry! This is just a sneak preview of an episode we’ll be releasing in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

New study from PwC: “Here are some of our key findings: CEOs emphasize the need to reinvent. More than a third (34%) of CEOs say that the average competitor in their industry will be out of business within three years if it doesn’t change its business model.” Feels like one of those 80% of people think they’re above average intelligence kind of statistics…

I’ve noticed a troubling trend emerging amongst nearly-power-users of GenAI: the tendency to bookmark, save, and share listicles of shortcuts and hacks for better prompting. We might call it, “prompt hoarding.” The dangerous thing about prompt hoarding is that it seems so useful, so practical… but as they say, “the path to hell is paved with good intentions.” And the same is certainly true here: the allure and gratification of collecting for future use can ironically distract from actual use. The key to use, is use. If you are to succeed in your quest to realize the gains we’ve all been promised by the early studies of this generational technology, you must regard every quick and easy prompt pack with skepticism. “The Ultimate Prompt Guide” and all its kin promise to bestow a wizard-summoning ability with a blue-pill-like ease. No, you will not know Kung Fu after downloading that prompt pack. Or any other. You will acquire the ability to collaborate with this seemingly-alien intelligence much like you do other, human intelligences: through relationship. Relationship is defined by interaction, back-and-forth, sustained engagement. Just like the best LLM is the LLM you’ll actually use (people ask me this all the time - my bias is in favor of the best mobile experience, as that’s where the frontier is), the best prompt pack is… the prompt pack you actually use. You may feel the siren call of prompt-appreciation, of savoring a well-formulated prompt like an ancient incantation. Fight it. There are no points awarded to the best prompt aficionado. Don’t be a collector. For any prompt pack that crosses your desk, put it to the cold hard test of actual use. No time? Write yourself a love note in the form of a recurring calendar event titled, “Try A New Prompt.” What’s true of innovation in general — that “schedule tetris” severely limits individual and organizational capacity to innovate (that HBR piece has held up fantastically well, if I say so myself…) — is true of relationship-building with this new technology: if you don’t make time for it, don’t expect to learn the language. Would love to hear your hacks to overcome the allure of the aficionado as well!!

Interviewing a true thinking hero — Steven Johnson, author of “How We Got to Now,” “Wwere Good Ideas Come From,” “The Ghost Map,” and many others — about his radical new AI project, NotebookLm, today with Henrik Werdelin on Beyond the Prompt. What are you dying to know?