Conversation Design Institute

As Global Head of Sales at CDI, I lead the charge in expanding our reach and impact across the world. My role focuses on aligning innovative sales strategies with our mission to empower businesses at every stage of their conversational AI journey—whether they’re just starting out or scaling to new heights.

With a dual focus on training and consulting, I work to drive growth across CDI’s core offerings, including hands-on workshops, comprehensive audits, and strategic consulting. My goal is to ensure businesses are equipped with the knowledge, tools, and support they need to implement impactful, future-ready conversational AI solutions.

In this role, I’m passionate about building strong partnerships, guiding teams toward success, and contributing to CDI’s evolution as a global leader in conversational AI. Let’s connect and explore how we can shape the future of conversational AI together!

Global Head of Sales

Companies around the world are looking for conversation designers, a rare breed of people that helps them advance communication between people and AI. That's where we help!

Conversation Design Institute teaches a human-centric workflow that has proven itself to organisations around the world. We work closely with tech partners, agencies and other key players in the industry. With this support, Conversation Design Institute is well on its way to becoming the number one platform in conversation design.

Become a certified professional, join one of our online courses, or work with our experts.

Business Development Specialist

Scaled Sales 

Good business coaches are there to help you see the blind spots and serve as your compass to make sure you are heading in the right direction. A business coach serves as an important objective third party to regularly check in to make sure that you are on the most direct path to your ideal destination. Oftentimes, the biggest hurdle to success is that you don't know what you don't know. You can't Google your way out of a problem that you aren't sure how to articulate—or worse, how to anticipate.

One pro for hiring a business coach for yourself is that it allows you to get constructive criticism from someone that doesn’t necessarily know you. 

A business coach is more like a person you're accountable to. No matter what level of success you have attained, there is a tendency to stay in your own lane and not observe habits and patterns that have been successful for others. A strong business coach can help increase awareness of methods and keys to success that have worked for other people and may be analogous to your own situation. 

One of the best investments you can make is in yourself. If you find yourself struggling in your professional career, or desire to increase your sales or improve your business relationship, then a business coach is an invaluable asset. One of the major advantages of having a coach or mentor is that they help you navigate through challenges and meet personal goals with their insights.


Steve Jobs once said, "We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do." Where, if not coaching, could this apply to more? 

One of the biggest benefits of hiring a business coach is that they will help you stay on the right track. Building a business is tricky, especially if you're a startup. It's also very easy to get distracted by all the opportunities that come your way, but you can't possibly do it all. The key is setting the goals, developing the action plan on how to reach these goals and executing to make them happen.

Business Consultant

Yell 

Senior Sales Manager

Fingo - AMi

Digital Strategy Director

As a Business Development Specialist at Conversation Design Institute (CDI), I help organizations around the world create human-centric AI Assistants, such as chatbots and voice assistants. 

At CDI, I work closely with tech partners, agencies, and other key players in the industry to offer high-quality e-learning programs and live sessions for teams and individuals. I have trained hundreds of professionals in strategy, design, and development for AI Assistants, using our proven workflow and best practices.

My goal is to empower more people to design, deploy, and manage valuable conversational experiences.

Benjamin Taylor

I’m lucky enough to get to hear the episodes coming out of the academy before anyone else. 

So much of this episode struck me that I was blown away. 

Hillary Black  clearly gets it and we are unbelievably proud to have her as part of the community.

Global Head of Sales | Driving Growth in Conversational AI | Training, Auditing & Consulting Leader

View company: Conversation Design Institute (CDI)

We’re still at the beginning of conversational AI’s potential.

While prompting and new tools may make it feel like we’re starting over, this time the context is different. The widespread attention around AI has raised the baseline understanding across companies, brands, and individuals.

Many still don’t fully understand what conversational AI or conversation design truly means—but the conversation has changed. Today, people come in more informed, more curious, and more ready to explore what’s actually possible.

Join Hillary Black , conversation designer at MAV in the new episode of unprompted. by CDI. 

Watch the full video here https://hubs.la/Q03YBjZB0

That shift opens the door to deeper, more meaningful progress.
#ConversationalAI #ConversationDes

Bob Hutchins, MSc

Bob Hutchins Consulting

Current and Recent Clients:

Senior AI Advisor and Fractional CMO for multiple startups, SMBs, non-profits, and VC funded businesses.

Area Cooperative Educational Services (ACES) ACES.ORG- Working with this Regional Educational Service Center in Connecticut to integrate Artificial Intelligence into their 1200 employee organization, magnet schools, and offerings to the various school districts they serve. Training, policy writing, advising, etc.

Developing an AI education and ethics training course for a regional university.

Senior Advisor on AI ethics, integration, and marketing strategy for an Educational SAAS (software as a service) startup.

Care Predictor/ Alter Health, Carepredictor.com- AI Advisor and Prompt Engineering for this mental health 'Care Intelligence Platform'. Care Predictor identifies trends, makes informed predictions, and recommends actions to improve the outcomes for mental health providers and their businesses.


Results for my clients:

Solving complex marketing and AI challenges, leading to a 40% increase in scalability for all client companies.
Enabled 20+ companies to achieve a minimum of 30% growth in revenue and digital transformation through a human-driven, data-informed marketing strategy.

Utilized AI and data intelligence to improve customer segmentation and targeting, resulting in a 25% increase in campaign efficacy. Implemented personalized marketing strategies, contributing to a 35% growth in customer acquisition for small and medium businesses. Achieved 40% higher engagement rates by integrating smart data attribution while maintaining authenticity in brand messaging.

Fostered collaborative partnerships, resulting in 50% more successful co-branded campaigns.
Developed impactful content and media projects that increased client brand awareness by 45%.

Founder- Human Voice Media | AI Literacy and Advisor, Fractional CMO services

EKOM AI

Creating and managing the go-to-market strategy and launch for Writerly.ai's innovative product, EKOM.AI
Spearheaded the launch of EKOM.AI, enhancing e-commerce SEO optimization and product asset creation, resulting in a 60% improvement in search engine rankings for users.

Fractional Chief Marketing Officer

5by5 - A Change Agency

Expert in Residence in Consumer Psychology

Expert in Residence

• Oversight and strategy of client deliverables for digital marketing
• Trend forecasting
• Digital Business Strategy
• Hiring
• Campaign strategy
• Ecommerce
• Oversee and communicate best practices
• Regular campaign oversight (analytics, landing page, automations)
• Assist in trouble shooting
• Training team members to execute digital marketing campaigns and assets
• E-commerce leadership and consulting with clients

Directed digital marketing strategy for 15+ clients, resulting in a 25% average increase in campaign effectiveness.

VP of Digital Marketing| Digital Marketing Strategist

BIPRI Wellness

Led the assembling of a team of some of the world’s foremost experts in nutrition, fitness, brain science and wellness to create one-of-a-kind programs that are revolutionizing how brain health and wellness is viewed. BIPRI is committed to providing a simple, holistic, and safe brain wellness programs that are grounded in science and based on the belief that everyone deserves a healthy brain.


Responsible for all e-commerce, branding, and growth strategy for the company. 
Increased company revenue by 500%.  
Increase social media engagement by 250%
Established extensive digital media buying strategy
Built a team of marketing and content writers 
Managed the development, maintenance, enhancement and adoption of integrated marketing planning tools
On a trajectory to profitability in less than a year
Implementation of Shopify, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Hotjar, IG

Fractional CMO- Chief Marketing Officer

Consulting

Worked across key areas that drive growth, which includes marketing, sales, research & development, finance, or more depending on the organization, to create and implement a longer term vision and enterprise-wide execution of growth-generating strategies. Data driven from customer demographics and psychographics.

Fractional CMO

The BuzzPlant (A Top Digital Marketing Agency in Nashville)

Founder/CEO of BuzzPlant (www.buzzplant.com), a digital marketing agency. Since 2001, strategically guided online campaigns for countless movie/books/music-releases, businesses and events, including  Disney's The Chronicles of Narnia, Soul Surfer, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, and Blue Like Jazz.

BuzzPlant Services included Audience Growth, Blogs, Content Creation, Email Campaigns, Google PPC Local SEO, Marketing Retainers, Organic Social, Paid Social, Press Releases, Reputation Management Retargeting, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Community Management, Street Teams, Website Redesign, Website Management, Call Center- Lead generation/ticket sales.

Bob is also a frequent blog contributor at Social Media Today, Business2Community, and Digital Journal, and occasionally teaches Social Media Marketing to MBA students at Belmont University (Nashville, TN).

Founder- Chief Marketing Officer- CMO

AI Advisor, Fractional CMO delivering scalable outcomes. Evidence-based marketing and GTM strategies. Human flourishing in technology and culture. PhD Candidate -generative AI. EdTech. Org Culture Change. Author. Speaker

I help organizations & leaders unlock transformative growth at the intersection of AI, psychology, and human-centered marketing.

As a Fractional CMO, AI Advisor, and PhD researcher, I guide clients through generative AI adoption, ethical transformation, and scalable digital strategies. My work, spanning startups to established brands, centers on making the human voice heard in an algorithm-first era.

Key Impact:

Delivered 40%+ revenue and digital transformation growth for 20+ companies through data-driven, people-first approaches.

Implemented AI and behavioral segmentation, boosting campaign engagement by 40% and customer acquisition by 35%.

Developed AI literacy programs and ethics training for enterprise, EdTech, and mental health sectors.

Launched products and content strategies that increased brand awareness up to 45%.

Core Strengths & Keywords:
AI Literacy | Fractional CMO | Digital & Media Psychology | Marketing Strategy | Generative AI | EdTech | Ethics in AI | Change Management | Digital Transformation | Content Strategy | Prompt Engineering | Public Speaking | Author

Let’s connect: Looking for a strategic collaborator, speaker, or advisor on AI, marketing, or ethical tech? Reach out to explore partnerships, guest speaking, or consulting.

Founder and President | Fractional CMO and Marketing Problem Solver, AI Literacy, AI Advisor

Solving complex marketing challenges, leading to a 40% increase in scalability for all client companies.
Enabled 20+ companies to achieve a minimum of 30% growth in revenue and digital transformation through a human-driven, data-informed marketing strategy.

Utilized AI and data intelligence to improve customer segmentation and targeting, resulting in a 25% increase in campaign efficacy. Implemented personalized marketing strategies, contributing to a 35% growth in customer acquisition for small and medium businesses. Achieved 40% higher engagement rates by integrating smart data attribution while maintaining authenticity in brand messaging.

Fostered collaborative partnerships, resulting in 50% more successful co-branded campaigns.
Developed impactful content and media projects that increased client brand awareness by 45%.

Bob Hutchins

The right words change perception:

Context is everything.

Bob Hutchins, Phd(c)

Empathy Isn’t Missing — It’s Misframed

I’ve watched this video countless times.

Every time, I don’t see generosity. I see design.

I used to believe people ignore the truth because they don’t care.

Now I realize it’s because they don’t see what I see.

Empathy isn’t a lack of compassion — it’s a lack of perspective.

And perspective can be designed.

The words didn’t change the man’s story — they changed our frame of perception.

When language shifts from description to contrast, it activates awareness.

That’s the mechanism behind empathy — it’s not emotional contagion, it’s cognitive reframing.
 → We respond to difference, not repetition.
 → We act when a message bridges our world with someone else’s.
 → We feel when language turns distance into proximity.

Here’s how I try to apply that lesson in my own work:
 ✅ Reveal contrast, not condition. Don’t describe pain — expose the gap between what is and what could be.
 ✅ Design for awareness before emotion. Help people notice first; feeling follows naturally.
 ✅ Make others participants, not observers. Use framing that transfers perspective, not pity.
 ✅ Use silence strategically. Leave room for the reader to complete the meaning.

Because empathy doesn’t start with emotion — it starts with architecture.

The right words don’t tell people what to feel.
They help them feel what was already true.

💭 The Question

👉 When you communicate — are you trying to make people care, or helping them notice what they’ve been blind to all along?

#LeadershipDesign #FramingEffect #CommunicationStrategy #CognitiveEmpathy #BehavioralPsychology #PerceptionDesign

Video credits: Dr. Marcell Vollmer

Generative AI acts like a mirror for your organization.
It reflects how your organization thinks, documents, and decides.
The tech is new. The reflection is old.

I keep seeing three responses.

1. Mirror Smashers

 Source: fear of losing control and identity. 
 How it sounds:
 “AI doesn’t understand our work.”
 “We tried it once and it messed up.”
 “People will get lazy if we use this.”
 They question the mirror instead of studying what the reflection reveals.

2. Mirror Decorators

 Source: a desire to look modern without changing how work happens.
 How it sounds:
 “We launched an AI task force.”
 “We added AI to the roadmap slide.”
 “We have a chatbot now.”
 They polish the mirror while old habits stay in place.

3. Mirror Students

 Source: curiosity and a willingness to revise the system.
 How it sounds:
 “What does this odd output say about our process?”
 “What skill do we want people to grow now that the routine is cheaper?”
 “How does this confusion point to gaps in our docs?”
 They let the reflection guide real improvement.

A simple check for any team:

 Where are we smashing the mirror, decorating it, or learning from it?
 The reflection often teaches more than the tool itself.

More detail in the infographic below. 👇

The Generalist’s Dilemma: Why "lacking focus" is actually a superpower.
For years, the feedback was consistent: "Bob needs to focus." "You're too big picture." "Pick a lane."

I spent years trying to force myself into narrower boxes, convinced that my tendency to see connections across fields (Education, Marketing, Psychology, AI, Tech) was a deficit.

I was wrong.

I’ve learned that this is actually a superpower I call Bridge Mind.

The world rewards specialization, but complex problems don’t respect departmental boundaries. 

• Specialists want depth. 
• Executives want decisions. 

• Bridge Minds translate between the two.

If you are a "systems thinker"-or if you’ve been accused of being distracted because you see everything at once, your role isn't to narrow down. 

➡️ It’s to create shared ground.

Here is the 5-Move Pattern I use to turn "big picture thinking" into actionable leadership:

1. State the Shared Goal & Limit 
Don't just set a vision. Set a boundary. Without limits, generalists want to solve everything. Example: "We launch the pilot by Oct 15. Only two schools."

2. Translate the Terms 
Pick the words that cause confusion and define them in plain English. Example: "'Model' means a workflow, not a neural network."

3. Show the Approach in 3 Steps 
Any more than three steps is a theory, not a plan. Example: "Define use case -> Recruit teachers -> Track outcomes."

4. Mark the Tradeoffs Upfront 
Honesty builds trust fast. Example: "We get speed, but we give up broad input for Phase 1."

5. Invite One Focused Risk 
Channel pattern recognition into safety. Example: "What specific risk creates a bottleneck for Step 2?"

We need translators now more than ever-especially in the age of AI.

Don't hide your generalist nature. Use it to help experts understand each other.

Are you a specialist or a bridge builder? 
How do you handle the translation gap in your teams?

#SystemsThinking #Leadership #Generalist #FutureOfWork #BridgeMind

The Internet is Being Gentrified.
Walk through any major city and you see it: the "weird" dive bars and family shops being replaced by frictionless, mixed-use glass condos. It’s clean. It’s efficient. And it feels exactly the same as everywhere else.

We are doing the same thing to our digital lives.
We are using AI to raze the "rough," inefficient neighborhoods of human creativity, replacing them with the writing equivalent of gray laminate flooring-cost-effective, smooth, and entirely soulless.

We are optimizing our humanity out of the loop.
In my latest article, I argue that we need to start zoning for "Human Preservation Districts"-spaces online where we intentionally refuse to optimize, where we leave the typos, and where we keep the friction.

Because the dinner table is not a feed. And the human soul is not an algorithm.
Read the full thoughts here: 👇

#SiliconAndSoul #DigitalGentrification #ArtificialIntelligence #HumanFirst #MediaEcology

View newsletter: Bob Hutchins-The Human Voice

By Bob Hutchins There is a section in almost every city where the "old neighborhood" meets the "new development." On one side, you have the cracked si

Open article: Digital Gentrification: The Loss of Our 'Rough' Spaces by Bob Hutchins, Phd(c) • 4 min read

Digital Gentrification: The Loss of Our 'Rough' Spaces

This was one of my most popular articles that I wrote a few months ago. I am posting it again in light of so many questions about being a 'generalist'.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, insights, and specifically your own experiences.

Why I stopped trying to cure my generalist brain and started using it as a leadership superpower For years, I thought something was wrong with me. I c

Open article: The Bridge Mind by Bob Hutchins, Phd(c) • 6 min read

Have you ever been told that you are too much of a 'generalist' and/or you needed to 'stay in your lane'?  You may have a high level of contextual intelligence. It's akin to emotional intelligence because both are "sensing" capabilities that require you to read invisible data to navigate complex situations.

Emotional Intelligence is Micro (The Individual). 
Contextual Intelligence is Macro (The System).

In a coming world where machines will specialize in content, structured data, and number calculations, leaders will need both: EQ to connect with their team, and CQ to ensure that team is working on the right problems for the current moment.

Stop treating AI resistance as a problem to solve. Treat it as a signal to listen to.

We often label employees who push back against AI as "fearful" or "stuck in the past." We write them off as Luddites. But in my recent conversation with Built In, I argued that this resistance is rarely just stubbornness. It is often high-fidelity data about where your tools are failing.

If a frontline worker, someone who has spent a decade mastering their craft, tells you a generative tool makes their work worse, they aren't afraid. They may be right.

They are spotting the hallucinations you missed. They are calculating the "recovery time" spent fixing bad code or rewriting generic copy. They are protecting the quality you claim to value.

When we mandate adoption without honoring this expertise, we don't get efficiency; we get the illusion of productivity. We get "check-the-box" usage while the actual work suffers.

Real integration doesn't happen by dismissing these concerns. It happens when we stop selling AI as a replacement for human ingenuity and start vetting it against the "lived realities" of our teams, and offer ways to augment and extend expertise.

Thank you Jeff Rumage for the opportunity.

Read the full article below for more on why resistance is actually your best feedback loop.

#AI #FutureOfWork #HumanCentric #Leadership #DigitalTransformation

Open article: Why Employees Resist AI — And How Companies Can Respond | Built In by builtin.com

Why Employees Resist AI — And How Companies Can Respond | Built In

I've been looking at my own prompts lately. Not the outputs. The prompts themselves.

Turns out, I give away more than I mean to.

The rules I repeat. The patterns I forbid. The phrases I circle back to again and again, trying to explain what I mean by "authentic" or "human" or "real."

Every instruction is a tell.

When you write a prompt, you're not just asking for something. You're revealing what you're afraid of. What you value. What you've been burned by before. The gap between what you want and what you think you'll get.
I started tracking this after noticing I had seventeen different ways of saying "don't sound like marketing copy." That's not editing. That's self-protection.

Here's what I mean:

If your prompts are full of prohibitions, you're managing trust issues with the tool.

If you keep adding context no one asked for, you're managing anxiety about being misunderstood.

If you write the same instruction three different ways, you're not being thorough. You're hoping one version will finally land.

And if you find yourself explaining your tone more than your task, you're not clarifying voice. You're protecting identity.
Prompts are maps of your thinking. They show you what you assume needs defending. What you think will go wrong if you're not vigilant. What you're trying to control because you can't fully articulate it yet.

The AI doesn't care about any of this. But you do.

So here's a new practice to try: before you refine the output, read the prompt.

What are you asking for? What are you guarding against? What does that say about how you're thinking right now?
The model will keep improving. Your relationship to uncertainty won't, unless you pay attention to it.

Your prompts know things about you that your outputs never will.

Try this prompt if you dare-

“Based on my prompts, and from a neurolinguistic or psycholinguistic persepective, what can I learn about myself that may not be obvious? What advice or insights should I consider? Does it reveal anything about my personality that I should consider and how it may affect my work and personal life?”

I'm excited to announce a new podcast for educators and educational administrators. Its called- Future Proof Education: AI and Beyond. Sponsored by Area Cooperative Educational Services. ( ACES)  The first two episodes are live where I talk to Deputy Executive Director Timothy Howes about the future of education and administration and AI. 
Give it a listen!

#edtech #aiandeducation

https://lnkd.in/eBmjpixQ

Open article: Episode 3- Dr. Jessica White on AI's Role in Modern Teaching and Restorative Practices by open.spotify.com

Episode 3- Dr. Jessica White on AI's Role in Modern Teaching and Restorative Practices

The European Commission today announced a formal antitrust investigation into Google’s use of third-party content, including publisher-generated and user-generated content like content from YouTube, to train AI models and power its AI Overviews. The issue is that the company may be using this content without permission, an appropriate reciprocal value exchange, or a real meaningful opt-out, and also potentially using its market power to harm smaller publishers and AI competitors.

This complaint, if it sticks, could have major implications on how AI systems are designed and regulated going forward. It could provide some much-needed leverage for content creators and publishers in how their content is used. For AI developers, this could be a leveling of the playing field.

As someone who cares about ethics in AI, this is a really big deal. Our media ecosystem relies on a balance of trust and exchange, and if AI is being trained on content creators’ hard work, those creators should have some agency and should have some value in that equation.

I’m also really interested to see how this trickles down through the rest of the AI industry. Will other countries join in on regulating how training data is sourced? Will content platforms have to re-evaluate how they use training data and source it more responsibly? This could be a real turning point in the “take my data for free” economy moving towards a “collect my data with accountability” economy.

#AI #Ethics #Regulation #Media #TechPolicy #Google #DigitalRights

Open article: Google faces EU antitrust investigation over AI Overviews, YouTube by reuters.com

The Google logo is seen outside the company's offices in London, Britain, June 24, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso/File Photo

Google faces EU antitrust investigation over AI Overviews, YouTube

When we prioritize speed over substance, we lose more than just jobs. We lose the distinct human perspective that connects a brand or organization to its audience. A machine can predict the next likely word. Sometimes really well. 

But it cannot predict how a sentence will make someone feel.

The friction happening is not technological. It is cultural. It is a decision to value the appearance of work over the work itself.

If you are a leader, look at how your teams are using generative AI. Are they expanding their capability, or are they training the system to undermine their own value?

We need to stop treating creative work as just a commodity to be optimized. Real connection requires contextual and emotional intelligence, not just a prompt.

Open article: "I was forced to use AI until the day I was laid off." Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry by open.substack.com

"I was forced to use AI until the day I was laid off." Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry

As we head into Thanksgiving, I’ve been thinking about the tension between the "Silicon" urge to capture the perfect moment and the "Soul" need to simply sit in it. We treat silence like a buffering error and boredom like a failure, but those are often where the real connection happens.

The most radical thing you can do this Thursday is leave the phone in the other room and embrace the analog friction of family.

Read the full reflection below.

Wishing you all a slow, messy, and deeply present Thanksgiving.

We curate our plates like we curate our profiles. But the soul of the holiday is found in the mess we can’t edit. There is a specific cadence to the h

Open article: The Table is Not a Feed by Bob Hutchins, Phd(c) • 3 min read

Most people treat AI like a Google search.

One question. One answer. Then they wonder why the result is mediocre.

AI isn't an encyclopedia; it's a collaborative engine. To get real value, you have to stop querying and start building.

Here are 5 rules to move from "search" to "strategy":

1. The "Therapeutic Alliance" (Push Back) In psychology, the breakthrough rarely happens in the first 5 minutes. The same applies here. Treat AI like a junior copywriter. Don't accept the first draft. Say, "This feels synthetic. Inject more empathy." The magic happens in Round 4, not Round 1.

2. Media Archaeology (Document Everything) AI has a poor long-term memory. It creates a new "self" every time you open a window. You must be the historian. Keep a "Master Doc" of prompts, style guides, and tone instructions that worked. Feed this context back in at the start of every session.

3. Cognitive Chunking (Modules) Complex systems fail when you force too much throughput. Don't ask for a whole landing page at once. Ask for the headline. Stop. Ask for the subhead. Stop. Ask for the CTA. Build the asset brick by brick to maintain quality.

4. Contextual Precision (Be Literal) AI lacks "Theory of Mind"-it doesn't know what you’re thinking, only what you type. Don't say: "Help me with marketing." Do say: "Act as a behavioral psychologist writing for burnt-out entrepreneurs. Write a scroll-stopping hook about cognitive load."

5. Scaffolding (Stack Your Prompts) Stop trying to "one-shot" complex requests. Start broad: "List the top 5 anxieties of CMOs." Go narrow: "Focus on fear #3." Execute: "Draft a lead magnet for that specific fear."

Treat the interaction with depth, and you'll get depth in return.

#AI #GenerativeAI #MarketingStrategy #BehavioralPsychology #SiliconAndSoul

My Roomba is sad this morning. The iRobot news this week hits kind of hard. Seeing a category-defining company file for Chapter 11 is painful, especially when the buyer is their own manufacturing partner. The supplier that built the machines is now acquiring the company for parts. 

This situation is a heavy lesson on agency and the danger of 'waiting to be saved.'

For the last few years, iRobot seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the Amazon deal to close. It is a common trap. When an exit appears on the horizon, the muscle memory shifts. You become careful. You hesitate to spend on the next big leap because you are trying to tidy up the balance sheet for the due diligence team.

But the market refused to wait. While iRobot sat in regulatory purgatory, competitors continued iterating. They built better, cheaper, faster products. 

The blocked Amazon deal delivered the final blow, but the erosion started the moment iRobot allowed its destiny to depend on someone else’s signature.

➡️ A dangerous moment for any leader arrives when "Plan A" involves someone else solving your problems. Real foresight demands we remain viable even if the exit never comes.

Sure, outsourcing manufacturing brings efficiency. But, mentally outsourcing your future costs you everything.

We should be asking ourselves: Where in our own strategies are we pausing, hoping for a rescue, instead of doing the hard work of staying relevant on our own terms?

Open article: How iRobot lost its way home | TechCrunch by techcrunch.com

How iRobot lost its way home | TechCrunch

In a world where Content is infinite and free, Context becomes the premium asset. 

Prompt engineering is just Rhetoric in a hoodie.

Here in America, we have spent the last twenty years turning our education system into a content delivery machine. We optimized for information transf

Open article: The Context Engine: Why the Humanities are the Ultimate Source Code for the AI Era by Bob Hutchins, Phd(c) • 5 min read

The Context Engine: Why the Humanities are the Ultimate Source Code for the AI Era

It was a lot of fun to be able to contribute to this piece. I love seeing so many older technologylies circle back around again.

Thanks Dan McCarthy for the opportunity!

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that people are romanticising the past at a time when those shaping the future of tech are intent on selling a vision where effort becomes optional and so much of what brings us joy is outsourced to AI.”

In my latest piece for Dazed Magazine, I explored the apparent resurrection of the humble MP3 player – or digital audio player (DAP) as they’re more accurately known. On the surface, the trend is seen as an aesthetic one, something younger generations have picked up and popularised as part of an ongoing Y2K revival. But their readoption can tell us so much more than that; it’s a behavioural signal about agency, ownership and connection to music.

The broad and growing sense that hyper-optimised, integrated, weapons-grade addictive smartphones aren’t bringing us much joy has converged with the ‘enshittification’ of streaming platforms like Spotify. It’s leading some music fans to dust off their old iPods and curate a private collection – something they don’t have to pay a corrupt tech giant to access. So, for young music fans raised with smartphones and seamless tech at their fingertips, choosing a single-purpose device isn’t just nostalgia. It’s media literacy. 

Massive thanks to all the brilliant contributors I got for this piece! Lottie Hanwell (it’s her quote above!) Bob Hutchins, Phd(c) Jozef Tuszynski Emma Wilkes Willem Deisinger

🔗 Read the full piece here: https://lnkd.in/eHhENH9Z

The hardest part of AI adoption isn't the AI. It's the humans.

It’s easy to get caught up in prompt engineering and model selection. But if you look at the organizations truly succeeding with Generative AI right now, their secret weapon is better culture.

Successful AI adoption is remarkably human-centric.

As outlined in the attached graphic, if you ignore Pillar 3 (Empowered People) and Pillar 4 (Responsible AI), your initiative will likely stall due to internal resistance or a lack of trust. We have to foster skills and embed transparency if we want scalable innovation.

AI is a powerful engine, but your team needs to be in the driver's seat.
Take a look at the 5 pillars below. How is your organization handling the cultural shift required for GenAI?

#HumanCenteredAI #OrganizationalCulture #GenAI #EthicsInAI #Management

The $83 Billion Admission: Welcome to Cable 2.0
The Netflix/Warner Bros. deal is the official start of the Great Re-bundling.

For a decade, we unbundled content to chase "freedom." Now, the industry is admitting that the consumer psychology of fragmentation is exhausted. We are rebuilding the very bundle we dismantled, just delivered via broadband instead of coaxial.

This is Cable 2.0, but with a twist...

Netflix is buying the crown jewels (HBO, Harry Potter, DC) while spinning off the dying linear networks. 

This proves that even the world's best algorithm can't manufacture 100 years of nostalgia. Netflix had to buy the history it couldn't code.

The medium has changed, but the model is reverting. We are trading the chaos of too many apps for the convenience of the monolith.

Are we ready for the return of the bundle?

#netflix

Open article: Netflix set to buy Warner Bros. in deal valued at $83 billion by abcnews.go.com

Netflix set to buy Warner Bros. in deal valued at $83 billion

Public Service Announcement in case anyone is wondering-

You can tell if someone is gaslighting you when they consistently deny your reality, make you doubt your own memory/sanity (saying you're "too sensitive" or "imagining things"), shift blame, tell lies, or isolate you from others, all to gain control and make you question your perceptions of events. Key signs include them twisting stories, minimizing your feelings, refusing to admit mistakes, and making you feel like you're the problem. 

Carry on, be careful out there, and take care of each other.

Something’s happening in organizations that we’re not really talking about yet. Roles are collapsing at the edges.

The old divisions between design, product, code, marketing held because they had to. Skills took time to build. Boundaries were real. A marketer couldn’t prototype. A designer couldn’t generate production copy at scale. A PM couldn’t test an interface idea without waiting on someone else.

Now they can. Not expertly, but functionally. And that is changing everything.

I’m hearing two kinds of responses starting to bubble up. One is territorial. People defending their domain, dismissing AI-assisted work from outsiders as amateur or ‘slop’. The other is experimental. Teams asking what happens when the constraints dissolv. When everyone has partial access to capabilities that used to require specialists, what does that mean for the organization?

This connects to something I wrote about recently: the bridge mind. The person who can translate between domains, hold multiple perspectives, synthesize across boundaries. That role used to be rare because it required deep competence in more than one area. ( and that was called a generalist) Now AI is creating a version of that capacity for almost anyone willing to use it.

A bridge mind isn’t just someone who can touch multiple tools. It’s someone who understands context, knows what they don’t know, can discern when to defer and when to move forward. AI gives you the reach. It doesn’t automatically give you the judgment.

Every new medium exposes the old environment by threatening it. The structure of roles, the assumptions about who touches what, the status hierarchies-all of it becomes visible when the technical barriers start to fall. We’re watching that happen inside organizations right now.

Will leadership create enough room for people to figure out what roles actually mean when the old constraints are gone? That will be the largest question in the next few years.

Acceleration and retrenchment look similar at first. Both create friction. But one is adaptive and the other is defensive. Most organizations don’t yet have a language to tell the difference.

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Bob Hutchins's LinkedIn Performance

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