Costco’s Tariff Strategy Is a Masterclass in Real-Time Resilience
What we can learn from @Costco’s tariff playbook Last quarter, Costco Wholesale pulled forward patio furniture shipments and rerouted tariff-impacted goods to non-U.S. markets. They ate the cost of higher tariffs on pineapples and bananas from LATAM to protect members, but let flower prices rise, seeing them as more discretionary. Why? Because U.S. tariffs are […]
Will Google Kill the Zoom Square?
Here comes Google Beam, a sleek evolution of its Project Starline, freshly commercialized with HP, promising to turn video chat into something much more lifelike, immersive, and maybe even… enjoyable? Beam swaps out the flat rectangle for a 3D “magic window.” A six-camera array and real-time AI stitching build a volumetric model of your conversational […]
UBS Bets on Synthetic Communication
For decades, investment banks sold exclusivity. Human contact, tailored briefings, private calls. Analyst notes weren’t just information; they were status. Now, UBS is flipping that logic. Using OpenAI and Synthesia, the bank is turning select analysts into scalable content assets, replicating their likenesses and voices to generate videos that can be watched by thousands, on […]
AI Won’t Fix Your Productivity Problem—But Rethinking Work Might
AI won’t fix your productivity problem. Too many leaders treat AI like magic, plug it in and wait for results. But productivity gains don’t come from better tools. They come from better thinking. Get back to first-principles.What is the job we are trying to get done?What is the value we are delivering? To unlock AI’s […]
From Labs to Living Rooms: The Robotics Sputnik Moment May Have Just Arrived
For years robots were million-dollar machines locked inside labs like Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Honda Research Institute USA, Inc., and Boston Dynamics Now? Hugging Face just dropped two open-source humanoid bots. One walks and talks. One fits on your desk. The cheapest one costs less than my most recent […]
From Assistant to Colleague: The Rise of Autonomous AI Agents
For years, we’ve talked about AI as a tool, something that responds, assists, completes. But what if that framing is already outdated? We’re entering a transformative phase in the evolution of AI agents. Today’s agents are largely reactive, acting only when prompted. But over the next 36 months, I expect a fundamental shift. AI agents […]
From Forecasts to Foresight: Microsoft’s Aurora Signals a New Era in AI
In 2023, Typhoon Doksuri tore through the Philippines. Models got it wrong—predicting a northern path over Taiwan. Except one. An AI model from Microsoft nailed the landfall days in advance. Meet Aurora: a foundation model trained on over 1 million hours of geophysical data. It doesn’t just forecast weather. It understands Earth systems broadly – […]
What You Don’t See at Checkout: The Hidden Fight to Keep Prices Down
In March, Best Buy said 55% of their product costs came from China. Today? It’s down to 30-35%. What happened? Manufacturers re-routed supply chains. Retailers adjusted assortments. Executives got scrappy. Why? Tariffs of course. Tariffs are adding 20% to 30% on many core electronics. But here’s the twist: at Best Buy the costs getting passed […]
The Next Frontier: Where Will Innovation in Services Take Off Next?
Imagine a string quartet playing Beethoven.In 1825, it took four musicians 30 minutes.In 2025, it still takes four musicians 30 minutes. No productivity gains. You can’t speed up the music without ruining it. But wages rise over time across the economy, even in sectors with low productivity growth, because:Workers in low-productivity sectors still need to […]
The Most Ambitious Treasure Hunt of the AI Age
Lost cities. Whispered legends. Dense green canopies that hide entire civilizations. The Amazon rainforest has always been an enigma—so vast, so complex, and so impenetrable that for centuries, much of it has lived only in myth. But that might be changing. Not because we’ve suddenly grown wings or macheted our way through six million square […]
