Here’s what most people get wrong about AI: they treat it like an efficiency tool when it’s actually an opportunity engine. And that mindset gap shows. Only 5% of AI pilots successfully scale to production – not because the technology falls short, but because organizations do. While most organizations ask "How can AI make us faster?", the ones winning are asking "What becomes possible now that wasn't before?"
The WIE Suite and Scope3 brought together an intimate group of leaders and innovators for a conversation that went beyond the AI hype. Hosted by Dee Poku, Founder and CEO of The WIE Suite, and Christina Cubeta, CMO of Scope3, the evening featured insights from four remarkable women at the forefront of AI transformation: Sheila Lirio Marcelo, founder, Ohai.ai and Care.com, Kate Watts, AI advisor and CEO of Fifty Thousand Feet, Asmau Ahmed, Chief Data and AI Officer, Varo Bank, and Sinead Bovell, futurist, workforce expert, and founder of WAYE.
What emerged was a blueprint for thriving in transformation. Here are the five insights that will shape how forward-thinking leaders approach AI strategy, workforce innovation, and business model evolution.
"This is the first technology in history that learns from use. So not using it is not a neutral stance." - Sinead Bovell
This is actually great news for organizations willing to engage. Unlike previous technologies where late adopters could catch up, AI's learning curve creates compounding advantages for those who start experimenting now.
Bovell, who analyzes workforce data across government and industry, identifies what she calls the shift from the "knowledge economy" to the "thinking economy." The exciting part? The premium is moving toward judgment, critical thinking, and creative problem-solving - uniquely human capabilities that AI amplifies rather than replaces.
The opportunity for individuals: Every interaction with AI builds transferable skills in judgment and reasoning. The people thriving three years from now won't be those who mastered today's specific tools—they'll be those who developed thinking patterns that transfer across any AI system.
The opportunity for companies: Organizations engaging with AI systems daily – refining data, learning from outputs, developing institutional knowledge – are building competitive moats that competitors can't easily replicate.
"Companies are optimizing for the company they need to be when this disruption hits." - Sinead Bovell
Here's the insight that changes everything: the organizations winning with AI aren't asking "How can we do our current work faster?" They're asking "What new value can we create that wasn't possible before?"
Kate Watts sees this daily in her consulting work with enterprise clients: "Unless they're thinking about how to rethink their entire business all the way across every single department, from supply chain, inventory to marketing to customer service, they're missing the real opportunity."
Watts identified two approaches organizations take:
Why the distinction matters: The 5% of AI initiatives that successfully scale can do so because they're building new capabilities, not just improving old ones.
When Scope3 launched Agentic Digital Campaign Planning (AdCP), the vision exemplified this transformational thinking: not automating existing media planning processes, but fundamentally restructuring how brands, agencies, and publishers collaborate - rebuilding trust and transparency into the advertising ecosystem itself.
The opportunity: This moment rewards bold reimagining. Companies born of the internet understand that AI-native competitors are emerging. The ones who will lead are becoming the 2.0 version of themselves.
"Figuring out how to remain authentic and differentiate what you do with AI – the key is personalization, and the flip side of personalization is privacy." - Asmau Ahmed
While 51% of consumers express skepticism about AI-generated content, this statistic represents opportunity, not obstacle. The organizations that crack the trust equation will own their categories.
Ahmed, who ran consumer trust at Google and now serves as Chief Data and AI Officer at Varo Bank, identified the central tension: AI enables unprecedented personalization, but personalization requires transparency and user control that many systems lack.
The breakthrough thinking: Trust isn't a compliance requirement but a foundational design principle that creates competitive advantage.
Anne Coghlan, co-founder and COO of Scope3, outlined how this plays out in advertising. As AI-powered search provides direct answers, the traditional media ecosystem faces pressure. But this disruption opens doors for innovation.
The exciting shift: Rather than reducing brilliant creative strategies to blunt demographic segments and keywords, agentic systems can hold nuanced, context-rich communication. A shoe brand doesn't just target "people interested in shoes." It connects authentically with marathon runners who care about resilience and mental strength, showing up in emotional contexts that resonate.
What winning looks like:
Sinead Bovell outlined how trust gets validated: "At the AI model level, you get a stamp of approval showing how this AI system was trained, its cybersecurity protocols, its fact-checking mechanisms."
The organizations building trust into their architecture today will own customer loyalty tomorrow.
“What does AI get you? It frees you up to do the creative thinking that you've been losing by having to do the math, which is part of your job. Your conceptual thinking, your critical thinking, your creative thinking, your cultural awareness can enhance your product 1000 times better." - Kate Watts
This shift might sound disruptive, but it actually creates exciting possibilities for how we work and what we contribute.
The data shows companies moving toward independent, skill-based collaboration. Rather than seeing this as job loss, forward-thinking leaders see it as unlocking human potential that rigid organizational structures previously constrained.
The leadership opportunity: Create environments where AI handles execution while humans focus on judgment, creativity, and strategy—the work that energizes and fulfills us.
Watts's approach with teams starts with possibility, not fear: "It's coming. You're gonna be okay, and we want you to grow." Her framework helps teams see AI as liberation rather than replacement.
What fluid organizations enable:
Bovell describes the future: "The only thing that is static is your North Star. But who helps you execute, and what helps you, sometimes it's a person, sometimes it's people plus AI, that becomes fluid."
The systemic opportunity: This transformation demands we reimagine social infrastructure – health insurance, safety nets, culture building, etc. The organizations that solve these challenges will attract the best talent.
"4.8 hours of unpaid labor. If we can create just one hour back, it's a trillion dollars in GDP—the size of two countries." - Sheila Lirio Marcelo
The opportunity for AI applications to solve for genuine friction in people's lives is huge. Marcelo's journey to founding Ohai.ai began with clarity about where real value lies: "I still have to be in care. I saw the problem again, and now agentic AI was right in front of me."
The opportunity isn't glamorous: PDFs from schools, fragmented email threads, tracking family schedules. But it's massive. Even if only a third of people use recovered time productively (while others choose self-care), that's still a trillion dollars in economic value.
One of the evening’s guests, Jean Lee, Head of Wearables at Google Gemini, reinforced this. "I don't work on image generation. I work on 'add this to my calendar' and 'remind me to pick up my daughter at four' so I can not take out my phone and interrupt this conversation."
These applications, like voice-activated task automation, friction-reducing habit formation, and household logistics management, benefit the people who need them most: busy professionals, multitasking parents, and anyone juggling modern life's complexity.
The access opportunity: "We're trying to get more women in AI," she shared, discussing her involvement in Maternal AI to increase women on boards, support female entrepreneurs, and expand access broadly.
Instead of "How can AI make us more efficient?" ask "What new value can we create that wasn't possible before?"
Efficiency is table stakes. The real opportunity is discovering where AI doesn't just improve existing processes but enables entirely new approaches to serving customers, solving problems, and creating value.
Action step: Map your entire value chain. Identify where AI opens doors to fundamentally different and better ways of operating.
Traditional org charts assume stable roles and clear hierarchies. The future rewards fluid teams assembled around specific challenges, drawing from diverse skill bundles rather than fixed job descriptions.
The organizations that figure out how to build culture, provide support, and create belonging in fluid structures will attract the most talented contributors.
Action step: Experiment with project-based structures now. Test new approaches to sourcing talent, building teams, and measuring contribution. Learn what works before your competitors do.
With 51% of consumers skeptical of AI content, trust becomes the ultimate competitive advantage. The organizations that get this right early will own their categories. This means transparency, clear policies, fiduciary responsibility, and user control baked into system design from day one, not added later as a compliance checkbox.
Action step: Audit every AI touchpoint in your customer experience. Ask, "would I trust this if I were the user?" Build trust architecture, not trust marketing.
"The future is not an automated version of the present." - Sinead Bovell
This might be the evening's most liberating insight. We're not headed toward a world that looks like today with more robots. We're building fundamentally new possibilities for how we work, create, connect, and contribute.
Kate Watts proposed what she calls a ‘Moore's law of human consciousness.’ "As AI proliferates, maybe our own brains will start to think in different, unique ways. There's more time to elevate our human consciousness."
This optimistic vision sees freed time enabling activities that expand our capabilities - for community building, artistic creation, deeper thinking, meaningful connection. As AI handles execution, human creativity, judgment, and innovation become exponentially more valuable.
Watts shared her conviction: "I fundamentally believe that authentic, pure creativity is going to be artisanal. To see original art in its form by a human will have exponential value in the future."
The exciting reality: We're not at the mercy of technological change. We're the architects of what comes next.
The 5% of AI initiatives that scale share something in common: they're not optimizing old systems. They're building new ones with intention, humanity, and a clear vision of the value they want to create.
The question isn't whether AI will reshape business, work, and society. It's what role we all play in guiding that transformation toward genuine human flourishing.
The WIE Suite is a membership community for modern leaders who think beyond 'business as usual' – senior executives and established founders blazing trails in their industries with fresh ideas to change the future for the better.
Scope3 is the market-leading platform for sustainable advertising, helping brands, agencies, and publishers measure and reduce the carbon footprint of their digital campaigns while building more efficient, transparent advertising ecosystems.
