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In late July, the Trump administration released its long-awaited AI Action Plan, which includes steps to cut environmental requirements and streamline permitting policies to make it easier to build data centers and power infrastructure. But even with massive deregulation, the fact remains: we have no idea where well find all the energy, water, and grid capacity to meet the enormous speed and scale of the emerging AI revolution. Recently, experts from the International Energy Agency estimated that electricity use from data centers could more than double in the next five years. By 2030, these facilities could use nearly 9% of all electricity in the United States. Without major investments, this growth will strain our power grid and lead to higher energy bills for everyone. And its not just energy. Globally, by 2027, water consumption from AI alone is estimated to reach the equivalent of more than half the annual water usage of the U.K. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, estimate that a ChatGPT user session that involves a series of between 5 and 50 prompts or questions can consume up to 500 milliliters of water (about the amount in a 16-ounce bottle). Google used a fifth more water in 2022 compared to 2021 as it ramped up its artificial intelligence work. Microsofts water usage increased by 34% over the same period. On top of all this, many communities are protesting or rejecting data center construction due to factors like noise disturbances and limited job-creation benefits. Its easy to feel overwhelmed by the scale of the task before us as a nation, especially considering that winning the AI race with China requires overcoming all these constraints, quickly. But the answer isnt despair, or even just deregulation. We need to innovate. Lets imagine and build data centers that stack as many functions as possible for sustainability, efficiency, and even social good. While the most obvious sustainability move for data centers is clean energy, permitting wait times and baseload requirements mean many new constructions are developing behind-the-meter power plants with natural gas. Even these systems can transform their environmental impact. Imagine if data centers could capture waste heat and CO and put it to the best possible usefor example, fueling nearby industrial-scale greenhouses that grow fresh, high-quality food. The CO emissions, when introduced into greenhouses, could accelerate photosynthesis, significantly boosting crop yields. Heat captured from servers can also keep greenhouses warm year-round. In other words, you could grow local tomatoes, lettuce, and herbs in the middle of a Northeast or Midwest winter by harnessing data center emissions. Because data centers often choose less populated areas for affordable land and available space, these projects could provide fresh produce to rural food deserts, addressing nutritional gaps and stimulating local economies. In summer months, when greenhouses require less CO, innovative data centers could convert excess emissions into clean hydrogen fuel. Emerging carbon-capture and electrolysis technologies can transform emissions into hydrogen, which could power backup systems, fuel cells, or even local transit. Likewise, organic waste from the greenhouses could be composted or converted into biochar onsite, enriching soils, sequestering carbon, and further contributing to local agriculture. Multiple sustainability functions can be creatively stacked, maximizing environmental benefits and turning traditional liabilities into assets. Data centers also offer major untapped potential for sustainable water solutions. Their expansive, flat roofsoften exceeding 100,000 square feetare ideal for rainwater harvesting. Just one inch of rain on a 50,000-square-foot roof can yield over 31,000 gallons of water, significantly offsetting cooling demands and reducing dependence on local municipal sources. This harvested rainwater can directly irrigate adjacent greenhouses, creating further efficiencies. Tech giants like Google and Microsoft are already starting to demonstrate the value of this straightforward yet promising approach. Traditionally, data centers are criticized for providing few long-term jobs. Construction might employ up to 1,500 people temporarily, but ongoing operations usually support only about 50 permanent workers. By integrating greenhouse agriculture and carbon capture, data centers can significantly expand employment opportunities. These integrated campuses could provide apprenticeships, educational programs, and hands-on training in data operations, energy management, sustainable agriculture, and related fields. This approach would promote diverse, long-term job creation and deeper community integration, ensuring more meaningful local benefits. Right now, were embarking on the biggest infrastructure development project in multiple generations. We need to think seriously about the choices were making regarding emissions, water, and local economies. Weve done this kind of big thinking before.When America needed cheap power in the 1930s, we built the TennesseeValleyAuthority and strung wires to virtually every farmhouse through the Rural ElectrificationAct.When commerce demanded speed, we carved the ErieCanal and later laced the continent with the Interstate Highway System.When the ColdWar caled for a moonshot, we answered with Apolloturning slide-rule sketches into a lunar landing in less than a decade and achieving scores of technological innovations along the way.Each project looked audacious at the outset. Each rewrote what was possible. AI infrastructure now demands a leap of similar scale.If we pair data center capacity with on-site microgrids, rain-harvesting roofs, carbon-fed greenhouses, hydrogen production, workforce academies, and other innovations, we can meet the demands of AI without undermining communities or nature. President Trumps new AI Action Plan includes some sensible and important steps, including expediting permitting for some data centers and semiconductor fabs as well as new initiatives to boost needed occupations like electricians and HVAC technicians. Yet any comprehensive plan to address the AI challenge needs much more serious attention to questions like energy and water sustainability as well as community resilience. The AI infrastructure race can be a positive opportunity for society, but we need to get creative
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E-Commerce
We need help. We really, really need your help. Steve Jobs walked to the podium, threw his jacket on the floor, and implored a group of designers to help shape the coming revolution. Addressing the 1983 International Design Conference in Aspen, he simply explained his vision for the personal computer era he saw coming. He then turned to the challenge: We have a shot at putting a great object there, or if we dont, were going to put one more piece of junk object there this stuff can either be great or it can be lousy. And we need help. We really, really need your help. One more piece of junk? What Jobs recognized was that major technological inflections are not just about accelerating what went before, but moments of profound redesign, and that takes more than just technical leaps. How we shape technical revolutions determines who participates, who benefits, what is gained and what is lost. Artificial intelligence, the latest technical revolution, arrives amidst a wholesale rejection of broken systems: only 36% of people believe the next generation will be better off, two thirds think society is on the wrong track, and populism is on the rise. So how this revolution is shaped is of profound importance. Will it lead to a further concentration of wealth, power and dissatisfaction, or an abundanceof science, education, energy, optimism, and opportunity? Design is how we apply intention to deliberately shape life, systems, and the future. The scary news is: we have to redesign everything. The exciting news is: we get to redesign everything. How can we redesign? Technical revolutions create windows of time when new social norms are created, where institutions and infrastructure is rethought. This window of time will influence daily life in myriad ways, from how people find dates, to whether kids write essays, to which jobs require applications, to how people move through cities and get health diagnoses. Each of these are design decisions, not natural outcomes. Who gets to make these decisions? Every company, organization and community that is considering ifand howto adopt AI. Which almost certainly includes you. Congratulations, youre now part of designing a revolution. Whether we do this design well, or poorly, is up to us. In our work at ENSO, a future design company that helps organizations design the future they aspire to, we have seen that getting big transformations right requires clarity, bravery, and the creativity to bring people along. Find clarity: Asking big questions In ordinary times, ordinary questions can suffice. Questions like, “how can we add to our market share?,” “how can we operate more efficiently?,” or “can we refine that process?” These kinds of “small minded questions” are premised on the assumption that next year will look very much like last year, so incremental improvement is a fine goal. But these questions can hold back the potential for radical progress. As the Harvard professor Clayton Christensen once said, too often, we overlook an obvious fact: finding the right answer is impossible unless we have asked the right question. In extraordinary times, extraordinary questions are more productive. In ENSOs future design process, we like to start with big questions like: “what is ultimate success?,” “what are people yearning for?,” and more recently, “how could AI reinvent this category and company?” Its often remarkable how differently leaders think about the same business: seeing current performance in a different light, disagreeing on whats hindering progress, or holding divergent visions of the future. Getting to clarity is critical to avoiding organizational malaise. Clayton Christensen described the importance of getting clear on “the job to be done” for customers: are they looking for a coffee or an experience? Do they want a diagnosis, or a compassionate conversation? Do we need to sell features, or alleviate fear? Finding clarity on what success looks like (for all stakeholders, not just customers) is the first step to any redesign. Success today may not be what we thought it was yesterday. Many business leaders and advisors have developed a strong muscle memory in getting to answers fast, based on best practices from the industrybut by definition, this is perpetuating old ideas. Eras of reinvention require more questions and more listening, to inform brave new paths. Foster bravery: exploring rather than forecasting To say there is little certainty about how the AI revolution will unfold is an understatement. Some of the best attempts at expressing what may occur, like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodeis Machines of Loving Grace, paint the broad outlines of whats possible. But even Amodei says, everything Im saying could very easily be wrong, and he proposes more concerted efforts of exploration: it is critical to have a genuinely inspiring vision of the future, and not just a plan to fight fires there has to be something were fighting for, some positive-sum outcome Fear is one kind of motivator, but its not enough: we need hope as well. Like it or not, we are so early in the AI era that the only reasonable option is to summon the bravery to explore multiple futures rather than assume one. But businesses love forecasts. They give everyone a sense of confidence and control in the future. They feel diligent. They also assume the future is very much like the past, just a bit better. They make no account for transformed user behavior, old marketing channels being upended, or most damaging of all, the opportunity cost of not considering the adjacent possible: the options available to a company at any time. While uninspired companies seek comfort in forecasts, inspired companies are relentlessly exploring beyond the established formula, particularly now AI has led to an explosion of adjacent possibles. As the economist Tim Harford has said on forecasts, the problem is not that theyre insufficiently precise, but that they allow us to short-circuit any further thought on the matter. Thinking seriously abut the future can be a worthwhile exercise, not because the future is knowable, but because the process is likely to make us wiser. At ENSO, we find that creating future scenarios is remarkably productive: freed from the pressure of creating an accurate forecast, we can explore beyond the expected. One scenario may be a more logical extension of the current reality, while others may be much more optimistic, or serve people in different ways, or assume the world changes significantly. Each scenario paints a picture of the future: what the company is saying and doing, how others receive it and respond. The scenarios can then be debated, dissected, remixed and improved upon. This process of future exploration has a lightness, joy, and curiosity about it that is so often missing from annual planning processes, which assume a singular path and become battles over budget and control. Connect emotionally: bringing people along Traditional business culture loves rational thought, but humans are emotional creatures making emotional decisions. Employees feel uncertain and are disengaging, while customers are frustrated and losing trust. Google found that psychological safety is the leading determinant of their highest performing teams, but the typical C-suite proving grounds of economics, engineering and finance do not naturally equip leaders to connect emotionally. Starbucks recently realized it had “over rotated” on technology replacing the humanity of service, which left both baristas and customers unhappy. At this moment, the excitement around AI could lead many leaders to optimize for productivity enhancing technology adoption, rather than adopting technology in service of an inspiring vision. How can you connect emotionally? Marketers know how. Artists know how. Designers know how. Too often, those voices have been heard long after critical decisions have been made: finance-driven forecasts and engineering-led products that leave only small decisions for those emotionally equipped to bring people along. Instead, those voices need to be (re)introduced to company strategy, product management and the boardroom. The intersection of technology, design, and understanding people and the world Every leader, even those steeped in logic-based disciplines can find their way to more emotionally-atuned ways of leading, but only if they are freed from executing business as usual. As Rick Rubin says, everyone is a creator, and the best work is the work you are excited about. If youre not excited yet, go back to asking bigger questions, listening and exploring; then, you can bring people into the excitement. Recently, Mark Zuckerberg raised eyebrows with $100 million signing bonuses for AI engineers. But even these look small compared to the $6.5Bn OpenAI paid to enlist Jony Ives help. Why would Sam Altman pay so much for a designer? He said at the announcement, AI is an incredible technology, but great tools require work at the intersection of technology, design, and understanding people and the world. Thats why, at the dawn of a previous revolution, Steve Jobs implored designers to help. At this moment, when we need to redesign everything, and we can redesign everything, its important that intersection is deeply baked into business principles and practice.
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E-Commerce
Having been on both sides of the tableas employee and managerI can confidently say that no one looks forward to annual performance reviews. As an employee, you might find yourself bracing for critiques and rehearsing defenses. Maybe youre asked to rate your own performance and feel unsure whether to play it humble or confident. And thats before you even start combing through an entire years worth of highs and lows. Employers are likewise tasked with the time-consuming exercise of digging through months of work for each employee. But the real issue isnt just that annual reviews are stressfulit’s that theyre often ineffective. They can leave employees feeling frustrated and disengaged. Meanwhile, organizations continue to waste time on systems that do little to meaningfully improve performance or support career growth. Some even rank employees, pitting them against each other in a race that completely undermines the spirit of collaboration. I know that kind of atmosphere would not work for my company. Todays employees want something different: timely, ongoing feedback that helps them improve in the moment. Its not just a more psychologically gentler approachit also delivers results. In fact, the percentage of U.S. companies using annual reviews dropped from 82% in 2016 to just 49% in 2023, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. Its no doubt due to the benefits of real-time feedback. Heres a closer look at some of those advantages. Real-time feedback accelerates improvement Imagine youre a line cook in a restaurant. Youve been preparing a dish from the spring/summer menu the same way for months. Then, in September, your sous chef informs you that youve been leaving out a key ingredient all along. The feedback comes too late to matteryoure already moving on to the fall menu. Delayed feedback, in short, is unhelpful. Annual reviews are too infrequent for the cycle of work today in most enterprises, says James N. Baron, a professor at Yale School of Management. Goals negotiated at the beginning of the year have often become obsolete and irrelevant by the end-of-year review. Thats why more and more organizations are shifting away from annual reviews. Timely feedback allows employees to adjust quickly. Baron advocates for real-time coaching, in which managers work directly alongside their team members. When leaders stay close to the work, their feedback is immediate and actionable. But when theyre removed from day-to-day operationswhen theyre too far from the trenchesthey cant possibly understand where employees need to improve. At AstraZeneca, managers adopted a more hands-on coaching approach. Four years later, the company saw a 12% increase in core coaching capabilities and a 70% boost in managers confidence in leading meaningful coaching conversations. Ongoing feedback makes the coaching process more effective and manageable for managers as well. Frequent feedback boosts motivation and morale As my companys workforce increasingly includes millennial and Gen Z employees, Ive seen a steady rise in the desire for continual feedback. While younger workers are sometimes unfairly labeled as overly sensitive, in my experience, they welcome constructive criticism, especially when it helps them grow and move closer to their career goals. Companies that want to attract and retain top talent are taking note. Regular, informal check-ins offer another advantage: They turn feedback into a dialogue rather than a one-sided annual monologue. This helps employers better understand their employees career goals and collaborate on aligning those goals with the companys broader objectives. These conversations shift from sources of dread to wellsprings of motivation. Simply put, ongoing feedback helps keep people on track, ideally in a direction that serves both their personal development and the companys success. More feedback, less fear: Shifting the tone of evaluation In the annual review process, theres often a performative element in which leaders feel compelled to balance praise with critique, regardless of whats warranted by the actual employees performance. Whether its delivered as a compliment sandwich or a straight-up list of pros and cons, the experience can leave employees feeling dissatisfied and deflated. The mere word feedback from a manager can trigger an employees threat response, flooding the brain with adrenaline and making it harder to process and act on whats being said. In contrast, when feedback is given regularly, it tends to be received more positively. Employees view it as less threatening and more helpful. Over time, frequent reinforcement and recognition lead to greater engagement and performance. As CEO of my company for nearly two decades, I can attest: It feels good to give positive feedback. Over time, it creates a virtuous cycle: You start looking for moments to commend employee performance just as much as you look for ways to help them improve.
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E-Commerce
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