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Zombies have always fascinated me: one favorite is Brad Pitts World War Z, a fun movie of the genre with its brain-dead bodies wandering aimlessly through the world looking to feed off the living. But recent highly publicized research from MIT has left me wondering whether we are entering the land of the living dead as we head into the AI-powered workplace. The study, carried out by MIT Media Lab, focused on how the use of chatbots impacts our thinking. Using EEG brain scans, researchers found that when people relied on AI to write essays, their brain activity plummetedwith as much as 55% less activity in areas related to memory, creativity, and attention. But that’s not all: after pivoting away from the AI, users still underperformed in critical thinking and recall tasks. The research suggests, too, that this underperformance may heighten our risk for clinical depression and anxiety, Alzheimers disease, and dementia. The costs of AI to our critical thinking The adoption of AI chatbots has been a rapid revolution; ChatGPT, for example, set a record for the fastest-growing user base of any modern consumer application when it reached over 100 million users two months after launching in 2022. Since then, many doomsdayers have been predicting the demise of millions of jobs and the downgrading of humanity to no longer being the smartest in our universe. I believe in humanitys ability to change and adaptbut this research does raise some serious questions about the long-term impact for AI in organizations. If we encourage our people to adopt AI-first strategies into our business activities, we may be setting ourselves up for failure. In the short term, things may be getting done more efficiently and revenue may be up. But what about the cost to your corporate resilience and problem-solving? The collective cognitive cost is that we risk creating a workforce that appears busy, but is functionally brain-dead, unable to think for themselves, problem-solve, or be creative. In other words? Zombies. But there is still time to push back against the impending threat of corporate zombie-ism. Here are four things you can do to arm yourself against the invasion. Hone a reinvention mindset. Reinvention isnt easy, but its critical to be able to adapt to a fast-changing environment. This starts by reviewing your strengths and weaknesses. From there, you can make a conscious decision about what will serve you in the new world and what wont. Just like moving houses, you dont want to take all the junk with you. A reinvention mindset sees disruption as an opportunity, failure as a learning curve, and adaptability as a superpower. Empower your team. As AI becomes the new normal, your team will need to evolve their skills to identify and adapt to new opportunities. Training them to be AI-competent, while still encouraging the need for individuality and human-centric creativity and logic, will help maintain a healthy balance. Tough it out. Its through failing, learning, growing, and continuing on that we build deep knowledge, resilience, and pride in our efforts. Create guidelines for your workplaces use of AI, and reinforce that AI is merely a tool, rather than a complete solution. Have fun. During challenging times, increased stress and cortisol often restrict our ability to think logically and strategically. We are in survival mode. One of the best ways to address this is to release the pressure valve by having fun. Encourage the team to laugh, play, enjoy, and live in the moment. A shot of dopamine will reinforce the culture of reinvention that will always win over zombies. If a culture where zombies are accepted creates teams with a high AI-dependency and lowered critical thinking skills, then creating a reinvention mindset is the best path to long-term success. By focusing on our human qualities that make a culture unique and high performing, such as curiosity, resilience, and creative problem-solving, you will build a culture of reinvention that wont just survive in this changing world orderit will lead it.
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E-Commerce
The role of the CFO is evolvingand fast. In todays volatile business environment, finance leaders are navigating everything from unpredictable tariffs to tightening regulations and rising geopolitical tensions. The latest shuffle in global trade policy is just another reminder that agility is no longer optionalit’s a necessity. According to Pigments latest CFO survey, most companies missed their financial targets last year. This isnt just a sobering statisticits a clear wake-up call. In todays volatile environment, businesses can no longer afford to wait and react; they must anticipate and move faster than the market to stay ahead. Finance leaders need tools that not only keep pace with a rapidly shifting global economy but also enable proactive scenario planning. Artificial Intelligence has emerged as the most powerful tool to meet this challengehelping businesses pivot with the same speed and agility that today’s business landscape demands. AI is ushering in a new era of smarter, faster, and more strategic decision-making in the office of the CFO. Finance leaders must now embrace AI not just to boost insights and productivity, but to drive more transformative, strategic outcomes. Teams are leveraging AI to access data faster, forecast more accurately, and collaborate seamlessly across the organizationoften through simple natural language prompts. But the next evolution is underway: autonomous AI agents. These systems dont wait for prompts; they operate continuously in the background, proactively handling complex tasks with minimal human intervention. From real-time forecasting and dynamic scenario planning to risk management and anomaly detection, AI agents will become essential tools in the finance function. The right investments today wont just streamline operationsthey will fundamentally redefine how finance teams drive value, resilience, and competitive advantage for the business. The Rise of Finance AI Agents The latest tariff developments and world trade saga are causing financial leaders and their institutions a lot of headaches. Trade policy is notoriously complex for businesses to navigate. CFOs must assess not only the downstream impact of specific regulations on functions like their supply chain but also how their business may be affected by the wider impact on regional and global economies. But fortunately for CFOs, there is a silver lining. The introduction of AI agents for finance teams has opened new doors to autonomous planning, real-time insights, and more proactive risk mitigation. AI agents can do more than just streamline processes like reconciliation and financial reportingthey can work independently and proactively as an extension of the team to help CFOs stay one step ahead of todays fast-moving business environment. Imagine a world where a forecasting model not only reacts to past trends but also continuously learns from new data, anticipates market shifts, and updates projections in real time. AI agents can simulate the financial impact of global eventsfrom supply chain disruptions to new regulatory policiesand run thousands of scenarios to understand how these could impact the business well before the numbers show up on the balance sheet. This enables CFOs to help their businesses better decide the best course of action to take. AI agents are poised to be a game-changing technology for CFOs and finance teamsbut only if they are ready to embrace the change. Making Smart Bets When new technology emerges, there is huge upside but also equal risk for first movers and early adopters. For CFOs, the key to navigating through the AI hype cycle to make smart and grounded investments lies less in being an expert in emerging technologies and more in understanding your business and what you aim to achieve. First, its critical to understand the problem youre trying to solve with AI and the end goal: Are you trying to cut costs? Improve productivity? Looking for internal or external use cases? Most CFOs today are looking for ways that AI can help reduce spending and time spent on repetitive tasks, so their team can focus time elsewhere. But productivity is just one area that AI can drive value for businesses. CFOs should also think about how AI can democratize data for teams to be more strategic and even help make better business decisions and manage risk. No matter the primary goal for AI adoptionin order to maximize the ROI on AI investmentsits essential to have the right foundations in place. AI can only be as good as the data you feed it. If data sources are poor quality, disparate, or inaccurate then you will get lackluster results no matter how powerful the AI capabilities might be. Related, adding AI to an already complex platform can frustrate teams rather than help them. Platforms that integrate easily with data sourcesand clean up data during implementationmake AI reliable and accessible for nontechnical users to maximize its value. AI agents operate best when supported by the right architecture. It is critical that they are embedded in a platform that is AI-first, flexible, and intuitive, while also having access to accurate, real-time data in order to deliver transformational value, fast. Finally, for AI to be truly effective and seamless, it requires an organization-wide strategy. CFOs should work alongside their CTOs and CIOs to ensure their data foundations are sound so that when new tools or platforms are added, teams can trust the data and outputs from AI are accurate. It also helps to start small. Get clear on exactly the use case for AI and test this out before building it out further. The Next Move is Yours The opportunity to become an AI-empowered finance organization is there for the taking. CFOs who want to give their teams the best chance to succeed and exceed expectations should not wait to make their move. According to McKinsey, 78% of business leaders say AI has already improved operational efficiency and decision-making in their organizations. And forward-thinking CFOs are already piloting AI in planning and analysis workflows, fraud detection, and even ESG reporting. The results? Greater accuracy, faster turnaround, and a better handle on risk. Those who delay risk being outpaced by competitors who are already harnessing AI to steer their companies with precision through these uncertain times. AI isnt just about unlocking new levels of eficiencyits about giving finance teams better access to the insights they need to make faster and more informed decisions in a more challenging and unpredictable world. Agents in particular have the power to change a businesss trajectory and resultsfinding new pathways to accelerate growth, drive higher margins, and identify the right opportunities to make trade-offs. CFOs who embrace this shift and harness the power of AI wont just have a significant edge over their competitiontheyll lead and redefine their industries.
Category:
E-Commerce
When scientist Zorana Ivcevic Pringle first started out in academia as an undergraduate student, she wanted to study interesting people. Unfortunately, thats not a scientific term, and it carries with it a value judgement (also unscientific, as fun as it sounds). I started being interested in describing what creative people are like, and understanding that complexity in a creative personality, she says. They seem to embody these dichotomies, things that oftentimes dont go together in most people. It grabs your attention to something really important. She frames creativity in her research around strength and vulnerabilities, particularly engaged in how both personality and processes feed a creative act or idea: How do you approach it when you have an idea? What happens with it? I became interested in what I ended up calling the process of self-regulation in creativity. And that is, how do you make yourself do it? Now, on the heels of launching her book The Creativity Choice (May 2025), Pringle, who is a senior research scientist at the Yale School of Medicines Center for Emotional Intelligence, admits she was onto something, and that dichotomy she senses about creativity is endlessly inspiring and interesting, across disciplines, everywhere. I wanted to study people who are complex, who are doing things that are different, and who are pushing boundaries of what is possible. The body of work shes cultivated in more than two decades of researching creative individuals and their processes is both incredibly layered and also fundamentally pedestrian. We all can relate to it, even if we dont have the last name of Bezos, Einstein, or Monet. Creativity has a lot of fun in it. We dont talk enough about it, but it also has times that are very hardI mean, excruciatingly hard. We encounter obstacles, as a rule. Nothing you ever try works out. Thats disappointing, frustrating, overwhelming. That can be stressful. We have to deal with that and on some level accept it will happen. We have to have comfort that we can handle it somehow. I became fascinated by that. I am very motivated by frustration. I work from the world of science. A gap, a question, something thats missing. I find it frustrating: Why hasnt this been asked? And then I want to ask it and work on it. I want to see how you can start answering it. That process of okay you have an idea but what are you going to do to make it real is fascinating. I sometimes start my talks with a New Yorker cartoon that shows a cocktail party. An Upper East Side-ish cocktail party. Theres a group of people and someone says, Do you know it is Harry who invented the daiquiri? He just never did anything with it. We chuckle because we have an understanding and a recognition of Harrys in real lifepeople who have ideas but dont do anything with it. We don’t always follow up on all of our ideas. There are reasons why people might not follow up on ideas. Oftentimes, the pictures of the creative process in the popular media are either limiting or more unintentionally discouraging. I love the picture book What Do You Do with an Idea? By Kobi Yamada. Its one of those rare things thats actually true to the creative process. That book is showing, Okay, I don’t know what to do with it. I’m just going to ignore it. And then it stays there, then you start on it. Okay, now you’re starting to nurture it, and then it starts growing with you. It is truly a stunning book. It is wonderful to see those kinds of portrayals in the popular media, but those are rare. There are barriers that we have to get over, that are psychological in nature. The sense of risk and discomfort associated with creativity, wondering whether we have confidence. I have done a study where I wanted to see what goes on in people’s mindsthe psychological experiencewhen they were considering whether to share ideas. And I found three strands of thinking: One is outwardly oriented. It is asking, well, what are people going to say about it? Are they going to find it silly? Are they going to think it’s stepping on someones toes? Is somebody going to be angeredgatekeepers, stakeholders, supervisors; angering them is not the best idea. These are real considerations, and we shouldn’t take them lightly. Another kind of consideration is more inward-oriented. And that one is, well, this is making me self-conscious. This is making me anxious, that personal discovery. And then the third consideration is completely different, and it’s saying this creative work, this trying to do something new, something originalbut effective and making a differenceis important to who I am as a person. It’s almost not a choice. You are making a choice, but it’s like involuntary because it’s just an expression of who you are. How you answer these outward and inward considerations is going to determine whether you start or not. Sometimes I hear people say, Oh, you have to get comfortable with risk. You have to get comfortable with this discomfort. You have to be fearless. I’m like, “No, you do not.” If that was the case, I would never have done anything. I came across this quote from Georgia OKeefe and she said something like, I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my lifeand I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do. I am not fearless, and I am not comfortable. And so if that desire and that sense of identity and the importance of creative work is there, it is possible to embark on it and do it, even if you are not comfortable. We’re just accepting the discomfort, to start the process. That is truly empowering. Those messages, you have to find the fearless in youwhat if you cant? Does that mean you cannot be creative? It implies it. It is not the case. I don’t think that you are born a fully creative person. It is true that for some people, some things that are important for creativity may come easier than for others. That does not mean that those for whom it doesn’t come all super easy cannot learn. We have wonderful evidence that creativity skills can be learned. We are starting to accumulate evidence that attitudes and mindsets relevant to creativity can also be learned. So all of these different pieces of the puzzle that is creativity can be learned. There is a whole constellation of things we need to be creative to the maximum the potenial. For the book, I interviewed the founder of Pinterest, Ben Silbermann. I really loved that interview because he had this unusual level of awareness and insight about the nature of the creative process, and in particular, the importance of the social side of it. He provided this really vivid example: When you are thinking of starting a company and you happen to be in the Bay Area, at the parties you go to, people discuss starting companies; at the bars you go to, people discuss starting companies. We don’t talk enough about that. We focus on individuals with great ideas. Sure thats important, but they are not coming out of a vacuum. There are reasons there are hubs where particular kinds of things tend to happen. Creativity is social, even when it does not seem like it. There is a big list of misconceptions on creativity. When I speak to my son, I say to him, if there is one thing, only one thing that you are going to learn from me about creativity, it is that first ideas are usually almost as a rule, not the most creative. And that seems to be, I have learned, counterintuitive to people. Thats because of the misconceptions about creativity that we have, that it is something that comes to you when you feel creative. We attach the word feeling to creativity because of how we were conditioned to think about it. But it is not a feeling. And because of this idea that it just comes over us that it’s not the result of purposeful thinking and work, we have this impression that the first thing that comes to mind has to be the most creative. But we can easily demonstrate that its not the case. There is a disproportionate association of creativity and genius. And it has very negative consequences. If we say the word creativity, we immediately think of Einstein, Monet, and Steve Jobs, then we look at ourselves and say, “Well, I am not that, because most of us are not that. If you say you are not that, which chances are you are not, then it is logical to think that there’s something special about them. That they were born with it. And if they are born with it and you are not, then there’s nothing much you can do. So why even try? And often in educational settings, we are trying to encourage and empower young people by putting forth these examples. But the exact opposite can happen. Some say that creativity is the highest when we have full freedom of action: no constraints, everything goes, but creativity is not about full freedom. Your mind has to start somewhere. And the way the mind works, it starts with what is familiar. What is familiar is something youve done previously. If youve done it previously it cant be original, by definition. Intuitively, it seems that creativity is this free floating, spontaneous thing. But no, not even for artists, who are the most stereotypically creative. Let’s look at that in the artistic practice: I am only going to use these materials. I’m only going to use this method for a particular thing. Those are constraints. Recognizing that the creative block does not mean that I am not capable. I can more easily say, “Okay, here are some things I can do about it to make it as short as possible.” I was using all of the strategies in the book, personally in the process of writing it, and I remember, vividly, getting stuck on a chapter about getting stuck. I stared at it, and I stared at it, and just was not going anywhere. And I said, well, I have to look at it in a different way. And I knew that each of the pieces I had felt right, but they were just not flowing. I printed my chapter draft that was not working and I cut it up and physically pasted different sections and then sat on the ground and arranged them in different ways. You can take different bits and pieces of a problem and start arranging them either symbolically or physically or in different ways to see what’s going to start clicking to create a full picture.
Category:
E-Commerce
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