The journey (Il viaggio)

Stories often prepare society for transformations long before technology makes them real. In the lantern scene of Tangled, accompanied by the song I See the Light, the moment of illumination is not just emotional—it is structural. Rapunzel moves from observing distant lights from a tower to inhabiting a world reorganized…

For centuries, human institutions have been structured around a fundamental constraint: intelligence was scarce. Expertise resided in individuals, knowledge accumulated slowly, and organizations had to create mechanisms to manage this scarcity. Hierarchies emerged because information moved slowly through organizations. Departments were created because expertise was fragmented. Procedures and bureaucratic processes…

The comfort of compliance There is also a psychological dimension. If you do not decide, you cannot truly be wrong. The procedure decided. The manager decided. The system decided. Compliance therefore carries a subtle form of safety. It protects individuals from the risk that comes with judgment and responsibility.

In SME-dominant economies, the structure of firms interacts with the structure of political representation. When the productive fabric is highly fragmented – composed largely of small and family-controlled firms – political systems often reflect that fragmentation. Electoral incentives encourage responsiveness to organized micro-interests rather than to long-term structural transformation.

Over the past decade, digital transformation in public institutions has largely been measured by visible outputs: new portals, chatbots, dashboards, mobile apps. Today, with artificial intelligence entering mainstream governance, the distinction is becoming sharper — and more consequential. We are witnessing a divide between cosmetic technology adoption and structural transformation.…

Last week’s announcements in artificial intelligence were not incremental improvements. They were structural signals. From national policy reinforcement in Asia to frontier scientific acceleration in the United States, the pattern is becoming clear: AI is no longer experimental infrastructure. It is becoming institutional infrastructure. For those of us working deeply…

A contract meant security. A role meant identity. A promotion meant progress. For many years, this model worked. It gave discipline, exposure, and a professional grammar that still matters today. But looking at the world now (through the lens of Artificial Intelligence) I would not give the same advice to…

In the 1990s, we attempted this with expert systems, decision-support tools, and knowledge bases. They promised consistency, speed, and rationality — a way to turn human expertise into software. What they lacked was language, adaptability, and scale. Today, with large language models and agentic architectures, we are revisiting the same…

 At first glance, the recent convergence between Apple and generative AI looks like a love story. In reality, it is a contract. The metaphor that best explains what is happening is not technological, but human. Much like Story of a Marriage, this is a story about alignment that works—until it…

For more than three decades, digital transformation has been about making organizations faster, cheaper, and more efficient. We digitized documents, automated workflows, connected systems, and optimized processes. Decision-making, however, largely remained human: technology supported it, accelerated it, and scaled it—but did not participate in it.