Boston, Boldness & The Day After Tomorrow: 5 Reflections from a Week of Rewiring

They say Boston is the birthplace of revolutions. After spending a week there with aroom full of curious corporate minds, I can confirm: they weren’t just talking about 1773.

With a brilliant group of executives, we dove deep into a tailor-made learning expedition that danced across AI, sustainability, reinvention, and the wonderfully uncomfortable space between what we know and what’s coming. This wasn’t just a week of tours and talks. It was a rewiring.

Here are five reflections from the week that stuck with me — lessons that stretch far beyond Boston, and matter for anyone steering a company in the Never Normal.

1. The Never Normal isn’t coming. It’s already here.

Peter Hinssen kicked us off (and wrapped us up, and popped up in between — thank god)with a hard truth wrapped in his usual sharp humor: we are not heading toward a more uncertain world. We're in it. Up to our necks. Welcome to the Never Normal.

And it’s not just about technology. Sure, AI is rewriting everything (more on that in a second), but we’re also talking geopolitics, climate disruption, societal shifts. It’s layered chaos. The kind that doesn't get solved with a 5-year plan and a digital transformation project.

For leaders, the question is no longer "How do I plan ahead?" but"How do I build a company that can surf the volatility, not sink under it?" Peter’s ‘Day After Tomorrow’ thinking — the idea that real transformation happens beyond today and tomorrow — has never felt more urgent.

The question isn’t “what will happen?”, but “how fast can we adapt when it does?”

2. AI isn’t just tech. It’s a leadership test.

We spent a whole day immersed in AI — from Microsoft’s R&D labs to MIT CSAIL and the Media Lab, with brilliant minds showing us everything from contextual intelligence to ethical machine learning. But what hit hardest was what David De Cremer said:

‍“AI adoption is not a technical challenge. It’s a leadership challenge.”

Many companies treat AI like an IT upgrade. Plug it in, cross your fingers, and hope it doesn’t hallucinate your P&L. But without clear leadership, AI becomes a rogue force — shiny, expensive, and misaligned.

De Cremer offered nine leadership actions for AI adoption. I won’t list them all here(I’ll let him write the HBR piece), but the core message was clear: AI must be integrated into your business model — not bolted onto it. That means vision, governance, and above all, courage.

Also: if your tech team is leading your AI strategy, you might already be late.

3. Bias is the silent killer of AI credibility.

From a business lens, AI can be magical. But from a societal lens? It can be dangerous.

Dr. Marzyeh Ghassemi at MIT CSAIL gave us a masterclass on the ethics of algorithmic bias —and it was one of the most sobering sessions of the week. In AI, data is history, and history is biased. If we don’t fix that loop, we’ll automate discrimination at scale.

She wasn’t scaremongering. She was showing us the very real risks of biased systems in healthcare, finance, recruitment — the spaces where AI is already making decisions.

As leaders, it’s tempting to focus on speed and scalability. But the real challenge might be slower, more uncomfortable, and absolutely necessary: Are we building AI that’s not just smart, but fair?

Ethics isn’t the cherry on top of innovation. It’s the foundation.

4. The future is built in ecosystems, not boardrooms.

We visited Greentown Labs — North America’s largest climate tech incubator — and heard from startups turning CO₂ into fuel, reinventing battery tech, and designing smarter energy systems. It was a sharp contrast to the polished PowerPoint decks many of us are used to.

The lesson? Big breakthroughs rarely come from within big organizations. They come from the edges — from startups, academia, messy experiments. And increasingly, success depends on how well we partner across those boundaries.

We also saw the power of public-private collaborations — where legacy institutions and fresh entrepreneurial energy collide to create real momentum. These aren’t just side projects; they’re lifelines into what’s next.

Innovation isn’t a solo act. It’s jazz. And if your company still thinks it can do it all in-house, you're probably playing the wrong tune.

5. Reinvention is more than a buzzword. It’s survival.

Boston is a city in permanent beta. We saw that — not just in its tech scene, but in its spirit.From the MIT Media Lab’s radical experimentation to PTC’s real-time industrial digitalization, reinvention is baked into the ecosystem.

But what struck me most was how much of that mindset is missing in corporate Europe.

Too many companies are still clinging to the “Sh*t of Yesterday” (as Peter calls it), optimizing the known instead of exploring the new. But as history — and Boston— shows us, the most dangerous place to be is in love with your legacy.

We need to stop asking, “What do we risk if we try something new?” and start asking, “What do we risk if we don’t?”

So... What now?

As we flew back over the Atlantic (with tired minds and overstimulated WhatsApp groups), I kept thinking: this wasn’t just a trip to learn about Boston. It was a mirror.A way to see our own companies — and our own leadership — more clearly.

And that clarity came with questions:

• Are we building for today, or the Day After Tomorrow?
• Are we leading our AI strategies, or letting them lead us?
• Are we collaborating with the world outside our walls, or clinging to control?

There’s no one playbook. But there is a mindset: curiosity, openness, and the humility to unlearn.

And if this week proved anything, it’s that reinvention isn’t just possible. It’s already happening — in Boston, and far beyond.

Now it’s up to us to bring it home. Ending with Peter Hinssen's quote from Churchill:

if you don't take change by the hand, it will take you by the throat. 

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