As you know, last week I was in sunny Santa Monica, escaping the snow in NYC, and got to have potentially the best pumpkin spice latte in the world at Superba in Venice Beach with Lukas N.P. Egger, VP @ SAP Signavio and Host of the Process Transformers Podcast. We’ve been guests on each other’s podcasts and I just love his perspective on all thing’s innovation. Watch his episode, #225, on my show.
We talked about the only thing that anyone in innovation is talking about: AI. The hype. The bubble. The opportunity and idiocy of the moment of breakneck technological change.
I loved how Lukas described the current state of AI inside many organizations: a whole lot of throwing spaghetti at the wall with no strategic arc. The leaders getting it right are not chasing shiny objects. They are starting internally, experimenting, iterating, and creating safe spaces to learn before they ever roll out AI to customers. They’re systematically lowering the cost of failure, which is what successful innovators do every day.
One truth keeps revealing itself: storytelling is the unexpected hero of AI adoption. Technology does not move people. Stories do.
At the center of every successful innovation effort is the ability to communicate complexity with empathy, clarity, and a little humanity. As Lukas and I dug into the realities of AI implementation, it quickly became clear that organizations are not struggling with the technology itself. They are struggling with the humans who have to absorb it. Fear of job loss, uncertainty about new tools, and the absence of a compelling narrative around why this matters are the real obstacles.
The good news is that storytelling is our greatest tool for making the unknown feel familiar. The right story helps people see themselves in the future. It addresses concerns before they calcify into resistance. It turns jargon into meaning and meaning into action.
And then Lukas shared a quote from 3x NYT Bestselling author Dan Ariely, that may be my favorite AI hype analogy of the year:
“AI is like teenage sex. Everybody talks about it. Everybody thinks everybody else is doing it. Nobody knows what’s really going on. And if you were actually engaged in it, you’d do it really badly.”
This incisive observation cuts right to the heart of our technological moment. We are in the hype, but not yet in the mastery, and in that gap, stories matter more than ever.
The real takeaway is this: AI adoption is not actually about the tech. It is about our ability to tell the story of possibility. To acknowledge the fear, highlight the value, and inspire people to move forward with confidence.
For leaders and innovators, the message is unmistakable: your best AI strategy starts with storytelling. Storytelling is the bridge, the connective tissue, between technological potential and human willingness to embrace what is next.