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Deep dives into design thinking, creative process, and the intersection of business and aesthetics.
n 2026, asking whether businesses should use AI feels a little like asking whether they should use the internet. The decision is already being made. Stanford's latest AI Index found that 88% of surveyed organizations now use AI in at least one business function, up from 78% the year before.
The more interesting question is what happens next.
AI can research in seconds, analyze thousands of data points, build workflows, draft copy, generate images, update systems, summarize meetings, qualify leads, and automate the administrative work businesses have spent decades paying people to do manually. We believe in that future. We build for it.
But there is one part of the conversation we think businesses are getting wrong: efficiency and creativity are not the same thing.
The machine is incredibly fast
There are parts of business that AI is simply better suited for.
A lead comes through a website at 11:47 p.m. AI doesn't need to wait until morning to organize the information. A salesperson needs research on 100 companies. Software can do the first pass while they sleep. A meeting ends with twelve action items. Nobody needs to spend thirty minutes manually putting each one where it belongs.
This is where AI becomes transformative. It removes friction.
Research involving more than 750 BCG consultants found that participants using generative AI on suitable creative tasks completed 12.2% more tasks, worked 25.1% faster, and produced results rated more than 40% higher in quality than participants working without it.
But the same experiment revealed something even more important: on a task outside AI's capabilities, people using AI performed 23% worse than those working without it.
AI is powerful. Knowing when to trust it is a human skill.
Efficiency gets you to the blank page faster
Imagine you're rebranding a hotel.
AI can analyze thousands of guest reviews. It can identify competitors, organize research, summarize customer sentiment, explore naming territories, generate moodboards, create hundreds of visual directions, and turn three hours of administrative work into twenty minutes.
Great.
Now comes the difficult part.
What should this hotel feel like?
What deserves to stay from its history? What should disappear? Which idea feels obvious versus expected? What will still feel interesting five years from now? What tiny detail could become the thing guests remember?
There isn't a prompt that removes the need for taste.
AI can give you a hundred directions.
Someone still has to know which one is right.
The sameness problem
There is an irony to having infinite creative possibilities available to everyone.
Everyone has access to them.
Researchers studying AI-assisted ideation found that people using ChatGPT produced more detailed ideas, but ideas across different users also became less distinct from one another.
That's worth paying attention to if you're building a brand.
If everyone asks similar models for a luxury hotel identity, financial firm website, skincare brand, campaign concept, or homepage headline, eventually the internet starts developing a certain sameness.
You've probably already seen it.
Perfect gradients. Perfectly pleasant copy. Perfectly acceptable logos. Everything technically good.
Nothing you remember tomorrow.
The advantage isn't going to come from having access to AI. Everyone will.
It will come from what your people can do with it.
Creativity was never just production
There is a passage in Exodus that we think about differently in the age of AI.
When Bezalel is chosen to create the Tabernacle, Exodus describes him as being filled with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and skill, including the ability to create artistic designs. The passage goes on to describe craftsmen, designers, engravers, embroiderers, and makers.
Creativity is presented as something deeply human: the ability to imagine, discern, make, and bring meaning into physical form.
Technology has always changed how humans create. The camera changed painting. Photoshop changed photography. Computers changed graphic design. The internet changed nearly everything.
None of them eliminated the need for an idea worth creating.
AI won't either.
So yes, we're going to use AI
A lot.
We'll use it to research faster. We'll build it into websites. We'll automate processes that shouldn't be manual anymore. We'll connect systems. We'll use it to explore possibilities, analyze information, remove repetitive work, and help businesses operate at a level that wasn't practical a few years ago.
But there will always be people pulling the strings behind our work.
People deciding what feels right. What feels wrong. What deserves to exist. What sounds like the business. What customers will care about. What should be automated and what absolutely should not be.
Because the future isn't human or artificial intelligence.
The interesting businesses will combine both.
Let AI handle the repetition. Let technology create leverage. Let automation make the company faster.
Then give the time back to the people capable of doing something meaningful with it.
AI can accelerate the work. Human creativity decides where we're going.
n 2026, asking whether businesses should use AI feels a little like asking whether they should use the internet. The decision is already being made. Stanford's latest AI Index found that 88% of surveyed organizations now use AI in at least one business function, up from 78% the year before.
The more interesting question is what happens next.
AI can research in seconds, analyze thousands of data points, build workflows, draft copy, generate images, update systems, summarize meetings, qualify leads, and automate the administrative work businesses have spent decades paying people to do manually. We believe in that future. We build for it.
But there is one part of the conversation we think businesses are getting wrong: efficiency and creativity are not the same thing.
The machine is incredibly fast
There are parts of business that AI is simply better suited for.
A lead comes through a website at 11:47 p.m. AI doesn't need to wait until morning to organize the information. A salesperson needs research on 100 companies. Software can do the first pass while they sleep. A meeting ends with twelve action items. Nobody needs to spend thirty minutes manually putting each one where it belongs.
This is where AI becomes transformative. It removes friction.
Research involving more than 750 BCG consultants found that participants using generative AI on suitable creative tasks completed 12.2% more tasks, worked 25.1% faster, and produced results rated more than 40% higher in quality than participants working without it.
But the same experiment revealed something even more important: on a task outside AI's capabilities, people using AI performed 23% worse than those working without it.
AI is powerful. Knowing when to trust it is a human skill.
Efficiency gets you to the blank page faster
Imagine you're rebranding a hotel.
AI can analyze thousands of guest reviews. It can identify competitors, organize research, summarize customer sentiment, explore naming territories, generate moodboards, create hundreds of visual directions, and turn three hours of administrative work into twenty minutes.
Great.
Now comes the difficult part.
What should this hotel feel like?
What deserves to stay from its history? What should disappear? Which idea feels obvious versus expected? What will still feel interesting five years from now? What tiny detail could become the thing guests remember?
There isn't a prompt that removes the need for taste.
AI can give you a hundred directions.
Someone still has to know which one is right.
The sameness problem
There is an irony to having infinite creative possibilities available to everyone.
Everyone has access to them.
Researchers studying AI-assisted ideation found that people using ChatGPT produced more detailed ideas, but ideas across different users also became less distinct from one another.
That's worth paying attention to if you're building a brand.
If everyone asks similar models for a luxury hotel identity, financial firm website, skincare brand, campaign concept, or homepage headline, eventually the internet starts developing a certain sameness.
You've probably already seen it.
Perfect gradients. Perfectly pleasant copy. Perfectly acceptable logos. Everything technically good.
Nothing you remember tomorrow.
The advantage isn't going to come from having access to AI. Everyone will.
It will come from what your people can do with it.
Creativity was never just production
There is a passage in Exodus that we think about differently in the age of AI.
When Bezalel is chosen to create the Tabernacle, Exodus describes him as being filled with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and skill, including the ability to create artistic designs. The passage goes on to describe craftsmen, designers, engravers, embroiderers, and makers.
Creativity is presented as something deeply human: the ability to imagine, discern, make, and bring meaning into physical form.
Technology has always changed how humans create. The camera changed painting. Photoshop changed photography. Computers changed graphic design. The internet changed nearly everything.
None of them eliminated the need for an idea worth creating.
AI won't either.
So yes, we're going to use AI
A lot.
We'll use it to research faster. We'll build it into websites. We'll automate processes that shouldn't be manual anymore. We'll connect systems. We'll use it to explore possibilities, analyze information, remove repetitive work, and help businesses operate at a level that wasn't practical a few years ago.
But there will always be people pulling the strings behind our work.
People deciding what feels right. What feels wrong. What deserves to exist. What sounds like the business. What customers will care about. What should be automated and what absolutely should not be.
Because the future isn't human or artificial intelligence.
The interesting businesses will combine both.
Let AI handle the repetition. Let technology create leverage. Let automation make the company faster.
Then give the time back to the people capable of doing something meaningful with it.
AI can accelerate the work. Human creativity decides where we're going.