On this week’s episode of Inside Outside Innovation, Robyn and I talk about counterintuitive trends for 2026, tactics for building great products, and how one company is controlling 64% of the future. Let’s get started.
Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what’s next. Each week we’ll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Miles Zero’s, Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with Impact, let’s get started.
Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton
Welcome to 2026 and What’s New
[00:00:40] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I’m your host, Brian Ardinger. With me, I have Robyn Bolton. How are you, Robyn?
[00:00:49] Robyn Bolton: I am good. How are you, Brian?
[00:00:51] Brian Ardinger: I’m doing great. It’s the beginning of 2026 in the midst of trying to ramp up new talent, and that’s always fun. So that’s what’s new on my side. What’s new in your world?
[00:01:02] Robyn Bolton: The course that I teach at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design is starting in a couple weeks, so I’ve been busy putting together my syllabus to teach strategy and business models and had to go in and change things up, though I’m very excited. We will be doing a case on Taylor Swift this semester.
Counterintuitive Trends Shaping Innovation in 2026
[00:01:21] Brian Ardinger: The world is changing fast. We’ll get into it now with our articles. There are a number of things we’ve pulled together for this episode.
The first one we want to talk about is called Six Counterintuitive Trends to Think About for 2026, and this is from Barry O’Reilly. Barry wrote a book called Unlearn, and he talks a lot about all things lean startup and, and everything, his particular take as he was looking forward into the 2026 and some of the things that he’s seeing and how we should be pursuing this whole innovation space.
The article talks about the fact that a lot of managers and that are asking the wrong questions, especially when it comes to AI, and we’re talking too much about the technology and how fast is AI improving. When the better question that we should be asking ourselves is, how is AI quietly changing how people work, think, decide, and trust themselves at work?
And I thought that was an interesting way to rephrase how we go into 2026 and move away from the technology itself and really think about like, how is this technology impacting people?
[00:02:25] Robyn Bolton: Completely agree. I’ve definitely seen that shift from what is our AI strategy to what is our strategy to accomplish our goals through people, through AI, et cetera, kind of the AI enabled strategy. So, it’s nice. It’s refreshing to see that shift reflected. Again. I loved his very first counterintuitive trend.
I was like, oh, please let this be a trend that leadership will be redefined around judgment, not control. And I would argue that leadership was always about judgment. Management was about control, and that was one of the big differences between leaders and managers. But overall, like I really do hope that he’s right, that executives, managers, you know, those senior levels of any organization, that they are shifting to more judgment, like not judgment as in condemnation judgment, but like critical thinking, problem solving versus trying to manage every aspect of their direct reports.
Leadership, Reflection, and Learning Faster
[00:03:30] Brian Ardinger: Yes. And talks about creating space for reflection and that, not just, again, I think we have a tendency, especially with all the pressure that we’re feeling around AI in that to do the next pilot, use the next tool, keep up to speed on what’s going on, and keeping in mind that that reflection period is actually where the learning happens a lot of times, and not being afraid to slow down.
Having said that, you know, the other thing that he talks about is the speed in which we have to go and deploy things in 2026 and beyond, making sure that we are learning fast. Strategy will ship from planning fast to learning fast. That is the key. It’s not about planning per se, it’s about, you know, how fast can we learn in this new world of uncertainty.
[00:04:14] Robyn Bolton: And the learning being so key for a whole host of reasons, but especially his third point that AI is quietly eroding human confidence. And so it’s kind of this interesting juxtaposition of trends in his list of, hey, we have to start focus on learning faster. Leadership is going to be defined by judgment. And by the way, this tool that we’ve spent certainly all of last year talking about is actually eating away at all of those things.
And I think it just highlights the importance of that reflection step and kind of saying, all right, yeah, I got an answer from AI, but does this make sense? Is this actually what I think or am I just parroting what Claude, Chat GPT, et cetera has said?
Why In-Person Experiences Are Making a Comeback
[00:04:57] Brian Ardinger: And then the final trend that obviously stood out to me was his counterintuitive trend that in-person experiences will surge, not decline. And the fact that, you know, he sees a growth in live events and executive offsites and high touch human-centered gatherings. Obviously, that’s what we’re pushing for with the IO Summit and other things around our neighborhood that we’re trying to get people actually talking and interacting in real life as opposed to online. And hopefully that trend will continue as well.
[00:05:26] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, I’ve never heard somebody say in the last couple of years that they regret going to an in-person event. I always hear people say how grateful they are and how much better it was than anything virtual.
Building Better Products by Challenging Corporate Norms
[00:05:38] Brian Ardinger: Alright. The second article for this week we’re going to talk about is called 25 Things I Believe In To Build Great Products by Peter Yang. He’s worked at big companies like Roblox and Reddit and Amazon and Meta, and he has an article talking about the funny thing is that what he believes in is often the opposite of how big companies like to work. And he talks about the way he looks at product development and some of the great things that he’s seeing that is sometimes counterintuitive to the way that traditional businesses run.
[00:06:08] Robyn Bolton: I love so many things on this list, but I’ll say that number 17 caused me to like slam my hands down on my desk. Shout yes and probably startle people in the house and walking by on the street. And number 17 on his list is ban decision by committee. I don’t believe in cross-functional alignment as a goal. Trying to make all stakeholders happy will inevitably compromise the product experience. Seek diverse opinions first, then have a single person make the call and own the outcome.
And you know, at first, I was like, no, you need cross-functional alignment. That’s how you get cross-functional progress. But going on from them like. Yes, absolutely. You need one decision maker. Get all the input, get everyone’s perspective. That’s absolutely required to make a decision. But one decision maker, not a group, because you will always end up with kind of a worse product. That’s how we got the platypus. Right. That’s a common joke.
Speed as the Only Competitive Moat
[00:07:11] Brian Ardinger: There were a number of other areas in the article that he kind of has broad categories that talks through the, these particular aspects and the first one is speed is the only moat. And I think we oftentimes, again, going back to that, what we were talking about with Barry’s article, but when do you speed up and when do you slow down? And he talks about from a product perspective.
Only thing, really, everybody has the same technologies, everybody has the same tools, everybody has the same access to markets that everybody else has. So what is your moat? What is your differentiation? And his thesis is that speed is one of those core things that can create some value in the marketplace by being out front, shipping faster, iterating fast, and learning fast. And so how do you build rapid feedback loops into your product development process?
How do you ship to small groups of folks to get real feedback and then move the idea forward? Versus in traditional build time, a lot of times you know, spend six months building a particular feature. Then you launch it and realize that was not the feature that you needed to launch. You know, how can you get closer to the customer and iterate first and fast with them?
[00:08:14] Robyn Bolton: And important to note that part of the section that speed is the only moat is a call for him to become the user. You know, he estimates that less than 10% of PMs actually dog food their product on a weekly basis. And so, this isn’t speed for speed’s sake. This is speed is a moat and incorporating into that worked at speed is becoming the user is taking into account user feedback of different types. You know, he kind of lays out concentric circles. So, it’s not a call to move fast at any cost. It’s a call to move fast still with user input and user perspective.
[00:08:53] Brian Ardinger: Yes, absolutely. And I think that goes back to knowing when to reflect and understand when you had to take time, which may technically slow you down at the beginning, but it actually speeds up the overall process.
The Hidden AI Monopoly No One Talks About
All right. The third article is, and this is one just to get our brains thinking. I tend to throw these into our newsletter every once in a while. It was a article I came upon in Next Financial, and it says, the AI monopoly, nobody sees. One company controls 64% of the future. And it goes on to talk about a company that maybe folks have heard of, obviously in technology you probably have, but Taiwan Semiconductor manufacturing company.
But what was interesting to me is he lays out the dynamics and the importance of this particular one company in the world of AI and the world of technology. So you look at. Nvidia is worth $3 trillion, Apple’s worth $3.7 trillion.
And together, you know, the entire economy of France is smaller than those two companies. But what Wall Street isn’t really telling you, or what we’re not really talking about is this Taiwanese company, you know, Apple and Nvidia. Never really exists without having access to some of these chips that Taiwan is producing, such that 64% of the chips that go into some of these things are controlled by one source.
So, what does that do when you know your entire economy, not only in the United States, but everywhere else in the world, and when we start building on technology stacks, how is that going to play out? So, I thought it was just an interesting both thought exercise as well as just understanding the dynamics of the market itself.
[00:10:20] Robyn Bolton: This article rocked my world. I read it, you know, in the beginning I’m like, okay, yeah, you know, 64% of global semiconductor foundry market. That’s a lot. But you know, there’s still other big percentages. You know, there’s still 36% left.
And then I got down to the results from when he dug into the customer list of the Nvidia, the Apples, you know, the Amazons, the Qualcomms, and got to a level deeper.
And then I started reading down that list that NVIDIA’s entire AI chip lineup is sourced from TSMC. Apple, every chip in every device is dependent on TSMC. AWS custom chips, all from TSMC kind of had this moment, this holy forking shirt. If you’re fans of the Good Place moment of like, oh my gosh, our entire society is based on TSMC chip.
And you know, just kind of realizing that the impact that like it kind of goes beyond a sense of monopoly when you think about how many of us for our day-to-day lives are dependent on these chips produced by one company that yes, they’re building fab sites in Arizona now so that we’re not fully dependent on Taiwan, but there’s still a lot of reasons why they have to be based in Taiwan.
And so playing out the geopolitical implications, it was kind of a, a stock the world moment. I was like, wow, the world is way more intertwined than I thought.
Geopolitical Risk and Technological Fragility
[00:11:58] Brian Ardinger: You can go back and play this thought experiment through other types of things. You know, technology in general. Yes. We’re obviously dependent on this in a variety of different ways, but what about electricity? What about running water? We’ve become accustomed to whatever that new technology is such that it becomes a prime foundational focus. So is this just one of those foundational things that we need to be aware of and work through?
[00:12:19] Robyn Bolton: Or is it something that, you know, if things go sideways, we’re still so new into kind of our use of AI and integrating it into things that if we had to go away from these semiconductors that we could. And I think we’re, we may still be at a point where we can return to life without AI, but I don’t know how much longer that will be true. It just kind of led to, as you were saying, like all sorts of different imaginings of what does this mean. What could happen when has something like this happened in the past and becomes a really interesting, hopefully intellectual and not practical exercise.
[00:12:58] Brian Ardinger: You know, and I guess the final thought around that is just because one particular company can do all this and that is providing all this doesn’t necessarily mean, you know, another company couldn’t come in and either disrupt that or take its place in some form or fashion. It may not be at that price point and efficiency, but there are obviously ways that markets deal with this type of uncertainty or consolidation of power, et cetera.
[00:13:19] Robyn Bolton: Interesting times.
Tactic to Try. Designing Serendipity Through Space
[00:13:21] Brian Ardinger: Excellent. Well, the last section we try to throw a tactic to try each week. I’ve been thinking a lot about moving into 2026 and how do we create these serendipitous moments, ways to create opportunities for collisions.
Obviously, we have the IO 2026 Summit coming up in April, but another thing that stood out to me is how do we change the space where we work. And how do we make time and use place as a core way of creating innovation? So, at Nelnet we opened up an internal coffee shop called The Green Squirrel that just opened on our first floor. That’s for our internal Nelnet partners and employees.
And, what I’ve done this week is just spent a lot of time working out of that coffee shop to see how it would change the collisions I had and change the way I work. And what I found is it opened up a number of different conversations that I was not having when I was at my traditional desk, even though I have multiple places, I worked within the Nelnet ecosystem.
Just changing it for a week and sitting down and having coffee and watching folks come in and out and having those serendipitous conversations changed the way I thought about things. It gave me some different perspectives into different groups that I wasn’t always spending particular time with.
And I think that’s just an interesting insight into how much does your own office location affect the amount of innovation or opportunities that you are exposed with, and what can you do in a simple way to maybe change the way you think about that.
Matching Place to Purpose in Creative and Business Work
[00:14:45] Robyn Bolton: I love that. I’m a big believer in how space and place influences how we think. And so, you know, going back to where I started, you know, prepping for the new semester at Mass Art with the graduate students that I teach, you know, there’s a graduate student studio, there’s a really creative workshop and rightfully so most of the students would prefer to have classes there. I would prefer to teach classes there. It’s just a much more creative space.
When I teach strategy and business models, I always get assigned, it’s a great corporate boardroom on the top floor of the power. It’s like the 12th floor. You have open view to the skyline of Boston. It’s awesome, but it is a corporate boardroom.
As much as I would love to be in the creative space and I know my students would, I force them to take class in this corporate boardroom because I’m like, we’re talking about business topics. And part of this curriculum is learning how to engage in business and with business people. So you’re going to be in rooms that look like this. And you need to learn how to advocate for yourself and your ideas in rooms that look like this and not the super fun creative space.
I just echo what you said, Brian, of think about how place and space is influencing you and you know, hey, if you have to do something more creative, can you go and do it in a more creative, fun, chaotic, different space? And so keep that in your mind and maybe fit the task to the place.
Closing Thoughts and Where to Connect
[00:16:17] Brian Ardinger: Absolutely. Well, that concludes another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. We’ll see you next week. Have a great one.
[00:16:23] Robyn Bolton: Bye.
[00:16:26] Brian Ardinger: That’s it for another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. Today’s episode was produced and engineered by Susan Stibal. If you want to learn more about our teams, our content, our services, check out insideoutside.io or if you want to connect with Robyn Bolton, go to MileZero.io, and until next time, go out and innovate.
Articles Discussed
- Six Counterintuitive Trends for 2026 – Barry Reilly
- 25 Things I believe in to Build Great Products – Creator Economy / Peter Yang
- The AI Monoploy Nobody Sees: One Company Controls 64% of the Future – Next Financial
