Selling to Machines with Don Scheibenreif

Three years after his first Invisible Machines visit, Don Scheibenreif returns with a sharper read on the trough: everybody knows generative AI, almost nobody has answered what it does to the business model. He led Gartner’s Autonomous Business research, the successor to digital business, and co-authored When Machines Become Customers. The through-line is that AI is a tool, the harder question is how to create value with it.Josh and Robb press him on token maxing as a vanity flex. Don calls it a lazy metric, pointing to more interesting questions: where are you more productive, which processes were reinvented, what happened to talent, and what are you doing with the investment? 80% of CEOs see it as the #1 transformative tech and want disruption, but most are settling for efficiency theater and middle-manager cuts while boards ask for more tech-savvy leadership. In Don’s framing this comes with rolling up your sleeves, not mandating from above.Also in this episode: The hyper hype cycle (peak → trough → peak loops as the tech moves faster than before);Organizational bullwhip vs organic individual use; Fear as brakes on the system; Crisis engineering and the plans that are lying around; The risk that AI in the hands of people eliminates companies before AI in companies eliminates jobs; Machine customers and retailers already blocking agent access while Amazon’s Buy for Me goes outside the walls; Agents that work for you vs agents that work for the vendor; Human brand vs machine brand; Service design and customer effort score; Frontline managers as the linchpin; and The next research wave Don names at the close: implementation platforms, ethics, and safeguards.When Machines Become Customers (book): https://www.gartner.com/en/publications/when-machines-become-customersCustomers Don’t Reject AI...They Reject Being Dehumanized: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6ZqXVXRWIw--------- Support our show by supporting our sponsorsThis episode is supported by OneReach.aiForged over a decade of RD and proven in 10,000+ deployments, OneReach.ai's GSX is the first complete AI agent runtime environment (circa 2019 — a hardened AI agent architecture for enterprise control and scale.Backed by UC Berkeley, recognized by Gartner, and trusted across highly regulated industries, including healthcare, finance, government and telecommunications.A complete system for accelerating AI adoption — design, train, test, deploy, monitor, and orchestrate AI agents.Use any AI modelsBuild and deploy intelligent agents fastCreate guardrails for organizational alignmentEnterprise-grade security and governanceGet in touch: https://onereach.ai/contact/?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=s7e16&utm_content=1 --------- The revised and significantly updated second edition of our bestselling book about succeeding with AI agents, Age of Invisible Machines, is available everywhere: Amazon — https://bit.ly/4hwX0a5#GenerativeAI#AIAdoption#MachineCustomers##AIInEcommerce#AIAgents#DigitalTransformation#FutureOfWork#BusinessStrategy#InvisibleMachines