Speaker Details and Media Kit

Timeless Lessons for Navigating the AI Revolution

The AI hype promising magical business solutions is fading, leaving leaders with expensive tech that fails to scale, kills trust, and creates ethical nightmares. The solution isn’t more tech. It’s timeless wisdom. The rules for navigating today’s disruptions were actually written 250 years ago and proven during the first three Industrial Revolutions. Through masterclass storytelling, Dr. Mike brings these timeless lessons to life. Equipping your audience with the ultimate AI North Star and Compass to confidently lead their organizations into the future.

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Hype Immunity

Speaking Topics

Start with these topics or jump down to the Prepackaged 90-minute Programs (60-min presentation and 30-minute Q&A). All of Dr. Mike's presentations are custom-made for the audience and the conference objectives. Please allow for 15-20 minutes per topic when selecting initial topics within your time constraint.

Danger!

Competency Blindness

Don’t believe that the attributes that made you, your leaders, and your organization successful up to now, including your physical assets, financial metrics, leadership structure, and deeply ingrained culture, will make you successful in the future. History tells us that those things may turn out to be the heavy anchors that drown you.

AI Hype Immunity

Don’t acquiesce to the fear of missing out, hollow promises, or the allure of quick returns from new technology. Instead, always base your business decisions on discipline, evaluation, and proven solutions that maximize your Return on Mission for the organization.

Defense in Depth

Don’t allow the speed of new technology to propagate hidden flaws and untruths into harmful business decisions throughout your organization. Instead, incorporate automated monitoring, guardrails, and checks and balances into your AI solutions that hand over immediate processing and control to humans before that harm metastasizes, and provide a mechanical kill switch controlled by humans when all else fails.

Complexity Trap

Don’t attempt to chase efficiency and cost savings through monolithic, tightly coupled, gold-plated business systems. Instead, build simple, highly independent, modular solutions that can work together to meet those business needs and be shared across the organization.

Waypoints on the Path

Revolutionary Strategy

Define your organization’s “North Star,” which provides an unwavering vision for why the organization exists beyond the transient technology it deploys, and the “Compass” that measures the metrics and guides decisions to keep you on the path to achieving that vision.

Pragmatic Financial Engine

Reimagine the pragmatic financial framework and project management infrastructure needed to support the speed and risk of developing AI-driven business solutions that maximize your organization’s Return on Mission.

Data Flywheel

Reimagine the changes and quality controls needed to identify and acquire valuable data, break down data silos, and establish your organization’s enterprise-level data flywheel to effectively support AI-enabled business solutions.

Resilient Architecture

Reimagine the technology, systems, processes, and procedures required to design and share modular, inspectable, and rigorously validated AI solutions at scale within your organization.

Augmentation Culture

Reimagine what it will take to establish a culture of human-centered augmentation for the adoption of AI-enabled business solutions, focused on your organization’s Return on Mission, that builds and sustains trust and rewards your employees’ innovation and creativity.

Collaborative Ecosystem

Reimagine the processes, procedures, and systems required to establish a collaborative, self-governing ecosystem that enables the efficient development and maintenance of AI solutions at scale in your organization.

Transparency and Trust

Reimagine the processes, procedures, and systems required to establish and maintain continuous transparency and trust in the veracity of your AI solutions and establish the necessary incident response mechanisms for when the inevitable missteps occur.

Lead the Journey

AI History and Limitations

Are you leading the AI revolution, or just reacting to it? Leaders can’t guide business transformation based on a technology with a history and limitations they don’t truly understand. They need to cut through the deafening tech hype to master the core mechanics of probabilistic AI, explore its turbulent fifty-year history of breakthroughs and winters, and discover how to safely navigate its current limitations.

Getting from THeRE to HERe

AI sounds flawless in theory, so why does it stumble in reality? While theoretical AI models promise perfection, effectively scaling them in the physical world has been and remains a massive hurdle. Leaders need to look past the algorithmic hype and confront the deep risks, vulnerabilities, and human responsibilities required to safely bridge the gap between computational power and true operational success.

Use It or Lose It

Could your organization’s newest technology be secretly eroding your employees’ capacity to think? Leaders need to understand the implications of established and emerging research warning that over-relying on AI erodes critical thinking, reasoning, and ethical judgment. To fight this degradation, leaders must learn to navigate the hidden risks of excessive AI adoption and implement actionable strategies that safeguard human expertise, foster cognitive growth, and protect sound decision-making across the organization.

Meet Your New Employee

What if your most powerful AI tool is actually just an unpredictable high school intern that memorized the internet? Leaders need to embrace this eye-opening metaphor that cuts through industry hype, helping them see AI as an ambitious, unpredictable digital workforce, and discover the essential training, strict monitoring, and guardrails required to mitigate risks and guide these powerful new digital “employees” toward reliable execution.

Brakes Make You Fast

Think reckless speed is the only way to win the AI race? Think again. Leaders must understand that the “move fast and break things” mantra enriches tech creators while leaving them with untrustworthy, inaccurate systems that paralyze real progress and halt scalability. True speed comes through responsible acceleration where trusted systems and guardrails unlock unstoppable, scalable, and sustainable execution.

AI Ain't Free

Think AI adoption is just a line item in your tech budget? Leaders must recognize that implementing scalable AI solutions that deliver a genuine Return on Mission requires looking beyond upfront technology costs. True transformation requires a robust, responsible, human-centered ecosystem to scale intelligence successfully. Real acceleration demands building a sustainable operational, ethical, and cultural foundation that far outlasts the initial price tag.

Prepackaged

90-Minute Programs

Topic groupings designed for a 60-min presentation followed by a 30-min Q&A. ***Expand the +Audience Focus on each Program for more details.

Reimagine the Mission

Focus on Boards and C-Suite Execs

Are your organization’s core strengths secretly holding it back? Cut through “competency blindness” and AI hype to realign leadership, expose cultural traps, and avoid the allure of quick tech returns. In this session, you will learn the timeless lessons required to define an unwavering “North Star” vision and build a pragmatic financial framework for technological evolution. Walk away with proven, disciplined strategies to maximize your Return on Mission and confidently manage AI-driven risks.

Building Scalable Ecosystems

Focus on Tech Leaders and Sr Execs

In an era of rapid technological acceleration, how do you innovate without falling into the trap of over-engineered systems and costly, automated mistakes? This session delivers timeless lessons for breaking free from monolithic architectures to build simple, modular, and highly independent AI solutions. Attendees will discover the foundational principles needed to confidently deploy validated AI ecosystems and balance rapid technological speed with essential human oversight.

Humans First

Focus on HR and other Managers

True transformation requires a robust, human-centered ecosystem to scale organizational intelligence. This session guides leaders to reimagine the processes and systems needed for a collaborative, self-governing AI support ecosystem. Attendees will discover timeless lessons for establishing a sustainable culture of human-centered augmentation that delivers genuine Return on Mission while actively building and maintaining trust and rewarding employee innovation and creativity.

AI Basics for Every Leader

Everyone

Are you leading in the AI revolution, or just reacting to it? This masterclass cuts through the deafening tech hype to explore AI’s history, real-world limitations, and the operational risks of scaling models in a physical world. Leaders will learn the timeless lessons necessary to navigate the vulnerabilities of probabilistic AI while implementing actionable strategies that safeguard human expertise, protect sound decision-making, and foster a culture of human-centered augmentation.

Responsible Acceleration

All Leaders

Think reckless speed is the only way to win the AI race? This session cuts through the algorithmic hype to bridge the gap between theoretical AI models and real-world scaling. Participants will learn why adopting a “move fast and break things” mantra paralyzes progress, and instead discover timeless lessons for building trusted, responsible operational systems. Attendees leave equipped with actionable guardrails to unlock unstoppable, sustainable execution and a genuine Return on Mission.

A truly deep subject-matter expert, Dr. Mike Horton is also that rare thing: an exceptional speaker and interviewee. He brings knowledge, experience, imagination and warmth to a space that can sometimes feel desperately short of all four. Whether on stage or in conversation, Mike has a gift for making complex ideas accessible, engaging and genuinely thought-provoking.