Insights & research
Original research, executive analysis, and frameworks for turning AI ambition into measurable business impact — and the bylines and features where that thinking shows up.
Most companies have committed to AI. The gap between investment and return isn't technical — it's organizational. Here's what the data actually shows, and what to do about it.
Published Articles
IBM Think, featuring Mindspan's Jeremy Korst. Companies are pouring billions into AI and still can't tell their boards what it's buying. The cause is leadership and org design, not technology.
Read →The Wharton School (Wharton@Work), featuring Mindspan's Jeremy Korst. Companies have wired AI into the daily routine and early pilots are paying off, yet value at scale stays rare. The piece's diagnosis, and ours: the gap is less about the tools than the distance between the people deploying AI and the people running the work.
Read →Co-authored by Jeremy Korst (HBR, April 2026). AI stalls in the middle: the managers who have to make it work see a different reality than the executives who fund it.
Read →Co-authored by Jeremy Korst (HBR, April 2026). AI interviewers collapse the old depth-versus-scale tradeoff in customer research.
Read →Co-authored by Jeremy Korst (HBR, November 2025). Synthetic personas and digital twins: what AI-generated stand-ins for real customers can and cannot tell you.
Read →Year three of the Wharton/GBK enterprise study, co-authored by Jeremy Korst — leaders move from experimentation to measurable ROI, and the data shows where value is actually landing.
Read the Report→Co-authored by Jeremy Korst (HBR, May 2025). Gen AI is already reshaping content. The authors argue the revolution is still ahead of it, in market research.
Read →Year two of the Wharton/GBK enterprise study — weekly Gen AI usage nearly doubled (37% to 72%) as adoption spread into Marketing, HR, and Operations.
Read the Report→Co-authored by Jeremy Korst (HBR, November 2023). A survey of 600 business leaders found marketing lagging its peer functions on gen AI.
Read →Research Briefs
BCG's 2026 AI at Work study, titled 'Strategy Matters More Than Tools,' put numbers on something we've argued for years: clarity and people, not tool access, drive the value companies get from AI. A founder's read.
Read →BCG surveyed 11,749 leaders and employees across 14 markets. The headline: most organizations are still stuck between commitment and capability. Here's what matters.
Read →Podcasts
Jeremy on the North Star Leaders podcast — why brand becomes the ultimate decision-making filter, and what happens when AI-generated content floods the market. 38 min.
Listen→Changing business models, the gap between AI ambition and execution, and what synthetic personas mean for research.
Listen→In the Press
Business Insider, featuring Mindspan's Jeremy Korst. As AI handles more of the work, leaders are starting to worry it's quietly eroding the skills their people will still need.
Read →The Wall Street Journal, featuring Mindspan's Jeremy Korst. As companies move from encouraging AI to mandating it, the real question isn't compliance — it's whether you can mandate adoption while people fear it costs them their job.
Read →The Wall Street Journal, featuring Mindspan's Jeremy Korst. Corporate AI is hitting an inflection point — pilots turning into measurable returns — even as the frontier pushes into the physical world.
Read →The Wall Street Journal, on the Wharton/GBK study Mindspan's Jeremy Korst co-authored. The short version: a lot more than last year — and the leaders are the ones turning use into returns.
Read →On the record
“Do we really think employees are going to broadly adopt AI if they believe it's going to cost them their job?”
“Our third annual study shows a clear inflection point. GenAI is delivering measurable returns.”
“There's tension among leaders around whether AI is becoming a crutch.”
“It's one of the fundamental questions about generative AI: Can companies put it to good use?”