Future Ready: AI and the Trends Shaping 2026 and Beyond with Futurist, Jonathan Brill

Forbes calls Jonathan Brill the “#1 Futurist in the World” and Harvard Business Review dubbed him “the world’s leading transformation architect.”

But those are just the flashy headlines.

Jonathan was also a global futurist at HP, where he directed the company’s technology vision and long-term planning, and his companies have invented foundational AI and over 325 products we use every day.

So when it came time to discuss AI and the trends shaping business in 2026 on Face Value, we knew exactly who to invite. Here’s an overview of the key insights Jonathan delivered.

From Symbolic Logic to the Whole Brain of AI

Imagine every employee wielding the decision-making firepower of a McKinsey or KPMG senior partner, no matter their role in a company. In Brill’s view, that’s what’s coming.

“Our evidence suggests that in terms of price performance, the cost of doing more advanced work will drop in excess of 32 times in the next year," Brill says. Along with that power will come a massive shift in how employees operate.

Tracing AI's evolution from the "left brain" of symbolic reasoning to the "right brain" of neural networks and probabilistic computing, Brill claims the future belongs to neither side alone. The next leap is a "whole brain" approach, combining both brains into a new generation of agentic AI.

Every person in an organization will understand through real-time simulations how their choices may affect the entire business. Soon, everyone will have the capability to generate scenarios, choose the best one, and make a decision – all before anyone has had a chance to “officially” sign off those decisions.

The Structural Problem Enterprises Face Today

Most organizations are still built on what Brill calls the "centralized mind" model — a top-down hierarchy modeled on the human nervous system, where the big head at the top decides what everything else does. This structure is fundamentally at odds with the kind of decentralized, bottom-up innovation AI makes possible – and that Brill envisions.

The alternative? Brill looks to nature's most successful decentralized innovator.

"To get the most out of artificial intelligence, many organizations are going to have to figure out how to think a lot more like [the octopus]," says Brill.

Leaders who want to thrive in the age of AI super-powered employees need to build organizations that work the same way. But decentralization without structure will lead to chaos. To learn Brill’s advice for how to avoid this chaos, watch his Face Value session now.

Leadership for the New Era: The Strategically Lucky

To help leaders evolve their focus from technical competence to a culture of success and adaptation, Brill offers his LUCK framework, based on information gleaned from 2.7 million managers:

Leverage Help: “Strategically lucky leaders” get help from peers far more than others, requiring massive amounts of psychological safety in the organization.

Unexpected Connections: They have broader socioeconomic relationships, seeking advice from a CEO of another company just as easily as they'd ask the janitor for their perspective.

New Mental Models: They look at first principles to manage risk, when old frameworks break down.

Know What's Missing: They take time to diagnose where challenges haven't yet been considered.

The Executive Action Plan

So, how can you get ahead of what’s coming? Brill believes the single most important AI initiative isn't a technology project — it's a cultural shift.

Publicly celebrate the people at the edges of your organization, the tentacles, if you will. That’s where the breakthroughs are already happening: customer support, marketing, compliance, HR, supply chain. Top down decision-making can’t work in the AI-driven world we’re all entering. Those that figure out how to centralize intelligence, just might be the ones who define the future.

To hear these and other insights, watch Face Value with Jonathan on-demand anytime: Future Ready: AI and the Trends Shaping 2026 and Beyond with Futurist, Jonathan Brill

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