Shawn Kanungo is an innovation strategist from Edmonton, Canada. He helps companies (incl. many Fortune 500) to create value in new ways. Shawn spends a lot of time speaking about disruption, innovation, AI, and the future. He was working for a Big4 audit company for 12 years.
His bestselling book The Bold Ones: Innovate and Disrupt to Become Truly Indispensable argues that extraordinary outcomes often come from people willing to experiment when others hesitate.
Just before his unforgettable performance on the big stage of the Nordic Business Forum, I had an exclusive opportunity to speak with him, primarily for the Latvian business community.
On the main stage
First, my takeaways from his speech on the big stage. I actually liked he did a brand new presentation that was not available on YouTube before. Also I liked that Shawn overall had a positive feeling about the future of AI.
GPT Astra just released - companies should experiment - it does sooo much goodies! You might even create version 2 of your company. :)
Start from zero - as if you don’t know anything.
It was not on the presentation, but I liked his experiment with giving 5 USD to people just to try changing the mindset that by using Fiver app etc a lot can be outsourced.
Two most important questions: Why not? Why not me?
AI should be used for the back-office - to optimize internal processes, not the customer service - the output.
The governments need to empower the population to use AI as much as it can, so it does not need to tax it.
One of his slogans was ‘try to get fired!’, meaning - don’t be afraid to experiment and be so disruptive that it’s on the edge of being fired.
The Tax Stories
We discussed with Shawn:
On what the government should focus on during the political cycle of the next 4 years?
This is the greatest time to be a tax professional.
Shawn even gave an exclusive hint - what his upcoming book ‘The Most Dangerous Person in the Room’ is going to be about: how to create a competitive edge for humans when the technology is all around us.
Professional knowledge together with the AI tools will become even more indispensable.
How to jump between AI tools when there are so many of them? AI is like a gym where you have to learn how to use each of the tools.
Prompt engineering is dead, just give AI the context and ask to make prompts.
Is it worth working on anything creative, like a book, if AI will be able to create it in seconds? AI will never come up with a dangerous, bad idea - it will provide just the most conventional ideas.
Creatives just should feel when to use AI and when to ignore it.
Who will win in this AI era - smaller boutique firms or large corporates?
Can the local law firms now go global with the help of AI, together with their clients?
Professional service firms will move from a fee for service model to charging for the value created.
People may more often litigate when having a ‘lawyer’ in their pocket as they more often will know their rights - that they are entitled to more. This also may encourage more people to go to seek advice of the experts, too.
Now AI will enable people to have software for their individual needs. People will get rid of manual redundant tasks, like entering information, as focus on what they are good at - solve the client’s problems.
AI will use software more than humans.
Rely on the AI (and agents) to use the software.
Where is social media going to? People are normally consuming pushed content, not looking up for a particular person. influencer. So the content wins. But Shawn is more excited about meetings in person, not on screens and AI. Events will be more interesting.
How to protect oneself against deep fakes and fraud? We have to play and use AI in order to understand the downside of AI, to start with.
What are Shawn’s trusted sources of information?
