Episoder
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What are you willing to compromise?
Lina Polimeni is the Chief Corporate Brand Officer at Eli Lilly and Company. This is a business whose work is often the difference between life and death, where they are trying to cure cancer, and where the outcome is very personal.
In the middle of that reality, your own leadership journey is fueled by a lot of food for thought.
No one can lead effectively without compromise.
But what we choose to compromise has a huge part to play in whether we’re successful.
If what we end up sacrificing is a pathway to discovering that we are already enough… If what we end up sacrificing is a road to realizing that the best version of who we are can help others become the best version of themselves…
If that is what we are compromising, then the cost of that will be the realization that we behaved as others wanted us to. And when they are a part of our past, remembered or forgotten, what we will be left with is a journey that is not the one we started out on. A destination that is not where we wanted to go. And a dream that is always around the corner.
We can be what others want, or we can be who we want to be. We always have that choice.
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Edited highlights of our full length conversation.
What are you willing to compromise?
Lina Polimeni is the Chief Corporate Brand Officer at Eli Lilly and Company. This is a business whose work is often the difference between life and death, where they are trying to cure cancer, and where the outcome is very personal.
In the middle of that reality, your own leadership journey is fueled by a lot of food for thought.
No one can lead effectively without compromise.
But what we choose to compromise has a huge part to play in whether we’re successful.
If what we end up sacrificing is a pathway to discovering that we are already enough… If what we end up sacrificing is a road to realizing that the best version of who we are can help others become the best version of themselves…
If that is what we are compromising, then the cost of that will be the realization that we behaved as others wanted us to. And when they are a part of our past, remembered or forgotten, what we will be left with is a journey that is not the one we started out on. A destination that is not where we wanted to go. And a dream that is always around the corner.
We can be what others want, or we can be who we want to be. We always have that choice.
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Mangler du episoder?
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Are you centered?
Kerry Sulkowicz is the Past-President of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and the Founder and Managing Principal of Boswell Group. They provide leadership advice to boards and CEOs.
Kerry and I have been friends for a long time, and he has taught me much about the psychodynamic aspects of leadership. Whenever we talk, his advice strikes me as clear and straightforward, and always very human.
Being centered doesn’t happen through accident, chance, or hope. It happens by intent.
And that intent is driven by recognizing two obvious truths.
Leadership is lonely.
And leadership is stressful. Much, much more so than many are willing to admit publicly.
The old-world view is that leadership demands that you project strength, certainty, invincibility. Even in the face of threats that can feel like they are existential - because these days, for many businesses, they might be.
If some days that means you feel like you’re a leader in a fight for survival, well, that’s not surprising. Because that’s exactly how your brain responds to that set of circumstances.
And under that kind of stress, the part of your brain that’s responsible for executive function, for risk assessment, and problem-solving, and for planning, suddenly starts to develop tunnel vision. And at the same time, our amygdala kicks in and suddenly survival gets added to the emotional maelstrom, and then finally comes the impulse to hurry up and do something. Anything.
Being centered is the shelter in that storm. It’s held up by a strong sense of self, by awareness and honesty about how you respond under stress, and it’s helped by having a clear and multi-faceted definition of success.
Those foundations, when combined with a willingness to take a little time to turn down the short term noise, and dilute the adrenaline fueled feelings of urgency, will give you the ability to lean on yourself and think things through.
Leadership is sometimes about taking action and it is sometimes not.
But it is always about being centered.
So, how well do you know yourself?
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Edited highlights of our full length conversation.
Are you centered?
Kerry Sulkowicz is the Past-President of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and the Founder and Managing Principal of Boswell Group. They provide leadership advice to boards and CEOs.
Kerry and I have been friends for a long time, and he has taught me much about the psychodynamic aspects of leadership. Whenever we talk, his advice strikes me as clear and straightforward, and always very human.
Being centered doesn’t happen through accident, chance, or hope. It happens by intent.
And that intent is driven by recognizing two obvious truths.
Leadership is lonely.
And leadership is stressful. Much, much more so than many are willing to admit publicly.
The old-world view is that leadership demands that you project strength, certainty, invincibility. Even in the face of threats that can feel like they are existential - because these days, for many businesses, they might be.
If some days that means you feel like you’re a leader in a fight for survival, well, that’s not surprising. Because that’s exactly how your brain responds to that set of circumstances.
And under that kind of stress, the part of your brain that’s responsible for executive function, for risk assessment, and problem-solving, and for planning, suddenly starts to develop tunnel vision. And at the same time, our amygdala kicks in and suddenly survival gets added to the emotional maelstrom, and then finally comes the impulse to hurry up and do something. Anything.
Being centered is the shelter in that storm. It’s held up by a strong sense of self, by awareness and honesty about how you respond under stress, and it’s helped by having a clear and multi-faceted definition of success.
Those foundations, when combined with a willingness to take a little time to turn down the short term noise, and dilute the adrenaline fueled feelings of urgency, will give you the ability to lean on yourself and think things through.
Leadership is sometimes about taking action and it is sometimes not.
But it is always about being centered.
So, how well do you know yourself?
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What is your pain for?
Taban Shoresh is the Founder of The Lotus Flower, a UK-based charity that supports women and girls that have been displaced by conflict, and helps them to build sustainable futures. Since 2016, the charity's projects have impacted more than 60,000 women, girls, and community members.
Every now and then, you meet someone whose story stops you in your tracks. Taban’s story starts with her being arrested in Iraq at the age of four. Three weeks later, she's ordered onto a bus that will take her to the place where she and other members of her family will be buried alive.
At the end of 2021, before Russia invaded the Ukraine or the war in Gaza, the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide stood at 89.3 million. There were 27.1 million refugees globally, half of whom were aged under 18, which makes Taban's story one of millions and completely unique.
She has experienced staggering trauma, she has known realities that I'm sure I would not have survived, and she has taken all of that pain and turned it into creative leadership of the most consequential kind. As you'll hear, for reasons both global and personal, she's in a hurry.
All of us have suffered pain. What we use it for is a question that will stay with me for a long time after this conversation.
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Edited highlights of our full length conversation.
What is your pain for?
Taban Shoresh is the Founder of The Lotus Flower, a UK-based charity that supports women and girls that have been displaced by conflict, and helps them to build sustainable futures. Since 2016, the charity's projects have impacted more than 60,000 women, girls, and community members.
Every now and then, you meet someone whose story stops you in your tracks. Taban’s story starts with her being arrested in Iraq at the age of four. Three weeks later, she's ordered onto a bus that will take her to the place where she and other members of her family will be buried alive.
At the end of 2021, before Russia invaded the Ukraine or the war in Gaza, the number of forcibly displaced people worldwide stood at 89.3 million. There were 27.1 million refugees globally, half of whom were aged under 18, which makes Taban's story one of millions and completely unique.
She has experienced staggering trauma, she has known realities that I'm sure I would not have survived, and she has taken all of that pain and turned it into creative leadership of the most consequential kind. As you'll hear, for reasons both global and personal, she's in a hurry.
All of us have suffered pain. What we use it for is a question that will stay with me for a long time after this conversation.
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Is that good?
Heather Freeland is the Chief Brand Officer at Adobe, a business that, as Heather describes, is undergoing significant change to prepare itself for the future to come, and the one that is already here.
In a company long known for providing powerful tools to creative people, the advent of Generative AI is both a threat and an opportunity. How human beings maintain our relevance sits at the very heart of that tension.
Is that good?
In the quest to become leaders that make a difference, there are many powerful questions to ask ourselves.
What do I want to find out about myself?
What is success?
Both of these are intensely personal, and can be answered, albeit with some serious and honest reflection, from within.
But, “Is that good?” usually stretches us out into the world. We are inclined to ask, through what lens? Against what criteria? Measured by what result? Based on whose experience?
But at the end of that journey of data collection, consultation, and analysis, the answer to, “Is that good?” is still waiting for someone to decide.
Michelangelo, when asked how he had created such perfection from a piece of rock said, “I simply removed everything that wasn’t the David.”
If human beings are to create a dividing line that AI can not cross, the question, “Is that good?” may be the beating heart on which that barrier depends.
“Is that good?” is heavy lifting. It requires clarity and confidence.
Muscles we should probably start building today.
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Edited highlights of our full length conversation.
Is that good?
Heather Freeland is the Chief Brand Officer at Adobe, a business that, as Heather describes, is undergoing significant change to prepare itself for the future to come, and the one that is already here.
In a company long known for providing powerful tools to creative people, the advent of Generative AI is both a threat and an opportunity. How human beings maintain our relevance sits at the very heart of that tension.
Is that good?
In the quest to become leaders that make a difference, there are many powerful questions to ask ourselves.
What do I want to find out about myself?
What is success?
Both of these are intensely personal, and can be answered, albeit with some serious and honest reflection, from within.
But, “Is that good?” usually stretches us out into the world. We are inclined to ask, through what lens? Against what criteria? Measured by what result? Based on whose experience?
But at the end of that journey of data collection, consultation, and analysis, the answer to, “Is that good?” is still waiting for someone to decide.
Michelangelo, when asked how he had created such perfection from a piece of rock said, “I simply removed everything that wasn’t the David.”
If human beings are to create a dividing line that AI can not cross, the question, “Is that good?” may be the beating heart on which that barrier depends.
“Is that good?” is heavy lifting. It requires clarity and confidence.
Muscles we should probably start building today.
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Why are you doing what you’re doing?
Gabriel Schmitt has just celebrated his one year anniversary as the Global CCO of Grey.
Grey’s proposition is that they have been coming up with famously effective ideas since 1917.
Gabriel is somewhat younger than that, but over his career, has learned one of the most important leadership lessons that I think often gets overlooked.
The importance of context.
A few years ago, I wrote an article for Fast Company called The Four Weapons of Exceptional Creative Leaders.
I got some pushback on using the word “weapons” in the context of creativity. My response was that if you’ve ever done battle with the status quo, then you already know that you need to bring some serious weapons to that fight.
Context is the beginning and the end of the leadership journey. Without it, you have no ability to answer critical questions, like where are we on our journey? How much further do we have to go?
Context is the reason why you are trying to make that wild idea.
It is why you hire that person.
It is why you invest in that technology.
It is why you make that decision.
It is why you come up with the answer.
It is why people follow you.
And without it… everything else is just a guess.
So why are you doing what you’re doing?
And are you sure?
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Edited highlights of our full length conversation.
Why are you doing what you’re doing?
Gabriel Schmitt has just celebrated his one year anniversary as the Global CCO of Grey.
Grey’s proposition is that they have been coming up with famously effective ideas since 1917.
Gabriel is somewhat younger than that, but over his career, has learned one of the most important leadership lessons that I think often gets overlooked.
The importance of context.
A few years ago, I wrote an article for Fast Company called The Four Weapons of Exceptional Creative Leaders.
I got some pushback on using the word “weapons” in the context of creativity. My response was that if you’ve ever done battle with the status quo, then you already know that you need to bring some serious weapons to that fight.
Context is the beginning and the end of the leadership journey. Without it, you have no ability to answer critical questions, like where are we on our journey? How much further do we have to go?
Context is the reason why you are trying to make that wild idea.
It is why you hire that person.
It is why you invest in that technology.
It is why you make that decision.
It is why you come up with the answer.
It is why people follow you.
And without it… everything else is just a guess.
So why are you doing what you’re doing?
And are you sure?
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How well do you know yourself?
Lisa Smith is the Global Executive Creative Director at JKR.
Fast Company have called her a visionary designer, citing in particular her work for Burger King, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Chobani and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They described her work as unique because “it has consistently changed the visual landscape, disrupted popular aesthetics, and started trends of its own.”
When you meet Lisa, her energy is infectious. As you’ll hear in our conversation, she wants to make a difference.
She also knows herself well enough to have learned that her energy sometimes needs an adapter.
We are driven by instincts, starting with the genetic code that we must survive.
Against that context, self awareness comes second and is usually filtered and diluted by other impulses.
The ability to stand back and accurately reflect on the impact we are having in real time, is a lifelong quest for most of us.
But when you meet someone who has learned to understand themselves multi-dimensionally, who sees themselves in mirrors that reflect all angles, the good and the works in progress, our trust in that person rises like the proverbial tide - predictably and visibly.
That remains true even if, especially if, they show up as less than their best selves but can acknowledge or forewarn us that they can see, and feel and acknowledge that - sometimes preemptively.
Lisa is not alone in her ambition sometimes turning her into a bulldozer.
She is rare in her ability to see it happening before it happens and to warn those around her that her form of leadership encompasses all the elements of “lead, follow or get out of the way.”
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Edited highlights of our full length conversation.
How well do you know yourself?
Lisa Smith is the Global Executive Creative Director at JKR.
Fast Company have called her a visionary designer, citing in particular her work for Burger King, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Chobani and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They described her work as unique because “it has consistently changed the visual landscape, disrupted popular aesthetics, and started trends of its own.”
When you meet Lisa, her energy is infectious. As you’ll hear in our conversation, she wants to make a difference.
She also knows herself well enough to have learned that her energy sometimes needs an adapter.
We are driven by instincts, starting with the genetic code that we must survive.
Against that context, self awareness comes second and is usually filtered and diluted by other impulses.
The ability to stand back and accurately reflect on the impact we are having in real time, is a lifelong quest for most of us.
But when you meet someone who has learned to understand themselves multi-dimensionally, who sees themselves in mirrors that reflect all angles, the good and the works in progress, our trust in that person rises like the proverbial tide - predictably and visibly.
That remains true even if, especially if, they show up as less than their best selves but can acknowledge or forewarn us that they can see, and feel and acknowledge that - sometimes preemptively.
Lisa is not alone in her ambition sometimes turning her into a bulldozer.
She is rare in her ability to see it happening before it happens and to warn those around her that her form of leadership encompasses all the elements of “lead, follow or get out of the way.”
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Which direction are you going?
Nils Leonard, one of the co-founders of Uncommon - the award winning global creative studio - has been a regular guest on this show since I started Fearless seven years ago.
In all of that time, I’ve wondered abut his partnership with his two co-founders, Natalie Graeme and Lucy Jameson.
Why did they decide to go into business together? How does it work and what might get in the way?
And what makes the Uncommon partnership particularly worth understanding is the extraordinary consistency between what they said mattered to them when they started, and how they show up today.
This conversation, on a wet, rainy Thursday morning, at an outdoor restaurant in Cannes, shows why this partnership has worked so successfully so far and raises some questions about how it will need to evolve to guide the company’s next stage of evolution.
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Edited highlights of our full length conversation.
Which direction are you going?
Nils Leonard, one of the co-founders of Uncommon - the award winning global creative studio - has been a regular guest on this show since I started Fearless seven years ago.
In all of that time, I’ve wondered abut his partnership with his two co-founders, Natalie Graeme and Lucy Jameson.
Why did they decide to go into business together? How does it work and what might get in the way?
And what makes the Uncommon partnership particularly worth understanding is the extraordinary consistency between what they said mattered to them when they started, and how they show up today.
This conversation, on a wet, rainy Thursday morning, at an outdoor restaurant in Cannes, shows why this partnership has worked so successfully so far and raises some questions about how it will need to evolve to guide the company’s next stage of evolution.
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What lessons have you learned?
This episode features the return visit of Jon Cook, the Global CEO of VML. I interviewed Jon for the first time a year ago, eight months after he had died while going for a run in his neighborhood.
Today, he is the CEO of the world's largest advertising agency. We covered a lot of topics during our latest conversation, from the qualities that he brings as a leader, to navigating mergers, to the impact of AI. We also talked about a simple but powerful truth that I think a lot of leaders have a hard time remembering when they're facing stressful situations - that we are already better than we think.
Leadership is lonely. It's a cliche because it's true. Those feelings of isolation usually leave our doubts and insecurities to wander through the garden of our minds, unchaperoned.
Given enough time and enough space, those insecurities can become a permanent part of our self-image and self-beliefs.
Talking to someone who can help us to fully see ourselves is always helpful. Of course, I'd say that. I'm a leadership coach. But we have ways to help ourselves that can be powerful, too.
One of the simplest is to look back and to see our past achievements for what they are. Achievements, experiences, skills, and wisdom.
And if you take a few moments and you write that list of achievements down, you'll be better prepared, not only to meet this moment, but you'll also be able to quiet the part of you that thinks that nothing you do is ever good enough.
Self-awareness is the most powerful asset that any leader can develop. So, make that list right now.
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What will be the impact of AI on the creative industries, and how can we meet this moment?
This is the final episode of my series of interviews over the last few weeks leading up to and through the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.
It offers a map for the future based on those conversations, and observations of the speed of change. If you haven’t seen it, look up the Volvo ad that was just published on social media. It took one person, 24 hours to create.
This ad could not have been made in May, when I started this series of interviews.
Creativity and innovation are oxygen for the world's best businesses. Increase the flow and they soar. Limit the supply and they wither and ultimately die.
That has been true for longer than anyone reading this has been alive.
What is also true is that until now, that creativity, that ability to come up with original ideas that solve problems has been limited to human beings.
With the arrival and advances in AI, will that still be true five years from now? Two? Tomorrow?
Over the last few weeks, I've interviewed ten different leaders from across the creative industries. Brand leaders, agency founders, global agency heads, global client leads, production experts, creator community experts, consultants, and an advertising industry legend.
And while I was at Cannes, I talked to two dozen more about where the creative industries are headed and what they need to do to ensure their future.
These industries are a complex eco system of competing and contradictory forces built on what I believe is the worst business model in the world: selling original ideas based on how long it took to conceive and deliver them, and then giving up the ownership and the economic benefit of those ideas forever.
It is the equivalent of pricing a Picasso based on how long it took him to paint it. It is selling every patentable idea based on the cost of the labor, while ignoring the impact on people's lives.
According to some reports it takes 24 hours to build an iPhone. Imagine if Apple broke that down into a scope of work and then sold each iPhone for the cost of that scope and, with it, the ownership of the IP. For how long would they remain the most valuable business in the world?
The daily advances of AI challenge every aspect of the creative industries. From defining and articulating the problem, to conceiving, creating and delivering solutions. Every part of the process is being radically changed. And the extent of that change is limitless.
So what should we do about that?
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Where does ideation end and production begin?
This episode is part of a series of conversations I've been having in partnership with the Cannes Lion Festival of Creativity. Over the last few weeks, I've been focusing my study of leadership through a single lens, the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Creative Industries.
This final interview is with David Rolfe, the Global Head of Production at WPP. Dave and I have known each other for more years than we care to acknowledge, and he is the most provocative and disruptive thinker about production that I know.
As the week at Cannes unfolded, it became clear that this series wouldn't be complete without a conversation about production.
So I asked Dave late in the week if he would sit down with me and talk about the impact of AI on production. As you may have heard in my interview with Adam Tucker, WPP has made a large investment in AI. That wasn't the reason I wanted to include Dave in this series, but it does, again, add a dimension to the conversation that helps to establish reference points as the industry navigates the disruption that AI is already bringing.
I started the conversation with Dave from a simple premise. Is production dead? As you'll hear, it is most definitely not, but it will look very, very different in a very short space of time, and that change has already begun. So if any part of your future thinking about production is based on how production looked and worked a year ago, you probably need to challenge that perspective to make sure that it stands the test of time, which in today's world, we can probably define as somewhere between 12 and 24 months, I suspect.
In the next episode, I'll sum up everything I've heard and seen since we started this series. In the meantime, thank you for listening.
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Does your AI do what you need it to do?
This episode is part of a series of conversations I've been having in partnership with the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. Over the last few weeks, I've been focusing my study of leadership through a single lens, the impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Creative Industries. I'd planned on ending the series with my interview of Sir John Hegarty, but I recorded two bonus episodes during Cannes that I felt were an important part of the conversation.
Adam Tucker is the Global Account Lead at WPP for Mondelez, and he reached out to me after listening to the first few episodes in this series. He pointed out that while we were focusing on how AI will impact the process of how the creative industries work, we hadn't talked about how it is already changing the work itself. WPP has made a significant investment in AI. The press reports that it's spending about $318 million annually in WPP Open, a set of AI capabilities that are now available to its 35,000 employees around the world. Adam explained why from his perspective, this investment creates a competitive advantage.
I'm not an AI expert, nor have I seen WPP Open firsthand, to pass any judgment on its capabilities, and whether it is in fact superior to other forms of AI that are publicly available. This conversation is not intended to convince you whether WPP has created a competitive advantage or not. What it does establish is one clearly differentiated benchmark in the ecosystem of AI that are now springing up across the creative industries, and therefore, it provides one measurement against which to evaluate your own relationship with artificial intelligence.
I'll wrap this series this week with one more bonus episode and then a recap. In the meantime, thanks for listening.
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Are you willing to dare?
This episode is the last in a series of conversations that I'm having in partnership with the Cannes Lion Festival of Creativity. For the weeks leading up to Cannes and during Cannes, we focused our study of leadership through a single lens. The impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Creative Industries.
Are we moving fast enough? Are we going far enough? Is this an opportunity to fundamentally redesign the creative industries? Or should we adjust and iterate, slowly and carefully? There are opportunities and risks around every corner.
This episode's guest is Sir John Hegarty. He's the Co-Founder of Bartle Bogle Hegarty and one of the most original thinkers of the last 40 plus years. Sir John is a reference point for an industry that has changed a lot, and also not very much over those four plus decades.
The through lines that mattered, then still matter today. Confident, disruptive thinking.
At a time when the future is waiting to be invented, like never before, Sir John's description of the atmosphere that leaders need to create is time tested. Only time will tell whether it is timeless.
Next week, we'll have a couple of bonus episodes before I wrap up the series, and give you my thoughts on the impact of AI on the creative industries, based on the conversations that I've been having. In the meantime, thanks for listening.
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Edited highlights of our full length conversation.
Are you willing to dare?
This episode is the last in a series of conversations that I'm having in partnership with the Cannes Lion Festival of Creativity. For the weeks leading up to Cannes and during Cannes, we focused our study of leadership through a single lens. The impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Creative Industries.
Are we moving fast enough? Are we going far enough? Is this an opportunity to fundamentally redesign the creative industries? Or should we adjust and iterate, slowly and carefully? There are opportunities and risks around every corner.
This episode's guest is Sir John Hegarty. He's the Co-Founder of Bartle Bogle Hegarty and one of the most original thinkers of the last 40 plus years. Sir John is a reference point for an industry that has changed a lot, and also not very much over those four plus decades.
The through lines that mattered, then still matter today. Confident, disruptive thinking.
At a time when the future is waiting to be invented, like never before, Sir John's description of the atmosphere that leaders need to create is time tested. Only time will tell whether it is timeless.
Next week, we'll have a couple of bonus episodes before I wrap up the series, and give you my thoughts on the impact of AI on the creative industries, based on the conversations that I've been having. In the meantime, thanks for listening.
- Se mer
