The Role of Human-Centered Leadership in the Age of AI
"Our physiology and psychology don’t change as quickly as technology does. As leaders, we need to focus on what stays constant—authenticity, trust, and human needs."
Tim Brown, Chair of IDEO & Leading for Creativity Instructor
Focusing on human needs is especially important in the AI-driven era, where the risk of losing sight of human values is heightened. As AI becomes more integrated into our lives, human-centered leadership remains essential. And while AI can augment and accelerate processes, it should not replace human creativity or the core human values that guide leadership decisions.
In this episode of the Creative Confidence Podcast, we speak with Tim Brown — Chair of IDEO and Leading for Creativity Course Instructor. He shares his unique perspective on leading through times of disruption, how leaders and businesses can bolster themselves in the age of AI, and the role of creativity in imagining the futures we want and finding ways to guide us toward those futures.
Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
JUMP TO SECTION
As AI Evolves What Human Qualities Won’t Change?
AI + Creativity: How Will AI Impact Design and Creativity?
Preferred Futures: How Should Leaders Think About the Future?
Learn more about how to bring a human-centered approach to AI with our Live AI workshop series.
Journeys of Disruption
Tim Brown describes disruption as a journey, not just a momentary shift. Disruptive moments are often seen as a sudden, single point of change. But in reality, they are periods where new technology or approaches evolve. And we go through predictable cycles on these journeys.
Something changes, and then the world changes in response. For example, with COVID-19, the initial disruption was immediate, but we quickly moved into phases of figuring out how to protect ourselves, develop vaccines, and adapt. It’s the same with technological disruption—it starts with a small group of people understanding it, and over time, as more people grasp the technology, the change unfolds.
Any new technology is only partially understood when it first arrives in the world and by a small number of people. As more and more people understand it, we start to get more and more ideas about how we might use it, and then that journey of change happens.
Tim describes the predictable phases of these disruption journeys as the Emergent, Evolved, and Mature forms of technology.
From Emergent to Evolved to Mature Form
We initially become obsessed with the amazing nature of the new technology. There’s hype about how this technology will change everything and force us as humans to be different.
In its emergent form, the technology emulates what we used to do in different ways. A great historical example is the transition from horse-drawn transportation to automobiles. The first cars were called “horseless carriages” because they mimicked the old form but with motors. Over time, the form evolved—think of the Model T Ford, which established much of the modern car's functionality. Then, the mature form of the technology came with the entire automotive ecosystem—interstate highways, gas stations, and repair shops. This journey took decades, and while things move faster today, the disruption still follows similar phases: an emergent form, an evolved form, and then a mature form that impacts entire systems.
With generative AI, we’re definitely in the emergent phase. The technology has just been released to the public, and we’re seeing a wave of innovation. Currently, most applications are still doing old things in slightly new ways—it’s the “horseless carriage” phase. For example, we the chatbot dominates. This is how we used to interface with previous versions of tech. But why is that the only way in which GenAI should show up? It isn’t, and we will begin to interface with this tech in more ways.
We eventually realize the new technology won’t completely change everything, and we learn how to harness unique attributes of the tech to evolve it into something new.
Another more modern example Tim gives is in the world of software. If you think of our old approach to communication, traditional post or snail mail, and what happened with the emergence of the internet, which was the underlying technological disruption in the way we communicate. We started with another version of the horseless carriage. At some level, email looks like snail mail, but on a screen and delivered instantaneously instead of taking hours or days.
Then as we realized the true potential of electronically-based communication we got to social media and social networks like Facebook, which massively expanded the amount of communication. When we get to the really mature form and we look at platforms like WeChat, which are way beyond just communication. They have methods of paying and massive applications and you can basically live your life on them.
As AI Evolves What Human Qualities Won’t Change?
AI won’t change human characteristics like taste and authenticity. AI is an incredibly important technology, perhaps right up there with the internet. But these technologies do not fundamentally change who we are as human beings—they do not reshape human qualities or behaviors.
Authenticity
Humans have a natural desire for authenticity, which AI can’t replicate fully. We can detect when something feels artificial or lacks human touch. We care about things that have human qualities and we’re quite good at detecting things that don’t have human qualities. Even AI videos will likely have a quality to them that doesn’t feel authentic.
One response to the AI revolution may be to increase the output and value of things that are created by humans. The imperfect vs perfect. For example, the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi—the beauty of the imperfection.
Tim also thinks this will show up in how we collaborate. As AI removes the authenticity of the relationship we have with people, we will value even more the genuinely authentic connections we have with people.
Taste
Similarly, Tim notes that taste is a dynamic quality. As human beings, our tastes change. We evolve, we get bored of trends, and we seek innovation—AI can assist but won’t replace that human drive for uniqueness. We get bored with things, and recognize things as repetition of the past. AI-generated artwork is already beginning to take on a recognizable style. Everything is already getting boring. And there’s a danger of the work looking exactly the same as everything else. This will affect the way the tech is used. AI can assist but won’t replace that human drive for uniqueness.
“The creative industry will evolve, but human creativity will always be central.”
Tim Brown, Chair of IDEO & Leading for Creativity Instructor
AI + Creativity: How Will AI Impact Design and Creativity
AI is a powerful tool for designers, but there’s a balance. While AI can help streamline design processes, the essence of creativity remains human. People will continue to value originality, and there’s still something uniquely human about imperfections. The creative industry will evolve, but human creativity will always be central.
For example, when desktop PCs first came out, everyone was using multiple typefaces and doing their own graphics. Everyone was producing the same things and talking about how it was going to be the end of graphic design. But it got boring really quickly and we ended up having a renaissance in graphic design—folks doing remarkably new things in graphic design. People who understood the tech and imagined new ways of doing it. Tim emphasizes that really creative people will figure out how to stretch the technology and do new things with them.
There was a recent study published in the UK where about 300 non-professional writers where divided into two groups. One group came up with story ideas on their own and the other group had the help of AI. They assessed the stories based on novelty and usefulness (or high enough quality to be published). The results showed that Generative AI enhances individual creativity (especially among more novice writers, the less experienced writers benefited the most). But the use of Generative AI reduced the collective diversity of novel content Collectively speaking, there was a smaller diversity of novelty in the group that had used AI for story ideas. In other words, the chatbot made each individual more creative, but it made the group who had AI help less creative.
Tim shared that he’s optimistic about the future of AI and creativity, and believes AI will help enhance creativity by expanding the tools available to innovators. However, he cautions that AI can sometimes lead to a "flattening effect," where it draws only on past data and trends, potentially limiting true innovation. Tim highlighted that AI tools are already helping creatives express ideas more easily by automating repetitive tasks and enabling faster iterations.
Human creativity will remain essential. Tim noted, "Creativity is driven by spikiness—the unique, out-of-the-box ideas that often come from human intuition and insight. AI can enhance this process, but it cannot replace the creative spark that defines human innovation."
"Creativity is driven by spikiness—the unique, out-of-the-box ideas that often come from human intuition and insight. AI can enhance this process, but it cannot replace the creative spark that defines human innovation."
Tim Brown, Chair of IDEO & Leading for Creativity Instructor
AI Audit Activity: What’s a Tangible Way Leaders Can Strengthen Their Organizations in the Age of AI?
Any major tech disruption can threaten or disrupt aspects of your business that you don’t yet see coming. There’s a simple and important exercise leaders should go through during times of disruption—a type of audit.
- LOOK AT EXISTING OPERATIONS & ACTIVITIES: Start by looking at every aspect of your business—marketing, leadership, sales, etc…and ask: How might generative AI change the way we operate? You might uncover areas where AI could solve long-standing pain points or identify places where human qualities will still play a vital role.
- FIND OPPORTUNITY AREAS: When you see something particularly relevant to your business, like an activity that causes pain today, something that’s overly costly, or an area where you’re currently winning in the market, any activity at the extreme—take a closer look at how the tech might impact it.
- IMAGINE EXPERIMENTS: Start to imagine what kind of tests, pilots, experiments, or learning programs you want to put into place to learn. Focus on any of these areas where you see the potential to unblock something you’ve struggled with or protect and strengthen an existing area of strength.
- MAKE CHOICES: Determine the areas where you need to be a leader in the technology and the areas where you don’t.
Tim advises leaders to break down their organizations into core processes and identify where AI can alleviate pain points. For example, IDEO worked with H&M to integrate AI tools that helped store managers predict which products would sell better, resulting in less waste and increased sales. The success came not from replacing humans with AI but from designing tools that enhanced human decision-making.
Tim stressed that the creative process starts with identifying pain points within systems: “The creative part is identifying the pain points. Once you know what isn’t working well, AI can offer many possible solutions, but identifying those problems is where the leadership and creativity come in.”
“The creative part is identifying the pain points. Once you know what isn’t working well, AI can offer many possible solutions, but identifying those problems is where the leadership and creativity come in.”
Tim Brown, Chair of IDEO & Leading for Creativity Instructor
Preferred Futures: How Should Leaders Think About the Future?
Creativity helps us imagine the futures we want and find ways to guide us toward those futures.
AI is a tool that allows us to deal with more complex situations than the tools we’ve had before. It can help us deal with a level of complexity that perhaps our brains aren’t equipped to deal with on our own. But it’s up to us to imagine the future we prefer. Think of AI not just as a problem-solver, but as a tool that allows us to explore possibilities we haven’t considered before. This is about being proactive, not reactive.
Imagine a world we could have if we had unlimited carbon-free energy. Imagine what we would be able to do to solve the clean water problem because we could turn seawater into fresh water.
It’s about thinking as practically as we can about futures we’d like to inhabit. Practical enough to be believable, not pure science fiction. Engaging with the future and starting to really think through how to design for that future and getting into specifics helps reduce the fear and temper the enthusiasm that are natural reactions to new technologies. Tim doesn’t suggest people do this on their own, it’s best done as a team.
It’s very empowering to give yourself permission to imagine this preferred future and far too few organizations do this. Most organizations are trying to manage their way forward, rather than lead their way forward.
"Lead your organization by imagining the future you want. AI is a tool, not a replacement for human qualities. The organizations that succeed will be the ones that think creatively, stay human-centered, and design the future they want."
Tim Brown, Chair of IDEO & Leading for Creativity Instructor
Tim’s Advice to Leaders
My advice would be to lead your organization by imagining the future you want. AI is a tool, not a replacement for human qualities. The organizations that succeed will be the ones that think creatively, stay human-centered, and design the future they want, rather than just reacting to the disruptions around them.
About the Speaker
Tim Brown
Chair of IDEO & Leading for Creativity Instructor
Tim frequently speaks about the value of design thinking and innovation to business people and designers around the world. He participates in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and his talks Serious Play and Change by Design appear on TED.com.
An industrial designer by training, Tim has earned numerous design awards and has exhibited work at the Axis Gallery in Tokyo, the Design Museum in London, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He takes special interest in the convergence of technology and the arts, as well as the ways in which design can be used to promote the well-being of people living in emerging economies.
Tim advises senior executives and boards of global Fortune 100 companies. His book on how design thinking transforms organizations, Change by Design, was released by Harper Business in September 2009 and revised and updated in March 2019.
This summary was synthesized with the assistance of generative AI.
- choosing a selection results in a full page refresh
- press the space key then arrow keys to make a selection
