KEY TAKEAWAYS (an AI-Output with Hallucinations)

AI AGENTS & AGentic workflows

• Atlas - AI Browser by OpenAI

• n8n - Workflow automation

• Cursor - Coding agent

• Comet by Perplexity - Best Agentic Browser - browse the internet with AI and get stuff done

• Lindy - Build an AI agent - great for AI automation

LLM

• OpenAI’s Deep Research - Absolutely the best research tool out there right now

• Manus - Most comprehensive AI agent in my opinion

• Claude Skills - Claude Skills is the best skills agent

• Grok 4 - Equivalent to o3 from ChatGPT - awesome for X data

• Gemini 2.5 - Incredible LLM

Text-to-App

• Lovable - Build any app with agentic reasoning (best at front-end)

• v0 by Vercel - Text-to-Webpage (really good front-end)

• Replit - Idea-to-App (best for full app)

Text-to-IMAGE/VIDEO

• Midjourney - Best for pictures and video

• HeyGen - AI Video Avatar

• Runway - Text to Video

• Google’s Nano Banana - Best Image Generator

Research & other

• NotebookLM - Research and the two AI podcast hosts that you see above :)

• Google AI Studio - Real-time AI co-presence

• Clay - AI Outbound Sales | Generating lists of emails and sending cold outreach

• Figjam - Whiteboarding Ideas | Brainstorming | Organizing

Briefing: Innovation, AI, and the Agentic Era

Executive Summary

This document synthesizes the core arguments presented by innovation strategist Sean Nongo, focusing on the transformative impact of Artificial Intelligence and the strategic imperatives for organizations like credit unions. The central thesis is that the current AI revolution, termed the "agentic era," is the most underhyped technology of our time and presents an unprecedented opportunity for value creation. This era is defined by AI's ability to move beyond content generation to perform autonomous actions, offering smaller organizations "infinite leverage" to reinvent processes and compete.

However, this technological acceleration is creating a paradox: as digital interactions become frictionless, digital trust is simultaneously eroding due to the rise of sophisticated deepfakes and scams. In response, the most crucial competitive differentiator will be the human element. The winning strategy for credit unions will be a dual approach: leveraging AI for hyper-efficient, automated services while simultaneously and deliberately "slowing things down" to create meaningful, high-friction, and memorable member experiences rooted in deep care.

Ultimately, navigating this future requires a fundamental shift in leadership mindset. Leaders must be willing to disrupt their own successful models, abandon nostalgia for past methods, and embrace an identity of innovation—even if it means looking "like a joke" in the process. The path forward is not through optimizing the past but through the bold, and sometimes frightening, work of creating the future.

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1. The Mandate for Disruption

The central framework for understanding the current technological landscape is the nature of disruption itself. New, transformative ideas and technologies are consistently met with skepticism and ridicule before achieving mass adoption.

• Disruption as a Joke: Groundbreaking innovations—from internet banking and ride-sharing services like Uber to the use of credit cards in fast-food restaurants—initially appear absurd or impractical. The initial reaction is often dismissive, yet this is the hallmark of a truly disruptive force.

• The Inevitable Shift: The core message is that what seems like a joke today will become the unquestioned reality of tomorrow. As Nongo states, "Disruption always starts out as a joke until the joke is really on us. That's why it's important not to disregard the disruptive ideas of disruptive thinkers."

• The Role of Inquiry: The objective is not to provide prescriptive answers but to provoke thought and encourage leaders to ask bold, challenging questions about their own operations and the future of their industry.

2. The Agentic Era of Artificial Intelligence

Contrary to popular belief, AI is not overhyped. For industries like credit unions, it represents the most significant and under-appreciated technological shift of all time. We are moving from a generative phase to an "agentic" one.

• The Most Underhyped Technology: The current discourse surrounding AI fails to capture its full potential. Nongo asserts, "My belief is that this is the most underhyped technology, especially when it comes to credit unions of all time. This is the greatest technology to this industry of all time."

• From Generation to Action: The evolution of AI can be understood as follows:

    ◦ Generative AI (until ~2022): Focused primarily on content creation, such as refining emails or summarizing conversations.

    ◦ Agentic AI (2025 and beyond): This is the era of autonomous action, where software can not only think but also "get stuff done." This "agentic revolution" is projected to be 100 to 1,000 times more valuable than the generative phase.

• Defining Agency: Agency is "the power to act" and "the power to execute." AI agents are software systems that can operate 24/7 and make decisions independently to achieve goals.

Practical AI Applications for Credit Unions

To demonstrate the tangible power of agentic AI, several live demonstrations were performed, targeting specific Manitoba credit unions.

Organization Targeted

AI Application Demonstrated

Key Takeaway

Access Credit Union

A Netflix-style employee onboarding platform was created from a text prompt using the tool "Loveable," generating the design, code, front-end, and back-end.

Complex applications can be generated from an idea, fundamentally changing the development process.

Cambrian Credit Union

A 24/7 AI agent was built to answer complex member questions (e.g., retirement planning) based on the credit union's website data, in multiple languages.

AI can provide personalized, always-on member service and support.

Fusion Credit Union

A 35,000-line synthetic (fake but realistic) data file of credit union members was generated and then used to create a complex financial model in Excel.

Synthetic data provides a safe and powerful way to leverage AI for analysis and forecasting without using real member data.

Assiniboine Credit Union

A specialized AI "skill" was created for a mortgage analyst, allowing the AI to replicate a standard operating procedure with consistent, high-quality output.

AI can be trained on specific internal processes to create specialized "ninja" assistants for complex roles.

General Application

OpenAI's "Atlas" browser was used to analyze the source code of Wealthsimple to reverse-engineer its technology stack and marketing strategy.

AI provides powerful tools for competitive intelligence and analysis.

3. Reimagining Work and Human Potential

The rise of AI fundamentally alters not only business processes but also the nature of work, the value of skills, and the psychology of fear and empowerment.

• Begin with the End in Mind: Traditionally, work has been a linear process of planning, production, and final delivery. AI inverts this model. Teams can now generate 100 different versions of the final deliverable (reports, campaigns, analyses) at the outset, allowing them to visualize the end goal with perfect clarity before the creative process even begins.

• The Shift from Knowledge to Boldness: The old adage "knowledge is power" is obsolete in a world where everyone has an AI co-pilot. Nongo argues, "what is power today is people that are hungry, people that can... create, people that are bold. To me, this is power."

• Infinite Leverage: AI provides smaller organizations, like credit unions, with "infinite leverage." They can now access tireless analysts (LLMs) and armies of digital employees (agents), leveling the playing field with larger institutions that have more resources.

• Overcoming Fear Through Action: Fear of AI is a direct result of inaction and lack of immersion. Individuals who actively engage with the technology do not see it as a threat to their job but as a tool for empowerment. The advice is to "work scared until you become scary... work scared until you develop your skills in this particular space."

• The Skill of Ignoring AI: Paradoxically, a critical future skill will be knowing when not to use AI. AI models are trained on past data and conventional wisdom. True innovation, like the Wright brothers' invention of flight, often requires defying that data. "AI is the second most powerful force that we have ever created. And the first will be our ability to ignore it."

4. The Paradox of Progress: Trust and Friction

While AI offers infinite opportunities, it also creates a landscape of "infinite hell" by eroding the foundations of digital trust. This necessitates a strategic re-evaluation of the member experience.

• The End of Digital Trust: The ability to create sophisticated and seamless deepfakes through audio and video signals the end of inherent trust in digital content. This will lead to an explosion in hyper-sophisticated blackmail, exponential scams, and synthetic relationships.

• The Obsession with Efficiency: Modern society is optimizing everything for its most efficient form, turning relationships into transactions and experiences into "dopamine hits" (e.g., food delivery, one-click shopping, clickbait journalism). This has dramatically raised baseline consumer expectations for speed and convenience.

• The Case for "Friction": In a frictionless world, the greatest opportunity lies in deliberately re-introducing "the F word: friction." This means creating experiences that are meaningful, magical, memorable, and awe-inspiring.

• Two Paths to Victory: In the future, two types of organizations will succeed:

    1. The Frictionless: Companies like Amazon and McDonald's that are incredibly fast, seamless, and automated.

    2. The Experiential: Companies like Four Seasons and Hermès that deliberately slow things down to focus on craftsmanship, one-on-one interaction, and experience. The danger lies in the middle, which Nongo calls the "black hole of mediocrity."

5. The Human-Centric Strategy: Deep Care and Empowerment

The antidote to eroding trust and the key to creating meaningful friction is a renewed focus on the human element, both for members and employees.

• The Foundations of Trust: True trust is built on only two things: incredibly reliable technology and people who are deeply cared for.

• The Dubai Hotel Example: A story was shared of a hotel that offered to gently knock on a guest's door if they missed their wake-up call. This extraordinary level of service was a direct result of the hotel's culture of care for its employees—it had previously invited all staff members' parents for a weekend stay to show them the opportunities available to their children.

• The Ultimate Strategy: This illustrates the ultimate business principle: "The greatest strategy in the world [is] to deeply care. It's deeply care about the people around you and in turn, they will care deeply about the people around them."

• Redesigning Organizations Around People: Historically, organizations have been designed like assembly lines for the sake of efficiency. AI automates routine tasks, freeing organizations to redesign themselves around the unique gifts of "scary good" people, as the software can now adapt to the human, not the other way around.

6. The Call to Action: Disrupt Yourself

To thrive, organizations cannot simply adopt new tools; they must be willing to fundamentally change their identity and processes.

• From 100 to Zero: The most difficult challenge is not growing from zero to 100, but being willing to go from 100 back to zero—to disrupt a successful model and become a rookie again. This involves "starting from zero" on every process, asking how it would be built from scratch with today's tools. This approach doesn't yield 5% improvements; it yields 5x improvements.

• The Danger of "Good Leadership": The story of Coca-Cola highlights a key risk. A Coca-Cola executive admitted their biggest disruptor was not a competitor, but their own "good leadership," which had become so focused on optimization and efficiency that the company lost its "remarkable" marketing edge.

• Nostalgia vs. Innovation: Nostalgia for what worked in the past is a barrier to innovation. "Good leaders optimize the past... But remarkable leaders, remarkable leaders create the future because they're focussed on innovation."

• The Innovator's Identity: Innovation is not an outcome or a product; it is an identity. It is the willingness to suffer, to be scared, and to look like a joke in pursuit of creating the future. The final charge is a reminder that progress is made by those who are simultaneously afraid and courageous:

thumb_upGood reportthumb_downBad reportThe AI Revolution:

• Generative AI's Potential: Shawn highlights how AI, especially generative AI, is transforming work by democratizing it. He draws parallels with the internet's impact on knowledge, emphasizing that AI will revolutionize how tasks are performed.

• Generative AI Era (2023-2024)

  • Shawn recaps how ChatGPT launched in late 2022 and captured the world’s attention.

  • 2023 and 2024 became the era of “generative AI,” with widespread use of tools like ChatGPT for writing, image generation, deep fakes, etc.

  Transition to 2025: The Agentic Era

  • The speaker asserts that the “generative AI revolution” is now “over.”

  • We’re entering a new wave in 2025, referred to as the “agentic” revolution, or the agentic era.

  • Key premise: AI agents will be the next huge disruptor, providing 10x to 1000x the value of generative AI alone.

  Why Agents?

  • An agent is software that can autonomously perform tasks on behalf of humans—mimicking what human employees might do but never sleeping or stopping.

  • Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang repeatedly referenced “agents” in his CES talk, highlighting their importance.

  Agents as the New Conversational Layer

  • In the ’90s, businesses needed websites.

  • In the 2000s-2010s, businesses needed apps and social media channels.

  • In 2025 and beyond, agents will become a critical “conversational layer” for organizations (internally and externally).

  • Companies will race to build their own brand-specific AI agents, and the challenge will be how to differentiate those agents.

• AI marks "the end of trust" as it becomes harder to distinguish between AI-generated and human-created content. Shawn warns about the erosion of trust due to AI's ability to create indistinguishable deep fakes and simulations.

• Shift from Knowledge Workers to Value Creators: As AI becomes more embedded in businesses, the most valuable jobs will no longer be knowledge-based but will center around creating value in new and innovative ways. Leaders must focus on being innovators, not just managing efficiencies​

• We live in an age of "infinite leverage" where individuals can do more with less using various tools and resources.

• AI as a Starting Point: The concept "the end is now the beginning" highlights a shift in how we approach creative and development processes. Rather than seeing AI-generated outputs as final products, they are considered starting points that inspire and guide further human creativity.

• AI is the next communication layer: Just like the internet, websites, and apps, AI agents will become ubiquitous, transforming how we interact with clients and information. Kanungo predicts, "By the end of next year, every company in this room will have one AI agent or multiple or hundreds."

• Iterative Creation: By generating numerous initial ideas or drafts using AI, the creative process becomes iterative. This allows for a broad exploration of possibilities before honing in on the final deliverable through human refinement and creativity.

• Rapid Prototyping: The example of generating a hundred websites, apps, or analyses with the help of AI emphasizes the efficiency and speed with which initial concepts can be developed. This rapid prototyping accelerates the innovation cycle.

• Creative Catalyst: AI serves as a catalyst for innovation by providing a multitude of starting points. It breaks the traditional linear progression of project development and encourages a more dynamic and flexible approach

• AI-Driven Efficiency: Tools like Midjourney can generate multiple creative options for advertisements in seconds, providing companies with the flexibility to test and optimize their campaigns efficiently

The Concept of DEEPLY CARING:

• Reliability and genuine care are foundational to building trust, both in technology and human interactions.

• Exceptional service goes beyond basic expectations, creating memorable experiences that differentiate a business.

• Personalized attention and proactive problem-solving significantly enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.

• Investing in employee well-being and growth fosters a positive work culture, leading to increased job satisfaction and performance.

• Recognizing and valuing employees' contributions, even extending to their families, can create strong emotional connections to the workplace.

• Empowerment is a two-pronged approach: providing cutting-edge tools (like AI) and demonstrating deep care for individuals.

• Genuine care is a strategic business advantage, driving both customer retention and employee innovation.

• Creating a culture of care can transform service delivery, employee engagement, and ultimately, business outcomes.

• The ripple effect of care extends beyond immediate interactions, influencing long-term relationships with both customers and employees.

• Innovation thrives in environments where individuals feel valued, supported, and equipped with the right tools.

• Care for Employees = Care for Customers: Organizations that deeply care for their employees tend to deliver superior customer service, as employee satisfaction directly translates to customer trust and satisfaction

  The Importance of Human-Centered Leadership

  • People Over Projects: A leadership philosophy that prioritizes people, such as letting employees take vacations despite client demands, fosters loyalty and long-term value for the business​.

  • High-Agency Cultures: Empowering people by combining technological tools with people-centric care creates "high-agency" employees who are proactive, innovative, and committed to the company’s mission​.

The Concept of Friction:

He advocates for maintaining trust through human-centric, meaningful, and memorable experiences.

• Bringing Back Friction: In an increasingly frictionless world, Shawn argues for the value of friction in creating deeper, more authentic connections. He stresses that community management companies, unlike tech companies, thrive on trust and relationships, not just efficiency.

• In a frictionless world, we need more friction.

• Companies will win by being either extremely frictionless or extremely human - the middle ground is "the black hole of mediocrity."

Are you willing to look like a joke?

Shawn suggests that true innovation requires embracing uncertainty and discomfort - what he calls "the darkness." This idea challenges the common view that innovation is solely about achieving specific outcomes or results.

By focusing on identity rather than outcomes, Kanungo seems to be advocating for a mindset shift. He's suggesting that being an innovator is more about who you are and how you approach challenges, rather than just what you produce. This approach emphasizes qualities like curiosity, resilience, and willingness to take risks.

The question "Are you willing to be the innovator?" is provocative. It asks whether one is ready to:

1. Embrace uncertainty and potential failure

2. Challenge established norms and ways of thinking

3. Cultivate a mindset of continuous learning and experimentation

4. Persist in the face of setbacks and criticism

This perspective on innovation as an identity rather than just a process or outcome can be empowering. It suggests that anyone can be an innovator if they're willing to adopt certain attitudes and behaviors, regardless of their specific role or industry.

Disruption and Self-Disruption:

• Leaders need to be willing to disrupt themselves.

• Innovation isn't about thinking, it's about acting. It involves deliberately exposing yourself to challenges and suffering.

• Small experiments and actions are key to starting the disruption process.

Embracing Innovation's Challenges

The Willingness to Look Foolish

• True innovation requires embracing uncertainty and discomfort ("the darkness")

• Focuses on identity rather than just outcomes

• Requires qualities like curiosity, resilience, and risk-taking

Innovation as Universal Responsibility

• Not a separate department but a mindset for everyone

• Continuously asking how to improve

The Most Valuable Question

• "What will you start today that scares you?"

• Begins changing your story and challenging limits

Self-Disruption

• The greatest challenge isn't scaling up (0 to 100)

• It's having the courage to disrupt yourself and what's working (100 to 0)

Beyond Mountains

• Success shouldn't breed complacency

• There are always new heights after reaching what seemed like the summit

To Reach 5×, You Can’t Think 5 % Bigger—You Have to Go to Zero

Take any core process—finance approvals, R&D cycles, vessel maintenance—and ask: If we rebuilt this from scratch with today’s tech, what vanishes? What automates? What now demands more human warmth? Going “to zero” prevents incrementalism from smothering breakthroughs.

The Most Dangerous Person in the Room

It’s not the algorithm or the credentialed expert—it’s the individual who feels the fear, yet moves anyway. Bold + scared beats brilliant + stuck. Be that person, hire that person, partner with that person, and the future tips in your favor.