A Day 1 session at the Twin Cities Business Architecture Forum’s 10th annual summit (7 to 9 January 2026). It was the first of three sessions I took part in, in person, that week, alongside a panel on AI and a keynote with Chris Lockhart.
Business architects have to shape strategy and operating models while AI’s future spans a wide cone of uncertainty. The talk offered frameworks for navigating several possible AI futures: adoption scenarios from augmentation to automation, the hidden sustainability costs that threaten current approaches, and practical categories of enterprise AI to match solutions to contexts. Drawing on work with government and industry, it showed how architects can move beyond vendor narratives to make conscious choices about AI adoption, spot early signals, balance profit, people and planet, and set policy that enables innovation while managing risk, and why constraints might drive better outcomes than “brute force”.
