This December:
- What AI means for ownership and authenticity..
- Is Your Business Innovative? What does true innovation look like?
- A reminder in song.
- Exclusive subscriber offer...
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Why the AI Conversation Is Missing the Only Point That Matters.
I’ve never felt the urge to talk much about AI, even though I’d argue I’m more qualified than most.
Not because I’m hiding anything, but because the space is overflowing with the same predictable takes:
AI equals efficiency.
Efficiency equals productivity.
Productivity equals progress.
It’s all a little too neat. A little too obvious. And honestly, a little boring.
But that hasn’t stopped me sharing my views on AI in others conversations and through this discussion I’ve noticed the topics that always spark the most heat always come back to two questions:
What does AI mean for ownership?
What does AI mean for authenticity?
Why This Is Happening
To understand what’s actually going on with ownership and authenticity, you can’t look at the last decade. You have to look at the last five centuries.
For the last 500 years, we’ve lived inside what scholars call the Gutenberg Parenthesis, a world defined by printing press where:
• texts were stable
• authorship was fixed
• originality was clear
• information was “finished”
• and ownership meant something solid and traceable
Our entire modern understanding of plagiarism, authorship, ownership, and intellectual property comes from that era.
But the Parenthesis is closing.
AI didn’t start this shift, social media has been chipping away at it for years, but AI has certainly accelerated it to a speed that’s impossible to ignore.
We’ve left the world where information is fixed and stepped into one where:
• ideas move
• interpretation matters
• texts can change and evolve
• creation is iterative
• and nothing is ever truly fixed or finished
This is the real reason why AI feels so disruptive.
It’s the cultural whiplash of leaving a 500-year mindset behind.
Why do these Conversations get so Heated?
1. Ownership
The ownership debate only exists because we were raised inside a framework where information behaved like property — fixed, finite, enforceable.
That world is dissolving.
We’re shifting from ownership as possession
to ownership as relationship.
The idea that a single person, model, or company can hold airtight claim over information feels increasingly out of sync with how digital culture now works.
Perhaps this isn’t really a debate about ownership anymore.
Perhaps it’s a debate about whether our old expectations of ownership are relevant to how businesses actually create value today.
2. Authenticity
People think AI threatens authenticity, but authenticity no longer lives inside the content itself.
In a world where information is fluid and endlessly remixable, the real power of authenticity comes from your ability to own your thoughts and articulate them clearly.
It’s not about being the first to say something.
It’s about being the one who can say it with clarity, conviction, and nuance.
The work is internal:
• understanding your own voice
• forming your own opinions
• separating your thinking from the sea of copy-cats
AI didn’t weaken authenticity.
It exposed who never developed it.
What Does All This Mean?
Well really what it means is that when we're debating the concepts of ownership and authenticitiy in the context of AI, we’re not really having a debate about AI at all.
We’re debating the collapse of a 500-year mental model.
The print era shaped our ideas of authorship, originality, and ownership.
The digital era has returned us to a state more akin to what we knew prior (fluidity, iteration, and reinterpretation). A world where ideas move, evolve, and never truly finish.
In this environment, the value of an idea no longer comes from possessing it.
It comes from how you express it, interpret it, and execute it.
AI hasn’t made creativity easier.
It has made mediocrity obvious.
The advantage now belongs to those who can:
• take ownership of their own opinion
• articulate nuance
• express a point of view clearly
• communicate with depth
AI can generate content, but it can’t generate depth of human understanding.
That remains a human responsibility.
The people and businesses who will thrive in this new environment aren’t the ones clinging to what they own, but the ones investing in how they think.
- Brad Eather
The Truth About Innovation
On the topic of authenticity, I figured it was the perfect time to explore the creative skills that actually sharpen our thinking.
This month on Selling’s Creative, I sat down with Christopher Sellers — a creativity and innovation consultant with 15 years moving between corporate boardrooms and the arts. He’s written and performed theatre, built problem-solving assessments, advised executives, and authored two books on why highly intelligent people often struggle with creativity.
He’s one of the rare voices who’s lived on both sides of the innovation divide.
In our conversation, we break down why so many companies claim to be innovative while unknowingly performing “innovation theatre.” We dig into the difference between technical intelligence and creative intelligence, the six creative skills leaders actually need, and why creativity is a trainable skill, not a personality trait.
🎧 Listen to the full conversation now.
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For your playlist.
One of my favorite ways to communicate is through sharing music, I love it! So each month I select a track for you to give a spin:
Be Yourself - Audioslave
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"To be yourself is all that you can do" - that's authenticity.
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