Kedron Rhodes

I’ve been wrestling with something this week that sits at the intersection of my design roots and our AI-accelerated future. As someone who’s spent decades thinking about how design creates competitive advantage, I’m watching AI fundamentally reshape both the tools we use and the way we think about creativity itself.

AI is rapidly eliminating the cost barriers to producing both design and story. That’s powerful. As we march toward commoditizing creative output, I’m convinced we’re simultaneously discovering—or maybe rediscovering—what makes human creativity truly irreplaceable.

The temptation to use AI as the “easy button” that Stanford’s d.school warns against is real. Generate a logo in seconds, write copy with a prompt, create presentations that look polished but feel hollow (yo, LinkedIn, looking at you!). But that misses the deeper strategic opportunity. What if instead of replacing human creativity, AI forces us to get clearer about what human creativity actually does that nothing else can?

I think about Roger Martin’s strategy framework here—the difference between operational effectiveness and strategic positioning. AI might help us get operationally effective at producing creative output, but competitive advantage still lives in the strategic choices we make about what to create and why. The human decisions before we hit “generate” and the curation, interpretation, and emotional resonance we bring after—that’s where the defensible value remains.

Design and story have always been intertwined, and AI will accelerate the volume of both. But as it does, I’m looking for the ways humans make it special, meaningful, memorable. Not despite AI, but because we’re finally forced to get serious about what only we can do.

Creativity in the Age of AI: Let’s Not Make AI the “Easy Button” 🧠

Glenn Fajardo from Stanford’s d.school cuts straight to the heart of something I’ve been feeling: when we treat AI as just another productivity hack, we risk stripping away the very friction that makes creativity meaningful. His research reveals a crucial insight—creativity isn’t just about what we make; it’s about who we become in the making. The neurological reward circuits that fire when we encounter the unexpected, the flow states that emerge from navigating uncertainty, the sense of agency that comes from shaping ideas—these don’t happen when we optimize for easy. They happen when we lean into the challenge. Fajardo suggests the real creative act with AI might not be hitting generate, but the intentional work that happens before and after: setting direction, asking better questions, curating and remixing what emerges. It’s a reframe that shifts AI from replacement to amplification, from shortcut to catalyst for deeper human creativity. (Explore the Creative Challenge →)

🪏 Take it a bit deeper with these…

📖 Storytelling & Strategy

• Storytelling for Product Leaders — Ken Norton’s comprehensive guide reveals why storytelling remains the most critical skill for product leaders. His insight: the best arguments won’t change minds, only good stories can. In an AI world where content generation is commoditized, the ability to craft authentic, emotionally resonant narratives becomes even more strategically valuable.

• Why most people get Jobs to be Done wrong — Bob Moesta dissects the gap between understanding JTBD conceptually and using it to drive results. The core mistake? Teams confuse demographics with intent, personas with moments of struggle. As AI helps us generate more customer insights faster, getting clear on the why behind customer behavior becomes the differentiating human skill.

🎯 Design as Strategic Advantage

• How service design is solving our 21st century challenges — Clive Grinyer argues that design isn’t decoration—it’s the “binding glue” that shapes technology, economics, and organization into something valuable. His research shows £1 spent on design returns £5 in exports and £20 in turnover. The implication for AI transformation: don’t just deploy tools, redesign the work itself with human-centered design principles at the core.

• Creating space for innovation — IDEO Shanghai’s approach to embedding design thinking into traditional R&D processes offers a blueprint for AI integration. Their insight: don’t replace existing processes, expand the potential for innovation within them. Design thinking isn’t a competing methodology—it’s a way of asking better questions and making more thoughtful trade-offs, regardless of which stage you’re in.

🚀 AI Transformation Reality Check

• Unsticking Your AI Transformation — Bain’s research cuts through AI hype with hard data: fewer than 20% of companies have scaled GenAI meaningfully. The trap? Treating AI as technology deployment rather than business transformation. The winners focus on fewer, bigger bets and redesign processes from the ground up with AI at the core. One bank reduced campaign creation from 60 days to one day by reimagining workflows, not just adding tools.

• AI & design culture (part 2) — Keir Regan-Alexander explores how architects are using AI image models and compares the capabilities of Midjourney V7, Stable Diffusion, and Flux. The article provides tactical insights for design professionals navigating the rapidly evolving AI landscape while maintaining creative control and professional standards.

📈 Strategic Growth Focus

• Intentional growth: A playbook for digital differentiation — Smart Design’s playbook for digital differentiation emphasizes strategic intentionality over growth-at-all-costs mentality. Their framework helps companies identify where technology investments (including AI) should focus for sustainable competitive advantage rather than just operational efficiency.

• Xapien’s Dan Secretan: On building transformative vertical AI — Dan Secretan shares insights from building one of the UK’s most promising AI startups, focusing on transforming background research. His approach emphasizes deep vertical integration rather than broad horizontal solutions—a strategy that creates defensible value in AI-saturated markets.

👋 Sign-Off

Summer is coming to a rapid close—and as it does, the things I’m reflecting on and truly value in my own life have nothing to do with AI. It’s spending time with my two kids before they head off to college in a couple of weeks. It’s the time I spend with my wife and the time I spend with a group of deep-thinking men each Wednesday evening. It’s the time I spend in nature and the time I spend reading books that have nothing to do with work.

It’s the time I spend reflecting on what is truly important in life and how I can make a difference in the world. As we head toward the back half of summer, I encourage you to take some time to reflect on what is truly important to you and how you can make a difference in your own life and the lives of others. That’s how you truly create an advantage in this world.

Thanks for reading, and remember—in a world of infinite AI-generated content, your authentic human perspective has never been more valuable.

⁓ Kedron

P.S. Speaking of human creativity meeting AI tools—I have one of the most ingenious partners in crime one could imagine! Titus has always been a creative problem solver, inventor, and wild dreamer. Here he is hacking a new feature into his truck, and yes, he uses AI to help with the technical details (those who know me know I shouldn’t be left in charge of electrical things). He’s headed to college and enrolled in an honors program focused on creativity and innovation. Go figure! So excited to see what’s in store for him—especially watching how his generation will naturally blend human ingenuity with AI capabilities.