Executive Summary
“The unlock, if you’re going to get the most out of AI, is wisdom.” Scott Anthony, recently named the world’s 5th most influential business thinker, discovered this teaching Gen AI at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. Through Jerry Seinfeld’s insights on creative excellence and the 66-year journey to modern AI capabilities, Scott demonstrates why the right way is the hard way—and why there are no shortcuts to developing the wisdom AI requires.
Core insights:
- The unlock for AI is wisdom: the ability to ask the right questions and distinguish useful output from hallucination
- How do you develop wisdom? “The right way is the hard way”—through obsessing over details, not seeking shortcuts
- The Seinfeld lesson: When asked if McKinsey could improve his writer’s room, Seinfeld asked “Are they funny?” No. “Then they couldn’t have helped me”
- The forklift metaphor: You could bring a forklift to the gym and lift any weight, but that’s not the point—it doesn’t develop strength
- 2022 was OpenAI’s first commercial year and the 66th year of AI research (started 1956 at Dartmouth)—innovation requires patience
- “We see the tail end and we think it happened in an instant, but that’s not the way innovation works”
- AI is an opportunity that can amplify the best in us or the worst in us
- Understanding what makes us human—collaboration, curiosity, creativity—helps us amplify the best
The AI Adoption Paradox
Your organisation is racing towards AI adoption. Leadership teams explore use cases. Pilots launch across departments. Everyone fears being left behind.
Yet research consistently shows that the vast majority of AI implementations fail to deliver their promised value.
Scott Anthony switched from consulting to academia in July 2022, thinking he’d finally get a chance to relax. “Consulting is hand-to-hand combat. Every day you’re fighting something. And the world of academia, of course, that moves slowly. Not too much happens.”
Four months later, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT 3.5. “Here I am right in the middle of a big disruptive change,” Scott recalls. Educators had to rethink how they teach and assess. Scott jumped in, designing and teaching a class called “Gen AI and Consultative Decision Making”—essentially “a sandbox to let people play around with the technology.” About half of Dartmouth’s Tuck School graduates go into consulting, making this practical exploration particularly relevant.
From this experience teaching Gen AI, Scott identified what actually makes AI valuable: “My biggest takeaway, the unlock, if you’re going to get the most out of AI is wisdom. The wisdom to be able to ask the right question to an AI, to prompt in the right way. The wisdom to be able to distinguish something that actually is useful output from what you might colloquially call a hallucination, or you might call something else if you want to. Wisdom is the key.”
But here’s the challenge: how do you develop wisdom?
The Seinfeld Test: Are They Funny?
Scott shares a story that perfectly illustrates how wisdom develops—and why it can’t be outsourced or accelerated.
He has his students read an interview Jerry Seinfeld did with the Harvard Business Review. Seinfeld’s writer’s room was famous for micromanaging and high burnout. The interviewer asked whether hiring McKinsey consultants could have improved the process.
Seinfeld’s response: “Who’s McKinsey?”
“They’re a consulting company.”
“Are they funny?”
Scott notes, “Having cut my teeth at McKinsey, I can report the answer of the interviewer is correct. No, they are not.”
Seinfeld’s conclusion: “Then they couldn’t have helped me.”
“This is the key thing,” Scott tells his students. “The right way is the hard way. The right way is the hard way. The show was good because I obsessed over every single detail.”
Scott continues: “This is what I tell my students. The right way is the hard way. Those of my students who like to go to the gym to work out, if they wanted to, they could bring a forklift to the gym and they could lift any amount of weight. But that’s not the point. The right way is the hard way. That’s what develops the wisdom.”
“The wisdom is the unlock to make AI a tool that lets us all go further.”
The Patience Innovation Actually Requires
Consider the timeline that brought us to today’s AI capabilities.
“We were talking about OpenAI a little bit before,” Scott notes. “2022 was the first year of commercial operations and the 66th year of work on artificial intelligence. That work began in 1956 at a conference here at Dartmouth College.”
The same institution where Scott now teaches.
“We see the tail end and we think it happened in an instant, but that’s not the way innovation works. It requires patience, it requires persistence, it requires overcoming false steps, fumbles, and yes, failures on the way to success.
AI Amplifies Both Best and Worst
Mark Blackwell observes: “AI is an opportunity. It can amplify the best in us. It can amplify the worst in us. And it’s also forcing discussions on what it really means to be human, because by thinking about what it means to be human, is how we can amplify the best to make AI a success.”
He continues: “I loved picking up elements of past conversations on collaboration, on curiosity, and on creativity. Do you yourself see any connections between this sort of disruption and how we might succeed in the face of AI?”
This raises the critical question: what human capabilities matter most as AI reshapes work?
Scott’s answer through the Seinfeld story and forklift metaphor points to a truth organizations often resist: there are no shortcuts to developing the judgment, understanding, and wisdom that make AI valuable rather than problematic.
Mark adds another dimension: “To learn new skills in the business world, we should play. And if there’s more new skills to be learned, because we’ve got more new challenges to face, then play should be something that we begin to get more comfortable with in the workplace.”
The forklift can lift any weight. But using it doesn’t develop strength.
AI can generate any content. But using it without wisdom doesn’t develop capability.
And wisdom—like strength—develops through practice, experimentation, even play. Not through shortcuts.
The Path Forward: Embrace the Hard Way
Scott’s insights from teaching Gen AI and reflecting on innovation history point to a fundamental truth: wisdom cannot be shortcut.
“The right way is the hard way” applies as much to developing AI capabilities as it did to creating Seinfeld’s brilliant comedy or building the innovation that led to modern AI over 66 years.
Organizations adopting AI face a choice: seek shortcuts that promise quick wins but don’t develop capacity, or embrace the hard work of building wisdom through practice, experimentation, and learning.
The forklift lifts the weight. The gym builds the strength.
As Mark notes, AI forces us to think about what it means to be human—collaboration, curiosity, creativity. These distinctly human capabilities, developed through hard work rather than automation, determine whether AI amplifies our best or our worst.
Your competitors are deploying AI. But deployment doesn’t create advantage.
Wisdom does.
Listen to the Full Conversation
Scott Anthony and Mark Blackwell explore AI wisdom, innovation patience, and why shortcuts destroy value in depth, including insights from teaching Gen AI, the Seinfeld creative process, and the 66-year journey to modern AI capabilities.
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/w1uJtpA3Kg0
Listen on Buzzsprout: https://arkaroinsights.buzzsprout.com/2012667/episodes/18237533-epic-disruptions-with-scott-anthony
Read the full Epic Disruptions article: https://arkaro.com/why-companies-miss-disruption/
About the Speakers
Scott Anthony is Clinical Professor of Strategy at Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, and was recently named the world’s 5th most influential business thinker. He previously served as Senior Advisor and Managing Partner Emeritus at Innosight, the growth strategy consultancy founded by Clayton Christensen. Scott helps organisations rediscover their entrepreneurial spirit and build sustainable futures in the face of disruption.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottdanthony/
Book: Epic Disruptions: 11 Innovations that Shaped Our Modern World
Book Website: https://epicdisruptions.com/
Mark Blackwell is founder of Arkaro, specialising in change management, innovation, and commercial excellence for the agriculture, food, and chemicals industries. Arkaro’s collaborative “do it with you” approach works through four steps: Understand, Co-create, Enable, Sustain. We don’t just coach—we get on the pitch with you
Ready to Build AI Capability in Your Organisation?
Scott Anthony’s insights from teaching Gen AI highlight a fundamental truth: wisdom cannot be shortcut. The right way is the hard way.
At Arkaro, we work with organisations to build sustainable AI capability through our collaborative “do it with you” approach—working alongside your teams through Understand, Co-create, Enable, Sustain to develop lasting capabilities, not just deploy tools.
We recognize that AI success depends on human wisdom developed through practice, experimentation, and learning—not quick fixes or shortcuts.
If you’re navigating AI adoption and want to build genuine capability rather than just implement technology, let’s discuss whether the Arkaro Approach could help.
Contact Mark Blackwell: mark@arkaro.com
Connect on LinkedIn: Mark Blackwell
We work with organisations that recognize AI success depends on human wisdom, not just technical capabilities. We get on the pitch with you.
Related Reading from Arkaro
On AI Implementation & Wisdom:
AI Organizational Design: The Key to Implementation – Why AI amplifies whatever organizational design you have—excellence or dysfunction
AI Implementation Failure: Why 95% Fail & How to Fix It – The neuroscience and human factors behind AI project failures
AI & the Octopus Organization: Adaptive Transformation – Why distributed intelligence and human alignment matter more than technology
People-Centric AI Change Leadership: The PEOPLE Framework – Putting people at the centre of AI transformation
On Innovation & Disruption:
Why Companies Miss Disruption: The 3 Ghosts Blocking Innovation – Scott Anthony’s full insights on past traumas, present patterns, and future fears
Strategy in a VUCA World: Emergent Approach Guide – Adaptive strategy for uncertain environments
Strategy is an Adaptive Challenge not a Technical Problem – Why expert-driven approaches fail and collaborative solutions succeed
On Change Management & Learning:
Neuroscience of Collaboration: The SPACES Model Explained – How clear boundaries, autonomy, and certainty enable team performance
Transforming Change Resistance: 4-Step Collaborative Approach – Why resistance reveals valuable insights
From Technical Fixes to Adaptive Solutions – How to expand technical excellence into adaptive capabilities
On Organizational Adaptation:
Why Traditional Management Fails and How Adaptive Organizations Succeed – Moving from control to flow through trust and collaboration
Make Strategy Work: The Power of Integrated Business Planning – Moving strategy from slides to sustainable execution
External Resources & Further Reading
Epic Disruptions Book Website – Scott Anthony’s complete resource on the 11 innovations that shaped our world
Epic Disruptions on Amazon – Purchase Scott Anthony’s book
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