Beyond The Prompt - How to use AI in your company

Jeremy Utley & Henrik Werdelin

Beyond the Prompt dives deep into the world of AI and its expanding impact on business and daily work. Hosted by Jeremy Utley of Stanford's d.school, alongside Henrik Werdelin, an entrepreneur known for starting BarkBox, prehype and other startups, each episode features conversations with innovators and leaders to uncover pragmatic stories of how organizations leverage AI to accelerate success. Learn creative strategies and actionable tactics you can apply right away as AI capabilities advance exponentially.

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20 episodes
Updated July 22

Episodes20

Newest first

July 22 · 50 min
What You Can Learn From Asking AI for Brutal Honesty About Yourself - with Bestselling Author Daniel Pink
Daniel Pink, bestselling author of Drive, A Whole New Mind, To Sell is Human and many more, joins Beyond the Prompt to discuss one of AI's most powerful and uncomfortable use cases: helping us see ourselves more clearly. By treating ChatGPT as a brutally honest advisor instead of an answer machine, Dan explores how AI can surface blind spots, challenge assumptions, and ultimately strengthen our own thinking.
July 8 · 53 min
Are You Qualified to Challenge Your Team on AI? - with Geoff Woods, Author of The AI-Driven Leader
Geoff Woods returns to Beyond the Prompt to discuss the updated edition of The AI-Driven Leader and what has changed since his first appearance. The conversation explores why leaders need to use AI themselves rather than delegate it, how to think beyond AI "use cases," and why the biggest opportunity isn't adopting new tools but improving the way leaders think, make decisions, and shape strategy.
June 24 · 53 min
The Unexpected Economics of AGI - with Christian Catalini, Tech Founder and Co-Creator of Libra
Christian Catalini, tech founder, co-creator of Meta's Libra, and founder of Lightspark, joins Beyond the Prompt to explore the unexpected economics of AGI. Drawing on his recent paper, he argues that as AI makes intelligence increasingly abundant, value shifts to what can't easily be automated, measured, or verified. The conversation explores what becomes scarce when intelligence is cheap, why the doomers may be wrong, and how AI could unlock entirely new waves of scientific discovery and innov
June 10 · 1 hr 1 min
Why Fear Kills Curiosity and What That Means for AI - with Chantel Prat, Cognitive Neuroscientist
Chantel Prat, cognitive neuroscientist and author of The Neuroscience of You, joins Beyond the Prompt to explore why curiosity may be one of the most important skills in the age of AI. The conversation covers how brains learn, why people respond so differently to new technology, and why feeling threatened by AI can prevent the very learning needed to benefit from it.
May 27 · 56 min
Why Your Favorite Brand Stopped Caring About You - Eric Ries, Author of The Lean Startup
Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup and the newly released Incorruptible, joins Beyond the Prompt to argue that most founders misunderstand the most important decision they make: governance. As AI raises the stakes around power, trust, and control, Eric explains why companies drift from their original mission, why founders so often lose control of what they build, and why governance may be the highest leverage decision founders ignore.
May 13 · 54 min
You Can't Outsource Wisdom: Bestselling Author Ryan Holiday on What the Stoics Have to Say About AI
Ryan Holiday, bestselling author and writer on Stoicism, joins Beyond the Prompt to explore what the Stoics can teach us about living and working in the age of AI. As technology makes it easier to outsource thinking, writing, and decision-making, Ryan argues that wisdom still comes from doing the work yourself. The conversation explores cognitive offloading, agency, change, and why the defining skill of the AI era may be developing a finely tuned “bullshit detector.”
April 29 · 1 hr 6 min
Proof of Craft: What It Takes to Stand Out When Everything Looks Good - with Laura Jones, CMO of Instacart
Laura Jones, CMO of Instacart, joins Jeremy & Henrik on Beyond the Prompt to explore what happens to creativity when AI makes "pretty good" effortless. She shares why brand becomes a question of trust as products converge, how a data insight about bananas became both a product feature and a Super Bowl campaign, and why the best ideas still require human friction — not just human-bot dialogue.
April 15 · 1 hr 3 min
Nobody Is Getting New Manager Training for Their AI Team - with Dan Klein, UC Berkeley
Dan Klein, professor at UC Berkeley and CTO at Scaled Cognition, explains how today’s AI systems work in practice. He breaks down why they produce fluent answers that are often useful, but not always reliable, what the “jagged frontier” means, and why using AI well requires a new set of skills most people are still developing.
April 1 · 49 min
AI-Native or Not: The Defining Choice for Companies Right Now - with Melissa Cheals, CEO of Smartly
Melissa Cheals, CEO of Smartly, joins Henrik and Jeremy to explore what it really means to become an AI-native company—and why that decision is becoming unavoidable. From challenging $1M, 12-month product timelines to rethinking leadership, communication, and how teams work together, she shares how AI is forcing organizations to question long-held assumptions about how work gets done.
March 18 · 59 min
Greg Shove on Why Most Companies Are Not Seeing ROI On AI (yet)
Greg Shove, CEO of Section and Prof AI, joins Beyond the Prompt for the third time to discuss why most companies are not seeing meaningful ROI from AI and what enterprise AI adoption actually looks like today. While a small group of employees are already using AI to become more productive, organizations struggle to capture that value due to culture, incentives, and workflows that have not yet adapted. Greg describes how AI is breaking traditional capability boundaries, allowing individuals to ta
March 4 · 58 min
How to Subtract: The Most Underrated Skill of the AI Era - with Leidy Klotz
Leidy Klotz, professor at the University of Virginia and author of Subtract, joins Jeremy & Henrik on Beyond the Prompt to explore why we instinctively add rather than subtract when solving problems. From a simple Lego experiment to organizational design, he explains how additive bias leads teams to accumulate tools, meetings, and complexity over time. In the age of generative AI, where creating content and workflows is effortless, this tendency becomes amplified. The conversation explores how l
February 18 · 56 min
From Roadmaps to R&D: How AI Is Changing Product Development - with Richard White, Founder of Fathom AI
Richard White, founder and CEO of Fathom AI, joins Beyond the Prompt to discuss how generative AI is changing the way product teams plan and build. As model capabilities improve quickly, estimating effort and impact becomes harder, challenging traditional roadmap driven development. Richard explains why his team operates more like an R&D function, how they experiment with different models and use cases, and what it takes to build in a world where the underlying technology keeps evolving.
February 4 · 59 min
Here’s How to Know If You’re Getting the Most Out of AI – with Bryan McCann, CTO of You.com
Bryan McCann, CTO and co-founder of You.com, joins Beyond the Prompt to discuss how AI is changing the way people search for information, work day to day, and think about productivity. Drawing on his experience as an AI researcher, Bryan explains how he shifted from measuring productivity by writing code to focusing on making machines work continuously by “keeping the GPUs full,” and how that mindset applies to individuals, teams, and leaders.
January 21 · 58 min
Building An Enterprise AI Innovation Lab: A Master Class with Humza Teherany, Chief Strategy Officer of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment
Humza Teherany, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, joins Beyond the Prompt to unpack how AI is reshaping leadership, workflows, and company culture. He shares how returning to his technical roots changed his approach in the C-suite and why building hands-on is now a non-negotiable. From agentic development to idea competitions and instant prototyping, this episode is a masterclass in how to lead from both the boardroom and the command line.
January 6 · 56 min
Why AI Gets People Wrong: The Real Source of Insight with Anthropologist Mikkel B. Rasmussen
Mikkel B. Rasmussen, founder of the Human Activity Laboratory, joins Beyond the Prompt to explore what it really takes to understand people. Drawing on decades of applied anthropology, he shares why true insight requires surprise, struggle, and embodied experience. He also reveals how AI is already helping us get there. From LEGO to synthetic data, this episode is a masterclass in uncovering hidden assumptions and designing for real human behavior.
Dec 24, 2025 · 1 hr 9 min
How the World’s Leading AI-First Fashion House Flips the Cash Flow Equation - with Diarra Bousso
Diarra Bousso, founder of DIARRABLU, returns to share how AI is helping her reinvent the operating system of fashion. She explains how generative tools are not only streamlining production and eliminating waste, but also fueling creative joy, all while enabling her team to sell non-existent products, manage operations with scientific rigor, and experiment at scale. Diarra also opens up about her personal transformation, from surviving a traumatic accident to building a business rooted in learnin
Dec 9, 2025 · 54 min
The Future of AI with Illia Polosukhin: The Man Who Put the T in GPT
Illia Polosukhin, co author of Attention Is All You Need and founder of NEAR Protocol, joins Henrik and Jeremy to explore the origins of transformers, the evolution of AI inside Google, and why he believed a major step change was coming years before it arrived. He explains how blockchain can help create trust and provenance in a world where AI increasingly mediates information, and why personal AI ownership will matter as autonomous agents begin acting on our behalf. The conversation ranges from
Nov 27, 2025 · 45 min
AI’s Next Frontier: World Models Explained by Christian Keller
Christian Keller from Meta’s Superintelligence Lab joins Henrik and Jeremy to explain how world models help AI understand context, change, and cause and effect. He discusses why text alone captures only part of the picture, and how adding modalities like video can provide richer inputs. They explore how AI is now used to help train future models, how research workflows have evolved, and how personal experimentation often uncovers new possibilities.
Nov 11, 2025 · 53 min
How Science Suggests You Change Your Organization - with Prosci’s Tim Creasey and Paul Gonzalez
What makes organizational change so hard and why does AI make it even harder? Tim Creasey and Paul Gonzalez from Prosci join Jeremy and Henrik to unpack what 30 years of research reveals about transformation at scale. From bold leadership to cultural resistance, they explain why change always comes down to people, and what it actually takes to make new behaviors stick.
Oct 28, 2025 · 55 min
You Can’t Vibe Code a 100-Ton Truck: Inside Applied Intuition’s Approach to Safety-Critical AI
Most AI today lives on screens. But what happens when it runs a 100-ton truck, a fighter jet, or a fleet of defense vehicles? Applied Intuition’s co-founders Qasar Younis and Peter Ludwig join Jeremy and Henrik to unpack what it really takes to bring AI into the physical world. From safety-critical systems and autonomous fleets to the graveyard of companies that moved too fast, they reveal why building real-world AI requires a mindset rooted in precision, patience, and pragmatism.

Beyond The Prompt - How to use AI in your company

What You Can Learn From Asking AI for Brutal Honesty About Yourself - with Bestselling Author Daniel Pink

Are You Qualified to Challenge Your Team on AI? - with Geoff Woods, Author of The AI-Driven Leader

The Unexpected Economics of AGI - with Christian Catalini, Tech Founder and Co-Creator of Libra

Why Fear Kills Curiosity and What That Means for AI - with Chantel Prat, Cognitive Neuroscientist

Why Your Favorite Brand Stopped Caring About You - Eric Ries, Author of The Lean Startup

You Can't Outsource Wisdom: Bestselling Author Ryan Holiday on What the Stoics Have to Say About AI

Proof of Craft: What It Takes to Stand Out When Everything Looks Good - with Laura Jones, CMO of Instacart

Nobody Is Getting New Manager Training for Their AI Team - with Dan Klein, UC Berkeley

AI-Native or Not: The Defining Choice for Companies Right Now - with Melissa Cheals, CEO of Smartly

Greg Shove on Why Most Companies Are Not Seeing ROI On AI (yet)

How to Subtract: The Most Underrated Skill of the AI Era - with Leidy Klotz

From Roadmaps to R&D: How AI Is Changing Product Development - with Richard White, Founder of Fathom AI

Here’s How to Know If You’re Getting the Most Out of AI – with Bryan McCann, CTO of You.com

Building An Enterprise AI Innovation Lab: A Master Class with Humza Teherany, Chief Strategy Officer of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment

Why AI Gets People Wrong: The Real Source of Insight with Anthropologist Mikkel B. Rasmussen

How the World’s Leading AI-First Fashion House Flips the Cash Flow Equation - with Diarra Bousso

The Future of AI with Illia Polosukhin: The Man Who Put the T in GPT

AI’s Next Frontier: World Models Explained by Christian Keller

How Science Suggests You Change Your Organization - with Prosci’s Tim Creasey and Paul Gonzalez

You Can’t Vibe Code a 100-Ton Truck: Inside Applied Intuition’s Approach to Safety-Critical AI