Brett StClair is a pioneering voice among today’s leading artificial intelligence speakers, known for translating complex digital shifts into actionable business strategies. A former Google and Barclays executive turned entrepreneur, Brett StClair has spent over two decades at the forefront of tech-driven innovation—helping businesses not just adapt, but thrive in the age of automation.
As one of the UK’s most sought-after technology speakers and a trusted advisor to corporate leaders, Brett brings a dynamic perspective on how AI, digital transformation, and agile leadership are reshaping industries.
In this exclusive interview with Champions Speakers Agency, the inspirational leadership speaker shares candid insights on what it takes to futureproof an organisation, the speed imperative behind AI adoption, and why disruption has become an essential mindset—not a risk to be avoided.
Q: With AI advancing at pace, what practical steps should business leaders take now to futureproof their organisations?
Brett StClair: “In order to be able to futureproof your organisation, you need to know what’s going to happen in the future. Previously, businesses spent five to ten years literally planning ahead: “What will the next five years look like? How will we put plans in for the next ten years?” I’d love to go back and speak to those businesses that had a ten-year plan that was put in place five years ago. I bet that plan is extremely different.
“The objectives might have been reached, but how they achieved those objectives are going to be vastly different. And we’re only seeing an acceleration of that. In fact, what we’re seeing is: if you’ve got a plan to deploy AI in your business over the next three years—well, that’s just too slow. You need to be thinking about what you can do in the next year.
“Now, if you’re going to really look forward, the only real light that we’re starting to see that is going to be for certain are two things—and the combination of those two. The first is: every human will end up having their own personalised AI.
“It will be as ubiquitous as a mobile phone in all our pockets. Now, if every human is going to have their own AI, then every business will have its own AI. And it might start with a proliferation of AI doing different things—different models, different tools within the organisation—but over time, it will amalgamate into one AI source, one large language model for that business.
“And so, if we know that each individual will each have their own AI, how does that impact the world of marketing? How do we market as businesses now to personalised AIs? How do our personalised AIs know what’s good for us, and what products it could be purchasing for us?
“It becomes an incredibly exciting time. Picture all those to-do lists that you used to have to get your head around, plan for the day—and whoever executed those to-do lists were deemed successful. Well, actually, AI will now do those to-do lists for you.
“And if AI is doing those to-do lists, and you’re the business on the other end of it—how are you responding? How are you automating those experiences? It’s no longer about building fabulous experiences for humans, but building fabulous experiences for humans and their AI counterparts.”
Q: As companies rush to adopt AI tools, what structural or cultural challenges are most likely to impede successful implementation?
Brett StClair: “Speed. Speed is possibly the number one—not just by a few centimetres when crossing that finish line, but it is metres ahead of every other challenge. What artificial intelligence is proving to us is that not only is the technology accelerating faster than we’ve ever seen before—in fact, it’s no longer Moore’s Law but Moore’s Snail Pace Law. Eighteen months for processing power to double—that’s way too slow.
“When you add software engineering into the space, you’re doubling that pace of output or the pace of innovation. Now we’re adding artificial intelligence—multiply that by a thousandfold over. We’re already seeing it with the number of large language models that are in the market.
“There are now tens of thousands of large language models, which are incredibly expensive to compute, need vast sums of data—and yet still it’s accelerating faster than we’ve ever seen before. That is resulting in this plethora of AI tools. These AI tools can solve any productivity issue—whether it’s in your personal life or whether it’s in your business life.
“And so, speed is the big differentiator. And so, if we know that AI is going to disrupt us, and it’s not going to be our business being disrupted by AI but another human or another business—the question is: how fast is your business moving? How fast is your business adapting to this change? Have you got your data assets in check and ready to be consumed, assessed by AI? Do you understand the problems that you need to solve?
“I’m so passionate about the speed of change—I’ve developed a one-day course to get you started in one day, because it’s no longer about waiting years to make the change, to take that first step. It’s no longer about waiting months when you’ve been to an event or gone to a workshop and you’re back at work and you know you have months to respond. Why? Because it’s not the Googles or the Facebooks that are going to disrupt you. It’s not the industry—it’s the competitor that is literally your neighbour.
“What have they been doing? Well, whatever they’ve been doing—they started yesterday. Have you started yet? Speed is hands down the biggest challenge for businesses.”
Q: You’ve spoken about the ‘disrupt or be disrupted’ era—how can organisations proactively embrace disruption rather than fall victim to it?
Brett StClair: “Well, especially in the era of AI, we’ve all heard of the term: it is not AI that will disrupt humans and society, but it will be the humans that use AI to disrupt others who are not. And so that’s becoming a very plausible term that we’re seeing more and more. Where to start? How do we start this disruption?
“Most businesses don’t want to change because of the pain that’s involved. So they’re looking for a return on investment—that in return needs to be a tenfold return, because the pain they’re going to face is vast. This moment in time is bringing on a huge ability for us to use AI to get that tenfold improvement. And that tenfold improvement is really coming through productivity.
“And so, this disruption that we’re seeing—this fear of being disrupted—is truly being empowered by one technology, and that technology is artificial intelligence.”
