Beyond Bleeding Edge with Amy Webb

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Beyond Bleeding Edge with Amy Webb" From the Ground Up – Inc. Magazine Podcast Release Date: August 11, 2025

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Introduction to Amy Webb and Her Expertise

In this episode of From the Ground Up, hosts Diana Ransom and Christine Lagorio-Chafkin engage in a profound conversation with Amy Webb, the founder and CEO of Future Today Strategy Group, a consulting firm specializing in strategic foresight. Amy, a renowned futurist, shares insights from her comprehensive 1,000-page Future Trends report presented at South By Southwest (SXSW).

Notable Quote:

"Strategic foresight has to bridge closer together with strategy to create forward-thinking approaches."
— Amy Webb (01:11)

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The 'Stone in Your Shoe' Metaphor for Cognitive Impairment

Amy introduces the "stone in your shoe" metaphor to illustrate how minor yet persistent issues can distract entrepreneurs and leaders from focusing on broader, more critical aspects of their businesses.

Key Points:

• Distraction from Minor Issues: Just as a small stone in one's shoe can shift attention away from the path ahead, minor crises can cause leaders to lose sight of long-term objectives.
• Cognitive Overload: Constant focus on immediate problems leads to cognitive strain, hindering effective decision-making and strategic planning.

Notable Quote:

"If you don't detach a little bit, you're going to miss what's coming and you're gonna start making terrible decisions."
— Amy Webb (04:00)

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Importance of Long-term Planning Amid Uncertainty

The discussion emphasizes the paradox where increased uncertainty leads to reduced planning, a trend that Amy argues against. She advocates for robust long-term strategic planning despite volatile environments.

Key Points:

• Shrinking Planning Cycles: Traditional long-term planning has been replaced by short-term, quarter-to-quarter strategies, leaving businesses perpetually reactive.
• Methodology Over Prediction: Amy stresses that planning isn't about predicting the future but preparing for various potential scenarios using rigorous methodologies and comprehensive research.

Notable Quote:

"Even during times of soul-crushing deep uncertainty, you still have to do the long-term planning."
— Amy Webb (06:05)

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Key Trends Highlighted in Webb's Report

Amy Webb delves into several critical trends shaping the future, providing actionable insights for entrepreneurs and business leaders.

1. Beyond Agentic AI

While agentic AI—AI systems executing individual tasks autonomously—remains a buzzword, Amy highlights the broader scope of AI's evolution beyond mere automation.

Key Points:

• Beyond Buzzwords: Focus should shift from trendy terms like "agentic AI" to understanding the underlying data systems and applications.
• Large Action Models: These models predict actions and behaviors, essential for applications in medicine, robotics, and beyond, surpassing the capabilities of large language models.

Notable Quote:

"AI has a very long evolutionary track and it's a very long horizon technology."
— Amy Webb (13:29)

2. Supply Chain and Automation

Supply chain resilience and automation are paramount as they impact virtually every industry. Entrepreneurs must prioritize these areas to ensure business continuity and efficiency.

Key Points:

• Essential Fundamentals: Tracking supply chain dynamics and leveraging automation can provide a competitive edge.
• Broader Implications: These trends are foundational, affecting everything from inventory management to global logistics.

3. Diminished Reality vs. Metaverse

Contrasting with the often-overhyped metaverse, diminished reality—technology that reduces or alters perceived information—offers versatile applications across various sectors.

Key Points:

• Practical Applications: Diminished reality can enhance industries by streamlining information and reducing cognitive overload.
• Beyond Hype: Unlike the metaverse, which remains a nebulous concept, diminished reality presents tangible benefits for startups and established businesses alike.

Notable Quote:

"Rather than tracking the metaverse, something like diminished reality would be very impactful for lots of different startups and founders."
— Amy Webb (09:54)

4. Enhanced Games and Human Augmentation

Amy discusses the controversial rise of enhanced games, where technology is used to create superhuman athletes through gene editing and other advancements.

Key Points:

• Ethical Implications: The development of superhumans for gladiator-style competitions raises significant societal and ethical questions.
• Entrepreneurial Opportunities: While presenting new market spaces, these advancements also challenge existing regulatory and moral frameworks.

Notable Quote:

"They’re literally just, they’re out of the closet making superhumans now."
— Amy Webb (14:33)

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Discussion on the Evolution of Technology Terminology

Amy reflects on how certain technological terms, such as "Web 2.0," have become obsolete as technologies mature and integrate seamlessly into daily life.

Key Points:

• Terminology Evolution: Just as "Web 2.0" is no longer a common term, current technologies like large language models may soon become part of the standard technological lexicon without needing specific labels.
• Omnipresence of Technology: As technologies advance and become ubiquitous, the necessity to label them diminishes, reflecting their integration into the fabric of society.

Notable Quote:

"When was the last time you used HTTP in a sentence? We don't say it anymore. It's implied because it describes how much that technology has evolved."
— Amy Webb (13:29)

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Strategic Foresight and Its Importance for Entrepreneurs

Amy elaborates on strategic foresight—a disciplined approach to anticipating and preparing for future uncertainties.

Key Points:

• Definition: Strategic foresight involves using rigorous methodologies and extensive research to understand and navigate future trends and uncertainties.
• Application for Founders: Entrepreneurs should not only monitor competitors but also identify adjacent signals and broader value networks to position their businesses for long-term resilience and success.
• Integration within Organizations: Companies can establish dedicated foresight divisions to inform executive decisions, talent management, and product development.

Notable Quote:

"The idea here isn't to predict exact futures, it's to be ready for anything."
— Amy Webb (17:19)

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Leading a Company Through Uncertain Times

The conversation concludes with strategies for founders to lead effectively amidst the current climate of rapid and simultaneous inflection points across technology, geopolitics, and economics.

Key Points:

• Embracing Flexibility: Leaders must maintain a clear vision of their long-term goals while remaining adaptable in their strategies to navigate unforeseen challenges.
• Emotional Resilience: Managing a business during chaotic times requires emotional strength and steadfastness to continue driving forward despite setbacks.
• Investor Relations: Founders should be prepared for pressure from investors to adapt quickly, emphasizing the importance of maintaining strategic foresight to justify decisions amidst volatility.

Notable Quote:

"It's the most important time to use foresight to continue working forward at that."
— Amy Webb (21:40)

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Conclusion

Amy Webb's insights underscore the necessity for entrepreneurs to adopt strategic foresight, embrace long-term planning, and remain adaptable in the face of relentless change. By focusing beyond immediate distractions and understanding broader trends, founders can position their businesses to thrive amidst uncertainty.

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Notable Quotes Overview:

1. "Strategic foresight has to bridge closer together with strategy to create forward-thinking approaches." — Amy Webb (01:11)
2. "If you don't detach a little bit, you're going to miss what's coming and you're gonna start making terrible decisions." — Amy Webb (04:00)
3. "Even during times of soul-crushing deep uncertainty, you still have to do the long-term planning." — Amy Webb (06:05)
4. "AI has a very long evolutionary track and it's a very long horizon technology." — Amy Webb (13:29)
5. "Rather than tracking the metaverse, something like diminished reality would be very impactful for lots of different startups and founders." — Amy Webb (09:54)
6. "They’re literally just, they’re out of the closet making superhumans now." — Amy Webb (14:33)
7. "When was the last time you used HTTP in a sentence? We don't say it anymore. It's implied because it describes how much that technology has evolved." — Amy Webb (13:29)
8. "The idea here isn't to predict exact futures, it's to be ready for anything." — Amy Webb (17:19)
9. "It's the most important time to use foresight to continue working forward at that." — Amy Webb (21:40)

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the essence of Amy Webb's discussion on strategic foresight, emerging technological trends, and leadership amidst uncertainty, providing valuable takeaways for entrepreneurs and business leaders aiming to navigate the complex future landscape.

Transcript

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[Josh Christensen]

I'm Josh Christensen, executive producer of Inc. Podcasts, and welcome to from the Ground Up. In this conversation, Diana Ransom spoke with Amy Webb, the founder of Future Today Institute, a, a consulting firm specializing in strategic foresight. They discuss Amy's presentation on a report her company released on Future Trends. The importance of not focusing too much on one task or project to the detriment of others and preparing for uncertainty. Enjoy.

[Diana Ransom]

Okay, well, thank you. This is everyone. Everyone, everyone, we're so excited. This is Amy Webb and we're so thrilled to have you here. Amy is a futurist. She's the founder and CEO of a company called Future Today Strategy Group. Thank you for being here.

[Amy Webb]

Thank you for having me.

[Diana Ransom]

So, Amy, your company has actually changed names, right? As of two days ago.

[Amy Webb]

As of two days ago.

[Diana Ransom]

As of two days ago. Okay. Congratulations.

[Amy Webb]

Thank you.

[Diana Ransom]

What prompted the change?

[Amy Webb]

So I think there is sort of a misconception in organizations about what foresight is and does. Years ago, foresight and strategy were the same discipline. And over the years, foresight really became more about pontificating and predictifying and things like that. And it really became divorced from strategy, which became very short term. So part of what we are trying to signal is foresight and strategy, which we've always done. Strategic foresight has to bridge closer together. So it's more just sort of putting more. Yeah, exactly.

[Diana Ransom]

That's great. Well, I caught your talk. So Amy does this almost every year, maybe 17th or 18th year at south by revealing your Future Trends report. I caught it on Saturday and apparently this report is 1000 pages long.

[Amy Webb]

1000 pages on the nose.

[Diana Ransom]

That's right, on the nose. Incredible. So that's a lot. You should all internalize it and read it and really take it into account. But during your talk, you said something that really sort of stuck with me is this concept of using a block. And you had everybody in the audience sit on the block. And it was about. It's like a metaphor for this stone in your shoe concept. And I wonder if you could kind of take us through that right now. Obviously you don't need to spend a ton of time on it, but sure, sure.

[Amy Webb]

So I think everybody at some point has had a small stone in your shoe. And when that happens, it's not life threatening, but when that happens, it draws your attention away from everything else. And all you can think about is that small irritant in your shoe. And it creates a cognitive challenge. Your brain starts laser focusing on that one thing and you start to lose sight of the other things you would normally be paying attention to. So this stone in your shoe effect really describes what's happening right now in business and in government, where we are laser focused on every single different tiny little thing that's happening, whether that's the latest who did what in the White House, or the latest what's happening with AI. And some of these things are important, some of them are less important, but it describes the sort of frazzled nature. And what I was trying to show was, yes, you want to focus on the stone in your shoe, but you have to zoom back out because some of these current stones in our shoes we can't get rid of. And the problem for founders and for investors especially and for businesses is that if you don't detach a little bit, you're going to miss what's coming and you're gonna start making terrible decisions, which is exactly what happens when we're focused like that.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah, I think that's something that would resonate with a lot of entrepreneurs in the room. Just generally speaking, we're all, I mean, you're all putting out fires all the time. You're not necessarily. What's the idea is you're working in the business, not on the business. And so this is pretty common. But I guess the idea is that it's happening more.

[Amy Webb]

It is, but I've got a really great example. So I was with a bunch of investors in a meeting. Investors and bankers and some folks on the day that Deep Seq, the news about Deep Seq came out and we're in a closed door meeting and I saw one person's head goes down and another person, they're looking at their phone suddenly. And I was like, one of us turned off our phone the way we were supposed to. So what is everybody looking at? Right? What just happened? And the next people were like, hey, there's this thing called Deep Seq. It's Chinese, it's an AI and they built it for free. And it didn't take any compute. And should we dump Nvidia? Oh, no, literally. And I'm like, no, if I was you, I would not. I'm not here to give investment advice. But what's wrong with you? No, you don't dump Nvidia. And then some of them did. Yeah, but this describes the current situation that we are in, which is it feels like so much is happening all the Time it feels like everybody's missing everything, that people are making the wrong decisions. And again, that's part of this cognitive impairment that I think everybody is dealing with. For entrepreneurs. Yeah, you have to focus on the business and build the business and everything else. For investors you need to make the right decisions. But ultimately everybody has to zoom out now and again and see what else is happening out there, you know, so you're not just focused on every single second.

[Diana Ransom]

Right. This idea of planning during uncertainty is really, really vital, I imagine.

[Amy Webb]

Sure. So paradoxically, the more uncertainty there is, the less planning that happens.

[Diana Ransom]

I bet.

[Amy Webb]

And.

[Diana Ransom]

But that's because you don't know how to plan. You don't know what the future is.

[Amy Webb]

Everybody knows how to. Planning is not a hard thing to do. There's a method if you have a methodology and you know how to do research.

[Diana Ransom]

I'm going to ask you about future.

[Amy Webb]

I'll be happy to tell you. But the. But, but before we were living through these poly crises, companies used to do the longer term planning. And they should. But those planning cycles have shrunk from a decade to five years. Two years is like the distant Star Trek future for a lot of companies. For the most part it's quarter to quarter. And if that is the cycle that you are stuck in, you are always going to be behind. Always. So even during times of soul crushing deep uncertainty, which describes where we are right now, you still have to do the long term planning.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah. So speaking of trends and what to look out for, you kindly summarized a portion of trends in your talk. I think you identified about 10 of them. One of them was about colonizing space and how a new economy is going to start up between the moon and the Earth. That's fascinating and I want to hear more. But I also wonder based on those, those trends, what are some that you think are really relevant for entrepreneurs or maybe even more near term than the others?

[Amy Webb]

Well, the first thing I'll say about trends is that trends aren't trendy. And a lot of people get confused about the purpose that a trend would serve. A trend is longitudinal and it describes what we can know in the present. You have to combine what we can know with what we can't know. Those are uncertainties. Those are areas over which no one entity has total control. So the economy for. I mean right now nobody has control. Maybe tomorrow, I don't know. There was one of you saw the news earlier today about inflation. Separate conversation. We'll have another time.

[Diana Ransom]

I've been Founders house all day. By the way I have not.

[Amy Webb]

There was a crazy, crazy answer that Trump gave this morning when asked about inflation. There was no teleprompter. You saw this, right? There's no teleprompter. So he's totally off script. And he literally said, maybe inflation and the markets took a nosedive.

[Diana Ransom]

Wow.

[Amy Webb]

So you can look at that up. That's fun. You can look that up later on. But you asked me about what do you do with a trend or what trends are.

[Diana Ransom]

What trends might be the more relevant ones.

[Amy Webb]

So it depends on where you are. So in our tech trends report, these are all long term. It's 1,000 pages long, there's 700 trends. Some of that's analysis and scenarios and things. And they're divided into different industries. So I think probably everybody at this point needs to be somewhat aware of what's happening in AI. I know everybody is very excited about agentic AI. They love to talk about that. But there is a life beyond agentic AI.

[Diana Ransom]

Can you tell us what that is, please?

[Amy Webb]

So it's just a buzzword. It basically means having individual smaller systems doing tasks for you. But it sounds cool when agent.

[Diana Ransom]

You can customize it.

[Amy Webb]

Yes. But now we're calling it agentic AI and that's a whole thing. And if you're a founder and you need to pivot, just pivot to whatever your name is, agentic AI. And you'll have the money. But how the systems are taking in data and what the data ingestion systems are, that matters for any business, regardless of what kind of business you are. So I would look at that. I would also probably be paying attention to things related to supply chain, which really impacts everybody. And some of that has to do with automation, some of it has to do with tracking. So those are the fundamentals that matter to every business for us. Blockchain stuff, metaversey stuff. Less important.

[Diana Ransom]

I was thinking that you have a whole. I mean, obviously Metaverse is still there.

[Amy Webb]

Sure. But we don't really. We refer to these as metaverse technologies versus the metaverse itself. So something like diminished reality, which is instead of augmenting or adding to information, it's taking it away. There's an enormous. I mean, that has wide applications across so many different industries. So rather than tracking the metaverse, which I wouldn't bother with, something like diminished reality, would be very impactful for lots of different startups and founders.

[Diana Ransom]

Yeah. There is also this thing about action models overtaking language models.

[Amy Webb]

Yeah.

[Diana Ransom]

And that somehow jumped out at me. I mean, seems pretty actionable. You know. So can you give us an idea of how, like how that would, how that plays out and what that looks like?

[Amy Webb]

Sure. So a large action model is built to describe what we might say, say next or write next. So that's useful to some degree. But a large action model describes what we might do next or what the behavior might be, what the action might be. And that's important because at the moment the AI models that we have can like replicate writing and they do that fast. It's not necessarily great, but it works. It's not, I mean it wouldn't replace what you do. It doesn't replace, from my point of view, it doesn't replace journalism at all. But for there to be application for AI in medicine in, you know, I'm trying, like eyewear, you know, basically any other area that any founder, you know, might be interested in, you need more than that text. And so that's where the large action model comes into play.

[Josh Christensen]

We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, Amy explains to Diana why we don't talk about the word web 2.0 anymore.

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[Amy Webb]

You remember, do you remember like the Web 2.0? Oh yeah, right. When's the last time you Talked about Web 2.0?

[Diana Ransom]

I mean, I kind of. No, it's been a while.

[Amy Webb]

It's been a while. Right. Because it just is. Right. So we don't talk about the Web 2.0 anymore.

[Diana Ransom]

We do it in headlines a lot. So it kind of still. Yeah, it's like something 2.0, but I'm.

[Amy Webb]

Specifically talking about the Internet. So web 2.0. Well, so. Yeah, exactly. Right. So this would have described that was a big thing at south by about 10 years ago. So Four Square, the social media, social platforms went into the sort of Web 2.0 idea that just describes how the Internet is now. We don't actually use that word anymore to the point where like if I say that to a lot of people, they don't, they don't even know what I'm talking about. So when we talk about large language models, I think in A couple of years, we won't be talking about them at all. You know what I mean?

[Diana Ransom]

So like they'll just be omnipresent and.

[Amy Webb]

We just like nobody. Like when was the last time you used HTTP in a sentence? Right. We don't say it anymore. It's implied because it describes how much that technology has evolved. So I know that large language models feel like the big thing right now and so does agentic AI. But AI has a very long evolutionary track and it's a very long horizon technology. So again this is really important because you have to track what the things that come next. So large action models and I could go on and on. There's multi agent systems and there's a whole new protocol that describes the interplay between AI and robotics and sensors. That's sort of like the HTTP for this new robotics AI ecosystem. And on and on.

[Diana Ransom]

I mean you. I love that you mentioned the ENHANCE games in your talk.

[Amy Webb]

I am fascinated by the enhanced games.

[Diana Ransom]

ENHANCE gains is crazy. Have you all heard about this? Amy, tell us.

[Amy Webb]

Gladly. So I don't even remember where I heard about this. It was a total accidental click. So I follow no sports with balls or any. Right. So my only. I'm a, I race, I'm a cyclist, I compete. The only sport that I pay attention to is pro cycling, which I know is gonna shock everybody, but it's been plagued by doping over the years and I know other sports, same thing. So. And it's, you know, whatever you're looking at these athletes and it's not fun to know that like they're winning because they're taking steroids or whatever. So imagine my surprise, delight, horror when I find this website that's called so it's advertising the enhanced games. And the point of this is to get athletes to get jacked up, to take tons of steroids and to do research. This is totally true research on human enhancement, gene editing, whatever it takes. Enhance basically create superhumans to the point where you can still send them out to compete. They don't die probably that's what this is. And who's founded this? It's like VCs and tech bros who are like, let's go. So they're literally out. They're just, they're out of the closet making superhumans now. And there's a gladiator style games where they're all gonna compete against each other at some point this year.

[Diana Ransom]

I can't. This is like must see tv. Frankly I can't wait.

[Amy Webb]

I could not make this up right but it does beg the question, so now what? We've moved beyond the sort of rules that the way society has always operated. So on the one hand, if you're an entrepreneur, you're like, cool giant, new white space for me, potentially. But on the other side of this, what does this mean going forward?

[Diana Ransom]

Right. For society in general. I know you teach an entire class about this, but I wonder if you could kind of talk to us a little bit about strategic foresight. And as an entrepreneur, business owner, you're thinking like, okay, I can tell something's going to happen, but how do you know how to plan for something if you can suspect something's happening? What is strategic foresight?

[Amy Webb]

Sure. So I developed and teach a course at NYU Stern. So it's an MBA class on strategic foresight. And I know that when you're a founder, you are literally just trying to keep the lights on. You're just trying to keep your head down and keep things moving. I too at one point was a founder. So I founded my company 20 years ago. I took no investment. We just brute force grew the thing. No debt, no investment.

[Diana Ransom]

Congratulations.

[Amy Webb]

Thank you. So if any of you are on the fence, it can be done. You just have to have a strong stomach and a spouse who doesn't divorce you when the going gets done. So what is strategic foresight? There's sort of a max and a min model. On the face of it. It is using a rigorous methodology along with a lot of data and research to track how things are moving and ultimately create strategies that are forward thinking. So the idea here isn't to predict exact futures, it's to be ready for anything. And on the min side of that, as a founder, what that means is not just tracking what your competitors are doing, it's looking for adjacent signals to your company or your product or whatever it is that you're doing so that you are ready to figure out what that value chain is, the value network that you operate in, and where you're going to play, win and be resilient. On the Mac side of things, there are companies that we work with that have entire divisions that do foresight, that are situated horizontally across the company, that do everything from helping executive leadership teams know the right time to make a decision about something, to informing the pipeline for talent and hiring and development, to new product development and so forth and so on. Wow.

[Diana Ransom]

Obviously it's a big topic and you teach an entire class about it, so I'm grateful you went through that with us. Now you also, in your talk, you talked about you mentioned this quote from Vladimir Lenin, the Russian revolutionary.

[Amy Webb]

Can we give some context, though? So you're not just like, Amy Webb loves those communists?

[Diana Ransom]

No, I'm gonna give the comments. So the idea is that. So there's this quote where he says, like, there are decades where that feel like nothing happens, and then there are weeks that feel like decades, and, you know, the last six or seven weeks have just happened. And it feels like a lot of change all at once. And so that quote feels very apt right now. And I'd just love to have you kind of talk to us about, you know, leading a company through uncertain times like this.

[Amy Webb]

Sure. And just what it looked like I was gonna do was start with a quote from John Lennon, and then I switched it up and quoted Vlad instead. So. So part of what we're experiencing, I think, is a sort of stochastic nature of these moments in history where there's a lot of inflection points all happening at the same time. So we've got inflection points in technology. We have very quickly changing global order in terms of geopolitics. We have economic uncertainty in ways that maybe it doesn't map to what we've seen historically. So this creates a lot of chaos. And as a business person, as a founder, that type of uncertainty is really tricky because oftentimes you're just skirting by. And if there's one tiny screw up in the supply chain or like some, you know, if you're in California, good luck. The regulatory landscape there is tough because you've got federal and state fighting each other. And it's similar. Similar story in different countries. And again, this is to bring it back to the stone in the shoe thing. You have to maintain sort of a focus on the farther future. And it's more important than ever to know exactly where you're going and to be. To be somewhat flexible on how you're going to get to that place, which I think is a place where a lot of founders mess up. Either they're trying to go in this linear from here to there, and if we have to falter, then things fall apart, or there's a quick pivot or the worst part, investors get itchy and they want to see a change, and there's going to be a lot of that right now because there's so many factors that seem to be changing at once. So it's an emotional time, but it's the most important time to use foresight to continue working forward at that.

[Diana Ransom]

Amy, thank you so much. That's all the time we have.

[Amy Webb]

Thank you.

[Diana Ransom]

Appreciate it.

[Josh Christensen]

That's all for this episode of from the Ground Up. Our producers are Blake Odom and Avery Miles, with help from Sam Gabauer and Hawa Ottori. Editing by Matt Toder. Mix and sound design by Nicholas Torres. If you haven't already, subscribe to all Ink podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.