“Change is inevitable; growth is optional.” — John C. Maxwell A lot has happened in the world of AI since I first published AI: Achieving Impact in March 2025 (https://a.co/d/9rzPWNb). This started as an effort to share lessons learned with friends and colleagues and became an incredible journey. The book itself was a casual exercise in learning by doing, but became an Amazon best seller and resulted in many meaningful, very human, interactions. Through friends and mentors like Andrew Lang, James Kaplan, John Ratzan, Keith Ferrazzi, Nick Shaw, Jen Nash, ICF PCC, Noelle Russell, Rory Horan, Allen Nathan, Christie Aerameli, • Robert Field, Lari Konfidan, Kathleen Wrynn, George Stevens, Tomas Thire, Jason Demby, Jeanine Bortel, Gary Sorrentino, Thomas Wonica, CISSP, MS, MBA and many others; I learned about publishing, promotion, and what it means to be a more public thought leader. The book has been published in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, Australia, Japan, the Netherlands, Italy, and India. As such, people have taken selfies with the book around the world. Most impressive has been my daughter’s friend, Timothy Honey, who brought the book across Asia: from San Francisco Airport to Taipei 101, Cambodia, Vietnam, Tokyo nightlife, Kyoto, and even the top of Mount Fuji. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who contributed to, reviewed, bought, recommended, and shared the book. My serious AI work began back in 2018 while helping enable a global bank to achieve better outcomes through the use of AI. But the last year has been such a dynamic time for AI. Given all of this change, I academically felt compelled to update the book. Since March 2025: • Reasoning models became the standard, with benchmark scores on advanced math tests reportedly jumping from ~46% to ~95%. • AI coding tools evolved from autocomplete assistants into semi-autonomous software engineers, with SWE-bench performance more than doubling. • Context windows expanded from ~128K tokens to 1M+ token production environments. • Agentic AI became operationally practical, capable of executing workflows across browsers, APIs, terminals, and filesystems. • Native multimodal AI became mainstream, integrating text, audio, images, PDFs, and video into single systems. • Open-source models like Llama, DeepSeek, and Qwen rapidly closed the gap with proprietary labs. • AI costs dropped dramatically while performance increased. • Enterprises shifted from experimentation to deploying AI as core infrastructure. • Benchmarks accelerated at a historic pace across reasoning, coding, and science. • The conversation shifted from chatbots to AI coworkers. What’s encouraging is that I didn’t need to fundamentally change the approach. The framework for incorporating innovation into an enterprise still holds. What changed was the scale, speed, and capability of the technology itself. We are still incredibly early in the supercycle that is AI. I can’t wait to see what the next year brings. #continuouslearning
This really resonates. Continuous learning feels less like a concept and more like a daily operating model now - especially with how fast AI is reshaping work and leadership. I haven’t read the book yet, but I’m already very interested based on this post and the comments. I fully agree with the idea of AI now being a co-worker, and I see this daily in practice. It genuinely feels like it took organisations a long time to recognise this shift and fully embrace what was already possible - moving from seeing AI as just a tool to actually treating it as part of the team. In many cases, there was a strong focus on policies and governance first, which slowed down adoption and practical experimentation.
Congratulations on the update! The stat that stands out most to me is the shift from experimentation to core infrastructure. That is exactly what I’m living with my clients right now. The technology moved faster than most organizations anticipated, but the behavioral and cultural work? That’s still the hardest part. Capability is no longer the bottleneck. Your point about the framework holding is so important. The principles of helping people embrace change haven’t changed. The stakes and the speed have.
The fact that this framework still feels ahead of the curve despite the staggering pace of AI evolution says a lot. What stands out to me is that it approaches AI not merely as a powerful technology, but as a fundamental rethinking of how organizations operate, make decisions, and create value, where humans and AI work in synergy, complementing each other’s strengths to unlock better outcomes for businesses and humanity alike. Excited for what’s next & Best Wishes John Napoli 😊
Congratulations on the continued impact of the book John Napoli. Well deserved. The speed of change in #AI over the last year has been incredible, but your point is the most important one: the enterprise framework still holds. That is the part many organizations miss. AI is not just a technology deployment. It is a leadership, governance, operating model, and culture challenge. The tools will keep getting better. The models will keep getting faster and cheaper. But the real differentiator will be whether companies can turn AI into business value while maintaining trust, security, and human judgment. AI is #appliedimagination.
Appreciate the grounded approach focused on the realities of adoption, leadership, and execution, not just the technology itself. Incredible to see how much the capabilities evolved in just a year while the core framework still holds true. Ready for your next book, John Napoli 😊 I’d love to hear your experience and insights around leading organizations where AI coworkers become embedded into how work gets done and how accountability is realized.
What a journey! Amazing the speed and scale of it all and a real compliment your foundational thesis still holds despite such dramatic transformation!
The shift from experimentation to core infrastructure is the most significant thing happening in enterprise AI right now. A year ago most companies were running pilots with no real accountability for outcomes. Now AI is sitting inside critical workflows and the stakes are completely different.
Incredible John Napoli. Thought leaders like you are helping entrepreneurs like me understand the power of AI and its practical application to enterprises and small businesses.. Your quote reflects the tremendous change that is happening before our eyes. Love it brother - congrats on your success and being generous with your knowledge. 💪
Congrats. Wow, this really something! It’s great to see how the book has circulated so widely and how you’re enjoying the journey. Can’t wait to get my copy and learn from you!
I reiterate my question about when you sleep!