Spoiler alert. It is not about their size. One of the most dangerous traps for corporations is to consume the idea of disruption, without internalizing it. They redesign their offices and add more open-plan spaces; they upgrade their technology and give their employees new collaboration tools; they sponsor a startup accelerator and create an innovation division in a separate office. Fast forward a few years, and nothing has changed. Why?

Here's the story of how Steve Jobs tricked you. When Jobs delivered his keynote address at the Macworld Conference & Expo in 2007, he pretended to be introducing three products: a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough Internet communications device. You know the ending: these were not three separate devices; they were one device, and he called it an iPhone. But Jobs's real trick was yet to come.

We can be so focused on robots replacing humans, that we miss the essential problem of preserving organizational knowledge. The future of work is more than just automation. One of the most significant opportunities for AI in the enterprise is using it to understand the heuristics, practices, and tacit knowledge exhibited by our best people - before they leave or retire. Especially now. Given the current crisis, finding better ways to define and retain talent patterns has never been more critical.

The latest round of antitrust hearings has been a high drama distraction from the pandemic. But while parading the CEOs of Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon before Congress provided ample opportunities for both sides of politics to score points in an election year - it also highlighted just how different competition has become in the 21st century. Obvious questions were asked about personal data, political bias, and predatory pricing - but more interesting were those brief glimpses of how the leaders of the world's biggest tech companies really think. If the antitrust hearings proved one thing, it is that the right data can allow you to reframe the rules of marketplaces, precisely target acquisitions, and make oblique strategic moves. And therein lies the problem: just how exactly do you regulate a different way of thinking?

Over the last few months, leaders have had a chance to respond to the impact of COVID-19. Plans for contactless service, process automation, remote work, Cloud infrastructure, and virtualization have been accelerated and implemented. While many businesses have closed and millions lost their jobs - many more have transformed and survived. That's all good news. But now we find ourselves at a precarious point. To call this brief respite from chaos - a 'new normal' - is to invite inevitable defeat. The only question that matters now is: where do we go from here? Without a new plan for the future, we may discover that the real crisis is yet to come.