When we launched UnBPO^TM earlier this year, we challenged the fundamental assumptions of our industry. The response was immediate: business leaders didn’t debate whether transformation was necessary; they asked how to actually make it happen.

That question, the gap between vision and execution, is what this edition explores.

I’m struck by how different industries are discovering the same truth. In financial services, banks realize that deploying AI in isolated pockets creates local efficiency but not enterprise intelligence. In business services, we’re finding that automation doesn’t eliminate human expertise; it reshapes where that expertise matters most.

These aren’t separate trends. They’re different expressions of the same shift: from optimizing individual processes to orchestrating entire ecosystems.

Most organizations can articulate where they need to go. They can demonstrate promising pilots. Yet transformation efforts stall before delivering sustainable value. The problem isn’t vision or technology, it’s mindset: the ability to think differently about how intelligence can be leveraged, to reimagine what’s possible when AI becomes the foundation of everything we do, to redesign workflows around human-AI collaboration, and to build organizations that learn and adapt continuously.

This edition explores transformation through three lenses: the strategic (understanding why traditional approaches fail), the operational (building systems that actually work), and the practical (seeing these principles applied in banking and financial services).

In Amar’s article, he shares a story that crystallized this shift for me. One of our recent hires, someone who joined to handle customer interactions, taught herself to code using AI and solved a client problem in days. This isn’t a miracle; it’s what happens when you create conditions for emergence: accessible tools, psychological safety, domain expertise, and clear problems to solve. It’s the AI-first mindset in action.

As you read, ask yourself: Are we optimizing or reimagining? Are we treating AI as a tool to improve what exists, or as a foundation to create entirely new value? Are we measuring efficiency gains or growth opportunities? What ecosystem do we need to succeed?

The organizations that figure out how to cultivate an AI-first mindset, to make AI their organizational operating system, to connect intelligence across the enterprise, to partner humans and AI effectively, and to adapt continuously, won’t just survive the next decade. They’ll define it.

Let’s build that future together.