Talks

Under the Hood of Agentic AI: an executive primer

A working lunch for INSEAD alumni on what agentic AI actually is, shown live from the real coding environment. Twenty minutes of talk, seventy-five minutes of questions.

24 June 2026 · Geneva · 1 min read

On 24 June 2026 I ran a working lunch for the INSEAD Alumni Association Switzerland, Geneva Chapter: "Under the Hood of Agentic AI: An Executive Primer", at the Novotel Genève Centre, hosted by Ricardo Arce and the chapter committee.

My html slides are here: https://insead.sambourton.ai/

The premise: most executives are treating agentic AI as an infrastructure decision and delegating it to IT. That is a mistake. Every choice in AI carries trade-offs in strategy, operations, organisational design and talent, so the strategic question is not "are we using AI" but where on the spectrum from prompting to goal-seeking agents your organisation actually sits.

Four parts, in twenty minutes, over lunch. From prompting to agents: why the architecture shift changes what AI can do inside an enterprise. Under the hood: a live demo of the actual development environment used to build agents today, including my own second brain, a knowledge graph of 1,700-plus linked notes with agents working across it, no slideware. From roles to workflows: why AI automates tasks rather than jobs, and what it means to lead when you orchestrate agents alongside people. And the right questions: the ones that separate executives who get value from those who do not, for your teams, your vendors, and yourself.

The room was senior, non-technical, and sceptical in the useful way. The talk was twenty minutes; the discussion ran seventy-five with really great questions.

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