What does your 2030 company look like?
Filmed beside the Tyne, November 2026. English captions are available.
Choose a chapter
- 0:00What does your 2030 company look like?What could AI do for your business, and how would you use it?
- 0:09Why the North EastWhat could the region’s AI investment help local businesses do?
- 0:33It’s not an easy question to answerHow can a business decide where to invest while the technology keeps changing?
- 1:08You need to think biggerHow could AI change the work across a business?
- 1:44Smaller and new businessesA new business can decide how AI fits before it has systems and processes to change.
- 2:05A much bigger question than which toolConsider how customers will buy, what they will need and who will do the work.
- 2:36Starting bigDecide what you want the business to become, then work out what needs to change.
- 2:56Five humans and five digital workersWhat will people need to learn to work with AI and check its results?
- 3:09Why I set up The 2030 CompanyWhy Adam founded The 2030 Company.
- 3:26The keys to a Formula One carWhy better tools also need knowledge, skills and a decision about what to achieve.
- 4:07Join us on 17 NovemberAn invitation to the free morning in Newcastle, and the line the film ends on: always think bigger.
Get a clear view of what is possible.
Imagine you were designing the business today, with AI available from the start. What would you offer customers? What work would AI do, and where would people add most value?
That gives you a clearer view of what you are aiming for. You can then apply it to your business and work out what would need to change.
Explore what AI makes possible
Picture the business you could build
Apply that view to your business
How could people and AI work together?
Think about how the work could be organised if AI could prepare information, compare options and complete agreed tasks. People would set direction, make judgements and decide what AI is allowed to do.
Questions to consider
- What could AI complete within agreed limits?
- Where would a person need to decide?
- How would you know the work was done properly?
What would you like the business to achieve?
More time with customers, a service you cannot offer today or fewer evenings spent on paperwork. A clear aim helps you decide which uses of AI are worth exploring and what people need to learn.
Technology
What AI can do.
Knowledge
What you need to understand.
Skills
What people need to learn.
Read the film as text
0:00 · What does your 2030 company look like?
What does your 2030 company look like? Businesses of all sizes, all sectors, across the UK and around the world are facing the same challenge. What can AI do for them, and then how do they adopt it?
0:09 · Why the North East
I’m in one of my favourite places in the world, Newcastle Quayside, my hometown. The North East has been designated as an AI Growth Zone, and it’s building the AI infrastructure, data centres and the skills to run the operations. The billions being invested in the infrastructure is just the starting point. The way that we unlock real value is by helping businesses to understand what’s possible and how it can help their business to grow, and also to inspire a new generation of people to start a new company. That’s how we start to get real wealth in the region.
0:33 · It’s not an easy question to answer
And it’s not an easy question to answer. AI’s got the potential to change how we work, how we operate and how society works. There’s a complete overload of information. AI’s in the news on almost a daily basis. New technology, new models are getting released, new use cases all the time. And businesses are being rightly cautious about what, where and when to invest in.
How do you make decisions when there’s so much uncertainty about the future technology, the governance, the controls, the regulation, and where it’s going to go? And until businesses truly understand what it is and what’s possible, it’s hard to make deliberate decisions about the right way forward. And that’s where The 2030 Company comes in. Imagine yourself in three or four years’ time, what does that look like, and work back from there.
1:08 · You need to think bigger
Companies are starting to use AI more and more in how they work. It’s great for tasks such as writing emails, drafting a report and doing research. But when it’s got the opportunity to transform how the business operates, you need to think bigger. AI’s got the potential to go far beyond assisting in the completion of tasks.
It can do things faster, it can do things better, and it can do things more often, 24/7. It can take on responsibilities, and that means re-evaluating who does what in your business, a human or a digital worker. Who’s best placed? Where do you need judgement? Where do you need control? How do you get assurance that a job’s being completed correctly?
So for lots of companies, this opens up huge opportunities, and it can be the transformation of how the business is going to operate.
1:44 · Smaller and new businesses
Smaller and new businesses have got an advantage over the bigger ones. If you’re going to go AI-first and adopt all this technology, you haven’t got all of the legacy systems and processes to redesign to get where you want to be in three years’ time. Getting the most from technology also means you have to do it in a controlled and well-governed way.
And it’s a lot easier to start and design from scratch versus having to untangle all of the existing systems, processes, people, infrastructure that’s already in place.
2:05 · A much bigger question than which tool
When companies are looking at the best approach for adopting AI, it’s a much bigger question than shall we go for Copilot, ChatGPT or Claude. It’s a set of questions, a long set of questions. But the best one to start with is, what does your 2030 company look like? Because for that, you’ve got to answer all of the big ticket questions.
What’s the world going to look like in 2030? What do your 2030 customers look like? What do your 2030 suppliers and distributors look like? How are consumers going to buy? What are your distribution channels? Are your products and services today still going to be relevant? What’s the right mix of human and digital workers?
2:36 · Starting big
By starting big and asking where your company is going to be in three or four years’ time, you get a much clearer idea of what you’re aiming for. And then you work out how to get there. How ambitious, how fast, how much is it going to cost, how much you want to spend, how is it going to impact staff, how much change is it involved?
Then you look at where you are today, what level of change is required to get from here to there.
2:56 · Five humans and five digital workers
New skills are going to be required across all parts and all levels of the business. How are you going to train people in these new skills? How are you going to acquire those new skills? Managing a team of 10 people today is very different from managing a team of five humans and five digital workers.
3:09 · Why I set up The 2030 Company
With so many unknowns and so many options available, how do you navigate this? And that’s why I set up The 2030 Company, to help people, businesses and all organisations navigate these challenges. It’s a place for thought leadership. It’s a place for ideas, examples, case studies, debate, to make deliberate choices about the future of their business.
3:26 · The keys to a Formula One car
I always talk about getting good at AI. It takes three things: technology, knowledge and skills. At the minute, technology is racing ahead. So the thing we need to focus on now is improving knowledge and skills, and that’s at all levels in the business. But I’d add a fourth: ambition. And that’s the thing that’s really going to set apart the companies that seize the opportunity and make the most of AI.
Right now, we’ve all been given the keys to a Formula One car. The most powerful thing in the world. But we’re just sat there, honking the horn, flashing the lights, having a look at the dashboard. Or if we are moving, we’re stuck in first gear, just going round the track, only using a fraction of what’s possible.
So the challenge is: who’s got the ambition to take the opportunity to be the next Lando Norris, Lewis Hamilton or Damon Hill? It’s available to all of us, but who’s going to do it?
4:07 · Join us on 17 November
If you’re a business owner, director or senior leader who wants to start thinking about what your 2030 company looks like, come and join us at 9am on the 17th of November as part of North East Entrepreneurship Week for The 2030 Company Experience. Always think bigger.