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Jon Iwata is Executive Director of the Yale Program on Stakeholder Innovation and…
Articles by Jon
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Three AI questions CEOs may hear on their next earnings call
Three AI questions CEOs may hear on their next earnings call
I’ve been mulling the AI headlines of the last few weeks, looking for the signal in the noise. Most of what passes for…
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Introducing the Data & Trust Alliance
Introducing the Data & Trust Alliance
Pleased to share that I’ve taken on a new role. Actually, it started two years ago.
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12K followers
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Jon Iwata reposted thisJon Iwata reposted thisIf CEOs increasingly talk about stakeholders, ecosystems, trust, AI, and long-term value creation, where does design leadership contribute? That's the question at the centre of our executive workshop, featuring Jon Iwata, former IBM Chief Brand Officer and Executive Fellow at Yale. He will share emerging patterns drawn from more than 200 CEO conversations on leadership, organizational adaptation, and the changing nature of enterprise value, while our council members bring the other half of the equation—drawing on their own experiences navigating the forces of AI-driven change inside organizations, where strategy meets execution and transformation gets tested against reality. Workshop co-hosted by our Council member, Cindy Chastain, Fmr. SVP of Customer Experience and Design at Mastercard. Conversations like this are how we stay at the forefront of what's next, shaping the thinking that helps our members lead with clarity in the AI era. To be part of these conversations, explore DXC membership: https://lnkd.in/gQFrMJ56
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Jon Iwata reposted thisJon Iwata reposted thisMost organizations no longer compete on access to AI. They compete on how they redesign around it. AI leadership is about more than choosing the right models. It’s about rethinking: - Products - Work - Customer experiences - Business models These are the conversations at The Great Redesign, a one-day executive conference hosted by Data & Trusted AI Alliance and Yale Program on Stakeholder Innovation and Management. 📍 November 4 at Yale School of Management 💡 Learn more: https://lnkd.in/e5_aHFuA #AI #EnterpriseAI #Leadership
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Jon Iwata shared thisAs IBM CEO, Sam Palmisano made massive investments in semiconductor fabs and data centers. He knows the bet: build the capacity, and demand follows. Here, Sam shares his take on today's wild AI infrastructure build-out. Well worth the watch.Jon Iwata shared thisAI is evolving at unprecedented speed, but the infrastructure needed to support it takes much longer to build. Sam Palmisano, former IBM CEO and Chairman of the CGE, discusses the challenges behind today’s AI investment boom, from data centers, semiconductors, and energy capacity to uncertain adoption rates and the rise of lower-cost, open-source models from China. Palmisano explains why companies making long-term bets on AI must plan for multiple scenarios—and be prepared to adjust when market conditions change. Watch the full interview from Bloomberg Television’s Wall Street Week: https://lnkd.in/eyF9S-tzWatch The AI Spending Spree Comes With a Catch - BloombergWatch The AI Spending Spree Comes With a Catch - Bloomberg
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Jon Iwata shared thisThe race to build AI data centers is accelerating—with unprecedented capital pouring in from tech giants, cloud providers, and large enterprises building their own AI infrastructure. The ROI on this massive capacity hinges on one assumption: that demand will follow. But demand for what? From whom? And when? Join us at Yale School of Management on November 4 for discussions about the demand side of the AI equation: how business leaders are deploying AI in the real world, what’s actually driving adoption, what’s working—and how AI is reshaping work, skills, industries, and stakeholder relationships. Data & Trusted AI Alliance Yale Program on Stakeholder Innovation and ManagementJon Iwata shared thisHow are organizations actually deploying AI, and what can we learn from those leading the way? On November 4, the Data & Trusted AI Alliance and the Yale Program on Stakeholder Innovation and Management will convene The Great Redesign, a one-day executive conference focused on how AI is reshaping industries, professions, and competition. The conference will bring together D&TA members, senior executives, AI-native founders, and practitioners for: - Executive panels - Practitioner spotlights - Candid conversations grounded in real-world AI deployment, not theory 📍 Yale School of Management 🗓 November 4, 2026 Learn more: https://lnkd.in/e5_aHFuA #AI #EnterpriseAI #AIGovernance
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Jon Iwata shared thisThank you for the kind words—and World Fest is shaping up to be an engaging and fun B2B gathering. I hasten to underscore the obvious: the work Reuben Webb cites bears the imprint of many, many colleagues at IBM and our terrific partners. I loved (and miss) the collaboration, the struggles, and the fun of occasionally getting it right. Lou Aversano Mike Wing Shelly Lazarus Curt Schreiber Keith Yamashita Teresa Yoo Edward Bevan Susana Rodriguez de Tembleque Nicolas Maitret Lisa MaulhardtJon Iwata shared thisGuess who's coming to B2B World Fest. The mind behind Smarter Planet and Watson on Jeopardy! Former CMO of IBM. Now co-leading Yale's CEO research programme. Jon Iwata. Miami. November 9. See the comments for a piece I've written on insights I'm anticipating: the question his boss asked him at IBM that changed how he thought about marketing, what 200-plus CEO interviews taught him about the loneliest seat in business, and why he thinks marketers are misreading AI the same way we misread the internet. Deep conversation on the day, then the floor is yours. So start thinking now: if you had Jon Iwata in the room, what would you ask him? The Drum Jon Iwata Steven Antoniewicz Craig Duxbury Gordon Young Emily R. Grieve Rob Morrice Marina Lawrence Tony Bennett Adam Freeman Lynn Lester Richard Draycott John McCarthy Cameron Clarke Dave Frankland Linda Boff Chris Bagnall Ricky Abbott IBM
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Jon Iwata shared thisMost discussions about AI ask: How can AI change our company? Our paper asks a different question: How is AI changing your customer? Right now, CMOs and their teams are scrambling to make their brands and offerings visible to AI. That's understandable. But viewing what's happening as merely a change in SEO risks missing fundamental changes in customer behavior. People don't interact with AI the way they interact with search. They express richer intent. And when AI makes a recommendation—increasingly the decision—it doesn't just find brands. It evaluates them. These and other changes have broad implications for brand stewardship, customer intelligence, experience design, and value creation. My colleagues Ravi Dhar, Jennie Vry Liu, Lauren Taylor, Janet Balis and I explore them in our new paper, which you can find here: https://lnkd.in/giadB8-p #agenticcommerce #agenticmarketing #agenticAI Yale School of Management Yale Center for Customer Insights Yale Program on Stakeholder Innovation and ManagementAgentic AI Will Make the CMO’s Role More ConsequentialAgentic AI Will Make the CMO’s Role More Consequential
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Jon Iwata reposted thisJon Iwata reposted thisWhat happens when companies can understand their customers, employees, and stakeholders at an unprecedented level of detail? In their latest article published in Fortune, Jon Iwata and Professor Ravi Dhar explore how “surveillance pricing” is an early warning sign of a much larger challenge: how companies will choose to use data, algorithms, and AI agents as these technologies reshape relationships and decision-making. The question is not whether companies can personalize at scale—it is whether they will use these capabilities to create value, build trust, and strengthen relationships, or to extract value from those they serve. Drawing on insights from our program’s research with CEOs, Jon and Ravi examine why enduring companies will be defined by the principles that guide how they deploy powerful new technologies. Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/gZ_wG_YC
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Jon Iwata shared thisPleased to share this article Ravi Dhar and I wrote that examines how "surveillance pricing" is an early warning for the coming era of AI agents. As states move to restrict the use of personal data for individualized pricing, the central question is whether companies will use the deep behavioral insights from data and AI to create value for customers (and other stakeholders)—or extract maximum value from them. With customers increasingly collaborating with AI agents throughout their decision journeys—creating AI-mediated commerce—these agents will gain rich contextual understanding of needs and behaviors, testing companies’ principles at scale. Drawing on our work at the Yale Program on Stakeholder Innovation and Management, we argue that the most enduring companies will resist short-term value extraction and instead use these powerful tools to build trust and strengthen stakeholder relationships. #AgenticAI #surveillancepricing Yale School of Management Yale Center for Customer InsightsYale School of Management: surveillance pricing is just the beginning. AI agents will be the real test of corporate trust | FortuneYale School of Management: surveillance pricing is just the beginning. AI agents will be the real test of corporate trust | Fortune
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Jon Iwata shared thisA great pleasure to continue this work at Yale in collaboration with Ravi Dhar and Edward A. Snyder. Through interviews with CEOs (well over 200 now) and deep looks into companies—from startups and not-for-profits to the world's largest enterprises—we've seen how effective leaders reject the 'tyranny of trade-offs' between shareholder and stakeholder interests. Instead, they take a holistic approach, designing and leading their businesses on a foundation of aligned purpose, strategy and culture. The concept may not be new, but in actual practice, it is rare—and highly effective. CEOs lean into this work at moments of high consequence. Yes, sometimes during crises, but also when a company is founded or 'refounded', following a significant M&A action or leadership transition, or when they want to get ahead of an existential shift.Jon Iwata shared thisRecognizing the value of his contributions to Yale School of Management's curriculum in support of its mission, the school has appointed Jon Iwata Executive Director of the Yale Program on Stakeholder Innovation and Management (Y-SIM). Since Y-SIM's founding, Jon has co-led the program, shaped its strategic direction, and brought its work to life inside and outside the classroom. This appointment formalizes that leadership and positions Y-SIM to move forward with greater focus and momentum.
Jon Iwata commented on a post
8mo
Alex, enjoyed the time we had together.
Always tough to be the last speaker at the end of a long day, but I really do believe that you and your AWS colleagues are very well positioned to provide the kind of leadership -- in marketing specifically and business broadly -- that our times cry out for.
Thanks for inviting me to your session.
Jon
Jon Iwata commented on a post
9mo
There may be many more refounding moments. AI is already reshaping productivity inside companies. With the emergence of AI native companies and agentic commerce, it will likely reshape the flow of power in markets and force a rethink of business models. That will inevitably cause leaders to ask: Who are we, at our core? For those interested in the full paper, it's here: https://som.yale.edu/centers/program-stakeholder-innovation-and-management/research/research-papers/when-companies-forget-who-they-are-work-refounding
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Jon Iwata liked thisJon Iwata liked thisIs the AI spending spree sustainable? 🤖💰 In a recent interview on Bloomberg’s Wall Street Week, CGE Chairman Sam Palmisano weighed in on massive corporate AI investments—and the critical catch companies can’t afford to overlook. As tech leaders pour billions into AI infrastructure, the real question becomes: When does capital expenditure turn into measurable ROI? 🔗 Watch the full interview here: https://bloom.bg/4wY0MQq #ArtificialIntelligence #Leadership #TechStrategy #Bloomberg #VentureCapital #AIROI
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Jon Iwata liked thisJon Iwata liked thisMost organizations no longer compete on access to AI. They compete on how they redesign around it. AI leadership is about more than choosing the right models. It’s about rethinking: - Products - Work - Customer experiences - Business models These are the conversations at The Great Redesign, a one-day executive conference hosted by Data & Trusted AI Alliance and Yale Program on Stakeholder Innovation and Management. 📍 November 4 at Yale School of Management 💡 Learn more: https://lnkd.in/e5_aHFuA #AI #EnterpriseAI #Leadership
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Jon Iwata liked thisJon Iwata liked thisSo……what a week. I honestly never thought I’d be at this moment in life. Maybe at least it was different for me 30 years ago. I am a dad, and it hasn’t been about me for the last 20+ years. But about them. Maybe a little me but a lot of them. This past weekend I left my daughter, Lauren Ambraz in Peoria, Illinois. She graduated from the University of Arizona in May with a marketing degree and she had multiple internships with Caterpillar Inc. that landed her here in Peoria with Caterpillar. I spent a weekend/road trip to Peoria with her and we had a blast! I certainly reflected on her journey and mine being a dad and being a longtime IBMer. We drove, ate, drank, slept, drove some more, moved in, installed ring cameras, shopped at some retail shops on my credit card, and had more great food and drinks over the weekend. The tears flowed as I got out of her Jeep to board a flight, but my mind reminisced on the last 22 years. 30+ countries visited together, living overseas, calling home to multiple states, scuba diving, hiking, fly fishing, and a piggy (stuffed animal I bought for her back in 2005 in England, she still cherishes). Saturday night, a Tom Petty cover band called Damn the Torpedoes, were playing down from her house. There were many songs played, but two songs that hit home. Into the great wide open and Learning to fly. I realized my girl was out of the nest and learning to fly on her own….hopefully with training wheels for dads sake….I did move her around the world for my sake, but she has benefited on the exposure and the experience of the world. Right now she is starting at first base and the great wide open is so so true today. We as fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters are seeing a different world to contend with and compete with. The future is unknown and it is wide open for all of us. What I hope she knows is the love a father has for his daughter and more importantly the hope or better yet the belief I have that she will rock. From a teary eyed dad to his daughter, I say this using many quotes and songs I did not come up with. I promise you, It is not that you only get one shot, that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but what I ask you to do is remember this , don’t ever give up. FIGHT! if you get to the the gates of hell, don’t back down, they are meant to be opened, knock them down. Remember “The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place, and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't how hard you hit; it's about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done.“ Rocky’s greatest quote outside of screaming “Yo, Adrian, I did it!"! So here it is “yo Lauren, you are going to do it!” Love ya babe, ding ding, round one babe, go catch greased lightning. Dad.
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Jon Iwata liked thisThe CMO role has the shortest tenure in the C-suite. The reason is simple: it requires two opposite kinds of thinking, and almost nobody is naturally good at both. ⠀ As a CMO, you need a combination of left- and right-brain thinking to make things work. You need to have enough analytical horsepower, or a team you built that lets you at least understand what good looks like. You need strong analytics applied to the business of marketing, and, at the same time, the creative, innovative, trendsetting flair of a marketer and advertiser. ⠀ You have to be able to do both as a CMO. So when a person comes into the job, if they're too much one or the other, that's when they fail. ⠀ I've seen CMOs come into a job, and the first thing they want to do is change the color of the logo. Well, guess what? You change the logo, but that doesn't help the business in the long run. ⠀ These types of CMOs focus too much on the creative side and make no progress in the business. Eventually, they hit a wall. ⠀ Then you have people on the other side who are so in the weeds that they only think about bits and numbers, and they miss the forest for the trees. They don't understand that to stand out in a very noisy market, you need innovation and creativity to get above the noise. So they run all their tactics on top of stale, ineffective creative, they can't get anyone's attention, and nothing gets accomplished. ⠀ So if you're too much A versus B, or you don't recognize the need to have a team that can do both, that's when you fail. People are successful because of their strength. I'm not saying one type of CMO is more likely to succeed than the other. But that person has to build a team that augments the other side. The real question is whether they can build a team that executes but understands the importance of both, because sometimes, when you're comfortable with one, you underestimate the complexity and the importance of the other. ⠀ The best CMOs aren't the most creative, nor the most analytical. They're the ones with the judgment to know they need both.
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Jon Iwata reacted on thisJon Iwata reacted on thisThe Wendy's Company announced the appointment of Tariq H. to the newly created role of Chief Marketing and Customer Growth Officer, effective immediately. Hassan brings more than three decades of global marketing, customer experience, digital transformation and brand-building leadership to Wendy’s, with deep experience across restaurants, technology and consumer brands. He previously served as Senior Vice President, U.S. Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer at McDonald’s, where he helped modernize marketing, strengthened digital and loyalty engagement, and put customer-first insights at the center of culturally relevant campaigns and menu innovation. More: https://lnkd.in/eRYFq_pJ
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Jon Iwata liked thisJon Iwata liked thisAn inspiring week with the Design Executive Council community in Palo Alto and Seattle, and on to New York today. The conversation was about how design leadership is evolving in the agentic era: what’s working, what isn’t. What stood out is that this isn’t just a story about design. It is about our leadership. It’s about deeply understanding how business and operating models are being disrupted or amplified, and the role design executives are playing in that growth, transformation, or defensive story. And in that journey, the deeply messy work and change management that has to occur. This is the true test of our skills. We have to be visionary and also hold truth and space for reality and the tax of change. Every conversation pointed to the same thing: emergence. The scope of the design executive is changing shape and its underlying work. As design moves closer to the left and right of the stack — in business strategy, governance, policy and product direction, or deeper into production, data and the tech stack, I see an era of higher agency and higher accountability design leadership. Things are changing faster than we can package it, and why I believe this is a time of leadership. You move swiftly with the terrain, and worry less about neatly bounded definitions. You need to lead. I’m excited to continue the conversation in our New York hub with Purvi Shah and our members at Target NYC HQ. Thank you to my amazing west coast community for the online and offline conversations and our members Arin Bhowmick for hosting us at SAP and Christina Vallery at The Cigna Group for our roundtables. Kaaren Hanson Arin Bhowmick Janaki Kumar Matthew Menz Jaime Mariko McFarland Deb Kawamoto Eric Kabisch Christina Vallery Jyoti Shukla Jennifer Darmour Matthew Holloway Jeff Gelfuso Jessica Speigel.
Experience & Education
Patents
Honors & Awards
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Harold Burson Award
PRSA-NY
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Larry Foster Award for Integrity in Public Communication
Page Center at Penn State University
https://www.psu.edu/news/bellisario-college-communications/story/page-center-honor-mary-barra-lester-holt-and-jon-iwata/
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B2B Hall of Fame
ANA
The ANA B2B Hall of Fame is designed to pay tribute to business marketing professionals from the overall B2B industry who have made significant and lasting contributions throughout their careers while serving as business-to-business advocates and displaying a consistent spirit of innovation and professionalism. Criteria considered for induction include business marketers who have consistently:
Elevated business marketing and moved the business-to-business industry…The ANA B2B Hall of Fame is designed to pay tribute to business marketing professionals from the overall B2B industry who have made significant and lasting contributions throughout their careers while serving as business-to-business advocates and displaying a consistent spirit of innovation and professionalism. Criteria considered for induction include business marketers who have consistently:
Elevated business marketing and moved the business-to-business industry forward
Demonstrated outstanding personal and organizational leadership and achievement in their individual field
Contributed to the future of business marketing by inspiring talent and championing development programs for the next generation.
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Brand Genius
AdWeek
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Marketing Hall of Fame
American Marketing Association
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CMO Hall of Fame
The CMO Club
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Distinguished Service Award
The Seminar
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Hall of Fame
PRWeek
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Hall of Fame Award
Arthur W. Page Society
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PR Week Power List
PR Week
Named to every PR Week Power List since 2007
Organizations
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Arthur W. Page Society
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Association of National Advertisers
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Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
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Japan Society
Member of the Board of Directors
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The Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication
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Yale Center for Customer Insights
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Simon Hodgkins
“The answer is not just to sprinkle some AI on it and make it happen. It’s got to work in designated areas. It’s got to benefit you, but also keep you productive and keep you working and at the top of your game." - Dr Lollie Mancey 1️⃣ Don’t chase AI, chase value 2️⃣ Invest in AI literacy 3️⃣ Build diverse AI teams 4️⃣ Think long-term, position for the future 5️⃣ Put ethics at the heart of your strategy Read the full case study. Link in the comments.
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