Copernican Shift
AI is getting booed at commencement ceremonies, which is a strange sentence to write and a useful one. Commencement speeches are usually designed to be politely endured. The speaker tells the graduates that the future is bright, the parents take too many pictures, and everyone tries not to think …more
I tried to write this post with AI, which seems like the honest place to start because the post is about writing …more
Why the periodic table of creative briefs matters more than ever — and how to turn an old discipline into the strategic …more
Every company eventually discovers that the work it depends on is not as neatly arranged as the org chart suggests. The work …more
A saloonkeeper built the cash register to recover missing money. AI can give small-business owners digital workers that recover missing time. Table …more
A buyer-centric operating model for how buying actually happens in the AI Age. D3C stands for Discovery, Create Confidence, and Commit — …more
How a retail lesson from Walmart, Kmart, and UPC codes helps explain the coming fight over agentic commerce infrastructure. One of …more
Why voice is the natural endpoint of human-computer interaction, why the model layer may be disintermediated by the interaction layer, and …more
I ran across this video of a speech I gave three years ago and, to be honest, I did not even know …more
The registered investment adviser business is one of the most important — and most misunderstood — parts of financial services. In 2024, …more
Why The Next Analyst Category Will Be Built On Trust, Not PDFs Analyst firms are being mispriced by the market because they …more
Family Health Agent — Working Prototype A household-first, delegated, role-based prototype that demonstrates the manager loop: track what should happen next, detect …more
I got tired of admiring the category from a tasteful distance, so I took the Family Health Agent thesis, turned the Claude …more
From category thesis to working software: how I would actually build the Family Health Agent, what I would prompt first in Claude …more
How a forgotten HealthVault insight about households, delegated care, and the real operating unit of healthcare points toward the next platform in …more
A buyer-centered control plane across D3C—where synthesized reputation, claim governance, proof production, activation, and outcomes form one compounding system. Table of Contents …more
As LLMs compress internet‑scale word‑of‑mouth into answers and citations, the next generation of customer platforms must govern how brands are understood across …more
As LLMs compress reputation into answers and citations, the next generation of SEO platforms must govern how companies are understood — and …more
Reshuffle reframes AI as coordination without consensus. Andrei Pop reframes the enterprise moat as operational memory. That combination puts product analytics and …more
GTM LITURGY: Tactics by Stage, Not by Team In Chapter 1, we did the uncomfortable thing: we admitted we’ve been measuring the …more
GTM HERESY: Measure Buyer Confidence, Not Funnel Metrics I know people don’t want to hear this, but we’re measuring the wrong thing. …more
TL;DR: Why the modern web is structurally unreadable to machines—and what that means for the future of accessibility. As software shifts from …more
TL;DR (Executive Summary) Marketing is selling, at scale. If it is not driving adoption, revenue, or durable belief, it is not …more
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME Every few years I like to roll out this little bit on …more
Seismic, Not Incremental — Why Microsoft’s AI Reorg Matters & What Comes Next By Grad Conn, for the Copernican Shift community In …more
Predictability isn’t the enemy of engagement; poor structure is. Repetition isn’t laziness; it’s ritual. People talk a lot about storytelling in marketing. …more
We’ve all heard them. Those iconic sounds that tell us our computer is starting, or you’re about to start bingeing Netflix. They’re …more
Charles Wilson Conn (July 27, 1938 – April 29, 2022, aged 83) 4pm ET, Friday May 6, 2022 — my Dad died …more
The challenge with marketing is that we all think we know our products and services better than anyone. But do we? In …more
That’s right. We’re now The Copernican Shift podcast (formerly the Unified-CXM Experience). And although we’ve changed the name, we haven’t changed the …more