PROGRAM SPOTLIGHT
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The AI Business Field Guide
This guide steers away from philosophical takes on AI’s future. Rather, it focuses on concrete strategies I’ve tested and refined on how to use AI to move the needle in work and life, from winning a $50k consulting gig to avoiding getting ripped off by a mechanic.
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UNF’s AI Business Innovation Fellowship Preps Students for an AI-First World
It’s not higher ed’s fault that AI is disrupting careers and entrepreneurship. But it is higher ed’s problem to solve. We created the UNF AI Business Innovation Fellowship to address this challenge head on through learning by doing, connections to industry, and an ongoing community.
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AI Innovation Week
Picture ChatGPT projected on a jumbo screen. A sales guy crafts a prompt while forty peers workshop every word—its phrasing, its hidden assumptions, whether the AI will misinterpret the goal. Each prompt becomes a live drill in AI‑powered leadership. That doesn’t happen in a typical business school. But it happened at IPADE, Mexico’s leading MBA…
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The U.S.-Mexico AI Education Initiative
The rapid rise of AI has left many communities and entrepreneurial ecosystems feeling uncertain—worried about job disruption, economic instability, and the challenges of adapting to this new wave of technology. At Actionworks, we see a different path.
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A 4-Week Program Changed Portugal’s Research Ecosystem
Portugal’s Ministry of Science and Technology faced a challenge: turning research into startups and spinoffs to drive economic growth and innovation. The “From Portugal to the World: Innovation-to-Business Journey” program addressed this need.
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From Tokyo to Texas: The University of Tokyo at SXSW
Helping Japanese technologists build international businesses, sell their ideas, and capitalize on conferences.
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Transforming Deep Tech: Actionworks at Intel
How we helped teams at Intel Ignite tell better stories on camera, sell to enterprise, and raise more capital.
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Customer-Centric Learning: A Week in Delhi with the Nexus Accelerator
A recap of a week’s worth of customer-focused founder education in Delhi, India.
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Minimum Viable Video at Silicon Valley Bank
At Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a challenge emerged: how to effectively distribute valuable market insights to their audience. The solution? Our Minimum Viable Video program designed to transform SVB’s experts into confident on-camera communicators.
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70 Executives Get Hands-on with AI
There I was, standing in front of 70 businesspeople and software developers visiting from India, watching them pound on table tops.
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Underrated Strategy: Find a Nemesis
A guy became a millionaire after he founded a tractor company. He made enough money that he could indulge his taste for Ferraris. He loved those cars so much that he bought two. A white one for him and a black one for his wife. But his infatuation faded when he burned out the clutch…
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How U2 Got Unstuck
One minute you’re on top of the world, the next minute you’re pissed off at your coworkers. That’s where U2 found themselves after the success of the Joshua Tree album. The record made them global superstars…but they forgot a key idea. I mean, I get it. Expectations would be huge after an album that blew…
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Minimum Viable Video on NPR
It was a joy to share stories and learnings from Minimum Viable Video, Actionworks’ flagship course, on such a big stage. Doug Wells and I talk about: how learning video changes the lives of entrepreneurs and knowledge workers cohort-based courses and David Perell’s Write of Passage reverse networking teaching entrepreneurship in Bogotá Listen here.
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How Marina went from English teacher to millionaire startup founder
She’s a Youtube star and startup entrepreneur who runs three channels that span 5 million subscribers. We had a delightful conversation. She’s one of those people who really nails the balance of extreme warmth and impressive ambition. It was a joy to learn from her. I like interviewing people to dig down at the earliest…
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How to prevent Zoom fatigue: 4 tips from Stanford researchers and 1 thing they got wrong
Stanford professor Jeremy Bailenson led a large-scale study and found ways how we can finally prevent the dreaded Zoom fatigue. Let’s dive in. 1. Shrink your Zoom screen When you’re having a conversation on Zoom with one person or many, our brains process it as direct eye contact. The way you see faces on Zoom,…
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How you can be in multiple places at once (yes, really!)
It’s a cruel irony that technology allows you to duplicate items on your to do list with a mouse click. So simple, so easy. But it doesn’t allow you—the actual doer of the work—to clone yourself. (We can clone sheep though, so there’s that. Sheep underperform on all productivity metrics, though, except when it comes…
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Get the job: No one likes reading resumes. But everyone loves watching videos.
Hiring managers read resumes because they have to. They watch videos because they want to.
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Reflecting on the first cohort of Minimum Viable Video: Results, Takeaways, and Plans for the Sequel
The first cohort of Minimum Viable Video (“MVV”) ended with a Virtual Film Festival of our students on December 17, 2020. It was the culmination of five weeks of learning, experimenting, and creating for our 20 students. In such a short time, they made a huge leap in their video skills. As they streamed their videos to…
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How to Get Comfortable on Camera, Part 2
Smiling and the rubber band effect In part 1, we covered a practice technique called the “Hello Video”. In part 2, we’ll address how to project warmth and connect with your audience. “Could you smile a little more?” said my colleague, Madeline. “I am smiling,” I said, through gritted teeth. I was smiling in my…
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The Building a Second Brain and Write of Passage Student’s Guide to Creating Video
You have a head start If you have taken the Write of Passage (WOP) or Building a Second Brain (BASB) courses, you already have a head start for creating video. In this piece, I’m going to show you why and what to do next. (Haven’t taken either of these courses? First off, take them. They…
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How to Get Comfortable on Camera, Part 1
From awkward to awesome Thanks to the world imploding in 2020, we’re all on video far more than we ever anticipated. In this 4 part series, we’ll give hands-on strategies and tips for making you camera-ready. Nailed it! Or so I thought. I had remembered my lines (most of them) and looked at the camera…
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Human Connection in the Zoom Era
The people who say online conferences will never replace in-person conferences sound like the people who said no one would ever meet the love of their life online. Technically, they are right—online conferences won’t replace in-person conferences. Online conferences will evolve into distinct, superior experiences. And it will happen within a year if it hasn’t…