The Imagination Gap: Why FOMO Gets You a Pilot and Nothing More with Paul O’Sullivan, Salesforce

What you will learn:

• The imagination constraint: Why applying AI to point-to-point solutions is the default and why Paul argues that’s where most organisations stop, not finish
• Three blockers in sequence: How data foundations, people skills, and LLM connectivity each stall adoption in different ways and why solving one without the others doesn’t move the needle
• The conversation design argument: Why Paul calls it conversation design, not prompt engineering, and what that distinction means for how you deploy AI in customer-facing roles
• The Turing test in practice: How Salesforce uses a live two-panel test to assess whether customers can distinguish between an AI agent and a human, and what the results reveal about deployment readiness
• First 90 days: Paul’s case for picking one use case, scoping it tightly, and measuring it properly before touching anything else
• Leading by example: Why Paul’s single piece of advice to mid-market CEOs is to get their hands on the technology themselves, before expecting anyone else to follow