Jurgen Appelo
CEO of The unFIX Company
Edition
ACE! 2025
Topic: Keynote: Human Robot Agent: Scouting AI Beyond Hype and Doom
Are software engineers headed for the end of coding, or will they have more legacy mess to solve than ever? Is AI eliminating gig work or enhancing freelance opportunities for everyone? Will algorithmic bosses enslave human workers or free them from traditional management? Is AGI already here or can we wait a while longer? And what role will humans have in the future of work?
This session unpacks highlights from the new book Human Robot Agent so that we can explore dilemmas, navigate complexity, and harness AI to thrive in a socio-technological and wicked world.
Learning Objectives:- Understand AI's Role in New Ways of Working: Identify how technology reshapes traditional business structures and ways of working.
- Embrace Disruptive Innovation: Learn an actionable mindset to lead change and be the disruptor rather than embracing change and be the disrupted.
- Cultivate New Skills and Mindsets: Explore the shift towards multi-skilled (M-skilled) workers, critical thinkers, and adaptive leaders in AI-driven environments.
Biography:
As an author, speaker, and entrepreneur, Jurgen Appelo helps innovative organizations survive and thrive in the 21st century. He gladly shares stories, games, tools, and practices, so you can create your own way of working as a network organization. Most importantly, he offers the unFIX model for organization design, continuous innovation, and a better human experience.
Jurgen calls himself a creative networker. But sometimes he’s a writer, speaker, trainer, entrepreneur, designer, manager, blogger, reader, dreamer, runner, freethinker, or … Dutch guy. Inc.com has called him a Top 50 Leadership Expert and a Top 100 Leadership Speaker.
From 2008, Jurgen wrote a popular blog at NOOP.NL with ideas on agile management and organizational change. He is the author of the best-selling book Management 3.0, which describes the role of the manager in agile organizations; How to Change the World, which describes a supermodel for change management; Managing for Happiness, which offers you practical ideas to engage workers, improve work, and delight clients; and Startup, Scaleup, Screwup, which dives into the major topics that business leaders and entrepreneurs are confronted with throughout the business lifecycle. And the fifth book he is working will be Glitches of Gods … a sci-fi novel!
Jurgen can help you upgrade your organizational structure with more engagement and faster results; He can show you how to increase your business agility with faster product development; He shows you how to creatively manage your company; And he can inspire creative professionals with a purpose, helping them integrate work and more joyful living.
Jurgen is CEO of The unFIX Company and co-founder of the Agile Lean Europe network.