Retrofit or Reimagine: An Agentic AI Strategy Workshop for Executives
Retrofit or Reimagine is a half-day agentic AI workshop for executives, September 15 in San Francisco, led by Blaine Mathieu, author of "The River Doesn't Wait: A Senior Executive Guide to Navigating the Surge of Agentic AI and Pulling Away From Your Competitors."
Agentic AI is resetting what good looks like in your industry. Success requires taking a clear position and building a way to keep that position current as AI capabilities advance.
Included
• September 15th Workshop and lunch for you + a colleague*
• Team Kit with templates to facilitate your work with your team
• October 15th 60-minute virtual cohort session
• A signed copy of The River Doesn’t Wait
• Membership in AI Realized community
*We encourage you to bring a colleague - they are included in your ticket price.
Workshop Description
The work begins with an honest assessment of one outcome you are accountable for: how exposed is it to agentic AI, measured against four characteristics that distinguish the work agents can genuinely take over from the work they only touch at the edges. You will test that assessment against an executive from another industry who has every reason to challenge it, which is the fastest way to find out whether it holds. From there you will decide where the outcome needs to sit this year, somewhere between retrofitting agents into the workflow you run today and reimagining how the work gets done, and someone at your table will argue the opposite case.
The morning closes with the part most strategies leave out. You will write three questions against your own outcome, assign an owner, and set a review rhythm. Those questions tell you when your decision has stopped being right months before your results do, and they are yours to run from the following Monday.
By noon you have an assessment you can defend, a decision you have already stress-tested, and a standing review that keeps both current.
You will also leave knowing which conversation to convene with your own leadership team next week, and the names of the executives who belong in it.
The room is deliberately small, because the working segments depend on every person getting their own outcome in front of the group.
The program has two parts
September 15 is the working session. October 15 is the check.
Thirty days after the workshop, the cohort reconvenes online for sixty minutes to compare what moved, what held, and what surprised them. It is open to every attendee and it exists for a reason. A position taken in September deserves a look in October, because the capability keeps advancing and the competitive picture keeps shifting. The reconvene demonstrates the argument the whole morning rests on: strategy that adapts outperforms strategy that was merely correct once.
Bring your counterpart
If your outcome requires collaboration with another executive, invite them to join you. A second seat is included with your registration for exactly this reason.
The room is built for pairs. For the assessment, you work with someone who comes at your outcome cold, because a position that survives a stranger survives a board. For the decision, colleagues work side by side and commit together, on the day.
Your registration covers two seats. Your registration covers two seats. On the registration form, select +1 Colleague and we will email you a free ticket code for them once your registration is approved. Select +2 Colleagues and we will send a free code and one for $245.
Candor by design
Chatham House Rule applies throughout. Participants are free to use what they hear, and the identity and affiliation of every speaker stays in the room.
We also seat a single company from each competitive set, so every executive in the room can speak plainly about their own business. Everything specific you work on stays in your own kit and goes home with you.
Who Should Attend
This workshop is built for senior executives who own a business outcome measured by a number, at a scope where changing direction carries real cost.
Seats are reserved for executives leading agentic AI strategy in operations and shared services, customer care and member services, sales and marketing, claims and underwriting, servicing, lending, and revenue cycle, supply chain, fraud, KYC and crime operations, and for divisional COOs and general managers.
Also welcome: CIOs, CTOs, chief transformation officers and chiefs of staff, who frequently bring line executives with them.
Every registration is reviewed, and we assign competitive categories. Tickets are non-refundable. If you cannot attend, email us and we will transfer your seat to a colleague.
Questions about fit? Email christina.ellwood@airealizedsummit.com and we will get back to you.
Why Attend
• Know which of your operations agentic AI can genuinely run, and which it will only touch at the edges, so your next investment lands where it returns.
• Choose between retrofitting agents into today’s workflow and redesigning the work outright, for a specific outcome, with the cost and the upside of each made explicit.
• Pressure-test that choice against executives from a dozen other industries, before you commit budget and political capital to it.
• Leave with a review you run yourself, so you catch the moment your approach needs to change months ahead of your results.
• Take home the method and the kit, and repeat all of this across every outcome your organization owns.
• Work directly with Blaine Mathieu, in the only open session of this workshop.
Program
• 8:30 AM Check in, coffee, networking
• 9:00 AM Where agentic AI is genuinely moving, and where it is noise
• 9:35 AM Your own outcome: the assessment, and defending it
• 10:40 AM How far to take it this year, and the argument against you
• 11:25 AM Keeping it current: your three questions, an owner, a rhythm
• 12:05 PM Lunch and open conversation
• 12:30 PM Close
Thursday, October 15 60-minute virtual cohort reconvene
About the Organizers and Host
👋 Blaine Mathieu is the author of The River Doesn’t Wait, a former Gartner analyst, and a former enterprise CEO and CMO. He has spent two decades helping large organizations decide what to do about a technology while the decision still belongs to them.
👋 Christina Ellwood is a Silicon Valley tech executive and startup advisor who has helped dozens of companies drive market traction and AI adoption.
👋 Mike Gorback is a venture and startup corporate attorney with K&L Gates.
📍 K&L Gates, Four Embarcadero Center, San Francisco. In person, a short walk from BART and Muni.
🗓 Tuesday, September 15, 2026, 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM
🔒 Chatham House Rule. One company per competitive set.
The surge rewards executives who take a position and keep it current. Take yours on September 15.