From Performance to Progress : Creative ITC

Client: Creative ITC

Event: From Performance to Progress

Industry: Cloud Computing Managed Services

Date: 3rd February 2026

Consultant: Rob Dixon, Lakshya Yadav Shifting from efficiency to innovation: how Creative ITC explored AI as a catalyst for faster learning, experimentation, and organisational progress. Creative ITC hosted Dixon AI for a keynote session focused on helping teams rethink how AI can move organisations beyond incremental efficiency gains and towards sustained innovation. Delivered as a keynote titled From Performance to Progress, the session challenged traditional business-as-usual thinking and introduced a more deliberate, people-centred approach to building AI capability for 2026 and beyond.

Creative ITC operates in the cloud computing managed services sector, where speed of learning and the ability to adapt are becoming more important than marginal performance optimisation. Like many organisations, the challenge was not access to AI tools, but how to use them meaningfully without distraction, overload, or misplaced expectations. The keynote addressed this tension directly, positioning AI not as a shortcut or replacement, but as a multiplier of human capability when applied with purpose.

This event aligned most strongly to the Organisational AI Literacy stage of the AI Transformation Playbook, helping participants develop a shared understanding of how AI fits into modern work and how it should be used in practice.

Objectives of the Event

• Shift thinking from efficiency-first optimisation to innovation and learning-led progress

• Build practical AI literacy through real examples rather than formal training

• Reframe AI as an enabler of human capability, not a replacement for it

• Encourage deliberate innovation instead of allowing business-as-usual activity to crowd it out

• Equip teams with a clearer mental model for using multiple AI tools based on purpose

What Happened During the Event

The keynote was delivered in person in Milton Keynes and focused on translating AI concepts into applied, real-world thinking. Rather than presenting AI as a single platform or solution, the session explored how different tools—such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, and Gemini serve different purposes depending on the task.

Live demonstrations showed how ideas can move rapidly from prompt to output, including examples that progressed from concept to code, report, web page, and creative assets in minutes. Throughout, the emphasis remained on human judgement, organisational purpose, and continuous experimentation as the foundations of real AI capability.

Several consistent insights emerged during the session:

• AI delivers the greatest value when used to accelerate learning and experimentation, not just productivity

• Innovation requires deliberate space; without intention, business-as-usual will consume all available time

• AI literacy is best built through hands-on experimentation rather than traditional courses or certifications

• Different AI tools should be chosen based on task and outcome, not personal preference or habit

• Purpose acts as a critical anchor, ensuring AI use supports meaningful progress rather than noise
  

These insights reinforced the importance of combining people, purpose, tools, and data to build sustainable AI capability.

Impact

The keynote helped reframe how participants at Creative ITC think about AI adoption. Rather than focusing on isolated use cases or short-term efficiency wins, the session created clarity around the role of experimentation, iteration, and judgement in building long-term capability. Attendees left with a clearer understanding of how AI can support faster innovation cycles and how small, practical starting points can compound into meaningful progress.

What Happens Next

Following the session, Creative ITC is well positioned to continue developing organisational AI literacy and move towards more structured experimentation. Logical next steps include deeper hands-on exploration, internal experimentation with real use cases, and continued focus on building confidence through doing rather than theorising.

AI transformation is not defined by how advanced the tools are, but by how deliberately organisations choose to use them. Events like From Performance to Progress reflect a broader shift away from optimising yesterday’s workflows and towards building the learning capability required for tomorrow’s challenges.

For organisations exploring how AI can support faster learning, better decision-making, and more deliberate innovation, Rob Dixon regularly speaks with leadership teams about what this shift looks like in practice.

AI upskilling and applied AI learning are becoming essential foundations for organisations seeking to move beyond performance metrics and towards sustained progress.