The A-Z of the 2026 Outsell CEO Summit
Our Finding the ROI in AI theme set the tone at Stationers’ Hall. The market moves at breakneck speed, and leaders came to slow down to speed up, meet new people, and get deals done.
A is for … AI ROI, the question every board is asking, with investment demands shifting from experimentation to accountability.
B is for … Behavioral Architecture, as the APA’s Dr. Bernadette Han showed that responsible AI means designing for the human mind, requiring a customer-facing launch needs a trust-and-risk review.
C is for … Customer Realities, with CCC’s Tracey Armstrong and DataIQ’s David Reed urging leaders to find every point where an AI assistant sits between them and the user, and either remove the friction or license the channel.
D is for … Discovery, as AI-driven evolution in access and engagement models force information providers to rethink how they demonstrate and charge for value.
E is for … End Users, Buyers, and Enterprise Buyers: three Outsell studies which show that every route to market is feeling the shift, requiring providers to test each revenue segment for substitution risk and new AI budget.
F is for … Finding Your Moat, helping content providers identify, strengthen and protect the unique values that set them apart.
G is for … Guardrails to help providers ensure AI ethics and agency.
H is for … Hyper Focus on micro-customer segmentation and micro problem-solving.
I is for … Improv, as Chip Brewer, CEO turned professional improviser, made the case for funding AI bets in 90-day increments and rewarding teams that adapt rather than sticking to the script.
J is for … Jocelyn Phillips, who showed how IBISWorld is redesigning teams and roles for AI, starting small with co-located teams and a healthy dose of experimentation.
K is for … Karen Abramson, whose View From the Top drew on 25 years of reinventing billion-dollar businesses to show what bold decisions look like when the ground shifts.
L is for … Licensing to machines as well as people, as James Phimister of OpenEvidence, in tandem with Outsell’s research, showed that rights clarity gates AI revenue, requiring content owners to inventory what they can license to LLM developers as soon as possible.
M is for … MCP, as Jeremy Burke of OAG and Ofer Mosseri of Clarivate outlined the possibilities for integrating AI into existing offers as well as building new AI-native solutions.
N is for … No UI, the Outsell prediction now playing out at lightning speed, which shifts investment to APIs, MCP servers, and structured data.
O is for … Outsell’s Back to the Future meta-theme for 2027, helping providers differentiate even when everyone is following a similar strategy.
P is for … Pricing and Packaging, as content owners learn to price training, grounding, and display rights separately rather than bundle them into one AI license.
Q is for … Quality Data, the highest-value types of which will build the strongest moats over the next five years, requiring content providers to rank and invest in datasets based on uniqueness, provenance, and freshness.
R is for … Rails, the new infrastructure for how data, content, and IP move through intelligent systems, where control captures the margin.
S is for … Stationers’ Hall, hosting big conversations since 1673 as the historic home of copyright registration, and a reminder that if you can’t prove what you own, you can’t license it.
T is for … Trust Is the New Algorithm, the Outsell prediction that makes visible provenance, citations, and a published AI policy a competitive requirement.
U is for … Upskilling, essential to help teams build the capabilities, confidence, and adaptability needed to thrive in this rapidly evolving industry.
V is for … Value Chain Compression, which is minting winners and losers daily and forcing intermediaries to move up Outsell’s value pyramid toward outcomes or down toward data and infrastructure.
W is for …Widened perspectives on AI, evolving customer needs, new revenue models, and the future of our industry.
X is for … eXistential Questions: including whether synthetic data becomes a real substitute, putting the proprietary signal it can’t replicate at the center of corporate strategy.
Y is for … Yes, And, the improv rule that doubles as strategy: say yes to clients who want your data in their internal AI tools, on terms that protect its long-term value.
Z is for … Zeroing In on 2027, with every leader leaving to scale one AI initiative, stop one, or test one new revenue line in the first half of the year.
Thank you to our speakers, Outsell CEO Network members, and every executive who joined us in London. The conversations that started on stage kept going at the reception, and that is where the real work begins.