David Creelman

You've probably learned something useful by chance. A stranger at a café mentions a tool that turns out to be exactly what you needed. You overhear a colleague in the elevator describe a project that touches your own. You sit through a compliance course, and the real value turns out to be an offhand comment on something else entirely. If serendipity plays a real role in learning, why isn't it part of our learning and development strategy? Can we engineer more of it on purpose?

Eric Kimberling, author of the book Welcome to the Machine, points out that the most commonly used ERP system is Excel. He’s being a bit tongue-in-cheek since this doesn’t apply to large organisations; however, for our purposes, it provides an important insight into the true nature of work.

Until recently, most HR professionals had never heard of “cost of compute.” Inference cost, token cost—these sounded like IT problems. HR had enough on its plate. That is changing. As AI use spreads and organizations experiment with agents, compute cost is becoming a management issue. It may not hit every HR department this year. But it’s worth understanding now—before it shows up as a budget surprise.