Simply Briefed

AI is starting to change eCommerce on both sides of the transaction.

Buyers can increasingly describe what they need instead of knowing exactly what to search for. Sellers can produce, analyse, optimise and communicate at a scale that previously required much larger teams.

But if AI gets better at comparing products based on price, availability, specifications and delivery — what happens to everything else that makes us choose?

Together with Bengt Wessborg, founder of Ghostar and one of the initiators behind AI BAREN, we explore how far agentic commerce has actually come, what AI already changes in discovery and purchasing, and where the biggest opportunities are for eCommerce businesses today.

We also get into the harder question: if becoming discoverable by AI is one challenge, what does it take to become preferred by humans?

From AI-readable product information and content at scale to brand, customer relationships, community and the value of investing in what is harder to copy.

About Bengt Wessborg

Bengt Wessborg is an entrepreneur, AI expert and eCommerce specialist with more than 25 years of experience across digital commerce, innovation and business development.

He is the founder of Ghostar, an agency focused on generative AI and AI transformation, and PixPax, which uses AI to rethink how companies produce product imagery, video and digital content.

Bengt has been part of the digital transformation of Swedish commerce since the early days of the internet and is passionate about making new technology understandable, useful and commercially relevant.

Today, he helps companies explore and apply AI across areas such as smarter customer experiences, agentic commerce, new business models and new ways of working.

Ghostar

LinkedIn:

PixPax

Can AI fix what’s already broken?

What happens when we use AI to speed up work that perhaps shouldn’t exist in the first place?

Most organisations evolve by adding. New roles, systems, reports, workarounds and temporary fixes gradually become part of how the business operates. Then AI arrives — and it becomes tempting to add yet another layer.

In this episode, I’m joined by Lars Kvinge, CEO of Vevd, to explore what he calls operational drag: the friction created when years of inherited processes start slowing the organisation down.

We talk about why finding the root cause matters more than automating the symptom, how organisations can uncover where value is getting stuck, and why the bigger AI opportunity may not be saving time — but creating capacity for what comes next.

Because before asking “Where can we use AI?”, perhaps we should ask:

If we designed this organisation for what we want to achieve today, what should the flow actually look like?

An episode about going deeper in order to go faster — and why AI won’t automatically fix what’s already broken.

Lars Kvinge is CEO of Vevd.

He has broad experience from the consulting and technology industry, with a background that includes PwC, Knowit and AFRY, as well as the financial sector through ABG Sundal Collier.

Lars has led complex AI and data transformations and is particularly focused on connecting technology to growth and concrete business value.

In 2026, he founded Vevd, a company that helps businesses get ready to scale by freeing up capacity, automating where it pays off and upskilling teams to drive the change themselves.

Vevd uses AI voice agents to map how work actually flows through an organisation, with the aim of identifying friction, finding where value is getting stuck and helping companies improve how people, automation and AI work together.

Lars Kvinge LinkedIN

AI is already changing how work gets done. The bigger question is what happens when we stop using it only to work faster — and start redesigning roles, teams and organisations around what humans and AI are each best suited to do.

In this episode, we explore that shift through Talendary, an HR and talent acquisition platform that sits on both sides of the change: helping other organisations rethink how they identify and work with talent, while also building its own organisation around AI-supported ways of working.

Together with founder Max Thormé, we look at what changes when tasks can be delegated to agents, when capability matters more than traditional signals, and when teams increasingly consist of both humans and AI.

The conversation moves from recruitment into a broader question: if we can free more human time from repetitive work, where do people add the most value — and what should the organisation around them look like?

About Max Thormé
Max has been building with technology since childhood, from programming bots and launching early ventures to working with startups and later joining Google in sales and technology roles. His own difficulty in understanding the “right” career path became part of the motivation behind Talendary and its broader ambition: helping organisations make better use of human potential.

Founder & CEO Talendary

LinkedIn: Max Thormé

How do we know whether a technology is still hype, simply too early — or starting to become something that really matters?

In this episode, Kristine Lium talks with Leo Rundgren Olsen, Junior Portfolio Manager at DNB Disruptive Opportunities and co-author of Postkort fra fremtiden / Postcards from the Future.

Leo works in a field where a big part of the job is to look ahead, read weak signals and decide what may create long-term value — and what is more likely to be noise. That makes his perspective useful far beyond investing. Because whether we are navigating our own AI transition, developing an organisation or thinking about building something new, we are all trying to answer the same question: what is worth paying attention to, and where should we put our effort?

Using the S-curve — a simple way of describing how new technologies often develop slowly at first, then accelerate once they reach a turning point — they explore why “we tried it and it didn’t work” can be a dangerous conclusion, why many organisations still add AI on top of old ways of working, and what happens when intelligence and execution become easier to access.

The conversation moves through productivity, value creation, analytical imagination and one of the episode’s strongest ideas: as intelligence becomes more available, good judgement may become even more valuable.

A practical conversation about what to observe, what to experiment with — and when it might be time to act.

Leo Rundgren Olsen is a Junior Portfolio Manager at DNB Disruptive Opportunities and co-author of Postkort fra fremtiden / Postcards from the Future. As the youngest equity fund manager in Norway, he works with one of the hardest questions in investing: how to recognise meaningful change before it becomes obvious. His work focuses on emerging technologies, competitive advantage and where long-term value may be created as industries change.

• Book: https://hegnarbok.no/products/postkort-fra-fremtiden

• X: https://x.com/ung_investor

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leorundgrenolsen/

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel — Use It to Get Up to Speed

AI makes it easier than ever to create ideas, analyse possibilities and move fast. But having more ideas does not automatically create more innovation.

So what actually turns a good idea into something people use, value and are willing to pay for?

In this episode, Kristine talks with Melanie Tschugmall, co-founder of CRO2go and an experienced Revenue and Go-to-Market leader who has worked across SAP, Zühlke Group and startup environments, leading international teams across strategy, innovation and execution.

Melanie’s work centres on a simple question: how can companies turn strategy into predictable, sustainable growth?

Through CRO2go, she helps companies build scalable Revenue Systems and establish Go-to-Market as a CEO-level priority, drawing on Silicon Valley GTM methodologies and adapting them to European and international markets.

Together, Kristine and Melanie explore why companies often resist knowledge developed elsewhere, why strong products can still fail commercially, and how proven playbooks can help organisations avoid unnecessary reinvention.

From “painkiller vs vitamin C” to the danger of “not invented here”, the conversation looks at what Europe can learn from Silicon Valley, what Europe already does well, and how combining proven systems with local strengths could help companies move from good ideas to repeatable commercial success.

Because sometimes the smartest way forward is not to reinvent the wheel — but to use the wheel that already works and build something better from there.

CRO2GO

Melanie Tschugmall

Halfway through 2026, Nordic innovation is showing plenty of momentum. But how do we turn individual successes into something that strengthens the whole region?

In this Simply Briefed Summer Edition, we revisit Kristine’s conversation with Adrian McDonald, CEO of Epicenter, about what it takes to move from promising companies and breakthrough ideas to a stronger, more connected Nordic innovation ecosystem.

They explore how knowledge can travel between entrepreneurs and established companies, why spaces and networks that bring people together matter, and whether we’re doing enough to learn from both the successes and struggles of those building what comes next.

Because perhaps innovation needs more than capital, technology and great ideas. It also needs bridges, shared knowledge — and people we can learn from and look up to.

We celebrate our athletes, artists and other stars. Is it time we got equally curious about our entrepreneurs?

A conversation about Nordic ambition, collaboration and what becomes possible when one success helps make the next one a little more possible.

About the guest:

Adrian McDonald is CEO of Epicenter Group and a long-time company builder with experience spanning big tech, startups and scaleups. Today, his work sits at the intersection of these worlds, connecting founders, growing companies, established enterprises and investors across one of the Nordics’ largest tech ecosystems.

With a career that has included Microsoft and the scaleup world, Adrian brings both an enterprise and entrepreneurial perspective to the question of how great ideas grow — and how stronger connections across the ecosystem can help more of them succeed.

Adrian McDonald CEO of Epicenter

We spend years wanting to finish school — then most of our working lives learning again.

Vibeke Fængsrud founded House of Math with a clear ambition: to make mathematics accessible to everyone. What started with tutoring and carefully structured learning methods has, with the help of EdTech and AI, become something that can adapt to each learner’s starting point, pace and specific knowledge gaps.

In this episode, we explore why learning is never one-size-fits-all, how technology can help teachers support more students individually, and why the real promise of AI in education may not be that it knows more — but that it helps more of us understand.

Background:

Vibeke G. Fængsrud is the founder of  and a former lecturer in math and physics. After failing math in high school and repeating a year, she went on to earn a master’s degree in Mathematical Finance. Since 2004, she has worked closely with learners, developing teaching methods that challenge one-size-fits-all education by focusing on structure, effort, and personalised learning.

Quote:

“Learning doesn’t get easier — it gets clearer when structure fits the learner.”

Vibeke Fængsrud: Linkedin

House of Math

Host: Kristine Lium

Produced by: PIMM 

As part of Simply Summer, we are bringing back Kristine’s conversation with Ekaterina Yurchenko — entrepreneur, ecosystem builder and host of Founders Walk.

The reason feels even more relevant now.

AI can already help us do far more than most of us are actually making use of. Some call this a capability overhang: the gap between what the technology can do, and what we are able to absorb, apply and turn into something meaningful.

For curious and ambitious people, that can be both exciting and challenging. More tools, more ideas and more possibilities can open new doors — but they also ask more from us.

More clarity.
More prioritisation.
More focus.

In this episode, Kristine and Ekaterina explore the human side of expanded AI capability through the founder lens: ambition, pressure, decision-making, focus and what it takes to build with direction when everything seems possible.

Because AI may make doing more easier.

But what actually deserves more?

Guest: Ekatarina Yurchenko

Ekaterina Yurchenko is an entrepreneur, ecosystem builder, and former athlete. She hosts a walk-and-talk podcast with founders across Europe, exploring entrepreneurship, ambition, resilience, and building for the long run.

Through almost 100 conversations with founders, she has developed a strong interest in the mindset, habits, and support systems behind sustainable high performance.

Summer gives us a bit of distance from the everyday rush — and sometimes that is exactly what we need to see our ideas more clearly.

In this Simply Briefed summer revisit, we return to our conversation with Viktor Margeirsson, Co-founder of Test 13, about vibe coding, AI-assisted development, and what happens when the distance between having an idea and actually testing it starts to shrink.

Together, we explore how AI-powered tools are changing who gets to build, why domain expertise matters, and how non-technical professionals can start experimenting without waiting for a full team, big budget, or perfect plan.

A practical and hopeful episode for anyone who has ever thought:
“I can see the problem — but I don’t know how to build the solution.”

Using AI with Confidence: How Cybersecurity Matters

AI is opening up new ways of working — helping us understand information faster, connect ideas, support decisions, and remove friction from everyday tasks.

But as AI becomes more useful, we also give it more access: to our documents, our systems, our workflows, and sometimes even our decisions.

So how do we make sure we can use AI with confidence?

In this episode of Simply Briefed, Kristine sits down with Steven Antoniou from Lenovo to explore cybersecurity in the AI era — not as a fear-driven topic, but as one of the key pillars that makes AI adoption possible.

Together, they discuss why security is not only about protecting systems anymore. It is also about understanding what AI tools can see, what they can do, and how organisations stay responsible when AI starts acting on their behalf.

The conversation moves from AI as a tool to AI as something closer to a digital colleague: something that needs access, boundaries, visibility, and clear rules. Steven explains why organisations often fall into two extremes — blocking everything or allowing everything with only a policy in place — and why neither creates the confidence people need to actually use AI well.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why cybersecurity can enable AI adoption instead of slowing it down

• What organisations need to understand before rolling out AI tools

• Why visibility is the first step toward protection

• The risks of shadow AI and AI features appearing inside tools we already use

• Why policies are not enough unless they can be supported in practice

• How safe structures can give people the confidence to experiment, create, and move forward

A key takeaway from the conversation is simple:

The safest organisations will not necessarily be the ones that use the least AI. They will be the ones that understand what their AI tools can access, what they are allowed to do, and how to make safe use easier than risky shortcuts.

Because cybersecurity is not there to stop the future from happening.

Done well, it is one of the foundations that lets us move into it with more confidence.

Steven Antoniou has over 20 years of experience in IT and telecommunications, working at the intersection of cybersecurity, endpoint management, and emerging AI governance.

In his role at Lenovo, he supports enterprises in gaining visibility and control over their device estate, strengthening their security posture, and aligning with evolving regulatory frameworks such as the Network and Information Security Directive 2 (NIS2) and the EU AI Act.

His focus areas include AI security and governance, endpoint and network protection, risk and compliance, and digital experience monitoring.

LinkedIn:

Mail:

AI security, cybersecurity, AI governance, Lenovo, endpoint security, network protection, shadow AI, agentic AI, AI adoption, digital trust, EU AI Act, NIS2, risk and compliance, Simply Briefed