twisted loop

A big thank you to our AI partner twisted loop who hosted an AI Clinic at Bamburgh Capital’s Manchester offices at The Royal Exchange, St Ann’s Square. Cameron Spiteri  gave us some fascinating insight into how AI can be used as a direct driver for our business, improve efficiency and enable focus on delivering value-add to our clients. Given the waves made by Anthropic this week it was a timely session to help understand where AI can enhance the service offering of corporate financiers and best practice for data security.

🚨 New AI benchmark reveals UK agencies are ‘all in’ – but only 2% feel prepared 💡 Today, we launched our new AI research on TheBusinessDesk.com, conducted with marketing agencies across the North of England: https://lnkd.in/eAMU2_yx Created in partnership with Mustard and Prolific North, the report provides one of the clearest benchmarks yet of how agencies are approaching the opportunities and risks of AI, as well as the clear gaps emerging between fast adopters and those still on the sidelines. Interestingly, the results show the agency sector's AI adoption levels trending in line with the classic Innovation Curve: 10% slow-to-adopt, 75–80% early adopters, and 10–15% building real capability. Jonathan Summers, Exec Chair at twisted loop said: “This data shows an industry leaning into AI with huge enthusiasm but most agencies haven’t yet built the scaffolding they need around that momentum. People are learning fast, experimenting fast, and asking AI to save time, but the structures, workflows and guardrails are lagging behind. What agencies should take from this is the need to shift from sporadic experimentation to deliberate capability-building. The differentiators now are AI fluency, workflow redesign and the ability to evaluate and direct AI. The agencies who treat this as an operating-model shift, not just a tooling exercise, will be the ones who gain a real advantage.” You can access the full report via the Business Desk article above. _____________________ Want to discuss how you can build AI into your business? Reach out to Dien Curtis via DM or email: diencurtis@twistedloop.com

A very big thank you to twisted loop who hosted an AI Clinic at this month’s Expert Office Hours at the Tech Hub at No.1 Circle Square Our Bruntwood SciTech Expert Office Hours provide free support from subject matter experts to help our customers to grow and scale their businesses. Dien Curtis and Jonathan Summers focused on how AI can be used as a direct driver of business value and take a commercial, valuation-led view of AI adoption. Twisted Loop brought experience from across the full business lifecycle, including starting, scaling, and exiting businesses. The clinics are a two-way working sessions designed to quickly assess where you are on your AI journey, clarify where you want to be over the next 12–24 months, and identify what needs to be put in place to get there. The focus is on practical application - how AI impacts growth and long-term business value. If you want to learn more about our Innovation and Growth support at Bruntwood SciTech - drop me a DM 📥

As a leader, do you need to know where technology is heading? Do you want to know what tech changes will shape growth? Where to invest, where to tread carefully? We asked the Twisted Loop team to answer these 4 questions: - What should business leaders be wary of? - Where should they be bold? - Where should they invest their budget outside of AI?  - What technological advancements are going to impact scaling businesses in 2026? Here's what they said in a nutshell, and in more detail in the graphic below: What should business leaders be wary of? - The “pilot trap”: clever proofs of concept that never scale, leaving businesses with impressive demos but no enterprise value - Fragile ecosystems: multi-agent systems without guardrails that collapse under their own complexity - The trust gap: over-reliance on AI-generated communication that erodes authenticity just as customers, employees, and investors demand it most Where should leaders be bold? - Empowering employees to become creators, not just users – giving them the tools, frameworks, and incentives to build agents safely and productively. - Channelling freed capacity into new markets, products, and customer segments. - Treating resilience as a competitive edge – building arbitration agents, loop limits, and checkpoints so multi-agent systems are reliable enough to trust. Where should leaders invest budget? - AI Fluency: training teams to map how their work really happens, then interact with AI agents in a safe and intelligent way to boost enterprise-level productivity and revenue - Data foundations: retiring legacy systems and cleaning and connecting data. What technological advancements are going to impact scaling businesses in 2026? - AI agents will move from proofs of concept to mainstream productivity, embedded in the everyday platforms we already use. - Recursion will arrive: agents creating other agents to break down complex tasks. Done right, this unlocks speed and sophistication; done wrong, it creates loops, contradictions, and wasted cost.  _______________ Want to build AI into your business? Contact Dien to set up a Discovery Call today: diencurtis@twistedloop.com

🚨 Only a couple of spots remaining! 🚨 In collaboration with Bruntwood SciTech, Twisted Loop is running 30 minute AI Clinics focused on commercialising AI in your business. 📍 No. 1 Circle Square, Thursday 22nd Jan, PM. Each clinic is a two-way working session designed to quickly assess where you are on your AI journey, clarify where you want to be over the next 12–24 months, and identify what needs to be put in place to get there. The focus is on practical application - how AI impacts growth and long-term business value. Designed for businesses that have already started or are ready to invest in enterprise-level AI. ✅ Book your free place today: https://lnkd.in/epDsx2Ja

🚨 Twisted Loop's Predictions for 2026 out now on TheBusinessDesk.com 🚨 Read here: ➡️ https://lnkd.in/eXHueKQX ______________ Want to build AI into your business? Contact Dien to set up a Discovery Call today: diencurtis@twistedloop.com

✳️ While Hollywood argues about who really controls AI scripts, most businesses are quietly facing a bigger issue: who’s actually in charge when machines start making decisions together? ✳️ As AI agents move from novelty tools to coordinated teams, leadership is shifting fast — away from task management and toward judgement, trade-offs, and accountability. ⁉️ In this week’s Twisted Loop newsletter, we look at what work really looks like in 2026 when humans aren’t “in the loop” as a safety net — but as orchestrators of work. From marketing teams to leadership roles, this is shared cognition, a step beyond automation — and most organisations aren’t set up for it yet. 👇 Read the full piece: The New Way of Work: Human + AI Collaboration in 2026 _________________ And if this hits close to home or you’re already experimenting with agents and want a sanity check, speak to Dien Curtis today: diencurtis@twistedloop.com

🎄 Twisted Loop’s Christmas Listening List 🎧 The end of the year is often the longest pause we get - no (or at least fewer!) meetings, longer walks, a bit more space to think. If you’re curious about AI and leadership, we’ve pulled together a short easy-listening Christmas list. Nothing technical. Just smart perspectives you can dip into between mince pies and dog walks 🦮 Our picks this Christmas: 🎙 How Will Artificial Intelligence Change The World? The Rest Is Politics. Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/egbT9qck Spotify: https://lnkd.in/et_A2cyn Rory Stewart in conversation with a former government AI adviser and author of the UK’s AI Action Plan. This is a grounded look at how AI could reshape how we live and work and whether this moment is transformation or hype! 📖 The Tipping Point (Audiobook) - Malcolm Gladwell https://lnkd.in/eejYMSxg A classic for a reason. Gladwell’s exploration of how ideas spread feels newly relevant in an era where technology can accelerate change almost overnight. 🎧 Communicating Clearly When You’re Under Stress - HBR on Leadership https://lnkd.in/gfM6Zr2v Leadership development coach Muriel Wilkins on how to communicate with clarity and credibility especially when pressure is high - a skill we're sure will be required as we get back into the swing of things in 2026. Happy listening! ✨

Over the past few months we’ve been working with Mustard and Prolific North to build a clear benchmark of how UK marketing and creative agencies are actually experiencing AI adoption on the ground. The theme that has emerged most clearly from the research is that confidence in everyday AI usage is now pulling away from organisational readiness at a meaningful pace. While many teams feel broadly comfortable experimenting with AI in their day-to-day work, 55% of agencies still describe themselves as only somewhat prepared for what lies ahead, with a further 42% feeling unprepared for the scale of AI-driven change now facing the sector. That gap matters because the next phase of AI adoption is increasingly shaped by how work is designed, how decision-making is governed, how skills are developed and how leadership aligns around long-term direction rather than tool-level activity alone. Preparedness is now sitting at the intersection of strategy, training, workflow design and executive ownership, and agencies that leave those foundations unresolved are likely to feel growing pressure as both client expectations and internal demand accelerate. We explore what’s driving this readiness gap and how agencies are responding to it in detail inside the full State of AI Adoption in UK Agencies report. Read the report here: https://lnkd.in/gMjeBxVk

🚨 🚨 Today we've published our new report: The State of AI Adoption in UK Agencies, with Mustard and Prolific North to create a new creative industry benchmark, based on insights from 53 professionals across UK marketing agencies. The data shows an industry full of energy and experimentation, while still in the early stages of building the operating models, leadership ownership and long-term capability required to turn momentum into something sustainable. 💻 We saw near-universal hands-on usage of AI across agencies, yet only a very small proportion of respondents feel genuinely prepared for the scale and pace of change that sits in front of them. This report exists to help agency leaders understand where they truly sit today, how that compares to their peers, and what the next stage of maturity actually demands. Huge thanks to everyone who contributed so openly, and to Mustard and Prolific North for helping shape the research and bring it into the industry. Here are a few highlights: 🟠 9 in 10 agency professionals now use AI 🟠 But only 2% feel very prepared for what comes next 🟠 70% say efficiency is their top AI use case 🟠 Just 17% have built bespoke tools, highlighting low AI differentiation in the market at present 🟠 89% feel positive about AI, but 2 in 3 fear over-reliance Read the full report now - link in the comments