Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.

In recent weeks Modern CEO has published predictions for 2026 from CEOs across industries and a list of books that can help leaders get ready for the year ahead. We invited readers to share their own prognostications and book recommendations. (Respect to the author who endorsed her own book.)  Here’s a sampling of the responses.

“2026 will mark a fundamental shift: ChatGPT and other AI platforms will become the primary interfaces between consumers and restaurants. Discovery will evolve into action—people won’t just find new restaurants on ChatGPT; they’ll order and review there, too. In an AI-first world, the need for intermediaries fades as ordering rails connect restaurants directly to these platforms. This creates a massive opportunity for restaurants to reclaim the direct relationships they lost to third-party marketplaces.”

—Savneet Singh, CEO, PAR Technology

“Over the past two years, companies raced to embed AI into service interactions, but many of those deployments are now revealing cracks. Our........

© Fast Company