Next Level 2026, the Technology Service Provider (TSP) conference hosted by SMBiT Professionals on 23–24 July 2026 at the Western Sydney Convention Centre, will feature a keynote from Gus Balbontin, entrepreneur, investor and former Executive Director and CTO of Lonely Planet. Ahead of the event, we spoke with Gus about AI, adaptability, and the one mindset shift he believes will separate the businesses that thrive from those that do not.
Readiness over prediction
Gus said too many leaders pour their energy into forecasting the future at the expense of being able to respond to it. “It doesn’t matter how well you can predict it. If you can’t adapt your business to it, what’s the point in knowing it?” he said. His advice is to flip that balance entirely. “You might as well invest in your ability to deal with whatever happens, rather than trying to figure out what’s going to happen.”
He pointed to the pace of change since the internet arrived. “Since the internet, we have not really seen any kind of visible stability,” Gus said. “If it’s not blockchains, it’s AI; if it’s not AI, it’s something else that’s coming and impacting.” The lesson, he argues, is written into the companies that had every advantage and still fell. “Kodak actually invented the first digital camera. So not only did they know what was going to happen, they invented what was going to happen,” he said. “But they still couldn’t do anything about it because they didn’t have the ability to adapt their entire machine to it.”
The antidote is novelty
Without giving the full keynote away, Gus offered a teaser of what he sees as the answer. “What I promote is engaging and embracing novelty as the antidote,” he said. The risk, in his view, grows as businesses and people get comfortable. “As we get older, we stop doing new things,” Gus said. “Bit by bit, as you stop doing novelty in your life, we effectively lose our tolerance to the discomfort of change and adaptability.” The fix is deliberately doing more of the unfamiliar. “The antidote for a business or for an individual is to start embracing the novel, to start doing stuff that you’ve never done before more regularly, to increase your tolerance to that discomfort, and in the process increase your adaptability.”
The small business advantage
Having led Lonely Planet through digital transformation and now running several small businesses of his own, Gus said the smaller end of the market holds an edge it should protect. “Be careful that in your pursuit of scale and standardisation, you don’t kill the very essence of the adaptability and the ingenuity and the creativity and the curiosity that you were born with,” he said. His guiding principle is lean by design: “As much as we need, but as little as possible.”
He said proximity to the customer is the real prize. “In a small business, the layers between you and the customer are few. Effectively, every person in a small business is in one way connected to the end customer,” Gus said. “That’s a gift. Use it.”
Thriving in an AI world
Asked what separates the businesses that will thrive in an AI world from those that will not, Gus was direct. “The ones that are going to succeed are the ones that don’t overestimate the short-term impact and, categorically, don’t underestimate the long-term impact,” he said. He cautioned against expecting AI to fix things on its own. “AI is not the solution. The solution is humans working with AI and businesses restructuring around AI and building better systems with AI,” Gus said. “Most of the challenge of any technology is the human side, not the technology itself.”
To make the long-term stakes concrete, he drew a comparison with the internet. “If I switch AI off right now, nothing happens. All that business will keep running,” he said. “But in five years time, you’ll be as dependent on AI for your business as you are on the internet right now. So don’t underestimate the long-term impact.”
Come ready to be challenged
Gus said delegates should arrive with an open mind rather than a notebook of answers. “Be ready to feel uncomfortable, to be challenged, to not believe me,” he said. “You don’t need to believe me. All you need to do is suspend your disbelief long enough for you to come up with your own thoughts. I don’t want you to believe my thoughts. I want you to think your own thoughts.”
And the meaning of the conference theme itself? For Gus, “next level” is about constant reinvention. “The next level is effectively to be able to self-actualise continuously,” he said, “to discard what’s not working and embrace new things, to cycle through the process of new to old, over and over again.”
Gus Balbontin takes the keynote stage at Next Level 2026.
Registrations are open now. For tickets, the full agenda, and sponsorship details, visit https://nextlevel.smbitpro.org/.