About Blaine
Blaine Mathieu is the author of The River Doesn't Wait, and the founder of The River Group, the advisory firm built on the book's method. He works the decisions in these pages with the executives who run the business, and with the technology leaders who need them decided.
He is a multi-time CEO, Chief Marketing Officer, and Chief Product Officer, at both large public technology companies and private enterprise-software and industrial startups, and a former Gartner analyst, a job that was vendor-neutral technology judgment with nothing to sell behind it. It still is: he recommends no AI platform, and he does not implement. His clients have included Ford, SoftBank, ABB, TotalEnergies, and China State Grid, among others, and his work has spanned North America, Europe, and Asia.
He has followed AI closely for more than three decades. His first published work in the field appeared in Ray Kurzweil's 1990 book The Age of Intelligent Machines, and he now builds agentic systems of his own. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Affiliations
Blaine is currently involved with several organizations:
- Post-Industrial Institute - an independent Silicon Valley research institute developing a post-industrial management science. Blaine hosts and moderates its Summit series and the Post-Industrial Voices podcast.
- Mindful AI Foundation - working to build the constitutional infrastructure for trustworthy AI. Blaine is a Fellow.
- Human Intelligence Institute - proclaims, protects, and preserves the value and meaning of human creativity in the age of AI and provides toolsets to help Human Creators do the same. Blaine is on the Advisory Board.
- Creatorbase - a community and media organization for creative business people and technology leaders. Blaine is a Founding Member.
Get in touch
The simplest way to reach Blaine is to reply to the monthly briefing. It goes straight to his real inbox. You can also write to him directly at blaine@riverdoesntwait.com.