The AI revolution has arrived, and with it, a simple truth: you don’t have to be the fastest or the tallest, you just have to be the smartest team-up on the savanna. One of my favorite books, A Road less Traveled has the opening line ‘Life is difficult” to describe the challenges of personal and spiritual growth. I’ve found the key is to never travel alone. Travel together.
In 2020, Jacqueline Adams and I coined the phrase "generational diversity" in our book, A Blessing, and the accompanying cross-generational research from 2019-2021. This concept highlights the importance of synthesizing superpowers across different age groups.
In A Blessing, we explored the animal kingdom to define a gathering of species—from a parade of giraffes to a crash of rhinoceros—and discovered that a gathering of unicorns is called a blessing (hence our title). Continuing our exploration, we uncovered a metaphor that surprised and delighted us: the collaborative skills of the Zebra and the Ostrich. Today, as we explore transformative technologies like AI, we can see how the dynamic duo of the Zebra and the Ostrich could truly excel.
My AI-powered research into the relationship between the Zebra and Ostrich uncovered even more fascinating analogies for leveraging cross-generational teams to thrive in our evolving (and frequently unimaginable ) AI world.
Zebras and ostriches are among nature's most famous "dynamic duos." Their tendency to travel together is a classic example of mutualism—a type of symbiotic relationship where both species benefit from the partnership.
The main reason they stick together is to compensate for each other’s sensory weaknesses, creating a 360-degree security system against predators like lions and cheetahs.
Each animal brings a specific "superpower" that the other lacks:
The Ostrich (The Visual Lookout): With the largest eyes of any land animal and a height of up to nine feet, ostriches have incredible long-range vision. They can spot movement from miles away across the flat savannah. However, they have relatively poor senses of smell and hearing.
The Zebra (The Sensory Specialist): Zebras have an exceptional sense of smell and acute hearing (their ears can rotate to pinpoint sounds). While their eyesight is decent, it isn't nearly as sharp or as far-reaching as an ostrich's.
By traveling together - working together, they cover all the bases:
Early Warning System: If a lion is stalking them through tall grass, the zebra will likely smell or hear it first. If a predator is approaching from a distance across the open plain, the ostrich will see it first.
Reacting to Cues: When one species detects danger and begins to flee, the other immediately follows. They don't need to "talk"—the sight of an ostrich bolting or a zebra galloping is a universal signal for "run!"
Safety in Numbers: Beyond their senses, just being in a larger, mixed-species group makes it harder for a predator to pick a single target. It also creates a "confusion effect," where the mix of stripes and feathers makes it difficult for a hunter to focus on one individual.
If they are cornered, both animals are capable of delivering lethal kicks. A zebra’s kick can crack a lion's jaw, and an ostrich’s kick is powerful enough to kill a human or a large predator.
Now imagine the power of similar cross-generational teams in the workforce, uncovering and inventing transformative workflows to deliver true value from AI models and applications. You have younger generations becoming the “visual lookouts” while the Boomer generations serve as the “sensory specialists”—sniffing out opportunities and assessing anything in harm’s way.
Last month when Radical Ventures hosted a panel with Jeff Dean and Geoffrey Hinton, the moderator asked Hinton, age 78, who is “widely called the Godfather of AI,” if he likes that name. Spoken like the ultimate Zebra, he replied, “I should not like it, but I love it.”
I’ve also enjoyed the benefits of this type of teamwork firsthand during my many years at Google, serving as the Zebra among a brilliant group of Ostriches. And today, as we build a new model for venture investing, Jackson Georges, Jr., my co-founder and co-managing partner at BAG Ventures, and I have seen the mutual benefits of my Zebra status and his visionary efforts as the Ostrich. We use our complementary superpowers to seek visionary solutions in Enterprise AI and to provide a portfolio success roadmap via capital, collaboration and community for our founders.
So, as we kick off 2026, I encourage everyone to find your Zebra or Ostrich and travel together! I’m confident you will see the benefits in the safari of everyday life.
Happy New Year!
Bonita C. Stewart
Co-Author, A Blessing
Co-founder and Managing Partner, BAG Ventures
