Chief Executive Officer Archives - Page 6 of 9

Among other topics, Jay discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

Local Motor’s micromanufacturing
The development of a bespoke community
The changes Local Motors provides in product development
Strategic partnerships with their clients
Jay’s history with entrepreneurship
The “waking hours” of artificial intelligence and what it means for traditional industries
Product education and its role in making the consumer ask, “Why do we care?”
The changes on the horizon for the automotive industry
Cars as upgradable hardware
Customers as the only force able to push back on the supply driven economy of the automotive industry

Jay Rogers’ Biography

Jay is the Chief Executive Officer of Local Motors, a cutting-edge automotive startup building the next generation automobile company and brand in the United States. As CEO and Co-founder, he is responsible for crafting the overall strategy for Local Motors and has been helping develop transformation within the automotive industry.

Prior to founding Local Motors, Jay served for seven years in the United States Marine Corps, where he was an Infantry Company Commander. Prior to service, he worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Co. and as an investment analyst at Ewing & Partners.

Jay earned a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and his MBA from Harvard Business School.

I recently caught up with Jay over the phone from Local Motors headquarters in Phoenix, AZ, and our conversation covered World Class IT Principle Four, IT & Business Partnership, as we discussed how the Local Motors forms strategic partnerships with clients; and Principle Five, External Partnerships, as we discussed how Local Motors as created a community that drives innovation and efficiency. We also discussed how Local Motors has relied on transparency to build teams, Jay’s history in entrepreneurship, transformations in the automotive industry, as well as a variety of other topics.

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Among other topics, Rob discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

Rob’s path from entrepreneur to CEO, and the growth he has led at Singularity University
The accelerating pace of technology progress, and the importance of thoughtful and creative futures thinking
How the lack of long-term thinking has contributed to economic instability and political class and social unrest in the US and across the world
The natural tendency for people to be pessimistic, and why the world needs rational optimists and storytellers
Why current frameworks are insufficient for keeping pace with change, and how leaders can begin to change their mindset
Best practices for corporations to experiment with new technologies and leverage innovation ecosystems
Intrapreneurship, innovation and scaling at the edges
Best practices from Lowe’s innovation lab Biography

Rob Nail’s Biography

Rob is the Chief Executive Officer and Associate founder ofSingularity University. Since assuming that role in 2011, Rob has overseen the growth of theorganization’s individual and organization-focused programs, its conference series, and itsglobal community, as well as championed SU Labs, a creative space that is part startupaccelerator, part corporate innovation lab, and part think tank.Prior to leading at Singularity University, Rob co-founded Velocity11, a robotics company forcancer research and drug discovery, which he led until its acquisition by Agilent Technologies.After its acquisition, Rob worked as a General Manager at Agilent. He is a Director at Harmanand Light & Motion, and co-founder and Director at Alite Design. He is also an active angelinvestor and advisor.

Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in Mechanical & Materials Sciences from the University of California, Davis and a master’s degree inManufacturing Systems from Stanford University. I recently caught up with Rob over the phone from his office in Silicon Valley, and ourconversation covered World Class IT Principle One, People, as we discussed the role of intrapreneurs and the importance of creative and forward thinkers in developing innovativecompanies and products, Principle Four, IT & Business Partnerships, as we discussedinnovation processes and strategy setting, Principle Five, External Partnerships, as wediscussed the challenges and rewards of partnering with startups and of developing innovationecosystems, as well as a variety of other topics.

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Among other topics, Baljit discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

Importance of cross-functional team work to figure out product offerings
Continually improving talent management and building people skills
Importance of technology to drive strategic decisions
Staying abreast of the competitive landscape
Importance of investments in R&D towards developing more integrations
Traditional brick and mortar retails versus digital natives
Eye on the Trends: Talent Management, Integration Platform, Supply Chain Solutions

Baljit Dail’s Biography

Baljit is the Chairman and CEO of JDA Software, a software and consultancy company providing supply chain management, manufacturing planning, retail planning, store operations and collaborative category management solutions. Prior to leading JDA he was an operating partner at New Mountain Capital, a private equity firm based in New York. From 2005 to 2012 Baljit served in several executive roles at Aon Corporation including CEO of Aon Hewitt and Aon Consulting, COO of Aon Benfield, and CIO of Aon Corporation.

Baljit also serves on the boards of Midwest ISO (where he also chairs the Information Technology Committee), Alexander Mann Solutions, AmWins, and Western Dental.

Baljit holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Warwick in England.

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Among other topics, Scott discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

The genesis of Atlassian
Using the IT team as a point of entry
The timing of venture capital funding and taking the company public
Fostering a culture of innovation at Atlassian
Serving multiple functions across a company
Prospects for future growth

Scott Farquhar’s Biography

Scott Farquhar is the co-founder and co-CEO of Atlassian, a collaboration software company that helps teams organize, discuss and complete shared work. Founded in Sydney, Australia in 2002, Atlassian is well-known for its issue tracking application, Jira, as well as its team collaboration product, Confluence.

Scott was awarded the ‘Australian IT Professional of the Year’ in 2004, and in 2006 was the youngest person ever to be awarded the ‘Australian Entrepreneur of the Year’ by Ernst & Young alongside co-founder and co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes.

Scott holds a Bachelor of Science in business information technology from the University of New South Wales, Australia.

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Among other topics, Stewart discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

The genesis of Slack
How Slack was scaled to an enterprise level application
What metrics are used to gauge the health of the business
External inputs into Slack and the value they add
Developers and partners in the Slack ecosystem
The Slack Fund and its role in driving innovative ideas
Stewart’s mentors and lessons learned from his entrepreneurial ventures
How culture can drive productivity
How talent management develops in a rapidly growing company

Stewart Butterfield’s Biography

Stewart is the founder and CEO of Slack, the fastest growing business app ever. It is a messaging and file sharing application heralded as the “Email Killer” of the workplace with over $100 million in annual revenue. As CEO, Stewart is responsible for all operations throughout the company as well as defining the future vision for Slack.

Prior to Slack, Stewart co-founded the picture sharing site Flickr, which was acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. He continued as the General Manager of Flickr at Yahoo! until mid-2008.

Stewart received his Bachelor of Philosophy degree from the University of Victoria and went on to earn a Master of Philosophy degree from the University of Cambridge.

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Among other topics, Oren discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

High impact Artificial Intelligence research and engineering at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
Some promising future outcomes of developments within the artificial intelligence field
Why equating intelligence with autonomy is inaccurate
His perspectives on the dangers of artificial intelligence that have been expressed by major technology leaders
Job displacement and the role of government in ensuring an easier transition
Methods he uses to stay current on upcoming technology trends
The role Paul Allen plays in the day to day operations
Partner organizations and the benefits of those partnerships
The people who most influenced him to become a serial entrepreneur
The significance of Alpha Go defeating the human international champion of Go
Advice on the use of artificial intelligence for enterprises considering the use of AI

Oren Etzioni’s Biography

Oren is the Chief Executive Officer of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a role he has had since 2014. The mission of the Institute is “to contribute to humanity through high-impact AI research and engineering.” The goal of Oren’s research is to solve fundamental problems in AI, particularly the automatic learning of knowledge from text.

Oren has been a professor at the University of Washington’s Computer Science Department since 1991, and has also been the founder or co-founder of multiple companies, including Farecast which was sold to Microsoft in 2008, and Decide, which was sold to eBay in 2013, among others.

Oren received his bachelor’s degree in computer science from Harvard and his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.

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Among other topics, Antoine discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

The state of the artificial intelligence industry and his work over the past fifteen years
How Sentient Technologies has applied there work to the retail and online shopping industry
How the technology maps out the process of interaction to create a better user experience
The large amount of capital currently held by Sentient Technologies and his plans for those funds
The war for talent in Silicon Valley
The balance between innovation and safety within the artificial intelligence industry
How he thinks about artificial intelligence in his daily life
The strategic planning process, and what he sees coming in the next five to ten years
Why he chose to pursue his career in the United States as opposed to Europe

Antoine Blondeau’s Biography

Antoine Blondeau is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Sentient Technologies, the highest funded artificial intelligence start-up in the world.

Antoine has worked at a number of technology companies, including Nortel, Salesforce.com, and Good Technology. He also previously served as the CEO of Dejima, the company involved with the DARPA project that later evolved into Apple’s personal assistant, Siri.

Antoine received his MBA from the Paris Graduate School of Management.

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Among other topics, Tom discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

His organization, Cloudera, where it stands now, and the current priorities at Cloudera
The path to success for older organizations with large antiquated infrastructures and for Digital-native organizations
Industries that Cloudera is working with the most
How Cloudera maintains its competitive advantages
How he came to be at Cloudera after the founding of the organization
The way in which he has forged a strong relationship with the founders of the organization
How the organization thinks about remaining a private company compared to going public
The team at Cloudera and the methods he uses to build and retain the team
How he thinks about strategic planning and how the organization continues to pivot
The relationships that have been built with several MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses)
Some industry-specific use cases

Tom Reilly’s Biography

Tom is the Chief Executive Officer of Cloudera, a fast-growing software company that provides Apache Hadoop-based software, support and service, and training to businesses. Tom has been the CEO since July of 2013.

Prior to Cloudera, Tom served as the CEO of ArcSight, an enterprise security company. Tom led the initial public offering of Arcsight and led the company in the subsequent sale to HP. He also served as CEO of Trigo Technologies, a master data management software company, which was later acquired by IBM.

Tom serves on multiple boards, including Jive Software, Ombud Inc, ThreatStream, and Cloudera.

Tom received his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley.

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Among other topics, Meg discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

The progress made thus far in splitting HP into Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc.
How the sequencing of the split was envisioned
How she plans on splitting her time between the two new companies
The synergies anticipated between the two new organizations
How HP, as an acquirer of businesses, considers today’s large technology company valuations
The process of identifying future partners and acquisition targets for HP
The paucity of women in technology and her opinion on how this has progressed in Silicon Valley
Her career path from traditional business into technology at eBay and HP
What she’s taken from her political experience running for governor of California, and how that’s affected her professional career since then
Eye on trends: Enterprise technology change (versus to consumer technology change), Cloud, Hybrid Datacenter, automation and monitoring, the business model shift from capital expenses to operating expenses

Meg Whitman’s Biography

Meg Whitman is the Chairman, President, and CEO of Hewlett Packard Company. She will be the CEO of HP Enterprise and non-executive chairman of the board at HP Inc. following HP’s split into two separate companies on November 1st of this year. Meg has been CEO at HP since September of 2011 and started as a member of the board there in January of 2011.

Prior to joining HP, Meg was the republican candidate for governor of California in 2010, a race which she eventually lost to Jerry Brown.

Before embarking on her political career, Meg Whitman was the President and CEO of eBay, where she began with the company in March of 1998. During her time at the organization the company from 30 employees and 4 million dollars in revenue to over 15,000 employees and annual revenue near 8 billion dollars. She has also held executive positions at Hasbro Inc, the Stride Rite Corporation, Walt-Disney, and Bain & Company. Meg also currently serves on the board of directors of Proctor & Gamble

Meg earned her bachelor’s degree in Economics from Princeton in 1977, and received her MBA from Harvard Business School in 1979.

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Among other topics, Marc discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

Overcoming the inefficiencies of the existing market and what market opportunities exist for Jet
How he defines the areas of focus for Jet.com
Some of the things he has learned from Beta testing the websit
His sources of profitability by being in a subscription model with a membership fe
His time at Quidsi and how his experiences have colored his perspective while launching another retail space ventur
The advantages of his experience in the financial world as it applies to his current wor
How he has planned his leadership team to balance strengths and weaknesse
How he plans the strategic direction of the new organization

Marc Lore’s Biography

Marc Lore is the Founder and CEO of Jet, the online marketplace that will take advantage of the economics of online shopping to create a new business model promising the lowest prices on the Internet. The company officially launches the day we are broadcasting, July 13, 2015. The company has raised over $220 million in funding.

Prior to Jet, Marc was the Co-founder and CEO of Quidsi, the parent company of e-commerce websites Diapers.com, Soap.com, Wag.com and more. The company was founded in 2005 and sold to Amazon in 2011 for $550 million. Marc was also the Co-founder and CEO of The Pit, Inc., an internet market-making collectible company constructed as an alternative to eBay, which was sold to the Topps Company in 2001.

Marc has received a wide array of industry accolades, including E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year regional winner and Fortune’s “smartest people in technology;” The Sunday Times Magazine of London named him one of Britain’s “new high-tech entrepreneurs and whiz kids.” Prior to being a serial entrepreneur, Marc held various investment banking positions, including Executive Vice President of Sanwa International Bank in London, where he was head of the bank’s Risk Management Division and Vice President of Emerging Markets Risk Management at Credit Suisse First Boston.

Marc received his BA in Business Management and Economics from Bucknell University.

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