As someone who released a book over the past year, I have been keenly aware of the great works of others published in 2021. The many great contributions reflecting rising trends in technology, the acceleration of digital transformation, the sancitity of customer-centricity, and the importance of remaining aware of the relevance of various trends to the evolution of one’s business all were represented across numerous tomes of consequence in the year that has passed. Here are ten that stood out.
AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future, by Kai-Fu Lee
Artificial intelligence is perhaps the most important technology of our time. How will it change the world over the next 20 years? In his latest book, Kai-Fu Lee, author of the bestseller “AI Superpowers” and former head of Google China, provides an immersive vision for how AI will transform aspects of our daily lives.
Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, by Brad Stone
In a follow-up to his 2013 bestseller The Everything Store, Bloomberg News’s Brad Stone offers a perspective on how the company’s innovation and acquisition strategy have propelled it to be the world’s largest e-commerce company.
The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism, by Hubert Joly
As Chairman and CEO of Best Buy from 2012 to 2019, Hubert Joly led the immensely successful transformation of the electronics retailer. In his latest book, The Heart of Business, Hubert gives a look into his philosophy of “human magic” to illustrate how the people of Best Buy created a customer-centric company, and competed successfully against some of the most successful digital native competitors in the process.
Play Nice But Win: A CEO’s Journey from Founder to Leader, by Michael Dell
Successfully navigating a firm through a rapidly changing business landscape requires a good dose of grit and a leader ready to face some setbacks. From dorm-room CEO to leader of a global technology giant, Michael Dell charts the evolution of his eponymous computer company and shares his perspectives on the corporate struggles that defined him as a leader.
The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology is Transforming Business, Politics and Society, by Azeem Azhar
We are living through a period of unprecedented technological change, and the pace of change is only accelerating. Azeem Azhar, creator and host of the popular Exponential View newsletter and podcast, explores the widening gap between the pace of change and our ability to adapt, and offers a new framework for understanding the impact of technology on the economy, politics, and the future.
Risk: A User’s Guide, by General Stanley McChrystal and Anna Butrico
General Stanley McChrystal understands risk at his core, having served at the highest ranks of the American military. In recent years as a business consultant, he has advised executives on how best to apply what he has learned on the topic to the business world. He and his co-author, Anna Butrico, define ten dimensions or controls of risk that we can adjust at any given time. The authors provide the mechanics to develop a healthy Risk Immune System to anticipate, identify, analyze and act upon the possibility that things will not go as planned.
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, by Adam Grant
To succeed in today’s fast-changing world, we must not only be continuous learners, but also un-learners and re-learners. We must develop this capacity and inclination in ourselves as well as in our teams. In Think Again, Wharton professor and bestselling author Adam Grant gives us tips and tools to question our assumptions, stay curious and develop nimbler and and more flexible mindsets.
The Age of AI: And Our Human Future, by Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher
How will AI transform our society? In this book, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Dean Daniel Huttenlocher explore how economics, politics, security and even knowledge itself is being re-imagined in the age of AI. They draw upon their diverse experiences as a statesman, a CEO, and an academic to highlight the dramatic changes that AI will usher in, ultimately transforming how we all experience reality.
Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation, by Kevin Roose
With the rising influence of AI and algorithms, some fear that automation will threaten jobs. In Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation, New York Times technology columnist Kevin Roose presents a hopeful future where humans can successfully thrive in the AI age, shares what skills are necessary in a world increasingly influenced by algorithms, and argues that we should focus on being more human rather than becoming more like machines.
The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and a Roaring 2020s, by Mark P. Mills
There are many pundits who write compellingly about a dystopian future brought on by technology advances run amok, with worries about how companies and the technology they unleash will continue to change our society for the worse. Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute offers a counter-point to that perspective, positing that we are the cusp of a second “roaring ‘20s” brought on by radical advances in three primary technology domains: microprocessors, materials, and machines. Accelerating and enabling all of this is the Cloud, history’s biggest infrastructure, which is itself based on the building blocks of next-generation microprocessors and artificial intelligence. With a historian’s ability to connect dots across the last century as well futurists pluck to articulate big bets on the future, Mills offers perspectives that are worth contemplating.
Peter High is President of Metis Strategy, a business and IT advisory firm. He has written two bestselling books, and his third, Getting to Nimble, was recently released. He also moderates the Technovation podcast series and speaks at conferences around the world. Follow him on Twitter @PeterAHigh.
Another year has passed, and technology and digital remain on the ascent, as companies focus on each as sources of new revenue streams and resilience. The innovations were represented well in a variety of pieces throughout the year. Though it is impossible to fully represent the breadth of that writing, here are ten noteworthy pieces that provide greater context to advances made and issues faced in 2021.
The Cost of Cloud: A Trillion-Dollar Paradox
By Sarah Wang and Martin Casado, a16z.com, May 2021
Sarah Wang and Martin Casado of the venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, argue that while cloud delivers significant value early in a firm’s growth, the costs it puts on the business may eventually outweigh the benefits. While primarily focused on startups, this article has been a useful thought starter for enterprise technology leaders as they continue to explore the long-term business implications of the cloud.
Why Computers Won’t Make Themselves Smarter
By Ted Chiang, The New Yorker, March 30, 2021
The notion of ‘the singularity’ has been tantalizing the tech community for decades, heralding a future with infinitely powerful artificial intelligence capable of independently improving itself. Even with the phenomenal computing advancements of the 21st century, it seems we are nowhere closer to actualizing this intelligence explosion. Is it truly possible for a computer program to surpass the intelligence of its human creators? Chiang offers an interesting counter-point to those who say yes.
The Technopolar Moment: How Digital Powers Will Reshape the Global Order
By Ian Bremmer, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2021
For centuries, nation states have been the primary actor in global affairs, but that is beginning to change as massive technology companies begin to rival them for geopolitical influence. Technology giants are increasingly shaping the global environment and wield tremendous influence over the technologies and services billions of people interact with daily. This piece explores the sovereignty tech giants wield over the digital space and beyond.
Moore’s Law for Everything,
By Sam Altman, SamAltman.com, March 16, 2021
As the CEO of OpenAI and former President of YCombinator, Sam Altman has a unique perspective on the future of artificial intelligence. In a recent essay, Altman explores the intersection between rapid progress in AI, politics and the economy, including global AI governance, wealth inequality and how AI could change the geopolitical balance of power. He ultimately concludes on an optimistic note, noting that the AI revolution “will generate enough wealth for everyone to have what they need, if we as a society manage it responsibly.”
The Outsider: How CEO-For-Hire Frank Slootman Turned Snowflake Into Software’s Biggest-Ever IPO
By Alex Konrad, Forbes, February 1, 2021
Former ServiceNow CEO Frank Slootman has branded himself as an unstoppable force in the tech industry, leading companies with an iron fist and demanding excellence from his constituents. Taking the reins as Snowflake’s CEO in 2019, Slootman has ignited another aggressive transformation to shift the cloud-based data warehouse to a multifunctional data hub capable of outracing the industry’s largest competitors. In this piece, Alex Konrad unravels Slootman’s playbook for turning Silicon Valley’s next cautionary tale into the fifth largest tech-listing in the United States.
How to Negotiate with Ransomware Hackers
By Rachel Monroe, The New Yorker, June 7, 2021
This piece offers a clear-eyed look at the evolving cyber extortion industry through the eyes of the rare ransomware negotiation specialist. If you’ve ever wondered what happens when a company gets hit with a ransomware attack, this article provides insights into how to fight (or, rather, negotiate).
Students Who Grew Up with Search Engines Might Change STEM Education
By Monica Chin, The Verge, September 2021
A generational divide in how we use computers is showing up in classrooms around the country. In an age where Google-like search interfaces are ubiquitous, many students today have little knowledge of, or seeming need for, file folders and directories. This is a compact but meaningful story about the confusing, though often humorous, situations brought on by technological progress.
What Ever Happened to IBM’s Watson?
By Steve Lohr, New York Times, July 16, 2021
A decade ago, IBM’s Watson supercomputer defeated Ken Jennings, the best human “Jeopardy!” player ever. IBM executives said that their artificial intelligence would transform industries, generate fortunes for the company, and start a technological revolution. In What Ever Happened to IBM’s Watson? New York Times Technology Reporter Steve Lohr traces the company’s missteps with Watson that have led IBM to settle on a far less ambitious AI strategy, suggesting that “the march of artificial intelligence through the mainstream economy, it turns out, will be more step-by-step evolution than cataclysmic revolution.”
For an Agile Transformation, Choose the Right People
By Rob Cross, Heidi K. Gardner, Alia Crocker, Harvard Business Review, April 2021
Researchers from Babson College and Harvard Law School find that while Agile methods can improve processes and increase speed to market, many Agile teams are not organized for long-term success. This piece examines where many Agile efforts go wrong and offers a revised approach to building strong Agile teams.
Epic Games Believes the Internet is Broken. This is Their Blueprint to Fix It.
By Gene Park, The Washington Post, September 28, 2021
The ‘social media era’ of the internet has stifled consumer engagement with commerce, leaving users’ brand exploration limited to the interests of social media moguls. Championing the internet’s freedom from exploitative herd advertising, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney lays out his plan for the metaverse, a revolutionary online ecosystem where users and brands can freely collaborate and seamlessly interact to transform the digital consumer experience.
Wesley Story has been named Chief Information Officer of Genesys, a global cloud leader in customer experience orchestration. As CIO, he will balance the day-to-day needs around operational efficiencies and scaling challenges that come from surges of rapid growth with new investments and the build-out of new capabilities that help the company position itself for continued future growth.
The company is going through what it refers to as its “Experience as a Service evolution,” and Story believes that IT has a significant role to play in the transformation to come. “Our Experience as a Service evolution…will be a central area of focus for me,” he said. “That means fostering and supporting our company’s cultural transformation that started a couple of years ago so that it’s genuinely baked into the DNA of our organization. Many companies have ‘values’ that are often printed on the back of their badges, posted on the walls in conference rooms, and perhaps used in annual performance reviews. But that can be a blind spot for an organization when it’s not baked into daily interactions. To me, that’s the goal. Our everyday decisions and behaviors should embody the culture.”
Genesys’ Experience as a Service is a new business model for the company. It was featured prominently in the announcement of the company’s most recent funding round of $580 million for a valuation of $21 billion. The round was led by Salesforce Ventures.
Story also noted the sanctity of data in this transformation, as data drives customer and market insights, providing a deeper understanding of how customers use Genesys’ products, fostering growth through better insights. “It’s one thing to have the data and perform analytics on it,” he said. “It’s another to be able to action the data by presenting it in the appropriate context for our employees, or, in some cases, use the data in a cognitive model to automate decisioning. Actions like this require intimacy with our cross-functional business processes like quote to cash, acquire to retire, and procure to pay, as well as customer experience metrics and business pain points so we can unlock value.” Story underscored that IT is a critical enabler in this regard, and he noted that IT will continue to forge tight relationships with the various functions and business units.
Story will report to Genesys Chief Financial Officer Brian Swartz, who noted in reference to Story, “Wesley is a proven leader with a deep understanding of business process improvements and building high-performing organizations grounded in customer experience and collaboration. As part of his responsibilities, he’ll work closely with product marketing, product engineering and many other functions as we grow and scale our business.”
Most recently, Story was an Enterprise Strategist at Amazon Web Services (AWS), where he was responsible for providing strategy guidance at the Board of Director, C-suite and IT leadership levels to advise clients on their transformation efforts. Prior to AWS, he was the interim global CIO at Sysco Foods, a leader in food distribution.
The automobile is one of the most important innovations of the last century. It has not been an unmitigated blessing, however, as it has led to millions of deaths through accidents, and it is among the biggest sources of pollution.
Mamatha Chamarthi is the Software Business and Product Management Leader at Stellantis, a post that she took on in April of 2021. Stellantis was formed in 2021 on the basis of a merger between the Italian-American conglomerate Fiat Chrysler and the French PSA group. The combined entity has a bit more than $200 billion in annual revenue.
It is refreshing to speak with Chamarthi about the car industry because she does not wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to the issues that the industry has had, just as she is inspired and energized by the role that technology can play in rectifying those issues. “Millions of people are seriously injured every year in car crashes [around the world]. Last year in the U.S., there was a 7% increase [in serious injuries],” she said. She recognizes that autonomous driving is the key to driving down these issues because 95% of the fatalities are due to human error. Her goals is to augment human intelligence to reduce this radically. “There is a bigger, broader purpose and a societal challenge that we are going after with autonomy. That is why the technology industry is also so fascinated with this area of autonomy.”
To solve autonomy requires the development of an ecosystem around Stellantis, and, here again, Chamarthi is part of the solution. “We are creating an ecosystem, partnering with technology companies like Amazon and Waymo,” noted Chamarthi. “We partnered with Waymo for autonomy, and we are also partnering with BMW, another traditional automaker just like us, to create our level two-plus [autonomy, out of five levels ] with enhanced autonomy to level three, which is where your hands are off the steering wheel, your eyes are off the road for some time and your feet are off the accelerator and the brake.” The company has developed adaptive cruise control, emergency braking and Traffic Jam Assist, as three components to help get from level two-plus driving to level three and beyond.
Chamarthi notes the necessity of partnering with pure-play technology companies, as they have technology budgets that dwarf those of automotive companies. A company like Stellantis can offer industry expertise and loyal customers, and technology companies can develop a portfolio of technologies for the Stellantises of the world to leverage as it climbs the rungs toward greater levels of autonomy.
Global warming is another major issue for the automotive industry to solve. Chamarthi admits that transportation is one of the biggest contributor to air pollution. The United States Environmental Protection Agency notes transportation as the third biggest contributing industry to greenhouse gas emissions. Again, she believes digital innovation should drive better outcomes on that front, as well. “We have to find an answer to reducing the carbon footprint because that is part of our responsibility to leave a cleaner, greener planet for future generations,” said Chamarthi. This will be enhanced not only through autonomy, but also through greater levels of electrification and shared mobility.
Chamarthi asked a rhetorical question. “What percentage of the time do we use [a car]? 7% maybe at best. 93% of the time it is sitting on a driveway or in a garage or a parking lot. In our digital economy, what happens with an underutilized asset? We find some creative, innovative ways of using that asset and that is what gave birth to ridehailing shared mobility.” To fill this need, Stellantis launched Free2Move, which provides customers the option to lease or own a mobility experience for a few minutes through to multiple years in duration. This mobility as a service offering will not be limited to Stellantis’ automotive portfolio. The company will provide the products and services to bring this to life for competitors’ portfolios, as well.
Beyond the virtuous aspects of digital innovation, Chamarthi is also excited about the experiences that can be brough to life through the connected automobile. “Can I personalize the driving experience of the customer?,” she asked. By way of example, she noted, “I can provide a Jeep for an off-road trail [for a customer], planning an end-to-end trail experience for my customer.” She likens this to excursions for a cruise line. If a customer signs up for Free2Move, they can have access to multiple vehicles for different kinds of experiences, each with a level of education and curation to make them safe and interesting at the same time.
Prior to her current role, Chamarthi was the Chief Digital Officer and Chief Information Officer of Stellantis. She sees her evolution from CIO and CDO to running a profit center for the company as representative of the ascent of technology and digital across businesses more generally. Increasingly, “Technology is front and center,” she said. “It is exciting to be driving and shaping the automotive industry in these macro trends of autonomy, electrification, connected services and shared mobility. All of them are enabled by software, are all enabled by technology. It only makes complete sense to me that technology leaders are being asked to come lead from the front [rather] than leading from behind.”
The fifth and final Metis Strategy Digital Symposium of 2021 is in the books. Thank you to the global CIOs, CEOs, and entrepreneurs who joined the conversation.
Looking to 2022, technology leaders said developing and maintaining strong cultures, motivating teams, and providing continuous learning and development opportunities are among their continued priorities. Also on the CIO agenda: maintaining agility and momentum following a period of significant digital acceleration. Additional highlights from the event are below. Check out our YouTube channel and the Technovation podcast in the coming weeks for recordings of individual panel discussions.
New ways of working enable agility and speed to market. CIOs noted that a continued shift to product-based operating models, paired with advanced applications of data and analytics, has led to greater enterprise agility. More nimble technology architectures also support more nimble operations.
Increased customer adoption of digital channels during the pandemic accelerated the shift to new team structures, roles and responsibilities and reinforced the need to deliver products and services to customers faster and with less friction. Michael Ruttledge, CIO at Citizens Financial, noted a 30% increase in the use of digital channels. Over the past year, his team has introduced more than 900 features in its mobile app. Citizens has leveraged advanced technology in those efforts, Ruttledge said, “but at the same time we’ve had to get that to market very quickly, and we’ve done that by changing our agile culture.”
Pairing new ways of working with agile, scalable technology architectures has helped the IT organization at Target move faster and deliver more value across the organization, CIO Mike McNamara said. Today, Target has hundreds of products across the business that can release updates daily or weekly. “The rate limiter is how quickly our business and our guests can absorb change rather than how quickly we can produce it,” McNamara said. “That speed and agility has just been a phenomenal benefit to the business.”
Fostering a strong culture is more critical than ever. As the war for talent intensifies and organizations embrace more flexible working arrangements, technology leaders are thinking about how best to foster a sense of connectivity and maintain innovative cultures as teams collaborate in new ways, both in the office and remotely.
Asurion CIO Casey Santos noted that her team is telling the company’s story in a more personal way, emphasizing the strength of their culture and technology, becoming more flexible, and relying on less formal recruiting techniques. Santos’ team is also training leaders at the company to be better coaches and sponsors so that they can help employees through their journey at the company. Asurion is also bulking up its internship, internal mobility, and rotational programs.
Underpinning many of those actions is a push to create learning and development opportunities for talent across the organization. As the pace of change continues to accelerate, “lifelong learning isn’t optional anymore,” said Sri Donthi, Chief Technology Officer at Advance Auto Parts. He shared the guiding principles he has followed while developing an engineering culture: creating a comfortable environment for employees to challenge themselves and excel; starting with the customer in mind while looking at the big picture; and keeping innovation top of mind. Donthi emphasized the need to lead with empathy and care, and encouraged fellow leaders to develop skills including crisis leadership, virtual leadership, and inspirational leadership.
Companies double down on upskilling and talent initiatives. Creating learning and development opportunities remains top of mind for CIOs in the year ahead, with 35% of participants noting reskilling or upskilling as their talent development priority in 2022, followed by enhancing employee experience.
Toptal Co-Founder and CEO Taso Du Val predicts that there will be a plethora of online courses that will allow employees to earn certifications. More meaningful content and a better user experience, among other factors, will make these programs more impactful than traditional education programs, he said.
Citizens Financial introduced academy programs that allow engineers to spend 10 days learning skills such as React, Java, Python, or learning APIs, CIO Michael Ruttledge said. The company also developed 38 different badging and certification programs across a range of technologies. At Discover Financial, the Discover Technology Academy runs a series of courses while also serving as a hub for multidisciplinary teams to share their knowledge and experience with others, encouraging collaboration and allowing innovation to scale more effectively.
Target CIO Mike McNamara said engineers at the company are expected to spend 20% of their time on learning and development, part of the framework Target has built to recruit, develop, and provide continued learning experiences for teams. He’s also proud that many leaders who have worked under his leadership have taken on CIO or senior executive roles at large companies around the world.
Common platforms enable data-driven customer experience at scale. Heading into 2022, leaders across industries continue to develop and refine platforms that allow their organizations to leverage analytics and AI across a broader range of products and services, deliver sufficient governance, and scale new solutions quickly.
At Experian, EVP & Global Head of Analytics and AI Shri Santhanam is leveraging a technical and commercial platform, along with the company’s vast troves of data, to develop more products powered by AI and machine learning. Common platforms allow Experian to bring in new data sets more easily and create more sophisticated models that give individuals, particularly those whose experiences may not have been reflected in traditional models, access to credit.
Anjana Harve, Global Chief Information Officer at Fresenius Medical Care, has focused on developing a platform that helps patients manage their care effectively and provides continuous insights throughout the user journey from early care to dialysis treatment. Through connected platforms, Fresenius can drive standardization, bring innovation and speed to end users, and guide workflows while providing the most relevant and personalized information for patients and clinicians.
Leaders continue to unlock new capabilities with data and analytics. Nearly 40% of attendees noted that they expect to see the most technology investment in data and analytics in the year ahead, and 71% noted that advanced AI is the emerging technology that holds the most promise for their organizations in 2022.
Discover Financial CIO Amir Arooni emphasized the importance of advanced AI in giving customers “actionable data that empowers them.” Applications of AI at Discover include real-time fraud detection and analyzing past spending data to advise customers on what to purchase and when, providing guidance on how to save more money and earn rewards.
Advanced analytics techniques are also making strides in the construction industry, which has begun to embrace technology as more digital tools, accessible via the cloud, went mobile. Turner Construction CIO Warren Kudman said the industry is “waking up to the value of data” and has used digital tools to visualize and manipulate environments virtually, reducing the likelihood of costly mistakes. Turner is also using data and ML to track and assess safety conditions at job sites, proactively identify interventions, conduct remote inspections, and track materials as they arrive on job sites.
Dean Del Vecchio, CIO and Chief of Operations at Guardian Life, discussed how the company is using data and AI to develop insurance products faster, easier, and with less friction for customers. Thanks to new tools and new ways of working, some processes that used to take 45 days have been cut to 30 seconds, he said.
Gartner, Inc. announced its top 12 strategic technology trends for 2022 and beyond. Analysts presented their findings at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2021, held virtually for the second year in a row, due to the pandemic. Gartner Research Vice President David Groombridge emphasized that just as 2020 and parts of 2021 found companies focused on survival, the future will focus on a return to the path toward growth. Just as survival required more creative use of technology, the path to growth will also emphasize creative use of technology, not so surprisingly. Gartner’s strategic technology trends for 2022 and beyond are:
Hyperautomation
Automation is a critical ingredient for digital transformation. Hyperautomation suggests a faster path to identifying, vetting, and automating processes across the enterprise. Gartner noted that areas to focus on in order to best accomplish this include improving work quality, hastening the pace of business processes, and fostering nimbleness in decision making.
Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Gartner notes an increase in interest and investment in generative AI in the past year. Generative AI references algorithms that enable using existing content like audio files, images, or text to create new content. Gartner predicts that in the next three and a half years, generative AI will account for 10% of all data produce compared to less than 1% at present. Case examples offered included supporting software development more generally, assisting companies in finding candidates to fill talent shortfalls, and identifying drug candidates more readily.
Data Fabric
Gartner defines data fabric as a design concept that serves as an integrated layer (fabric) of data and connecting processes. This fosters resilient and flexible integration of data across business users and platforms. The upshot is that it can reduce data management efforts substantially while dramatically improving time to value.
AI Engineering
The staying power and lasting value from AI investments have been mixed across many companies. An issue is that some companies deploy an AI model once and expect that value will accrue in perpetuity, Gartner notes that sustained efforts and model evolution must be driven to gain more from these investments. Groombridge noted that AI engineering adoption should lead to three times more value for AI efforts.
Autonomic Systems
Although it is early days in the life of autonomic systems, the next half-decade should yield increased value from it. “Autonomic systems with in-built self-learning can dynamically optimize performance, protect [companies] in hostile environments, and make sure that they’re constantly dealing with new challenges,” Groombridge noted. This trend anticipates greater levels of self-management of software.
Decision Intelligence (DI)
Decision intelligence aims to model decisions in a repeatable way to make them more efficient and to hasten the speed to value. It anticipates doing so through automation that enhances human intelligence. Gartner predicts that in the next two years, one-third of large enterprises will use DI for better and more structured decision-making.
Composable applications
The idea of composable applications highlights that the functional blocks of an application can be decoupled from the overall applications. The component parts can be more finely tuned to create a new application that is of greater value than its monolithic predecessor. Gartner notes that companies that leverage composable applications can outpace their competition by 80% regarding new feature implementation.
Cloud-native platforms (CNPs)
Gartner believes that cloud-native platforms, which leverage cloud technology’s essence to offer IT-related capabilities as a service for technologists, will provide the foundation for most new digital initiatives by mid-decade.
Privacy-enhancing computation (PEC)
Privacy has been an increasingly important concern and priority across the business landscape. Privacy-enhancing computation can protect a company’s and its customers’ sensitive data, protecting the confidentiality of data. Gartner hypothesizes that this is a pathway to maintain customer loyalty by decreasing privacy-related issues and cybersecurity events, and it believes that roughly 60% of large enterprises will leverage these practices by 2025.
Cybersecurity mesh
Cybersecurity mesh is a form of architecture that provides an integrated approach to security IT assets no matter their location. It provides a more standardized and responsive approach to cybersecurity by redefining the perimeters of cybersecurity to the identity of a person or a thing. This is a pathway to reduce the financial implications of cyber incidents by 90% in less than two years, according to Gartner.
Distributed enterprise
Gartner is a believer in the value of the hybrid approach to work, believing that those who enable it fully will achieve 25% faster revenue growth than peer companies who do not. This model allows employees to work in a geographically distributed fashion, opening up new pathways for talent acquisition.
Total experience (TX)
The pandemic has certainly led to an evolution, and in some cases a revolution in customer and employee experience, especially as it pertains to the digital versions of each. By managing each effectively, enterprises should drive better outcomes. Gartner suggests that natural silos relative to innovating around the customer, employee, and user experiences must be broken down so that a more holistic approach might be achieved.
Another Metis Strategy Digital Symposium is in the books. Thank you to all of you who joined the session and to the global CIOs, CEOs, and entrepreneurs who shared their insights. More than ever, it is critical for leaders to tap into their ecosystem of peers and advisors for information, wisdom, and support as organizations navigate this complex and uncertain environment.
Below are a few takeaways from the event. Check out our YouTube channel and the Technovation podcast in the coming weeks for recordings of individual panel discussions.
Culture is key in the transition to hybrid work. Nearly 60% of attendees noted cultivating a strong culture among teams as the greatest risk to operating in a hybrid work environment. With many return-to-office plans in flux and a new wave of employees joining firms without stepping inside an office, executives continue to place a strong emphasis on employee experience, creating new norms around equity, inclusivity, and productivity, and creating new ways for teams to engage in a hybrid setting. For technology leaders, that also includes managing a growing ecosystem of collaboration tools and emerging technologies to find the mix that works best for their organizations.
Just as CIOs helped pave the way for remote work, they also will have a role to play in helping peers understand the art of the possible regarding the future of work. The road ahead is far from clear, but today’s technology leaders are adapting people, processes, and technologies to help create organizations that can pivot quickly in the face of change and seize new opportunities as they arise.
Innovation comes from empowered teams. The ability to innovate at scale continues to rise in importance as organizations work to future-proof their operations and drive enterprise agility. To do so, a number of executives said they are exploring how to democratize innovation capabilities across their companies and unlock the full potential of their teams. Debra King, SVP, Chief Information Officer and Chief Transformation Officer at Corteva Agriscience, discussed how she and her executive team developed a culture of ownership across the organization in which team members at any level in the company were empowered to come up with an idea and execute it. The leadership team then focused on removing roadblocks and providing resources where needed.
Similarly, Tim Dickson, Chief Information Officer at Generac, discussed how the company’s first hackathon spurred new ideas while revealing pent up demand for employee upskilling. Sixteen teams participated, and over half of the ideas presented have been implemented as production deployments, Dickson said. Generac also launched a digital center of excellence that helped scale the internal capability to bring new ideas to life quickly. These new ways of working made employees feel as if their voices were being heard, while providing an avenue to develop those ideas into new products and services for the company.
Security is critical to creating strong customer experiences. Technology leaders are taking greater responsibility for the ways their organizations’ products and services impact the customer experience, and security is an increasingly critical element of that. Mickey Boodaei, CEO of Transmit Security, which received the largest-ever Series A funding round for a cybersecurity company, shared his perspective on the move toward a passwordless future, the evolution of identity and authentication, and the fine balance between security and user experience.
For consumers, identity is critical to processes such as account opening and credential validation. Too little focus on security and vulnerabilities or compliance risks may arise. Too many security measures and the user experience becomes an obstacle. As authentication technology advances and passwords continue to pose a security threat to consumer accounts, Boodaei anticipates organizations will make a concerted effort to go passwordless.
Companies scale up AI efforts. As companies continue to refine their data strategies and identify opportunities to turn data into actionable insight, significant analytics and AI deployments are only expected to grow. Nearly 40% of respondents said they expect analytics to be their greatest area of investment in the year ahead.
Machine learning and AI, paired with an increasingly sophisticated understanding of customer needs, is powering new waves of innovation across industries. Barbara Lavernos, Deputy CEO for Research, Innovation, and Technology at L’Oréal, described an experience that crunches data to provide customers with personalized advice on their beauty routines. The company is also using AI to mine its extensive store of historical data as well as real-time consumer information to deliver cutting-edge products. For example, L’Oréal has trained an AI algorithm to read the thousands of online customer ratings and reviews of the company’s makeup products. With real-time insight, research and innovation teams can then make relevant product changes and target advertising more effectively.
At Johnson & Johnson, new technologies have enabled the company to reimagine consumer health and deliver care for patients in new ways. Augmented reality and virtual reality, paired with AI, have helped train surgeons eight times faster by combining digital imagery with insights about how to perform the best surgical procedures. AI and digital twins have helped Johnson & Johnson accelerate enrollment in COVID-19 vaccine trials and improve batch production of vaccines, from one batch every two weeks to two batches every half week.
Embracing change and becoming nimble is more important than ever. Of the tips IT leaders shared about sustaining a competitive advantage in the current environment, the most common was the ability to be nimble. That means being able to pivot quickly when the market changes, seize opportunities as they present themselves and stave off issues as they arise. Indeed, more than 75% of attendees said creating a culture that embraces uncertainty, as well as the ability to pivot quickly, would have the greatest business impact over the next six to 12 months.
Companies are making a number of changes to make their organizations more nimble, including transforming their operating model, adopting new technologies, upskilling employees and bringing in new talent, and driving innovation through partnerships.
Nimbleness is at the heart of many of today’s technology transformations, including the shift to embrace cloud, APIs, and other technologies, said Bernadette Nixon, the CEO of Algolia. These modern software architectures ultimately allow organizations to move more quickly and evolve their systems to support market shifts, further empowering teams to become more efficient and nimbler in their processes.
We hope you’ll join us for our next Metis Strategy Digital Symposium on December 9, 2021. Stay tuned to our website for more details.
The Metis Strategy team was honored to participate in the 2019 Forbes CIO Next conference, where chief information officers, technology and operations leaders, VCs, and artificial intelligence experts shared their insights into the evolution of AI in the enterprise and gave us a glimpse of where things are headed in 2020. Here are a few lessons we brought home:
“Digital immigrant” companies leverage their strengths. Organizations not born in the cloud, often referred to as “digital immigrants,” continue to face challenges that many of their digital native competitors do not. But as legacy firms upgrade their technology environments and make progress on digital transformation efforts, they increasingly are able to make use of their inherent advantages: stockpiles of valuable data, decades of industry expertise, and the scale to enter new markets quickly.
At Rockwell Automation, for example, the convergence of Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) and an increased focus on data has helped the company improve its on-time delivery, optimize and automate many internal processes, and shift its business model toward services such as telemetry and predictive maintenance. At insurance firm Travelers, aerial photos paired with geospatial data and claims information help the company quickly assess potential losses and deliver help to customers.
In 2020, we expect digital immigrant firms will continue to use their data and scale advantages to optimize internal processes and deliver tech-enabled products and services that can compete with their startup rivals. New technology investments will focus on business capabilities that truly differentiate companies from their competitors.
New ways of working take hold, but developing talent remains a challenge. The line between IT and the business has all but disappeared as firms embrace cross-functional, agile product teams. Many executives noted that this way of working has allowed them to respond more quickly to market changes and provide better customer experiences. We expect this cross-functional collaboration to increase in the year ahead.
At the same time, the battle for talent shows no signs of slowing down. Conference attendees listed talent as a top priority for 2020 as they look to recruit, hire, and retain new people while re-skilling existing employees for jobs of the future. Executives said they continue to seek and develop “T-shaped” employees who have a breadth and depth of skills that span technology and operations. They also recognize the need to create work environments that promote continuous learning at all levels.
We’re still in early innings with AI. Enterprise adoption of AI and machine learning is accelerating as companies explore new use cases and pursue applications that drive concrete business value. In the year ahead, we expect many companies will work to hone existing use cases and develop mechanisms to scale advanced analytics capabilities across the enterprise. Indeed, as many traditional organizations called themselves tech companies in recent years, some panelists suggested we might start hearing them refer to themselves as AI companies.
But significant work remains to be done. Companies continue to invest in their core data infrastructure, and executives are looking for new ways to measure and communicate ROI for their AI initiatives. There are also fundamental issues yet to be resolved, such as how to create explainable algorithms, how to reduce inherent bias in data sets, and whether certain AI technologies should operate without a human in the loop.
The pinnacle: using data to drive growth. Both winners of this year’s Forbes CIO Innovation Award used their companies’ rich data sets to develop new services and drive tangible financial growth:
As we enter 2020, we expect CIOs to play an increasingly visible role in the development of corporate strategy. Many are likely to expand their purview as organizations look to new technologies to drive operational efficiency, deliver top-line growth, and create a differentiated customer experience. CIOs also will continue to be agents of cultural change as they foster new ways of working and develop technology talent across their organizations. We look forward to the year ahead!
This article originally appeared on CIO.com. Steven Norton co-authored the piece.
You have heard the hype: Data is the “new oil” that will power next-generation business models and unlock untold efficiencies. For some companies, this vision is realized only in PowerPoint slides. At Western Digital, it is becoming a reality. Led by Steve Philpott, Chief Information Officer and head of the Digital Analytics Office (DAO), Western Digital is future- proofing its data and analytics capabilities through a flexible platform that collects and processes data in a way that enables a diverse set of stakeholders to realize business value.
As a computer Hard Disk Drive (HDD) manufacturer and data storage company, Western Digital already has tech-savvy stakeholders with an insatiable appetite for leveraging data to drive improvement across product development, manufacturing and global logistics. The nature of the company’s products requires engineers to model out the most efficient designs for new data storage devices, while also managing margins amid competitive market pressures.
Over the past few years, as Western Digital worked to combine three companies into one, which required ensuring both data quality and interoperability, Steve and his team had a material call to action to develop a data strategy that could:
To achieve these business outcomes, the Western Digital team focused on:
The course of this analytics journey has already shown major returns by enabling the business to improve collaboration and customer satisfaction, accelerate time to insight, improve manufacturing yields, and ultimately save costs.
Driving cultural change management and education
Effective CIOs have to harness organizational enthusiasm to explore the art of the possible while also managing expectations and instilling confidence that the CIO’s recommended course of action is the best one. With any technology trend, the top of the hype cycle brings promise of revolutionary transformation, but the practical course for many organizations is more evolutionary in nature. “Not everything is a machine learning use case,” said Steve, who started by identifying the problems the company was trying to solve before focusing on the solution.
Steve and his team then went on a roadshow to share the company’s current data and analytics capabilities and future opportunities. The team shared the presentation with audiences of varying technical aptitude to explain the ways in which the company could more effectively leverage data and analytics.
Steve recognized that while the appetite to strategically leverage data was strong, there simply were not enough in-house data scientists to achieve the company’s goals. There was also an added challenge of competing with silos of analytics capabilities across various functional groups. Steve’s team would ask, “could we respond as quickly as the functional analytics teams could?”
To successfully transform Western Digital’s analytics capabilities, Steve had to develop an ecosystem of partners, build out and enable the needed skill sets, and provide scalable tools to unlock the citizen data scientist. He also had to show his tech-savvy business partners that he could accelerate the value to the business units and not become a bureaucratic bottleneck. By implementing the following playbook, Steve noted, “we proved we can often respond faster than the functional analytics teams because we can assemble solutions more dynamically with the analytics capability building blocks.”
Achieving quick wins through incremental value while driving solution to scale
Steve and his team live by the mantra that “success breeds opportunity.” Rather than ask for tens of millions of dollars and inflate expectations, the team in IT called the High-Performance Computing group pursued a quick win to establish credibility. After identifying hundreds of data sources, the team prioritized various use cases based on those that met the sweet spot of being solvable while clearly exhibiting incremental value.
For example, the team developed a machine learning application called DefectNet to detect test fail patterns on the media surface of HDDs. Initial test results showed promise of detecting and classifying images by spatial patterns on the media surface. Process engineers then could trace patterns relating to upstream equipment in the manufacturing facility. From the initial idea prototype, the solution was grown incrementally to scale, expanding into use cases in metrology anomaly detection. Now every media surface in production goes through the application for classification, and the solution serves as a platform that is used for image classification applications across multiple factories.
A similar measured approach was taken while developing a digital twin for simulating material movement and dispatching in the factory. An initial solution focused on mimicking material moves within Western Digital’s wafer manufacturing operations. The incremental value realized from smart dispatching created support and momentum to grow the solution through a series of learning cycles. Once again, a narrowly focused prototype became a platform solution that now supports multiple factories. One advantage of this approach: deployment to a new factory reuses 80% of the already developed assets leaving only 20% site-specific customization.
Developing a DAO hybrid operating model
After earning credibility that his team could help the organization, Steve established the Digital Analytics Office (DAO), whose mission statement is to “accelerate analytics at scale for faster value realization.” Comprised of a combination of data scientists, data engineers, business analysts, and subject matter experts, this group sought to provide federated analytics capabilities to the enterprise. The DAO works with business groups, who also have their own data scientists, on specific challenges that are often related to getting analytics capabilities into production, scaling those capabilities, and ensuring they are sustainable.
The DAO works across functions to identify where disparate analytics solutions are being developed for common goals, using different methodologies and achieving varying outcomes. Standardizing on an enterprise-supported methodology and machine learning platform enables business teams faster time-to-insights with higher value.
To gain further traction, the DAO organized a hackathon that included 90 engineers broken into 23 teams that had three days to mock up a solution for a specific use case. A judging body then graded the presentations, ranked the highest value use cases, and approved funding for the most promising projects.
In addition to using hackathons to generate new demand, business partners can also bring a new idea to the DAO. Those ideas are presented to the analytics steering committee to determine business value, priority and approval for new initiatives. A new initiative then iterates in a “rapid learning cycle” over a series of sprints to demonstrate value back to the steering committee, and a decision is made to sustain or expand funding. This allows Western Digital to place smart bets, focusing on “singles rather than home runs” to maintain momentum.
Building out the data science skill set
“Be prepared and warned: the constraint will be the data scientists, not the technology,” said Steve, who recognized early in Western’s Digital journey that he needed to turn the question of building skills on its head.
The ideal data scientist is driven by curiosity and can ask “what if” questions that look beyond a single dimension or plane of data. They can understand and build algorithms and have subject matter expertise in the business process, so they know where to look for breadcrumbs of insight. Steve found that these unicorns represented only 10% of data scientists in the company, while the other 90% had to be paired with subject matter experts to combine the theoretical expertise with the business process knowledge to solve problems.
While pairing people together was not impossible, it was inefficient. In response, rather than ask how to train or hire more data scientists, Steve asked, “how do we build self-service machine learning capabilities that only require the equivalent of an SQL-like skill set?” Western Digital began exploring Google and Amazon’s auto ML capability, where machine learning generates additional machine learning. The vision is to abstract the more sophisticated skills involved in developing algorithms so that business process experts can be trained to conduct data science exploration themselves.
Designing and future-proofing technology
Many organizations take the misguided step of formulating a data strategy solely about the technology. The limitation of that approach is that companies risk over-engineering solutions with a slow time to value, and by the time products are in market, the solution may be obsolete. Steve recognized this risk and guided his team to develop a technology architecture that provides the core building blocks without locking in on a single tool. This fit-for-purpose approach allows Western Digital to future-proof its data and analytics capabilities with a flexible platform. The three core building blocks of this architecture are:
Designing and future-proofing technology: Collecting data
The first step is to be able to collect, store and make data accessible in a way that is tailored to each company’s business model. Western Digital, for example, has significant manufacturing operations that require sub-second latency for on-premise data processing at the edge, while other capabilities can afford cloud-based storage for the core business. Across both spectrums, Western Digital consumes 80-100 trillion data points into its analytics environment on a daily basis with more analytical compute power pushing to the edge. The company also optimizes where it stores data, decoupling the data and technology stack, based on the frequency with which the data must be analyzed. If the data is only needed a few times a year, the best low-cost option is to store the data in the cloud. Western Digital’s common data repository spans processes across all production environments and is structured in a way that can be accessed by various types of processing capabilities.
Further, as Western Digital’s use cases became more latency dependent, it was evident that they required core cloud-based big data capabilities closer to where the data was created. Western Digital wanted to enable their user community by providing a self-service architecture. To do this, the team developed and deployed a PaaS (Platform as a Service) called the Big Data Platform Edge Architecture using cloud native technologies and DevOps best practices in Western Digital’s factories.
Future-proofing technology: Process & govern data
With the data primed for analysis, Western Digital offers a suite of tools that allow its organizations to extract, govern, and maintain master data. From open source Hadoop to multi-parallel processing, NoSQL and TensorFlow, data processing capabilities are tailored to the complexity of the use case and the volume, velocity, and variety of data.
While these technologies will evolve over time, the company will continually need to sustain data governance and quality. At Western Digital, everyone is accountable for data quality. To foster that culture, the IT team established a data governance group that identifies, educates and guides data stewards in the execution of data quality delivery. With clear ownership of data assets, the trust and value of data sets is scalable.
Beyond ensuring ownership of data quality, the data governance group also manages platform decisions, such as how to structure the data warehouse, so that the multiple stakeholders are set up for success.
Future-proofing technology: Realize value
Data applied in context transforms numbers and characters into information, knowledge, insight, and ultimately action. In order to realize the value of data in the context of business processes – either looking backward, in real time, or into the future – Western Digital developed four layers of increasingly advanced capabilities:
By codifying the analytical service offerings in this way, business partners can use the right tool for the right job. Rather than tell people exactly what tool to use, the DAO focuses on enabling the fit-for-purpose toolset under the guiding principle that whatever is built should have a clear, secure, and scalable path to launch with the potential for re-use.
The platform re-use ability tremendously accelerates time to scale and business impact.
Throughout this transformation, Steve Phillpott and the DAO have helped Western Digital evolve its mindset as to how the company can leverage data analytics as a source of competitive advantage. The combination of a federated operating model, new data science tools, and a commitment to data quality and governance have allowed the company to define its own future, focused on solving key business problems no matter how technology trends change.
