As AI tools make it possible to generate polished music in seconds, UJAM COO Wolfram Knelangen argues that the act of learning and making music still holds irreplaceable value. In this Q&A, he reflects on creativity, technology, and why human skill and practice remain essential in an increasingly automated musical landscape.  

What early influences or moments in your life sparked your interest in helping people make music more creatively and intuitively?

I’ve lived through a fascinating period of change in music creation: in the 1980s and 90s, it still took quite deep pockets or connections to make a halfway-decent record. Tape machines and big mixing consoles were still the norm. Access to studios was guarded by inhibitive fees, which meant A&Rs and label executives ultimately decided what was worthy of being produced. Nowadays – and for a while now – entire albums are made “in the box” on computers using software. Even more so, we see the first entirely AI-created songs charting. For me personally, in the late nineties, I found myself confronted and frustrated with this reality as an amateur guitar player. A friend handed me one of those unprinted CD-ROMs of unknown provenance and told me that it contained music-making software. I was sceptical but desperate enough to try it. What a revelation! I could now make music on my Pentium computer. It was all still very rudimentary and quirky, but a proof of concept. Back then, there were no YouTube videos or Reddit or Chat GPT – the learning curve was long and steep. It took me probably two years of desperate trial and error to figure it out. So, I fell down a rabbit hole of wondering how to make music software easier and more accessible, and never really climbed back out.

Throughout your career, what experiences have most shaped your leadership approach in a space where artistry and technology often intersect?

One key experience shaping my view was seeing how poor leadership and management by spreadsheet drives competent people away and leads to deteriorating products. When our small German startup was acquired by Digidesign in 2005, I joined their San Francisco-based Pro Tools team. Pro Tools is the industry standard used in professional audio production, and I was immediately fascinated by how people there were so deeply driven by a true passion for music and audio technology. Even the GM had been playing live keyboards for David Bowie and other rock stars. I was stunned! People truly cared, and it created an atmosphere of happy productivity.

We believe that people with autonomy, mastery, and purpose build strong businesses and are more invested and more fun to work with.

After a management change at the parent company, there was more focus on optimizing for profits than generating value for customers. The attempted assimilation into the structures and culture of the mothership and the reduction of creative freedom led to an exodus of market knowledge, competency, and passion. The right people count everywhere, but especially in our field, as it’s a very niche market with a complex product. At UJAM, we make people a priority, emphasizing trust and constructive conflict. For example, we offer training for giving and receiving critical feedback. We have facilitators who run meetings, making sure there’s a psychologically safe space to speak up for everyone. We assign decision-making authority by competency rather than hierarchical seniority and with high levels of autonomy, as long as decisions and actions serve the company’s purpose. We believe that people with autonomy, mastery, and purpose build strong businesses and are more invested and more fun to work with.

How has your work with musicians and creators informed your understanding of what people truly need when engaging with modern music-making tools?

Our customers are people who make music, and they belong to a distinct psychological cohort. Nature magazine recently published research that predisposition for musical sensitivity is predicted by three personality traits: openness, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Openness reflecting curiosity and creativity; agreeableness showing compassion and cooperation; and neuroticism indicating a tendency towards self-doubt and emotional sensitivity. Caring for our customers means that we need to take this into account. Making music is a joyful exploration of new ideas, sounds, and patterns. It is also a deeply collaborative process, and people play off one another’s ideas like in improvisation. Finally, it can be a powerful way to process and express difficult emotions, as we know from works like Mozart’s Requiem to Céline Dion’s My Heart Will Go On. Recognizing this helps us understand how our customers experience the world.

AI can now generate music instantly, yet many still values learning an instrument or developing musical skills. Why do you believe that human learning and practice remain essential in this new landscape?  

It’s the big question in our industry these days: whether human learning and practice will remain essential. Our answer is a clear yes. Why? Because it’s the same question as “Why still learn French when my AirPods can now simultaneously translate?” Or even “Why bother to dice vegetables if you can buy stock cubes?” As a small preliminary MIT Media Lab study earlier this year reported, reliance on AI may contribute to cognitive atrophy and shrinking of critical thinking abilities – the same is likely true for our creative faculties.

Learning a language or an instrument develops new neural pathways and may even influence long-term health. Research published in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychology suggests that learning music may delay cognitive decline and improve executive function. Learning music has been linked to better memory, enhanced pattern recognition, and increased empathy.

The value is in the process of learning and joyful experimentation. It’s like with a physical muscle: use it or lose it. And like a gym session that can be enjoyable, I think that many people are enjoying the creative struggle. “Musicing” as some younger students call it now, according to Derek von Krogh, head of the German Pop Academy.

As AI-assisted and AI-generated music expands, what misunderstandings or assumptions do you often encounter about its role in creativity and musicianship?

AI music generators ingest vast libraries of recorded music, convert it to training data, then recombine elements based on user prompts akin to an LLM like Chat GPT which is basically predicting the most likely next word. This isn’t as much a creative process, as it is an elaborately stitched-together quilt from the fabric collection of a century of recorded music. No original musical idea emerges from this process.

It suggests that as AI-generated music floods the market, genuinely original ideas—born from human creativity—will become increasingly valuable.

The results sound impressive and realistic and these tools are potentially a new gateway for people entering music creation or are handicapped in some form. However, if we’re brutally honest, it’s clear that generative AI tools are built on the appropriation of artists’ intellectual property. Not paying them equals theft. Pending lawsuits from the record industry may confirm this from a legal perspective, but the technical reality is that without the preexisting fruits of creative struggle by human artists, the generative AI systems would have nothing to recombine. This isn’t moral judgment but mechanical fact. And it suggests that as AI-generated music floods the market, genuinely original ideas—born from human creativity—will become increasingly valuable. As Rick Rubin, the producer of artists like Run DMC or Johnny Cash, observes: “What makes an artist a great artist is that their point of view does something to me. I’m not sure that AI has a point of view.”

With real-time AI music tools emerging, what do you see as the biggest challenges for the industry in keeping human expression at the centre of music Creation?

I don’t think that the industry will keep human expression at the center, I think that humans will. We need to build the tools that augment and support their creative process, taking them seriously and celebrating their results. At UJAM, for example, we are employing machine learning-based tools to help our users find the right sound. This is AI working quietly in the background, it leaves creative control in the hands of the artist, making sure they can find and express their vision with joy.

Executive Profile

Wolfram Knelangen is COO at German music software company UJAM, where he leads product strategy and development. With over 20 years in music technology, he has guided global teams at major audio companies. He focuses on building tools that make music creation more accessible while preserving the value of human musicianship. 

The post How Creativity and Technology Intersect in Contemporary Music Making appeared first on The European Business Review.

After an early career that, in addition to math and science, included bioinformatics, Kamil Salikhov entered the world of high-speed, high-frequency trading, a field that is, as he puts it, at the intersection of finance, technology, and science. We managed to catch up with him to hear more about it. 

It’s great to have you with us, Mr. Salikhov! Your academic and career journey is impressive. With multiple publications in bioinformatics and algorithms, you have nevertheless found yourself on the business side. Can you walk us through your path and key milestones which led you to the high-frequency trading field?

My journey to HFT was not linear, and it is rooted in my strong background as a mathematician. I studied mathematics and computer science in the late 2000s and early 2010s. It was a time of rapid growth of tech companies, and it was very natural for people with my background to pursue a career there (which I almost started as well, but that’s a completely different story). I didn’t know anything about HFT and even algorithmic trading in general. It was a coincidence that I joined a small startup doing high-frequency trading. As it turned out, my love for math was a perfect fit; HFT is one of the most mathematically intensive fields in finance, built on complex models and sophisticated algorithms.

HFT is one of the most mathematically intensive fields in finance, built on complex models and sophisticated algorithms.

Around the same time, I was offered an opportunity to go to Paris for a short internship at Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée to work on problems in bioinformatics. It was another field that represented an appealing combination of mathematics, science, and technology. I joined the program and spent several years as a researcher, pursuing a PhD in a joint program between Moscow State University and Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, working at the intersection of technology and computational biology. It was a productive period for me as an academic. I authored and co-authored several papers and even developed a paper that (to some extent) improved the state-of-the-art solution to the problem of genome assembly.

Both HFT and bioinformatics were very interesting to me at the time, so for four years I worked on my PhD while also growing within an HFT startup. It was a challenging but rewarding period. In parallel with my doctoral studies, I was exploring the new and rapidly emerging field of HFT. Eventually, I decided to focus more and more on my career in the algorithmic trading industry. Now, after more than 10 years in this field, I am the co-owner and Head of Research at Pinely. However, a part of me will always belong to academia.

How has your academic background shaped your approach to algorithmic trading today?

I see algorithmic trading as a very special field, one that lies at the intersection of finance, technology, and science. HFT began to truly take off in the early 2000s, and data and technology have since become absolutely central to it. On the practical side, working in HFT means constantly exploring new ideas, especially with the boom in machine learning and data-driven methods, which form the core of our algorithms.

HFT research, in many ways, mirrors academic research. Behind every system and model lies deep exploration, experimentation, and innovation. At Pinely I also hold the position of Head of Research, a role that is not typical in most tech or finance firms. However, for companies like Pinely, it represents the very essence of our philosophy, combining scientific rigor with entrepreneurial agility.

In the end, the work of a researcher shares common ground across disciplines. You tackle complex problems from multiple angles, experiment with different approaches, and (hopefully) achieve great results—sometimes even ones that no one has reached before.

My strong academic background has shaped my mindset, to view challenges not only as business problems but also as opportunities for discovery and innovation. From this perspective, my work in algorithmic trading, my PhD studies, and my master’s degree are all deeply and organically connected.

To thrive, you must constantly develop new ideas, test them, and refine them faster than anyone else.

Pinely is known for its “technology-first” mindset. How does this philosophy influence your approach to research, experimentation, and product development?

HFT is not a trading strategy, it is a technology and an approach. Understanding this nature of the field, we at Pinely have incorporated a technology-first mindset into every part of our work. Technology became the cornerstone of every process we deal with, whether it is analyzing large volumes of data or developing and optimizing our trading infrastructure for this purpose. We are much closer to tech companies than to traditional trading firms.

This technology‑first philosophy ensures that our research doesn’t just ask, “What strategy can we deploy?” but also “What infrastructure, what algorithms, and what design will enable a strategy to execute reliably and at unrivaled speed?”

Our aim is always to stay ahead of the market, developing not just innovative trading models but modular, adaptive systems that can respond intelligently to dynamic and complex market conditions.

The HFT field is pretty mystifying compared to other tech subsectors. Could you tell us more about it? For example, what qualities, in your opinion, differentiate HFT professionals from developers in big tech?

Many of my colleagues have a background in big tech, so the fields are not that far apart. One noticeable difference is that our researchers and developers usually see the results of their work much faster than in big tech—sometimes in hours or days. It’s also important to note that HFT involves different parts of technology. One part is more data-driven, where the key skills are understanding advanced mathematical models. Another part is the infrastructure, where ultra-low-latency technology is critical. This means building systems that can process huge amounts of market data and react instantly.

From my experience, two qualities truly distinguish HFT professionals: a research-oriented mindset and a relentless drive for innovation. The industry is intensely competitive, and competition breeds creativity. To thrive, you must constantly develop new ideas, test them, and refine them faster than anyone else.

The company is also highly engaged in the tech community, supporting programming competitions like ICPC and educational conferences. Why is community involvement such an important part of Pinely’s culture?

I and many of my colleagues come from backgrounds in competitive mathematics and programming, so supporting younger generations of talented and motivated people feels very natural to us. From my own experience, I know how much of a difference it can make when someone’s talent is recognized at the right time. I’ve seen people whose lives and careers were completely shaped by being noticed and encouraged early on, and that’s something I want to help create for others.

I also deeply believe that innovation doesn’t start at the corporate level; it starts early, with curiosity, inspiration, and the drive to explore new ideas. By engaging with students through competitions like ICPC and educational conferences, we can spark that curiosity, encourage experimentation, and perhaps even help someone discover a passion that shapes their future.

Another factor is the Pinely team. We have a tremendous amount of expertise across research, technology, and problem-solving, and it feels only natural to share this expertise with the next generation—to mentor, inspire, and challenge their minds. This is not just giving back, it’s investing in the future of technology and innovation. Supporting the community has become a part of our culture.

As the co-owner of Pinely, how do you personally define success, both for yourself and for the company?

Throughout my career, I have grown with the company, and now it’s almost impossible to separate the company’s success from my own. I don’t see success as a single final point but rather as a journey, working on challenging problems with some of the smartest people in the world and building something that has never been done before is the best way I can describe it.

Finally, as an experienced tech leader with a solid scholarly background, what are the most important trends in technology that leaders should be aware of and understand? What should they understand about them?

Everyone is talking about AI nowadays, and I really think it’s changing the world, including our industry. At the same time, I think we should value the people we are working with and human interaction.

Executive Profile

Kamil Salikhov is Co-Owner and Head of Research at Pinely – a company specializing in high-frequency trading and algorithmic solutions. Kamil’s academic and professional journey reflects a strong commitment to integrating cutting-edge technology with financial markets to optimize trading strategies. Kamil actively contributes to innovation in the fintech space and is open to professional dialogue on high-frequency trading, algorithmic solutions, and advanced financial technologies.

The post Speeding Through the Intersection: Algorithmic Trading appeared first on The European Business Review.

As founder and CEO of ZeroBounce, Liviu Tanase has built one of the most trusted names in email deliverability. Under his leadership, the company has evolved from a single email validation service into a full suite of deliverability tools. Most recently, it launched ZeroBounce ONE, a unified platform that simplifies how businesses improve their email performance. 

Speaking with The European Business Review, Tanase shares how his approach to leadership has evolved, what AI means for the future of communication, and why the human touch will always remain at the core of technology.

You’ve built several successful ventures. What personal qualities or habits have been most critical in helping you sustain momentum as an entrepreneur?

Two traits have really helped me sustain momentum: I’m stubborn, and I have a lot of energy for what I do. I wouldn’t call being a workaholic a quality, but I doubt I would have gone very far without persistence and drive.

When it comes to habits, I make a point of staying in tune with what’s happening in the world, especially in tech. The best products anticipate a need before the market even realizes it. So I stay curious, follow new innovations closely, and think ahead about what challenges people might face next. Of course, I’m not always right, but it’s a great exercise in imagination and entrepreneurship.

How has your perspective on leadership changed from your early days as a founder to leading ZeroBounce today?

My perspective on leadership has changed completely. When I started my first business, all I could think about was the product and how to deliver the best experience to our customers. I didn’t think much about building a team culture or developing people. New people would join us and we’d throw them in the water and let them learn to swim.

Investing in your team is tremendous, because happy employees create happy customers. And happy customers always come back.

Today, I lead two companies, and ZeroBounce alone has more than 100 employees. While I’m still very focused on the quality of our products, I’ve learned that leadership is about much more than that. I ask myself: What kind of culture are we building? Do our employees have a sense of purpose? How can we make their experience better?

Investing in your team is tremendous, because happy employees create happy customers. And happy customers always come back.

Looking back at your career, what has been the most unexpected lesson about building technology companies that you wish you had known earlier?

The most unexpected lesson was to trust my instincts more. You can never be 100% sure your product is going to work, and that uncertainty never goes away completely.

When you’re first starting out, you’re even more unsure. Of course, you rely on market data and initial customer feedback. But mostly, you operate based on gut instinct and a belief that what you’re building will serve its purpose and be of service to people.

When I first ran the concept of ZeroBounce to some of my business partners, they thought it was a terrible idea. A niche B2B software-as-a-service (SaaS) company? They thought the chances of making it successful were slim. But I had another email marketing company and could sense how the market was going to shift.

Email validation is now a must-have for all mass senders – and I’m glad I trusted my instinct and went on to build ZeroBounce. It’s now the go-to email deliverability platform for half a million customers around the world. We’re beyond grateful they choose us every day. 

ZeroBounce has become a recognized name in email deliverability. What leadership strategies have helped you keep the company competitive in such a fast-changing industry?

I could sum it up this way: we never rest on our laurels. That mindset runs through everything we do – from product development to the way we treat every one of our customers.

We started as an email validation company, and that foundation helped us become a recognized name in the industry. But we’ve continued to add new services to the platform because we listened to our customers’ feedback through the years. From email scoring to deliverability tools and an email finder, all these services have shaped ZeroBounce into the company we are today.

Many of the features are actually a direct result of customer feedback. We read and respond to every message, social media post, and review – and share all suggestions with our product team. In a real sense, we’ve built ZeroBounce together with our customers.

Another key strategy has been investing in education from day one. Our marketing and PR team launched with a blog, and since then, our content library has grown tremendously. We now publish original studies, reports, guides, and host webinars that draw large audiences. When you think and act like a publisher, people begin to see you as a trusted source of knowledge. That’s something we’ll always strive for. 

What is the larger mission that drives ZeroBounce, and how do you keep your team aligned with that vision as you grow?

Our mission has always been to help people use email safely and more effectively. That hasn’t changed since day one. It’s the foundation for everything we do, from how we build our tools to how we support our customers.

Every team member learns about this mission from the start, but more importantly, they see it in action every day. It comes through in our decisions, our priorities, and the way we treat our customers. That shared sense of purpose makes it easy for everyone to move in the same direction.

We also talk about our mission often – whether in company-wide meetings or in everyday chats – because it’s not a one-time effort. It’s something you keep alive through constant communication and example.

Your team recently launched ZeroBounce ONE. How does this new platform represent the next chapter for your company and reflect the way you approach innovation?

ZeroBounce ONE is tied to our mission of helping companies succeed with their email communication. We thought of a way we could serve them even better by making our entire platform easier to access and use.

ZeroBounce ONE is a subscription that brings together our email deliverability suite, plus 25,000 monthly email validation credits, at a price lower than what the credits alone used to cost.

Previously, 25,000 validation credits cost $175 per month. Now, for just $99 per month (or $79 per month billed annually), ZeroBounce ONE customers gain not only the same 25,000 credits, but all our other tools – Email Warmup, DMARC Monitor, Blacklist Monitor, Inbox Placement Testing, Email Server Testing, and Email Finder – at no additional cost.

Marketers kept telling us deliverability tools felt expensive and fragmented as they had to use separate vendors. ZeroBounce ONE unifies everything into one subscription so businesses don’t have to choose between validation and deliverability. They can get both.

At a time when many SaaS subscriptions are soaring in price, ZeroBounce ONE defies the trend and sets a new standard for value. We’ve made enterprise-grade deliverability tools affordable and accessible to every marketer. And we’re giving them more than ever – for less than they were already paying. 

AI is changing the way companies think about personalization, automation, and data quality. From your perspective, what role will AI play in shaping the future of email deliverability?

AI can analyze massive data sets, detect patterns almost instantly, and help companies make smarter decisions, like predicting which emails might bounce or when to send for the best results.

Our team sees AI as an incredible support system for humans, not a replacement. The human side – strategy, empathy, understanding what makes communication meaningful – still matters just as much. I think the companies that thrive will be the ones who use AI to amplify human expertise, not replace it. 

Beyond deliverability, how do you see AI transforming the broader communications ecosystem, and what opportunities or risks does it create for companies like yours?

AI is changing how we create, personalize, and deliver messages across every channel, from email to chat to social. Companies can now reach people faster and with more relevance than ever before.

But that also comes with responsibility. The easier it becomes to automate communication, the greater the risk of losing authenticity. If every message starts to sound the same, people will tune out. That’s why the real opportunity is in using AI to enhance human connection, not replace it.

For companies like ours, AI opens incredible possibilities to make communication safer, smarter, and more effective. At the same time, it challenges us to stay ethical, transparent, and focused on the human being at the other end of every message.

Fast-forward to the next decade. What do you hope ZeroBounce will stand for in the industry, and how do you envision email’s place in the future of global communication?

A decade from now, I hope ZeroBounce continues to stand for trust, innovation, and reliability. We’ve built our reputation on accuracy and security, and I want us to keep pushing those standards higher while helping businesses communicate more effectively.

If ZeroBounce can keep that human element alive, and help companies reach people in a genuine way while protecting their data and reputation, then we’ll have done our job well.

Email will keep evolving, but it will always be at the heart of digital communication. What will change is how intelligent it becomes: more automated, more personalized, and better integrated with other channels. AI and automation will make it smarter, but the human intention behind every message will still matter most.

If ZeroBounce can keep that human element alive, and help companies reach people in a genuine way while protecting their data and reputation, then we’ll have done our job well.

Want to get more out of your email marketing?

Even the best campaigns fail when emails don’t reach the inbox. With an average of 28% of email lists going bad each year, data accuracy is everything. ZeroBounce helps you keep your lists clean and your messages deliverable. If your email marketing could use a boost, sign up for ZeroBounce. You can check your first 100 emails for free, with 99.6% accuracy guaranteed.

Executive Profile

Liviu Tanase is a serial entrepreneur and telecommunications executive with more than 17 years of experience. He founded five companies and has participated in three exits creating quadruple-digit returns. In 2015, he founded email validation and deliverability company ZeroBounce. ZeroBounce helps businesses maintain email data quality and offers several deliverability tools to ensure the successful delivery of emails to the inbox. Liviu Tanase is also an email deliverability thought leader. He’s a contributor to Inc., Entrepreneur, and countless other industry publications.

The post ZeroBounce CEO Liviu Tanase on Leadership, AI, and the Future of Email appeared first on The European Business Review.

Robotics continues to evolve as one of the most transformative forces in modern industry. In this interview, Romain Moulin shares his lifelong passion for machines and his perspective on how innovation, leadership, and automation are shaping the future. He highlights the importance of curiosity, technical excellence, and strategic vision in driving sustainable progress.

What first sparked your interest in robotics, and how has that passion evolved throughout your career? 

I’ve been fascinated by machines for as long as I can remember. As a child, I spent hours building with LEGO Technic, and growing up near a factory only deepened that curiosity. When I was 14, I watched the French Robotics Cup on E=M6 and thought, “One day, I’m going to do that.” Every year after that, I’d stay up late on the night it aired, imagining the robot I would have built. At 20, I finally competed, and that same passion has stayed with me ever since. Even today, I still love designing new mechanisms – just last night, I modelled a robotic finger in Onshape to improve how our system grabs bins. 

Having worked in both technical and leadership roles, how do you balance engineering expertise with the demands of leading people and organisations? 

In my role as CEO, I’ve found it’s really a 50–50 balance. My strong technical background is both a strength and a potential weakness. If you lean entirely to one side, it doesn’t work: you either end up with a company that’s poorly managed operationally, or one led by a CFO who doesn’t fully grasp how the product should resonate with the market. In the end, a technology company’s success depends on aligning what’s technically possible with what the market truly needs, and every leader in the organisation has to understand that. 

In your experience, what qualities are most important for leaders in the robotics sector to cultivate in order to drive sustainable innovation?

Curiosity is key. The robotics sector is evolving at an incredibly rapid pace, from advances in AI and perception to new materials and manufacturing methods. Leaders need to constantly look beyond their own organisation and stay engaged with the broader ecosystem. It is about keeping a ‘Day 1 mindset,’ as Jeff Bezos says: never assume the work is done and always question how things could be improved.

Leaders need to constantly look beyond their own organisation and stay engaged with the broader ecosystem.

Strong technical acumen is just as critical. In robotics, every innovation sits at the intersection of hardware, software and logistics, and understanding those connections is what allows leaders to make the right decisions. Sustainable innovation comes from leaders who can combine deep engineering insight with strategic vision, ensuring that technological progress translates into real-world, practical, scalable solutions. 

How do you view the current state of robotics in Europe, and what forces are shaping its development?

Automation has deep roots in Europe, especially in Germany and Austria, who have long excelled in the field. Today, as robotics increasingly relies on software, data, and mathematics, France has a real opportunity to play a larger role in this new phase of automation. 

However, we still face challenges in building a stronger industrial ecosystem, particularly when it comes to suppliers. At the same time, competition from China is evolving, with manufacturers expanding their presence through broader product portfolios and increased global reach. The key for Europe will be to leverage its engineering excellence while developing a more agile and connected industrial network that can compete on both innovation and scale. 

What lessons from your career stand out when it comes to managing growth in industries where technology moves faster than regulation and adoption? 

In our industry, regulation and adoption are keeping pace with technological progress. Within warehouses, regulation remains pragmatic and supportive, which gives us the freedom to innovate and design systems exactly as we envision them. And on the adoption side, the response has been excellent.

This is why growth in robotics is ultimately about discipline: delivering innovation at a pace the market can absorb, while keeping quality, reliability and consistency at the core. 

The real challenge is not regulatory or societal resistance, but execution – by scaling technology reliably and ensuring every customer benefits from the same level of performance. This is why growth in robotics is ultimately about discipline: delivering innovation at a pace the market can absorb, while keeping quality, reliability and consistency at the core. 

An example of this is the next generation Skypod, which builds on the success of the original system by delivering higher performance, increased storage density, and advanced software capabilities. These improvements enable seamless fleet management, reduced downtime, and allow customers to conveniently scale operations with greater efficiency.

As automation and robotics become more widespread, what do you see as the implications for the future of work and workforce skills?

Low-skilled labour in warehouses will continue to decline, but in reality, these are jobs that many people no longer want to do, given their physically demanding, repetitive, and often high-risk nature. At the same time, automation is creating new opportunities for skilled roles, particularly in maintenance, system operations, and engineering. 

Education and training will be essential to bridge that transition. Without strong investment in technical education, we risk facing a significant shortage of maintenance technicians and engineers. The future of work in logistics will depend on how effectively we prepare people for these higher-value, technology-driven roles. 

Looking ahead, how do you imagine robotics transforming supply chains and industries globally over the next decade?

Warehouses will become fully automated, but not with humanoid robots: the future of logistics is about efficiency, not imitation. We will see increasingly intelligent and adaptive systems, like the Skypod, that boost throughput and maximise storage density, enabling warehouses to handle greater volumes within the same footprint.

Automation will extend beyond the warehouse as well, connecting production, transportation, and fulfilment into a continuous, data-driven supply chain. The coming years will be defined by how well companies integrate robotics into the broader flow of goods, creating resilient networks that are faster and more flexible.

Executive Profile 

Romain Moulin is the CEO of Exotec, a company he co-founded with Renaud Heitz in 2015. As a former robotics architect and technical engineer at GE and BA Système, Romain spent 10+ years immersed in deep technology systems before he shifted his attention to solving the challenge of retail warehouse automation. He was born and raised in France and graduated from a top French engineering university, SUPAERO. 

The post How Robotics Innovation Is Transforming Global Warehousing and Supply Chain Efficiency appeared first on The European Business Review.

Employment law, like so many aspects of 21st-century life, is subject to constant evolution. It’s challenging for employers, who must be aware of their legal responsibilities at all times, but also for employees, who need to know exactly where they stand. Enter Tessa Harris and her team at Redmans.

You have built an impressive career in employment law, now serving as Employment Law Director at Redmans. What inspired you to specialise in this field?

Having a family who are largely in the medical profession, I have always been interested in medicine and healthcare (even questioning whether, at one point, I chose the right profession). So, I initially wanted to specialise in clinical negligence.

However, during my Legal Practice course, which I carried out at the University of the West of England in Bristol, clinical negligence was not a topic to specialise in, so one of my optional modules was employment law. Since it felt easier than my other modules, I enjoyed it the most out of all.

It is also fast-paced and ever-changing, which means I have to be on my toes. I benefited from knowing the law and understanding my rights as an employee, as did my friends and family when ad hoc advice was needed.

Following the end of my university life, as luck would have it, a paralegal opportunity arose in the Employment team at Lyons Davidson solicitors. And although I grabbed the opportunity merely because it was one foot in the door in an incredibly competitive industry, I quickly discovered how much my enjoyment of employment law actually increased in practice.

I found employment law to be highly relatable, as most of the population is employed or in some form of work capacity. It is also fast-paced and ever-changing, which means I have to be on my toes. I benefited from knowing the law and understanding my rights as an employee, as did my friends and family when ad hoc advice was needed.

I love that I can help so many people, and every person’s case is different. I couldn’t imagine being in a position where some of my clients find themselves having been unfairly dismissed or discriminated against. But I can, however, as an employee, sympathise with them. I am therefore able to show a human / relatable side of being a lawyer, which can be lost in other legal areas.

How have your academic and professional experiences, including your master’s in Clinical Negligence, shaped your approach to employment law and client advocacy?

I say this to many aspiring lawyers that a degree, the Legal Practice course, and a training contract are all useful to gain the basics of the theoretical side of law. However, I only had a firm grasp of what I was doing once I had a caseload myself, and I was applying the theoretical side of law to actual real-life situations.

Nothing can prepare you for dealing with those initial client calls, drafting and submitting your first claim form, or representing your client, during the first preliminary hearing.

As Employment Law Director, you balance client work with mentoring and guiding your legal team. What principles define your leadership style in such a people-focused area of law?

Being a specialist in employment law, I know first hand how poor management can result in significant repercussions. So, I am always conscious of ensuring that I strike a fine balance between acting in the best interests of the firm as a business, as well as my team.

The most important principle is that I will always listen and take opinions and points on board. If I can find a solution, fantastic; if I can’t, I will suggest alternatives.

Because of the nature of my role and my experience, I have developed empathy and look to understand the “why” before reaching a conclusion. While I honestly communicate the potential issues that may occur, I also look to work with my team to reach a conclusion and a way forward.

Moreover, part of managing a team is being able to make difficult decisions. So, having an open and transparent dialogue and offering support from the start allows those difficult decisions to be communicated with discussion and suggested options, where equal respect is offered both ways.

I am very fortunate to work with an incredible team, where we have developed a fantastic working relationship. As a collective, we work on solutions and ways forward and always support one another.

Redmans is one of the few UK firms that focus solely on employment law and has earned recognition for its success in resolving cases efficiently. What makes Redmans’ approach distinctive, and how does this shape your work with clients and colleagues?

The lawyers we hire are key to maintaining our high levels of success at Redmans solicitors. We pride ourselves on being approachable and try to offer solutions where clients may feel there are none.

In our initial calls, we will always offer advice and suggest best ways forward for clients. We believe that the human approach is key, as empathy and understanding are so important.

While more experience will assist with having these skills, we also ensure that our new recruits are the right fit for not only working as a team but, equally, for offering the same level of approachability and professionalism that our clients come to expect.

The discussion around employee empowerment and day-one rights has become increasingly important. How do you think these developments are influencing workplace culture and employer responsibilities?

It’s significantly reshaping workplace culture and redefining employer responsibilities. As employees increasingly expect greater autonomy, fair treatment, and a voice in decision making, organisations are being challenged to create more inclusive, transparent, and supportive environments, which in my view is a positive way forward.

Employers are expected to offer more by way of training, communication, and mental health support to meet the expectations of this new workplace culture.

Workplace culture is shifting from traditional, top-down management to more collaborative and flexible styles. This then allows employees the space to be more engaged, motivated, and innovative, which can lead to higher productivity. However, this also means that employers are expected to offer more by way of training, communication, and mental health support to meet the expectations of this new workplace culture.

Employers are now, more than ever, accountable for creating safe and respectful workspaces. It requires a review of pay equality, work-life balance, diversity and inclusion, and harassment prevention. A higher onus is on employers to ensure that employees are safe, and if day-one rights come in (which seems likely), the risk to employers is far more significant. Thus, policies and procedures will need to be reviewed carefully, legal advice sought and prepared in readiness for this change.

Mental health and well-being have become top priorities in many workplaces. How do you see employment law supporting this shift toward healthier and more inclusive working environments?

The law hasn’t changed much since the implementation of the Equality Act 2010, which protects those who have a disability from discrimination. Although not everyone who struggles with mental health issues will be considered disabled, that does not necessarily mean that employees who do struggle with mental health have nowhere to turn to.

Health and safety regulations require employers to provide a safe physical and mental working environment, reducing risks of injury and stress. So, businesses are now swiftly adapting their ways of working to accommodate mental health and provide support systems in place.

Implementation of stress risk assessments at work and providing hybrid working for a positive work-life balance are two areas which employers seem to adopt at present. Additionally, employment law covers areas such as equal pay, protection against unfair dismissal, flexible working rights, and parental leave, all of which contribute to an employee’s well-being and work-life balance.

From your experience handling cases such as disability discrimination and absence management, what key trends or challenges are shaping employment law today?

Since COVID, employers have adopted hybrid working, which has improved work-life balance. However, now that some time has passed, some have reduced that flexibility or removed it completely. This has resulted in many employees, who have relied upon such flexibility to manage their mental health and personal circumstances, feeling disgruntled and stressed.

So, the vast majority of discrimination claims that I now receive are with a greater focus on mental health as a disability.

In the past, physical impairments were traditionally the conditions relied upon for disability discrimination claims. However, with the growing recognition of mental health conditions, such as anxiety, depression, and PTSD, employers are increasingly required to consider adjustments for mental-health-related absences or performance issues, even before determining whether the condition is in fact a disability or not. This helps to ensure that they have taken steps to protect themselves from the possibility of litigation.

There is also more of an emphasis on reasonable adjustments being implemented at work. A rising expectation for employers is that they be proactive in ensuring that adjustments have been discussed and implemented.

Moreover, employers are expected to consider each individual pattern of absence per employee, as a generalised absence-management policy tends to be outdated and rigid in structure. Adapting a more flexible way of managing absence would show that care and attention have been given to the individual’s needs.

Failure to do the above can lead to grievances being raised and, again, litigation.

Looking ahead, how do you see employment law evolving to meet the changing expectations of employees and employers in the future world of work?

As employee awareness grows and their rights increase, so will litigation matters. With day-one rights likely to be implemented as well, employment law practitioners are likely to see an influx of cases, which will have a knock-on effect on the capacity of Acas and the Employment Tribunal.

I foresee an increase in not only unfair dismissal claims but, given how the culture is shifting, in disability discrimination claims, specifically failure to make reasonable adjustments, as well as discriminatory dismissals by way of sickness absence.

Employers will need to have a sound business justification for removing or reducing flexibility around hybrid working. While, at present, Employment Tribunals tend to avoid interfering with how a company wants to run its business, if there is no sound commercial reason for the justification, this could result in Tribunals finding that such action is unlawful. Again, employers should be considering, therefore, why they need to change, what the pros and cons are, and what alternatives can be offered to assist those most in need.

Fairness and inclusion are key. A reasonable employer will now be expected to include its employees in decision-making processes, consider individual needs based on any underlying medical condition, and adopt a supportive and understanding environment. If an employer does not, there is likely to be a significant litigation risk.

Executive Profile

Tessa Harris is the Employment Law Director at Redmans solicitors and is at the forefront of managing diverse cases. Serving as a deputy to the firm’s Partner, she brings her wealth of experience to supervising and guiding the legal team.

She focuses on litigation, particularly in areas like disability discrimination and absence management.

The post Evolutionary Forces at Work: Keeping Abreast of Employment Law appeared first on The European Business Review.

The health sector has gone through some testing times since Iñaki Ereño became part of it in 2005, including COVID-19. Now Group CEO of Bupa, he puts into focus the group’s priorities and achievements, as well as its ambition to become the world’s most customer-centric healthcare company.

Hello, Iñaki. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today. To begin, you’ve had a remarkable journey from leading Sanitas (part of Bupa) in Spain to becoming Group CEO of Bupa. What key experiences have shaped your leadership style?

I first joined Sanitas in 2005 and it’s hard to believe that it is now 20 years ago! I became CEO in 2008 and that timing coincided with the Spanish financial crisis. That was a very hard situation to navigate, and it had a huge impact on my leadership style, because to survive we needed to choose a growth mindset no matter what the obstacles were. We had to find new, creative ways to work and to be resilient through it all.

Another experience that shaped my leadership style was the knowledge that healthcare as an industry needed to transform. As a sector, healthcare has been slow to digitise. We wanted to offer something different and provide care in a way that customers experience other consumer products and services so that it is on their terms.

My leadership style evolved again during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a very intense period. We were caring for people in very tough situations and some of our patients and residents did not survive this terrible virus. We wanted to honour them and make sure that we always spoke their names and that those impacted were all remembered for the people they were, and not as a statistic. The organisation demonstrated its immense capacity to be caring at this time and that has shaped my leadership style, too.

How have these experiences influenced the way you steer a global healthcare business today?

We can never be complacent. That’s especially true for a global healthcare company, where our customers are relying on us to deliver for them in one of the most important areas of their lives. Bupa is over 75 years old, which is a wonderful achievement, but we need to keep adapting. We are a unique company who do not have shareholders. Our structure means we are able to reinvest our profits back into the business and into our purpose, ensuring we are constantly improving the services we provide for our customers.

These improvement ideas can be small, for example training our dental reception teams to be able to detect a nervous patient and put them at ease when they arrive for an appointment. Or, the innovation can be in the form of much more significant business initiatives; for example we are making a significant investment in expanding mental healthcare support by opening 200 mental health facilities called “mindplaces” worldwide.

Since taking the helm in 2021, what shifts or transformations are you most proud of initiating?

We’ve grown hugely as a business over the past few years; we now have more than 60 million customers worldwide and 100,000 colleagues. We’re growing faster than the market average, too, and that is testament to the hard work of the teams around the world and their growth mindset, and I’m truly inspired by them.

We’ve also made a lot of progress towards our ambition of becoming the world’s most customer-centric healthcare company. We’ve built a customer system so we can listen to our customers’ feedback right across the organisation via a customer listening app, and we’ve asked all our colleagues to listen and generate ideas to improve the experience that we provide wherever possible.

Since 2022, we have listened to nearly 200,000 customer calls and made over 24,000 customer improvements. As a result of this, our customers’ likelihood to recommend us is now much higher than ever before, which makes us all incredibly proud, while recognising that there is always more we can do.

This focus on our customers and their experience has also had a significant impact on our colleagues and their sense of pride. We measure colleague engagement twice a year and our latest results from May 2025 saw 87 per cent of colleagues participate and give an engagement score of 83 per cent. I am especially positive because there were so many comments provided, which shows that our people believe we take their feedback very seriously, too, which we definitely do.

Having worked across diverse markets in Europe and Latin America, what leadership lessons have you learned from managing teams across different cultures? How have these insights shaped your approach to leading Bupa?

It has been extremely valuable to build a broad perspective from working across our different markets. A big reflection for me is how to communicate well and keep it simple. We want our strategy to be understood around the world by every colleague, which means we need to be simple, clear, and consistent.

In 2021, one of the first projects we introduced was the launch of an internal communications platform so that all our 100,000 colleagues could connect with each other. Through this platform, there are hundreds of groups which have been spontaneously created on different topics, where our people can ask each other questions, share problems, and find solutions together, no matter which country they are working in.

While we’re a global company that benefits from global collaboration, it’s clear that each market faces a range of different needs and challenges, whether that’s different regulatory environments, healthcare landscapes, or cultural trends. It is so important to empower the local management teams, who know their market and are best placed to take care of the customers who live there.

Fostering innovation at scale is a major challenge for any multinational. How are you cultivating a culture at Bupa that empowers employees to take smart risks and learn from both success and failure?

One of the biggest shifts has been reshaping Bupa’s culture. In early 2021, we consulted with the leadership team about streamlining the company’s values and together we refined them from seven down to three: Brave, Caring, and Responsible.

We consulted with the leadership team about streamlining the company’s values and together we refined them from seven down to three: Brave, Caring, and Responsible.

Caring and Responsible were more established and expected values, but Brave was deliberately new. Bravery is central to the culture we’re building here at Bupa. That means pushing boundaries, taking calculated risks, and innovating – and that applies to everyone.

We want all our colleagues to be involved and to think of innovation as both the big, exciting, strategic ideas and the small suggestions that each make such a difference for our customers. With our customer listening app and the ability to listen and make improvement suggestions, we’ve tried to create a tool that enables every single colleague to be able to innovate.

How is the business’s leadership focusing on fostering talent and supporting people’s careers at Bupa?

We’ve had a strong learning and development programme in place for our colleagues for years, but we’ve recently made additional investments to ensure that our people have the skills and confidence to thrive in their careers and change the future of healthcare.

In June 2025, we launched a global initiative, known as Bupa Campus, that is bringing together the best in physical and digital learning experiences, creating a modern way of growing the skills of our people, to deliver better care for our customers. While it is a global programme, it will be tailored to the specific needs of each market.

We also take advantage of our global footprint to learn from each other, offering short-term placements, long-term relocations, or temporary secondments to the various Bupa offices across the globe. We want to do even more to offer mobility in a flexible way and to encourage more colleagues to try something new, boosting their skills and capabilities.

Bupa’s ambition is to become the world’s most customer-centric healthcare company. How is your digital health solution Blua transforming the healthcare experience for customers globally?

Blua, our digital health solution, is core to our customer-centric philosophy. Blua gives our customers access to virtual consultations, digital health programmes, and remote healthcare, which is revolutionising the way we deliver care. And our customers agree – we’re seeing widespread adoption across our markets, with 7.5 million customers already using the service globally.

Blua is always evolving. A good example of this is the “Monitor your Health” feature used by our Spanish customers with chronic illnesses like arrhythmias or high blood pressure. Instead of waiting for issues to arise, the “Monitor your Health” feature detects early warning signs, enabling patients to set goals and make lifestyle adjustments proactively, helping to prevent potential health problems.

Blua also integrates with customers’ wearable devices to sync their real-time health data directly with a team of healthcare professionals, including doctors, psychologists, nutritionists, personal trainers, and physiotherapists.

In 10 years, I think we’ll look back and wonder how we managed our health without this kind of digitisation. The potential is massive.

You’ve spoken passionately about the link between planetary health and human health. How is Bupa embedding a sustainable approach into its global operations?

It’s undeniable that human health and the health of the planet are linked. To help people stay healthy, we are working to help create healthy environments where everyone can thrive. We call this our “better world” strategy and there are three core elements.

Firstly, we want to help even more people access affordable and preventative healthcare. We have set ourselves the target of helping 25 million people in this way by 2027.

Secondly, we want to help improve the environments where people live: cities. As part of our ongoing “Healthy Cities” initiative, we’re working to get our people, customers, and communities active. We want to support at least 50 cities to become healthier places to live in over the next few years by investing in projects that champion healthier, more inclusive communities and that ultimately will contribute towards creating a healthier society.

Lastly, we want to invest in nature restoration, too, reducing our impact on the planet and restoring key nature ecosystems. Our intention is to ensure that 75,000 hectares of nature can be restored in order to support people’s health. It’s a big, ambitious plan but one that we are tremendously excited about delivering.

As you look to the future, what is your vision for Bupa’s role in shaping global healthcare?

It’s an incredibly exciting time; we want to become the world’s most customer-centric healthcare provider and redefine what people expect from a healthcare provider.

Through this process, we know that we will find solutions and create tools that we can share beyond Bupa, finding new methods to help the whole healthcare sector improve how we serve customers and patients. We want to encourage even more sharing between private healthcare providers and public health systems for the benefit of all.

This will be a game-changer for global healthcare, revolutionising our ability to prevent and treat disease so we can live longer, healthier, happier lives.

And finally, as a CEO, how do you define success?

We have a method for measuring success that we call a “performance triangle”. As you would expect, there are three elements, given that it’s a triangle! Financial performance is obviously key. Making sure we have a strong, sustainable business that is generating profit and enabling us to reinvest in our purpose is one of the core elements.

In addition, we must prioritise customer experience. Having customers that recommend our services to others and that choose to stay with us and trust us to look after their health needs is a critical factor in our success.

And finally, it’s about doing the right thing for our colleagues, investing in their development, supporting their careers, and listening to their feedback. High rates of colleague engagement are the third element to our triangle.

Success, to me, means delivering each of these factors in balance, so that each side of the triangle is equal, ensuring that one aspect does not overpower the others. Strong financial performance, and customers who highly recommend our services, and a team of colleagues who are highly engaged and want to do their best work is when we know we have been successful.

Executive Profile

Mr. Iñaki Ereño is Group CEO of global healthcare company Bupa. Appointed in 2021, he is responsible for managing the business’s worldwide operations and heads up the Chief Executive Committee, driving the performance of the business and setting the strategic agenda. He was previously CEO of Bupa Europe and Latin America, and CEO of Sanitas (part of Bupa).

The post Healthcare with the Customer Front and Centre: Interview with Mr. Iñaki Ereño of Bupa appeared first on The European Business Review.

From steering a 20-person startup to leading Capgemini’s vast Southern European region, Andrea Falleni knows what it takes to navigate change and seize opportunity. In this candid interview, he shares his insights on the next AI revolution, the rise of intelligent supply chains, and how Capgemini is helping businesses in Europe reimagine their future—one AI agent at a time. 

Reflecting on your career journey, what defining moments or achievements have shaped your leadership approach and vision for Capgemini? 

Before joining the company in 2012, I founded the Italian IT services provider AIVE BST Group. With only 20 employees, we rapidly made our mark in the banking sector and grew to over 100 people, which attracted Capgemini’s attention and ultimately led to our acquisition. That transition was a pivotal career step for me and underscored the importance of agility and entrepreneurial thinking in leadership.

From here, I led the same business unit that had acquired my firm, with my appointment as CEO of Capgemini Italy. Collaborating with a high-caliber leadership team, we achieved numerous benchmarks that solidified Capgemini’s presence in Italy and taught me the value of strategic foresight, teamwork, and innovation.

Most recently, in 2023, I was named CEO of the Southern European region, including Central Europe countries, and joined the Group’s Executive board. This role has given me the opportunity to further cultivate a culture of collaboration, performance, and continuous innovation across the region.

Each of these milestones has informed my leadership style. They are a testimony to the power of being a performance driver, the importance of nurturing talent, and the necessity of staying agile in a rapidly evolving market. These principles guide my vision for Capgemini: to constantly innovate, to invest in our people, and to deliver transformative solutions for our clients, creating value.

What personal values or guiding principles have been most instrumental in your rise to CEO of the Southern Europe Strategic Business Unit at Capgemini? 

I strongly believe in continuous learning – embracing new ideas, seeking out diverse perspectives, and staying curious about emerging technologies. Working alongside talented individuals across varied disciplines fosters innovation and helps us deliver transformative outcomes for our clients. It is also something which is embedded into Capgemini’s culture, where we actively encourage skill development and knowledge sharing.

I also feel it’s important to maintain an entrepreneurial mindset. Being open to experimentation and not afraid to challenge the status quo has driven my approach to leadership. I’ve found Capgemini to be an exceptional environment in this regard, as it has given me the chance to be at the forefront of change, whilst working alongside a dynamic and supportive team.

As Capgemini looks ahead to the rest of 2025, what key innovations and developments can clients and partners expect to see, particularly in alignment with your dual focus on digitalization and sustainability?

Over the next year, we see AI and Gen AI having a major impact on companies’ priorities, as well as on many adjacent technology domains, including robotics, supply chains, and tomorrow’s energy mix. It’s encouraging to see that organizations are already preparing to incorporate new technologies such as AI into their sustainability objectives while they are upgrading operations.

One key trend we can expect to see is a new generation of agile, greener, and AI-assisted supply chains. As Capgemini Research Institute data revealed 37 per cent of top executives see these new-generation supply chains as the top tech trend in industry and engineering in 2025.

Technologies like digital twins and AI are key to adding agility to manufacturing processes and self-fix supply chains in dynamic market conditions, helping organizations anticipate disruptions and make data-driven decisions.

In a challenging global landscape, and unpredictable macro-environment, this is more than a trend. The drive for security and stability is causing European organizations to prioritize the diversification of their supply chains, despite rising costs. Technologies like digital twins and AI are key to adding agility to manufacturing processes and self-fix supply chains in dynamic market conditions, helping organizations anticipate disruptions and make data-driven decisions. They are also supporting sustainable manufacturing practices, so technologies like AI and data-driven strategies are crucial for greener, more efficient production. This shift is about upgrading operations to meet the challenges of a resilient, low-carbon future, creating sustainable value.

Another key trend we’re seeing is the dual transition towards a more sustainable and digital world. Capgemini research shows that nearly eight in 10 organizations (77 per cent) agree that this shift is underway. In fact, the eco-digital economy is expected to double in size over the next five years and, by 2028, it will be worth around $33 trillion. This transition will be driven by digital technologies playing a role in emissions reduction and the vast untapped potential of other new technologies such as AI and agentic AI.

How is Capgemini currently leveraging AI agents to drive innovation, enhance customer experiences, and improve operational efficiencies for your European clients? 

We help them understand, through use cases, how technology can optimize the efficiency of their existing infrastructures and increase productivity, as well as how to best integrate them into their operations and facilities. We are helping them explore the potential of AI agents to digitize and redefine their businesses from end to end, enabling them to transform their value chains, from smart products and services, intelligent supply chains and manufacturing to enhanced customer experiences.

What specific benefits do you believe AI agents bring to Capgemini’s services within Europe, and how are these AI-driven solutions contributing to revenue growth across the region? 

The emergence of AI agents has the potential to enhance automation and productivity across sectors, business processes, and along the entire value chain. These AI agents have evolved from supportive tools to autonomous entities capable of executing tasks independently – interpreting, adapting and understanding – in dynamic environments. They offer organizations immersive versatility and potential, including smoother automatic and enhanced productivity.

Although the technology is still in its early stages, recent Capgemini research shows that organizations are eager to adopt AI agents, with 82 per cent intending to integrate them within 1–3 years. The pharmaceutical and healthcare sector is at the forefront of AI agent adoption (23 per cent) but, over the next year, a significant portion of high-tech (77 per cent) and retail (66 per cent) organizations are poised to embrace AI agents, indicating acceptance across diverse fields. About three-quarters intend to deploy the technology for tasks such as generating and iteratively improving code.

We’re already seeing these AI-driven solutions contribute to revenue growth across the region. One example is a Swedish payments company that uses an AI assistant to handle tasks equivalent to the workload of nearly 700 employees. This AI assistant addresses service requests, manages refunds, and handles returns in various languages. It has significantly enhanced efficiency and precision in resolving tickets, cutting repeat inquiries by 25 per cent. On average, it completes tasks in one-fifth of the time that it took to do them manually, freeing up employees to focus on other revenue-driving activities.

Similarly, in cybersecurity industries, AI agents are enabling organizations to automate contextual alert triaging, incident investigation, and response. This auto-prioritization allows security staff to focus on urgent matters, reducing stress levels and mitigating burnout.

With advancements in AI on the horizon, what future developments in AI agents are you most excited about, and how do you see these impacting Capgemini’s offerings for European clients in the coming years? 

While currently only a small number of organizations use AI agents effectively, we envisage widespread adoption across a range of industries. For example, the pharma and healthcare industry could use AI agents in the future to coordinate healthcare services, from appointment scheduling and patient care tasks, to monitoring vital signs and administering medication, reducing errors and enhancing overall service delivery.

In terms of AI more broadly, this could be used to reinvent drug discovery, clinical trials, and personalized medicine. Capgemini optimizes the performance of processes across the entire value chain, offering an end-to-end approach that uses the right technology for the right task. These advancements will free up time to allow our teams to continue to innovate and discover new ways that Gen AI can create a positive impact both within the pharma industry and beyond.

How does Capgemini plan to maintain a competitive edge in the European market while driving both innovation and growth in a rapidly evolving business landscape? 

The importance of having an end-to-end approach in an ever-evolving business landscape cannot be underestimated. For example, many organizations understand the new and emerging digital technologies, but they don’t understand how to build a boat or a plane, or how to design, develop, and deliver a “smart” factory. Capgemini can do it all. We’re helping organizations to digitize and redefine their businesses from end to end, leveraging strengths from strategy and design to engineering, all fueled by our market-leading capabilities in AI, cloud, and data, combined with our deep industry expertise and partner ecosystem.

Executive Profile

Andrea Falleni is CEO of Capgemini’s Southern Europe region and Group Executive Board member. With over 30 years in business and technology transformation services, he’s held senior roles across sales, operations, and business leadership, driving digital transformation and growth across multiple sectors and geographies. 

The post AI Agents at the Helm: Capgemini’s Vision for Smarter, Greener Businesses appeared first on The European Business Review.

As AI reshapes creative industries, Sonarworks CEO Helmuts Bems offers a clear-eyed look at its role in music production. In this Q&A, he reflects on technological disruption, shifting business models, and how AI-assisted tools are unlocking new possibilities for artists, producers, and platforms navigating an increasingly fast-paced digital landscape. 

Your career intersects music, technology, and innovation in remarkable ways. Can you walk us through the key milestones that shaped your path to becoming a leading voice in AI and music?

I first studied for a business degree, and I went on to study physics. I chose business because I thought it would help my career, and physics because I was passionate about it. I started my first company while still in university (studying physics), and it eventually took off, requiring me to drop out. That first company was a success. Shortly after, I started a second one, which failed miserably and quickly. After that reality check, I went to work for the first venture capital fund in Latvia (2007–2010). That was an eye-opening experience, and I learned just how important technology is in everything.

In 2012, we started Sonarworks — a pure technology play. Initially, it was all about data, software, and research. As Sonarworks evolved, we began developing technologies for the consumer electronics segment. Back in 2021, we saw the need to start experimenting with machine learning algorithms, so we built internal capacity in that area. A few years later, LLMs exploded, and we were naturally inspired by that. It quickly became clear that this technology would be the next big disruptor for the industry.

We formed an internal think tank to explore the impact AI would have on our industry (music production). In parallel, we also began developing our AI-assisted product line. Our mission is to identify problems in the industry that we can address meaningfully with technology — ultimately to help creatives.

What first drew you to explore the possibilities of AI within music creation, and how has your vision evolved as the technology has matured?

Initially, we formed an internal think tank to assess AI technology. This grew into a broader internal market and technology research project. The technology was new and developing so quickly that we felt no one could fully grasp its impact. It quickly became clear that this was the next big thing — and that we either commit and jump on board, or risk becoming irrelevant.

The technology was new and developing so quickly that we felt there was no one could fully grasp its impact. It quickly became clear that this was the next big thing — and that we either commit and jump on board, or risk becoming irrelevant.

When we started our think tank, LLMs were just beginning to emerge as the powerhouses they are today. It was clear that AI’s capability to generate music would eventually evolve; however, none of us initially thought it would happen this fast. Now, the trajectory for AI in music is much clearer, which allows us to start assessing its true impact. The speed of development is just unbelievable.

As a leader navigating a fast-changing industry, what personal principles or habits have helped you stay ahead of the curve and drive meaningful change?

I am a strategy-first and execution-second type of personality. That’s just my natural way of being. It’s an advantage in some environments and a disadvantage in others. We have a strategy in place for every function of the company.

I have a high- risk tolerance personally and have spent most of my professional life in very high-risk environments. This has helped me develop the skills to cope with and navigate risk and uncertainty. Strategy is one of the best tools for that. Regardless of the environment, I always have a plan.

Sonarworks is a small company, and our size is definitely an advantage in such a disruptive environment. There’s a famous quote from the movie Margin Call: “There are three ways to make money: be first, be smarter, or cheat. Outsmarting the industry is very difficult, and we do not cheat.” So being first is the best strategy.

AI-generated and AI-assisted music is redefining creativity. What are the biggest disruptions you’re seeing today, and how are creators and platforms responding to them?

We believe that producers and composers are poised to be the major beneficiaries of the AI era. Thanks to AI, they’ll be able to generate more content independently, without relying heavily on collaborators to complete their projects. While professional musicians working in areas like background scores and advertising may find fewer opportunities, hobbyists and independent artists will gain new creative freedoms — no longer needing costly equipment or extensive technical skills.

This broadening of access lowers the barriers to music creation, opening the door for many more people to participate. But it also saturates the market, making it harder for individual artists to gain visibility or earn a stable income. In this evolving environment, raw creativity isn’t enough; success will require artists to also act as curators, strategists, and technologists.

On a broader scale, AI will significantly reduce the cost of content production and lead to an explosion of new material. Humans will still play a role, but expectations for productivity will climb sharply. We see the real threat to musicians not in AI-assisted creation, but in fully AI-generated content. Ironically, it’s the AI tools designed to assist humans that offer the strongest counterbalance to this trend.

Economically, the advantage will go to those who adapt — producers, composers, and creators who leverage AI to maximize their productivity and creative output. However, it also suggests that a growing share of revenue from streaming, licensing, and royalties may shift from artists to platforms and AI technology companies.

In terms of response, I think artists and streamers are both experimenting. Labels do what they always do: try to defend what they have.

Many in the industry are debating ownership, authenticity, and monetization in AI-generated music. How do you see business models evolving to address these complex challenges?

This is very difficult to predict. People tend to think linearly, trying to forecast the future based on experience. However, major technology shifts almost always disrupt existing business models — and usually in ways that are hard to anticipate. I’m quite confident that the models will change. We can look at some of the main factors influencing that change:

1. I believe the share of cash flow tied to ownership rights will decrease. In turn, the share of revenues going to technology and computing power providers will increase. The point at which these lines are drawn will be determined by legal frameworks, which makes it hard to predict.
2. Another crucial factor is whether end users will be willing to pay more or less for AI-created music. My linear-thinking gut says that, similar to how downloads disrupted CDs, users will pay less at first — but more in the long run.

What role do you believe real-time AI music will play in areas like gaming, live performance, or immersive experiences—and how can businesses prepare for this shift?

My personal vision is that real-time generation and augmentation will become a major aspect in the long term. At the moment, it’s held back by technology; however, I do believe this will be solved, and real-time or near real-time will eventually dominate.

There are historical analogies: think of royalty in the past. They had musicians available to entertain them while they were eating — and a king could ask them to change the tone if he desired. This would be the same, but for everyone.

Real-time AI processing capability is a major disruptor to how the industry operates today. The current recording industry is, in essence, built on post-processing — and moving to real-time processing would disrupt everything. I’m confident this will eventually happen, but it’s very difficult to put a timeframe on it. My “shoot from the hip” estimate would be 10–15 years from now. If it happens within that timeframe, it would be very disruptive.

I think we will get there, because the human brain can do it — a trained musician can participate in the creation of music in real time, so why couldn’t an advanced machine? This would essentially mean having a personal musician always at your disposal.

There are historical analogies: think of royalty in the past. They had musicians available to entertain them while they were eating — and a king could ask them to change the tone if he desired. This would be the same, but for everyone.

I want to stress again: this is just speculation, and we are not currently at that capability.

Looking ahead, what are you most excited about when it comes to AI’s role in music, and how should leaders across industries be thinking about the convergence of creativity and machine intelligence?

I see a massive explosion in creativity in the near term. AI will enable talented artists to create much more than they could have before. It will also encourage many new people to try creating music. This means more content at lower cost — which translates into greater efficiency and productivity. When I think about the AI era, I think about productivity first.

Executive Profile

Helmuts Bems is the CEO and Co-Founder of Sonarworks, a pioneering audio technology company based in Latvia. With a background in economics, physics, and venture capital, Bems has spent his career launching and scaling innovative ventures at the intersection of sound, software, and emerging technologies. 

The post Rewriting the Beat: How AI is Changing Music Production appeared first on The European Business Review.

You may not realise it yet, but the way businesses approach office furniture is changing—radically. Imagine a workspace that evolves with you, minimising waste and maximising flexibility. In this interview, Aïssa Laroussi, Founder and CEO of Enky, reveals how his game-changing model is transforming sustainability, finance, and the future of work.

Good day, Mr. Laroussi! Thank you for gracing us with your time despite your busy schedule. To start, what inspired the creation of Enky? 

The inspiration for Enky came from a desire to revolutionise the way businesses approach workspace design and sustainability within the context of the circular economy. I recognised that traditional furniture purchasing models were often rigid, costly, and environmentally wasteful. Enky was born out of the need for a more dynamic, sustainable, and financially accessible solution that aligns with the evolving needs of modern businesses. 

Where did you first get the idea for its Furniture-as-a-Service (FaaS) model?

The idea stemmed from the rise of subscription-based services in other industries, such as software services. I’d already had the experience of working on the digital transformation of factoring for businesses with Ebedex which raised €1Bn for small businesses. The FaaS model is based on circular economy principles. I saw an opportunity to apply this concept to office furniture, allowing businesses to access high-quality furniture but without the cost of ownership, being able to free up capital to deploy to other areas to help either shore up a business needing some flexibility because of market conditions, or to help it  grow more quickly. 

How does Enky’s subscription model provide flexibility and value for businesses compared to traditional furniture ownership?

Our subscription model allows businesses to scale their workspace efficiently, adapting to changing needs without the capital expenditure associated with furniture ownership. It eliminates large upfront costs, offers maintenance services, and offers access to the latest ergonomic designs. This approach not only offers financial flexibility but also reduces waste by promoting reuse and refurbishment. 

Enky recently launched a leaseback model. Can you explain how this works and why it is a game-changer for businesses?

Our leaseback model allows businesses to sell their existing furniture to Enky and lease it back immediately, unlocking cash flow while retaining access to high-quality ergonomically and ethically sourced furniture. This approach provides an immediate financial boost – particularly valuable in a challenging economic climate where liquidity is key. Additionally, it ensures that furniture remains in use for as long as possible, reinforcing our commitment to the circular economy. 

We understand Enky also has its investment program. Can you walk us through what was the motivation behind launching the My.Enky Invest platform?

My.Enky Invest was launched to democratise investment in the circular economy. We wanted to give individuals and organisations the opportunity to contribute to a more sustainable future while benefiting from financial returns. It provides an avenue for impact investing, where investors support a business model that prioritises environmental responsibility and resource efficiency. 

How does My.Enky Invest support the broader goals of Enky’s circular business model?

The platform fuels Enky’s ability to expand its sustainable offerings by funding the production and refurbishment of high-quality furniture. By reinvesting in our circular ecosystem, we reduce waste, lower carbon emissions, and extend product life cycles, reinforcing our commitment to responsible consumption and production. 

Can you elaborate on the synergy between sustainable furnishings and investment opportunities that My.Enky Invest offers?

By reinvesting in our circular ecosystem, we reduce waste, lower carbon emissions, and extend product life cycles, reinforcing our commitment to responsible consumption and production. 

Sustainable furnishings and impact investing go hand in hand. Through My.Enky Invest, stakeholders can directly contribute to sustainability while receiving financial returns. By supporting the circular economy, investors help drive responsible manufacturing and encourage businesses to adopt environmentally friendly workspace solutions. The platform has already raised €750,000 in crowdfunding in just one quarter, and we anticipate a fivefold increase in financing volume over the next 12 months. Taken together with investment in client projects and furniture, we’ve raised over €2.5M to date and delivered over 50Tonnes of sustainable furniture, all ethically sourced from within Europe, and extended the life cycle of the items four-fold. 

What types of investors are you targeting? How do you make investment opportunities accessible to a wider audience?

We welcome a diverse range of investors, from individuals looking to align their portfolios with (Environmental, Social and Governance) ESG values to institutional investors seeking out green investments and sustainable assets. By offering flexible investment plans and clear impact metrics, we ensure that My.Enky Invest remains accessible and transparent, allowing more people to participate in the green economy. With more than 2,000 active investors, our platform is proving to be a major force in the sustainable, green finance arena. 

Enky has already made a significant impact in multiple European countries. What are your plans for scaling the business further?

We plan to expand into new markets across Europe and beyond, focusing on regions with growing demand for sustainable office solutions. Our strategy includes forming strategic partnerships, such as working with architects and town planners, enhancing our digital infrastructure, and increasing the accessibility of our services to businesses of all sizes. Recently, we entered the Luxembourg market, known for its strong business density and eco-innovation initiatives. We have a plan to launch into the USA within the next few years. 

With growing interest in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), how has your company aligned its strategy with the evolving priorities of businesses?

Enky aligns with CSR priorities by offering solutions that help businesses meet their sustainability commitments. Our circular model reduces waste, cuts carbon footprints, and promotes ethical consumption. By integrating sustainability into workspace solutions, we empower companies to enhance their CSR impact effortlessly and, indeed, profitably. 

What lessons from your fintech background have you applied to Enky’s operations and strategic growth?

My fintech experience has shaped Enky’s approach to innovation, scalability, and customer-centric solutions. I have applied the principles of digital transformation, subscription-based finance, and data-driven decision-making to optimise Enky’s business model and enhance the customer experiences. We recently won the 2024 PropTech Community Award for example. That was a big moment for us and a validation for the whole team that we’re on the right track. 

And lastly, as a Founder and CEO, how do you define success?

Success, for me, is about creating lasting impact. It’s not just about financial growth but about driving meaningful change in how businesses approach the circular economy. Enky’s success is measured by the value we bring to our clients, our contribution to a greener planet, and the empowerment of individuals to make responsible investment choices. The rapid growth of our My.Enky Invest platform and the strong demand for our leaseback model confirms that we are making a real difference in the industry. 

Executive Profile

Aïssa Laroussi’s diverse work experience covers leadership roles across various companies. In 2006, he founded Genisys and served as the Founder until 2011. From 2012 to 2017, he co-founded and served as the CMO of Edebex. In 2018, he joined Talundra as a Board Member and held the position until 2021. Since 2020, Aïssa Laroussi has been the Co-Founder and CEO of Enky, a Furniture Subscription (Furniture-as-a-Service) business.  

The post Furniture-as-a-Service: How Enky is Redefining Sustainability and Flexibility in Workspaces appeared first on The European Business Review.

The World Artificial Intelligence Cannes Festival takes place in that city from 13 to 15 February. Keynote speaker Dalius Kazlauskas, CTO of the city of Vilnius, shares his perspective on how AI technology is being employed for the benefit of the Lithuanian capital – and beyond. 

Good day, Mr Dalius! Thank you for taking the time to join us today. In your WAICF keynote talk, you emphasize practical AI applications in cities. Can you share specific examples from Vilnius where AI has already made a tangible impact on citizens’ daily lives? 

In my talk, I focus not on future technologies, but on driving change within corporate-level organizations. It’s not just about technological solutions; we must also help people within organizations adapt. For example, we started by measuring AI maturity levels and providing training, ensuring that employees understand the broader benefits of these technologies. We paid special attention to non-technical teams, and it’s encouraging that maturity assessments showed that 70 per cent of employees have already started using AI. This gives me confidence that AI adoption will benefit everyone and face little resistance.  

AI is just one part of a broader innovation approach in Vilnius. Our focus is on solving real city challenges with the right tools, not just technology for the sake of it. Platforms that monitor snow removal, track invasive plants, and manage municipal waste are already improving urban services. However, effective city management isn’t always about AI; sometimes, simply engaging communities or improving processes can be more impactful and cost-effective. The biggest shift now is data-driven decision-making, with AI helping predict urban needs, while investing in AI training ensures that city employees can use these insights effectively. 

As the Chief Technological Officer, how does your vision for Vilnius’ AI-driven services align with broader European smart city initiatives in 2025? 

Vilnius is not just applying AI; we’re shaping how it’s used responsibly. Data-driven predictions are transforming urban management, while transparency and openness remain our priority. As one of the first European cities to offer open data, real products, and public dashboards (open.vilnius.lt), we ensure that AI solutions bring clear benefits to citizens. We actively contribute to national AI initiatives, helping regulators understand real-world challenges. By aligning with the EU AI Act, we balance ethical AI use, sustainability, and public trust, positioning Vilnius as a leader in democratic and smart governance. 

You’ve highlighted AI tools like “Fix My City” and an AI chatbot. How are these solutions enhancing public engagement and accessibility for, let’s say, seniors? 

We take pride in being a very clean city, but these data-driven insights will help us optimize resources and reduce costs for city maintenance, making urban management more efficient without compromising cleanliness. 

Fix My City (tvarkaumiesta.lt), like many of our projects, does not use AI within the tool itself but in data analysis. Currently, we combine data from waste collection companies, drone scans of city containers, and citizen reports. In the future, AI will help us better predict waste collection routes and optimize logistics, ensuring more efficient and responsive municipal services. We take pride in being a very clean city, but these data-driven insights will help us optimize resources and reduce costs for city maintenance, making urban management more efficient without compromising cleanliness. 

The platform was designed to be as non-bureaucratic and easy to use as possible, making it accessible for seniors and those unfamiliar with technology. After extensive testing, the AI chatbot will soon be available to a wider audience in the city. This will allow seniors and those who prefer to avoid bureaucratic documents to access clear and simple information about the services that matter to them. 

You made a post recently about the reuse of AI-driven pollution data. Can you tell us more about this initiative? 

Previously, we focused heavily on data-driven products, but they were mostly designed for professionals. Now, we are expanding their reach to residents, healthcare providers, and educational institutions. By leveraging data processing and AI, we aim to provide deeper insights, for example analyzing how changes in road signs impact pollution levels. 

Electric vehicles have also been on the rise in Europe. How have you been using AI to enhance e-charging infrastructure and promote sustainable transportation? 

As the Green Capital of 2025, Vilnius has a strong commitment to reducing CO2 emissions across multiple sectors. We have an ambitious plan for expanding EV infrastructure, driven by both municipal initiatives and private investments. To ensure smart expansion, we are introducing an open competition system, allowing private investors to propose charging station locations. Later, by integrating business growth trends, population data, and AI-driven analysis, we will identify the most effective locations for new charging points, ensuring that infrastructure grows in line with real demand.  

Aside from those, can you share examples of how AI has helped improve efficiency in municipal services, such as waste management, permit processing, or education?  

The biggest transformation is likely not in the creation of new solutions but in how employees within organizations experience positive change and learn to apply AI tools in their work. For example, even a non-technical employee can now gain data analytics skills and quickly integrate them into decision-making. 

By integrating business growth trends, population data, and AI-driven analysis, we will identify the most effective locations for new charging points, ensuring that infrastructure grows in line with real demand.

When it comes to solutions, our teams are working on projects like traffic flow management, using anonymized telecommunications data and drone-collected information. AI helps process and analyze drone images, allowing us to identify where illegal waste is being dumped or which areas of the city are not properly cleaned by service providers, such as inefficient snow removal. 

Your team is also currently developing a new security and communication app for Vilnius. How would you like it to improve public safety? In what ways are you balancing security with data privacy? 

Due to climate change, wildfires, and heat waves, every city must leverage modern technologies for communication with residents. However, we plan to go beyond just providing information; we aim to use gamification to educate and train people on how to respond to emergency situations effectively.  

In line with that, how does your company ensure ethical AI use and maintain public trust in these relatively novel technologies? 

It is important to talk not only about AI but also about how the public sector should communicate with residents and engage different groups, from gathering opinions for product improvement to fostering accountability through participation in various initiatives, such as those related to cyber resilience. We engage citizens, including seniors and tech experts, in testing and feedback loops to prevent bias and ensure accessibility. 

Are there any lessons from Vilnius’ AI initiatives that could be applied to other European cities looking to enhance their smart city strategies, not just in Lithuania?  

Vilnius’ approach to technology and data-driven solutions can be useful for other European cities. We focus on people first, making technology accessible to everyone, including seniors. Data helps us act, not just react. Fix My City is a great example of how we reduce bureaucracy and engage residents, and we’ve even shared it with other cities to help them improve their services. We build scalable, open solutions, so other cities don’t have to start from scratch. Balancing innovation with regulation is key.

As a speaker at WAICF, what role do you see events like this playing in fostering AI collaboration? 

Events like WAICF are crucial for AI collaboration but, for me, it’s also about sharing how real change happens, not just through innovation but through organizations’ ability to adapt and use technology effectively. The real challenge isn’t AI itself, but how people within organizations embrace and apply it.  

How do you think such events can help cities like Vilnius accelerate their AI-driven transformations even further?  

These events help cities like Vilnius accelerate AI-driven transformation by providing access to the latest technologies, global expertise, and funding opportunities. They also spark discussions on ethical AI, governance, and public engagement, which are key to making AI work for citizens in a meaningful way.

Executive Profile

Dalius Kazlauskas is the Vilnius City CTO, a board member at a tech company, and a passionate innovation strategist. He leads Vilnius’ efforts to leverage technology for smarter and more sustainable urban solutions, with a strong focus on democratic innovation and citizen engagement. As an advocate for AI-driven transformation, he ensures that human-centered approaches remain at the core of technological progress. 

The post AI in the City: The Right Tools in the Right Place appeared first on The European Business Review.

With a career spanning over three decades, what pivotal moments have shaped your leadership philosophy, and how do they influence your role as CEO of Game Lounge? 

Well, I left Manchester Uni in 1994 (which blows my mind) So it’s actually now three not two decades! 

If I look back at the pivotal moments which have shaped my leadership beliefs, they are very much a mix of the brilliant and terrible. I’ve worked for geniuses and tyrants; and learned so much from both types. I have experienced great successes and disastrous failures; often very closely linked. I’ve also managed and led some really great people, as well as plenty of frauds and time-stealers. I really do subscribe to the adage; “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. I fear very little these days and have realised that life – and one’s career – is far too short to spend with and on toxic people or trying to work out or fix any OPPs (other people’s problems). Time spent with curious, intelligent, motivated people – ideally smarter than yourself – is never wasted. In my experience, successful leadership is simply getting people like that to find a common purpose and work hard together to reach and achieve it. 

Having worked in prominent organizations like PwC, BBC, and Nokia, what unique leadership insights have you brought to the iGaming industry? 

I need to be working somewhere I can see out of the windows (both literally and metaphorically) and with people who don’t treat their own career success as a zero-sum game against those around them.

Well those three mentioned are among the lowest enjoyed parts of my career, even though they are the most often recalled. All were relatively short and painful. All were highly political and required a lot of time, very far from any actual work and more around building consensual alignment (whatever that means) to get shit done. I am driven by the energetic momentum of those around me and, the larger the business, the slower the momentum and lower the energy. So, around 10 years ago, I realised that ‘corporate’ life is not where I can ever thrive and have avoided it ever since. I need to be working somewhere I can see out of the windows (both literally and metaphorically) and with people who don’t treat their own career success as a zero-sum game against those around them.

What inspired you to prioritize workplace well-being and leadership autonomy at Game Lounge, and how has this shaped the company culture? 

Simply because I am too protective of my own time to want to get dragged into every single decision that a company needs to make to achieve its aims. I absolutely believe that if you strive to create what Robert C Townsend calls a “world-class organisation” or Jim Collins calls “great”, then once those core beliefs are understood and followed by a team who passionately believes in being the best team member they can be to help and support each other every minute of their working day, then success can only follow that. 

The “Level Up, Leap Forward” EVP initiative is an innovative approach to employee development. Could you elaborate on its goals and the impact it’s had on your team so far? 

Game Lounge is more than simply 185 people coming to work each day to make more money for the company shareholders while helping our customers and readers to safely enjoy playing games. We want every minute we are together to be interesting, valuable and career enhancing. I talk a lot about removing manual processes; both at Game Lounge and at my previous company, I emphasise “more brains, less hands”; which means that if we can reduce friction and potential inertia by continuously innovating away from our slowest processes we will automatically speed up and get better. In terms of impact so far, our monthly profit per employee has risen 50% since I started so I would say it’s already working well.  

The 4-day work week trial is a bold move in modern workplace management. What were the key takeaways from this initiative, and do you see it becoming a permanent policy? 

In July and August each year a ‘half-day Friday’ was already in place. It’s a very hot month in Spain and Malta, where we are mainly based; plus, for our team in the Nordics, many take those months for their holidays. So even when we had some work hours on Fridays, not much got done or moved forward; our media output usually dropped around 30% those months anyway. So we decided to call it and declared the 4DWW trial for July and August 2024 only. We monitored output and it did drop, but only by 20% – so we have been very satisfied that the trial worked well. In speaking to the teams, it turned out that the prospect of the 3 day weekend forced some of the productivity discussions which had drifted for some time to be accelerated; the end result being that once we returned in September to 5DWW our output had automatically levelled up. Now we will repeat July and August 4DWW again in 2025 and have added April too since that is also usually a lower productivity month.

Distributed leadership is central to Game Lounge’s success. What strategies do you use to empower team leaders, and how has this approach contributed to organizational growth? 

This approach requires extremely strong and smart teams who are not driven by territoriality or personal success greater than the organisation they work for. Very much the ‘one for all, all for one’ approach. If I grow, we all grow etc, and success follows.

This is something I learned whilst I was Chair of Governors at my daughter’s primary school many many years ago. With the help of the excellent Head Teacher, we put into place ways to completely empower all of the teaching staff and also the support team. Everyone became the ‘Head’ of their area. They didn’t need to ask permission for anything but needed to spend more time with each other to understand the core objectives and which part of the school they ‘owned and operated’. We all discussed topline data and they ran their own ‘operations’. Inside a year, we obtained an Outstanding OFSTED rating. We also slashed the need for controls or administrative processes. This approach requires extremely strong and smart teams who are not driven by territoriality or personal success greater than the organisation they work for. Very much the ‘one for all, all for one’ approach. If I grow, we all grow etc, and success follows.  

As a leader championing productivity and mental well-being, how do you balance these priorities while driving business success in a competitive industry like iGaming? 

I absolutely detest drama when leading and managing teams. Dramatic people don’t tend to last long in high pressure projects and struggle for consistency; they either. eventually jump out to new adventures or we ask them to do so. Achieving flow is everything. Drama kills flow. Sometimes people confuse passion and energy with drama. I have found that if you spend a little longer on the well-being of your teams, then the drama is pretty much eliminated. Generally, the best people or team members just want to know where a company is headed and how they can help to get everyone there. Also I am a big believer in the saying “misery loves company” so the happier your team, the less time you spend needing to sort out or eliminate any drama.

Looking ahead to 2025, what innovations and initiatives can we expect from Game Lounge, and how do you envision these shaping the future of work and employee engagement in the iGaming sector? 

Well we have just split the company into two; one being the key core business of Game Lounge (GL) – our global iGaming affiliate media company working hard on creating useful and helpful guides to finding the best online casinos who keep their promises and their customers safe; and Game Lounge ‘X’ GLX incubator which has been launched to provide a test kitchen/special ops team for new operations, ideas and innovations. GL is successful, highly profitable and growing rapidly inside its current horizons. GLX has been put together to almost disrupt the way we are doing business right now; it will focus on new products, techniques and the potential interests and behaviours of customers who are currently inhabiting the next horizon.   

Executive Profile

Richard Dennys, CEO of Game Lounge, leads a global iGaming affiliate company operating over 131 brands across 39 countries. With 20+ years in digital and affiliate marketing, including roles at PwC, Yell, BBC, and Nokia, he is known for his transformative leadership – championing workplace autonomy, work-life balance, and continuous learning. 

The post Empowering the Workforce: A New Era of Leadership – Interview with Richard Dennys of Game Lounge appeared first on The European Business Review.

Interview with Elize Dimare and Johnny Sørensen of Fire & Shield

Which ability is more important for a business leader: to lead with passion, or to provide a supportive environment for their people? Answer: yes. For Elize Dimare and Johnny Sørensen of Fire & Shield^TM, it’s “all of the above”.

Good day, Ms. Dimare and Mr. Sørensen! We’re grateful that you could make time to speak with us despite your busy schedules. To start, can you share a little about what initially drew you both to the field of leadership development and what inspired the creation of Fire & Shield?

Elize Dimare: I’ve always been drawn to leadership from a young age. My first leadership role was when I was just 14 years old as a co-leader in my local rowing club, organizing trips and coordinating activities. Even as a big sister, I naturally found myself creating games and leading the way for my younger sibling and her friends.

Leadership models are often overly theoretical or anecdotal, but what we were missing was a simple, effective recipe that works under pressure.

Johnny Sørensen: I naturally grew into leadership. From a young age, I was very focused and driven. I started my own business doing accounting for the local grocer while I was in university. But what really shaped me was working as a brick layer between high school and university. I was at the bottom of the hierarchy but had a fantastic boss who really inspired me. I also saw how arrogance often accompanied education and power, and experienced how damaging and demeaning it was to be treated like that. After graduation I quickly got more and more leadership responsibility and was promoted to Operations Director in the Iberian subsidiary of the company I worked for. There I found myself responsible for a lot of people in a completely different culture, and I had to learn the ins and outs of leadership the hard way. What stood out to me was the importance of asking for help and being OK with not having all the answers. That beginner’s mindset – where you’re open to learning and adapting – is still at the core of our leadership approach.

Both of us always knew we wanted to focus on leadership. The idea behind Fire & Shield came from our need to simplify leadership concepts. We wanted something practical, something you could apply in real situations. Leadership models are often overly theoretical or anecdotal, but what we were missing was a simple, effective recipe that works under pressure. That’s what Fire & Shield was built to address.

At the heart of the Fire & Shield methodology are the two elements “FIRE” and “SHIELD”. Can you talk briefly about what this means?

Elize Dimare: “FIRE” represents passion and energy. We wanted to capture that feeling of being truly motivated and driven by a great leader, the kind of passion that makes you feel incredibly capable and effective. Loving your job and the difference you can make.

Johnny Sørensen: “SHIELD” is about protection, that sense of being supported. A good leader creates a safe environment where you can take risks, learn from mistakes, and grow. It makes you sleep well at night, trust your boss and your colleagues, and arrive rested next day.

Together, these two elements – FIRE and SHIELD – define the kind of leadership we believe in: one that ignites passion while also providing the necessary protection to allow that passion to thrive.

Most models and literature on leadership focus either on driving results and performance focus, or psychological safety and caring for your people. But the reality is, as all great leaders know from experience, that you have to do both. If you ignore results, you are being unfair to those who are paying your salary, and if you ignore the emotional safety, you are being unfair to those who work for you and their families.

In short, you have to create both FIRE and Shield at a balanced, high level if you want to create the best long-term performance.

You also mention that “If Shield is higher than FIRE, your focus is on increasing FIRE, and if FIRE is higher than Shield, your focus is on increasing SHIELD”. How does this apply in practice?

Elize Dimare: A great example of this is a recent project I developed for a client. The team had lots of Shield – support and structure – but was lacking FIRE, which made implementing new tools long, tiresome, and inefficient. Therefore, we instigated a shift towards creating immediate energy and focus on getting things done, one thing at a time and the most important first. By being extremely specific, with frequent follow-ups and check-ins, we trained the organization in getting out of your head and into action. If there’s not enough FIRE, people often get stuck in overthinking or frustration, and when you increase FIRE, you get focus and execution.

On the flip side, when the pace is too hectic, the team might need more Shield to handle the pressure. If people are stressed, it’s usually because they’re missing that layer of protection. The reason people feel stressed at work is often not because they are too busy, but because they don’t feel safe – due to office politics, lack of clear priorities, unhealthy culture, or bad leadership. In that case, we focus on prioritizing, slowing down, and making sure the team is supported to maintain both creativity and productivity.

Fourteen years ago, you set out to decode the “essence of performance” in the simplest-possible manner. Now, your leadership programs focus on fast-track learning through practical, short modules. How do you ensure that these modules are tailored to individual needs and effectively address the specific challenges faced by leaders?

Elize Dimare: We make sure to keep the modules short and actionable, focusing on real-world application rather than abstract theory. Each module is designed to address an actual challenge our clients face. We spend time understanding their specific needs and then craft our content around that. The goal is to give them tools they can use immediately. And between each of the five to six modules, the participants get a task of practising and integrating the new tools in their daily work, by using them in real life. When we meet up for the next module, they share experiences, get input, and internalize the tools. And then we teach them the next one, and so on. Over a course of three to five months, these trainings can be quite transforming.

Johnny Sørensen: The modules are adaptable, too. We provide leaders with simple frameworks, but we encourage them to tweak and personalize them based on their situations. It’s about giving them just enough structure to succeed, while also allowing flexibility. On top of that, we always include a hotline, so when specific challenges arise, we can support them directly in figuring out the best (other) way to handle this challenge.

How does Fire & Shield integrate both practical and theoretical aspects of leadership?

Johnny Sørensen: All our tools and teachings are based on both theory and our own experience from decades of practical leadership. It’s important for us that what you learn with us is highly applicable to your current situation, and that you can integrated it in your daily leadership immediately.

Elize Dimare: It’s all about frequent, small interventions that gradually build new habits. We design our modules to become second nature, just like putting on a seat belt. It’s not just learning the theory; it’s about integrating it into your daily routines so that Fire & Shield becomes a natural part of how you operate.

Your company has a history of transforming underperforming companies. What role does your concept play in these transformations? How do you apply it to different industries?

Johnny Sørensen: Turning numbers and turnarounds are always with a time factor. The company is running out of cash, or sales are dropping, or margins are lowered, or we are losing our best people, and we need to put a plug in before we have to close. And Fire & Shield is so fast. It takes you very little time to assess the levels of FIRE and Shield and, by just doing that, you are already getting strong hints as to where to start your focus. It may surprise you how often a company that is suffering still is lacking FIRE because top management has not informed people of the true state of things.

Elize Dimare: Managers often think that they are protecting their teams by not involving them in the reality and the problems the organizations are facing, but it is actually the other way around. By activating every single person and their smart brains in finding the solutions, you create an amazing energy and always, always come up with something better, smarter, easier, faster, and much more successful than if top management sit by themselves in an ivory tower trying to figure out all of it on their own.

Speaking of history, can you tell us more about how you developed the concept nomadic leadership and how it fits into you overall leadership model? How does it help in managing constant change within organizations?

Johnny Sørensen: Nomadic leadership is all about agility. It’s recognizing that change is the constant in business and leadership. This approach helps leaders manage transitions smoothly by being flexible, adaptable, and always ready to pivot. Change requires constant training, and our model encourages leaders to stay in motion and continually evolve.

It’s recognizing that change is the constant in business and leadership. This approach helps leaders manage transitions smoothly by being flexible, adaptable, and always ready to pivot.

Elize Dimare: Change management is the only management discipline today. John Kotter wrote about it in his book What Managers Really Do back in 1999, yet we seem to cling on to ancient theories of change as being something clearly defined, with a specific start and end date, and objective targets that you will begin with fair warning and time to plan. I can see you’re smiling now, as people always do when we talk about it like that. Because it’s true. Change in this century is messy, constant, overlapping, and mostly comes as a surprise. With nomadic leadership, you accept this premise and therefore develop an organization with a flexible mindset, a flexible structure, and with flexible tools and processes. And you always accept the change, instead of fighting it.

Your approach involves understanding business nuances across various cultures. How do you adapt the Fire & Shield model to fit different cultural contexts?

Elize Dimare: We’ve worked with clients globally, including in the US, and with international teams with many nationalities present in one team. We always approach this with a curious, open mindset, being aware that leadership expectations and business dynamics can be very different. And every time, we are surprised how similarly people think and feel. The key is adaptability – understanding the cultural nuances while maintaining the core principles of Fire & Shield. We tweak our approach to respect cultural values but always aim for the same result: creating passionate, effective leaders.

Johnny Sørensen: In the end, people are people. Across the world and across time, we’ve all wanted the same things: to feel safe and to make a difference in the world, while being able to provide for ourselves and our loved ones. It doesn’t have to be that hard. The hard part is yourself. You have to get your own weaknesses and keep your blind spots in check, and be the best version of yourself, so that you can bring that out in others. Every day.

“It’s not about creating the strategy, but implementing it and getting leaders onboard” is one of the core messages you often emphasize. How does the Fire & Shield method ensure that leadership strategies are not only created but effectively implemented? Can you discuss the role of follow-through in your process?

Johnny Sørensen: The real challenge in leadership is execution. We make sure that our strategies come with clear, actionable steps, and we support leaders through the follow-through process. A strategy is just a piece of paper until your front-line people start doing something differently. It’s about accountability, and we work closely with leaders to ensure they stay on track and adjust as needed.

Elize Dimare: It always strikes us as a bit ironic how much time and money organizations and top management teams are willing to spend on developing the strategy, and how little energy they put into making it happing in the real world. Setting your vision is a half-day exercise: growth, sustainable growth, consolidation, defending your position, expanding into new markets or new products or services, increasing profitability, or thinking about blue ocean positions in the market. Then you do your analysis work, which you always should, but if you don’t involve your middle managers in making the plans specific, actionable, and with clear steps, you end up discussing holograms in an echo chamber.

How do you handle the responsibility of managing other people’s money and lives while implementing the model? What strategies do you use to balance this responsibility?

Elize Dimare: We approach every project with a sense of responsibility, knowing that the stakes are high. By focusing on clarity and transparency, we ensure that leaders make informed decisions. It’s about balancing risk with smart, strategic actions.

Johnny Sørensen: Helping people transform their leadership style is a very vulnerable situation, because most good leaders care deeply about being a good leader. But if they want to be truly great, they have to face the unpleasant truths about themselves and learn to overcome that. We treat that with the utmost respect, making sure they know that we are in their corner every step of the way.

Given your expertise in turning companies into high-performance organizations, what common pitfalls do you see in leadership, and how do you address them?

Johnny Sørensen: A common pitfall is leaders feeling like they need to know everything. We encourage leaders to adopt a beginner’s mindset, stay curious, and not be afraid to ask questions. This humility not only helps them grow but also builds trust within their teams.

We encourage leaders to adopt a beginner’s mindset, stay curious, and not be afraid to ask questions. This humility not only helps them grow but also builds trust within their teams.

Elize Dimare: My background as an engineer has taught me that leadership needs structure and discipline, but it also needs flexibility. No matter the industry, we focus on practical tools that can be adapted to the specific needs of the organization. Whether it’s tech, construction, or retail, the Fire & Shield principles remain the same; they are just applied differently based on context. However, many leaders seem to believe that leadership in their specific industry is unique.

Johnny Sørensen: Coming to think of it, another common pitfall is that leaders forget to ask for help. Accepting that leadership is a trade as well as any other trade, it is natural to reach out to leadership experts to fast-track your learning curve. You call a doctor with the right medical training when you have a health issue, so why shouldn’t you get help from a trained professional with becoming a better leader?

Looking ahead, what is next for Fire & Shield?

Elize Dimare: We’re expanding internationally, bringing Fire & Shield to new markets and industries. We’re excited about helping leaders across the globe simplify leadership and boost performance.

And finally, as leaders, how do you define success?

Elize Dimare: For me, success is about creating lasting impact. It’s not just about achieving short-term goals or hitting targets; it’s about helping people and organizations grow in a way that’s sustainable. If we’ve given leaders tools that they can use for years to come and they feel empowered to face challenges confidently, then I consider that a success. When I meet a leader I trained three or four years ago and they share the immense difference the training, the reflection, and the new tools have made, that is when I feel most proud of our work.

Johnny Sørensen: Success is when the leaders we work with feel both empowered and protected. It’s seeing them have that “Aha!” moment when they realize that leadership doesn’t have to be complicated and they start leading with more clarity and confidence. If they’re able to inspire their teams while also maintaining balance in their own lives, that’s when I know we’ve done our job well. In that sense, you could say that we try to make the world a better place, one organization at a time.

Executive Profile

Elize Dimare holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior, an M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering, and an Executive MBA. With over 20 years of leadership experience, including a decade in senior management, she excels in leadership training, team building, and bridging the gap between theory and practical business applications. You can reach Elize via
ed@fireandshield.com.

Johnny Sørensen with 25 years of leadership experience, has successfully led companies as CEO across Denmark, Holland, and Italy. Specializing in turnarounds and growth, he holds an M.Sc. in Economic Analysis and frequently applies the Fire & Shield^TM method in his interim management roles to drive real results. You can reach Johnny via js@fireandshield.com.

The post Passion and Compassion: The Equilibrium of Leadership appeared first on The European Business Review.

Luxury Lifestyle Awards: Wetag Consulting has a remarkable history spanning nearly five decades. Could you share the key moments or turning points that have defined Wetag’s evolution as a boutique real estate agency?

Ueli Schnorf: When we acquired Wetag in the mid-Nineties, it was a small, traditional real estate company with aging owners whose best days were behind them. We didn’t want to lose money, so we gave it a push. Shortly after, Sotheby’s, who were building a European luxury network, became aware of us and invited us to become their affiliate. This was in 2000. I was elected to their European Advisory Board and quickly became acquainted with European luxury realtors. In 2004, when Sotheby’s sold their network to a franchise company, none of the European affiliates wanted to follow this path. Together with two other advisors, I co-founded the European Real Estate Network (EREN) with this group, where I have served as a director ever since.

In 2005, we successfully negotiated with Christie’s to invite suitable EREN members to become new Christie’s European affiliates, as Wetag has been since that year. These negotiations firmly anchored us in the international luxury scene, and we subsequently shifted Wetag’s focus entirely to luxury real estate. Over the years, we were approached by many international luxury associations for membership, but we couldn’t be everywhere. Whenever an international celebrity was among our buyers or sellers, word spread, though, of course, we never disclosed anything. Being voted Christie’s worldwide ‘Affiliate of the Year’ a few years ago was certainly a career highlight.

LLA: Wetag specializes in the luxury real estate market in Ticino. In your view, what sets Ticino apart from other regions in Switzerland, both in terms of lifestyle and real estate offerings?

US: Ticino is one of the Swiss cantons offering the possibility for tax agreements, an attractive feature for many. Unlike the rest of Switzerland, Ticino enjoys a much warmer and sunnier subtropical Mediterranean climate, with Italian as its language, and a lifestyle and cuisine to match. Fashion capital Milan is less than an hour’s drive away. The architecture here reflects the Mediterranean style, with villas and palazzi, while the gardens are filled with palm trees, banana plants, and orange trees. The grey winter skies of Zurich feel a world away.

LLA: Wetag Consulting recently secured the Luxury Lifestyle Award for the Best Luxury Real Estate Brokerage in Switzerland for the third time. What do you believe has been the driving factor behind Wetag’s consistent success in receiving this prestigious recognition?

US: We focus exclusively on luxury properties, leaving everything else aside. With our services, we aim to be among the best in the world, a goal we pursue through our extensive network of connections. We attend numerous international conferences throughout the year, closely monitoring every development in the luxury sector, and we implement what suits us long before it becomes the standard in Europe or Switzerland.

But above all, my partners, our entire team, and I are truly passionate about what we do. Passionate – you know what I mean? We love what we do; it’s not just work, it’s our life, and we want to do it well. And we make sure to have fun along the way; we’re like a group of friends. This enthusiasm naturally extends to our clients, many of whom become friends as well.

LLA: How have you seen the luxury real estate market in Ticino evolve over the years? Are there any current trends in buyer preferences or property design that stand out to you?

US: The Ticino luxury market is fueled by the continuous international demand for high-end residential properties. Over the past 20 years, we have served clients from more than 70 countries, each with distinct preferences. However, general trends show a strong inclination toward turn-key properties, modern technology, and contemporary architecture. Most buyers are not interested in investing time in renovations or extensive conversions.

LLA: Wetag’s clients are described as discerning and sophisticated. What are the main qualities or services they value most when searching for luxury properties, and how does Wetag tailor its approach to meet these needs?

US: The most important thing is to first understand the diverse needs of our clients and help them see how their desires can align with local realities and regulations. This often involves addressing key issues like residence permits and taxes. We don’t make empty promises; instead, we ensure they understand the potential drawbacks of each situation. But we don’t just point out problems—we solve them. That’s exactly what I would expect as a client in a foreign country, as simple as that.

LLA: As an exclusive member representing Ticino within global luxury real estate networks, how does this affiliation benefit your clients? What advantage does this bring to those seeking properties in the region?

US: First of all, being affiliated with a well-known name signals that we maintain a certain high standard of service. These networks also help channel potential clients to us. However, the majority of our clients find us independently, simply because we have a reputation for fulfilling their needs exceptionally well. Additionally, we have many contacts who come to us when they want to buy or sell property abroad – whether in Australia, Argentina, or elsewhere. We can offer valuable assistance and connect them with the right people.

LLA: As an executive business owner who also calls Ticino home, how does living in the region influence the way you approach the real estate market? Does it give Wetag an edge in understanding what truly matters to buyers?

US: Yes, living in Ticino certainly helps when it comes to understanding the everyday aspects that matter to buyers – such as schools, sports, and shopping. However, I believe it’s even more important to travel extensively and study real estate offerings and practices in other countries. This hands-on experience allows us to truly understand what’s essential in the global luxury market and implement those insights for our clients.

LLA: Looking ahead, what are your goals for Wetag Consulting over the next few years? How do you envision the Ticino real estate market evolving, and how is Wetag preparing for that future?

US: Switzerland will likely continue to be an attractive place to live, though political decisions or global events could change that. We closely monitor these developments and ensure we stay competitive, never resting on our laurels. We regularly gather feedback from our clients and use an independent qualification system to keep improving – feel free to check our website for more details. Financially, we remain conservative; we have no debts, no loans, and no creditors. This independence allows us to act quickly and adapt to any market changes.

LLA: Throughout your career at Wetag, what has been one of your most memorable or rewarding experiences in helping a client find their dream property in Ticino?

US: Oh, there have been so many memorable moments. One that stands out is when I was called by an elderly couple looking to sell their unique villa and asked for advice on how to proceed. I could see that this lovely couple, who had traveled the world, would be unhappy anywhere else. Instead of encouraging them to sell, I suggested they transform their villa to better suit their needs as they aged. They looked at each other and agreed, saying, “We think Mr. Schnorf is a wise man, and we will follow his advice.” Years later, after her husband had passed, the widow called me for guidance on what to do next. This experience taught me an important lesson: it’s vital to prioritize what’s right for the clients over quick profits. That approach will pay off in the long run.

Conclusion

Ueli Schnorf’s passion for Ticino and his intimate understanding of the region’s market have made Wetag a true leader in the industry. With a personalized approach, global network connections, and dedication to client satisfaction, Wetag is set to maintain its legacy of success in connecting clients with their dream properties in this captivating region.

Ready to discover your dream property in Ticino? Explore Wetag Consulting’s exclusive portfolio of luxury homes and experience the unparalleled charm of the region.

Visit wetag.ch to start your journey today!

The post Inside Ticino’s Luxury Real Estate: A Conversation with Wetag Consulting Co-Owner Ueli Schnorf appeared first on The European Business Review.

Once firmly in the province of specialists, 3D printing is now being brought closer to the rest of us, due to the pioneering efforts of printer manufacturers such as Elegoo. We spoke to co-founder Kevin Wang.

Good day, Mr. Wang! It’s a pleasure to have you with us today. Since its founding in 2015, Elegoo has achieved remarkable growth. What key factors do you believe have been instrumental in driving the company’s rapid success?

It’s been quite a journey! Our growth has been driven by a strong focus on our customers. We constantly communicate with our users, gathering feedback and fostering a community where we can co-create products together. We want our users to feel that their voices are heard and that they play an integral role in shaping our products. By understanding and prioritizing their needs and creative aspirations, we’ve built a product lineup that appeals to everyone, from beginners to professionals.

Quality and affordability have also been at the heart of our strategy. We ensure that every product we ship is fully tested and proven in both performance and reliability. We never overpromise. We’ve worked hard to make 3D printing accessible to more people by breaking down barriers to entry. Take our recent Kickstarter campaign for the OrangeStorm Giga, for instance. Having launched it in early November 2023, we offered an early-bird option at just $1,250 for the first 100 backers and $1,500 for others. This pricing strategy has really resonated with the market, making large-format 3D printing more accessible, especially to small businesses that might have been put off by the high costs of traditional industrial machines. The campaign has been a huge success, raising over $3.3 million from more than 2,000 backers.

Another crucial factor in our success is our commitment to innovation. We stay ahead of the curve by continually updating and improving our products. This September, we’re excited to launch the Centauri Carbon, a printer that we believe will shake things up. Many desktop printers can be complicated and expensive, but the Centauri Carbon aims to change that. This agility and responsiveness have been key to Elegoo’s remarkable growth.

Elegoo’s products are now available in over 70 countries. How has your global expansion strategy evolved, and what have been the most significant challenges and successes in this journey?

Our global expansion has been driven by one simple observation: people everywhere want affordable and accessible 3D printing. We saw this demand, especially in key regions like North America and Europe, and knew we had to meet it.

To do this, we’ve expanded our reach to over 70 countries through a mix of direct sales on our official website, partnerships with major e-commerce platforms like Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba, and a strong network of local distributors. But it’s not just about getting our products out there; we’re big on communication. We prioritize clear and consistent interaction with our users and back it up with 24/7 after-sales support to ensure customer satisfaction.

Our global expansion has been driven by one simple observation: people everywhere want affordable and accessible 3D printing.

Of course, going global hasn’t been without its hurdles. One of the biggest challenges has been adapting to different cultures and languages. To tackle this, we’ve invested heavily in building a robust customer support team that understands local needs. We’re also working on establishing local operations and user experience centers to get even closer to our customers and offer the support they need, right where they are.

As for success, the numbers speak for themselves. In 2022, Elegoo’s total revenue surpassed US$118 million. And in 2023, we hit a major milestone, approaching the US$200 million mark. This incredible growth shows that our 3D printing solutions are resonating with users around the globe.

The recent launch of the Saturn 4 Ultra, featuring an AI-powered intelligent detection system, is a major milestone. How do you envision AI transforming the 3D printing experience for users, and what other AI-driven innovations are on the horizon?

AI is set to revolutionize the 3D printing experience by making it more precise, efficient, and accessible than ever before. With the Saturn 4 Ultra’s intelligent detection system, AI steps in to automatically spot and fix common 3D printing issues in real time. This not only boosts the reliability of the printing process but also enables users, even those with little technical know-how, to achieve professional-grade results.

Looking forward, we’re excited about the potential of AI to lower the barriers for everyone, especially those who aren’t familiar with 3D modeling. Imagine being able to generate 3D models using AI. This could open the door for many more people to enjoy 3D printing, expanding our user base and making the technology accessible to all.

We’re actively exploring other AI-driven innovations that could further enhance the user experience, making 3D printing more intuitive and unlocking new levels of creativity.

Could you share what initially attracted you to the field of artificial intelligence and how it has influenced your vision for Elegoo?

As AI started to become a key trend shaping the future of manufacturing, I saw incredible potential in using this technology to push the boundaries of what’s possible. It wasn’t just about jumping on the AI bandwagon; it was about solving real problems and making our products smarter, more efficient, and easier to use.

AI is certainly the future direction for us, but it’s not the end goal. The ultimate aim is to create products that genuinely improve people’s lives, and AI is one of the tools that will help us get there. At Elegoo, we’re committed to using AI and other technologies to make 3D printing more accessible and meaningful, so that everyone can benefit from this amazing technology. This focus on practical, impactful innovation is what drives our R&D and sets Elegoo apart.

Elegoo currently accounts for approximately 15 per cent of the global shipment volume of desktop 3D printers. What strategies do you have in place to sustain and further grow this market share?

To keep growing our market share, we’re homing in on a few key strategies. Continuous product innovation is at the heart of what we do. By investing heavily in R&D, we’re developing the next generation of 3D printing solutions that combine cutting-edge performance, affordability, and ease of use.

We’re also expanding our distribution channels. While our e-commerce model has been a huge success, we’re not stopping there. We’re forging strategic partnerships to get Elegoo products into more brick-and-mortar stores worldwide, making our printers even more accessible.

Finally, cultivating brand loyalty is crucial. When you deliver top-notch products and an exceptional customer experience, people come back. We’re committed to solidifying Elegoo as the go-to choice for desktop 3D printing, whether you’re a professional or a hobbyist. By sticking to these strategies, we’re not just maintaining our market share; we’re setting the stage for even bigger growth.

How do you plan to balance the need for cutting-edge technology with ensuring that your products remain user-friendly, especially for small business owners and individual creators?

At Elegoo, we’re focused on combining cutting-edge technology with user-friendly design, especially for small-business owners and individual creators. We don’t see these as opposing forces; in fact, they go hand in hand. By keeping things simple without sacrificing innovation, we’re making 3D printing accessible for household adoption, which is key to expanding its reach.

Cultivating brand loyalty is crucial. When you deliver top-notch products and an exceptional customer experience, people come back.

To meet the diverse needs of our customers, we’ve developed a range of product lines tailored to different use cases and skill levels. For instance, our flagship Saturn series is packed with advanced features for professional users, while our Mars series offers more accessible and beginner-friendly options at around the $300 price point. Meanwhile, our first industrial-grade printer, the OrangeStorm Giga, is specifically designed for small-business owners who need professional-grade results.

Our products are versatile, with applications ranging from gaming miniatures and garage kits to home decor, jewelry, fashion design, STEM education, and more. Ultimately, our goal is to empower every 3D printing enthusiast, regardless of their technical background, and to foster an environment where creativity knows no bounds.

How do the recent advancements in Elegoo’s product line align with the company’s broader goals for innovation? Could you share how these developments fit into your long-term vision?

The recent advancements in our product line, like the Centauri Carbon, really showcase how we’re aligning innovation with our long-term goals. The Centauri Carbon is designed to be one of the most user-friendly and reliable 3D printers on the market, and we’ve made sure it’s also affordable. We could have launched it earlier this year, but we resisted the urge. We’ve spent months rigorously testing it to ensure that it truly delivers on what we promise. It’s not just about putting out a product; it’s about making sure it fits into our bigger vision of turning 3D printers into household items, where they can function like mini-factories at home. But it’s not just for home use; it’s also a workhorse for professionals, including designers and small businesses.

We’ve noticed a growing trend of people using 3D printers not just for hobbies, but also to produce products that they can sell for a profit. As the technology continues to advance, I think we’re going to see this trend explode to another level. And with that in mind, we’ve been steadily growing as a company. We’re now close to 700 employees, and we’ve maintained a strong CAGR of over 40 per cent for the past three years. Our R&D team alone has seen over 50 per cent annual growth, which really underscores our commitment to innovation and staying ahead in the game.

With your background in marketing STEM kits and promoting 3D printing in STEM education, how crucial is it for Elegoo to continue supporting the integration of 3D printing in educational settings? What future plans do you have in this area?

Supporting the integration of 3D printing in educational settings is a crucial part of Elegoo’s mission, especially since our journey began with producing STEM kits. Education is deeply embedded in our DNA. That’s why we actively collaborate with academic institutions and student organizations worldwide. For example, our partnership with NYU Shanghai’s Interactive Media Arts (IMA) program involves providing cutting-edge 3D printers to help students unlock their full creative potential. By offering these advanced tools, we enable young innovators to seamlessly translate their design concepts into tangible, high-quality prototypes.

Beyond our work with NYU Shanghai, we have a strong history of sponsoring educational institutions and makerspaces globally. Whether it’s supplying 3D printing materials for competitions or equipment for engineering projects, our goal is to foster hands-on learning experiences. We’ve supported teams like the Concordia University Formula EV Racing Team in Canada, the Firenze Race Team from the University of Florence, and the Lenoir-Rhyne Rocketry Team by donating our Neptune 3 Pro and Mars 2 Pro 3D printers. These efforts encourage students to dive deeper into engineering, physics, and aviation, sparking their curiosity and innovation.

You’ve mentioned the role of AI in fostering a circular economy. Could you elaborate on how Elegoo is leveraging AI and other technologies to promote sustainability and reduce environmental impact?

At Elegoo, we’re deeply committed to sustainability and reducing our environmental footprint, and AI plays a key role in this effort. We’re using AI for predictive maintenance on our 3D printers, helping us anticipate issues before they become problems, which maximizes the lifespan of our machines and reduces waste. Additionally, we’re exploring ways in which AI can optimize the 3D printing process itself, suggesting the most efficient parameters to conserve both materials and energy.

Beyond technology, our commitment to the environment is reflected in our product offerings. We provide Elegoo Plant-Based Resin, primarily made from soybean, ensuring that it’s BPA-free with minimal odor and almost no pungent fumes. We’ve also introduced Elegoo PLA filaments, a biodegradable material that supports sustainability.

In 2023, we took another step towards environmental stewardship by partnering with One Tree Planted. Through this initiative, we’ve donated thousands of dollars to help plant trees around the world, contributing to reforestation efforts and reinforcing our dedication to a greener planet.

With your extensive experience in operations and marketing within the consumer electronics industry, what trends do you see as pivotal to the future of 3D printing? How is Elegoo preparing to adapt to these changes?

With my experience in the consumer electronics industry, I see some key trends that are shaping the future of 3D printing, and Elegoo is getting ready to ride this wave.

One of the most exciting trends is the potential for 3D printers to become as common as household items like robot vacuums or other smart home devices. With advancements in technology, 3D printers could very well be the next big thing, much like drones. The best part? You won’t need any technical background to benefit from it.

The second trend I see is the rise of 3D print farms, where small business owners purchase multiple printers to mass-produce customized products at a low cost. This trend is driven by the ease of use and the strong productivity of modern 3D printers. Elegoo is committed to supporting these entrepreneurs by continuing to develop reliable, high-performing printers that make mass production not just possible but efficient and scalable.

Finally, closely related to the rise of 3D print farms, there’s a growing shift where 3D printing is no longer just for prototyping but is becoming a go-to for producing end-use parts. As the technology continues to improve in speed, precision, and material diversity, more industries are turning to 3D printing for functional, final components. At Elegoo, we’re broadening our focus to include not just hobbyists and educational users, but also sectors like gaming miniatures, home decor, jewelry, and fashion design.

Looking ahead, what exciting developments or new products can we expect from Elegoo in the near future?

Looking ahead, you can expect some exciting developments from Elegoo aimed at raising awareness of 3D printing. We’re thrilled about the upcoming launch of our Centauri Carbon, designed to set new standards in the industry. Alongside this, we’ll be releasing new resin printers with larger build volumes later this year to unleash even more creativity. Beyond products, we’re also planning to partner with other brands and influential individuals to launch projects that will inspire and engage a broader audience, bringing 3D printing into the spotlight.

Finally, as a leader and innovator, how do you define success, both personally and for Elegoo? What legacy do you hope to build?

Success is about more than just numbers. While financial growth and market leadership are important, our true goal is to make 3D printers as common as household items. We want them to be cool, innovative, and accessible to everyone.

As a startup, we’re a simple and “pure” team, driven by a genuine passion for 3D printing technology. Our focus is on growing our community and making 3D printing a regular part of everyday life. We aim to create a legacy of innovation that genuinely benefits people and the planet. Ultimately, it’s about making the world a bit more exciting and pushing the future forward with every step we take.

Executive Profile

Kevin Wang joined Elegoo in 2016 as co-founder and Vice President, bringing with him 14 years of professional experience and a bachelor’s degree in International Trade from the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. He has developed in-depth insights into retail marketing and global e-commerce operations.

Kevin is an experienced leader with a demonstrated professional history in the consumer electronics industry. Earlier at Elegoo, Kevin strategized marketing plans for STEM kits and discovered a market gap as he realized that 3D printing is necessary for STEM education and the maker community. With a vision to create the future with smart manufacturing, Kevin leads a young and vibrant team to democratize 3D printers and enable further exploration of the creative universe.

The post Close Encounters of the 3D Kind: Interview with Kevin Wang of Elegoo appeared first on The European Business Review.

Facilities management software is at the forefront of transforming how businesses operate and maintain their environments. As technology advances, these platforms must innovate to stay relevant and effective. Explore the upcoming trends, technological integrations, and key improvements poised to redefine facilities management over the next five years, driving efficiency and sustainability in our exclusive interview with Philip Myers of mpro5. 

What emerging trends do you see shaping the future of facilities management software platforms over the next five years? 

I don’t foresee any major new trends – I think the industry has been grappling with the same issues for the last few years and we are still seeing that with clients operating in the space: 

• Paperless FM – many businesses still rely on paper forms to verify jobs have been done and provide an audit trail if needed. Not only does this use unnecessary amounts of paper, but it is also vulnerable to exploitation, human error, loss, and damage. Digitising these processes provides an infallible audit trail, time stamps, and reports problems automatically, giving real time insight to businesses so they can address any issues instantly. 
• Energy conservation – energy-saving is becoming ever more critical, and FM software is perfectly placed to monitor building usage and performance. Monitoring everything from lighting, HVAC, and air quality to room usage and cleaning schedules, can reduce unnecessary power consumption, resource usage, and waste. 
• Perfecting hybrid work environments – many businesses and buildings are still perfecting the balance of operating hybrid working models. Again, FM software is well placed to help monitor building usage to optimise maintenance, security, and cleaning schedules, and even office opening patterns to streamline energy and resource usage and adapt them to hybrid working patterns. 
• Embracing IoT – most companies are still to fully unlock the power of IoT to improve their FM processes. Cameras and various sensors (temperature, door opening, occupancy) can be used to trigger both preventative and remedial actions, but all are still far too underutilised across the industry. More on that shortly… 

How do you envision the integration of technologies like IoT, AI, and machine learning impacting the capabilities of facilities management software?  

More and more advancements in machine learning and AI will make platforms smarter around prioritising problems and issues to allocate limited resources more efficiently. We will also see these platforms begin to propose remedial actions based on past process completion. For example, if a common problem occurs with an HVAC system, the software will suggest actions to rectify the problem and what parts might be needed, or additional actions or expertise are required, to fix it.  

Though the term Internet of Things (IoT) was first used way back in 1999, the power of cameras and sensors is still not being fully exploited in facilities management. Granted, the practical applications of these technologies have only been a reality in the last decade or so, but there is still so much more FM professionals could use them for. For example, using cameras to retrospectively investigate thefts is far less effective than using cameras to alert a security guard to an intruder’s presence as it’s happening, who can respond in real-time to the intruder and stop the theft. Responding to a fire door being left open instantly due to a sensor, instead of noticing it potentially hours later on a scheduled patrol, could prevent a multitude of unwanted scenarios unfolding. Similarly with temperature monitoring on fridges and freezers – fix them (or simply close the door!) before food spoils and goes to waste. Prevention is always easier and cheaper than cure, and IoT can carry the weight of this challenge for many businesses.  

What improvements do you think are necessary to enhance the user experience for facilities management software platforms? 

They must be quick, simple, and easy to use. Being mobile-friendly is a non-negotiable. Clients should also have the choice to implement them on devices they supply, or on employees’ own devices by adopting a bring your own device (BYOD) policy, which has multiple benefits around cost savings and device familiarity for users. They need to operate on limited or zero connectivity so that users never have to wave devices around to get a signal! You may not be surprised to hear that mpro5 offers all of the above.  

In addition, and something we are always working on, is the use of AI and machine-learning to remove the burden from users, streamline processes, reduce repetitive tasks and ease adoption to increase user efficiency and productivity.

How can facilities management software contribute to sustainability and energy efficiency goals for businesses? 

I touched on this earlier, but it’s all about reducing consumption and waste by responding to incidents in a timely and efficient manner. Cleaning restrooms based on usage and footfall is far more efficient than doing it by schedule. Using sensors on doors and windows will prevent heat loss during winter and optimise HVAC performance year round, by making sure they are not left open unnecessarily. Sensors on fridges and freezers can alert maintenance teams to issues before food spoils and is wasted. Simply digitising offline audits and logbooks can save hundreds of thousands of pounds in paper and printing alone. One of our clients saves over £1million a year in paper and printing costs since switching to mpro5. 

With the increasing reliance on digital platforms, what measures should be prioritised to ensure data security and privacy in facilities management software? 

As with all technology, implementing robust security measures is a must. Regular audits and penetration testing is critical, as is employee cybersecurity training. Suppliers should also invest in the latest security technologies and always keep up to date. We of course adopt these practices and we also use end-to-end data encryption at rest and in transit, and are ISO27001 certified.  

How important is customisation and scalability in facilities management software, and what are the challenges in providing these features? 

This is a challenge faced by most software companies and a decision that needs to be made by the business. I generally see three options: 1. You build something once and sell it to many, adopting a lower value, higher volume approach to sales. 2. You go the other way, embrace customisation, and make bespoke solutions that are more expensive and time and resource intensive, where you have fewer clients that are of higher value. Or 3., you diversify your offering – make different versions, tiers, or instances of a similar product and price them accordingly. It all comes down to the strategic direction and desires of the business. 

Regardless of your approach, any software needs to be flexible to adapt to evolving, changing industry trends, and the capability to add new features and integrate with new technologies is a must. Without the ability to innovate, embrace change, and adopt new technologies, your offering will never get off the ground. 

Executive Profile

Philip Meyers joined Crimson Tide in August 2023 as COO, bringing a wealth of experience in IoT and process management, and was promoted to CEO in April 2024. His previous experience includes Vice President of Capabilities and Innovation at Inmarsat Global, the world leader in global mobile satellite communications, senior positions in smaller satellite businesses, and Channel Sales Manager for BlackBerry.  

The post Sustainable Solutions for Businesses: Enhancing Efficiency with Facilities Management Software appeared first on The European Business Review.

Can you share the pivotal moment or experience that ignited your passion for driving positive change in society? 

The pivotal moment for me was during a visit to a remote village where I witnessed first-hand the struggles of families living without basic necessities. This experience opened my eyes to the profound impact that targeted support and sustainable initiatives can have on improving lives. It fuelled my determination to create lasting positive change and led to the founding of WeCare, where we focus on empowering communities and fostering sustainable development. 

WeCare has been involved in various support channels. Could you elaborate on the specific initiatives that have had the most significant impact on the community? 

One of our most impactful initiatives has been our Education for All programme, which provides resources to underprivileged students. By enabling access to quality education, we are helping to break the cycle of poverty and create opportunities for future generations. Additionally, our Health and Wellness campaigns, which include free mental health support, have significantly improved the well-being of many individuals. These initiatives, along with our efforts in promoting clean energy solutions, have had a transformative effect on the lives of those we serve. 

Sustainable finance is a core area of your advocacy. How do you define sustainable finance, and why is it crucial for the future of our society? 

Sustainable finance goes beyond traditional financial metrics to consider the long-term impact on society and the environment. This approach is crucial for our future as it ensures that investments contribute to sustainable development, mitigate climate risks, and promote social equity. By aligning financial flows with sustainable goals, we can build a resilient economy that benefits people and the planet. 

What challenges have you encountered in promoting sustainable finance, and how have you addressed them? 

One of the main challenges is the lack of awareness and understanding of sustainable finance among investors and stakeholders. To address this, we have focused on education and advocacy, organising seminars, workshops, and campaigns to highlight the importance and benefits of sustainable finance. Additionally, we encounter resistance from traditional financial institutions hesitant to change established practices. To overcome this, we have worked on building strong partnerships and showcasing successful case studies that demonstrate the positive impact and financial viability of sustainable investments. 

How do you see the role of technology and innovation in advancing sustainable finance and driving social change? 

Technology and innovation play a pivotal role in advancing sustainable finance by providing new tools and solutions for measuring and managing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors. For example, blockchain technology enhances transparency and traceability in supply chains, while AI and big data analytics improve risk assessment and decision-making processes. Furthermore, fintech innovations enable greater financial inclusion, allowing underserved communities to access financial services. By leveraging these technologies, we can drive social change more effectively and create scalable, impactful solutions to global challenges. 

Looking ahead, what are your goals for WeCare in the next five years, particularly in the realm of sustainable finance and societal impact? 

Over the next five years, our primary goal is to expand our sustainable finance initiatives to include more diverse and inclusive investment opportunities. We aim to launch a dedicated impact fund that supports startups and projects aligned with our ESG criteria. Additionally, we plan to deepen our engagement with local communities by developing tailored programmes that address specific needs and challenges. By focusing on capacity building and empowering individuals, we aspire to create a ripple effect of positive change that extends beyond immediate beneficiaries to the wider society. 

Executive Profile

Saad Kassis Mohamed is the Chairman of WeCare, an organisation committed to advancing sustainable development and social impact globally. With a robust background in finance and a profound dedication to social justice, Saad has been pivotal in initiating and leading numerous impactful programmes aimed at improving the quality of life for marginalised communities. Under his visionary leadership, WeCare has emerged as a prominent advocate for sustainable development, focusing on key areas such as education, healthcare, and renewable energy. 

The post The Power of Sustainable Finance: A Dialogue with Saad Kassis Mohamed appeared first on The European Business Review.

Thank you for joining us today, Mr. Jouteau. Can you explain what the circular economy is and how it differs from the traditional linear economy?

The circular economy is an economic system designed to phase out waste, where every item is appreciated for its intrinsic value and is used to serve its purpose indefinitely. In practice this means recycling, reusing and repairing goods, in a major departure from “throw away” culture.

In contrast, the traditional linear economy is structured in such a way that many items are produced to be only single-use with a short lifespan — people buy a product, use it, and then dispose of it when they’re finished. Ultimately, this model of production and consumption is unsustainable for both people and the planet in the long-term.

This is why it’s so important that businesses begin taking the steps necessary to transition to a circular economy. Enabling re-commerce as a means of consumption is pivotal to this, as buying and selling this way can significantly extend the life cycle of a product. At Adevinta, we believe passionately in the ethos of ‘reduce, reuse, upcycle and recycle’ that underpins the circular economy, and our online marketplaces aim to help drive this.

How do you see re-commerce fitting into the broader goals of the circular economy?

The goals of re-commerce and the circular economy are intrinsically linked, and circular consumption can only be achieved by implementing re-commerce at scale.

By shopping second-hand we extend a product’s lifespan, reduce waste, and practise more sustainable consumption. This way of thinking informs the circular economy itself, where the goal is to maximise the value of our resources and consequently reduce environmental impact.

It can all sound daunting, but it only takes small steps to make a big difference. If we can get people engaging in the buying and selling of pre-loved items, they will be participating in the re-commerce market, and thus contributing to a more circular economy.

And it’s already happening. According to data from leboncoin, one of Adevinta’s marketplaces, nearly 20 million French consumers bought or sold an item on the platform in 2022. We’re seeing the beginning of a seismic behavioural shift towards second hand, and corporates, governments and individuals will all have a role to play in making sure it continues. Incentivisation and improving convenience will be key.

Can you discuss the environmental and economic benefits of re-commerce for both consumers and businesses?

For consumers, the continuing high cost of living and the desire to live more sustainable lives are arguably the two biggest factors driving the rise in second-hand shopping. In fact, recent research from Adevinta found that 47% of consumers report that the cost-of-living crisis has encouraged them to buy second-hand to save money, and 37% are driven to do so by a desire to live more sustainably.

The cost-saving and environmental benefits of re-commerce are already well understood by most consumers – and for those in need of convincing, there’s plenty of data to stand testament. Shopping on Adevinta’s marketplaces alone saved a potential 25.3 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2022.

For businesses, engaging with re-commerce offers them the opportunity to meet rising expectations from both consumers and policy makers. With new regulations such as the EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products – which aims to improve EU products’ circularity and sustainability – coming in, delivering on circularity is fast becoming a necessity.

Environmentally, re-commerce reduces the amount of waste they’re directly contributing to landfills, lowers their carbon footprint, and helps them engage with consumers that who want to be more sustainable and financially savvy.

And businesses can reap the benefits of the transition commercially, too. A recent report conducted by Internet Retailing found that the European re-commerce market is predicted to grow by 60% by 2025, to €120bn, clearly providing huge economic opportunities for businesses.

What are the main challenges and barriers companies face when trying to implement re-commerce initiatives, and how can they be overcome?

One of the biggest challenges companies face when trying to implement re-commerce initiatives is ensuring that traditional online marketplaces and classifieds sites evolve to keep pace with the market-dominating global platforms that deliver brand-new, mass-produced products to consumers daily.

The key to success here is providing consumers with convenience, which comes through constant innovation. We need to make it as easy and convenient as possible to buy second-hand. Businesses and online marketplaces need to prioritise investing in technology that will help them to build the re-commerce platforms of the future — meaning they can offer consumers a smart, efficient user experience.

A shift in mindset and behaviour still needs to occur for a lot of consumers to want to engage more readily with re-commerce. A recent study by Barclaycard Payments found that Generation Z and younger millennials in the UK are most likely to shop second-hand, whilst baby boomers make up only 9% of spending in the re-commerce sector. We know the re-commerce market is growing at scale, but we need to make sure that we are taking everyone along on the journey. 

How can companies influence consumer behaviour to support and engage with re-commerce and the circular economy? 

The appetite for consumers to engage with re-commerce and the circular economy is already there. We just need to harness it.

One way we can do this is by providing more information and choices to consumers so that they feel empowered to make conscious decisions to shop more sustainably. Online marketplaces are uniquely positioned to provide consumers with an array of choices that many traditional retailers cannot. And all businesses have a role to play in providing information that is there to help educate consumers with the second-hand market. People need to have clear guidance on where they can shop second-hand and shake the belief that supply is limited or that a wanted item won’t be available. Once people experience the benefits of re-commerce, they’ll feel empowered to continue to shop in more sustainable ways.

One of the first things that companies have the power to get right is their supply chains, ensuring that those businesses that they work with all have sound sustainability credentials. Companies can lead by example by proving that they themselves are committed to being more circular, whether that’s across their operations, product offerings, or their services. This authenticity is critical.

What role does technology play in enabling re-commerce, and what infrastructure is necessary to support these initiatives effectively? 

Technology is an integral enabler of re-commerce, powering online marketplaces for users to buy and sell goods wherever they are and whenever they want. Already, pre-loved items that consumers have never had easy access to before are now at the fingertips of millions, meaning it can truly become a worldwide movement.

But there’s more to be done. This is why businesses should invest in technology and collaborate across borders to build common capabilities. Digital technology acts as a powerful gas pedal, unleashing the potential of collective action on a massive scale, by making it easily accessible to all, with no barriers to entry. At Adevinta we have more than 2,700+ tech specialists across our platforms, so we can accelerate our delivery time of new solutions that enhance user experience.

Some ways that technology can accelerate the rise of re-commerce include the provision of faster transactions, generative AI speeding up of processes, better collection and application of customer data and innovations in cloud technology.

What kinds of policies and regulations would help promote re-commerce and drive the transition towards a circular economy on a larger scale?

We believe that Europe can be a global leader in driving re-commerce and championing circularity, but to get there we need to establish better cross-sector and cross-country collaboration. The key to this is sharing our learnings across borders to promote and drive new regulations and standards.

The EU Circular Economy Monitoring Framework is a prime example of this, offering to increase resource efficiency and reduce environmental pressures by measuring circularity.

Executive Profile

Antoine Jouteau has been with Adevinta (and previously Schibsted) since 2009, holding management positions at leboncoin, including Director of Business Development (Product & Sales & Marketing) from 2009 to 2012, and Deputy General Manager from 2013 to 2015. He was appointed CEO of leboncoin in 2015 and CEO of Adevinta in August 2022. 

The post Advancing the Circular Economy: Insights from Antoine Jouteau, CEO of Adevinta appeared first on The European Business Review.

What are the key challenges that C-suite executives face when implementing digital transformation initiatives, particularly concerning cybersecurity and AI integration?

As more security teams look to bring AI into their security technology stacks, one of their biggest obstacles will be ensuring data volume and data quality. Investing in data infrastructure to ensure access to complete, accurate, and reliable data, with the ability to respond dynamically to changes in the IT environment, is key for AI models to effectively recognise patterns and detect anomalies. It is only by truly understanding the full scope of the data that AI can be effectively used to mitigate attacks.

For example, Abnormal Security uses an API-based architecture to ingest data from across an organisation’s email and SaaS environment. This allows the platform to baseline the known-good behaviour of every employee and vendor in the organisation based on each user’s communication patterns, sign-in events, and thousands of other attributes. The platform can then apply advanced AI models, including natural language processing (NLP) and behavioural analytics, to detect abnormalities in email behaviour that indicate a potential attack, ultimately preventing those attacks from reaching end users.

How do you see the role of AI evolving in digital transformation strategies within organisations, especially concerning email security and threat detection?

As email attacks become more sophisticated and security teams simultaneously grapple with reduced budgets and cyber-skills shortages, more security teams are turning to AI as a tool that not only helps improve defences, but also helps regain productivity. There are a few areas in security – and especially in email security – where introducing AI could help security teams see improved efficiency.

By understanding what normal user behaviours look like, AI-based tools can then detect deviations from the norm that could signal malicious activity.

One example is using behavioural AI to detect advanced email attacks, including text-based social engineering attacks. Socially engineered emails typically lack the traditional indicators of compromise (things like malicious links or blocked senders) that traditional secure email gateways and other rule-based defences look for. By understanding what normal user behaviours look like, AI-based tools can then detect deviations from the norm that could signal malicious activity.

Another area where AI could be applied to transform email security is in automating workflows around user reporting of phishing emails. Manually triaging and responding to user-reported emails can consume hours of skilled analyst time, even though the majority of user-reported phishing emails are ultimately deemed safe. Using AI to inspect and evaluate these emails (and automatically remove those that are part of a larger campaign) can accelerate this process and free up valuable security analyst time for more strategic tasks.

From your experience, what are the most common misconceptions among C-suite leaders regarding the adoption and deployment of AI technologies in their digital transformation agendas?

When it comes to AI adoption for digital transformation initiatives within a business, there is a common misconception among C-suite leaders that AI solutions can simply be plugged in and start delivering results immediately.

AI is an extremely powerful technology, but there are a number of factors to take into account before you can begin to reap its benefits. AI solutions work best when applied to specific problems and well-defined use cases, so making sure your vendors deeply understand your security challenges is a first step. AI also needs sufficient quality data to operate effectively, so ensuring tight integration with existing data sources is another key step.

There is another common misconception that AI will replace human workers. In reality, the most effective use of AI today is to augment human security analysts, helping them to automate or speed up more of their manual processes, so that they can focus on the more strategic aspects of their jobs.

Can you provide examples of successful AI applications in cybersecurity that have significantly enhanced organisational resilience and efficiency, particularly in mitigating email-based threats?

Due to its widespread use and vulnerability, email has long been a primary target for cyberattacks. Despite significant investments in email security solutions to combat threats like spam, ransomware, and credential phishing, losses continue to rise. AI is proving to be an extremely valuable tool in countering these threats.

The application of behavioural AI in email security – that is, understanding human behaviour to detect anomalous (malicious) activity including phishing, social engineering, and account takeover – has been shown to help organisations improve their defences, while also reducing costs and boosting productivity.

For example, according to Forrester, the average 10,000-employee organisation that deploys Abnormal’s AI-native human behaviour platform achieves a total ROI of 278 per cent in three years, with a payback period of less than six months. During that period, the average organisation displaces a legacy secure email gateway solution, prevents $4 million dollars in losses due to business email compromise, and reduces security analyst hours spent on email security tasks by 95 per cent.

According to one customer, Robert Woods, Cloud Computing Director, Kroenke Sports & Entertainment: “Abnormal has delivered significant time savings. I’ve gained 75 per cent of my time back that I used to spend on email and now I can focus on other aspects of cloud security.”

What are the critical factors that C-suite executives should consider when evaluating AI-powered solutions for their cybersecurity needs amidst their digital transformation journeys?

The rise of generative AI, with tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, has been incredibly rapid, having a transformative impact in just a couple of years. These tools are popular for their efficiency and legitimate uses, but cybercriminals exploit them, too. As AI technology evolves, organisations must prioritise AI-powered solutions to enhance their cybersecurity defences, utilising defensive AI to stop this malicious AI. Integrating AI into their strategies will be crucial for C-suite execs looking to stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated threats and ensuring robust protection against email-based attacks. However, before choosing security tools, companies must understand that security tools need to “think” like security teams, which can be done through the power of AI. Rather than flagging every unusual event as a threat, the most effective email security platforms will evaluate the message and correlate events to determine the likelihood of a threat. This process is similar to how humans make decisions. For instance, if a drop of water lands on your head, you don’t immediately assume it’s raining. You consider the context; maybe it rained yesterday, but the sky is clear today, making rain unlikely.

Integrating AI into their strategies will be crucial for C-suite execs looking to stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated threats and ensuring robust protection against email-based attacks.

AI can take this further by analysing historical and current inputs to predict the most likely cause of an event, utilising thousands of signals to determine whether something is simply unusual, or it is truly malicious. Abnormal Security uses various AI techniques, including behavioural analysis and natural language processing, to detect threats. Our systems quickly identify anomalies, not just as deviations from a baseline, but also inconsistencies among other anomalies in a user’s activity. This sophisticated approach ensures improved protection for users, with more accurate threat detection, ultimately leading to fewer false positives than other platforms.

How do you recommend that organisations balance innovation and risk management when integrating AI technologies into their digital transformation roadmaps, especially within sensitive areas like email security?

AI has incredible potential to transform a number of business functions, including security. And while organisations should be thinking about AI as part of their innovation strategies, they should also be cautious of the risks it presents.

Security teams should be careful not to over-rely on AI. It’s not a silver bullet, but rather a tool that can be layered with other defences for stronger overall security, while improving efficiency and elevating security team members in their roles. This means that security leaders should not rely exclusively on AI-based email security technology to protect their organisations, and they should continue to implement security awareness training and other foundational security measures like multi-factor authentication and password management.

Another common concern surrounding AI is that there tends to be little visibility to the end users around how it operates and makes decisions. Any company that uses AI in its solutions also has a duty to prioritise transparency as much as possible, with assurances around how the AI operates and how they manage users’ data privacy.

In your view, what are the emerging trends or advancements in AI that C-suite leaders should closely monitor to stay ahead in their digital transformation strategies, particularly within the realm of email security and threat detection?

Cybersecurity leaders should be conscious of how threat actors’ attack tactics are evolving, so they can adapt their defences accordingly.

One of the biggest trends we’re seeing now is attackers using generative AI to write greater volumes of highly sophisticated email attacks. Now, even inexperienced petty criminals can leverage widely accessible tools like ChatGPT to craft perfectly written, personalised, and seemingly realistic emails, making them exponentially more difficult for employees (and legacy email security tools) to identify.

The rise of AI-generated threats underscores the importance of having AI-based defences that can detect the subtlest changes in email behaviour indicative of a potential attack. In fact, a recent study found that 82 per cent of IT decision-makers plan to invest in AI-driven cybersecurity, and over 94 per cent of security leaders believe that AI will significantly impact their cybersecurity strategies within the next two years.

Could you share insights or case studies illustrating the tangible business benefits that organisations have realised through the strategic adoption of AI-driven solutions in their digital transformation initiatives, specifically in the context of enhancing email security and minimising cyber risks? 

Many of our clients have seen significant benefits from AI-driven solutions. For instance, Mace, a leading commercial construction and consultancy firm, faced challenges with advanced email threats bypassing its signature-based defences, and it needed a shift in its security mindset. Traditionally, construction hasn’t been overly focused on cybersecurity, but Mace’s high-value projects require robust data protection.

Vendor email compromise was a major issue for Mace. Their vendors were being compromised and used as attack vectors, where attackers would use legitimate accounts to send attacks to Mace employees. Since trusted emails lowered users’ guards, this strategy often results in more effective attacks. Mace needed a smarter defence layer, choosing Abnormal due to the behavioural and language-based AI used to detect deviations in email content and intent, even from known vendors and other trusted sources.

Similarly, Softcat, an IT services and consulting company, aimed to enhance security for its employees and customers. The growing company faced evolving email threats despite using Microsoft Exchange Online and SEG. Softcat’s Head of Information Security noted they received around 100,000 inbound emails daily, with a few account-takeover emails slipping through.

Softcat explored API-based vendors and quickly set up proofs of concept, ultimately choosing Abnormal for the ability to detect advanced attacks and reduce false positives. Abnormal also automates responses to user reports, freeing the security team for other tasks.

Executive Profile 

Mike Britton is the CISO of Abnormal Security, where he leads the information security and privacy programmes. He is integral in building and maintaining the customer trust programme, performing vendor risk analysis, and protecting the workforce with proactive monitoring of the multi-cloud infrastructure. He also works closely with the Abnormal product and engineering teams to ensure platform security and serves as the voice of the customer for feature development. 

Prior to Abnormal, Mike spent six years as the CSO and Chief Privacy Officer for Alliance Data and previously worked for IBM and VF Corporation. He brings 25 years of information security, privacy, compliance, and IT experience from multiple Fortune 500 global companies. Mike holds an MBA from the University of Dallas and a BA in Political Science from the University of Mary Washington. 

The post Cybersecurity: Using AI to Really Think It Through – Interview with Mike Britton, CISO at Abnormal Security   appeared first on The European Business Review.

Thank you for meeting with us today, Mr McCreesh! Can you tell us about what inspired you to establish Taiwan Outdoors after moving to the country in 2019?

Absolutely. Thank you for this opportunity to share a little bit about Taiwan and our platform, Taiwan Outdoors. Before moving to Taiwan in 2019, I had actually lived here in the early 2000s. Like many who have lived in or visited Taiwan, I became infatuated with the diversity of outdoor activities this country has to offer.  After moving to Taiwan in 2019, I began to realise that there were two main challenges to getting more people outdoors and truly experiencing one of Taiwan’s greatest assets – Nature.

The first reason is that the English-language information needed to properly plan and safely adventure into Taiwan’s great outdoors is very fragmented. It’s found across personal blogs, YouTube and short-form videos, tweets, etc. There is no platform that has collected and presented this kind of information across multiple activity areas like hiking, cycling, diving, surfing, birding. We’re not there yet, but we intend to be that platform for the public.

The second reason is that it’s hard for visitors to connect with local experiences and experience providers. I’ll get more into that later, but those are the two pain-points that inspired me and my co-founder, Michael Chen, to create a platform like Taiwan Outdoors.

How did your previous experiences in destination development, bicycle tourism in Canada, and working with indigenous communities shape your approach to creating this company?

While working in destination development, I learned the importance of understanding and enhancing a location’s unique attributes to make it appealing to visitors. Developing bicycle tourism in Ontario, Canada was focused on creating sustainable and engaging travel experiences that connect visitors with the people and places they visit, slowing visitors down to capture the true essence of a destination. Working with indigenous communities in Australia and Canada emphasised the value of building strong, respectful relationships and incorporating local culture into tourism offerings. The foundations of all of our indigenous communities are based on these relationships. I believe in Taiwan there’s a need for indigenous communities to lead tourism product development. In this regard, Taiwan Outdoors aims to provide detailed information and foster connections between visitors, local experience providers, and communities.

Were there any challenges you encountered in marketing your company to the international community?

There is certainly a challenge for any local tour platform to reach international markets. Marketing continues to stick out as a challenge for us – specifically, figuring out how we can reach an international audience at the right time in the consumer purchasing process to convert eyeballs to bookings for us or our partners.

We’ve had moderate success in a few of our endeavours, such as SEO, organic social content, and influencer marketing. We’ll continue to develop these more strategically in 2024 and beyond. Moving forward, we will also lean into other tactics such as co-branded tours with influencers and B2B partnerships with travel agency networks and outbound tour operators in key source markets.

How has the international community responded to Taiwan Outdoors since its launch?

Every visitor I speak with resonates with the vision for Taiwan Outdoors and often remarks, “This is exactly what Taiwan needs.” Hearing this is always encouraging and fuels our enthusiasm.

Recently, I had the honour of speaking at two Taiwan Tourism Administration events in Toronto and Vancouver. The response from Canadian outbound tour operators was overwhelmingly positive. They were particularly excited about a local Taiwanese tour operator creating unique travel products tailored for international visitors, coupled with the ability to provide ground support for clients travelling in Taiwan. Many of our overseas partners have never had this kind of support for Taiwan before, which we believe bodes well for our long-term opportunities.

Since Taiwan Outdoors is “built by foreigners for foreigners”, what unique challenges and opportunities have you encountered in marketing Taiwan’s outdoor activity tourism industry to the international community?

Marketing Taiwan’s outdoor activity tourism to an international audience presents unique challenges and opportunities. One significant challenge is bridging the gap between local providers and international visitors. Many local providers are not accustomed to catering to foreign tourists, which can affect the quality and relevance of the experiences offered. On the other hand, there are opportunities to showcase Taiwan’s diverse and rich outdoor activities to a global audience that may not be aware of them. By acting as an aggregator of experiences, as well as a mediator between international visitors and local providers, Taiwan Outdoors can help local providers understand and meet international standards and expectations, while also curating and promoting unique experiences that highlight Taiwan’s natural beauty and cultural heritage.

From product ideation to taking the guests out on a tour and following up post-tour, everything we do has the international visitor in mind. Frankly, there is really no one doing what we’re doing for the outdoor and adventure market in Taiwan.

As Taiwan’s first English-language platform for outdoor adventure activities, what strategies have you used to build and maintain the most comprehensive database of outdoor experiences in Taiwan?

Building and maintaining the most comprehensive database of outdoor experiences in Taiwan is an ongoing process, and we’re not there quite yet. As we build this out, we are utilising two main strategies: partnerships with database providers and collaboration with niche knowledge experts.

For database providers, we target those not currently active in the international tourism sector, offering them exposure and additional revenue through our platform and our community. In areas not covered by these partners, we engage key knowledge experts across various outdoor activities. These passionate individuals, from hikers to surfers, have developed deep expertise over many years. They provide objective and detailed content, helping us create value-oriented content (compared with click-bait). We greatly value their contributions and they’re a big part of what we’re doing. We create further opportunities for these experts to contribute as consultants in tour product development and marketing.

How do you ensure the safety and quality of the experiences provided by the professional experience providers and transportation solutions featured on your platform?

Ensuring the safety and quality of experiences on Taiwan Outdoors is a top priority. We vet all experience providers and transportation solutions featured on our platform. This vetting process includes checking for proper licences and certifications, insurance, safety protocols, and risk management plans, as well as references in the form of their past customer reviews and feedback. We also seek ongoing feedback from our own guests to see how we can maintain high standards in terms of quality, as well as safety. Participating in outdoor and adventure activities has inherent risks, but we do our best to mitigate and reduce these by working with professional partners.

Can you discuss the importance of integrating local resources and products into Taiwan Outdoors and how this approach benefits travellers and local communities?

Firstly, the outdoor and adventure travel sector in Taiwan is quite fragmented, with local providers often overlooking the potential of international visitors. Taiwan Outdoors acts as an aggregator of these local resources and providers, helping them reach a new, underserved, and high-margin tourist market. This neglect of the international market by local experience providers creates several issues (and opportunities). For travellers, the lack of unique, exciting, and safe tour experiences means they miss out (as far as we’re concerned) on the true “Taiwan experience”. In a competitive global tourism landscape, this is a missed opportunity for both travellers and the industry.

We believe that by partnering with local experience providers and offering them a platform to reach an international audience, we can maximise the potential of Taiwan’s outdoor tourism sector, ensuring a richer and more authentic experience for travellers while supporting local economies.

How do you collaborate with local Taiwanese businesses and communities to enhance the experiences offered on Taiwan Outdoors?

As I mentioned above, we vet and verify each partner, ensuring they emphasise safety, professionalism, and quality. Our collaboration process also involves evaluating and adapting their existing products or experiences to meet the needs of international visitors. Many local experiences are initially developed for the domestic market. We illustrate to our partners that catering to international visitors can enhance value and justify higher pricing, while reducing guest volume for a more exclusive experience, which is what the modern traveller is looking for.

What trends do you see emerging in Taiwan’s tourism and outdoor activity industry? How is your company positioned to capitalise on these trends?

The COVID-19 pandemic sparked a global surge in outdoor activities as a means of maintaining health and fitness. While activities like cycling have seen a slight decline from their peak, the demand for active and adventure travel remains pretty robust. This trend aligns perfectly with Taiwan’s evolving image as an adventure travel hotspot. We’re leaning into the slogan of Taiwan as the “Adventure Capital of Asia”.

As Taiwan’s premier English-language platform for planning and booking outdoor travel, our company is positioned well to leverage these trends. We provide comprehensive resources and booking services, making it easier for adventure-seekers to explore Taiwan’s landscapes and outdoor activities.

What role do you see technology and digital platforms playing in the future of adventure travel and tourism, particularly for a platform like Taiwan Outdoors?

We are working on connecting two pieces of key technology to Taiwan Outdoors, both relevant for any digital platform promoting and selling outdoor experiences. These are both rooted in the thesis of improving the safety and overall experiences of those who venture into Taiwan’s rugged natural areas.

Firstly, robust weather data. We understand that weather impacts both consumers and operators and we are exploring how more timely weather updates can improve how visitors experience Taiwan outdoor environments more safely and enjoyably. We also know that weather greatly determines when and how people go outdoors.

The other is artificial intelligence, AI. Across the tourism industry, we believe that consumers will increasingly seek conversation-based engagement with digital platforms, helping them find suitable experiences for their travel dates, abilities, and interests. We’re looking into how to weave weather data and a language model trained on Taiwan’s outdoor offerings in a way that can improve personalisation and accessibility. By integrating these technologies, we aim to create a more intuitive and responsive platform that can provide tailored recommendations, real-time updates, and seamless communication. That’s the vision we have and we’re slowly making inroads in this area. This innovation will not only enhance the user experience but also promote safer and more enjoyable adventures in Taiwan.

Can you share some examples of the most popular or unique outdoor experiences Taiwan Outdoors offers international visitors?

There are many, but two of our most unique and popular experiences are our Night Safaris, where we take guests into the jungles around Taiwan to seek out the many rare and endemic reptiles, amphibians, and other creatures that come alive when the sun goes down. The other experience is our 3-day / 2-night experience to Tjuvecekadan, a Paiwan indigenous tribal village in southeast Pingtung County. This community boosts the largest collection of traditional slate-stone homes in the country and is listed on Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture’s “Potential UNESCO World Heritage List”. It’s a special overnight night experience that can’t be done anywhere else on Earth.

What are your future plans for Taiwan Outdoors?

Firstly, outdoor and environmental education programmes for youth. Many of our team spent their formative years outdoors. This can have a tremendous impact on individuals, communities, and even societies at large. We want to create a platform for youth (both here in Taiwan and from overseas) to connect with the outdoors.

Secondly, we would like to align our tours (and profits) with charities and non-profit organisations in Taiwan working in nature and cultural conservation. We understand that the impact tourism can have on destinations is not all roses and rainbows. We’re still working out how this may manifest itself, but we feel this will be a meaningful contribution to the places and people our tours visit.

Finally, down the road, I believe our team could work more closely with local, regional, and central government stakeholders in consulting on destination development, marketing, and training.

For now, we’ll continue to be the premier resource for people to plan outdoor activities during their travels in Taiwan. For those that don’t want to figure it out on their own, we’re here to help them with custom trip planning, or through our existing tours and activities.

Executive Profile

Michael McCreesh has over 20 years of experience in the tourism industry. He used to work in the destination development sector, developing bicycle tourism in Canada, and in various roles working with indigenous communities and eco-tourism resorts. After moving to Taiwan in 2019, he runs two tourism-related companies, Parkbus Taiwan and Taiwan Outdoors.

About Taiwan Outdoors

Taiwan Outdoors is Taiwan’s leading English-language platform for Adventure Travel. We’re building the most comprehensive database of outdoor experiences to help independent travelers plan their next adventure to Taiwan.

For those who need it, we’ve verified and selected professional experience providers and transportation solutions to get you outdoors safely.

Visit our website: https://taiwanoutdoors.com/

The post Adventure Awaits: Michael McCreesh’s Mission to Showcase Taiwan’s Outdoors appeared first on The European Business Review.

In this interview, Irina Nazarova discusses how AI is transforming healthcare marketing. She explains the way AI enhances patient engagement, personalizes strategies, and improves outcomes. Irina addresses ethical considerations, real-world challenges, and provides practical advice on leveraging AI tools effectively, offering insights into navigating regulations, patient expectations, and technological advancements. 

Against the backdrop of Irina Nazarova’s career, where she has been at the helm of marketing endeavors for companies like Brain Scientific (BRSF) and currently as the Head of Marketing at Zeto, we’ll envision the future landscape of healthcare marketing. Irina, how do you see AI shaping this landscape, and what opportunities does it unveil for marketers and healthcare providers alike? 

AI truly transforms every sector by providing efficiency, automation, personalization, and predictive analytics. In the realm of healthcare marketing, AI proves particularly invaluable. It streamlines creating content like blogs, videos, photographs, emails, presentations, and scripts; it can also enhance SEO practices. Moreover, AI can refine digital advertising campaigns. AI chatbots can kickstart patient engagement and provide personalized communication around the clock. 

Within healthcare more broadly, AI significantly elevates the quality of diagnostics and medical services. It plays a crucial role in developing new medications and analyzing vast amounts of medical data, improving diagnostic precision. It can also help reduce healthcare expenditures.  

Overall, AI efficiently handles routine tasks that would otherwise occupy medical staff, allowing them to focus more on patient care.  

In the EEG field specifically I see the integration of AI into seizure detection software that helps detect seizures in real-time and send notifications to personnel. 

When planning my marketing strategy for this year, I conducted research and compiled a list of AI tools that could be useful. I am gradually integrating them into my workflows. For example, AI-powered SEO tools are aiding in keyword analysis. Currently, I’m using out-of-the-box AI solutions, but I see many advantages in developing a custom one. 

Imagine a scenario where AI becomes the backbone of healthcare marketing, seamlessly integrating with patient journeys. Could you share examples of how AI technologies are currently reshaping marketing strategies to deepen patient engagement and enhance overall outcomes? 

This year, I had my first experience riding in a driverless, AI-enabled car, and it was an entirely new experience for me as a user. Imagine calling an Uber, and an autonomous car shows up! These vehicles demonstrate how companies can use AI to create innovative ways to interact with customers. They’ll want to share these memorable experiences on social media. Marketing approaches are already changing, and this is just the beginning.  

Let’s talk about my everyday experience in healthcare marketing strategy: AI actively helps to optimize marketing campaigns. It analyzes patient reactions to various marketing initiatives and automatically adjusts strategies, for instance, by changing content, distribution channels, or the timing of campaigns to enhance their effectiveness. This allows for more precise and efficient targeting of the audience. I remember another project I worked on as the Marketing Director at Brain Scientific. I needed unique illustrations for a new patient presentation, and I used DALL·E for the first time. The results were strikingly unusual; the process was not only incredibly fast but also completely free! DALL·E helped me generate images in multiple styles, which allowed me to customize the visuals precisely to the theme of the presentation.  

I would also highlight chatbots, which we have grown accustomed to. Sometimes, they can be annoying — but they represent an effective tool for communicating with patients. Using AI to manage chatbots that provide 24/7 support, answer patient questions and help with booking appointments enhances patient satisfaction and ensures continuous interaction with medical institutions. 

Another benefit is personalization: AI analyzes patients’ behavior on the website, their habits and preferences, to create custom offers and content. Overall it’s crucial to be on top of new developments and implement AI tools to make your marketing strategy more productive — and competitive. 

Reflect on the vast ocean of healthcare data — how can marketers navigate this sea with AI as their compass, steering toward personalized strategies that resonate with individual patients while safeguarding their privacy and security? 

It’s pretty straightforward: in the context of personalization, data is key. The more data we use, the better we understand patient needs and preferences. AI, combined with data analytics, allows us to gather information from website interactions, social media activity, customer service chat history, mobile apps, and more. Data analytics solutions can sift through this sea of information to gain a deeper understanding of patient trends, behaviors, and inclinations. 

AI achieves this through machine learning algorithms, which enable it to identify trends and forecast outcomes. This paves the way for real-time personalization that was once considered unattainable. For example, AI can analyze a patient’s health history, test results, and responses to treatment to suggest lifestyle recommendations.  

In healthcare, to protect the privacy and security of patient data, it’s essential to use encrypted and anonymized data during the AI training process. Moreover, it’s crucial to strictly adhere to regulatory requirements, such as HIPAA in the U.S., which govern the processing of medical data. These measures not only help protect patient information but also enhance their trust in the use of AI in medical institutions. 

Consider a world where AI-driven chatbots become virtual companions on patients’ healthcare journeys, offering real-time support and information. How can marketers ensure these interactions strike the delicate balance between technological efficiency and human empathy? 

Envisioning AI-driven chatbots as full companions in healthcare journeys is quite an exciting prospect, isn’t it? We’re definitely on our way there. Currently, many healthcare systems have started using chatbots, but these primarily provide instant answers to common questions. The real challenge — and opportunity — lies in evolving these chatbots into true companions that can offer nuanced support throughout a patient’s healthcare experience. 

One major hurdle is ensuring chatbots provide accurate information. It’s critical that they’re not only programmed with extensive medical knowledge but also continually updated and checked against the most current research. And, of course, this needs to be overseen by healthcare professionals to maintain trust. 

Integration of human oversight is essential. No matter how advanced chatbots become, there should always be a straightforward way for patients to connect with a human healthcare provider. Patients often need reassurance or face complex issues that only humans can manage effectively. 

Speaking of the human touch, tools like the IBM Watson Tone Analyzer are becoming key. They allow chatbots to adapt to the emotional tone of a conversation. This capability is incredibly important — it helps chatbots respond not just with the right information, but also in a way that acknowledges the patient’s emotional state, making the interaction feel more empathetic. 

What ethical considerations should be taken into account to safeguard patient privacy and data security in this AI-driven landscape? 

The integration of AI in healthcare brings up serious ethical considerations, especially concerning patient privacy and data security. It’s essential to clarify who owns patient data — whether it’s the patient, healthcare provider, or the AI developer — and to ensure that robust security measures are in place to protect sensitive health information from being mishandled or exploited. 

Another significant concern is the commercialization of patient data. Patients are rightly worried their information could be used for research, product development, or marketing without their consent. Tackling this will require stricter regulations and transparency in how medical data is used. AI developers and policymakers must work together to create tools that not only enhance healthcare but also prioritize patient privacy, informed consent, and data security. Ultimately, ensuring that AI implementations in healthcare are patient-centric and respect privacy rights is paramount. 

Think of the challenges that lie ahead as marketers harness AI’s potential in healthcare. How can these hurdles be turned into stepping stones, allowing marketers to navigate the evolving terrain of regulations, patient expectations, and technological advancements? 

Harnessing AI in healthcare marketing comes with challenges, but these can be transformed into opportunities. For instance, navigating the maze of regulations like HIPAA can be tough. Marketers can get ahead of this by stepping up their game in compliance and transparency. This isn’t just about meeting legal requirements — it’s a chance to build trust and show that your brand leads the way in the use of ethical AI. 

As technology rapidly evolves, keeping up can feel like a race. However, embracing continuous learning and staying open to innovation can make these advancements into stepping stones to success.  

How can marketers not only adapt but also lead in leveraging AI innovations, making sure their strategies are both modern and effective in the healthcare marketing landscape? 

To really stay ahead with AI in healthcare marketing, it’s all about keeping up-to-date with the latest tech and how it can be applied. There’s some talk out there about AI possibly replacing marketing jobs, but I see it differently. I think AI is more about taking the repetitive tasks off our plates, freeing us up to dive deeper into the more strategic and creative parts of our work. Regular training and brushing up on AI and analytics can really empower marketers to harness the full potential of these tools. 

Working closely with AI experts, data scientists, and healthcare professionals is also key. It helps ensure that our marketing strategies are cutting-edge yet still clinically sound. It’s kind of like mixing the best of both worlds — technology and healthcare expertise — to create approaches that really hit the mark with patients. Testing these ideas on a smaller scale first lets us tweak them based on actual feedback. This way, when we roll them out big time, we know they’re spot on. 

Take this recent project I worked on, for instance. I had to get a video campaign off the ground quickly and with a tight budget, needing personalized promo videos for different audience segments. I turned to an AI-based service, which analyzed audience data and then crafted videos from components like imagery, headlines, and Calls to Action, all tailored to specific audience needs. The results? The click-through rate and overall effectiveness of these promo videos were about 30% higher than traditional methods. It was a real win that showed me the value of integrating more AI tools into our future campaigns. 

Irina, could you share how you incorporate AI tools into your daily marketing activities and the benefits they bring?  

AI has proven especially useful for managing complex tasks. For instance, to enhance tracking and management of inbound calls, I adopted a service equipped with AI-enabled Conversation Intelligence. This tool was a new addition for me. It actively listens for specific key phrases we’ve set up, and whenever it spots these, it instantly alerts me about a potential hot lead.   

Additionally, AI has refined our advertising efforts by automating bid adjustments and placements based on real-time data, leading to a more efficient allocation of our advertising budget. 

I also utilize generative AI to kickstart content creation and assist with research. Different AI content creation tools assist in drafting initial content outlines and generate ideas that we can develop further, making our content creation faster and more efficient. 

Executive Profile

Irina Nazarova is the Head of Marketing at Zeto, where she leverages her extensive tactical marketing expertise and background in Communications and Journalism to drive growth. With nearly a decade of experience in the MedTech industry, Irina is a seasoned professional dedicated to advancing medical technology. Before joining Zeto, she served as Marketing Director at Brain Scientific (BRSF) from January 2019 to November 2021, where she spearheaded digital marketing initiatives that significantly contributed to the brand’s expansion in the medical technology sector.

The post Exploring the Role of AI in Healthcare Marketing appeared first on The European Business Review.

Pavel Shynkarenko, CEO of Solar Staff, discusses the findings of a study on salary disparities between male and female contract employees in the EU. In this interview, he highlights surprising trends, the root causes of the pay gap, and potential strategies to promote gender equality in contract employment. 

Can you provide an overview of the methodology used in the study on salary disparity between male and female project workers in the EU? 

Solar Staff connects over 2,500 companies worldwide with independent contractors, giving us a wealth of data on contractors’ specialisations, earnings, and client profiles. Because of KYC checks, we also gain insights into contractors’ age and gender. In this study, we focused on how frequently EU-based companies engaged with female and male contractors and analysed their spending on these services over the last two years to uncover patterns in gender-based earnings differences. 

What were some of the key findings from the study that surprised you the most?  

I will highlight two things.

First, we noticed a 20 per cent surge in the number of contractors last year, with a noticeable rise in the proportion of female contractors. In 2023, the number of women contractors surpassed men by 11 per cent, representing a slight decrease of 2 per cent compared to the previous year. 

Second, despite the rising number of women among contractors, they still earn less than men while working with EU-based companies. The pay gap may reach 20 per cent in low-paying specialisations such as tutoring, but the difference is much more prominent in higher-paying positions. For example, male copywriters can earn 135 per cent more than their female counterparts.  

How do you explain the significant disparity in pay between male and female project workers, particularly the finding that it can reach up to 135 per cent? 

The significant pay gap primarily stems from the tendency to hire males for higher-level, better-paid tasks, while females often fill lower-tier, less lucrative positions. This recurring trend is evident across various high-skilled professions, where even with a balanced gender presence, senior roles are predominantly filled by men.  

Could you elaborate on how the pay gap varies across different specialisations within project-based employment and what factors contribute to these variations? 

I think that the essence of the pay gap lies not within specific job types but in the roles assigned within these fields. For instance, in 2023, women dominated lower-paid roles such as call centre work and tutoring, outnumbering men by 10-25 per cent. 

What implications does this study have for both employers and policymakers in terms of addressing gender pay inequality in project-based employment? 

We hope our study will show that the pay and representation gaps exist among non-employees, too. This does not mean that EU governments must strictly configure the number of women inside a company’s contractor team and their incomes, because it would destroy the principle of contract work. I think it’s a business job; companies should ask whether it is not the case that we pay contractors of a specific gender less without objective reasons. 

Did the study uncover any trends or patterns regarding the representation of women in specific industries or roles within project-based employment? 

There are still more women doing creative-related jobs such as graphic design or copywriting. For example, in 2021, 71 per cent more women were doing design jobs part-time for EU companies. I think that the pandemic played a huge role here because, during lockdowns, EdTech was flourishing, and many people took courses to try a new job either to make more money or find something more meaningful.

Also, I can’t say this is a brand-new fact, but it’s still worth noting that engineering is still a male-dominated specialisation. Unfortunately, in 2023, six times more men helped EU companies with IT tasks than women, and their monthly incomes were 78 per cent higher. 

How do you think the findings of this study compare to broader discussions and research on gender pay disparities in traditional full-time employment settings? 

It at least complements traditional employment studies, such as the European Commission study, which highlighted that women working as full-time employees earn 12.7 per cent less than men. 

There are many findings about gender pay disparities, but not so many of them cover non-traditional employment, which is the future of work. There are as many freelancers as ever; the gig economy is booming, and “side-hustling” is becoming a norm. So, it’s also essential to have a discourse about the representation and earnings of men and women in this space. Our research aims to raise awareness about this issue among the market and business community, catalysing efforts to address it. 

Based on the study’s findings, what strategies or initiatives do you believe are most effective in narrowing the pay gap and promoting gender equality in project-based employment within the EU?  

1. Helping companies to fix the pay gap problem, not in the form of strict restrictions, but recommendations and instructions on how to straighten out the representation or cost of labour compensation
2. Creating open statistics where professionals or companies can learn about the representativeness of women and men in specific roles in European companies. This provides a tool for change within companies

Executive Profile 

Pavel Shynkarenko, an entrepreneur with 20 years of experience in HR, financial and legal technologies, business development and client-contractor relationship automation, founder and CEO of Solar Staff, an HR tech company for freelancers. Pavel enjoys art and photography, and his images are displayed in galleries in the US and Europe. 

The post Gender Pay Disparities Persist Among Independent Contractors appeared first on The European Business Review.

In the second edition of your new book The Art of Compassionate Business, you emphasise the importance of adopting an attitude of service towards customers. Could you please elaborate on this topic? 

For most companies, customers are the most significant source of income; customers contribute directly to the company’s bottom line, which means profits. Therefore, developing strong, long-lasting relationships with customers is paramount. Many companies treat customers in a very instrumental way, which means they consider customers as a means to an end (profits). For this type of organisation, customers are only figures in a database that can contribute to the company’s economic results. These organisations are more prone to treating customers in an impersonal manner. They tend to adopt a selling attitude, by prompting their customers to buy as many products as possible, without considering their unique needs. These companies are often self-centred and mostly focused on their own objectives (for example, higher profits, bigger market share, etc.), instead of being customer-focused.

Other companies, on the other hand, adopt a different attitude towards their customers. These organisations adopt an attitude of service. It is important to highlight that service does not mean servitude. A company with an attitude of service wishes the best for its customers and offers them products and services which address their specific needs adequately. This type of company offers customers products and services which can improve their lives to different extents.

Customers are the most significant source of income; customers contribute directly to the company’s bottom line, which means profits. Therefore, developing strong, long-lasting relationships with customers is paramount.

Whenever possible, such companies aim to interact with customers in a personalised way, in order to discover their unique tastes, requirements, and preferences. By doing so, these organisations are more likely to offer their customers products and services which are suitable for them. These companies ask customers various relevant questions (for example, “What use will you give to this product?”, “What are your past experiences with similar products?”, etc.) in order to consider each customer’s unique needs. Companies with an attitude of service treat each customer as a valuable human being who has legitimate needs to be properly acknowledged and addressed. In addition, companies which adopt an attitude of service towards customers are more prone to acting as follows:

• They not only try to satisfy customer needs; they also aim to exceed their customers’ expectations. In simple words, whenever possible, these companies try to delight customers by giving them more than they expected. For example, they can positively surprise their customers by providing them with gifts (for example, free samples, free training, free delivery, etc.), which often prompts the customers to feel “indebted” towards the company. When an organisation adopts a generous attitude towards its customers, those customers are more likely to leave positive reviews of the company’s products, and also recommend the products to other customers.
• Companies with an attitude of service develop only win-win agreements with their customers. In this type of agreement, both parties (the company and the customer) win, which means that neither party takes advantage of the other. As research has shown, when customers feel they have been deceived by a company, they tend to avoid developing a relationship with this organisation; they also tend to discourage other potential customers from trying the company’s products.
• Companies with a serving attitude prompt their customers to experience positive emotional states before, during, and after the buying process. Customers who experience positive emotions in their various interactions with a company (for example, in person, emails, phone conversations, etc.) are more likely to associate these positive feelings with the organisation’s products and services, bringing about stronger bonds with the company.
• Companies with an attitude of service towards customers always act in a transparent manner. This type of company always provides customers with full information, so that they can make the best-possible purchasing decision. In addition, transparent companies are more prone to developing trust-based bonds with their customers. Some companies purposely hide relevant information in order to take advantage of their customers. Other organisations include unintelligible fine print in the terms and conditions of the contracts signed by customers. These companies’ lack of transparency often leaves customers unaware of potential risks and responsibilities related to their purchases. In simple words, whenever a company does not provide customers with transparent information, those customers are more likely to make buying decisions which are detrimental to them.

What other examples do you give in your new book of actions that companies can take in order to develop stronger relationships with their customers? 

This is a very important topic. There are many other things a company can do. Companies should aim to develop more human-oriented conversations with their customers. These conversations should be natural, spontaneous, and aimed at adding more value for customers. Through such conversations, companies can discover each customer’s past experiences, fears, and expectations, as well as their innermost desires and tastes. In that sense, companies should avoid using scripted conversations, which are very common in some sales training courses. These scripted conversations often make interactions with customers less personal and more mechanical. Other tips for companies to strengthen their relationship with their customers are:

Companies should avoid using scripted conversations, which are very common in some sales training courses.

• Exceeding customer expectations: Most companies can fairly meet their customer needs. However, if a company wants to actually stand out, it should aim to add higher value for customers than other organisations do. According to research, this can be done in different ways; for instance, adopting an inquisitive attitude towards each customer’s unique needs, treating customers in a supportive and caring manner, showing excellent technical skills and knowledge regarding the company’s products, and solving customer problems effectively (for example, problems with the use of the products, etc.), among others. In other words, a company should always aim to “overperform” and exceed customer expectations. Customers should receive more than they were expecting from the company. Research has shown that when customers are delighted by an organisation, which means that their expectations are exceeded, these customers are more likely to purchase the company’s products again.
• Avoiding the use of pressurising or manipulative techniques: Customers can often feel it when a company tries to exert pressure on them. They can also notice when an organisation tries to take advantage of them. In these cases, customers feel that their autonomy or freedom of choice is compromised by the organisation. Some companies use various manipulative techniques (for example, making exaggerated claims about the products, falsely stating the scarcity of a product to entice customers, etc.). Whenever customers feel pressurised or manipulated, they are less likely to make the best purchasing decisions. These customers are also more prone to feeling regretful or resentful after buying a product or a service, which often has a negative impact on the bonds between the company and its customers.
• Reducing the perceived risks related to purchases: Customers often face various risks when buying products or services. For instance, one risk before buying the products is that customers are often unsure if these particular products would be adequate for them. There is a risk that the products will not meet their needs. In relation to this risk, a company can show the customer how a product can effectively meet their needs. For instance, the company could demonstrate the most relevant features and benefits of the product, offer free samples, or mention past referrals. In addition, the company could offer customers a refund or return policy, in case they regret their purchase. For some products (for example, electronics, medicines, etc.), customers also face potential safety risks regarding the use of the product. In this case, the company can provide customers with clear and detailed instructions on how to use the product safely. With all these actions, a company is providing customers with valuable support, by reducing the risks related to their purchase, which makes these customers less liable to regret buying the products. On the one hand, these customers are less likely to experience negative emotions regarding their purchases; on the other, such customers tend to develop more robust relationships with the company.
• Being grateful to customers: An organisation can show gratitude to its customers by sending them a personalised “thank you” letter, in order to show their appreciation of their custom. A company can also adopt a grateful attitude when customers do not buy its products. In this case, the company appreciates the time spent by customers analysing its offerings. In addition, companies should also be grateful to customers for their positive reviews, as these reviews are always relevant cues regarding customer satisfaction. Lastly, an organisation can also show gratitude to customers for their seemingly negative reviews, as these reviews can be considered as worthy and actionable feedback regarding things the company could improve (for example, product packaging, product design, delivery, etc.).

Lastly, could you please provide other suggestions on developing more meaningful relationships with customers, based on your new book? 

People working for a company should regularly ask themselves relevant self-reflection questions. Some examples of these relevant questions are:

• How can we add more value for customers?
• How can we address customers’ distinctive needs in a more effective manner?
• How can we assist customers with their doubts and objections?
• How can we adopt an attitude of service towards customers?
• How can we improve customers’ experience and delight them?
• How can we communicate with customers in a more natural way?
• How can we offer customers high-value products and services?
• How can we be more thankful to customers?

Executive Profile

Dr Bruno Roque Cignacco (PhD) is an international business consultant, TEDx speaker, and researcher. For over 30 years, he has advised and trained hundreds of companies on international trade activities and international marketing. He also trains companies on topics related to compassionate business and human-oriented leadership. He is a university professor and a senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA), in the UK. He is also the author of business and personal-development books published in various languages. The second edition of his new book The Art of Compassionate Business is available at  www.routledge.com/9781032445427. His website is www.brunocignacco.com 

The post The Importance of the Human in Customer Relationships: Interview with Bruno R. Cignacco, Author of The Art of Compassionate Business appeared first on The European Business Review.

Geert van den Goor, Group Managing Partner at Valcon, shares his insights from a prolific career in consulting and his vision for navigating the evolving landscapes of technology, data, and business transformation.

It’s an honour to have you with us today, Mr van den Goor. Can we start with a few words on how your interest in consulting began? How did you get into the industry?

Thank you for having me. My journey into the world of consulting began during my studies in computer science. Initially, my focus was on the technical aspects, but through my university years, I became more interested in the business side of what we now call “digitisation”.

This was fuelled by a transformative experience I had while spending several months in the United States as part of my graduation programme. It was evident that the US was ahead of the Netherlands in leveraging digital technologies for business purposes. On graduation, I really wanted to be involved at this intersection of business and technology and do this at an international level.

I did an interview for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) and the company’s vision was compelling enough to ensure that I worked there for 20 years. It gave me the opportunity to hone my skills, collaborate with diverse teams, and tackle complex challenges.

Can you tell us about your career and how you have progressed through the industry?

I started out as an analyst at Andersen Consulting, intending to move to the client side after a few years.

But I enjoyed consulting immensely. The dynamic nature of the work, tackling complex problems, and engaging with various clients appealed. The culture of “work hard, play hard” and collaborating with young, driven individuals who were committed to going the extra mile for clients drove my passion for consulting.

As time went by, I realised that not only did I enjoy it, but that it fitted my capabilities. The opportunity to work closely with clients and the continuous loop of learning kept me interested. Fast-forward 30 years, and I still find consulting incredibly fulfilling, mainly because it’s constantly evolving. In each of those three decades, every year has been different. Stand-out milestones are 2002 when I made partner at Accenture, and then in 2012/ 13 when I left and joined one of the predecessors of Valcon, First Consulting.

What was your initial vision for Valcon when you joined the business?

When I joined Valcon, then known as its Dutch predecessor First Consulting, our vision was to become a more modern and mid-sized alternative to the larger consulting firms. At the time, First Consulting was around 80 people, operating in one industry with one capability.

Before officially joining, I collaborated with two other partners to create a strategy we referred to as First Consulting 2.0. It outlined our ambition to add value to enterprise clients, expand our industry coverage, incorporate more technology into services, and grow an international footprint. We wanted to be a competitive alternative to the bigger players, offering a blend of expertise, innovation, and personal attention that would differentiate us.

At the time, the idea of an organisation with 1,700 colleagues across seven countries would have been beyond my wildest expectations. But the fact that we have achieved that is testament to the vision, hard work, and dedication of our team.

Can you tell us about the three main capabilities of your business – consulting, technology, and data – and how you put that into practice at clients?

We add most value to our clients when we take a holistic view – the transformation, business processes, and the technology and data – and at Valcon we group this into three capabilities: business consulting, technology, and data. In projects, we weave these together to come up with the best solution for the client.

The business problem or challenge is the starting point and we then roll up our sleeves to get it solved. We are not just about writing reports. We do the operational strategy, but we also do the implementation of the change, which might be implementing a new process, a new IT system, or an exciting new AI system. We have a broad range of business consulting services, from operational strategy and excellence to transformation management.

With data challenges, we are not just about AI and data science. We also build the data platforms and look after the data management and engineering, as well as data visualisation. Where technology is concerned, we focus on intelligent automation, combining technologies like RPA (robotic process automation), low code, BPM (business process management), and AI, and complement this with custom development on platforms like Azure and AWS.

What types of clients do you work with and what kinds of remits do you work on?

We pride ourselves on having long-standing relationships with our clients and we typically specialise in working with enterprise clients and government organisations. And that’s across sectors, so from retail and industrials to financial services, utilities and transportation, in addition to public sector clients.

Where we tend to work on mid-sized projects, we might help our clients with several projects of a similar size. Each project is different, but the common denominator is that they always add value. This could be a supply chain improvement to reduce stock levels, an AI dynamic pricing model to increase revenue, or an IT solution which helps to schedule and plan workforces more intelligently.

Given Valcon’s commitment to combining technology, data, and consulting, how do you see the increased focus on sustainability?

We are super-conscious that all our clients are engaged in sustainability programmes and have their eye on working towards net zero. For us as a business, that’s important for Valcon, too. So sustainability is always a consideration in client engagements.

But sustainability in engagements is also about the longevity message. We want to make sure that our work stands the test of time and we want to leave our client organisations better prepared for the future than they were when we started. We focus on results that are tangible, add value, and last. That’s a strong sustainability message, too.

Valcon takes pride in being a “no-nonsense” consultancy. How does this philosophy translate into practical strategies for delivering sustainable change for clients?

We live and breathe our brand values: together, joy, curious, integrity, and can-do. They aren’t just for marketing purposes. We really aspire to bring them alive and embed them in our culture, so they are conspicuous in our work and in the way we interact with each other, our clients, and partners.

This is where our secret sauce is and is what binds us together as “Valconeers”. You can see and feel this in all the stories from our people and see how they use our Valcon values in their working lives.

In your article “30 Years as a Consultant: A Journey Through Time”, you reflect on your extensive experience in the consulting industry. How has the landscape of consultancy evolved over the years, particularly in relation to the integration of new technologies?

New technologies keep our industry moving and evolving and the role of tech and data has become increasingly prominent in the last three decades. Consulting has always had a deep relationship with the digital world. It’s always been about looking at a problem and coming up with a solution that invariably involves a technology component.

But what has changed in the last 30 years is that it is no longer good enough to be a pure-play IT company; you have to be more business-focused and look at scenarios and challenges from a business perspective. And I think a lot of tech companies struggle with that. It’s probably changed as the role of technology within a business has changed. Thirty years ago, the IT department was a stand-alone function, but now technology has evolved and become an integral part of all departments and business areas. This is why a business perspective is vital. But new technology and data solutions is what underpins our industry and keeps it moving. Consulting helps the business world make sense of these new technologies and assists companies in harnessing them to improve their efficacy.

Looking ahead, what trends do you foresee in the consulting industry? How is Valcon preparing to address them?

We think that technology, data, and consulting will continue to evolve together and the challenges that clients face will continue to be solved by a combination of elements of these areas. AI is in this picture. It isn’t just about technology, or data or consulting; it lies in the intersection of these three disciplines. And this is what is exciting for people working in consulting. It is a fascinating space because it is always evolving, and consultants have to stay on the front foot with developments.

A key focus for us all in consulting is adding value to clients. It’s not just about implementing the latest AI pricing solution, a new cloud platform, or a new ERP system. We have to analyse why we are doing it, what the business benefits are, and then ensure that those targets are met. Things change in consulting, but the factor that stays constant is that a good consultancy intrinsically wants to add value.

And finally, how do you define success?

For me, success is always tied into adding value to our clients. When I hear all the amazing projects we are working on, that is what makes me proud to be a Valconeer, and extremely proud of our team. Our people are the ones that make a difference. Of course, we have a business to run but, if you have the right team, doing excellent work for the right clients, everything else falls into place. Running the business is the easy part.

Our Valcon journey is far from over. We aspire to grow further, to build on and enhance our capabilities, and enter new markets in new geographies. Our future is exciting and I can’t wait to see where Valcon will be in five years’ time.

Executive Profile

Geert Van Den Goor is an experienced partner and consultant, with over 30 years in the consulting industry, having specialised primarily in working with public and semi-public organisations.

After studying computer science at university, Geert joined Andersen Consulting (currently Accenture) and after a 20-year stint, he joined First Consulting, which grew into the current Valcon.

The values that define Geert’s approach are passion for the client, professionalism, being results orientated and working as a team.

Geert lives in The Hague with his girlfriend and two children and has a passion for cars and mountain sports – he’s a keen climber, skier and enjoys mountain biking.

The post Longevity for Sustainability: Adding Value That Lasts appeared first on The European Business Review.

It’s great having you around again, Mr Cox! In our last interview, you mentioned the potential risks associated with generative AI, such as deep fakes and misinformation. What safeguards do you think are necessary for businesses adopting AI to ensure ethical use and mitigate risks?

Thanks for having me back!

Jumping into AI is like navigating a minefield with huge rewards but equally big risks, such as deep fakes and misinformation. It’s crucial for businesses to be picky about where and how they use AI, similar to conducting a risk assessment of ISO271001 security standards. Ask yourself: Is the planned use of AI ethical? What are the reputational and financial risks? And importantly, does it benefit your customers and staff?

Also, with laws constantly evolving, staying updated is key. For instance, the US just banned AI robocalls with deep fake voices, as this threatened the upcoming election. It’s a wake-up call for businesses using any similar tech in their services, for instance in a customer service environment.

Lastly, stick with a machine learning model that’s got street cred, something reputable and off-the-shelf. If you try to cut corners or go off the beaten path without really knowing what you’re doing, you’re opening up a can of worms. Bad data is not just a headache, it’s a fast track to a whole mess of risks.

As a founder of Enate, can you share some key lessons or insights you’ve gained from building a SaaS platform that facilitates operational efficiency through automation and AI?

We find that a lot of businesses think they’re ready for automation and AI but, the truth is they’re often not. You’ve got to have your house in order first. If you don’t know who’s doing what and with what resources, jumping into automation is like putting the cart before the horse. You’ll just end up redoing everything a year later.

Then there’s the real talk about automation. It’s not just about slapping some tech on a process and calling it a day. It’s a whole business shift. We’re talking about fundamentally changing how people work and interact with their jobs. Sure, the tech part is cool, but the real magic happens when you see how it changes the work dynamic for the better, though for some, the idea of it can be a bit daunting.

Finally, building a company like Enate has taught me that you’re only as good as your team. You need folks who aren’t just brilliant but also gel well together. It’s those relationships and that team spirit that really drive a company forward.

So, in a nutshell, get your basics right, understand that automation is a change maker, not just a tech upgrade, and build an extraordinary team that loves working together.

With the evolution of human roles alongside AI, how do you envision the collaboration between human workers and AI evolving, and what steps can companies take to facilitate a smooth transition and collaboration between the two?

AI is set to become the ultimate co-pilot, taking over tedious tasks and freeing humans up for work that adds real value – tasks like enhancing customer engagement. To make this transition smooth, companies should engage those excited about AI, providing a framework but avoiding unnecessary micromanagement. It’s crucial not to rush everyone at the same pace; some will embrace AI quickly, while it’s only natural that others will take a while to warm up to its benefits.

Understanding “the art of the possible” with AI is vital, but it’s changing literally weekly at the moment. Companies should bring in experts to demystify AI’s potential, making the magic of technology accessible to all. Knowledge plays a key role in this transition; it can either empower or intimidate. By educating and inspiring employees about AI, companies can ease fears and foster a collaborative future where humans and AI work together seamlessly, enhancing productivity and creativity.

As businesses explore AI integration, what role do you think the collaboration between industry leaders and AI developers plays in driving impactful innovations for operational enhancement?

Most industry leaders have little understanding of “the art of the possible” and most AI developers have little understanding about what businesses need. This is where intermediaries such as Enate play a key role. We’re not direct AI developers; instead, we serve as the essential link, enabling collaboration between industry leaders, who often lack insight into AI’s potential, and AI developers, who may not fully understand business challenges.

The key to driving impactful innovations lies in this collaboration, facilitated by intermediaries. Unlike big consultancies or global systems integrators (GSIs) that may not provide the necessary freedom for exploration, entities like Enate offer a platform for truly innovative solutions. By demonstrating how generative AI can solve real business problems, we not only bridge the knowledge gap but also foster operational enhancements that are both meaningful and practical. This collaborative approach ensures that AI integration is not just about technological advancement but about creating tangible value for businesses.

What simple yet impactful steps can businesses take to make their AI implementations more transparent and understandable to employees?

To make AI implementations more transparent and understandable, businesses should empower their employees to take the lead on these projects. The key is to move beyond seeing AI as simply a to-do list for the IT department. When off-the- shelf AI models are made accessible to business users, they can directly apply these tools to their work areas, enabling a deeper understanding and ownership of the technology.

For instance, at our company, we’ve embraced this approach by purchasing and deploying an AI testing platform that our testing team (not the IT department!) has configured and installed. This hands-on involvement demystifies AI, allowing employees to see firsthand how it can be tailored to meet their specific needs and challenges. By enabling those who are directly impacted by AI to lead its operationalisation, businesses can create a more inclusive, transparent environment that encourages everyone to engage with and understand AI technologies.

How do you believe that businesses can effectively integrate AI innovations to streamline operations and remove manual work, fostering increased productivity?

Orchestration is the backbone of any automation endeavour. You need to start with an end-to-end workflow tool such as Enate, which will enable you to stand back and view your entire service line from start to finish, get the right task to the right worker at the right moment, and enable you to identify bottlenecks and make impactful changes.

The main steps involved in any service delivery life cycle can be distilled into three main steps: 1. understanding the request (what is the customer asking?); 2. gathering the necessary data (get the data to do it); and 3. executing on the task (go and do it). The first two steps must be meticulously completed to ensure that the third step is executed effectively. Implementing a robust orchestration tool facilitates this process, ensuring that AI and automation technologies can be implemented and leveraged to their fullest potential to boost efficiency across the board.

What quick wins can businesses achieve by leveraging AI in their day-to-day processes?

AI is essentially a productivity super-boost. It enables people to do fewer of the mundane, repeatable tasks and focus their attention on the more challenging and rewarding aspects of work, such as customer success. For instance, with Enateʼs AI capabilities, businesses can automatically categorise emails, check the sentiment of communications, intelligently extract data from a range of documents, and automate queries. The time saving is massive.

For example, in email classification environments alone, using AI saves 30 hours per 1,000 emails. For a mid-sized operation, that’s a huge saving over the course of a year.

On a personal note, how would you define success?

Feeling happy. I don’t view success as a specific number or end point. It’s much more personal and immediate than that. I define success by satisfaction – mine and that of the people around me. If I’m happy and I can see that my actions or achievements bring happiness to others, then I consider that a success. On the flip side, if the people and team around me are not experiencing satisfaction, then it signals to me that there’s still work to be done.

Executive Profile

Kit Cox is Enate’s Founder and CTO. Kit has been obsessed with technology from a young age, he began coding at the age of 10 and is an engineer by trade. Kit built Enate’s workflow orchestration and AI platform to help businesses run operations smoothly, automate manual tasks and deliver SLAs on time. Today, global businesses such as TMF and EY rely on Enate to work efficiently and seamlessly.

About Enate

Enate is an end-to-end orchestration platform designed to help businesses run operations smoothly and produce consistent work on time, view, manage, and track the flow of all work, identify automation opportunities, assign tasks to the right resource, and become more efficient.

EnateAI, powered by GPT-4, is the latest product release from Enate. It’s integrated into the platform and offers five exciting features to help businesses leverage AI in operations, including: categorise – automatically categorise emails to create the right ticket category; data extraction – extract data from your emails and auto-populate forms; sentiment analysis – identify the emotional tone of communications from your clients; thank you analysis – know whether incoming “thank you” emails need action; foreign language fluency – understand and process foreign-language emails.

The post What can AI do? The Art of the Possible: Interview with Kit Cox, Founder and CTO at Enate appeared first on The European Business Review.

Congratulations on the recent breakthrough in quantum computing! Could you explain, in simple terms, what the discovery of logical qubits means and how it helps solve the problem of high error rates in quantum computing?

A critical challenge preventing quantum computing from reaching its enormous potential is the noise that affects qubits, corrupting computations before reaching the desired results. Quantum error correction overcomes these limitations by creating “logical qubits”, groups of physical qubits that are entangled to store information redundantly. This redundancy allows for identifying and correcting errors that may occur during quantum computations. By using logical qubits instead of individual physical qubits, quantum systems can achieve a level of fault tolerance, making them more robust and reliable for complex computations.

The announcement mentions the sensitive nature of atoms causing high error rates. How does the concept of grouping qubits into logical qubits address this sensitivity and improve the stability and reliability of quantum computers?

Quantum error correction has been developed to counteract this sensitivity. It involves grouping several physical qubits to form a single logical qubit. This approach significantly enhances the stability and reliability of quantum computers.

The concept of grouping qubits into logical qubits introduces redundancy, akin to the classical repetition code used in traditional computing. In a classical repetition code, information is replicated across multiple bits to protect against errors; similarly, in quantum error correction, the state of a logical qubit is distributed over multiple physical qubits. If one or some of the physical qubits experience an error, the overall state of the logical qubit can still be maintained and determined based on the remaining, unaffected physical qubits. This redundancy provides a buffer against individual qubit errors, leading to increased stability.

Additionally, logical qubits allow for the implementation of error detection and correction algorithms. These algorithms can identify when and what type of error has occurred. Once an error is detected, specific quantum operations can be applied to correct it, restoring the logical qubit to its intended state. By using logical qubits, quantum computers can therefore manage and mitigate the effects of errors more effectively, paving the way for more reliable and robust quantum computing systems.

The collaboration with Harvard University, MIT, and NIST/UMD is highlighted in achieving quantum error correction in 48 logical qubits. Can you share with us how these partnerships contributed to this milestone?

The collaboration between Harvard University, QuEra Computing, MIT, and NIST/University of Maryland played a pivotal role in achieving this significant milestone in quantum computing.

Harvard University led the experiments, which were performed in the Harvard labs. QuEra supplied critical electronic components and know-how. QuEra, MIT, and Harvard are in a long-time close collaboration. In fact, QuEra was founded by several Harvard and MIT professors.

The term “logical qubits” might be new to many. Can you break down what logical qubits are and why achieving quantum error correction in 48 of them is such a big deal?

Logical qubits are groups of physical qubits that are entangled to store information redundantly. Until now, previous demonstrations of error correction have showcased one, two, or three logical qubits. Our research demonstrates quantum error correction in 48 logical qubits, enhancing computational stability and reliability while addressing the error problem.

This breakthrough has achieved the creation and entanglement of the largest logical qubits to date, enabling the detection and correction of arbitrary errors. Larger code distances imply higher resistance to quantum errors.

Additionally, our research showed for the first time that increasing the code distance indeed reduces the error rate in logical operations. By realising the use of 48 small logical qubits to execute complex algorithms, this research has surpassed the performance of the same algorithms when executed with physical qubits.

Moody’s Analytics recognises the potential to revolutionise data analytics and financial simulations. Can you provide a simple example of how everyday tasks, like data analysis or financial predictions, might be positively affected by this quantum computing breakthrough?

Moody’s Analytics’ recognition of the potential of quantum computing to revolutionise data analytics and financial simulations is a testament to the transformative power of this technology. To understand how quantum computing could positively affect everyday tasks like data analysis or financial predictions, let’s consider a simplified example:

Imagine a financial analyst working for an investment firm, tasked with predicting stock market trends to make informed investment decisions. In the classical computing world, the analyst relies on algorithms that process historical data, market indicators, and economic factors. However, as financial markets are incredibly complex and influenced by countless variables, classical computers can take a considerable amount of time to analyse data and often struggle with accurately predicting market behaviours, especially under volatile conditions.

Now, introduce quantum computing into this scenario. Quantum computers, with their ability to handle and process vast data sets simultaneously, can speed up this analysis or perform this analysis while considering a wider range of variables, and provide more nuanced insights into potential future market movements. This could lead to more accurate and timely predictions, enabling the investment firm to make better-informed decisions, manage risks more effectively, and potentially achieve higher returns.

Another example is the potential to enhance weather forecasting, which, especially in predicting the severity of major weather events, is a crucial application with far-reaching implications for consumers, as well as for insurance companies. Classical computers, currently used for weather modelling, face limitations due to the sheer complexity and dynamic nature of atmospheric systems. Quantum computers could allow for more precise and faster modelling of complex weather phenomena. Improved accuracy in forecasting the paths and impacts of events like hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods could lead to more effective emergency planning and response, ultimately saving lives and reducing property damage.  

How does this achievement accelerate the timeline for practical quantum applications in the short term, and what kind of applications could we see sooner than expected?

This announcement sets us on a path culminating in a system with 100 logical error-corrected qubits which we will have ready in 2026. This development, capable of deep logical circuits, will push quantum computing beyond the limits of classical simulation.

The unique transversal gate capability of logical qubits prevents error propagation across qubits, making them inherently error-resistant. They simplify quantum error correction by allowing errors to be corrected independently for each qubit. This system establishes the groundwork for error-corrected quantum computing.

The announcement mentions solving problems previously considered intractable by classical computing. Can you give an example of a problem that was once impossible to solve but may now be within reach thanks to this breakthrough?

One example of a problem that was previously considered intractable by classical computing but may now be within reach, thanks to the breakthrough in quantum computing, is the optimisation of large-scale logistics networks. Classical computers struggle with this problem due to its immense complexity and the exponential growth of possible solutions as the size of the network increases.

Consider the scenario of optimising a global logistics network for a major shipping company. The company needs to determine the most efficient routes and schedules for its fleet of trucks, ships, and planes, considering numerous variables such as delivery deadlines, fuel costs, vehicle capacities, weather conditions, and traffic patterns. This is a classic example of a combinatorial optimisation problem, where the number of possible combinations of routes and schedules grows exponentially with each added variable, quickly becoming too vast for classical computers to analyse effectively.

Quantum computers can explore a much wider range of potential solutions in parallel, significantly reducing the time it takes to identify the most efficient logistics plan. This capability could lead to substantial cost savings, reduced environmental impact, and improved service quality for the shipping company.

Looking ahead, how do you see this impacting our daily lives? Are there specific areas or industries where the average person might see the positive effects of this quantum computing advancement?

Advancements in quantum computing are poised to impact our daily lives in several significant ways, particularly as this technology becomes more integrated into various industries and applications. Here are some specific areas where the average person might see the positive effects of quantum computing.

Healthcare and medicine: Quantum computing has the potential to revolutionise drug discovery and personalised medicine. By accurately simulating molecular interactions, quantum computers can help develop new medications and treatments more quickly and cost-effectively.

Financial services: Quantum computing can enhance risk assessment, portfolio optimisation, and fraud detection in the financial industry. This means more secure transactions, better financial products, and potentially lower costs for consumers. Improved financial models could also lead to more stable and efficient financial markets.

Supply chain and logistics: As mentioned earlier, quantum computing can optimise logistics and supply chains, making them more efficient and environmentally friendly. This could result in faster delivery times, lower costs, and reduced carbon footprint for the products we use every day.

Weather forecasting and climate research: Quantum computing can provide more accurate and timely weather forecasts, helping us better prepare for natural disasters. It can also enhance climate modelling, leading to more-informed decisions about environmental policies and practices.

Energy sector: Quantum computing can optimise energy production and distribution, leading to more efficient use of renewable resources and a reduction in energy costs. This could accelerate the transition to sustainable energy sources, benefiting both the environment and consumers.

Executive Profile

Yuval Boger is the CMO of QuEra, the leader in neutral atom quantum computers. He served as CEO and CMO of frontier-tech companies in markets including quantum computing software, wireless power, and virtual reality. In “The Superposition Guy’s Podcast”, he hosts thought leaders in quantum computing, quantum sensing, and quantum communications to discuss business and technical aspects that impact the quantum ecosystem.

The post A Logical Solution for Quantum Computing: Interview with Yuval Boger, Chief Marketing Officer at QuEra appeared first on The European Business Review.

Criminal groups are increasingly targeting operational technology (OT), the systems that control and monitor physical hardware and processes. We ask Grant Geyer, Chief Product Officer at Claroty, about the most important risk factors ahead, and what organisations should be focusing on in 2024 and beyond.  

How do you see companies evolving in their understanding of the gaps in their OT security frameworks, and what measures do you anticipate being crucial to address these gaps as we approach 2024 and beyond? 

As we enter 2024, I think companies are becoming more adept in identifying gaps within their OT security. Between cyber threats like ransomware and increasing regulatory demands from directives such as NIS2, there is a lot of pressure to get this right.  

As ever, the most important factor is developing real visibility of the intricate relationship between IT and OT environments and creating an accurate risk assessment from this knowledge. Organisations cannot hope to secure their environments if they don’t fully understand their IT and OT assets and how they interact.  

As business imperatives continue to drive the convergence of IT and OT environments, network segmentation and vulnerability management are two of the most important capabilities. We’re seeing encouraging signs that companies are progressing in these areas. In a recent survey of over 1,000 IT and OT professionals, most said their capabilities in these areas were moderate or mature.

With 80 per cent of organisations having a cyber insurance plan and 49 per cent having coverage exceeding half a million dollars, to what trends or factors do you attribute the significant increase in cyber insurance adoption, and how does this impact organisations’ overall approach to cybersecurity?  

The rising cost of cyberattacks is one of the main factors in the huge surge in cyber insurance we’ve seen in the last couple of years. Threat actors are increasingly focusing on highly disruptive attacks, such as ransomware, that aim to cause as much damage and expense for their victims as possible. We see many enterprises turning to insurance as a way of softening the financial blow of an incident. 

A comprehensive policy can provide a financial safety net to help the firms survive an incident. That said, it’s important for insurance to be seen as a complementary factor to risk management efforts, and not a replacement for them. In risk terms, we refer to this as a “risk transfer”. However, business leaders shouldn’t confuse insurance with having an effective control. 

Insurers are starting to learn about OT security and controls and, at the same time, also becoming stricter as they seek to manage the amount of risk they take on. Most policies now include a prescriptive list of criteria that organisations must meet to obtain coverage, and security failings may disqualify them from claims. Firms must ensure they have strong access controls, vulnerability management, and other critical security capabilities. With insurers scrutinising applicants more closely, enterprises must be proactive here and cannot expect to get by on a “tick box” approach.  

Given the increasing oversight of cybersecurity incidents by governments and regulatory agencies globally, how do you observe organisations adapting to these changes, especially in balancing the protection of critical OT operations with the need to comply with rigorous rules and regulations? 

Regulations are extremely influential in driving OT security strategies. Nearly half of IT and OT decision makers in our research cited the TSA Security Directives as having a significant impact on their security investment plans. The regulatory landscape can be very complex and is continually evolving as new regulations are added or existing ones are updated. Organisations in fields dubbed “critical national infrastructure” (CNI) have particularly heavy compliance obligations due to their critical nature and will need to comply with NIS2 when it comes into effect in October 2024. The financial sector will meanwhile need to adapt to the recently created Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) ahead of January 2025, and some organisations will need to accommodate both. 

One of the most challenging aspects of regulations for business leaders is the lack of harmonisation of standards from a variety of countries in which they operate and regulatory bodies. Security and risk leaders are left to take a “highest water mark” approach to ensure that all standards bodies are met. 

As companies navigate the delicate balance between protecting OT operations and adhering to stringent rules, what challenges do you foresee emerging in terms of compliance, and what strategies can organisations adopt to overcome these challenges effectively? 

One danger with regulations is the tendency to prioritise compliance over actual cyber resilience. While organisations need to meet all relevant regulatory demands, they cannot afford to mistake compliance for security. Regulatory and organisational compliance should be the byproduct of your risk programme. 

The good news is that most regulations, particularly more recent ones, tend to be focused on core security capabilities that organisations should already be pursuing. NIS2, for example, has a strong focus on risk management, prescribing the creation of policies for risk analysis, incident response, and business continuity among others.  

Firms feeling overwhelmed by overlapping regulatory obligations should take a step back to map the various expectations. They can then create and implement risk management frameworks that will meet multiple regulatory needs while also keeping the business resilient against cyber threats.  

With a growing realisation of the importance of cybersecurity, especially in the face of diverse cyber threats, what best practices would you recommend for organisations to address the most critical pain points in their security posture, and how can these practices be implemented effectively?  

While cyber threats are continually evolving, effective security usually boils down to the same handful of core measures. Getting these foundational elements right will greatly mitigate the risk posed by most attack tactics.  

Firstly, conducting regular and thorough risk assessments is essential to identify and mitigate potential vulnerabilities. As we discussed earlier, it’s critical that firms understand how various systems – IT, OT, IoT, whatever they may have – interconnect and how this influences risk exposure.  

This also has an important impact on patch management. Firms should be aware of their most critical systems and ensure they prioritise relevant updates.  

Alongside this, implementing robust network segmentation is another crucial step, as it helps contain and limit the spread of malware or intruders within the network. This can be further enhanced by taking on a zero trust approach to further guard against unauthorised network access, as so many OT environments have third parties that support and maintain the equipment, and the enterprise can inadvertently inherit their risks if not properly controlled.  

Considering the increasing variety of cyberattacks, from ransomware to supply chain attacks, what proactive measures and strategies should organisations prioritise to ensure a robust defence against the evolving landscape of cyber threats? 

There has been a near-constant stream of high-profile cyberattacks in recent times, with a trend for highly disruptive attacks that hit hard and fast. Incidents like the ransomware attack on Clorox demonstrate how quickly an incident can bite into productivity and start racking up costs. Attacks on ports such as those in Canada and Australia also show the tendency to target critical infrastructure that will have a widespread impact.  

Proactivity is essential against threats of this calibre. All too often, organisations are focused on threat monitoring tools. While these are important controls and have a critical role in monitoring for a cyber attack, the most important thing organisations can do is to reduce their attack surface area through patching and implementation of compensating controls. By reducing the large inherent risk associated with OT environments, organisations can focus a threat monitoring programme on the residual risk.

How do you see collaboration evolving among companies and industries to collectively strengthen cybersecurity defences, and what role can partnerships and information sharing play in mitigating the impact of cyber threats on critical OT operations? 

Enterprises are necessarily guarded about their security strategy and controls. At the same time, we have witnessed strong governmental influence in encouraging best practices and information sharing. Notably a broad set of information sharing and analysis centres (ISACs) provide a hub where vertical-specific organisations can share intelligence and best practices. Additionally, governmental organisations have published a set of best-practice guides to serve as on-ramps for organisations that are nascent in their journey, such as CISA’s cyber performance goals.  

Looking ahead to the future, what steps do you recommend for organisations to future-proof their security measures, considering the dynamic nature of cyber threats and the evolving technology landscape? 

We anticipate some significant shifts in the year ahead, particularly when it comes to the Extended Internet of Things (XIoT), the umbrella that encompasses all connected technology. We’re seeing continued convergence in IT and OT, and a growing volume of IoT devices. Every network will be an XIoT network before too long. Combined with ongoing IT trends like cloud migration, environments are becoming more complex than ever.  

One result will be an increasingly asset-centric approach to security that accounts for individual systems. Alongside this, there will be a greater focus on secure communication through segmentation and understanding “good” traffic patterns between assets.  

These advancements will be fundamental in safeguarding interconnected devices and critical infrastructure. 

Executive Profile

Grant Geyer oversees Claroty’s product management, engineering, and research organisations, and is responsible for the company’s product strategy and development. Earlier in his career, Geyer served as a military intelligence officer for the US Army. He holds a BS in Computer Science from the US Military Academy at West Point and an MS in Engineering Management from the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

The post What Challenges Does 2024 Have in Store for Securing Cyber-physical Systems? appeared first on The European Business Review.

The path to becoming a C-Suite executive is often challenging, filled with both remarkable achievements and formidable obstacles. It’s a journey that shapes leaders, tests their mettle, and often defines the very businesses they lead.

In this interview, Martin Mackay, CRO of Versa Networks, shares critical insights from his 30+ years of experience as a tech leader. Martin’s story is one of resilience, strategic foresight, and strong commitment to his team and business objectives, which can be a great inspiration for the current generation of leaders.

What is your greatest achievement and the biggest challenge you have ever faced?

One standout achievement was leading a significant acquisition valued at $500 million. This endeavour required an intensive due diligence process completed in just four days, followed by a rapid 30-day integration of the business. The eventual outcome of this acquisition was that the parent company I worked for achieved a highly successful exit at approximately $2 billion valuation to private equity.

But what truly resonates with me is how I was able to lead during an acquisition process where there was looming uncertainty. Significant changes in the organisation were clearly coming. During this challenging time, I wasn’t just focused on the business metrics. I prioritised the well-being of our team, customers, and partners. Our collective efforts culminated in a remarkable 30% year-on-year growth in our final quarter. What is very special to me is that the bonds forged during those trying times are still there and stronger than ever. Five years on, my leadership team from that era remains in close contact with each other.

In any business, success is almost always defined by how individuals work as a close-knit team to deliver value. A supportive and cohesive team fosters an environment where individuals feel valued and motivated. This, in turn, contributes to business resilience and adaptability, especially during times of change. 

On the other hand, probably the most significant challenge in my career was taking over as CEO of a struggling business in 2012. Despite its strong technology, the company faced investor fatigue, and an unexpected termination of a key OEM relationship with a much larger technology vendor pushed us into crisis. Leading the company through this critical phase was very difficult and required significant resilience and calmness to make the right decisions. Together with the management team, we navigated these rough waters, focusing on maintaining customer relationships and avoiding bankruptcy.

A large part of this success was also due to the incredible support from my wife, who kept motivating me throughout that difficult period. At the end of the day, having a strong support network always pays off, both professionally and personally. Without effective support and motivation from your peers or close ones, your mental strength might crumble and affect your decision-making.

How would you describe your management style?

I’ve always tried to lead from the front. I firmly believe that a leader should be the first to confront challenges and the last to withdraw in the face of adversity. This style is guided by three fundamental principles: integrity, competence, and benevolence.

As a leader, integrity is everything to me. It’s about maintaining a moral compass and being honest, both in success and in failure. Competence follows closely; it’s crucial that a leader is not just trustworthy but also capable and effective in their role.

Benevolence, as I define it, does not mean weakness. Instead, it’s about treating people with respect and kindness, even in situations where accountability is necessary or when difficult decisions must be made. It’s essential for people to trust their leader and believe that the leader can deliver on promises.

Finally, I always emphasise creating a memorable employee experience. I feel a great sense of self-satisfaction when an employee comes to me and says they will always remember and cherish their experience of working with me. It’s important to regularly communicate with your team about status updates, objectives, progress, and expectations.

What are your three top tips for becoming a C-Suite executive?

The path to becoming a C-Suite executive isn’t going to be the same for everyone. However, there are fundamental principles that have been instrumental in my journey and may serve as valuable guidelines for aspiring leaders.

The most important principle is integrity, it’s non-negotiable. This is more than a virtue; it’s a cornerstone of effective leadership. Integrity builds trust, and trust is the foundation of strong leadership. In the complex and fast-paced world of business, those around you, be it your team, peers, or stakeholders, must believe in your honesty and moral principles.

Then comes mentorship and advocacy. You need someone to look up to. A mentor is not just a guide; they are a challenger, an encourager, and a critical part of your support system. They provide invaluable insights from their experiences and assist in your personal and professional development. Most importantly, a mentor can act as a strong referee in your career journey, which is essential if you’re going to be a C-Suite executive.

Last but not least, a strong work ethic and deep resilience are mandatory. It’s about showing dedication and commitment to your role and responsibilities. Beyond just hard work, it’s the ability to deliver tangible results that sets you apart. Success in your current role is often the most compelling testament to your potential as a C-Suite executive. This track record of achievement is often what catches the eye of decision-makers.

What advice would you give to someone wanting a career in tech?

To be successful in the industry, one needs to first develop a strong passion for technology itself and innovation. This passion fuels curiosity, which is critical for always being up-to-date with the latest trends and developments in tech. Embrace the pace of change in the tech industry as it offers a unique opportunity to constantly learn, grow, and reinvent yourself.

One would also need to focus on effective networking, and I can’t overemphasise this enough. In my experience, every significant career move has been influenced by my professional network. Building relationships within the industry can open doors to new opportunities, provide insights into emerging trends, and offer guidance through the complexities of tech careers.

Most importantly, one needs to find a genuine sense of enjoyment. The tech industry is fantastic. It’s not only global and dynamic but also financially rewarding. However, it’s important to acknowledge that it can be equally challenging and stressful, with high expectations set for professionals. To succeed, you need to be resilient and truly enjoy what you do. Embrace the challenges as part of the journey and find fulfilment in your role, whether you’re developing new technologies, solving complex problems, or driving innovation. The satisfaction derived from making a meaningful impact through tech is what makes a career in this industry truly rewarding.

About the Author

Martin Mackay leads the Versa global sales organization and overall go-to-market. He has a track record driving growth in security, networking and SaaS enterprise software. Prior to joining Versa, Martin has held senior leadership positions with Proofpoint, CA Technologies, Verisign, NorthgateArinso and PeopleSoft and has lived and worked in multiple countries.

The post What it Takes to Become a Technology C-Suite Executive appeared first on The European Business Review.

Interview with Ala Shaabana, Co-founder of Opentensor Foundation 

Amid widespread concern regarding possible built-in bias, opacity, and misalignment in big-tech-dominated AI, one strategy that offers the potential for more balanced machine learning processes is to decentralise them. Ala Shaabana of the Opentensor Foundation explains. 

Hello, Mr Shaabana. It’s a pleasure to have you here. To begin, would you tell our readers a little bit about your background and personal journey in the field of AI, leading up to your role as a co-founder of Opentensor Foundation?

I started my journey in graduate school, where I obtained my PhD in applied artificial intelligence on human-centric sensing in 2017 from McMaster University. I then joined VMware in Palo Alto, California, working on problems in distributed computing. In 2019, I met my current co-founder Jacob Steeves, who had been working on the problem of decentralised AI since 2016, on an online AI research community. We then decided to work together on Bittensor and start building the protocol and together co-founded the Opentensor Foundation.

From your perspective, what do you think are the key moral considerations driving the recent discussions within the AI industry, and how might they influence the path AI development takes? 

I believe that AI transparency and explainability, bias, and alignment are some of the most important considerations surrounding AI today. Transparency is ensuring that AI training processes and code are always made available to the general public for review and scrutiny. The Biden administration’s recent executive order is loosely aimed at solving this issue. However, open source AI already solves it, indicating just how ill informed governments are about technologies and AI in general. AI bias is centred around moral questions about fairness and equality, especially in critical applications like hiring, law enforcement, and loan approvals. As a result, there’s a growing emphasis on creating AI that is fair, unbiased, and inclusive, which may lead to more rigorous data handling and algorithmic accountability measures. Finally, the AI alignment problem refers to the challenge of ensuring that artificial intelligence systems’ goals, decisions, and actions are aligned with human values and intentions. This problem becomes increasingly critical as AI systems grow more complex and capable, particularly when they are given more autonomy in decision-making. 

When it comes to decentralised AI and collective ownership, how does this philosophy align with your personal vision for the future of artificial intelligence? What concrete benefits do you think decentralisation brings to the AI landscape? 

AI transparency, bias, and alignment are central to my vision for Bittensor and the future of AI in general. Decentralisation ensures that all three of these are dealt with by the community at large, and not by one company whose bottom line is truly its profits. When AI is placed in the hands of everyone, and not just one entity, it loses its bias, is forced to be transparent, and is aligned with everyone’s interests by default, as everyone is contributing to it. 

The conversation often revolves around the concentration of AI power in tech giants. In your view, how can decentralised AI models play a role in disrupting this concentration, and what challenges or opportunities does this dynamic present for the industry?

Decentralised AI models have the potential to disrupt the concentration of AI power in the hands of tech giants, offering both challenges and opportunities for the industry. Let’s start with opportunities. Decentralised AI models can enable a wider range of stakeholders, including smaller companies, researchers, and individual developers, to contribute to and influence AI development. This democratisation can lead to more innovative and diverse AI solutions that reflect a broader range of needs and values. There’s also more potential for greater creativity and a wider array of AI applications. Finally, decentralised systems can be more resilient to failures and cyberattacks, as they don’t rely on a single centralised entity. This enhances the overall stability and security of the AI ecosystem. However, challenges still exist in the system that must be resolved first. For example, decentralising AI development could lead to challenges in coordinating efforts and maintaining standards across different projects. Additionally, establishing effective regulatory frameworks that can adapt to the rapidly evolving and diverse landscape of decentralised AI is a significant challenge. Decentralised models may struggle with resource allocation, as smaller entities might lack the computing power and data access that larger corporations possess.

To give us a clearer picture, could you walk us through a real-world example of how the Bittensor protocol operates and contributes to the broader goal of decentralised AI? 

By incentivising the creation of decentralised AI models, the Bittensor protocol incentivises AI engineers and researchers to create state-of-the-art AI models to compete with each other to provide the best-possible output to users. As an example, a user can build a state-of-the-art model and deploy it on Bittensor’s text language subnetwork. The model’s performance is judged by the validators on the system. Validators will reward the model with more Tao than its peers if it outperforms its peers. Users, on the other hand, can interface with validators with their prompts, who will send these prompts to the models on the network and deliver back the best response. Thus, users will always get the best response for their queries and models will always be rewarded in proportion to their performance.

Reflecting on the recent success of Ritual in securing substantial funding, how do you interpret this within the broader industry trends? What implications does it carry for the future landscape of decentralised AI platforms? 

This is a positive indicator that many are starting to embrace the decentralised AI narrative, and the idea of taking this power away from centralised tech giants. However, it is vitally important that these companies continue to embrace the decentralisation aspect as well as ethics, and not simply assume that, just because a system is decentralised, then it is ethical. 

Thinking about international collaborations in establishing ethical standards for decentralised AI, how do you see organisations like Opentensor Foundation contributing to and fostering such collaborative efforts? 

International collaborations in establishing ethical standards for decentralised AI are crucial, given the global nature of technology and its impacts. Organisations like the Opentensor Foundation can play a significant role in fostering these collaborative efforts in several ways. 

Developing Open Standards and Protocols: Organisations like the Opentensor Foundation can lead or contribute to the development of open standards and protocols for decentralised AI. By promoting a set of universally accepted standards, they can ensure interoperability, fairness, and ethical compliance across different systems and regions. 

Facilitating Global Dialogue and Consensus Building: These organisations can serve as platforms for dialogue between various stakeholders, including governments, tech companies, academia, and civil society. By bringing together diverse perspectives, they can help in building a global consensus on ethical AI practices. 

Research and Innovation in Ethical AI: Organisations dedicated to decentralised AI can invest in and support research focused on ethical considerations, bias mitigation, transparency, and accountability in AI systems. This research can provide valuable insights and guidelines for the development of ethical AI. 

Education and Awareness Campaigns: Educating AI developers, users, and the broader public about the importance of ethical AI is crucial. Organisations like Opentensor can organise workshops, seminars, and campaigns to raise awareness about ethical AI practices and the significance of decentralisation in promoting fairness and transparency. 

Policy Advocacy and Advisory Roles: By actively engaging in policy discussions and serving as advisors to governments and regulatory bodies, such organisations can influence the development of policies and regulations that govern decentralised AI, ensuring they align with ethical standards. 

Building Ethical AI Tools and Frameworks: Developing and providing open-source tools and frameworks that embody ethical AI principles can significantly aid developers in creating AI systems that are inherently ethical, transparent, and unbiased. 

Encouraging Community Involvement and Diversity: Promoting community involvement in AI development can ensure that AI systems are not only technically sound but also socially relevant and beneficial. Diverse community participation can help in understanding and addressing a wide range of ethical concerns. 

Partnerships and Collaborations: Forming strategic partnerships with other organisations, universities, and research institutions can amplify their efforts in promoting ethical standards. Collaboration can lead to pooling resources, sharing expertise, and aligning goals for a more significant impact.

Looking ahead, where do you personally see significant growth opportunities, both for yourself and the broader AI industry? Particularly, how do you envision these opportunities within the context of the ongoing moral discussions and the push for decentralised technologies? 

I believe the Opentensor Foundation is well positioned to be a central player in the decentralised AI movement, as more and more entities start to embrace decentralised AI as the ethical future of AI. It is inevitable that people will look to entities like the foundation for moral and ethical guidance, and in this case it becomes extremely important that the foundation lead by example and ensure that all moral considerations are taken into account and align AI with the planet. 

Executive Profile

Ala Shaabana is a co-founder of the Opentensor Foundation, an organisation dedicated to the building and maintenance of the Bittensor protocol, a peer-to-peer machine-learning protocol that incentivises participants to train and operate machine learning models in a distributed manner. By interconnecting neural networks on the internet, Bittensor aims to create a global, distributed, and incentivised machine learning system. 

Educated at McMaster University in Canada, Ala holds a PhD in Computer Science with a dissertation focus on human-centric sensing, creating extremely small machine learning models that fit on IoT devices to detect signals coming from the human body. Prior to founding the Opentensor Foundation, Ala worked on distributed computing research at VMware, where he led three projects on neural architecture search, language modelling, and load prediction in distributed environments. Subsequently, this led him down the path of distributed AI and how models across the internet might be able to work together to accomplish tasks. 

The post Decentralise to Incentivise: The Quest for Unbiased, Explainable AI appeared first on The European Business Review.

This is unfortunately a prevailing misconception that we’ve seen in the industry for many years now, and it’s often been the root cause of attacks targeted at the cloud. Cloud environments are dynamic and constantly evolving. With new services, updates, and configurations being added regularly, a static security approach is never enough. The belief that initial security measures are sufficient overlooks the need for continuous monitoring and updating to address emerging vulnerabilities and threats. Moreover, the cloud creates additional complexity with the lack of transparency afforded compared to on-premise deployments. 

The misconception that cloud service providers operate on a shared responsibility model that takes care of security is also a considerable issue. Clearly defining the area of responsibility for each party becomes crucial, particularly as we consider the burden for data controllers to manage the processing of personal data across the supply chain. 

Even if you implement robust perimeter security measures, you can’t just sit back, switch off, and expect your cloud systems to take care of themselves. Attack tactics are continuously evolving, which can make your existing cloud security measures almost immediately ineffective. At the same time, there’s also the risk of insider threats and human error. 

So, cloud security should never be treated as a one-time task but a continuous process. It requires ongoing vigilance, rigorous authentication, constant monitoring, regular training, and adaptation to new threats. 

In your view, what specific vulnerabilities or shortcomings in cloud security practices contribute to cyber incidents, and how can organisations better address these issues?

We recently conducted a mid-year threat review at Rapid7 and found that a shocking 40 per cent of incidents in the first half of 2023 were a result of poor multi-factor authentication (MFA) practices, particularly on cloud-based remote access systems like VPNs, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and SaaS applications.  

Our report very clearly highlights the critical need for robust MFA protocols. However, it’s not just about having MFA in place; it’s also about implementing it correctly. MFA push fraud is on the rise as threat actors take advantage of notification fatigue, suggesting that organisations need to look beyond traditional MFA methods. Solutions like number matching can mitigate this fatigue and enhance security. 

Beyond the vulnerabilities in access controls, around 11 per cent of incidents were linked to cloud misconfiguration. In a race to deploy cloud applications quickly, if you leave behind misconfigured elements such as unrestricted ports, unvetted third-party connections, or excessive permissions, you’re basically giving an open invitation to the threat actors. Balancing speed with caution and vigilance should be the key to effective cloud implementation. 

Additionally, more than a third of widespread threat vulnerabilities were exploited in zero-day attacks, emphasising the need for routine patch cycles and prioritising patching on high-value assets. This includes putting network edge devices, like VPNs and file transfer appliances, on a high-urgency patch cycle. 

The best way to address all of these vulnerabilities is to focus on the security fundamentals. Businesses should implement and harden MFA, continuously monitor for unusual access to cloud storages like Google Drive and SharePoint, and establish clear, measurable deadlines for routine patch cycles, focusing on both OS-level updates and actively exploited vulnerabilities.  

You have been involved in cybercrime cases. How do you see the role of cloud security evolving in the context of cybercrime investigations, and what improvements are needed to enhance the security posture of cloud environments?

Broadly speaking, when we consider the evolving threat landscape, we have to consider the constantly evolving tactics being leveraged by threat actors. It has been said that we are in a constant game of cat and mouse to stay one step ahead of their next move. 

I think a major concern going forward will be the misuse of commercial cloud service providers (CSPs). For example, threat actors are not always relying on infrastructure that has been known to host command-and-control servers and are increasingly leveraging CSPs to host malicious content. The reason behind this shift is clear: the growth of reputational feeds against known bad IPs demands a change in how attackers blend their malicious activities with legitimate services. 

To combat these threats, we have to reimagine our approach to cloud security. There’s a need for closer collaboration between cloud service providers, cybersecurity experts, and law enforcement agencies to effectively track and combat these evolving threats. For businesses, once they have the critical security fundamentals in place, they should look to implement more advanced detection systems, improve threat intelligence sharing among stakeholders, and continuously update and refine security protocols.

Your co-authorship of the “CSA Guide to Cloud Computing” indicates a deep understanding of cloud security. How can organisations transition from the traditional “install and forget” approach to a more proactive and continuous security model, and what are the key elements of the “assess, detect, respond, and automate” framework?

To move away from the “install and forget” mindset, businesses must first prioritise cloud security at the top of their security team’s agenda. This means making cloud security a continuous process, demanding a level of transparency against an often opaque deployment. Although the historical approach would be to drive periodic assessments such as audits of critical cloud resources, we have to consider frameworks that provide continuous cloud security assessments. This incorporates the key aspect of the “assess, detect, respond, and automate” framework, which is integrating real-time monitoring and analytics, enabling rapid detection and response to potential threats. 

“Assess” involves conducting these continuous assessments to identify risks against the deployment. This step is crucial for understanding the current security posture and planning improvements. “Detect” focuses on implementing advanced monitoring tools to identify potential threats and anomalies on the cloud in real time. Concurrently, organisations must have a robust incident response plan that can be rapidly activated in case of a breach or threat. This ensures minimal impact and quick recovery. 

There should also be a significant focus on training and awareness, ensuring that all employees understand the evolving nature of cloud threats and their role in maintaining security. At the same time, business leaders should look to make life easier for the security teams. Leveraging automation for routine security tasks can significantly improve efficiency and consistency, freeing up resources to focus on more complex security challenges. 

How can organisations leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to enhance their cloud security measures?

The use of AI/ML within cybersecurity is not new; indeed, one can argue that the implementation of data science for driving stronger efficacy demonstrates how cybersecurity has been leading the charge well before it has become a mainstream topic. The demand to drive better detection is a perpetual challenge, particularly as we consider the evolving tactics by threat actors. This means investing in solutions that can detect and prioritise anomalous activities, as well as effectively distinguish between threats and genuine activities. This sharpens the focus on true threats, significantly reducing false positives and enabling security operations centre (SOC) teams to concentrate on active threat investigations and responses. 

It’s also important that businesses integrate AI and ML solutions for better cloud management, not just security. They should implement tools that can automate critical processes, such as adjusting configurations, right-sizing permissions and privileges, and streamlining collaboration across the SOC, engineering, and IT teams during incident investigations. Ultimately, the benefits of efficient management transition into better security. 

In advocating for constant monitoring as part of the security framework, how do you address concerns related to the potential impact on system performance and operational efficiency? What strategies can organisations employ to strike a balance between security and operational needs?
 
The best and perhaps the only way of balancing security and operational efficiency is by turning cybersecurity into a core business process. Organisations shouldn’t look at cybersecurity as an isolated responsibility; rather, it should come up in every single business process. There should be a centralised security strategy where cyber risk is collectively understood and managed by all stakeholders, from the CEO to the most junior team member. Every business component should work together like a well-tuned engine, balancing security needs with operational demands for optimal performance. 
 
CEOs play a pivotal role in achieving this integration of cybersecurity. They must lead the change, establishing security responsibility and accountability across the entire business. The key is open communication and a shared understanding between all parties. By engaging the entire workforce in cybersecurity, recognising it as a team game, and defining clear roles and responsibilities, organisations can decentralise cybersecurity. This approach not only improves security effectiveness but also aligns it with broader business objectives, ensuring operational efficiency. 

The notion of hackers lurking within networks for extended periods is alarming. What steps can organisations take to improve their ability to detect and respond to these prolonged threats in cloud environments?

A business’s detection and response capabilities often come down to how good its threat intelligence data is. The cyber domain is undoubtedly an ocean of threats, and you can’t possibly address every single one. So, the most practical approach is to address threats that are critical to your business and pose a high risk to your valuable assets. That’s why you need quality threat intelligence data, which will help to provide a deeper understanding of the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by attackers. 

Achieving this requires businesses to invest in tactics such as routine threat hunting for evidence of compromise, leveraging true actionable intelligence. This activity becomes a key component of continuous assessment within an environment, and it demands the integration of intelligence based on new findings and evolving attack patterns as well as ensuring that all relevant teams are trained to interpret and act on this intelligence effectively. 

As cloud security continues to evolve, what role do you see for collaboration between industry stakeholders, government agencies, and cybersecurity professionals in shaping effective security practices and policies? How can these collaborations contribute to a more robust defence against emerging cyber threats in the cloud?

The need for collaboration in cybersecurity is more critical than ever. This year alone, there have been several high-profile take-downs of dark web marketplaces and ransomware groups, such as PIILOPUOTI and Genesis Market, where collaboration between the private and public sectors helped the industry crack down on numerous malicious activities. Such collaborative efforts demonstrate that absolute anonymity for cybercriminals is increasingly a myth, and their activities on the dark web are not entirely risk-free. 

The key to effective collaboration lies in maintaining cross-industry transparency and communication. It’s about sharing information and working in unison to develop and implement effective security practices and policies. This synergy can significantly enhance our collective defence against emerging cyber threats in the cloud or anywhere else we conduct business. 

Executive Profile 

Raj Samani is a computer security expert with more than 25 years’ experience building a stronger, more resilient cybersecurity community through organisational leadership and industry activism. As Senior Vice President and Chief Scientist at Rapid7, Raj is responsible for extending the scope and reach of Rapid7’s research initiatives to further inform and equip business and government leaders. Raj has assisted multiple law enforcement agencies in cybercrime cases and is special advisor to the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) in The Hague. 

The post Is Cloud Security Still an Install and Forget Job? Interview with Raj Samani, Chief Scientist at Rapid7 appeared first on The European Business Review.

In an insightful conversation with Carl Day, Chief Sales Officer at Apogee, we explore the transformative journey that has defined his leadership philosophy and the pivotal role of prioritizing people within an organization. Carl’s diverse career trajectory, stemming from early technical roles to steering sales strategies at renowned corporations, reflects his profound commitment to evolving company culture through a people-centric approach.

Hello, Carl! It’s a pleasure to have you here. To begin, could you share with our readers a bit about your background and what inspired you to take on the role of Chief Sales Officer at Apogee Corporation back in 2020?  

Of course. I’ve had a varied career to date, starting with a short spell of training to be a marine, followed by some time as an engineer’s labourer at a company that made and installed sprinkler systems and then as a photocopier technician.   

I then joined the technical support division at Ricoh, which was a turning point in my career as the company was truly invested in the training and development of its employees which allowed me to make the leap to sales. I started as a junior account manager before progressing to a regional sales manager. 

I then decided I wanted to cut my teeth at a board level and made the leap to Toshiba where I was national sales director on the board of Toshiba in the UK. At this point, I decided to also undertake a work-based learning degree in Leading Sales Transformation at Middlesex University. After Toshiba, I spent a short time at a governance and risk company but soon realised it wasn’t for me. 

I was then approached by the then CEO of Apogee who had read about what I’d done with my degree and how I’d introduced learning into sales in previous roles. He felt that because Apogee had been a privately-owned business and was acquired by a corporate company, my understanding of how to transform behaviour and culture would make me a good fit and I agreed. So, in February 2020, I joined Apogee as Chief Sales Officer (CSO).   

In a transformative role like Chief Sales Officer, decisions often impact the entire team. How do you involve your team in the decision-making process, especially when implementing changes, to ensure a collaborative and inclusive approach?   

I think it’s so important to listen to what your employees have to say and to consider the impact any decisions you’re about to make could have on them. In such a big company like Apogee, even the tiniest of changes can create the biggest of ripples, so I make sure I take a step back and consider the potential outcomes and implications of the decisions I make and encourage other managers to do the same.   

Leading a transformation in a sales culture requires effective leadership. How do you measure and assess your leadership effectiveness, and what feedback mechanisms do you have in place to understand how your team perceives your leadership? 

For me, there are two ways of measuring progress, one is the lag measure, and the other is a lead measure. A ‘‘lag’’ is the ultimate result – like pipeline, revenue or gross profit (GP) targets. The difference is that I cannot effect lag measure, but I can effect lead measures. Lead measures are typical activities such as customer visits or account managers educating themselves in the right area, for example. This could be through account planning, presentation delivery or truly understanding their customers’ world and the needs of different personas within one organisation. 

I can measure progress on all our ‘‘lead’’ factors, and I can influence this by having an aligned leadership team that supports these goals. We currently measure these through a competency framework agreed with the sales leaders, utilising tools like e4enable which allows us to correlate lag results to our lead measures. For example, we have seen a 40% increase in opportunity with customers where there is smarter activity within that account. 

To ensure we get the right feedback from the different stakeholders, we hold regular meetings and 1:1s within each team. This is alongside ongoing field accompaniment to ensure we can see first-hand what the customer engagement is like and is all underpinned by the data and trends we see in our CRM. This is also combined with a ‘‘Voice of the Customer’’ project to ensure we gather insights from all areas – and that ultimately, our customers are happy with the account management engagement they are receiving.   

As a leader, how do you ensure your team has the necessary tools for success? 

I subscribe to the idea that if an individual has the will, we’ll help them gain the skill. We do that through a variety of initiatives and by creating a culture of listening whereby if somebody feels they need extra support or guidance, they are empowered to speak up about that and we’ll ensure they are equipped with the skills and tools they need to succeed. 

Investing in the professional development of your team is vital. What specific initiatives or programmes have you implemented to ensure that team members have opportunities for continuous learning and skill enhancement?   

One thing I was keen to implement was coaching. It’s something I’ve benefited from and that can have a really transformative effect. This approach ensures individuals are taught how to do their role, how to get results and how to grow the business, rather than throwing them in at the deep end and expecting them to produce results out of nowhere. In sales in particular, there are elements of the role that can create anxiety, so we put a lot of energy and resources behind coaching to help upskill individuals and also give them the confidence to do their role. 

In an environment encouraging risk-taking, how do you foster a culture that allows team members to experiment with new ideas?   

I believe that failure is the one inevitability of business. I think for any business to progress, you need to learn how to fail and how to create something positive from failure. That ethos is something I try to instil in my team so that they feel empowered to try something new – and inevitably the results will come.   

You’ve emphasised the importance of people and company culture. How do you actively prioritise and invest in the development and well-being of your team members to ensure they remain a key asset to the company?   

For me, well-being initiatives aren’t about Pizza Fridays or after-work drinks, for example. Instead, I believe it’s important to understand what poor mental health looks like and to cultivate an environment where we respect the well-being and mental health of individuals. The coaching we offer plays into that, but we’ve also introduced a non-industry mentor to the sales team who is there to offer support.   

Work and personal life are interconnected so individuals can talk to the mentor about anything that is impacting their well-being and those conversations stay between just them and the mentor. We feel this combination of coaching and mentoring is really important to ensure individuals feel supported and cared for by the company.   

For emerging leaders aspiring to make transformative changes, what advice would you offer based on your experiences and the lessons you’ve learned at Apogee?   

I would say focus on the people first. The people are what really matters, so you need to make sure you have the right individuals and that they are respected and listened to. As a second point, and one I touched on previously, I would say, don’t be afraid to fail. Failure in itself doesn’t have to be a bad thing if you can learn from that failure and create something positive out of it.  

Executive Profile 

Carl Day has been in the technology and managed services industries for the majority of his professional life, and has extensive experience leading direct and indirect sales teams in both B2B and B2C markets. Carl is passionate about personal development and work-based learning and coaching, all of which are critical for Apogee as we invest in developing our skills and effectiveness in this area. He has a Master’s degree in leading sales transformation, and a track record of implementing and enhancing programmes that drive sales performance and ultimately, growth in market share. 

The post “Focus on the People” – Carl Day of Apogee on Leadership and Teambuilding appeared first on The European Business Review.

Entrepreneur Scott van den Berg, founder of CELEB and Influencer Capital, talks to The European Business Review about the latest trends in influencer marketing and investing successfully in celebrity-founded companies.  

Twelve years ago, the word “influencer” didn’t exist yet. Today, the influencer marketing industry is worth 21.1 billion dollars – and it’s not showing any signs of slowing down. However, trends emerge and evolve constantly. Scott van den Berg loves keeping his finger on the pulse, predicting what’s next, and building businesses that elevate the industry for creators, investors, and the public. 

Van den Berg, a content creator himself, first started Influencer Capital, a company that facilitates equity deals between startups and influencers. Working with thousands of creators around the world, he saw an opportunity he decided to tap into: investing in businesses founded by people with large followings. CELEB was born – an angel syndicate that gives accredited investors access to these exclusive deals.  

In this interview, Scott van den Berg talks to The European Business Review about the ever-changing influencer marketing space and touches on:

• How companies today can build genuine and long-lasting partnerships with influencers. 
• Why AI is a game-changer and how it’s helping creators save time and make better content. 
• The challenges he faced launching a syndicate when he’d never run one before. Only months after launching, CELEB already works with more than 200 accredited investors.  

The influencer marketing industry has grown so much through the years. How do you see it evolving? Will people still trust and follow influencers in 10 years? 

It’s true, that this industry has grown very much throughout the years, but what many people forget is that 12 years ago, the word “influencer” didn’t even exist yet. The influencer marketing industry is still new and is maturing every day.  

The most recent change we see is the shift from the concept of “influencer” to the idea of “creator”. Many influencers don’t like being called “influencers.” They have a negative perception of the term. They don’t want to influence people’s behaviour but rather create content and give followers a look behind the scenes.  

In the beginning, these influencers would promote any product because, for the first time ever, they could make money off their work. However, they quickly found out that the companies they worked with didn’t always have people’s best interests in mind. Also, many followers commented that the promotion of a specific product felt disingenuous given that the influencer wasn’t using the product.  

That’s why recently, many influencers have become a lot more careful about the brands they work with. They only want to promote products they use themselves. And I believe that this trend will endure in 10 years. 

Another recent trend we’ve seen is that influencers are starting their own brands. What better product to promote than one you developed yourself? It still has to be a product that influencers use themselves, but it makes it a lot easier to create content around it.  

Creators have a free distribution channel through which they can promote their brands to millions of followers. A traditional brand has to pay millions of dollars for that kind of advertising. So the next generation of iconic consumer brands will be co-founded by creators. I believe in this so much that I started investing in brands founded by celebrities and creators. Also, I’m allowing other accredited investors to invest in them via my company CELEB.  

What was the spark that led to the idea of CELEB?  

Many successful creators I know have been telling me that they want to start their own companies. But in many cases, they need money. They need money to develop the product, hire the right people, build a brand, and all the things necessary to have a successful company.  

Oftentimes, celebrities and creators in my network would ask me if I wanted to invest in the companies they started. Although I have capital that I could invest in these brands, it’s not enough to make it a significant success. So, I started talking to investors in my network to see if they wanted to co-invest with me. Many of them responded very excitedly but were also surprised. They would ask me: how did you get access to these rounds?  

That’s when I discovered my advantage. I have access to creators and celebrities because I’ve been working with them on business deals for the past three years. They know I can create value and would love to have me on board as an investor.  

That’s why I started CELEB, which is an angel syndicate that invests in brands founded by celebrities and creators. What makes us unique is that we are not keeping these investment opportunities to ourselves. We allow other accredited investors to co-invest with us via a syndicate model.  

Celebrity-founded companies like PRIME, Feastables, Divi Hair, Hairitage, Teremana Tequila, and many more have seen growth traditional brands have never seen. It’s a tremendous market, and I’m privileged to be a part of it and invite other investors to join us.  

How does it work? Can anyone invest or are there certain filters? 

Individuals have to be qualified as accredited investors according to US law to participate. This is a standard in the startup investment industry. If they’re qualified as accredited investors, they can then sign up on our website and receive investment propositions in celebrity-founded brands directly in their inboxes.   

Next, I arrange the investment propositions. I search for the best celebrity-founded brands, perform due diligence, negotiate the best investment terms, structure the deal via the CELEB syndicate, and open up the investment to other investors in the syndicate.  

The syndicate members receive an email with a pitch deck and a deal memo of the investment proposition. The deal memo basically describes an overview of the company and my thoughts on why I want to invest in that specific celebrity-founded brand.   

The final decision, of course, belongs to the investor. They can participate with as little as $2,500 per company and decide how much more they’d like to invest.  

As a guide for the investors, what do you look for in a celebrity-founded brand? 

Besides standard investment criteria investors look at when assessing startups, I look at four specific factors when investing in a celebrity-founded brand.  

1. Celebrity Ownership: Does the celebrity have a large enough equity stake to care?  

The more equity a celebrity has in a company, the more they will benefit if that company performs. So it incentivises them to put in the effort to make the company successful. From experience, I have seen that the lower the equity is, the less that celebrity cares. They’re working on multiple things. So they’ll see the company they only have a tiny equity stake in as a side project, not their main focus. That’s why I’m looking for celebrity-founded brands in which a celebrity owns an equity stake of at least 10%.

2. Celebrity-Market Fit: Does the brand fit with the personality, audience, and content of the celebrity?  

The brand has to fit with the celebrity, otherwise, it doesn’t come across as authentic and doesn’t speak to that celebrity’s audience. A celebrity promoting a liquor brand while they often state that they don’t drink alcohol doesn’t make sense. It would be much better if they created a non-alcoholic alternative. A female celebrity promoting a swimwear brand when 90% of her followers are men doesn’t make sense. A brand focusing on its core audience would be much more profitable. So we always look for a match between the brand and the personality, audience, and the content a celebrity produces. There needs to be a product-market fit.

3. Independent Brand: The brand shouldn’t depend on the celebrity 

The brand should have enough substance and appeal without a celebrity’s endorsement. If the celebrity doesn’t talk about it, the brand should still be able to grow. So it would need a plan to sell products in ways that don’t include the celebrity.   

It also means that the quality of the brand should be on par or exceeding the quality of its competitors. Otherwise, people wouldn’t buy it without the celebrity being on board.   

Celebrities are very busy. If you are working with an actor, they could be away doing a movie for a month or two. And if your company is too dependent on them, that can cause issues relating to marketing and sales. That can’t happen. Your business should be able to keep on growing as an independent brand.  

4. Team: Does the brand have experienced and full-time operators on board?

This might be the most important criterion because, in the end, it’s all about people. You can have the largest celebrity and the best brand, but you need people to make it a success. The more experienced they are, the better the chances of success.  

Let’s look at Feastbales. Mr Beast hired many people from RXbar, a chocolate bar company that exited to a large conglomerate, to join his company. They knew what it was to start and scale a chocolate bar company as they’d done it before. It allowed Mr Beast to focus on what he could do well, while the team did that as well.  

What was the biggest challenge for you in launching the syndicate?  

I’d never launched a syndicate before. I knew what a syndicate was but had no idea how to operate one. However, to quote Pippi Longstocking: I’ve never done it, so I think I can.  

When I announced CELEB, I was far from having all the answers. Before figuring it all out, I launched it to see if there was enough interest. My announcement got many investors who had their own syndicate to reach out to me to chat. I was able to pick their brains and immediately answer the questions I was getting from interested investors. 

Many entrepreneurs have great ideas but they are afraid to launch. That’s because deep down, they have no idea what they’re doing. I’m a big fan of just doing it and figuring it out on the go. And I can encourage every entrepreneur to do the same.   

How do you see AI impacting the influencer market?  

AI is going to have a huge impact on the influencer marketing industry. Many creators are struggling with creator burnout. They feel that they constantly have to create content for their followers – and that can have a huge effect on their mental health.  

AI can help them create content and manage their businesses. For example, creators can replicate themselves using an AI bot. The AI bot can respond to comments and direct messages the same way the creator would.   

Also, tools like ChatGPT can help a creator when creating content. No need to do research and writing anymore. Just ask AI to do it for you. You don’t need written text but rather videos or photos? No problem. Generative AI tools can help you develop high-quality imagery you can use in your content. Tools like this will help creators save time and produce content faster (and sometimes even better!).  

I expect that AI will become an executive assistant for creators. A creator can ask the AI questions to help them navigate their business and outsource specific tasks. As a result, more creators will be able to create better-quality content, which will give the industry a boost.  

For the many companies around the world looking to boost their revenue with the help of influencers, what would you advise them?  

Influencers get approached by thousands of brands every year. That’s why you have to find a way to stand out and make the influencer care about what you do. Find a unique way to create a partnership that feels authentic.  

You don’t want to pay an influencer a one-time fee and end things there. The influencer will promote your brand once and promote another brand immediately the day after. So you have to find a way to work together in a long-term, beneficial relationship.  

But how exactly can companies do that? 

For example, could you help the creator with content creation?  

Let’s say you have a wine brand – could you invite the influencer to your winery and let them show the behind-the-scenes of how your wine is produced? If you can do that, the influencer has good quality content and can talk about your company in a unique way.   

Oftentimes, these long-term relationships can be very expensive. Brand-new businesses don’t always have that kind of budget. Could you then think of alternative deal structures? For instance, you could pay them based on the success of the campaign. But also, could you offer them equity in your business?  

With my other company, Influencer Capital, we structure equity deals between startups and creators. It allows a startup to align the incentives with a creator because that creator will only see results if the company does well. So now the creator has to do their part and play an active role in the success of that company – and in the monetary return they get.  

What are some of the red flags decision-makers should be aware of when picking an influencer to endorse their company?  

Brands should always do research into that influencer to see if they fit with the brand and its target audience. Let me illustrate with two examples.  

Jennifer Lopez recently started a canned cocktail company. Although at first, it seems like a great mix, JLo has often stated that she doesn’t drink alcohol. So many of her followers were quick to raise questions like: how can you promote a product that you don’t consume yourself? How can you taste if it is actually good if you don’t drink alcohol? Her husband, Ben Affleck, is also in alcohol addiction recovery and has been in rehab multiple times. So many of her followers were left confused.   

The lesson here is that the product, in this case liquor, doesn’t fit the celebrity. It would’ve been much better and more credible if she had a partnership with a non-alcoholic drink company. So brands have to do a lot of research into an influencer to see if the product fits the public persona of that influencer.  

The second example has to do with a mismatch between the brand’s target audience and the target audience of the influencer. Influencer and model Emily Ratajkowski often posts pictures of herself in a bikini. So she partnered with a company to launch her own line of bikinis.  

The problem? Most of the 30 million of Emily’s followers are men. And men don’t buy or wear bikinis. So although, initially, it looked like Emily would be a great fit given she always posts pictures in a bikini, her target audience doesn’t fit with the audience the brand is trying to reach.   

You’ve been an entrepreneur for almost 10 years. What are the main principles that guide you in business?  

I live by the quote: dream big, work hard, stay focussed, and surround yourself with good people. Funny enough, that quote came up when thinking of the main principles that have guided me in business as well.   

Dream Big

We only have one life and I want to spend mine creating something big. That’s why I always ask myself: could this have a significant impact on humans and/or the planet? If the answer is no, I abandon the idea. 

Work hard

You can have the biggest dreams and goals, but if you don’t work hard, you won’t achieve them. As an entrepreneur, I have to work hard and sometimes sacrifice other things to make my dreams come true.  

Stay focussed

In my first years, I often worked on multiple business projects at the same time. Whenever I encountered a bit of adversity, I’d stop the project and start on something new. However, I soon realised that I was going in circles. To create a long-lasting business, I had to break through the adversity. That’s when I decided to focus on one thing at a time. It has helped me to cut distractions and focus on achieving what I wanted most. It’s also helped me determine what I’m most passionate about and focus on that goal only.  

Surround yourself with good people

Although I’m currently a solo entrepreneur, it doesn’t mean I do everything by myself. I have a close group of partners, advisors, and friends who can help me go further and faster. Many of them are also entrepreneurs, so they can relate when I share business successes or failures. They can help me get back on track when needed, and I hopefully do the same for them.  

Executive Profile 

Scott van den Berg has been an entrepreneur for eight years. He is the founder of CELEB, an angel syndicate that allows accredited investors to invest in celebrity-founded businesses. He is also the founder of Influencer Capital, a company that facilitates equity deals between startups and celebrities. 

Prior to Influencer Capital, Scott van den Berg led an investment banking firm aiding European startups in securing vital capital. Throughout his career, he facilitated the raising of more than $25 million in funding. 

Scott van den Berg is a creator economy and celebrity business expert and thought leader, with posts that garner millions of views on LinkedIn.

The post Scott van den Berg on The Future of Influencer Marketing and Investing in Celebrity Businesses appeared first on The European Business Review.

Nicola Ebmeyer co-founded Gain.pro having identified a gap in the market for solid information on private companies. As she says, “We founded it because we needed it ourselves.” Here, she fills us in on the drivers of the company’s success.  

It’s an honour to meet you, Ms Ebmeyer! Thank you for spending this time with us. Could you please walk us through your journey from McKinsey to becoming a co-founder and co-CEO of Gain.pro? 

At McKinsey, I felt in a very good place. I had great colleagues and interesting client engagements. After five years when I was an engagement manager, I needed to evaluate whether I wanted to go for the partner track or do something else. That was when the entrepreneurial itch started to play up.  

My co-founder and I started Gain.pro because we identified an opportunity, a gap in the market for high-quality information on private companies, something we ourselves would have loved access to in our previous roles. In the beginning, we had five people, and now we have almost 250, with offices in London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Warsaw, Bangalore, and New York opening in 2024. Since our launch, we have received €20 million in funding and have gained over 150 clients. We serve leading investors (e.g., Blackstone, KKR, CVC), bankers (e.g., Goldman Sachs, UBS, Jefferies), consultants (e.g., McKinsey, BCG, Bain), as well as all four of the Big Four (KPMG, PwC, Deloitte, EY). As a team, we are dedicated to delivering the highest levels of client satisfaction in the industry. In fact, 100 per cent of surveyed organisations agree that Gain.pro is their go-to platform for private market data.  

With a background in consulting, what skills or lessons from your earlier career have proven most valuable in your role as co-CEO at Gain.pro?  

Firstly, I think it was my role in consulting that helped me identify the opportunity that grew into Gain.pro. I am very data-driven and analytical, and I had a clear understanding of what would help customers in PE, M&A, and consulting to make informed decisions. This was, and remains, absolutely key in what we do. 

Secondly, during my time at McKinsey I learned how to break down highly complex problems into more manageable pieces. I don’t shy away from ambiguity and I get excited by ambitious goals. In order to grow, you continuously need to push existing boundaries and embrace feedback as a gift. We could have stayed as a small Dutch player and created a comfortable environment for my co-founder and myself, but we thought globally from the get-go and that has been a great move for us, growing 100 per cent year on year.  

Lastly, I have experienced that you are best off if you lead a company with a high degree of transparency and a clear vision. At Gain.pro, we openly share an extensive set of KPIs with all of our employees and investors on a monthly basis. We are always honest about our performance, including during times that go less well than expected. This has created a lot of trust over the last years and people understand a lot better why we make certain decisions.  

In the tech industry, female leadership is still underrepresented. Would you tell our readers a little bit about your experiences as a woman in a leadership role in the tech sector and any insights on overcoming gender-related challenges? 

For those of us who are in the industry, particularly in leadership roles, we have to work a lot harder to overcome bias and get investors to believe in us. I’ve been overlooked by potential investors as a leader, referred to as “HR” and not been invited to events because it’s assumed I need to look after my child – challenges my co-CEO has not had to experience.  

My advice is to fight against any imposter syndrome and be firm about your achievements and your strengths. I was lucky enough to have a handful of senior sponsors that were instrumental at certain stages in my career. They leaned in to enable an international office transfer at McKinsey, pushed for an early promotion, and encouraged me to take on the role of co-CEO at Gain.pro. These sponsors don’t suddenly show up, but you have to gain their trust through hard work and consistency over time.  

When it comes to underrepresentation, it is definitely an issue in the tech industry, and female empowerment is at the top of my personal agenda. I think that the industry is actually one that lends itself to this; there is flexibility when it comes to where you work from, the hours you work, and so on. It’s also ideal for people of all ages – it’s not just for graduates – especially if you’re looking at having a family and continuing to work either full- or part-time.  

Diversity and inclusion are important aspects of a thriving workplace. Can you tell us about the strategies you’ve implemented to foster diversity and inclusion, and what benefits you have observed? 

Diversity and inclusion are incredibly important for us at Gain.pro, and it’s an area of the business that really resonates with me personally. 

At Gain.pro, we get to enjoy a mix of different cultures and traditions on a daily basis, thanks to our global presence. I myself have lived in eight different countries and our team is made up of colleagues of over 35 nationalities. We truly appreciate the impact that cultural diversity has on our professional and personal growth, which is why we never miss a chance to celebrate local traditions. In October, for example, we were able to celebrate the colourful festival of Dussehra, led by our Bangalore office.  

Also, one of our firm values states that “people are our greatest asset”. “We strive to create a non-hierarchical, inclusive, and trusting environment where your own contribution determines your progression.” We put a lot of emphasis on removing culture and gender biases. As part of this, we have just finalised a project with an HR consulting firm to create a career development and progression framework built on highly objective pillars to ensure equal opportunities for everyone at Gain.pro, independently of where people are located, who their direct manager is, and what gender the person has. 

As I alluded to in an earlier question, I have experienced the challenges of being a woman – and a mother – in business and, in particular, as a CEO. There remains a lot of bias in the industry, although, slowly, progress is being made and the culture of business is changing. I want every single individual at Gain.pro to recognise that they are valued and listened to just as the same as anyone else. 

The work-life balance is a concern for many professionals. How do you manage your own work-life balance, and do you have any tips for those striving to maintain it? 

Let me start by addressing the elephant in the room. You simply don’t build one of Europe’s fastest-growing businesses by working 9 to 5. As a founder, you need to be willing to “be on” all the time. A cyberattack, sickness of a key employee, a complaint of a major customer, an emerging competitor, a pandemic, economic headwind, all these things happen irrespective of your holiday plans, weekends, and personal commitments. It’s your job as a founder to address these issues and do so in a timely manner. This, however, doesn’t mean that you have to work 24/7. 

For me, work-life balance is a mindset question. I have found peace with the fact that I’m working more than most people do and I actually don’t mind it. I love the work I do. It energises me. Each year, I set priorities for myself. For example, 2023 is all about scaling Gain.pro to become the private market intelligence leader in Europe and beyond, spending quality time with my baby girl, and living a healthy lifestyle. This also means that I have actively deprioritised parts of my life that I put more emphasis on in the past, like living an active social life or going on adventurous travels. These are the priorities for this year; 2024 might look different again. 

I have always been a very structured person, which helps me to focus on the activities that have the biggest impact on my current set of priorities. As an early bird, I don’t mind getting up earlier. This gives me extra time to get ahead with work before our European colleagues start working, to do sports, or to spend time with my daughter before she goes to daycare. During normal working hours, I try to be laser focused and only work on things that only I can do. In the evenings, two hours are blocked for my daughter and cooking. I’m very passionate about food. Later in the evening, I try to reduce the amount of work that I’m still doing for Gain.pro, but I’m not always succeeding in it yet. 

To summarise, I think work-life balance is something very personal and it’s our own responsibility to create a set-up that works for us. No one else will do it for us. 

Communication is vital in leadership. How do you ensure that your messages and vision are effectively conveyed to employees and stakeholders, especially in a fast-paced environment?  

For us, it’s vital that every single employee knows how they contribute to our goals, and how their work impacts the business. It keeps people focused and that understanding keeps them working toward a shared goal. Of course, we have many employees across locations, so it’s vital we communicate often and transparently, and continue to talk about our vision and mission, so that they become ingrained in our culture and DNA as a business. All boats rise together. 

How do you foresee the landscape of investment and M&A evolving in the coming years, and what trends do you anticipate will have the most significant impact? 

The reversal of quantitative easing by central banks means that easy returns from rising company valuations are a thing of the past. This poses a challenge to private-equity firms, who now require more profitability growth in order to create healthy returns for their investors and themselves. It is now essential to drive organic sales growth, do buy-and-build acquisitions, or make operational improvements. 

This trend will also impact the nature of the mandates that advisors will be working on. Whilst the last years were all about sourcing and advising on more platform deals, more emphasis will be put on formulating winning add-on strategies and pulling operational levers in the portfolio companies in the future.  

Looking back on your journey, what is one piece of advice you wish you had received at the beginning of your career, and what difference would it have made?  

As a business owner, your objective doesn’t necessarily need to be that people like you, but to act in the best interest of the company, its employees, and shareholders. On a daily basis, I need to make trade-offs. Sometimes the right decision for the business is not the desired outcome for an individual. For instance, it’s our responsibility as leaders to hire the best people for the right roles, instead of building positions around people. Loyalty is important when building a business but you have to find the balance between people and roles and ensure that you’re getting what you need for your business in terms of skills and focus. 

Executive Profile

Nicola Ebmeyer co-founded Gain.pro in 2018. As co-CEO, she leads a global workforce of 250 employees in developing a world-class private market intelligence platform. Nicola finds inspiration by focusing on building a product that she would have loved to use herself when she was still sitting at the other side of the table. Prior to Gain.pro, Nicola spent her career in consulting with McKinsey. She holds a master’s degree in Strategy and International Management from the University of St Gallen in Switzerland. 

The post Providing the High-quality Lowdown on the World’s Private Companies appeared first on The European Business Review.

In the old days, all we had to memorise was a birthday or two. Now, the internet and all its security ramifications oblige us to grapple with a seemingly infinite list of passwords, in both our professional and our private, lives. But, as Michael Crandell, CEO of Bitwarden, tells us, it doesn’t have to be so hard.

Good day, Mr Crandell! Can we start with a few words on what made you want to work in cybersecurity?

My interest in security began with encryption, when I was implementing encryption technology as part of a document storage system. The idea that I could make a document inaccessible to anyone – including the system in which it was stored – and then return it to readable form for verified users, was exciting. I realised then the tremendous potential for achieving security through a multi-layered approach.

Was there something in particular about information security that drew you in?

As former New York Times cybersecurity reporter and author Nicole Perlroth said during the recent Bitwarden Open Source Security Summit, the fight against global cyberattacks isn’t just the responsibility of governments; businesses and individuals all play critical roles. What inspires me is the opportunity every day to help businesses solve their password security challenges, to help individuals stay safe online, and to work with a talented team that is passionate about those same goals.

Launched in 2015, Bitwarden has consistently provided the global community of online users with a way to securely manage their sensitive information and promote overall good credential hygiene. What moved you to finally establish your company?

The founder and CTO of Bitwarden is Kyle Spearrin. He recognised the need for a more comprehensive password management product that could meet the needs of end users and businesses. As an open source solution, Bitwarden views trust and transparency differently from competitors. We host our source code publicly on Github, which means anyone is free to audit and contribute to the codebase. Community, accountability, and code quality are key differentiators of the open source approach we take at Bitwarden.

For companies looking to establish a solid cybersecurity posture today, what common problems might they run into and how would you advise them to deal with them?

Our common challenge is also our great opportunity – namely, to empower employees to improve their personal security practices. Improving corporate security starts at the personal level, where employees are not only educated and aware of best practices, but also have the necessary tools to follow similar practices in their personal and home lives. When security tools are complex and difficult to use, adoption is going to be slow for your company. If you educate your employees about password management and multi-factor authentication and give them tools that improve their workflows and daily lives in and outside of work, you’ll see much less resistance. Think of it as helping people do business faster, safely.

In a survey conducted by your company, it was found that 92 percent of IT decision-makers reported reusing passwords across multiple sites. Aside from the tediousness of having to remember multiple passwords, why do you think even industry leaders struggle with implementing a password security scheme?

It’s simple. People hate passwords, but they love their password managers. Until you use a password manager daily, you don’t even realise how much time you have spent unnecessarily trying to keep track of everything. I think people have good intentions; it’s a case of “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”  Once they’ve had the “Aha!” moment of using a password manager, they’re on board.

Unfortunately, not every company provides password managers to all of their employees. So employees revert to do-it-yourself practices, which involves reusing passwords and creating simple passwords. 

However, things are changing as companies realise they can have happy and secure employees when they provide them with convenient tools for managing secure credentials. 

You’re the CEO of Bitwarden, working in the realm of internet security. Have you ever fallen victim to an online scam?

Thankfully, I have not been scammed, but a few years ago I was notified that LinkedIn had been hacked and my email and password were exposed. My initial concern was not about my LinkedIn account being compromised, but whether this log-in and password that had been exposed were also used for any of my bank accounts. Since I was using a password manager at the time, I had strong and unique passwords set up for every site, and I realized the only thing I had to do to re-secure my account was update my LinkedIn password and the problem was solved. I know at Bitwarden we provide that same protection for millions of users every day.

In your opinion, what exactly is so bad about passwords?

I wouldn’t claim that passwords are bad. Passwords have been around since ancient times and will continue to be a part of our daily lives both personally and professionally. Passwords are ingrained in all of us; people know how to use them and, as long as they are strong and unique, they do their job.

It’s how we interact with and manage passwords that needs improvement. Businesses and individuals today use hundreds of online accounts and applications that require passwords for access. To deal with this, people tend to use the same password for multiple accounts. When a weak password has been compromised, it compromises all other accounts that use the same password. For businesses, the ramifications of a leaked password are often disastrous. The SolarWinds and Colonial Pipeline incidents are a couple examples out of many.

Passwords by themselves are not bad. When they are improperly managed – that’s what’s bad.

In what way can Bitwarden help with an organisation’s data protection and cybersecurity? What needs to be done by companies and organisations to avoid data breaches?

Every company is different and security systems should be tailored to the company’s size, structure, existing tools and resources. Cybercriminals can come through various vectors across the organisation. Just like you wouldn’t lock your windows but keep your front door open, companies need a multi-layered approach to security.

The easiest way to mitigate data breaches is to use strong and unique passwords for every account and service. What isn’t so easy is that, for most people, remembering these passwords is impossible. Enter Bitwarden. Most simply, Bitwarden provides a way for people to create, securely store and easily access their passwords anywhere they need them. But that’s just the beginning. For companies that are scaling, they need an easy way to manage secure password storage and sharing across multiple teams and functions.

So, the simplest first step toward cybersecurity and data protection is to start with the one thing every employee uses daily: their passwords. Giving employees a password management tool that simplifies their workflows is mutually beneficial for them and their companies. Employees will want to use Bitwarden, and IT teams will have better password security control.

Can you highlight a few core features of password management systems and their benefits to teams who mainly work remotely?

Password management systems should: 

• Offer to store existing passwords in a secure vault automatically when a user is accessing a new website 
• Generate strong passwords for new accounts when they are created by the user 
• Autofill username and password credentials when the user visits a website already stored in their vault 
• Allow users to work across multiple operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux), mobile devices (Android, Apple iOS), browser extensions (Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Safari, Edge, Vivaldi, Opera), and a web vault.

For remote teams, a few of our top Enterprise features include: 

Organisations allow teams to collaborate or share portions of a business vault. When you create an organisation within a vault, you can then associate users and vault items together to share log-ins, notes, cards and identities that are owned by the organisation, which can be a team, business, family or any group that needs to securely share data. 

SSO integration. Bitwarden offers multiple authentication options with zero-knowledge encryption and delivers the right configuration for each company’s SSO requirements. 

Event and audit logs. This provides a record of events, activities and changes that occur across your company’s system operations. It’s an incredibly valuable resource for IT teams, admins and auditors who want to examine potentially suspicious activities on a network, or troubleshoot issues. 

Free Families plan for employees. Bitwarden recently announced that customers on the Enterprise plan can offer their employees a personal Bitwarden Families plan, including five additional accounts for their loved ones. 

A comprehensive list of Bitwarden Enterprise features can be found at bitwarden.com. 

You’ve also mentioned that despite the common knowledge that using unsafe sharing methods can lead to a cyberattack, people still continue to engage in risky credential practices. How would you encourage them to be more security-conscious?

At Bitwarden, we recommend a simple concept called “the triangle of security success”. It’s three simple steps: 

1. Start using a password manager. Bitwarden offers a fully featured free version, so anyone should be able to get started with little fuss.  
2. Secure your email account. It’s more than a digital mailbox in which you receive messages. It’s often the way websites verify who you are by sending a confirmation email, so you’ll want to add some additional security measures, such as two-factor authentication. 
3. Keep going and implement two-factor authentication everywhere you can, starting with your password manager and email system. This adds another layer of security in the form of an additional log-in step, over and above your password.  

On that same note, why do you think password security is such a polarising topic within the crypto community in particular?

Actually, it appears to us that there is a lot of communal rallying around increased attention to credentials within the crypto community. Most people recognise that it is nearly impossible to keep track of cryptocurrency credentials without the help of a password manager. And with cryptocurrency and web3 trends putting more responsibility and emphasis on decentralisation and end-user control, password security practices become even more important. There are always a few open debates as to whether you should store your seed phrases in a password manager, but that is really up to individuals and their unique security profiles. Overall, we see the push to crypto currency and the emphasis on end-user credential management as just another reason folks need a password manager. 

How would you advise companies to promote a stronger security culture?

Build consistency. Education and awareness are key but it’s not enough to offer one employee training session and think the lesson will sink in. Security is a process – we have to learn good security habits over time, just like we learn healthy habits over time, such as going to the gym or eating healthily. It doesn’t happen overnight. The threat landscape is always changing and how you build a security-conscious culture will need to keep pace. 

Establish open dialogue. In addition to regular security awareness training, make it OK for employees to ask questions or report security incidents. Sometimes, people are embarrassed if they accidentally clicked on a phishing email or downloaded a malicious link. Sometimes, they’re worried about repercussions. Sometimes, they simply don’t know. Give them a safe and open forum – we’re all in this together – and tell people: “If you see something, say something.” 

Bestow responsibility on all. Online security isn’t merely IT’s job. Cybercriminals exploit human weaknesses and most attacks are said to rely in some part on human involvement. Giving your employees security tools is good, but giving them accessible tools that boost security without slowing down productivity – such as a password manager – is even better.  

When do you think we’ll see a ‘password-less future’ and how much of a challenge will it be adapting to that future?

Unlike other password managers, the Bitwarden name intentionally does not include the word password in order to reflect the broader vision of creating more secure online experiences for everyone. Bitwarden currently integrates passwordless approaches, including biometrics, security keys, and single sign-on.

The passwordless future is here today. But the pace at which individuals and businesses adopt new forms of authentication will continue to evolve over time. Bitwarden enterprise customers deploy passwordless technologies in phases, based on various factors such as size, departmental needs, IT resources, employee personas, and more. These factors shape how quickly customers can transition into other forms of authentication. Many of our customers start the passwordless journey by integrating applications with single sign-on systems and identity providers, based on tokens or other passwordless entry points.  

As Wired’s “best choice” password manager, how can Bitwarden secure the “virtual front door” for good?

Many data breaches start through the same attack vector: account compromise through weak passwords. This is true even for large enterprises with advanced security controls in place, simply because we’re human. We’re all susceptible to clicking on phishing links in emails, downloading malicious attachments, or unintentionally visiting malicious websites.   

Bitwarden helps enterprises on several levels:  

• For IT admins and anyone in charge of cybersecurity, Bitwarden provides them with granular access control and user management to configure and optimise overall security. 
• For employees and end users, Bitwarden offers an easy way for them to generate, store and secure complex passwords. This can go a long way toward ensuring that all work-related accounts and services have strong passwords.  
• For executive and leadership teams, Bitwarden takes you one step closer to building a security-conscious culture across your entire company, where everyone embraces the role they play in cybersecurity. When you give employees accessible security tools that make their lives easier, it’s that much easier to ingrain a sense of accountability and ownership.

This article was originally published on March 13, 2022.

Executive Profile

Michael Crandell is the chief executive officer at Bitwarden. Before Bitwarden, Michael was the CEO and co-founder of RightScale, where he led the cloud management platform during the first decade of cloud computing. Michael received his bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and completed graduate studies at Harvard University. He began his career as a software engineer, self-taught, coding in assembly language.  

The post Cybersecurity Made Simple: Taming the Password appeared first on The European Business Review.

Good day, Mr Evans! Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today. Could we begin with a few words on how you and your friends founded Mindera?

Absolutely. Our story began in March 2014. I distinctly remember wearing a pair of Paul Smith socks at the moment I realised it was the right time to move on from my job at a big corporate company and start something new.

At the time, I was 46 and had just bought a new house with my wife, Hetal, who I now work alongside at Mindera, and our two small children. I’ve never been someone who can switch off. I’m always thinking, “What’s next?” I went to my garden shed, of all places, and tried to figure out what was next for me. I had two options: get another corporate job or start a new company.

Then, over pizza in the summer with some friends (we were working together), we sat down with a simple goal: to work together in a happy place, not driven by cash, but by getting things done right every day and, importantly, where people come first. This is when Mindera was born.

Mindera has grown from its humble start-up roots to a multinational company with locations all over the world. We’re curious about the key strategies you implemented to scale the company while maintaining its core values and objectives.

People and relationships are the foundations to our success. You could say our journey is not your typical one and it may seem unorthodox compared to traditional tech companies, but we are proudly different and this difference is a cornerstone of our success. We’ve grown globally, but we all stay connected together, whilst giving our locations autonomy in their markets.

One thing we can attribute our success to is our people-first approach. This is perhaps our most notable difference and something that really sets us apart. We have no organisational structure, no managers. From day one, we placed our emphasis on our people, prioritising them over financials and creating a hierarchy.

Another is the way we do our work. We work on partnerships and relationships with a focus on doing things the right way. We don’t refer to companies we work with as “clients”; they are our partners. We work collaboratively with them as an extension of their teams or autonomous teams to deliver success and these partnerships have lasted almost as long as we’ve been in existence and have built further success through our relationships and referrals of the work we’ve delivered. Incidentally, our first client was an old friend of mine I bumped into on a flight. I asked if he wanted to work with us and he said yes.

Being true to our values, allowing our people to thrive, and building relationships are the strategies which have got us to where we are and will take us forward.

Collaboration seems pivotal in the B2B space. How do these collaborations between technology companies and other businesses ultimately benefit end consumers, even if these consumers might not directly interact with the technology itself?

For me, it’s not business to business; it’s human to human. Tech is created for people, and behind every great piece of tech is a person. When we are working on projects, we always focus on the human element and think about how humans will interact with the tech. It’s about getting a deeper understanding of what our partners and their customers need (even if they don’t know that themselves) and that’s how people benefit.

Could you please provide an overview of the Teal organisational model and how it differs from more traditional hierarchical structures? How did you come across this model and decide to implement it at Mindera?

The Teal organisational model is one which is centred on humans. It has no formal organisational structure and instead champions autonomy and collaboration and focuses on relationships.

Why we embraced this again boils down to our founding principle of creating an environment where people come first. I’ve always believed that the team is more important than the individual, and so we wanted to build a company where decisions are made by those impacted most, and where people have the autonomy to try out new things.

We wanted an environment where the lessons learned from failures are seen as part of our growth and success. We give our Minders (how we lovingly refer to our employees) more responsibility and opportunities for personal and professional development.

Naturally, as with all structures, there will be difficulties but, ultimately, it’s about doing your best to ensure that people are central to everything we do.

One distinctive feature of the Teal model is the absence of formal job titles. How has this impacted the way work is assigned, recognised, and celebrated within the company? Are there any challenges you’ve encountered with this approach?

I think, as with anything, nothing is ever perfect and there will be challenges, but we found that this model is ideal for us. For people joining us from corporate jobs, it can be a bit of a culture shock and I suppose it could be argued that this is where challenges with our model do tend to arise. However, once people get settled, it becomes seamless.

We see the traditional way of job titles and corporate structures as a bottleneck to progress. For me, If you have a job title, next comes objectives and, in a split second, you have hired a great person but you’re not fulfilling their potential because you’re effectively “putting them in a box”.

However, at Mindera, everyone is encouraged to make decisions with the support of mentors and collaborators, not commanders. Through our Teal model, we are effectively “self-organised”, as this encourages individual action and shared responsibility. Crucial to this and key to our success are trust, collaboration, and communication. Collectively, everyone takes responsibility and everyone celebrates each other globally.

We’re interested in learning more about the specific courses Mindera offers to various groups like women, people in prison, and young people. How do these courses contribute to improving pathways to technology?

I’ve always been an advocate of giving back to society and this has been something at the heart of Mindera since day one.

Our Education journey started with a dream. It was simply based on the idea that “there should be no labels” on young adults, anything from neurodiversity to a physical disability or indeed an invisible one. The Mindera School is a home for people who previously might have had a label but certainly would never have one at Mindera. The “label” concept came from my own experience of having a childhood stammer.

We created Mindera Education, which includes the Mindera School, Tech Camps, and Mindera Code Academy, because we love helping people to grow and develop skills. Through Code Academy, we teach the best engineering practices,designed to help people find new opportunities in the job market

We also run Tech Camps, providing young people in institutional environments with a chance to learn about coding and programming in a holiday environment. Personally, seeing young people (12+) attending our camps and seeing them flourish is a truly wonderful sight. One of my proudest moments.

We also have the Mindera Foundation starting, which will enable each location to give back to the local community. The charitable trust will spearhead tech education for those who are underprivileged.

Education is a passion of mine, as I believe tech should be made available to everyone. The most disadvantaged are often the most excluded and, as a tech business, Mindera should have a role to play in democratising tech.

Mindera’s success is undoubtedly tied to the talent within the company. Could you please discuss your approach to attracting, developing, and retaining top talent in a competitive technology landscape? How do you foster continuous learning and growth among your employees?

Talent can be a challenge for businesses of all shapes and sizes. In our industry, it’s been particularly challenging post-COVID, with employee expectations changing and demand for talent ever-increasing.

I’ll again go back to our values and being people-first. We put people at the heart of everything we do and we’ve always been advocates of letting people be themselves and ensuring we have a happy team. Our people become shareholders, so having ownership within the business certainly plays a part in our team.

We want people to be themselves and to have a say in where they want to take their careers. If there are particular passion points or things that interest them, we give them the space and time to do this. We also let people work in a way that best suits them. Giving this autonomy is really important in not only helping people fulfil their potential but also helping our company grow.

What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs and leaders who are looking to start and grow their own technology-focused companies, especially in a way that aligns with social impact and inclusivity?

It all starts with a dream. Our dream was to create a company that would make a positive impact for people. In the end, I followed my heart and Mindera was born. Be brave and don’t be afraid to take the plunge.

Be vulnerable. I have a stammer, so sometimes when I do my weekly updates and I feel low, I stammer and I’m very open about this. Running a business isn’t about being a demigod; it is about sharing stories of what we are doing with all the normal humanness intertwined.

Play to your strengths, find your superpower, but also find people to balance the areas you aren’t as strong in.

Be authentic, stay true to your values, and don’t be afraid of being different. You’ll have some bumps on the way, but have belief in yourself and your team and you’ll overcome these. We all make mistakes. Learning from them can be some of the most important lessons you learn and will be just as important in shaping your success as when things go well.

Think of everyone else first. It’s not about chasing money. Our ethos has been that if we deliver, then more work will come and we can reward everyone. Treat everyone the same. We have an ethos: “We are all the same, just a different skill set.”

Give back to society. You will know when that time is right. Individually, it is hard to change the world but, together, I believe we can make a real difference if we are deliberate about looking after those less fortunate than ourselves.

Always leave the door open for anyone to return. At certain points on the journey, make time to thank those who helped create the company.

No clocks. This isn’t about clock-watching. This is to provide a sense that it is never a better time to do something than now.

Finally, you know when you have something special when you cannot discuss the end of the journey – you just talk about different routes.

Executive Profile

Paul Evans is a dad, husband, brother, friend, and also the founder of Mindera, a global technology company where people come first. In 2014, Paul wanted to do things differently and build his own company where autonomy is championed with people at its heart and where the focus was getting things done the right way. After some contemplation in his garden shed and over pizza with friends in 2014, Paul created Mindera.

The post Doing it Right by Putting Humans First: Interview with Paul Evans appeared first on The European Business Review.

The biotech industry, a realm of constant innovation and transformation, is driven by brilliant minds determined to revolutionise healthcare. One such entity making waves in the field is SR One Capital Management, a prominent transatlantic life sciences investment firm. In an exclusive interview with Dr. Simeon George, a seasoned investor and executive at SR One, we delve into the journey of this renowned venture capitalist into the biotech domain, the key qualities crucial for success in this ever-changing industry, and how the firm identifies potential investment opportunities.

The Journey into Biotech and Passion for Impact

Dr. Simeon George’s journey into the biotech sector began with an unwavering desire to become a physician. Reflecting on his early aspirations, he fondly states, “My earliest memories are wanting to be a physician, wanting to treat patients, wanting to basically problem-solve when people are going through some of the hardest challenges in their lives.” This innate drive to help others and solve complex medical challenges fueled his determination to study medicine. Throughout his medical education, Dr. George’s passion for making a difference in healthcare only grew stronger.

Interestingly, his career path took a unique turn when he decided to pursue an MBA alongside his medical degree. This decision was driven by an eagerness to explore the intersection of healthcare and business. “I also, frankly, was interested in the creativity and the sparks that come from bringing new products to patients that can impact at a much larger scale,” he shares. Combining medical expertise with business acumen opened up new avenues for him to create transformative impact beyond individual patient care.

Key Qualities for Success in the Biotech Industry

Success in the biotech field demands a combination of critical qualities. Dr. George emphasises the importance of passion and patient focus as fundamental motivations for anyone working in the industry. He states, “You really have to be passionate about working in this field. I think it has to start, at least for me, with this patient focus and orientation of wanting to really bring important new products to patients.” A deep-seated commitment to bringing groundbreaking products to patients can be a powerful driving force.

He also stresses the significance of innovation and continuous improvement, seeking to challenge the status quo. Dr. George explains, “I talk about this idea of rewriting the medical textbooks, of wanting to do things differently, thinking about innovation, continuing to improve what we’re doing today.” This commitment to pushing the boundaries of medical science is a driving force in his work. By constantly seeking novel solutions to medical challenges, he embodies the spirit of innovation that characterises the biotech revolution.

Identifying Promising Investment Opportunities

SR One Capital Management’s success lies in its ability to identify and invest in emerging trends in the biotech industry. To accomplish this, Dr. George and his team maintain a strong network and stay at the forefront of scientific developments. Dr. George explains that “(…) it’s a combination, I’d say it’s maybe two or threefold. One is the networking piece, you need to be in the network, understanding what’s happening at the scientific forefront. Regularly engaging with experts, staying updated on research papers, and attending conferences are all part of our commitment to staying informed about the latest breakthroughs in the field.”

Navigating Economic Uncertainties

Like any industry, the biotech sector faces economic uncertainties from time to time. Dr. George offers valuable advice to biotech-focused venture capital firms on how to navigate through these challenges. He believes that their primary focus should be on the aspects within their control. “The job of a venture capitalist isn’t to necessarily focus or worry about things that they can’t control at the macroeconomic level,” he advises. Instead, they should concentrate on securing capital, building a strong investment thesis, and having confidence in the teams they back.

By maintaining a clear vision and staying steadfast during unpredictable economic situations, venture capital firms can better weather the storms and continue driving innovation in the field.

Advice for Biotech Companies Seeking Private Investment

For biotech companies seeking private investment, particularly during uncertain times, Dr. George offers valuable guidance on how to attract investors. Having a clear value proposition is essential. “You have to have the conviction, the courage of what you’re doing, your beliefs around why you’re doing it,” he advises. Investors are more likely to be drawn to companies that demonstrate a strong sense of purpose and conviction in their goals.

Additionally, being open to feedback and continuously refining their approach is vital for companies looking to secure investment. Networking relentlessly and engaging with potential investors allow entrepreneurs to showcase their passion and expertise, increasing the likelihood of successful partnerships.

Advice for Aspiring Biotech Entrepreneurs

For aspiring biotech entrepreneurs, Dr. George’s advice centres around two key aspects: conviction and talent acquisition. He again emphasises the importance of unwavering conviction in one’s vision. In a field where challenges are abundant, it is this sense of purpose that will drive entrepreneurs forward even in the face of adversity.

Moreover, he highlights the significance of building a talented team to support the realisation of their vision. “You need to be able to recruit talent around you, and retain talent,” he stresses. An exceptional team with diverse expertise and a shared passion for the company’s mission is crucial for success in the biotech industry.

Defining Success in the Biotech Industry

Success in the biotech industry, according to Dr. George, is a culmination of several factors. At its core lies resilience and a refusal to give up when confronted with challenges. In Dr. George’s perspective, success is marked by resilience and never giving up in the face of challenges. He states, “Success for me… starts with never giving up, no matter what happens. You try, you fail, you try, you fail, you try, you fail, you just keep going.”

Ups and downs mark the journey in biotech, and it is this steadfast perseverance that propels individuals and companies forward. Beyond perseverance, Dr. George also emphasises the importance of maintaining exceptionally high standards of excellence and holding oneself accountable to those standards. Learning from failures and being open to serendipity, or “increasing your luck surface area,” as he terms it, are also crucial elements of success.

SR One Capital Management’s journey in the biotech landscape is a testament to their passion for innovation, patient impact, and unwavering commitment to excellence. Dr. Simeon George’s insights provide valuable guidance to aspiring entrepreneurs and biotech companies seeking private investment. By staying at the forefront of scientific developments, focusing on patient needs, and embracing innovation, the firm continues to be a key player in the biotech venture capital space.

As the biotech industry reshapes healthcare, SR One Capital Management remains dedicated to partnering with visionary entrepreneurs and bringing transformative therapies to patients worldwide. Dr. George and the team at SR One embody the spirit of innovation that fuels the biotech revolution. Through resilience, strategic vision, and an unwavering commitment to making a positive impact on patients’ lives, they navigate the complex biotech landscape, driving positive change in healthcare on a global scale.

Executive Profile

Simeon George, MD is CEO and Managing Partner of SR One. Simeon co-founded SR One Capital Management following its spin-out from GSK in 2020, raising over $1 billion across two venture funds in that time. Previously, he worked in management consulting (Bain & Co.) and investment banking (Goldman Sachs). Simeon led SR One’s investments in several marquee deals including CRISPR Therapeutics (CRSP), Principia Biopharma (PRNB), Turning Point Therapeutics (TPTX), Progyny (PGNY), and he co-founded both Nkarta Therapeutics (NKTX) and Arcellx (ACLX).

The post Pioneering Biotech Investment with Patient-Centric Vision appeared first on The European Business Review.

Traditionally, the welfare of a company’s employees lies within its own control. But what if that same company opts to outsource? Who looks after employee well-being then? Clearly, the working environment and employment policies of the outsourcing provider are key. Rajnish Sinha, CPO at outsourcing provider TaskUs, outlines his company’s approach. 

Good day, Mr. Sinha! Thank you for giving us your time today. Could we begin with a few words on how you got started in your career in human resources?

Thank you for this opportunity. HR was actually my backup plan, not my first love; business operations was my sole focus. I was a Business major, but liked the people and business combination and went to the best HR school in India: XLRI Jamshedpur. I started my career in consumer goods and then spent a lot of time in tech and consulting, mostly with Genpact, a GE spin-off. I have really loved the opportunity of driving impact on people across my tenure in the function.

What do you find most intriguing about human resources?

I’ve always found building human connections to be very important, and particularly in my role as Chief People Officer of a global company, I find bridging cultures and forging connections across the world particularly intriguing.

Working with global talent excites me. Being in a growth industry, we are able to provide opportunities to many people all across the world. 

Founded in 2008, TaskUs has been hard at work for decades delivering “ridiculously good next-generation digital outsourcing” for everyone from new-age disruptors to established icons. What’s the most exciting part of the job for you?

TaskUs gets to work with some of the most disruptive, established brands in the world—as well as some of the most exciting up-and-coming businesses. It is an amazing opportunity to provide ridiculously great solutions to the world’s most innovative brands. 

But the real joy is working with refreshingly smart, creative, and transparent individuals. It is exciting to help produce the best working experience for our people to enjoy their work and soon create world-changing businesses for the brands we partner with. We all share the success as one of our Core Values is TWMTDW (Teamwork Makes the Dream Work). That’s one of our mantras.

Since its humble beginnings in a small space above an auto shop, TaskUs has grown exponentially and received numerous awards including CCW’s “2021 BPO of the Year” and Recruitment Hacker’s “2021 Best Localization Champion.” How do you think the company’s culture has played a role in its success?

Our company culture is a direct reflection of our people. And it all starts with our leadership. Co-founders Bryce Maddock and Jaspar Weir have always been steadfast in creating a company that they truly believe in, embodying a dynamic culture that puts people at the heart of TaskUs. Their unique vision for a people-first company has led to consistent growth, even during a global pandemic. 

We know that investing in employee experience helps us keep our employees happy. We believe that, happy employees equate to happy clients. 

Our employees are members of a closely integrated team that our clients can see and trust. I believe TaskUs has so far demonstrated a strong commitment to building a supportive workplace for all our teammates, increasing business transparency, and creating genuine partnerships with our clients. Apart from that, we are dedicated to making a positive impact on the world around us.

TaskUs has also been a consistent recipient of the “Best Company for Women” and “Best Company for Diversity” awards for many years now. What do you suggest to companies looking to be more inclusive?

For companies who want to be more inclusive, I recommend not only talking the talk, but walking the walk. At TaskUs, we’re proud to cultivate a safe, inclusive, and equitable environment that empowers every person to collaborate and thrive together regardless of age, gender, race, culture, and background. We’ve built a culture where everyone is committed to creating a positive environment and establishing a space where every employee feels included and supported. 

We’ve built gender parity into our workforce and leadership team. We advocate for our teammates and their communities. We also created spaces for all of our teammates to voice concerns and share ideas for continuous improvement because we know the work of building a truly inclusive, welcoming space is never completely done.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion also start from Day 1 at TaskUs. As an equal-opportunity employer, we are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees. When it comes to hiring, we believe that the more diverse the workforce is, the better. 

What do you find most challenging about leading people operations for a team of overnearly 40,000 people? What is most rewarding?

The most challenging thing is also the most rewarding! As of December last year, our team is located across 23 locations in 10 different countries. We have such a large and diverse workforce, so working with TaskUs means having the opportunity to establish cohesive yet unique corporate norms across our global locations.

Leading this large team, especially during COVID, has been a bit difficult to have face-to-face interactions and have deeper insight into our employees’ lives, but it has also provided us with an opportunity to explore more hybrid and remote tools and roles. 

How would you suggest that business leaders maximize employee engagement and retention?

We’re proud to have a workplace culture that genuinely prioritizes employee wellbeing and engagement. I strongly believe recognizing employee battles inside and outside their professional life is the first step to a healthy and well-rounded workforce. Over the past year, TaskUs doubled the number of life coaches and mental health professionals available to our employees. Our Wellness and Resiliency department also served as a critical lifeline for many employees as we shifted our global workforce to work-from-home early on in the pandemic. 

Additionally, we encourage learning through experience with initiatives like the IdeaUs portal, which empowers our employees to share new business solutions and ideas to address current roadblocks in customer support. Instead of taking direction from leadership, the IdeaUs portal allows solutions to flow upward. Given the success of our people-first program at TaskUs, I think companies today definitely need to take employee feedback more seriously, prioritize high-quality mental health support and resources, and encourage learning through social experience. 

Being a people-first company, investing in employee well-being is a winning proposition. It leads not just to higher employee engagement, but also productivity and improved morale. Although beyond offering services to employees, it all comes down to embedding a wellness mindset into the company culture and having leaders lead by example. 

Your company places great emphasis on prioritizing your people and building a strong culture across global offices. Can you elaborate on what this means in practice and how it impacts your work for your clients?

TaskUs is a launchpad for disruptors to achieve growth and global scale, and employee experience is key to our success. We directly invest in our own people by bolstering valuable tools, technology, resources, and training programs solely dedicated to upskilling our workforce. 

With over 40,000 employees scattered across 10 different countries, TaskUs has an incredibly international, culturally diverse workforce. We place great emphasis on building a strong people-first culture because it’s what unites us. As a global organization with offices around the world, we want to ensure that we are leveraging every opportunity to enhance our employee morale.

Mental health and wellness are also a primary focus for the TaskUs people team. Why should businesses prioritize devoting resources to ensure the wellbeing of their teams?

Wellness and Resiliency programming has become a significant differentiator for TaskUs. Simply put, it’s the right thing to do. But to make a business case, while there is a cost to making these resources and benefits available for team members, there is also a cost to not offering them. Doing nothing to invest in the wellbeing of team members results in rises in benefits claims regarding mental and physical wellness needs, increases in absenteeism, decreases in productivity, and lower employee satisfaction which can lead to burnout and attrition. Being proactive and making resources available to support team members is a clear choice.

Our clients are receptive and ready to invest because we are able to show proof of the benefits through measurable data and outcomes. They’ve also shown an increased trust, which allows for more autonomy in our working relationships.

TaskUs recently expanded further in Europe with new offices in Greece, Poland, and Romania. How have you scaled your company’s culture to these new cities?

As a people-first company, we always take into consideration the needs of our people in all our geos. We have quarterly eSAT surveys to assess this. We deep dive into the responses in this survey to understand how we can further improve our initiatives and benefits for our employees.

We also try to instill our Core Values from day 1. We constantly talk about them, and recognize people who live these values inside and outside of work.

Employee benefits and programs are a big part of the TaskUs culture and overall employee experience. As we do with every new site, we look at the specific needs and maximize the benefits for team members at that site. For example, in Greece, we’ve ensured that every teammate is automatically enrolled in a free insurance, medical, and disability expenses plan, and is eligible to enroll an unlimited number of immediate family members. 

For Ireland, we have a unique gym reimbursement program as we firmly believe in a physically and mentally healthy workforce. We also provide a bike-to-work scheme wherein our teammates can avail government tax relief offering tax-free bikes for cycling to work.

Apart from those geo-specific benefits, we also have our global initiatives for all our teammates to enjoy. We offer free mental health consultations to our employees and their dependents. TaskUs also believes in giving ample career and professional development opportunities for all employees. Apart from our in-house upskilling and skills certification programs, we also have a Tuition Fee Reimbursement Program that covers a portion of the cost for furthering education toward an Associate, Bachelor, Master, or Doctoral degree, or approved certification program.

Many people would agree that the team is the backbone of any service business. And it’s even more important in terms of engineering expertise and the ability to deliver technological products. What’s your approach to building and evolving the team?

We know that in today’s working landscape, it’s as much of an interview for a prospective employee to get to know us as it is for us to get to know them. So, we’ve taken strides to make our hiring process the best in the business, to put our best foot forward, and show what our culture of respect is all about in the first impression. This helps make us a desired place to work for ridiculously talented candidates. 

We also provide exceptional training for each team member and ensure they are not only valued members of the TaskUs team, but also our partner companies’ teams. 

In a post-pandemic world, what issues might a company need to take into account when considering outsourcing?

We’ve all learned in the last two years that work is not the most important thing. So, as companies think about the work they want to accomplish and decide whether outsourcing is right for them, those companies should first prioritize the people who will be doing the work before the work itself. 

They should ensure that any outsourcing partner also aligns with this priority and provides a working experience for team members that respects work-life balance and provides fair and equitable compensation and benefits.

The world of work has changed so much just in the last two years. What further changes do you predict for the future of the workplace?

Predictions can be tricky because none of us expected a global pandemic over two years ago, and we can never really know for sure what the future will hold. What we have found, though, is that flexibility is the most important attribute of a successful business in times of uncertainty and change. I think that flexibility will continue to define the future of work—flexible schedules, flexible workspaces, flexible locations, and flexible leadership that can adapt to what its people need, not expect people to adapt to a company’s rigid ways.

This article was originally published on 11 March 2022.

Executive Profile

As Chief People Officer at TaskUs — a provider of outsourced digital services and next-generation customer experience to innovative and disruptive technology companies — Rajnish Sinha is responsible for leading the company’s human resources function, including recruitment, engagement, retention, and preserving the TaskUs culture. Previously, Rajnish held roles at Genpact, the HCL Group and Ernst & Young. Rajnish has earned degrees from the University of Delhi and XLRI Jamshedpur in India.

The post Outsourcing That Puts People First appeared first on The European Business Review.

When you need to process your company’s data rapidly and cost-effectively, proximity to the edge can bring significant gains. Rob Coupland, CEO of Pulsant, explains why.  

It’s a pleasure to speak with you, Mr Coupland! You joined Pulsant as CEO in 2019, just when the whole world shifted upon itself. How has your role evolved since then?   

It’s great to be speaking with you too! The year 2019 was an interesting time for any CEO to join an organisation. Not long after my appointment, the pandemic forced huge changes on everyone and prompted UK businesses to adapt their whole way of working.   

There wasn’t a playbook on how to manage it, so it was all about listening and learning as we went along. For me, it reinforced my belief that people matter. It’s important to surround yourself with the right people to get the best perspectives on how to manage your business and clients through these crises. Communication became the priority; we set up a regular Thursday all-hands call to answer questions and manage everyone’s concerns when we didn’t necessarily have all the answers ourselves. But that honesty was important to me, as we battled the unknown together. It created a real sense of unity and we’ve kept that open house ever since. I’m proud of how we worked through the pandemic, without needing to furlough anyone and creating a sense of team spirit that’s driving us on to bigger and better things. People respect honesty and will work with you if you give them that. 

As a CEO, I have to focus on the numbers and business success, but equally important to me is ensuring that our business offers our team a vision to buy into that can fuel their own professional goals and give them the opportunities to develop and grow. 

Pulsant is the UK’s hybrid cloud specialist, providing trusted cloud, colocation, and networking services to help businesses reach their digital goals. Can you talk about the company’s realignment and what you’re trying to accomplish? 

Pulsant has a strong heritage in the technology sector. When I joined, I realised that we had a real opportunity to thrive in the edge infrastructure space. We already had a lot of technology in place, so over the last three years we have refocused our priorities and have been making big investments in our core portfolio to really bring it in line with that strategic vision. 

We started by developing our national network backbone to connect our regional sites across the UK, followed by investing in our core technology platform to create the network fabric to power application delivery, and we have delivered that with platformEDGE. I believe this focus has positioned Pulsant at the forefront of IT infrastructure innovation today. We know the market, we have focused on our strengths, and we have a unique offering that those looking to drive digital innovation can rely on. There are huge untapped opportunities around the region of the UK and the time is right to enable them to profit from the latest infrastructure to foster regional growth and regeneration. So, we have 12 data centres around the UK, which are ideally located to bring these services out to where the businesses are, and it is that combination of heritage and technology that, I believe, positions Pulsant as the partner of choice for local, regional, and national organisations looking to deploy edge solutions today. It’s taken a lot of effort, but we are now at the point where our portfolio can deliver that edge-ready infrastructure that those businesses are crying out for. 

For people who may not be familiar with the concept, can you tell us what edge computing is all about? How does it compare to the cloud? 

Edge computing is a game-changer, as it enables devices to compute, process, and analyse data closer to the point of use, which improves response times and reduces costs. Think about the smart city as an example. There is enormous potential to improve the way services are delivered to citizens by using edge computing. From remote healthcare to smart parking, digitising the infrastructure of a city means hard-pressed services can achieve more with less. The rising demand for real-time access to content will involve a lot of IoT devices and AI-powered compute, which will generate large quantities of data. It’s far quicker and more cost-efficient to process this data at the edge, in the city where it’s created, rather than routing every piece of data back to centralised servers far from the point of use, as we do today. 

Pulsant’s platformEDGE gives them the power to do that by taking infrastructure closer to the user. And we’ve invested heavily, so that regional businesses can consume what they need, when they need it, where they need it, locally, nationally, and even internationally via our network. Let’s be clear, the world has evolved and businesses are looking for more flexible technology solutions. Our platform offers just that. A few years ago, businesses moved from their on-premise solutions to cloud, but didn’t think so much about the location of the service. Edge is distributing the cloud back towards the geographies to be hosted nearer the user. It’s a different manifestation of cloud to meet the changing needs of the market; there is no one-size-fits-all approach any more.   

Many CEOs may hesitate to steer their organisations towards edge computing out of fear or lack of understanding. They may fear that it is all hype or is too costly or complex for their organisation at a time when top-level IT talent is hard to come by.  

CEOs are generally looking to grow their businesses profitably. As a CEO, that’s what I’m trying to do as well. Many businesses are now finding that past overcommitment to hyper-scale cloud usage has consumed far more of their budgets than they expected, increased their staffing costs, and reduced their ability to innovate quickly. By using an edge platform that delivers access to diverse connectivity, compute, and storage, alongside a wider ecosystem of partners, businesses can access the services, technology, and talent they need in order to grow. As we focus on finding ways to drive new economic growth in the UK, technology is key to enabling the brightest businesses across the connected digital economy. 

So, I think CEOs will start to overlook the hype and see there is new revenue to be found at the edge, and the opportunity is there to manage down costs whilst improving client experiences. My vision for Pulsant is to help them achieve this. 

Pulsant brings the advances of edge computing within reach of 95 per cent of the UK population. How do you see the edge market developing over the next few years? 

We are already seeing the reality of edge on the UK high street. From autonomous vehicles for smart transport in Edinburgh, to gaming in Newcastle, media companies in Manchester, and logistics companies in Milton Keynes, digital strategies are gaining momentum and already delivering technology innovation across the UK. 

I believe that the use of regional data centres will continue to grow in line with the rise in data volumes fuelled by these opportunities. We are moving away from a “cloud only” approach to digital transformation, into a more balanced approach, placing the right workload in the right location. An edge platform that has colocation, alongside access to multiple cloud and network services, can help orchestrate workloads to achieve maximum efficiency and retain control over costs. 

My vision to help UK businesses develop, produce, and distribute new services and applications lies in fostering regional ecosystems, to support wider business collaboration and help improve the commercial agility of our clients and partners. By maximising connections between businesses, service providers, and suppliers, we can support faster, more efficient and secure development of new applications and services to drive regional regeneration. Our data centres are well positioned to foster those ecosystems that will make accelerating future technology innovation possible. 

Pulsant currently has 12 UK data centres stretching from London to Scotland, which makes you the UK’s largest and only truly nationwide edge colocation services provider. Do you have plans to expand soon? 

Yes. We are always looking at future opportunities to expand our network. To date, we have invested more than £100 million in building our edge infrastructure platform, acquiring additional data centres, and implementing high-speed resilient connectivity and building our own IaaS platform to take compute and storage out to the edge. It is clear that regional infrastructure requirements will continue to expand; a ResearchAndMarkets report last year indicated that regional data centres outside the M25 and Slough are adding 20,000 m2 annually. The report predicted that overall data centre revenue will grow by 36 per cent up to 2025. We intend to keep pace with that regional demand, giving organisations a new level of flexibility to prosper in this new data-driven economy. 

Ongoing investment is key in order to ensure that we continue to serve the needs of innovative new start-ups, scale-ups, and local authorities as, ultimately, edge is all about locality. We are a local business ourselves and the client businesses we serve are mostly local to that region, so we feel that connection to those local communities and economies. We took the decision a few years ago to relocate our service centre to the North East in order to take advantage of the great skills available there. Edinburgh is the connectivity hub of the north and Manchester is our fastest-growing market, so there is a lot of the UK outside of London and the South East where we can see growth potential in the future.    

As the CEO of Pulsant, what are your three biggest priorities next year? 

My strategic goal remains unchanged as we work to build our business as an edge market leader in the UK. We will continue our investment in infrastructure to extend our national distribution network, alongside continuing to expand our partner ecosystem. 

People are a priority. I feel confident that we have the right people and technology in place now to deliver on our strategy. With our edge ambitions, we have a pathway for growth that our people can benefit from. I believe in nurturing talent and giving people the opportunity to develop and grow, so my team and I will be focused on ensuring that everyone has a real opportunity to grow within the business. Equally, we’re hiring graduates and apprentices around the UK to ensure that we find and support tomorrow’s talent as well. We’ve a great track record in this space, one that I’m really proud of.  

And finally, priority three is a regional one. I want to see Pulsant become the partner of choice for regional edge innovation. As the opportunities from 5G and the focus on delivering smart cities continue across the UK, our edge platform is uniquely positioned to enable the brightest businesses to truly benefit from the economic growth potential that technology has to offer. 

Executive Profile

Rob Coupland – Chief Executive Officer, Pulsant. With almost 30 years of experience in the industry, Rob has a wealth of leadership expertise in the telecommunications, data centre, and cloud managed services markets. Rob joined Pulsant in 2019 to guide the company along its growth trajectory and improve its position in the market. He is also committed to enabling customer transformation – and improving Pulsant’s quality of service and support.

With experience spanning almost three decades, Rob began his career with Cable & Wireless in a range of positions, most notably product group manager for applications. He also spent 10 years at Telecity Group in a variety of roles, including chief operating officer (COO) and managing director. As COO, Rob led the company’s data centre expansion programme and significantly grew the business.

In his most recent role before joining Pulsant, Rob was managing director EMEA of Digital Realty, a data centre and colocation business headquartered in San Francisco, USA. 

The post Why It Doesn’t Always Make Sense to Keep Away From the Edge appeared first on The European Business Review.

Can you tell us more about your background and how you became interested in the automation industry?  

I’ve been into technology from a young age. I started coding at the age of 10 when this became available on BBC Bitesize and my interest in automation evolved from there. I’m an engineer by trade and love to bring my manufacturing mindset into the services world – literally building solutions to complex problems. At Enate, we’ve built a SaaS platform that really enables businesses to get their operational ducks in a row, giving them full visibility over their end-to-end processes so they can see where the gaps are, streamline processes, and deliver work on time. We’ve harnessed the latest automation technology and now AI, too, to help those businesses ultimately work smarter and faster and become more agile.  

How would you describe the generative AI revolution and its potential impact on society? 

I was around when the internet was launched, when mobile was launched, even when personal computing started and I can say that AI is the biggest single change in technology capability that I’ve seen in my lifetime. The scale of it is rapid and game-changing.  

The impact on society will be profound and, as it stands right now, it risks being negative. We are all being warned about existential risks around it and, it’s true, there are. There are risks that exist right this second with the ability to generate misinformation quickly and influence people, politics, and democracy. Major elections are coming up in the US and the UK next year that risk being severely disrupted by generative misinformation. It’s not just verbal generative that’s the risk, it’s images and videos that have never existed – deep fakes – that pose a big risk.  

Many people are concerned about job losses due to AI. Can you elaborate on why you believe the scaremongering around this issue may not be as severe as it seems? 

In terms of the economy, it’s true that certain jobs won’t exist any more and some roles will be disrupted. It would be irresponsible to be founding a technology company and say there won’t be an impact on jobs. Of course there will be an impact and we need to support people through that. We shouldn’t be supporting people who have a laissez-faire attitude to job losses and shrug when asked; this is people’s lives.  

There is talk of universal basic income, but my concern with this is that it runs the risk of taking us back to the Middle Ages in terms of control and living in a society of institutionalised serfdom.  

Technology has always removed and created jobs, but the upside is that right now there are more jobs than people can physically do. There’s only so much that machines can take away; you still need people. What’s perfectly clear, though, is that as a society we need more productivity in the market to make the economy run better, and AI can help fulfil that ask. There will be many jobs that are AI-enabled rather than replaced.   

As the founder of Enate, could you explain how your platform combines real intelligence (people) and artificial intelligence to deliver and manage services? 

Most of the current excitement around AI is geared towards tools that enable the creators of the world (writers, designers, software developers) to speed up productivity but, when it comes to service operations, these are often too variable or complicated to automate. Operations sit in end-to-end processes and, until now, using AI in service operations has required installing costly and time-intensive machine-learning pipelines which often deliver only 70 per cent accuracy.  

What we’ve done differently at Enate is to build our very own AI product which sits on top of our existing orchestration platform and automatically categorises emails, extracts data, performs sentiment analysis, understands foreign languages, and asks and answers specific questions such as, “Is this email just a thank you?” There’s no need for expensive or complex MLOps, as EnateAI is automatically integrated into the platform. Plus, it’s 90 per cent accurate and free.  

In high-volume email environments, such as shared mailboxes, approximately 5-10 per cent of the effort is spent on manual triage. Employees spend time figuring out the content of the email and identifying the person best suited to work on it. With EnateAI capabilities, customers can reduce 20 per cent of their manual efforts and provide better service to their clients as a result.  

What all this means is that service employees and businesses can spend less time and effort on boring, repetitive tasks and more time on customer success. We see this as the end of service and the start of success, which is not to service the customer, but to delight the customer. If we do a great job of moving work between people and digital workers, and allowing that blend to change, then we’re creating capacity in the people for them to do extraordinary things rather than just ordinary things. 

The recent announcements from Google, Adobe, and IBM indicate increasing support for the generative AI revolution. In your opinion, what measures and tools are necessary to enable widespread adoption of intelligent automation? 

The way I think about it is that if your job includes something like creating, e.g., graphic designer or copywriter, then using generative AI right now is low-risk and those roles should be adopting it. If you’re a writer, you should use GPT; if you’re a designer, use Midjourney.  

However, if your job title includes words like “delivery”, “process” or “execute”, then it’s important to put guard rails around it and manage risk, which is where something like orchestration comes in. You need a way of measuring the outcome you’re expecting, and you need a crystal-clear policy around data, how to manage it, and what the appetite is to use your organisation’s data in training other models. I would go as far as to say that you probably need to appoint someone in your business to be responsible for AI safety. A chief AI officer, for instance, is going to be required very soon. It’s a very specific skill set for organisations who want to get serious about AI.   

How do you foresee the economic impact of AI in the coming years? Are there any potential risks or challenges that need to be addressed to ensure positive outcomes? 

AI is essentially a natural resource that everyone who uses the internet has helped to create and has a stake in. It needs to be decentralised so that it benefits society as a whole, and not just the handful of geeks who figured out how to soak all that knowledge up and create AI products out of it.  

One of the big risks with AI is that capitalism breaks if the relationship that has existed for the last 100 years between labour and those with capital gets broken. There is a real risk around economics.

What are some key factors that businesses should consider before implementing AI and automation within their workplaces? How can they ensure a successful integration and maximise the benefits? 

To train and use AI models, you need to share data with them. Start by getting a grip on your data management rules. Clearly define what data can and can’t be shared with public and private AI models. Make sure your entire team is aware of and following these rules.  

Brainstorm and identify use cases for AI. Collaborate with your staff and an external expert to explore the art of what’s possible to do using AI. Remember that what is possible is literally changing weekly right now. This is the fastest pace of technology-driven change in my lifetime. Classify your use cases into four categories: skill support, transaction support, customer support, and decision support. 

All these use cases support humans in their tasks.  

Investigate AI safety, hallucination, and data privacy before deploying AI, especially generative AI like GPT-4.  

Adopt the following playbook for each category. 

Skill support  

1. Identify everyone in the organisation whose job involves creating (writing, designing, and building). 
2. Create task forces for each skill and let them find the best AI co-pilot for their task. 
3. Test and procure low-risk tools to support individuals in your organisation.

Transaction support  

1. Orchestrate your workflows. It’s the only way to manage and control the deployment and mitigate the risk of “doing the wrong thing faster”.  
2. Use your orchestrator to create business cases for AI deployment for specific tasks.  
3. Choose the right AI tool for each job, such as NLP, IDP, or NLG.  
4. Give your AI tools access to core business systems data to improve outcomes.  
5. Ensure that people are always in control, particularly when using NLG technologies such as GPT-4.  

Customer support  

1. Ensure that your organisation has the skills to use conversational AI safely.  
2. Choose a customer dialogue platform that meets your use cases.  
3. Use sophisticated human-in-loop technology to flip conversations between AI and people.  
4. Give the conversational AI access to data that will help it converse with customers more effectively, but start with non-sensitive product knowledge. 

With the rapid advancement of AI technologies, what kind of legislation do you believe is necessary to ensure the longevity and ethical use of generative AI?  

There is legislation that needs to be put in place to recognise that this is a natural resource that only exists because every human has created the data that’s allowed these AI models to be trained. The economic benefit of these generative models therefore sits with every human who has had access to the internet at any point over the last 20 years, rather than just with a handful of smart geeks.  

In the near future, what notable progress or breakthroughs do you expect to see in the realm of intelligent automation and its fusion with AI? Are there any specific sectors or domains where you predict that the effects will be exceptionally revolutionary?  

I believe there are some old technologies that are going to go from expensive and valuable to totally commoditised very rapidly. People currently spend a lot of money on intelligent document processing, which will soon become a commodity. When we start integrating general models and use them for practical tasks rather than just pure information, there are going to be huge breakthroughs. Once these powerful AI models can access other systems and perform actions going from reasoners to generate, the game will change.  

There could be extraordinary impacts in this way on accounting and legal professions, but it’s likely that regulators will prevent it, as it’s not in their interest to change it.  

Medicine is an area ripe for disruption. I predict that the diagnostic parts of being a doctor will largely be automated and the caring and communication aspects which can’t be emulated by AI will be more important requirements of the role. This will open up medicine to people who have the empathetic and caring skills needed for medicine but may have previously been locked out due to not being able to pass traditional exams. I see general practitioners becoming much more powerful as fundamental carers. We’re already seeing it with the change in the NHS staffing plan that’s being drawn up indicating that some doctors won’t need to go to medical school.   

About Enate 

Enate is an end-to-end orchestration platform designed to help businesses run operations smoothly and produce consistent work on time, View, manage, and track the flow of all work, identify automation opportunities, assign tasks to the right resource, and become more efficient.  

EnateAI powered by GPT-4 is the latest product release from Enate. It’s integrated into the platform and offers five exciting features to help businesses leverage AI in operations including:  

Categorise – automatically categorise emails into or create the right ticket category. 

Data extraction – extract data from your emails and auto-populate forms. 
Sentiment analysis – identify the emotional tone of communications from your clients. 

“Thank you” analysis – know whether incoming “thank you” emails need action. 

Foreign-language fluency – understand and process foreign-language emails.  

Executive Profile

Kit Cox founded Enate to help businesses run their operations smoothly. Enate provides an end-to-end orchestration solution to help businesses manage, organize, distribute and deliver work on time. Global businesses such as EY and TMF have adopted Enate’s SaaS solution to manage end-to-end services.

The post Artificial Intelligence as an Enabler for the Real Kind: Interview with Kit Cox, CEO at Enate appeared first on The European Business Review.

Recently, dramatic events like pandemics and wars have prompted business minds to focus on building resilience. But where is this elusive commodity to be found? Is it in a company’s data? Or is it in its employees? Correct, says Petra Jenner of enterprise resilience experts Splunk. 

Can you tell us about your journey and experience that led you to your current position as Senior Vice President and General Manager EMEA at Splunk?

With a career that spans over 25 years, I’ve had the privilege of holding various leadership positions in technology. Immediately prior to Splunk, I was an EMEA leader for six years at Salesforce. As a General Manager and Senior Vice President for EMEA Central & Eastern Europe, I proudly took on the role of executive sponsor of the “Bring Women Back to Work” programme, which helped women in returning to work after parental leave. Prior to this, I was CEO for Microsoft in Switzerland.

What has excited me most about my career is being part of companies undergoing complex digital transformation projects, scaling teams across markets to help drive these initiatives forward.  

People are the heart of an organisation, but data is the lifeblood of what makes an organisation resilient. It has the potential to inform stakeholders, policymakers, and leaders in a way that previously hasn’t been possible. By understanding the value of people and data, organisations can thrive in the face of challenges.  

This led me to my current role at enterprise software company Splunk, where, a year into the job as Senior Vice President and General Manager for EMEA, my responsibility is to use data to help our customers become digitally resilient and shape the region’s next chapter. 

As a leader, how do you prioritise building resilience within an organisation? 
 
The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digital transformation of many businesses. Workplaces have changed significantly as this, and other factors, have driven more value into the digital realm. This, in turn, increased the importance of reducing downtime and tracking digital infrastructure to keep digital operations running smoothly. This is Splunk’s stock-in-trade.

Now, we find ourselves at another inflection point. In the midst of continuing digitisation, we’re in the middle of a digital skills shortage. Today, when thinking about organisational resilience, I believe businesses must now put an increasing focus on the people who make their business succeed. Businesses need to shift from seeing empathy as a “soft” leadership trait and, instead, prioritise higher levels of employee engagement as one of the most important threads of management in order to drive their businesses forward.

How can bold and resilient leadership contribute to an organisation’s survival and success, particularly after times of crisis?  

As the recovery begins to emerge, you will need to determine where to invest managerial energy and resources – innovation for growth, strategic direction, new customers, or new business models? Clear measures and decisive actions build optimism and confidence. Pursuing the right opportunities will inspire people, and your actions and words will align the minds, physical energy, and the hearts and souls of the people around you. Your presence on the front line is also important in creating momentum, and transforming concern into confidence. I believe that a leader needs to show a path forward that is credible and concrete, and enrol the “change agents” in the organisation who are empowered to execute on the tough decisions without sacrificing values.  

You mentioned that technology failures often stem from not having the right people on the project. How do you ensure you have the right team in place to drive successful technology initiatives? 

When it comes to developing a successful IT strategy, people are at the heart of any product, solution, or service. If you don’t have the right people in place to bring all those elements together and help to evolve your processes in the future, it’s unlikely your IT strategy will ever get off the ground.

Unfortunately, the growing IT skills gap makes it increasingly difficult for decision makers to staff their departments with the necessary talent. A 2022 policy brief from the Foundation for European Progressive Studies mentions that 58 per cent of European businesses are finding it hard to recruit ICT specialists, and that there will be a shortfall of eight million IT workers across Europe by 2030. And even businesses that manage to source the employees they need may have trouble establishing the appropriate internal culture, failing to encourage fresh thinking and keep employees properly motivated.

Today’s macroeconomic environment also requires a workforce that embraces and adapts to change. This means constantly upskilling staff. We seek to nurture and invest in the next generation of digital talent through our early talent programmes, graduate schemes, and internships. Splunk also has a 24/7 training platform in place that is designed to build confidence and foster lifelong learning.  

In your experience, what is the most important part of a working environment?

The atmosphere of a workplace is hugely important. Businesses need to ask themselves have they created a working environment that fosters creative and motivated employees, leading to better productivity? Or do employees constantly feel under pressure? And will employees perhaps show greater commitment if the atmosphere is better suited to their needs?

More than ever, businesses are pivoting to address these concerns. A more empathic management structure and greater flexibility over working hours, for example, can significantly increase employees’ willingness to perform and achieve.  

I want to ensure that employees have a chance to focus on their own well-being and progression. At my company, this comes through offering flexibility and a balanced approach to the workday.

How do you believe businesses can be intentional in creating a culture that supports women and underrepresented groups and promotes females in technology?

As a woman in the technology industry, I’ve faced my fair share of challenges, from encountering biases and outdated attitudes to being the “first woman in the room” in senior meetings. That is one of the reasons I am constantly seeking avenues to attract and retain a greater representation of women in technology. As data has demonstrated, women still only make up around a quarter of the global technology workforce and are notably underrepresented in leadership roles, with only 12 per cent of C-suite executives being women.

Businesses need to be intentional in creating a culture that supports women, but also ensure they have policies in place that support wider diverse groups of employees. Key to this effort is ensuring that a company’s talent systems are fair and equitable.

As a starting point, more time and input must be factored into the language that technology businesses use in job descriptions, highlighting the diversity and breadth of roles a company has to offer. This goes hand in hand with the need to be more accountable and proactive in hiring practices. As a data company, we have a clear responsibility to set and track progress on diversity, equity, and inclusion to try to prevent unconscious bias across our hiring and talent recruitment frameworks. There also need to be more programmes in place to support women who have taken career breaks or parental leave – for example, a training programme to reskill, regular mentorship, coaching, workshops, and networking opportunities.

We also need to consider early careers. Research from McKinsey shows that 31 per cent of young women who study tech-based subjects at school in Europe drop out of the pipeline before university. There is clearly a job to do in fostering the next generation of female talent in technology. Showcasing clear development and progression through early talent programmes, graduate schemes, and internships is important, as is promoting case studies of women who have had success within the technology industry and providing effective mentorship in STEM.  

The technology industry has achieved a lot in recent years in terms of making employment relationships more flexible and providing platforms to harmonise career and family, but there is still a long way to go.  

Have you ever had to manage generational divides and the stigma of flexible working amongst employees?

Many employees who began their careers during the COVID-19 pandemic have become increasingly comfortable with the virtual office, compared to more experienced colleagues who were working in the office five days a week pre-2019, and who value face-to-face collaboration.  

A 2023 study by the CIPD found that 63 per cent of millennials say flexible working is important to them, compared to 47 per cent of Gen X-ers and 38 per cent of baby boomers. Furthermore, 58 per cent of millennials have implemented flexible working arrangements, compared to 43 per cent of Gen X-ers and 33 per cent of baby boomers.

The pandemic accelerated the need for strong leaders that can inspire a hybrid workforce, and this is something I really focus on when engaging with teams across the region.  

And lastly, can you share your personal philosophy or definition of success as a leader? How does this philosophy guide your decision-making and leadership?

Culture-centric, resilient leadership is my recipe for success – when engaging both customers and employees. I also think it’s important to see failures as a platform for change and improvement. You learn from these moments, and it makes you a better leader. 

Executive Profile

Petra Jenner is Senior Vice President and General Manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Splunk. Prior to Splunk, Jenner spent six years at Salesforce across a variety of roles in EMEA, most recently as General Manager, Senior Vice President responsible for Eastern Europe and Switzerland. Based in Munich and with more than 25 years in the technology industry, she has also held leadership roles with Microsoft, Checkpoint and Pivotal. Jenner holds a masters degree in Business and IT, and studied international management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in Singapore. 

The post Resilience to Turbulence: How to Keep Going in Uncertain Times appeared first on The European Business Review.

It’s an honour to meet you, Mr Papafloratos! Thank you for spending this time with us. Can you tell us about the inspiration behind Numan and why you are passionate about men’s health?  

I’ve been thinking about the idea behind Numan for over a decade. It was around 2012 when I sold my first company, Trusted Places, and I was starting to take a very different view of what it meant to be fit and healthy. I realised that I had neglected my health as I built the company. I smoked, drank, and I was always stressed and tired, so I set out to develop better habits and improve my well-being. As I did so, I got more interested in men’s health, specifically holistic health. 

Holistic health is important to me because health issues don’t exist in a vacuum. Sometimes when people are ill, they are given treatments to help their symptoms, but I think healthcare should be about getting to the root of the problem and this is what I’ve tried to do with Numan.

Before starting Numan, I realised that there were very few healthcare organisations that were targeted at men. I also saw how digital technology could be used to improve healthcare for medical professionals and their patients.

Fast-forward five years later and we’ve built a website, an app, and we’ve helped over 350,000 men with a range of issues including sleep, premature ejaculation, erectile dysfunction, and more. 

We understand that you have led two other companies and have been an angel investor for 10 years. How have these experiences shaped your approach to building and growing Numan? 

During my time as an entrepreneur, I have gone through all the different stages of a business and learned so much along the way. My experiences have taught me about good leadership, perseverance, and communication, which have been invaluable to me as I’ve built Numan. 

As any founder will tell you, money is essential for a business to function. Numan wouldn’t be possible without adequate funding. My experience as an angel investor gave me some insight into what other investors look for when trying to determine if a business is worth supporting. This was helpful during the pitch process and, eventually, we were able to raise £2 million in seed funding before launching Numan. 

But what I’ve learned is that, aside from funding, the thing you need is passion. In hindsight, I realise that I pursued some of my previous companies because they were great business ideas. But I didn’t have true passion for them. With Numan, I definitely have that. I genuinely believe it is the most important thing I could be spending my life on and I think that’s something that sets me apart.

After that, you obviously need a talented team and I am very lucky to work with great people at Numan, from our medical professionals to marketing, research, procurement, and more. Everyone does their part to deliver exceptional healthcare and products to men across the UK. 

Being a young father and the CEO of a VC-funded scale-up business can be challenging. How do you balance your personal health and well-being with the demands of your professional life?  

Ultimately, health comes first. It would be impossible to lead the team at Numan and spend time with my family if I wasn’t mentally, physically, and emotionally healthy.

Since my first business, I have tried to be more intentional about my work-life balance. I exercise regularly, I try to get a good amount of sleep and I don’t drink too much alcohol.  I also make sure I set aside enough time to have outlets for the things that I enjoy doing, like basketball, hiking in the mountains, hanging out with friends, and being with my family. I feel the effects very quickly if I neglect any of these.

How do you effectively lead and align a diverse range of teams, from doctors and nutritionists to brand and marketing experts, towards the common goal of improving men’s health? 

The most important thing is to be aligned on the overall aim and goal. Everyone at Numan, regardless of their job role, knows that our mission is to improve men’s health. And we always set clear goals and priorities for the company, so everyone knows what to focus on. 

Where it gets more difficult is how that translates on a day-to-day level, but that’s the same with any company. We are probably in a tighter regulatory framework than most companies, because we are offering prescription medication, and sizing up a new product is more complex because, as well as strategic fit, we have to consider clinical design and evaluation. 

But one of my main jobs as CEO is to provide that high-level clarity and make sure people are aligned. From there, I know I can rely on the people we have to execute cross-functionally.  

What steps do you take to motivate and encourage your employees to prioritise their health and wellness?  

We have some core internal values as a company and one of those is to “refill the cup”. I know from personal experience the importance of work-life balance and we want people to feel pushed at work. That said, they also need to be able to take the time to rest and recharge. 

We also offer other initiatives like days off for volunteering, remote working, discounted gym membership, and private health insurance.  

How has your personal health journey shaped your understanding of the challenges that individuals face when it comes to weight management and overall well-being? 

Although I’ve never struggled massively with my weight, as I mentioned above I have previously struggled with keeping healthy habits like getting regular exercise, eating well, getting enough sleep, and quitting smoking. These can have a big impact on weight and well-being, as well as a host of other health issues.

But, whilst I’ve never been obese, I’m well aware that obesity is a disease, so it may not always be the result of poor diet or a lack of exercise. Regardless of why people struggle with their weight, the impact on the body can be huge. It can contribute to cardiovascular issues, diabetes, mobility issues, and more, so managing weight is vital.

The good news is that the way we treat obesity is going through a revolution. New weight loss drugs like Wegovy can result in a 15 per cent reduction in body weight and work by driving metabolic reset, so you maintain a healthy weight and keep it off for good. 

For obese patients that meet the criteria and who have struggled to maintain a healthy weight, these drugs could be a game-changer – not just for individual health, but also by reducing the burden on the NHS.

However, it’s important to note that, while medications like Wegovy hold great promise, they are only part of the solution. They need to be used as part of a wider holistic healthcare programme that focuses on diet, exercise, sleep, and more. That’s why we offer ongoing coaching in all these areas as part of our programme. It’s also important that the medication is carefully prescribed only to patients who meet the guidelines, and not to individuals who are looking to lose weight for aesthetic reasons. 

How do you believe that men can be empowered to take action and prioritise their own health?

First, we need to shake men out of their inertia and motivate them to take action to improve their health. Men are often inactive about their health, they put off finding solutions like visiting a doctor, even when they know it will be helpful. We need to challenge men to understand that their health is in their hands. 

Once they’re motivated, men can be empowered to take action on their health by making it accessible to them. One of the reasons we made Numan digital is so that men can have access to health products and professionals at the tips of their fingers. 

Lastly, what are your long-term goals and visions to empower the field of men’s health? 

We are trying to build a company, a product, and an experience that doesn’t exist yet. The next step is to be preventative. My vision is a world where men are drastically healthier, especially in the middle phase of life (40s-60s) when men are in their prime. 

The healthcare term we like to use is patient-centred care. At Numan, we want to put the people at the centre and give them a holistic view of what they need to do to be optimally healthy with as little friction as possible. 

Executive Profile

Sokratis Papafloratos is an entrepreneur with over 17 years of experience. He is the founder and CEO of Numan, the leading digital healthcare company in the UK. Numan has raised millions in funding and the company has helped more than 350,000 men in the UK. 

The post Improving Men’s Health with a Passion: Interview with Sokratis Papafloratos, Founder and CEO of Numan appeared first on The European Business Review.

While it is undeniably true that we are all the sum of our experiences, it is also fair to say that some experiences offer more lessons for life than others. Mark Anderson, ice hockey player and CEO of Alteryx, is well qualified to reflect on that. 

How did your experience as an ice hockey player prepare you for your role as CEO of Alteryx?

Growing up in Toronto, I was an energetic kid and therefore gravitated towards sports. I eventually became a product of the Canadian youth hockey culture. Playing hockey provided me with many great experiences, but it also taught me countless important lessons that helped shape my life and my face – my nose was broken seven times. Apart from teaching me to keep my head up, hockey also taught me to remain calm and persist through difficult times, especially when the result wasn’t what you planned.  

While this didn’t come naturally as a young boy growing up, I strongly believe that reaching out and asking for help makes you stronger, not weaker. As anyone playing a team sport knows, helping each other is crucial to winning. This realisation was a turning point in my own personal development, and I haven’t forgotten it as a business leader. Whether you’re on the ice and striving to score or a CEO leading transformation in tumultuous times, you must keep your head up, keep moving forward, and do your best, regardless of the circumstances.

Learning to do this was a key turning point in my development as a skater, and I’ve continued to use it as a business leader. I have worked with many smart, talented, and driven people. Bringing them into a situation, asking them for advice, and taking advantage of their guidance has enabled me to “flex and develop unfamiliar muscles” that helped progress my career and led me to where I am now. 

In what ways do you think the skills required to lead a successful tech company differ from those needed to succeed in ice hockey?

It may have taken a while to keep nursing those broken noses, but I still look back and appreciate my time on the ice. Some of those plays, tactics, and strategies that helped support and coach the team on the rink to get the puck into the net still help me now.  Similar to a hockey game, leadership takes practice and a loyal team to succeed.

In a high-pressure business environment, there are always many tasks and activities that can distract you from your goal. It is crucial to trust the team around you to make some of these plays. This is especially important for the plays outside of your own comfort zone. Whether through delegation or automation, have the confidence to pull back and create space for others to participate and control situations so the company can make that goal. 

Practice and training deliver consistency and enable you to focus on the long-term goal, while keeping the stamina needed to be prepared and cross the finish line. As I get older, I realise you can’t buy time, you don’t need to sprint to win, and the things that made me successful in the past may not help us in the future. I get energy from the people around me; I balance leadership with trust that others can lead, and I take advantage of data-driven insights to help guide my plays, strategies, and tactics to deliver transformative outcomes for the business. 

What are some of the biggest challenges you have faced as a leader in the tech industry, and how have you drawn on your experience as a hockey player to overcome them?

Risk and uncertainty are two of the most common challenges I’ve faced in both sport and the tech industry. Similar to sports like hockey, the world is moving very quickly. To be successful, you’ve got to be ready for what’s around the corner. 

Every leader I talk to is feeling the pressure of today’s turbulent times and is constantly assessing tactics and strategies to ensure success. As the great one, Wayne Gretzky, said, “You miss 100 per cent of the shots you don’t take.”  Regardless of ice hockey or business, it takes a team to succeed. Leaders who collaborate and learn from others can gather insights that can be used to help reduce uncertainty, provide clarity, deliver performance, and differentiate by providing the best experience for customers.

But an effective team needs to be nurtured and provided with the tools, skills, and opportunities to make the shot. Everyone has the potential to improve and better themselves, whether this be on the hockey rink or learning a new skill in the office. A successful coach invests time in their players, understanding their strengths and weaknesses, helping them improve, and showing them what they are capable of. The same principle applies to a business leader. You’ve got to train your people with the right tools and capabilities to navigate change and be capable of taking the shot. While hiring the right people is hugely important, I strongly believe that business leaders need to make the most of their teams’ potential and learn how to invest in them to develop the skills and insights they need.  

Can you describe a time when your experience on the ice helped you make a critical decision as a CEO?

When facing an opposing team, it’s crucial to have confidence in the players around you and understand that each one will play a critical role in seeing the play through.  Today’s dynamic macroeconomic environment is similar to skating on ice and navigating the opposing team on your own. For a business leader, it’s like steering a ship through a minefield – with just one lookout.  Facing challenges alone means that the chances of failing or sinking are high. But, similar to having confidence in the skills of your other players to get to the goal, being in the know that every employee is equipped to be a lookout enables the CEO to navigate a safer course.

How do you ensure that your team is motivated and working towards the same goals, and how does this compare to the dynamics of a hockey team?

As with any team-based sport, different people will have different ideas of how the game should go and different thoughts on what success looks like to them and the team. Some want to score personal goals; others are happy to take a supportive role and assist others to take the lead. While my current role is CEO, I’m still just one person in the team.  We all have different goals to meet as an organisation, and everyone still has different concepts of what individual success looks like to them, but my role is to set a course and help develop everyone and take them on the journey. 

I learned early on in my career how important it is to engage with people and listen to them so you can understand their goals, motivation and, crucially, any issues they are having. I always felt most comfortable working in the field, learning from people and coaching people. I’ve never been the kind of person that likes telling people what to do. As a leader, I like to orchestrate their output and lead by example. But while it is important to have ambition and hunger, it is also important that individual visions of success align with those of the organisation. Like any good sports coach, mentoring and developing talent by providing pathways for their individual success is critical to the organisation’s overall success.

How do you balance the need for individual performance with the importance of team cohesion, both in hockey and in business?

I think businesses and sports teams are very similar in this respect. There may be a star player but, ultimately, it’s the whole team, each player doing their part and working towards winning, and this is also the case in businesses. I’m sure most organisations have many standout individuals, but it’s the teams around them that enable them to shine individually, and it’s important that everyone is aware of that. Just like a hockey team has goalies, scorers, and defenders, businesses have multiple roles, all of which must work towards the same goal and be coordinated. As CEO, I may be the most visible person at Alteryx, but I would be nothing without the team I work with, and this is the case for any sports team or tech company, I assure you.

Can you share any specific lessons from your time on the ice that have translated directly to your approach to leadership in the tech industry?

Today’s business environment is forcing leaders to reshape their organisations to adapt to new realities and working conditions. If I look back to my time cross-training and learning about balance and agility from a figure skater, I see two similarities to my leadership style.

Since becoming CEO of Alteryx in October 2020, I have been balancing leading with empathy while making changes that fundamentally impact our agility and improve how the company operates. In my experience, leading with empathy is vital to creating a successful working environment. Empathetic leaders get better results because they take the time to learn who their employees are as people, and they understand their strengths, dreams, motivations, and concerns. According to research by Catalyst, 47 per cent of people with highly empathic managers report often or always being innovative at work, compared to only 13 per cent of people with less empathic managers.

Many people look to the CEO for strength. Balancing the openness of empathy with strength as a company leader is a delicate endeavour, but it is the most effective and rewarding way to navigate change through a healthy company culture while ensuring that the business remains resilient and agile enough to sidestep unnecessary risk.

How do you think your background in sports has helped you to build and maintain strong relationships with partners and customers in the tech industry?

I revel in being present. I enjoy walking down the halls, stopping by someone’s desk, learning people’s names, and interacting with them on elevators. I remember once being a young man in an elevator with the CEO and being ignored. Since then, I always knew I wanted to be engaging and approachable in the CEO role. 

This passion to be present is no different from my approach to building and maintaining strong relationships with our customers, partners, and investors. After the pandemic, when travel restrictions were lifted, I spent pretty much an entire year travelling to visit and engage with customers, partners, and teams all over the world.

I continue to balance travel to meet in person with taking advantage of technologies available to collaborate virtually. We just held our annual customer, partner, and executive conference in Las Vegas. It was such a great experience to see and chat with many of the thousands of global attendees as they collaborated in person and spent time learning data- and analytics-driven best practices.

Finally, looking back on your career in both hockey and tech, what advice would you give to young professionals starting out in either field?

Whether you’re an aspiring leader looking to get on that first rung or an established leader trying to climb the ladder, never be afraid to go outside your comfort zone or ask others for help.

Take every chance you can to ask questions and learn as much as you can from people you respect. I cannot emphasise enough how important this is. I was lucky enough to work with John Chambers at Cisco. I got in the habit of bringing him with me on long drives to sales calls. Before each call, I prepped questions that I’d thought about and prioritised the night before, which I’d then ask him during the drive. 

I was very lucky to learn from John and made the most of my opportunities with him. So, use the experience other people have learned to improve and develop your own skills. This is a great way to build relationships with anyone.

Executive Profile

Mark Anderson is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Alteryx. Prior to Alteryx, Mark was president of Palo Alto Networks, where he and the team grew the company from pre-IPO in 2012 to become one of the largest security companies in the world. Prior to Palo Alto Networks, Mark led sales and go-to-market initiatives at F5 Networks, where he was instrumental in driving the company’s long-term, sustained hyper-growth. Earlier in his career, Mark held leadership positions at Cisco Systems and Lucent Technologies. He holds a BA in business and economics from York University in Toronto.

The post Keeping your Head up: Experiences that Shape your Life and your Face appeared first on The European Business Review.

It’s well known that, to be effective in any undertaking, you first have to be able to measure it. But that requires the right tools. For policymakers charged with cultivating, growing, and retaining their national pool of talent, such a tool exists – and it is showing us a picture of mixed global trends, as Bruno Lanvin explains.  

Hello Dr Lanvin. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer our questions!  First of all, can you tell us a bit about your career path leading up to becoming the Executive Director for Global Indices at INSEAD, and beyond? 

After receiving a French education (BA in maths/physics, MBA from HEC, and PhD in Economics from La Sorbonne), I had the opportunity to enrich it at INSEAD and MIT.  

I started my international career as an economist in 1979 at the UN, first in New York, then in Geneva, specialising in international trade and development issues. In 2000, I resigned from the UN to join the World Bank in Washington, DC, where I focused on ICT, e-government and the evaluation of national economic performances. This led me to develop the first global index on technology readiness (GITR, with the World Economic Forum). In 2010, I left the World Bank to join INSEAD and create my own consultancy company with offices in Geneva and Singapore. In 2007, we launched the Global Innovation Index (GII) and in 2013 the Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI). Currently, I am a distinguished fellow at INSEAD, and the President of the Smart City Observatory (which produces the Smart City Index under the auspices of IMD, in Lausanne).  

The Global Talent Competitiveness Index 2022 was released just last week. What have been the biggest insights and surprises in making this year’s index and report? 

In the 2022 rankings, countries such as Switzerland (1) and Singapore (2) maintained their lead as the most talent-competitive countries, and many European economies (especially Nordic ones) kept their spot in the top 10. Smaller economies continued to display top-notch talent performance. This year, for example, Denmark outpaced the United States and entered the top three of the index. And, for the first time, Estonia entered the top 20.  

Middle-income countries also showed remarkable individual and regional performances. China (36) continued to climb the rankings and is now the most talent-competitive upper-middle-income country. For the second year running, Chile (34) represented the region of Latin America and the Caribbean in the top quartile of the GTCI. 

However, stability and encouraging signs in the rankings are no cause for celebration, as there are worrying trends beginning to permeate. The report underlines that new “talent divides” are appearing, which could rapidly become larger. This is why we chose to subtitle this year’s edition “The tectonics of talents”. If we project on a world map the main differences detected in terms of talent performance, we can identify some of the fault lines of current talent tectonics. The report shows that most of Africa and significant parts of both Latin America and Central Asia have a high concentration of countries that are on the wrong side of the talent divide.  

Can you tell us a bit about the method you use to rank countries? What parameters do you use?  

The model and methods used by GTCI have been remarkably stable since the creation of the index in 2013. This year’s model includes 69 variables, and covers 133 countries, representing almost 98 per cent of the world’s GDP and more than 93 per cent of its population. Improvements continue to be made continuously to the GTCI model, based on further discussions with academics and business and government leaders, as well as feedback from users of the GTCI.  

In the context of the GTCI, talent competitiveness refers to the set of policies and practices that enable a country to develop, attract, and empower the human capital that contributes to productivity and prosperity. The GTCI is an Input-Output model in the sense that it combines an assessment of what countries do to produce and acquire talents (Input) and the kind of skills that are available to them as a result (Output).   

The Input pillars of the GTCI are inspired by the Attract-Grow-Retain framework used by corporations to steer talent management. Multinational corporations frame talent management in these terms, defining talent management as an organisation’s efforts to attract, select, develop, and retain talented employees to meet their strategic needs. The GTCI focuses on efforts by countries and thus the model is fed by macroeconomic and country-level variables. Attracting talent, in the context of national competitiveness, is viewed from two perspectives: (1) as a draw towards external (i.e., foreign) valuable resources – both productive businesses (through foreign direct investment and the like) and creative people (through high-skilled migration) – and (2) as an internal attraction that is focused on removing barriers to entering the talent pool for groups such as those from underprivileged backgrounds, women, and non-native people. Growing talent has traditionally meant education, but its definition should be broadened to include apprenticeships, training, and continuous education, as well as experience and access to growth opportunities. (Although we may acknowledge that most skill development occurs through experience, much remains to be done to conceptualise and measure its role.) Retaining talent is necessary, because the more talented the person, the wider the global opportunities he or she can find elsewhere. Two key components of retention are sustainability (both personal and national) and quality of life. In addition, the regulatory, market, business, and labour landscapes within a country facilitate or impede talent attraction and growth; the GTCI classifies these elements as parts of the Enable pillar. Together, Enable, Attract, Grow, and Retain constitute the four Input pillars of the GTCI model. 

Regarding Output, the GTCI differentiates between two levels of talent, which can be broadly thought of as mid-level and high-level skills. Mid-level skills, labelled Vocational and Technical Skills (or VT Skills), describes skills that have a technical or professional base acquired through vocational or professional training and experience. The impact of VT Skills is measured by the degree of employability to which they lead. Employability is measured by indicators of skills gaps and labour market mismatches and by the adequacy of education systems. High-level skills, labelled Global Knowledge Skills (or GK Skills), deal with knowledge workers in professional, managerial, or leadership roles that require creativity and problem-solving. Their economic impact is evaluated by indicators of innovation, entrepreneurship, and the development of high-value industries. Together, VT Skills and GK Skills constitute the two Output pillars of the GTCI model. 

The technical annexes to the report provide additional details on the definitions, indicators, variables, and sources used, both for the overall rankings and for the detailed country profiles included. A strong comparative advantage of GTCI is its ability to offer consistent time series, which is critical in order to analyse and refine national strategies.  

It’s a key finding in the report that there’s growing inequality in the global talent landscape. Can you tell us a bit about the link between various global crises – COVID, the war in Ukraine, inflation and food scarcity – and the growing inequality in talent? 

Last year, GTCI warned of the possibility of a “K-shaped” recovery after COVID. It anticipated the possibility that the pandemic would widen inequalities between workers well equipped and trained to contribute on-line and those that were more dependent on physical assets and equipment. This prediction proved right. 

Since then, three indicators show that inequalities are growing, and that talent inequalities are at the core of this phenomenon. First, poverty is back. The World Bank estimates that, over the last two years, an additional 70 million people entered a state of living in extreme poverty. This is a devastating setback, occurring after almost three decades of continuing success in poverty reduction. Second, the war in Ukraine has also created additional tensions in food and energy markets, for both of which many poor and emerging economies have to rely on external supplies. Third, the resumption of inflation is generating price and supply distortions that typically affect lower-income people and nations more.   

The report dwells on two types of inequalities for which action is urgently required: gender and education. 

While gender divides have been highlighted in previous editions of GTCI, this year we examined three new indicators: economic empowerment of women, gender parity in high-skilled jobs, and leadership opportunities. Despite encouraging signals, we found that gender divides remain prominent on the talent scene and that the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically impeded recent progress.

The pandemic has also had a devastating impact on children’s education in impoverished countries. The percentage of children in low- and middle-income countries unable to read and understand a simple text by the age of 10 has risen from 53 per cent to 70 per cent, according to the World Bank.  Some of the shocks created by the COVID-19 crisis may be irreversible. One striking example is that of children, especially girls, who didn’t attend school for one or two years. Many of them may never return to a classroom. 

Do you see the internet and the growing online gig economy as something that can help ameliorate the tendency of growing talent inequality by enabling young people from lower-ranking countries to partake in a global rather than local economy?  

GTCI data and analysis show that the response to this question remains ambiguous. On one hand, gig-economy behaviours and practices have added flexibility and fluidity to labour markets and allowed more young talents to participate actively in the workforce. On the other hand, as underlined earlier, inequalities in access to technologies and communication infrastructure, as well as inequalities in education and training, have been amplified by the rapid growth of inline interactions. 

Previous editions of GTCI have underlined and measured some of the facets of this ambiguity. This was particularly the case of GTCI 2020, devoted to “Global Talent in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”, but also in GTCI 2021, which explored the emergence of the “K-shaped recovery” mentioned before. 

One important element that has started to affect deeply the global talent landscape is the change in demands and expectations from younger generations (X, Y, Z, Alpha). They are more comfortable with the notion of temporary and flexible employment (gig-type), and seek more value and impact in their daily work, while aiming at a healthy work-life balance. This is a central topic of my latest book (The Future Is Young), as well as of the 2022 edition of the Network Readiness Index and Report, released on 15 November under the title “Stepping into a new digital era – How and why digital natives will change the world”.  

For policymakers reading this interview, what is the best advice you can give them to help their country rank higher in the competition on talent? 

As underlined in the previous editions of the GTCI, countries are competing globally to grow better talent, attract the talent they need, and retain those workers who contribute to competitiveness, innovation, and growth. Countries seek to put economic and social policies in place that will facilitate this. In such a context, governments, businesses, and various other stakeholders need quantitative instruments that can inform their decisions (as investors, employers, employees, or jobseekers) and can help them design and implement better policies in areas such as education, employment, and immigration, to name a few. This is the purpose of the GTCI.  

Decisions regarding the development, attraction, and empowerment of talent are remarkably complex and multi-layered. They involve a multi-disciplinary endeavour to tackle talent dilemmas that have been raised in the fields of economics, education, human resource management and organisational behaviour, entrepreneurship, innovation, and strategy. At the policy level, this complexity is compounded by emotional dimensions and the international consequences of choices to be made in terms of immigration, social equity, and fiscal incentives, among other issues. 

Faced with such intricate issues, decision-makers – both public and private – need quantitative tools that will enable them to benchmark the efforts made and results obtained in different socioeconomic environments in terms of talent management and talent competitiveness. The GTCI has been designed to help address this challenge by providing a composite view of talent competitiveness applicable to a large number of countries (133 this year). Although several composite indices concerning skills, talent, and human capital have been developed in recent years, both private and public players in the field see the need for a neutral, global, and respected index that would enable them to assess the effectiveness of talent-related policies and practices, identify priorities for action in relevant areas, and inform international and local debate in this arena. 

The GTCI report provides a composite view of talent competitiveness – the set of policies and practices that enable a country to develop, attract, and empower the human capital that contributes to productivity and prosperity. Private and public decision-makers use the index to assess the effectiveness of these policies and practices and identify priorities for action. 

Europe is the stand-out continent in this ranking, with 15 countries in the top 20. What makes Europe stand out when it comes to talent? 

The prevalent position of European economies at the top of GTCI is not a surprise. On one hand, if we look at the global dataset of GTCI, we see a strong correlation between income per capita and talent performance: rich countries are better at growing, attracting, and retaining talents. On the other hand, we also see a strong presence of smaller economies at the top of GTCI rankings. This is largely due to the fact that those economies have historically had to compete without significant natural resources or territorial advantages Relying on talent was often their only way out of isolation and poverty, and being open economies was a condition of their growth. So, if we put these two ingredients together (being rich and being small), it is clear that most of the countries combining both are to be found in Europe. (Rare exceptions include Singapore, and possibly New Zealand and some countries in the Persian Gulf.) 

But European countries have clearly relied on the appropriate policies to strengthen that advantage by combining it with the pursuit of four strategic priorities: education, innovation, infrastructure (ICT), and openness.  

While European countries are doing well in the ranking, when it comes to cities, US has three in the top four. What makes some American cities perform so well? 

When ranking cities, the 2022 edition of GTCI  shows a mix of large and small urban centres, ranked on their reputation and growing footprint in attracting global talent. It is among the former that US cities shine, greater San Francisco and Boston being two key examples. Both offer a rare combination of high-level universities on one hand and a vibrant innovation ecosystem on the other.  

Altogether, however, the GTCI rankings of cities are (like country rankings) largely dominated by European cities, which accounted for more than one-third of the total coverage (68 out of 175). Smaller cities prove highly competitive in terms of talents. The example of Swiss cities (Zürich, Lausanne, Geneva) is remarkable in this respect. 

There’s been talk about cities’ potential to lure talent for decades now. Do we see a situation where cities play such a big role in luring talent that it creates talent inequality not just between countries, but also inside countries?   

Globally speaking, talent hubs are much more cities than nations. Cities are more agile and can offer better conditions to the workers they want to attract or retain (fiscally, but also in terms of access to key services and quality of life). Innovation clusters are particularly clear examples. 

As the world enters times of higher economic, social, and political uncertainty, talent hubs will be better equipped to weather the storm. Cities that appear well positioned to be future-ready include medium-sized cities (with a population of between 200,000 and 2 million), as well as those that mobilise digital transformation, offer attractive work environments to younger generations, and contribute to national strategic goals and objectives. 

One may add here that, in a global economy that is growing increasingly digital, talented workers become less dependent on specific production locations. Most can operate anytime from anywhere. In such a context, quality of life is a strong contributor to talent attraction. Europe’s dense tissue of medium-sized cities helps it significantly in this regard. 

This article is originally published on November 21, 2022.

Executive Profile

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In a world where Generative A.I. has become ubiquitous, Riversoft‘s CTO, Claude Shen, discusses how the technology can be effectively incorporated into the business world. With A.I. market projected to reach nearly 2 trillion U.S. dollars by 2030, Claude explores the potential of ChatGPT-like models and emphasizes the importance of understanding their limitations. Discover how Riversoft aims to delve deeper into the power of A.I. to provide customised solutions while preparing society for a future where A.I. plays an increasingly prominent role.

Game Changers with Promising Futures

The emergence of Generative A.I. and applications like ChatGPT has transformed what was once a seemingly distant technology into an integral part of our daily lives. People from all walks of life, including researchers and laymen, were both shocked and impressed by its capabilities. The question now arises: How can we harness its potential and effectively incorporate it into the business world and our daily work?

“It’s a question of a ubiquitous technology that penetrates every industry. So with this generic model that can easily be adapted into all different kinds of industry”, according to Riversoft’s Chief Technology Officer, Claude Shen.

Claude is a Natural Language Processing (NLP) expert educated in Taiwan and further in Germany in the discipline of computational linguistics and NLP. With a professional career built on NLP-related research and development in leading companies such as Philips and Nuance, he later founded an NLP-led company Lingtelli, which Riversoft acquired, for whom Claude now works as the Chief Technology Officer. 

Riversoft is a Taiwan-based software development company that specializes in generative A.I. chatbots and Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology. They serve a broad client base spanning from Travel, Healthcare to E-commerce. Today, we are privileged to have Claude sharing his insights on the A.I.-dominant era and the core value of Riversoft.

Current Status and Prospects of the A.I. market

A.I. market is predicted to experience robust growth in the next decade. According to Next Move Strategy Consulting, its current value of nearly 100 billion U.S. dollars is projected to increase twentyfold by 2030, reaching almost 2 trillion U.S. dollars.

Before the advent of ChatGPT, notable advancements in A.I. were already observed in specific fields. For instance, AlphaGo, an A.I. software, achieved remarkable success by defeating top-level players in the game of Go with minimal learning time. The emergence of ubiquitous technologies like ChatGPT has transformed A.I. into a tool that permeates every aspect of our lives. OpenAI, the renowned company behind ChatGPT and GPT4.0, is a major player in this field. Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI engineers, is its primary competitor. Anthropic recently announced that they had expanded their chatbot’s context window to 75,000 words. To put it into perspective, their chatbot can process an entire novel in just one minute, while a human would require approximately five hours to do the same.

These generic models can now be readily applied across various industries by anyone. Students can utilize them for homework assistance, doctors can employ them to analyze clinical notes, and companies like Riversoft can leverage their presence to enhance customer service.

According to Claude, we can anticipate industry giants focusing on developing cutting-edge and general A.I. models. At the same time, downstream companies will build upon these foundations, tailoring and applying them to specific domains.

“It takes a huge amount of resources to create and build those models. So it’s not for small and middle-sized companies. We have to think about (is that) now we have ChatGPT and GPT-like models, what can we do more to go deeper into our domains? We have to know our real value instead of just using ChatGPT. This is a huge opportunity.”  Claude explains.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) & Generative A.I.

Claude explains that NLP is a broad term encompassing various technologies and applications. The transformer model is one of the NLP models with inherent features making it particularly well-suited for processing language data. The “GPT” in ChatGPT stands for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer.” The neural network structure of a transformer draws inspiration from the intricacies of the human brain, which may explain why interacting with transformer-based models feels akin to engaging with humans in conversation.

“Everything converges down to a Transformer based architecture to tackle different kinds of problems, especially now that we have ChatGPT and GPT-like things that seem to solve every aspect of NLP. “

Riversoft’s Edge and Core Values

“ChatGPT and similar technologies can significantly enhance our ability to serve customers, but rather than relying solely on them, we need to identify our values and advantages,” emphasizes Claude.

In Claude’s view, the essence of research and application in NLP technology lies in understanding meaning. People desire machines to communicate, read, and write like humans, and this hinges on comprehension. Although GPT and similar models can generate articles that appear human-like, the extent to which they truly understand their output is still debatable.

“ChatGPT and similar models are super capable of generating human-like patterns, but we still cannot say that they understand what they produce. Maybe it’s a philosophical issue; I mean sometimes you think you have free will you think you have consciousness but some would argue that it’s illusion.”

Presently, one of Riversoft’s products in the medical field involves analyzing clinical notes written by doctors, extracting relevant information, and presenting it in a structured manner.

Riversoft’s goal is to delve deeper into information generated by A.I. models and humans. While such information is easily comprehensible for humans, it is not readily accessible to computers. By developing a system capable of processing unstructured data for further use, Riversoft aims to offer highly detailed and personalized travel itineraries by scouring travel sites and blogs. In the medical realm, the system can analyze medical records, alerting healthcare professionals to any cautionary factors when prescribing treatments and medications. This system streamlines necessary checks and reduces the risk of inappropriate treatments.

“We want to generate a core that can process through all the content and put it back to the system where the system can orchestrate all the information, be it structured or unstructured, and put them all into a very systematic process. So that we can serve our client,” states Claude.

Consciousness of A.I.

“If you don’t have the knowledge to verify if what’s been generated (by A.I. models) is hallucination or facts, you will be misinformed. I think we provide here that no matter what kind of generation models, we will have a way to go through the content and modify and deletions.” “It’s dangerous to rely only on one source. So it’s important to have a mechanism to correct and modify the output of those models.”

The technology employed by Riversoft strives to increase solution autonomy and flexibility. Through a combination of deep learning models and semantic mechanisms, human intervention can be minimized within the system. This is how small and medium-sized companies can thrive in the era of the A.I. revolution.

Here to help or here to replace? Possible changes that A.I. might bring about

The disruptive breakthrough of A.I. has sparked diverse perspectives among scholars and researchers. While some express optimism, others raise concerns about its implications. Geoffrey Hinton, widely regarded as the godfather of A.I., even resigned from Google to adopt a more neutral stance on the matter. He shares several major concerns.

Firstly, Hinton highlights the issue of misinformation. With programs capable of generating words, pictures, and videos, discerning reality from fiction on the internet will become increasingly challenging. Secondly, he emphasizes the impact on the job market. While A.I. currently complements human work, there is growing apprehension that as A.I. capabilities expand, it will disrupt the labour market on a large scale. Lastly, although still hypothetical, Hinton worries about the existential risk that may arise when all human work is replaced by A.I.

In contrast, Claude adopts a more optimistic view of the issue, focusing on the practical implementation of these technologies. “It’s less about controlling the research and more about how we put these technologies to use,” he states.

While the ability to generate information is currently in the spotlight, Claude emphasizes the importance of appropriateness. Generated information can be either factual or mere fabrications. Without domain-specific knowledge, distinguishing between the two can be challenging. This underscores the need for mechanisms to modify and correct the output of A.I. models. Humans possess ethical, legal, and societal constraints that guide us in distinguishing between good and evil. Similarly, it is crucial to establish similar systems to exercise control over A.I.

Claude reassures, “We are not yet at the stage of sci-fi scenarios where machines are trying to eradicate the human race.” However, we can already witness A.I. making significant changes in various fields. For instance, as autonomous driving technology matures, human driving—the source of many uncertainties—can be eliminated, making roads safer for everyone.

Since we are still far from a world where machines entirely replace humans, worrying about such scenarios is unrealistic. Instead, Claude suggests that we prepare society for a future where A.I. plays an increasingly prominent role in our lives.

Regarding the impact on the job market, Claude offers a more positive perspective. “Currently, many people perform mundane, repetitive work not because they want to, but out of necessity.” He envisions a society where labor-intensive jobs are replaced by machines. Claude proposes that as firms’ personnel costs decrease due to A.I., the resulting excess profit could be redistributed by the government through initiatives like universal basic income—an idea advocating for regular cash transfers to citizens without conditions.

Furthermore, with A.I. taking over tasks such as handling emails and questionnaires, individuals will have more time and resources at their disposal. They can spend quality time with family and friends or just look at the stars. “A.I. can make humans more human by liberating them from industrialized processes,” Claude asserts.

Overall, while acknowledging the potential changes brought about by A.I., Claude maintains an optimistic outlook, emphasizing the importance of responsible implementation and preparing society for a future where A.I. increasingly shapes our lives.

How ChatGPT-like Models Improve Collaboration in Workplace  

ChatGPT-like models have the potential to enhance collaboration in the workplace significantly. Their consistent and reliable nature eliminates fluctuations and forgetfulness that humans may experience. This is reflected in the significant increase of 44% in the use of collaboration tools between 2019 and the present, as reported by Gartner. While collaboration is becoming increasingly prevalent, managing and tracking teamwork can be demanding and time-consuming.

With systems like ChatGPT, all communication and organization needs can be efficiently coordinated and consistently followed. “You can imagine having an omnipotent assistant standing next to you, telling you things to beware of, to take care of, and making sure everything stays on track,” said Claude.

Moreover, ChatGPT and similar systems act as connectors within teams. Previously, companies relied on fixed systems that required strict adherence to established procedures and disciplined execution. However, ChatGPT-like models function as proactive agents, identifying missing elements and contacting individuals to ensure tasks are completed. “The old system required rigid disciplines from everyone. But sometimes it doesn’t work because people failed to follow up.” This new system effectively coordinates and controls the workflow, automating various office processes.

Importantly, the applications of such models extend beyond the workspace. Claude gave a scenario when planning a trip to London; it is essential to confirm the availability of desired attractions and restaurants and check the weather and traffic conditions. Here, an agent working in conjunction with other models can simplify and streamline the process for tourists, providing coordinated assistance and relevant information.

The Challenges

When discussing the challenges faced by Riversoft, Claude acknowledged the intense competition within the A.I. industry as a significant hurdle. Competitors are constantly striving to outperform and replace each other. However, he expressed confidence in Riversoft’s technological advantage in deep learning models and semantic technology, which, when combined, serve as their competitive edge.

Financial and market-related challenges are also prevalent, including the need to attract investments and establish a presence in the market. The impact of the pandemic has led to a slow recovery of capital, making it more difficult to secure the necessary funding. Additionally, as these technologies are relatively new, there are no established models to follow, necessitating significant time and effort to communicate with customers and educate them about the benefits. Acquiring customers in this landscape can be costly, and Riversoft aims to address this challenge by exploring strategies to reduce customer acquisition costs.

Currently, Riversoft’s client base extends across Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and Europe. Their strategy involves partnering with major players in different domains, enabling them to gain valuable insights and identify the essential features required in each market. As the technology continues to mature, Riversoft intends to expand its market share and explore new opportunities.

Keeping up with the Trend 

As the CTO of Riversoft, Claude emphasized the importance of staying updated with the latest trends and advancements in the field. Platforms like YouTube and Google serve as valuable sources of general information, allowing individuals to discover experts who provide insights into specific areas. This enables them to keep abreast of the latest developments. While academic papers are a valuable source of information, Claude acknowledged their limitations in terms of speed and relevance to the market. “I spend lots of time keeping myself updated. In such an ever-changing field, if you don’t survey for a week, you find yourself missing out on important things,” said Claude.

Embracing Innovation, Collaboration, and Endless Possibilities 

ChatGPT and similar A.I. technologies have brought about a transformative change in our daily lives. From the astonishing growth of the A.I. market to the intense competition among industry players, it is clear that A.I. is here to stay and will continue to shape the future.

While the challenges of financials, market-entry, and customer acquisition persist, companies like Riversoft leverage their technology edge and strategic partnerships to carve a niche in specific domains such as travel and medicine.

As we embrace this A.I.-prevalent era, it becomes crucial for individuals and organizations to adapt and make the best use of A.I. tools. “The most important aspect of human intelligence is creativity,” said Claude. By understanding the potential of A.I. and harnessing its capabilities, we may be able to navigate the evolving landscape and unlock endless new possibilities for innovation, collaboration and beyond.

References

• https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/12/23720964/chatbot-language-model-context-window-memory-anthropic-claude
• https://www.statista.com/statistics/1379027/chatgpt-use-us-companies-money- saved/
• https://lilianweng.github.io/lil-log/assets/images/transformer.png
• https://www.statista.com/statistics/1365145/artificial-intelligence-market-size/
• https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/01/technology/ai-google-chatbot-engineer- quits-hinton.html

The post Navigating the A.I. Era: How Riversoft from Taiwan Harnesses the Power of Generative A.I. appeared first on The European Business Review.

Good day, Mr Dumanski! Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to speak with us. Could we begin with a few words on what made you pursue a career in telecommunications? 

Certainly. I was introduced to telecommunications as a student in graduate school. At the time, I worked with Bell Canada and became very enamoured with the industry. After graduation, I was lucky to be employed by Nortel and joined their wireless group almost immediately.  

Founded in 1992, Subex has spent over 25 years helping global communications service providers maximise their revenues and profitability. With a legacy of world-class solutions for business optimisation and analytics, what would you say are the cornerstones of your success? 

Going beyond the Subex legacy of world-class solutions for business optimisation and analytics, we are now paving the way with solutions that help achieve Digital Trust within our customers’ business ecosystems. These solutions focus on privacy, security, predictability, and confidence in data. Our latest platform, HyperSense, encapsulates all this, making it simple enough for any business, no matter the industry, to embrace disruptive change and succeed with digital trust.   

The cornerstone of our approach and our constant evolution is Subex’s 3-Horizon strategy.   

Horizon 1 has products for traditional businesses within telecom, and these are a primary revenue generator for us. Fraud management, revenue assurance, partner ecosystem management, and capacity management are the most popular ones. We have also upgraded this entire solution suite with AI/ML to keep in step with the market and support the latest 5G and digital requirements.

Horizon 2 focuses on the internet of things (IoT), security, and analytics. Here, too, we have been upgrading our IoT Security solution to address Operational Technology (OT) use cases. One of the things Subex does very well is securing converged networks that have OT and IoT deployments. Agreeably, this gives us an edge in exploring new growth opportunities in this sector. This year, there have been some exciting additions to our Horizon 2 portfolio, such as Vulnerability Management, Micro-segmentation, and geography-focused cybersecurity solutions. This space will continue to improve with better product capabilities and strategic partnerships for market expansion.  

And lastly, Horizon 3 is more about breakthrough innovations around identity and onboarding marketing. One key start-up here is ID Central, which focuses on AI/ML innovation. The main product is an identity verification system that strengthens the digital ecosystems of telecoms, e-commerce, fintech, and other verticals, and supports the API economy.

Subex now acts as a key player in enabling all-around digital trust in the business ecosystems of its customers. For those who may not be familiar with the concept, what exactly is digital trust?  

Digital business is creating new rules of engagement, agile but ephemeral digital interactions, dynamic digital supply chains, and an explosion of players that work in tandem within this complex ecosystem. Digital trust is a concept that enables users to carry out business transactions in a safe, secure, ethical, and reliable manner within these ecosystems. But digital trust is multi-dimensional and multi-directional and very hard to build in digital ecosystems. 

Subex envisions Digital Trust as the lifeblood of digital business. Through it, entities can quantify expectations, validate themselves, monitor behaviour – all within the boundary-less world of digital. We drive Digital Trust across multiple dimensions, such as Transactional Trust, Competence Trust, and Representational Trust across customer businesses, consumers, and partners. We believe it is crucial to create a complete, robust, and fail-proof framework for Digital Trust. Our portfolio of products and solutions does exactly that. 

Give us a quick peek into the evolution of technology at Subex?  

Since the very beginning, Subex’s core customer base has been the telecom segment. As we all know, telecom is a mix of very rich data, holding a significant amount of insights, opportunities, and challenges. One of the earliest challenges we’ve faced was how to leverage this data in a meaningful way to highlight opportunities, gaps, threats, and revenue.  

Over the years, we have partnered and co-created with our customers by leveraging data to solve complex issues. We have developed a suite of products using powerful technologies that help our clients solve complex business problems. Some of the topmost areas where clients seek our help are maximising revenue, preventing leakages, handling fraud, and optimising spending. We can provide our customers with clear and actionable insights because of our expertise in data engineering and ability to deal with high volume, high velocity, and a great variety of data. 

This became the core of what we do, i.e., analytics.

As CSPs become DSPs (digital service providers), there is a new surge of interest in digital infrastructure and next-gen solutions. We have been riding this wave by experimenting, prototyping, and deploying industry-class solutions to meet this demand. In addition, we now leverage AI and ML in our products and push cloud-first solutions. 

We have also evolved beyond traditional licence-based models. In the digital future, we aim to deliver innovation rapidly, give customers control over their data, and have the confidence that their digital ecosystems are secure, safe, and reliable. 

Interestingly, HyperSense, our latest platform, is the culmination of this journey of technological evolution at Subex. As an open cloud-native platform built on microservices architecture, it is composable and includes several studios that give customers the tools to solve problems in-house. 

You recently announced the launch of HyperSense. Could you please introduce us to the capabilities of HyperSense?

HyperSense is an end-to-end AI orchestration platform that helps enterprises make faster, better decisions by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) across the data value chain. 

It takes away the need for CSPs to invest in multiple-point solutions to solve different problems and keep the software and human resources up to date. It aggregates and organises data generated across the enterprise, eliminating challenges with data integration and siloed data sets. 

HyperSense seamlessly marries data and analytics, making it extremely simple for the end users, who can be developers, data scientists, and even business teams. IDC estimates that the analytics market will reach $500 billion by 2025, and HyperSense helps enterprises tap into this. 

We designed HyperSense by tapping into our extensive data analytics experience. As a result, it contains all the augmented analytics capabilities that enterprises need in one flexible and modular platform. Another thing that HyperSense does very well is help businesses use AI. Around 70 to 80 per cent of enterprises struggle to find a uniform AI and data stack, organise data for AI models, and find the right talent. Since it is a no-code platform, users without coding knowledge can easily aggregate data from disparate sources, turn data into insights, build and tune AI models, and share findings. 

Diving into its capabilities, HyperSense has five studios. 

The Data Management Studio handles data governance aspects like curating, cleansing, validating, and storing data. The Business Modeling Studio codifies business rules and simulates business processes. The AI Studio helps make smarter, profitable, and agile decisions through easy drag-and-drop capabilities. The Business Intelligence Studio helps explore, analyse, and visualise complex datasets. The Process Automation Studio provides closed-loop feedback, visualisation, and reporting for better stakeholder collaboration.  

For enterprises, HyperSense will change how AI is adopted and used to cement profitable offerings and strategic partnerships. For Subex, HyperSense is the start of our platform journey.   

Can you take our readers through Subex’s journey towards making AI/ML an essential/powering factor within your products? 

Subex started on the path of AI/ML a couple of years back. Early adopters of AI/ML have different success stories. A common refrain is that the RoI seems limited, even as the technology matures and becomes more affordable. In a few cases, companies have started to reduce their investments in AI, because they do not reap the expected promises.

What we have done at Subex is created “AI Labs” to foster experimenting with AI. For customers, it gives them an idea of the actual benefits of AI, i.e., how it solves precise problems, the substantial efficiencies they can gain, and costs they can reduce. This simple approach has steered us to create powerful products. Alongside, we are also building competencies in AI talent, tools, and solutions. We, too, have an AI-first approach towards building our own products. We are investing in the right AI talent and have been identified as the 15th among the Top 50 Best Places for Data Scientists to Work in India by Analytics India magazine. 

Please give us a few insights into your technology labs and virtual start-ups. How is it helping Subex to come out with innovative products and solutions? 

Innovation is part of the culture at Subex. At the outset, we have designed a framework to support innovative ideas and proofs of concept. An example of these efforts is our anomaly-detection solution. We have an internal virtual start-up ecosystem for internal tech entrepreneurs to run with their ideas and test how these solve real-world business problems. Taking the case of the anomaly solution, now any company can learn about attacks on its payment gateways and how these attacks evolve.

In a similar vein, our technology labs have churned out products such as Capacity Management, an AI-enabled network investment planning solution, and IDcentral, a consent-first identity and access management solution. There are some prototypes in the pipelines. We also build solutions in collaboration with customers, like the revenue reconciliation solution using blockchain technology. 

Can you tell me some of the work Subex is doing around the blockchain space and how this will evolve in the next few years? 

Blockchain will soon be a force multiplier across multiple industries, with applications ranging from cryptocurrencies to vaccine tracking. By enabling immutable trust, blockchain melds very well with our vision of digital trust. At Subex, digital trust has three components: the “non-negotiable” foundation layer of risk management; the “sustenance layer” that binds identity and security; and the strategic layer, which creates competitive advantage and supports brand reputation elements. Our view is that, on the three-point trust scale, blockchain is a layer-three technology; that is, it can enhance brand reputation by delivering the immutable trust required in transactions. 

There are many opportunities for blockchain adoption in telecom. By 2023, we expect that it will be worth $993.8 million in the telecom industry. Top of mind, some of the immediate use cases are dealer management, margin management, and data governance. 

Blockchain seemed like a natural choice for us at Subex. We were named as one of 10 technology provider partners supporting the Communications Business Automation Network in 2019 by the ITW Global Leaders’ Forum. We are also a member of the RAG Wangiri Blockchain Consortium and take part in several telecom forums, focusing on developing real-time industry threat intelligence on fraud by utilising blockchain. 

Can you tell us about the work Subex is doing in the space of IoT? 

We have upgraded the Subex IoT Security solution to address Operational Technology (OT) use cases. One use case is cybersecurity. In the past two years, cyber-attacks have become more prevalent, and every industry is grappling with these. Recent reports estimate that the global OT security market will reach US$25 billion by 2026. Hackers are bent on exploiting technology gaps to steal valuable and sensitive corporate data. One common means of hacking systems is through connected devices on the Internet of Things (IoT). 

Having significant expertise in securing converged networks that have OT and IoT deployments, Subex is constantly evolving its products in this space. For instance, we have added features such as Vulnerability Management and Micro-segmentation into our product to meet specific client needs.

Some of the clients eager for our IoT cybersecurity solutions are in the maritime, appliance manufacturers, automotive manufacturers, O&G, and (of course) telecom sectors. To achieve this, we are actively engaging with key distributors and resellers to make our geography-focused cybersecurity solutions available to different markets. 

Could you please give us insights into the R&D cycle in your company?  

We are firm believers in the principles of continuous innovation and a start-up mindset. So, we fund teams that come up with the best ideas. They also have access to mentors, incubators, and time off to actualise their ideas. All of this spending is part of our R&D cycle that helps us bring out relevant digital products and solutions that add value for our customers.   

Your thoughts on the kind of talent needed to veer Subex into the future in terms of technology? 

Given that technology is the bedrock of most operations, we will be investing significantly in upscaling our talent. This includes hiring certified talent and upskilling our engineers through our internal Learning Management System (LMS). Internal journeys are supported by a robust career architecture that we dedicatedly built to help our employees chart meaningful career journeys. 

In terms of technology talent, we are strengthening our expertise in the cloud space around cloud infrastructure and cloud-native development. Some of the roles we focus on are programmers and OSEs, technical architects, and product management talent. We also want to refine competencies around AI/ML by investing in data scientists, data engineers, and people with AI/ML or Deep Learning skills. And finally, UI/UX architects will be crucial to ensure that all of these capabilities are customer-centric, and we are looking for the top talent in those areas as well.  

Please talk about customers and partners and how Subex has adapted based on their changing requirements? 

Subex works with over 200 operators globally, and 75 per cent of the top 50 telcos are our partners. We have 300+ installations across 90+ countries, which will give you an idea of the scale at which we operate.  

This year, we announced deals with a few marquee names for our core products. At the same time, our newer focus areas like IoT Security, Capacity Management, and IDcentral also had good traction, and we should see more growth coming from these areas in the next year. 

As a customer-centric company, we pride ourselves on being able to listen and adapt as per our customer needs and the changing market landscape. Customers today want control. They want to choose their best course of action to solve their problems. Since the beginning, Subex’s core customer base has been the telecom segment, which has access to a vast amount of data that holds insights, opportunities, and red flags. The challenge comes from leveraging this data.  

Even before big data became a mainstream word, Subex has been building capabilities in data engineering and dealing with large-scale data. As technology progressed, so did we. As a result, we consistently reimagine how we serve our customers and how our customers will be conducting business in the future. For example, we shifted from software primarily for on-prem deployment to Hadoop as a platform and innovations around big data. 

Recently, we augmented our entire product suite to support 5G and other digital requirements by leveraging AI/ML capabilities. This product strategy and our focus on Digital Trust continue to see an encouraging response from customers. We endeavour to help our customers across the chasm of using AI capabilities to get a disproportionate advantage, despite the harsh realities of lack of data science skills. HyperSense is the outcome of this. Built on open cloud-native microservices architecture and using a studio-based approach, HyperSense puts the solution in the hands of the customer. 

Please tell us about your team and how they stood by company values during the pandemic? 

Subex’s employees are spread across the globe, and the larger centres are our offices located in Bengaluru, London, Denver, Dubai, and Singapore. We have 1,000+ full-time Subexians on our rolls globally. Subex and Subexians are united by our values of Make it Happen, Win Together, Think Customer, Create Value, and Be Open, Be Fair. I believe this unity and strength helped tide us through the pandemic. Each Subexian worked tirelessly, channelising all their energy and skills to meet the needs of our customers and partners. Through their continued efforts, we ensured continuity in operations and business growth. With the rapid changes in telecom, Subex has been quick to understand the market needs and build capabilities to support this. These achievements are possible only because of our strong community of employees. 

At Subex, talent acquisition and retention remain a key focus area and will always be essential to building Subex as a fast-growing technology company. We continue to hire top talent wherever we see a role fitment. Given the direction that Subex is taking, our current talent pool lies in the cloud space, towards cloud infrastructure, specifically for cloud-native development. On the other side, hiring investments are also directed towards building additional competencies around AI/ML, an area where we are expanding and upscaling. This includes data scientists, data engineers, folks with AI/ML or Deep Learning skills, etc.  

What trends do you see influencing the telecom industry in the coming decade?    

The world is gradually moving towards 100 per cent mobile coverage. Growth across mobile adoption, mobile internet, and 4G adoption has been steady. Two years ago, 50 per cent of the global population used mobile internet. Telcos want to bring the rural and gender deficit of users within their networks.  

5G is also seeing steady growth across developed and developing markets, with an average of eight new 5G networks being added every month. Some estimate that we will see 150+ 5G networks growing in nearly 60 global markets, with over 200 million connections.   

IoT tech will become more mature, driving new-age use cases of 5G. Integration with existing ecosystems, data security, and implementation costs are the topmost expected hurdles, and telcos will need strong solutions to help them ride the wave.   

All of this makes cost management more critical. Many CSPs were weighed down by a sharp fall in mobile revenues during COVID-19, due to low roaming services and the need to discount services to help deal with the pandemic. In the future, US$900 billion is the expected capex of operators by 2025, 80 per cent of which will be dedicated to 5G. We see significant interest in open network technologies to reduce cost, widen supplier choices, and make network investment planning more judicious.   

And lastly, how would you define success?  

Success will be measured in many dimensions. First, with our customers. Do they see value in their relationship with Subex? Is Subex top of their mind to help solve pressing issues? Is Subex a trusted partner? 

Next, with our employees.  Is Subex a great place to work? Do our employees recommend us to their friends? Are people treated with respect and dignity? Are they proud to be called a Subexian? 

When we can answer all of these questions in the affirmative, we will undoubtedly be considered “successful”.  

This article is originally published on March 30, 2022

Executive Profile

Warren Dumanski heads Subex’s North America business, and is responsible for overall P&L for the region. He brings with him over 30 years of experience, spanning across most conceivable areas of wireless and communications technologies. 

Prior to joining Subex, Warren was General Manager, Americas at TEOCO Corporation for eight years, where he managed the Sales and Account Management teams. Warren has also played critical, revenue generating roles in other organizations like Celletra, Newfield Wireless, NextG Networks, Spectrian Corporation and Nortel Networks amongst others. 

The post Digital Trust is on the Horizon: Interview with Warren Dumanski, Executive VP and General Manager of Subex appeared first on The European Business Review.

Good day, Ms Sheehan! Thank you for lending us some of your time. What initially drew you to the veterinary industry, and what inspired you to establish UNAVETS?

In 2019, after executing a successful buy-and-build strategy in the convenience retail sector in Spain, I was looking for my next project.  
 
Beyond the fundamental economics, healthcare was compelling to me because of the potential to make a positive social impact. After studying various healthcare verticals, I was convinced to move forward in the veterinary healthcare segment by the fundamental trends supporting the sector, especially in Iberia. For example, its stable and growing market size, recession-resilient demand, and its readiness for consolidation. And that was pre-COVID. 
 
Since COVID, the veterinary sector has become even more dynamic, with ever-greater opportunities for accelerated growth. 

• Overall, there are over a billion pets worldwide.  
• The number of pets in Spain – which is where, alongside Portugal, we have most of our practices – increased approximately 25 per cent during the pandemic, and now exceeds 20 million. 
• In Iberia, average spending on pets is projected to grow by a minimum of 7.5 per cent each year for the next several years, due to both the increased sophistication of care and increases in the price of care. 

However, I also believe that the strength of the vet sector is in its stability. People love their pets; they’re members of our families, our steadfast companions, and their health is so important to us. In fact, according to research, 72 per cent of Gen Z and Gen X adults would rather save money for their pets than go on vacation, while another study found that more than 80 per cent of pet parents choose to spend more on their pet’s healthcare than their own. 

It was in response to this strong sector growth and customer demand that I was inspired to establish UNAVETS. Since day one, our mission has been to promote healthy pets, healthy vets, and a healthy planet. We do this by providing our vets with the best-possible work environment and by investing in their well-being and professional development, so they can offer excellent healthcare to our pet patients.  

Could you tell us a bit about the evolution of UNAVETS from its inception to now? Also, what are the primary drivers behind the company’s growth?

Against an uncertain macroeconomic backdrop, investors tend to look for markets that can withstand turbulent conditions, and the “vets and pets” sector fits that profile. After self-funding the company for about six months, Oaktree Capital Management invested in UNAVETS in December 2019. I had a business plan and a pipeline of targets, but the company was still very much in the beginning stages of its evolution. 
 
While the sector had been consolidating in more mature markets like the UK and US, the €2.6 billion veterinary healthcare market in Iberia had relatively low consolidation levels compared to some other parts of Europe. Only 7 per cent to 10 per cent of Spanish and Portuguese practices are owned by large groups, in contrast to more than 55 per cent in the UK and 35 per cent in Sweden. This is despite the Spanish and Portuguese markets sharing many of the same characteristics as other consolidated markets, such as increasing advances in clinical care, and higher levels of pet ownership and pet life expectancy.  
 
Focusing on Iberia is bearing fruit. In just over three years since our launch, we’ve acquired 107 practices and labs, and more are joining every day. The team now comprises 1,100 people committed to veterinary healthcare excellence and innovation. We also have a sister company in Poland, the LuxVet Group, with 250 team members across 20 practices. 
 
UNAVETS is now the leading veterinary healthcare group in the Iberian region and one of the fastest-growing veterinary groups in Europe. I give enormous credit to UNAVETS’ amazing management team and staff – all brilliant and creative veterinary industry professionals, business leaders, and human healthcare specialists who have propelled the business to where it is now.  
 
Given our strong execution track record, last November, Ares Management provided more than $120m in additional debt and acquisition financing to fund our continued growth.  

What sets UNAVETS apart from other veterinary groups?

UNAVETS is known for its commitment to the comprehensive well-being of our vets and veterinary staff.  
 
Vets have historically been underpaid and undervalued, suffering from high levels of work stress. We’re leading the industry by paying our clinicians above the average, investing in well-being programmes, and providing all our team members with access to advanced learning and development courses. 
 
We have more than 60 support staff dedicated to business, operational, and professional development support, which enables our teams to focus on the clinical work, which is their passion.   
 
We offer an increasing range of education and training options. In 2022, we provided more than 100 in-person and online training sessions across the group. This year, through our OneAcademy learning platform and partnership with IFEVET, an online training institute often referred to as “the Netflix of veterinary training platforms”, we’ll deliver even more opportunities for learning and development. 
 
We also offer health insurance to all our team members, a leading benefit in the Iberian vet sector. 
 
Direct benefits like these set us apart from our competitors. They’re helping to reverse the historical trend of Iberian specialists departing their home countries for the UK or US for better jobs and more experience. They can now find mentorship and career opportunities in Iberia at UNAVETS-owned practices.  
 
Because of our differentiated focus, approach, and ethos, an increasing number of clinicians that weren’t interested in selling to other groups have decided to join UNAVETS.

How do you ensure that your clinics provide high-quality care to their patients?

You’ve used the right word: “care”. We care about our vets; we care about our pets and pet parents; and we care about the integrity of what we’re building at UNAVETS. That includes our investment in professional development and facilities, as well as the importance we place on post-merger integration.  
 
A few examples…

• The UNAVETS platform offers key business and operational support services so vets can focus their time on what they want to do and what they do best. And that’s caring for animals, not negotiating with suppliers or handling accounts, payroll, or benefits.  
• UNAVETS’ care isn’t solely limited to the clinical. We place great importance on the “clinical journey” – specifically, the work environment for our vets. We employ two architects across the group who ensure our practices are designed to the highest standards.  
• Pets and their owners get the reassurance that they need that their vets are fully equipped, dedicated, and supported so they can provide the highest quality of care.  
• UNAVETS also offers health plans which ensure that preventative care is more affordable and accessible for pet owners. We’re also committed to transparent pricing and offer clear and easy-to-understand cost breakdowns. 

UNAVETS has made a strategic partnership with the BSA, one of the world’s most sophisticated animal blood banks. How has this arrangement – and any other partnerships or investments – enhanced the company’s services and capabilities? 

Our rapid growth isn’t limited solely to practice acquisitions. We’re also committed to expanding into adjacent areas that focus on innovation in veterinary healthcare. 

Our partnership with the Banco de Sangue Animal (BSA), one of the world’s most advanced veterinary blood banks, is proof of this. BSA is revolutionising the way animal blood donations are managed, ensuring clinicians and practices have safe, quick, and easy access to animal blood components to help animals in need.  

Alongside our partnership with the BSA, we’ve also invested in a couple of US software companies – a healthcare-focused data analytics platform called JUX/Vetcelerator and a practice management software company called Rhapsody, which has already been bought by Chewy, the US-based pet e-commerce business.   
 
We are also proactively scanning adjacent verticals that are complementary to veterinary healthcare and we will continue exploring various opportunities.  
 
Finally, we’re also investing in our clinical sites. Our flagship referral hospital, Veterios, represents 18,000 sq. ft. of clinical excellence in Madrid and is a template for our future new-build hospitals.  

Could you provide more information about UNAVETS’ venture into the rapidly growing field of veterinary technology?

Investing in technology is a key part of our growth plans and our commitment to supporting the development of the sector. Frankly, as we continue to see the pet population outpace veterinary resources, we believe that innovation and technology can play a pivotal role in bridging that gap.   
 
As an example, JUX/Vetcelerator, our healthcare data analytics business, provides valuable commercial insights for veterinary and human healthcare practices in an automated and efficient way.   
 
We’re also believers in the democratisation of training resources, and are investing in our OneAcademy learning platform, which provides multiple avenues of learning for our vets and nurses. Technology will make this learning (and specialist collaboration) more accessible for our team members, regardless of where they’re located.   

What are UNAVETS’ expansion plans and why? Do you see UNAVETS moving into other geographies or other adjacent verticals? 

We’re always looking for opportunities to grow by working with like-minded practices and businesses. By the end of 2023, we expect to have approximately 140 practices within our group.   
 
We continue to evaluate other geographies across Europe, as well as adjacent verticals that have synergies with our veterinary practices.    

What is UNAVETS doing in the ESG space?

ESG is an integral focus for UNAVETS. It’s in our DNA, given what our vets and teams accomplish each and every day. But we continue to strive for more.

We’re driving change by advocating for improvements in the working lives of vets and investing in staff well-being by providing quality healthcare to all members of the UNAVETS network. We also pay more than the industry standards.  
 
Our commitment to a “healthy planet” is something we take very seriously. Our support of the African Wildlife Foundation, which operates in 17 African nations to protect and preserve endangered wildlife and wildlands, is just one example of our conservation focus.  

In light of your experience with UNAVETS, what guidance would you offer to an individual looking to establish a business in the veterinary sector? 

My main piece of advice would be to have a clear understanding of what the problem is that you are trying to address. Then, to socialise your ideas with those who know the industry best, so you can adapt, evolve, and refine your business idea.  
 
For non-veterinary industry professionals, I’d also advise that you find veterinary professionals with whom you can join forces. Having good partners with a solid understanding of the sector has been key to our success.  

Finally, as the CEO and founder of UNAVETS, what are some of your proudest moments with the company, and what do you hope to achieve in the future? 

One of the proudest moments for our team was the acquisition of our 100th clinic. It was a huge milestone. It put into perspective how hard and creatively our acquisition group and support teams have been working, and how many vets have become a part of the wider UNAVETS network.  
 
Personally, my proudest moments have been seeing the impact that UNAVETS’ commitment and support have had on practice owners and their teams. I’ve had multiple clinical directors tell me how happy they are that they joined UNAVETS. They’re able to provide even better care and have a better quality of life, spending more time with their families and friends. Hearing that feedback is hugely gratifying and motivating. I couldn’t be prouder of our UNAVETS family.  

Executive Profile

Junko Sheehan has over 20 years’ experience in finance and corporate development, with over $30 billion in M&A and capital-raising transactions. Her previous experience includes work in the TMT investment groups of Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley, and UBS. Most recently, she has focused on the development of M&A and consolidation strategies and is currently the Managing Director and Chairman of the Board of Directors of UNAVETS, as well as a Board Director for OneVet (vet group in Portugal), BSA (a blood bank platform), LuxVet (a Polish vet group), and Vetcelerator (a data analytics SaaS platform).  She is also the managing partner of Marconi Capital, an investment and advisory vehicle for her and her partners. 

The post Where Healthcare is a Pet Subject: Interview with Junko Sheehan, Founder & CEO of UNAVETS appeared first on The European Business Review.

ChatGPT is here. It’s new and its potential uses are largely uncharted territory. So should businesses approach it with fear or fervour? Here, Job van der Voort, CEO of Remote, puts the case for trying it out. As he explains, any company that delays evaluation of AI for business is putting its future at risk. 

Thank you for making the time to meet us, Mr van der Voort! We’re glad to have you here. Has 2023 been good to you so far? 

Yes! It’s an exciting year!

Despite being a few months in, this year has already brought us a lot of growth drivers. We know you’re fond of ChatGPT in particular. What excites you the most about it? 

It seems like the first taste of artificial general intelligence (AGI). It’s immediately useful to a very wide range of use cases. The potential seems limitless.  

A lot of companies will be quick to shy away from automation, for fear that the “robots will take their jobs”. But this is not the case with Remote. In fact, you encourage employees to find creative and original ways to use ChatGPT within the business. What are some of the ways this has manifested?  

I believe it’s part of my duty as a leader to encourage everyone across my business to get proactive and hands-on with it.  

One of the ideas we are working on is a bot that helps automate knowledge management. At Remote we help people access employment all over the world, so our teams must be able to answer highly specific questions about employment law, immigration law, and other topics, for each of those countries. We have launched an internal AI chatbot for this use case and are testing and training it to build up its knowledge base. Instead of looking up the information in a database, our team can simply ask a question and help the customer faster.  

Why do you think ChatGPT is as popular as it is? From a business standpoint, what are its main advantages? 

ChatGPT has caught on in popular culture because it’s both very accessible and very powerful. People have heard about AI for many years but it has been difficult for the average person to try it out and understand how it would apply to their lives. Now, for the first time, we can experience it firsthand and understand what potential it holds.  

For a business, it’s instant access to content generation, editing, summarisation and potentially much more.

How about disadvantages, if any? 

Large-scale language models like ChatGPT are still in their infancy. We are far from the day where every response can be trusted every time. There are also concerns about what data it has access to and how its output is used. All of these issues must be figured out, but knee-jerk rejection is not the way to do it. 

You mentioned that, instead of feeling threatened, a true leader would embrace the innovation this tool is going to stimulate in the coming years. Do you think AI chatbots will be a staple in business processes over the next few years?  

Any company that does not consider how to incorporate AI into their business processes very soon probably will not have a long future.

With the many use cases of ChatGPT, what is the best way to apply it in the HR industry? How would you encourage other payroll companies to take advantage of its features? 

ChatGPT can be used in a variety of scenarios in HR, payroll, and beyond, so the best way to understand it is to try it out. It can be applied to managing information and answering questions, quickly producing text, and automating repetitive, time-consuming work. 

The pandemic showed us that work structures and cultures are more flexible than we think. Where do you see ChatGPT in the future of work?  

History has proven several times over that technology has never succeeded in “taking our jobs”. In fact, the opposite is true; it has enabled development of applications and technologies that create entirely new industries and many more jobs. True leadership means exploring what’s next with transparency and proactivity, rather than being anxious or fearful about hypothetical risks. 

Executive Profile 

Job van der Voort is the CEO and co-founder of Remote. Job previously worked as a neuroscientist before leaving academia to become the VP of Product at GitLab, the world’s largest all-remote company, where he hired talent in 67 different countries. 

The post ChatGPT Means Accessible AI – But What Can You Use it for? appeared first on The European Business Review.

Hi, Mr Saprov. Thank you for joining us! To get started, could you tell us how you came up with the idea for Voyagu? 

I’ve always been passionate about travel, and my professional path started when I joined a travel company. Attending different travel venues and conferences for travel agents, I realised that the industry’s future would definitely be driven by technology. I wanted to create a backed-by-technology travel management platform to make the job of the travel advisors more efficient and exciting, providing them with the tools to work faster, easier and also make client interactions much friendlier and smoother. 

The pandemic did major damage to the travel industry. The travel agencies were cutting their staff, and the growing number of independent advisors created a new market opportunity for us to enter and focus on providing solutions to the problems the pandemic had created for travel. 

Premium travel seems like a very specific target market, not to mention a certain clientele that you need to look after. Why not opt for economy-class travellers instead? 

This is a great question! Every traveller needs good support and client care. Quite often, the industry is not able to offer it, mainly for the reason of the high cost of human labour and the availability of resources with a strong level of empathy and expertise. We started with the US premium-travel market, because it is a rapidly growing segment and less volatile in value terms. Most of our clients have the time and financial resources for international travel, so the role of the travel advisor becomes more essential to help increase the quality of the travel experience. The advice of a travel advisor is even more valuable for well-travelled clientele. For the travel advisor, building engaging relationships based on trust and expertise is very important and rewarding.  

Our solution aims to improve the experiences of premium travellers and raise the overall standard of service in the industry. We consider expanding to other segments as well.

Travel has evolved in the past decade as clients need – and now demand – greater flexibility and immediacy in travel itineraries to meet their business imperatives. Voyagu uses advanced technology and tools to enhance the process of flight booking. Can you walk us through how it all works?  

The process is very simple. All customers need to do is to get in touch with the travel advisor and give them all of the information about the trip in a free, comfortable conversation. The role of the travel advisor is to collect the preferences and travel details carefully and precisely, and then the magic begins. The travel advisor, equipped with a powerful search engine and booking tools, will create a personalised and customised offer with a very high likelihood of being accepted by the client. So indeed, this is very simple and easy for the client. 

Voyagu connects clients with real humans who are experts in premium air travel, passionate about what they do, and are sincere about offering exceptional client care. What, if any, trends are you most excited to implement in the future? 

The main trend is that tech will become more accessible to people, including travel advisors. As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more prevalent and sophisticated, it will support all professionals to a greater extent and all professions will become much easier and more interesting. 

AI has the potential to significantly impact the travel industry and the work of professionals in this field. The quality of the client experience will be elevated further to an extent hardly imaginable by an ordinary traveller. All problems such as flight disruptions and cancellations will be resolved in a much shorter time. 

Thanks to chatbots similar to open AI’s GPT, one travel advisor will be able to manage huge customer databases. The only issue standing in the way of this is that chatbots need to learn to solve tasks and not just work with texts. In the future, clients will only need to share their preferences, and a chatbot backed up by information from search engines and other open sources will swiftly create a tailored offer within the proposed budget.  

You’ve grown Voyagu into a business with six locations all over the world, such as Japan and India. Do you have any plans to expand soon? 

We are a diverse, international company. Our talent strategy is to hire the best people across the world, so any location will be possible. Our business focus, for now, is on the US travel market and helping American travellers explore the world.  

All of the players in this market have to confront the trust issue in a peer-to-peer business. How are you dealing with some of those issues and any legal pressures that you might be facing, and the industry faces, from various jurisdictions in your many locations?

Voyagu is a reputable company with a strong performance record, and our brand is gaining recognition in the United States. We adhere to all necessary compliance regulations and licensing and are transparent in our business practices. The top recognition for us is the positive recommendations and high trust of our clients. Neither trust issues nor any legal pressures are a concern for us. Every day, we do our best to make our customers happy to love us back. This is our main goal and strategy.

So many companies talk about personalisation, but it seems as if it is at a very early stage. Can you give any examples of what Voyagu is focusing on and how it works for the company? 

From the very beginning, we decided to build our product on personalisation. We designed a personalised experience that we are trying to automate, rather than following the path of many well-known online travel agencies that attempted automation first and are now trying to personalise it.   

A commonly used strategy is to first create a generic service and then try to fine-tune it, but this has never been our method. We have a different approach, putting personalisation at the core and building out from that. It creates an entirely different experience when a live advisor addresses you by name and provides you with unique offers that perfectly answer your needs, knowing your preferences and fitting your budget.  

What’s more, human support has a stronger sense of urgency in answering calls or chat messages within seconds and providing all problem solutions with empathy, which is something in high demand, especially during travel disruptions like delays or cancellations. 

Can you tell us more about the exclusive statistics and facts about premium trips to Europe that Voyagu has access to?  

River cruises have become very popular among Americans. The demand for European river cruises showed an increase of 115 per cent in 2022 vs. 2021. Additional end-of-year European river cruise promotions, expiring on 31 December 2022, facilitated the spike of +47 per cent in November-December Voyagu booking requests. The choices of international river cruises for 2023-4 have also expanded.  

One of the reasons for river cruises’ popularity is a combination of visiting the top popular destinations, such as Amsterdam, Vienna, Paris, Budapest, etc., with lesser-known inspiring locations like Avignon, Lyon, Koblenz, Basel, Transylvania, and Belgrade. 

The overall demand for trips to Europe has soared. Travellers choose arrival and departure airports in different cities or even countries to expand the experience with the neighbouring destinations for their extended weekend getaways, family visits or “bleisure” travels, combining both business and leisure purposes. By booking flights with Voyagu travel advisors, the client gets maximum flexibility. 

We see a growing tendency for micro-trips, 4-5 days, and visiting multiple locations during one trip. This summer, we saw travellers visiting up to five countries in one trip. And, if they travelled to one country, Italy being at the top, they visited up to six cities. This summer, our travel advisors observed 20 per cent of trips with an entry to London and departure from Paris, or vice versa. 

We have travel advisors who know European destinations really well. For example, Paris is extremely popular, so they can suggest a restaurant for dinner and a cosy place for a coffee break, perfectly knowing the client’s taste, in addition to making all travel bookings and reservations.  

How do you see premium travel panning out in 2023? 

The current economic uncertainty is unlikely to shake the US premium travel sector. Travellers are more than willing to spend on new experiences after the time of pandemic restrictions. Besides the rise in domestic and international travel, we will see the formation of a new “blended” or “bleisure”, a travel category that combines business and leisure, replacing business travel. Now, people travel on vacation or visit family and simultaneously set business meetings, attend professional events, and continue remote work or vice versa.

What’s more, we will see a shift in the demand for value-added services, such as travel assistance, among millennials and Gen Z. They are becoming real advocates of travel professionals who can take the burden of planning and organisation off their shoulders.

And, of course, the general trend for sustainability will increasingly impact premium travel. Travellers of all ages have become more committed to sustainable travel and will opt for companies that provide more sustainable opportunities. 

What can we expect to see next from Voyagu? 

At our company, we are committed to constantly improving our technology in order to enhance personalisation and empower our travel advisors. By doing so, we want to create as much value as possible for all those involved – travellers, travel advisors, and our partners. And we also want to bring back fun for everyone! 

Executive Profile

Ivan Saprov is a tech entrepreneur with a strong background in sales, a deep interest in business strategy, and proven leadership skills. He is a travel nerd with 10 years of experience in the industry, and CEO and Founder of Voyagu  – a San Francisco-based travel tech startup that connects US premium travellers with travel experts for better and easier planning, booking, and management of their trips. 

The post Premium Travel Services Where Personalisation Comes First: Interview with Ivan Saprov, CEO and Founder of Voyagu  appeared first on The European Business Review.

Hello, Alex. Let’s talk about your recent collaboration with the Japanese tech company SCSK in developing the travel app Payke. Payke is a popular app, currently ranked number one in the app store for Taiwan and Hong Kong, with over 4 million users and growing. Please tell us what type of services and benefits the Payke app offers.

Payke is an app designed for travellers to Japan, with a unique product translation technology that translates all the details of a product by scanning the barcode and locating many products in Japan. It makes Payke one of the most popular apps for travellers to Japan.

Payke recently launched Payke Travel Support (PTS) as a travel service, combining insurance, portable Wi-Fi, and concierge service (chat support service). Compared to other travel insurance without coverage for the first day of the traveller’s visit, PTS can activate the day the traveller arrives in Japan. PTS also covers notifiable diseases that other travel insurance does not cover, such as COVID.

The portable Wi-Fi included in PTS’s services are Vision Inc. devices, which are high-quality, stable and fast-sharing. It is common for people to have multiple 3C products (phones, tablets, laptops, etc.) per person. That’s why we choose portable Wi-Fi instead of the e-SIM network.

Chat service support is SCSK’s speciality. SCSK’s call centre consists of 5,000 employees, supports seven languages (Japanese, traditional and simplified Chinese, English, Korean, Vietnamese, and Thai) and assists with restaurant reservations, sightseeing advice, interpretation, and even lost and found items.

With these three services included, travellers only need to purchase PTS before their trip and solve most of the problems encountered during their trip.

Riversoft and SCSK have partnered to make the Payke app even more powerful. Can you tell us more about this partnership? What role does Riversoft play?

By collaborating on Payke, SCSK has integrated many services into a complete tourist service for travellers. Riversoft mainly plays the role of bridging Payke to Lion travel by API. Riversoft also assigns YC Health, its subsidiary, to act as an agent to distribute PTS in Taiwan. YC Health will start to promote PTS from December 2022 and build up a fulfilment centre to enhance customer satisfaction. In the near future, YC Health will create a marketing plan with Payke/SCSK to enlarge the market share in Taiwan.

SCSK chose to collaborate with Riversoft over many other IT companies. What do you think is the unique know-how or technical edge that distinguishes Riversoft from the others?

Riversoft has a powerful booking engine that can categorise and label users based on their behaviour, recommending relevant content to users, extending their time to browse, and increasing their interest and willingness to purchase. The technology can also be applied with CRM included.  Riversoft also uses this technology for social software robots to help travel agencies manage customers and remarketing.

Payke has a recommendation function for products with Japanese barcodes, but not for travel products. Therefore, Riversoft will apply this technology to Payke and upgrade Payke’s shopping system to recommend related products according to users’ interests. The two technologies are integrated to recommend shopping orders and arrange shopping routes for users. This service can provide a smooth shopping experience.

In addition to shopping in Japan, we invite local travel agencies in Taiwan to join this cooperative project.  We plan to build a travel product platform on Payke and include itineraries and tickets from local travel agencies in Taiwan, so travellers can purchase itineraries and tickets directly on the app. In the future, we will further extend our cooperation to flight and accommodation packaged dynamically through joint efforts between the three parties.

Did you encounter difficulties working with SCSK in adding value to Payke?

Riversoft has a comprehensive vertical integration capability, dedicated to tourism for over ten years. With the project with SCSK, the most challenging point is not the interconnection of data and technologies but the conception and development of a complete set of tourism services across Taiwan and Japan. 

In the Payke app, they already have insurance, Wi-Fi, and call centre services, and we add medical care to provide a second-opinion service for travellers to Japan. On the other hand, we wish to establish the same model for inbound travellers to Taiwan. To Riversoft, the most difficult part is finding a service centre in Taiwan that complies with SCSK’s SLAs. We are now dealing with Lion Travel, Far Eastern Group, Formosa TV, etc., to establish the Payke Taiwan version. 

What can we expect in the future for Riversoft and Payke?

We are ready to start the next phase of cooperation after the launch of PTS. We are also ready to make the products of local travel agencies available on the Payke app, so travellers can purchase itineraries and tickets on the Payke app.

In the future, we will further invite local travel agencies in Japan to offer their in-depth itineraries, so travellers can have a deeper travel experience. We also plan to design a new process with GFAI Robot Travel Agency to provide a tour service using LBS.

Other proposals under discussion include the weather recommendation system Netzero to recommend suitable travel dates for travellers, Airline Holiday providing Peakwork’s dynamic packaging system to SCSK’s customers, and Peach Airline for an online Travel Agent service.

Related articles: 

• What’s Next for TravelTech? Insights from Riversoft CEO, Alex Kuo
• Riversoft Makes the Connection: From Travel Services to Medical Data Via NLP

Executive Profile

The post Payke: High Tech to Enrich the Japan Experience appeared first on The European Business Review.

It’s lovely to meet you, Mr Kuo! Thank you very much for sitting down with us today. You had quite a career before focusing on the tourism industry. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your professional journey?

Thank you for having me to this interview. I am a lucky man and was brought up in Taiwan. I had a pretty smooth learning path from the best high school and university in Taiwan, and received advanced MBA education from George Washington University in the US. I worked in Acer group for almost 20 years and in two big private, tech-based companies in China for six years. Then, I immigrated to Canada and started my career of venture angel to more than 10 companies. I particularly devoted myself to the travel and travel IT business from 2017. Now, I am concentrating on Riversoft, a travel AI and solution company, and Lotus, a class A travel agency in Taiwan. I am very much enjoying my learning experience from transforming the tourism industry and fighting against the impact of the pandemic to ensure the survival of my company. So far, we are doing well, even though we are still in a stage of the pandemic period.

How did you decide to come back to Taiwan and join Riversoft? Was there a specific moment which influenced you to make this decision?

I was introduced to assisting a traditional travel agency in Vancouver in 2016. During the survey, I found that the operational logic of making a tour package is very similar to making a computer. Further, the travel business consists of integrating service, content, creativity, and IT technology. This attracts me a lot. Besides, travel is in a global business environment and fits me well, since I spent all my career in Acer working towards globalisation.

Since 2008, Riversoft has continuously assisted traditional travel agencies in upgrading and optimising their ERP systems and e-commerce websites. Can you walk us through your core services?

In the period 2008-18, Riversoft mainly devoted itself to assisting small and medium-sized travel agencies in using the subscription model to make their website and ERP via software as a service. Riversoft received investment from Peakwork and me in 2019, Lion travel in 2022, and Chain4Travel in 2022. I also injected further investment in Riversoft to ensure my confidence in its capability and potential for the future. From 2019, Riversoft built up its core competence in travel, ESG, and blockchain. In the travel sector, we have perfectly integrated Peakwork‘s dynamic packaging engine and Riversoft’s NLP and ERP into different types of services to fit a variety of requirements of the global tourism industry

You’ve grown the company into a business with multiple international travel partners. Can you tell us a bit more about the strategic thinking behind this? To what can you attribute this level of success?

Riversoft was originally a local software house to small and medium-sized travel agencies. In order to cultivate its capability and capacity, I invited Peakwork, Lion Travel, and Chain4Travel to invest in Riversoft and infuse financial, technical, and market resources to support the transformation of the company. In addition, we recruited employees from Canada, Hong Kong, Malaysia, India, and Sweden. My global working experience and channel networking also supported Riversoft’s entry into the global market

In 2019, Riversoft entered a joint venture with Peakwork, a leading travel technology company from Germany, to engage in a strategic cooperation. How has this partnership benefited you today?

Yes, Peakwork’s investment has benefited Riversoft in three dimensions.

• First, Peakwork invested in Riversoft during the pandemic period, and this investment has encouraged the whole team a lot, financially as well as psychologically.
• Secondly, Peakwork’s technology framework has always guided us with a broader and wider scope of implementation to explore a deeper insight into the travel industry.
• Finally, networking partners from the Peakwork ecosystem have brought a huge business potential to our approach.

How would you define your organisational culture? How have you managed to scale up your team over the years and maintain a coherent culture?

I want Riversoft to be a place full of technology innovation, cross-border cultural cooperation, and inspiration for well-being. Over the years, we have done our best to grow and educate our employees to learn new technology applications, to contribute to social welfare, and to participate in building ESG-related enterprises. We have continued to perform these activities even during the pandemic period.

The last two years had the world at a standstill due to COVID-19, with the tourism and hospitality industry being the worst-hit sector. How well do you think Riversoft weathered this crisis?

Riversoft has luckily survived throughout the whole pandemic period. From this disaster, we learned how to be resilient in the face of change and grow new capabilities during tough times. Now, we have grown our capability in medical services with our NLP and chatbot technology. This is one of the most valuable lessons learned. We are very proud of our staff for their integrity and loyalty to Riversoft and for assisting the whole company to survive and grow from this crisis.

Travel patterns have also changed significantly during the pandemic, with customers shifting toward domestic travel or trips to neighbouring countries. What’s your outlook on tourism in the short and long term?

We foresee that tourists will ask for more freedom of choice, more options for small groups, and greater focus on security and insurance. We have already adjusted our technology platform to fit these changes in demand. In the short term, we will concentrate on enhancing our existing networking partnerships with a consensus towards building protocols of cooperation in order to satisfy customer requirements.   In the long term, we will adopt more user-friendly technology to support these shifting requirements, such as contactless payment, conversation as a service powered by AI, and remote medical-aid support for tourists.

Your company is well positioned to enable travellers to search and book on the site almost throughout the travel cycle, from city guides to flights, hotels, tours, and restaurants. What do you see as the most important trends in the world of travel booking?

There are three key important trends in travel booking.

First, travellers are asking for wider and instant availability of travel resources. Here, we have successfully implemented the best practice of Peakwork from Europe.

Second, we will use chatbot to support tourists via our NLP AI engine to assist them with their service requirements.

Finally, we have successfully engaged with the mobile portal from Payke ^[1] of SCSK, and the robot concierge from Guardforce AI ^[2]. This is an innovative pattern in the tourism industry and we expect it to lead to a trendy new service in the near future.

You are currently developing an epic new project called DART. Can you tell us a bit more about this new development? What are the objectives and goals of such an innovation?

DART stands for Dynamic Attention Referral Technology. We invented this technology in order to achieve the following goals.

First, we want to serve tourists with a “what you choose is what you get” service. In comparison with many MarTech companies, who carry out a lot of tagging analysis on customer needs, we add more domain knowledge to resource supply, with instant control of availability.

Second, we have pioneered a cookie-less NLP tagging ontology to understand or even foresee tourists’ service needs.

Third, we want to build a customer-centric service platform and support cross-border cooperation between supply chains.

These innovations and integrations have become our corporate mission and have driven our technology development.

What do you think are the biggest challenges that the hospitality and tourism industry will face in the next 10 years in Taiwan and globally?

In the coming ten years, Taiwan needs to make its best efforts to transform itself from local tourism-oriented hospitality to at least a regional service and support platform with multi-cultural operation. We expect to phase in new technology and a new business model in Taiwan.

As for global concerns, I think net-zero, metaverse, NLP AI, and blockchain will definitely influence the future landscape of global tourism.

What is next for Riversoft? Can you share with us your planning for 2023?

In 2023, our priority of business execution is doing proof of business according to our plans. We expect to develop most of our technology modules by the end of 2022.   Also, we will start to plan for Riversoft‘s long-term capital structure in order to grow in scale and with global expansion.

And lastly, Mr Kuo, what is success to you?

I define my success not from how much money I make or what title I earn from this venture. I consider my task to grow Riversoft into a global arena as my life mission, to show my gratitude for my good fortune in being a Taiwanese and for being raised by my parents. I also feel that this whole experience and achievement will be the best gift I could leave to my family and children. I am very grateful to have this chance and opportunity to contribute my learning from school, from Acer, and from many partners. I will pass on my leadership to my successor, together with my hopes for Riversoft to become a public company in the near future. In the years to come, I hope that Riversoft will go down in Taiwanese history for being a role model in assisting Taiwan’s economic transformation.

[Notes]

1. Payke https://payke.co.jp/
2. Guardforce https://gfaihk.com/

Executive Profile

The post What’s Next for TravelTech? Insights from Riversoft CEO, Alex Kuo appeared first on The European Business Review.

We can’t thank you enough for agreeing to sit down and share your story with us today, Mr Tsymbal. First things first, what’s every day like for you right now?

The first thing in the morning is to check the news, with hope for a peace treaty, fewer casualties, and success for our warriors and politicians. After that, contact family and friends, especially those still close to the combat zone. This is the way morning starts for many Ukrainians, including me.

What was it like hearing the news of the invasion for the first time and what immediate steps did you take, both for your family and the company?

It was not due to the news that I understood that the war had started. I lived in Kharkiv, a city 30 km from the Russian border. On 24 February, we were awakened at 5 a.m. by the sound of heavy bombardment over the city. Then an alert notification from MobiDev was sent to all employees with a recommendation to move to safety.

What were my first steps? We were not rushing, as we knew that our army would hold their position and give us time. By the way, Russians have had no luck capturing Kharkiv and other big cities even after three weeks.

I have two infant daughters, so morning routines were to be made. Later that day, we packed a few things, took our cat, and left Kharkiv with the aim of sending our family abroad. But it was tough to face reality, as we had hoped that it would never happen.

As for MobiDev, we had to be fast to follow our business continuity plan: notify people, confirm our reservations with hotels in Chernivtsi (a city 40 km from the EU border, where we have an office), start finding permanent apartments for employees with their families, and notify our clients of the actions we were planning to take. Since day one, our clients have been aware of what’s happening with each project team in the company.  

For people outside Ukraine, this ongoing war has progressed far beyond their worst nightmares. What does it mean to be in Ukraine at the moment and has the media been faithful in portraying it?

After sending my family abroad, I went back to Kharkiv as a volunteer to bring in supplies. Active combat was close to the city, and the Russians were using heavy artillery to bombard the city. Despite that, there was a queue to enter military service, but only those with prior military experience were being accepted. So many were disappointed by being refused. The Ukrainian forces have proven that the Russians are not strong. It’s just that there are plenty of them.

Despite the destruction, there was no panic, there was only readiness to do what had to be done. The city was full of volunteers delivering food and medicine to civilians hiding in basements. Public utilities were mainly functioning, and service workers were fixing all they could.

As for refugees, many decided to leave. All over Ukraine and further into Europe, strangers provide assistance to them. There are no refugee camps in western parts of the country or Poland, because locals are willing to take people into their homes. So, half of the country is fighting, while the other spends time and money buying and providing our army and civilians with equipment and supplies.

We’re all standing as one nation these days against the death and horrors of the war. Brave, strong, and united with all the civilised world against the common enemy – that’s how I’d like the media to portray the war in Ukraine.

“The most powerful weapon today is truth,” you’ve stated. Could you elaborate on what you mean by this and why transparency, in this current political climate, should be front and centre for this war?

In 2014, we learned how information could be manipulated and used for propaganda. Today, if you watch Russian news, you can find that Mariupol, a Ukrainian city with over 400 thousand citizens, is a military target. The result has been no undamaged buildings left there. Hospitals and the theatre – a shelter for civilians – were also destroyed. That’s the power of propaganda.

I believe that when people know the truth about the war, they are capable of making the right conclusions. Even citizens in Russia can change their attitude if provided with information about what’s really happening in Ukraine. And it would result in action being taken.

As difficult as it is even to live through this conflict, managing a business on top of it seems nearly impossible. Yet MobiDev still has its doors open for operations. How have you made the impossible happen?

Since 2014, MobiDev has had a business continuity plan in place. It allowed us to get back to 95 percent of our operations in less than ten days after the war started. There were two priorities: keeping people safe, and securing our clients. We’ll face revenue losses in March, but they won’t be that critical. More importantly, we managed to secure our teams, keep delivering products to clients and fulfil our obligations on all accounts.

Following the plan before the invasion, we moved all the data and infrastructure to the cloud outside Ukraine, set up secure remote access for employees, launched a fully operational office in Chernivtsi and a front office in Poland. Today we are extending our office in Lodz (Poland) with engineers to make it fully functional. It will bring extra stability to our clients.

On 24 February, the day of the invasion, two of our Ukrainian offices were affected. So we had to relocate over 300 engineers together with their families and pets. The team did an outstanding crisis-management job. We supported employees 24/7 with logistics, legal support, real estate services, and finances during the evacuation and settlement process.

It was challenging to organise bus transfers, due to active combat, and find permanent apartments for so many people. But eventually, we managed to arrange the evacuation and places to live.

Today, many people have moved to our Chernivtsi office and our office in Lodz. Some went to other safe locations across Ukraine and Europe. And they are already back at work.

In parallel with securing people, we had to bring confidence to our clients. So MobiDev implemented daily updates for clients with transparent information on actions taken and people’s availability. Even engineering leaders have joined project teams to support the development during the first days. They were able to onboard in no time, due to the regular technical evaluations – a process the company implemented two years ago.

I want to thank our clients, US and European businesses, as they supported the company and people all the way. Not a single client has terminated our cooperation during this period. Moreover, a couple of days ago, we signed two new contracts for product development.

Running the company today is not just about business but providing stability to employees and their families. Moreover, MobiDev and most of our guys help the Ukrainian army and civilians with supplies and equipment, donations, volunteer activities, and some have entered military service. We are keeping our office in Chernivtsi, and will reopen offices in Kharkiv and Mykolaiv as soon as it is safe! We all feel obligated to support Ukraine today in the best way possible.

In your opinion, what more can the Ukrainian government do to accelerate support for its people at this time? What can the rest of the world do to help?

It is a hard time for Ukraine and the people. Still, our forces are fighting furiously, and we are fighting not only for Ukraine but also to protect Europe and its values. We’re the first line of defence here, as Russian ambitions lie far beyond our country. With its limited resources, our government is doing its best to achieve victory on the battleground and international arena, and to support civilians.

We are happy to know that most countries, many businesses, and ordinary people worldwide stand today with Ukraine. And we’re grateful for this support! Especially for sanctions against Russia and Belarus, as it is a powerful yet expensive weapon for our allies. On the other hand, it will save lives and force the enemy to negotiate and withdraw. Moreover, it is the way to prevent future invasions into other European countries.

MobiDev had implemented our own sanctions: we have not done business with the Russians since 2014, after they annexed Crimea. And now we’re not hiring employees from Russia or Belarus.

There are several steps that any business can take to support Ukraine and to show that there is no place in the modern world for such aggression:

1. Stop working with the Russians and make a stand with your own sanctions.
2. Ask your partners and vendors if they have joined the sanctions. It is a simple but powerful question to show unity against the aggressor.
3. Work with Ukrainians. Many businesses in Ukraine have moved to safe locations and have secured their operations.

I’m sure Ukraine and its allies will eventually stop the Russian invasion and this war. MobiDev is ready to rebuild our beautiful country and continue to grow our business in both Ukraine and Poland.

Executive Profile

Oleksii Tsymbal, Chief Innovation Officer at MobiDev. We run a software engineering company with offices in the US, Ukraine and Poland. I’m a part of the business team and in charge of marketing and innovative technologies. I lived in Kharkiv, a great city that today is under Russian attack. So had to move to safety along with our Kharkiv office. Today I’m working in Chernivtsi, missing my native city and recently renovated apartment. But most of all I miss my family as I had to send them abroad, and my parents who refused to leave Kharkiv.

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