Fireside Chat
There is agreement among political leaders that the systems of international coordination (tax, trade, currency, crime, etc.) need to take advantage of new technologies such as Central Bank Digital Currencies and to implement new data control regulation for both privacy, security, and national defense. Consequently, there will be new "rules of the road" for commerce and infrastructure controlled by digital systems. However, there are competing system proposals in different regions (e.g., China, EU, and the US). How does this change a companies' global strategy? What do you need to do to prepare for this, and what new opportunities are opening up?
Alex "Sandy" Pentland directs MIT's Connection Science initiative and the MIT Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program and is a founding member of advisory boards for the World Economic Forum, AT&T, Telefonica, United Nations, and Nissan. He previously helped create and direct MIT's Media Laboratory, the Media Lab Asia laboratories at the Indian Institutes of Technology, and Strong Hospital's Center for Future Health.
Forbes magazine declared Pentland "one of the seven most powerful data scientists in the world," along with the founders of Google and the CTO of the United States. Pentland is among the most-cited computational scientists in the world, and a pioneer in big data analytics, computational social science, organizational engineering, and wearable computing. His research has been featured in Nature, Science, the World Economic Forum, and Harvard Business Review, as well as being the focus of TV features including "Nova" and "Scientific American Frontiers." His most recent books are Social Physics, and Trust :: Data.
Interesting experiences include winning the DARPA 40th Anniversary of the Internet Grand Challenge, dining with British Royalty and the President of India, staging fashion shows in Paris, Tokyo, and New York, and developing a method for counting beavers from space.
David Shrier is a globally recognized authority on technology innovation, serial entrepreneur and corporate innovator, and author. He is a Professor of Practice (AI & Innovation) with Imperial College London, and holds a secondary appointment with the University of Oxford.
David specializes in helping established organizations to act strategically to build new revenue and new markets. He has developed $9 billion of growth opportunities with C-suite executives, particularly in data-driven businesses related to the financial services sector. He has led a number of private equity and venture capital-backed companies as CEO, CFO or COO, in either interim or full-time capacities, and has cofounded four AI-enabled MIT spinouts including Esme Learning Solutions (www.EsmeLearning.com). David’s books on AI, distributed ledger and identity include Trusted Data (with Alex Pentland and Thomas Hardjono, MIT Press, 2019), Basic Blockchain (Little Brown, 2020) and the forthcoming Augmenting Your Career (Little Brown, 2021).
Douglas Kim has almost 30 years of experience in co-founding and running category-leading enterprise software businesses in AI, customer engagement and business process automation. He was the founder and GM for the Cloud business at PEGA, a publicly-traded billion dollar leader in AI-enabled process automation technologies, founder of Talksender, the world's first rich media email marketing company and a founding member of NovaSoft, the category leader in cloud-based content management where he ran Europe and Latin America.
Most recently he was the Chief Commercial Officer responsible for creating the multimillion-dollar Enterprise SaaS business for Cogito - an MIT Media Lab spinout co-founded by Dr. Sandy Pentland, growing the business by 400%, and helping raise almost $100MM in capital from Salesforce.com, Goldman Sachs and other corporate venture funds. Today he invests in and advises startup founders who are interested in addressing the "future of work" and the balance between corporate needs for responsible growth and profitability with societal needs for privacy, safety and health. A biomedical and industrial manufacturing engineer by training, Douglas applies an engineered, systems-view approach to building and scaling businesses, and is a proven coach to founders and their leadership teams.
There is agreement among political leaders that the systems of international coordination (tax, trade, currency, crime, etc) need to take advantage of new technologies such as Central Bank Digital Currencies and to implement new data control regulation for both privacy, security, and national defense. Consequently there will be new "rules of the road" for commerce and infrastructure controlled by digital systems, and there are competing system proposals in different regions (e.g., China, EU, and the US). How does this change companies' global strategy? What do you need to prepare for, and what new opportunities are opening up?