Rita Gunther McGrath is a world-renowned business strategist, author and Professor at Columbia Business School who has dedicated her career to helping identify how to anticipate, plan for and manage disruptive change. Our conversation covered a broad range of topics including the principles of Discovery-Driven planning, which she pioneered in the mid 1990s and was the first major management approach to embrace the idea that change is a constant in business – and which led to the development of the Lean Startup methodology. She shares insights into how the nature of competitive advantage has changed, leaving businesses vulnerable and in need of fresh strategies to address the opportunities and risks of digital business. We discuss a range of examples of successful leadership, and explore how the dynamics around Big Tech are different but in many ways similar to past monopolies. Finally she shares the ideas around her new book Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points Before They Happen.

Jay Allardyce is the Chief Product Officer at Uptake. Our conversation touched on his extensive background in technology and analytics from his time at HP, Vertica and GE prior to joining Uptake. We discuss the evolution of the market around analytic software, some of the key experiences and lessons from working with different types of customers and business problems, and the unique value-add that AI provides when embedded in business process. We discuss the landscape of IoT platforms and the critical elements for success both in terms of the platform as well as in organizations adopting advanced connected solutions, and dive into some of the aspects of the energy industry that make it a unique, and exciting sector for innovation. Lastly, he shares his vision for AI-powered transformation and the unique opportunities across different industries today.   

We spoke with Dr. Leemon Baird, Founder and Chief Scientist at Hedera Hashgraph, and Founder & CTO of Swirlds Inc. In our conversation he shared the origins of Hashgraph and the technology, the genesis of the company and how the shortcomings of existing approaches to online trust provided the foundational principles for the development of the Hashgraph protocol. He explains in detail how Hashgraph works, why it’s fast and scalable and how the design lends itself to distributed trust. In our discussion he shares a diverse range use cases for Hashgraph and outlines the unique governance approach for Hedera along with key partnerships. Lastly he shares the latest product announcement – an offering that allows for the technology to be deployed as an online service while still providing trust.