About Shelly Bardai
Shelly Bardai is an Associate Partner at IBM Consulting and the Customer Transformation lead for Western Canada within IBM iX. She is based in Vancouver, Canada, and works with Enterprise clients in Energy, Mining, Retail, and Public Sectors. Prior to joining IBM, she spent five years at KPMG, leading their Innovation practice and Innovation Centre in Vancouver. Shelly is passionate about supporting women in tech and is a mentor for ICTC’s Ambassador Program, which aims to support women in leadership positions and promote gender equity within the digital economy.

About Mohan Gulati
Mohan Gulati is a Program Director at TheoremOne. His strategies for product creation are on every major digital platform: web, native apps, mobile web, and wearables. His international career path allowed him to develop expertise in technology, product management, user experience, design, and agile software development.

SHOW NOTES:
0:00 | Who is Shelly Bardai and Mohan Gulati
2:20 | How to make sense of what is happening in the market and survive
7:33 | How to compile your vision, strategies, and comms plans in a downturn
13:14 | Where to double your efforts on your innovation and product teams
23:46 | Focusing on the core of your business VS innovation and R&D investments
28:39 | How to prioritize the budget per the business objectives to achieve
36:52 | Structuring functional innovation teams to maximize opportunities for growth
39:04 | Organizing your strategies around long-term and short-term horizon opportunities
43:33 | Trends in the finance insurance space
46:21 | Trends in the public and energy sector
51:22 | Wrap-up

QUOTES:
“You’ve to look into the past to understand where you’re going to go in the future; having a vision that is tied to a strategy with clear focus areas is critical to get through an economic downturn.” [4:49]

“Don’t box yourself to only focus on who you think is directly in front of you, look around to see where disruptions may be coming from and pivot in a way that responds to those destructions.” [10:53]

“Understanding who your customers are and what they want and making sure that you’re adding value is important to your core business. Also, investing in R&D is equally important, and there needs to be a budget for that because the world is changing all the time, new disruptors are coming up in the market every single day, and you’ve to ensure you’re ready to tackle the disruption as well.” [29:52]

“Vision comes from the top of your organization, but innovation is driven from a bottom-up approach. Empower your team and give them the ability to feel sensible ownership to innovate, create and bring great ideas to the forefront.” [35:00]

Connect with our speakers

Shelly Bardai
Personal Website: https://shellybardai.medium.com/
Company’s Website: https://www.ibm.com/us-en/
LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/shellybardai

Mohan Gulati
Company’s Website: https://www.theoremone.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mohangulati

Investor Stories 339: Disruptive Forces (Tully, Jones, Green)