Ep 25: Elizabeth Kiehner of IBM on turning ideas into realities

'The Optimist'.

Technology is increasingly the platform on which fearless creative leadership sits. The challenge of this is twofold. First, we need the capability to get the answers to the questions that we know. How do I solve these known problems, and what role does technology play in that? And second, we need the courage to ask questions that until now have been unimaginable or inconceivable. Today, like never before, real-world technology can take us to places that used to be the stuff of fantasy - ideas that existed only in the recesses of our imagination and were never allowed past our office building’s security guard once we got to work in the morning. Today, leaving those ideas at the door can be the difference between success and failure. Rewiring ourselves to expand our own curiosity and understanding of what might be possible is a fundamental requirement of successful modern leadership. It's no longer enough to think that a linear progression based on what we know today is anything like enough to figure out what will be needed tomorrow. The best leaders are constantly provoking conversations and exploration about what the future could look like - and should look like - so that they can light the trails and take the leaps required of companies as they reach the top of their current S-curve, and stare into what comes next. Those conversations and that exploration is literally impossible without exposing ourselves to the outer limits of what technology will be capable of in 5-10 years. If, as leaders, we don't stretch our own imagination, we cannot hope to make decisions in the short-term that will maximize the possibility that this company will still be relevant in the long-term. The day-to-day demands of leadership require we place one eye firmly on the ground directly in front of us. But the speed with which the future is coming at us, requires that we train our mind’s eye to see beyond the unlikely, and instead help us imagine a world in which the impossible becomes the inevitable. As the Global Design Practice Director at IBM, Elizabeth Kiehner applies some of the world’s most powerful technology to solve the problems of today and tomorrow. I talked to Elizabeth about the expansion of natural language technology in our daily lives, about a machine’s ability to edit tennis highlights without human involvement and about how to design solutions for problems that will exist 5 years from now.