Technovation with Peter High (CIO, CTO, CDO, CXO Interviews)

771: Sunny shares an overview of Snowflake’s business and what his purview encompasses at the company. Sunny embodies a customer-centric mindset in his role, spending a remarkable 70% of his time directly engaging with customers, and shares how he has built his team to allow him the bandwidth to do so. He explains how he has managed IT during a period of massive growth, built a strong culture in a remote working environment, and drove innovation in the evolving landscape of data. Sunny explains the key differentiators he has seen of successful data leaders and companies that have leveraged data effectively. He also dives into the importance of platform solutions and why he focuses on investing and building platforms at Snowflake. Additionally, he shares the value derived from his board experience, highlights the latest tech trends shaping the industry, and reflects on the keys to his career success.  

Rajan, CDO of Ascension, discusses project-to-product transformation, customer expectations, and measuring success. Eben, CIO of Hyatt, talks about technology in customer care, agile culture, and empowering teams. Both discuss organizational impacts, workflow changes, and the partnership between CDO and CIO to advance digital.

Michael and Rob discuss design thinking in ecosystem business models, driving innovation, understanding customer needs and emerging technologies, the relevance of design thinking, deploying innovation in ecosystem business models, and focusing on commercial outcomes.

768: Our latest episode features a panel from our Metis Strategy Digital Symposium in May 2023 where Kathy and Josh discuss the topic of sustaining a high-performance culture in times of change. Kathy describes the culture of Principal when she joined the company remotely during the pandemic, explains the necessity of leadership driving the cultural transformation, and speaks to the way she responds to misalignments in the culture of the company. Josh covers the elements of World Fuel’s cultural transformation, how he quantifies and measure culture, and how he communicates constructive feedback to his organization. Finally, both executives look ahead at how hybrid work environments, generative AI, and more will impact the practices around culture at their companies.   

767: Our latest episode features a panel from our Metis Strategy Digital Symposium in May 2023 where Ramesh and Allen speak about driving practical progress on your AI journey. Ramesh explains his methods to educate talent within the company on the latest advancements in AI, measuring the value of AI use cases, and reigning in the bespoke AI applications across the company into a single vision or strategy around artificial intelligence. Allen shares how he cuts through the noise and the hype around AI to pursue practical applications of the technology, leverages AI to navigate talent shortages, and focuses on understanding the foundational data being fed into the AI model.  

766: Rob discusses the concept of intrapreneurship, bringing an entrepreneurship mindset to within the organization, and how this concept has helped drive innovation at the company. He talks about the innovation teams he has built, the design thinking and storytelling they bring to the innovation process, and how they collaborate with the rest of the business. Finally, Rob looks ahead at the value potential of emerging tech trends like ChatGPT and generative AI as well as reflects on the keys to his success.  

Cisco Sanchez, CIO at Qualcomm, discusses transforming the company into an intelligent one. They explore Qualcomm's business evolution, the importance of IT organization providing guardrails, culture and team changes in IT transformation, trends in technology and embracing AI, and secrets to success in the technology industry.

764: Asif discusses the evolution of the company and how it reflects the evolution of artificial intelligence more generally. Asif shares his pathway into AI and data science, the genesis story of Quantiphi, and why he decided not to seek outside capital in the early stages of the company’s growth. We also cover the various phases of the company’s history including finding the company’s product market fit, specialization, verticalization, and finally the latest phase of exploring and leveraging generative AI. Asif shares his perspectives on how companies have successfully harnessed the power of AI, the potential disruptions coming from ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms, and the future ahead for AI in general. Finally, Asif shares the two key pieces of advice that he believes facilitated his career success and will continue to help him in the future.

763: Tony discusses the remarkable transformation he led at the company focused on rethinking the digital customer experience and fostering an agile culture with a digital mindset. We explore Signify’s five-frontier strategy and how digital plays in each frontier. We also delve into how the company is digitalizing offers, co-innovating with business partners, and refiguring the business from the perspective of the customer. Tony shares his reflections on his career experience and the tech trends on his radar that are shaping the future of lighting.

762: Hasmukh discusses his experience in the CIO role at AMD and how his team thinks about sustainability, innovation, and artificial intelligence within the context of the semiconductor industry. He talks about driving AMD’s talent strategy, advocating for the customer’s needs through the customer zero program, and leading M&A in the CIO role. Additionally, Hasmukh talks about the overall evolution of the semiconductor industry, looks ahead at trends in AI on the horizon, and reflects on the keys to his career success.