Between Worlds

Charlene Li, an expert on disruption and transformation in business, dives deep into the misconceptions surrounding disruption and growth. She believes that growth, not disruption, should be the main focus for leaders. The discussion highlights how significant shifts in industries, particularly during the pandemic, force organizations to reassess strategies. Li also shares valuable insights on the contrasting paths of Myspace and Facebook, emphasizing the need for adaptability. Additionally, she underscores the importance of compassionate leadership to navigate these turbulent times.

Rodrigo Mendoza is co-founder and CEO of Quine, a company building hyper-fluid interfaces between software developers and the labour markets. Previous to Quine, Rodrigo was an academic, a venture capital professional, and a freelance data-scientist. Rodrigo holds a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Oxford, where he was also a postdoctoral researcher in Machine Learning.

Nick Walton is CTO and Co-Founder at Latitude, and creator of AI Dungeon. He has been working on deep learning technology for the last several years, working at autonomous vehicle companies and in a deep learning research lab at Brigham Young University. What makes AI Dungeon so interesting and relevant to the near future, is that it demonstrates the radical creativity that is possible when you combine a good idea with the heavy lifting of a Cloud AI system that can be generally applied to multiple use cases.

Workplace transformation has never been more important than now, in this time of crisis. So what does it take to build and sustain a culture that is not only innovative and creative, but capable handling constant reinvention? Is the fact that it is difficult and uncomfortable, the very reason we should do it anyway? Dr Adam Fraser is a human performance researcher and consultant who studies how organizations adopt a high performance culture to thrive in this challenging and evolving business landscape. He is the author of Strive: Embracing the gift of struggle and The Third Space: Using Life's Little Transitions to find Balance and Happiness.

Austin Grossman is one of my favorite authors. His books (including my personal recommendation, ‘Crooked’) typically reveal an alternate version of the reality you thought you were living in. Given that, his side gig as a design consultant to the video games and mixed reality industry makes total sense. Most recently, he also served as Director of Interactive Design at Magic Leap. We spoke about the emergence of XR (or extended reality), and the challenges of creating content and telling stories in multiple dimensions. According to Grossman, at Magic Leap, they often spoke of preparing for a future world ‘without screens’. So, just how far are we from that world of augmented experiences, and what will it mean for brands and storytellers when we get there?

While for many of us ‘working from home’ has been a new and unexpected challenge, for some companies, remote is how they were designed from the beginning. Zapier, a leading software automation platform, is one such of these. However, what makes Zapier a fascinating case study is not just their lack of physical offices, but the systems, workflows and practices that they have evolved to make their distributed organization function effectively. In this interview, I chat with Zapier’s CEO and co-founder, Wade Foster. Prior to Zapier, Wade worked as a customer development lead for The Idea Works, Inc. in Missouri. He is an alumni of Y Combinator and has degrees in industrial engineering and business administration from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Our experience of reality is about to change. XR, which incorporates augmented and virtual reality, has shifted from a niche technology to consumer prime time. Now the question is how do we start to design compelling experiences, commercial partnerships and digital ecosystems to unlock the potential of this new medium. XR will change everything from the way we build digital retail stores to how a meeting planner might envision the space for a live event. My guest, Raffaella Camera, is working closely with a number of global brands and organizations to bring some of these ideas to life. A trained concert pianist and award-winning content creator, Raffaella Camera is the Global Head of Innovation & Strategy at the Accenture Extended Reality (XR) practice.

Mars, Incorporated was already well advanced in their plans for digital transformation before the crisis hit. However, when I spoke to Sandeep Dadlani, the company’s Chief Digital Officer, he explained that the pandemic led Mars to embrace a new internal clock speed. Sandeep Dadlani joined Mars, Incorporated as Global Chief Digital Officer in September 2017, and has responsibility for working with Mars' global business segments to drive its digital transformation agenda, while delivering effectiveness and efficiency to existing business and technology platforms. In the last two years, he has driven a new wave of consumer and user centricity, unleashed the power of data, analytics, AI, and automation while driving new agile digital behaviors across the enterprise.

Now that the pandemic has plunged us into the world's largest remote work experiment, what are we learning about the kind of culture that supports distributed organizations? And how do leaders build a cultural operating system for a time of crisis and change? To answer this question, and to also understand how data is changing our understanding of performance and transformation - I spoke with Didier Elzinga, the CEO and co-founder of Culture Amp – one of the world’s fastest growing technology startups and has helped companies around the world harness the power of employee feedback to drive positive change. If you enjoyed this episode and Didier's perspectives, please take a moment to read my article on this topic in the Harvard Business Review.

Regardless of your profession, one of the most important steps to becoming a better decision maker is knowing how to quantify uncertainty. That applies if you are a scientist, a poker player or a business leader. And while it is not unusual to apply probabilistic approaches to applications like robots or environmental monitoring - what is more challenging and potentially revolutionary is using similar strategies to more effectively fight crime or prevent bushfires. One of the leading thinkers in this field is Dr Roman Marchant, a lecturer and researcher in machine learning at the University of Sydney. I spoke with Marchant about his current research into developing new data science techniques to answer complex social questions such using AI for predictive policing and the implications for bias and discrimination.