Enterprise AI Innovators

On the 28th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, host Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) talks with Naresh Shanker, former CTO of Xerox and CEO of PARC. Xerox is a foundational computing and technology company with over 20,000 employees and multiple spinoff companies operating at the frontier of modern technology. Before running IT and product teams at Xerox, Naresh was formerly the CIO at HP, Palm, and other notable companies. In this conversation, Naresh describes AI’s impact on enterprise software, the importance of data strategy for successful AI applications, and how technology executives can empower teams using AI solutions.Quick hits from Naresh:On the areas AI can make global impacts: “AI is going to continuously evolve into the acceleration of GenAI and start marrying this bridge between the whole human condition as well as context. When you start putting this together, you're going to start looking at things like its applicability in the field of energy efficiency. So smart cities, smart water, smart transportation, these spaces are going to start accelerating at a global level.”On understanding data as it relates to AI: “There is going to be data that's going to be what I call foundational to these models, to these learning-based models that can actually help advance certain capabilities that are much more commoditized. Then there is going to be a whole layer of specialization. That specialization has nuances because there is going to be foreground IP, background IP, meaning intellectual property. And then there are going to be all of the policies, regulatory aspects that govern that data. Then there are security and regulatory requirements. All of that has got to get layered. The way we break down this challenge is to just make sure that the data can be what I call classified, segregated, compartmentalized in a way that it can actually serve as building blocks around what is truly a commodity to advance a set of capabilities versus what is going to be very specialized to be a differentiator in specific industries to advance specific sciences.”On the importance of AI frameworks: “We are going to see more deep tech. Where there is going to be a combination of sensing technologies coupled with very strong AI. That pivot is going to be very critical. So putting in place the right frameworks that can take advantage of both these agile frameworks and hardware and software ecosystems so that we can iterate quickly, learn from failures and adapt to these changing market conditions globally is going to be super critical.”Recent Book Recommendation: From Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks--Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at www.enterprisesoftware.blog. Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.

On the 27th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Tom Gerdes, EVP & CIO of The Heico Companies. Employing over 9,000 people globally and with an annual revenue of over $2.5 billion, The Heico Companies is the parent company for over 70 high-performing manufacturing, construction, and industrial businesses. In this conversation, Tom discusses the advantages of generative AI at enterprise scale, the realistic impacts of AI on modern manufacturing processes, and ethical considerations of AI adoption.Quick hits from Tom:On The Heico Companies’s current use of automation: “Some of our products have telematics built into them. And so taking that information, being far more aware of the status of the equipment, how it's being operated and ensuring that you're getting the maximum value for your end consumer out of that product. While you think about things like cranes and forklifts being non modernized technology, even when they're human operated, the real ability to get better data and better insights and then use those models to start getting what you've seen in a lot of airline industries, which is uptime and availability of equipment and really putting that across our portfolio of products.”On the impacts of AI on human labor: “I don't see a transformational shift in taking a lot of the labor out of that process. I think it's about skilling that labor up and utilizing automation as a means to get more value out of what we do in a manufacturing organization. But when you're running a furnace to produce steel billets and when you're rolling those into a rod and we're drawing it into wire, there's certainly a level of automation that can work there.”On the risk of adopting AI tools: “If you're trying to drive risk to zero. You're in my view, driving value down to negative or certainly below zero. I think it's very hard and I think the whole component of generating value is about understanding and accepting risk, and making sure that risk is also effectively communicated to the business.”Recent Book Recommendation: Essentialism by Greg McKeown--Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/ Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.

On the 26th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Naveen Zutshi, CIO of Databricks. Databricks is a leading AI enterprise software company enabling organizations to build, deploy, and maintain data solutions at scale. In this conversation, Naveen shares fascinating use cases from the next generation of large language models, how AI can transform every aspect of enterprise work, and the best ways to stay knowledgeable about the cutting edge of AI. Quick hits from Naveen:On Rolls-Royce harnessing AI: “With Rolls-Royce, their model is selling engines for a very low price because they actually charge the customer per fly run, per hour of flights. They want to keep the engines in great working order and do a lot of preventative maintenance to reduce the amount of downtime for the engines because their entire revenue is tied to this. They use machine learning and AI for all of those purposes.”On AI’s coming dominance to the world of software: “Marc Andreessen had this note, right? Software eats the world and I think data and AI is going to eat software, and that is proving more and more true.”On the entire C-Suite being interested in the next generation of AI tools: “Before [this latest AI wave], you were using NLP and AI, but it was used primarily by data scientists and data engineers. It is now democratizing this whole notion of LLMs to the entire company. I can’t tell you how many business leaders, whether they’re in sales and other groups who want to start using the technology.”Recent Book Recommendation: The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen--Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/ Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.

On the 25th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Paul Chapman, VP of Business Strategy at Cisco. Cisco is a leading global networking equipment, software, and services provider. In this conversation, Paul shares his perspective on AI, how technology will transform the future of work, and hard-fought lessons on innovation that have stuck with him throughout his career.Quick hits from Paul:On productivity tools granting back time: “You know what a billionaire can't buy? One second of time. If we can give people back the gift of time through this shift to hyper-productivity, I think we're gonna see a huge fundamental paradigm shift in how we operate.”On the future of office buildings: “I spend a lot of time talking to customers about the digitalization of real estate, smart buildings, and smart building technology. The amount of sensors and intelligence we can now get from buildings in terms of how they're being used, helps us make smart decisions around how we think about sustainability.”On the expectations of CIOs: “CIOs are expected to be disruptive and failure is the currency of risk. I think all too often the CIO behaves in a very conservative way, but that's not how they're measured and what's expected of them. They're expected to be disruptive.”Recent Book Recommendation: So Smart But…by Allen N. Weiner--Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/ Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.

On the 24th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Scott Strickland, EVP & CIO of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. Wyndham is the world’s largest hotel group, with nearly 10,000 properties in 95 countries across 24 global brands. In this conversation, Scott shares how Wyndham is deploying AI to transform guest experience, frameworks for building a unified technology stack across their brands, and tips for startups and enterprises to best collaborate. Quick hits from Scott:On Wyndham utilizing AI for live coaching of call center agents: "The AI is sitting there in the background and performing real-time coaching and then scoring the agent at the end of the call."On Wyndham's intelligent booking systems: "Perhaps you're making a reservation on your mobile device sitting in our parking lot. I have 90 seconds to drop that reservation down to the system so that when you check in, your room is available for you, and they greet you with a smile. I have to do that at scale for a million rooms every day. And naturally, you're going to be making that reservation at our peak period, which is between 5-9 pm. So I need to build a system that can accommodate that sort of volume intelligently."On the importance of being customer-centric: "Define your customer, whoever your customer may be. In this case, we have three customers at Wyndham. We have a franchisee, the small business owner who owns our hotels, we have a guest who uses our hotels, and then we have our internal team members. What does each one of those folks want? You can't pull a Henry Ford because he always said, 'If you ask them what they want, they want a faster horse,' but you need to listen to them."Recent Book Recommendation: City Of Stairs by Robin Jackson Bennett--Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at enterprisesoftware.blog Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer

On the 23rd episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Claus Torp Jensen, Chief Innovation Officer and EVP of R&D at Teladoc Health. Previously, Claus was the CTO at both CVS Health and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. In this conversation, Claus shares how Teladoc harnesses technology to transform patient outcomes, how to build a culture of innovation, and AI's potential to revolutionize health care.Quick hits from Claus:On AI helping manage chronic conditions like diabetes: “If you're a newly diagnosed diabetic, one of the more dangerous things is that you don't actually know what it feels like when your blood sugar is out of whack, and it could be quite dangerous, so we make sure you have a blood glucose meter with you. What should happen is that there's an algorithm somewhere that flags that there’s a new data point saying this individual on our program has low blood sugar, and we know this person is a newly diagnosed diabetic. Why don't we call them and see if they need help?”On what innovation truly means: “If you can find ways of applying either existing or borderline technologies in people's real lives, that is a meaningful innovation that matters to society…innovation doesn’t come in one shape, size or form. You can be in the mindset of incrementally improving something we're doing already [with technology].”On technology’s role in improving bedside manner: “The thing about health care is people are not in a good place when they need help; it's very emotional and personal. So our ability to actually help whoever is in contact with you detect the emotional cues of ‘is this person getting increasingly distressed?’ is actually a meaningful power-up of a system. I believe that adding emotional intelligence to hybrid interactions is a meaningful use case that, again, people aren't talking about a whole lot, and the technology exists.” Recent Book Recommendation: If Disney Ran Your Hospital by Fred Lee--Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/ Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.

On the 22nd episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Sandeep Davé, CDTO at CBRE. CBRE is a Fortune 500 commercial real estate company, with $27B of revenue and more than 100,000 employees operating in over 100 countries globally. In this conversation, Sandeep shares fascinating insights into CBRE’s innovative uses of technology, including augmented reality solutions for technicians, their venture into consumer facing applications, and AI capabilities that reinvent the commercial real estate experience.Quick hits from Sandeep:On CBRE utilizing AR/VR solutions to combat the talent gap: "The built world is going through this transition where especially for complex assets such as life science labs or hospitals, the technician talent and the knowledge pool of the technician talent is reducing. And so we actually applied AR capability to [have] four eyes in the field…you have a more junior technician in the field, but also have a more experienced technician behind the scenes, seeing what the person is seeing, guiding them through what changes they or what the diagnostic is and what they should be doing as a result."On 'self-healing' buildings of the future: "I think we are starting to scratch the surface on remote diagnostics and remote maintenance. I fully see ten years from now the likelihood of this concept of self-healing buildings, where they are much better managed with less human intervention, and the humans are doing a lot more productive work than they do today."On generative AI transforming real estate planning: "Imagine designing a building and saying, well, I wanted to have this ESG footprint and running multiple models through generative AI technologies, then creating a visual digital twin of it and saying, well, here's how it would look, and these are the different ways that it could look. And then being inside the building to say, well, would you like it to look like this? And see it in an immersive manner, not just on your browser, but to see it in an immersive manner. The possibilities are so tremendous, and clearly I'm excited about it."Recent Book Recommendation: Play Nice But Win by Michael Dell--Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/ Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.

On the 21st episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Carter Busse, CIO of Workato. Workato is an enterprise automation tool allowing businesses to integrate their apps and automate workflows without compromising security. Today, he shares how the company is harnessing its technology for various internal business functions, his perspective on the possibilities of AI, and the ideal role for IT within enterprise organizations.Quick hits from Carter:On the state of digital transformation today: "We're in a second wave of digital transformation. We did the [first stage of] digital transformation before COVID. We had COVID. Now we're on this hyped-up AI, automation, Web 3.0; so it's like a second wave… We're all in this big race to figure out this second wave of digital transformation."On Workato deploying their tools internally: "We're doing a lot of fun things here using AI with work. If you're an employee, you want an app, you just tell our chatbot, and we take the automation from there and then we automate the approval with your manager through Slack, and then we provision the application."On the state of IT within enterprise organizations: "I've learned that especially nowadays with the young generation coming out of school, they want to own the technology, they want to be involved, they want to help IT. It's really up to the IT leaders to give them the architecture, guard rails and governance so they can innovate and we can put it into production as well."Recent Book Recommendation: Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller --Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/ Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer

On the 20th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with David Smoley. David has had a storied career, leading technology teams at several large and defining companies, including General Electric, Flex, and AstraZeneca. Most recently, he led an engineering team as a VP at Apple. Today, David shares anecdotes about being an early advocate for innovation, best practices for collaborating with startups, and his experiences with hands-on digital transformation.Quick hits from David:On digital transformation: “Digital transformation depends on your starting point. What would be a radical digital transformation for one company might be meaningless to another company. I think of digital transformation as being very contextual around a particular situation or problem that you're trying to solve."On enterprise IT executives’ relationships with startups: “It’s this great quid pro quo where you're looking for cool technology and smart people who can help you in your role as a tech leader and [startups] are looking for smart tech leaders who are going to help them develop great products and great companies.”On the ethos of being a technologist: “One of the things you have to love if you're a technologist is living on that edge of what's possible and what are the risks, and getting people to see your side of what the possibilities are.”Recent Book Recommendation: World Class IT by Peter High--Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/.Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.

On the 19th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Tom Cullen, CIO of Corsair. Before Corsair, Tom has been CIO at several large and defining companies, including JUUL Labs, Peet's Coffee & Tea, and Driscoll's. Today, Tom shares fascinating ways Driscoll's has harnessed technology, including leveraging blockchain to trace berry provenance, Corsair's utilization of data to enhance custom configurations for customers' gaming setups, and best practices for partnering with startups.Quick hits from Tom:On keeping things simple as a CIO: "Technologists love to overcomplicate things, build a big Rube Goldberg design just because you can…I think your job as a technologist, as an architect, as a CIO in my case, is to bridge that gap between process standardization, business enablement for scale and leverage and growth in the future, while also keeping your technology stack as standard as you can."On what Driscoll's real business is: "What's interesting about Driscoll's is that they develop proprietary berry genetics and patent them. That's why the berries are so good. It's not your university variety that's just replicated, they're special and they're actually patented…one of my favorite things to say while I was there, just for impact, which is mostly true, is Driscoll's is a multibillion-dollar berry company that doesn't grow any berries."On blockchain helping with berry provenance: "[At Driscoll's], we partnered with other companies to do a blockchain experiment. We started looking at different traceability mechanisms around food and certification of food. Is it actually organic? Is it shade grown? How are the workers treated? Is their child labor deployed?  There's a lot of factors that play into that in any type of global manufacturing. We started a blockchain pilot with IBM to look at food traceability. So you could trace your product all the way back to the farm harvest date and what are the certificates and certifications of that farm…it was super fun to be involved in a pilot like that because you're using what some would consider a cryptocurrency technology, to solve a food traceability product issue."On Corsair harnessing data for better customer experiences: "We have software products, one in particular called iCue that sits on the computer and controls all of your devices. If you had iCue right now, it could control your microphone, your lighting, your computer; and if you're a gamer, everything interacts at once, which is super cool. iCue throws off a lot of important data about how you're using products and what you're actually doing. We're trying to ingest and correlate data that shows not only product usage, but consumer behavior online. We're hoping to get into the social aspect as well and ingest that data to better understand how customers use our products, what type of activities they do, and how they engage in the further community."Recent Book Recommendation: Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek--Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/ Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.