Enterprise Software Innovators

On the 52nd episode of Enterprise AI Innovators, host Evan Reiser (Abnormal AI) talks with Sastry Durvasula, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Operating, Information, and Digital Officer at TIAA. Serving the investment and retirement needs of over 5 million customers, TIAA is a Fortune 500 financial services company with $40 billion in revenue and over $1 trillion in assets under management. In this conversation, Sastry shares his perspective on how AI enables large-scale transformation within a 100-year-old institution, why everyone should have a secure AI assistant, and the cultural components that will unlock the next wave of enterprise AI adoption.Quick hits from Sastry:On using AI to enhance security awareness training: “We used to send static phishing emails. Now we use generative AI to create training campaigns that are more realistic—and way harder to spot.”On AI's strategic impact for legacy enterprise: “AI will play the biggest role in the operational aspects of large, old companies, like digitization did 15 years ago.”On the importance of leadership: “We talk about platforms, processes, and people. But one of my mentors told me: it's people, people, people.”Recent Book Recommendation: Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella, Jill Tracie Nichols, and Greg Shaw--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 AI Innovators is a show where top technology executives share how AI is transforming the enterprise. Each episode covers the real-world applications of AI, from improving products and optimizing operations to redefining the customer experience. Find more great insights from technology leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/ Enterprise AI Innovators is produced by Josh Meer.

On the 51st episode of Enterprise AI Innovators, host Evan Reiser (Abnormal AI) talks with Shyam Bhojwani, Chief Information Officer at Nextdoor. With millions of users across the U.S., the U.K., and Canada, Nextdoor is one of the largest neighborhood-based platforms in the world, connecting communities with real-time information, local recommendations, and public safety alerts. In this conversation, Shyam shares his perspective on how AI is shifting automation from static workflows to dynamic, context-aware agents, why IT and cybersecurity are prime candidates for fast AI wins, and how culture, architecture, and data readiness all shape the long-term success of enterprise transformation.Quick hits from Shyam:On unlearning in the age of AI: “Every day with AI is a new learning but also a lot of unlearning. What we thought wasn't possible yesterday is already possible today.”On the evolution from automation to agentic orchestration: “Earlier, you would sort of create static processes, step A, step B, step C. Now with AI, it can go from step A to step C based on context. These AI agents aren't just automating tasks, they're orchestrating workflows with real-time intelligence.On how to avoid AI chaos across teams: “There needs to be a centralized AI Ops team to connect the dots. Otherwise, every department ends up buying the same tool twice.”Recent Book Recommendation: The New Automation Mindset by Vijay Tella--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 AI Innovators is a show where top technology executives share how AI is transforming the enterprise. Each episode covers the real-world applications of AI, from improving products and optimizing operations to redefining the customer experience. Find more great insights from technology leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/ Enterprise AI Innovators is produced by Josh Meer.

On the 50th episode of Enterprise AI Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Sesh Tirumala, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Western Digital. Western Digital is one of the world's largest data storage manufacturers, with over 51,000 employees, 13,000 patents, and $13 billion in annual revenue. From enterprise data centers to high-performance hard drives for creative professionals, Western Digital has been a storage pioneer for over 50 years. In this conversation, Sesh offers insights into practical applications of AI in enterprise productivity, the critical role of IT in global manufacturing, and the future of IT architecture to enable business transformation.Quick hits from Sesh:On AI's ability to reduce enterprise dependencies on meetings: “We all have this fear of missing out and we try to attend all meetings. What if you told your staff, ‘You don't need to, here's just a snippet that you need to know.' 90% of the meetings are generally non action driven, so boring and monotonous. You can spare a lot of people from pain, I see value in that.On the current direction of AI and enterprise data: “If your sales data, procurement data, and contract data are all connected, your system should be able to tell a sales rep, ‘Take this action because your customer is about to churn.'”On the importance of experimenting with new AI solutions: “You need to jump in and not wait, because if you wait for too long, then you're going to be irrelevant. So, it's important to get your teams to test out of the box solutions. Because I think data is going to be the ultimate differentiator, both from a cost and connective tissue perspective.”Recent Book Recommendation: Driving Digital Strategy by Sunil Gupta--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 AI Innovators is a show where top technology executives share how AI is transforming the enterprise. Each episode covers the real-world applications of AI, from improving products and optimizing operations to redefining the customer experience. Find more great insights from technology leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/ Enterprise AI Innovators is produced by Josh Meer.

On the 49th episode of Enterprise AI Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Vineet Khosla, Chief Technology Officer of The Washington Post. The Washington Post is the third-largest newspaper in the United States, with 135,000 print subscribers and 2 and half million digital subscribers. In this conversation, Vineet shares his thoughts on the mainstream integration of AI technology, the transformative impact of AI on journalism, and the future of personalized news delivery. Quick hits from Vineet:On proof that AI is having a true impact on our lives: “The Nobel Prize for Physics went to Geoffrey Hinton. The Nobel Prize for chemistry went to Demis Hassabis, the deep mind. This is the first time we’re seeing the top prize in physics and chemistry go to people who created an AI which solved a problem in that field. It is the AI they invented that did such a commendable job that other people were forced to recognize their achievement as being top notch.”On the impact AI has on human creative roles: “So when these AI models start to be creative, it is understandable everyone's afraid. Let's put that as the baseline and say this is not wrong. It doesn't make anybody bad. But slowly and the way we're doing it with creative tools is that we want AI to do the part of your job that you shouldn't have been doing anyways, and you start to see a change in people's behavior, their hearts and minds. And of course, some people will move faster than others. But when they see the actual benefit, the skeptics will come around and use it to their power.”On encouraging Productivity and creativity through AI tools: “You give people these tools, let them be productive, let them go on their journey,  and you encourage them. You obviously give really good use cases. Like I said, when I was writing code recently, I got the AI to write me most of my unit tests because as an engineer, I hate that. And I know they're super important. There is no way I will check in code without it, but I hate writing them. Now that time gets freed up.”Recent Book Recommendation: Our Mathematical Universe by Max Tegmar--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 AI Innovators is a show where top technology executives share how AI is transforming the enterprise. Each episode covers the real-world applications of AI, from improving products and optimizing operations to redefining the customer experience. Find more great insights from technology leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/ Enterprise AI Innovators is produced by Josh Meer.

On the 48th episode of Enterprise AI Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Sathish Muthukrishnan, Chief Information, Data, and Digital Officer of Ally Financial. Ally is an American bank holding company, with over $8 billion in annual revenue and over 11,000 employees. The company provides auto financing, mortgage loans, banking, and other financial services to 11 million customers across the United States. In this conversation, Sathish explores Ally's groundbreaking journey from mainframes to AI-powered banking, the game-changing role of generative AI in customer support, and his predictions for how AI will redefine personal banking in the years to come.Producer's note: This episode was recorded in August of 2024.Quick hits from Satish:On the rules for engaging with Gen AI: “Gen AI is new and fast evolving. Like any new technology, there are risks that you have to tackle. We came up with guiding principles for how we use AI: One, let's build use cases that face our internal customers as the technology evolves. Two, there should always be a human in the middle. And three, we cannot allow sensitive information to leave Ally.”On the necessary data journey to unlock AI's potential: “AI is having its moment because of the convergence of other hype cycles that have happened. Whether that's data, cloud, native app development, or any technology investments. If you went through the data journey, and you have cloud enabled, you've made it findable, and you've made it easy to compute the data, now you have the ability to access the data and use the insights, and you can take advantage of this AI explosion.”On the importance of staying up to date with new technology: “Do not forget to experiment. Do not be afraid of the fast evolving technology. Continue to experiment, have your team be empowered. Whether it's on the offensive or defensive side, it's extremely important for you to be prepared. You need to continue familiarizing yourself with new technology so you can be prepared.”Recent Book Recommendation: Ideaflow by Jeremy Utley and Perry Kleb--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 & Josh Meer.

On the 47th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Ramesh Razdan, Global CIO & CTO of Bain & Company. Bain & Company is a “Big Three” management consulting firm with 65 global offices, 19,000 employees, and over $8 billion in annual revenue. Bain helps Fortune 500 companies optimize performance, enhance operational efficiency, and implement innovative technology at scale. In this conversation, Ramesh shares his thoughts on how generative AI is transforming Bain, the evolution of the CIO role in the AI era, and how Bain's clients harness the latest AI capabilities.Quick hits from Ramesh:On AI's exciting potential to enhance security: “I remain to be extremely bullish on where AI can take us. I believe AI as a human oversight can really increase the velocity of our defense. We have to do that. Human beings cannot respond fast enough.”On choosing which use cases to apply generative AI first: “A famous two by two exercise is to say, ‘What data is available and what value is at stake there?',  and then plot what's the most valuable data for what you are trying to do. What you don't want is the most complex use case up front because the engine is not warmed up. We need to prove the value.”On understanding risk and compliance before adopting AI: “ This technology doesn't come with its own sets of risks. It doesn't come with its own set up. You need to establish proper risk and compliance forums. You need to make sure you are in lockstep with legal teams and risk teams. We want to make sure we're training the right way. We want to change the right behavior.”Recent Book Recommendation: Optimal by Daniel Goleman--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 46th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, host Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) talks with Munir Hafez, CIO of TransUnion. TransUnion specializes in credit reporting, fraud detection, and data analytics. With over 19,000 employees and over $3.6 billion in annual revenue, the company impacts more than a billion people worldwide. In this conversation, Munir shares his thoughts on AI transforming business operations at TransUnion, balancing the potential of AI against the current hype cycle, and the future impact of AI in the enterprise.Quick hits from Munir:On the importance of grounding data to train AI: “If you're asking it how to make a chocolate chip cookie, you don't really need to ground that in your data. If you're trying to say, ‘What cross-sell opportunities can I have for this customer?' You have to be able to feed it your product catalog and everything else.”On prompt engineering driving value in the current AI environment: “Over time, [AI] is going to get smarter where you need less and less prompt engineering teaching it. But certainly in the short term, I think training, custom LLM, and then depending on the tool, teams that are designed and focused on extending the prompt engineering and the capabilities will be the best way to get the value.”On identifying real use cases for enterprise AI: “My team supports over 500 applications. Everything has AI, including toothbrushes and trash cans. So which tools are actually far enough along that [the AI component] provides value. We were looking for if the triangulation of the technology is advanced enough. The business case makes sense and the business users are engaged and are willing to learn and help support.”Recent Book Recommendation: Outliers by Malcom Gladwell--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 45th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Jonny LeRoy, CTO of Grainger. Grainger is a Fortune 500 industrial supply company, ensuring seamless operations for a broad range of customers, from hospitals to manufacturing plants and everything in between. With over $16 billion of annual revenue and 26,000 employees, the company provides over 30 million products to support its four and a half million customers. In this conversation, Jonny shares his thoughts on how AI transforms operations at Grainger, quick wins for AI applications in the enterprise, and realistic expectations around today's AI capabilities.Quick hits from Jonny:On AI's transformative potential: “We've got 2 million SKUs in our Grainger brand and 30 million products across the whole portfolio. AI helps us match the right product to the right customer, and that's where it starts to get really powerful.”On the importance of continuous improvement: “It's all about solving small problems, one by one. That's how you unlock AI's potential—not by waiting for the perfect solution, but by making progress now.”On AI's ability to improve the customer experience: “A lot of the customer software we're building is to empower, whether it's our merchandising agents or customer intelligence people, to do their work that drives the business, but produces better data. That data then feeds into potential machine learning AI systems. We can put that into motion, get that in front of customers, and improve that data feedback. We understand the direction we're going, and that's not changing. Understand products, understand customers, bring them together super easily.”Recent Book Recommendation: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig--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 44th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, host Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) talks with Mike Hamilton, CIO of Cloudflare. Cloudflare is a cloud connectivity company that helps businesses deliver content and applications worldwide while keeping them secure. More than 20% of all internet traffic flows through Cloudflare's networks, making them an indispensable part of modern internet infrastructure. In this conversation, Mike shares insights into how AI helps filter the noise in cybersecurity, the seamless integration of AI in business operations, and the power of AI to automate the mundane.Quick hits from Mike:On AI's role in the future of business: “Artificial intelligence as a technology goes back decades, back into the fifties, starting with academic papers. But the scale of how it gets delivered has been one of the challenges. We're at this interesting turning point now where we've developed something that can actually support this incredible technology to take off.”On the future integration of AI in business operations: “The area that I want to see worked out the most is around the integration space and how we get business systems to talk to each other, [for example, how AI] technology can read API specifications and start to understand how to create automations based on those specs.. That's something the AI industry has to nail."On the impact of AI on human life: “I think humans will live longer as a result of technology, and I don't think we're necessarily going to draw the connection. Just in the same way that technology, like computers, has improved our quality of life, there are going to be many little ways that AI will extend human life. We probably won't think about it as AI's doing, but it will be, and it might not even get the credit it deserves.”Recent Book Recommendation: Leadership is Language by L. David Marquet--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 43rd episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, host Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) talks with Jack Tam, SVP & CTO of Intuit Mailchimp. Intuit Mailchimp is a comprehensive email marketing and automation platform leveraging advanced AI-driven tools to create personalized, data-driven marketing campaigns. In this conversation, Jack shares insights into the evolution of email marketing in the AI era, the transformative impact of AI on customer engagement, and a glimpse into the future of AI-enabled business growth.Quick hits from Jack:On the ability of AI to help small businesses with marketing needs: “Imagine that you can run A/B testing on these marketing experiments. Today you have to watch it, you have to monitor it. We want to be able to let this automate itself, ultimately the owner is still in control, but removing as much of the friction in the experimentation to find the optimal ways to market.”On how AI might continue to improve the user interface: “If you look at Mailchimp today, it's very much a sort of menu navigation. Click this and click that. I can imagine that it can be a much simpler interface. For example, it could literally just be a Google search bar. And you type in this is what I want to do and all the automation happens behind it."On AI roles that will become necessary for enterprise businesses: “Over the last year we spent a lot of time talking about LLMs. Now you're seeing much more specialized LLMs based on industry and data. And so I also think there could be roles around how you get the right data into the right LLMs that are necessary for the types of industry that you're working in.”Recent Book Recommendation: Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson--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 42nd episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, host Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) talks with Amit Shah, EVP & CIO of Excelitas Technologies. Excelitas is a global technology company specializing in generating and sensing light in photonics. In this conversation, Amit shares insights into how Excelitas utilizes AI to enhance its photonic technologies, the impact of generative AI on productivity and cybersecurity, and the future of enterprise AI.Quick hits from Amit:On AI opportunities in cybersecurity: “I want my cybersecurity vendors to use AI because the bad guys are going to and already are using AI to be more effective in their outcomes. I want them [Cybersecurity Vendors] to make sure they are using AI to reduce the complexity in the fragmented nature of how cybersecurity is done today.”On the importance of data strategy when leveraging AI: “There's a golden principle in the IT world - Garbage in, garbage out. No matter how good the technology is, if you're feeding garbage to that technology, it's going to spit out garbage. Hallucination is the word people use. What it means to an individual in an enterprise, boils down to the input is not good enough, hence, you're going to have output, which is not good enough."On the potential of generative AI in the enterprise: “You will be using AI without you knowing you are actually using AI within a corporation. It will be embedded into your data structure where it might be cleaning the data. It will help you execute your business processes faster. Being able to distribute your documents and other data to your employees, your customers, your vendors, and your partners, in a much more secure and efficient manner.Recent Book Recommendation: Good to Great by Jim Collins--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 41st episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Kirk Ball, former EVP & CIO of Giant Eagle. Giant Eagle is one of the largest regional supermarket chains in the United States, with over 37,000 employees and more than $11 billion in annual revenue. In this conversation, Kirk shares how AI is transforming the retail industry, the impressive scale of Giant Eagle's operations, and AI's potential to shape the future of the enterprise.Quick hits from Kirk:On how ML is being used by Giant Eagle today: “Machine learning is used in setting the assortment, setting the optimized price, driving traffic from your customers and learning which products are price sensitive, which products aren't. When a season comes or goes or a particular weather day occurs, that changes. [With ML], you know what people want to buy and you have to be prepared for that change and your supply chain has to adjust.”On how enterprise use cases are evolving for AI: “They've got generative AI assisting with complex support calls and complex customer interactions to give additional guidance and suggestions, to help them make sure that that customer leaves satisfied. The ability to look through legal documents when you do a software or hardware contract, you probably look for 90 percent of the same thing in every contract. Generative AI can do that for us, we can reduce the cost and the cycle time down dramatically.”On maintaining an innovative culture: “Chance favors the prepared mind. It always does. And it always will. You should constantly be preparing your mind, your team, and your organization.”Recent Book Recommendation: Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio--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 40th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Vishal Gupta, Global CTO & CIO of Lexmark. With over 9,000 employees in 170 countries, Lexmark is a global technology company specializing in printing solutions and cloud-enabled IoT imaging technology. In this conversation, Vishal shares insights into how Lexmark uses AI for predictive maintenance and an optimized customer experience, the revolutionary potential of enterprise AI adoption, and how IT leaders navigate the opportunities and challenges of emerging technologies.Quick hits from Vishal:On current use cases for AI vision: “We're working with one of the biggest oil change companies on the planet. With our Edge AI technology, we can detect if a car that has come in for an oil change has been greeted by the oil change team within the first three minutes. With this technology, we're already seeing that they're able to save one or two customer drive-offs a day, which pays for the entire month of the technology itself.”On how Lexmark is capitalizing on emerging technology trends: “We've transitioned a lot based upon the technologies that we have developed into being an IoT and AI company. We launched an offering called Optra two and a half years back. We're doing a lot of work with AI, our printers have IoT sensors, and they last fifty percent longer than the rest of the industry because we're able to stream the data and we're able to use the AI to extend their life.”On areas of AI that people may be underestimating: “People underestimate the accuracy aspect of AI. They think more about ‘how do I get a project done,' and not about ‘how do I actually measure accuracy on an ongoing basis to know whether or not I can really trust it.' Having a set of metrics will let you be objective about it where you're neither leaving a comparative advantage on the table, nor are you completely putting yourself at risk."Recent Book Recommendation: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey--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 39th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, host Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) talks with Reena Tiwari, Chief Information Officer of LexisNexis. With over 10,000 employees in over 160 countries, LexisNexis is the global leader in tooling and resources for legal research, boasting the world's largest database for legal and public records information. In this conversation, Reena shares her thoughts on AI integration at LexisNexis, AI applications transforming the legal space, and navigating future trends of AI skills development. Quick hits from Reena:On the importance of AI democratization: “It shouldn't be this one person sitting in the ivory tower on top because they are in the AI space, and they get a different privilege. No, everybody should be using those kinds of tools and technologies to improve their day to day lives.”On introducing generative AI to enterprise teams: “The way I try to coach my team is to really educate ourselves first. What is generative AI? How is it different from the other types of AIs that we have used in the past? Once we understand, then really question our processes.”On how Lexis+ AI is different from other models: “They [other AI models] don't have real data behind them. Because it's gleaned from websites and they can't name the source of the information. That's where we bring value. We use the latest and greatest technology, which we have been evolving for the last decade, and use that data we have. We implement all of that data to create [Lexis+ AI]. The solution that we provide to our customers is real and it helps them in improving their productivity and efficiency, so they can get their answers faster."Recent Book Recommendation: Our Iceberg Is Melting by John Kotter & Holger Rathgeber--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 38th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Mojgan Lefebvre, EVP and Chief Technology & Operations Officer of Travelers. Travelers is a Fortune 500 insurance company offering a range of insurance products to customers across the globe. With over $41 billion in revenue and over 32,000 employees, Travelers is the second-largest writer of U.S. commercial property casualty insurance and the sixth-largest writer of U.S. personal insurance through independent agents. In this conversation, Mojgan joins the show to share her perspective on integrating emerging technology into enterprise operations, prioritizing the customer experience through data-driven insights, and the importance of culture for successful AI adoption.Quick hits from Mojgan:On what makes the insurance industry different from other businesses: “We don't manufacture anything and have no physical goods. Everything we do is based on data and information. And so insurance companies have had data in those systems for years, and how you leverage technology to get insights from that data is really core to how we do business.”On the advantage of leveraging datasets with enterprise AI: “We think that [AI] can be huge for us, as a company that has so much data, so much of which is curated, whether it's our claim documents that we use to train our claim professionals or our underwriting standard operating procedures. The ability to bring all of that together and to leverage a technology that can go through that so quickly and put it at the fingertips of your employees [is powerful].”On understanding business processes to create impact with AI: “It's very important how you ask questions and how you prompt your AI. It's going to become even more important for your IT organization to truly understand your business and your business processes and have the ability to think of where these technologies will actually make a difference. You can't really do that without understanding the business process and where you can inject the technology."Recent Book Recommendation: Radical Candor by Kim Scott--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 37th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Saket Srivastava, CIO of Asana. Asana is a leader in project management platforms, allowing teams to stay organized, communicate effectively, and achieve their project goals efficiently. Asana has more than 130,000 customers in over 200 countries across the globe. In this conversation, Saket reflects on the dynamic role of AI in business, strategic considerations informing technology adoption, and how enterprises can best embrace the digital frontier.Quick hits from Saket:On the hype vs. reality of AI: “Gen AI might be overhyped in the shorter term, but in the longer term, it might actually be underhyped. The possibilities with Gen AI are something we are just beginning to understand. We're still scratching the surface, I think this is still the preview that we're seeing.”On the current role of CIOs: “As CIOs, our work is more about being a business leader, being that business strategist, being that business architect who's able to connect the dots across the company. And it's important that we're able to sort of drive conversations and drive strategy for the company.”On identifying meaningful AI use cases: “One was this notion again around a copilot for our go to market teams, who need to do research around our prospects and customers. There's a ton of that research and Gen AI is perfect to kind of do that on their behalf. So, Gen AI could create a cheat sheet for them."Recent Book Recommendation: The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni--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 36th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Rob Carter, EVP & CIO of FedEx. FedEx is a multinational courier delivery services company with over $90 billion in annual revenue and is the fifth largest employer in the US, with more than 500,000 workers globally. With billions of packages delivered every year, using the world's largest cargo fleet, FedEx uses sophisticated technology to provide a unique delivery service to customers across the globe. In this conversation, Rob shares fascinating insights into how FedEx uses AI, the future of automation in the transportation and logistics industry, and lessons on building a culture of innovation from his 23-year tenure. Quick hits from Rob:On what the potential of AI means to Fedex: “We're at a fascinating point in the journey of AI where it's not just a buzzword but a tangible tool that's reshaping how we think about movement, connectivity, and the global economy. At FedEx, we're harnessing this potential to redefine the delivery experience.”On the importance of understanding data: “The information about the package is as important as the package itself. This was a visionary statement by Fred Smith that has guided us for decades, and it's never been more relevant than now, in the age of AI and big data, where information is indeed power.”On the importance of culture for innovation: “Building a culture of innovation isn't just about introducing new technologies; it's about creating an environment where questioning the status quo, exploring new possibilities, and taking calculated risks are part of everyone's job description. That's the culture we cultivate at FedEx."Recent Book Recommendation: How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie--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 35th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Chris Helsel, SVP of Global Operations and  CTO of The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. Goodyear is a leading vehicle equipment manufacturer known for producing tires and rubber products for diverse applications, including cars, airplanes, and industrial equipment worldwide. Chris shares his thoughts on the vital role of technology at Goodyear, important blueprints for successfully leveraging AI, and how Goodyear tire sensors are enabling the future of self-driving vehicles.Quick hits from Chris:On the symbiotic nature of AI and cybersecurity teams: “The AI basically tells them right away what to go do. So I almost think of it as Tony Stark. When you put on the Iron Man suit, it gives you a kind of superhuman augmentation.”On the need for AI to manage data overload: “It's impossible that we're going to think engineers are going to be able to consume that data...You're going to need these types of [AI] technologies in order to discern those insights.”On enabling data-driven technology: “Our solution has a sensor in the tire... It measures temperature, pressure, acceleration, ID. It has a small chip and a battery. So we take that information off there, combine it with some other vehicle information, and pass it through Telematics, up to the cloud."Recent Book Recommendation: The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker--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 34th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, host Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) talks with Marty Brodbeck, CTO of Priceline. Priceline is an online travel agency that enables users to book hotels, flights, and rental cars across 400 airlines and 300,000 hotels in over 200 countries worldwide. Marty shares thoughts on organizational frameworks to implement AI effectively, underestimated use cases for generative AI, and how Priceline's new chatbot, Penny, uses the latest generative AI capabilities to transform the customer experience.Quick hits from Marty:On the future of AI in business: “I firmly believe that... a lot of the biggest innovations [in the enterprise] are going to be the application of machine learning and generative AI to scale out infrastructures.” On the iterative development of AI applications: “These large language models don't work right out of the box. There's a corpus of information that they get trained on that isn't necessarily accurate, so you have to complement the capabilities you're going to get from a large language model with your own data.”On AI for personalization and customer interaction : “Number one, it's the iterative nature in which we built our prompts for Penny and tested those to get it to a point where it was conversion positive... And two, being able to iterate on prompts to get them right so that Penny is responding in the appropriate way that's valuable for our consumers, those are the two big things that we learned."Recent Book Recommendation: Going Infinite by Michael Lewis--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 33rd episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Karl Mosgofian, CIO of Gainsight. Gainsight is an industry-leading customer success platform used by enterprise organizations to optimize the customer journey from beginning to end. In this conversation, Karl shares his thoughts on balancing the hype versus the reality of current AI capabilities, understanding opportunities presented by generative AI, and approaching AI integration as an enterprise team.Quick hits from Karl:On managing expectations between current enterprise AI and generative AI: “Some people are acting like AI was just invented, and it wasn't. Gainsight has had AI in our products for a long time. There are a lot of people out there who've been doing this for a long time, doing really effective stuff. But it's also true that OpenAI made a big breakthrough. LLMs are really different. They're doing some things that previous technologies couldn't do and it's super exciting, and it's going to have a big impact on the world. But the hype cycle is real.” On optimism for the potential of generative AI: “It makes me think of Arthur C. Clarke's line, that ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.' And ChatGPT is maybe the most magical technology I have ever seen. So, in some ways I'm all in on the hype, in the sense that this is really an incredible technology that's capable of fantastic things. We're at ChatGPT 4, right? So what's ChatGPT 17 going to look like? Running on quantum computing. I mean, if this is what it is in the early stages, what's it going to look like in 5-10 years? I'm excited about it and it's adding a lot of value for a lot of people right now.”On advice for utilizing new technology at the enterprise level: “The first thing I did was identify someone on my team and said, ‘I want you to be the AI person. I want you to be a focal point and run a center of excellence within my team, so that somebody is really on point.' The danger of things like this, especially when anybody can go to ChatGPT, you've got all these different people in the organization, they're doing cool stuff, but nobody's talking to each other. There is no security or governance around it. It is just like the wild west. And a little bit of that is okay. I don't want to stop that and try to control everything, but in the modern world, the role of it more and more is actually not to be dictators, but facilitators and coordinators across the company.”Recent Book Recommendation: Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter--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 32nd episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Eric Johnson, CIO at PagerDuty, the digital operations management platform. Eric is a longtime technology leader and has been the CIO at many notable companies throughout his career, including Informatica, DocuSign, and SurveyMonkey. In this conversation, Eric shares his thoughts about the impact of data strategy on AI adoption, transforming business operations with automation, and best practices for using generative AI in the enterprise.Quick hits from Eric:On questions to ask before approaching enterprise AI: “One, how are you using data to drive business impact. Two, what are very clear use cases that you could be focusing on around generative AI? There's a lot of excitement around generative AI because it's a very powerful, sophisticated set of solutions that are going to change not only the business world that we live in, it's going to change people's lives. But right now if you're not careful, you can get sucked into this situation where you're spending a lot of time and energy running around looking for a problem to solve.” On the importance of promoting organizational buy-in to leverage AI: “Change is something that you just have to understand is a constant. The pace of technology change is fast. And now with more new technology coming out that companies are starting to get better at managing and leveraging automation and AI and some of these other tools. You have to sit down with the organization. You have got to talk about what kind of change that is going to be in the organization and make sure the executive team is on board with that. If you can't get that done, then you're not going to go very far on that sort of transformation.”On potential limitations of AI interacting with legacy code: “There is this belief that AI is going to transform. And there are elements of it for sure, but I don't know how great AI is at taking a bunch of old legacy code and untangling that. This gets back into the whole problem where we have got to be careful not to assume that generative AI is the utopia, because there are still a lot of limitations to it.”Recent Book Recommendation: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni--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 31st episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Pranab Sinha, CIO of Matterport. Matterport is a next-generation virtual modeling tool that uses 3D-scanning technology and machine learning to create immersive digital replicas of physical spaces. In this conversation, Pranab shares how Matterport uses the latest AI capabilities to enhance their products, the importance of a cohesive AI data strategy, and upcoming AI use cases he's most excited about.   Quick hits from Pranab:On AI powering Matterport's newest products: “Our digital twin technology and platform is powered by the Cortex AIm an advanced machine learning engine, which essentially takes the physical spaces and combines the digital image into a photorealistic, digitally accurate digital twin.” On areas where Pranab sees AI's immediate impact: “One is around customer service, customer support, IT service. It's a lot of repetitive tasks that we have and we see real use cases, real potential on using AI to augment our intelligence that we have with our people on the front line. The second use case is around security. There is good news and bad news. You have all this great technology being developed, but at the same time, that technology will be available to the guys who are trying to disrupt your business.”On data structures needed to make AI viable for Matterport: “One of the big things we pride ourselves on is the data that we get and how we train our models. Trust is a big thing. Data security is the biggest thing. And so when you put your physical space on our digital twin platform, we want to make sure that you have absolute confidence.”Recent Book Recommendation: Good to Great by Jim Collins--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 30th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Alan Boehme, Former CTO at H&M, Procter & Gamble, and former CIO at The Coca-Cola Company. For over 20 years, Alan has led technology teams at some of the world's most recognizable brands. He has a wealth of insights into how next-generation technology can transform customer experiences and improve business processes. In this conversation, Alan shares how H&M uses technology for sustainability, his insights into the ways startups can best collaborate with enterprises, and details about how smart mirrors piloted at H&M are now in use at both H&M and COS to enhance the customer experience.Editor's note: This episode was recorded in 2022 when Alan was still CTO of H&MQuick hits from Alan:On leveraging data locked in clothing tags to enhance customer experience: “There's a lot of RFID data locked in tags on garments. We decided to lift the data out of our core warehousing systems and we created a data layer in the store that now mimics what's in the warehouse. By using 5G readers embedded in the ceiling and RFID readers in the walls, we can get 99% accuracy of everything that's in the store at the same time. When you pick a garment up and walk around the store, we know which are going into the fitting rooms and which ones are being left behind. Which ones are being tried on which ones are being returned to the rack. We can create an experience for you with a mirror [using that data]. By lifting the data out and making it available using artificial intelligence and machine learning, it becomes more predictive.”On the global nature of innovation: “The way we have to look at innovation is that it comes from anywhere and everywhere in a corporation and around the world. It's not bound by any geography anymore.”On how startups and corporations can best collaborate: “Corporations tend to define their problems too tightly and they're looking for specific solutions; [doing so] loses the creativity of the startups. You lose the intellectual capital that the startups bring, on top of their technology and services if you try to focus them too much. [As a startup], you want to present a business problem, and instead of telling [a corporation] how to solve it, ask them what they can bring to the table in order to make it work and make it solvable.”Recent Book Recommendation: Everybody Wants to Rule the World by R “Ray” Wang--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 29th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Bob Muglia, former CEO at Snowflake and former President at Microsoft. ​​For over 30 years, Bob has been at the frontier of modern technology and spent over two decades at Microsoft, becoming one of four Presidents reporting directly to CEO Steve Ballmer. After a stint at Juniper Networks, he was CEO of Snowflake, a foundational cloud data company, and today sits on the boards of several technology startups. In this conversation, Bob discusses navigating AI as an enterprise business, the role of data in AI's success, and valuable lessons on innovative leadership.Quick hits from Bob:On exciting trends emerging in AI: “Probably the most incredible thing that's happened this year, ‘what is the programming language of 2023?' English. English is the new programming language, which is a crazy thing to think about. Now, you're basically programming these AI models by talking to it in English, and pretty soon they'll be multimodal and you'll just literally be talking to them. So it's making things much more accessible. On the importance of data quality relating to AI: “AI only knows as much as the data that it is trained on or fed with. It has to be provided with data in order to provide answers. If you can't come up with that data in a coherent way, you are not going to be able to use these models very effectively.”On ethics being present in AI driven products: “I encourage every company that I work with to create a set of values and to really live by those values and to demonstrate that in many deep ways throughout the organization. That's something I focused on throughout my career. One of the observations I've had is that in the technology space, the values of a company are reflected in their products. This is only going to become reinforced and more true as AI takes on more and more decision making capability within these products.”Recent Book Recommendations: Robot Visions by Isaac AsimovThe Datapreneurs by Bob Muglia--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 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 takes 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.

On the 18th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Akash Khurana, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Wesco International. With over 18,000 employees and $20 billion of revenue, Wesco is a leading provider of electrical, industrial, and communications MRO and OEM products, supplying vital infrastructure in countries across the world. Today, Akash shares his insights on digital transformation, the role of data in optimizing customer experiences, and the importance of AI in driving business outcomes.Quick takes from Akash:On AI optimizing product recommendations: "One area that we have seen significant improvements is product recommendation. We have massive data from our end-to-end value chain. [In the past] as we responded to commercial proposals, it was all about how we go to the product set that is available, the product set that a sales rep is familiar with. And that was the past, right? It was very linear in terms of responses. Using AI, we are able to now provide not only one linear option to our sales representatives, but we are able to provide multiple recommendations with different profiles, and different availability metrics, which allow much better capability for our sales organization to deliver to our demands customer commitments.”On AI's increasingly important role at Wesco: “​​We have something we call the ‘AI Factory.' And every business model, every opportunity that we think of, we take a lens of ‘what can AI do in this area?' You really need to make it part of your operating model so that it becomes the way you operate, the way you think about technology, the way you think about providing services and solutions.”On how Akash defines digital transformation: “The way I define it is in terms of leveraging digital to create new value channels for the organization, whether it's through new products, new services, new solutions, new ways of going to market, new ways of engaging with customers, new ways of doing business with our partner ecosystems, new ways of tapping into innovation capability of the organization.Recent Book Recommendation: Creative Construction by Gary Pisano--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 Josh Meer and Luke Reiser.

On the 17th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Diane Jurgens, EVP & CIO of The Walt Disney Company. Disney is an American multinational entertainment and mass media company, pioneering experiences in film, TV, theme parks, and more. Today, Diane shares how Disney uses technology to create magical experiences for their guests, next-generation innovations that reimagine film production, and her best practices for building a culture of innovation. Quick hits from Diane:On Disney's next-generation film production technology:  “We do a lot of our filming on stages with something called Stagecraft, which is an integrated, virtual production environment. In traditional movie making, you'll construct a physical set but then you might film with a green screen. With Stagecraft, instead of virtual post production, it's displayed live; you have these physically constructed partial sets that allow the directors, actors and the camera operators to position themselves accordingly. Then you have a much more expansive virtual reality set with models from different cities, different countries, even different worlds and shoot live to that. It allows actors to see and visualize what they're actually shooting in; it's really unparalleled creativity to render this in real time.”On Disney utilizing animatronics at their theme parks: “My nephew loves Spiderman and we were at Avenger's Campus. If you've been there, Spiderman comes out and interacts with the audience and then he crawls up high on the building and does a major flip in the air and lands on the other building. Well, our imagineers actually have designed and built animatronics. So my nephew absolutely could not believe that was not a person.”On Disney's partnership with startup ecosystems: “The accelerator program starts by vetting a large number of startups and this year the theme was Web3. And out of those companies, they narrow it down to a smaller number and then senior leadership gets together and we listen to their pitches on their technology. Our executive sponsors in different business units give them meaningful feedback on the applicability of their technology, but also some coaching and mentoring on how to work with large companies like Disney.”On Disney's customer centricity: “100% of the focus of everybody who comes to work at Disney is how to delight, and that storytelling in surprising people. At D23, we unveiled Avatar, the next 3D movie from James Cameron, and to see the surprise and delight [was amazing]. That movie was made with the audience in mind [in terms of] how to make that immersive experience as best as it can be.”Recent Book Recommendation: Investments Unlimited by Helen Beal--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 Josh Meer and Luke Reiser

On the 16th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Sigal Zarmi, former International CIO & Head of Transformation at Morgan Stanley. Sigal is a seasoned technology executive, having spent time at some of the world's leading companies including Morgan Stanley, PwC, and General Electric. Currently, she's on the board at a number of innovative startups including HashiCorp, DataRobot, and more. On today's episode, Sigal shares how data in the cloud is enhancing customer experiences, her perspective on building a culture of innovation, and the best frameworks for partnerships with startups. Quick hits from Sigal:On GE creating algorithms to help franchisors through a standalone app: “A unit of GE Capital was financing franchisors when they were opening new stores. Our app could help a franchise figure out where the best place would be to open based on location, cost of living, and car traffic data. We knew how many cars and people were moving through the area, where the hospitals, schools, and  city government offices in the area were. Based on that data, we created an algorithm that recommended a place for franchisors to open.”On common misconceptions startups have when attempting to sell to enterprise customers: “I've talked to so many companies that think that just their technology should sell itself. ‘It's obvious what our technology does.' That never happens. Technology does not sell itself.”On what to remember when selling to enterprise companies: “First, it takes a long time to sell to large complex organizations. Second, focus on security up front and make sure you know how to answer any questions around security. Third, make sure that your product fully answers customer needs. Sometimes products just answer a feature that is solving a specific problem. I wouldn't buy something that only solves a feature because that might be acquired or developed by a competitor. So think about the platform you're building rather than just a feature.”Recent Book Recommendation:The Psychology of Executive Coaching by Bruce Peltier--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 15th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Sanjay Srivastava, Chief Digital Officer at Genpact. Genpact is a global professional services company with over 100,000 employees that enables the world's largest companies to digitally transform. Today, Sanjay shares how companies should approach driving true digital transformation and his perspective on the tremendous potential of AI.Quick hits from Sanjay:On how technology fits into the business: "I used to be all tech, tech, tech. And I realized tech is no longer the long pole in the tent. It's about people, processes, data, orchestration, and change management, all great things that need to happen for tech to deliver results."On how to think about applications of AI: “Often [people] think about AI, it's these big massive  things like autonomous driving…the reality is you have to put all that aside. Think about ‘small' AI, like utilities and tool kits. It's things like NLP: NLP is ahead of human capability today. Computer vision is actually almost at human capability. Voice to text is pretty close if not at human capability. Think about day-to-day business processes and efficiency.”On how tomorrow's workforce can harness AI's potential: “I always like to say that the world doesn't really need another machine learning engineer…what the world really needs is a finance and accounting specialist that understands machine learning; a manufacturing engineer that also understands computer vision; a data scientist that actually gets pattern recognition. It's this idea of the intersection of sciences that becomes very important.”On the difference between digital transformation and digitization: "Digital transformation is a big word these days, and it often gets used in the same way that digitization gets used. The reality is those two words, though interchangeable at times, couldn't be further apart in meaning. When we talk about digitization, it's about taking an end-to-end process, breaking it down into its components, and automating every single piece. You've got an end-to-end process that is faster, scalable, more efficient, and more reliable. But the work remains the same; it's just done faster. When you do digital transformation, you're redesigning the value chain, rethinking the experience, and delivering a much more sticky endpoint to a client. You are using new emerging technologies and get a redesigned end-to-end value proposition. The work that's left behind is now different and new. Digital transformation is about orchestrating change in the dimensions of people, processes, data, and technology." --Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at enterprisesoftware.blog.Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Josh Meer and Luke Reiser

On the 14th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Alvina Antar, Chief Information Officer at Okta. Okta is a leading workforce identity provider and helps some of the world's largest companies connect people and technology in a secure environment. Today, Alvina shares her perspective on the importance of data decentralization and her insights on best practices for product-led technology organizations. Quick hits from Alvina:On the importance of data availability: “Data and insights at the speed of the business is huge for us. [With Okta] being a high growth organization, we're positioning ourselves to accelerate our self-service capabilities and democratize data for every employee. That means not just having the enterprise data capabilities within business technology, but being able to make that data accessible to everyone [in the organization].”On Okta's IT organizational structure: “A lot of times as a business technology or IT function we get challenged with dates..the business says ‘you know, I need this at the beginning of the fiscal year, it's required.' And the dates are already given to us before we've even assessed the scope, let alone understand what's gonna take to actually deliver…We operate as a product and engineering organization for the company that's running our business. And so just as product and engineering isn't pressured [since] they're the experts of the technology that they're delivering to sell, we should have that same mindset and that is why myself and many of my peers are embracing this new product operating model, [because] it's not just a name change. You don't just move people and move their titles. It's a mindshift in thinking of operating as a product organization.”On how startups can best pitch themselves: “The startups I spend the most time with are those that take the time to understand my strategies and how their product can help me be successful. And so they're not just pitching their product in their generic way but they actually understand the challenges that I'm facing and share stories - not at the surface level but at a level that would relate to me and to my team.”Recent Book Recommendations:Zero to IPO by Frederic KerrestUnapologetically Ambitious by Shellye Archambeau--Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at enterprisesoftware.blog.Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Josh Meer and Luke Reiser

On the 13th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Bashir Agboola, Chief Technology Officer at Hospital for Special Surgery. HSS is one of the preeminent medical institutions in the world, specializing in orthopedics and providing care to patients from over 100 different countries. Today, Bashir shares his perspective on digital transformation, the exciting technologies HSS is deploying to improve patient outcomes, and insights into upcoming step changes in the healthcare industry. Quick hits from Bashir:On HSS utilizing 3D printing: “We have the first in-hospital 3D printing of joints. This was a project we did in collaboration with a European company to set up an FDA regulated facility at the hospital to print the joints for acute procedures. So for things like that of course you might think, ‘3D printing, is that digital?' Of course…it's all along the line of digital transformation. The modern total knee replacement was developed at HSS close to 50 years ago. So being able to do 3D printing of implants for those acute situations is just in line with that tradition of groundbreaking innovation.”On HSS accelerating its digital transformation during COVID-19: “We went from an organization that as of 2019 probably had less than 1% of our workforce working remotely to within March of 2020, a third of the organization was working from home, so we had to enable that technology. For me and other infrastructure and operations leaders in healthcare it was ‘finally, yes. This is what we've been saying all along, we need to focus on digital workplace transformation…'[For perspective], in all of 2019 we had less than 1500 telehealth sessions. 12 months later, we had over 123,000 telehealth sessions.”On the future of healthcare delivery: “The future of healthcare has us consuming care virtually more and in ambulatory settings whether it's in-home or in a clinical setting. To put things in perspective, for the first 150 years of HSS, we did surgery at the hospital. In the last five years, we've opened a number of ambulatory surgical care centers where you go in, you get that meniscus tear repaired and you go back home. You don't have to stay in a hospital setting.”On blockchain's use cases for healthcare: “People have also talked about tackling the problems of counterfeit therapeutics, which is a big problem, particularly in the developing world. There are counterfeit drugs in pharmacies all over Africa and other parts of the world. Leveraging the blockchain to track the provenance of that drug or any other thing for which you want to track the provenance, the decentralized nature of the blockchain can allow us to do that.”Recent Book Recommendation: The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins--Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at enterprisesoftware.blog.Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Josh Meer, Luke Reiser

On the 12th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Bijoy Sagar, Chief Information Technology and Digital Transformation Officer at Bayer. As one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, Bayer positively impacts billions of people through technology innovations across healthcare, agriculture, and biotech. Today, Bijoy shares how Bayer is deploying digital farming practices, his perspective on AI, and the best methodologies for partnering with startups. Quick hits from Bijoy:On Bayer deploying drones to optimize farming practices: “We have drones over 73 million acres where we're collecting data real time on the field. We have satellite data coming in. We actually acquired a company to get the data so you can actually predict how much soil moisture is there in one square meter of the land. And then you can actually use algorithms to predict how much seed you plant there and how much do you water? What kind of resources do you need there so that you can actually grow, get the best outcome for the farmers in the most sustainable way? This may not be the most critical digital topic somebody would think about until you think about the fact that this is the food you're eating every day.”On building mission-driven teams: “​​You have to have everybody be mission driven. We spend a lot of time purposefully looking at ‘how do we build the teams together, how do we actually get them to be mission focused?' I don't start a single presentation without first referencing our mission and purpose, ‘Health for All, Hunger for None.' I always remind them you are here every single day because there is a patient at the end of the journey, there's a farmer at the end of the journey…You cannot go solve problems of tomorrow with the tools of yesterday.”On the technology frontiers of the future: “The best is yet to come. And what do I mean by that? Some of the really complex pharmaceutical problems such as protein folding would require a 1000 qubit computer right now. We are playing with 40 qubit, so it's gonna be amazing but we're not there yet. So I don't want people to sort of feel like yeah, this is the pinnacle of digital; I don't believe that. I think we will look back six years from now and say my God, those were primitive days!On step changes coming to medicine: “With better models with stronger AI, [in the future, we will have] the ability to do protein folding and visualizations. We should be able to treat Parkinson's disease and cure it. I'm happy to predict and we'll see if I'm true or not in 10 years that Parkinson's will be a curable disease, not even necessarily a manageable disease.”On the framework for engaging with startups: “Look for non weaknesses in the way of solving a problem. I always tell people, if band aid and bailing wire is the cheapest, best, most reliable way to solve a problem, that's fine because there is a role for a band aid and bailing wire, otherwise we wouldn't be making those things, right? So I wouldn't look for a startup to invent a problem to solve. As you say, if you only have a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.”Recent book recommendation: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari--Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at enterprisesoftware.blog.Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Josh Meer, Luke Reiser

On the 11th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Mel Crocker, Chief Information Officer at Air Canada. As the largest airline in Canada, Air Canada is responsible for tens of millions of passengers every year, flying to destinations across the globe. In his nearly five years at the company, Mel has overseen a range of digital transformation initiatives. Today, he joins the show to share how technology deployment is enhancing the customer experience and his insights on AI, data, and the future of air travel. Quick hits from Mel:On AI helping optimize airplane maintenance processes: "Picture how are you going to track all of your inventory, watch what happens throughout a year, and then preposition the parts where they're probably most needed as time goes on, such that if you do have to cancel an aircraft, you can either fix it very rapidly or if you have to delay a flight, you can fix it very rapidly. or at the very least you've got another aircraft somewhat available. When you're running a complex network, you don't have planes all over the place. That becomes almost unsustainable. You've got to be incredibly thoughtful about maintenance and things like that. That's where we absolutely throw a lot of AI at to try and get very smart at this."On future forms of air travel: "There's no doubt you've seen eVTOL, these electric vehicles or electric vertical takeoff and landing technologies. On a small scale, I think that's quite real. I think people are going to be able to order a flight in the same way that they order an Uber, then go from point A to point B through the air versus on the ground. I don't think it's that far from reality now. There's a lot of companies pushing hard on this, I think it's real."On the complexity of air travel logistics: "We hold some love for rocket scientists, they got to figure this out. It's a one-time, you take off from here, you fly to the moon, you slingshot around, you come back. Well if you think about it, try and do that with 240 aircraft that are going to various destinations. You have to coordinate the passengers with their bags, ideally, then you've got to follow all the regulations from all the different countries to make sure you're not breaking any of those and then right in the middle of it, Russia attacks Ukraine and you have to change your network on the fly and make all this happen. Some days I wish I worked for NASA, it'd be a lot simpler."Recent book recommendation: Peak Mind by Amishi Jha --Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at enterprisesoftware.blog.Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Josh Meer, Luke Reiser

On the tenth episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Scott Howitt, CDO at Ultimate Kronos Group. Scott has been a CIO, CTO, CISO, and CDO across several industries during his career, giving him a unique perspective into the world of deploying technological initiatives at large companies. Today, Scott joins the show to discuss how CIOs and CDOs can become ‘chief bridge builders' within organizations to optimize business outcomes, create a culture of innovation, and evaluate startups to form great partnerships.Quick hits from Scott:On CIOs speaking multiple languages: “As techies, we're really good at not having much respect for people who don't understand all the techno jargon that we use, guess what? The CFO is thinking the same thing when you don't understand EBITDA and how revenue is recognized and what ARR is and what PEPM is. You need to be like a UN translator. You have to know multiple different languages to be a successful executive."On CIOs understanding the business: “Sometimes, you're way up above the business, doing a strategic plan, but occasionally, you've got to dive down and get exactly where the troops are and understand what they're doing. I think too often technologists are like, ‘Hey, I'm just a technologist. I don't need to understand the business.' You have no purpose in life if it were not for the business, and too often, technologists forget that they're here to support the business, not the other way around.”On how CIOs and CDOs can evaluate startups to form great partnerships: "Look at who's on their board, who's investing in them. But then, go ahead and have a dialogue too. My thing with all the vendors is it needs to be the CEO, the CTO, or the Chief Product Officer. Otherwise, I don't want to talk to him because I want to get the heartbeat of where this company is going, what's your vision, what's your exit strategy, all those things. Because if it's a partnership, let's not worry about the price. It is the last thing I get to. It's how we would come together and work together if we formed a partnership. And it should be a partnership, not a vendor-consumer relationship.”Recent book recommendations: The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George SpaffordHue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam by Mark Bowden--Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at enterprisesoftware.blog.Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Josh Meer, Luke Reiser, and Tom Hunt.

On the ninth episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Vish Narendra, CIO & SVP, Global Business Services of Graphic Packaging International. GPI is an integrated paper packaging company that services hundreds of the world's most recognized brands. Vish shares insights on how he's leading digital transformation at GPI, how to measure the success of digital transformation, how to find the right startups to work with, and the state of AR/VR for enterprise.Quick hits from Vish:On Graphic Packaging International's digital transformation: “At a 50,000 foot level, we're putting in processes and systems that will be used by this company ten to fifteen years from now. Not in a static way but an agile and flexible way that can evolve and adapt to the changing needs of the economy, the business, and the industry.”On maintaining dynamism in a highly-volatile world: “Technology itself is not the biggest challenge. It is prioritization and adaptation for evolving needs. That is actually truly the biggest challenge...So, you have to adjust.”On how CIOs can become more innovative: “Find progressive CIOs that are active in the space. See if there are ways that you can get connected to them. See if there are ways that they will share their knowledge and their time.”On how to balance pre-existing best practices and innovation: “As humans, no matter who you are, you are a creature of habit. If you have developed a certain set of habits over a while, it takes a lot of effort to break those habits. And understanding how we can drive that change within that organization and understanding the appetite for change is critical to the success of all the work.”Recent book recommendation: Good Company by Arthur M Blank--Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at enterprisesoftware.blog.Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Josh Meer, Luke Reiser, and Tom Hunt.

On the eighth episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Gary Reiner, former CIO of General Electric and a current operating partner at General Atlantic, a global growth equity firm with over $79 billion of assets under management. While at GE, Gary was an executive leader for almost 20 years, and an early advocate for implementing SaaS applications during his 14 year tenure as CIO. Today, he sits on the board of several GA portfolio companies including Atera, Devo, Evisort, JumpCloud, Pymetrics, ThreatLocker, Vast Data, and Zoomin. In this conversation, Gary shares why he believes the best business process wins, his perspective on packaged solutions, and the meaning behind “lean before digitize”.Quick hits from Gary:On how technology and business processes need to work together: “Technology is there to support processes. We used to have a saying at GE, ‘lean before digitize.' What that means is you need to do a ton of work improving the process before you roll out technology. We had actually looked at a lot of successes and failures within the work that we had done in IT at GE. And it was pretty much binary where if we had leaned processes first and then attached technology to it, it was successful. And if we had tried to just take the technology that was there and support an unimproved process, it was a failure all the time.”On building software in-house or using a partner: “During my 20 years at GE, if you took the most proprietary thing that we did, it was developing the inside of an aircraft engine. It was the single most sophisticated thing requiring incredibly high IQ people doing very, very sophisticated things. And yet when you looked for software that they needed, in order to develop those engine parts, there were at least three different software solutions they could use. Someone who was more NIH would say, "We need to build this, because it's strategic to us." That's not the strategic part of it. The tool was not the strategic part. The strategic part was the knowledge of the engineers that were designing it, not the tool itself.”Gary's advice to startup SaaS founders: “If you're a startup building software to support processes, whether it's a selling process, manufacturing process, service process, make sure you understand what the best practices are in that case that you're supporting, so that when good customers are leaning their processes, they default to your solution.” Recent book recommendation: The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli--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, Josh Meer and Emily Shaw. 

On the seventh episode and season one finale of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Diana McKenzie, former CIO at Workday. Diana has been SVP and CIO of Workday in addition to CIO at Amgen. Today, she sits on the board of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, MetLife, Change Healthcare, and Paradox, among others. Evan and Saam speak with Diana about the importance of being a customer facing CIO, the technology-driven innovations she's most excited about in the life sciences, and her experience being a board member after spending years on the other side of the table.Quick hits from Diana:On CIOs directionally oriented towards deploying new technology: “When we found a group of CIOs who were willing to embrace some of these newer concepts, you tend to cluster together and develop relationships. And then somebody in the group comes to the dinner and says, ‘oh my gosh, we're trying this, We're trying Snowflake, or we're trying that.' And then everybody wants to jump on board because it's a cool thing to be engaged with, but never just for the technology, always because you're trying to derive an outcome that's better for the business.”On being customer focused as a CIO: “The entire time I was a CIO, I never ever called the people that I worked with inside the company my customers. My belief has always been that the person that we are selling our product or service to is the customer and that's the one we have to all be looking at in the same way. Inside the company, we all have to be working together to make sure we're achieving that end. And by keeping myself and my team focused on the end customer, I think we're better at sort of deciphering what we needed to do internally.”On technological breakthroughs in the life sciences space: “We are working in partnership with the CRISPR company to develop a product called CTX001 and right now it's showing enormous promise in clinical trials for patients suffering from sickle cell anemia. It is all about editing their DNA so that it will produce this fetal hemoglobin that ultimately becomes a mature adult hemoglobin in the amounts that are needed so that these patients no longer have sickle cell anemia. So we're talking about a cure [and] you simply don't get to that without the application of technology.” Recent book recommendation: Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda by Sean Naylor--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, Josh Meer and Emily Shaw. 

On the sixth episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Ravi Malick, Global CIO at Box. Ravi's career has taken him from investment banking and consulting to the energy industry, where he spent nearly 4 years as the SVP and CIO of Vistra Energy before landing at Box. Evan and Saam speak with Ravi about the most defining moments of his career, the operational differences of startups vs. Fortune 500 companies and how they can work together, the best ways larger companies can leverage startup-driven technology, and the roles of CIOs within executive teams. Quick hits from Ravi:On finding the balance of innovating while maintaining a solid foundation: “Your ability to change is determined by the business's ability to absorb it and how much can you push the envelope a little bit without breaking things”On recognizing the correlation of company size and operational speed: “I went from being in a speed boat to a tanker”On prioritizing the importance of experimentation within organizations: "You have to constantly experiment. If every day you're worrying about the current project, and the current issues, you're going to miss the opportunity...I always felt that if you use technology effectively, [the company could] jump four or five steps ahead."Recent book recommendation: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis---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, Josh Meer and Emily Shaw. 

On the fifth episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Anuj Dhanda, CIO of Albertsons Companies. As the second largest supermarket chain in the United States, Albertsons is responsible for helping feed much of the country. Anuj discusses the challenges Albertsons faced in the wake of the pandemic, the various next-generation technologies being used to drive the future of grocery, and the thought process behind when Albertsons partners with startups. Quick hits from Anuj:On Albertsons deploying machine learning: “Every aspect of how we run our business has an implication [that] machine learning could improve. [Beyond] demand forecasting and replenishment, [how about] when we think about how we staff our stores, the slot management for e-commerce…How do we fulfill those slots? How do we better predict the specific needs of the customer and to be able to match the offers to them? We think there is a big opportunity as we mature both the machine learning as well as a higher level of base automation in the system.”On being more customer centric and agile: “From an e-commerce perspective, pre-COVID grocery was lagging other industries. And that has certainly increased at a very fast clip…Our view is that customers will decide what works best for them. Some people like to buy their produce in the store and love the theater of looking at the produce…Some people say, ‘hey, if someone can deliver it, that's great for me.' Some will do different combinations. Our intent through all this is to be able to meet the customer when she's ready and in a way that she wants to shop…And what we find is that even customers who shop online, many of them go to the store, too. If you give the optionality to the customer, we can personalize this experience in a way that works for her, that would be the winning strategy for the customer and us.”On working with startups: “If you talked to me five years ago, I would have said we generally tend to work with industrial strength companies because we have big [scaling needs. And I have fundamentally changed that [perspective]...because with the cloud, scalability for a small company is not an issue…That has democratized how we access [and partner with] startups.”Recent book recommendation: Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson---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, Josh Meer and Emily Shaw. 

On the fourth episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Sreelakshmi Kolli, CDO of Align Technologies. Align Technologies' most popular product, Invisalign is the product of 3D printing, a breakthrough technology that is completely upending manufacturing processes. In fact, Align Technologies is one of the biggest 3D printers in the world. In this episode, Sreelakshmi breaks down Align's decentralized approach to data access and how it's improved innovative capacity, the link between culture and technology evolution, and the factors that define Align's successful partnerships with startups.Quick hits from Sree:On Align's goals for data access within the organization: “Our goal is to make data so pervasive inside Align, so that it's not just for a data scientist or a small technology team to unlock the potential of it. It's been a cultural transformation as much as it's been a technology transformation.”On using AI to transform medical processes: “The selfie app that we use, we call it the smile view. That's an AI model that takes your selfie [in] real time and shows you what your smile could look like. That's a very individualized experience. We are using it in our treatment planning, you know, we understand what the doctor's treatment preferences are, how they would like to treat the patient. And so we are codifying that using AI to generate treatment plans that the doctors can then modify in real time.”On how Align benefits from startup philosophies: “For us, technology's like the central nervous system of the company. And so, as a technology team, we stay on top of current technology trends and actively engage with the startup community…Experimentation is very much part of our culture, when we fail an experiment, we treat it more like learning experiences so that we can continuously iterate on the idea or, you know, we just decide to abandon it. The entrepreneurial culture is very much alive at Align.”Recent book recommendation: Ask Your Developer by Jeff Lawson---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, Josh Meer and Emily Shaw. 

On the third episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Jay Dominick, CIO at Princeton University. Princeton University is a unique organization with 8000 students, over 7000 employees, its own power plant and own police force; in short, ample opportunities for deploying impactful technological innovations at scale. Evan and Saam speak with Jay about balancing risk and reward, the benefits Princeton attains from collaborating with startups, navigating COVID-19, and the best practices for balancing various stakeholders' technology needs at universities.Quick hits from Jay:On managing risk during COVID-19: “What we were facing was an existential crisis... the risk mitigation switched into failure mitigation. We had to take risks to avoid failure…. People tend to be risk averse, but really they should focus on being failure adverse…We had to change a lot of rules…around work at home or around what students could be considered to do with respect to technology in their studies.”On the benefits of working with startups: “One of the reasons we work with startups is to give our organization the opportunity to see when people are just thinking differently…engagement with the innovator's mind keeps us healthy.”On how to nurture innovation: “...for CIOs, if you're encouraging innovation from within, you have to figure out how to align your own success and interests with the innovator's success and interests.”Recent book recommendation: Caste by Isabel Wickerson---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, Josh Meer and Emily Shaw. 

On the second episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Shamim Mohammad, Executive Vice President, Chief Information & Technology Officer of CarMax. CarMax has been at the forefront of the used car business for decades and has consistently stayed at the frontier by being unafraid to adopt new technologies alongside their core business. Shamim walks through the differences of what he calls “start-up” vs “end-up” companies, and the multiple ways CarMax has deployed exciting new technological innovations to keep their business thriving. From AI models to an omni-channel customer experience, CarMax is a worthy example of a previously exclusively brick and mortar business that has successfully transformed themselves into a digital platform.Quick hits from Shamim:On CarMax disrupting itself in their transformation to being a digital business: “…fortunately for CarMax, we were not afraid to disrupt ourselves because we knew that if we didn't guess what's gonna happen, you know, maybe not immediately 3, 4, 5 years, 10 years down the road, we would be disrupted. So we wanted to disrupt ourselves before somebody else did.”On the omni-channel approach CarMax offers its customers: “If somebody is not as comfortable with all the digital experiences and they want to go talk to a human being in a store, they could do that. So what I found is in our omni-channel approach, most of the customers are taking advantage of the digital tools and capabilities we have built, but then also a lot of them are going to the store and finishing their transaction."On the importance of a startup ethos: “I've seen what a startup kind of mindset can do. And the energy and the passion a startup company has is invaluable. And when the company gets too big and gets away from that startup mindset is when trouble begins.”Recent book recommendation: Getting To Nimble 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, Josh Meer and Emily Shaw.