Built for Change

This week’s episode is a special recording of Built for Change at the DealBook Online Summit, which took place on November 9, 2021. Hosts Josh Klein and Elise Hu are joined in conversation by Jack Azagury, U.S. Northeast Market Lead, Accenture; Christie Smith, Global Lead of Talent and Organization/Human Potential, Accenture; and Leena Nair, former Chief Human Resources Officer, Unilever. Sponsor session by Accenture.

Soccer is the most popular sport in the world and a multibillion-dollar commercial industry. But as recently as the 2000s, most professional soccer teams did not prioritize — or even consider — data and analytics when making critical business and personnel decisions. That’s not the case anymore. The demand for accurate data, predictive analytics and A.I. in the world of soccer has exploded on both the business and sporting sides. And that growth is thanks, in part, to a popular video game. In this episode, we’ll speak to Miles Jacobson, Studio Director at Sports Interactive; Andy Hickl, Global Lead for Advanced A.I. at Accenture; and Dee Kundra, Managing Director (Americas) at F.C. Bayern Munich.

Across industries, innovators are building technologies and systems that can understand people better than ever before. Wearability, portability, convenience and other features of consumer-oriented devices are driving transformation anywhere people and technology interact. It’s time for leaders to ask how these latest developments might help their enterprises. In this episode, we’ll speak to Moha Bensofia, Chief Evangelist at Mendi; Mary Hamilton, Lead of Accenture Technology Innovation Technology for North America and Latin America; and Prof. Xuanhe Zhao at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

An executive at an energy firm based in Britain receives a call from his boss, asking him to transfer 220,000 euros to a Hungarian vendor. He transfers the money, only to find out later that it wasn’t his actual boss who called him. It was a sophisticated fake of his boss’s real voice. You may have heard of “deepfakes” in the media by now. But what about the underlying technologies that power them, called GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks)? While most people probably associate deepfakes with scams or viral social media videos, there’s enormous potential for using GAN technology in legitimate business applications — from product design, to synthetic data, to art and content creation. But these new technologies also present an abundance of ethical, privacy and security problems. In this episode, we’ll speak with Edy Liongosari, Chief Research Scientist at Accenture Labs; Cristóbal Valenzuela, Co-Founder and C.E.O. at Runway; and David Danks, Professor of Data Science and Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego.

Recent breakthroughs in quantum computing show that the technology is on the verge of fulfilling its vast potential, creating a wave of opportunity for businesses. Leaders who understand the capabilities of quantum computing will be better positioned for the long term — and will be able to capitalize as the technology continues to mature. In this episode, we’ll speak to Celia Merzbacher, Executive Director of the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C); Carl Dukatz, Next Gen Compute Lead at Accenture; and Rebecca Krauthamer, Chief Product Officer at QuSecure.