Exclusive Interview Archives

Prof. Martin Curley: Driving Breakthrough Improvements in Health Service Efficiency, Effectiveness and Experience

Meet Prof. Martin Curley, the Director of Digital Transformation and Open Innovation at the Health Service Executive (HSE), helping to enable digital transformation in Ireland’s Health Service. Under his leadership, the HSE Digital Transformation group works to build health system-wide digital capability, capacity, and competence.

An electronic engineer by profession, Martin’s career started with Philips Lab in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Later he worked on IoT systems in factories of General Electronics and Intel, well before the term Internet of Things was coined. At that point of time, he specifically focussed on developing and deploying Digital Manufacturing Solutions and realized these could be particularly applicable for the Health Care industry, where variability plays a major role.

He has also lectured and spoken at various global universities and conferences and been in boardrooms across the planet.

Before starting HSE, Martin also served as the Senior Vice President and Group Head for Global Digital Practice at Mastercard.

The Inception Story

Martin started his journey at HSE Digital Transformation to transform Ireland’s healthcare using Digital Technology. Using the Design Practices documented in his book on Open Innovation 2.0, he understood one could use digitization to drive a fundamental change in healthcare, which was at least a decade behind other industries.

Martin states, “I noted and observed that the combination of exponential digital technologies, the information-intensive nature of healthcare – healthcare is an information business and the use of an exponential innovation methodology that I developed (OI2) would and is creating supranormal or 10X returns repeatedly and predictably.”

He explains that it translates into much better outcomes, with lower costs, better experience, and improved life qualities. Starting to become known as the ‘Curleys law,’ the methodology’s application produces breakthrough 10X solutions and outcomes. For example, a digital heart care at home solution has resulted in a 10X reduction of hospitalizations and 10X improvement in monitoring, all of which can be achieved at a rate of 2.5X less than the cost of the current solution. Remote respiratory monitoring solutions can keep respiratory patients out of hospital at a cost which is 30X cheaper than admitting a patient to an acute hospital.

Path Breaking Services

Within Ireland, Martin envisioned a unique new Digital Healthcare system, which can be described as a health and wellness system. He and his colleagues in the Irish Digital Health Leadership Steering Group and ecosystem envisioned a new approach designed to keep people fit and well and detect any chronic disease very early. This kind of health system is unique from and in contrast to the existing healthcare system/paradigm, which works like an illness system, where chronic diseases account for up to 90% of all costs and 70% of all deaths.

HSE Digital Transformation has also created a ‘health elevator,’ which integrated various products and services from eleven companies to deliver a completely new proactive health and wellness service for the Irish citizens. The health elevator focuses on moving healthcare closer to home, where patients are empowered to improve their self-care and live healthier. It also aims to transition from a reactive care pathway to a proactive approach with ongoing management and preventative health screening by utilizing remote monitoring and real-time information.

“You have to take the opportunity of a lifetime in the lifetime of the opportunity. Dream, Dare, Do!”

Additionally, the ‘Oceans Eleven’ arrangement helps Irish citizens with a rapid 15-minute health assessment, a personal electronic health record, a computer algorithm-assisted medical report, a fitness device like Fitbit, a wellness app, and a holistic digital health therapeutic. Patients can avail all of these at around the cost of a PCR test, which in return provides the much-needed information, therapeutics, and nudges to create a fit and healthy population. The Ocean Eleven arrangement includes HSE Digital Transformation, Careplus Pharmacies, Google, Fitbit, AWS, PatientsKnowBest, Full Health Medical, Eurofins, Roche, Trimedika and Checkpoint.

Keeping the Team Motivated

As the leader of HSE, Martin tries to keep his team motivated by providing them with a compelling vision that entirely aligns with an individual’s values and business skills. He tries to empower and encourage as much as possible rather than commanding and controlling.

However, for Martin, it’s not only about motivating the team, but it’s also about motivating the ecosystem, and he is delighted that the ecosystem HSE Digital Transformation has built has beautifully aligned around the vision and strategy of ‘Stay Left, Shift Left- 10X’.

“Many senior leaders and organizations from across the ecosystem such as Dr John Sheehan, John Shaw, Prof Richard Costello, Prof. Anthony Staines and Dr Donal Bailey have self-selected into the ecosystem, and we mutually motivate each other as we strive for 10X interventions which compound and mutually reinforce each other.“- he stated. Together they founded the Irish Digital Health Leadership Steering group (IDHLSG) to accelerate the Digital Health transition in Ireland.

Picture of the Future

As an organization, HSE Digital Transformation and the IDHLSG would like to create an entirely new Digital Health and Wellness system that would help extend the lives of every Irish citizen and create a model and a platform that could be adopted and improved by other countries worldwide. Martin and his colleagues aspire to make Ireland a European Health leader by 2025 and one of the top 10 global health systems by 2030.

The organisation believes that data plays a major role in fighting modern-day diseases, and it will set the challenge to add 2.5 years of life for every citizen over the next five years. “Like Moore’s Law, Curley’s Law will ultimately come up against the laws of biology and physics, but adding an extra ten years of quality life to every global citizen over the next two decades would be an amazing accomplishment we could all be proud of.‘- states Martin.

“We plan to achieve this by deploying a digital health platform centered around the patient/citizen, which proves seamless access across the care continuum to citizens, carers, clinicians, and academics alike. Overlayed on this will be a complete and ever-growing portfolio of IoT devices, digital therapeutics, and AI solutions that provide insights, nudges, tools, and diagnoses to help keep people healthy and detect/intervene with early signs of chronic diseases.”

This solution will fully focus on all the factors of health, which include lifestyle, genetics, mental health, environment, and healthcare systems. Eventually, Ireland will have a closed-loop digital health system operating at a national, population, health facility, and individual level to optimize health and wellness strategically and in real-time to create a true health learning system.

Neil Pretty: Creating High Performing, Resilient Cultures

Meet Neil Pretty, the Co-founder, and CEO of Aristotle Performance, which works to empower organizations to develop high-performing, resilient cultures to succeed in an increasingly unpredictable environment. As an organizational development firm, Neil and his team at Aristotle Performance focuses on scalable solutions directly impacting leaders and teams. By focusing on a foundation of psychological safety and building team effectiveness from that foundation, Aristotle’s performance is helping teams work together while creating a better sense of belonging for employees.

Aristotle Performance is Neil’s seventh business venture. “With minimal formal training, it was necessary to seek out mentors, read books, and learn through trial and error. You could say the same for my journey as a leader: My first formal leadership position was in Army Cadets at 13 years old. I was posted to my first platoon at 15 and have maintained leadership positions ever since,”- he explains. “This, along with often working in parallel contracting or having varied part-time roles in numerous industries, culminated in my early 30s realizing that I had led over 300 teams.”

As Neil entered the coaching profession and evolved his practice to focus on career and leadership development, his practice slowly evolved to focus on high performers, often labeled as toxic leaders. Eventually, his work evolved into team and organizational development as Neil was asked to take on more complex and wide-scale challenges with his clients.

Founded on 15th April 2020, Aristotle Performance has worked with several leaders, teams, and certified professionals through its partnership with the Fearless Organization. Till date, the organization has directly impacted over 2500 teams, and an innumerable number of teams have been impacted by those the firm has certified. Alongside its certified practitioners, the firm has also worked with several teams and organizations spread across six of the seven continents.

Present Business Environment

Neil believes most leaders and organizations face a challenge from what is commonly referred to as the VUCA world- volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Initially a military term, VUCA describes urban combat situations; it becomes relevant to survival from a business’s perspective is often what is at stake.

On the other hand, the current state of the world offers excellent opportunities. Those organizations that realize connecting with their people and creating team environments that are beneficial to the lives of their people will accelerate their business and separate them from their competitors.

Tackling the Gender Pay Gap

Neil believes the issue of the gender pay gap is a complex ongoing issue. He says, “Pay equity should be our goal, while also asking – “Equity for what?” There are numerous groups that are paid less. A specific group should not get paid more or less because they are an identifying member of any specific group.”

So, Aristotle Performance structures pay by looking at the bigger picture, assessing results, and creating equal opportunities to achieve those results. It is imperative to consider the unconscious bias, which is key to devising strategies to tackle those biases. Instead of having the same answer for everyone, the primary goal should be to create awareness regarding inappropriate gaps and work to fill those gaps. However, the organization’s response is quite simple, it has a rate based on a specific job role, and it pays as per the associated value of that role.

Diversity of thought, education, experience, mindset, process, and background is critical for every organization. If an organization want its employees to share their perspective, then it needs to help them by providing the proper environment, paying them adequately, and offering a sense of direction, connection, and meaning.

Keeping the Team Motivated

Neil keeps his team motivated in several ways. Firstly by connecting their effort and Aristotle Performance’s common mission. Secondly is by creating a team environment that offers the best personal and professional growth. And third, by working to share and nurture gratitude.

Everyone at Aristotle Performance knows the fact that Neil will support them in every aspect of their lives, as they feel willing to share with him. He says, “The greatest gift I’ve had as a leader is to see the potential someone else has before they see it in themselves- and working alongside them to help them achieve what they previously thought was impossible. As a result, I do not even question if they are motivated.”

Aristotle Performance is a culture-obsessed organization regarding re-learning and continuous education. It successfully incorporated and learned more than any other team or organization that Neil has ever been a part of.

“The result is a fast pace without being “fast-paced”: we have a lot of fun, we innovate, we accomplish a lot, and very importantly, we can look at each other and know that it is together that those outcomes were achieved.”- explains Neil.

Preparing for the Future

Having laid the foundation through its work at several global organizations, Aristotle Performance will soon start working with even more Fortune 500 companies to tackle the uncertainties our world is going through. In the future, Aristotle Performance’s goal is to become a global leader in developing psychological safety and learning by using a scalable, systemic, and repeatable process.

Neil says, “If we are successful, we will be changing the nature of work for an untold amount of employees and their families. We feel that our mission is to help people and organizations win together – and the world is abundant enough that we believe it is possible.”

Hiren Kotak: Unleashing the Power of Hyper-automation

Meet Hiren Kotak, the CEO of Hyper-Botz, helping clients adopt intelligent business process automation, so their employees don’t have to work on repetitive manual tasks, which their digital assistants can do.

After completing his Computer Science and Electronics Engineering, Hiren started his career as an IT programmer. Within a few years, he was promoted to Technical Lead and Manager. He eventually found his true calling in his managerial responsibilities and completed his MBA, and started working on developing business strategies using statistics and data analytics. In this role, Hiren successfully managed a team of developers, architects, operations analysts, project managers, process engineers, and product managers, which helped him deliver business value worth millions of dollars through revenue growth, cost efficiency, and customer service improvements.

Nearly half a decade ago, Hiren decided to explore Robotic Process Automation (RPA), to help a commercial bank grow efficiently. RPA enables faster, low-cost, high-return, non-invasive, low-code no-code automation and offered his organization the much-needed ability to quickly automate tasks that were resistant to automation via the traditional technology for several reasons.

As an RPA Evangelist, Hiren decided to help others achieve their automation dreams and manage the technology effectively to realize their desired results. For that, initially, he joined some well-known global technology service providers. With his MBA training, strategic mindset, and business background, he contributed significantly to the overall business performance of these companies and their clients.

After building significant experience as an automation consultant in the professional services industry, he finally decided to create his own company to help companies of every shape and size reap all the benefits of RPA.

“Having worked on two sides of customer and vendor relationships, I witnessed some opportunities that prevent clients from fully utilizing the vendor capabilities and some challenges that prevent vendors from being effective partners for their clients. At Hyper-Botz, we fully align our goals to our clients’ goals to maximize our contribution to their success.” – states Hiren.

Increasing Productivity

Hyper-Botz’s primary mission is to boost global productivity using Intelligent Business Process Automation. Even after making such huge progress with digital technologies and computers, there’s still a lot of non-value-adding manual work in several sectors. Many of those administrative, tedious, repetitive, and transactional work is usually performed in business operations and horizontal services organizations like Finance and Accounting, HR, Procurement, IT, and Customer Service, which results in a loss of human intellect, productivity, and creativity. So, Hyper-Botz’s vision is to empower all humans to work like humans, not robots.

Using AI and RPA, Hyper-Botz enables its clients to attain greater speed, efficiency, and growth irrespective of their business domain.

“This type of automation, irrespective of your business processes and systems, can help you empower your employees, strengthen your customer relationships, and open new ways to innovate and expand your business.“- Says Hiren.

Hyper-Botz’s experienced practitioners partner with clients to maximize their automation potential and ROI. It helps its clients develop their automation strategy and roadmap, establish governance and operating model, identify automation opportunities, and develop, test, implement, and maintain bots. Under Hiren’s leadership, Hyper-Botz also provides Automation-as-a-Service to minimize upfront investment from its clients and eliminate their ongoing maintenance and support headaches.

Present Business Environment

“The current business environment is very interesting. During the Covid-19 shutdown, the US government pumped billions of dollars into the economy to keep it going. Once the vaccines became available, we became more comfortable living our normal lives,” Hiren explained, “as a result, business and consumer demand spiked. However, production and supply chains have not kept up with the resulting demand and inflation, leading to the Fed’s decision to raise interest rates again to contain the inflation. In the last couple of years, we have seen major swings up and down, and now most economists agree on one thing – economic uncertainty in the near term!”

For digital transformation and automation businesses, the situation is much more interesting. Thanks to the pandemic-induced shutdown, businesses worldwide realized the value and importance of automation and went for it, creating massive demands. However, with rising interest rates, inflation, and economic uncertainty, businesses are playing cautious with new investments and sometimes slowing some of their IT initiatives. Hyper-Botz has worked with several organizations to mitigate this issue in various ways. Thankfully as Business Process Automation requires very less upfront investment and provides huge ROI within the same quarter, Hyper-Botz hasn’t witnessed a major impact in this sector. Additionally, with its managed service offerings, Hyper-Botz eliminates any upfront capital expenditure and makes it easier for its customers to adopt intelligent automation throughout their companies.

Keeping the Team Motivated

Hiren believes in hiring talented people with good work ethics and can-do attitudes and then letting them do their jobs. His team members have the full autonomy to perform their jobs and deliver the output they are chosen to deliver.

Hiren encourages his team to take charge of their professional development and support them financially. He has also started a quarterly reward program to recognize their exceptional achievement, value delivery, and teamwork.

Tackling the Gender Pay Gap

Hiren believes there are two types of gender pay gaps; the first gap comes from women taking low-income jobs in low-income industries, government entities, and the service sector. While this could be a matter of choice as many women opt for stability, flexibility, or convenient hours for better work-life balance. These, in most cases, are personal choices without any external or negative pressure.

On the other hand, the second type of gap comes from women not being promoted or paid equally even after doing the same job as their male peers, which is a widespread problem that also affects people of color and needs immediate attention fixing. However, Hiren and his colleagues at Hyper-Botz encourage ‘women in technology’ during and after recruitment. With its diverse employees, Hyper-Botz has a strong culture of equality, transparency, and inclusiveness. It values the unique ideas, perspectives, and qualities women employees bring to the table.

Picture of the Future

At Hyper-Botz, Hiren and his team continue training their employees on the latest technological innovations and practical applications. He believes the world now needs its smartest people focused on solving problems like climate change, food and water issues, infrastructure and transportation hurdles, and growing health & safety concerns.

In the long run, Hiren would like his company to contribute to solving these global challenges.

He says, “We could simply use AI to maximize crop output, find efficient ways to generate, distribute, and store power, or explore optimal ways to utilize water and other natural resources. AI could help us be better prepared for containing the next pandemic or help us eliminate many fatal diseases. I think of this as – we all rent or lease a place in this world for a few years during our lifetime and it is our duty to leave it nice and clean, fully stocked, for the next set of tenants. My future goal is to help raise awareness and drive some of the restoration efforts in any way I can.“

Ángela Álvarez: Revolutionizing the Current Generation of Financial Infrastructure

Meet Ángela Álvarez, the founder and Executive Chairman of Action Monkey, a Permissioned Defi Platform. She is also the Founder and Executive Chairman of Aglaia Capital, a new-generation of corporate finance boutique covering traditional business, and digital assets, and advising on token-generating events. The firm also provides expansion and growth solutions for companies, investors, and governments in the Philippines.

Over the years, Ángela has developed her professional career chairing executive international positions and boards in several global entities, banks, corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, and investment banking, mainly in financial, real estate, hotels, restructuring, and alternative financing sectors including, fintech blockchain, crypto, and DeFi.

A veteran of the industry, Ángela worked at BBVA in several positions, including Head of Investment Banking and member of the Risk Committee of the Iberian Special Assets Situations unit, Member of the Executive Committee of BBVA Consumer Finance and the Digital Bank Uno-e Bank, and Head of Corporate Development for the acquisitions of Consumer Finance, Insurance and Financial Institutions in Europe, Asia, USA, and Brazil. Before that, she headed the Corporate Finance and M&A European Financial Institutions Group team in Spain at KPMG. Ángela has also worked at PWC Corporate Finance, Bankinter, Citibank, and All Trading AVB.

A speaker at several Economic Forums, Ángela is passionate about decentralized technologies and cooperation business models, and she is active in the international M&A, Fintech, and Blockchain space.

As the leader of Aglaia Capital, Ángela’s vision to develop a new financial infrastructure to provide liquidity to the Private Capital Markets focused on Alternative Investments and Financing with blockchain has led her to create and develop another venture, Aglaia Capital DeFi Platform, well known better for its brand Action Monkey, a Permissioned DeFi Platform,

The New Generation of Financial Infrastructure

Action Money is a present-generation financial infrastructure with blockchain that provides liquidity, scalability, and efficiency to the Private Capital markets. It offers native crypto services and investment banking covering the entire life cycle of crypto assets.

Primarily focused on security tokens, Action Monkey represents a crucial step toward digitizing and modernization of financial markets by creating a much more liquid, resilient, open, and accessible financial system.

Action Money is a DeFi platform presently deployed on the Ethereum Blockchain focused on Security Tokens. It also covers all the necessary functionalities of a crypto asset, from issuance to sale. Its functionalities include tokenization or distribution, compliance, custody, exchange of fiat currency- crypto, purchase, and sale of the tokens listed on the platform and connected to an automatic liquidity protocol.

Additionally, Action Monkey’s clients have the needed access to other related services before and after the issuance. These services include advising on all aspects of the Token generating event through affiliated companies and independent experts.

The Present Business Environment

Ángela says, “We are living in a moment where we are immersed in a shift of a new financial infrastructure that will transform the financial industry and the rest later.”

She feels that the financial industry will be transformed over the next few years, and few players will disappear from the market. An entirely new financial infrastructure backed by the blockchain and central digital currencies will eventually transform some of the financial institutions into something new.

Ángela believes the new incumbents will be much more prepared for this new environment than the traditional financial institutions, ensuring a shift of useability towards the new financial infrastructure.

The Private Capital Market is expected to be the most disrupted market, as it is the most fragmented and biggest traded market. It also needs an evolution that can happen massively in the short term. This will eventually allow the inclusion and democratization of the private capital markets, efficiency, automatization, and transparency. Additionally, the remarkable combination of metaverse and crypto infrastructure will develop more efficient systems to transact massively, evolving the e-commerce models as we conceive them presently.

Bringing in New Values

Ángela feels diversity is of utmost importance for any company that will make a difference in the short term. The gender pay gap should not exist in any modern company aspiring to survive in the short term.

She states, “For me, it doesn’t make any difference what is the gender of any person in a whatever position they may have in a company. What makes the difference are the traits, skills, knowledge, values, as well as have character enough to be resilient.”

Action Monkey’s culture is based on consensus, balance, and a fair way of doing business. Angela’s vision is to change the current financial infrastructure and include some values from the world of crypto to the world of traditional finance. She believes in decentralization, disintermediation, openness, fairness, and flexibility in business which are also within the essence of Action Monkey and what she would like to add to this new infrastructure.

Picture of the Future

As a permissioned DeFi platform, Action Monkey is already a pioneer, unique of its kind, a new generation of financial infrastructure transforming Private Capital Markets globally. With its unique approach, Action Monkey covers the entire lifecycle of crypto assets. Conceived from an investment banking and crypto perspective, the DeFi platform was born as an effective way to solve some of the critical issues found in the industry.

The platform also converts the Private Capital Market into a much more scalable, efficient, transparent, and liquid with a new financial infrastructure for funds, alternative investments, and alternative financing industries.

For the future, Angela and her team at Action Monkey, also with the support of Aglaia Capital deal flow, are planning to feed Action Monkey with current or new Alternative Investment Funds, Real Estate, Hotels, and Crypto Funds to escalate the market’s needs.

Ken Gosnell: Creating Great Leaders

Experiences shape great leadership. Many leaders often think they are not good enough or don’t know what to do. In reality, most of those leaders have the needed answers, but they require a place that can inspire their best thinking to achieve the best results in business and life.

Every business leader needs a place to get an unbiased and different perspective to generate new ideas and thoughts about their business during their leadership journey. They need a safe place to share their doubts, fears, and concerns. Additionally, they also require an Executive Team of Mentors who can help them learn the best business practices.

So enters Ken Gosnell, the founder of CEO Experience, a full-service private consulting company helping CEOs through various types of retreats to learn business principles to help them grow their business with Kingdom Impact. The organization offers peer retreats, private retreats, team retreats, and strategy retreats, all featuring the monthly Executive Retreat Guide, which serves as a business magazine and executive journal.

As a founder of the organization, Ken always wanted to highlight the value of each person’s personal experience and then benefit from the idea of learning from others’ experiences so that one doesn’t have to suffer years of disappointments and setbacks to understand what took years for them to learn.

He believes CEO Experience equals Well Done, which are the two most essential words in the world of business and have the potential to transform any leader’s performance and life.

Ken states, “It is not good enough for a leader to only succeed in business. True success is being significant in business and life.”

Starting the Journey

Initially, Ken tried to do life and leadership alone. However, he felt lonely at the top and wasted too much time repeating the same mistakes, and then he learned a better way. It was learning from his own and others’ experiences as well. He realized that a wise business person would never underestimate the lessons they can learn from various businesses and business experiences, even if those have no value at all. Ken believes that business success and innovation often come from others who have never done it before or can see the business in a new and fresh way.

Ken authored a book entitled “Well Done- 12 Biblical Business Principles for Leaders to Grow Their Business with Kingdom Impact” in 2021. In that book, he explained the best ideas he learned in businesses from the Bible and other business owners and CEOs. It highlights over 200 companies and business leaders who have led some of the largest organizations in America over the last 150 years.

Under Ken’s leadership, CEO Experience seeks to build the CXP CEO Executive Retreat Guide and each CEO retreat to discuss what is currently happening in the marketplace through a lens of timeless truths proven to work in every generation and location. The organization promises never to repeat an executive guide but instead provide new content that is current and relevant for the marketplace each month. Additionally, the CEO Retreats (https://ceoretreatday.com) use several innovative methods, including biblical case studies, CEO interviews, assessments, tools, and best ideas from the past.

Ken states, “We understand that the market is constantly changing and their new challenges to face every day, but we believe that leaders who succeed today are the ones that prepared yesterday.”

Women Leaders are Changing the World

Ken believes that women CEOs are slowly becoming the norm, which is good for businesses. As an organization, CEO Experience often reminds CEOs that God established the first woman CEO when he created Eve and gave her a landscaping business. However, it has taken the rest of the world thousands of years to catch up.

“Women leaders are different from men leaders. They are far ahead of their men counterparts in many areas, and there are areas where they are still behind.”- Says Ken.

CEO Experience’s retreats are Collective and Individualistic; its CXP Executive Retreat Guide is one part personal and business journal and one part business magazine. The guide is full of Experience Questions, Win Activities, Writing Blocks, and CEO Tools to help business owners capture their best thoughts and the best ideas of others. The organization believes every leader is essential and valuable and must work to improve themselves. Leaders who work to improve their leadership style become better leaders and produce better results.

Motivating CEOs

Ken believes energy is the most significant asset for any business leader. CEO Experience has designed its CEO Retreats and CEO Executive Retreat Guide to be inspiring and informative. Several leaders often feel they are not suited or don’t know what to do. However, the organization understands that every CEO has the answers, but they often need a place that could inspire their best thinking to achieve a breakthrough in business and life. The CXP CEO Retreat helps leaders to make the decisions they need to make and provide them with the needed courage to make the critical decisions to move their life and business forward.

“Self-awareness always precedes self-improvement.”

Business is always complicated, and many leaders often reach a stage where they feel like giving up. This is where CEO Experience help leaders build momentum by highlighting wins and creating a monthly winning wall to press into what is working. While too many organizations work to fix leaders’ problems, very few look to maximize their win and success rate.

Additionally, CEO Experience uses a leaders’ dashboard to help them determine their energy levels and enhance focus. The leaders’ dashboard also allows leaders to review the most critical areas of leadership to understand where to focus their energy and time.

Preparing for the Future

With the promise to provide the best leadership experience to its partners, CEO Experience works to develop the culture at the retreat to be inspirational and informative. Both the CEO Retreats and the CEO Executive Retreat Guide are authored to encourage and inspire CEOs and business leaders.

Ken says, “Our mission is to help dynamic CEOs practice continual growth for Kingdom Impact to hear the words Well Done. We want to work with Christian and faith-driven CEOs and coaches in every major city in America and worldwide.”

Every year, CEO Experience offers training for coaches to launch CEO Retreats in their respective cities. It has also prepared a Christian coaching training retreat, starting in January 2023, in Orlando, Florida.

Rohit Gaur: Driving Productivity Across Digital Product Teams

Founded in 1989, Infragistics is a world leader in providing tools to accelerate application design and development. Several blue chip companies, including Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, Exxon, Ikea, Bank of America, and Intuit, depend on Infragistics tools to build their applications.

Based in Gurgaon, India, Rohit Gaur has spearheaded Infragistics operations in India for the past decade. As the company’s Managing Director, he leads sales and operations for all Infragistics software and services in India. An industry veteran, Rohit has over two decades of experience in sales, building relationships with clients and partners at several large multinational companies, small and medium-sized businesses, and Indian government organizations. Being a leader of the organization, Rohit helps Infragistics maintain its position as a world leader in UI development tools and multi-platform enterprise software products and services. With his help, Infragistics has more than 250 employees, with offices spread across the U.S., Australia, Japan, Uruguay, Bulgaria, India, and the U.K.

“I am proud to lead Infragistics’ growth in India and provide leading-edge enterprise software that solves problems for those working in the fast-paced field of technology. I enjoy building trusted client relationships, forming true partnerships with our customers, helping them tackle new challenges, and meeting their customers’ needs in innovative ways,” he stated.

Rohit started his first job as a Channel Manager at Symantec Corp in 2001. He continued in the IT space further and moved into Serena Software as an Enterprise Account Manager. Later he joined Microsoft as Alliances Manager – North India. In June 2011, he started serving Symantec as the National Sales Manager – Enterprise (PSU) before joining Infragistics in May 2013.

Groundbreaking Products

As an organization, Infragistics stays ahead of its competition by encouraging internal innovation in product development and enhancement. One of its latest product offerings is Reveal, an embedded analytics platform allowing clients to integrate analytical capabilities into existing applications to bring real-time data insights to decision-makers. Reveal brings the power of data to all users and enables much quicker data-driven decisions inside the application without switching the context. Embedding Reveal into an application saves time, increases productivity, and helps with a better analytics experience.

Recently the organization has also built a new digital workplace tool named Slingshot. Clients can use this platform to get the work done in the digital realm and be productive irrespective of their location. The best part about Slingshot is that it streamlines a company’s workplace tech stacks by providing remote, in-person, and hybrid teams a single place to collaborate, set goals, make data-driven decisions, share content and communicate within the context they are working on. This revolutionary tool keeps people connected even when they are far apart and transforms the digital workplace with a software platform that can connect all departments, including R&D, marketing, sales, customer support, manufacturing, HR & IT.

The firm’s other popular enterprise software products include Indigo.Design, a design-to-code system; App Builder, low code/no-code software; and Infragistics Ultimate, a leading UI/UX toolkit.

Embracing Innovation

Rohit says, “Companies like Infragistics, which are clear market leaders, have one common factor — they all embrace innovation. Not only can internal innovation represent significant cost savings, but it can also successfully originate new concepts and enhance employee engagement. Because we create teams that support innovation and welcome creativity, everyone can be involved in generating ideas, improving those ideas, and prototyping the best ideas.”

With the launch of the Infragistics Innovation Lab, Rohit and his colleagues successfully cemented the firm’s commitment to its internal inventors and entrepreneurs. For several years, the organization informally developed game-changing enterprise software products in-house. Presently, Infragistics has a $50 million fund and a formal process for constant innovation, which it needs to continually stay ahead of the technology curve. The firm’s Innovation Lab encourages its employees to contribute with a regular stream of insights that could help shape any upcoming innovation. It also empowers internal inventors to experiment with innovations beyond its core UI/UX products without the need to generate immediate revenue.

Tackling the Pandemic

When the pandemic started impacting organizations and their employees, everything quickly moved online, and employees struggled to tackle the new normal and be productive without being able to collaborate in person. However, Infragistics’ global company already had a lot of people working remotely, and the organization had the needed infrastructure in place to completely shift its workforce online, resulting in high productivity levels.

During the pandemic, many organizations started working to redefine their workplaces to be much more productive for in-person, remote, and hybrid teams. As a company, Infragistics recognized that these businesses were in dire need of a better digital workplace with a single platform allowing their teams to collaborate on data analytics, projects, content, and chat. So, it ramped up its effort to develop the revolutionary Slingshot platform to support firms that were not fully prepared for the pandemic and released this platform to meet the needs of remote, hybrid, and in-person employees.

Picture of the Future

Infragistics is leading the enterprise software market with cutting-edge innovations in low-code software, business intelligence embedded analytics, and transformational team-performance software. Its development strategy goes beyond the UI/UX tools to include product development tools, embedded analytics, and digital workplace software.

Infragistics’ founder and CEO Dean Guida guides the firm in maintaining its focus on innovation, improvement, and success in the enterprise software tools market. Over the past three decades, Infragistics has demonstrated a passion for excellence and takes pride in the quality of everything it does. In the future, it will continue to develop solutions for its clients that are rooted in a deep and thorough understanding of their needs.

Dong Jin Son: Helping Brands Grow, Innovate, and Transform

Based in Seoul, Korea, Krema Worldwide has created various award-winning ideas to help brands grow, innovate, and transform. With its wide range of strategic and creative talent, Krema derives optimal strategies and crafts globally competitive campaigns.

Having worked with global behemoths like LG Electronics, Samsung Mobiles, Lotte, and Disney Korea, the founder, and CEO, of Krema Worldwide, Dong Jin Son, brings more than two decades of experience with him. Majored in foreign literature, Son joined Korea’s number one advertising agency Cheil Worldwide, where he was assigned to the department of global marketing business. Soon, Son went on numerous business trips across the world and accumulated local marketing insights, and realized that advertising is not just a creative video that appears on the viewer’s screen but it is a solution that solves various concerns of the marketers. At this point of time, Son understood that his role was limited only to large organizations, so he voluntarily left Cheil Worldwide and moved to a three-person startup. Meanwhile, he completed his MBA from a University in Finland and received his doctorate in digital content, which helped him understand clients’ concerns in their broad business
activities. Later in May 2009, he founded his own company Krema Worldwide, focusing on providing specialized services for overseas marketing and clients who can utilize the organization’s capabilities while conducting global marketing.

Path Breaking Services

Since its foundation, Krema Worldwide has successfully established itself and proliferated in sales and size in a yearly manner. As a result, Krema received 17 awards in the last five years in various leading international festivals like Cannes, New York, and One Show. The organization was also ranked among the top 10 across multiple ad journals, including Ad Age and Campaign. “This is proof that our company has been recognized worldwide for creativity, which is the core of advertising. Since January 2019, we have also expanded the area of ad agencies to an e-commerce business that encompasses all participants in the marketing ecosystem.”- says Son. He explains the primary goal of his business is to provide A to Z solutions starting from overseas marketing to sales agents for various small and medium-sized companies that have competitive products but lack an international presence. Krema also has a roadmap to build a very competitive e-commerce platform by connecting clients, individual sellers, digital media owners, and financial & trade businesses.

Working as the backbone of the company, Krema’s planning professionals make the most timely, trendy, and accurate marketing results by learning fast trends. They are the strategists, communicators, and do-it-all creatives who deliver flawless project execution from concept to creation. Additionally, the firm uses current technologies like AI, data, and metaverse to internalize all the internal and external resources in the shortest time possible; depending on that; immediate service can be operated. With its agility and mobility, Krema’s business model is much ahead of other professional agencies.

The Asian Business Environment

Son feels growth in Asia will be much more noticeable in the future, especially in Indonesia, which has witnessed a rapid recovery of the advertising market since late 2020. The proportion of digital advertising costs in countries like India and Indonesia stands around the 20% range. However, with the rapid growth rate of 10%, they will soon become the pillars of the global advertising market. As a result, the traditional North American and Western European markets will start decreasing in the future.

He explains that Asian consumers are highly interested in social networks. They know the process of learning information quickly and communicate actively, even in non-face-to-face situations. Additionally, their huge interest in the latest technologies meant they were the first to embrace Metaverse and NFT to grow their businesses. So, marketers need to study diligently and move quickly because of these unique characteristics of Asian consumers. Ad-agency’s flagship products have also changed along with those trends. Even a decade ago, an advertising agency’s primary job was to plan and produce commercial advertisements for a market mainly focused on TVC and print. Now cut to 2022, most of the organization’s products are YouTube-based video advertising or a website for consumer awareness of corporate brands and content to communicate with consumers over various communities. At present, organizations are paying much more attention to AI, metaverse, and OTT platforms.

Future Roadmap

As the founder of his company, Son’s short-term goal is to successfully pivot from the world of digital content to the new area of media. He says, “Global advertising trend is shifting to non-face-to-face, virtual reality after endemic, enabling agencies to propose the most practical and efficient ad packages the clients need. To this end, the company’s professional staff are working hard on R&D every day and night and, at the same time, continue to challenge through constant internal collaboration. In the mid-long term, it is to properly demonstrate the synergy caused by M&A. It is to successfully combine marketing assets based on IPs of ads, movies, and dramas to develop service products for clients that have never existed before.”

Led by Son, Krema recently ran M&A with Asia’s one of the best new media content production companies Dexter Studio. He feels the synergy of M&A is of utmost importance in realizing Krema’s dreams. It’s also much easier to raise investment funds than it used to be. “I strongly believe skilled tech resources combined with our planning resources would greatly increase the chances of achieving business objectives. We’re not going to stop here, but we’re going to expand our reach further as a group specializing in global digital media and content.”– he says.

Few Thoughts

As an industry, advertising is well known for its cutthroat competition. Recently multiple cases of business failure have emerged due to the pandemic. Son says, “But in the meantime, someone is making money out of this red ocean, leading the market, generating demand. I try to keep Dexter Krema (changed company name after M&A last year) listed in that mainstream. Only diligent research and development, maintaining a young and fast organization, and constantly finding newness and collaborating with outside powers make this possible.” This year, Dexter Krema plans to lead the industry by introducing the latest marketing by combining various partners and technologies related to the 4th industrial revolution. “In addition, we will share the fruits of the fast-growing company with all our stakeholders, helping to create a successful future for each employee, not the fundamental goal of sales as mentioned earlier.”– he added.

Bizsu: Helping with Best Energy Savings Solutions

Founded in 2019, Singapore-based Bizsu helps companies save 25% on air conditioning consumption by using a very simple and patented net. Bizsu helps its clients by providing the easiest and one of the most energy-saving solutions on the market presently. It does not use high-tech solutions like others; instead, it uses a low-tech solution entirely made of natural ingredients.

Over a century ago, Willis Carter invented the air-conditioning machine, which is about the same type we use nowadays. Although very useful, we humans added this system everywhere possible, resulting in an enormous amount of pollution. So, now we need maximum energy efficiency to minimize its impact as soon as possible. Bizsu wants to help its clients reduce their carbon footprint and energy consumption. For example, the startup ran a pilot at CapitaLand, and the result showed that it has achieved up to 51% savings on their AHU in LogisTech, a certified Green Mark Platinum Super-Low Energy building and one of the most efficient buildings in Singapore.

Bizsu’s primary solution, named CONTINEWM®, is a Japanese patented net made out of a specific ceramic, saving 25% on air-conditioning consumption on average. Unlike any other energy-saving solutions, CONTINEWM® fits every kind of air conditioning system, making it accessible and compatible for all. This also uniformizes the temperature while purifying air, requires only a few minutes for installation, fits any air conditioning system, and lasts a lifetime.

As a startup, Bizsu has witnessed companies set up carbon reduction objectives without the knowledge to implement them effectively. So, the firm also provides sustainability workshops to educate employees regarding climate change, and then according to their company activities, BIZSU helps them define the initiatives they want to carry out in the short, mid, and long term.

Saving the Environment

Brice Degeyter, a serial entrepreneur, a human-centric person, and an environmental defensor, founded Bizsu in 2019. While working on his dream job in 2016, Brice was shocked by how we humans treated the environment and amazed by the solutions and opportunities available to us. Brice then decided to devote his time and energy to bringing sustainability solutions with maximum impact.

Experienced in sustainability initiatives for several big companies, Brice understands the importance of making customers loyal, suppliers happier, and employees prouder. Under his leadership, Bizsu works with some of the biggest companies, including CapitaLand, Keppel, JLL, Bollore Logistics, Food-Panda, etc.

Asian Market Trends

Brice believes that the Asian market has enormous potential, and he feels this is just the beginning. According to a poll by JLL in the Asia Pacific region, as much as 70% of organizations were willing to pay higher rents for green-certified buildings. So, an increasing number of employees and companies want to focus on sustainability and environmentalism. Also, the younger generation prefers to work for an organization that cares for the environment. Another research says, around 40% of millennials have selected a job due to the sustainability factor of the company, whereas 70% feel that their company’s good sustainability plan will encourage them to work there long term. So, working for the environment is essential to attracting and retaining talent. This showcases how all the stakeholders are ready to pay a premium for sustainability; hence, going green is definitely worth the company’s cost.

Changed Priorities

Once founded, Bizsu started offering different solutions. As many sustainable solutions exist, Brice wanted every company to know them and be able to buy and use them. However, it failed to meet the market need. Eventually, Brice realized air conditions represent 30% of Singapore’s CO2 emissions. With the massive number of air conditions across the country, Bizsu and its clients have a lot to gain by saving energy. So, step-by-step, the company focused entirely on air conditions and devoted time and energy towards bringing sustainability solutions to maximize effect and impact.

“Air conditioning represents an astronomical amount of Singapore’s CO2 emissions, roughly 30%, so we want to provide the region with our solution and help save one million tons of CO2 in Singapore by 2027.”– says Brice.

Mission and Vision

As an organization, Bizsu aspires to create fast ROI and easy-to-implement solutions to reduce energy consumption for real estate, hotels, warehouses, and schools. The firm wants to help clients reduce their carbon footprint as much as possible for as long as possible.

Sustainability for Bizsu means reducing the amount of CO2. So, as a business specializing in energy savings, Bizsu’s main priority is to help companies do that. It believes that the best strategy for companies to reach their objective is to focus on sustainability and reducing carbon emissions.

“We should not have to compromise between business and sustainability. Both are compatible, and we prove it every day.“- states Brice.

Preparing for the Future

Bizsu believes that we are currently in the age of the sustainability revolution. Earlier it was the digital revolution of the 1990s and 2000s. Now a sustainability revolution is ready to start, indicating that if businesses fail to choose the proper course of action, they will struggle. We have already seen several companies, like Kodak, Blockbuster, etc., fail due to a lack of adoption. So, as we witnessed decades ago, if businesses are not evolving quickly enough, they will face serious consequences. In the coming years, just like the digital world is crucial to our daily lives now, businesses will have to focus on doing good for the environment.

Mary Radenkovic: Celebrating Feminity by Creating Iconic Styles

Meet Mary Radenkovic, the founder and designer of London-based women’s luxury brand Lavishly Appointed. Hailing from the Mediterranean, Mary’s connection to the sea and nature, coupled with her love for fashion, inspired her to create her own brand that celebrates femininity, style, and luxury with sustainable practices at the forefront of the process. The brand was created for like-minded women seeking unique and eye-catching dynamic pieces that can take them from day through night.

Launched in 2016 in London, Lavishly Appointed offers essential costumes, bikinis, loungewear, innovative body adornments, and dresses that are designed and developed by Mary.

Following its philosophy, ‘buy less, buy better,’ the luxury resort brand creates several unique, multifunctional, and timeless pieces with a razor-sharp focus on craftsmanship. Most of the products made by the brand are artisanally handmade by women for women.

It’s all About Sustainability

Mary says, “The company values are all about sustainability. The swimsuits are made out of recycled plastic. Resortwear is 90% handmade – in that way, we are helping artisan women.” The brand’s garments are made of exclusive, premium, sustainable materials. The brand doesn’t believe in only practicing sustainability. Instead, it strives to create a movement to spread awareness. In order to bring change and awareness, Lavishly Appointed has started the ‘Save the Fish campaign,’ encouraging its clientele to participate in the change. When clients buy any products bearing the brand’s Goldfish logo, 20% of the profit goes to several non-profit organizations working on ocean wildlife preservation and the reduction of plastic pollution.

However, when it comes to practicing sustainability, Lavishly Appointed’s manufacturing process uses solar energy to power its warehouse. Additionally, it is also fighting for equal pay for the workers. Mary and her team at the company want to show that they are not only selling fashion products but are also selling a lifestyle and a message.

In addition to its environmental awareness, Lavishly Appointed takes great pride in handling the production process. The human aspect is also cherished in every step of the production process, taking into account the human rights of every artisan by providing a nourishing environment for their creative process. As a firm supporter of women’s and children’s rights, Mary makes sure that Lavishly Appointed’s female employees have equal status with its male workforce.

The True Mentor

Although Mary is friends with many successful entrepreneurs willing to share their words of wisdom, she only considers her late grandfather as her true mentor. Also, a fashion designer, Mary’s late grandfather helped her develop a genuine passion for fashion at a very young age that has been with her.

Mary made sketches for her first collection at the age of 12 and started working in the fashion world at 15. Initially, she worked as a model for beachwear, make-up, and hair products and became a face for multiple European brands.

Suggestions for Younger Self

Mary suggests that entrepreneurs must love what they do. She says, “You can only be your own and enjoy your own success if you have fought for it, failed several times, and eventually achieved it yourself. I think it is when you turn behind and reflect on everything that happened, and you realize that despite all the difficulties, you managed to get your idea and your dream to come true.”

Picture of the Future

Mary’s goal is to go back to the days of handmade production, just to bring back individuality and uniqueness. So, every design from Lavishly Appointed is entirely handmade by some of the finest artisans in the business.

When it comes to the future, the brand is hoping to have its own fashion show at the Miami Fashion Week. Mary states, “Opening our first branch store would be the next challenge and the next step, but we have not yet decided on the details.”

Rajiv Malik: Revolutionizing the Digital Ink Experience

Established in 1983 in Japan, Wacom is a global leader in the pen display and tablet market for creative users across the planet. The brand Wacom is derived from the word ‘Wa,’ which means Harmony in Japanese. Wacom products are widely used by the creative communities, including; illustrators, animators, graphic designers, editors, fashion designers, and industrial design professionals.

“Led by its current Sr. Director, Rajiv Malik, Wacom India also provides digital ink solutions for its wide range of partners at the global level Wacom is providing Ink solutions to various partners using and producing tablets and smartphones. However, Wacom India is focussed on developing Creative, Education, and Digital Signature solution markets only.”

Journey of the Leader

Rajiv started his professional career with an exciting opportunity to promote Professional Recording Media products in Film and Television Studios, News and Entertainment Channels, Independent Documentaries, and Film Makers.

He says, “As I networked with the industry, and made many good industry friends while interacting with some of the amazing and highly successful Creative Directors, Artists, and Technical Heads, I felt the need to go deeper to understand how technological advancements are helping the industry to unleash the creativity.”

This was the crucial time of transition for the industry from analog to digital. It eventually enabled Rajiv to switch to the core industry of A/V professionals, where core broadcast and digital imaging products have been an integral part of all film and broadcast studios. With Electronics Engineering as a base qualification, Rajiv has always been very passionate about working closely with the Creative Community and Technologists. He has also pursued a master’s degree in Business Administration at a later stage.

Not a Typical IT Company

“What I learned while joining Wacom is that it’s not a typical IT trading company.”– Says Rajiv. Creativity flows in Wacom’s DNA. It designs products with a strong intention of supporting creative professionals. He adds, “Diversified culture, strong leadership, values, and ethics, with creativity at the core, were reasons enough for me to join this amazing company. This very well resonated with my previous work background.”

Rajiv’s most ambitious project is transforming traditional Wacom office set-ups into Creative Experience Centers. He plans to redesign these spaces to reverberate with creative minds, not just for aspiring artists but also for internal team members. He feels Wacom’s customers must get the feel of its products by simulating an artistic environment. Along with the metro cities, Rajiv also plans to expand Wacom India’s presence in smaller cities and towns to provide the best experience to the widely spread creative communities with diverse backgrounds.

Tackling the Pandemic

Rajiv says, “Though the Pandemic was unfortunate for all, however on the brighter side, our business saw exponential growth.”

The pandemic increased the practical usage of pen tablets in the education sector. During the lockdown period, academicians discovered how digital pen tablets and displays play a critical role in remote teaching and learning. It helped people realize the power of digital tools, helping professionals and students communicate much more effectively without missing the natural flow of knowledge transfer.

Soon distance education became much less cumbersome. With more accessible and effective education, many of the ed-tech groups came forward and established themselves very quickly. Rajiv further adds, “The Media and Entertainment industry saw a big shift towards OTT. Access to Creative as well as Academic Education, and WFH for the Corporate sector gave a big boost to our business.”

Current Market

Rajiv feels the market is changing rapidly, even faster than it ever did in the past. With the ever-changing situation, most institutions that have already experienced the advantage of digital tools are constantly working on setting up Hybrid set-ups/classrooms for a long-term perspective. He believes the market has evolved to a large extent and will continue to evolve in segments like education, film, and television production in the coming years. Also, content creation for cinemas is bouncing back to its earlier levels after two consecutive years of slowdown.

Picture of the Future

Wacom plans to further develop and introduce its state-of-the-art products and cutting-edge technologies to support artists express their creativity safely. Rajiv says, “Supporting communities by introducing easier-to-use, highly accurate devices to support creative expressions will remain at the core. There’s a growing need to secure the precious content created by artists, which is being made possible with the help of blockchain technologies.” The company wants to further expand its presence and strengthen close two-way communication with its clients via various platforms. By demonstrating its latest products, solutions, and the best hands-on experience to budding professionals, Wacom’s direct presence as a legal entity in India makes a lot of difference.