Business Lab
61 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 1 year ago - ★★★★ - 24 ratingsThe Business Lab is a sponsored podcast produced by Insights, the custom content division of MIT Technology Review. The Business Lab podcast features a 30-minute conversation with either an executive from the sponsor partner or a technologist with expertise in a relevant technology area. The discussion focuses on technology topics that matter to today’s enterprise decision makers. Laurel Ruma, MIT Technology Review’s custom content director for the United States, is the host.
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Episodes
Modernizing IT Helps Enterprises Do More with Less
December 14, 2022 12:00 - 25 minutesThe World Bank Group has a massive mission to “help developing countries escape poverty and share prosperity,” says Vijay Yellai, program manager for enterprise resource planning transformation at the World Bank Group. For example, it provides an wide array of financial products and technical know-how in a complex and ever-changing global setting. Therefore, for an institution like the World Bank Group, which provides funding and resources to countries with low bandwidth and infrastructure,...
Feeding the World by AI, Machine Learning, and the Cloud
November 16, 2022 15:23 - 25 minutesAlthough the world population has continued to steadily increase, farming practices have largely remained the same. Amid this growth, climate change poses great challenges to the agricultural industry and its capacity to feed the world sustainably. According to the World Bank, 70% of the world’s fresh water is used in agriculture and droughts and heat waves continue to threaten crops. And that is where the challenge arises to feed the world while mitigating the environmental effects of agricu...
AI and Data Fuel Innovation in Clinical Trials and Beyond
October 06, 2022 12:00 - 28 minutesThe last five years have seen large innovations throughout drug development and clinical trial life cycles—from finding a target and designing the trial, to getting a drug approved and launching the drug itself. The recent use of mRNA vaccines to combat covid-19 is just one of many advances in biotech and drug development. Whether in preclinical stages or in the commercialization of a drug, AI-enabled drug development is now used by an estimated 400 companies and has reached a $50 billion ma...
Building a Culture of Innovation in Research and Development
October 05, 2022 11:00 - 42 minutesMemory and storage solutions for technology are built into our everyday life, from mobile applications, cars, health-care systems, and more. To meet that need and help propel innovation, Micron Technology said it would invest $150 billion into research and development to build factories for its semiconductor memory chips. This investment looks to expand not only the reach of memory chips but also to innovate new solutions to common problems, says Naga Chandrasekaran, senior vice president of ...
Maximize Data Outcomes by Investing in People and Systems
September 27, 2022 12:00 - 25 minutesIn any enterprise, digital transformation is not only a technology transformation but enables business transformation itself, driving new products, solutions and innovations. Having an efficient data strategy is critical to any successful digital transformation but requires careful investment into both people and systems. “To achieve that goal, availability of good data, of the right data, and availability of that to the right people and systems is very, very critical. So that forms the dat...
Building great digital customer experiences with agile infrastructure
September 07, 2022 14:00 - 22 minutesAs more business, shopping, and banking is done online and from, well, anywhere, customers increasingly expect high-quality digital-first services that remove the need to go into a physical store or bank. “People were working from home, shopping from home, banking from home, and are more tech and digital savvy than ever,” says Mike Dargan, group chief digital and information officer for UBS. “And if you look at the financial services industry, the ecosystem is constantly evolving, so it becom...
Using Technology to Power the Future of Banking
August 15, 2022 13:38 - 31 minutesA heritage financial services institution isn’t necessarily the first place a technologist looks to grow their career. But that hasn’t been a problem for JPMorgan Chase, which has made itself an appealing career destination for technologists. “Technology is not an afterthought,” says Gill Haus, chief information officer of consumer and community banking at JPMorgan Chase. “It is in everything we do, from our offices to our branches to our contact centers to our web and mobile applications.” H...
Building Tomorrow’s Telecommunications Network Today
June 15, 2022 14:00 - 26 minutesThe current 5G evolution in network connectivity is expected to drive unprecedented demands for bandwidth, reliability, and security. However, a network of this magnitude and robustness doesn’t pop up overnight and enterprises and consumers are just beginning to realize the myriad use cases a 5G network can support. For example, consider the increased number of connected devices in a house like smart thermostats, security cameras, tablets, smartwatches, and mobile phones, of course. Raj Savoo...
Building the Necessary Skills for Digital Transformation
June 15, 2022 13:00 - 26 minutesThe skills and capabilities needed to undergo digital transformation are in high demand as every company jockeys to gain a competitive advantage. To address the skills gap, some companies are prioritizing upskilling and reskilling. But to be effective, learning and development itself must undergo a transformation. According to Daniela Proust, global vice president and head of global people enablement and growth at Siemens, learning and development is at the core of digital transformation. “In...
Embracing Culture Change on the Path to Digital Transformation
April 15, 2022 14:25 - 22 minutesLike many banks, National Australia Bank (NAB) decided to outsource a large part of its operations in the 1990s. “We pushed all our operations and a large part of our development capability out to third parties with the intent of lowering costs and making our operations far more process driven,” says Steve Day, the chief technology officer of enterprise technology at National Australia Bank. Unfortunately, achieving these goals had an unintended consequence. “We froze our operations in time,”...
Mapping the Atmosphere on Mars Can Help Advance Science on Our Own Planet
April 13, 2022 14:00 - 17 minutesWith its Emirates Mars Mission, also known as the Hope Probe, the UAE has established itself as only the fifth country in history to reach Mars and the seventh in the world to reach the orbit of another planet. The UAE’s first mission to Mars, Hope’s goal is to provide the first, complete picture of the Martian atmosphere and its layers to help scientists understand the planet’s climate better. The Emirates Mars Mission is unique in that the troves of data collected by Hope are being released...
Technology and Innovation Transform Farming
April 07, 2022 14:44 - 26 minutesIn many areas of the world, environmental conditions are not conducive to traditional farming. As a result, these countries are food dependent. They rely on imported food, which is subject to supply chain issues and nutrient loss during transportation. A company in the United Arab Emirates called Smart Acres is looking to change all that through hydroponic vertical farming. “Living in a region with a lot of non-arable land and in arid conditions, we're not able to produce a lot of the crops n...
Applying Laser Technology to Humanity’s Challenges
April 05, 2022 09:00 - 23 minutesFor many people, the concept of directed energy, or lasers, conjures images of lightsabers and bank vault security systems—the stuff of Hollywood movies. However, the fact is, lasers are commonly used in everyday life applications, from surgery to optical communications. At Technology Innovation Institute’s (TII) Directed Energy Research Center (DERC), scientists and engineers are using directed energy to solve some of the world’s most complex challenges and make the world a better place. Dir...
Scientists Advance Cloud Seeding Capabilities with Nanotechnology
March 28, 2022 16:11 - 18 minutesSince the 1940s scientists have studied ways to increase rainfall with the goal of increasing precipitation in arid and semi-arid climates. Today, that endeavor is making incredible leaps and bounds as scientists and engineers apply nanotechnology to improve the effectiveness of cloud seeding. “The global water shortage has continuously intensified by rapid population growth and economic development around the world. Conventional water resources such as rivers, lakes, and groundwater have bec...
Make Sustainable Products, Sell, Repeat
March 16, 2022 14:00 - 39 minutesFew today won’t agree that sustainability is important not only to the future of the planet and society but to business practices as well. And approaches are evolving beyond designing products to be used as long as possible. “If we’re going to design a product or use a product, we’re thinking from the very first moment what happens afterwards,” says Corey Glickman, vice president and head of the sustainability and design business at Infosys. “How do I source those materials? How does it funct...
Digital Inclusion and Equity Changes What’s Possible
March 08, 2022 19:10 - 28 minutesFueled by innovations in AI, IoT, and blockchain, digital transformation has been accelerating rapidly across industries. But as the world’s data is growing at the edge, the stark differences in digital equity and inclusion have become clear. Access to technology, underrepresentation within tech companies, and bias within technology itself contribute to this stark digital divide, says Janice Zdankus, vice president of strategy and planning and innovation for social impact at HPE. From healthc...
Create Equitable Experiences to Empower Your Employees
March 07, 2022 11:25 - 29 minutesAcross industries and geographies, the pandemic has triggered a paradigm shift in the way companies—and their employees—conduct day-to-day business. The move to work-from-home and hybrid work models has increased the need for collaboration to facilitate communication and innovation from remote locations, and to keep teams connected and engaged when in-person meetings are difficult or impossible. Successful collaboration requires creating an equitable experience for all team members, says Fa...
Sustainability Starts in the Design Process, and AI Can Help
January 19, 2022 16:45 - 29 minutesArtificial intelligence helps build physical infrastructure like modular housing, skyscrapers, and factory floors. “…many problems that we wrestle with in all forms of engineering and design are very, very complex problems…those problems are beginning to reach the limits of human capacity,” says Mike Haley, the vice president of research at Autodesk. But there’s hope with AI capabilities, Haley continues “This is a place where AI and humans come together very nicely because AI can actually ta...
Building the Future with Software-Based 5G Networking
December 15, 2021 16:04 - 40 minutesNext-generation solutions and products are hitting a wall with wi-fi: it’s not fast enough, and latency and connectivity issues mean it’s not reliable enough. What’s an innovator to do? Focus on what’s next: 5G and software-defined networking. Nick McKeown, senior vice president and general manager of the network and edge group at Intel Corporation says this technical leap is what will make future innovation possible, “Once you've got a software platform where you can change its behavior, you...
Embracing the Promise of a Compute-Everywhere Future
December 14, 2021 16:56 - 31 minutesThe internet of things and smart devices are everywhere, which means computing needs to be everywhere too. And this is where edge computing comes in, because as companies pursue faster, more efficient decision-making, all of that data needs to be processed locally, in real time—on device at the edge. “The type of processing that needs to happen in near real time is not something that can be hauled all the way back to the cloud in order to make a decision,” says Sandra Rivera, executive vice p...
To Accelerate Business, Build Better Human-Machine Partnerships
December 13, 2021 16:30 - 32 minutesBusinesses that want to be digital leaders in their markets need to embrace automation, not only to augment existing capabilities or to reduce costs but to position themselves to successfully maneuver the rapid expansion of IT demand ushered in through digital innovation. “It's a scale issue,” says John Roese, global chief technology officer at Dell Technologies. “Without autonomous operations, it becomes impossible to keep up with the growing opportunity to become a more digital business usi...
The Employee-Driven Future
December 08, 2021 16:38 - 43 minutesThe global pandemic accelerated the trend toward a work-from-anywhere, distributed workforce. As we approach a post-pandemic world, companies—and employees—expect this trend to become the norm. While IT departments are rapidly configuring and deploying devices, infrastructure, and software to support the shift in a secure and productive way, employees are likewise having to reset priorities and learn new ways to engage with their coworkers and managers, and to navigate their career goals. Thi...
‘Security is Everyone’s Job’ in the Workplace
November 22, 2021 16:45 - 26 minutesHackers around the globe are smart: they know that it isn’t just good code that helps them break into systems; it’s also about understanding—and preying upon—human behavior. The threat to businesses in the form of cyberattacks is only growing—especially as companies make the shift to embrace hybrid work. But John Scimone, senior vice president and chief security officer at Dell Technologies, says “security is everyone's job.” And building a culture that reflects that is a priority because c...
Engineering the Future of Mobility
November 17, 2021 16:47 - 35 minutesFrom cars to planes, the future of transportation is already here—and is changing rapidly. Software engineering is increasingly central to both the development and maintenance of all kinds of vehicles. That means more people need to start thinking like systems engineers. Dale Tutt, vice president of aerospace and defense industry for Siemens Software, says this means companies must offer more training and planning for those designing and developing vehicles of the future. “As you try to addr...
Accelerating Development in Aerospace for More Urban Mobility
November 16, 2021 16:05 - 28 minutesThe next wave of aerospace is just around the corner, and a lot of that innovation is happening thanks to new, faster methods of development. “What's happening now is that companies are trying to understand how they take the lessons from Agile software development and apply those to Agile product development,” explains Dale Tutt, vice president of Aerospace and Defense Industry for Siemens. With Agile software development, you can build software and test it relatively quickly. “When you start...
Digital Transformation is Changing Banking from the Inside Out
November 15, 2021 16:58 - 25 minutesCompanies across all industries are faced with the urgent need to transform the way they do business, including financial services, but changes abound with governance, security, and culture. A shift in mindset and perspective away from “the way things have always been done” is key to a successful digital transformation and to providing the frictionless customer experience banks and other financial services businesses strive to offer. To stay competitive in the wide-ranging fintech landscape,...
Cryptocurrency Isn't Private -- But With Know-How, It Could Be
October 28, 2021 15:55 - 25 minutesThere’s probably no such thing as perfect privacy and security online. Hackers regularly breach corporate firewalls to gain customers’ private information, and scammers constantly strive to trick us into divulging our passwords. But existing tools can provide a high level of privacy—if we use them correctly, says Mashael Al Sabah, a cybersecurity researcher at the Qatar Computing Research Institute in Doha. The trick is understanding something about the weaknesses and limitations of technol...
Robo-taxis are Headed for a Street Near You
October 26, 2021 16:00 - 33 minutesIn the coming years, mobility solutions—or how we get from point A to point B—will bridge the gap between ground and air transportation—yes, that means flying cars. Technological advancements are transforming mobility for people and, leading to unprecedented change. Nand Kochhar, vice president of automotive and transportation for Siemens Software says this transformation extends beyond transportation to society in general. “The future of mobility is going to be multimodal to meet consumer de...
Machine Learning in the Cloud is Helping Businesses Innovate
October 19, 2021 15:55 - 31 minutesIn the past decade, machine learning has become a familiar technology for improving the efficiency and accuracy of processes like recommendations, supply chain forecasting, developing chatbots, image and text search, and automated customer service functions, to name a few. Machine learning today is becoming even more pervasive, impacting every market segment and industry, including manufacturing, SaaS platforms, health care, reservations and customer support routing, natural language processi...
Creating a Better Human Experience at Work Starts with Trust
October 05, 2021 15:59 - 27 minutesWhat if managers and leaders at companies focused on a new goal: to elevate the human experience? This paradigm shift is something Amelia Dunlop, chief experience officer at Deloitte Digital, advocates for. She and her team have worked hard to measure the amount of humanity in the workplace—a measurement that often depends on how much trust exists between workers and leaders. Dunlop’s team focused on four signals of trust that leaders can track: capability, reliability, humanity, and transpar...
A Customer-Centric Approach is Key in a Post-Pandemic World
September 09, 2021 15:59 - 37 minutesQuoting John Lennon, Bill Kanarick describes the tectonic industry shifts brought on by the pandemic: “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.” After months of hunkering down at home, consumers got used to online shopping, telehealth doctor’s appointments and contactless and curbside pickup, effectively doubling e-commerce sales in the last 18 months. “So just in a one-year period, what you saw is the intensification of commitment to an investment in...
A New Age of Data Means Embracing the Edge
August 16, 2021 15:59 - 33 minutesArtificial intelligence holds an enormous promise, but to be effective, it must learn from massive sets of data—and the more diverse the better. By learning patterns, AI tools can uncover insights and help decision-making not just in technology, but also pharmaceuticals, medicine, manufacturing, and more. However, data can’t always be shared—whether it’s personally identifiable, holds proprietary information, or to do so would be a security concern—until now. “It’s going to be a new age.” Say...
Cybersecurity Can Protect Data. How About Elevators?
July 12, 2021 15:59 - 32 minutesAdvanced cybersecurity capabilities are essential to safeguard software, systems, and data in a new era of cloud, IoT, and other smart technologies. In the real estate industry, for example, companies are concerned about the potential for hijacked elevators, as well as compromised building management and HVAC systems. According to Greg Belanger, vice president of security technologies at CBRE, the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm, securing the enterprise has...
Using Machine Learning to Build Maps That Give Smarter Driving Advice
June 23, 2021 15:59 - 30 minutesIf you drive in the United States, chances are you can’t remember the last time you bought a paper map, printed out a digital map, or even stopped to ask for directions. Thanks to GPS and the mobile mapping apps on our smartphones and their real-time routing advice, navigation is a solved problem. But in developing or fast-growing parts of the world: not so much. If you live in a place like Doha, Qatar, where the length of the road network has tripled over the last five years, commercial mapp...
Taxing Digital Advertising Could Help Break Up Big Tech
June 14, 2021 15:59 - 35 minutesFor the past several years, economists and government leaders have regularly sounded alarms about the dangers of big tech monopolies. On her 2020 campaign website, for example, Senator Elizabeth Warren said “big tech companies have too much power, too much power over our economy, our society, our democracy." In the months since the election, politicians on both the left and right have expressed concerns over how to encourage competition and innovation among the big tech leaders, and even how ...
As Cybersecurity Evolves, So Should Your Board
June 02, 2021 15:56 - 33 minutesExecutives need to clearly communicate risks but also bring context to data. Tech talk is out: speaking the same language will win the day. It’s drilled into the heads of board directors and the C-suite by scary data-breach headlines, lawyers, lawsuits, and risk managers: cybersecurity is high-risk. It’s got to be on the list of a company’s top priorities. But how many directors get lost in the technicalities of technology? The challenge for a chief information security officer (CISO) is talk...
Better Cybersecurity Means Finding the “Unknown Unknowns”
May 26, 2021 15:59 - 36 minutesDuring the past few months, Microsoft Exchange servers have been like chum in a shark-feeding frenzy. Threat actors have attacked critical zero-day flaws in the email software: an unrelenting cyber campaign that the US government has described as “widespread domestic and international exploitation” that could affect hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. Gaining visibility into an issue like this requires a full understanding of all assets connected to a company’s network. This type of co...
Embracing the Rapid Pace of AI
May 19, 2021 15:59 - 31 minutesIn a recent survey, “2021 Thriving in an AI World,” KPMG found that across every industry—manufacturing to technology to retail—the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) is increasing year over year. Part of the reason is digital transformation is moving faster, which helps companies start to move exponentially faster. But, as Cliff Justice, US leader for enterprise innovation at KPMG posits, “Covid-19 has accelerated the pace of digital in many ways, across many types of technologies.” Ju...
Machine Learning Project Takes Aim at Disinformation
May 02, 2021 15:59 - 30 minutesThere’s nothing new about conspiracy theories, disinformation, and untruths in politics. What is new is how quickly malicious actors can spread disinformation when the world is tightly connected across social networks and internet news sites. We can give up on the problem and rely on the platforms themselves to fact-check stories or posts and screen out disinformation—or we can build new tools to help people identify disinformation as soon as it crosses their screens. Preslav Nakov is a compu...
Democratizing Data for a Fair Digital Economy
March 22, 2021 15:59 - 34 minutesThe digital revolution is here, but not everyone is benefiting equitably from it. And as Silicon Valley’s ethos of “move fast and break things” spreads around the world, now is the time to pause and consider who is being left out and how we can better distribute the benefits of our new data economy. “Data is the main resource of a new digital economy,” says IT for Change director Parminder Singh. Global society will benefit because the economy will benefit, argues Singh, on decentralization o...
Building a Better Data Economy
March 11, 2021 16:59 - 39 minutesTim O’Reilly, the “Oracle of Silicon Valley,” wants to shift the conversation about data value to focus on the harm that tech giants are inflicting against us with our own data. It’s “time to wake up and do a better job,” says publisher Tim O’Reilly—from getting serious about climate change to building a better data economy. And the way a better data economy is built is through data commons—or data as a common resource—not as the giant tech companies are acting now, which is not just keeping ...
Leveraging collective intelligence and AI to benefit society
November 18, 2020 16:59 - 34 minutesA solar-powered autonomous drone scans for forest fires. A surgeon first operates on a digital heart before she picks up a scalpel. A global community bands together to print personal protection equipment to fight a pandemic. “The future is now,” says Frederic Vacher, head of innovation at Dassault Systèmes. And all of this is possible with cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and a virtual 3D design shop, or as Dassault calls it, the 3DEXPERIENCE innovation lab. This open innovatio...
With Trust in AI, Manufacturers Can Build Better
October 28, 2020 14:39 - 24 minutesSome people might not associate the word “trust” with artificial intelligence (AI). Stefan Jockusch is not one of them. Vice president of strategy at Siemens Digital Industries Software, Jockusch says trusting an algorithm powering an AI application is a matter of statistics. This podcast episode was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not produced by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff. “If it works right, and if you have enough compute power, th...
The Fourth Industrial Revolution Has Begun: Now’s The Time to Join
October 14, 2020 15:59 - 28 minutes2020 has created more than a brave new world. It’s a world of opportunity rapidly pressuring organizations of all sizes to rapidly adopt technology to not just survive, but to thrive. And Andrew Dugan, chief technology officer at Lumen Technologies, sees proof in the company’s own customer base, where “those organizations fared the best throughout covid were the ones that were prepared with their digital transformation.” And that’s been a common story this year. A 2018 McKinsey survey showed ...
How AI Will Revolutionize Manufacturing
September 29, 2020 15:59 - 25 minutesAsk Stefan Jockusch about what a factory might look like in 10 or 20 years, and the answer might leave you at a crossroads between fascination and bewilderment. Jockusch is vice president for strategy at Siemens Digital Industries Software, which develops applications that simulates the conception, design, and manufacture of products such as a cell phone or a smart watch. His vision of a smart factory is abuzz with “independent, moving” robots. But they don’t stop at making one or three or fi...
Smart Devices, a Cohesive System, a Brighter Future
July 29, 2020 15:59 - 36 minutes[Sponsored] AI advancements today are pointing to improvements everywhere you look. But it’s a confluence of technologies—cloud, 5G wireless, smart devices, and more—that will usher in the greatest results, predicts Dell Technologies’ John Roese. If you need a reason to feel good about the direction technology is going, look up Dell’s CTO John Roese on Twitter. The handle he composed back in 2006 is @theICToptimist. ICT stands for information and communication. “The reason for that acronym wa...
Covid-19 Spurs Collaboration in Telehealth
June 29, 2020 15:59 - 39 minutes[Sponsored] The coronavirus pandemic has led to enhanced collaboration, spurred innovation, and increased the use of digital technologies. Telehealth enables doctors to safely connect with patients virtually and to monitor them remotely, whether in different cities or just down the hall. And smarter and smaller medical devices are producing better outcomes for patients—a disruption is sensed, like low blood sugar or a too rapid beating heart, and a therapy is applied, in real time. All of thi...
Leading With a Security-First Mentality
March 04, 2020 16:59 - 28 minutes[Sponsored] As technology rapidly develops, the number of security and privacy concerns will only continue to grow. In this episode, we look at how companies can build cybersecurity into their business strategies—instead of scrambling to respond when a breach happens. Even with danger lurking around the corner, today’s guest, cybersecurity expert Ann Cavoukian, argues that companies are turning a blind eye to security and privacy issues until it is too late. Cavoukian is the executive directo...
Securing the Internet of Things and Your Workplace
February 26, 2020 16:59 - 37 minutes[Sponsored] In this episode, we look at the need to secure the internet of things, physical workspaces, and the products companies make. From planes to children’s toys to oil rigs, more connected devices are vulnerable to attack than ever before. Ken Munro is an internet-of things security researcher, penetration tester, and writer with two decades of experience in the security industry. He is also the founder of security services company Pen Test Partners. Munro helps expose the vulnerabilit...
Cybersecurity in 2020: The rise of the CISO
January 29, 2020 16:55 - 53 minutes[Sponsored] As the new year (and new decade) begins, one thing is certain: cybersecurity will continue to have an increasing impact on business, for better or worse. In this episode, we hear from Stephanie Balaouras, a cybersecurity expert who has spoken to thousands of customers over her 15 years at Forrester Research. She is the vice president and group director of security and risk research, as well as infrastructure and operations research. Balaouras makes the case that all businesses sho...