Executives gathered at Cognizant’s flagship European thought leadership conference heard how digital technologies in general and AI in particular are poised to generate significant economic growth.

1. Cognizant
Community
Europe 2017
Mastering Digital: Navigating the Shift
to the Digital Business Era
Executives gathered at Cognizant’s flagship European
thought leadership conference heard how digital
technologies in general and AI in particular
are poised to generate significant
economic growth.

2. What chapter will your organization
contribute to digital mastery, the great
story of our time?
That was the question tackled by
Cognizant Community Europe 2017.
Senior executives from leading companies
throughout the UK and Europe gathered
in London to hear globally recognized
luminaries explain how organizations
can write their futures with artificial
intelligence (AI), automation, robots and
digital capabilities.
The clear message: digital is ready to deliver new solutions.
Social, mobile, analytics and cloud, the IoT, and advances in
artificial intelligence and automation are all accelerating, said
Raj Mehta, Cognizant’s President. Large, established businesses
can use these tools to augment their existing strengths, from
client relationships to market expertise. Organizations can
create their own hybrid digital-traditional business models
rather than slavishly imitate digital natives. The time for
digitally-driven innovation at scale is now, he concluded.
“The exponential impact of all
these technologies across the value
chain … is where possibilities are
endless.”
– Raj Mehta, President, Cognizant

3. The gathered executives explored
how technology has caught up with
the idea of AI.
“We think nothing will matter more than your relationship with
AI and what you do with it over the next five to ten years,”
said Malcolm Frank, EVP, Marketing & Strategy, Cognizant. AI
is key to the new machine, a “system of intelligence” driven
by software that learns and is fueled by endless rivers of data.
These systems are getting smarter, driving down costs and
improving services. They will enable organizations to focus
on “big things,” creating new ways of delivering healthcare,
education, public services, etc. Companies that master these
new machines will deliver new experiences at a lightening pace.
Raffaello D’Andrea, Professor of Dynamic Systems and Control at the Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology, demonstrated in real time how algorithms help machines learn.
Navigating the Digital Shift —
Learnings from Cognizant Community Europe 2017
PLAY VIDEO

4. “This is officially a very
special time to be alive.”
– Tim Urban, Creator, Wait But Why
Writer Tim Urban detailed the speed with
which systems of intelligence have
emerged — and continue to advance.
Humanity has lived in a fairly primitive world for nearly 99.8%
of its existence. Much of the technology we take for granted,
from steam engines to the Internet, emerged during the last 200
years. AI’s impact, for instance, will accelerate exponentially at
a rate that will make our own futures as unrecognizable to us as
today’s world would be to George III if he were swept forward
in time.
Source: Tim Urban, WaitButWhy.com

5. “With AI, automation,
bots, big data and people,
there are no stop signs
ahead. When machines
do everything, there will
still be a lot to do. So we
should all just get on
with it.”
– Malcolm Frank, EVP, Marketing &
Strategy, Cognizant
If there is a disruptive digital force,
it is AI.
Yet where 90% of the AI conversation focuses on job
losses, those discussions should shift to how AI will enhance
productivity and enable the creation of new industries and
vocations, Cognizant’s Frank declared. With powerful “new
machines,” great things will happen. New jobs will replace those
lost to automation, while many more will be enhanced, as AI
augments and extends the human strengths of creativity and
imagination. A historical case in point is the “Budding Effect.”
Inventor Edwin Budding’s lawnmower so efficiently manicured
greens that it eventually gave rise to the multi-billion dollar
modern sports industry. Looking forward, it’s “an absolutely
stunning lack of imagination to think these technology advances
and AI platforms are not going to lead to new wide-scale
Budding Effects,” Frank noted.

6. “Every single time there has been
a technological transformation,
labor markets have gotten bigger,
not smaller.”
– Mark Blyth, Political Economist, Watson Institute,
Brown University
In his energetic presentation on how populism and
economics are intertwined, political economist Mark Blyth
asserted technology is poised to help lead productivity
and thus growth.
He debunked the “lump of labor” fallacy that asserts there’s a finite amount of work to automate.
Instead, Blyth said, as technology advances “there’s more work to be done by virtue of the fact
that technology has changed what it’s possible to do.”

7. “Trust is a confident relationship to the unknown.
Technology can be very good at reducing the unknown.”
– Rachel Botsman, Global Authority on Trust
Steve Wright, Data Privacy
and Information Security
Officer, John Lewis
Partnership, discussed how
compliance with the EU’s
General Data Protection
Regulation will help the UK
retailer strengthen customer
relationships and create
better experiences.
Protecting and securing
personal data and privacy is
critical to building strong
customer relationships as
data fuels systems of
intelligence that anticipate
needs. Author/consultant
Rachel Botsman explained
how trust paradigms are
shifting from institutional to
distributed, peer-to-peer
models.
Deutsche Telekom’s Christian
von Reventlow revealed how
the telecom giant studies
customers to understand what
experiences they will want,
how they will curate their data
sharing and how it must adapt
its business models to thrive
in a future where free
connectivity is the rule.
“I strongly believe technology will build a great future.”
– Dr. Christian von Reventlow, Chief Product &
Innovation Officer, Deutsche Telekom AG

8. “No one wants change
forced on them. But – if
the context is changing,
you can do different
things. You embrace
change.”
– Rudi Peeters, CIO, KBC Group
Capitalizing on digital’s possibilities will
require businesses to disrupt themselves.
In the digital world, IT is part of the business, noted Rudi
Peeters, CIO at KBC Group, a European integrated bank-insurer.
Exhibit A is KBC’s “branch of the future,” where KBC business
leaders experience the capabilities of new technology. Then
“they start thinking about opportunities,” Peeters said. To glean
ideas from digital natives, he has his IT professionals share
workspace with start-ups that occupy the fintech incubator KBC
operates. These professionals return to the IT organization,
questioning established practices. As Peeters put it, “… if you
want to learn something new, you won’t learn it from inside the
company. You will only learn it outside the company.”

9. “It’s precisely because it has never
been done that you have to try.
Otherwise it will always remain
undone. It will always remain
impossible.”
– Bertrand Piccard, explorer and pilot, Solar Impulse
To Swiss psychiatrist, pilot and balloonist
Bertrand Piccard, “every problem
becomes a new way of learning, not
an obstacle.”
When airframe manufacturers said no one could build an air-
craft to his specs, Bertrand and his team turned to a shipbuilder
to create the Solar Impulse, which went on to make a record-
breaking solar-powered flight around the globe. “I had to find
someone who didn’t know it was impossible,” he said.
Multidisciplinary networks and partnerships are critical for
gaining new perspectives and ideas that will enable organizations
to envision new digital possibilities and business outcomes.

10. • Automate everything you can.
• Instrument everything you can.
• Enhance every person you can.
• Drive the price point of products and
services as low as you can.
• Discover and invent all of the possible
futures you can.
Getting AHEAD*
will require
organizations of all sizes and
shapes to embrace the following:
* See the AHEAD Model on page 191 in What to Do When Machines Do Everything:
How to Get Ahead in a World of AI, Algorithms, Bots, and Big Data, by Malcolm Frank,
Paul Roehrig, and Ben Pring, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

11. About Cognizant
Cognizant (NASDAQ-100: CTSH) is one of the world’s leading professional services companies, transforming clients’ business, op-
erating and technology models for the digital era. Our unique industry-based, consultative approach helps clients envision, build
and run more innovative and efficient businesses. Headquartered in the U.S., Cognizant is ranked 205 on the Fortune 500 and is
consistently listed among the most admired companies in the world. Learn how Cognizant helps clients lead with digital at www.
cognizant.com or follow us @Cognizant.
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