Technology & Innovation EMEA

Tech executives who want to center their strategies on customer value must start by acknowledging that their organization cannot “deliver” value to customers. No one can — that’s not how value works. Instead, tech executives must work with stakeholders in their organization to embrace customers’ value networks — the array of people and organizations customers work with to pursue a goal. Their role is to develop technology strategies that enable their organization to earn a place in customers’ value networks and to facilitate value creation through customer-centric technology ecosystems.

In this session, tech executives will learn: 

• What value for customers is and why no organization can “deliver” it. 
• How to help their organization earn a place in customers’ value networks and facilitate value creation across those networks. 

Modern technologies and open innovation have offered Siemens the opportunity to shift from just selling industrial products to engaging with partners, clients and employees for sustainable value creation.

In this session you will learn how Siemens is leveraging a Future Fit approach:

• with practices that break internal silos and drive a culture of openness and collaboration
• with partnerships that engage a broader ecosystem to co-create new solutions
• with an open platform that help to scale and speed up the delivery of value

Every organization is facing skill gaps when tackling their broader digital transformation initiative – technical and soft skills. Many European business leaders have difficulty finding the digital talent that they need. In this presentation, participants will learn: 

• Which competency areas are most critical for digital evolution and where the right skill clusters are in Europe. 
• If and how AI-tools like ChatGPT can help bridge digital skill gaps. 

Join us for lunch where we’ll have one hot topic per table. Choose your preferred table and start the discussion with your peers.

The metaverse does not exist yet, but precursors do, in consumer- and employee-facing scenarios. Companies have been exploring how to reach consumers in virtual worlds and games, and how to make use of new environments for employee onboarding, training and collaboration. Indeed, some of the most promising developments are happening in asset-intensive industries like manufacturing. Earlier investments in augmented and mixed reality, the internet of things (IoT) and digital twin combine with compelling use cases to make this a space that’s ripe with opportunity. Companies interested in their own metaverse journey have much to learn from these early adopters.

In this session, we will explore: 

• What’s worked — and what hasn’t — in consumer-facing scenarios. 
• Why metaverse precursors make sense in asset-intensive industries, and which solutions deliver value. 
• Useful lessons for technology leaders in other industries. 

Enterprises creak under the weight of technical debt and the myriad of legacy systems they must modernize – and few transform their application landscape successfully. New business models, fluid organizations, slick product experiences, cloud, and agile practices stretch the boundary of existing architectures even further. Our research tells us that successful transformers take innovative paths to weave new technologies into their application landscapes.

This fireside conversation will tell you:

• What a major European bank did to surmount these challenges.
• How judicious use of modern and emerging technologies can elevate existing platforms.
• How to organize and optimize to assure transformation and continual change.

You enjoyed the opening keynote by Maxie Schmidt on “Technology’s Role In Driving Customer-Obsessed Growth” and want to learn more? Join this exclusive Q&A!

IT’s environmental impact, from carbon emissions to toxic waste, continues to climb each year. Tech leaders need a robust strategy for reigning in emissions and reducing waste. Beyond this basic commitment, tech leaders have an opportunity to build a sustainability roadmap that will not only see their organizations reap the benefits of operational excellence, but help them build deep trust, increase resilience, and open entirely new markets – green markets. The Green Market will be a historic business opportunity, on par with the industrial revolutions. European tech leaders have a unique moment in time to leapfrog competitors globally with the highest percentage of green consumers, robust government and private sector investment, and market changing regulatory shifts.

In this keynote, Forrester will: 

• Highlight the state of IT environmental sustainability and explain how Forrester’s Tech Sustainability Framework can achieve targeted goals. 

• Present Forrester’s Green Market forecast and Green Consumer Segmentation to showcase the economic opportunities in Europe and globally. 
• Explain how tech leaders can power the success of their organization in this economic revolution. 

ChatGPT smashed records earlier this year when it reached 100 million users within a couple of months. And while it won’t live up to the hype, generative AI clearly has a place in the enterprise technology portfolio. The same applies to a number of other emerging technologies — some clearly over-hyped (e.g., the metaverse), some almost sneaking in under the radar (e.g. edge intelligence). 

In this presentation, we will share: 

• The current state of the latest emerging technologies, and what this means for enterprises.
• Key lessons we can learn from the early adopters of those technologies.
• How to prepare for the — potentially sudden — emergence of the Next Big Thing in technology.

Join us for a reception full of networking, fun, food, and refreshments.

Join us for breakfast as we open the floor for any questions you may have related to the event from a Leadership perspective, and how we can help you advance your tech strategy.

We must abandon economic growth opportunities that are not sustainable, that further damage the planet. Sustainable growth is possible, which is what we’ll explore in this session. The magic potion for sustainable growth is made up of applying technology, a silo breaker mentality, and a cradle-to-cradle mindset. In this session,  

• We’ll share inspiring examples of sustainable growth that brings together great technology, human creativity, and collaboration. 
• We explain why and how tech leaders should welcome Gen Z as silo breakers and sustainability proponents who are reinventing the economic growth of the future.  

Businesses that stride to embrace software technology at the core are the ones that succeed in making the leap to transforming themselves into true digital businesses able to reap the associated benefits of pace with economies of scale and agility. Yes, that means they build, buy, or adapt tons of software to express and automate their business policies, procedures, and processes. That enables them to pivot business models quickly. But for many, change has not been fast enough. A new era of change is here, and it’s the era of TuringBots, or generative AI. This will help you build great enterprise applications more quickly and in a way that fits your ways of working whilst still being easy to change to provide a springboard to continually compete in markets that are evolving faster than ever.

You will walk away with:

• What you need to do to prepare for the arrival of TuringBots, challenges and benefits.
• Learnings from Mark Burnett, G-Research – a FinTech that is using TuringBots in the real world.

There is a hard-to-combat misconception among enterprise and technology leaders that just adopting the latest and greatest emerging technology would elevate their companies into new realms of revenue generation through innovative differentiation. This at least partially explains the craze about emerging technologies such as ChatGPT, the Metaverse, and cryptocurrencies. Successful technology adoption requires more than just technology adoption.

In this session, we’ll explore:
• Where tangible innovation success is stemming from,
• How innovation leaders prioritize and decide about which emerging technologies to adopt.

During this exclusive ELE lunch, discuss the value Generative AI can bring to your business. Don’t ask ChatGPT, rather ask your Peers and our three analysts: Martha, Enza, and Diego.

If one of the world known Italian geniuses Leonardo Da Vinci suddenly discovered Open AI ChatGPT or GitHub Co-Pilot and other AI TuringBots, what would he do? He would probably find creative ways to populate your software factory with autonomous TuringBots that would totally automate development and more. But would the famous British nursing reformer and statistician Florence Nightingale, that professionalized nursing saving hundreds of lives, question that professionalizing TuringBots is a good idea?

Forrester analysts will impersonate the two characters to discuss points and counterpoints, and land on common agreement, your take aways will be:  

• What are the real opportunities and the real risks? Will it be “humans in the loop” or “TuringBots in the loop?”, How do we govern the arrival of TuringBots? How real is all this?  

• Find out how you need to pragmatically prepare for Generative AI, it is here to stay, and will change you build applications and deploy them forever. 

Out with the pandemic and in with a banking crisis as we head straight into a talent-constrained recession. What was last year’s metaverse is this year’s ChatGPT — though generative AI is exponentially gaining practical momentum within the future of work, editorial, education, customer experience, mathematics, and writing code. The stage is being set for 2024. Come listen to our top technology analysts discuss the next frontier of innovation threats, advantages, and opportunities.

ChatGPT smashed records earlier this year when it reached 100 million users within a couple of months. And while it won’t live up to the hype, generative AI clearly has a place in the enterprise technology portfolio. The same applies to a number of other emerging technologies — some clearly over-hyped (e.g., the metaverse), some almost sneaking in under the radar (e.g. edge intelligence).

In this presentation, Paul Miller and Martha Bennett will share:
• The current state of the latest emerging technologies, and what this means for enterprises.
• Key lessons we can learn from the early adopters of those technologies.
• How to prepare for the — potentially sudden — emergence of the Next Big Thing in technology.

We must abandon economic growth opportunities that are not sustainable, that further damage the planet. Sustainable growth is possible, which is what we’ll explore in this session. The magic potion for sustainable growth is made up of applying technology, a silo breaker mentality, and a cradle-to-cradle mindset. In this session,  

• We’ll share inspiring examples of sustainable growth that brings together great technology, human creativity, and collaboration. 
• We explain why and how tech leaders should welcome Gen Z as silo breakers and sustainability proponents who are reinventing the economic growth of the future.  

Businesses that stride to embrace software technology at the core are the ones that succeed in making the leap to transforming themselves into true digital businesses able to reap the associated benefits of pace with economies of scale and agility. Yes, that means they build, buy, or adapt tons of software to express and automate their business policies, procedures, and processes. That enables them to pivot business models quickly. But for many, change has not been fast enough. A new era of change is here, and it’s the era of TuringBots, or generative AI. This will help you build great enterprise applications more quickly and in a way that fits your ways of working whilst still being easy to change to provide a springboard to continually compete in markets that are evolving faster than ever.

You will walk away with:

• What you need to do to prepare for the arrival of TuringBots, challenges and benefits.
• Learnings from Mark Burnett, G-Research – a FinTech that is using TuringBots in the real world.

Out with the pandemic and in with a banking crisis as we head straight into a talent-constrained recession. What was last year’s metaverse is this year’s ChatGPT — though generative AI is exponentially gaining practical momentum within the future of work, editorial, education, customer experience, mathematics, and writing code. The stage is being set for 2024. Come listen to our top technology analysts discuss the next frontier of innovation threats, advantages, and opportunities.

Compliance and avoiding lawsuits are no longer the primary driver behind enterprise accessibility statements. This panel will discuss the shift of firms citing that “attracting and retaining talent” as the top driver behind their accessibility commitments.

During this session, we will discuss:
• The myths of providing accommodations, and how to manage an increasing number of requests from employees
• How companies are personalizing their employee value proposition at scale
• Why a “one size fits all” approach no longer works and how having a strong, accessible culture can be the difference between a productive employee base vs. an unsatisfied one.

DIGITAL SESSION ONLY

A personal & professional journey that has seen this Product Leader succeed across multiple industries, geographies and at the intersection of technological & business disruption. In this fireside chat, Ash Mukherjee will discuss with Monica Carlesso how she has grown as leader by embracing curiosity and displayed grit to open to be constantly out of the comfort zone, yet has learnt how self-care is key to leadership and a sustainable growth. Modern leadership is about embracing change and dichotomies, both as strategic business levers but also to lead compassionately through massive societal changes and Monica will share her story with Ash.

During this session, we will discuss:
• A product leader’s journey across different industries and geographies, exploring challenges and implications
• How to overcome the bumps of a growth journey with curiosity, grit and self-care.

DIGITAL SESSION ONLY

Hitendra’s mission is to discover, codify, and explore the laws of success in life and leadership. With an MBA and Ph.D. from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Wadhwa brings a mathematician’s rigor and a truth-seeker’s spirit to some of today’s most vexing questions about authenticity, success, leadership, and human potential. In this conversation, we’ll explore with Hitendra his personal journey of discovery, his insights, and his recommendations for defining, and then achieving purpose, and how you can be a better leader with Cultural Intelligence.

DIGITAL SESSION ONLY

Gone are the days when leaders stood in front of their followers and told them what matters. Modern leaders engage their teams to learn from them, and with them, what matters in business and for customers. But that can only happen with a more purposeful listening strategy. In this session, attendees will learn:

• What listening is and why it plays the largest role in an organization’s approach to employee input.
• How listening is a productive, rather than merely reactive, tool for improving the business.
• Why successful leaders will be known as much for what they learned as what they said.

DIGITAL SESSION ONLY

Energy and engagement are finite resources that are essential to achieving business results. One of the challenges that organizations and leaders face is that these resources have been depleted for many of their employees due to a lack of strategies to refresh and sustain that energy. In this session, we will:

• Define “tired rock stars” — high-engagement contributors who are at risk of burning out.
• Guide leaders to see the tired rock stars in their ranks (including, possibly, themselves) and understand them more clearly.
• Share how leaders can sustainably earn excellence from their talent.

DIGITAL SESSION ONLY

Technology differentiates your business when it’s focused on business outcomes — the value that tech initiatives bring to your customers and to your business. Bring this focus to value delivery using business leaders’ language and adopting shared accountability for those results.

This session will help yo:
• Use business capabilities to plan, deliver, and communicate the impact of technology on business outcomes.
• Link tech investments with what business leaders care about using the language of the business.
• Identify the work needed to achieve strategic outcomes through value stream planning — spanning capabilities across the enterprise and partners’ ecosystems.
• Navigate dynamic backlogs using KPIs — cascading them across business capabilities and the organization’s OKRs.

DIGITAL SESSION ONLY

Leaders are sitting at the edge of a transition from the leaders-as-heroes that got our organizations through the tough times of the pandemic — where confidence in executive leadership nearly doubled between 2019 and 2021 — to now, where many leaders are left unsure what their role in leading their team to high performance should be. Is their job to call people back to the old habits of in-office work supported by reactive leadership with a goal of incremental growth? Or is it to embrace the ongoing dynamism of whatever turbulence comes next and learn to steer a creative and innovative team to bold, new outcomes? In this session, clients will learn:

• The role that they have as leaders in setting the stabilizing vision of their teams.
• How leaders can increase the energy of the “local culture” that their team experiences.
• The role that technology — including expanding AI tools — will play in making them “better, stronger, faster” as leaders.

DIGITAL SESSION ONLY

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (“DEI”) are key concepts at the forefront of many corporations’ agendas today. The need for a more inclusive workspace is not new, but corporations are now recognizing trends in the correlation between a diverse/inclusive workspace and greater staff retention and productivity. This session provides an easy-to-follow pathway that helps get any company past the initial step (of what is often viewed unfavorably as ‘requisite diversity training’) and around the most common traps that stop companies from maintaining best practices.

• How to ‘jump right in’ and identify specific areas for program enhancement. Don’t get lost in the too-big picture!
• Learn the three key components of the employee lifecycle for DEI incorporation.
• Discover how a stronger DEI program can lead to team and company maturity.
• Recognize the most common traps: where attempts to be inclusive go wrong with most corporations.
• Act upon two things you can do to improve immediately/today.

DIGITAL SESSION ONLY

Each day, IT and security teams face major risks and concerns globally; unfortunately, teams are often working against each other by not presenting a unified front, and at times, with outward hostility. Yet technology and security executives have a multitude of benefits to reap from having a unified and consolidated security vision, sound relationships, and working together to enable the business.

Attend this session to:
• Explore the root causes of the divide and tensions between IT and security.
• Discover the surprising commonalities between technology and security leaders and teams.
• Build humanity in the interactions and behaviors with infosec leaders and teams.
• Learn how to operationalize the collaboration required to build trust between the teams.
• Exercise empathy to build trust across teams.

DIGITAL SESSION ONLY

The use cases for low-code have reached a tipping point. As low-code platforms are used for more critical business challenges — including creating significant portions of commercial software products — technology leaders must ensure that best practices are followed, such as automated testing, governance, and compliance, without compromising development speed or alienating low-code developers. To meet these challenges, organizations must learn how to properly apply the principles of DevOps to low-code.

During this session, we will:
• Introduce the audience to the practices and tools of low-code plus DevOps.
• Explain how it’s both the same and different from DevOps for traditional coding.
• Review the benefits of this approach and some compelling use case examples.

DIGITAL SESSION ONLY

The ideal state for the modern enterprise is direct alignment between the technology stack and the business strategy. Achieving that state is difficult to do, however. Most enterprise tech stacks are a jumbled mix of legacy and modern technology. These companies acquire new technologies without identifying business value.

This session will focus on:
• How enterprises can achieve a tech stack that minimizes technical debt and brings maximum value.
• Identifying key technologies (cloud, platforms, automation) to invest in and the best ways to organize (embedded teams, crowdsourcing).

DIGITAL SESSION ONLY

The service provider industry is an early adopter of generative AI for software product development, content production, and more. In this session we will present our findings on of what 12 large technology, consulting, and agency service providers are doing with generative AI, including the impact on service delivery and economics; their investments in technologies, skills, and solution platforms, and the implications for you with improvements in productivity, speed, and consistency. Come to this session to learn from early adopters to: 1) understand how to take advantage of their evolving capabilities in service delivery; and 2) what lessons you can apply directly to your own technology service delivery.

DIGITAL SESSION ONLY

Environmental sustainability is neither just a risk nor just a business opportunity but a revolution that will force CMOs to rethink their marketing. In this session, you will learn how to:

• Differentiate your approach to sustainability by embracing the green market revolution.
• Understand consumers’ behaviours and attitudes toward environmental sustainability.
• Learn from sustainable leaders on how to best engage your green customers.

DIGITAL SESSION ONLY