New episodes out now—listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The AI platform shift brings immense opportunity, but the road to success isn’t always easy or clear. That’s why we’ve asked customers, partners, Microsoft experts, and other leaders to share their journeys and insights in our new podcast, Leading the Shift.
In each episode, we’ll explore how our guests are using data, AI, and cloud technologies to deliver meaningful and trustworthy innovation to their organizations, customers, and communities. You’ll hear from executives, developers, data scientists, and visionaries across industries in both the public and private sectors. We’ll discuss how the platform shift is affecting everything from data strategy, customer relationships, organizational structure, and culture, to their own lives and career journeys. And, most importantly, they’ll share what they’ve learned along the way, as well as their advice on how to get started and how to navigate bumps in the road.
The first four episodes of Leading the Shift cover a lot of ground, from how data and AI are being used for social impact, to the use of AI to create a fan remix experience for a world-famous band, to the opportunity to use data, AI, and cloud technologies to map the customer journey and truly personalize experiences, to the potential for proprietary data to transform an organization’s competitive advantage.
Throughout these conversations we aim to get at the heart of the approaches, tools, techniques, opportunities, threats, and emerging best practices that leaders are adopting as they learn by doing. We’ll see common themes emerge: the transformative power of data and AI, the importance of trust, the innovation potential of co-creation, and the value of getting hands-on during the process.
Here’s what you can expect from our first four episodes:
Creating the new field of data for social impact, with Perry Hewitt, data.org
You’ve heard about data-driven products and services, and even data-driven business models. But in our premiere episode, Perry Hewitt, Chief Marketing and Product Officer at data.org, discusses how the organization is using data and AI to create an entirely new field—data for social impact.
Perry shares how data.org is working with organizations around the world to co-create solutions to some of the world’s greatest challenges, such as dispelling misconceptions about women’s health in India, upskilling migrant Venezuelan women in Chile, and creating intensive AI curricula for teachers, students and businesses in rural Mississippi.
It’s a rigorous and innovative approach built around trust, respect, and co-creation, and is as applicable to business as it is to the public sector.
Remixing the Coldplay fan experience with AI, with Robby Ingebretsen, Pixel Lab
In this episode, Robby Ingebretsen, Founder and Creative Director of Pixel Lab, an award-winning creative agency, talks about how he and his team built a fan remix experience that builds on the release of Coldplay’s new album, MOON MUSiC, and its film compendium, A Film For The Future.
The fan remix experience offers people the opportunity to join a community of Coldplay fans to create their own remix of the film using inputs that match their mood and attribute choices and contribute to the film as their piece is added to the future playback.
It’s a wide-ranging conversation that explores the impact of digitalization and platform shifts in the music and technology industries, the impact and opportunities of AI, and how co-creation can unlock new opportunities for creativity, engagement, and innovation for customers and consumers across a range of industries. Read more about how this experience was built with Azure AI Foundry.
Data doesn’t just fuel generative AI—it goes both ways, with Shirli Zelcer, dentsu
Shirli Zelcer began her career as a statistician and is now Chief Data and Technology Officer at dentsu, an integrated growth and transformation partner to the world’s leading organizations. It’s a fascinating role, and her roots in data, combined with a deep understanding of AI, have prepared her to bring data and AI together to help dentsu and its clients unlock new sources of value.
Shirli shares a bit about her journey, including how she’s seen data and analytics evolve from a back-office practice to a C-suite priority. We explore a range of topics, including new approaches to generating audiences, the opportunity to combine structured and unstructured data to better understand customer needs and behavior, the value of synthetic data, and—underlying all of this innovation—the imperative to use intelligent data and technologies in a trustworthy, responsible, and privacy-compliant way.
Your proprietary data is your competitive advantage, with Teresa Tung, Accenture
In this episode, we talk with Teresa Tung, Global Lead of Data Capability at Accenture, about the evolving role of data in AI strategy. We explore the strategic value of proprietary data, how generative AI can help organizations realize value from unstructured data, the changing landscape of data governance, and how synthetic data can model sensitive scenarios in a safer way. We also discuss how generative AI can help organizations jumpstart data capability.
Teresa is a prolific inventor, holding over 225 patents and applications, and leads the vision and strategy that ensures that Accenture is prepared for ever-changing data advancements. It’s a real treat to hear her share what she’s seeing in the industry and what she believes will help organizations deliver value to their customers and clients.
Looking ahead with Leading the Shift
Leading the Shift will release new episodes in the last week of each month. Listen, like, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
The post Introducing Leading the Shift, a new Microsoft Azure podcast appeared first on Microsoft Azure Blog.
