Every episode of the Innovantage podcast offers a new perspective on different business aspects and the role of technologies in them. This time, Max Golikov, the podcast host and the CBDO at Sigli, invited Agu Aarna to talk about tech due diligence and the impact of AI on the investment landscape. Agu is a Co-Founder and Partner at Intium Tech, a tech advisory firm specializing in helping large companies and private equity funds buy and sell tech businesses. Over more than 20 years of his professional journey, he has accumulated experience in such spheres as development, architecture, and executive leadership. All this helped him to get a good understanding of how the tech world works. Seven years ago, he transitioned into consulting, helping businesses with acquisitions, carve-outs, and value creation. In 2021, he co-founded Intium Tech. With Intium, Agu and his team wanted to create a standardized approach to assessing technology, similar to what exists in other sectors. They recognized the need to describe technology in a clear, structured way for investors and business leaders. As they developed their system, they realized it could be integrated into software. This led to the creation of their own platform, which enables more efficient analysis of acquisition targets. How technology affects business In his dialogue with Max, Agu emphasized the complexity of technology’s impact on business. A minor technical detail can have significant business implications. That’s why assessing its true effect is crucial. Blindly following best practices is not the best approach. The focus should be on understanding their relevance to a company’s goals. For example, if a company doesn’t run unit tests, it’s not just about missing a best practice. First of all, it should raise questions about the quality of its solutions, leadership, and overall strategy. It’s necessary to find out why it is so. According to Agu, the key lies in finding a balance and understanding both the business’s ambitions and how technology can support them. This dynamic relationship between business goals and technology is what he finds most important. Challenges in tech due diligence Tech due diligence (TDD), which is one of the core aspects that Agu’s firm is focused on, is a detailed examination of a company’s technology infrastructure, products, and processes, typically conducted before a merger, acquisition, or investment. As Agu highlighted, the approach to such analysis has evolved significantly over the years. In the 2000s, it was viewed as a “nice to have” process. It presupposed that a couple of tech experts would assess a company’s technology, often resulting in a laundry list of issues based on their own expertise. This approach lacked a comprehensive view of the business impact. By the 2010s, tech due diligence had become more professional. It already could offer a broader perspective on leadership, architecture, and infrastructure. However, the analysis still lacked a focus on the actual business impact of these issues. In the 2020s, the focus shifted to understanding the business impact of technology and analyzing companies from this perspective. However, inconsistencies in reporting remained a challenge. Different experts can emphasize different aspects, which leads to varying results. Such an issue highlighted the need for a standardized approach. How to make TDD more efficient today Agu believes that to solve this, the industry needs more consistent, high-quality analyses. This could be achieved by leveraging software instead of relying on people-driven processes. This shift toward software-powered solutions, like the one developed by Intium, aims to provide a more scalable and smooth approach to tech due diligence. When discussing tech due diligence, Agu also highlighted two key aspects to focus on. First, it’s crucial to educate clients that tech due diligence is more than just a code or architecture review. Technology is the engine that powers a company, but just like a car, it needs to be steered in the right direction. Evaluating technology requires understanding its context within the business, not just identifying flaws in infrastructure or architecture. Equally important are the people managing the technology and the processes that connect them. Inefficiencies here can quickly undermine technical strength. The second key aspect is taking a comprehensive 360-degree view of the company. Concentrating on only one part of the technology or business won’t provide the full picture. Without this broader perspective, risks and crucial elements to make the deal successful might be overlooked. Moreover, Agu identifies several key risks in tech due diligence that can lead to failed deals: One major risk is when technology is presented as a core asset but doesn’t live up to expectations. Another risk is technical debt and architecture. If the debt requires too much effort to manage or fix, it can cause a deal to fall apart. A third risk is insufficient preparation for the sales process by the target company. When private equity firms are considering mature companies, a lack of proper preparation can reveal too many unknowns, making the deal seem too risky. A well-conducted TDD not only helps determine whether to buy this or that company but also provides information to negotiate the price, impose conditions in the purchase agreement, and even structure earnout plans. Key factors investors should pay attention to It is believed that when you are investing in tech businesses, technology always remains the key factor to evaluate. However, this is not always true. Agu explained that in early-stage investments like seed, pre-seed, and Series A or B, technology is often secondary (as at such stages there is hardly any tech at all). What investors are looking at are the ideas and leadership. Investors should focus on exploring whether the leadership team understands the technology they are working with. Here, the key task is assessing the leadership’s technical acumen to ensure they can build and execute on their vision. As companies move into the growth phase, product-market fit is already established. It means that technology becomes crucial. Scaling the technology to support growth is a different challenge from proving a market problem. This makes tech due diligence more important at this stage. In private equity, where mature companies are involved, technology is already a significant factor. Agu stressed the importance of being transparent and truthful when communicating with investors. If a company misrepresents its technology or misleads investors, it can result in the collapse of the entire deal. AI wrapper companies: Good or bad? While talking about tech innovations, Max mentioned the growing number of so-called AI wrapper companies. They build user-friendly interfaces or apps on top of existing AI technologies, often providing a simpler or more tailored experience for end-users. Instead of developing their own AI models or deep technologies, these companies focus on wrapping AI capabilities into practical solutions. They interact directly with users and often become "sticky" due to people’s habits. Agu believes there is nothing wrong with establishing a wrapper company. In fact, being a wrapper company can be even more important than being a deep tech innovator like OpenAI. He pointed out that AI wrapper companies need to work in some specialized areas like prompt engineering, which may not require deep tech knowledge but still involve particular skills. These companies must know how to effectively augment prompts and optimize user interaction. He also noted that developing and hosting AI can be expensive, adding another layer of complexity for companies in this space. According to Agu, building your own AI is not impossible. However, convincing investors that the team has the expertise to do it is challenging as AI can be very technical. When evaluating an AI company, it is crucial to determine if AI is truly the right tool for the indicated problem. For example, traditional mathematical or statistical models may work as well as AI in some cases, and using AI unnecessarily could signal a lack of understanding of the problem. However, in competitive markets, simply being a wrapper around AI isn't enough. Teams behind such projects must specialize in and understand how AI works. This is also necessary to choose whether they will use off-the-shelf solutions or develop their own models. Privacy is another major concern, particularly in regions like Europe, where data protection is strict. In some cases, companies opt to develop their own AI in order to avoid privacy issues with third-party systems. Impact of AI regulation and privacy laws AI regulation and privacy laws, such as GDPR, have sparked significant debate. Nevertheless, over time, they have proven to be pretty manageable and even beneficial. For instance, GDPR served as a template for other laws like the CCPA in California and the UK’s data protection frameworks. These regulations were initially seen as hurdles but now they are generally accepted as necessary for privacy protection. There is a concern that regulation can stifle innovation. This can happen not necessarily due to any created barriers, but due to the lack of input from business and tech representatives during the drafting process. A more collaborative approach that includes industry experts can make the regulations much more balanced and practical. Regulations are important for protecting personal data. It is crucial to remember that not all market players have good intentions. Without regulation, the misuse of personal data, especially in AI training, could lead to manipulation on a massive scale. Proper regulation ensures that the technology benefits society without being exploited. Policies serve as a tool to raise awareness and guide behavior. They are like a friendly reminder to look both ways before crossing the street, providing useful information that helps keep us safe. When viewed in this light, regulations aren’t obstacles but safeguards that help us navigate potential risks. As AI and technology continue to connect us more deeply, establishing ground rules becomes essential. These rules will help define what data can be used and under what circumstances, ensuring that people are not overwhelmed by the complexities of these technologies. With proper guidelines, people can better understand and trust the systems in place. This clarity is vital for preventing confusion and misuse as the tech landscape evolves. Future of AI for investors These days, there are a lot of talks about the role of AI in different industries and domains. That’s why Max couldn’t help but ask Agu to share his vision of the role of AI in tech due diligence. AI is already being used by investors, particularly in early-stage analysis. Today investment firms leverage AI to gather data on potential companies, analyze it, and automate certain tasks. For example, AI can notify investors when a company becomes more lucrative to drive further investigation. Investors can also use advanced tools like ChatGPT to ask AI for advice about companies. AI plays a significant role in the early stages of investing, and its use extends to later stages and new purposes. However, relying entirely on artificial intelligence without expertise can be risky. If you input a company’s documents into AI, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and ask for a summary of the top issues, the technology may provide a polished response that seems accurate but could be misleading. This is because AI sometimes hallucinates and fills in gaps with logical but incorrect information, leading to wrong conclusions. This can be especially problematic for non-experts who might be misled by the polished language. AI is particularly useful in summarizing large amounts of data. But it should always serve as a tool to support expert analysis, not replace it. The key is using AI’s output as an input to the expert’s thinking while controlling that AI doesn’t miss important details. This approach allows for more accurate and reliable results. AI has made significant progress in assisting with due diligence. However, it is still not at the point where it can fully conduct the process on its own. Connecting AI findings to the investment thesis and business impact remains a significant challenge. While AI can provide valuable insights, human expertise is required to make sense of AI-generated data in a meaningful way. In the future, AI may gradually take over more tasks, with humans focusing on areas where AI struggles. However, a key challenge will be ensuring that AI systems continue to evolve. They need constant feedback to stay updated with new information, trends, and market shifts. Without this ongoing learning, AI may become outdated and far less helpful. Investment opportunities and trends in the tech market While talking about the current investment opportunities, Agu noted that in recent years, many specialized startups have emerged. What makes them successful is their focus on niche products that effectively solve specific market problems. According to Agu, today a lot of private equity accounts are sitting on a significant amount of dry powder, which means that there is capital ready for immediate investment. This situation suggests that a period of consolidation may be on the horizon, where smaller companies are acquired and merged into larger corporations. This trend is likely to create opportunities for venture capital and growth equity investors who have supported these niche companies. In particular, AI wrapper companies, if they solve a real problem and maintain strong customer relationships, are well-positioned in this environment. In conclusion, Agu agreed with the common opinion that AI is here to stay. It is expected that this domain will become increasingly efficient over time. We will likely see the emergence of more advanced AI use cases and implementations. However, all of these AI systems will still require resources to operate. Therefore, anything that powers AI is likely to remain essential moving forward, which is a quite expected trend. And if you want to learn more about the current and future trends in the business world, the Innovantage podcast is exactly what you need. The next episodes will be available soon (moreover, don’t forget to verify whether you haven’t missed the previous ones)!

Every startup founder wants their business to achieve success. But does every startup founder have the required traits that will lead their business to success? This was one of the questions that Max Golikov, the Innovantage host and Sigli’s CBDO, addressed to his podcast guest Mike Sigal.Mike is an expert with over 35 years of experience as both a founder and investor, who is now a founder of Sigal Ventures, a Venture Partner at GPO Fund, MiddleGame Ventures, and Pella Ventures, and serves on the Investment Committee for SC Ventures. During his professional journey, he has seen the peculiarities of the entrepreneurship world from different perspectives. In his conversation with Max, they also discussed the current state of the fintech market, the challenges of the VC industry, and the value of resilience in the business space.Entrepreneurship is a force for goodOver the years, Mike founded or co-founded eight startups, varying from graphic arts, cloud databases, analyst firms, software, and fintech, to a nonprofit. His journey included raising venture capital, experiencing both successes and failures, and serving as an executive at a company through an IPO. He has been through the entire startup to exit journey multiple times. Between startups, Mike consulted for mid-to-large corporations, which led him to work with SWIFT. There, he helped bridge the gap between startups and global banks, creating a competition that introduced fintech unicorns like Wise and Revolut to the industry.Among his other career milestones, he was also invited to join 500 Startups (now known as 500 Global) as an Entrepreneur in Residence. In this role, he helped them to build their fintech acceleration program and became a General Partner of their Fintech Fund.The COVID lockdown became a turning point for Mike. By 2019, he already knew that being a VC wasn’t what he loved most while working directly with founders was.Before the pandemic, his role meant constant travel. His tasks and responsibilities included keynoting conferences, meeting investors, connecting with entrepreneurs, and exploring startup ecosystems worldwide. But when the world shut down, that part of the job disappeared.Mike was forced to slow down and reflect. At that time, he realized what truly mattered: helping others. With decades of experience, he decided to shift his focus from investing to coaching founders and fund managers.According to Mike, entrepreneurship is a force for good. Supporting those building the future became his most fulfilling work.How not to take the wrong pathMike believes both entrepreneurship and venture capital require thinking in long-term cycles, which are often 10 years or more. A single VC fund takes years to raise and another 7 or 10 years to run. As for a venture-backed startup, it typically needs the same timeline to get to liquidity.According to Mike, before diving in, future founders and investors should ask themselves whether they truly love the journey enough to commit a decade (or even more) to it. Success in either path isn’t about the next quarter or year but about embracing those long cycles.For Mike, the way to stay balanced in a professional life is to focus on what brings daily joy.Mike emphasizes the importance of regular self-reflection as a discipline, whether daily, weekly, or monthly. He compares it to customer development, but in this case, you are the product. The process involves asking:Where am I trying to go?What am I learning?What new questions are surfacing as I grow?Just like talking to customers reveals insights, reflecting on your own journey helps uncover where the real value lies. Mike believes this practice builds both confidence and clarity, not just for yourself but for anyone you mentor.Only we ourselves are responsible for our own growth. If we are not controlling our own personal and professional development, then who is?What constitutes a good founder?Mike decided to explore what traits VCs look for in founders and turned to artificial intelligence to help him. He asked ChatGPT to focus specifically on insights from seasoned investors who have backed unicorns. He formulated four key questions:What founder traits do VCs value most and why?What traits make the biggest difference in entrepreneurial success?What early-stage behavioral or psychological signals indicate potential? What tools can help surface those traits?What are the red flags?The exercise highlighted five top traits VCs commonly seek:Visionary leadership. It is the ability to see some versions of the future and inspire others. ChatGPT offered Elon Musk and Steve Jobs as examples of founders with this trait.Exceptional execution. This is a skill of turning vision into reality. Jeff Bezos is a person who has such a skill.Resilience and grit. These traits presuppose the ability to push through setbacks. Here, ChatGPT named Brian Chesky of Airbnb.Deep market insight and domain expertise. They are crucial for disrupting industries. Melanie Perkins of Canva was mentioned here.Adaptability and fast learning. These traits demonstrate your skill of being agile and pivoting quickly when needed. According to ChatGPT, Stewart Butterfield of Slack possesses these traits.Just for fun, Mike also gathered common red flags that cause VCs to pass on deals. He shared them in a room full of VCs and founders and asked them to raise their hands if they had ever rejected a deal for each reason. Every hand went up each time. Here are some of the positions included in the list:Unbalanced teams (all technical or all business team members);Frequent staff turnover;Founders lacking self-awareness;Romantic relationships between co-founders;Founders working on too many projects;Founders with narcissistic tendencies.While discussing this topic, Mike mentioned the research from Defiance Capital, which studied 2,018 unicorn founders in the US and Europe from 2013 to 2023. The findings revealed three common drivers behind unicorn founders’ success:No plan B. These founders were all-in. There was no safety net or fallback. For them, failure wasn’t an option.A chip on the shoulder. They had something to prove, whether to themselves, the world, or both.Unlimited self-belief. They truly believed they could make it happen, no matter the obstacles.According to Mike, these traits often separated unicorn founders from the rest. And namely, they can also be mentioned in the context of another, even broader notion. It is resilience.The power of resilienceWhile talking about resilience and its role in business, Mike mentioned Hummingbird Ventures, one of Europe’s top-performing venture funds. This fund is known for its unique thesis: they invest primarily in founders who are neurodiverse or trauma survivors. This approach is based on the belief that these people see the world differently and possess exceptional resilience.Founders who have overcome extreme challenges (it could be growing up in war-torn regions or rising from refugee camps) often develop the inner strength needed to navigate the tough journey of building a company. Hummingbird sees that experience as a competitive advantage.Learning from failureWhen it comes to failure, its role (and the value of lessons learned) shouldn’t be underestimated.Mike shared a personal story about his fear of public speaking. Early in his career, after his startup was acquired, he found himself a senior executive leading product and technology through an IPO. At his first major organizational meeting, surrounded by lawyers, bankers, and other executives, he froze.At that moment, he realized that he could easily let his team down because of his fear. That became a turning point. From then on, he committed to improving his communication skills, especially in high-stakes settings.Such failures could be very painful. But they often become a catalyst for growth, especially in corporate environments where failure is less tolerated than in the startup world.You can’t control how quickly the market or the world around you changes. That’s a given. The real question is: how fast and how efficiently can you learn? If you, as an individual, a team, or a company, can learn faster and cheaper than the others, your chances of winning go way up.What truly makes the difference is your ability to learn from mistakes. If you can minimize the cost of those mistakes while maximizing the speed of learning, you naturally start moving faster than everyone else. And that’s where the edge comes from.The fintech industry todayIn 2021, the global financial services industry represented about $12.5 trillion in market capitalization. Out of that, only around 2% was fintech. Projections suggest that by 2030, the industry will grow to $22 trillion. But fintech will still only make up about 7% of that total.There’s still a long way to go before financial services are truly transformed by modern technology. Yes, many financial institutions already use technology. However, a lot of solutions are 40 or 50 years old, built on legacy systems that weren’t designed for the digital age.It’s also worth noting that financial services remain one of the most profitable industries on the planet, with gross margins of 18%. That translates to roughly $2.3 trillion in annual profit up for grabs. This is an enormous opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors.If we take some comparatively simple things like retail and small business savings accounts or sending money internationally through platforms like Revolut and Wise, a lot has been already done.Emerging trends in the fintech worldWhat is coming next in the fintech space is much harder but also much more interesting. Technologies like AI, embedded finance, and finally, a clearer global regulatory framework are maturing and could reshape the industry.AI in fintechIn the context of using emerging technologies in fintech, Mike mentioned the findings of the Bank of America research. The research revealed that over the last 20 years productivity across S&P 500 companies skyrocketed. Specifically, the number of employees required to generate $1 million in revenue dropped from about nine people to just over one.And that was even before generative AI tools like ChatGPT became widely accessible.Just imagine how many people global financial institutions employ and then think about the productivity gains that AI could unlock. It can give you a hint of the scale of change that might be coming.TokenizationAnother concept that, according to Mike, looks quite promising is tokenization.When considering tokenization, it is important to set aside speculative crypto. This isn’t about meme coins or hype-driven tokens. Instead, the focus is on real-world assets, like buildings, infrastructure, and commodities.Today, there are an estimated $475 trillion or even more in real-world assets globally. The vast majority of this is still managed through paper-based processes and PDF documents.Digitizing these assets and automating their management could dramatically improve efficiency. Furthermore, tokenization would allow these assets to be fractionalized into much smaller pieces, enabling access to investment opportunities that were previously out of reach for most people.For example, people in Sub-Saharan Africa could invest in a fractional share of Apple or own a small piece of a revenue-generating office building in London.If regulated by strong, modern frameworks, tokenization could unlock a more inclusive and efficient global financial system, where access to high-quality assets is democratized on a global scale.Embedded financeThe idea of embedded finance is something that Mike really likes, particularly in terms of its potential to drive growth in emerging markets. However, he believes that the path to growth in such regions doesn’t solely lie in increasing venture capital investments. While many may advocate for more VC funding, he thinks, the true opportunity lies in deploying more debt into emerging markets.At present, major institutions like the World Bank, IFC, Goldman Sachs, and others are limited to operating with large-scale debt investments, typically in the billions of dollars. This is largely due to the high costs associated with underwriting and the profitability goals these organizations are trying to achieve.The challenge, according to him, is that these large institutions are constrained by the size and scale of their debt, which doesn’t always meet the needs of smaller, more localized markets. At the same time, these markets could greatly benefit from more accessible, tailored financial solutions.Embedded finance could act as a bridge to solve this issue, offering scalable, more adaptable solutions to drive growth without being confined by traditional financial models.VC cycles and key startup challengesWhen it comes to corporate VCs, there are several things they need to be mindful of when looking at the market, founders, and potential unicorns. One of the biggest challenges they face is the timeline mismatch between startups and corporations.Startups often operate on rapid timelines, moving quickly to develop products, secure investments, and scale. For example, a startup may be able to code and pitch a product in a matter of weeks or months. However, corporations typically work on annual or quarterly cycles. As a result, it becomes much more challenging for them to move at the same pace.This timeline mismatch becomes especially evident when a corporate VC is looking to make a major technology investment. The process within a corporation can take a significant amount of time (perhaps 18 months) to make an investment decision, another 18 months for procurement, and another 18 months for deployment. But even within the first 18 months, a startup may not survive due to lack of funding or any other factors.Corporations, on the other hand, often expect to see a return on investment within a couple of quarters or a year. However, early-stage startups typically require a 7 to 10-year horizon before they can generate liquidity.This disconnect between the timelines and expectations of startups and corporations creates significant challenges for both sides. To successfully collaborate with startups, corporate VCs need to recognize these challenges and adjust their expectations. This will help to avoid misunderstandings and missed opportunities.As you can see, there is still a long way to building an ideal environment in this space. Nevertheless, it is precisely such challenges that forge founders and help them reach new heights.The tech world and the startup ecosystem are highly dynamic. Therefore, the ability to adapt and learn from mistakes in the shortest possible time remains one of the most important priorities on the path to success.If you want to know more about what is happening in the tech industry and understand the trends shaping its future, don’t miss the upcoming podcast episodes, where Max Golikov and his guests will continue sharing inspiring insights.

How can tech startups survive today? How to find a good idea that will rock the market? Who can help you to guide your team if you have a limited budget?To discuss these topics, Innovantage podcast host Max Golikov, who is also the CBDO at Sigli, invited Laimonas Sutkus to join him in his studio. Laimonas is a person with robust expertise in helping businesses launch their projects and manage tech teams in such highly competitive fields as AI, fintech, health tech and others.In his career, he has gained experience as a software developer, tech advisor, CTO, and fractional CTO, working with businesses at different stages of their development. In this episode of the Innovantage podcast, Laimonas spoke not only about his professional path and the peculiarities of the tech industry landscape today but also shared valuable insights and practical recommendations for startup founders.Being a Fractional CTO: What does it mean?Laimonas began his fractional career in early 2024. As he admitted, before that he even hadn’t known that such roles exist nowadays. According to him, he discovered the concept by chance through a LinkedIn post from another fractional CTO. This inspired him to explore the field.A fractional CTO operates as a hands-on consultant and provides technical leadership to companies that don’t require a full-time CTO. This role is particularly beneficial for non-technical businesses like marketing agencies and small pharma companies, as well as early-stage tech startups. Such teams may not need a full-time executive but they still require expert guidance to avoid common pitfalls.Unlike a traditional CTO, a fractional CTO is available on a part-time basis. It can be a few hours per day or even just a few hours per week.What is important to highlight here is that this person is not a third-party consultant. This specialist is a full-scale team member, despite the limited hours that he or she devotes to your business per week.This expert helps businesses navigate technical challenges, streamline processes, and make informed decisions.The fractional model extends beyond CTOs to other executive roles, such as fractional CMOs and CFOs. And all these roles follow the same principle. These professionals provide their strategic expertise without being full-time employees.For a little bit less than a year, Laimonas worked as a fractional CTO. Nevertheless, now he has a full-time job. And here are the key pros and cons of a fractional role that he defined.Advantages of being a fractional executiveAmong the benefits, Laimonas highlighted the flexibility and security that come with a fractional career. Fractional employees can choose their projects and work with multiple clients.Moreover, this approach helps to reduce financial risk. If you lose one or two clients, it doesn’t mean that you will lose all your income at once.In other words, a fractional executive operates as a one-person business and can maintain great autonomy.Disadvantages of being a fractional executiveHowever, this independence also comes with challenges. Fractional professionals must handle not just their core expertise but also a wide range of other tasks, including sales, marketing, and client acquisition. All these activities are traditionally managed by entire departments in a business.As a result, Laimonas shared that a significant portion of his time was spent on prospecting, lead generation, and outreach rather than on his actual technical work.For specialists like fractional CMOs, CFOs, or CTOs, the ideal scenario is to focus solely on their expertise. In Laimonas’ case, his passion lies in technology, not in sales or marketing. Constant business development efforts could be very draining and that’s the key disadvantage of this career path.How the AI landscape is changingAs artificial intelligence remains one of the most widely discussed topics today, Max and Laimonas also couldn’t omit it in their conversation.Laimonas joined the AI space long before this technology became mainstream. He has been building AI-based products since 2014.Over the years of his work, he witnessed how AI development has changed with the emergence of large language models like ChatGPT. Previously, AI required hands-on data science, machine learning experimentation, and model deployment. Today, AI is more accessible. Developers can integrate it into products with simple API calls, avoiding the need for complex model training. This shift has allowed businesses to incorporate AI quickly and transform non-AI products into AI-powered solutions sometimes in a matter of hours.According to Laimonas, earlier many startups approached AI as a standalone product rather than a tool. Laimonas mentioned Rabbit R1 and AI Pin as examples. These are gadgets designed to function as AI-powered assistants. Nevertheless, they failed. It happened because they lacked a strong foundational business model.Today, it has become obvious: AI is not a product in itself but a feature that can enhance existing solutions.Laimonas believed that in the future AI will continue to be a powerful tool for gaining a competitive advantage. However, success will depend on integrating AI into solid business ideas. It will work much better than just relying on AI as the core offering.AI market realitiesAccording to the article published by Sequoia, one of the biggest VC firms, the vast amount of capital poured into AI-based solutions now requires an additional $500–600 billion in revenue across these companies for investments to break even. At the moment, it’s difficult to say whether this target is achievable or not. However, it brightly highlights the significant financial pressure on the AI sector.Laimonas mentioned that the gap between business profitability and AI investments exists not only for startups but also for major players like Google, Meta, and Microsoft. These tech giants lead AI development today because only they can afford the immense costs of training large-scale models. Such efforts often require tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.Despite such a market situation, investors remain optimistic. This can be seen in the steady growth of the S&P 500 index, which tracks the stock performance of 500 of the largest companies listed on the US stock exchanges. However, here we can observe a notable concentration on the so-called “Magnificent Seven”. Seven major tech firms (Microsoft, Meta, Tesla, Amazon, Apple, NVIDIA, and Alphabet) make up nearly 30%-35% of the index.The last time when such a concentration was observed was in the dot-com bubble era.AI: Is it just another bubble?Laimonas sees obvious similarities between the current AI hype and the early 2000s internet boom. The internet was also a revolutionary technology. It went through a speculative bubble that eventually crashed before stabilizing into long-term growth.Could this happen to AI as well? The expert believes AI is following a similar trajectory. There was an initial boom. Now we can expect a likely correction that will ultimately result in a lasting impact.According to Laimonas, AI is definitely a very good technology. Nevertheless, it is already being weaponized. Deepfake videos of world leaders, AI-generated propaganda, and automated disinformation campaigns are becoming widespread. Large language models, when integrated into social media platforms, further amplify misinformation. That’s why it’s also worth taking into account this “darker” side of AI while analyzing its role in our society.The value of feedback for startup foundersLaimonas emphasized that one of the most important lessons for new founders is accepting that their initial ideas can be flawed. In the beginning, a startup’s vision is rarely perfect, and founders must be willing to refine it. Instead of treating an idea as something sacred, they should focus on building a minimum viable product (MVP), testing it, and gathering feedback.The reality is that most early concepts will fail. However, failure is part of the process. Founders must continuously iterate. This should include seeking feedback, adjusting the product, and repeating the cycle. All this should be done again and again until product-market fit is achieved. The key is to remain adaptable and recognize when something gains traction.However, not all feedback is equally valuable. Some users may explicitly state why they don’t like a product. For example, they may explain that they stopped using a product because the price is too high or because it doesn’t address some of their needs. That’s a very helpful type of feedback.Nevertheless, more often, the feedback is implicit: users simply don’t engage. In such cases, founders must investigate why it has happened. This requires reaching out to former or inactive users, analyzing usage patterns, and identifying the reasons behind low adoption.Deep, specific feedback is crucial to making the necessary improvements that lead to success.Why full-stack for early startups?In early-stage startups, achieving product-market fit requires rapid iteration cycles. The faster a startup can implement and test changes, the higher its chances of success will be. The chosen technology plays a crucial role in this process. It can either accelerate development or become a bottleneck. It is the responsibility of a technical co-founder, fractional CTO, or experienced consultant to ensure the right technological choices are made to support fast iteration.Traditionally, technical teams are structured with dedicated backend developers, frontend developers, QA specialists, and sometimes mobile engineers. While this model worked well in the past, it is often too slow for modern startups that need a competitive edge.As a response to such market needs, full-stack frameworks and technologies have started gaining popularity. They integrate multiple aspects of development into a single streamlined system.Frameworks like Next.js and Vercel provide infrastructure, frontend, and backend capabilities in one codebase. As a result, they enable faster deployment and iteration. However, these technologies come with some pitfalls, such as vendor lock-in. To fully unlock Next.js’s benefits, software developers often need to use Vercel, which can be costly and restrictive.Other frameworks, such as Remix, offer an alternative approach. For instance, Remix allows developers to write frontend and backend logic within the same file. This might seem disorganized at first. However, following strong design principles can result in a well-structured and efficient system.A single full-stack developer in such a case can often outperform a traditional five-person team consisting of separate frontend, backend, and QA engineers. The key advantage lies in eliminating communication overhead and reducing knowledge gaps. In other words, one developer can deliver all features without dependencies on other specialists.This shift toward full-stack development, combined with AI-assisted coding tools, significantly shortens iteration cycles. Features that previously took a full day to implement can now be developed in a fraction of the time.For startups aiming to stay agile and efficient, prioritizing generalist developers, who can build entire features independently, is more effective than hiring narrow specialists. Specialization should come later when the team grows to a size where dedicated roles in infrastructure, frontend, backend, and QA become necessary. Initially, focusing on generalists ensures maximum speed, flexibility, and resource efficiency.Balancing the concentration on today and tomorrowStartups must strike a balance between focusing on immediate survival and planning for the future. While long-term vision is important, over-prioritizing future scalability at the expense of present execution can be fatal. If resources are not managed well and iteration cycles are too slow, a startup risks running out of cash before it ever reaches the future it envisions.The priority should always be profitability and survival.Scalability issues, expansion challenges, and the need for team specialization are all positive problems. They signal that the business is working, clients are coming in, and revenue is growing. Growth problems indicate success, whereas failure to manage short-term sustainability can lead to an early shutdown.Some kind of uncertainty is an inherent part of the tech industry. Tech teams constantly need to solve scalability problems. While the nature of these problems evolves, the challenge itself never disappears. Mature IT leaders and software developers must recognize this uncertainty and design solutions, architectures, and infrastructures that accommodate future changes.A well-structured codebase should reflect the uncertainties of the business. It must be flexible enough to adapt to different directions as the company expands. Designing with adaptability in mind ensures that as business needs shift, the technology can keep up without requiring a complete overhaul.Where to find the right mentorship?For early startups, it is also vital to have people who will professionally guide them at least at the initial stages of their development.While many mentorship services are available online, they often lack a very important element. This key element is trust. It is difficult to assess a mentor’s true experience, expertise, and quality of services without firsthand knowledge.Instead of relying solely on external help from the internet, startup founders should first turn to their personal networks, including friends, former colleagues, business partners, and industry acquaintances. These trusted connections can either offer direct guidance or introduce founders to experienced professionals within their networks.Human connections are invaluable. In the startup world, relationships often open doors to mentorship, partnerships, and new opportunities that wouldn’t be accessible otherwise. Entrepreneurs should prioritize building and maintaining strong professional relationships, as these connections often prove more beneficial than any formal mentorship services.The journey of building a tech startup is filled with challenges: from finding the right idea to managing scalability. According to Laimonas Sutkus, flexibility and readiness for iterations are among the key components that can drive a tech startup to success.Want to learn more about technologies and their role in the business world? Don’t miss the next episodes of the Innovantage podcast where its host Max will welcome new experts in his studio.

One of the key goals of the Innovantage podcast is to let its audience learn more about the latest tech trends and explore how they are transforming the business landscape. And the recent episode serves exactly this purpose. This time, the topic of serverless technology has taken center stage.The podcast host and the CBDO at Sigli Max Golikov invited Michael Dowden to speak about the decreasing significance of servers today, as well as the benefits businesses can gain from this shift.Michael is a technology leader, international speaker, and serverless expert with more than 30 years of experience in software development and consulting. Of course, serverless technology hasn’t been around for that long. It started gaining adoption nearly 15 years ago. Given this, Michael has a very good understanding of how the shift to the new technology has happened. Moreover, he explained the reasons why businesses started ditching their servers and what are the cases when using servers is still feasible.This and much more were discussed in that episode and the most interesting ideas we’ve gathered for you in this article.Serverless computing: What is it?The core concept of serverless doesn’t mean there are no servers. They are still there, managed by providers, not by businesses directly. The idea of this technology represents an additional layer of abstraction. Everything started with servers, then moved to virtual machines, followed by Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). Serverless takes it a step further by providing only the essential operating containers required to run your tasks.One key aspect of serverless is Function-as-a-Service (FaaS). Similar to microservices, each function is managed and scaled independently. You can build, deploy, and scale individual units of code without worrying about the entire system. If traffic spikes, serverless platforms scale automatically by creating copies of the function to handle the load. Once the traffic decreases, the platform adjusts by scaling back.With serverless, you are charged only for the actual computing time used, and you don’t have to manage the infrastructure yourself. The platform scales according to your needs, making it efficient and cost-effective.In other words, with serverless technology, you are basically outsourcing a part of your infrastructure to make it lighter, leaner and more responsive, better in every possible way.Michael shared his experience of transitioning to serverless technology while working at startups. His goal was to find cost-effective solutions that would scale as the businesses grew. The first shift to serverless was not planned. It just happened naturally. Michael’s approach to software had always been user-focused. It means that he starts building the front-end and UX to quickly prove concepts and gather feedback from users.One of the startups he worked with began as a progressive web application. As the product evolved, the team realized they needed a backend, and serverless was the logical choice to support their growth.Downsides of going serverlessThough the idea of serverless may sound highly appealing, businesses also should stay aware of possible downsides.They become obvious when you need to execute control at a low system level in a very specific way. While you can adjust parameters like memory allocation on platforms like GCP, AWS, or Azure, you don’t have full access to the underlying system. Additionally, you might lose visibility into the scaling process. For example, it may be impossible for you to control how many instances of your function are running at any given time. This lack of proper control over scaling and thresholds can be a challenge.Another issue is the cold start problem. When a function is triggered, it often needs to spin up, typically using something like a Docker container. This setup takes time (it can be a couple of seconds). This leads to a lag before the function can serve traffic, which might be noticeable to users.Observability becomes crucial in serverless environments. Without direct access to the system, you need to rely on external tools to monitor your code and infrastructure. If an issue arises, it can be hard to pinpoint the cause without proper monitoring in place.Serverless is great for small, independently managed functions. But it has limitations for long-running services (often capped at 5 minutes) or applications requiring extremely low latency. While serverless offers massive scalability, the slight latency in ramping up can be a concern.When is serverless a good option for you? Serverless-first approachAs with any technology, it’s essential to carefully consider your use case before choosing serverless.Michael admitted that he advocates a serverless-first approach, especially for new projects. He believes that most companies and projects should start with serverless by default. When you are unsure about the application or just starting out, serverless should be the initial choice. You should consider a different architecture, only when you understand why serverless might not be suitable. This can be relevant, not for the entire project but for its specific parts.One key reason for implementing the serverless-first approach is that this technology allows you to build faster. You spend less time setting up infrastructure. This enables you to start running your project quickly. Moreover, this technology scales automatically. So if your project experiences unexpected traffic spikes, it can handle them with minimal effort.By starting with the serverless-first approach, you can focus on getting your product in front of users while managing traffic. This gives you the flexibility to learn what works and what doesn’t, without worrying about infrastructure bottlenecks.Michael also mentioned the following case.Amazon is well-known for its use of serverless infrastructure in its video streaming service. The company once published an article explaining how they stopped using serverless for one component of that service. However, the article was widely misinterpreted. Due to the provoked reaction, Amazon eventually retracted it. Despite the misunderstanding, the article was a great technical explanation of that decision.The company explained that the specific part of the project had some requirements that their serverless infrastructure couldn’t meet. So, they changed the architecture of just that one component. This helped them save money, improve the user experience, and make the system more efficient.According to Michael, this is a perfect example of the serverless-first approach. Amazon was able to build and run the service in front of customers for months or even years before realizing they needed a different solution. They had the time to learn, design a better approach, and successfully implement it. This, he believes, is a huge success story for serverless.Value of serverless computingOne of the key economic advantages of serverless, especially for startups, is its cost-efficiency. Many startups invest heavily in infrastructure before acquiring a single customer. With serverless, infrastructure costs remain low until traffic increases, allowing expenses to scale with revenue. This model ensures that businesses only pay for what they use, aligning costs with growth.Another major benefit is flexibility. Unlike monolithic architectures, where components are tightly integrated, serverless systems are highly modular and event-driven. Functions, databases, and services operate independently, making it easier to scale, reorganize, or optimize specific parts of the system as needed. If two functions need closer integration, they can be easily adjusted without restructuring the entire architecture.Starting with a modular serverless approach allows businesses to adapt more easily over time. It’s much simpler to merge independent services when necessary than to untangle tightly coupled components in a monolithic system. This adaptability makes serverless an ideal choice for companies looking to scale efficiently while maintaining agility.Concept of “good” codeAccording to Michael, a key test of adaptability in software is whether a piece of code can be removed without disrupting the rest of the application. It doesn’t matter whether you need to introduce a new implementation, update a feature, or improve functionality, in most cases, code will need to be replaced. Flexibility is essential, and well-structured code should allow for seamless modifications.In a modular architecture, where functions are deployed independently, removing or replacing a function is straightforward. If a service is no longer needed, it can be deleted without affecting other components. If an update is required, a new function can be introduced without major disruptions.However, sometimes the issue lies not in the function itself but in the process behind it. To improve user experience, it is often beneficial to handle certain operations in the background while allowing users to continue to the next step. Even when latency is a concern, effective solutions can mask delays and ensure a smooth and responsive experience.Is serverless technology only for startups?While serverless computing is often associated with startups, it is also highly valuable for large enterprises (if not even more). Some of the biggest adopters of serverless technology are actually the companies that provide it: Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure. These tech giants didn’t create serverless computing for startups alone. They use it extensively themselves.One of the primary reasons serverless is so beneficial at scale is agility. It allows enterprises to deploy new features and services without being directly tied to complex infrastructure work. While these companies invest heavily in infrastructure and employ some of the best hardware specialists in the world, their service developers don’t need to focus on hardware management. Serverless enables them to build and deploy applications faster and keep innovation cycles short and efficient.Large enterprises also often need to deal with ongoing legacy system upgrades. Many companies operate in a continuous cycle of replacing outdated platforms with modern solutions. Serverless offers a strategic way to introduce modular, scalable services into these transitions. By gradually integrating serverless technology, businesses can break apart monolithic architectures, reduce infrastructure overhead, and create a more flexible and efficient system. And all this is possible without the need for a full-scale overhaul.Future of serverless technologyA few years ago, serverless computing was surrounded by significant hype and some people believed that serverless could be used for everything (which is not true). Now, this hype seems to be over as we have reached a so-called plateau. Some developers may not be familiar with it at all. However, serverless architecture is not a passing trend. It is here to stay. The question is not whether serverless will remain relevant but rather how widely it will be adopted and in what form.In the coming years, more companies are expected to adopt a serverless-first approach, where serverless is the default choice unless specific needs dictate otherwise. However, this shift will not happen across the board, as different businesses have varying infrastructure requirements.It’s difficult to make industry-wide predictions, as serverless is just one of many architectural choices available. Over time, the term “serverless” itself may fade, with the focus shifting toward broader cloud-native patterns rather than a distinct category.Another key area of change could be the pricing model. Today, serverless operates primarily on a pay-as-you-use basis. This provides cost efficiency and scalability. However, companies may also see opportunities to reduce expenses by purchasing capacity in bulk. This will be quite similar to traditional cloud computing models where reserving resources upfront can be more cost-effective. This shift could help businesses optimize spending while still leveraging the benefits of serverless technology.Apart from this, Michael explained that serverless computing will continue evolving. It’s highly likely that we will see new patterns emerging to streamline its adoption. Now each company needs to invent its own approach. Nevertheless, established best practices and frameworks could guide serverless implementations and make this technology an even more viable option for businesses of all sizes.Challenges and opportunities presented by emerging technologiesWhile speaking about the impact that new technologies may have on the world, Michael stated that the consequences of the adoption of some innovations can be quite worrying.Machine learning (ML) has been around for decades, but large language models (LLMs) are still relatively new. While they have specific strengths and weaknesses, the current hype makes it difficult to fully assess their most effective use cases. As the technology matures, a clearer understanding will emerge regarding what LLMs are truly efficient at and where their limitations lie.Beyond technical capabilities, a critical aspect of evaluating any architectural decision is its impact on the world. And here we should consider them not just in terms of performance and cost but also sustainability. Energy consumption, carbon footprint, and ecological impact are all essential considerations.The ability to make informed decisions about minimizing negative effects and amplifying positive ones is crucial. However, when it comes to LLMs, this level of control is still lacking, which raises concerns about their long-term viability from an environmental perspective.Serverless computing, on the other hand, offers a more sustainable approach to infrastructure. It inherently optimizes resource usage, scaling only when needed. Running dedicated servers, by contrast, can lead to wasteful energy consumption, making serverless a more viable option for reducing carbon footprints.How to choose the right infrastructureAt the end of their discussion, Max also asked Michael to share his recommendations for businesses that need to choose the type of infrastructure for their systems.According to the expert, your team’s existing skill set should be a key factor. Of course, it’s possible to push a team to learn, adapt, and grow. However, leveraging their current expertise can often be the most efficient approach. If your team has deep knowledge in a specific area, it might make sense to build around that strength rather than forcing a transition to an unfamiliar technology stack.Michael mentioned that some companies make infrastructure decisions that require them to hire entirely new tech teams just to support the shift. While this can bring in fresh expertise, it also introduces risks, costs, and potential disruptions.Another crucial consideration is risk mitigation. Relying on a single location for server management or cloud services can create vulnerabilities caused by outages, security breaches, or physical disasters. A robust disaster recovery strategy is essential to ensure business continuity.For high availability and resilience, companies should consider multi-cloud strategies. This could mean using:Multiple cloud providers to reduce dependency on a single vendor;Containers deployed across different cloud environments.A multi-cloud approach can significantly enhance reliability and performance. Nevertheless, it requires investment in tools, expertise, and governance to manage complexity effectively.As you can see, the implementation of every technology (even the most promising one) can be associated with a range of pitfalls. And it is always better to stay aware of them beforehand.If you want to learn more about tech innovations that are expected to change the world, don’t miss the next episodes of the Innovantage podcast!

One of the goals of the Innovantage podcast is to help businesses better understand what is happening in the digital world and how they can leverage tech advancements to improve their processes and get benefits in the long run. This episode fully aligns with his goal as it is dedicated to digital transformation at enterprises and the most efficient approaches to it.To cover this topic, Max Golikov, the podcast host and the CBDO at Sigli, invited Stijn Viaene to join the discussion.Currently, Stijn is a professor and partner at Vlerick Business School & KU Leuven. One of the core subjects that he is working on is exploring the best ways to create business value with investments in technology. His career started 25 years ago with research on insurance fraud. But some years later, when the concept of digital transformation entered the game, Stijn focused on it. Now, for more than a decade already, he has been working in this domain, which allowed him to get great experience and an impressively deep understanding of the peculiarities of this process.What is digital transformation?Digital transformation has become a hot topic these days. However, in many companies, there is still a lot of confusion and disagreement on what it actually means. For some of them, this process presupposes the implementation of tech solutions into their operations. Nevertheless, just using technology, even the latest one, doesn’t make this usage transformational.According to Stijn, digital transformation is a strategic way to respond to the threats of not surviving and the opportunity to thrive in a digital economy. The main idea behind the implementation of any tech solutions should be changing an organization for the better.What is the key difference between digital transformation projects and just tech projects?Stijn explained that digital transformation projects are not only new solutions that you invest in. They are not just shiny things that may look exciting or trendy. They should always be based on a strategy and a clear vision of how you will reshape your enterprise in the process of their realization.Of course, today, when there are so many new products and tools, businesses may be confused with all this variety. However, implementing all of them at once won’t bring any value. It’s much more important not just to follow all the trends but to create a well-thought-out plan for a long-term sustainable transformation.How to plan transformation in a quickly changing tech world?It’s quite obvious thing that the digital world is very dynamic. Given this, people who are preparing for digital transformation in their organizations have to start looking at things in the right way to find the best approach to such changes. Highlighting this, Stijn shared three tips.Acceptance of the reality. We are living in the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) world. We can’t deny that there is a lot of turbulence these days and it is impossible to hide or run away from it. There is no sense in waiting for someone to come up with a magical recipe and solve all the issues. If you get to navigate that turbulence better than your competitors, then you will win the game. That’s why the first thing to do is to accept that the world is turbulent. But at the same time, this situation provides a lot of opportunities to win the competition.Systemic view on changes. You also need to understand correctly the nature of the change you will get yourself into. This nature of the change is systemic. It means that digital transformation is not just a task for your technology department or marketing team. Digital transformation should cover all elements and levels of your organization.The right mindset. One of the worst things that people can do at the beginning of such a transformation journey is to look for an easy way out. There is no single tool kit for conducting transformation. People should understand that there is a lot of work to be done and be ready for it.Digital transformation is not something that you can do in a year or two. This process won’t stop. It’s not just a project with clear timeframes. There will be a continuous stream of digital opportunities and threats that will come in the future and, as Stijn explained, there won’t be any end to it.Challenges and peculiarities of digital transformation for SMEsTransformation journeys for large enterprises and small and medium-sized businesses are quite different. This is explained by the peculiarities of such organizations, as well as the opportunities that are available for them.The main difference is related to the fact that smaller businesses are more restricted in resources. Given this, the need to focus on some projects and initiatives is bigger for them. They can’t allocate much attention to many things at once. This can become a difficulty for such companies.But at the same time, they have more opportunities to work in partnerships with other organizations. Smaller businesses are usually more open to joining forces with others than big corporations that usually perceive the necessity to collaborate with other market players as a weakness or as a chance to dominate.In reality, for many businesses, the strength lies exactly in alliances and partnerships in the ecosystem of equals.Partnerships can (and should) be win-win, which means that both parties need to be not just looking for the benefits but also willing to invest their efforts and resources in such common projects.Balancing short-term wins with long-term strategyOne of the major challenges in digital transformation for everyone is overcoming the mindset that prioritizes short-term gains. Many organizations strive for immediate results, often at the expense of long-term value. This mindset is antithetical to successful digital transformation because true success requires consistent investment in infrastructure, processes, and cultural change.However, completely ignoring short-term wins is not the solution either. Human psychology demands instant gratification. Therefore, offering periodic quick wins can help maintain motivation and engagement. The key is to frame these short-term achievements as steps toward the larger goal, ensuring they align with the long-term strategy.How to change mindset at an organizationStijn highlighted that changing an organization’s mindset is one of the hardest challenges leaders face during digital transformation. The key is not to fight the existing culture but to work with it. Leaders must identify the gap between the current mindset and the ideal mindset, and then carefully plan strategies to bridge that gap. This involves choosing battles wisely because some areas may not be worth changing just at the very beginning, while others will require significant focus.Good leaders also should realize that they cannot change everyone. It’s essential to identify individuals who are resistant to change and find ways to either confine their influence or part ways if necessary. It is much better to spend energy on those who are open to change as well as on new hires who will bring fresh perspectives and align with the desired mindset. Such people can act as agents of transformation.Talent remains one of the most valuable resources for organizations undergoing digital transformation. The global competition for skilled workers, particularly in tech, is high. Organizations need a clear talent strategy to attract, retain, and develop the skills required for success in the digital age.Short-term layoffs for cost-cutting might seem appealing but they always come with risks. Firing thousands today with the hope of rehiring tomorrow is neither fair nor sustainable. It can negatively affect the company’s reputation and lead to a loss of critical talent to competitors.AI: Yes or No for digital transformation?According to Stijn, currently, we are at a moment when a lot of people realize that certain assumptions about AI that they might have made in the past are no longer necessarily true.One of such assumptions is related to how AI can be applied. Many of us used to think that people will always be responsible for everything that involves creativity and curiosity, while technology will perform some routine and boring work.However, since 2012–2013, when the world just started talking about digital transformation, this illusion has gradually disappeared. Now, with such models like ChatGPT, significantly more things than we expected are possible.Today we can hear the brightest writers say the best poems that they read in the last couple of years were written by an AI. This proves that AI actually can do things that are based on creativity.It’s interesting that in the context of discussing the potential of this technology, there are also a lot of talks about the nature of our humanity, our role, and our real differences from AI. There are also questions related to the ethical principles underlying the use of this technology and the risks that are onboarded by companies and societies when introducing AI.Stijn believes that before starting to use artificial intelligence, we need to find answers to a row of important questions.How will we use AI? Will we just put it in the function of automating work or will we try to prioritize the augmentation of humans in the work environment?Actually, the second option doesn’t exclude automation. However, it puts automation at the level of support for augmentation. Here, Stijn stressed that the business cases for the augmentation of AI will be totally different from the business cases for AI automation.People like Elon Musk have a quite transformative vision of the future. They have already tried to build entire factories that were expected to run with zero workers. Such factories didn’t work. But that’s not because the people behind such projects didn’t believe in such projects. That’s just because the technology was not yet ready.In the future, it will be vital for the leadership and companies to show their real stance on the relationship between human workers and technology. That’s an important point that will demonstrate their vision of the future not only for their businesses but also for society in general.If a lot of companies follow Musk’s principles, the distribution of wealth in the world will be incredibly uneven. Based on their vision, companies define in what technologies they will invest. The link between these choices and the survival of companies becomes very tight.Stijn explained that if he had to make a decision regarding such investments today, he would put money into transforming a company into a learning organization. In such an organization, everyone strongly believes that learning is part of their job.Top tips for digital transformation consultantsToday, a lot of companies that are planning digital transformation, invite third-party consultants or companies to guide them through this journey. As Stijn quite often acts as such a coach and consultant, Max asked him to provide practical recommendations to those people who are employed for such tasks.Tip 1. The main thing that any company providing such services should do is to prepare a really good answer to one question: “What makes you the best digital transformation partner for your customers?”. And what is even more important is that the answer shouldn’t differ when the same question is asked to any employee at this company.Tip 2. As a consultant, you need to have, demonstrate, and help to develop certain mindsets. Given this, consultants shouldn’t say “yes” to everything a customer asks them for. Consultants should be ready to be sparing partners. They need to be critically constructive. They should walk away when they really think that something is not going to work, while customers still insist on their own vision. It can be very tough because some good money might be involved. Nevertheless, namely, this can help to create the right reputation.Tip 3. There’s also competition between consultants. That’s why it is very important to stand out from the row of companies with similar services. To do this, it is required to establish close contact with customers and make them part of your tribe.Recommendations for executivesStijn understands the needs and challenges of all parties that can be involved in the process of digital transformation. In the discussion with Maxim, he also shared his ideas that can be helpful for executives who are planning to start digital transformation at their organizations.Your benchmark for whatever is good should be outside the company. Never think that you have all the people you need around the table. What is good often lies beyond the boundaries of your enterprise. That’s why you need to create your strategy and set your goals based on what you see around the organization, not inside.The right mindset matters not only for consultants but for executives as well. It’s very important to make transformational changes part of it.One more vital task is to balance the following paradox. As a great leader, on the one hand, you will be expected to come up with your own vision and be able to inspire people. But on the other hand, you also need to be humble. You need to be able to listen to the outside world, listen to your people, and see the existing weaknesses in your organization to define how they can be transformed. You should find the balance between humility and vision.Wrapping upAt first glance, it may seem that digital transformation is mainly about technology. However, as Stijn Viaene explained, successful digital transformation is not only about that. It’s also about people, their mindsets, and their approach to change. By focusing on vision, talent, and strategic balance, organizations can navigate the complexities of digital transformation and position themselves for sustainable success in the digital age.If you want to find out more details of this conversation, we recommend you listen to the full version of this podcast. And to learn more about business and technology in the modern world, do not miss the next episodes of the Innovantage podcast hosted by Max Golikov.

In recent years, AI has maintained its position as one of the most promising and widely discussed technologies. Interestingly, it attracts the attention not only of technical experts but also of people far removed from the world of technology. Why is this happening? What is driving the hype around AI? To discuss these and many other questions, Maxim Golikov, the host of the Innovantage podcast and the CBDO at Sigli, invited AI experts to his studio. The guests of this episode were William De Prêtre, Head of AI at AllKind Group, and Artem Pochechuev, Head of Data and AI at Sigli.Both of them have been working with artificial intelligence for many years. During their careers, they have observed different stages of AI development. For this episode, they agreed to share their vision of what is happening with this technology now and what we can expect to see in the years to come. They also explained the key challenges that organizations may face when integrating AI into their solutions. These insights will be of great help to everyone who is considering the implementation of AI in their companies now or in the future.Education as the major step toward AI introductionAs both Artem and William have incredibly rich experience in working with AI projects at their companies, Maxim asked them about the most important preconditions for successful AI implementation. Their answers may seem surprising to a huge part of the podcast’s audience. Both experts mentioned that the first thing that should be done before bringing AI to people is educating them on what AI actually is. If you just ask random people about their understanding of artificial intelligence, they will say that it is ChatGPT. In reality, AI and its use cases go much beyond this.The problem is that today a lot of people who want to use AI have very limited knowledge of this technology. As a result, they can’t find the best application for it. However, using AI just because that’s AI is the wrong way.AI itself has become very efficient. But it is not necessary to apply it everywhere. A lot of solutions can work without it. According to William, if you can solve something with just your high school statistics course, then solve it with this knowledge and not with AI. This will let you use your AI resources for something that really requires AI.The term “AI” has become a powerful marketing tool. You can perfectly sell something by just saying that it has AI even if it doesn’t use this technology at all.As Artem noted, the first thing when it comes to decision-making regarding the implementation of something new should be awareness. To adopt something, to decide that you need something, to start planning something, you need to be aware of that. That’s why this education should be company-wide. Not only potential users but also decision-makers should be educated on tech-related questions.The second thing that you should focus on is the process of AI implementation. To implement this technology, you can’t avoid having tech-savvy people on board. These people should be aware of AI and be ready to go deeper and deeper into AI topics. A lot of businesses prefer to have a reliable technology partner. Or they have a choice to grow their own engineers who will be able to cope with all the required AI-related tasks. Moreover, there should be specialists who will help the company define the right purposes and priorities for their AI projects.How to introduce a new tech solutionAt the same time when you bring something new to managers and want them to let you implement some new solution, you should be ready to show them the full potential of this innovation. It is vital to explain everything in simple terms in order to let everyone fully understand your ideas. Managers do not need to know technical details. But they need to know what value they can get with the introduction of some new technologies.It doesn’t matter who will bring a new idea to the table: tech experts, business people, or external partners. What does matter is how people adopt it. How do they understand it? How quickly do they apply it to real work? How do they avoid potential risks? It doesn’t matter where exactly the implementation process starts. It is much more important how you continue with that.William also mentioned that the success of solutions often depends on the contributions of different teams. His company builds innovative products for students with different needs, like the Web2Speech extension that can read text content aloud. That’s why the success of such projects is preconditioned by the interplay between input coming from engineers, input coming from people from the education sphere, and input coming from management. There is constant interchange, which is required to have success in the AI market.Main challengeSpeaking about edtech solutions, William highlighted one very important aspect that many people can forget. Such solutions deal with children’s data. That’s why privacy laws, GDPR, the AI act, and other related regulations become very important.Intuitively, you may know that anonymizing your data is crucial. But practically, this will greatly complicate a lot of things for you.However, you can’t avoid taking care of data protection. It is really necessary because your solution will work with tons and tons of very sensitive data. And of course, you can’t let it leak because this situation will kill your reputation.The more widespread AI becomes, the more attention companies need to pay to data security and privacy protection.Unfortunately, that is something that engineers tend to overlook because they are focused on making AI perform in the right way and may forget about the value of some data for people.How to get ready for working with dataAccording to Artem, quite often, people underestimate the significance of data in AI in general. However, it plays the most important role. If there is no data, there is no AI. Without it, you can’t train your AI/ML models that grow into a large language model (LLM). You can’t train anything if you have no data. That’s why data comes first.One of the most crucial steps that are required for AI adoption is shifting to the data-centric direction. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what companies often miss.Of course, a lot of people have heard about AI but they perceive it as some kind of a jack-in-the-box that can just jump out and do everything you need. But it doesn’t work this way. AI should be trained with data before it can do anything for you.In this context, William mentioned one of his company’s projects known under its code name Bulbasaur. It is an AI tutor that can assist teachers. It can be fed with course materials. And namely, these materials and their quality will show how good your tool is. If the solution doesn’t have enough data, it will not be able to answer your question. But this situation doesn’t characterize your solution itself. It just shows that you haven’t provided it with relevant data.Without sufficient data, it simply won’t work.This principle is applied to any AI-related task. It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about predictions or clusterization. All such tasks will be performed on data.Even if you want AI to reformat your presentation, you need to feed it with your thesis, abstracts, and other presentations first.How to define your AI needs correctlyArtem explained that he usually splits the AI needs into two categories: an internal track and an external track. An internal track is all about tools that can help your employees perform their usual duties more efficiently and bring more benefits to the company. Another thing is projects that you as a company sell to your customers. Here, it’s important to understand whether you can improve your projects with AI tools.Being at the crossroads as a decision maker you need to choose which way to go. It’s vital to clearly detect the pains of potential users. This will give you an understanding of the exact tasks that your solution should perform. At the same time, you also need to talk to engineers to gather their opinions on how such tasks can be solved with tech solutions.Nevertheless, the introduction of innovations does not always go smoothly. William said that you can also face resistance to change and it’s not just because you are offering AI solutions. In his practice, there were similar cases with cloud services. When his company started moving solutions to the cloud, a lot of customers were quite confused by such a decision. Nevertheless, now people complain quite a lot about their non-cloud solutions.Given this, it’s possible to assume that at some point somebody will be not satisfied with tools that won’t have AI.You should also be ready for situations when it is not feasible to continue a project that seemed to be a good one at the beginning. It may happen because there are not enough resources for it or because it is not fully supported by your company. William advised not to throw it away but to put it aside. It may be still viable sometime later and you will be able to return to it.Practical tips for AI implementationAt the end of their discussion, Maxim asked the experts to share their recommendations with those who want to start their journey with AI.“Surround yourself with good people. Educate everybody. Find good partners,” William said. He recommended exploring all available options. “The path to heaven is clear. Go ahead and build your ladder. So even if you’re not in heaven yet, at least you can hear the angels singing,” he added.According to Artem, the best way is to grow professionals inside a company and get their expertise. He explained that today many people are ready to train you to work with AI. But in reality they just want to get easy money. That’s not what a successful education is. You need to have a decent person who is able to go deep and share the knowledge. This is the most effective way to educate people all around you and people in the company.William also highlighted the importance of industry conferences and organizations that support tech companies. Sometimes they can provide funding or help you get into contact with the right people.AI future: What is it?It’s interesting to see how people’s opinions about AI are changing over time. Initially, teachers voiced a lot of concerns about children using ChatGPT for their homework. Now some teachers in Belgium explain to high school students how various types of AI work and help them build small AI projects using off-the-shelf components. All this indicates that quite soon we will have a new generation for whom AI will be just part of their everyday life.Of course, it’s very hard to predict the future, especially in something that is moving so fast as AI. Nevertheless, it’s possible to make some general assumptions based on what is happening now.For example, according to William, there will be far more autonomous systems and self-driving cars. But he doesn’t think that they will come from Tesla as there are other car manufacturers that are already far more advanced in their autonomous technologies. Apart from this, there will be more autonomous drones used for military purposes, as well as AI personal assistance agent systems, in which small dedicated agents will work together to solve bigger problems.Nevertheless, William hopes that we won’t see more AI-generated images in the future. According to him, an AI-generated Hollywood blockbuster won’t be the best idea. He said that we should assign our boring tasks to AI, while more creative, fun work should be still performed by people.Artem added that we should perceive generative AI as a tool, not more or less.As for predictions, he also said that it is quite useless to make them. Right now, there are a lot of talks about AI hallucinations but 3 years ago we didn’t even know what it could be.That’s why when somebody is trying to invent any framework protecting us from the vicious AI of the future, it is mainly just a waste of resources. The future may turn out to be different from what we expect now.Wrapping upArtificial intelligence is a highly potential and powerful technology that, with the right approach, can help us solve many tasks of different types.However, as the experts advised, we shouldn’t use a microscope to hammer nails.Today there are plenty of things people are trying to solve with AI. But in reality, such things do not need any sophisticated approaches and can be solved much more easily.One of the core things required for successful AI adoption and implementation is comprehensive education of people on the basic questions related to this technology. It’s vital to know what AI is and how it can be used to bring benefits to your organization.The Innovantage podcast has a similar role. It helps to increase the awareness of the audience on various business and tech topics with a focus on AI and its capabilities. If you want to learn more, do not miss our next episodes!

Have you ever dreamt about your own AI assistant that will know everything about you and will be able to do some tasks instead of you? This can become a reality even in the near future and that’s one of the topics discussed in the 9th episode of the Innovantage podcast. The podcast host and Sigli’s CBDO Maxim Golikov invited to his studio Maarten Verschuere, a data and AI professional with more than 20 years of experience in this sphere.Maarten spoke about his successful project Clever, which was later acquired by Zoovu Ltd, and his new startup MentX.ai. Moreover, he explained the power of emerging technologies and shared practical recommendations for entrepreneurs who are starting their business journeys.In this article, we will mention the key ideas voiced in this insightful conversation. But if you want to get more details, we invite you to our YouTube channel, where you will find the full video version. MentX: Is AI-driven knowledge sharing already here?During his career, Maarten worked in different countries in such spheres as data science and marketing analytics. He had the opportunity to see how these areas were changing and what new approaches were introduced as technologies evolved.In 2015, he founded Clever, a general data science company that later went specifically into chatbots. Why did it happen? Maarten explained that he noticed a serious gap in the market and decided to address it.But now the times are different and they require new solutions. With this idea in mind, Maarten started MentX which will take AI solutions to the next level in creating AI versions of real humans.As humans, we communicate and we spend a lot of our time at work and at home just sharing information with others. Now if somebody is not available for customers or internally, there is an obvious communication gap. People need to get information and when a particular specialist can’t talk to them, they have no other choice but to wait.With AI, such inefficiencies can be eliminated.What the MentX team is going to do is create a full AI version of an existing human. This AI version will have not only the look and voice of that human but also the knowledge and personality of him or her.Will this new version of yourself fully replace you when you are just too tired? Probably not. The first goal of MentX is to serve some specific purposes. For example, this technology can be used to create an AI version of a senior lawyer or consultant who needs to communicate not only with colleagues but also with clients and students or trainees. It’s obvious that these experts can’t be available 24/7. But it will be possible to unlock their knowledge to others and make it available around the clock.In other words, if an assistant needs a piece of advice to get through the first steps of some tasks, an AI version will be highly helpful.This idea sounds quite promising. However, Maarten admitted that the technologies for its realization are not here yet. He and his partners truly believe that they will be able to digitize all the knowledge and the personality of people. But it can’t happen now. According to their estimates, the development of such technologies will take around 2 years.Nevertheless, today, the team can run pilots for some specific components. For example, it is possible to create a video of somebody and then have that video version say anything with the voice of that person.A lot of the components that are required to create people’s AI versions already work within a certain scope. Now, MentX is trying to bring them all together.Can AI truly increase our efficiency and productivity?Of course, our AI versions won’t allow us to live forever or become superhumans. The soul and the creativity that we have can’t be copied. People will still have their unique value as personalities. However, such technologies can greatly save our time and help us (and other people around us) work more efficiently.AI definitely plays a huge role in the growth of our productivity. Nevertheless, that’s not something unique about artificial intelligence. It is absolutely true in relation to any technology you can only think about.Maarten explained that by our nature, we, people, have only basic physical skills. And we need to invent technologies and augment ourselves. For instance, to move faster people started using horses. But to transport themselves faster and go further, they invented cars. Later, they introduced airplanes. Now, businesses are working on inventing space rockets that could become available to a wide audience.AI is a big invention that can transform humankind. Actually, this transformation has already begun. If previously, traditional breweries needed to hire 100 people, now their tasks can be performed by only two specialists. The same tendency can come to offices very soon.With mass AI adoption, we will be able to do the same work at a faster pace and with fewer people.Does it mean that with AI implementation we can just relax and chill while all tasks will be executed by robots?Even if this option may look appealing, Maarten doesn’t think that people will do that. In his opinion, all these changes are just the beginning of another era. People will still be looking for new tasks and new jobs to fill our lives with new interesting projects.“AI will replace you”The name of this section, which coincides with the name of Maarten’s book, may disappoint you. Nevertheless, it’s not the best time to give up. The author of the book has a very clear explanation.Today AI can do a lot of things for us. It can recommend to us what to watch, what to have for dinner, what to buy at the supermarket, when and where to go on vacation, and many other things. These recommendations are based on the experience of the entire world. All the data that is collected by AI systems allows them to create optimized recommendations for everything in our lives. And if we blindly rely on all of them, we will simply become pets of AI.Yes, if people feel very comfortable because of not having the necessity of making decisions themselves, then AI will basically replace them.However, not everyone is ready for that. In his book, Maarten offers an alternative for those who do not want to be replaced. People need to accept the reality and start taking more responsibility for their own future and their own decisions.It’s also important to consider this situation not only from a personal but also a business perspective.If you have a business, you also have a lot of things to think about. Is AI going to become something that will wash over you, and transform your sector and your industry? Or are you going to be the one who is taking charge? If the second option sounds more appropriate, you need to define how AI is going to be used in your company and how you can use it to create value for your customers and employees.In this context, it’s very important to get over the so-called AI anxiety and transform it into an AI opportunity.Emerging technologies and chip developmentMaarten mentioned that we are entering the perfect storm of technologies that are appearing at the same time. The pace of development of new technologies has become absolutely crazy. And this thesis refers not only to digital innovation but also to the physical infrastructure and the hardware.For example, chips produced by Nvidia were critical elements in the growth of OpenAI and ChatGPT. Today, there are huge investments in chip technology as chips really fuel the next wave of innovation.In the conversation with Max, Maarten mentioned that he is greatly impressed by the progress achieved in data science in recent years. But while speaking about emerging technologies, he also highlighted the significance of edge computing. This approach presupposes that computation and data storage should be brought closer to the location where data is really needed. This is done to improve response times and save bandwidth.It means that when you are on Mars, your data shouldn’t be sent back to the cloud on Earth to be processed and then returned to your application on Mars.Of course, AI today differentiates itself from other emerging technologies. It has already started to bring money. That’s why AI is not about hype, it’s about creating value, and a lot of businesses have already realized this idea.Can AI help in solving real business problems?If you pay attention to the new products that appear on the tech market, you will see that a lot of them have AI in their names. But do all of them really rely on AI? Maarten admitted that quite often he notices AI washing cases. Companies just put AI on top of their offerings just to make sure that they are innovative. However, in the back end, we are just still doing the same things.For example, they used to have a database. Now they still have the database but can call it AI.Real innovations should have value and ground to be implemented.20 years ago data was the new oil and it still has value. You need to use your data to create value for your customers and for your business. The same should happen with AI.To better explain his vision, Maarten shared a case from his practice.When he worked at P&G, the company started to realize that they could lose their share in the washing detergent segment. It was necessary to find an approach to retain customers and avoid losing profits.Maarten’s team managed to use data in such a way that allowed them to create a retention model to identify the potential of every customer leaving the brand. By looking at some indicators and retail data, they could see the customers who could leave the brand and understand how it would be possible to retain them.Further analysis revealed that this model helped the company earn a million dollars, while all the investments in its development and implementation were close to $100K.It means that it had a 10x impact.Based on his experience, Maarten insists that for implementing AI, businesses should look for such cases when they could leverage 10x return on investments.However, that is possible only when you are solving real problems, when you define real pains and address them.That’s why while consulting businesses, Maarten prefers to talk not only to IT experts but also to other non-tech specialists, like marketers and HR managers. These professionals work with final solutions and communicate with people. They have a very clear vision of what can be improved.Businesses should focus their attention on how to implement AI to solve problems and to help their employees, instead of replacing them.How to implement AI: Real-life recommendationsYour preparations for AI implementation will greatly depend on the type of business that you have. It’s quite natural that a local bakery will need to deal with fewer tech requirements than a utility provider.But regardless of these differences, all businesses should have at least basic capacities for the introduction of new solutions. If you are going to use AI to make personalized product recommendations, your infrastructure needs to be able to support this functionality.When you rely only on legacy tools that were built 20 years ago, your databases will probably work in silos. It will be a serious obstacle.For implementing AI solutions that will work based on the data about your customers or your operations, your data needs to be in order.Among other tips on how to implement a good AI strategy, Maarten also mentioned the necessity of formulating the exact reasons for introducing AI and getting the right people on board.Another important step is to analyze the complexity of potential solutions. If the complexity of implementation is high, then this is not a project to start with. You should begin with easier initiatives to test your AI implementation potential.It could be also sensible to start with data projects, where your data can be cleaned and prepared for further implementations.Is it challenging to be an entrepreneur?First of all, when answering Max’s question about the challenges of entrepreneurship, Maarten said that he has tremendous respect for all entrepreneurs, regardless of the stage of their business development.Maarten explained that in his opinion being an entrepreneur is super hard.These people are creating something, they need to go from zero to one. This process is painful. It is impossible to follow someone’s instructions. It is necessary to follow your vision and try to make it work.“Don’t become an entrepreneur if you want just to get rich. Don’t become an entrepreneur just to have a cool lifestyle,” Maarten said.Very often entrepreneurs fail. But it doesn’t mean that they give up. However, when you are building your own business, you always have the choice to get out of the game or iterate.It can also be hard to get funds. Investors want to see a potential return on their money. If you have nothing at the moment, you need to make them believe in you and your idea. But when you raise money, you get a whole new set of problems. Now you have to deliver the results. You need to deal with other people’s money. So the pressure to deliver is even higher.The more money and the more customers you get, the more people you have on board, the higher your responsibility is.Though Maarten was talking a lot about difficulties, he also mentioned one more essential thing.In his opinion, having fun is a crucial part of the whole entrepreneurial journey. If a person doesn’t enjoy the process, is it really worth all the effort?Final wordBuilding a new business or transforming an existing one may not be the easiest task. But when you know why you are doing that, everything makes sense. In the Innovantage podcast, its host Maxim communicates with tech and business experts. They share their experience and vision of how AI and other emerging technologies are changing the world around us and how we can benefit from this transformation. If this topic is interesting to you, do not miss the next episode that will become available quite soon.

The Innovantage podcast is continuously expanding its horizons. While the previous episode was devoted to the experience of Lithuania in the AI revolution, this time, podcast host Sigli’s CBDO Max Golikov has invited Dr. Ott Velsberg to talk about the path chosen by Estonia.For the last 6 years, Dr. Velsberg has been serving as the Government Chief Data Officer of the country, which allowed him to accumulate unique experience in this sphere. Ott has been overseeing such domains as data governance, open data, artificial intelligence, data privacy, and others from both strategic and practical implementation perspectives. This gives him a comprehensive vision of everything that is related to data and AI within the Estonian government. And in his conversation with Max, he shared his insights.Check out the full Innovantage episode with Dr. Ott Velsberg here: https://youtu.be/fxhCXDkrggo?si=SLOXvyd7ohIbtpzjThe role of data and AI in Estonia’s economyEstonia is one of the examples of how digital governance can be run. But it is not going to stop where it is at the moment. One of the country’s priorities for 2030 is to build an AI-powered government.The focus is not necessarily on emerging technologies. The focus is on data itself and its value for the government, businesses, and society in general. Data plays an important role in delivering better services and making more informed decisions at different levels.According to Ott, in the data economy, AI is one of the key pillars in boosting the growth of the economy in general.Today Estonia already has one of the highest data economies in terms of percentage of GDP globally. It occupies the second position, just behind the United States.However, Estonia is the leading implementor of AI in the world, as Ott highlighted, not a developer.What sectors are the largest contributors to the AI economy in Estonia?Of course, such services as information and communication technology as well as connectivity are known for their significant contribution to the development of AI and data economy.But in this context, it is also crucial to mention some other domains, like manufacturing in healthcare, that are currently heavily investing in this field.Dr. Velsberg mentioned one of the studies conducted in Estonia. They evaluated the activities and approaches of companies where at least one-third of the teams were data specialists. Nevertheless, surprisingly, no specific data-driven approaches were detected. The reason is that just the presence of particular experts doesn’t guarantee transformations.At the same time, there are some domains, like agriculture, that do not hire people to solve any data-related tasks. Instead, they are outsourcing such services. In general, a lot of processes can be enhanced with the right application of data. If we are talking about farming, all efforts can become more efficient when farmers have enough valuable information about the characteristics of the soil and fertilizers that should be used. Outsourcing can help to address such tasks. However, with this model, agricultural businesses still do not have people who can continuously drive transformation and create the necessary environment for innovations.New times require new skillsOtt mentioned that today we all need to have elementary data and AI skills. The society we already live in affects literally everyone. It’s impossible to avoid its influence.If we look at the situation with domain experts, like data analysts, data scientists, data engineers, and data stewards, we will see that Estonia currently lacks around 13,000 specialists. Specifically within the government, the country is missing one-third of data analysts.The issue is that today it is not possible to train as many specialists as needed. However, this is not a local problem in Estonia. It is a global trend.Speaking about a wider labor market, Ott noted that new knowledge is required not only for specific data-related roles. Even such experts as project managers need to know, for example, what the difference between a typical IT project and a data science project is, what generative AI is, what an LLM is, what machine learning is, and so on.At the beginning of next year, the government in Estonia will be launching a data literacy campaign across the country.There are plans to introduce various topics related to data science and analytics to young students in schools and universities.The objective is to ensure 80% data literacy by 2030. This cannot be achieved without working with the whole society at different levels at the same time. There are always some elderly people who are not open to innovations. But the more they know about technologies, the less skepticism they will have. Talking about such topics is extremely important.Moreover, it is vital to organize various programs. A row of AI training sessions held by the Estonian government for different social groups gained tremendous popularity. All places for the course aimed at primary school students were filled just within a day.A good understanding of the value of technologies and data is required at the organizational level as well. Today there are a lot of companies at different stages of their maturity that work with data but they do not even understand what type of data they collect, who can access it, where it is stored, and why it is actually needed. Given this, can they efficiently manage this data and fully leverage its value? It’s highly unlikely.New challenges and new solutionsThe same is true about people at the individual level. Many people today have no idea what data about them is collected and how it can be further applied. Moreover, they do not even think about how they can benefit from this data. Max compared this situation with the early adoption of the internet. Users got a powerful tool but they didn’t know what exactly they could do with it.Ott explained that today’s initiatives aimed at the development of basic IT literacy in society are part of the European goals for 2030.Governments need to start talking about data and AI as well. In this context, it is vital to educate people about new services that will appear and that don’t even have non-digital counterparts. Here, it is also necessary to inform citizens about those groups of specialists who might become unemployed before it actually happens. It is important to mention the existing risks, as well as the factors that ensure trustworthiness and transparency.People should have a clear vision of how they can control the use of their data.For example, in Estonia, the government introduced the Data Tracker. Its purpose is to offer citizens access to a full overview of the operations conducted with their data. The country also has a consent service. It enables people to give the state permission to share their personal data with a certain service provider, for example, healthcare organizations.Today, the government is also working on increasing the accessibility of services and has been heavily investing in sign language and real-time speech recognition.Another project of the Estonian government is the development of the digital twin concept, but not in a typical sense. In this case, such digital twins can visualize different real-life situations based on available data and help the government stay proactive. For example, such solutions can be useful for foreseeing the changes in the labor market. The government is always interested in keeping the unemployment rates as low as possible. By getting insights into the possible changes, the government can organize various training courses and provide practical recommendations to those who are likely to lose their jobs in the next 6 months.Are there any risks associated with this? Definitely yes. First of all, people may be rather confused. Not everyone is ready to get such information from the government.Secondly, job losses are often related to the bankruptcy of companies. If the government publishes some info about a company that may go bankrupt in the near future, it can negatively affect its reputation already today.That’s why it is crucial to think not only about how to handle the data but also how to present any information to citizens.How governments should work with dataTrustworthiness is one of the key concerns across society. Ott shares some statistics.Women are more likely to not trust technology itself. Many of them are less active or savvy users than men.As for the generational differences in the Baltic states, the older generation trusts the government less, however, these people trust the private sector. With younger people, the situation is completely opposite. They don’t trust the private sector but they trust the government.The task for the government today is to stay proactive and not to wait for a person to reach out with some questions or issues. People are likely to believe more if they understand how and what the government is actually doing.In Estonia, there are some important initiatives that are designed to increase transparency in the AI and data sectors.Ott also shared that at the time of recording the podcast episode, they were preparing for the launch of the algorithmic transparency standard. Its introduction presupposes that everyone who has carried out an AI project within the public sector needs to openly clarify the goals and the logic behind it, as well as other important details.Moreover, every funded project needs to implement the Data Tracker so that all the information can be available on the government portal.One situation last year brightly demonstrated the interest from the side of citizens in getting access to such information. Around 450,000 Estonians looked for information related to the application of their data included in the population register when there appeared some concerns regarding the ethical side of its use.Estonian approach: Keep it simpleWhen asked about any specific approaches to building the data economy in Estonia, Ott stated that the main idea is to keep everything as simple and small as possible. Instead of large-scale projects, it’s better to start with small ones that address some specific problems.Dr. Velsberg warned: “Don’t overanalyze. Don’t overanalyze.”It’s necessary to listen to end customers, detect their pains, and offer solutions to them.According to him, that’s exactly what Estonia is doing. The country’s approach can be described as problem-focused, rather than tech-focused.There is no need to implement AI just because it is AI. It is necessary to identify the processes that can be changed and do this.A lot of AI projects today can cost between 60,000 and 70,000 Euros and their implementation may take just around a couple of weeks. But they can save hundreds of hours of people’s time.Countries are ready to invest millions of euros to analyze some technologies. But quite often it’s more efficient and feasible just to take action than to conduct endless research.EU’s AI Act: Will we benefit from it?Of course, the introduction of a regulatory framework has some pitfalls and controversies. Should AI have separate legal entity status? Who is responsible for its decisions when it misbehaves?But without any doubt, the legal framework for the use of AI and data is critical. It’s vital to control how data is collected and used, as well as to protect people’s rights.Nevertheless, the Estonian government has made a decision that they won’t regulate AI nationally and will rely only on European laws.One of the advantages of this is that the EU has a large global market and if companies that adhere to its regulations decide to enter other markets, they will have a great potential for this.Moreover, quite often, EU-wide regulation can also push countries to the introduction of a basic standard that will be applicable to everyone across all member states. It could bring benefits not only locally but also on the international level as well.Ott admitted that when he read the first version of the EU’s AI Act, he was extremely skeptical. The document included a lot of unrealistic requirements. The latest version has been greatly updated. It offers a lot of best practices and seems to be much closer to reality.Ott hopes that the Act won’t undergo changes in the next few years. Time is needed to understand how the rules work and whether it is possible to improve them.The AI Act has already downplayed or eliminated a lot of risks related to the use of AI. In some potentially dangerous situations, AI can’t be implemented at all (like social scoring which is a rather popular use case shown in many films). There are no reasons to be worried.The value of personalized servicesGovernments today are interested in using AI to deliver better services to citizens and facilitate a lot of processes for them. In Estonia, a lot is done to introduce proactive and personalized services.For example, even before a baby is born, parents can solve a lot of questions. For example, they can already give a name to their son or daughter, re-register a child to kindergarten, and get full information about the social benefits related to the birth. All this helps to save people’s time because time is the most valuable resource.The same approaches can be applied to various aspects of people’s lives, including military service and car registration.The government should understand the needs of people and adjust all the services to them.Very similar rules work in the business world as well.If you are able to provide services that your client actually needs in a personalized manner you are going to be more successful than those who provide something that people don’t actually care about.AI and data can bring a lot of benefits at different levels of our society. But only when they are properly used with the right goals. And that’s one of the key topics discussed with experts in the Innovantage podcast. If you want to learn more about it, do not miss the next episodes.

Today, when the whole world seems to be quite globalized, each country still has the possibility to build its own approach to various aspects of its development. And digital transformation is one of them.This episode of the Innovantage podcast is devoted to the way chosen by Lithuania and its achievements in the ongoing AI revolution. To talk about this topic, Sigli’s CBDO Max Golikov invited Dr. Linas Petkevičius to his studio.Check out the full Innovantage episode with Dr. Linas Petkevičius here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jn98Bb_9iAAI ecosystem in LithuaniaLinas is the general manager for the Artificial Intelligence Association of Lithuania and an associate professor at Vilnius University with a focus on AI, deep learning (DL), and other technologies connected to it.The idea of combining these two spheres of professional activities may sound too challenging. Nevertheless, Dr. Petkevičius noted that he sees a lot of perks of this duo. As a researcher and lecturer, he needs to plan courses and supervise students who are writing the Bachelor’s theses in various applications, monitor the freshest research publications to get access to new ideas and techniques.From the side of the AI Association and his NGO-related activities, Linas needs to communicate with ecosystem stakeholders and bring them together through discussions and consultations.But all these things have a common ground. And that’s AI. It means that Linas not only can stay tuned with the research from the perspective of the academia but also from the perspective of businesses. Thanks to this, he has a full picture of the Lithuanian AI ecosystem.Lithuania is a small country. However, it successfully unites under one umbrella all the contributors to the AI domain, including academia, companies, startups, professionals, and enthusiasts. Today, a lot is being done to support innovations and expand the tech ecosystem. There are numerous engagement events, like hackathons and meetings, that help new ideas be heard.Linas mentioned that today Lithuania looks quite attractive to both local startups and international investments. Moreover, the country is interested in welcoming new projects and talents. It also invites alumni to come back after studying abroad. According to Dr. Petkevičius, given the ongoing conditions in the tech space, it is a good time to do this.How AI is perceived by the publicAI is changing what we can touch and see each day. But it is also changing a lot of fundamental things in how the world is functioning. Previously, it was governed by a capitalistic approach. If you had labor, you could create value by establishing a call center and it was your market advantage. If you had capital, you could build and operate factories and it was your way to create value.Now everything doesn’t look this way. AI has arrived. And now one programmer with a laptop can replace thousands of jobs by creating automation tools.This approach doesn’t fall into the categories of labor or capital. It is a completely new idea that we are not accustomed to.What is deep learning?Deep learning is known to be a subset of machine learning that relies on artificial neural networks to learn from data.According to Dr. Petkevičius, deep learning helps us modify some data, like images, text, or speech, and transform it into new dimensions in order to make it more informative.For example, such models can analyze an image and describe what is shown in what, what its general mood is, and whether it is blurred or not. Similar operations can be made with text. A DL model can read a paragraph and provide such info as the names of the companies mentioned in it, the key semantic information presented, the style of the text, the general context, etc.These applications can be highly valuable for businesses now. If they have an image, they can get its description which can serve different purposes.Key boosters and barriers for AI and DL researchDr. Petkevičius shared his own observations regarding how the interest in deep learning research from the side of students has been changing over the recent years.For example, 5 years ago, when students chose deep learning as a topic for their Bachelor’s theses, they needed to code a lot and had many other tech things.Today, this process is less complicated. Now they have access to ChatGPT and a lot of new products can be successfully built on its base.Thanks to this, it is not only easier but also significantly faster to test and implement new ideas. That’s why the level of students’ research projects is much higher now than it was 5 or 10 years ago.The models delivered by students can be really nice and clear for the general public. They may have real value and interesting use cases. But they are not reproducing the fundamental new knowledge, they are not based on the latest research. In this context, Linas mentioned the necessity to invite them to work with fundamental topics and experiment with them.However, sometimes such experiments can be quite depressing, especially for students. To get one successful model, sometimes you need to try a lot of things, test hundreds of combinations, but all these efforts will stay invisible. It’s impossible to create an excellent model for business or academic purposes from the first trial.Another barrier that may discourage students from DL research is that we all want to have one big model for everything. But at least at the moment, it doesn’t seem realistic.It is much more sensible to have smaller models designed to deal with a limited number of tasks.The gap between academia and real-life projectsWe had a spike in technology breakthroughs in 2015 when various image recognition models were developed. There were significant advancements in different generative tools in 2017. Today, we also have the language models which became really innovative after they started to produce interesting results in 2018.At that time, the only problem was that all those technologies and all those breakthroughs were in academia, in R&D. The general public didn’t have the final product to touch it and to understand its possibilities.Nevertheless, this issue is not a new one. For centuries, academia has been leading the introduction of fundamental models and theories. When innovators were looking for ideas that could be applicable in practice, they could take some academic research and start working on real products that would be later available to customers. This process could take 5 or 10 years. And nobody could be initially confident in its success.The same is happening now. From the applicational point of view, academia and businesses are joined. A lot of companies have AI teams that work with academia to test and implement new ideas faster and reduce the time gap between research and production.Changing habitsIt’s breathtaking to analyze how the adoption of technologies is related to what we are accustomed to.Today, there is an opinion that computer literacy classes can be useless for modern children. They actively interact with smartphones, while using traditional computer mouses and typing requests with a button keyboard look quite archaic for them.Linas mentioned an interesting example. He can observe that young students quite often use their smartphones to google something, even when they are sitting in front of computers during programming classes. That’s the power of habit.Have you noticed that today for many people it is much more convenient to write messages instead of making voice calls, especially when they are somewhere outdoors? It happens because this already seems more natural today. And it explains why some technologies are still not widely adopted, despite their potential value.For instance, speech-to-text models produce reasonably good accuracy these days. They can be very useful for a very wide audience. Even while driving, a person can just talk to AI and get a full, well-formatted document as a result. Nevertheless, for the majority of people, it is still easier to type their texts.Though the use of VR glasses, like Apple Vision Pro, could help us collect a lot of necessary information about objects and processes, their adoption is slowed down for the same reasons.To implement some innovations in our lives, we should change our behavior first.How to choose the best ideasIn his dialogue with Linas, Max asked him about the ways to decide on whether new technology is good or which startups are interesting enough to support. Unfortunately, unless you know the future, without testing, you wouldn’t be able to guess with 100% accuracy which idea will be a successful one.According to Linas, at the AI Association, they organize regular AI meetups which allows them to invite as many new ideas and new speakers to talk about their startups as possible. As a result, the community can get a lot of valuable and diverse information delivered by different people with different backgrounds.Linas noted that the more ideas are voiced, the better. If we have just one or a few options for services, we just get accustomed to them and do not want to have changes any more.But if we have a new app every week, we try it, we start searching for a better one. This fosters new developments and helps to achieve better results.Education for the public is also very important in building and adopting new ideas and products.AI in healthcare: Do we really need it?Dr. Petkevičius noted that there are many tasks in healthcare that are really suitable for automatization. For example, it is possible to introduce very efficient algorithms that could analyze various images, like CR or X-ray scans, and quickly provide feedback regarding any anomalies or potential health risks. Here we have a huge time-related benefit. If a radiologist needs around 10 minutes to analyze a scan and make a conclusion, AI will do it in milliseconds.Moreover, AI models can greatly help with such complex domains as tissue and cancer recognition. Nevertheless, in the end, it all comes down to the amount of data.The more high-quality data you have, the more complex and efficient models you can create. Some big hospitals in the United States have 100x more patients than any hospital or lab in a small country. As a result, they have 100x more data for validation and further use.But can we expect to have fully automated medical consultations soon? On one hand, it may seem that with the introduction of AI apps, we will greatly boost the efficiency of many processes. AI can’t get frustrated when it needs to repeat the same things again and again. It doesn’t have emotions and the quality of its consultations can’t be worse because of its tiredness.On the other hand, it can hallucinate, it means it can provide information that is factually incorrect or misleading. This makes it obvious that for final decisions, the human touch is still needed. While AI can work with data, doctors have their own real-life, continuously evolving experiences. They have the latest information about how medications work with different symptoms and often can analyze many more factors simultaneously than AI can.However, in many countries, there is a problem with making appointments with specialist doctors. Given this, AI-powered apps that can provide at least preliminary diagnoses and recommendations to people can be of great help.Urban planning and generative AIUrban planning can be named among the spheres that can enjoy the biggest benefits from AI implementation. In this domain, AI tools are absolutely not harmful and the risks related to their use are the lowest. Thanks to Generative AI, you can easily get around 100 possible demos of how you need to reconstruct a park, for example.You can select different options and modify them. That’s why Linas highlighted that urban planning can be a very good area for experimentation with AI.AI regulation: Good or bad?Currently, AI regulation is a sphere that is full of uncertainty. For instance, in the US, there is still no comprehensive federal legislation that governs the creation of AI tools and specifically prohibits or restricts their use.The European AI act entered into force on August 1, 2024 (Please note that the Innovantage podcast episode with Dr. Linas Petkevičius was recorded before that date. Nevertheless, the core principles and ideas proclaimed by this document were already known). This marked a crucial step towards forming a comprehensive and ethical framework for AI in the region.According to the chosen line of AI regulation, there is a classification of applications of this technology based on how they affect us as a society. For example, some of them do not have a direct impact on people. That’s why, it is not needed to introduce any specific rules to regulate them. Some applications should be completely forbidden due to their damaging power.There are also some cases of AI usage that have the possibility to impact us and/or we could get hurt after their implication. In other words, such cases are associated with high risks (for example, like all applications of AI in healthcare). They should be strictly regulated and there should be requirements for their testing. Without any doubt, such types of AI products should be monitored. But without a clear vision of how they should be tested, how they should be certified, all this leads to a lot of controversies.The implementation of AI regulation also results in additional bureaucracy and expenses for startups and companies that do research in high-risk domains.Today, we can watch how competition between the largest US AI companies, like Meta and OpenAI, is gaining momentum. They are continuously improving their models so that they can demonstrate better and better results.As for the European region, at the moment, there aren’t any large A-tier AI firms. And an additional burden of regulation won’t create favorable conditions for new projects.Today, it can be very expensive and risky to create new models from scratch. That’s why in spite of all the benefits that regulation can bring to the space, it can also freeze innovation. Just imagine, how many ideas won’t be transformed into real projects, if it is prohibited to keep personal data online.Bottom lineToday it has become absolutely obvious that AI is much more than just a buzzword. It has real-life applications and its value for various domains is continuously growing. While different experts may have different opinions regarding the development of this technology and approach to working with it, the majority of them agree that only in cooperation with each other and with communities, academia and business can conquer the highest peaks. The same idea was highlighted by Dr. Linas Petkevičius. And Lithuania is a great example of the country where this approach works well.Want to learn more about how AI is transforming the business world? Follow us in order not to miss the next episodes of the Innovantage podcast.