GET TO KNOW
How do you deal with stress and unwind outside the office ?
Since university , I ' ve enjoyed ( usually ) Muay Thai , or Thai kickboxing . I ' m older now so I can ' t safely participate in full-contact practice , but I still enjoy the physicality of it . In more peaceful times , I enjoy the outdoors , particularly snowboarding and paragliding .
If you could go back and change one career decision , what would it be ? are some fundamental capabilities that are common across the region , and unsurprisingly they are founded on data .
Despite the heterogeneity , businesses and governments that can cut through the complexity of their data , at whatever scale , to gain insight will prosper . The APAC region is a pressure cooker of innovation and hard work and to lose the battle is to quickly recede from your competitors – be they other commercial organizations or other nations .
Hindsight is 20 / 20 . In the moment , all you can do is choose based on your context . Any changes I could hypothetically make would have unintended consequences elsewhere .
What do you currently identify as the major areas of investment in your industry ?
The AI macro trend continues to gain strength . This is not a passing fad . The age of AI is here . But AI is fuelled by data , and so there is a corresponding ( but slightly lagging ) curve where investments in data happen . I ' m biased here because I ' m a huge fan of databases , but you can ' t have fast trains without rails , and data is the rails of AI . The data and AI investment decisions made today will determine the leaders of the future .
What are the region-specific challenges when implementing new technologies in APAC ?
APAC is very heterogeneous and very large geographically . There is no one-size-fits-all answer here . What works in Australia is quite different from what works in Indonesia and what works in Singapore seems destined to fail in India . Nonetheless , there
What changes to your job role have you seen in the last year , and how do you see these developing in the next 12 months ?
The last 12 months have been tumultuous for everyone in the technology industry . While we ' ve seen remarkable innovation , we ' ve also seen softness in the general market .
In my role , I have to learn to accommodate those shortterm events but keep my team on an even keel for the longer term . As researchers , our goals are typically 2 – 5 years out from today and we have to make sure to keep our product suite relevant by delivering high-quality research to our product engineering peers .
In the next 12 months , we ' re going to increasingly strengthen our good relationships with academia , since we know that the university sector has a huge role to play in our future .
What advice would you offer somebody aspiring to obtain a C-level position in your industry ?
Think carefully about why you want a C-level role . Is it a career move ? Can you use the role to enact change ? Your motivations will have a significant impact on whether you can move into a C-level role and how successful you will be once you achieve it . Be honest with yourself about why you want the position and be very clear with yourself about what you ' ll do in that role – it certainly shouldn ' t be a vanity project . p
80 INTELLIGENTCIO APAC www . intelligentcio . com