Thank you for joining, and welcome to Accelerating AI Transformation. This is such an incredible conference with women in tech.I don't know if you've checked out any of the other speakers, but a wealth of information and women connecting with women, sharing, learning from each other. I'm here to share with you a few things that I've learned in my journey. I have a passion for AI. I currently work full time in AI, as Paulina mentioned, as an AI senior product manager. I also read deeply on it and have have studied it at the University of Toronto Rotman School of Business. So I'm here to share with you some practical things that you can implement right now as leaders for your organizations.

In joining, you know, you already know that AI is the most transformative and disruptive technology of our time, and that really is a call to action. It is very timely in how we wanna implement and leverage this. And so what I'm sharing with you today is things that you can consider, so that you can continue to accelerate this in your organization. But first, we're gonna start with a little bit of a story. We're gonna go back in time a little bit. And in the early 2000s, late 1990s, a very common experience in families across the world was Friday night, end of the week. Let's go get a movie. Let's go to Blockbuster. In my case, my older brother and I would go. He would go to the movies with the aliens and the robots.

The kids would run past us, like Olympic sprinters are going to the kids section. It was very energetic, very lively. You'd go to all these aisles with movies. If anyone remembers this, you'd pick one up, read the back, put it down, and so on. Eventually, you'd pick your movie, then it's time to line up. You line up. You wait for your turn. You get to the cashier, and the cashier would open your boxes. For example, sometimes you'd open a box and say, we don't have this. Sorry. And you don't get to watch that movie. And she would open the next box, and then she would scan it with a UPC scanner. It felt very high-tech, UPC scanners, and so on. Now often in my family, that was the moment when the cashier would then tell us, you have late fees.

That was not really the best experience, but it was part of renting the movie at the time. And so I want you to hold on to that thought, and we're now going to move into behind the scenes corporate where we have Blockbuster, a mega company, a $6,000,000,000 company at the time. Thousands of customers worldwide generating revenue, you know, with this model of, you know, home entertainment that was still new at that time. And you have a company like Netflix where the founders of Netflix went in to speak to the Blockbuster CEO John Enteko and said, we see that you are very successful with the in person home entertainment model. Let us partner with you. We can help you with the online presence of this entertainment offering. And we all know this story because this is no longer a company that exists. That CEO said, no.

I see that what you're doing is, you know, not helpful and not needed, and we're good. We don't need to partner with you. And we know how that ended for Blockbuster. And one of the reasons why is because the online presence would erode one of their major revenue streams, which was late fees. And in the same way that I had mentioned from my customer experience, that late fee was a pain point. From Blockbuster's point of view, this was a major revenue stream. Why would they want to cut this out? And so when you think about the different perspectives of the customer experience versus the company experience, Very different lens in which we're looking at those through.

So as I mentioned, when, you know, Netflix cofounders went to Blockbuster and Blockbuster said, we have no need to partner with you. And it really was a very simple deal or no deal ask. Now today's presentation is not about mergers and acquisitions and deals. It's really about thinking about your current model and the other options that may or not be available right now but will be coming. And it's not necessary that you have to partner with other companies for those other offerings, but it's to start to think about what that expansion could start to look like. And I do wanna pause on this slide because, really, this is the one takeaway that I'd like everyone to come away with and to think about as women leaders in your organizations. If you are unwilling to disrupt yourself, somebody else will disrupt your business for you.

What that means is to think about your current revenue streams might be humming along very nicely, might feel very concrete and locked in, but we're in a new time and a new world with AI. And I used this example here because it's so stark, a company that no longer exists, and a small little startup that came to them and said, we have an idea and an option for you. Will you consider it? And the the company that was so well founded said, we don't need this. What you have is hype. What you have is futuristic. We're not there yet. And so today's presentation is to start to get you thinking about AI is today. AI is disruptive, and it's time to start thinking about how you are going to disrupt your own company, your own revenue streams before someone else does that for you. Because the reality is right now, this is the environment that we're in. We're in an environment of disruption. Now that all sounds very, you know, good and like, hey.

We need to do something. Now what? So this slide here is pulling together all these pieces of information that I have from both working full time in AI, reading deeply on it, having studied this through formal courses, and it really boils down to a six part AI transformation playbook. And, of course, at the leadership level, always starts with your strategy, with your big picture. But what's different about this strategy is the second word on the top bubble, which is friction, is to start thinking about what are the friction points for your customers and the solutioning to start to address that specifically. Now as an organization, you will also need AI fluency. It's not enough to just work on external solutions. It's the internal fluency that will really pull this through. Next is redesigning workflows. It's well known. You're not just tacking on AI solutions to bits and pieces. It's redesigning end to end workflows. Next is that governance.

I've attended a few sessions on governance. I encourage everyone to watch some of those recordings. I've already picked up great information myself, so shout out to the speakers on AI and governance. That is key to your success and it doesn't slow you down. It really sets the right foundation. Finally, we need to have measure measurement and leadership. And That's why you're joining to hear here today as those leaders. And to always consider that it's not enough to just have ideas or to just have innovation. It really is key to have a plan for how that's going to be measured. Now this diagram is illustrative, and I want you to think back on, you know, the story that I shared initially about Friday night going to Blockbuster.

What were all the friction points? The waiting in line. Sorry. The movie is not available. A little chaotic. Everyone's running all over the place. The late fees. I would say the late fees would be, like, right at the rock bottom in bright red. And as an organization, to be honest with yourself, really put yourself in your customer's shoes and really ask yourself, me as the customer, what is this experience? Do I love it? And if you don't love paying late fees yourself, likely your customers don't want to either. And it might feel very comfortable, as I mentioned, to say, but this is a major revenue steam stream. We don't want to touch that. That's okay today. But the world is evolving and that's where it's critical to have insight and really being honest and vulnerable in what is my customer journey and experience and really start to map those out.

And maybe they're not a today solution, but it's a solution that you're gonna wanna start to plan for because eventually, somebody else will start to solve that for you. So this slide really just pulls it together in terms of mapping the complete journey, tagging those steps with either a time stamp, error rate, the impact of that pain point. And finally, think about your proprietary data assets. What do you have that your competitors don't have? If you think back on this illustrative example, at the time, Blockbuster knew what movies people wanted to watch, how often they were coming, when they were coming. That was proprietary information and actually gave them an edge at that time until, unfortunately, too much time passed and they did lose that edge. So this is just to mention that you do have an edge right now with your own proprietary information, and don't lose that edge to time, which is taking action on it will only benefit the journey that you have.

So to keep it very simple, your AI acceleration plan, really, it's map out that journey, find those pain points, prioritize them, which are the top three to five, and you need that full redesign. It's really not just about tacking on AI. If we think back on the example that I gave you, you know, Blockbuster could have made it easier with AI to tell people when they had late fees and could have continued to tell them, like, you have accumulating late fees. You have more late fees coming. That wasn't really making for a better customer experience. It was really just amplifying a pain point that they already had. Finally, it's the measurement of really starting to understand as you start to close the gap on those friction points to measure that. So I do wanna leave you with a question. The question is not whether you will be disrupted, but if you will be doing the disrupting.

And that's not something easily done, and those are not conversations that are easily had. So I encourage everyone here as women in leadership, in technology, it is time to start to think about how to have that conversation. It really does require a plan, and it does require being well thought out. And, you know, some of the things that might be raised might not be very popular. But in terms of the long term health and success of your company, somebody does need to have that conversation. And so I empower everyone here to start to think about how you do have that conversation. And I want to end on a high note, which is, of course, AI adoption is not about technology alone. It's about transformation. It's about internal transformation, external transformation.

And I know that the leaders here as part of this, conference are just the right women to do it. So that is a key message that I did wanna share.