Good morning and congratulations to those of you who have made it to Thursday morning at Davos and are here with us in the room and online. My name is Heba Ali, I'm the CEO of a news organization that reports about conflicts and disasters around the world called the New Humanitarian and as you might imagine refugee flows is a big part of our reporting. And today we're going to talk about integrating refugees into labour markets. Of course this is a moment of rethink on so many things and asylum policy and integration of refugees is one of them particularly in Europe but also beyond as we'll hear about today. Having a job is key to not only economic but also social integration for refugees and in this moment in which we're seeing so many millions of people in Ukraine but of course beyond as well moving we're also seeing that in many cases that integration is halted because of a lack of access to the labour market. The hypothesis is that Ukraine is beginning to change that and has opened up a conversation around how better to support refugees including in how they access employment and so today we're going to try to showcase some examples of the private sector succeeding in doing that but also some of the barriers in being able to scale that kind of agenda up and then explore some opportunities for multi-stakeholder action on this and hear a few announcements. So we've got with us today to my left Nicholas Schmidt, Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights at the European Commission next to him Valérie Beaulieu who is the Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at the HR Solutions Company at Deco and then Jesper Brodin the CEO of the INCA Group popularly known as IKEA and finally Ebru Ozdemir who is the Chairperson of the Board of Lemak Holding a Turkish conglomerate with companies across a range of industries from construction to tourism to food. So actually Ebru I'd like to start with you because you have tried to really raise awareness about how refugees can be a benefit to both business and society and have supported many projects to upskill refugees to work with refugee-led companies. How did you get to that place and what's your persuasion I suppose to your peers in the private sector around the business case for integrating refugees into the labor market? Thank you it's very nice to be here and discussing about this here today. You know we see this as if the refugees are not a burden but an opportunity and in all my talks I say that refugees have the untapped human capital it's very important. So seeing in Turkey above 4 million refugees right now and probably around 1 million babies born since the conflict we thought that we have to integrate it in a way and currently they have access the refugees in Turkey have access to schools to the health systems without paying but at the end of the day we have to integrate them into the work as well to be for this to be sustainable. So in the areas that we work we do a lot of technical stuff like building bridges highways and so forth or the dams so it's very hard for us to integrate them in this technical fields because of the technical skills and the languages. However what we try to do is we brought them on board by using them as subcontractors in many like food supplies or some other services that they can give us through Turkey and we also would like to create some role models. With Atlantic Council a couple of years ago we provided a report on showing what the refugee situation and what's the current situation in Turkey and afterwards we realized that they're very courageous women in Turkey who came with their luggage to Turkey and then started business from scratch. So we decided to make a documentary do seagulls migrate and these four women are enormous. I mean one of them become a journalist the other one is like a cook. The third one is a she established a language school because language in many sectors is a big barrier I mean so they have to speak Turkish and then the fourth one is become like a wedding planner and an organizer of weddings and ceremonies. So showing this around Turkey we wanted to create role models and we also run another program called Turkish women engineers. We had three Syrian engineers in that and they all become very good engineers now going to the masters working at the same time and one of them already migrated to Germany so we lost her. So basically we try to create role models because from the women's perspective people can and from the refugee perspective as well. They can be what they can see. So this is a lot of work that we do on that side. Ebru just mentioned that even for someone who's such an advocate of integrating refugees into the labor market it's been difficult for Lumac to do so because of the technical skills. That's one of several barriers and Valeriyah I want to turn to you in 2017 a deco published a white paper that tried to really understand and then communicate those barriers to integrating refugees into the labor market. Walk us through more broadly in the sector what you're seeing as blockages. Yeah and we have a long tradition in the deco group of being committed to help refugees that is core to our values and who we are. And what we've realized and observed is that it's always the same barriers. The first I would say is the administrative burden and the regulatory to make sure that people can work in a legally fashion. And I want to salute the work that the European committee community has done in the Ukrainian crisis to make it super easy and extremely fast. So thank you very much for that. The other barrier as you've just mentioned is language. We have seen situations very recently with Ukrainian refugees where they were hosted in families and they could not even communicate with the families because they don't even have English together. Some 85 percent of the refugees we've observed in especially in Poland and in the other countries from Ukraine are women and many haven't traveled before. So language definitely is a big barrier. The third barrier that we've seen is the fact that their qualification when they have are not recognized in the home country. So you have a number of areas where especially when you have technical qualification you don't have equivalent. And so that's another barrier. And then last but not least housing. You think about if you want to have a livelihood and to have a job you need to have an address and you need to have housing. So I would say if I summarize what we've observed in all the efforts that we've put forward to include refugees in the labor force that would be the fourth the four. I would add just another one that I think we discussed while we were preparing which is when comes the time of the for the enterprise to integrate refugees. Is to make sure that you are particularly listening to their story and inclusive in their specific situation. They come with a very specific background that are any kind of employees. And I think having that proactive and deliberate inclusion towards refugees is also a condition to make it successful to integrate them. So that's one tip. Your white paper also talked about other tips or recommendations for employers. What would you advise them to overcome some of these barriers. Well I think this listening that I was talking about is absolutely critical and also do not try to do that by yourself. That's also a big learning that we've had. Obviously our core business being in the HR solution. For example in the Ukrainian crisis we were able in matter of days to set up a platform that we call jobs for Ukraine where we invited companies. We have over fifteen hundred companies from the private sectors offering job to refugees. And we also closely work with NGO to make sure they would be the go between to the refugees so that they can participate into that platform. So I think the other thing is go to your core business. Don't try to do something that you don't know how to do. And we had one of the of our clients. We I was doing call downs to just get people to to participate to the platform and and some of the clients a big FMCG customer and the consumer good customer was like I want to help more. What can I do. And I said well do you have a warehouse in Poland close to the border. They said yes. OK so can you give us some space so that we can store some of the donation and this absolutely. And this is how you can participate. Don't try to invent yourself what you are not. It will be more authentic and you will have more impact. Yes I want to come to you. Inka is one of the most engaged companies when it comes to refugee action. And in twenty nineteen you committed to supporting two thousand five hundred refugees by the end of twenty twenty three in all income markets. So tell us what you've been able to do so far on that commitment and how you've overcome some of the barriers that Valeti has just mentioned. I think first of all I you I think you nailed the barriers and it's a very concrete topic in many ways when you get into it. So the background for for me and for us is that we are a foundation foundation based organization and together with the business and the foundation shared the vision to create better life for people. And in that our foundation has been active since many many years in supporting the first stage of refugee crisis in many places in the world. The starting point for where we are today was actually in the war in Syria a few years ago where after the first stage we were invited by the foundation and the Hashemites in Jordan to look into how can we actually provide people with dignity income purpose in the next stage of life by providing jobs. So I was personally engaged in that and we managed to set up a social entrepreneurship with textile design and production for four hundred women. And it was difficult. We learned everything about the challenges but we overcome them and we decided at that time to actually bring what we call today skills for employment as a program to all our markets in in again. And the point for us is the big why it's it's it's quite deep with us. It's two things that are incredibly important. Maybe the second one is what I will try to drum loud on the coming weeks and months. First of all maybe not everybody agrees but we think we need to represent society as it is. However the situation we need to be part of it and be relevant for people. Secondly this is exactly what Valerie is talking about and you Ebru this is a great opportunity. We we talk about talent being one of the greatest shortages and issues right now. So why wouldn't you see this as a great opportunity. We see great progress with the employment schemes that we have. We actually also see we have statistics on how actually the retention rates are much better even and the barriers are about language. It's a couple of things you need to address in a systematic approach. But it's definitely something that is possible and we show that with the numbers. Commissioner Valeri mentioned that you need other stakeholders involved to do this work civil society to connect to the refugees but also the regulatory environment. And the EU is a very special case study of that. You've responded very swiftly to Ukrainian refugees by. Well actually why don't you tell us a little bit about what you've put in place in this case in particular to make it easier for them to access the labor market. Well first thank you very much for organizing this very important discussion and I must say I like very much the comments which have been made. Which reflects by the way the general attitude of Europeans and also our neighbors towards refugees now during this crisis. I have to admit this was not the case during the previous crisis except Turkey. I must say where things because you referred to this crisis or then to the former crisis model. So I think this is I don't I do not know is it lessons learned or is it just because first things happened extremely rapidly. In in three weeks more than five million people came into the EU. This is much more than the refugees from Syria because it took nearly two years for three million. So there was really a very abrupt situation in that in that context. And the reaction was in that way also quite different because we managed to activate this temporary protection directive which had been adopted during the wars on the Balkans but never been activated even then it was not activated. And so the Commission proposed to activate it and there was an agreement that was a consensus to do so. And this directive is a very I would say progressive one in that sense and reflects exactly what has been said here. It gives first an immediate status to people not long demands not bureaucratic because very often for refugees this kind of bureaucratic barriers are extremely difficult and also in some way. Discouraging at least that's very moderate expression. So this is makes things much easier. It was also the right way because especially those countries on the borders Poland Romania had to receive each day thousands and thousands of people coming crossing the border. So this was managed quite well. I must say I was on the border. I was in Poland. I saw how the poll managed this also in terms of protecting people because as you said those who are coming or have come are mainly women and children. So they have special special needs also for personal protection because we know that. Well they always also some threats or abuses around such a situation. And the second thing is people should get immediate access to labor market. And this was granted by nearly all the member states who make efforts to integrate them into the labor market. And also there's a strong will of these refugees to be integrated in the labor market and thousands have already managed to be in the labor market. Which is remarkable also and especially also access to social services. And I fully agree. There is one big issue that's housing. That's a real big issue. Now in the first stage I must say that especially in Poland but also in Romania where where the bulk of people have arrived civil society or just citizens have done a fantastic work because not only there but in Germany and Sweden also but where where we need the millions of people have arrived. They have just received people at home. And this is also something quite exceptional. So there is a movement of solidarity in that context. But I think it is supported also by this very open approach thanks to this frame the protection directive. And now certainly we have to work on how we really give people because many of these refugees thought they could come for some weeks or perhaps two or three months and then return back. Some have already turned back return back because of the situation in Kiev which has improved. But the situation as we all know in Ukraine remains extremely extremely dangerous and complicated. So I think now we have to provide these people with also the essential social services. I must say last point is education for kids. We have more than one million. I think largely more than one million kids arriving. Many small children and they have interrupted their schooling everything. So I saw in Poland. I saw also in Romania how schooling for these kids was in a very rapid way put up where kids get now continue their schooling partially through online schooling partially with teachers who have arrived also especially women women teachers. And I think this is important first not to allow these kids to continue their normal life if one can say so. But also to overcome this kind of trauma these kids have gone through. And I think in that sense this is an essential element which you mentioned also to help people to overcome the trauma they have they have been affected by. But it also speaks to the what Valery mentioned that kind of whole society approach that's needed because the parents can't access the labor market if they don't have kids in school. Childcare. Childcare is an issue when suddenly the polls have got a second generation of young kids. So you have to build you have to set up schools for these kids because nearly as many kids as as they were there have arrived from one moment to another. And then child care which is another challenge to give in order to allow mothers to work. Well you have to provide the child care and and and this is a this is a real challenge. But I noticed that a lot has been at least initiated to do so. Well with the support of the European Union because we all know this is also a financial challenge for for the countries who have been faced who are facing this situation. Yes. Yes. I just wanted to be on and take the opportunity to thank the commissioner because the speed of policy shifts and enablement was incredible. I was like yourself in in the border in Poland to Ukraine among the first weeks. And what I found remarkable was how the whole society as you said was basically kids youngsters stopped school to become volunteers. I think majority of Ikea coworkers had people in their homes and the centers that I visited had flowers. And I was walking with a gentleman from the from the city of Lublin and he told me the story that in the past to become a hero in Lublin in the past history.  And I said now we're going to try to love our neighbors. And I must say having been in these places you can see that the devastation and tragedy we read about the newspaper. I would like to start the goodness of people mobilizing is just amazing to see and to be part of. Now we've seen that kind of solidarity in the case of Ukraine and we've seen uncharacteristically fast action by the EU in the case of Ukraine. But more broadly that hasn't been the case. And I heard your fellow commissioner Margarita Schinas who is focused on promoting the European way of life of course. And he earlier this week said how frustrated he was at how slow the EU has been to agree a broader migration policy. I think his exact words were it's it's too much talk. I'm losing patience. So that's I think a question and if you see more broadly some of the frameworks that the EU had tried to put in place before Ukraine. And I'm thinking here of the reception conditions directive which required signatory member states to allow asylum seekers to access the labor market within nine months. We saw that the UK when it was a member wasn't following that that Hungary and others weren't really coming along. So to what extent is Ukraine likely to lead to the same kind of treatment for other refugees moving forward. Is it a turning point in the way the EU might then facilitate what it did for Ukrainians for others. That's for you commissioner. Yes. Well I think there's a certain number of lessons which we should draw from this case and member states should draw first access to labor markets. I think some countries by the way Sweden is one example access to labor market is quite easy and quite immediate. So you do not need you need not wait nine months six months until you can be integrated in the labor market. And I think this is something I was migration minister some years ago and I always pleaded for integrating people immediately into the labor market. And I heard always this theory now that's a pull factor. You should not do that because this is if people have to return back and they are in the labor market that will create even worse problems and so on. But I think this is a real lesson that the sooner and the more rapidly you integrate people in the labor market. You give them the chance to work. This is a factor of integration. This is a factor of participation. This by the way is a good opportunity as you said. And I heard by the way also recently I was with the Jordan Labor Minister and he said well the Syrian refugees to Jordan. They are all businessmen or business women. They are extremely and you mentioned Syria Jordan. They have created a lot of jobs and opportunities. So I think this is something we should now really a lesson we should have learned. Now will this prevail if we are facing hopefully not but you cannot exclude it. Other migration crisis very difficult to say very I'm honest. I cannot say yes this will change because we have seen by the way that countries were very much opposed to migration during the migration crisis in 2015. Are now on the forefront and they have been very active. Poland is one example Czech Republic Slovakia Romania. They are very active and doing a tremendous good job. That's a good good point. We've also seen double standards where certain refugees are treated one way by Poland and others. This is this is a sad issue. Something which one cannot agree with because we have seen the first day when people crossed or wanted to cross the borders. That discrimination were applied. I hope that we immediately reacted against that and that things had changed. But this is an issue and shows that well this conflict is a very particular conflict. It's a European conflict. Let's say the truth. Let's say the truth. It's a European conflict at our borders and especially at the borders of those countries who were the most reluctant before. So that's why I cannot say now this will change now the whole migration policy in Europe by the way what my colleague has said. Yes we are in a process of negotiating a migration policy more comprehensive active and also in a way harmonized migration policy. The Commission has made a very whole bunch of proposals and negotiations are really progressing very very slowly. So hopefully we had this instrument of the temporary protection directive which helped us finally to to respond in a very very positive and very active way to to this crisis. What about on the private sector side? Have you seen a shift now because of Ukraine in terms of the appetite of companies to kind of follow your lead? Yes we'll start. You were going to say something. I will try to exercise patience. So I mean I just want to say something. I'm so happy to see the awareness. I mean Turkey has been dealing with this issue for the past decade. We provided housing. We provided jobs, health services and they are integrated in the society now. The Syrian refugees and some of them are already recruited by European Union but the qualified ones. So actually what's left in Turkey is mostly the unskilled ones. So this puts us in a position that we have to reskill them and we have to find jobs to them integrate into the labor market. I mean but after the situation in Ukraine I think nothing will be the same. I mean we have to as the private sector we have to think differently act differently and we have to be more community focused. I mean for the past two years we've been talking about ESG how we can make our businesses or planet better. But now we have to I think think differently be more community focused. We have to integrate these people in our companies because there's like 80 million displaced people in the world. I mean it's not only Ukrainians, Syrians but more people maybe more people will come. So we have to be more creative and probably do work on solutions from the policy level with the governments, with the academia, with the private sector but we have to work together. I mean we should not compete anymore. We have to work together and use this diversity to put extra talents in our companies. And the other thing is we have to communicate it very well. Right now in Turkey of course we have economical issues. We have 11 percent unemployment rate, 21 percent in the young unemployment. So it's not easy for us but then we have to be probably more long term focused. And you know from the private sector we have to put our hands under the stone at Turkey's saying. And you know take it from there. I would just like to agree. I think it is probably so when you listen to experts that it's going to be forever that your level of caring will be higher when it's somebody close to you. But I think still there is an opportunity to change the narrative right now. At least it's worth giving a try. So we will ourselves engage now. We are announcing today actually that we will launch the toolkit that we have developed the last years. Where we are then long before the Ukrainian war developing a methodology for how we actually overcome some of the barriers and include people that has fled their homes into our workforce. So it's called Skills for Employment. It's a seven step model. And we're launching it today to present it in the open. But even more important I think we're challenging and inviting 500 companies to join us to talk about this and to if they can learn from what we have experienced to actually be part of how we turn this into both a humanitarian and economic success story of the future.  So we want them to join the movement. But we also want to have a race up till December 23 when there will be a big event around refugees. And so we see that as a milestone. Some of this work will is not done in a day. So you need to put the program in place. But what we feel and what we experience is that it is not only the right thing to do but it has all the economic upsides as well. So we're going to invite people. We're going to use the International Refugee Day. I think it is the 20th of June to actually create the dialogue but in particular invite other corporates to be part of it. Can I be on that because I think we see much more interest than in the past from the private sector. And it has a lot to do with the aftermath of the pandemic. I want to be provocative here because what private sector has realized is that we need to give meaning to what we do. And all our stakeholders are asking us private sector to stand for our values and to take a stance. In the past we were getting away with just a moment of contrition and poor guys etc. But now if you want to retain your employees they need to know that you true and authentic to your values. Our motto in the ADECO group is make the future work for everyone. We can't let the refugee on the side of the road. So it's core of our mission. And when we call for our customers and I did a lot of these call downs to get companies to participate on the platform jobs for Ukraine. People were jumping in. And the other thing that was interesting is by the way it's not only the employees. Clients are also asking you what are you doing? Where are you on the spectrum of support? Your investors are asking you because ESG being so big. And I think when I saw the movement towards yes we want to participate. The other thing that was very telling is that today you have people who are dedicated. Guess who I was calling. It was not the CEO. The CEO was saying talk to my sustainability officer. This person is responsible to make sure that we have our social impact. So what we see and it's not ideal. I don't want to paint a rosy picture etc. There is still a lot of good intent and not enough action. But what I see is that the social impact is becoming more and more into the fabric of the private sector. And we have to participate. It can't be something on the side. Which is new because as you were telling me earlier, you've been lonely after doing this kind of work since 2015. You haven't seen many of your peers in this space. I would say to the commissioners point also that the closer you come to the war and to the conflict. It's more of a grassroots movement than everybody. Small companies big. Everybody's engaged. But I would say as I've been traveling to the markets in IKEA surrounding or neighboring to Ukraine. I've been told by UNHCR Red Cross, MediSansson, Frontier etc. That they have not met anybody in my position traveling around this topic. So I think there is still something what you say that people are in general distancing themselves to this topic. But it's part of our reality. It's part of our society. And also so is the opportunity. So therefore I think I'm happy to share that insight with other fellow corporate leaders. Just a word on the previous crisis. There has been a study made in Germany because Germany received more than a million and a half of refugees during 2015 and 16. And there has been a study on the impact economic impact. And this study shows absolutely that economic impact is positive. So I think we have also to work very, very strongly on the narrative of immigration. And I think we have to be prepared. Well, the demographic evolution in Europe is what it is. And so we have to work on this narrative. Now we launched the idea of talents. Indeed, Europe now says, well, we should try to attract more talents. That's true because other parts in the world, they attract the talents. I think Europe has to be more attractive. And I think we have to work in our societies on these issues. But you know, immigration is not a one-way street. It's not just the immigrant has to do everything, but also the society has to give the opportunities to integrate. It's a two-way street. And I think here efforts have to be made. Housing is important, fundamental jobs, education, and also the possibilities really to be part of the society. And the community approach which you mentioned seems to me extremely important. And I do wonder if by showing that the economic benefits, making that case, putting it into practice, that that helps detoxify, as your colleague said the other day, the more kind of social or demographic piece in Europe in particular that has been such a blockage. So there may be a way in which that narrative kind of helps what you're doing helps play into that narrative. I want to open it up to the floor if there are any questions. And if you could briefly introduce yourselves, yes. I'm Hido van Ham from the University of Antwerp. I'm a virologist, so I'm not related. But I also, in my spare time... You could just put the mic a little bit closer. Yeah, I'm Hido van Ham from the University of Antwerp. And in my spare time I take care of some refugee issues in Belgium. And so I'm surprised that the elephant in the room has not been talked about, which is racism and Islamophobia, which is terrible and which is especially terrible in Eastern Europe. So how are we going to address racism and Islamophobia? Thank you. And maybe we'll take one more and then come back to the panel. Hi, I'm Saptar from Tata Consultancy Services. I manage European operations. My question is around, there are a lot of people coming in to Europe from Ukraine seeking jobs. We should have a platform by which a lot of people are looking to employ them. Is there a platform that is created, which is common, which the Commission can create, where you can publish those jobs and we can kind of take these people in. Otherwise every enterprise trying to go and these people coming into various platforms like LinkedIn and others is too complicated. And that would probably speeden up this whole employment aspect. And the second one I had was on skills, because we need to develop skills at scale. And what are the solutions for that? Are there programs that are coordinated by the Commission that can help us all join together? The good news is that you don't have to build it. A deco already has. So we have already a platform, it's Job for Ukraine. I can tell you the details right after. This was put in place like two weeks after the invasion. And so we already have over 1500 companies participating from any sectors. And it's totally free. It's totally pro bono. And so we are working with the NGO to make sure that refugee get access to the platform. We are also providing coaching for them to develop their resume, to do assessment on their skills. And we also have over, I think it's over 6000 refugees who are benefiting from a wide range of program for training. We have partnership with bullets on language. We have partnership with Cisco, Microsoft, etc. The big tech industry for technical skills. So we are actually calling on for partners come and join us. As I was saying, it's not the deco group doing everything by itself. It's the coalition of the willing. It's everyone participating to the core. And so if in your company you have curriculum that you could put on the platform, please come because this will accelerate the access to market for all these refugees. I'm not ignoring the Islamophobia question. I'm going to come back to it. But Ebru, do you want to speak to the skills issue? How do you address that challenge? This is what we are doing right now, trying to put down programs together with the academia and the language schools as well. And especially the lady who is the entrepreneur who has opened the language school. Because without language, it's very hard for them to survive in Turkey. I'm talking about the Syrians. By the way, we have Ukrainians too, but they're more integrated. And with the Syrians, they are very much currently in the textile sector, but we really want them to be technically involved as well. I work with one petroleum engineer, a woman. And it was so hard for her to make her diploma valid. You know, it took ages for her. I experienced day by day with her to send it to Aleppo from the university. So these are the things right now we are working on the engineering level. But the skilling, thanks to digitalization with universities, language school, we are putting down the program together. Maybe short remark. And also, I will enjoy studying how you operate. And but also this is not a competition. So we also glad to share the learnings because as we are launching our methodology today, it's about the nitty gritties in the how to overcome the barriers. And then I would just like to comment, even if I'm sure that the commissioner would love to comment on the first question here. I'm not sure you will love to comment on the first question. I think from our perspective, it's a very not to allow elephants to to be invisible in the room. I think it's a very valid question that is not only, of course, a political ownership. We all have to take ownership for that question. It's a scary and complex question. And I don't I would not pretend to have the answer to your question. But I believe today and these days I've experienced in Davos people discuss on top of the challenges. Interesting enough, I hear talent and I hear polarization and racism is probably the ugliest part of polarization. I think by what we are discussing here by bringing people together to not isolating people in our societies and making sure people get to know each other, work together. At least I think that holds a small part of the puzzle in how we can avoid that. So thank you. But practically with an IKEA, did you face resistance because of some of that racism or Islamophobia when you tried to integrate? Of course we did. But I would say not it's almost it's so it's not been one of the topics we had to discuss. I thought it would be it's there in society. But since we're a company that are for many people and that we since ages have been representing people and basically having an inclusive attitude to gender, where you come from, what's your sexual preference, whatever. I think people are not people are more curious and driven by that force. And I think it was one of the recommendations that came out of the white paper that also setting a tone from the top becomes very important. It's such a cultural issue that that can perhaps be part of the answer that when CEOs send a certain message within their companies that you get a bit more traction. But Commissioner, more broadly within Europe, what can be done to overcome the Islamophobia that is at the heart of so much of the anti-refugee sentiment? First, I want to say that certainly the more Eastern European, Central European countries. The problem was, well, we do not want people of a different religion. That was very clearly the message we got. Now, I would not say racism is just in Central and Eastern Europe. Racism is everywhere in all our societies. And we know that populism is growing with racism and Islamophobia. And when we look at the election recently in some countries, how these themes have been at the center for some parties. This is quite worrisome. So I think we have really to work on that and also work on the solutions. Because we failed in many respects on really getting the right integration solutions. When you put all the people in some poor area and they have no job and then the problems come up of racism and all kinds of difficulties in some area or suburbs in big cities. Well, these are the errors we committed during the past and which have to be absolutely corrected. But certainly we cannot accept any racism or discrimination. But this is a difficult fight we have really to fight. But certainly in Eastern Europe, in Central Europe, we have also to understand these societies. They were closed societies, largely closed. So this was a shock for them and it was abused by some political leaders. We all know that who started to rebuild fences around their country. The first country where fences were demolished was the country where a fence was again built. So this is also a policy and populist policies which we have to fight. So this on racism, this is by the way a major topic in the European Union. I think non-discrimination fighting all kinds of inequalities and discriminations. This is high on our agenda. And I can tell you that I think across many sectors beyond government and corporate, even within my world, the humanitarian sector, a lot of agencies are looking to say, how can we leverage this moment of Ukraine to kind of tap into a broader solidarity and that there's a lot of energy going into thinking about how can you translate that into broader support for other refugees, whether that works or not is an open question. We've got a minute and 45 seconds left. So maybe just to close, if I can hear from each of you, if there's one kind of practical tip for folks who are interested in moving forward in this direction, who are facing some of these barriers, who are looking for advice. What's one way forward that you can propose to them? And maybe Jesper, since you're launching the toolkit, we can start with you. No, but I would do two things. I wrote here, winter is coming, but I realized I was already taken. You wrote what? Winter is coming. I think we need to brace ourselves. There are several things going on in the world right now that are scary. We stand before a famine crisis. We stand before climate change that will put enormous pressure on this topic. And again, the war is ongoing in Ukraine. And as much as things, there are some optimism in it that we have a winter ahead of us. That's going to be energy crisis and more of refugees and more likely. So on one hand, I think we need to brace ourselves and make ourselves ready for the coming period. Second, I would just say that let's continue to do what I think the forum does so excellently and others. Let's bring this topic into the public. Let's talk about it. Let's have a dialogue and let's make sure that there is a space where companies have a big responsibility to actually be a part of the solution. Thank you. Valeri? Well, I would say for corporate, for private sector, focus on where you're good at. Don't try to invent yourself an NGO if you are not. Work with the people who know. Don't try to think that you come to the solution by yourself. Are you sure you know whether Ukrainian people want all these women who were refugees? So work with the people who have access so that you get their needs and work with the public institution as well. It will take a village to make that happen. So that would be my conclusion. Commissioner? Well, I think we have to keep the momentum of solidarity in our societies because there's one danger which we should not totally exclude. That's the danger of some kind of fatigue at the end. So I think we have a huge responsibility in supporting, in finding very concrete solutions. And I think what the private sector is doing is, if essence, it's key because we have housing is key because, well, people are ready to receive somebody for one month, two months, three months. And then maybe they start to say, well, where's the solution? So there is, for the public sector, a big responsibility to work also on that side on solutions to finally take over the solidarity which has been so strong on the citizens or civil society side. So I think this is something we have to plan ahead, to see ahead because unfortunately this war will go on and this is terrible. And I wonder if actually private sector engagement might push some of the more reluctant governments to also pick up their socks every last word.  You know, you have done a lot. So continue to be resilient. Ask for help. Asking for help is not bad, but also show us to the private sector, to the government, show us ways to help you because, you know, the programs, it's like we come up after direct communication. So it's very good to ask for help. It's nothing bad. And plus showing us ways how you can be benefit to us and be benefit to you. For a private sector, nothing will be the same.  We have to act differently. We have to do everything what we have done so far differently. As Valerie said, values are important. I mean, now we have 50,000 people. Our value is that we exist if we deliver and we exist if we collaborate.  But all of us has to join forces. Not only the real sector, but with the governments.  And but it's good to see that. I mean, now there's bigger solidarity and I'm happy to see that. So I've heard that there are a number of barriers to being able to integrate refugees but that they are surmountable when there is an appetite and that that appetite is beginning to grow and that we may be at a turning point. Now, not only because of Ukraine, but as you say, Valerie, because of the pressure that employees and others are putting on companies to be better global citizens. And I think you've also heard a number of practical tools that you can use from a decos platform to IKEA's toolkit for the EU, this directive that could perhaps be applied to other refugees. And so I hope you're walking away from this with a few tangible things that you can take forward. Thank you very much for your attention and thank you to all of you.


Good morning, high performance computing fam, and welcome back to Denver, Colorado. We're here at Supercomputing 2023. My name is Savannah Peterson, joined by my fabulous co-host, David Nicholson. How are you doing, man? Doing well. You came in all juiced up this morning. I've been very excited coming off of a couple of my Wharton classes and meeting with someone from Cambridge. What could be better? You're feeling intellectual and academic. I'm going to do my best. That must be your first. I'll do my best. I'll try to hang. Well, I'm really excited for our next segment. We have a CUBE veteran, Andrea, from Dell. Thank you for being here. Absolutely. And we've also got Paul from Cambridge representing the intellectual academic side of things. It might be. Yeah. I don't do the intellectual after a long time. I mean, that's fair. It is day four. It is day four. We're at elevation. It is arid. My vocal cords are certainly showing it, but really excited to talk to you too. There's been a partnership between both company, or between Dell and Cambridge for 17 years, which is awesome. We've got projects to talk about. Paul, I want to turn it to you first. How's the show going for you? I imagine you've been to many supercomputings. I've been to 22 supercomputings. You might be our record holder on the show this week. And it was much easier 22 years ago, believe me. Really? Yeah. Interesting. I heard this is the largest ever. Yeah. It feels like it. It feels like it. Over 10,000 is what we were seeing. I think we've got the COVID thing out of the way, and everyone wants to come out and chat and talk. It's good. Yeah. They were whittling microprocessors out of wood back then, right? No. 22 years ago. I'm like that old. Wooden supercomputers. Floppy desks. The Beowulf clusters, I was right at the start. That's when I got involved in the very beginning of the Beowulf clusters. That's 20 years ago.  Are you on one of those history panels out there? No. Well, we'll have to work on that.  Big announcements for Dell coming out. I know that Cambridge implemented some of what you announced last year. Tell us about what's going on. Yeah, so last year we used SC-22 for our huge launch of our XE portfolio, in which I kind of iterated, we focused on a couple key things. One being versatility in vendor diversity within our products. The other being able to meet customers where they're at in regards to thermals from a liquid and air cooling solutions. Now we get to see it in action, which is so incredibly cool, because University of Cambridge took our first XE 9640 right off the line. It's our liquid cooled variant. And it's also our Intel Pontavecchio variant. So it's both parameters. Which is, I love that you just said that, Andre, application is what we're starting to see here at the show. It feels like we've tipped over hypothetical and there's so many different use cases. I can imagine Paul being in the research side of this hot topic. You're on the front lines. What are you seeing? What are the students and stuff doing? So this machine is designed to kind of be a converged AI and simulation platform. So we want to run simulations. We want to run AI. And we actually want to run simulations that are informed by AI. And so we want a GPU system which goes into, mainly because of the one API program and environment that allows us to develop codes across platforms. So this is actually the fastest AI system in the UK. We've got 20 petaflops. The system's up and running now. We should be doing early science in December. And one feature of this system that's actually quite interesting is from carbon boxes in my loading bay to LIMPAC took us just three and a half weeks.  A super computer. That is super fast. Boxes to HPL in three and a half weeks was kind of stellar. And it shows what can be done if you focus. Of course we've been working with Dell for a long time to get to that stage in co-designing the box. Yeah. We've been working with Intel in the software environment. And it's rocking. And there's a lot of applications already that we can put on that system that are going to make some real impact. So I had the pleasure of joining in the Dell Summit, HPC Summit, and I saw your presentation. I'd like to hear about essentially your kit. If I remember correctly, it was something around 100 million pounds of investment. And particularly I want to know how you maintain security and you keep out the mongrels from the industrial, the filthy industrial town of Oxford. Oh yeah. Okay. In particular. But in all seriousness, tell us about the size and scope of what you're doing. Yeah, so the size, so this is 258, 9640 servers. Each one of those servers has four GPU cards. So there's 1,024 cards in total. 32, I can't do my maths. 1,032 cards. Each server also has four HDR 200 links because we really wanted this to be as scalable as it could be. That's why we actually chose this 2U Dell server because we can get four full width PCI cards in there for the networking. So there's one infinity band link per card. There's one NVMe drive per card. So you've got a large local NVMe capacity in the servers and then you can get out to a large solid state storage pool. So in total, it's a really powerful machine. Yeah, it sounds like a very powerful machine. Tell us a little more about Project Dawn. Yeah, so as a dorm was funded by a co-design partnership with Dell Intel and the UK government and it's really designed to push the UK, kickstart the UK's AI capability. The UK has been underfunded for some time but the current administration recognized this and we're ramping up our federal funding dramatically and this is the first of a series of AI focused machines in the UK. And we are targeting it at free kind of science use cases to begin with. I think the first one is the fusion community in the UK. So the UK has got quite a large activity to try to develop a fusion reactor, putting energy on the UK grid by the 2040s. Because fusion is a huge problem. The simulation domain is multi-physics, multi-time domain. It's a really big simulation problem. So we work with UK quite heavily. The second domain is pushing AI into clinical medicine, actually into the clinic for patient processes. Of course, most clinical research is in the lab but pushing IT into the clinic is a different matter and we've been doing that for some time. So there's a lot of activities in pushing HPC and AI for various domains in clinical medicine. And the third domain is climate science. So we support a lot of climate activities globally. We have a lot of climate science research staff and software development staff. And we have this machine really to push the boundaries on climate science. You know, it's a fascinating loop when you think about using AI to advance energy technology, so that enough energy will be available to power the machines in order to put it in a vicious circle, man. But yeah, clean energy is a huge one. And using AI to shortcut some of the computational costs of simulations is going to really revolutionize what we do. Because most simulations, a lot of simulations are solved in large partial differential equations, right? So at the heart of many simulation codes, it's a PDE. I cross from fluids to electronic structure to materials or PDEs. And we solve them by brute force and that's really expensive. So we need extra scale machines. But if you can use AI to simulate that PDE, you can get an effective exoflop on the petaflop machine, right? So that's where I think we're going to see huge gains in the coming years in science. It is a really exciting. I mean, supercomputing as an industry, high performance computing, started with a lot of simulations and weather and climate. And it's amazing to see us scale and evolve orders of magnitude essentially in what's possible. Andrea, I love that you just touched on this, Paul, the collaboration between government, academia, and enterprise partners like Dell. How important are these partnerships for you and how, I'm curious, since you had the big announcement last year and AI is so hot, are there more and more countries and government organizations and people reaching out to try and collaborate like this? Absolutely. I would say one of the key focuses we have is actual early engagement with really, really strategic partners. When we're looking at our next generation product designs, their feedback is so imperative for us. You know, when we can have the early feedback in regards to, hey, this is where our head's at, this is what we're thinking from a design perspective, and we can actually get live feedback that can influence the design to make sure it's exactly designed for what our customer needs. That's one of the top tenets of how we design and articulate what we need to go do. Well, and I love that. I mean, you're designing with your community in mind and making sure that you're optimizing some of the hottest hardware on the planet, quite literally, to do so. Are there any trends in the converse? I realize there's obviously, you're very early in the process sometimes in these strategic dialogues and probably can't disclose, but are there any trends that you're noticing? We've had a real sense of FOMO here on the show as everyone's trying to catch up. Are you experiencing that? I think one of the biggest trends, and we touched upon at last SE, I think everyone was talking about, oh my gosh, the TDPs and thermally, now a year later, it's exploding way more. Especially in the acceleration space and these types of products and designs. I think one of the most critical things when we're talking to customers now is the conversation changes to we need to be educating and bringing along the journey of five years out because for a lot of these products, from a thermal perspective, liquid cooling is just one, not if anymore. And we actually have to plan the CAPEX investment now. And it's two key parameters. One is going to be how do you plumb a facility for water. The second is make sure you have the right rack power and even the right weight that can be supported by the floors in some of these locations. The different time scales that infrastructure build up. So your IT infrastructure, you might be looking at a year time scale from inception to completion. But the data center around there, you've got to do big work in your data center. You're talking two years, three years. So you need to be thinking two or three years ahead for your data center planning. Otherwise you're not going to be able to buy that computer. So the different time scales here, I mean the customers need to be talking with Dell so they can find out what data center are I building for equipment you're going to be selling me in three years time. Yeah, and that loop is quite a difficult one. Customers are not used to that because we've been in a pretty static air-cooled environment for a long time. And now there's a big transition going on and you've got to prepare and look, looking three or four years ahead in the IT space is quite difficult. If you look at the rate of change we're going through at the moment, it's difficult to predict. I'm not sure about your job actually. Yeah, I guess. And the other key thing I think is, you mentioned geographically, especially energy prices and consumption, Europe, predominantly, in a lot of other different areas, sustainability is so critically important as we're looking at the future and in different ways to also be able to protect against the cost of the power and how to optimize from that standpoint as well. Because every megawatt's costing you two and a half million bucks a year, right? So that's a lot of money. So small improvements, 10% improvement in energy efficiency because you're cooling and saving you a quarter of a million bucks. You're looking at one megawatt. You're looking at two people from California so we're extremely familiar with, you know, residential rates of 60 cents a marginal kilowatt hour. This is home. You know, running a megawatt in your basement. Right, no. No, I generate megawatts on my roof, but over time. I think that's, we had at North and Dell actually on the show earlier this week talking about taking liquid cooling and taking that water and actually heating homes in Copenhagen. Yeah, we're planning something similar. Which is so cool. It was one of, I feel like there's a moment, every show, thanks to you brilliant, wonderful humans for sharing your intellect, where it all clicks for me with some new layer of this. And that was where I got how this becomes sustainable and renewable and actually makes so much more sense.  It's your aha moment. 100%.  It's why we do what we do and we're passionate about this. What I do feel, and I mean, even with travel, I feel a little guilt about my carbon footprint sometimes. And I feel guilt about the types of activities I promote because I'm not sure that that's the most climate friendly activity even if we have to run the climate model. But now, I feel like we're finally at a place where we can see, as much as none of us have a crystal ball, I feel like we can finally see that future is possible and that we will build the tools to make that future possible. So, I would. And the flip side of the coin is the technology helps with global weather patterning. Exactly. To be able to predict what the future would be. So it hits it on both paradigms, ironically. Which is awesome. Exactly. I mean, you just mentioned it. It's this full circle holistic situation and it's so great to see partnerships like yours. Paul, I got to ask, since you've been to 22 supercomputings, which is impressive. How, do you feel like hardware is in the spotlight more broadly now? Do you feel like it's having a moment? Do you feel like? Well, obviously the AI boom is really focusing people's minds on dense accelerated systems. All the quick cooling thing has really lifted off. When did you see plumbing at supercomputing shows? You never used to see it. I know. Yeah, pipes and tubes. So you know, for the hardware junkies, it's an interesting time, right? Very. But again, I would say that we should really put more focus on the software. Because with hardware, you might get one X or two X with performance gains. With software, you can get 10 X or 100 X. So the big gains are coming from the software. The hardware is a necessity and a lot of us are hardware junkies and we love the cables and all that kind of hardware stuff because it's what we like. But the real gains are in the software. Well, on a happy note in that subject, I mentioned off air that I do guest lecture work at Cambridge CTO program. When we talk about the AI stack. Well, exactly. It's all software. We casually mentioned TPU, GPU, CPU. Let's talk about the software stack. And so it is a focus. But we're always harping on the idea of just how critical the hardware is. Yeah, yeah. It's a critical enabler, but then a big gain. So we bought a whole lot of A100s three years ago. And those things are just getting faster and faster and faster by themselves. I think the performance on that has trebled since I bought that same bit of hardware. So without you even noticing, that same piece of hardware is just getting faster, faster, faster in the AI space because they can take advantage of low and low precision, right? And again, the HPC space has got a cotton onto that. The HPC community is going to thrive. It has to learn how to adapt and use AI technologies. So we've got to get into lower precision. We've got to get into using that AI hardware and that's how the simulation community is going to benefit from this focus on AI. So we mentioned how so much has changed since we chatted a year ago. How much technology has advanced when we have your wonderful self on the show next year at Supercomputing? What are we going to be talking about then? How do you say? I don't think I can say. Well, I mean, we're always here for the scoop, Avi. But I think the next ecosystem of how we are going to go and address liquid cooling in a way in which it makes it easy for our customers to adopt. I think that's the ease of implementation and our designs are really, really focused on that because everyone needs the easy button. The end of this is such a hot topic. I want to tell you what, I was in some Dell meetings this week and for the first time ever, they've surprised me. And they've never surprised me in 17 years and it's really exciting what they've got planned. I can't say any more than that, I couldn't tease you. But I was surprised and excited with the stuff that we had. Talk about a 12 month cliffhanger, Paul. Yeah, just wait for 12 months and then you'll see. It's looking really, really good. Okay, so no one, you know, it's just us here, right? We're just in our, it's just us friends. Just us, just us. Very well illuminated. So, so, Blake twice, if there's any truth to the rumor that Dell is planning to acquire Starbucks and co-locate data centers with Starbucks using the latent heat from processing to brew coffee. Is there any truth to that? How did you know? I don't know. Is there any truth? Okay. There's a rear door cooler exchange that goes directly into the machine. Right, well, so Savannah thinks it's cool that we're all using this heat. I feel like it makes us look like apes. And we get free coffee out of the TO because, hey, it's a strategic partnership. But eventually, shouldn't we be efficient enough that it's not very warm? How did he know? Wow, okay. Well, we're going to have to edit that out. You've got a leak. Yes. No one needs to lose a job over this interview. Taking us in our final direction for our chat. I know you mentioned that Blake, your stepson is going to be walking the show floor with you this afternoon. What are the younger folks most excited about in supercomputing? I think they just love to come and geek out on the technology, right? So he goes to DU, so computer science. And he's all up to speed and all the time. My boy does the same. He's a computer science in Manchester. Imagine that. Yeah. How did he get into that? I don't know. Yeah. AI is the thing that my boys are really interested in. Today, if you're young and you're in that space, it's going to be AI. It definitely seems like a gateway conversation to the beautiful high-performance computing hardware behind us. But even seeing what they learn in their universities, I think coming to an event like this and seeing the future of technologies, and then, you know, I'm a very visual person. So when you can actually see it, touch it, feel it, it resonates in different ways. And then it also is enormous in terms of brainstorming and idea-generating. And then, you know, that younger generation is going to fly. Here's, how about this for a brainstorm. Internship at Cambridge. Hey, Paul. Exactly. That's good. I have my boy in my group this time. Yeah, yeah. How about we swap? He's like, daddy, I learned more in eight weeks in your intern than the whole year of Manchester. And I got paid. So why am I at university? Oh, that's a good thing to know. Exactly. Conversation with my kids. On that note, congratulations on your smart offspring. And thank you both for being here on this fantastic episode. Andre and Paul, it's so insightful. David, thank you for being here and always making some creative analogies during our little adventure in getting the secret scoop. And thank all of you for tuning in at home here. We are live from Denver, Colorado at Supercomputing 2023. My name's Savannah Peterson and you're watching theCUBE, the leading source for emerging tech news.


Well, with games at the minimum in the first month of the season due to weather conditions, the Brainerd baseball team sits three and one and undefeated in the Central Lakes. They have a twin build this afternoon, but let's go to game two. Warriors host St. Cloud Tech with Bryce Flanagan on the mound and he gets roughed up a little bit. Logan, Elisran goes deep with two men on. Tigers go up three zip after one. Doesn't get any better in the second for Brainerd. Chris Bacchus lines the one to deep left field. That'll roll to the wall and plate another one as Brainerd would lose it to St. Cloud Tech 12 to nothing and then they would also fall earlier in the day to Fergus Falls at six to five. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland news, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


Robin is a recognized pioneer and expert in strategy and digital implementation. He is driven to transform strategy implementation globally by inspiring leaders to adopt a different mindset and approach. He's the founder of three companies and three businesses association. Robin is the CEO of a business consulting and co-founder of a strategy implementation institute and the ticking clock guide. As a TEDxpeak presenter and facilitator for IMD and an adjunct faculty member for Duke CE and Singapore Management University and an international best-selling author, he actually recently launched his new book, World's Best Bank, A Strategy Guide to Digital Transformation. And you'll see, we'll talk about the fact that he's been recently co-nominated with Piyush Gupta, CEO of DBS Bank, over Fingers 50 ideas into practice award. We were privileged to have him with us just over a week ago as a strategy at work. It was simply spectacular. So the topic today really is about the story of DBS Bank, lessons from a world-class digital transformation. As we know, leaders need to learn new strategies and continually and create actually new approaches to transform their organizations. What should they focus on? That's the question that we're asking ourselves. Being strategic, planning digitally and implementing in times of change require fundamental shift in culture and ways of working. Rubin will share with us how leaders can accelerate the pace of transformation while at the same time placing a deep focus on implementation. In the talk that we'll have with Rubin taking us through, he will also share how DBS Bank transformed from a traditional bank to the world's best by leveraging digitalization. DBS has been awarded the world's best bank for the past three years, so not one, not two, but three, and ranked among the top 10 digital transformations of the past decade by Harvard Business Review. Through the presentation, Rubin will help us uncover the intriguing lessons, best practices, and strokes stemming from the three years of research that he's done for his new book. So without further view, let me welcome Rubin here so that he can take us through the great story of DBS Bank. Rubin? Terry, thank you for the intro. Let me kick off with a question. We all know that digital is critical for most business models, but what percentage of digital transformations are succeeding in today's world? 10, 20, 50, 80, what percentage succeed? Well the research from not only myself but people like McKinsey, IBM, Boston Consulting Group, all is consistent that only one in three digital transformations are succeeding. I'm living in Singapore, which has been home for almost 30 years, and I sat down with my ex-colleague from Citigroup, a gentleman called Piyush Gupta, a couple of years ago.  And Terry, thank you for the introduction. It's not, they just won it not for the third year, but now for the fourth year. So they've now been recognized for four years in a row. And Piyush and I were together last week and I said to him, thank you for winning it again. And he looked at me and he realized, of course, it means your book is good for another year, the world's best bank. So I have 20 minutes to share with you the two years of access I was given to the C-suite, to the bank in our collaboration to write the world's best bank. And my focus, as Terry was kindly introduced, is not a banking story. It's how a legacy company became one of the top 10 digital transformations, as according to Harvard. And as Terry kindly mentioned, Piyush and I have been co-nominated and are presenting next week at the Thinkers 50 conference. So I'll go back a step. So for myself, just to add onto Terry's kind introduction, it's a pleasure to be presenting with Brightline again. We had a lot of fun at the conference a few weeks ago, a lot of interaction and discussion. And my passion is implementation. I was previously a city banker and I love banking, but my passion is helping leaders implement that strategy. And it's something that I've done for 21 years. So here we go. Let me go straight into the presentation. Because as I said, I got 20 minutes to share with you two years of research, writing and development. So why does digital transformation fail so often? And for today, we'll do this as a rhetorical question. I was very fortunate that not only was I working with the world's best bank, but I was also working with the world's largest luxury company back in 2014. And I pivoted my business seven years ago, recognizing that digital transformation is even tougher than strategy implementation as we previously knew it. In 2018, we interviewed over 1,800 leaders across North America, Europe and Asia looking at the state of digital. And the top three reasons in 2019 that we discovered why it fails are, first, the lack of senior leaders to change their mindset. This is something I've now coined that we shift from vertical leadership to horizontal leadership, where they have to humble themselves and recognize they can't run the business the way they always have done. The second reason is the culture. As soon as you walk in and you see people working in cubicles, not connecting with each other, you know they're going to struggle. We've got to change the culture, the way we run meetings, the way we connect, how we get together, how we communicate. So much needs to change. And the third top reason in no order is that recognizing it's not about applying automation to your back-end processes, but a whole business model transformation. So with that, I was curious to understand why DBS was so successful. And I sat down with Piers and he and I have been colleagues and friends now for 25 years. And I've been consulting to the bank for a decade now to capture the story. And this was a fun picture that someone put together of Piers, you know, back to the future style. So in my short presentation, I'm going to highlight three key areas of any digital transformation, not just a bank. How do you transform your technology architecture to support the transformation? How do you become customer obsessed? And how do you create that startup culture where people respond fast, quickly and move? So the first question that any organization moving into digital transformation should have asked is what does digitalization, sorry, where does digitalization add value to your business? Because digital has become an enormous word. Are we talking about AI, machine learning, customer journey, DevOps, agile, hackathons, customer journey mapping, design thinking? There's so much under this umbrella. You have to articulate with the focus of where the value is for your customers and your business. In DBS, the leaders were sitting in 2014 discussing the opportunity. And at the time, it was just at the back of the global financial crisis. Many people found banking painful and they recognized nobody wakes up in the morning saying, let's do our banking. So they saw an opportunity and out of that, a strategy was born to make banking joyful. Now, banking is not joy. Disneyland is joyful, not banking. So this was the digital purpose. They focus on how to really make banking joyful. And you can see here the strategy. I'll just go back to the question. Here's the first challenge. Once you identify how to digitalization will impact your business, you have to make it come alive for your employees. In our 20 years of continuous research, only 5% of employees understand their own organization strategy. So first challenge was how did DBS share making banking joyful with the whole organization? And I call this a strategy on a page. And this image was like tattooed on everyone's forehead. Everyone knows it. And when I interviewed the leaders for the book, nobody mentioned making banking joyful because it was already after four years embedded into the way they worked. So this picture summarized their strategy around focusing on the Asian markets, embedding into digital, and then behind is the skyline of Singapore. So what was the understanding? Technology allows you to make processes invisible to your customers. So by adopting the new technologies of today, the bank became less visible in the processes. Simple example, previously to do a transaction, you had to visit the branch. Get in your car, go all the way down, find a parking space, fill in the forms when you got to the branch, join the back of the line, wait to be served. Of course, now we all use mobile apps. So that's taking the pain. Now that's a very, of course, simple example, and you'll see how the bank used technology to make it invisible. So the next question is, well, you've got a purpose, but how do we implement the transformation? And as I shared as the agenda, the bank came up with three strategic principles. To transform your, to become digital to the core, this is transforming your technology, and this is where your initial capital expenditure goes. Embed yourself in customer journeys. For years, I've worked with banks across the world who said, we are going to be number one in customer service, and not just banks, but any company. Today, we truly can become the best in customer service, as DBS did. They actually went from last in Singapore to best. And how do you create that startup culture that encourages agile communication, learning, experimentation? So I'll spend about five minutes on each. So here we go with the technology component. For DBS, the challenges were redesigning their architecture, becoming nimbler so they could work and respond faster, and enable scalability through all their ecosystem partners and improve business and technology while co-working with maximizing the use of data. And part of the bank's success was how they responded to these challenges. So now you've got your purpose. You've shared it with everyone, but how do you change the mindset? Now pause for a moment. How do we get people to think and act differently? Far too often leaders charge into a transformation without recognizing that they've been studying the transformation and planning it maybe for six months, a year or two years. And they give their employees a town hall meeting and expect them to change their thinking. It doesn't happen. So this is another example of how DBS were very smart. They used an expression that said, what would Jeff do? Now you'll recognize the picture, of course, it's Jeff Bezos from Amazon, who's known for being customer obsessed. And this was very clever, because in meetings, instead of saying, how do we solve this as bankers, they said, how do we solve this as a techie if we're working in Amazon? So they thought, what would Jeff do? But a slogan on its own is not enough. So they also visited the top tech companies. And again, they were very clever. They took the acronyms and made a new, they took the letters and made a mnemonic that represent the lessons from people like Google Netflix, LinkedIn, et cetera. And it spelt out Gandalf. And Gandalf, many of you will recognize, is the wizard in Lord of the Rings. So it gave a magic touch to transforming our technology. And it explained it by saying, from Google, for example, we'll learn about open source, from Netflix about data, from LinkedIn about the importance of community. And the D in the middle is DBS becoming the digital and data bank of Singapore. But even this is not enough. You need to support with a roadmap for technology. And you need to benchmark not against your competitors, but the best in the processes. So benchmark against the world's best, not your competitors. So the leaders then said, well, we need the architecture roadmap. And from day one, the first year of the transformation, they displayed the five key elements for the change. So today it's all about moving from products to platforms. Four out of the top five companies in the world today are platform-based. It's about developing a platform-based platform It's about developing high-performing agile teams. Automate everything. Now for any bankers on the call, they'll be familiar with the term STP, straight through processing. This has been the bane of banking for many years. Now we can finally really achieve straight through processing. Design for modern systems and organized for success building in scalability. So the roadmap achieved the transformation over about three years. And the bank moved from designing for ops to no ops to now, like many in organizations, it's about having AI not people at the center of your ops. So I've put together after each one, best practices that I picked up from the research and published in the world's best bank, the book. Number one was so critical for their success. In the past, the business set the goals, turned to technology and said, what can you do to assist us? Today in DBS, the tech and the business as they plan for 2022 sit at the table as equal partners. It's called tech is biz and biz is tech. What would Jeff do? Very effective in changing the mindset. Benchmarking against the world's best, not your competition. Becoming cloud native, finding that right balance between private and public cloud. What's removed toil? Toil is a term from Google, which is the pain in processes, the non-value act. Automate everything and reinforcing how important that is. And finally, digital is not the tech's responsibility, it's everyone's. Sorry, one more, and develop your roadmap. So what were the challenges for them becoming truly customer obsessed that made them the world's best bank? Well, remember when they started their digital transformation in 2014, banking was seen very negatively. In fact, Time Magazine showed that 71% of people prefer to go to a dentist than their local branch, what? That's how painful banking was. So they wanted to make the change, hassle free, great customer satisfaction and build ecosystems. So a question you need to ask is what does digitalization mean to our customers? And for DBS, they started with what I call an outside in approach. So they didn't say what's best for us, which banks are very guilty of, and we build the process and then we like force the customer to do it our way. The bank looked at the touchpoints with the customer and reversed engineer so that they could make it easy to do, easy to do business with from the customer's point of view. So they moved from being product focused to customer centric. But how did you get your employees to practice being truly customer obsessed? It's fine to talk about it, but you have to embed it into the everyday business. In DBS, they use customer journey mapping, which many of you will be familiar with. This is not just mapping out the touchpoints of the customer, but physically going to meet them or virtually, finding out where the pain points are, how the customer feels, what are their expressions and looking at ways to improve. It's about identifying the job to be done. Now, what do I mean? For example, in the bank, people don't want a car loan. What they want is a new car. The job to be done is not provide a loan, but to provide the car. So on DBS website today, you can actually buy and sell cars. Now, what? Why would a bank buy and sell cars? Because they built the ecosystem with the partnerships through open APIs and the loan process is almost invisible because it's embedded as you enter your information, which the bank already has. It's also about eliminating those pain points when customers get so frustrated. So just a couple of examples, one example, how often have you gone to an ATM and it says, sorry, no cash? In banking, we call that cashouts. An early success was using predictive technology to remove cashouts from three months. So every 90 days to now, only happens every 55 years. Couple of other key things to share. You have to provide the tools in any technology transformation. You can't expect people to change the way they act and behave without giving them the supporting understanding, lessons and tools. DBS adopted design thinking. Now, whether you use the Stanford or the British approach doesn't matter, they're all the same principle. You discover what needs to be done. You define the problem and opportunity. You develop a minimum viable product and then you embed it, you deliver it into the operations. And this changed the thinking of the employees. So this built on what they were doing. So they no longer ask, how many mortgages do we sell every week or month? They focus on the customer. And the job to be done is to help the customer realize their dream. Customers don't want a mortgage, they want the new home. And that changes the way you think and solve problems. And customer journey mapping and design thinking are two very prominent tools that help the bank redesign its customer experience. And just closing out on customer for those in banking financial, the bank move from cross-sell to cross-buy. Now, what's cross-buy? The bank now uses contextual marketing to provide the right recommendation at the right time because it tracks every single step in the customer journey. And instead of just pushing products onto customers, it makes recommendations based on the use of data. And the bank is also very prominent in enhancing the customer experience and has the largest live open APIs of any bank in the world. So let me summarize. This is a picture of the car loan. So best practices under customer. Don't ask what is best for us but what is best from the customer. Design outward in. Start with the customer and work inward. Know the job to be done, not a mortgage or a loan, but a new home or a new car. Continuously identify, improve, and remove pain points. This is not a one-time action. You continuously track and improve customer journeys. At the bank in DBS, they used hackathons early on and they were very successful in showing what digital could do. Build open APIs to create better customer experience. Okay. So I got about five minutes left and we'll run through the culture components, which has two key messages in it because I appreciate there's a lot of information here. For DBS, it continued to evolve its culture. It wanted to move to experimentation. Now, huh? In banking, we're taught to mitigate risk. Now we were encouraging people to experiment. So that was a major change in thinking and culture. And they also wanted the happiest workforce. So the first thing the team did and a question you should ask is what is the biggest barrier to changing your culture? In DBS in 2015, there was no doubt. It was meetings. They had too many meetings that didn't start on time, took too long and weren't productive. So they created a governance. But they, again, they made it fun and enjoyable. They called it Mojo. Now, huh? What's Mojo? Mo is meeting organizer. Joe is joyful observer. So they created a Mojo for meetings. The governance was that the meeting organizer had to follow dates, be data-driven, fixed agenda, start and end on time, encourage everyone to speak up and then summarize. And at the end, the joyful observer would give feedback on the Mo's performance. And if a Mo receives too much negative feedback, they can be stopped to organize meetings. What was the impact? Today, the bank saved half a million wasted customer... Sorry, employee hours that freed up the time to take value-adding actions. So how often, before the pandemic, were you sitting in a meeting room waiting for colleagues to start a meeting or your meeting overran and you were rushing to the next meeting with no time to do anything? That was eliminated. And they also moved the needle that they went from 40 to 90% engagement with everyone speaking up in the meeting. And the last thing I'm going to share with you, and I've just got two more slides and then we'll open up for some questions. How do you create that startup culture? Every legacy company is looking at the startup culture because it eliminates the bureaucracy. We blow up bureaucracy. We work faster. We can adopt agile. Again, you won't be surprised the bank was very smart about how they did it. They had an ABCDE approach. Not just agile for A in the tech, but the whole bank worked in an agile. So one of the first departments to adopt agile was audit because they had to work faster. They became a learning organization recognising in digital transformation we need to learn new skills. Now, why customer obsessed again? Because they wanted to reinforce how important it was and the approach from Piyush is not what many other organisations do, which is employee customer stakeholder. For Piyush, he's very clear, and we were just talking about this last week, he said, Robin, customer employee stakeholder. If you create the understanding and the focus on the customer and give people a purpose, then the employees are more engaged and they deliver the results. So when customer was reinforced, being data driven, I don't have the time with you today, but this is the biggest challenge for almost any organisation who's coming from legacy. By cleaning up your data and getting rid of mistakes so that you're putting in the right data and then putting in the governance of how data is used throughout your organisation. And finally, E is experimentation to build a culture that is psychologically safe for people to experiment. So let me close out. You have to, in digital transformation, encourage experimentation. Why? Because to innovate, you need to experiment and when you experiment, you fail. So you need to encourage people to experiment and simultaneously create a culture of psychological safety where people can put up their hand and say, I tried, it didn't work, but I learned. So the motto becomes learn fast, learn forward. Learn about your mistake and apply it to your next experiments. Create a working environment that supports agile. Break down the silos, break down the barriers. For years, we've talked about silos as an issue in companies. It's about truly achieving open relationships. Go back to school. For those of you who are here today, thank you. It's about learning new skills. I had the best teacher. I learned from the leaders. I walked in and said, so how do you build the world's best bank? Look at where your gaps are, how you can fill them. Number five is so critical. You have to be a data first culture. You can only talk about AI and data separately today. But in time, we'll only talk about AI because data is part of your AI. So it's evolving and you need to have that data in the organization and remove time wasting meetings. Free up employees time. And then something the bank did was they hired non-bankers to think different and blow up the bureaucracy. If somebody goes into a design thinking and then has to go around the organization asking for approval, you're already dead in the water. So before I hand back to Teru, just to give you a highlight, the bank recognized that digital customers provide double the amount of income to traditional customers. They do more business. They perform more. So I'm just going to share this for those. Sorry, there's a problem with the system. So let me go to the next slide. There we go. So today the bank continues to invest about a billion or three quarters of a billion US dollars a year in its technology. It's focusing on blockchain using 5G and now it has achieved its goal of becoming the best bank in the world. It wants to be the best bank for a better world. And people around the world are asking no longer what would Jeff do but what would Pius do. So thank you for joining us today. I'm going to hand back to Teru. I know as soon as we walk away you forgot in half of what I said. So, you know, please welcome to stay in touch. Implementation Institute, our online course or want to connect or interested in buying the book. Please do let us know and thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to share what's been a wonderful learning for me as well as experience in publishing the book. This is wonderful. I encourage participants here to type in the questions in the Q&A. If they have any questions there but really I was saying it's an inspiration and the energy with which you're sharing these and then the learning that are coming out of it simply spectacular. By the time we see some questions I'll throw in one and that is when you see basically the better the technology the less visible the bank becomes. It kind of made me think because of course you want the customer to remember the bank for the next transaction. So if the bank is less visible how do they differentiate? Because if I don't see with different banks Your question was actually asked by the employees they said the same thing as you. Hang on if they can't see us they forget. So this is a very big mindset shift that when the bank becomes invisible it means invisible on the platforms. So going through you don't have to physically go to your branch or go through a long process what that translates to is not that people forget about you that they feel more comfortable using the platform. So to give you an example many people obviously use Amazon around the world or Alibaba here in Asia once you're on the Amazon once you buy that book buying your toothbrush your groceries because you're comfortable on the platform and it becomes easier so what's happened is the banks found that digital customers do 16 times more self driven activity on their own because they're simply comfortable using the app and using the platform and because it's painless it's seamless faster and easier. So yes it seems counter intuitive but it actually results in greater business because customers find it easier. Wonderful, wonderful still waiting for questions from attendees if they have any. I'll just for one more. Of course you were saying to build the startup culture and I personally like it I mean you get the Silicon Valley thinking and so on but what would you tell to people that says our company is too big how can we let's say adopt the startup mindset it is too risky for us. Sorry in terms of data in terms of the startup mindset which are you referring to? The startup mindset so the agility, the learning the experimentation that you were mentioning. So it's not an option for many industries not all but for many we have to respond faster in the past it was all about size and ironically just as we're talking you might have heard in the news that GE is breaking up it was just announced on the news today it's no longer about size it's about speed and if you don't move fast enough then either somebody sitting in a garage will find a solution for your customers or your competition will be doing it. So it's no longer an option for most now I say most industries because some industries are still got the luxury of time but for many of us especially in technology banking and telecoms it's how fast you're moving to sustain and maintain your market share because if you don't offer the customers what they want today they'll go. So the critical thing is creating the right culture to hide the company. Now you and I both noted from the work we do in implementation culture is the hardest thing to change in any implementation of all the different components why? Because changing culture means changing everything and everything means everything so very difficult to make a culture change happen which is why it contributes to transformation in digital struggling. Amazing, amazing and when you were saying to be fast I recall a strategy at work we also welcome Mike King who was saying really that one need to be fast speed wins perfect doesn't so meaning that the ability to go fast. Let me take the last question and that question is coming over with two but we'll take one it's coming from Glenn Turgman and he's saying again thank you for this excellent presentation and he would appreciate understanding more about the impact of the transformation on senior leadership so let's say 100 top leader in 2016 how many are still in the organization so basically what is happening to that senior leadership during transformation and investing. Great question Glenn I was personally amazed because when Peuge took over the bank in 2009 he took the leadership on a journey and today most of the team are still with him so he didn't replace he didn't have to replace you know one or two changed as always happens but on whole the leadership team learned with and followed along on this journey he was able to bring them up from working you know and this was the same team who were working in a traditional bank who he brought along on his passion and his vision and his purpose to make banking joyful so his CFO, his CTO his CIO all the same people maintained yes did he bring in some bench strength in a couple of areas absolutely and further down you saw that they hired non-bankers who were for example in data translators, data analysts, data engineers so but it was tremendously successful in evolving and bringing along so I've actually written two case studies on the book that are on Harvard and you know when I've gone back and forth sorry on the bank not the book when I've researched the leaders they come I go back in the room you're back again Robin what for this time meaning it's the same leaders over the 10 year journey so most of the great question the leadership team he brought along with them on this purpose wonderful thank you so much this will take us to the end of this formal part of the presentation and Robin really really appreciated and of course beyond this I'm saying there are always I mean many people involved we have our own you have Nika who is playing the role of the curator for this to make sure that we again are able to bring the best and the greatest insight to the forefront here so really really appreciated I just want to mention also that coming up next on November 24th we will also welcoming Raul Avasti and to discuss again digital transformation for teams that are not digital first that would have been one question that I would have asked you actually that being said Robin I know it is early morning for you so have a great one and then for everyone let's say east coast west coast have a good evening and good night thank you goodbye from Singapore there we go beautiful beautiful thank you everyone Terry thank you for the invite