Harness the Cloud Economy to Accelerate Business Growth

Expert in Applied Innovation, Business Model Transformation, Digital Customer Experience, Digital Solutions, Digital Transformation, Operational Excellence.

Leading the Capgemini Applied Innovation Exchange in San Francisco, Capgemini’s flagship innovation space.

International experience as CTO of Capgemini Scandinavia, member of Sweden and Scandinavia country boards. Digital transformation and innovation advisor for key accounts in the US, Netherlands, France, and the Nordics. Key topics include digital customer experience, operational excellence and business model transformation; innovation capability, digital platform and ecosystem design, “x as a service”, product-to-service design, subscription business.

Managed Sogeti’s (Capgemini unit) global digital practice and grew it from $10M to $100M+.

Author of numerous white papers (MSDN), columns (Computer Sweden), and co-author of the books: “Pocket PC Development in the Enterprise” (2001) and “The App Effect” (2012). Awarded with the national award for “Best IT Consultant”, on the national list of “Sweden’s Top Technology Experts” twice, and several times awarded “Most Valuable Professional” by Microsoft. My Google Scholar account: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=bPghI2gAAAAJ&hl=en

John Abel is a developer turned innovator. His focus is driving customer success blending new technologies such as Blockchain, AI, Internet of Things with existing, deployed, systems to help make ideas become not just reality, but commercially relevant.

John works within a diverse team drawn from multiple backgrounds and skill sets to ensure synergies of different perspectives working together comes to the fore. John also supports a number of STEM projects that are aimed at increasing participation overall but particularly from a wider range of backgrounds.  John is also very proud of being an ambassador for British Dyslexia Association. John began his technology career nearly 30 years ago, working on early AI and even distributed ledger technologies that were deployed to great impact in private and public sector environments. His expertise across many roles within Oracle and now Google in security and data technologies have led to him being a renowned industry speaker, author and commentator on technical and business innovation issues.

Deidre is a serial entrepreneur who has founded and led several companies, including WorkBoard. Her last company, PSS Systems, created a new market category and inspired deep customer loyalty from Global 1000 companies including ExxonMobil, Citigroup, Travelers, Novartis, Wells Fargo and others. It was acquired by IBM in late 2010; at IBM, Deidre ran the high-growth Information Lifecycle Governance (ILG) business, improving information economics for enterprise customers. She has 16 patents and has published dozens of articles.

Andrea is a Silicon Valley based corporate leader in technology, commercialization, scale-up strategies, and Futureproofing. As a global corporate transformation specialist and former Silicon Valley tech startup CEO, Andrea is an expert in “business innovation you can take to the bank”.

Over the past decade, Andrea has worked on more than 200 corporate growth initiatives that have moved companies beyond innovation toward Futureproofing. Andrea drives commercialization of innovation with a focus on the Future Of theme covering Healthcare, CPG, Digital Health, Retail, Mobility, Fintech, transformative AI, Future of Work and Business Model reinvention. Based in San Francisco and working with teams around the world, Andrea uncovers scalable directions for growth.

Andrea was CEO of the San Francisco SaaS technology company that pioneered the application of lean startup methods for large companies and was the gold standard for commercialization for the National Science Foundation, DARPA, and National Institutes of Health in the US. The innovation platform served 13,000 teams (corporate, government, university, research labs). She’s led future-focused strategy initiatives for clients including: Ford (US/China—cybersecurity, technology, co-creation), Hyatt, United Airlines, SuMi Trust (Japan), Shimizu (Japan) Stitch Fix, Fujitsu, JLL, Intel, NASDAQ, CommonGrounds, KK Wind (Denmark), Shell, Allstate and Mayo Clinic.

As an industry thought leader, Andrea has delivered Future + Strategy + Innovation keynotes at CxO Forum (Tokyo), Dubai 2020, OpenBanking (Mexico), Phocuswright’s Futureproofing Travel conference + think tank, TED main stage, and Aspen Ideas Forum. She has also served as Board member for Embrace Innovations (based on engineering/medical technology out of Stanford University and led by a TED global fellow) which took her to Bangalore for extended field work and resulted in an acquisition in 2021.

Andrea developed the original thinking fueling an end-to-end corporate process for innovation at scale known as “futureproofing”. Author of: Futureproofing : NEXT—The Future Beyond Innovation (2021). Find Your Next–Using the Business Genome Approach to Find Your Company’s Next Competitive Edge (McGraw-Hill). Strategist in residence: Cisco (global innovation), Business Institute in Aalborg, Denmark, OpenBanking (Mexico), Open Innovation Gateway/Digital Business College (Fujitsu). Andrea has also taught innovation at Stanford, UC Berkeley, and at the eLab at Princeton University. She is on the Advisory Boards of: OpenFinance Mexico, Copenhagen Fintech, the Dilemma Library (Stanford University) and RTM Journal (Research Technology Management).

Marco Palladino is an inventor, software developer and Internet entrepreneur based in San Francisco, California. He is the co-founder and CTO of Kong, the leading cloud connectivity company that created widely adopted open source projects such as Kong Gateway, Kuma and Insomnia. Besides being a core maintainer, Marco is currently responsible for the design and delivery of the Kong products, while also providing the technical thought leadership around APIs and microservices within Kong and the external community. Marco was also the co-founder of Mashape, which started in 2010 and is today the largest API marketplace in the world.

Prior to Databricks, Arsalan was an Associate Principal at McKinsey and Company, where he advised enterprises, vendors, and the public sector on a broad spectrum of strategic topics, including next-generation IT, cloud computing, and big initiatives as well as general IT and corporate strategy. Arsalan received a PhD in computer science from UC Berkeley in the area of Networking and Distributed Systems and a B.Eng from the University of Virginia.

Hannu Kauppinen is the CTO in Nokia Technologies, the patent and technology licensing business group of Nokia Corporation. He manages Nokia’s industry leading patent portfolio, that has been ranked as number one in 5G patents in independent studies. His teams are responsible for patent filing and prosecution, portfolio management and analytics and technical support for commercial licensing programs in the areas of cellular standards, devices and services, networks as well as multimedia technologies.

Hannu Kauppinen joined Nokia in 1997 and has since then held key leadership positions in Nokia’s R&D. During 2007–2008 and 2010–2011 he was the Head of Radio Systems Laboratory in Nokia Research Center and was responsible for the research in 3GPP and IEEE radio standards in Nokia’s products. During 2011-2014 he was the Head of Nokia Research Center and in 2014-1016 the Head of Labs in Nokia Technologies, driving research in Media Technologies, Sensor and Material Technologies as well as Radio Systems. His teams have contributed to Nokia’s IPR portfolio in mobile technologies, a foundation to a billion-dollar technology licensing business. In 2016-2019 he held product and business management roles in in Mobile Networks, the largest business group of Nokia, building a differentiating product portfolio in 5G communication networks and Internet of Things.

Hannu Kauppinen is an entrepreneurial executive turning advanced technology research to commercialization and profitable growth. In addition to 5G and IoT wireless communication, his areas of interest include loud connectivity and computing, mobile multimedia and AR/VR, sensors and nanomaterials, health technology, data analytics and AI/ML. He has created technology portfolios, formed high-performing teams of scientists, engineers, and business developers, and acquired external innovation through M&A and partnering, leading to accelerated go-to-market and new product introduction. He has worked in the Silicon Valley (USA), United Kingdom, France, Japan and Finland. He has led global R&D organizations of up to 500 people and small teams of experts in Europe (Finland, Russia, UK, Switzerland), North America (USA, Canada), Asia (China, Japan and India) and Africa.

Hannu Kauppinen holds a PhD degree in Physics (1997) and an Executive MBA (2007), both from the Aalto University in Helsinki.

Previously, Pedram worked as Head of Business Intelligence at Spotify, where he was responsible for automating and streamlining financial reporting that was an important building block for the IPO. After Spotify, Pedram began a career as a consultant in Analytics at EQT. He helped EQT’s portfolio companies to build solid architecture and organization strategies, to enable scale and speed to meet with the investment’s full potential plan. During the time EQT filed for an IPO, Pedram took on a new role where he was given the responsibility for streamlining and digitizing internal group functions such as Finance, HR, Tax, Legal, and Business Development. Now Pedram is Heading the Data function within EQT where he is responsible for all data technologies and data management initiatives.

Kristian Hjort-Madsen is the EVP of Business Development ang Digitization at Alm. Brand.His journey at Alm. Brand started in 2018, as he took on responsibility of the overall IT section at the company. He soon gained responsibility of group wide business development, which he now leads alongside Alm. Brand’s IT and digitization strategy from a agile and technical perspective.He is no stranger to developing businesses and carrying out digital transformations, as he draws from his experience with former employers such as Danish pension company PFA, BEC Financial Technologies, Accenture, and the Danish Ministry of Finance.Kristian holds a Master of Science in Information Technology specializing in software development, and a PhD in Strategic IT planning.

In his role Johan drives the digital transformation at IKANO bank. He is business focused and an entrepreneurial executive with significant experience and track record of building strong leadership teams, execute transformation, Data and Digitalisation and Strategic Change.

Anil Agarwal is the CEO at Capgemini Nordics, and recently (since January 2021) took over the role of Global Sales Officer (GSO) for Northern Europe too. He has had an overall responsibility for leading operations in the Nordics since 2018 as the President of the Capgemini Nordics Business Unit. In this role he is responsible for billion plus Euros business and 11,500+ employees/consultants.

As the GSO for Northern Europe, Anil is responsible for driving large deals (in billions) and business development in Capgemini’s new strategic business unit, Northern Europe, which brings together Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark (Nordics), the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany. He joined the Capgemini Group in 2012 and has been leading winning projects and driving positive development ever since.Prior to Capgemini, he has worked with leading technology organizations such as Wipro and Infosys. He holds a degree in Master of Business Administration from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

Anil is committed to sustainable growth and innovation. He believes that this can achieved through diversity, especially gender balance, digital inclusion and environmental sustainability through conscious reduction in our carbon footprint.