About this keynote
Firstly, thank you to Jason and Alison at Aveva, the world’s leading industrial enterprise software company, for the second time in as many years for asking me to be their keynote, this time at their first annual in person sales conference in Orlando, Florida since the global pandemic hit over two years ago.
With over 3,000 employees in the Orlando Hilton hotel’s ballroom and just as many again watching virtually the Aveva hybrid Go Beyond event was not only a spectacle to behold, but as the world tries to get back to normal it was also an incredibly complicated and fraught operation with many of the directors not convinced that it was even going to be able to go ahead when Omicron reared its head just a couple of months before the kick off. However, with the goal of providing both executives and the sales teams with the tools and new thinking that would let them have new conversations with their customers I'm glad to say the show went on.
Nevertheless, Omicron tailed off as quickly as it came and thankfully the event went ahead as planned with only a few people missing it because they were ill. During my keynote, which was aptly entitled Go Beyond, I took the audience and leadership team on a journey through the future of their core industries, Chemicals, Energy, Power, Smart Cities, and Utilities, and dove into all of the different trends that are changing global business, culture, and society.
First we looked at the chemicals industry where bio-manufacturing, Meta Twins, and quantum chemistry, are set to change everything from incumbents operating models to R&D strategies, then across to energy and utilities where we dove deep into the global energy transition, new power generation technologies and Virtual Power Plants, and the decentralisation and disruption of the industry.
Next, we looked into the future of manufacturing, customisation and personalisation, Dark Factories, and explored the new trend of Continuous Innovation, then topped it all off with an exploration of Smart Cities including the need for city wide operating systems, climate resilient infrastructure, and the impact of new autonomous mobility technologies on city operations and services. And then we went into breakouts, had breakfast sessions, and checked out the pools because … why not!?
