Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2022 Barcelona: Day 4 & Closing Highlights

We are bringing you news and highlights from Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo, which took place from 7^th to 10^th November in Barcelona, Spain. Below is a collection of the select announcements and insights. We have picked some of the sessions from day 4 and selection of sessions from previous days for our closing highlights.

We would like to remind you, that if you were registered for Gartner Symposium 2022, you can watch all Symposium sessions featured below (and many, many more) on demand on Symposium portal. Please note that some sessions, such as guest keynotes, may be available for on-demand replay for limited time only (typically 30 days).

 

Guest Keynote: The Geek Takeover – What traditional companies can learn from big tech

Presented by: Andrew McAfee, Principal Research Scientist, MIT

In his talk, MIT digital economist and data scientist Andrew McAfee, co-founder of MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, went on a deep dive into his upcoming book, “The Geek Way.”, pulling back the curtain on what makes these “geek companies” consistently strong performers, how they excel at disrupting industries, and what traditional companies can learn from them.

CEOs across industries today claim “we are running a technology company. When thought I could not be surprised anymore, CEO of Dominos Pizza claimed he is now running a technology company.

 

Why are we seeing the phenomenon of all companies trying to become a “technology company”?

1. First reason is history of corporate spending on all company equipment vs software and hardware…. This is why many CEOs (can) say “we are a technology company”
2. Second are rapid gains in underlying technologies – Moore´s Law means digital assets get better and better (and also get obsolete) – very quickly.
3. That leads to third - shorter product lifecycles, greater need for innovation, agility AND execution simultaneously.

Hence the “Tech” companies need to be managed differently – and cluster of companies managed by “Geeks” is showing us how it can be done (and pulling away).

Traditional companies struggle with becoming “Tech” or “Digital” since their traditional approach to projects and management does not work with software development. IT often falls prey to 90 % syndrome – when everything on the project looks fine, until it (allegedly) reaches 80-90 % completion (timeline-wise) and things start to go wrong, with timeline expanding to 150 % or 200 %. Yet there has been a functional approach around for two decades: The agile manifesto. This allows to increase observability and eliminate plausible deniability (claiming things are going along better/faster, than they really are).

How often Tesla releases updates to car SW? About 20 times a year – something that would be unthinkable in waterfall approach (small lines are bugfixes, tall ones are significant functionality updates).

That might be one of the reasons behind huge shift in auto manufacturer market cap over past 10 years…

 

However the “Geek way” is about more than just agile approach. Another important thing is to eliminate the “HiPPO” phenomenon – deciding model based on “Hihghest Paid Persons Opinion” and replace it with A/B testing – a scientific way to overcome human overconfidence. What other things geek companies do differently is in Andrew McAfees upcoming book “The Geek Way” scheduled for early 2023 release.

Does the geek way work? Market capitalization offers quite clear picture of geek companies in stock market.

 

Building a Digital Future: The Metaverse

Presented by Marty Resnick, VP Analyst, Gartner

Six trends are driving the use of metaverse technologies today. During this session, Marty Resnick, VP Analyst at Gartner, discussed how these trends and technologies will continue to drive its use over the next three to five years.

 

“After four days together, I think we know each other well enough for me to openly admit: I love the metaverse”, said Marty Resnick. “And you may think: The metaverse doesn't even exist yet, we don't really know what it's going to be, and the guy already loves it. And yes - I would say it has been already successful in three ways.”:

First way is that it is driving us and enabling us to think about the art of the possible – in tourism, transportation, retail and elsewhere we start thinking out of the box.

The second success is in that we need to understand how the technology trend like metaverse is going to impact the world – for example in government how are we going to protect our citizens, or to tax them, or who actually owns the metaverse.

Third already existing success of the metaverse is the ecosystem it has already created….

…This slide was created moths ago. And I Imagine, today there would be two or three like this, said Marty Resnick.

 

Gartner defines metaverse as “a collective virtual shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical and digital reality. A Metaverse is persistent, providing immersive experiences.

 

Key Takeaways

Six trends driving metaverse technologies that could benefit your organization:

1.Gaming

Gartner predicts that by 2025, the serious games market will grow by 25% due to the impact of metaverse technologies. “Enterprises will adopt “serious games” — gaming technologies, experiences and storytelling for training and simulation of specific work tasks and functions.¨

2. Digital Humans

“Digital humans are interactive, AI-driven representations that have similar properties as digital twins. Organizations are already planning on using digital humans to act as identified digital agents within metaverse environments for customer service, support, sales and other interactions with current and potential customers.”

3. Virtual Spaces

“Virtual spaces engage multiple senses and provide participants with the ability to immerse and interact with the space.” Gartner predicts that by 2025, 10% of workers will regularly use virtual spaces, up from 1% in 2022.

4. Shared Experiences

“The metaverse will move shared experiences out of siloed immersive applications and allow for more interactive opportunities to share experiences across applications, consumer events and services.”

5. Tokenized Assets

“In metaverse experiences, most tokenized assets will use non-fungible token technologies (NFTs). The new features and functionalities enabled by the metaverse will inspire new ways to not only compete and monetize virtual products and services, but also to acquire physical (real-world) goods.”

6. Spatial Computing

“Spatial computing will allow organizations to get more out of physical and digital assets by surfacing related, “unseen” digital information and content anchored to people, places and things.”

 

Use Management Hacks to Create an Antifragile Enterprise

Presented by Dave Aron, Distinguished VP Analyst, Gartner

During uncertain times, it is important to be even more vulnerable to your clients and aim to be antifragile. In this session, Gartner Sr Principal Analyst, Rui Zhang discussed what hacks are necessary to create an antifragile enterprise and how to use those hacks.

Key Takeaways

• “Recognize antifragility as a key enterprise goal and response to uncertainty.”
• Use three powerful levers to create antifragility:
  • Bring the uncertainty inside
  • Manage real options
  • Experiment to learn
• “Approach culture change like a hacker. Don’t aim to be comprehensive, changing everything at once. Rather, aim to find small access points where the system - in this case, the culture - is vulnerable to change and exploit those.”
• “Use management hacks to shift towards a culture of antifragility.”

There are seven culture hacks:

1. Listen to Your Disobedient/Disenfranchised/Non/Ex-Customers
2. Implement a Shadow Board
3. Create Options Moments
4. Increase Options Awareness With Games
5. Label Every Investment Fear/Fact/Faith
6. Display and Discuss Failed Prototypes
7. Run Virtual ‘Digital Safaris'

 

How CIOs Can Play Offense Into a Downturn

Presented by Bryan Hayes, Sr. Director Analyst, Gartner

There are three compounding pressures most executives have likely not encountered before: persistent high inflation, scarce expensive talent, and global supply constraints. This session describes how CIOs should proactively respond and prepare for periods of economic uncertainty, by managing three key components: spend management, digital investment and talent.

 

Key Takeaways

• Economic downturns offer opportunities: 70% of companies don’t regain their pre-recession growth levels in the 3 years following a recession. Only 5% of companies consistently achieve profitable growth above their competitors coming out of a recession.
• “IT executives see the talent shortage as the most significant adoption barrier to 64% of emerging technologies, compared with just 4% in 2020.”
• Three actions for CIOs to solve talent shortages:
  • Implement a human centric work design: 66% of employees say that if they can work flexibly they will stay.
  • Upskill managers to enable sustainable performance: IT employees rank respect and manager quality as the no. 2 and no. 3 attrition drivers.
  • Adopt an agile learning culture: Growth opportunities increase employees' intent to stay by 6%.
• Manage speed: Create a prioritized list of trade-offs you will make in your budget with a narrative about why, match your cloud strategy to your digital ambition, while paying attention to shifting pricing changes, and move to agile funding models to focus on value creation.
• Optimize the workforce: Create a digital culture which will attract and retain talent, implement digital more effectively by integrating technology delivery with the wider business, and improve enterprise workforce productivity by exploring all automation opportunities.
• Accelerate digital: Explore all opportunities to reduce operating costs through digital acceleration, develop a future vision of the customer to accelerate the right digital investments for the future, and narrow the metrics you use to measure and manage digital initiatives to the few that align to outcomes.

 

Become an Outcome-Driven CIO by Amplifying Your Executive Leadership Abilities

Presented by Matt Hancocks, Sr. Director Analyst, Gartner

Recent CEO surveys have identified ambitious agendas for major transformation change where technology is a major aspect of achieving the objectives. These agendas are more nuanced today than they have ever been. This session identified three key issues that need to be addressed in order to become an outcome-driven CIO.

 

Key Takeaways

• “Leadership is the ability of an individual or a group of individuals to influence and guide other members of an organization. Leadership is an action, the action is influence, and leaders influence outcomes.”
• 3 key issues need to be addressed:
  • What is an outcome-driven leader?
  • What amplifies your impact as an outcome-driven leader?
  • How do you self-develop your executive abilities effectively?
• “If you focus on tasks and outputs you give license to an individual mindset which demotes accountability for achievement of what really matters.”
• “Amplify your impact across the enterprise by focusing on executive success factors. CIOs need the expertise to be able to understand what opportunities will have value, the ability to execute those opportunities effectively and the finesse to successfully navigate all the engagements.”
• Find friends in the middle: “You don’t learn from the senior most person in the organization, you have to mimic how they learn by talking to the roles that are doing the work. Employ the friends in low places strategy for your learning.”
• “Commit yourself to a new style of leadership. Start by identifying opportunities that you can impact for the enterprise. Follow the outcome-driven leader principles and practice to ignite you and your team to achieve more. Commit yourself to self-development.”