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The Traditional Pyramid Is Under Attack Most professional services firms have operated in a pyramid model where the most senior owner of a P&L would have a staffing ratio of 1:3 to 1:5 and their next reports would have a staffing ratio of 1:5 to 1:10. This pyramid structure would continue until the last level. There could be as many as 8 to 10 levels in a structure that looks like this with billable rates per hour that would correspond to seniority and level of expertise.

The Leap Year Brings Announcement Of A New Copilot - Finance Microsoft announced the public preview of Copilot for Finance. With tools such as Copilot, the user experience begins and ends with generative AI. In conversations with Vice President of Business Applications Engineering - Charles Lamanna, Corporate Vice President of Business Applications Marketing - Emily He, Vice President of AI-led ERP Engineering - Georg Glantshnig, users can now apply geneative AI across departments such as sales, service, finance, and IT with Copilot for M365, Copilot for Sales, Copilot for Service, Copilot for Finance, and Copilot Studio.

Enter AI And The Real Fourth Industrial Revolution Running out of ideas to inspire, a false fourth industrial revolution was coined by the World Economic Forum. The move to digitization and digital transformation was a necessary half-step to the move towards AI. While some will now profess that the Fifth Industrial revolution is AI, AI is more exponential than the internet or the fake fourth industrial revolution. The dawn of the fourth industrial revolution begins with AI. This Cognitive Era will be with us for decades to come.

The 54th annual convening at Davos brings 2700 delegates from over 130 countries to officially attend the World Economic Forum’s event. Meanwhile, an additional 5000 individuals join events around Davos in a series of programing known as UnDavos. This year’s official Davos proceedings center on four main themes:

Two Year IPO Drought Coming To An End In 2023, only 148 companies completed an initial public offering (IPO). This was the worst year on record and followed a 15% decline from the number of IPO's in 2022, another disappointing year. In 2023, ARM was the sole blockbuster tech IPO. After a brutal two years with a paucity of tech IPOs, the market is poised for a resurgence in 2024.

Constellation’s 2023 H2 “CxO Business Confidence Survey” assesses the confidence of C-suite executives in today’s business and technology climate as well as their financial outlook for 2023. The survey asked respondents to identify top business issues impacting their enterprises, weigh in on their state of investment in digital technologies, and confirm which service and software vendors are top of mind in the industry.

Many organizations have performed classical cost-benefit analyses to determine the impact of business technology projects. Although these approaches account for the quantifiable metrics, they often fail to capture key attributes such as probability of success and level of difficulty in project type.

Sam Altman just faced his Steve Jobs moment when the OpenAI board fired him on Friday. The balance between too much governance and not enough innovation was the challenge OpenAI faced. This was a very immature board with members who had never built companies, never moved from ideology to commercialization, nor had any pragmatic board experience.

With artificial intelligence (AI) projects all the rage, organizations must make a strategic determination to create a new CxO role at least at a functional level if not at a title level.. This decision should not be made lightly, however. Although the chief AI officer (CAIO) role is critical to an organization’s success, the level of collaboration across business, IT, finance and operations, HR, and legal risk and compliance requires an unprecedented level of cooperation and orchestration. Boards will also want to consider AI at the same level as CyberSecurity.

Big Brains In AI Discuss The Risks of Generative AI At Reinvent Futures Event On July 27th, 2023, almost 300 people gathered at Shack15 in the Ferry building in San Francisco to discuss the actual risks of Generative AI. The event hosted by Reinvent Futures with Peter Leyden and Joe Boggio brought together the biggest minds on AI for an evening of deep discussion.