Greg Williams

Cyber Security & Emerging Threats.

Today, every organisation is in the software business—this means great opportunities, but also significant vulnerabilities as the more connections there are on the network, the more chances there are for the bad guys. Digital ubiquity has left us vulnerable, whether that’s personal (one study suggested that there were 885 million data breaches in the US in 2019), societal—such as the power grid being compromised—or our civic institutions coming under attack from state actors. Technology offers us not only the opportunity to tackle some of the greatest challenges known to man, it also means we are subject to significant, emerging threats—the dangers are many and significant and will only increase as nascent technologies such as wearables and the internet of things become mainstream. In this arresting talk, Greg—who curates WIRED’s highly-respected Security conference—examines emerging threats from hackers, criminals and foreign actors and defines the hazards of the future – from biology to satellites – that every individual and organization needs to be aware of.

The World is Spiky, Not Flat: How Geography, Politics and Technology Will Shape the Future.

The digitisation of economies famously brought about the idea that you could hire someone in Iceland to look after your computing stack, run your business through an Estonian identity, outsource back office operations to India and manufacture your products in a Chinese factory you’ve never visited. The world, it was said, was levelling up and flattening out.

While, to some degree, this remains true, 15 years after the publication of Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat, the fracturing of the US-China relationship, the rise of populism in Europe, Brexit, a nationalist India and Russia potentially decoupling itself from the global network could lead to a fracturing of the internet. We think of the internet as a monolith – but it’s actually a tangle of systems, protocols, standards, hardware and organisations, a group of entities that are all being influenced by a fractious operating environment.

Similarly, global organisations are now being impacted by events on the other side of the world: hardware manufacturers revised their forecasts after the outbreak of coronavirus in China, the territory where their goods are manufactured. Following the devastating fires in Australia, institutional investors – under pressure to decarbonise their portfolios – have examined their relationships with European software manufacturers powering Australian coal mining operators. Geography now matters more than it has since the digital era began.

With the US boycotting Huawei technology and banning the Chinese social platform Tik Tok from government-issue phones, the ramping up of regulation from Brussels and Berlin, increasing incidents of governments requesting that user data must be stored on local servers and the UK leaving the EU, technology and geopolitics are increasingly intertwined. The UK government’s decision to make Huawei part of the UK’s 5G network has become a source of tension between London and Washington, a relationship already tested by the latter’s announcement that it would introduce a digital services tax that will impact US technology companies. Information warfare practiced by rogue states, facial recognition technology, the introduction of digital currencies such as Libra – which could undermine central banks – and issues such as privacy, anti-trust, and the ethics needed to safely implement artificial intelligence, all require international cooperation, policy alignment and cross-border governance. In this timely and compelling talk, Greg demonstrates that technology, politics and international affairs are now intertwined as never before and that how this plays out will shape economies and geopolitical alignment for years to come.

Your Corporate Social Responsibility Program Isn’t Enough: Why Today’s Organisations Will Succeed by Becoming Purpose Driven.

Today’s decision makers must shift from focussing on shareholders to having purpose at their core. “Today’s culture of quarterly earnings hysteria is totally contrary to the long-term approach we need.” This isn’t a quote from an idealistic politician, it’s the words of Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest investor with $4.6 trillion in assets. Fink’s words echo a significant new trend in business—the move from organisations needing to be driven by more than just the pursuit of profit in order to achieve success. A significant number and range of businesses—from start-ups like Warby Parker, to multinationals such as Unilever—are embracing the idea that being ‘mission-driven’ will be a necessity for forward-thinking organisations.

Over the past two years different factors have combined that fundamentally challenge the idea of what large companies do. The climate crisis, MeToo movement, increased awareness of income inequality and an understanding that diversity and inclusion are not just an item for the corporate social responsibility (CSR) check-list have combined to fundamentally realign the fundamentals of large organisations around new sets of values beyond fiduciary duty to shareholders.

In this engrossing and powerful presentation Greg examines this accelerating trend and offers insights into organisations that are implementing long-term thinking, establishing meaningful goals and pursuing positive change.