Transforming Customer Operations with AI Arek Skuza

The systems we require for sustaining our lives rely upon algorithms to run. Entertainment, food distribution, healthcare, fuel, global banking, sport and wellness, and much else are becoming highly automated. AI development needs reliable moral guidance if we are to avoid some of the more catastrophic scenarios envisioned by AI critics. I am excited to conduct a conversation with Reid Blackman Ph...

Check the interview with Anurag Ranjan, who is a manager at ICONMA, American recruitment and staffing company. We live in the same city, Dallas, but due to COVID19, we couldn't meet for this face to face. We decided to get the chance and do it online. He explained what the future of the recruitment industry in the Artificial Intelligence era is. Anurag also shared his insights and recommended how...

Product manager personality influences many different aspects, including team motivation, drive in solving vast challenges and communication standards. Digital product managers of the past focused on the timeline and delivery of the product. Those of today, they glue many functions that touch a product - design, prototyping, customer success, marketing, operations, growth hacking, and more. Certai...

Product management is a dynamic field that requires a lot of tenacity and grit, but not necessarily an advanced degree like an MBA. To succeed as a PM, you’ll need to have an entrepreneurial spirit and a high level of emotional intelligence. The best PMs are confident in their abilities and willing to push the envelope in search of the next big thing. Though the road may be unconventional, the ing...

What is Artificial General Intelligence? Why Elon Musk partnered with Microsoft to keep working on it.  Is your microwave going to be smarter than you? Also, why is Artificial General Intelligence a different animal than Artificial Intelligence?  Couple links: Architects of Intelligence book: https://www.amazon.com/Architects-Intelligence-truth-people-building-ebook/dp/B07H8L8T2J Subscri...

Do you see customers' pain-points and don't know how to turn them into a powerful, digital product?  Are you wondering which idea should be turned to the new product?  You can't decide which concept is better for your customers? Embrace Slack's founder approach, which I call "SideEffect".  Listen to this podcast and start leveraging "SideEffect" tomorrow. Here is the link to slides...

To succeed, product managers must demonstrate a specific set of core competencies — no matter where they work. But, the role of the product manager is particularly hard to define. They operate with a wide range of responsibilities and huge pressure to deliver results, often without reporting authority.  The future of a product is never predictable. As it meanders — discovering, fine-tuning, and pi...

Trends capture provides a 360 perspective of the external circumstances that affect product launch and go-to market startegy. While defining future objectives for a product or service, trend capture is used as a basis on which future go to market strategy assumptions are designed. Market trend capture involves getting four puzzles together: Puzzle 1: Understand trends in consumer needs (value prop...

New products and product innovation are the best ways to promote growth. Apple, Microsoft, Sony, and thousands of small and mid-sized companies' managers understand that the launch of new products is necessary. Customers are impatient, they expect new features, enhancements, and continuously developing a value proposition, and they are ready to pay for it (either with money or data). At the same t...

How the retail will never be the same again? Amazon's retail strategy extends well beyond Amazon.com into brick-and-mortar cashier-less and pop-up stores that purposely disrupt the retail model. What is Amazon doing? What is the company tactic? Should Carrefour, Wal-Mart, IKEA, H-E-B, or Auchan be afraid? Let's see in the podcast what is Jeff Bezos's crazy journey. I am Arek Skuza, I work with com...

Open Innovation has been widely embraced in organizations across the world. It has proven its effectiveness in the US and Europe, as well. Many cases of it being used efficiently by businesses like P&G, Lego, Samsung, GE, Tata Group, Marico, Philips, and BlaBlaCar. On the other hand, there are still firms that are yet to embrace Open Innovation or are unable to extract value from it. The promi...

Welcome to my next podcast. Listen to this piece to learn: 1. What is co-creation, and how you can quickly embrace it in your business? 2. Why is co-creation the future of any successfully launched and scaled product/service or microservice? 3. How did DHL leveraged co-creation to launch: - Parcelocopter; - Smart Glasses; - Trucks maintenance on the demand; Enjoy it and let me know what do you thi...

Nobody owns ideas! Execute on innovation or die EUREKing. Put the podcast on and learn: Amazon. Nike and Zalando say an open-source mindset fosters collaboration and make it easier for companies to gather resources and tackle subjects like sustainability. Nordstrom an American chain of luxury department stores, a retailer with $15.86 bln revenue in 2019 started the open-source project called Hello...

The biggest and medium companies opened their innovation labs. Many companies will open innovation labs in the nearest future.  Does the corporate innovation lab bring money to the mother company? Can it change the revenue of large and medium-size companies?  Listen to this episode to learn:  1. UPS example of changing its core product with startup partnership and acquisition 2. how...

Don't introduce bad startups to your boss. You don't want to sound ridiculous or not prepared. How to quickly scan startups before you start doing business with them. If you want to learn more, subscribe to my weekly letter at www.arekskuza.com

"I don't know how to speak to the CEO and Board of Directors team and convince them to allocate their time into my innovative project." We had a FB Live and I explained 3 methods which you can use if you struggle with catching the attention of CEOs and Board of Directors team and you find it hard to engage them into your innovation, startups project. 1. Show money and BMC not features. 2. Calculat...

How startups and corporates can build a deal faster and quicker. In this episode you will learn from 7eleven, Fidelity, Wells Fargo and AT&T executives. Some of their tips: 1. Build timeframe expectations. 2. Answer phones and emails. 3. Engage and ask questions (not obvious for corporate guys) 4. Have a clear Value Proposition (startups) learn more in the episode. Enjoy. Please follow me on:...

Do Not Make These Mistakes When Responding To Startup Threat Speed:  1. Do not try converting your employees into "intrapreneurs" because its oxymoronic and will cost you. Like $10M. 2. Do not wait and see. Be a fast follower instead. Do this on the outside. Build from Lego blocks. AI is one. 3. By all means have a process if you want to work with startups. Especially if you don't acquire the...

Dear CEO, CMO, General Manager or innovation freak, we have a new episode for you.  Jump into this podcast and assimilate: a) Entrepreneurs have always-on curiosity and fall in love with problems. Their obsession with problems is more than a 9–5 job. b) Entrepreneurs leverage their ecosystem while companies fixate on internal specialists or buy expensively via consultants. Entrepreneurs crowd...

This episode will pack your head with the following food: - Nokia did not believe iPhone was the competition, they believed iPhone was threatening the PC. - Set culture from tight to loose. Experimental approach questions the status quo and must be open to first-hand outside stimuli. Execution requires tight grip. Know when to have which. Reward appropriately for improving # of experiments, not su...

This episode is about digital ventures, new ways of building startups for and with large corporations. Listen to learn about: - why digital ventures are on the rise? - How Microsoft, NordStorm, Unilever and few others are leveraging digital venturing and startups approach. - Can large companies be fast and lean? - Why shareholders of large companies might actually don't like startups?

Please let me introduce you to 5 big reasons why large companies can't bring startup speed into their world. Those five are: - lack of board members and senior leadership teams support - lack of access to customers which enables customer-centric experiments - Lean Startup tools and how to practice them - incentive-based actions - breaking silos in large companies Listen to this episode to learn ho...

In this episode, I am explaining why local governments play important role in bringing innovations to local communities. What kind of tools City Halls can use, how they can support large companies as well as startups. I share examples of Boston. Cincinnati and San Francisco to prove it works.

In this episode you will learn real examples of large companies entering startups world. Coca Cola, Nestle, Apple want to offer us personalized products and services. Why and how they do it with startups? This is what this episode provides. Enjoy !