The Private Equity Digital Transformation Show

Solo episode with Bruce Sinclair, the host of the show, discussing the competitive advantage smart digital diligence provides the sponsor upfront in the deal cycle during the auction.

At the heart of all post-acquisition value levers is understanding the company’s customers.  The higher fidelity you have on who the customer is and what the customer does, the closer you’ll hit the mark with all you value levers, including revenue growth, pricing optimization, multiple expansion, debt paydown and informing your priorities on margin expansion and follow-on acquisitions.

This is the purpose of smart tech, to gather and transform proprietary customer data, proprietary operational data and proprietary monetization data on your customers whether they use your product in the physical or virtual world.

In this episode, Bruce discusses:

  • Smart products and what is smart digital value creation.
  • The high technologies used in smart digital and how they differ from IT and automation.
  • Capturing proprietary data, its significance and how it’s used for value creation.
  • How smart digital improves an investment.
  • Performing smart digital diligence.
  • Connecting the dots between physical world data and virtual value models.

Related links you may find useful:

Direct download: bruce_s_5b_mixdown-A.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:30am PDT

Our guests are André Quina, sales director with Plat4mation, an experienced control and automation engineer and Greg McKenzie, a commercial lead with Plat4mation with 22 years of manufacturing operational experience in food, automotive, and plastics.  André, Greg and Bruce discuss:

  • How to leverage manufacturing operators to improve efficiency and safety.
  • How WAZE-like tagging works, why it’s important and its results.
  • The different benefits of a connected worker platform versus a connected machine platform.
  • How a worker-centric maintenance solution is different from an AI maintenance solution.
  • The importance of capturing tribal knowledge.
  • Applicable use cases.
  • A brewery case study including the quantified value produced.

Related links you may find useful:

Direct download: andre_q_mixdown-A.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:30am PDT

Our guest Michel Morvan is cofounder of Cosmo Tech, a scientist, academic, entrepreneur and AI expert.  Michel and Bruce discuss:

  • Complexity defined by systems and systems of systems
  • The importance of knowing how things work for simulation
  • Why using deep neural networks is lazy, when they make sense to use and when they don’t
  • Data-based AI vs knowledge-based AI
  • The proper definition of the digital twin… for value creation
  • Different types of digital twins
  • The power of simulating simulations
  • Finding hidden value resulting from the Butterfly Effect
  • Case study quantifying the technology ROI of the simulation-based digital twin

Related links you may find useful:

Direct download: michel_m_edit_mixdown-A.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:30am PDT

Our guest Taha Memon is the founder and CEO of Dunia and CloudiTwins. He has over 10 years of experience as an entrepreneur, speaker and as a business development consultant to startups in Pakistan and the US.  In this episode, Taha and Bruce discuss:

  • The tech behind smart contracts.
  • How to create a smart contract and if this means lawyers will soon be made obsolete.
  • The role of platforms (middleware) to deploy smart contracts.
  • The Golden Triangle: the valuable connection between smart products – smart business models – smart contracts.
  • A few interesting use cases for smart contracts.
  • The benefits, risks and minefields of smart contract deployment.
  • A real estate case study that quantifies the value and cost of smart contracts.

 

Related links you may find useful:

Direct download: taha_m_edit_mixdown-A.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:30am PDT

Our guest Daniel Young is Senior Manager of Product Standards at Toshiba America and is part of Toshiba’s global Digital Innovation Team that is focused on accelerating the growth of Industrial IoT systems and developing best practices using industry standards.  In this episode, Daniel and Bruce discuss:

  • The benefits of eliminating (subjective) human judgement.
  • The unexpected but important HR benefits from improving defect inspection efficiency.
  • Applicable use cases and industries for this type of AI inspection.
  • The cost and time to implement an AI/machine learning inspection system.
  • Different tech architecture options to implement machine learning inspection within the manufacturing facility.
  • The role of inspection and AI standards.

 

Related links you may find useful:

Direct download: daniel_y_edit_mixdown-A.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:30am PDT

Solo episode with Bruce Sinclair, the host of the show, discussing the first step in smart digital diligence that’s used as a quick triage step before getting company specific to determine if a company is a good fit for smart digital transformation.  Sector, business type, maturity level and market dynamics all play into this step.  Once the theory is known, the Smart Tech Value Creation Quiz on the homepage of digitaloperatingpartners.com can be used to give any company a smart grade.  In this episode, Bruce discusses:

  • What is digital and what is smart?
  • What is a smart company and how do you create a smart company?
  • Why make a company smart in the first place?
  • Which sectors are best?
  • Which types of revenue generating businesses are best?
  • How old should a company be?
  • How dynamic should the company’s market be?

 

Related links you may find useful:

Direct download: bruce_s_4_mixdown-A.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:30am PDT

Solo episode with Bruce Sinclair, the host of the show, discussing how to unlock value and potentially disrupt industries with the five core data-driven business models within the Smart Business Model Continuum.  Data-driven business models are created by transforming legacy business models with smart tech such as the internet of things and artificial intelligence.  In this episode, Bruce discusses:

  • The Product data-driven business model.
  • The Product-Service data-driven business model.
  • The Service data-driven business model.
  • The Service-Outcome data-driven business model.
  • The Outcome data-driven business model.
  • The data-driven business model as a feature.

Related links you may find useful:

Direct download: bruce_s_3_mixdown-A.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:30am PDT

Solo episode with Bruce Sinclair, the host of the show, discussing data-driven business model development and its fundamental importance in smart digital transformation.  Bruce will discuss how the business models on the Smart Business Model Continuum reduce monetization friction and produce a proprietary competitive advantage.  In this episode, Bruce discusses:

  • Why business model innovation is as important or more important than product or service innovation.
  • The difference between B2C and B2B smart business models.
  • Monetization friction.
  • The Smart Business Model Continuum.

Related links you may find useful:

 

Direct download: bruce_s_2_mixdown-A.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:30am PDT

Solo episode with Bruce Sinclair, the host of the show, discussing the confusion around what the term digital transformation means.  Bruce will dissect the term into its three tech layers and relate each to the company stage where it creates the most value.  In this episode, Bruce discusses:

  • The true meaning of digital transformation.
  • The three tech layers of digital transformation and what they are.
  • The biggest money-maker: smart digital transformation.
  • The difference between smart digital transformation and digital transformation.
  • The smart digital transformation stack.
  • The tech layer with the most impact at the three maturity stages of a company.

Related links you may find useful:

Direct download: bruce_s_mixdown-A.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:30am PDT

Our guest Manny Bernabe is the founder and CEO of bigplasma ai – which specializes in AI for Industry 4.0 applications and connected products.  Manny has had roles ranging from data scientist at an AI unicorn start-up to investment analyst at a global financial services firm.  In this episode, Manny and Bruce discuss:

  • Various AI and stats techniques.
  • Different AI techniques to make predictions.
  • Picking the right AI models and why simple is often more important than complex.
  • The importance of “data” in data science, especially for commercialization.
  • The three steps to implementing AI within your smart product or process (Industrie 4.0)
  • A medical device case study.
  • The time and cost to deploy AI within your smart product or process.

Related links you may find useful:

Direct download: manny_b_edit_mixdown-A.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:30am PDT

Our guest Bob Sharon is the Founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Blue IoT. He is an entrepreneur with over 30 years experience in technology, sustainability and data centres, and is a subject matter expert in IoT and smart buildings.  In this episode, Bob and Bruce discuss:

  • Tech required to reduce building (HVAC) energy consumption.
  • Rational for using LoRaWAN and cellular for data transmission in infrastructure environments.
  • Implications on carbon emissions and possible carbon credits.
  • Differences between a building management system (BMS) and a smart energy solution.
  • Use cases and types of buildings that would most benefit from smart energy management.
  • Cost per square foot of implementing such a solution.
  • Return on technology investment and payback period.

Related links you may find useful:

Direct download: bob_s_edit_mixdown.mp3
Category:Investing in Technology -- posted at: 12:30am PDT

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