I’m pleased to have an opportunity to share some of the fresh thinking and important insights about the acceleration of technology that were revealed at the recent Collision at Home conference.1 We at KPMG Private Enterprise have been longstanding contributors and participants in the Collision conferences, Web Summit (Lisbon) and RISE (Hong Kong). At every conference, every year, we’re able hear directly from founders, entrepreneurs, and CEOs about what’s top-of-mind. Even though we had to gather virtually this year, Collision was as engaging as ever.
Despite the challenges that the entire world has faced over the past few, months one of the positive outcomes of COVID-19 that people were talking about was the acceleration of digital transformation, especially artificial intelligence and machine learning. As Asheem Chandna, at Greylock Partners observed, these technologies will, in fact, be instrumental in collecting and analyzing the enormous sets of data that will be vital to our post COVID-19 recovery.
Another theme I heard frequently connected climate change and technology under the umbrella of sustainability and development of green technologies. The collective belief is that both will continue to rise on the world’s agenda and help to protect the planet, transform entire industries, and create a host of new ones.
It was encouraging to be able to take a pause and consider the opportunities on the other side of COVID-19 throughout the conference. Here are a few highlights of what I heard and learned this week.