The Innovator's Radar newsletter enables you to stay on top of the latest business innovations. Enjoy this week's edition.
Jennifer L. Schenker
Innovator Founder and Editor-in-Chief |
|
- N E W S I N C O N T E X T - |
|
This week’s headlines confirm what cyber crime experts already knew: state sponsored hackers are using GenAI tools for nefarious purposes, making corporates more vulnerable than ever to cyberattacks. Based on collaboration and information sharing with Microsoft, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, said it caught and disrupted five state-affiliated malicious actors: two from China, one from Iran, one from North Korea and one from Russia. The identified OpenAI accounts associated with these actors were terminated. The latest discovery is an example of how nation-state threat actors and cyber crime groups are exploring and testing different AI technologies as they emerge to understand the potential value to their operations and the security controls they may need to circumvent, Microsoft said in a blog posting reporting the discovery. Indeed, cyber criminals are already harnessing the power of GenAI to create more sophisticated social engineering schemes, find network vulnerabilities faster, produce synthetic media for impersonation, intimidation, or identity theft, and automate phishing attempts and malware development, says a blog posting from cybersecurity company Check Point. Read on to learn more about this story and the week's most important technology news impacting business. |
|
| Stay on top of the latest business innovations and support quality journalism. Subscribe to get unlimited access to all of The Innovator's independently reported articles. |
|
| Renan Devillieres learned about manufacturing and operational strategy while working as a senior partner at McKinsey and as a strategic project manager at Richemont, a Swiss holding company that produces everything from jewelry to firearms. He then switched to working in tech for five years, creating his own startup. His light bulb moment was when he realized that manufacturing operations employ 40% of the world’s workers and represent 25% of the world’s GDP yet only 0.7% of startups target the sector and the average tech worker knows nothing about manufacturing. “It is a huge market, and it is hard to penetrate,” says Devilliers. Sensing an opportunity, he sold his tech company and created OSS Ventures, a Paris-based startup factory that fixes factories. OSS’s structure is akin to a startup studio or venture builder and investment firm. The idea is to take people with deep sector knowledge and pair them with experienced founders. The French firm’s twist is that teams visit manufacturing plants and survey management and employees. If dozens of plants operated by different companies in different sectors have the same pain point OSS Ventures seeds a startup to solve that specific issue, typically investing €500,000 (€400,000 for salaries and €100,000 in cash) at the start. The insider knowledge makes a product fit – and customer sales – way more likely. The strategy appears to be working. In just four years OSS has launched 15 startups with a total investment of €8 million in areas such as financial planning and analysis, supply chain and scheduling, shop floor management, data, industrial automation ,and sustainability. Four of the startups are working with LISI-Group, a 247-year-old French company in the aerospace, automotive and medical sectors that operates 42 factories in 13 countries. LISI is just one of the manufacturers that have opened their doors to OSS Ventures. The French startup studio says it has nurtured a unique network of 1700 manufacturing sites globally that are ready to test its technology and collaborate. |
|
- I N T E R V I E W O F T H E W E E K - |
|
Who: Janna Salokangas, a Finn, is co-founder of Mia, a global AI academy that works with corporates to train the non-technical women they employ to use artificial intelligence and emerging technologies. The aim is to upskill one million women worldwide, driving inclusive innovation in the AI space and unlocking 100,000 jobs worldwide.
Topic: How companies can hone their own AI talent by upskilling the non-technical workers who are most at risk of losing their jobs to automation.
Quote: "There is a huge community of women willing to learn and companies looking for diverse talent. About 85% of jobs in 2030 have not even been invented yet, according to a report on emerging technologies’ impact on society and work, so the future of work is being created now. We are working on what skills will be needed in future and are offering companies a solution to upskill the women in their workforce."
|
|
- S T A R T U P O F T H E W E E K - |
|
| Some of the machines in factors have been running longer than others and a few are so old they don’t even have a programmable logic controller. Guidewheel, a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, has come up with a way to stitch these disparate machines together and use the power of AI and the Cloud to help manufacturers increase productivity and become greener. Its sensors can be added to machines of any age, in any industry, and used to get a view across operations.
The San Francisco-based scale-up is working with over 200 manufacturers in the automotive, cardboard and food and beverage sectors, with a heavy focus on plastics and packaging. Clients include Berry Global, Pretium Packaging, and Pack Labs.
A third-party survey of the San Francisco-based scale-up's customers found that on average clients benefit from a 40.8% increase in uptime on monitored machines. |
|
- N U M B E R O F T H E W E E K |
|
Percentage of business leaders who are ambivalent or dissatisfied with their progress on AI and GenAI, according to a recent BCG survery of 1,400+ C-Suite executives in 50 markets. While almost all executives now rank AI and GenAI as a top-three tech priority for 2024 those who expressed dissatisfaction with their organization’s progress on AI and GenAI highlighted several challenges, including a shortage of talent and skills (62%), unclear investment priorities (47%), and the absence of a strategy for responsible AI (42%), according to the survey.
The survey found that only 6% of companies have managed to train more than 25% of their people on GenAI tools so far and 45% of leaders say that they don’t yet have guidance or restrictions on AI and GenAI use at work. Two-thirds of the executives surveyed believe that it will take at least two years for AI and GenAI to move beyond the hype, and 71% are focused on pursuing limited experimentation and small-scale pilots.
|
|
4YFN and Mobile World Congress, February 26-29, Barcelona, Spain
Cybertech Global TLV, April 8-10, Tel Aviv, Israel
Tel Aviv Sparks Innovation Summit, April 10-12, Tel Aviv, Israel
Viva Technology, May 22-25, Paris, France |
|
|
|
|
