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Digital transformation strategist and author helping companies to improve their business using technology
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About Rudy
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The keynote speaker Rudy de Waele is a digital transformation strategist and author. He assists companies to improve their business using technology. His unparalleled experience, knowledge and insight, propels leaders to stay ahead of the technology game whatever their sector; by providing his clients with targeted advice and strategies to transform their business.
Over the past 20 years, our speaker Rudy de Waele has coached CXOs on how to unpack grassroots innovations that pose a risk to core business and how to predict staying ahead of the early adopter to mass-market conversion. He has helped diverse global brands such as BMW, Coca-Cola, IBM, Intel, Louis Vuitton, PayPal, Samsung and World Bank.
His latest book Shift 2020 delivers impactful insights into how emerging technologies such as wearables, IOT, robotics, and AI will have on our collective daily lives and includes foresights by some of the world’s leading technology experts from Google, Kickstarter, Microsoft, Spotify, and Telefonica.
Rudy de Waele is a graduate from Singularity University and he has developed more than 150 leading industry events across more than 50 cities globally such as shift 2020 events, Mobile Mondays, AppCircus, IoT Stars, and Wearable Wednesdays.
Known internationally as a thought leader in Mobile 2.0 where he was a proponent of open innovation and the development of the app economy ecosystem, our tenacious speaker Rudy de Waele lectures regularly at top technology conferences and mentors startups.
Mr de Waele, a native of Belgium, now permanently resides in Cambridge, United Kingdom. He is fluent in English, French, Flemish, Dutch, and Spanish with comprehensive understanding of German.
Clients include: Base, BlackBerry, BMW, Boston Cambridge University, Consulting Group, CBRE, Coca-Cola, Cheil Worldwide, City of Barcelona, Digicel, Ericsson, European Commission, IBM, Informa, Intel, Louis Vuitton, Microsoft, Millicom (Tigo), MTN, Nokia, PayPal, Philippe Starck, Orange, Samsung, S-Group, Sanoma, Spring Messe Management, Telcel, Telefonica, TeliaSonera (Azercell), TIMWE, The Drum, Vodafone, Young & Rubicam, World Bank.
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What technological advances right now do you find most fascinating?
How do you keep yourself at the forefront of innovation?
Should companies adapt new technologies faster than currently? (if yes) why?
Yes. Because we live in a world where technology is accelerating everything. We’re the first generation that has to learn to cope with such accelerated pace of innovation. Companies who are not able to adapt to that pace or learn how to innovate in this new business environment will disappear. We live in an age where most companies need to completely reinvent current business models that will disrupt or enhance existing ones.
This has happened already in the music, telecom, media, and publishing sectors. We can witness this now in banking, hospitality, transport, and retail sectors for example. Every company has to reinvent itself in the near future and ask how their business is going to look in this new economy. That’s a big challenge for most companies. My job is to assist companies to better understand the changing landscape in their sector and introduce them to new processes on how to start to innovate better.
Who or what inspires you most?
Startups, music, travelling, nature and youth culture.
As for the most inspiring person, it’s Miles Davis: he always challenged the status quo of jazz and kept looking for new ideas and explored those with the younger generations of musicians, resulting in some of the best recordings and performances of all time.
And that’s exactly what I’m trying to do in my day-to-day job with shift 2020
Do you have a favorite experience from your speaking career?
My favourite experience was one of the first times I had to speak in public, on a topic I was very much engaged with at the time, called Mobile 2.0. It was at the Plugg conference in Brussels in 2008. I remember how everyone seemed to be blown away by how I presented a cascade of innovative startups disrupting the telecoms at that time.
Very few people in the audience were aware of what was happening in that area, especially the telecoms. Everyone wanted to see me afterwards or work with me. It was so exciting and a new calling for me to become the professional speaker I am today. That presentation defined a new career change and opportunity for me.
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