AI access isn’t an AI strategy: Balancing risk and innovation with IMA Financial Group’s Tony Glebe

In this episode of Catalyst, Tammy is joined by Tony Glebe, executive advisor at IMA Financial Group. Tony has spent more than 25 years leading commercial organizations and building growth strategies at companies like IBM Watson Health and WEX Health. Today, he advises executives and investors in highly regulated and complex industries. Tony has had the opportunity to see risk and innovation from many angles and brings that perspective to the AI conversation.

Highlights from the episode include:

• Smooth operator. Tony started his career as a consultant, later taking on roles in sales leadership, corporate development and growth. Managing budgets and making trade offs taught him lessons that advising from the outside never could. His experience as an operator keeps his advice practical and grounded today.
• Innovation depends on leadership and culture. Company size doesn’t determine the ability to innovate. Tony has seen startups get consumed by financial spreadsheets while large corporations create room for experimentation. Leaders set the conditions that allow new ideas to grow alongside an established business.
• Give AI experimentation a purpose. Tammy and Tony compare experiences with AI tools that consumed more time than they saved. Rather than individual experimentation, Tony encourages organizations to focus their efforts on specific customer problems and build from there. Just as the dot-com boom didn’t turn everyone into HTML programmers, the AI boom should not have us all building agents.

Check out the full episode to learn more about Tony’s Minnesota farming roots and why insurance is an unexpected innovation enabler.

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Please note that the views expressed in this episode may not necessarily be those of NTT DATA.