Azeem Azhar is a strategist, product entrepreneur and analyst, currently working as the Senior Advisor for AI to the CTO of Accenture. He is also the creator of the Exponential View newsletter and podcast, which offer cutting edge insights into technology, business and society.
If you’ve been listening to the show for a while, then you’ll have noticed that technology is a topic I’ve covered extensively – and that’s because I believe understanding tech is an essential part of understanding our modern world and operating effectively in it. Azeem is uniquely positioned to offer insight into the space, given his multidisciplinary background
He founded and sold PeerIndex, a company which applied machine learning to large-scale social media graphs to make predictions about web users. As an investor he invests in tech startups, particularly in the AI sector and he has the ear of some of the world’s leading entrepreneurs and technologists
In this episode we discuss
- Azeem’s lessons as a successful entrepreneur and how that affects his investment decisions
- The potential impact of AI on the labour market and how to position yourself for the changes to come
- How technology changes our understanding of the world and how we act in it
This episode was a real pleasure to record and it was great to get inside the head of someone who has thought as deeply about the interactions between technology, business and society as Azeem has.
Richard Bowdler is the founder of StoryThis, a company that develops bespoke learning solutions for companies who want to maximise their investment in learning & development and he’s also building a technology platform to end unwanted forgetting and make the world a smarter place.
Rich is someone I’ve known for a couple of years now and I was really pleased to finally get him on the show – he’s got a fascinating background having experienced life as a Buddhist, Royal Marine Commando & Memory Expert. In his spare time he also runs an exclusive, invitation-only, peak-performance mind-body training programme for executives.
In this episode we discuss
- The learning environment in the military and how it differs to school and university
- How Rich first came across memory palaces and how we can all use them to improve our learning and manage our knowledge
- The skills that Rich believes are essential to thrive in the 21st century, including the art of personal reinvention
So whether you want to boost your memory, reinvent yourself or you’re just curious about the learning environment in the Royal Marines, this episode will leave you with range of useful insights.