Cognition AI

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Cognition AI | Fortune

Cognition AI Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings | Fortune

Gillian Zucker, master operator at the L.A. Clippers, discussed her unique relationship with owner Steve Ballmer, emphasizing his genuine love for the game. She detailed her career journey, from Hamilton College to roles in PR, sales, and operations. Zucker highlighted the transformation of the Clippers’ fan base and the development of Intuit Dome, focusing on frictionless technology and fan engagement. She shared insights on leveraging data for personalized experiences, such as rewarding loud fans and using facial recognition. Zucker also touched on the Clippers’ commitment to sustainability and efforts to enhance the fan experience through innovative features like the Halo scoreboard and the Wall. 

Gillian Zucker's Blueprint for Modern Sports Entertainment

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Leadership

Sebastian Siemiatkowski knew GenAI was going to be a big deal, so he rushed to get on Sam Altman’s calendar when OpenAI began getting some recognition. Now, according to Siemiatkowski, the companies have a productive partnership—and even share a Slack channel.

Klarna CEO on how OpenAI partnership has allowed the company to stay ahead of the curve

Photo illustration by Fortune. Photograph provided by Klarna.

Sebastian Siemiatkowski knew GenAI was going to be a big deal, so he rushed to get on Sam Altman’s calendar when OpenAI began getting some recognition. 

Klarna CEO on how OpenAI partnership has allowed the company to stay ahead of the curve


At plan. Now, we were like, um as many other, I think entrepreneurs and founders and founder led companies, you know, when you start the business, you're all about building a product. But then you start thinking about how do you organize yourself and all that. And then you look around and you read these books, like management books, like good to great or you know, all these different books, you're like, what, what do we do from that? And then you read in the newspaper, it says Google just launched 20% of creative time, which used to be big thing, you know, back in the days and like, we have to do 20% of created time for everyone and we did that and nothing happened and, you know, we put Coca Cola in the rooms free Coca Cola, ping pong tables like, and, and you know, lego in the conference rooms like we did it all right. And we've been trying and testing all of the things that like you read in the press, like you're reading too many management, I think. Exactly that was my conclusion as well. Eventually. But it took some time to reach that, you know, reach that realization. Welcome to leadership. Next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership. I'm Mi Avram and I'm Diane Brady. When I think about clarinet, I can't, I'm hard pressed to think of a bigger fan of generative A I to the point where you actually put out a press release, I think in your first month talking about how, um you know, I think it was the equivalent of 700 full time agents through chat GP T talk about how transformative that has been for you. I mean, I think it's amazing. I first of all, I would like to say something, which is that I'm actually one of the people who are kind of skeptical about new technologies. And like people have been asking me about crypto obviously for a lot of years. And I always said like if I can't convince my mom to use it, I don't understand the value of it. And so like I did, I never got my mom to understand why she would have a Bitcoin and I still haven't convinced her but she does use. But there you go. And, and so I think when Jen A I came out, it was very clear from day one that this actually has practical application, we can use it, but it's difficult to get it to practical application because it's a new technology, you have to figure it out. And as much as you will see a lot of noise currently about people doing press releases about this and that product launches, few things we have seen have actually come to like serious uh you know, results that have business impact. And so when we achieve that with uh the customer service experience, where actually the A I chat has a similar and many times higher customer satisfaction than people interacting with human agents. We felt that that was quite an interesting data point and we wanted to share that because at the same point of time, we feel a little bit that society is not necessarily and politicians are not necessarily taking enough consideration to the implications that will have on jobs, which is why obviously sharing that 700 number, we knew it was somewhat controversial and then we will create some like people with, you know, open, you know, they would, you know, react to it. But at the same point of time, we said, look in, in the short term, we hire big uh customer service companies, they have hundreds of thousands of employees. They're just going to, when we have less errands, they're going to send errands as well. These people will still have jobs. But in the longer term, in the few coming years, this will have severe and you know, big implications for society. And we think it's time to think about that more proactively. We understand you uh allowed Sam Altman from open A I um to basically use Klarna like an A I sandbox. Um So I'm just curious to hear how that relationship started. Obviously, we're seeing open A I spark some really interesting partnerships. This is definitely one of them. So tell us about it when I tried it myself first in November a little bit more than a year ago. Now, I was like, wow, this was like a Google experience back 20 years ago when I tried Google first time. But even better, I would say to some degree and like, it became very obvious to me that Sam and open A, I would be a company that would be very hard to reach very soon and a great relationship. So I was like, I better move off before it's too late. So I made sure to get the, yeah, exactly. Get on the calendar. I took a trip to San Francisco basically only to see Sam and I managed to still, it was kind of funny because I think initially the meeting was two hours and by the time I arrived it was only 30 minutes. So it was kind of a good impression of like how fast open A I's calendar were shrinking due to the interest in the company. But I think the, the point we had a meeting and I said, look, I want to be a great partner and I know, you know, afterwards I heard a little bit they were like, really a European bank. Are they going to be one of our most like forward leaning partners. But since then we created joint slack channel and we've had like a lot of good interactions and like just testing and you know, saying we want to try that, we want to try that and provide a lot of like good meaningful feedback to them about how the API S work and what could be working better. And I think it's, it's helped establish us as a, as a good partner of theirs. There's such a mixing maturity of application and utilization of A I cross companies. You'll have everything from people like are very much leaning in to like people that are still like, oh this, I'm not sure how this is going to work. And is it, what about data? What about hallucinations? What about this and that? But for the people leaning in, there's a capacity issue, like there's a clear capacity issue where like there's not enough electricity, there's not a lot of, you know, uh there's not a lot of processing power. And so like leaning in and making sure to be a customer that's actually, you know, we just want to buy and we want to make sure we're easy to work with actually benefits us in that case because it becomes easier to get, you know, access to the processing power that we need. And so it's been very helpful for us since I think it just allows us to stay slightly ahead of the curve. Uh which is what we're trying to do. You're the first person I know who's used the Toyota way applied to something that's not manufacturing. I think of tape on the floor and very kind of distinct modular management practices to apply it to the financial services sector is really interesting. Well, and I think it's very fun that you say that because I, I'm not going to say which company this was, but I talked to one of the largest banks in the world and their chairman is from the manufacturing industry and he was quite disappointed that the bank that he was a chairman of wasn't like more applying these practices. I think to some degree, the thing with banking, right? Which is interesting. And I think there was a research that showed that like bank is banking is the only industry in the last 150 years that basically has zero productivity gains in the last 150 years, right? Like as opposed to manufacturing a lot of huge price. And I think the reason for that is because we regulated banks so much, there's actually a very limited competition to be fair. Like once you reach that size, the competition is actually quite limited. And so as a consequence, the excess wealth that is created has been distributed to the employees of the banks and the shareholders, right? Which is why we also used to have these tremendously high compensation. Now after 2007, it's come down a little bit but, and so there hasn't been that strong incentive and as much as officially banks are so well regulated with policies and instructions, like in a lot of banks, those compliance parts live a parallel life to reality. Um, which is also why we're still seeing things happening and things blowing up now and then. Um, so I think that like really applying them in practice is, is actually an interesting challenge and, and, and has a lot of opportunity in itself.

Poppy Gustafsson, Chief Executive Officer, Darktrace   Lama Nachman, Intel Fellow and Director, Intelligent Systems Research Lab, Intel Corp.    Baroness Joanna Shields, OBE, Founder and CEO, Precognition Moderator: Ellie Austin, FORTUNE 

Brainstorm AI London 2024: Championing Responsible AI Within The Enterprise

Photography by Joe Maher Fortune Brainstorm AI

Conferences

Poppy Gustafsson,Chief Executive Officer,Darktrace ,Lama Nachman,Intel Fellow and Director,Intelligent Systems Research Lab, Intel Corp.,Baroness Joanna Shields,OBE, Founder and CEO, Precognition

On this episode of Executive Exchange, Founder and CEO of 1-800-Flowers.com Jim McCann joins senior editor and host Ruth Umoh in our Fortune studios to discuss how he turned one flower shop in Manhattan into a $3 billion company with worldwide recognition. Today, Jim oversees a sprawling $3 billion multi-platform e-commerce site that sells much more than just flowers, including The Popcorn Factory, Cheryl's Cookies, Harry & David, and Wolferman's Bakery.

Here's how 1-800-Flowers founder Jim McCann made his first billion dollars

Features

1-800-Flowers.com founder and CEO Jim McCann details how he doesn't know how he made his first million dollars in business, but recalls when he made his first billion dollars.

Walk us through how you made your first million. I don't know. Uh I don't know when that happened because wealth is generated mostly by creating that. Somewhere in that 1st 10 year period, I accumulated a bunch of these stores and they were profitable. And when I bought the company that had the 800 number in it, uh I had a must have gather all the money. And when I was able to put up $2 million to, to buy the company, that's when I realized I had more than a million dollars. Are you able to share how you made your first billion dollars? Sure. It's, it's brick on brick. Uh For us, it's continuing to build a portfolio of brands uh making yourself more convenient so people can act on their thoughtfulness very conveniently. And the mobile device was the, the way that really catapulted us. And mobile has completely revolutionized our business. And that's when we cross the billion dollar threshold. When, hey, if you were in the back of an Uber and you just came from a great meeting with Ruth and you wanted to say thanks to her and say she, I'd like to send her a, I want to send her bouquet. Well, now, instead of having to wait till you get to the office or open up your laptop and go in through your PC, you have this mobile device in your hand. Now you can just go click on our app and with voice interactivity, say I'd like to send Ruth a bouquet of flowers. Here's what I like to say on the card and you're done. So, uh that's when Mobile really kicked in. That's when of course the billion dollar threshold. I want to end with uh some quick questions for you around Robin. If you will, uh best business advice you've ever received. Best business advice would probably be uh to not listen to all the people who tell you that your wacky idea can't happen that listen, listen for good advice. But if you think it can work, keep going because people don't know what they don't know. It's easy to say that in hindsight, it is, it is easy to say it in hindsight. But when you're making decisions now and you think back, what would the advice be from that person on this back then it helps you to contextualize. And the other thing in terms of leadership was, uh I don't know if you heard this guy Jamie Diamond, he was a little bank up town here, but he's someone Chris and I are friendly with and advice. He gave me one time and I, I think about it often is he said, Jim, you spend way too much of your time evangelizing. I said, what do you mean? He said you spend too much energy and time trying to get everybody in the organization to get it. So they don't all need to get it. He says they just need to have the faith that you get it and that if they do their job of moving things from here to here and everybody does that, it will roll up into a beautiful, a beautiful noise, a beautiful crescendo. The most important question. What is your favorite flower? Hm. Well, this, this is a year round answer, I guess and a seasonal answer seasonally. A ping because it's still with all those things we've done in terms of the science, they're still kind of rare. My wife is the uh head gardener at home. I'm her, uh her helper. Uh but we have a beautiful P and ES and they're majestic and special. But on a year round basis, we were talking about roses before I'm a purist. I bring flowers home. I don't bring them oftentimes, a mixed bouquet. I bring a single flower and I like to work them and see how long I can get them to last. And I like to work the flowers myself. So, but I love of a vase of roses all one color and uh that's what it gets me excited at home. I now have a hand for fruit and chocolate. All, who knows? Maybe it's in your future.

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