About Nicola Villa
Nicola Villa is a Corporate Entrepreneur focused at the intersection between Digital Innovation, Sustainability, Analytics, the Internet of Things and Cognitive Computing. Nicola is an Executive Partner at IBM’s Global Business Services. He runs the European Growth initiative for the Internet of Things. He brings together more than 20 years of experience in helping leading Public and Private sector organisation transition towards becoming a Cognitive organisation.
Prior to that Nicola spent 19 years at Cisco where he set up and managed a number o
f strategic programs: He led e-commerce initiatives in the 90’s, co-founded Cisco’s Internet Business Solution Group, led Connected Urban Development (Cisco’s first step in the sustainability & smart city space, through a Global Partnership with Clinton Global Initiative, MIT and leading cities around the word). He managed the global Public Sector innovation team at Cisco, helped incubate Data & Analytics at Cisco Services and finally helped build Country Digitisation partnership programs with key European Political Leaders.
Nicola is an executive member of the Steering Board of the World Economic Forum’s Future of Urban Development Program. Nicola has a strong focus on digital Innovation strategies and is collaborating with both enterprise organisations as well as central government agencies, often at CxO and Cabinet level, in supporting the creation of Innovation & ICT programs, as well as new IT consumption models.
Nicola is an Italian national who studied Business Economics at the Universita’ Cattolica in Milan and at the Brighton University in the UK. He wrote his thesis on Industrial Economics, analyzing the effects of Technical standardization policies on the Internet and on the GSM telephony markets.
3. Internet
Evolution
– last
20
years
Intelligent Connections
Internet of
Things
Connect the
Unconnected
Immersive
Experiences
Digitize interactions Networked
Economy
Digitize business
processes
Connectivity
Digitize access
to information
Triple Bottom Line Impact
8. 8
• Billions of Things are getting
connected
• Our world is submerged in data
• The world is being re-written in
software code and the cloud is
the platform on which this it taking
place
• Computer systems are gaining
cognitive capabilities that are
becoming mainstream
We
are
now
being
confronted
with
new
developments
Cloud as the main
platform
Arrival of cognitive
computing
80% of
unstructured data
9. Reimagining
our
world
– Once
Again
Transforming
the traditional
taxi industry
Excess Capacity:
Everything
as a service
Transformedits
industry in a capital
intensive space
Self-driving car
is impacting traditional
auto makers
13. 13
• Understand natural language and
put it into context
• Reason by generating hypothesis,
considering arguments and
coming back with
recommendations
• Learn while being trained by
experts and continuously
becoming smarter with each piece
of information
Cognitive
Systems
understand,
reason
and
learn
Understand
Learn
Reason
15. Cognitive
…
in
The
Netherlands
!
Poseidon Inclusive
Enterprise
This
initiative
focuses
on
raising
awareness
on
the
(over)use
of
water
in
agriculture
and
developing
low-‐cost
technology
for
3rd
world
farmers
to
support
them
in
consuming
water
in
smart,
efficient
and
effective
ways.
This
project
advocates
the
well
being
of
the
employees
and
the
feeling
of
being
engaged
to
the
workplace;
with
the
goal
to
provide
a
better
workplace.
RainSense
RainSense
is
a
project
under
IBM’s
partnerships
with
academia
aims
at
creating
smarter
cities
that
can
react
effectively
in
cases
of
extreme
rainfall
or
related
phenomena.
16. “To
improve
is
to
change;
to
be
perfect
is
to
change
often.”
Winston
Churchill
