Technovation with Peter High (CIO, CTO, CDO, CXO Interviews)

AI layered onto a broken process doesn’t fix the process; it just runs it faster. Prakash Kota spent his first 18 months at UKG consolidating two legacy companies into unified CRM, ERP, and data systems before any AI conversation began. Now, as Chief Transformation Officer, he is shifting the question from “what tools can we deploy?” to “what outcome are we trying to reach?” That discipline extends to the customer funnel, where AI-assembled signals travel with a prospect through every handoff, and to sales reps, where an autonomous assistant pushes pre-meeting briefs before a rep has to ask, reclaiming the 40–50% of call-prep time currently spent on research.

Key Highlights:

Why redesigning the process must come before choosing the technology

How UKG unified two legacy companies’ systems as the foundation for AI-era work

The shift from AI as a tool you pull from to an autonomous teammate that pushes the right information to you

How AI-enriched signals travel with a prospect through every funnel handoff, making customers feel individually known

Why UKG’s CEO holds a weekly cockpit review of the top 10 transformation programs, measured at the business-outcome level

This episode is sponsored by Tines. This episode is presented by Tines: Freedom to build. Complete security. No compromises. Learn more at tines.io

The binding constraint on AI adoption is not access to tools. It is the organizational fear and mindset shift required to reimagine work entirely.

In this episode of Technovation, Peter High speaks with Kristie Grinnell, EVP and Chief Information Officer at TD SYNNEX, about building company-wide AI fluency across a global workforce of nearly 30,000 employees.

Grinnell joined TD SYNNEX roughly two years ago and holds executive sponsorship of its AI fluency strategy alongside full IT operational scope. She describes how TD SYNNEX structured fluency at three tiers, required every ELT member to produce an AI plan, and built Fluidworks.ai as an internal factory to scale governed AI across the organization.

Key Highlights:

Why AI adoption fails as a change management problem before it fails as a technology problem

How a tiered fluency certification gives every employee a concrete path to AI readiness

Why every AI agent at TD SYNNEX must carry a registered identity and a named human owner

How agentic SOC triage turned tier-1 analysts into threat hunters

Why TD SYNNEX policy holds employees accountable for the AI outputs they use

This episode is sponsored by Tines. This episode is presented by Tines: Freedom to build. Complete security. No compromises. Learn more at tines.io

Healthcare has accumulated friction that patients have come to accept as normal. Novant Health’s Chief AI Officer is systematically dismantling it.

In this episode of Technovation, Peter High speaks with Vijay Sankararaman, Chief AI Officer at Novant Health, about deploying AI across patient experience, clinical operations, and proactive population outreach at a system with 22-plus hospitals and 8 million annual patient encounters.

Sankararaman came to healthcare from retail product and engineering leadership at Walmart and Lowe’s, and he brought a problem-first discipline with him: every AI initiative must justify the problem it solves before the technology is considered. His team has deployed a 24/7 surgical companion, a lung-cancer screening outreach program that contacted more than half of 20,000 at-risk patients in a fraction of the time human call programs managed, and a mammography scheduling agent that drove call abandonment to near zero.

 

Key Highlights:

Why the hardest part of a CAIO’s job is saying no to AI proposals

How a conversational AI agent reached thousands of at-risk lung-cancer patients human callers could not

What 40% after-hours engagement reveals about suppressed patient demand

Why the CEO’s frame on AI (technology feature vs. business reimagination) determines whether a CAIO role makes sense

How Novant’s build/buy/co-develop architecture avoids vendor lock-in without slowing deployment

This episode is sponsored by Tines. This episode is presented by Tines: Freedom to build. Complete security. No compromises. Learn more at tines.io

Most generative AI programs stall at the pilot stage. Zoetis reached 95% computer-based colleague adoption.

In this episode of Technovation, Peter High speaks with Keith Sarbaugh, Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Zoetis, about how the world’s leading animal health company built an AI platform that colleagues actually use, and how Sarbaugh measures whether any of it is working.

Sarbaugh spent over two decades in human pharmaceuticals at companies including Eli Lilly and Biogen before joining Zoetis in 2023. He now oversees IT, AI, data, cybersecurity, and global customer experience, and describes the role as more hybrid business-technology leader than traditional CIO.

Key Highlights:

Why Zoetis built a model-agnostic platform (Zen AI) with 10–11 LLMs rather than standardizing on one

How a 350-person global Change Champion Network drove adoption faster than any top-down mandate

What Sarbaugh’s Business Value Realization Framework requires teams to define before a project begins

Where agentic AI earns its place: rules-based, high-value decisions like supply chain demand forecasting

Why aggregating all customer touchpoints at 10x prior volume revealed service failures that NPS never could

This episode is sponsored by Tines. This episode is presented by Tines: Freedom to build. Complete security. No compromises. Learn more at tines.io

The next generation of technology giants may not be built in software. They may be built in factories.

In this episode of Technoventure, Peter High speaks with Lior Susan, Founder and Managing Partner of Eclipse, about why AI, robotics, and industrial innovation are transforming the economics of American manufacturing.

Lior explains Eclipse’s five-forces framework for building industrial companies and why physical industries represent a significant opportunity for venture capital.

They explore:

How AI and robotics enable competitive domestic manufacturing

Why industrial startups need operating expertise beyond capital

The infrastructure opportunities emerging from AI’s energy and compute demands

Why humanoid robotics may be getting ahead of practical applications

How policy and national security are shaping industrial investment

Listen to discover why Lior believes this is an extraordinary moment to build companies in the physical world.