S1:Ep85 The War of Ecosystems: Redefining Power, Partnership, and Purpose in the AI Era

My amazing guest today is Alejandro Canonero from Dubai, UAE. Today we are diving into the War of the Ecosystems to  Redefine Power, Partnership, and Purpose in the AI Era. 

Alejandro is a Go-To-Market Architect & Executive, Ex-Google, Amazon AWS, Hewlett Packard,  Criteo, Teradata, DELL-EMC. Researcher & Reporter about Technology. - Best-Selling Author. - Consulting Advisor to Founders & Boards.

Alejandro holds a Doctorate in Business Administration with a research thesis on Artificial Intelligence, SaaS, and Cloud Ecosystems, an MBA from London, and a postgraduate certificate in Platform Technology Leadership led by MIT.

Beyond his executive and academic career, Alejandro is a five-time full Ironman triathlon finisher, a dedicated shark diver who has completed dives across the seven oceans, and a Scout leader with over 20 years of experience serving in several countries, a commitment that continues today in Dubai. Through Scouting and community initiatives, he dedicates time to helping the next generations prepare for life, fostering leadership, teamwork, and resilience in young people.

Alejandro have also served as a Civil Defense volunteer in Spain.

I’m honored to have Alejandro as a part of the Diamond Executive Group of the AI Game Changers Club - an elite tribe of visionary leaders redefining the rules and shaping the future of human–AI synergy.

Key topics discussed:

• From markets to ecosystem warfare
• Power shifting to intelligent, fluid ecosystems
• Today’s real battlefields: data, algorithms, innovation, narrative
• Leadership when intelligence becomes distributed
• Ethical scaling and trust as competitive advantage
• Human–AI co-creation beyond automation
• Ecosystem Command Framework and Intelligence Warfare Map
• Ecosystem leadership in Dubai, UAE, and Saudi Arabia
• How AI agents and quantum systems reshape competition
• Why some ecosystems collapse and others regenerate
• Alejandro Canonero’s mission to shape future Ecosystem Commanders

🔗 Connect with Alejandro on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/canonero/

🌏 https://www.waroftheecosystems.com/

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Guest Introduction
• 3:15 Resilience And Early Ecosystem Lessons
• 6:20 Alliances As Go-To-Market Superpower
• 9:08 Orchestrating Power: Government & Cloud
• 13:54 Battlefields Of Intelligence Explained
• 20:21 Ego, Ownership, And Modern Leadership
• 24:18 Ethics, Governance, And Guardrails
• 29:05 Human–AI Synergy Beyond Automation
• 33:24 Frameworks: Ecosystem Command & Intelligence
• 40:12 UAE & KSA: New Digital Power Centers
• 46:50 Alliances, Chips, And Shifting Power
• 51:00 Legacy, Jobs, And Candid Leadership
• 54:20 Singularity: Signals Over Hype
• 55:00 Unlearn Certainty, Stay Nimble
• 57:12 Message From The Future: Collaborate
• 1:09:00 Closing & Community Invitation

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Digital Transformation and AI for Humans with your host, Amy. In this podcast, we delve into how technology intersects with leadership, innovation, and most importantly, the human spirit. Each episode features visionary leaders who understand that at the heart of success is the human touch, noturing the winning mindset, fostering emotional intelligence, and building resilient teams. My amazing guest today is Alejandro Canonero from Dubai UAE. Today we are diving into the war of the ecosystems to redefine power, partnership, and purpose in the AI era. Alejandro is a go-to market architect and executive, ex Google, Amazon, AWS, Hewlett Packard, Creteo, Teradata, Dell EMC, researcher and reporter about technology, best-selling author, consulting advisor to founders and board. He holds a doctorate in business administration with a research thesis on artificial intelligence, SaaS, and cloud ecosystems, an MBA from London, and a postgraduate certificate in platform technology leadership led by MIT. Beyond his executive and academic career, Alejandro is a five-time full Ironman triathlon finisher, a dedicated shark diver, and a scout leader with over 20 years of experience serving in several countries, a commitment that continues today in Dubai. Throughout Scouting and Community Initiatives, he dedicates time to helping the next generation prepare for life, fostering leadership, teamwork, and resilience in young people. Alejandro has also served as a civil defense volunteer in Spain, assisting people in need during critical emergencies and natural disasters. I'm honored to have Alejandro as a part of the Diamond Executive Group in the AI Game Changers Club, an elite tribe of visionary leaders redefining the rules and shaping the future of human AI Synergy. Welcome, Alejandro. I'm so happy to have you here in the studio.

SPEAKER_01: 2:20

Thank you, Emil. It's a pleasure to be with you today. It's an honor to be invited to be part of this conversation. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 2:29

Let's start the conversation and transform not just our technologies, but our ways of thinking and leading. If you are interested in connecting or collaborating, you can find more information in the description. And don't forget to subscribe for more powerful episodes. And if you are a leader, business owner or investor ready to adapt, thrive, and lead with clarity, purpose, and wisdom in the era of AI, I would love to invite you to learn more about AI Game Changers, a global elite club for visionary trailblazers and change makers shaping the future. You can apply at AIGamechangers.club. I'm so happy to have this conversation exactly today. I've been waiting for it for quite a long time. So, Alejandro, to start with, I would love to hear more about you, about your journey, about your passion. I'm so impressed by your life, your career, and you as an individual, as a human being. It's absolutely incredible how much you've achieved by today.

SPEAKER_01: 3:40

Thank you, Amy. Thank you for your kind words. I believe my story is another story of resilience, like many of us. I was born in the uh deprived areas in Latin America and Argentina, born from a single mother as a single child, and I from my early beginnings I learned that you know you need a tribe to succeed and to persevere. So that's when I started my team activities, team sports activities, and I got involved in scouting, I got involved in sports, and I got involved in many scholar activities from the early days. And since then, it's been a driving force for me as a professional but also as an individual. Ecosystems are all around us, have ever always existed, the natural ecosystems, and I think the analogy also applies to business ecosystems. And that's what I research even more after 30 years of professional career when I decided to do a PhD on it, and I invested six years of my life in researching and writing and interviewing people to find out what exactly makes a company successful versus others. In the technology world, that was the particular focus. But yeah, I'm a I'm a father of four, uh happily married, and uh, we've been living, this is the sixth country that we live in. I lived in Europe, lived in the Americas, now we live in here in the Middle East. Learning never ends, adapting is a constant need for us, and uh we are always uh trying to catch up with the new environment, the new technologies, the new ways of life. So it's uh it's a never-ending journey. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00: 5:36

Amazing. Such a great pleasure, Alejandro. You built and led ecosystem strategies across Google, AWS, Creteo, Hewlett Packer, Dell, Teradata. But what personal experiences led you to see the future of business not as a market game, but as an ecosystem work?

SPEAKER_01: 5:57

Yeah, I think I will continue with the story about survival in the most difficult environments that you can be on, where I had to rely on a network of friends and families to continue my survival through life by being with other people. And I also saw the adversity when we were on our own trying to do everything. And I think that also evolved into areas of business when I was uh in my early days selling software for uh small software companies, and we were trying to capture a new market, and it was in 2004 when I was um from London capturing the Middle East and Africa and entering into new countries with a technology company and realizing that it was only through alliances with the right people, with the right alliances, with the right technology companies that we are the right fit how we managed to enter in 20 different countries in 18 months. And that was the seed that got planted into my business mindset that, you know, for everything in life you need to succeed. Even to raise a child, sometimes it's said, right, that you need a tribe. And you look at the analogy of lionesses, how they raise each other's cuffs, and they support each other, and that's how they are successful prides in the savannah, right? In isolation, we are weaker. When we work with others, we are stronger. And I think this is something that you are also as a time executive leader that is uh leading wonderful new initiatives like the one we are talking about today, is you're doing it by increasing the people that are involved and creating value with you, right? So I think it applies to everything.

SPEAKER_00: 7:59

Exactly. That's so true, and I absolutely love your comparison. The tribes are powerful and we are social creatures and we need support, and we also need to support others. So it is important to make sure that we share what we have and that there is somebody to support us in our vision, our dreams, and our goals. And that's true, what I'm building has so much in common with what you just described, because I see we have a similar approach to how to build a long-term sustainable success. That's only through alliances. You know, it reminded me of a saying if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, get into alliances.

SPEAKER_01: 8:56

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 8:56

That's exactly the case. Alejandro, how is global power evolving from centralized institutions and corporations into fluid, intelligent ecosystems? And what does this shift reveal about the new architecture of business, value creation, and human collaboration?

SPEAKER_01: 9:16

Very complex question. I will I will share a perspective, and it has to do with the orchestration of ecosystems as a new leverage of power, particularly in the technology world, but also in government. I will start from the latest when I was at um a technology company recently, a technology event, and I saw the UAE government, the government of the United Arab Emirates presenting their strategy to lead artificial intelligence in the future, and how they orchestrated all members of the ecosystem to play along an organized game of coordination, co-development, investment, and execution of a strategy. And I saw it how they partnered with the largest and biggest and most renowned companies in the world today, like OpenAI, Microsoft, Oracle, G42, and many others, to create more capacity than they will probably need in the foreseeable future. So not only to serve their country and the needs of the government and companies in their country, but also to support others to use their infrastructure. So instead of waiting for other governments to lead the way, the UAE is one of the leading governments in how they are orchestrating all members of the play. So from chip manufacturers with NVIDIA to data center builders to platform companies like Oracle and OpenAI, where each one provides their own technology stack to build a complete offering for the users, right? And this is a prime example of government as an executive organization, which is a good example to see. My perhaps more resounding experience in the corporate world, what I saw this orchestration happen was at Amazon Web Services, where I was a founding member of AWS Marketplace in EMIA in 2015, and I was also the founder of the partner team for the public sector organization in EMIA. So leading cloud, public cloud at the time where public cloud was not welcome in Europe. I was doing it out of Luxembourg, and no one wanted to put their data into an American cloud. So we had to overcome a lot of bias, a lot of reasonable doubt, and a lot of objections. And since then, Amazon is one of the prominent players in the world, perhaps the leading cloud provider still. And it's being done through alliances, through partnerships with governments, with the incumbent technology companies, the telecommunication companies. And if you see today the sovereign cloud offerings that the hyperscalers are offering, always have a government play on it. They have a local technology provider, maybe a telecommunications company, and then a lot of regional organizations supporting it. And that's the only way to grow. And I remember at the time, the paradigm at Amazon was to work alone. They were coming from a self-service culture where you put something in the hands of the end user, the end user will buy it, they will get it directly, and that's it. We don't want anyone in the middle that will disrupt or damage the customer experience. But they had to learn that to provide technology to the enterprise and government markets, they needed to provide a lot of bridges to the most advanced technology. Knowledge doesn't fly from one head to the other in one day. You need a lot of enablement activities. And that not only means training, it means providing the right people in the middle to facilitate the knowledge transfer and the technology adoption. And that's where Amazon started to build the partner teams and building partnership organizations that will allow them to connect with the market in a more meaningful and impactful way. And I was one of the people that was part of that journey. So, two impactful experiences. I did it at Google as well when I was leading globally, a worldwide level, the partnerships organization for public sector, which included government, defense, healthcare, education, and I was creating with the teams initiatives where members of these verticals being educational organizations, healthcare. It was at the time of COVID, so we were providing assistance to citizens by helping government organizations. We were providing the technology to enable providing aid to citizens in a crisis time, right? So that's when technology becomes more meaningful, when it comes useful to the people that live in the world. So those are some of the examples where I saw uh orchestration being extremely powerful and way more impactful than organizations playing on their own and trying to be the long ranger or the superhero that solves everything.

SPEAKER_00: 15:06

Very interesting story. See that it is global as everything else in your life. So your experience and your insights are, of course, very relevant for anybody listening to us or watching this interview today. Mindset is defining how you are going to develop, and it applies on the personal level, it applies on the level of business. And sometimes we need to upgrade our mindset, our way of navigating the new times, and uh it is absolutely crucial to review what is working and what should be changed and upgraded, and that's exactly a perfect example of that. You describe ecosystems as battlefields of intelligence. Where are the true battles unfolding today? In the race for data, innovation, algorithmic dominance, or narrative control? What should visionary leaders understand about these invisible front lines? And please tell a little bit more about your book as well, so that you can share not only the answer to this question, but also a broader context for why you see it this way.

SPEAKER_01: 16:32

Thank you. Yes, absolutely. This question is um very much uh anchored in my book in one of the chapters where I talk about the battlefields that are taking place within the war of the ecosystem. Of course, I would like to delve on that and share my perspective on what are those battles. But I would like to take a step back and address the initial question, which is what needs change to understand this in a different way. I think the biggest enemy of today's progress is anti-created mindsets. But anti-creative mindsets is not represented by people that do not believe in ecosystems, but they believe in the wrong way. And what I mean by this is most people don't want to admit they don't know something, or they don't want to admit that their thinking is perhaps a bit far in the past. So everybody will say, Well, I know everything that there is to know about partnerships and alliances. But their paradigm is that ecosystem thinking is one element that is uh thought after, outlining how you go to market, what you're gonna do, which market you're gonna go, how you're gonna sell. My proposal is that there is a paradigm shift where your ecosystem thinking takes place when you're thinking about what your idea is, what problem you want to solve in the world, what the product that you're gonna create to solve that problem in the world looks like. And in that in that moment, you think about the ecosystem you're gonna operate in. Not an afterthought that you create the product, you hire the salespeople, you do your marketing, and then you think, oh, I need partners. A lot of companies did that, even Amazon, even Google, and they were not willing to share profit margin with their partners, so they were not willing to pay them. And there was a lot of friction and a lot of time wasted in that time to facilitate this thinking. Organizations that are in the present and that are orchestrating the most meaningful uh changes and empower orchestrations have ecosystem thinking at the core of the beginning of the process. When you're thinking about your portify forces, your pastel frameworks, instead of using them in the way they were designed at the previous time, you enrich them with ecosystem thinking and you incorporate your strategic perspective at the beginning. When you are crafting the beginning of the story, you say, okay, what environment am I going to operate in? What value chain I'm going to be part of? What is going to be my contribution? Who is before me? Who is after me in solving this problem, and how I'm going to collaborate with them, who I'm going to compete with, and what's the bigger play that I need to be part of. So that's extremely important to think about it from day one, not later. That's number one. Number two is part of the question and extremely relevant, is that there is no one ecosystem. There are many ecosystems depending on the industry you are in and where you're sitting in that industry. And within that ecosystem, there is a war against another ecosystem. If I oversimplify and I bring you the Amazon ecosystem is fighting against the Microsoft ecosystem, who's fighting against the Google ecosystem, who's fighting against the Oracle ecosystem, but then there are players within those ecosystems that fight amongst each other for pre-eminence. There are in the Amazon ecosystem hundreds of providers of database services. They compete with each other in the same ecosystem. And the analogy that I love to bring is that in the war, let's say the Second World War, there were multiple fronts. You had the Russian front, you had the Atlantic Front with the submarines attacking the provisions from the Americas to Europe, you had the front on Great Britain, you had the front in France, you had the North Front in the Nordics. You have multiple battlefields, multiple battlefronts within the same war. And within those battlefields, there were different fights between the species snipers against snipers, ships and navy against Navy, airplanes against airplanes. So you have multiple battlegrounds. And to bring it down, for example, to the technology world, some of the battlefields that I have identified in my research and my book, which are extremely important and that the big players use them properly, is the developers' battlefield. So the battle to capture technical people to adopt your technology is extremely important. And a lot of companies invested a lot of money in capturing the technical people's mindset and preference to be extremely influential then in the way products are developed. If you are captured out of university or before by Amazon or Google, your preference will be to develop in that platform. And then when you go into a big company, a big bank, you're gonna recommend your big bank to buy Google or to buy Amazon. So the battle for the mindset and the preference of the developer is one important battlefield. They're extremely influential. They build and they recommend. That's an example. Then you have another battlefield: the systems integrators, the companies that make your technology work in the environment of the customer. Every government organization is already working with a technology company that's making the technology work in their organization. If you come with a new idea, a new product, and you want to bypass them, you're gonna fail. You need to work with them. So you transfer your knowledge and your technology to this enabler company, and they will do it for you as the customer. This is the battle that technology developers need to fight for the mindset and preference of the system integrators, the boutique consulting firms, the advisors. That's why Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, they all have huge investments done together with Accenture Deloitte, Pricewaterhouse, and many others. So there are many more examples of different battlefields that take place uh in the world of the ecosystems. You can find them in my book, you can find them in my blog post in my website, part of theecosystems.com. Uh, or we can continue to chat as uh as we continue that. I'll stop there, hand over to you.

SPEAKER_00: 23:40

So exciting. How you are telling about it, it's both engaging and extremely valuable. So I could continue just that part for another few hours. But I see that you are a brilliant leader, so I would like to dive deeper into that topic. Traditional leadership was defined by hierarchy, hard ownership, predictability. But what defines leadership when intelligence itself becomes distributed, when AI systems, platforms, and human collectives co-lead strategic decisions?

SPEAKER_01: 24:21

It's an extremely impactful question because I continue to experience the good and the bad of um leadership practices. And in this day and era, and it's been happening for a while, no one knows everything. It's not like in the past the belief that the manager knew more than the subordinates. I still believe in ownership. It's extremely important to have someone to own an outcome from beginning to end and to be the exclusive owner for the organization of a project, an initiative, a product. Ownership is extremely important to see results. I still believe in the importance of assigning ownership to reliable team members. Now, in terms of intelligence, I see that ego plays a terrible role in preventing collaboration. And continues to happen because despite all the evolution in our technical surroundings, human beings sometimes struggle to evolve and adopt new thinking. And ego gets in the way, past history, mindset, experience, education, they're all components that affect how we see the world and how we react to it. And I saw the biggest failures in technology adoption, technology evolution, ecosystem creation. The biggest failures are when ego prevents collaboration. So I still see that knowledge is gonna continue to evolve and be more available thanks to generative AI now, Agentic AI in the future, and robotic AI in the future. It's fine, it's perfect. It's an additional aid that I hope we all leverage meaningfully for improvement, but still the human gets in the way of making everything better. Despite the evolution of technology and intelligent decision-making tools, the human still gets on the way. So I'll say that what I learned is that hierarchy provides some order, but other, you know, with with the central span of control in terms of how many people you have under one manager, and creating management layers just to create more control is not effective any longer. But lack of control also leads to lack of productivity and loss of direction for people. So I think it's an art, it's a balance that needs to be in place where leaders need to know when to touch what button to continue the enablement and progression of the team towards the desired direction. Um, so I'll oversimplify and say ego is the enemy, continues to be, and is part of an anti-quated mindset that needs to be erased through introspection and candor in conversations with honest and intellectually honest people. It's an area of concern for me as a senior leader, as an experienced person at this stage in my life, where I can see the success of some organizations and the failure of others by human get me away.

SPEAKER_00: 27:55

I couldn't agree more. I believe many of us have been there and seen that the status quo and the human willingness to be right to protect those boundaries. It's not always productive and not always enabling those alliances, unfortunately. But we are here today exactly to highlight how to raise as human beings to the next level where we can become better people, better humans, individuals, better leaders, better professionals, in order to create that space for open and honest conversations and uh extremely powerful, fruitful collaboration. And by the way, to all our listeners and viewers, if this conversation sparks something for you, hit like, follow, subscribe, and share it with one person you know would be inspired by this episode. Sharon is caring. Alejandro, as ecosystems scale, they not only expand capacity but also potential negative consequences. How can organizations grow exponentially while cultivating ethical intelligence, transforming trust, transparency, and human dignity into their ultimate competitive advantage?

SPEAKER_01: 29:32

Well, that's another very complex uh intelligent question. I have a goal from my perspective that governance continues to be key and to protect humans from other humans and from the bad utilization of technology. If we look at the most technology changes lately see that the technology advances and governments and policy come later. You know, usually Uber launches and no one was able to regulate the Uber drivers, how everything operated, how much they got paid, where they can drive, what service they provide, and then governments were catching up. Airbnb, the same. They were launched and they were doing good things and others could have been better until governments evolved and possibly catch up and try to regulate and control certain practices. I'm not saying they were bad, but everything in technology has a positive, a negative angle that needs to be explored for the greater good of everybody. The same applies to generative AI at the moment. There have been a lot of discussions about, remember decades ago already talking about facial recognition used by law enforcement organizations. How you protect the data of your good citizens to protect them by recognizing the face of bad citizens. So it's always the yin and yang, the good and the bad and requires a very balanced look at how it's going to be managed. Some organizations are going full in some countries are going full in. I will say the critical element and I'll bring it back because it's very close to home is how the UAE government is looking at it by creating teams, multidisciplinary teams, multi-organizational teams that are writing policy, right? At Gitex, the biggest IT event in the world that took place a couple of weeks ago, the GCC countries presented policy proposals to govern AI, right, in their territory. So the more proactive government organizations are in providing guardrails for technology companies to operate in a way that will be good for them as a generation for business, but also good for the citizens in protecting them from bad use, from the creation of malware attacks, from the creation of false images, false voices, false identities, stealing passwords and identity. So all of that needs to be considered while we enable people to create the most attractive videos to promote their product, right? It's a very careful and difficult balance. And only government organizations can protect us because corporate is always going to look for the profit. We're incorporating the good, but they always need a bigger brother. And even the OpenAI, CEO, and many others who are saying you know we want to work with government to help them create those policies. But they will not create themselves. So our representatives need to be proactive, engaged, leading from the front and trying to protect citizens while enabling the development of business.

SPEAKER_00: 33:15

That is truly a very sensitive area and it requires a lot of wisdom and balance because it's a fine line between the good and a lot of harm and right now I'm not sure that only those guardrails and policies are going to help us avoid in what we would like to avoid. And actually I had a very interesting conversation around this with a chatbot where we were discussing what is the solution from the other side of artificial intelligence perspective. And the context behind is something what should become more meaningful. Because what we see as a set of rules it can be really applied in our own way. We had a very deep conversation which gave me many insights around what is really the next step for us both from the human perspective and from the perspective of artificial intelligence and how we can coexist.

SPEAKER_01: 34:28

But diving deeper into the co-creation and human alliances how can this human AI synergy evolve from automation to co-creation where AI becomes an amplifier of human insight imagination and emotional wisdom rather than a replacement for them well um that's a wonderful reflection there are many perspectives and people have different viewpoints of course in my case from what I have experienced until now as a user of generative AI which is the part of AI that I have access to on a daily basis outside the corporate world where I had access at Amazon and Google to more advanced enterprise level technology I would say that today generative AI has only been an amplifier it has not replaced my thinking at all it has only amplified my perspective expanded my horizons and saved me time. Let me give you an example I uh I am honored to be hired by different companies to advise on the software or technology go-to-market strategy and um I rely on many of the frameworks of my book and my PhD thesis to frame the conversation and also to design the outcomes that I want to suggest and propose based on my analysis. And I ingested my book, my thesis, my research papers, my research notes, my interviews into a GPT and created a GPT based on my knowledge that I enrich continuously with my blog post and my thinking and then I asked him questions that use my knowledge to um present it in different ways for me to look at my work from different angles, right? So it's only helping me to better share my knowledge and my perspective and to apply it. It doesn't do a lot of the work that needs to be done analyzing custom ecosystem right because you for that you need to look at contracts you need to look at relationships you need to do all the things that a human will do. So I have the perspective that this is only at the level it's at and at the level it's available to me as an individual citizen, a researcher, a writer, a learner it has only been an amplifier. So I don't see any negatives out of it. But I see the danger particularly in education is critical thinking starts to be replaced by a question through a chatbot who will process the question and give us the food digested for us to give away instead of actually processing it. Finding food cooking it and presenting it and eating it and digesting it like it should be the learning process for my kids. I have young kids and I want them to develop their critical thinking but I also want them to be able to access the power of these technologies for the better group. Let me give you an example I don't let my kids answer any homework with AI. But we were talking about creating pictures about Halloween. So I uploaded a picture of my kid and myself and asked the AI tool to create a coloring page Halloween theme for her to color. I think that is an area that helps because we were going to color together and we're going to use a higher level of drawing than if I was trying to do it. What I'm trying to say with an oversimplified example um I gave you the example of a GPT about my book to talk about a doctoral thesis and how it's used and I give you an example of a coloring page that I do with my kids right I only see the positive so far but I see the danger if it's not used properly and comes back to human behavior how you use it.

SPEAKER_00: 39:07

Exactly we use it in a very similar way how you described it but I also see people around me who don't use it in this way and I see that it is important to work more on our behavior, on our way of thinking of creating working more on our mindset as well. One of the recent MIT studies actually showed that it can impact the ability to think as before and be as sharp as before so the cognitive ability is really heavily impacted in a negative way. So I think it is important to at least highlight that there are of course more than two ways of using it but we need to be mindful about the consequences.

SPEAKER_01: 40:00

In your book The War of the Ecosystems you introduced models such as the ecosystem command framework and the intelligence warfare map can you walk us through how leaders can use this to dominate their ecosystems instead of just competing yes absolutely thank you for bringing it up I introduce a lot of um frameworks and ideas for people to play with I even have reflection pages in my book for people to write their thinking after reading so they keep their notes alongside the book and not in separate notebooks. And some of those frameworks are the ones that you just mentioned. The commander is a figure that I love to use because it's that person that takes ownership they go to market strategy and orchestrates all the elements of the ecosystem in a way that is going to take them to their desired outcomes. And this framework provides examples of what are the steps that need to be taken to craft an ecosystem strategy and what are the elements that need to be answered in a particular order if you want. It's just an idea proposal people can manipulate it and do their own but it's a guy because I've seen a lot of people working for years in the alliances and partner business that have a very narrow perspective and very tactical. So I'll encourage everyone to take a step back and a step up in the way they look at the business and an ecosystem is made of the customers the partners the competitors the alliances the government so there are many many players within the ecosystem that need to be considered it's not only what we used to consider imported five forces five forces now we've got many more forces affecting the way technology goes to market step sales, marketing, consulting partners is designed. So I encourage people to take a look at it it is a guided step a process where you can start from zero to a framework that outlines how you can attack the market and what the other elements you need to be considered. From an intelligence gathering perspective I think it's extremely important and this is an area of concern to me particularly with social media where a lot of half truths untruths are shared and people are of course um researching the web before they do something to know what to expect but the web is full of truths and lies and artificial intelligence tools recurgitate because they had memory banks what they've been fed and they've been fed a set of data that is available in the world and it depends on the owner of that AI tool and what information they had access to what the strength of the AI tool is going to be and the bias. So if you look at I don't want to make strong assertions but some people will say you know Google is using all the information it has about searches to use in Gemini among other sources that growth is using X and what people say and feel and talk about in X. And ChatGPT is using other courses and cloud is using other sources anythropic and so on. So what I'm trying to say is the principle of being cautious and being open-minded and balanced about what you believe in before you act remain. What I mean by this is that you need to consider multiple sources when you're doing your research for you go to market technology or for planning your kids' birthday and if you use an AI tool it doesn't replace your critical thinking and the need to countermeasure the validity and the strength of the source of information you are considered. It's like for a strong medical procedure right you will look for a second opinion right so the same principle applies. And in technology there are voices that are louder than others. They are more visible on LinkedIn they got more money they got more power they got more media presence but that doesn't mean that they are absolutely true. That means that they are sharing a perspective with a particular interest to sell you their services or to convince you to go in a particular direction. So I did a few LinkedIn posts and blog posts talking about being careful on how you source your information, how you believe in what you are digesting and you are acting on and so I the continues you know the availability of information doesn't prevent you from being thorough depending on the importance of the use you're going to make based on that information. And particularly in go to market for technology companies which is the focus that I'm usually my core is you cannot believe a single source or a single analyst sperm telling you who are the top players and that's it. You need to counterbalance it with different opinions. And that continues to be important as intelligence gathering in the world of the ecosystems. If you think about the Second World War there are many examples where intelligence gathering changed the outcome of the war. You know there is a very famous example of the the Battle of Medway it was in the Pacific and the Japanese force was going to attack the U.S. force after Pearl Harbor in a second surprise attack that was going to dismantle the US Navy force in that field. But the intelligence forces from the US captured a message of the Japanese force and discovered what was going to happen. So they stimulated not knowing it and they created an ambush that destroyed the Japanese force and sank four of the air carriers that they had at the time and changed the course of the war. Right?

SPEAKER_00: 46:46

So it has real examples in real life if you want to find them on how important it is to be very thorough about what you believe and how you gather your intelligence I feel that your recommendations should be framed in a golden frame really for anybody who is using new technologies and especially artificial intelligence on a daily basis applied to their life to their business and it also made me think unfortunately referring to the history that there are different cases we have seen before and we are not the first round of attempt to survive as a civilization on this earth so we should be really looking at the broader perspective and asking ourselves how can we make sure that we don't destroy our civilization and our planet and stay here for the brighter future co-create together. Alejandro you are now based in Dubai at the crossroads of global innovation how do the ecosystems emerging in the UAE and Saudi Arabia define what ecosystem leadership and digital power mean in practice?

SPEAKER_01: 48:12

So I'm uh very technology oriented area at the moment and the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are very hot in everybody's radars due to the investments that these countries are making in the creation implementation and utilization of technology so I'll say there is a big contrast with the with the old world with Europe and other areas of the world because there is a combination of elements in the ecosystem that makes it different. It's not to be neglected the government frameworks are different. Decision making here takes place in a different way than in other countries and when decisions are made they are executed in a very thorough fashion which means that the adoption of technology and the execution of the projects tend to be quite thorough and on time in many many cases despite the challenges of reality. These areas are extremely ambitious you know everybody heard about the NEO project in Saudi Arabia Vision 2030 in Saudi Arabia and many other wonderful initiatives in the UAE I would say these are two of the hottest markets here in the region alongside maybe IT and a few others so it's a it's a hot area and it has triggered an evolution in the way technology is promoted acquired and implemented and I was sharing previously in this conversation how I saw the UAE orchestrating orchestrating policy orchestrating vendors orchestrating the ecosystem as a whole for the greater good with faster speed reducing risk and accelerating implementation. I see something similar and perhaps evolving also in Saudi Arabia where they are creating their learning from their peers and they are doing more things to evolve right so there is more control about who can install themselves as a cloud provider in in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. You got the first or one of the biggest um Arabic first generative AI models created by by a Saudi organization called Humane the same in the UAE where they created an AI model an LLM model that was a mix of Arabic and English by G42 uh which is a strong organization here in the UAE and so there are strong investments that also look at identity from a language perspective culture and so culture and identity and language are being baked in the definition of the technology ecosystem what is going to be prioritized and how is it going to be managed and who can install themselves here and how are they going to commercialize the product. So data sovereignty now is a key factor but in Western Europe when Amazon Google and Microsoft were there installing cloud it wasn't. People were choosing to put their data there or not but there was not even a law requiring that the data had a residency in the country that started to appear later. So what I'm trying to say is that usually the early adopters suffer the weaknesses or dangers of the new technology in exchange for being the first to adopt it and to leverage the benefits. The middle or late adopters they get more stable elements of the technology development and they are able to craft a more customized way of adopting that technology and being more in control on how it's adopted. The drawback is that they are not the first to use it and so they are not leveraging their benefits as early as others as the early adopters but you know they get it and they get it quickly. If you think about it I have an analogy here is the telephone right in the past to get a telephone you needed a copper wire to be installed from the center to your house. But if you go to Africa everybody has a mobile phone and internet through their phones. Same for Latin America same for this part of the world they have all internet how how they have internet through the mobile phone. So they adopted the technology much faster because it's easier to lock and they don't have to pay the price of all the infrastructure creation they're getting it later so they're leaving and using that technology much later but the speed of adoption is much faster.

SPEAKER_00: 53:31

That is a great example and it's so true and I'm sure we're going to see the same trend over and over again.

SPEAKER_01: 53:40

Now we're entering exciting times where something is transforming there are fantastic news every day, every week and everything is moving so fast so quickly but uh at the same time many ecosystems rise quickly and collapse under their own velocity as AI agents, quantum systems and autonomous organizations evolve, how will these technologies reshape the way ecosystems collaborate compete and expand across industries and also what do you think sets apart those that transcend the growth cycle evolving into living legacies that continuously regenerate value, meaning and purpose over time I wouldn't dare to think that I can answer it but I can share a perspective and we see how power is shifting in the technology world. We continue to use these glasses to look at reality in my particular focus area which is technology companies in the artificial intelligence, software as a service and cloud industry I don't pretend to talk about everything and anything that happens in the world and I only have a limited and humble perspective in this area that I talked about. But if we're gonna look deeper at this area my perspective is that you can see the shifts in power that are result of orchestration. Why do I say this? If you look at the investment loops between Nvidia and OpenAI how they invest in each other and they promise to buy from each other and then they incorporate other vendors into it like Oracle data centers, the the the super data center here and the super data center there alliances between companies continue to determine who writes to power right so we take a step back just a couple of years and Google was very advanced in artificial intelligence and if you think about Alexa from Amazon was a machine learning outcome that was using artificial intelligence and everybody had it in their home. Siri was a rudimentary artificial intelligence chatbot, right? Google Home and many other examples. So Google had the technology and they created the GPTs that then were used by other they made it available in open source and other people started to use them and craft the technology the world was shocked when OpenAI released this chatbot that was an improvement of what others did but make it available to the end user, to the normal citizen in a very easy to consume fashion. Well the the the position of power shift with Chrome being the default browser for the world and two more options started to be available through AI tools and AI browsers like Comet. So what did Microsoft do? Microsoft did an investment in OpenAI right and they captured OpenAI for co-pilot in their tools was a strategic shift a pure smart power play that the CEO of Microsoft did that really changed the positions of power in in that industry. And it it continues to show with the CEO of NVIDIA orchestrating alliances everywhere even with governments right so the old principle and I think this always happened in wars one feudal king would ally with another to fight against a fair one right alliances and ecosystems continue to be the defining factor in the rise to power for technology companies. And that's why Nvidia by being lucky and smart in developing a chip that was used for games but it was powerful for AI now became the overarching director of the orchestra and that is influencing everything that we are doing in the world. But the work of the ecosystem continued why because the government influence of the United States preventing chips to be sold to China what did it generate it generated the development of chips in China by Chinese. So the ecosystem world continues the Chinese ecosystem the American led ecosystem and everybody in between so ecosystems continue to be the tool to raise and get power exactly it just highlights how things are and um your examples are just giving more depth to our understanding so great answer and thank you so much for sharing your perspective beyond technology and business what drives your personal mission to train the next generation of ecosystem commanders how do you personally define legacy in an era where algorithms are so often shaping interest and meaning yeah knowledge workers like myself um are continuously challenged by the AI tools that are coping and aggregating knowledge from different sources and presenting it as their own but in fact they learn from someone that wrote it and put it available in a way that the AI tool can process and digest. Unfortunately that is a war for intellectual property that continues to take place and will continue for the foreseeable future. So I see a threat to my knowledge sharing the tools but also an opportunity to use and to disseminate my knowledge. So my legacy will be that I am able to save people's time, companies get successful go to markets, sell more With more customers satisfied, more jobs created by the successful progress of companies selling technology by orchestrating their ecosystem properly. So what I'm trying to do is help people have a better thinking about go-to-market by using ecosystem thinking in a way that they're going to be successful and that people are going to get hired to do more jobs, to sell more of this technology, to help more people. So if something that really matters to me at the moment, what I'm seeing is that job creation. Because I've struggled many times in my career to help someone find a job, to find a job myself, and I see many layoffs being done now with the excuse of AI, which is not true. AI is not replacing those many jobs. It's not true at all. It's an excuse to divest funding into capital investment for AI tools, maybe, AI infrastructure, maybe, and to cut fat from bad hiring in the pandemic time and after that. So I love for companies to do proper planning. And my paradigm of go-to-market influence that proper planning in a way that is good for people. Don't overhire so that you don't need to fire. You don't underhire, so you create the jobs that you need to do this. AI is not going to do the allowances. I am deeply involved in how software is sold today through AWS Marketplace, Google Marketplace, Microsoft Marketplace. You need a lot of people to make them work. They are not as automated as they claim to be, and they are not as automated as we believe them to be. So fortunately, there is a lot of work for humans, from manual labor to real thinking, and most importantly, human-to-human connection, which is where you really want to collaborate with someone because you see their intention is good and they want to progress with you in creating more value for the customer. I'm going to get that technology with your professional services and my technology product, we're going to solve this problem, right? So that's what I'm aspiring to do. My legacy is that I've been impactful, that I've been truthful, that I've been candid. I pride myself on being candid, even in the work environment where there is not a lot of candle, particularly in big corporate, particularly in the technology world. And that is a waste of time, energy, and life for human beings. So my legacy is that people remember me for being sometimes unusual, candid, honest, but also principle. And so I have the courage to say no to things or to stop things that I don't like. And I like our world to be more fair, more candid, more transparent. So in my example, as a doer and an executive that gets things done, inspire someone, I will be happy with that, and that will be my legs.

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:07

That is beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing this, and um it truly touched my heart, and I see all that in you through time, so it is truly impressive. You are walking the talk and uh showing the way. So thank you so much for doing that on the global level. I also thought I can't not ask you this question because you are so deeply into everything. What do you think about singularity?

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:48

Well, um I will I will defer to make any strong assertion on the topic. I think it's uh it's a nice aspiration. It's it's it's good that if there are people thinking about it. I hope it's uh crafted in a careful way that is being used for good when it's achieved. I'll say that um it's not something that I lose my thoughts or my dreams or my sleep over, but uh I I see it as an important development that is coming up. I'd love to see more signals before I'm able to share a particular perspective. I'm not as informed as I would like to be.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04:37

That's a very fair point. Alejandro, what is one belief or paradigm leaders must unlearn to navigate this age of intelligent ecosystems? And what single piece of advice would you leave for those ready to co-create the next chapter of human AI evolution? What should they unlearn?

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:01

Well, every time we think we know something, life, the world, the paradigm shifts show us that we don't know everything about anything. So I'll say that the key here is to remain nimble in the belief about what we think we have the absolute truth about. And I'm very strong on this point. I see a lot of people carrying themselves in the world with the belief that they have the absolute truth about something. I don't think anyone does about absolutely anything. I think we all carry our perspectives, and those perspectives shift with the increase of our knowledge, perspective, and experience. So unless we remain willing to evolve and don't get stuck in a particular dogmatic position about something, we are gonna continue to progress as humanity, as society, as civilization, and as individuals. So my strongest point at this stage of my life where I wasn't always thinking this way. It took me a lot of losses, and I lost some more battles than I can count to get me to this point. But if I can save you or your audience anytime, I would love to offer this perspective, which is stay nimble, don't get too attached to your own thinking. Use it for good, but be ready to observe, to listen, and to open your horizons, you know. And that that will be the key. I see someone using the expression watering holes, right? These places, oasis, the middle of the savannah, where all the animals go to drink water, right? And they see each other there. And people have watering holes that they go to very often. If you go always to watering hole and you listen to the same opinions, that's gonna be your universe. And that's gonna frame your perspective on the world, on your business, and your life. So I will say I'll encourage you to have multiple watering holes that enrich your perspective. In our world, well, today multiple networks of knowledge sharing, multiple sources of knowledge, multiple AI tools that you asked your ideas about. So I will say diversify the source of truths that you're gonna use to define your perspective in life and your actions.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:02

Alejandro, if you could send one message from the future back to today's leaders, a single insight to guide them through the coming years, what would it be? And why does it matter now more than ever?

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:20

Yeah, thank you for this honor. I would say I will talk to myself and the advisor, the the word of caution will be very much aligned with ecosystem thinking is don't fight it alone. Don't be tactical and only think about today. Put food on the table today while looking on how you're gonna put food on the table next month, next year, and for the foreseeable future. And that also means it's an executive creating technology, not only think about this quarter, this month, or what you're gonna create this product for, think about the impact it will have in the wider environment that it's gonna operate in, in the wider society. So uh no narrow mind, no long-range fight, broader perspective, long-term thinking, collaboration, collaboration, collaboration, be open to collaborate because if your ego is too big about knowing it all, then you're not helping others and you're preventing others from evolving. So, collaboration, long-term thinking, don't fight it alone. That would be my advice to myself from the future.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:34

Amazing, absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much, Alejandro, for sharing your wisdom and for being here today. I so much appreciate you, and I absolutely loved our today's conversation. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:51

Thank you, Amy, for giving me the honor to be in your podcast today. Thank you for your insightful questions. Thank you for all you do and the care that you're placing in helping technology development to have a care for the human being. So thank you for what you do and keep doing it. You're doing great.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:12

Thank you so much. And it's very mutual. So I'm looking forward to witness your success, and I'm also looking forward to co-create the future together. Thank you so much, Alejandro. Thank you for joining us on digital transformation and AI for humans. I am Amy, and it was enriching to share this time with you. Remember, the core of any transformation lies in our human nature, how we think, feel, and connect with others. It is about enhancing our emotional intelligence, embracing the winning mindset, and leading with empathy and insight. Subscribe and stay tuned for more episodes where we uncover the latest trends in digital business and explore the human side of technology and leadership. If this conversation resonated with you and you are a visionary leader, business owner, or investor ready to shape what's next, consider joining the AI Game Changers Club. You will find more information in the description. Until next time, keep nurturing your mind, fostering your connections, and leading with heart.