Exclusive Trusted Magazine Q&A with Yogesh Malhotra, AWS Partner
How could you describe your career path in few words?
Dr. Yogesh Malhotra 'Yogi' is the Chairman & CEO of the Silicon Valley-Wall Street-Pentagon-Global Digital CEO Practices Pioneer New York Venture Capital & Private Equity Firm Global Risk Management Network, LLC. A Postdoctoral MIT-Princeton Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning (DL) Natural Language Processing (NLP), Cyber, Crypto, Quantum and Risk Computing Faculty-SME with AI-Quant-FinTech R&D impact ranked among Nobel Laureates such as Herbert Simon and Black-Scholes, he leads AI-ML-Cyber-Crypto-Quantum-FinTech-Risk-Cloud-Computing practices as Amazon AWS Cloud Computing Network Partner. His USAF-AFRL Digital AI-ML-Quant-Cyber-Crypto-Quantum-Risk-Computing CEO Networks guiding Pentagon Joint Chiefs-US Air Force (USAF) & US Space Force (USSF) Chiefs advance upon his world’s first, foremost and largest global CEO-CxO Digital Transformation Networks with worldwide organizations such as Goldman Sachs as early adopters.
His direct clients roster includes Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists & CEOs, $Trillion Wall Street Hedge Funds, Big-4 IT Partners such as Accenture; Silicon Valley Strategy & Consulting Partners such as McKinsey; global Telecom, Semiconductor, and Health Technology firms such as British Telecom (UK), Intel Corporation, and Philips (Netherlands); Big-Tech firms such as Google, IBM and Microsoft; Wall Street investment banks such as JP Morgan; Digital Marketing firms such as Ogilvy; world-leading management and leadership institutions and programs such as Harvard MBA, Harvard University, MIT, and, Princeton University; and United Nations HQ, US and World Governments, Parliaments, Cabinets and Nations such as Switzerland, Netherlands, South Korea, and, Mexico.
His Digital Transformation practices are adopted & recommended by Global Business, IT & Defense & Space industry leaders such as Microsoft founder Bill Gates, PwC Vice-Chairman & CKO, DoD Undersecretary, and CIOs of US Air Force, Army, and, Navy as well as top commanders and leaders of Allied Forces among other world leaders.
His interviews and worldwide reviews of his Tech Ventures as global industry benchmarks including world’s Top-ranked Digital Site, Search Engine, and Social Network appear in the most premiere business and technology press including Business Week, Fortune, Fast Company, Inc., Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Chief Executive, Computerworld, Information Week, and, CIO Magazine.
Dr. Yogesh Malhotra “Yogi” is profiled in Marquis Who's Who in America®, Who's Who in the World®, Who's Who in Finance & Industry®, Who's Who in Science & Engineering® since 1999.
What was your most challenging experience and it has changed your mindset?
In the final year of my PhD in 1998, when approached by the Harvard Business Review for leading their Digital Transformation as Editor-in-Chief with choice of proposed office locations being Boston and New York City, I had probed how sincere they were to really “become Digital”, willing to ‘Walk The Walk’ beyond ‘Talking The Talk’. On finding their commitment to 'talking the talk', I passed on their offer at the time as founder of the original Digital pioneer founder of the Global Digital Social Enterprise 'walking the walk' adopted and recommended by worldwide leaders such as Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Born with the beta version of the first WWW browser in the Cloud, we are currently pioneering the next phase of Global Digital Disruption and Digital Transformation, leading post-AI-Quantum Future of Cloud Computing as Amazon AWS Cloud Computing Partner. However, that journey has been shaped by as well has shaped worldwide Digital practices as founder of world’s first, foremost and largest Global Digital Transformation Network and world’s Top Digital Site-Search Engine-Social Network as described below.
As shared with a former New York State Congressman at the Quantum Defense Summit organized by the Air Force Research Lab, I think of myself as an ‘accidental professor’ as well as an ‘accidental entrepreneur’: those roles emerged as a matter of serendipity rather than a pre-planned career path. In my first professional life as graduate of an elite engineering college, I was the youngest Executive Engineer and inter-continental Process Engineering project manager with one of largest Global Japanese automotive conglomerates. While there, I happened to study The Fifth Generation: Artificial Intelligence & Japan's Computer Challenge to the World by Edward A. Feigenbaum, the Stanford Professor who would be subsequently Chief Scientist of the US Air Force (USAF). Probabilistically, I could hardly imagine that 25 years later, I would be invited to interview for the same top USAF Science role of the USAF Chief Scientist at Pentagon. Prior to that, having served in tenure-track research roles at top US universities, in recent years, I serve as invited industry expert and faculty-subject matter expert on Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Computing, Quantitative Finance and Trading and FinTech-Crypto Digital Innovation and Digital Security for and at institutions such as MIT and Princeton University.
After my automotive engineering career out of engineering college, I had led Global Big-3 IT and Big-3 Banking & Finance CIO software engineering teams building global financial systems deployed by worldwide financial organizations. Enroute from Hong Kong, where I led Big-3 IT team as algorithms strategist on Forex Arbitrage for [British] Hong Kong Government’s Treasury Management, with permanent residence of Australia in hand, I led what I then thought as my last US Global Big-3 Banking project [for the Bank of America in Las Vegas] before moving to Australia [where I would in fact visit 20 years later]. Enrolled on MBA scholarship and fellowship at the local State university, I collaborated in publishing research on hyper-media computing [which would thereafter become World Wide Web] with late Stanford PhD ex-Bell Labs Professor Ranel Erickson. Erickson who would be subsequently described by The Las Vegas Review Journal as the grandfather of Las Vegas Digital Transformation, would become the pioneer of B2B computing as co-founder CTO of one of the first billion-dollar B2B enterprises.
While doing MBA, I received the offer of Top-10 PhD scholarship and fellowship with Top-10 founder of Information Systems field and pioneer of IT Strategy Dr. William R. King, University Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. When he called to interview me about my PhD application, I had the Business Week of February 1993 with cover story on Virtual Organizations in my hands. That was just a year before the beta of the first WWW browser Mosaic would be launched. When King asked me what I would like to do, I shared with him that I would like to build a global Virtual Organization and he invited me to come there. While earning twice the needed PhD credits from the University of Pittsburgh and the Carnegie Mellon University, on the side I would build what Computerworld would rank as the Top Digital Site of the World also ranked among Top-3 Search Engines in the Carnegie Mellon-Indusry.Net National Awards as well as among top Social Networks. That would earn me a place among global experts and pioneers of Digital Innovation and Virtual Organizations followed and sought by CEOs-CxOs of Tech and Consulting firms such as Microsoft and PwC; Tech firms such as Google, IBM and Intel and global consulting firms such as McKinsey and Accenture sought me for their global Digital Transformation, with global Investment Banks such as Goldman Sachs among major early adopters of my CEO-CxO Networks.
When you get surprised by unusual or uncertain context, what do you think?
"The new business model of the Information Age, however, is marked by fundamental, not incremental, change. Businesses can't plan long-term; instead, they must shift to a more flexible 'anticipation-of-surprise' model." – Dr. Yogesh Malhotra in CIO Magazine interview, Sep. 15, 1999.
"The future is moving so quickly that you can’t anticipate it… We have put a tremendous emphasis on quick response instead of planning. We will continue to be surprised, but we won't be surprised that we are surprised. We will anticipate the surprise." -- The 'Anticipation of Surprise' Framework, FutureOfFinance.org.
While all else have focused on DATA, DATA & DATA for the last 3 Decades, we have focused on MANAGING CHANGE, UNCERTAINTY & COMPLEXITY, particularly where related RISK is most critical for Existential Survival of the World at Large as well as existential survival of Global Economies, Enterprises and Individual Lives and Careers. That focus has come from advancing beyond the Data-Driven text book focus on Data Management from early 1990s to Data Science in 2010s to Managing Radical Discontinuous Change, Uncertainty and Complexity.
“Yogesh Malhotra says his vision is to fill the gaps between business and technology, data and knowledge, and, theory and practice...” - Fortune Magazine Interview, Dr. Yogesh Malhotra: June 1998.
The concept of 'anticipation of surprise' articulated in an executive’s Strategy journal by Steve Kerr, then Chief Learning Officer of GE, and the future Goldman Sachs Managing Director responsible for Goldman Sachs Leadership Development caught my attention in 1995. My R&D developed that concept into a comprehensive and actionable framework of Model Risk Management of non-deterministic risks such as those associated with black swans through 'anticipation of surprise' by 'effective challenge of models'. A similar framework would be subsequently seen applied in the US Federal Banking System’s Model Risk Management focus after the Global Financial Crisis with my related R&D sought by other organizations such as the US Treasury and for leading US national insurance practices such as by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Over years, my related Networks, Practices, Technologies, Teams and Ventures resulting from my R&D on risk modeling and risk and uncertainty management such as subject of multiple presentations at the Princeton University conferences sponsored by Goldman Sachs and Citadel, the New York State Cybersecurity Conferences sponsored by the State Governor, professional association keynotes such as for the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Society, and, US national and global national economic keynotes across Asia and Europe and have guided world's greatest nations, firms, and institutions at the forefront of managing risk and uncertainty. In addition to the above worldwide global and national impact, our major global CEO-CxO network clients such as Goldman Sachs are known to have fundamentally transformed their global risk management strategy around the above frameworks of advancing to anticipation of surprise. Often such anticipation of surprise is based on creativity, imagination, insight and intuition advancing beyond AI-stereotype focus on ‘prediction’ based on ‘historical data’ which is well known to be hazardous yet quite often followed without questioning.
What’s the most important key success factor for you based on your experience?
“Obsolete what you know before others obsolete it and profit by creating the challenges and opportunities others haven't even thought about” – Dr. Yogesh Malhotra, in Inc. Technology Interview, 1999:
Adopted in organizational strategy statements of US and worldwide organizations such as the U.S. Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) and Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA): Some of the early examples: https://yogeshmalhotra.com/globalimpact.html .
We pioneered Global Digital "BizTech" [as reported by the CIO Magazine] for the "Wild Wild Web " for Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists-CEOs in the 1990s; Future Of Finance, Risk Modeling and Risk Management to Uncertainty Management for the Wall Street Hedge Funds and Investment Banks in the 2010s; and, Quantum Uncertainty and Time Space Complexity for the Pentagon Joint Chiefs in the 2020s post-COVID aftermath. Today's Global Unrestricted Warfare intertwined with Cyber, Geopolitical Warfare, Financial, Economic and Trading Warfare was recognized in headlines a decade after we pioneered the underlying foundational Cyber-Finance-Trust™ Framework. It was proposed in my post-doctoral Computer Science-Network Security-Quant Finance thesis with related guidance sought as an expert by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. So, as evident we not only 'talk the talk' but 'walk the walk' as the world-recognized global Digital pioneer and world leader on Artificial Intelligence, Business Intelligence, Competitive Intelligence, and, Cybersecurity ISR-C4I-Cyber [Information, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, Command, Control, Communications, Computers & Intelligence], and Adversarial and Counter-adversarial Command & Control (C2) over recent decades.
What would be the major pitfall that may undermine the success of a leader?
If we connect the dots between the above real life ‘lessons learned’ in the University of Hard Knocks, we can derive a synopsis of how success of a leader can be facilitated and enhanced. So, leaders can better succeed by ‘Walking The Walk’ beyond ‘Talking The Talk’ and future-oriented anticipation of surprise based on creativity, imagination, insight and intuition beyond primary focus on data in the ‘rear view mirror’. In addition, as pioneers of Human and Machine Learning underlying Artificial Intelligence, what programs such as Stanford University now call as Human-Centered AI (HAI), as well as Organizational Learning practices adopted by global organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), we think that such continuing success is often a function of obsoleting what one knows before one’s knowledge is obsoleted by others as I shared in my Inc. magazine interview. As worldwide pioneer of global Self-Adaptive Complex Systems practices described as benchmarks in editorial reviews of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, we believe that the above prescriptions if adopted and followed can help leaders and organizations build sustainable success.
“Knowledge Management refers to the critical issues of organizational adaptation, survival and competence against discontinuous environmental change. Essentially it embodies organizational processes that seek synergistic combination of data and information processing capacity of information technologies, and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings.” - The Wall Street Journal Interview: Dr. Yogesh Malhotra, 1998.
“Future strategic advantage and competitive performance will not derive from simply adoption and use of new information and communication technologies. Rather, they will be determined by smart minds using smart technologies, with greater emphasis being on smart minds.” – Business Standard Interview: Dr. Yogesh Malhotra, January 2, 2007.
“The synergy of 'smart minds' and 'smart technologies' provides a basis for defining agile and adaptable supply chain networks that can withstand the challenges of a radically changing business environment.” - Institute for Supply Management Interview: Dr. Yogesh Malhotra, July 2002.
Conversely, one can deduce that more of the focus on DATA particularly with focus on INTERNAL EFFICIENCIES and OPTIMIZATION, more so with the lack of awareness about EXTERNAL COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTIVENESS, is going to be detrimental for most leaders despite the proclaimed ‘sexiness’ of Data Science by the Harvard Business Review editors, as acknowledged by co-author of the respective article. As the original post-WWW The Knowledge Creating Company™ born on the Cloud a decade before Google came to us as client to leverage our Global Digital footprint for their Initial Public Offering (IPO ) in 2004, we are the original Global Digital Transformation pioneer of world's Top Digital Site, Search Engine and Social Network long before Social Networks were mainstream. Building upon our insights of the last 25 years, as current leader of post-AI-Quantum Future of Cloud Computing as Amazon AWS Cloud Computing Partner, we anticipate ongoing Digital progress over the next 25 years.
Hence as the original Global Digital Social Enterprise, our message to worldwide organizations and leaders is that: We create the Digital Future™: And You Can Too...