Linda Bernardi
Linda Bernardi possesses a unique vision and a fierce commitment to promoting innovative, disruptive vision and technologies
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- Former Chief Innovation Officer at IBM for IoT and Cloud
- Former EVP, Chief Product and Strategy Officer at Element AI
- Author – The Inversion Factor (MIT press 2018), ProVoke (2011)
- Tech Startup Entrepreneur
- Co-Founder of Anita Borg Institute for Women
*Fee ranges are presented as a guideline only. Speaker fees are subject to change without notice. For an exact quote, please contact your Speaker Exchange Agency representative.
With a passion for disruptive technologies and leadership, Linda Bernardi possesses a unique vision and a fierce commitment to promoting innovative, disruptive vision and technologies. In her role as “innovation provocateur,” Linda helps organizations break free of their comfort zone, defy conventional wisdom, and shatter outdated paradigms in their quest for market-changing products, services and methods. Linda is a very active professional speaker, delivering keynotes and talks around the globe. She works closely with the Financial, Healthcare, Pharmaceutical, Retail, Hospitality, Consumer Products and Tech sectors.
Linda was Chief Innovation Officer at IBM for IoT and Cloud when IBM introduced Watson. Her focus was enabling IBM’s Fortune 100 customers to introduce IoT, AI and cognitive capabilities into their operations and thrive in the hyper-connected world. As the former EVP, Chief Product and Strategy Officer at Element AI, she was responsible for product development and strategy. She has held several other senior executive roles.
Upon leaving IBM, Linda completed her second book, The Inversion Factor (MIT Press 2018), which discusses the mindset shift in enterprises from ‘product-first’ to ‘needs-first’ mentality and the evolution of IoT in the hyperconnected world. The Inversion Factor lays out one of the most critical paradigm shifts in technology today and won the Axiom Bronze Award in Business Theory.
Linda’s first book, ProVoke (2011) discusses the necessity of disruption in order to innovate. She is now working on her 3rd book in innovation and disruptive technologies to be released in 2021.
Linda has delivered hundreds of talks at large companies, tech and innovation events & conferences around the globe and has reached tens of thousands of readers and followers of disruption and innovation. She has proudly and deliberately created the Culture of Disruption in large companies. You can call her an Innovation Activist!
Linda is a serial tech entrepreneur. In 2001, she founded her first startup, ConnecTerra, Inc., a Cambridge, MA-based software provider connecting RFID technology to large enterprise IT. Today RFID is considered to be the genesis and enabler of IoT.
After selling the company in 2006, she became an avid early-stage technology startup investor in the US and abroad.
Linda’s work in the not for profit sector includes:
- Founding Emeritus board member of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology & The Grace Hopper Celebration
- Emeritus board member at The SETI Institute in astronomy and astrophysics
She has an MS in Applied Mathematics & Statistics from UCLA and lives in Seattle.
Linda takes a deep-dive into the emergence of today’s consumer-driven “Know-Me” economy and the trends surrounding Artificial Intelligence (AI), The Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, and crypto technologies. She raises her audience’s comfort level with digital disruption and sparks optimism in the idea of futureproofing your business. Her focus is to engage you in a positive way with these transformational technologies. As author of the Amazon best-seller, The Inversion Factor: How to Thrive in the IoT Economy, Linda shares with audiences how to abandon the ‘product-first’ model and capitalize on a ‘customer-need’ model, as Netflix and many others have done.
The financial industry is experiencing game-changing disruption from AI and IoT, as well as Big Data and predictive analytics. Linda illustrates how traditional financial models are being pushed aside in today’s consumer-driven “Know Me” economy by technologies like blockchain and cryptocurrency. She discusses how digital disruption is literally overhauling the mobile consumer’s banking expectations. A serial high-tech entrepreneur and best-selling serial author on these topics, Linda brings financial audiences a powerful message of futureproofing that applies to financial institutions, asset management associations, reinsurance, and the mortgage industry.
As Chief Innovation Officer at IBM and Watson Co-Lead, Linda is ideally qualified in how to leverage disruptive innovation. Her enthusiasm will inspire your audience to feel comfortable with disruption, empowering them to futureproof their business as disruptive technologies continue to shape the financial industry.
The healthcare industry is traditionally resistant to technological change and disruptions. However, AI, blockchain, and the resulting technological shifts are turning healthcare on its head. From intelligent robotics, personalized medicine, and compliance monitoring to immersion technology, predictive monitoring, and IoT-enabled services, Linda discusses inversion technologies like blockchain and AI and their impact on traditional models of research, patient data, clinical trials, and drug approval. While hospitals aim for higher revenues, patients require more transparency. Patient portals are one response, but are portals enough? Linda says the hospital landscape of the near future must align with today’s consumer-driven “Know Me” economy.
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