
This is software (AWS) generated transcription and it is not perfect.
Oh, that's a lot of questions, but yes, so firstly I am Mahesh, I am the Chief Digital Officer for IBM's energy, environment, and utility business. So, in my role, I lead strategy, partnerships, and ecosystems for the business. So for me to get to this path has not been linear, so it has been through a few things that I've done. So I have spent half my career in what I call operational technology and half my career, the current half with information technology with IBM. So I had an opportunity to work on both the OT side of the world and the IT side of the world. In terms of my background, I'm an engineer by training, and after graduating from the National Institute of Technology, Suratkal in India, I ended up working for Schneider Electric, which is a large engineering firm. I had a variety of roles in that firm and subsequent to those roles, which included product management and included sales management on also some part of engineering. I wanted to move to the technology side of things. I also wanted to move to the energy and utility side of things that I ended up going to the University of Cambridge for my MBA and subsequent to my MBA, I had an opportunity to work for IBM as a part of one of their programs. Inside of IBM, I've had a variety of roles, starting off in consulting, I've had opportunities to lead businesses around energy in China. Do some work for the strategy for IBM research and also have had the good fortune of working very directly with very senior IBM leaders, as an executive assistant to one of the Senior Vice Presidents. Subsequent to all of those experiences, I got an opportunity to do my current role, which is basically leading energy, environment, and utilities. Energy, environment, and utilities are one of the 12 industries that IBM, as a company, goes to market, and within that industry, I lead strategy partnerships and ecosystems. So yeah, so it's not been a linear part. it's been a bunch of experiences that have gotten me here.
OK, so like I said, right, I lead strategy, I lead the Ecosystem, and I lead partnerships. So these are three parts of my job. A lot of what I do enables, drives Success across these 3 metrics, in terms of the strategy aspect, the primary task would be to ensure that we are able to get a profitable growth from a solution development aspect, One of the things that I do is to build solutions that solve specific industry challenges and finally on the partnership aspect, on the ecosystem aspect, it is built partners that can take what you build to market and also create meaningful relationships in the industry, so the industry as a whole improves. One of the things that I'm really working on right now is on the topic of the energy transition because as all of us understand it, we're moving from more fossil fuels to more renewable sources of energy, right? And to do that, you have to use a lot of technology that enables that transition and that is something that I enjoy working on. So, hey, weekly work hours, I could've given a good answer, It's probably a few months back, right now because of Covid, the entire work schedule is completely reset. But in sum, I would say I end up working probably from eight in the morning to probably like six or seven in the evening. That's probably like a standard working hour. But we are in technology, right? So in technology, I don't think there's a linear working out methodology. So we, at times when we need to get things done in an agile fashion. So we come together and get it done, and there are also times when, and we're all more process and programmatic oriented. So there's no fixed routine. But to your answer, yeah probably like an 8 to 6 in the evening.
So the thing is, from what I do is, in my job, as I said, I work in energy, environment, and utilities and a big part of what I do is to provide and use technology, like technologies such as AI, Machine Learning, Deep Learning advanced analytics to solve specific industry challenges. So, one of the things that I always have to work on is always, I have to, stay in touch, learn, relearn technology, and also the business side of the problem so that whenever I apply technology or I solve a problem, its actually adding specific business value to my client and also to my customers. So business value becomes an extremely important aspect to work on and there are numerous examples that I can talk about and primary one of the things I want to focus on is, how we look at product management. For example, if I have to create a product, you have to spend a lot of time working with your clients and your partners to understand the problem first, because technology end of the day is a means to an end and it's not about the technology itself. You have to apply technology to solve a problem, for that first, you need to understand the problem and you need to understand the context in which the problem is happening on that is what will help you be successful.