Greg Smith
Greg helps organizations solve their intractable problems using disruptive digital technologies and ways of working
Areas of Focus
Education
University of Leicester
BSc (Hons), Biological Sciences
Past Experience
Atos Consulting
Partner, Global Head of IT Strategy & Transformation, Chief Knowledge Officer (UK Consulting)
Yodel
Chief Information Officer
Capgemini
Consulting CIO
Kingfisher
Senior roles at Kingfisher’s property division (Chartwell Land) and entertainment distribution and category management business (Entertainment UK)
Greg is a Partner at Arthur D. Little, based out of our London office, and leader of Digital Problem Solving practice.
Greg focuses on how emerging digital technologies and associated ways of working can be harnessed to drive the transformation of the business, either to breakthrough problems or to seize new opportunities. He believes that the technology patterns and approaches that have been used by businesses in the past are no longer appropriate to the challenges they now face and that new approaches will have to be adopted if the full potential of the “digital revolution” is to be realized.
Over a 25 year+ career in technology, Greg has worked within businesses as an IT leader, and through consulting organizations as a strategic advisor and intractable problem solver to clients across a wide range of sectors.
Additionally, he has led innovative programs covering IT and Digital strategy, IT operating model transformation, customer strategy, business operating model redesign and the IT interventions required to effectively enable mergers and demergers.
Winning the war for digital talent
Businesses across the world are facing a shortage of professional talent and expertise in digital and IT skills and capabilities. For example, a 2021 survey suggested that 76 percent of IT decision-makers worldwide faced critical skills gaps in their departments, an increase of 145 percent since 2016.[1]
Act now for full digital transformation of air traffic control
Leveraging COVID-19 crisis for more efficient, sustainable, and effective business models for ANSPs.
Moving from “Best Practice” to “Next Practice”
We are constantly bombarded with the message that we are living through a period of unprecedented change; that technology is rewriting the rule book across all industries; that any organization that fails to fully master technology will become commoditized, obsolete, or extinct; and that the only possible solution to these challenges is to implement the latest technological miracle cure.
2018 Technology Trends
While KPCB venture partner Mary Meeker’s annual “Internet Trends“ report does an outstanding job as a ”State of the Digital Nation,” there is no single user manual on the related trends affecting how companies can leverage emerging technology. Often there is asymmetry between the apparent positive trends from emerging technology and the negative trends these can create for established companies.
Why machine learning is crucial
This article explores the challenge of managing and gaining the most value from big data. We highlight the increased opportunity associated with larger data sets, while illustrating the limitations of current methods and human intellect across the 4 Vs of big data (volume, velocity, variety, and veracity), ultimately resulting in lost value — the fifth V. We further show how organizations can use machine learning (ML) to address these limitations and realize the full value from big data. Finally, we highlight how cutting-edge companies employ ML to obtain greater value.
Developing a customer experience
Excellent customer experience (CEX) remains elusive. Companies struggle with CEX due to lack of clear accountability at board level, or because they do not challenge their assumptions about what they think customers really want, or how they really feel about the service or product being offered. Consequently, they may focus on the wrong areas. Arthur D.
Sense of Purpose
From time to time concepts that, at first sight, seem quite old fashioned suddenly get a new lease of life. For example, open innovation has been around for decades, but it’s come to the fore again in recent years in the context of converging industries, start-up collaborations and the rise of the innovation ecosystem.
Tackling the Digital Hype – Executing digitally enabled strategies
Successfully implementing a business strategy is usually a lot more challenging than developing it. Advances in digital technology are frequently perceived as a “silver bullet”. However, digital can also expose a company’s inner contradictions, reveal hidden pockets of poor performance and even lead to perceived core capabilities becoming seen as critical weaknesses. What are the most common execution problems when it comes to digital, and how can they be overcome?
Driving adoption in digital transformation
When it comes to delivering effective digital transformations, human behaviour is often overlooked in favour of a focus on technology. Based on our experience and research, we outline how organizations can truly engage their people by understanding their behaviors, and consequently, ensure that they undergo successful digital change.
Turning customers into subscribers – How to successfully make the shift
What customers expect from manufacturing businesses is changing, moving away from outright purchase- to subscription-based models. This offers opportunities and risks for traditional players, providing them with access to greater customer insight, but also lowering barriers for competitors. Based on case examples, this article looks at how manufacturers can make the shift to subscriptionbased businesses.
Converging on the Future
Convergence seems to be everywhere in the business world these days. It covers a wide range of factors which can come together to change the status quo in an industry or value chain. Think of food and healthcare in functional foods, or telecoms and energy in smart grids. Digital technology has been a huge enabler of convergence.
Embrace the shadow
Shadow IT, systems built and used by business units without approval from the IT function, are now pervasive. Given that shadow IT is now a reality, this article outlines how companies and IT departments can embrace the trend in order to properly manage it and reap its benefits, in terms of increased productivity, innovation and flexibility.
Getting ready for the energy consumer of the future
The energy sector is undergoing radical transformation as formerly passive consumers take control over their energy consumption and procurement. Based on the five stages of this transformation, we explain how it impacts the energy value chain and outline the capabilities that traditional providers must embrace if they are to meet the needs of the energy consumer of the future.
The Company of Tomorrow
The COVID-19 crisis hit the world as this edition of Prism was in preparation. Needless to say, the outlook for business, at least in the short term, has changed radically in just a few weeks. Nevertheless, it’s becoming increasingly clear that one effect of the crisis has been acceleration of trends that were already there, such as virtualization of the workplace, further penetration of digital technologies (for example, AI and the IoT), and “asset-light” business models that make businesses more responsive and resilient to rapid shocks.
The “human-to-technology” language challenge
It is often said that within every business is a technology business, with software central to enterprise success. However, translating ideas into working software is not easy. Looking at typical business-to-technology language problems, this article shows how to overcome them through new ideas and techniques used by digital leaders.
Unleashing innovation using low code/no code – The age of the citizen developer
As the saying goes,“software is eating the world,” forcing companies to change their business models and operations. In a highly competitive environment, ensuring they have the required software capabilities is a challenge. This article shows how adopting low-code/no-code techniques enables businesses to widen their options, providing tools for non-specialist “citizen developers” to digitize and transform their operations.
Greg is a Partner at Arthur D. Little, based out of our London office, and leader of Digital Problem Solving practice.
Greg focuses on how emerging digital technologies and associated ways of working can be harnessed to drive the transformation of the business, either to breakthrough problems or to seize new opportunities. He believes that the technology patterns and approaches that have been used by businesses in the past are no longer appropriate to the challenges they now face and that new approaches will have to be adopted if the full potential of the “digital revolution” is to be realized.
Over a 25 year+ career in technology, Greg has worked within businesses as an IT leader, and through consulting organizations as a strategic advisor and intractable problem solver to clients across a wide range of sectors.
Additionally, he has led innovative programs covering IT and Digital strategy, IT operating model transformation, customer strategy, business operating model redesign and the IT interventions required to effectively enable mergers and demergers.
Winning the war for digital talent
Businesses across the world are facing a shortage of professional talent and expertise in digital and IT skills and capabilities. For example, a 2021 survey suggested that 76 percent of IT decision-makers worldwide faced critical skills gaps in their departments, an increase of 145 percent since 2016.[1]
Act now for full digital transformation of air traffic control
Leveraging COVID-19 crisis for more efficient, sustainable, and effective business models for ANSPs.
Moving from “Best Practice” to “Next Practice”
We are constantly bombarded with the message that we are living through a period of unprecedented change; that technology is rewriting the rule book across all industries; that any organization that fails to fully master technology will become commoditized, obsolete, or extinct; and that the only possible solution to these challenges is to implement the latest technological miracle cure.
2018 Technology Trends
While KPCB venture partner Mary Meeker’s annual “Internet Trends“ report does an outstanding job as a ”State of the Digital Nation,” there is no single user manual on the related trends affecting how companies can leverage emerging technology. Often there is asymmetry between the apparent positive trends from emerging technology and the negative trends these can create for established companies.
Why machine learning is crucial
This article explores the challenge of managing and gaining the most value from big data. We highlight the increased opportunity associated with larger data sets, while illustrating the limitations of current methods and human intellect across the 4 Vs of big data (volume, velocity, variety, and veracity), ultimately resulting in lost value — the fifth V. We further show how organizations can use machine learning (ML) to address these limitations and realize the full value from big data. Finally, we highlight how cutting-edge companies employ ML to obtain greater value.
Developing a customer experience
Excellent customer experience (CEX) remains elusive. Companies struggle with CEX due to lack of clear accountability at board level, or because they do not challenge their assumptions about what they think customers really want, or how they really feel about the service or product being offered. Consequently, they may focus on the wrong areas. Arthur D.
Sense of Purpose
From time to time concepts that, at first sight, seem quite old fashioned suddenly get a new lease of life. For example, open innovation has been around for decades, but it’s come to the fore again in recent years in the context of converging industries, start-up collaborations and the rise of the innovation ecosystem.
Tackling the Digital Hype – Executing digitally enabled strategies
Successfully implementing a business strategy is usually a lot more challenging than developing it. Advances in digital technology are frequently perceived as a “silver bullet”. However, digital can also expose a company’s inner contradictions, reveal hidden pockets of poor performance and even lead to perceived core capabilities becoming seen as critical weaknesses. What are the most common execution problems when it comes to digital, and how can they be overcome?
Driving adoption in digital transformation
When it comes to delivering effective digital transformations, human behaviour is often overlooked in favour of a focus on technology. Based on our experience and research, we outline how organizations can truly engage their people by understanding their behaviors, and consequently, ensure that they undergo successful digital change.
Turning customers into subscribers – How to successfully make the shift
What customers expect from manufacturing businesses is changing, moving away from outright purchase- to subscription-based models. This offers opportunities and risks for traditional players, providing them with access to greater customer insight, but also lowering barriers for competitors. Based on case examples, this article looks at how manufacturers can make the shift to subscriptionbased businesses.
Converging on the Future
Convergence seems to be everywhere in the business world these days. It covers a wide range of factors which can come together to change the status quo in an industry or value chain. Think of food and healthcare in functional foods, or telecoms and energy in smart grids. Digital technology has been a huge enabler of convergence.
Embrace the shadow
Shadow IT, systems built and used by business units without approval from the IT function, are now pervasive. Given that shadow IT is now a reality, this article outlines how companies and IT departments can embrace the trend in order to properly manage it and reap its benefits, in terms of increased productivity, innovation and flexibility.
Getting ready for the energy consumer of the future
The energy sector is undergoing radical transformation as formerly passive consumers take control over their energy consumption and procurement. Based on the five stages of this transformation, we explain how it impacts the energy value chain and outline the capabilities that traditional providers must embrace if they are to meet the needs of the energy consumer of the future.
The Company of Tomorrow
The COVID-19 crisis hit the world as this edition of Prism was in preparation. Needless to say, the outlook for business, at least in the short term, has changed radically in just a few weeks. Nevertheless, it’s becoming increasingly clear that one effect of the crisis has been acceleration of trends that were already there, such as virtualization of the workplace, further penetration of digital technologies (for example, AI and the IoT), and “asset-light” business models that make businesses more responsive and resilient to rapid shocks.
The “human-to-technology” language challenge
It is often said that within every business is a technology business, with software central to enterprise success. However, translating ideas into working software is not easy. Looking at typical business-to-technology language problems, this article shows how to overcome them through new ideas and techniques used by digital leaders.
Unleashing innovation using low code/no code – The age of the citizen developer
As the saying goes,“software is eating the world,” forcing companies to change their business models and operations. In a highly competitive environment, ensuring they have the required software capabilities is a challenge. This article shows how adopting low-code/no-code techniques enables businesses to widen their options, providing tools for non-specialist “citizen developers” to digitize and transform their operations.
More About Greg
- University of LeicesterBSc (Hons), Biological Sciences
- Atos ConsultingPartner, Global Head of IT Strategy & Transformation, Chief Knowledge Officer (UK Consulting)
- YodelChief Information Officer
- CapgeminiConsulting CIO
- KingfisherSenior roles at Kingfisher’s property division (Chartwell Land) and entertainment distribution and category management business (Entertainment UK)