IT Friendsbook ᐅ David Hollembaek

Online Magazine

I am an expert in ...

... building data products. As the head of MLE at Accenture, I leverage my knowledge of making software and AI to help our employees as well as our clients develop such products.

My current project:

Intelligent apps, i.e., intelligent experiences that seem to know what you need when you need it.

What drives me:

My biggest motivation is to help people achieve more. We are at a point where an explosion of data and computing capabilities is enabling life-changing technologies to appear and improve every day.

My biggest professional challenge and what I learned from it:

There have been too many "big" challenges to list, let alone rank!
Perhaps one of the most transformative was, many years ago, teaching the value of Validated Learning (a process used in Scrum). This helped me better understand how Agile (see box below) supports customer value chains, and led me to develop products with a "Lean Startup mentality" that still drives much of my work today.

What is Agile and how does it benefit your business?

In times where change is the only constant, companies need flexible structures and an agile mindset.

Find 5 tips on how your company can achieve this in this article.

How I stay up to date:

I regularly read articles on four specific platforms:
1. The Economist
2. MIT Technology Review
3. LinkedIn (many sources)
4. Medium

I often refer to articles in The Economist and MIT Technology Review to help clients identify larger trends and show them that they are not alone in struggling with data and AI topics.

In addition, I have recently been taking courses that have helped me to refine and improve my MLOps skills and solutioning on Coursera.

What Applied Intelligence means for me:

For me, Applied Intelligence is about creating impact, generating value from data and ever-growing data-centric ecosystems.

My advice to companies in the digital age:

Your goal should be to create real value with your digital products, but don't get stuck in "analysis paralysis." Today, we can prototype and develop MVPs faster than ever before, which tempts us to develop things we don't need or develop them in ways that don't scale. Start small enough to develop something quickly, but with a kind of product mindset where the expectation is to deliver value (albeit limited) on day one. Then scale feature by feature, in a way that you can measure what additional value you're creating.

My favourite emoji:

This person from the field of data analytics, AI or automation inspires me:

Andrew Ng – He applies his ideas to help billions of people while remaining a compassionate, down-to-earth person, explaining highly technical topics in easily understandable stories.