Paul Zikopoulos

VP of IBM’s Competitive and BigData Analytics Teams and Future Trends Expert

In a world where Facebook is the biggest media company but creates no content, Uber is the largest taxi service but owns no cars, and Airbnb is one of the most popular places to book a place to stay but owns no buildings, data has become the new competitive advantage. According to future trends expert Paul Zikopoulos, “every day we walk by solvable problems, leaving opportunities untapped.” The VP of the Competitive and BigData Analytics Teams for IBM and discusses how working these “solvable problems,” creates disruption in the marketplace and golden signals are found within mountains of noise.

Exclusively represented by Leading Authorities speakers bureau for lectures, Paul is changing the way audiences are looking at their businesses in terms of potential sales, obstacles, and potential for growth. Paul shares future trends that are starting to happen in real-time and have multiple applications: from garbage cans that alert the sanitation department when they need collection – saving cities more than a million dollars – to shampoo brands that are connecting weather forecasts with personal consumer profiles to suggest the right mix of hair products for the day. He easily discusses the next generation of technological change from the power of machine learning and hadoop, to the opportunities in reading digital body language and joining the internet of things.

Incredibly energetic and easy to follow, Paul is the antithesis of what many people think of when they consider a big data expert. Using incredible visuals, including a hashtag aggregator that instantly creates examples of perfectly segmented consumers live on stage, Paul amazes audiences with the amount of information available to change the conversation about your industry. By sharing his insights on where big data comes from and the idea that “if you aren’t paying for it, you are being sold,” Paul breaks apart the roles of data collection and decision making for executives seeking the opportunities for disrupting their industry and leap-frogging the competition.

Named one of the “50 Big Data Twitter Influencers” by SAP, Paul has served as a big data consultant for “60 Minutes” and multiple universities, and has been named an expert on big data by publications such as Big Data Republic, Technopedia, and Analytics Week. Paul also leads IBM’s World Wide Competitive Database and Big Data teams. An award winning writer, he has published more than 19 books and over 350 articles on data including Big Data Beyond the Hype, DB2 for Dummies, Understanding Big Data, and more. An expert in harnessing the power of big data, Paul brings real world experience from his at time managing over 1,400 professionals to help you build influence and affect change in your company.

Paul also is a seated board member of Queen’s University Business School’s Masters of Management Analytics (MMA) program. Paul has taken an active role in bolstering Women in Technology, and sits on the board of Women 2.0, a global network and social platform for aspiring and current female founders of technology ventures.