The Brief: The rapid evolution of AI technology is creating unprecedented tension internally and requires new rituals beyond new infrastructure.

Session: Track 1 - Augmented Employees & Leaders
Date: June 4, 2025
Moderator: Dr. Andrei Villarroel, Chief AI Officer, Innoverse.ai

The Unstoppable Wave

Switzerland faces an uncomfortable reality: while employees pay for ChatGPT from their own pockets to boost productivity, Swiss enterprises lag dramatically behind in AI adoption. This productivity gap emerged as the central tension during Panoramai's opening panel, where three industry leaders confronted the accelerating pace of AI transformation threatening Swiss competitiveness.

Sébastien Burdin from Swissquote delivered the session's most sobering statistics. « Training compute is being increased every year five times, » while inference costs drop « 90% reduction » annually. Model update cycles have compressed from six months to three months, with « hints that it's going to be faster than that. » His conclusion: « There's no major signs of slowdown. »

This exponential acceleration forces organizations into what Burdin termed a VUCA world where « change and disruption are happening very fast and we need to adapt. » Traditional strategic planning cannot match AI's development velocity, demanding « fast experimentation » and « continuous adaptation » instead.

The Three Horses Racing Toward Dominance

Sal Matteis cut through AI hype with a stark framework: three simultaneous races that will determine global competitive advantage. His Silicon Valley perspective, gained through nine years at Yahoo during its « $100 billion company » peak, informed a brutal assessment of European positioning.

The first horse represents the AGI race, where « billions of dollars, and in fact every month is something crazy like 400 billions that are starting to go into AI. » OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and Microsoft pour unprecedented resources into systems capable of replacing « PhD level colleagues. » Matteis emphasized the inevitability: « It's a river that is coming downstream from the mountain and it's unstoppable. There's nothing we can do about it, whether we like it or not. »

The second horse involves enterprise productivity unlock. Organizations serve as critical gatekeepers, with « enterprise is really important because enterprise is the gatekeeper » determining AI adoption speed. Each company can accelerate or restrict AI implementation faster than government regulation cycles allow.

The third horse focuses on application layer breakthroughs. Matteis traced the logarithmic progression from basic ChatGPT to sophisticated agent workers functioning as autonomous colleagues. « We went from agents that were prompt agents, chatGPT-like, to workflow agents, to what is now agent worker agents. A worker agent is the example I gave earlier before. Have a colleague that does X things. »

His critical question resonated throughout the session: « How do you operate in this new structure? » where AI agents transcend departmental boundaries and traditional hierarchies.

Swiss Reality Check: The Observatory Findings

Yvan Cognasse presented findings from Switzerland's first comprehensive AI Observatory, interviewing over 100 organizations across all industries. His opening struck directly at organizational complacency: « This year it's about action. » The exploratory phase of asking « What is AI? » has ended; implementation demands immediate attention.

The research revealed brutal truths about Swiss AI readiness. « Let me be very direct. No chance to succeed in AI transformations, and I'm speaking about transformations, if you don't have a support for your leaders. » Leadership commitment proved the strongest predictor of success, with « a strong correlation between the low usage of AI and a poor leadership. »

Surprisingly, industry sector proved irrelevant. « No correlation between the AI transformation benefits and your industry » emerged from the data, suggesting organizational readiness matters more than vertical advantages.

The most striking finding exposed the productivity paradox: employees are « paying from their personal pocket to work and to improve their productivity » through tools like ChatGPT, while their organizations fail to provide enterprise AI capabilities. This gap between individual adoption and corporate systems creates immediate competitive vulnerabilities.

Cognasse challenged traditional data governance excuses: « It's not anymore an excuse to say I don't have strong data governance in my organizations. » Organizations can extract AI value despite imperfect data foundations, though maturity amplifies benefits.

Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

The panel consensus emerged around culture as the determining transformation factor. Cognasse articulated this with characteristic bluntness: « Culture eats the strategy at the breakfast. »

Successful AI implementations require fundamental organizational restructuring. « If you include AI in your organization, does it change your organization? » Cognasse demanded. True integration necessitates hierarchical adjustments and role redefinition rather than simply adding AI tools to existing workflows.

The transformation challenges traditional Swiss organizational siloes because « AI doesn't care at all about management, organizations and departments. » AI agents operate fluidly across functional boundaries, forcing cross-departmental collaboration that many Swiss companies resist.

« If you think about an AI agent, they don't have any manager and they are cross-departments, » Cognasse explained. This represents a fundamental shift toward results-focused operations that transcend traditional organizational charts.

The Leadership Imperative

Leadership emerged as make-or-break factor for AI transformation success. The observatory confirmed that sponsorship requirements exceed typical project timelines. « Sponsor, it's a long-term position. It's not one role for one month, » Cognasse emphasized.

Effective leaders must balance competing tensions: maintaining competitive positioning while preserving employment, accelerating adoption while ensuring ethical implementation. Burdin's Swissquote experience demonstrates this balance through « top-down and bottom-up approach by fostering all knowledge and fostering desire from everyone across the board to participate in this new AI venture. »

Swissquote's practical approach involved training over 100 employees and establishing active AI communities running experimental projects. One initiative optimized lightweight models on older hardware while awaiting infrastructure upgrades, demonstrating how organizations can begin implementation despite resource constraints.

European Competitive Positioning

The discussion highlighted fundamental differences between American and European AI approaches. While Americans pursue « let the horse go » strategies prioritizing speed and market dominance, Europeans emphasize thoughtful technology assessment and social responsibility.

Matteis challenged this approach with pointed questions about technology's societal impact: « When you think about it from their level, look at what internet has done. The companies that have monetized have gotten where they've gotten in valuation. Great, incredible, you know, multi-billion-dollar, trillion-dollar company, and what is the impact of technology on society? »

His critique of European positioning proved particularly sharp: « We missed the boat » on cloud computing, Airbnb, and Salesforce-scale innovations. However, he questioned whether GDP-focused metrics tell the complete story when comparing actual living conditions across regions.

The competitive gap widens daily as American organizations achieve productivity gains through aggressive AI adoption. Swiss leaders must accelerate implementation while maintaining European values around privacy protection and human-centered design.

Call to Action: Think Beyond Optimization

The session concluded with calls for transformational rather than incremental thinking. Burdin advised participants to « think about your dreams » and leverage AI to realize previously impossible aspirations rather than merely optimizing existing processes.

The transformation requires what Matteis described as « AI native » thinking, where organizations redesign themselves around AI capabilities rather than retrofitting AI into legacy structures. This fundamental reconceptualization challenges Swiss organizational culture but represents the only pathway to competitive sustainability.

Three Strategic Imperatives emerged:

Leadership Commitment: Establish long-term executive sponsorship exceeding typical project timelines, with clear authority to drive organizational restructuring.

Cultural Transformation: Move beyond pilot projects toward systematic culture change that embraces data-driven decision making and cross-departmental collaboration.

Experimental Velocity: Create AI communities encouraging peer learning and rapid experimentation while maintaining ethical boundaries and security protocols.

The message from Panoramai 2025's opening session proved unambiguous: Swiss organizations must act immediately or risk competitive obsolescence. The window for strategic AI implementation remains open, but it closes rapidly as global competitors accelerate adoption and capture market advantages.

AI transformation in Switzerland requires immediate action, sustained leadership commitment, and cultural evolution that embraces both technological capability and human potential. The future belongs to organizations that successfully orchestrate this complex transformation rather than those that merely experiment with AI tools.

More on the panelists

Sébastien Burdin, Swissquote

Yvan Cognasse, Oracle

Sal Matteis

Dr. Andrei Villaroel, moderator

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