The fourth industrial revolution, the one we are experiencing today, has come so fast you may not even noticed it was a revolution.

Of course, you’ve seen the signs, you’ve even tasted the fruits, but chances are you kept thinking “life and business will go on as usual” and that’s where you are setting yourself up for an unwelcome surprise.

You need to realise the world has become increasingly VUCA, which is an acronym that stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, and the old rules of business don’t work anymore.

 Companies and their leaders have to accept the business model which made them successful may be outdated five years from now, if it’s not yet, and that embracing change could be the smartest thing to do, and they have to be CLEVER about it.

The guest of today’s show, Professor Alessandro Lanteri, is the author of the book “Clever, the six strategic drivers for the fourth industrial revolution” and with him, I aim to understand what companies and individuals can do to not just to stay afloat, but to strive and be relevant in the years to come.

Professor Lanteri teaches at various business schools and works with multinational companies, and public organizations across five continents, helping them set strategies and creating road maps to capture the opportunities an ever-changing marketplace will present, and minimise the challenges they will inevitably face.

Ulrik Nerløe, founder of Unified People, has been transforming international organisations and creating winning cultures that bring world-class results since 2010. 

An “energy and freedom creator”, he has extensive experience in executive mentoring, organisational development, leadership development, and one-on-one life coaching. 

He is the author of the best-selling book " The life bridge, your journey from an unconscious to a conscious life".

Key takeaways of this episode:

• Everyone has the potential to live the life they want
• What you think you will attract
• People lack self-esteem and have too much self-confidence
• The life-bridge model
• The principles of Attraction
• Leading from the hearth
• It's all about energy

Drawing the fine line between reality and perception has kept humanity busy for thousands of years.

Countless philosophers and scientists have spent their lives trying to separate what’s true from what’s collectively and individually perceived as such, and they often failed the test of time for their truth being true only until the next discovery was made to contradict it.

This is not to say we cannot be certain of anything in life.

Of course there are facts and we should not confuse them with opinions.

We should know that data is often more accurate than an impression and that a lie is a lie even when it sounds true.

And in our daily attempt to understand the world, we should never forget that our individual reality is always a merge of what’s going on outside and inside of us, and that our emotions, cognitive biases, background and culture will always be the filters through which we’ll make sense of the world we live in.

If there is an industry which has always played succesknsfully with reality and perception, that is with a doubt the movie industry.

Think how many movies have changed your life offering you a fresh point of view, telling you a story you didn’t know, lifting you up when you needed to or triggering your deepest emotions.

Technology, with time, has helped movies become more and more realistic, immersive, and imaginative, and with the growth of the animation industry, fantasy today feels more real than ever.

Jean-Colas Prunier, the guest of today’s show, is a visual alchemist, or to say in a more corporate way, a digital animation specialist, the man who contributed to making impossible stories appear real on a screen.

Having worked with filmmakers such as George Lucas and James Cameron, the list of movies he has worked on is impressive and I will only mention a few: Avatar, The Lord of the ring trilogy, X-men, Harry Potter, Godzilla, King Kong, Life of Pi and many, many more.

By listening to today’s interview, not only will you understand some secrets behind the movies you love and the technologies that made them possible, but also how technologies like Virtual and Augmented Reality are rapidly changing the way we live, and will transform many industries, perhaps yours too.

Today we’ll speak about tomorrow.

The future, once said the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, influences the present as much as the past. 

The future is everyone’s next destination, yet many people and companies don’t know where they are going and they need the help of those who can read the signs.

And reading the signs to understand where society will go, what consumers will buy, and what people will want is a job that requires analytical skills and a methodology grounded in science.

In the fashion and jewellery industries, every new item you see in the market is not just a product of creativity, but also the outcome of a precise understanding of what will be trendy in the future.

 The guest of today’s show is one of the world’s leading trend-forecasters in the fashion and jewellery sector.

An industry veteran, the editor of the yearly publication Trendvision Jewellery Trendbook and a consultant to global luxury brands, Paola De Luca has helped me, and many others, understand that creativity is not at odds with science and that the merge of the two gives life to beautiful products which appeal to people.

Millions of people around the globe buy a watch every day, despite having their time measured by their smartphone, because they have either learned to appreciate the almost impossible work of engineering that goes with the complicated mechanical movement because they love a certain design, or because they seek social recognition.

In all this Switzerland has for centuries been the country where the most sophisticated watches were invented, and still is the place where most premium luxury and high-end watches are produced.

By listening to today's show, you will learn the difference between premium luxury and high-end watches, and how  these precious  time pieces not only resist the attack of technology,  but actually keep growing in value all over the world.

And this is why this episode of the podcast, is titled : Apple won't kill the luxury. Watch. 

My guest of today, Guido Terreni, is not only an expert in watchmaking end in the strategies that make this industry a multibillion dollar one, but also the person who, in this ten-year tenure as head of the watch division of Bulgari, has enabled the brand to achieve the highest level of legitimacy in watchmaking.  

As we will discuss later, not an easy task for a jewelry company, as great as it may be. 

Guido Terreni's experience as a senior executive in the luxury industry make him an extremely authoritative voice to listen to while seeking to understand how to reach a stellar level of desirability and a premium position in the marketplace.   

Paolo Gallo is a best-selling author, coach, and former head of HR at the World Economic Forum.
In his career he has interviewed over 9.000 candidates (including several Nobel Prizes, Prime Ministers, and CEOs.)

In this episode of the podcast, Paolo shares principles and strategies to help listeners achieve happiness at work while building a successful career.

Key takeaways:

• Passion and talent are not the same
• Talent is not enough to succeed in the long run
• Failing to understand an organization's culture is a dangerous mistake
• A job interview is an opportunity to understand, rather than seduce
• Several tips to succeed at a job interview (for both candidates and recruiters)
• An organization is like a zoo, you need to understand what animal you're dealing with
• Values are at the base of a successful career
• People at the top of an organization are rarely the happiest
• During a crisis, leaders have to learn to manage paradoxes

It was 1999 when a book titled “The experience economy” made its appearance in the bookstores around the world.
Many listeners will surely remember how companies, back then, were still busy producing goods and delivering services at full speed and very few of them, with the exception of some in the entertainment and hospitality industry, would ever think of their interactions with their clients as EXPERIENCES.

Yet, experiences they were, for experience is an inevitable dimension of human life.

When asked if they were trying to predict the future, authors Pine and Gilmour always answered that they were anything but futurists and that their work was grounded in history and in the present.

Fast forward two decades, CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE has become not just a common language, but a concept that pretty much every company in every industry says they are fully committed to.

However, the reason many companies do not succeed, despite their effort, in staging memorable and transformative experiences for their customers is because they fail to use the framework explained in the book The Experience Economy, which, by the way,  was re-issued in 2019 with many updates, and which is based on universal principles that make it as current and as effective today as it’s ever been.

In my conversation with Co-author B. Joseph Pine II,I've learned:

• Experiences are NOT just nice and easy service
• Experiences are time well spent
• Experiences must be designed and staged
• Experience must leave positive clues
• Difference between Experiential Marketing and Marketing Experiences
• Experiences are at the highest level of the economic progression
• A theme helps create a memorable experience
• Experience designers should take inspiration from theatre

In this episode of Lux & Tech, Carlo Pignataro discusses the future of humanity with best-selling author and Artificial Intelligence expert Calum Chace.

Calum offers a comprehensive overview of the challenges and opportunities a "Luxury Automated Capitalism" presents and in this interview, based on the principles included in the book "AI and the two singularities" the two discuss:

• A brief history of AI
• AI and machine learning
• The economic singularity, and a jobless world
• The technical singularity, and a new form of intelligence
• Post- humanism: Man merges with machines

In this episode Carlo Pignataro interviews John Wood, co-author of the book "Humachine, humankind, machines and the future of enterprise".

Key takeaways:

• Data overload: not everything that can be counted, counts
• The elegance of the Kasparov's law
• Narrow Artificial Intelligence is extremely powerful and can give companies a significant competitive advantage
• Artificial General Intelligence may not be possible, nor the best path to follow
• Mavoc's paradox should be leveraged rather than solved
• A Humachine is within our reach
• AI can help people and organizations overcome their cognitive biases
• Too much automation can kill people's cognitive skills
• A strong governance is necessary to ensure AI does not pursue unethical goals