Dr. Ashwani Dev is the Vice President of Digital Business and Innovation for Crowley Maritime Corporation. He leads the digital transformation and innovation execution to enhance and scale business agility and competitiveness. Dr. Dev brings more than two decades experience in AI leadership management, digital business transformation execution, product management, and business incubation. Before Crowley, he worked for Halliburton Corporation and Ion Geophysical Corporation. He is a globally recognized thought leader, invited speaker and holds multiple patents in logistics and oil and gas exploration. Dr. Dev has a doctorate in Geophysics from the University of Texas at Dallas.
Recently, in an exclusive interview with CIO Magazine, Dr. Dev shared insights on his background and areas of expertise in digital business transformation, highlighting his experience in leading unique and transformative digital initiatives focused on customer and business innovation through AI and emerging technologies. Dr. Dev also shared his perspective on artificial intelligence’s role in digital business, personal sources of inspiration, future plans, words of wisdom, much more. The following excerpts are taken from the interview.
Hi Dr. Dev. Please tell us about your background and areas of expertise.
Over two decades, in various leadership roles, I have had the opportunity to lead unique and transformative digital initiatives focused on customer and business innovation by leveraging AI and emerging technologies. A significant part of my experience has been creating digital and AI organizations from ground-up to lead AI strategic initiatives for operationally intensive organization. Taking well established companies on business transformation journey provided me an opportunity to develop an empathetic business first mindset where digital solutions are enablers. Some of the initiatives morphed into new revenue lines to demonstrate the B2B revenue opportunities. My experience has been from cradle-to-grave when it comes to digitally transforming the business or incubating a new business. It has been a fun journey.
My expertise focuses on developing and executing digital business transformation strategy for mature organization. Managing and creating new digital innovation organization, business centric AI innovation, P&L management, product incubation and business realignment.
What do you love the most about your current role?
I love that there is opportunity in large and unique company portfolios, to help scale business digitally, when teams are collaborative and motivated, and management is supportive. Our Chairman and CEO Tom Crowley values people, technology and new ideas through collaboration that can make Crowley a great experience for our customers and employees. This vision from the top helps create a culture of customer-centric, sustainable innovation.
How do you see the role of the Chief Digital Officer evolving in the next few years, and what skills will be most in demand?
A CDO role must become more strategically business oriented not just digitally savvy. The primary role of CDO is to enable business to become more future-focused competitive and growth oriented. A CDO must learn business at a deeper level to be effective not just at the technology level. CDO role should develop think tank advisory skills to help assist and prepare business heads and COO about the top line and bottom-line improvement possibilities through a tactical and strategic lenses.
What’s your perspective on the role of artificial intelligence in digital business, and how do you see AI evolving in the next few years?
Artificial intelligence (AI) scope and ability to impact business will continuously improve and evolve. Last two decades, the industry has seen evolution of Big data technologies, cloud, and machine learning as the core advancements used in advocacy of business transformation. Now, the large language model (LLM) innovation is impacting areas like coding, marketing content generation and customer support that may allow for greater enterprise efficiency, new models of working to maximize their business impact and reduce manual processing. There is certainly improvement in human productivity in certain areas. However, this must be governed by clear data and AI governance and discipline on data security and intellectual property.
The combination of business logic embedded agents making machine-to-machine decisions using machine learning, small language and large language models with self-service consumption will be the future for B2B efficiency and growth. Over a period, rethinking of business models will redefine the business process, application and customer experience.
Companies with clear long-term end goals will reap the benefits, because technology is changing fast but value creation for customer is not happening at the same speed in short term nor the adoption. Also, the cost of the new solution has to be inline with business margin expectations else it will fall short on adoption.
At present, AI for B2B model exhibits potential at proof-of-concept level but value realization at the top and bottom-line revenue remains to be seen specially for service industry. I am here not talking about cloud, social media or pure data play companies.
How do you stay ahead of the curve in terms of digital trends and technologies, and what sources do you rely on for information?
I read a lot and keep myself educated through industry conferences, engage with startup accelerators and incubators, and reach out to peers in different verticals to compare notes and internal experimentation.
Is there a particular person you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are?
My wife Krishna Pallavi has been a constant support as she took a career break to support family and my career. My dad who is a retired teacher gave me freedom to choose my own path and taught me to help others without expecting anything in return. My PhD advisor Prof. George McMechan motivated me to learn through experimentation with real data.
What are some of your passions outside of work? What do you like to do in your time off?
I am passionate about healthcare challenges, especially around elderly care dealing with dementia and Alzheimer and kidney diseases prevention. Elder care will be one of the biggest problems in next 20-30 years around the world.
Beside science and innovation, I am very intrigued about how human brain works, so my interest includes neuroscience, human behaviour and psychology. Helping entrepreneurs develop new business ideas that can improve human lives. Spend time with kids playing cricket and watching football.
What is your favorite quote?
Time is the most valuable asset – spend it wisely.
What is your biggest goal? Where do you see yourself in 5 years from now?
Create the maximum impact for the people and organization around me. We can make sense of life only by looking into the past because there is no reference in the future. My expectation is that after 5 years, I have even more capacity to meaningfully serve the people, organizations, and society.
What’s your advice for organizations looking to build a strong digital foundation and drive sustainable growth?
Develop a long-term sustainable business growth strategy to build an effective digital foundation. Have a deeper evaluation of current business, customers and processes with lenses of 10-15 years projection. What worked in the past may not be sufficient blueprint for the future. Create a core team that understands business, customers and technology. Let this team become the digital brain for the customer experience, business and translate the business transformation requirements in terms of technology and process. Be measured and bold but- stay lean. Quantify the progress through measurable goals and end customer feedback. Be ready to remove ineffective people, process or software asap. Chase the business not technology.