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Welcome, Christian.

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It's great to be with you.

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I just wanted to start,

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we're living in this era of disruption-

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from AI breakthroughs to
geopolitical challenges.

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What's critical in the CEO role right now?

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What's evolving?

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What new capabilities are required?

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Well, thanks for having
me, first and foremost.

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Well, the world has changed dramatically.

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When you go back 10 to 12 years,

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in hindsight, it felt
much easier to be a CEO.

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There's so much going on,

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which you have to kind
of find your way through

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and navigate, as you call it.

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And I think one of the biggest
task is that, as a CEO,

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that you find amongst all that noise,

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what is really impacting
your strategy going forward?

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Where do you have to kind
of reconsider changes

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to your strategy,

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and what is just noise, and
you just follow through?

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I mean, that is one big thing

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where CEOs have to be
able to find their way.

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Transparency is very important-

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being truthful and
transparent to your teams,

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and let them know what you are seeing

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so that they can kind of
keep their confidence.

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Because some of the
things which are going on,

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not least around AI, are
pretty scary to many people,

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and so they need to be confident

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that their leadership is
navigating in a thoughtful way.

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It's interesting, in times like this,

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earning and sustaining
trust in disrupted periods

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becomes even more important.

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And I think your point about transparency

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directly feeds into that,

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is how do we sustain trust as leaders

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to guide our organizations
through times like this?

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One of the challenges

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is that when there's so
much focus on efficiency

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and productivity right now,

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sometimes it's hard to
leave room for innovation,

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and what we do in innovation

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to ensure it's translating
into real growth.

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How do you strike the balance

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between the
efficiency-productivity efforts

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and what you do to spur innovation?

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Yeah, I think it's an excellent question

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to put these two things together,

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because I think they belong together.

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Every large organization has
to constantly identify new ways

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of getting more efficient,

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but it doesn't fly without
being constantly innovating.

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So you have to find a way

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to bring efficiency and
innovation together.

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And maybe AI is a great way
of helping us in solving it,

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because AI, first and foremost,

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is very helpful to drive efficiency,

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and it may take kind of
the lower-skilled tasks

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away from people,

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where everybody has things they need to do

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which they don't enjoy

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and which can be done by AI,

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and then they can focus on the things

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where they can really be
creative and be innovative.

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And so I hope AI will help us,

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and we always say,

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I always say to our people,

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"Make AI your best friend,

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that makes your life easier."

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Christian, thank you so
much for your perspective.

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Thank you, Rich.

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And have a wonderful Davos.

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Thank you. All the best, Rich.

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(upbeat music)