HR Tech Europe: I'm speaking.

I'll talk about innovation and how to shop.

Back in the day I used to talk at a lot of conferences. When I worked at Gartner and SuccessFactors, I would regularly trott across the stage at various events around the world. Over the last couple of years, I’ve done far less of it, but I was asked by the nice folks at HR Tech to dust off my skillz. They are kicking off a European Event, so I figured why not. Details of the event here (Amsterdam RAI 2-3 May 2024).

Once more unto the breach and all that.

The next question was what to talk about. While I’m doing a lot of relatively deep work on AI at the moment, I didn’t want to add yet another AI talk to the roster. AI fatigue is real.

Over the last 30 years or so, I’ve seen HR tech from a variety of angles, from presales, product management, as an analyst and so on, I was thinking how can I bring those perspectives together into something a bit different, what can I bring to the event that would be useful for HR leaders and HR IT people?

I’ve been involved in 100s of HR software deals over the years, I suppose if I was to add them all up it would involve several billions of dollars (alas for most of those I wasn’t on commission).

Today I make my living as a venture capitalist, investing in early stage HR tech companies, so I don’t have specific attachment to any one vendor or analyst firm. As I now longer have a brand police governing my slides or messaging, I can go a bit off-piste, way off-piste. I think it is about time explained how I really think enterprises should shop for HR software.

Shopping Sensibly: Building a Robust and Nimble HR technology Portfolio That Helps Your Business, Minimizes Waste and Delights Your Users.

Some of the things I’ll talk about.

• The Carbolic Smokeball and how to avoid it.

• Whose innovation is it anyway? Exploit and explore and becoming ambidextrous.

• Thomas the Tank engine

• Fish and Wine: Applications and data.

• The ship of Theseus and Ozymandias.

• Suites and niches: sunflowers, daisies, cacti and dandelions.

Here’s the more formal description

Many HR organizations have over 200 HR applications, and no clear idea why. There are waves of ever more sophisticated, slick and well funded vendors gearing up to sell you more stuff. Many of you will double your HR tech spending in the next 5 years. Some of it will be awesome, a lot of it not.

This session will apply modern strategy and innovation theory and research to give you a robust framework to make HR technology investment and deployment decisions. It will help you objectively decide when to leverage your suite vendor, and when to deploy niche or best of breed solutions. We will explore how integration, UX and analytics enhancements are creating new ways to make solutions work together. There will be some AI, but just a sprinkling.

Let’s chat

I’m expecting to connect with friends and former colleagues from the vendor community and also talk with lots of HR people. And it is always fun to connect with the analysts and other speakers. An opportunity to meet start-ups should also never go amiss.

I’ll also be on a panel discussion.

HR Tech Europe have put together a great programme for start-ups, so if you are interested in exhibiting, do get in touch with the team there.