Andrea Iorio is a globally recognized authority on digital transformation, leadership, and the future of work. As one of the leading voices in artificial intelligence and innovation, Andrea helps organizations navigate technological disruption through strategy, adaptability, and ethical leadership.
A former Chief Digital Officer at L'Oréal and Head of Tinder in Brazil, he brings a wealth of real-world experience in driving growth through data and human insight.
Now a sought-after keynote speaker and author of Meta Leadership, Andrea explores how AI is reshaping leadership, redefining soft skills, and demanding a new era of human adaptability.
In this exclusive interview with The AI Speakers Agency, Andrea discusses the biggest challenges businesses face when adopting new technologies, the leadership qualities needed to thrive in the digital age, and how professionals can future-proof their skills in an AI-driven world.
Q: Many organizations rush to adopt emerging technologies, but few manage to do it effectively. From your experience, what are the biggest challenges companies face when implementing new tech?
Andrea Iorio: "Well, first of all, new technologies always bring about lots of advantages to businesses, but also lots of challenges. And so some of the main ones include, first of all, the problem related to the lack of digital literacy when it comes to the teams that adopt these technologies.
"So as much as with calculators in the 80s, as much as with AI today, actually, outcomes are very different through the use of technology depending on how much people who are using it are able to prompt them better, use better data and so on.
"Whenever we look at the budgets going to new technologies in companies, usually 90% goes to the tech itself and just 10% goes to training and empowering people to better use these technologies. So the first point here is that we focus so much on rolling out the latest technologies, but we don’t focus enough on preparing people to use them.
"Which brings us to a second big point, which is people’s resistance to new technologies, mainly for fear of substitution. If teams do not really understand or grasp the potential benefits of the technology but just see that these technologies are more efficient and productive than themselves—human beings—then they'll, of course, resist them. Resistance can take many forms, even lack of usage is one form of resistance.
"If people don't understand its benefits, they don't use them. Well, then it's a second big challenge. And a third one maybe, we see very often the rollout of new technologies that are not aligned with the company's pain points.
"What I mean by that is that we often see companies adopting new technologies because it's fashionable, because everybody talks about AI or large language models or many different tools for automation and data analysis.
"But we don't see them as really focused or aligned, at least with the core business. So we roll out these technologies, they're scattered across the company, they're just individual projects that do not really merge with the company's pain point. So I think these are some of the biggest challenges, but definitely there are many more."
Q: In your book Meta Leadership, you discuss the qualities required to lead in the age of AI. Which leadership principles do you believe will define the most successful digital leaders?
Andrea Iorio: "I recently published a book on this—specifically on the skill set needed in the age of AI. My book is called Meta Leadership, and I'll name a few of these leadership principles or skills.
"The first one I call reperception. Since the external world is changing at an exponential rate, which is actually faster than the one we were used to during the age of the internet, reperception is basically a leadership principle that speaks about the ability of leaders to update their vision of their business, their market and eventually the world in the face of external changes.
"The second principle is data sensemaking. This is the ability of leaders to not only have analytical skills and a high IQ to crunch data but to use AI tools to do that and eventually migrate towards focusing on picking the right KPIs and letting AI crunch the data.
"If we all look at the same KPIs, we don't have a different vision of business compared to our competition. Picking new KPIs—like correlations between some of them—can lead to novel insights and a competitive advantage.
"The third leadership principle that is very important is trust. Statistics show that most employees at organisations do not trust or would not trust an AI leader. Humans are the only ones able to establish trust, and this is one of the few things that AI and new technologies cannot substitute.
"We don't trust AI because of explainability problems, as we don't know exactly how their algorithms work or the data sets they use. Instead, with human beings, we can establish trust through vulnerability, reciprocation and other human mechanisms. Trust is a leadership principle that cannot be substituted and is essential to thrive in the digital age."
Q: As automation grows, human skills are being redefined. Which soft skills should professionals focus on to stay competitive in a technology-driven workplace?
Andrea Iorio: "This is a great point because soft skills are more and more important in the workplace. Two years ago, I made a survey and asked 247 HR leaders the following question: if you were to recruit someone for your company, would you rather hire someone who had great hard skills but no soft skills, or someone that had great soft skills and no hard skills?
"Believe it or not, 93% of the HR leaders said they would rather hire the second candidate—good soft skills and no hard skills. That shocked me because I grew up in a world that prioritised hard skills.
"We were taught that knowledge of things and IQ would be the best predictors of our success in the workplace, and that soft skills such as empathy or vulnerability were not important because they were hard to measure and hard to teach.
"These results showed something very different—that nowadays, more and more, soft skills are important. Hard skills are much easier to teach if a candidate doesn't have them than soft skills.
"But the main point is that AI tools are already better than employees at hard skills—they code faster, learn faster and have more access to knowledge. But they don't have the same soft skills, which are unsubstitutable and represent the competitive advantage that humans have.
"Some of the most important include critical thinking, adaptability and vulnerability. Critical thinking is key when we look at things from different perspectives and challenge the status quo.
"Adaptability is crucial because it's not about how we thrive in the workplace now, but how able we are to adapt to an ever-evolving market. Vulnerability is important because it's the foundation of trust, and trust remains a defining human skill in the digital age."
Q: Digital transformation looks different across industries. How do you see technology reshaping B2C versus B2B sectors over the next decade?
Andrea Iorio: "Digital transformation is a term used for many technologies and the impact they have on businesses of all sorts. But we have to differentiate their impact. Usually, the adoption of new technologies and digital transformation—including AI technologies—starts in B2C sectors because they're closest to the end consumer. Change in demand for new technologies, experiences and products always starts from the end consumer.
"Sectors like retail, banking or financial services are usually early adopters, while B2B sectors like mining or pharma take longer. But interestingly, the biggest impact of digital transformation lies in B2B sectors. That's where the biggest opportunity is. Being consumer-facing means you are more reactive to change and therefore have a bigger sense of urgency to reinvent your business.
"However, when most competitors are doing the same, your differentiator becomes the experience you provide. In B2B sectors, early adopters of digital transformation gain the most competitive advantage.
"There's a great Deloitte report from their team in Australia called Long Fuse, Big Bang, which means B2B sectors take longer to accelerate their digital transformation—but when it happens, the explosion of impact in their industry is much greater than in B2C sectors."
Benzinga Disclaimer: This article is from an unpaid external contributor. It does not represent Benzinga’s reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.
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