Agenda

Welcome to ADAPT’s 29th national gathering of Australian CIO and IT leaders from Enterprise and Government – with the cohort responsible for over 1/3 of AU GDP and 10% of the workforce.

The #1 Business Goal articulated by CIOs for 2026 is to “Grow the Business” – moving IT from a cost centre to a revenue and business enabler, while still delivering on Tech modernisation, Simplification and Scaled AI.

Critical to remaining relevant in the agentic age will be understanding and championing new business and operating models that evolve the people, processes and platforms enabled by the tech strategy.

CIOs will lead this alignment and then communicate value to all the stakeholders to help sustain the change.

As we embrace Agentic on that journey: What is the future? What is possible? What is the opportunity if we get it right over the next 5-10 years? What will be the cost if we get it wrong?

Join your CIO community, experts and ADAPT for the day to find answers to these critical questions and enable business led change.

ADAPT’s research team reveal the latest local fact-based insights from over 5000 interactions and 1000 detailed surveys with our region’s top CIOs, CISO, CFOs, CTOs, and digital leaders. This session will assist you in comparing the resource allocation, investment priorities and unique challenges of Australian CIOs for you to benchmark and validate your priorities and thinking. Gabby will reveal the core findings distilled from your aggregated pre-event surveys and examine the technology strategies that are generating value – focused on what the top performers are doing differently.

Drawing on MIT CISR research spanning 2,378 companies, this keynote unveils a bold framework predicting how AI, agents, and automation will redefine the ways businesses create, capture, and grow value over the next decade.

– Trace how digital ecosystems expanded from 30% to 81% of firms in twelve years and what this means for the next era of AI-driven, real-time business models
– Explore how GenAI, autonomous agents, and robotic systems will reshape cost structures, value exchange, and competitive advantage across industries
– Discover MIT CISR’s new business model architecture that maps how organisations will pivot from digital platforms to self-optimising business networks
– Decode One New Zealand’s journey to AI‑driven operations as a blueprint for scaling from pilots to production impact in complex enterprises

As Chair of CISR at the MIT Sloan School of Management in Boston, Peter’s work centres on the role, value, and governance of digitisation in enterprises. Peter works with several of Australia’s and the world’s leading CIOs, ExCos and Boards and is a senior advisor to the New York VC firm Insight Partners. Peter was nominated for the 2023 Thinkers-50 based on his new book, Future Ready, and was ranked by Ziff Davis as the 24th most influential person in IT and the highest ranking academic. MIT CISR undertakes practical research on how firms generate business value from digital.

An armchair interview with Maile Carnegie – sharing leadership lessons from her career at ANZ bank, Google, and Procter & Gamble.

– Tips on navigating complexity, driving innovation, and leading large-scale change in volatile markets.
– Harnessing Maile’s global commercial, digital, and innovation expertise across varied industries and markets
– How to align senior leaders on transformation frameworks, fostering a unified vision and modern leadership capabilities
– Lessons for CIOs on portfolio prioritisation, executive accountability, and accelerating project delivery under volatile conditions

Maile was Group Executive Australia Retail, ANZ’s largest business which serves around five million retail customers. At ANZ, she developed enterprise-wide digital capability, including the transformation of the Australia Business to improve the financial wellbeing of ANZ customers and the rebuild of ANZ’s payments capabilities. Maile also held Group accountability for design and marketing which included ANZ’s brand, advertising and sponsorships. She was a Non-Executive Director on the Board of ANZ Bank New Zealand Limited.

Maile is keenly focused on customer centric innovation and design. She joined ANZ in 2016 from Google where she was Managing Director Australia and New Zealand. She also spent over 20 years with Proctor and Gamble in roles including Managing Director Australia and New Zealand, General Manager for Asia Strategy, Marketing and Design based in Singapore and a number of senior commercial roles in the United States.

With a passion for helping future generations, Maile contributed as one of six members on the independent review of the Australian public service, was previously Vice-Chair of the ASIC External Advisory Panel and a board member of Innovation and Science Australia. Maile holds a degree in Business Administration in Finance, Economics and Marketing from the University of Technology, Sydney.

AI promises to revolutionise work yet most organisations are still figuring out what that actually means in practice. In this session, Atlassian leaders will cut through the noise to separate AI fact from fiction. Hear real examples of how Atlassian is embedding AI responsibly, empowering teams to collaborate with AI as a teammate, not a threat and turning disconnected tools into a connected system of work.

Key takeaways:

– What leaders must stop believing so they stop wasting time on the wrong AI bet
– How to design AI-driven workflows that enhance rather than erode human capability
– The leadership shifts required: from “Will AI replace us?” to “How do we partner with AI together?

Probing the evolving CIO mandate, exploring strategic leadership in business architecture, foundational readiness for AI ROI, budget mastery in uncertainty, and balancing tech democratisation with control.

– Debating the evolving role of the CIO: Are CIOs becoming the new drivers of business architecture and operating model change?
– Are the technology and data foundations truly in place to have a meaningful debate about AI ROI?
– Amid economic uncertainty, how are you navigating budget constraints and prioritising investments?
– What lessons from 2025 are most influencing your strategic decisions and priorities in 2026?
– How do you balance democratisation of technology with governance, alignment, and risk management?

Edge AI is emerging as a game-changer for organisations aiming to drive real-time insights, reduce latency, and increase operational autonomy.

In this session, Ericsson Enterprise Wireless will explore how Edge AI, powered by advanced wireless connectivity, is transforming how businesses manage data, automate operations, and scale innovation—especially in mission-critical industries such as utilities, manufacturing, and logistics.

Key takeaways will include:

• Why Edge AI matters now: business drivers and risks of falling behind
• How Australian organisations can effectively deploy and benefit from Edge AI
• Real-world use cases combining AI at the edge with 5G/Private LTE networks
• A first look at the latest connectivity advancements from Ericsson enabling AI-driven infrastructure

Whether you’re leading cloud strategy or managing infrastructure at scale, this session will provide clear insights into how to align connectivity and AI to future-proof your operations.

CFOs surveyed by ADAPT for the last 2 years have confirmed challenges in proving the uptake and usage of deployed technology – wanting to see the value, they struggle to get visibility on either the spend or the returns. This leads to the mantras of “Do more with what we have” and “Sweat the assets”. The same CFOs perceived that 40% of deployed tech was not being used their business. Is this the case? What can CIOs do to improve the perception? What are the best strategies for digital adoption and change management?