Agenda
Tuesday, 24 February 2026
“Business & Operating Models in the Agentic AI Era”
Please note that 1:1 meetings will be running throughout the day.
Registration & Check-In
Secure your seat in the keynote room for the day.
Welcome to the 29th CIO Edge:
Business & Operating Models in the Agentic AI Era
Jim Berry
- CEO & Founder at ADAPT
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 Australian Maturity & Performance Insights
Gabby Fredkin - Head of Analytics & Insights at ADAPT
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.
Get an Edge: Making the Most of Your Day
Rachel Rock - Director of Executive Programs Engagement & Delegate Acquisition
Business Models in the Agentic AI Era: How we will make Money using AI
Peter Weill - Chairman & Senior Research Scientist at MIT CISR & ADAPT Senior Advisor
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.
Transforming the Enterprise in a Volatile World
Maile Carnegie - Innovation & Growth leader
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.
Busting the Myths of AI: What’s real? What’s next? What still needs humans?
Abhik Sengupta - Principal Business Value Advisor at Atlassian Sherif Mansour - Distinguished Product Manager & Head of AI at Atlassian
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?
Morning Break
Refreshments, snacks & connections
CIO Edge Panel: Redefining the CIO - Driving Business Architecture, Value, and Agility in 2026
Arul Arogyanathan - Chief Information Officer at Village Roadshow (#1 in CIO50 2025) Jeremy Hubbard - Chief Technology and Data Officer at Rest Aarti Joshi - Chief Information Officer at Department of Customer Services
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?
Connect What Actually Works, Know What Doesn’t, and Drive Productivity and Digitalisation with Wireless Technology
John Hopping - CTO APAC at Ericsson Enterprise Wireless
Get ready for a high-energy session where thought leadership meets laughter and strategy meets surprise! Hosted by Ericsson Enterprise APAC CTO John Hopping, this session takes delegates on a fast-paced journey through the technologies shaping enterprise productivity today – and the innovations that will redefine it tomorrow.
In this interactive experience, attendees become contestants as we explore the real-world impact of modern connectivity: from turbo-charging operational efficiency to unlocking massive cost savings through automation, private 5G, AI-driven networks, and edge computing. Each round blends fun trivia, real enterprise use cases and quick-fire polls. John brings expert insights, forward-looking trends, and practical “what this means for your business” takeaways.
Stop Adoption Whiplash: How Enterprises Stay Ahead of Constant Change
with WalkMeAI and transformation efforts often stall because people can’t keep up with change. Fragmented workflows, low adoption, and compliance gaps leave value unrealised. This session explores how enterprises address these challenges by guiding users across apps, automating tasks, enforcing in-app policy, and proving ROI with adoption intelligence.
ADAPT Executive Insight Roundtables
Attend your preselected roundtable to participate in a peer discussion moderated by ADAPT analysts with subject matter experts.
Untapped Value, AI Workloads, and the New Era of Digital Sovereignty
Nick Sone - Chief Customer Officer at Brennan
Most organisations have completed their major cloud moves. Yet the deeper work of modernisation remains uneven. Fragmented estates, legacy systems, and rising risk expectations now limit the value of new technology investments. CIOs are entering a period that demands simpler platforms, stronger control, and genuine AI readiness.
This roundtable will explore how leaders are reshaping their environments for the next decade with discussion focussing on the essentials that support practical AI adoption, improved resilience, and better operational performance.
In this roundtable, we’ll open the conversation around:
– AI workloads and readiness: The technical and organisational steps required for AI at scale.
– Cybersecurity and AI success: Protecting data, governing model use, and preparing for AI-enabled threats.
– Why digital sovereignty raises the stakes: How regulation, resilience and risk are shaping IT strategies.
Unlocking Resilience: From Technology Operations to Business Value
Felix Fitzpatrick - Head of Observability ANZ at Splunk Mitch Barnes - Staff Observability Specialist at Splunk
Modernising resilience and simplifying operations remain the top priorities for Australian CIOs. Yet, many organisations are constrained by fragmented toolsets, rising operational complexity, and lack of visibility across digital services that directly impact customers and revenue.
This session will explore practical strategies to strengthen operational resilience, unify hybrid and multi-cloud environments, and build real-time visibility across infrastructure, applications, and security layers. We will examine how modern observability platforms enable IT teams to proactively detect and resolve issues faster, reduce noise and cost, automate responses, and connect system performance to customer experience, productivity, and financial outcomes.
Attendees will discuss how to:
– Move from reactive troubleshooting to predictive and AI-assisted operations
– Break down data silos across distributed environments for end-to-end service visibility
– Improve MTTR, uptime, and customer experience while reducing tool sprawl and operational burden
– Communicate IT value more clearly through business impact dashboards and executive reporting
Building the Adaptive Digital Foundation for AI Value and ROI Realisation
Nik Jain - Regional CTO and Director of Solution Engineering at Dynatrace Australia and New Zealand. Ian Christie - Head of AI & Data at Fujitsu
In today’s digital landscape, IT budgets are growing, yet confidence in capturing value is declining. CIOs now face a clear mandate: demonstrate impact, not just progress. As AI drives increased spending on cloud and compute resources, leaders must architect digital foundations that evolve with emerging technologies and deliver measurable outcomes aligned with business strategy.
This roundtable will explore how CIOs and technology leaders can balance innovation with accountability, embedding resilience and adaptability into their digital foundations. We will discuss:
– Designing Secure, Modular Architectures: Learn how to create flexible systems that enable AI while maintaining cost control and visibility.
– Frameworks for Value Realisation and ROI Tracking: Discover practical approaches to transform digital investments into quantifiable business outcomes.
– Embedding Governed Growth: Explore strategies for balancing agility with fiscal discipline, ethical AI practices, and sustainable innovation.
– Lessons from Adaptive Organisations: Gain insights from real-life examples from organisations that are evolving with market demands and proving continuous value to both the board and the CFO.
Join us to uncover how adaptive digital foundations can be the cornerstone of realising value from AI and achieving business impact.
CIO Roundtable: Real World AI Transformation Insights from Dell Technologies
David Hall-Johnston - Field CTO, Asia Pacific & Japan at Dell Technologies
Join Dell Technologies as they share candid, real world examples of AI transformations, what succeeded, what stalled, and the leadership choices that made the difference for enterprise outcomes. The focus is on practical steps CIOs can take to reduce risk, accelerate value, and align stakeholders.
What you will learn:
– Outcome first framing: How to anchor AI to clear business value, build the right sponsorship, and move from proof of concept to measurable impact without getting stuck in pilot purgatory.
– Operating model shifts: Practical ways to organise teams, clarify roles, and drive change management – so data, digital, and lines of business work together with accountability.
– Risk, readiness, and momentum: How to balance responsible AI, privacy, and compliance with speed; sequence the roadmap; and use simple KPIs to sustain progress and stakeholder trust.
Is ERP Dead? What Comes Next in the Age of Agentic AI?
Jagdeep Singh - Regional CTO at Rimini Street
Traditional ERP thinking is being rewritten.
Agentic AI is shifting how work gets done and forcing leaders to question long held assumptions about monolithic suites, vendor roadmaps, and the belief that modernization must come through disruption.
This boardroom is an open, peer level conversation designed to explore where ERP is really heading and how technology leaders should be preparing for right now.
We will examine how agentic AI is unbundling ERP responsibilities, reshaping process orchestration, and enabling more intelligent service layers that sit above existing systems. Rather than pushing upgrades or platforms, this session focuses on the ideas, patterns, and signals that matter for predicting the next era of enterprise operations.
Join fellow CIOs and technology leader to explore:
– Why monolithic ERP models are losing relevance and what is replacing them
– What assumptions every CIO should challenge when evaluating vendor roadmaps
– How agentic AI is redefining the role of ERP in the enterprise
Peer Networking Seated Lunch
Join us for relaxed peer networking and great food, upstairs in the Heritage ballroom
Strategy to Execution: Where most strategies go to die - and how to keep yours alive
with Atlassian Matt Boon - Senior Research Director
Strategy isn’t the hard part. Execution is. Most strategies look great on slides but lose momentum the moment real work begins.
In this invite only roundtable, Atlassian leaders will explore how to bridge the gap between vision and value – designing teams where strategy remains dynamic, visible and deeply embedded in the fabric of everyday work.
Over lunch, the cohort will debate
– Approaches for translating strategic vision into organisational momentum and measurable business impact.
– How to create transparency and alignment at every level, ensuring teams are focused on the highest-value opportunities
– Ways to empower teams with the autonomy and clarity they need to innovate and execute at speed
ADAPT Executive Insight Roundtables
Attend your pre-selected roundtable to participate in a peer discussion with confidence under Chatham House Rule moderated by an ADAPT analyst with subject matter experts.
From Strategy to Impact: Adopting and Operationalising AI
Matthew Pritchard - Head of Digital Technology, Architecture & Data at SA Power Networks
As organisations move beyond isolated AI pilots toward enterprise-wide adoption, the challenge shifts from experimentation to execution.
Join Matthew Pritchard (SA Power Networks) and Murali Shanmugam (SAP), for an exclusive look at SA Power Networks’ innovative approach to practical AI.
This CIO-level roundtable explores the complexities of scaling AI across the business, emphasising the necessity of a strategy-led approach to manage risk, ensure compliance, and unlock meaningful value.
Debating:
– Strategic Framework
– Responsible and Ethical Use
– Operational and Cultural Challenges
– Building Organisational Readiness
Modernisation for AI: How to Reduce Tech Debt and Remove the Barriers to Growth and Innovation
Kevin McCabe - Chief Technology Officer at Cognizant
To win in the age of AI, businesses must overcome the massive tech debt in their legacy systems that stifles innovation and agility. These outdated systems are the main barrier to leveraging the full power of this technology and meeting the demands of the present day.
In this discussion, we explore how organisations can overcome barriers and unlock the growth and innovation promises of AI:
– Harnessing AI to discover and document legacy real estate, then accelerate delivery of modernised solutions.
– Best practices approach to modernisation. The critical considerations, risk management, and data that you need to help drive decisions forward.
What an ideal modern solution looks like: scalable, integrated, available for AI agents to leverage services and data.
Observability, Accountability & Actionability by AI and for AI
Dr. Peter Stanski - CTO at V2 AI Rafi Katanasho - CTO & VP, APAC at Dynatrace Nik Jain - Regional CTO and Director of Solution Engineering at Dynatrace Australia and New Zealand.
Recent cases, like the Air Canada chatbot ruling, show that enterprises remain fully accountable for unpredictable behaviour by AI systems.
How can organisations minimise exposure to new risks that AI systems bring?
Join Dr Peter Stanski (CTO, V2 AI, previously CTO at Microsoft and Head of Technology at AWS) and Rafi Katanasho (APAC CTO, Dynatrace) as they deconstruct what AI readiness looks like for CIOs.
They will walk through the five elements every organisation needs to run reliable and responsive AI systems:
1. Cultural and organisational readiness for AI operating models, ensuring your systems remain compliant and aligned with standards over time.
2. Maintaining channel integrity to ensure trusted and consistent AI – customer interactions.
3. Continuous assurance with observability and drift detection for full system visibility before, during, or after any unexpected incident.
4 Governance and risk enablement so AI behaviour is secure, aligns with brand expectations, and clearly links to risk and compliance requirements.
5. Vendor and supply chain management with vendor visibility and AI evaluations, so you uncover vulnerabilities before attackers and customers.
Lessons to learn:
– How to build AI operations with clear disclaimers, escalation paths, and traceable policy alignment.
– How to turn unpredictable AI into transparent, measurable value with lower risk
– How to move from static operating models to evolving capability.
…and more!
Secure Agentic Ai: How to Drive Growth, Optimise Resources and Win the Backing of Your C-suite and Board
David Siroky - AI Chief Technology Officer JAPAC at Cisco APJC Andrew Riley - Head of Solutions Architecture at NSW Cisco Australia & New Zealand Dr. Rose Skandari - Field CTO of AI Solutions at Cisco Systems Australia
As CIOs navigate 2026, the mandate is clear: leverage Agentic AI to drive significant growth, all while optimising resources, integrating and securing it with complex enterprise environments, and locking in C-Suite and Board backing.
Join David Siroky, Cisco’s AI CTO for APJC and ‘The AI Guy,’ for an interactive roundtable discussiondesigned to tackle these critical questions. Drawing on his unparalleled experience trailblazing AI deployments across the region—including Cisco’s 1000+ GPU internal AI usage and his prior work at Dell and Microsoft—David will facilitate a candid discussion on architecting secure, compliant Agentic AI operating models that maximise value, overcome hurdles, and clearly demonstrate ROI to secure your executive mandate.
You’ll leave this interactive session with:
– Actionable strategies to architect secure, compliant Agentic AI operating models.
– Proven methods to maximise value from AI investments, even with constrained resources.
– Techniques to articulate AI’s business impact and secure critical C-Suite and Board backing.
– Peer insights from an open discussion led by a leading AI expert.
Afternoon Break
Agentic AI: A CIO’s Playbook for Enterprise Transformation
Solly Brown - Partner at McKinsey & Company and Leader of QuantumBlack AuNZ
Are we truly in the stage of capturing value from AI agents, or just beginning to grasp their transformative power? The reality sits somewhere in between — we are entering a paradigm shift where organisations are just beginning to realise the true potential and capabilities of agentic AI. This session will explore how CIOs can rewire, scale, and lead through this new era of intelligent automation.
– How agentic AI is transforming business processes and redefining enterprise value chains.
– The CIO’s roadmap to integrate AI agents into core operations at scale.
– Strategies for blending engineering, business strategy, and governance to enable AI-driven agility.
Solly is a Partner at QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, based in Sydney, where his work is oriented around helping organisations with strategy, AI and transformation. His QuantumBlack teams work with organisations to unlock the power of advanced analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
Solly holds a PhD in machine learning and artificial intelligence, with a prior background in theoretical physics.
Scaling AI: A Practical Guide to Getting Value from AI
David Walker - Group Chief Technology Officer at Westpac & DBS
This session delivers actionable insights and lessons from a leading CTO on how to successfully scale AI in complex organisations, focusing on practical implementation, workforce enablement, and navigating agentic AI disruption.
– Driving productivity and innovation by embedding AI tools across operations while balancing compliance and ethical considerations.
– Recent use cases, maturation over the past year, sector-specific challenges—especially legal—and lessons learned from both successes and failures.
– How to prioritise high-impact, lower-risk AI projects to deliver measurable value without overwhelming resources.
– Strategies to upskill and reskill employees for effective collaboration with AI agents, unlocking new performance and innovation possibilities.
CIO Town Hall: What's on the Mind of A/NZ Cios Leading Tech for 30% of Our GDP?
Peter Weill - Chairman & Senior Research Scientist at MIT CISR & ADAPT Senior Advisor
This town hall reflects CIOs’ priorities of AI integration, operational excellence, and modernising legacy systems to drive growth, resilience, and innovation in 2025.
– Where does your organisation stand on the 4-stage Enterprise AI maturity model?
– What AI-driven approaches are working, and how are you leveraging autonomous agents today?
– What key issues and opportunities are top of mind for tech leaders in ANZ?
– Peer brainstorming to tackle your biggest technology challenges or uncover new growth avenues.
– Discuss strategies to achieve agility and responsiveness for top-tier performance.
– Explore how leading AI and digital transformation projects can shape your professional legacy.
– Preview insights from upcoming MIT CISR research on how to integrate and lead AI-powered collaborators effectively.
Closing Comments
CIO Edge Peer Networking Drinks
An opportunity to stay, mingle and meet other attendees over drinks and food and discuss the day