Teaser: What We Learned From Humza Teherany About Building an AI Innovation Lab

0:00Welcome back to another Beyond the Prompt teaser. Now, a lot of people ask Jeremy and I, what are the best way for companies to structure rolling out AI in their organization? And for people with that question in mind, this episode is a really good one. Because today we speak with Hamza Tarani. He's built a central AI team that turns ideas into prototypes in just days. And then he managed to really abridge the C-suite with the itch of his organization. And what really stands out is just how hands-on he is and how important he thinks that that is to his success. So if you were thinking about what real AI progress looks like inside a company, there's a lot here.

0:36I hope you enjoy it. And if you do, please check out the full episode. Hi, I'm Hamza Trani, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer for Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. We're the organization that runs the Toronto Raptors, the Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto FC, and many other teams, along with the entertainment concert company as well. And I'm really interested today to talk about how to drive innovation with AI, how to accelerate it, how to be strategic as business leaders and technology leaders, as well as the crazy, super nerdy stuff. I mean, what an amazing, what an amazing guy, right? He's such an incredible person.

1:12I mean, like, it's, it's so nice to see and hear the energy of people who have ideas and have had like a long and cool career, but probably become all the manager. Basically going like, Hey, this is an opportunity to come go back and get my hands dirty. Um, and you can always like feel the energy, right? Like, I'm like, Hey, I'm actually able to actually do this stuff now again. You said it's like going back to my 25 year old self, which I just love. It's, it's pretty, it's a cool way to think about it. I think it does beg the question. I mean, we've talked a lot about what does it take to build the capability in the organization?

1:46And to me, to have a credible, technically minded, but also business savvy leader like Hamza, I mean, what we didn't even get into and Henrik, I kept wanting to, but it just, the conversation didn't go there, but he's a very successful founder. He's, he's sold businesses. He's an entrepreneur, right? And we didn't even get it. I was hoping when I asked him at the end about skills that he would kind of get into entrepreneurial resourcefulness because I think it's actually a part of the equation. But the interesting thing, he mentioned three things. He says you need to have good technical understanding and then you have to be able to basically get the people together.

2:20You need to be able to attract people and then you have to bridge into the domains like the CMOs. And when I look at one of the technical chops that I always look for when we invest, it's basically first agitation that's getting things done, which is kind of like having the technology, but also the energy to do it. Just to be clear, you didn't say agitation. You said agitation. I said agitation. Yeah, I just want to make that word clear because that's a really good word. I look for people who have something that propels them forward, right? And clearly he did. And the second thing I talk normally about is what I call gravity.

2:55But that is so that you can gather people around you. gravity to kind of hold a story gravity to get other people to pay attention to uh what you're saying that's about recruiting people recruiting sponsorship of ideas and stuff like that and then he talks about bridging i normally uh talks about resourcefulness like being able to basically get a lot done with a little because often you don't have that and he obviously also just showed that in spade, right? You know, he talks about like learning, spending two hours a day learning, but not in his day job time, right? But it is commute time, for example.

3:33But I do think that he is such a good example of these new technology leaders that are coming and having success because that they can bridge domain expertise, technology, experimentation, all these different things that historically was very defined as entrepreneurial, but I think now is becoming kind of the hallmark of an AI super leader. Yeah. I love, love, love his continued emphasis on the one hand, mastering AI and on the other hand, downplaying AI in the organization. Yes. I think that is a, I think the danger is to fall in the middle where you overhype AI and you under master it, right?

4:16But what he's done is he's mattered far more than most folks I see in organizations, you know? And when I met him, I think I told you this before we were recording, when I met him in Toronto, we had lunch together and he's showing me stuff. He's running on his phone. He's like this, he's like, watch this. And he's speaking into his commute mode. Hey, would you add a feature of my app? Just brainstorm and decide what feature you want to add, then do it. And then we keep eating our sushi. And he goes, look at that. It just had this feature on my card. So he's so, and yet I thought it was brilliant how he talked about his tactics in the organization art.

4:48Just forget AI. Like, what's the problem? What are you trying to do? And he's not leading with, okay. And now AI can help you. It's just, he's, he's all about the how and understanding the what. Another thing that I think he brought kind of forward to me was that you had these super users and you need spaces for them to play and so for him that was a portal that they created or a lab I think other organizations have other way of doing it and of course you want to give everybody the opportunity to play with these things because a that's how you find out where they are but also you know it's good for the organization general but I think one thing that was pretty profound is when you're then moving into the next phase where you're looking to get a gentake upgrades to your organization you're looking at workflows that you could basically put to code then there is i think there has been this thinking that that will just organically materialize this will be a grassroots kind of thing i think what he laid out is no this is something that is a capability of a specific subset of people they will identify basically best practices or good ways of using ai but super contextualized to the specific work that people are doing and then you go back and saying hey salesperson i have a better way of you making sales stick or hey um marketing person here's a really good way for you to access data instead Instead of going like, and now we're going to learn how to prompt, you know, and then, and so this just seems to be like a hyper efficient way to get people to use technologies because they're going to help them in their day job, not because it's technology for its own sake.

6:35I think it'd be fun. I mean, maybe it's because I was with Bryce yesterday, but on one hand, you've got somebody like Bryce from Moderna for people. Yes. Yeah. Sorry. Listen to that episode. He's great. But he is all about democratizing and enabling everybody, right? And Hamza basically represents this other paradigm. I think it'd be fun. I'm proposing to you, and you can tell me whether you liked it or not, to get the two of them on a call and to talk about what is this groundswell, grassroots, bottom up? Because right, if you think about what Bryce did, they had a prompt competition. That's very different, by the way, than an idea competition, isn't it?

7:14Right? And on and on and on. I think it could be a super cool conversation. and one thing I wanted to mention that I thought was really cool, especially if, you know, we're going to do a little teaser trailer, so to speak, but I thought it was really cool how he mentioned that they've got this idea gen competition kind of inspired by dig, but he said, basically in the organization, they've used AI to create this, but he said, they've got basically an idea competition platform where anybody in the organization can submit an idea and anybody in the organization can upvote or downvote like dig. But then here's the thing.

7:47Here's the thing. People listen to this. Once a quarter, we take the top three and we do a build in a day where each of the people who champion that idea gets to sit next to an agentically capable AI builder. And they go from concept to actual realized thing in a day. And to me, that is if you don't have that mechanism of the build in a day. And he said, by the way, then there's a demo day the next morning, right? Which shows the organization, we value your ideas. We can materialize them. It matters what you vote on. You should bring the stuff that you can't build. Like it creates all sorts of social momentum by having that.

8:29I mean, I think Henrik, when we talked to Wade Foster, his app here, he talked about a hack week and that's kind of a organizational layer. If there's enough people in the organization, you're kind of capable of doing the quote unquote build in the day. you can do a hack week. But if there aren't people who are capable, I think to me, this was a really authentic mechanism for Hamza and the MLS8 team to say, we're not trying to get everybody to the point that they can build, but we want to have mechanisms where folks share their ideas. And then we know we have the capability to realize the best of those ideas.

9:01That to me is a very elegant mechanism. And we think about kind of culture transformation. It's really hard to overstate the importance of that kind of event and moment in the, what it does to the hearts and minds of the people of the organization. A hundred percent. Maybe that's a good spot to stop. And then for the people who have not heard this, the conversation yet, they should definitely check it out because it's awesome. And for the people who have listened to the whole conversation and had reached this point, thank you so much for listening all the way through. Wow. Thank you. Thank you.

9:35Thank you. I think that's it. And then as always, if you have suggestions, comments, idea, we read all the stuff that people post on Facebook and we're very happy with all the comments that people put on the various platforms. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Keep doing it. And promote, subscribe, like, all this stuff. Introduce us to your cool friends. You know, we love that. We have people who go, hey, you know, you need to talk to and then you know what happens? We get Hamza on the pod. Okay? This is what happens. We have friends who introduced us to Hamza. Who should we talk to next? And with that, We only have one thing left to say, and that is bye-bye.

10:09Bye-bye.