🎙️ #53 Asia's AI Divide: "The Experimenters" vs "The Value Creators"

When Bernard Leong looks across Asia’s enterprise landscape, he sees a widening split between two worlds: companies still experimenting with AI, and those already realizing value at scale.

In the full episode of The Generalists, Bernard Leong, founder of Dorje AI and host of Analyse Asia, joins Michael Smith Jr. and Raz Kotler to unpack the findings from the Cisco AI Readiness Index 2025. The data reveals a striking new divide: while most enterprises are still stuck in pilot mode, a small minority — the “pacesetters” — have mastered data readiness, network architecture, and cultural flexibility to scale AI across their operations and unlock measurable ROI.

📖 What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why Asia’s AI economy is splitting into “experimenters” and “value creators”
• How Thailand and Indonesia are leapfrogging Singapore in enterprise AI adoption
• What separates true AI readiness from isolated pilot projects
• Why back-office automation is delivering the clearest early ROI
• How data maturity, network infrastructure, and cultural agility drive scaling success
• The emerging role of AI agents — and the hidden security and workflow implications
• What CEOs should start (and stop) doing to build practical AI readiness

👥 Hosts

• Michael Smith Jr.: https://www.linkedin.com/in/smittysgp/
• Raz Kotler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/razko282/

👤 Guest

• Bernard Leong: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bleongcw/

🔗 Resources & Links Mentioned

🚀 Reports & Research

• Cisco AI Readiness Index 2025: https://www.cisco.com/c/m/en_us/solutions/ai/readiness-index/realizing-the-value-of-ai.html
• Cisco AI Readiness Index 2025 – Full PDF: https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/m/en_us/solutions/ai/readiness-index/2025-m10/documents/cisco-ai-readiness-index-2025-realizing-the-value-of-ai.pdf
• McKinsey Global Survey on AI (2024): https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai-2024
• MIT Report – 95 % of GenAI Pilots Fail: https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2025/ai/mit-report-95pc-corporate-generative-ai-pilots-fail

🧠 Technology & Tools

• DeepSeek-OCR:https://www.deep-seek-ocr.org/en
• Dorje A: https://dorje.ai