The pressure of delivering strong results quarter after quarter can tempt even the best companies to be myopic on ethics and fair business practices. Sometimes, this gives rise to the sort of scandals that can destroy the very foundations of a business. While some may view 'fair practices' as resource-draining and growth-impeding, companies that adopt a values-based approach to ethics and compliance gain a long-term competitive edge in the marketplace. At recent combined sessions of the India CEO, CFO and CHRO Forums across India, Sabina Sudan, a corporate lawyer and active speaker on ethical and legal issues, discussed effective strategies for melding profitable growth with ethical practices, and how organisations can embed ethics into the corporate culture, including in their code of conduct, CSR initiatives and whistle-blower policies.

Despite years of digital transformation, most enterprises remain stuck in what might be termed a ‘digital slum’: a maze of dashboards, siloed systems and disconnected analytics. They are data-rich but insight-poor, paralysed by complexity and unclear on how to translate their massive data reservoirs into real business value. At a recent India CEO Forum session in Mumbai, Dr Shailesh Kumar, Chief Data Scientist at Reliance Jio, laid out a comprehensive blueprint for becoming an AI-first enterprise, one that goes far beyond use cases and shiny GenAI tools. Such a plan would call for a systemic reimagination of workflows, a deep integration of domain and digital knowledge and a cultural pivot from IT mindsets to AI-centric thinking. Dr Kumar argued that the core issue in AI adoption isn’t technology, but insecurity, rigidity and fragmented systems. True transformation begins with people and culture, and the end goal is clear: interoperability.