Banks spend 93% of their AI budget on technology. Only 7% goes to people. And then they wonder why 95% see no impact on their P&L.
On March 31, 2026, I gave a keynote at the Zühlke Banking Talk in Schlieren on why the future of AI is “cybernetic” and what it takes to become an AI-native bank. The evening brought together perspectives from academia, a major German bank, and practitioners from Swiss financial institutions.
I am honored to share that I have been named a Digital Shaper 2026 in the Mentors category. The Digital Shapers initiative, organized by BILANZ, Handelszeitung, and digitalswitzerland with the support of Huawei, recognizes 100 of Switzerland’s most influential digital minds each year across ten categories.
Although AI has moved fast, many organisations haven’t. Most leaders we speak to aren’t short on ideas, proofs of concept, or vendor demos. The challenge is turning AI into something repeatable, a capability you can trust, scale, and steer without creating new risks or bottlenecks.
Understand why most digital transformations fail, and you’ll figure out what tomorrow’s leading businesses will all have in common. Here’s how Cybernetics solves AI challenges at scale.
Discover the people, processes and technology you’ll need to mitigate setbacks on your transformation journey, and unlock AI-augmented ROI that compounds as it scales.
Most companies that work in an agile way today while simultaneously trying to implement AI will not survive the next decade, in my opinion. The reason: their operating system is too old. The future is not agile. The future is not AI either. The future is cybernetic.
Digital and agile was yesterday # Many companies believe they can secure their future with a dash of agility and rapid AI pilot projects. But those who simply “graft” artificial intelligence onto outdated structures will fail. A radical upgrade of the operating model is needed.
Does AI really solve the problems we have? What does it mean for innovation and intellectual property? Will AI replace patent analysts? In this webinar with IamIP, I cut through the fog of AI hype and share a practical framework for understanding where AI genuinely adds value, and where it falls short.
How much agility can software development really handle, and where does agility tip into chaos? In this episode of the “Modern Work 2 Go” podcast (in German), I speak with Florian Schneider about exactly these questions. We dive deep into a concrete real-world example: an agile transformation at a Swiss bank that I accompanied over eight years. The conversation covers the shift from waterfall to agility, scaling with SAFe, building value streams, and why continuous improvement is the central pillar of every transformation.
The Cybernetic Enterprise: How to Build a Future-Ready Organization is your comprehensive operating system for navigating the next era of business transformation.
Welcome to the Leanpub Launch video for The Cybernetic Enterprise Course: How to Build a Future-Ready Organization by Romano Roth
When people, machines, and algorithms work as a “team,” more than automation emerges: a learning and resilient factory. But how can industrial companies make the leap into the AI era without losing their human element?
Everyone talks about Industrial AI, but where’s the impact at scale? Too many companies are stuck in pilot purgatory, with fragmented tools and limited results. In this article, we show how cybernetic thinking can break the PoC loop and scale AI across your organisation for real business impact.
