Narrator:
From the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, welcome Inside the ICE House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange is your go-to for the latest on markets, leadership, vision, and business. For over 230 years, the NYSE has been the beating heart of global growth. Each week, we bring you inspiring stories of innovators, job creators, and the movers and shakers of capitalism here at the NYSE and ISIS exchanges around the world. Now, let's go Inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Lance Glenn.
Lance Glinn:
Each month on the Inside the ICE House Podcast, we engage in insightful conversations with business leaders, CEOs of NYSE listed companies, entrepreneurs and visionaries. We explore their journeys, the challenges they've overcome, and their aspirations to shape the future. You can tune in every Monday on all major podcast platforms to catch these discussions and watch full video episodes on tv.nyc.com and on the NYSE YouTube channel.
Inside the ICE House in February, we aired four new episodes covering a diverse range of topics, including the development device voice, the evolving workforce, AI's role in drug development, and the rebranding of an insurance industry icon. We kicked off with episode 456 featuring Kurt Adams, CEO of IPC Systems. Since its founding in 1973, IPC has become a market leader in financial communication solutions, serving over 7,000 customers worldwide. Now leading the company, Kurt joined Chris Edmonds, president of ICE Fixed Income and Data Services to discuss the company's rich history and the partnerships between the two firms to launch ICE Voice.
Kurt Adams:
I think Chris, really, one thing that we've been struggling with in this market for a long time is interoperability. These fragmented systems where our customers, we talk to again and again about the fragmentation of the market and wanting something more holistic. We see what ICE is doing in the market, the innovation that you're focused on. We're really focused on innovation at IPC as well, and how can we use this as an opportunity to show real collaboration in a way that it hasn't existed before in this market?
In my previous life, I spent several, actually two decades in FinTech, and there was a point in time where competitors, banks, other tech companies had all these disparate point solutions, but they finally got their act together and collaborated and created real true interoperability and interconnected systems, and ultimately, the customer's the winner. So we saw this as a great opportunity with the relationship between our two organizations to start and really embed IPC voice with ICE Chat on the ICE desktop to now start moving the market in that direction.
Chris Edmonds:
Excellent, excellent. Can you talk behind the scenes, the partnership that we have... We talked about the innovation, inspiring the venture, and where that was going. Why us right now? You talked about our innovation, but there's something in there that your team saw or you saw that said, "Hey, these are the right guys," at that point. How did you evaluate that?
Kurt Adams:
I would say that while we have our business strategies, there was a great cultural fit, Chris. I mean, the two organizations, and we talk a lot of times about the human component with this age of AI and digital innovation and all that's happening in the market, but there needs to be that cultural fit between two organizations to strike the right partnership. So many times partnerships fail. Great on paper, great on PowerPoint, but the cultural fit isn't there. So we saw the fit of two organizations at the right place at the right time, and that's really where we came together.
Lance Glinn:
Episode 457 features Rishad Tobaccowala, author and longtime executive of the Publicis Groupe. With over 40 years of experience, Rishad has witnessed firsthand how both the workforce and workplace have evolved. His first book, Restoring The Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data, was published in 2020, and his latest Rethinking Work: Seismic Changes in the Where, When, and Why explores how employees and organizations can thrive in an era of unprecedented transformation. He joined us Inside the ICE House to discuss his book and explore the future of work.
Rishad Tobaccowala:
So I believe we'll recognize that we're still working. So I don't believe we'll be sitting around getting basic minimum wages and getting the machines to do everything. That won't happen. I suspect the following, there will be far fewer employees in large companies than they are today. However, there'll be far more companies than there are today, and because of that, there'll be more employment than there is today. But it will be an ecosystem of what I call wheels and plankton. The wheels might be the big companies, like a YouTube is a wheel, a creator is a plankton, right? A OpenAI or a TS, Taiwan Semiconductor are wheels, and then there are plankton. So that's the first thing.
So that'll be the first. Many more companies, smaller companies, fewer larger companies. Many companies with 15, 20 employees, and a billion dollars of revenue, not million dollars of market cap. That'll be one. The world will be far more global than even it is today. It'll be far more multipolar. It won't be China rules it all, America rules it all, India rules it all. It'll be multipolar.
The third thing that I think what we'll basically do is the majority of people will basically not be full-time employees. Full-time employees will become a third of what we have. Today it's 60, 70% will be a third, so it'll be half as much, if that makes sense in a great model. And we will also look back and we will basically...
There'll be some people who'll say that these are the good old days, whatever that is. But a lot of people will look back and say, "Why did we do what we just did?" Because if I explain to somebody in the modern world who's working in a fully distributed landscape and world that, "Oh, I have this new model of the future where I'm going to buy really expensive real estate. Make you spend two hours to move your meat parts to come into a place where it's more expensive for you to come there and feed yourself. Not good for the planet, not good for anything, just because that's the way the ancestors used to do it." You'll say the ancestors were crazy, right? And what I'm trying to explain to the current management, we are the ancestors. Let's not appear to be crazy 10, 15 years from now.
Lance Glinn:
Inside the ICE House for Episode 458, Novartis, CEO Vas Narasimhan joined Kristen Scholer. The pharmaceutical industry is experiencing an era of extraordinary innovation fueled by breakthroughs in science, technology, and data. Novartis, that's NYC ticker symbol NVS has been a driving force in this wave of transformation. Vas and Kristen discuss the significant growth the company has experienced under his leadership, the transformation it went through, and how Novartis sharpened its focus on innovative medicines, searching for treatments and cures to the world's most pressing medical issues.
Vas Narasimhan:
Look, I think this is really cool science. You know that many of our listeners will know that cancer is often treated by radiation, but that radiation is just really radiating the body. It hits healthy tissue, it hits cancerous tissue, lots of side effects, very difficult for patients to tolerate. So the idea here is what if you could take a drug that goes to a cancer and link that drug to a radioactive particle and you have very, very small doses of radiation go directly into the tumor and really only impact the tumor with minimal impact to the rest of the body? And that's what we've done.
And we already have two drugs approved with this technology, one for prostate cancer, one for neuroendocrine tumors. And what we see is efficacy shrinking the tumors. And then we also see very good safety. And what's amazing about this technology as well is you can see how the treatment is working. Because it uses nuclear technology, you can do a scan of the patient's body, see where the tumors are, treat, scan again, and you see the tumor start to disappear. And that's very important I think, for patients and for oncologists.
So right now, we have a very big effort. We have manufacturing sites around the world. We have, I think about 15 different candidate drugs that are being advanced in our pipeline at various stages to tackle different types of cancer. As I mentioned, two drugs already in market. We've recently announced a hundred million dollar investments in China and separate one in Japan to expand our manufacturing network. So a tremendous potential with this technology. I mean, we estimate this could be a 30 billion market over time.
Kristen Scholer:
Wow. What are the biggest challenges, Vas, or barriers to expanding the adoption of this technology? And if these obstacles are addressed, how do you think the role of this can evolve in terms of cancer treatment over the next 10 years?
Vas Narasimhan:
Always when you introduce a technology like this, there's a paradigm shift, and that takes time to move through the healthcare system. We already have the capacity to use radioligand therapies in large hospital systems and academic medical centers, and now we're trying to move this capacity further and further out into the community. But that takes educating oncologists, getting them comfortable with referring patients, understanding the safety and the benefits of the technology, hopefully making it simpler to use.
Most of the challenge here is not that the medicine or the data or the supply chain. It's really getting the clinical pathways in place so that patients get routed to the right place and are able to get the medicine that they need. So we're making progress on this in the US, also in Europe, in China, in Japan, step by step. So I'm very confident that in the five to 10 year period, this will become something that's very easily and commonly used within clinical practice. I do think over the next five years, that's the great task for Novartis, is to actually now build a capacity within the healthcare system to use the medicine effectively.
Lance Glinn:
February's final podcast, Episode 459, welcomed two guests, the Hartford Chairman and CEO, Christopher Swift, and the company's chief marketing and communications officer, Claire Burns. For over 215 years, the Hartford, that's NYC ticker symbol HIG, has been a staple in the insurance industry, but looking toward the future, the company is rebranding, altering its logo and brand identity. Chris and Claire go Inside the ICE House to discuss the transformation and how they're setting up the company for another two centuries of success.
Chris Swift:
Yeah, I think if you look at our history and where we are today, we're intentionally pivoting to be more of a growth orientated, innovative company. I think we've done great things in the past, but as we think about our economies, we think about our country, as we think about the world, we want to lead, we want to be that trusted leader that our brand stands for and with other dimensions too. So yeah, it's part of our strategy, and we wanted to have the brand come along with our strategic orientation.
And as Claire said, in my own words, we're taking the best of the past in the history, maintaining our image with the stag, but we're also in a digital age that gives us greater flexibility with a color pattern that I think is Regal Royal, pretty cool looking in other ways. So those are some of the reasons why now, and it's because we're a leader in a digital age. We ultimately want to have a brand that reflects where we are today. But more importantly, as Claire talked about looking over the herd, our customer centricity is forefront in our minds these days with products, with technology, with risk, solutions, with resiliency. And so to have the brand ultimately focused on that customer orientation, I think is also very, very powerful message.
Claire Burns:
Can I add something here?
Chris Swift:
Sure.
Claire Burns:
Because I think Chris is being very modest when you think about his tenure as our CEO and when the logo mark that we had prior to today was really reflective of 2010 when we created it, which was a very different time for the company, for the industry, for the country. And it signified blue skies. There's literally blue in that logo and the stag is looking forward. But over the last 10 years, Chris has fundamentally reshaped the business. He's taken on some acquisitions of new companies and capabilities that help us meet the moment very, very differently and divested of other more volatile lines of business that are not part of our business mix today. So that reshaping is an exciting part of it. We can declare that that reshaping is complete. We're the Hartford Insurance Group now. We're doubling down on insurance as our core and our source of strength for customers as Chris described. But I want them to get credit for that reshaping and that helped lead up to this moment.
Lance Glinn:
You can listen to these episodes along with all past and future Inside the ICE House episodes, wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes are also available on tv.nyc.com and on the NYC YouTube channel. Be sure to join us every Monday for inspiring conversations with leaders, entrepreneurs, and visionaries. Thanks for listening.
Narrator:
That's our conversation for this week. Remember to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen and follow us on X at Icehouse podcast. From the New York Stock Exchange, we'll talk to you again next week Inside the ICE House. Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties expressed or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information, and do not sponsor, approve, or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the preceding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.