Dennis Amorosano SVP and GM at Canon Information and Imaging Solutions

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:01) Hello, my friends. We have deployed Leaderbits in a number of enterprises, and I am so excited about the growth. We're learning a lot as a new company. And to gain an edge and bring even more value to the market, we've made a few changes. The principle of our first change is progress equals happiness.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:18) As people, when we're making progress towards a goal, we are the happiest. So now we reach out and set professional goals with the individuals on the platform, then we personalize the Leaderbit challenges around their goals. The principle of our second change is out of sight, out of mind. We've broken the barrier between the digital and the physical world, and we're now shipping out bands based on the levels that you've obtained and the achievements you've unlocked. This is creating a huge buzz in the offices and allowing peers to see their counterparts progressing through the levels.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:52) This drives engagement and makes progress just a bit more real. Head over to leaderbits.io if you want better leaders faster. Today, we are talking to Dennis, the Senior Vice President and General Manager at Canon Information and Imaging Solutions, and we discuss their role in creating the office of the future, how Canon is doing so much more than creating cameras and printers, and why it's up to the employee to deliver value to the company if they want to grow in their career. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast. Here we go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:30) This is the Modern CTO podcast. Yes.

(Dennis at 00:01:41) You're all set up. You've got the microphone, the whole deal, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:46) Yeah. And we got the team on the other side. We just wave hi.

(Dennis at 00:01:49) Hi. Oh, all right. Terrific.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:51) Yeah. Hi, guys. And then our producer is, you know, one of the people that set all this up. He just bought his first house. He's very excited. And so he's moving today.

(Dennis at 00:02:02) Oh, congratulations. Yeah. Very nice.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:05) Isn't that a fun experience, your first house?

(Dennis at 00:02:10) Oh, yeah. It is until you actually start to do the work.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:12) I didn't pull him down from it. He was all, you know, pumped up and high doing his closing and stuff yesterday. I was like, he'll do the maintenance and he'll get his, he'll see his amount of principal paid after his first three months and he'd be like, what?

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:28) Well, the key to happiness I find is having a

(Dennis at 00:02:32) lot of grass to mow because no one can, no one bothers you when you're doing that. So it's like a guaranteed hour, hour and a half each week where you can just shut the rest of the world off and be in peace.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:44) That's like the way that guys meditate with a giant machine and a spinning blade.

(Dennis at 00:02:49) There you go. Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:51) In nature.

(Dennis at 00:02:52) Uh-huh. Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:53) How is your day going? Tell me about your day. How it started? What are you doing? What are you working on?

(Dennis at 00:03:00) No, just normal rain here in New York. Where are you calling from?

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:05) Florida. So we're getting the rain. I got rain on. This is my second shirt today.

(Dennis at 00:03:08) Oh, is it? All right. Yeah. It's kind of a pea soup up here too. So, you know, just kind of rainy day. But we're getting to the end of our month. So a lot of our focus is on trying to close as much business as we can between now and next Tuesday.

(Dennis at 00:03:24) So that's really where we're focusing our energies, at least at the moment. So amongst other things, but that's certainly taking up a lot of our time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:32) So what part of the state are you in?

(Dennis at 00:03:36) We're on Long Island. So Canon's Americas headquarters is actually out in Melville, New York. So if you look at a map of Long Island and cut it in half, we're basically halfway out on the island, about maybe anywhere from 30 to 40 miles from Manhattan.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:55) Oh, nice. Yeah. I've been there quite a few times. We have family in Westchester.

(Dennis at 00:04:00) Oh, okay. Sure. Yeah. Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:03) It's a little train ride.

(Dennis at 00:04:04) Yeah. That's not that far at all, actually. Yeah. It's fairly close.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:07) And then before the show, you're gonna enjoy this. So we do video, like, lots of video. And we have a video studio over there with like a small green screen, mic'd up, lit up, right? And I'm like, guys, we use Canon cameras, right? And I saw, I ran in there and checked and then, you know, found the box because it's all like behind the teleprompter and it's encasing and stuff. We have like a Canon 70D or something in there.

(Dennis at 00:04:35) Oh, no kidding. That's great. Thank you very much. You're contributing nicely to my retirement plan. I appreciate that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:41) You know, I will tell you this though. I had the Nikon before, and we upped to the Canon because I watched YouTube videos. So yeah, I went and watched YouTube videos of people who shot different video and who explained the different lenses and all that stuff.

(Dennis at 00:04:56) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:57) And ultimately, he had this really high res video that he did to do the tutorial on which one to choose.

(Dennis at 00:05:03) Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:04) Listed out all the equipment that he used to make that video, and I said that's the exact quality I want. That's the same distance and lens that I want. And I just Amazon click, click, click, click, click and bought every single thing he had, and then I put it in my studio and my video came out identically to his.

(Dennis at 00:05:19) Nice. Well, our folks in the camera group will appreciate that because they're obviously spending a lot of time and effort to do those kinds of things. So I don't know if you saw one that they had produced or one that someone, you know, just who uses Canon technology produced. But nonetheless, I think they'd appreciate hearing that story. So I'll certainly relay that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:38) So what group are you in?

(Dennis at 00:05:40) Yeah. So Canon, we're broken down into a number of different functional groups in the company. So the two largest groups we have are what we call our Image Technology and Communications Group, which is really our camera and consumer imaging group for lack of a better way of describing it. And then the other group that we have, the other large group we have, is our Office Technology Group. And I spent the first roughly 23, 24 years of my time at Canon in the office technology side of the business.

(Dennis at 00:06:14) And a number of years ago back in 2011, we actually created a separate subsidiary of Canon in the US that we call Canon Information and Imaging Solutions. And that company is, you can almost think of it as a solutions development and delivery organization for Canon in the Americas. And a year ago, I transitioned into that company full time. I had been with that company since its founding, but I was kind of wearing two different hats inside the organization. And so it was about a year ago I kind of moved there full time. So that's been keeping me very busy to say the least.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:51) That's awesome, man. That's 20-plus years.

(Dennis at 00:06:55) Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's a long time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:56) How did you, what happened? Just a random newspaper job post. You're like, hey, let's go to Canon.

(Dennis at 00:07:02) Yeah. You know, it was quite interesting because I started my career at NCR and I spent two years with NCR. And after that two years, NCR was acquired by AT&T and then became what was called AT&T Global Information Solutions. And I hung out there for another couple years. And, you know, I reached a point where at the time I was in sales and I wanted to actually transition within AT&T at the time into more of a product marketing type role. But there weren't any opportunities available at the time. So, you know, this'll date me certainly, but, you know, of course, I then looked for job postings in the New York Times, if you can believe it.

(Dennis at 00:07:47) You know, these are the days before Monster and all the job boards and sites and so forth, right? So I applied to an ad in the New York Times and interviewed with Canon, and it wasn't long after that that I came here.

(Dennis at 00:08:03) And, you know, that was a really interesting transition, you know, going from kind of the computer industry to the office technology space, which at the time was still very much traditional analog, non-network connected type technology. So it was almost like a culture shock for me for the first year. But, you know, the industry has been transitioning a lot significantly since then. So it actually got quite exciting quite quick. So before I knew it, here I am 25 years later. Go figure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:36) And then what's your current, like, big project right now? Like, we know it's office technology. We know that, you know, you're envisioning the future of how offices run because, you know, maybe printers go away, maybe they just, maybe something replaces a printer.

(Dennis at 00:08:49) Mhmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:50) You know, and that's just what came to my mind. But, you know, what's the office of the future look like?

(Dennis at 00:08:55) Yeah. So in our case, you know, again, being within Canon Information and Imaging Solutions, we look at the marketplace a little bit differently in some respects than the traditional Canon organizations in that, you know, our whole focus is around software and professional services delivery. And if you look, for example, at the way we're structured, many of the practice areas that we've built are around things like business process automation, information management and governance, and security and infrastructure services to name a few. So we're focused, you know, less on the traditional Canon hardware technologies that are being deployed in the general office environment, and we really focus more on the software technologies and information management and business process automation activities that are kind of making up the types of digital transformations that you see happening within the marketplace today. So we see a lot of things happening in that area.

(Dennis at 00:10:00) I mean, I wouldn't say that, for example, there's one particular project per se that we're focused on, but, you know, we're really looking at how can we leverage Canon's technology and delivery expertise to help customers really strip a lot of the manual processes out of their business workflow. And in doing so, you know, help them to gain the efficiencies associated with work process and at the same time, kind of, you know, make the information associated with the business process more available to the users so that those users can make better business decisions and things of that nature. So that's really, at least within Canon Information and Imaging Solutions, that's our primary focus. And of course, while we do that, we kind of tie Canon's traditional hardware office technology into those solutions. So in many cases, the traditional printer or the multifunction device becomes an off-ramp for information in the sense of printing or it becomes a digital on-ramp to take paper-based information and feed it into a workflow process.

(Dennis at 00:11:08) So that's really kind of where our primary focus is.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:12) That's amazing. Canon's beautiful.

(Dennis at 00:11:15) Yeah, right? Didn't realize, did you?

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:18) No. You should be doing like podcasts and PR stuff.

(Dennis at 00:11:22) That's why I'm here.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:23) Right? No, it's not. You know why it's logical to me though? Like, as you're talking about this, I'm like, you know what?

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:29) You guys make these, I'm just gonna go with cameras, right?

(Dennis at 00:11:31) Yep. Sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:32) The mentality that you have to have to deliver such a highly engineered product at scale to the world means that your business processes are solid. Your teams are well-oiled, and you can clearly execute and deliver a product. So as any business changes, you know, the product can change, but if you have that whole infrastructure there and that ability to deliver on time with engineering excellence, then you can adapt to the market relatively easy. To hear that, like, Canon's a little bit in the software space or...

(Dennis at 00:12:06) Oh, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:07) That makes me really happy.

(Dennis at 00:12:09) Yeah. You might be surprised actually if you look at Canon's global business. We're roughly, last year about a $36 billion company globally. And hoping to be about 40 billion this year. But if you look at the amount of that revenue that is made up by software and professional services, it's well in excess of a billion dollars in revenue that we generate globally in those areas.

(Dennis at 00:12:32) So, you know, again, I mean, we're obviously very much known for our office equipment technology, and we're even better known as a consumer imaging company. But the reality is just given the nature of technology we have in Canon and the kind of innovation that we drive, you know, we're really kind of smack dab in the middle of helping customers figure out how to tie all these disparate pieces of technology together and better manage workflow and, again, gain access to the key information that in many ways is the key asset of their businesses to help them make better business decisions. So and that's, you know, it's a lot of fun, frankly. I mean, you know, truth be told, it's a lot more fun than selling printers. But I can't say that too loudly inside Canon.

(Dennis at 00:13:20) Yeah, given our history. But...

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:23) You don't want that to be like the quote from the show.

(Dennis at 00:13:26) Yeah, right, right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:28) Oh, so the future is coming at us fast, right? And you guys are there dealing with it. Lots of talk about AI.

(Dennis at 00:13:35) Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:36) With what you're doing and how large your business is. You clearly are not a stranger to this. How are you responding and leveraging AI?

(Dennis at 00:13:43) Yeah. It's, you know, it's really interesting what's going on there, right? So and as you mentioned in our case, again, because Canon at its core is a technology company and focused around innovation, we're doing all kinds of stuff with AI and machine learning as an example. So, you know, just to give you a few examples that my organization is involved in, we, as you might expect, we have a lot of printers and multifunction devices connected to customer networks in the market.

(Dennis at 00:14:17) In fact, Canon has had an IoT infrastructure in place for those devices for the better part of the last ten years. And each one of those devices has literally hundreds of sensors in the device that are sending all kinds of information back to this IoT infrastructure. And what we're able to do now is we're able to harvest all that data. And by using big data analytics, we're able to now analyze that data so we can see all kinds of things in terms of usage patterns and parts usage and expected lifespan for various parts, et cetera. So what we've now done, leveraging the R&D capabilities we have here in the United States, is we're starting to apply artificial intelligence and machine learning to that data. So that instead of, for example, our service delivery activities being reactive to a problem when a customer calls us, we've now gotten to the point where we're actually able to proactively address problems with the device prior to actually the device experiencing the problem.

(Dennis at 00:15:26) So, you know, when you see some of the commercials on TV in terms of, you know, I think it's the IBM commercial where the elevator calls the service guy before a problem occurs and things of that nature, we're doing that today in connection with the way in which we've implemented artificial intelligence and machine learning in connection with our service and IoT infrastructure for devices. And just to give you a sense of the scale of this, on a worldwide basis, we have well over a million devices connected to this infrastructure. In the United States, it's about 370,000, you know, close to 400,000 devices. So the amount of data that we're capturing is just massive.

(Dennis at 00:16:06) But, again, I mean, the new service methodology that this is providing is really changing our business model in many respects and truly having huge implications, not only for us, but also for customers in terms of, you know, the uptime that we can provide them in connection with the device technology they're investing in. So that's one example. I'll give you another example which I think you'll find really interesting. So we actually have a manufacturing facility in Virginia that we call Canon Virginia. We're not great at naming some things, but suffice to say it's called Canon Virginia.

(Dennis at 00:16:40) And we do a lot of different types of manufacturing there. So as an example, that happens to be the location where we manufacture many of the toner cartridges that are used not only in Canon's technology, but HP's printers in the marketplace. But one of the capabilities that exists in Canon Virginia is the ability to create wax molds and forms. And so leveraging that capability, we actually work with one of the major suppliers of aircraft parts. And the company that we work with, they actually use our wax molds to actually create the turbofan blades that go into many of the jet engines that you find in use today.

(Dennis at 00:17:22) And, you know, if that's not interesting enough, we've actually built a software technology that allows that company basically to take an X-ray image of the part and automatically check for occlusions and cracks.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:37) Oh, that's cool, man.

(Dennis at 00:17:38) Faults and so forth. So that has to happen, for example, as part of the process they use before they'll officially provide a part to the aircraft engine manufacturer. They actually have to inspect it. And, you know, they go through a process of what they call non-destructive testing because they obviously can't destroy the part to test it. Right? So this technology we've built, the software technology, also leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning, and it also leverages computer vision.

(Dennis at 00:18:10) So what it does is it actually, again, ingests an X-ray image of the part. And based upon it having been trained on what a good part looks like, it can do a comparison between the part that was just X-rayed and a part known to be good. Right? And, of course, like any machine learning-based technology, the more you throw at it, technically, the smarter it gets. Right? And so what we can find is that over time and with training, the system reaches a point where it can recognize parts with unbelievably high degrees of accuracy.

(Dennis at 00:18:48) So that's another example of how, you know, we're applying our imaging technology and artificial intelligence and machine learning to solve a particular business problem. In that case, the problem around non-destructive testing. And there are many other use cases that we have, some of which, for example, are specific to where we see the office going. So as an example, when we go in and we help customers automate their accounts payable processes, you know, we're looking at ways in which we can implement robotic process automation in connection with specific manual tasks, right, as a way to alleviate those tasks from having to be done by a human. And again, we're looking at, well, how do we infuse artificial intelligence and machine learning into those processes so that, again, we can automate the task.

(Dennis at 00:19:39) But I think maybe most importantly, at least from my perspective, you know, the value there is certainly efficiency gain. You know, we see that no question. But from my perspective, the greatest value that we deliver to customers when we do these types of automation projects is we emancipate their business users. And what I mean by that is, you know, today, if you look at a lot of business process, the user has to understand how the process works in order for them to function within the process. And oftentimes, the process is very manual.

(Dennis at 00:20:14) And what happens in our case, and again, I'll use accounts payable as an example. When we automate an accounts payable process, whether we're using AI or machine learning or not, we eliminate the need for the user to have to really understand the details of the process. We make the process transparent to them. And in many cases, we give them time. And the user then can use that time for what they're really being paid to do.

(Dennis at 00:20:40) You know, most people who are in accounts payable roles are not being paid to shuffle paper. You know, they're really being paid to try to be creative and innovative in terms of the business process. And that's really, you know, when we think about digital transformation, it's one thing to drive digital transformation in terms of gaining benefits around information management and data analytics and so forth. But it's a whole other thing to kind of emancipate the workforce and allow them to have the time necessary to really become more creative and innovative, which in and of itself will drive even more business value. So, you know, when we think about the future as to where things are headed, that's exactly where they're headed.

(Dennis at 00:21:19) And, you know, within at least our company within Canon and CIS, we're very focused on trying to deliver those kinds of outcomes to customers that we deal with.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:30) That was really interesting. So when you were talking about the radiograph machine learning, I had someone on and I was speaking with them. They were doing that, but with reading X-rays for medical diagnosis.

(Dennis at 00:21:43) Oh, sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:44) Diagnosis.

(Dennis at 00:21:44) Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:45) And I was like, that makes so much sense. Why wait the two hours for the doctor to tell you you have a fracture, like a break, or whatever when the thing sees 10,000 of those a minute across the, you know, entire world.

(Dennis at 00:21:58) Oh, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:58) Yeah. Yeah. So the cool thing is, you know, the connection I'll make here is I could see, you know, Canon doing that for the non-destructive to innovate there, but then people come and go, engineers happen, people share at conferences, everyone's sharing about the technology, and that fundamentally improves the technology as a whole because you're investing in it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:21) Although the application's different, the people coming out of your company will write articles. They'll speak at conferences. They will further the industry. So it's really amazing how if you look at us as humans as a whole, like an organism, how the innovations you're making can actually bleed into these other industries and help them.

(Dennis at 00:22:40) Yeah. Well, you know, it's interesting too because, again, I mean, we're leveraging AI and machine learning technology and, of course, we're applying it to the use cases that I just mentioned, but the technology itself is not specific to a given use case. Right? I mean, to your point, we can apply it across a whole range of different use cases. In fact, I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but Canon itself has a large medical imaging business.

(Dennis at 00:23:08) So, you know, in fact, we acquired Toshiba Medical Systems about a year or so ago. This was roughly a $6 billion acquisition that we made worldwide. And as a result, we're one of the top five providers of medical imaging technology globally. Well, certainly, you know, you think about the types of images that are coming off of the equipment that Toshiba, you know, and Canon are providing in the market. And there's no question, we can take that same, you know, AI-based technology and we can apply it not only to an X-ray of a part, for example, but we can apply it equally to an X-ray of, you know, a hand, a wrist, a foot, you know, whatever the case might be.

(Dennis at 00:23:54) And if nothing else, I mean, I'm not sure we'll find or we'll reach a point in time where in that industry sector, the FDA, for example, will allow for automated diagnostics in terms of that technology. But at a minimum, it will become assistive to, you know, whoever the medical practitioner is. So it'll really help improve diagnosis and, you know, without question, you know, as trained as these folks are in the medical profession, the imaging technology we have is much more accurate than the human eye. So, you know, no question we're going to see significant advancements continue to be made in this area. And again, AI and, you know, machine learning and the derivatives of artificial intelligence in general are going to have a big impact on that.

(Dennis at 00:24:40) No doubt.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:41) Yeah. My brother and stepmom are both physicians.

(Dennis at 00:24:44) Okay. Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:45) And so lots of cool medical technology comes across my day from, you know, Kevin Scott's the CTO of Microsoft, and one of his friends is doing this. They analyze your heart rhythms and they predict heart issues through your data. And so it was very cool because it reminded me of, like, you talk about your IoT devices sending out signals, hey, something might be wrong.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:08) Well, they're doing the same thing with human data. And then, you know, another person came on the show out in the UK, and they have this imaging, like, overlay. So if they're going to be doing surgery and it, like, 3D maps their entire topography of the human over it so that they can just have this real-time, but that's happening in real-time. And so they're talking about getting the processes down, getting the response back in, like, under milliseconds and stuff like that so that it could be real-time. So all these advancements in technology, I'm at dinner talking with them, like, you still can't get the billing right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:43) It's I just put in 400 comments when someone gets a shot for B12 or something.

(Dennis at 00:25:49) Right. Right. Well, again, you know, we have an accounts payable solution. So we're trying to help customers get the billing right too. But, yeah, certainly that's not easy in health care as you know well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:00) So for the people listening, I want to build an image because, obviously, what you've explained is coming into this, Canon's a camera company, and they made printers too. Right?

(Dennis at 00:26:17) Yeah. Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:17) But what we're doing is everyone's listening, and we're widening their perspective of Canon. It's, you know, potentially overwhelming so that they can get some ground and some perspective. Where do you sit in the organization? And, like, what is your title and your responsibilities today?

(Dennis at 00:26:34) Right. So today, you know, as I mentioned, I am within a subsidiary of Canon USA that we call Canon Information and Imaging Solutions. And I'm the senior vice president and general manager of that business unit within Canon. And that business, of course, rolls directly up to Canon USA, which is the major business unit in the United States and in the Americas.

(Dennis at 00:27:04) And so roughly, Canon USA as an entity represents about a third of the revenue that Canon does on a global basis. So, and kind of going back to CIS, we formed this company back in 2011, and we really formed the company based upon some of the things we were starting to see happen in the market, particularly in relation to our sale of office equipment technology to business-to-business customers. And, you know, at the time, many of those customers were expecting us not just to deliver, for example, a piece of hardware, but they really wanted us to help them, you know, tie that hardware into their existing software environments, tie it into their networking infrastructure, and really start to tie those technologies into business process. And, you know, as we started to see those trends emerge in the market, we thought that, jeez, you know, we can kind of build out those capabilities within our traditional office technology business unit, or we can kind of establish this new company.

(Dennis at 00:28:13) And in addition to looking at how to support our office technology business, we can create this new company to have a technology development capability that would scale across all of Canon's businesses. And so that's what we did. And so, you know, it's interesting that within Canon Information and Imaging Solutions, while, you know, we kind of grew up out of the office technology part of Canon's business, if you look at the activities we're involved in today, we're providing software development activities and professional services delivery for the office technology business, the consumer imaging business, the medical equipment business, and really across the entire breadth of Canon. In addition to that, we represent Canon globally on many of the standards committees around the world, whether it be standards committees that are focused on print or, for example, the IoT standards committees and the like.

(Dennis at 00:29:11) And we also are partly responsible for managing some of Canon's global relationships with the likes of Microsoft and Oracle and Box and, you know, a whole host of other third-party companies that we work very closely with. So we get this really unique view of the world inside Canon based upon the business that we're in.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:33) No. I really like it because, uh, what you're like, how you service the whole organization.

(Dennis at 00:29:39) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:39) Very, very smart. And then your content, your mention of the standards, that's one of my favorite pieces of advice to people is wherever industry you're in, wherever there's a standard, get involved with that standard.

(Dennis at 00:29:53) Oh, sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:54) Because they control the head of the industry.

(Dennis at 00:29:57) Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I mean, you know, obviously, when we talk about standards, there are a couple different types of standards we see in the market.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:03) Standards.

(Dennis at 00:30:04) There is. Right? Well, and that's true.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:06) I mean, those become the—

(Dennis at 00:30:07) De facto standards that a manufacturer sets that everyone else has to follow. Right? That's great if you're the manufacturer that sets the de facto standard, it's great. But, you know, you're not always in such a fortunate position. But, you know, I think what's been really interesting about, you know, the information technology space in particular is that you do have these standards bodies that emerge to deal with, you know, emerging and innovative new technology so that, you know, you don't end up having the scenario where you have 50 different ways and 50 different technologies to deal with a business problem that don't work and talk with one another.

(Dennis at 00:30:45) Right? So no question, you know, standardization in the information technology industry, I think, has been a great thing for customers. And to some degree, it's been a good thing for manufacturers as well. And, you know, we've always been a big proponent of participating in those standards groups within Canon and, you know, really trying to promote the use of standards in the marketplace. Because in many ways, it makes it easier for us from a development standpoint to then be able to integrate our technologies into whatever those standards become.

(Dennis at 00:31:15) And of course, representing Canon in those standards bodies allows us as a company to have influence, of course, in terms of how the standard is created, which obviously is to our advantage as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:29) Absolutely. I have a standard that I'm waiting for that I've been watching the market. It's kind of weird. It's kind of out there, but it's really the AI. So I'll share it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:38) Yeah. So I was having this future session where I was just thinking about, you know, where we're going to be in 10 years. And then I thought of, where's the standard I could own? Like a standard brainstorming session.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:52) And I came up with the one that I wanted, and I'm waiting for the right time, or I don't know if it'll ever happen because it's not a priority for me. But it's a cool one. And in the AI, after we get it to the next level and we get it more personality, right? At that point, we'll have a huge need for these large repositories of these concepts of like backstories and memory storage for the AI personalities.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:20) Okay. And I wanted to, I've mapped it out to define a standard for how we'll store those memories and how the lookups will look about adding algorithms for adding details to stories and where you get your trees of details, and how that can make things up, but then make them up in real time and then remember them for the future. And so, yeah, I just sat down for like a weekend. I had a spare weekend, and this was like a year ago before the show and everything, before I had, when I had spare time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:55) And I mapped out this whole complicated thing, and I was like, this is awesome. Yeah. So maybe when that becomes more close, the whole concept of a backstory AI standard will come up. But yeah.

(Dennis at 00:33:08) I'm sure there's probably an engineer in a garage somewhere out in Silicon Valley who is kind of tinkering towards this without much of a doubt. But yeah. No. I mean, obviously, you know, as AI and of course machine learning and related technologies continue to become pervasive in the market, clearly standards are going to have to emerge in terms of how they're utilized and implemented in regards to different work processes and things of that nature. So I don't think there's any doubt that's going to come.

(Dennis at 00:33:41) I, you know, obviously, we're still to some degree. I mean, we're still in the early stages, I would say, of the use of AI, even though technically all of us are interacting with AI-based systems on an everyday basis without even knowing it. You know, it's going to really be amazing what's going to go on, I think, over the course of the next five to 10 years in terms of pervasiveness of this kind of technology and the types of implications it'll have for people, not only in terms of business, but obviously maybe even more so in terms of how it impacts our personal lives. So it'll be really interesting to see what's going to unfold here in the next few years.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:20) So I'm very impressed by you.

(Dennis at 00:34:22) Thank you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:23) And I'll tell you why. Because you're responsible for bringing a tremendous amount of value to the market and to people. Right? And you started out 20 years ago in '94. You're a technology individual through and through. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:37) And you were making systems and working on some great stuff back then, and then you increased your knowledge, and you grew and you learned new things to go from a contributor to a team lead, from a leader to a leader of leaders, from leader of leaders all the way up to the C-level to now, you're at the top. And so you've traversed from individual contributor all the way to the top. And that is, like, maybe like 1%. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:02) I love it because the questions that we get. So we have a large audience, and we have about 72,000 people. I'd say about 60% of them are individuals that are looking to get to the next level. They're individual contributors. You know, there's no one in life to just direct you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:20) You kind of just have to get frustrated and figure out, oh, I guess I've got to work harder now. There are a bunch of resources, try a million things, things don't work, you take the ones that work, you science it. And so I want you to speak a little bit to, you know, your progression and some of the things you've learned along that path.

(Dennis at 00:35:37) Yeah. Well, you know, it's interesting. I know in my case, you know, when I came out of college, actually, I was a finance major. And I tell this story to people, particularly when I'm asked this kind of question: how did you get to the point you're at now? You know, I was a finance major, but the best job opportunity I had out of college was to join NCR and go into computer sales and information technology sales.

(Dennis at 00:36:06) And so I took that because I needed employment, you know. My parents basically were going to kick me out of the house and weren't going to let me live in their basement, so I had to go do something. So suffice to say, you know, I kind of started down that path, and I personally always had an interest in science and technology, and it just kind of worked out that, I really didn't have any interest in computing technology, frankly. In fact, I had no desire to be involved in that industry programming, and I had no desire to be a programmer. And to this day, I have no desire to be a programmer.

(Dennis at 00:36:41) But suffice to say, you know, I did have an interest in technology, and of course, you know, getting involved with NCR at the time I did proved to be really fortuitous for a number of reasons. Number one, they had a great training program, and they really helped to build a foundational level of knowledge in terms of information technology, which frankly throughout my entire career, really, it's just been building new information on top of that foundation, and I really credit them for that. But I also entered that market at a time where it also was transitioning from the traditional centralized computing infrastructures to distributed computing and the like. And the industry was really exciting, and of course, that kind of piqued my interest. But, and then of course, when I came to Canon, same kind of thing.

(Dennis at 00:37:34) Canon was making, or trying to make, this transition from the traditional analog copying device that you plugged into the electrical outlet to a device that contained all these multiple features and actually plugged into your network environment and you accessed via software from your desktop. So, you know, for me anyway, it was just an area that was really interesting. And because I was so interested in it, I was really passionate about it and really liked what I did. And that's certainly been the case really throughout my entire career. And so, you know, when I get asked the question, you know, like this, one of the things I always tell people is you need to pursue things you're interested in.

(Dennis at 00:38:16) Right? And, you know, even when I moved into management roles inside Canon, you know, I've always tried to have conversations with personnel in my organization to understand, you know, what is your area of interest? What do you want to do? So that I, as a management-level person, can kind of direct them into those areas, because my belief has been if someone's interested in something, they'll deliver greater value to me and our organization as compared to if I put them in an area that they really have no interest in. So on an individual basis, again, I tell people, you know, you've got to pursue what your passion is, because if you do, you know, the things you do every day won't feel so much like work.

(Dennis at 00:38:58) Some days they do, of course, but not every day. And, you know, I think maybe the biggest piece of advice that I've been able to give to people, whether they're in individual contributor roles or even whether they're in management roles and they're looking at how to advance their career, for me, it's always been about value delivery. And—

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:19) Talk about that. I'm sorry. Sorry to interrupt. Yeah. I love it. The value. It's always about the value.

(Dennis at 00:39:25) Yeah. And, you know, for every business, every business unit, I mean, the value they're looking for may be a little bit different, but I think it's incumbent upon employees in the organization, again, whether you're an individual contributor or a manager, to understand what is it that I personally can deliver that will be a value to the organization and the company. And if you can consistently do that, then I think you'll find you'll have opportunity to move and advance in your career. And frankly, that's been my experience at Canon.

(Dennis at 00:39:58) So, you know, wherever I've been, and you know, I didn't go into a lot of the details around my background, but in the office technology part of the business, I've had the good fortune to run almost every business unit in that organization. And the reason I was able to go from one business unit to another to another to another is that I was always open to learning new things and, you know, I was always fortunate and blessed enough that I was able to contribute value in the role that I had been in, such that the executive management in the organization said, well, jeez, you know, he's delivering value here. Let's see if we can put him in this role and he can deliver a similar level of value here as well. And so that's really always been my personal focus in terms of how do I advance my career. It's really about consistent value delivery to the organization and making sure that that's recognized.

(Dennis at 00:40:53) And in my particular case, I've been very fortunate in that it has been.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:57) That's amazing. I was talking about this like an hour ago about how, you know, becoming more valuable. You simply ask what you could do to become more valuable, and then you do that and you bring that to the organization. And then, you know, no one's perfect. No organization is always communicating outwardly exactly, but—

(Dennis at 00:41:17) Definitely not.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:18) You got me all pumped up, man. You got me all excited. I like broke my rule of interrupting people because I was just like, yes, the value. Do you speak? Do you give talks?

(Dennis at 00:41:32) Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, you know, I have opportunities to speak at industry conferences and so forth on a, you know, sometimes on a frequent basis. It ebbs and flows, you know. So certainly, you know, many presentations inside Canon and to Canon channel partners and customers and the like. But on occasion, I'll do the keynote or something at a conference, or certainly a presentation session at a conference. Yeah. So I enjoy doing that. Not not so much on, you know, like, personal growth kind of issues. More on business subjects and things of that nature. But yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:07) Well, you got me pumped up on the personal growth issues. So, like, if you ever, let me know. Send me the YouTube of those talks. Right?

(Dennis at 00:42:13) Yeah. Well, you know, and again, I think it's interesting because we have this kind of conversation inside Canon with employees on a fairly frequent basis. And, you know, I think it's not only true in Canon, I think it's true in a lot of organizations. In many cases, employees think that, you know, management is going to kind of show up and just, you know, kind of lay out their career path from the time they walk in the door to the time they retire. And, you know, it's going to say, okay, after you do this for two years, you're going to be promoted to this role, and then another three years here, you're going to be promoted to that one.

(Dennis at 00:42:47) And like I tell, you know, particularly younger folks in my organization, you know, it doesn't work that way, you know. The individual has to really take responsibility for their own career path planning. Now management certainly has a role here, but the individual needs to own that. And, you know, they need to recognize that, you know, there isn't necessarily this—they have to make the path. And in my view, the way to make the path is by continuing to contribute value. You know, that's certainly been my experience and, you know, if you talk to any of the employees who work in my organization, they would tell you they've probably heard this speech more times than they care to recount.

(Dennis at 00:43:27) So they're all familiar with it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:29) Well, two things I noticed. The first one is that conversation you're having with them that you were just describing to me, you're teaching them one of the first parts about leadership to even be a manager. It's responsibility. You're 100% responsible for your own growth, and no one's going to come lay some perfect map out for you. You have to decide it for yourself and get that discipline and that routine of being able to execute.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:56) And you're giving them the answer. It's a very simple answer. Become more valuable, make it your responsibility to grow, and then just repeat over and over differently.

(Dennis at 00:44:05) Absolutely. No question. Yeah. That's been, again, that's been the formula for me personally and for many of the people that I've worked with at Canon for a long time who, you know, also have had the fortune to kind of rise to senior-level positions in the company. That's really been the same path they followed as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:23) Yeah. And it's important too that you mentioned that another thing as leaders, that you have to constantly make sure that they're pursuing their passion. Right? Because you never know, they might be some, you know, college graduate with an accounting degree being forced into sales just to get out of their parents' house. Right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:42) Yeah. I can, I can—

(Dennis at 00:44:43) I can certainly commiserate with that. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:46) Yeah. So it's important because people will often, I hear that a lot. They'll take something because they need the money and they need to move on and because everyone else is doing it. So it's important as a leader to make sure that, yeah, you recognize they may be doing a good job, but let's point them in the direction of a passion and let them know that that's an option.

(Dennis at 00:45:02) Yeah. And again, I mean, that to me is the responsibility, one of the responsibilities amongst many, of folks in management-level roles. I mean, we have a responsibility to help employees within the organization achieve their individual goals, but the primary responsibility to do that is the employees. Right? So, but yeah, absolutely.

(Dennis at 00:45:22) I mean, we've had so many cases, for example, in my career at Canon and managing people where, you know, I may be having kind of a one-on-one conversation with that employee, and I may ask them as I usually do, you know, okay, well, what are you interested in doing? You know, if you had to project the next three to five years, what do you see yourself doing? And I may get an answer that is completely outside the scope of what they're doing today. Right?

(Dennis at 00:45:47) And of course, that immediately tells me, okay, I either have to figure out how to align activities for this individual that they're interested in, which can also bring value to the organization, or I run the risk that I'm going to lose them, or I need to find them another place inside Canon that has that kind of work that they'll enjoy and then help them make the transition into that other organization. And, you know, to a large degree, particularly with people that from a management perspective we want to invest in, that's exactly what we're doing. So if I have a resource, for example, that I know is a value contributor and I want to invest in that resource, I mean, to the extent that I can't provide the kind of work that is of interest to them, management's responsibility in my view is to help them find it somewhere else within the company. And of course, we're blessed in Canon in that, you know, we have such a diverse company in so many different types of operations we have in the organization.

(Dennis at 00:46:49) We typically can find areas where that individual's interest can be satisfied and where they can continue to contribute the value that we're after.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:58) And so you're one of the leaders, one of the main leaders there, right? And you're always helping everybody. So who's asking you this stuff?

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:07) Nobody. I'm asking you right now. Like, what's going on with—I want to show Dennis some love. Nobody's thinking—yeah, that's the one thing about leadership, right?

(Dennis at 00:47:15) Yeah. You know, it's, again, I mean, but part of that, that's my responsibility, right? I mean, you know, as a senior leader in the organization, obviously, I not only have responsibility for the ultimate performance of the company, but, you know, I also have my own personal responsibility to make the decisions and chart the direction I want to go in terms of, you know, where I want to take my career in terms of the next steps in life. So, you know, obviously, as you kind of climb the ladder in an organization, you know, the number of potential positions you can ascend to starts to get smaller and smaller.

(Dennis at 00:47:54) So you reach a point where there's not a lot of other places to go. So you kind of get to a point where, you know, maybe it's not so much about the moving to a different type of position, but maybe it's taking on a different type of challenge within either the existing organization that you're in or a different part of the company. And again, in my case, I've had that kind of good fortune in that, you know, I have kind of been bounced from one type of business unit to another a lot. So, you know, for me as I look down the road, you know, I don't know. I mean, I really enjoy the kind of work that we do within Canon Information and Imaging Solutions.

(Dennis at 00:48:38) It's really challenging. It's very innovative. It's exciting. We get to deal with customers who are, you know, really in the throes of trying to figure out how to tackle these major challenges they have and transform themselves digitally. So that's really exciting.

(Dennis at 00:48:53) But then you look at other parts of Canon, particularly our medical imaging business and some of the new business areas we're developing, and that's really interesting as well. So, you know, who knows? We'll see how things play out. But, you know, I think in my particular case, you know, if Canon were to ask me to go do something differently, I certainly would do that, you know, just given the history I have in the company and my desire to add value in as many parts of Canon as I can.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:25) Yeah. And that's like what you said about being a leader, being able to re-quantify your value as you transition. You know? Sure. Maybe at one point, it becomes about simply raising up everybody down. Like, if you're at the very top, right, you're making sure you're bringing value to the market and then raising everybody up. And so I love that ability. It's something that I'm—I'm in my early thirties, so I'm very new to this, you know, middle, upper, upper level. And so I'm constantly surrounding myself with people who are farther ahead than me and learning from them and then, you know, mixing that with also reading and other people. Knowing people, having people I don't know—like I'm a—I like the Tony Robbins and the Brian Tracys and all that stuff.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:06) And I pull them around because, um, it's just—I heard one time what you do is you find people who are way farther ahead and way smarter than you, and you pull them around you, and you listen to them, and then there's no, like, combative conversation. It's like, this is when you shut up and learn. Like, that's what I do. I bring smart people around, and I shut up and I learn. I'm like, alright. Cool. Cool. Cool. And then I go try it, and then it works.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:35) And in a world where a lot of things don't work, that's a very useful principle.

(Dennis at 00:50:40) Yeah. You can learn a lot by just observation. And, you know, to your point, I mean, I think in my own case, certainly, there have been individuals that I've worked for in the past within Canon and that I've encountered just in my business dealings outside of the company that you kind of, you know, you look at and you try to model some of the things you do based upon the characteristics they exhibit because they have shown, you know, a track record of consistent success, right? And again, you can learn a lot by observation and then experimenting.

(Dennis at 00:51:17) And, um, you know, I think one of the nice things about our company is that it has given us the flexibility to experiment. So, you know, as we kind of do that research, you know, read those business books, look at someone who's implementing a new business model that is unique as compared to what we've done in the past. We've got the flexibility to kind of tinker around and experiment with that to see if we can apply it to our own business. And, you know, if it works, great. If it doesn't, okay. You know, we didn't bankrupt the company in the process of doing it, right? So yeah, I mean, I think all good business leaders, frankly, are always looking to both sources in their own organizations as well as outside to learn new things and then to try to apply those things to how they're running their businesses. I know in my case, I certainly have been doing that consistently for a long time, and many of the things that I do even to this day came from that kind of, you know, learning by observation and then trying to apply that to some of the things that I wanted to accomplish from a business standpoint.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:24) So smart. Yeah. Because at the moment you apply knowledge with action, that's how you create experience.

(Dennis at 00:52:29) Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:33) Dennis, we did it. We made a podcast, my friend.

(Dennis at 00:52:36) Alright. Well, you know what? I feel fine. Yeah. I feel fine. Thank you so much for the opportunity. It's been nice to meet you. Nice joining you. Yeah. I enjoyed this kind of conversation very much. So, you know, I'd be happy to do it again if you're interested in doing so.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:54) Absolutely. Yeah. I know it's great. And then just so you know, if you ever need anything from me at all, if there's any way I can bring you value at all, you just let me know. Reach out directly, and we'll make it happen.

(Dennis at 00:53:06) Great. Good deal. I appreciate that. Thanks so much.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:08) Awesome. Thank you so much, Dennis.

(Dennis at 00:53:09) Alright. Take care. Alright. Bye now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:17) Thank you so much for listening to the Modern CTO Podcast. Share this. Get the word out. Thank you guys so much. I couldn't do it without you. I appreciate it. You guys are the absolute best.