Episode Details

Can technological progress, economic growth, and planetary wellbeing reinforce one another rather than compete?

Today’s guest is Tom Raftery, a technology and sustainability analyst, keynote speaker, and former SAP Global Vice President whose career has been driven largely by curiosity and an interest in emerging technology.

Tom began studying biology and was working toward a PhD when his hobby of computers gradually became his career. He went on to build technology businesses, work in software development and social media, develop an energy-efficient data center in Cork, lead energy and sustainability research at RedMonk, and later join SAP as a Global Vice President and Internet of Things evangelist.

He has also built two interview podcasts: Climate Confident and Resilient Supply Chain.

In this conversation, we explore:

• How Tom moved from biology into technology
• Why curiosity has been the through-line of his career
• His early work in computer training and software development
• Building one of Ireland’s early data centers in Cork
• Why he deliberately designed the data center to be highly energy efficient
• The role of open-source thinking in documenting the data-center project
• His work in energy and sustainability research
• What he learned from working at SAP
• Why AI is still not mainstream across every business
• How businesses can identify practical use cases for AI
• Why companies should run focused AI pilots rather than deploy technology indiscriminately
• AI’s potential role in monitoring complex global supply chains
• Forced labor, bribery, corruption, pollution, and other supply-chain risks
• Why supply-chain problems can quickly become brand and legal risks
• How greater supply-chain visibility can encourage more sustainable business practices
• Renewable energy and the broader transformation of business
• Why short news cycles can make it difficult to distinguish hype from reality
• Why leaders should slow down and investigate before following technological hype
• The importance of testing, learning, and iterating
• Why Tom believes society has made significant progress despite the problems that receive the most attention
• The case for an optimistic outlook grounded in data

Tom’s approach to emerging technology is not simply about adopting whatever is newest.

His advice is more deliberate:

Identify the problem. Determine whether AI can genuinely help. Run a pilot. Learn from it. Then decide what to do next.

And when it comes to the future more broadly, Tom argues that optimism doesn’t have to mean ignoring problems. It can mean recognizing the progress that has already happened—and using that perspective to keep working on the challenges ahead.

🌍 Thought Atlas

https://joinpodmatch.com/thoughtatlas

🌐 Connect with Tom

Website:
https://tomraftery.com/

Tom explicitly gives TomRaftery.com as his website and says listeners can find his work there.

LinkedIn:Tom says he is easy to find on LinkedIn by simply searching Tom Raftery.

🎙️ Tom’s Podcasts

Climate Confident

Tom describes this as a podcast focused on successful emissions-reduction stories and strategies.

Resilient Supply Chain

This podcast focuses on supply-chain resilience, including ways organizations can make supply chains more digital, sustainable, and resilient.

📰 Future Proof

Tom also has a free weekly newsletter called Future Proof, which goes out every Thursday.

He says listeners can find the newsletter link through TomRaftery.com.

📚 Book

Tom explicitly says:

“I don’t have a b