This week’s spotlight features Tal Katzav, an AI leader dedicated to driving business transformation.
As the head of Wärtsilä’s AI Centre of Excellence, Tal focuses on bringing high-impact ideas into production while empowering a talented team to work their magic. With a role that connects business needs with technological possibilities, challenging traditional “we’ve always done it this way” mindsets, Tal creates the space necessary for continuous innovation. His approach is a human-centric leadership philosophy: helping smart people do even smarter things, while ensuring the team has the autonomy and support to thrive.
In this interview, Tal discusses how to successfully navigate the intersection of business and technology without becoming a bottleneck.
Hyperight.com: What’s the best way to describe your job to someone outside tech?
Tal: I help connect ambitious business goals with the right people, data and AI capabilities. In simpler terms, I try to help innovation move from interesting conversations to actual results, without getting lost in jargon along the way. My team used to be called Advanced Analytics, so we still joke that our weekly “AA meeting” often starts with the most important step: admitting we have a problem worth solving.
Hyperight.com: What originally sparked your interest in AI/data, and what keeps you inspired today? 
Tal: What originally sparked my interest was the possibility to solve real-world problems with technology, not just create clever solutions looking for a problem. What keeps me inspired is the breadth and depth of what can be done with data and AI. It can be applied across so many domains, from operations and engineering to customer experience and sustainability, and the possibilities are not limited to one tool, platform or trend. The technology is advancing, the problems keep changing, and just when you think you’ve seen it all, a new challenge appears and proves you wrong.
Hyperight.com: What is one challenge you’re trying to solve, and why does it matter?
Tal: One challenge I’m trying to solve is how we combine AI with the knowledge that already exists inside the company: our engineers, business experts, domain specialists and proprietary data. That combination is where the real value and competitive advantage comes from. AI on its own can be impressive, but AI connected to deep business knowledge is much more powerful. The goal is not to replace expertise, but to help it scale, move faster and avoid being trapped in people’s heads, inboxes or spreadsheets. That’s where the real competitive advantage is: not in using the same tools as everyone else, but in applying them to what only we know.
Hyperight.com: A tool you can’t live without (tech or not)?
Tal: Coffee. I work in Finland, so I think this answer may be culturally mandatory. It helps with thinking, meetings and pretending to be fully functional before 9am.
Hyperight.com: What trend in data or AI do you think will shape the Nordic region the most?
Tal: I think the biggest trend will be AI moving from pilots into real work. The Nordics have a strong mix of trust, safety, collaboration, technology and industrial know-how. But we also need to increase the speed of execution. The real opportunity is redesigning workflows around how people and AI work together. In short: less “AI as a shiny add-on” more “AI as part of how work actually gets done”.
Hyperight.com: What’s one piece of advice you’d give to others entering the data and AI field?
Tal: Stay curious and don’t fall in love with your own expertise. In AI, “I know how this works” can become outdated surprisingly quickly. Keep learning, ask good questions and remember that curiosity scales better than ego.
