“The real challenge isn’t adopting technology for yourself — it’s creating the space for your people to experiment, make mistakes, and learn how to use it meaningfully.”
Gullnaz Baig, Executive Director of the Angsana Council and Monk’s Hill Ventures, has more than 15 years of leadership experience across the tech and public sectors. A former policy and strategy leader at Twitter, TikTok, and Facebook, she is recognized for her expertise in trust, safety, and regulatory strategy across Asia-Pacific.
At the Digital Leadership Summit 2025, organized by NewInAsia to help leaders navigate the complexities of digital transformation, Gullnaz delivered the opening keynote Navigating the Next Frontier of Transformation.
Blending macroeconomic insights, demographic realities, and the rise of tech-enabled disruptors, she urged executives to treat digital change not as a passing trend but as the foundation for future competitiveness.
Highlights
Southeast Asia’s Shifting Ground
Gullnaz began by situating Southeast Asia in the global context. Over the past 30 years, the region has enjoyed stable economic growth, with Vietnam standing out as a leader. As shown in one of her slides, Vietnam’s real GDP has expanded 8.7 times since 1993, while Singapore and Malaysia grew fourfold, and Thailand just 2.5 times.
But beneath this growth story are cracks that demand urgent attention. The manufacturing share of GDP has declined in most Southeast Asian economies since the 2000s, with Indonesia and the Philippines hit hardest. Services now account for a larger share of output, leaving the region more vulnerable to global shifts in technology and consumer demand.
Demographic pressures are also reshaping competitiveness. In the coming years, working-age populations will slow or shrink, particularly in Singapore and Thailand. Immigration, once a buffer for labor shortages, is no longer enough to offset aging populations and declining birth rates.
For leaders, Gullnaz argued, this means growth must come not from more workers, but from making the existing workforce more productive through technology.
The Rise of Tech-Enabled Disruptors
To illustrate this path forward, Gullnaz introduced the concept of Tech-Enabled Disruptors (TEDs) — firms that have embedded digital transformation at the core of their operations. “By 2030, 50% of employment in this region will be from companies we define as TEDs,” she noted, adding that such companies are already 25% more competitive than their peers.
Her slides showed just how far-reaching their impact could be. Between 30–40% of GDP across Southeast Asia is projected to be reshaped by TEDs, with the most disruption expected in retail, logistics, finance, education, and healthcare.
AI as an Inflection Point
Artificial intelligence, Gullnaz argued, is the accelerant of this transformation. She framed AI’s current surge not as hype, but as the result of three converging forces: mass adoption by the public, advancements in computing power, and cultural readiness to experiment.
She pointed to DBS’s use of AI to create 360-degree customer relationships, turning transactions into lifelong engagements that grow with the client’s needs. In education, AI-powered platforms are beginning to accompany learners from early schooling through professional reskilling. These are examples of how AI is shifting industries from one-off interactions to continuous value creation.
Yet Gullnaz acknowledged the adoption gap. Research shows 70% of high achievers already use AI in multiple aspects of their work, from scheduling to content creation. But scaling this across entire organizations remains a challenge. For many companies, the problem isn’t technology — it’s culture.
Her solution: leaders must create “playgrounds” — safe environments where employees can try new tools, fail quickly, and learn by doing. Accepting short-term inefficiencies, she argued, is essential for building long-term resilience. Leaders who enable this experimentation will transform their workforce from process followers into problem solvers.
Leading with Intent
Gullnaz Baig’s keynote underscored that digital transformation is not a one-time project but a leadership discipline. It requires executives to balance investment in technology with investment in people, to encourage curiosity while setting clear goals, and to translate experimentation into scalable business practices.
Her call to action was simple yet urgent: leaders must stop seeing digital transformation as a checkbox and start seeing it as a daily habit of adaptation. The companies that thrive will be those that embed learning, unlearning, and relearning into their culture — giving teams ownership of digital change rather than imposing it top-down.
“The leaders who thrive in 2030 won’t just be the most tech-savvy. They’ll be the ones who turn learning into a daily habit, give their teams space to try, and see technology as a partner in resilience.”
Highlights
Read the Chinese article here.
