SPEAKER_01: TED Audio Collective.
You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm your host, Elise Hu.
Big business is leaning into AI, and one of them is one of the largest pharma companies in the world, Sanofi. In a conversation from Ted at BCG, Sanofi's CEO, Paul Hudson, sits down with Ted's Lindsay Levitt to highlight the ways his industry is adopting AI, what has surprised him along the way, and how it's transforming every facet of the business. Coming up after a break.
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SPEAKER_02: So we're living in an era with multiple overlapping disruptions that business is facing. And I want to dive straight in and talk about one of the biggest of those, which is AI.
How are you approaching AI?
SPEAKER_00: You know, AI at scale. It's a whole big subject, of course, but for us, it's an idea. We aim to be the world's leading pharmaceutical company using AI at scale. Why and how are we going to do that? It's pretty straightforward.
We have 23,000 people using AI as often as every month. 9,000 people in the company using AI as often as every day. We're boldly taking on the opportunity to completely disrupt the business.
We don't have a choice. It's the fourth industrial revolution. It's here, whether we like it or not. And it's amazing how resistant people can be across organizations and across industries.
But we're all in and have been quite public about that. Our aim is to provide daily decision intelligence, to give people a sort of nudge in the right direction, to give them deeper insights, to allow them to be more effective for what they do. And it's real and it's such a privilege to be involved in it.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you're taking a very aggressive, active stance. What surprised you?
SPEAKER_00: Well, a lot of things surprised you about AI. I mean, for some people, it's Skynet and Terminator.
SPEAKER_02: For some people, they confuse AI with cyber.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying everything is perfect, but I'm surprised that the number of CEOs or executives who,
their first response to an AI conversation is governance, controls, rules, principles. Of course, everything has its place.
But I think we have to be honest with ourselves.
If it is the fourth industrial revolution, which we believe it is, then hesitating, this fear that can take over, can deprive you of so much opportunity. And you have to go for it.
I find that when you talk to lots of CEOs, they really are very hesitant. Some would say even frightened.
SPEAKER_00: I look internally, people are frightened that you get this radical data transparency.
You can see their data real time.
And you're experiencing that.
SPEAKER_02: I've experienced that and still do. People are often shocked that you may get the insight at the same time as somebody lower down the organization.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's a lost opportunity to polish a slide deck and re-present it in the way that I'm supposed to be informed.
It's not a deliberate sort of misleading approach. It's what people know. They get the insight, they craft the story, they push it upwards. And that's life in many corporations.
For us, we get the data. I get the same data at every level that the organization does. I get the insight exactly at the same time. And then people say, pull down, look, the data is not 100 percent correct.
SPEAKER_00:
We'll make it correct, because the data is live. So if you really jump in and make it correct, it'll better reflect what you're doing, right?
SPEAKER_00: But if we wait for perfection, it's simply not going to happen.
SPEAKER_02: Right. So we're seeing fear. And some of that, I guess, is not unreasonable. We read reports about the impact on job losses, for example, to come from AI. I wonder what mindset you believe people need to adopt in the workforce of all generations as they approach, or we all approach, this new future.
You know, the adoption of AI in particular is not about jobs.
SPEAKER_00:
And I know people will think that. And inevitably, more meaningful work is created, and of course, some roles change, or some skills don't match. And therefore, with the help of many of the people in the room, you get to reshape organizations. But in the end, it's really about using artificial intelligence to create this real momentum of decision-making and to be able to take such an advantage over the competition.
And we believe, I believe, that if you create more meaningful work and people focus on insights and action, and less on Excel and PowerPoint and Word,
then there is a chance that they enjoy their work more.
Now, it may lead to productivity gains. It may lead to efficiency. It may lead to all those things. Nobody's sort of denying that.
But what I've discovered so far is when it does, people see it quite quickly.
They put their hand up to do something else or to focus more on insights than data crunching and aggregation.
SPEAKER_00:
You know, I'm old enough to remember when the internet was launched commercially,
and sort of similar arguments, even when the cell phone was launched. Be careful.
But the truth is they made all our lives better.
The use cases are coming. But I think we're starting to understand now how much this is going to change everybody's lives. So who's leading this in the organization? Is it a new generation? Is it specially appointed people?
SPEAKER_02: Where's the leadership coming from? It's an excellent question because maybe I'm the last of the great dinosaur CEOs who got to the top by doing sort of every job.
SPEAKER_00:
I ran Japan. I ran North America. You know, I was in global marketing. You know, I've done all the tasks. I get to the top. And then I've sort of seen everything. And so I can be involved in every discussion.
And now the younger talent are saying, you didn't see AI, old man.
So, you know, I have a better insight than you do.
And oh, and by the way, I'm not just going to push it up to my boss.
I'd like to tell you myself. Right.
SPEAKER_00: So the younger talent justifiably are saying, hey, you know, I don't need to have my work shared upwards by a bunch of guys
SPEAKER_00: who are all sitting there going, what do you think? And none of them actually know.
And so we invert the pyramid. We have to have different people with two, three, four years experience in the room.
Because what do we know? And that's sort of exciting, I think. Really exciting.
SPEAKER_02: So is AI a unique disruptor? If we think about some of the other big challenges, you know, we've got to shift the entire global economy to be sustainable, for example.
Is that comparable in terms of complexity? Maybe more so? How do you tackle that kind of an issue?
I think these are these are the big transformational moments for society.
SPEAKER_00:
And, you know, sustainability is, you know, for many it was carbon neutrality, then it was net zero. It was go to COP28. It was put a poster by the elevator with the meaningful work you're doing to show your commitment. But it's really different now. I think there's a collective realization, certainly in health care, that we didn't do well enough.
SPEAKER_00:
And we're a very purpose driven organization. Right. And so an industry, in fact, we do health, we transform the practice of medicine, we invent miracles often.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's very easy to say, look, we're very purpose driven.
But it doesn't abdicate the responsibility of removing plastic from packaging of vaccines and medicines. It's ridiculous to even think you wouldn't have to. Often it's harder with the regulator, by the way, to get that done than with your own people.
So you've got those kinds of projects going on, have you? We're doing it. We have to do it.
SPEAKER_00: We have to do it because, you know, we have this sort of approach of what can we do that if we don't do it, it won't happen.
Right. And that's sort of our philosophy.
SPEAKER_00: You know, in health care, it's good. The health care delivery of health care creates more carbon than the airline industry.
And that's half of that, let's say five percent, half of that is making drugs, shipping them, doing different things. The other half is people driving to hospitals for an appointment in an overheated, over cooled health care practice too often without the use of a virtual hybrid delivery of health care. And it's the same as the airline industry. And, you know, we feel because we're in health care, we have this unique opportunity if somebody is pre-diabetic, for example, and you coach them and they change their lifestyle and don't become a diabetic,
SPEAKER_00: that's the difference of them creating 16 tons of carbon as a normal adult, healthy, and 48 tons of carbon in their adult life if they become diabetic. That's a 3X.
That's really meaningful. And if we don't step in and help, we just simply never get there. And we're doing a lot of work, I'm doing a lot of work with King Charles and the Sustainable Markets Initiative. Right.
SPEAKER_00: To get people to decarbonize the delivery of health care because it's such a massive opportunity. And presumably you've got to collaborate in very different ways than in the past to do, you know, you're talking about supply chains to deal with something like plastic.
SPEAKER_02: Are you seeing different kinds of skills from people in order to make those collaborations?
Well, I think these functions and the sustainability groups, as I said, have gone from a poster by the elevator to being very actively involved in a lot of work
SPEAKER_00: to do these things properly. And, you know, it's not about a competitive advantage in Sanofi being better at wastewater management or renewable energy than Pfizer or AstraZeneca. That's not a competition. Right.
SPEAKER_00: The competition is us versus, you know, destroying the planet. Right.
So we work a lot together to do the right thing. We work with Nova Nordisk, AstraZeneca, GSK to try and work out ways to be kinder to the environment in the delivery of health.
It's the right thing to do, right? It's a shared responsibility, a collective responsibility.
SPEAKER_02: And we're talking here about big social challenges beyond any one business or industry or even country with an expectation that business needs to step forward. I think partly driven by the fact that policy doesn't always work and we're disappointed with leadership and disappointed with government. So a lot of finger pointing as to who is responsible and who can act on these big shifts. I wonder how ambitious and bold do you feel CEOs should be about stepping forward and helping society through some of these mega transitions that we are faced with?
You know, it's clear that companies are being pulled more into the conversation about individuals' values.
SPEAKER_00: And I think people who work in our company and old companies start to try and identify themselves, perhaps rightly, with the values of the company.
And they're starting to have much higher expectations about the company they work for. And it can be on all the major social issues. You know, there's been so many difficult moments and tragic moments. I'm often written to by people from all over the world. You haven't declared which side you're on on this important subject. Why not?
And people want to know that you are fully vested and the company is behind them.
To be clear, it's almost impossible to get everything right. The world is almost perfectly divided.
SPEAKER_00: You can pick an issue and half your employees will tell you we don't agree and the other half will say, well done.
And we're not used to that as CEOs. We're used to trying to find the right sort of moment to get the majority to say, I'm proud of my company. So you have to retreat a little bit and say, I'll spend my energy on making sure whatever the issue,
that the people, 90,000 people in our case, get the very best chance to live their best version of themselves.
It could be inclusion, it could be race, it could be many different things. It could be LGBTQ plus. But whatever those issues that are being debated strongly or less strongly in different parts of the world, it matters to us that our people feel they can be the best version of themselves. So when people ask, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? I can have a personal opinion, but our organization, if you're looking to match your values with ours, is really about we're in health care, we want you to have the best life possible, how can the company facilitate that in this sort of maelstrom of subjects? And we focus then, I'm not saying we're perfect, I don't think any company really is perfect on this, but the expectation of our own employees to be able to set a standard on an issue and to see it through is real. And leading in these times is more complicated, I think, than perhaps it has been previously.
SPEAKER_00: So you're describing a world where the work of the CEO is changing very fast.
SPEAKER_02: Could you just sum up for us the role of a leader in this new era?
Well, I took this role at the end of 2019 and thought I will roll through my 100-day plan
SPEAKER_00: and I will amble through getting around town halls across the world and shake a lot of hands and do a listening tour. And the pandemic dropped on us within a few weeks after that and worked out of the kitchen not far from here.
And the war, Russia, Ukraine, current war, Israel and Hamas, and I mentioned the pandemic, China, US, the social issues.
SPEAKER_00: And I think what we realized as leading is, I think, put something, described it as the perma-crisis, a sort of cadence of issues that just is relentless. And you really have to have some resiliency leading now, I think, and you have to recognize that there are a series of sprints in the role. There's the fundamentals of the business that must be continued. There's a metronome for us. We feel the responsibility to bring medicines and transformational medicines forward is non-negotiable. At the same time, parts of your organization is in a very difficult situation somewhere in the world. And we have to make sure we have the right energy, experts, support, crisis teams often, more recently,
SPEAKER_00: to protect our people and to continue the work we do.
We ship drugs all over the world irrespective of the stance of politics or anything else. People are people and if they're sick, we'll help.
But it really has got very complicated. So resiliency, agility, being open-minded, recognizing you're not the expert many times, trusting the advice you get from your own people, particularly those on the ground, protecting your people where it's necessary, moving your people where it's necessary. That's the sort of new expectation, really.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think we're all experiencing this sense of perma-crisis.
SPEAKER_02:
Just to finish, it would be great to just get a sense of what are you really excited about right now? Well, I'm incredibly excited.
SPEAKER_00: I touched on it in the beginning about the use of artificial intelligence, particularly large language models, because I think it changes everything.
It's got me questioning whether I could go back and look at medicines that didn't quite make it and wonder if we just didn't know enough with the data that we had to look deep enough.
It can be, you know, recently we just did our, this is a small example, but it's just fun, our engagement survey. We had 409,000 comments, nine million words, and normally somebody would make a nice slide deck to tell me,
SPEAKER_00: the organization, Paul, is very engaged.
Never been more engaged.
How much more engaged? Point one.
Good, thank you. Definitely improvement.
And so I asked them to run the 409,000 comments through a large language model. Forty minutes later, it told me the three things that people love about the company, the three things that people hate about the company.
I didn't need a lot of external support, didn't need teams of people, and it was clear it was no hallucination because it was there right in front of me. And it made sense. And I shared them with people and they're like, yeah, that's us.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the difference between meaningful work, using, let's talk about what it tells us about whether our people really like it here and bring their best or not. I think AI, for me, a relatively new CEO, I have a chance to disrupt structural biology, electron microscopy, I have a chance to invent medicines and undruggable targets that were never touched before. I have a chance to take away the sort of, I should put it, the heavy lifting,
SPEAKER_01:
SPEAKER_00: the interesting, unglamorous work that people don't like doing.
I have a chance to reinvent everything, to do it more efficiently, reinvest in R&D. And I have a chance to get ahead of the competition while they're all worrying. We have governance, but every step forward by us is a step of leaving behind those that are overly sensitive. And we're happy to share, but we can do incredible things for patients
SPEAKER_00: and for the people in the company by being more bold about stepping into the new world. Your passion is infectious. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02:
Thank you very much, Paul. Great to be with you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:
