Realize LIVE day two: connecting strategy to execution

Momentum builds

We started the day the same way as day one — with a run.

And then when we got to General Session, Magnus came on stage on a bike.

So now there’s a question floating around:

Are we doing a triathlon tomorrow?

From inspiration to application

Day one was a lot about connection.  And day two feels a little different.

You can hear it in the conversations — less “what is this?” and more “how would we actually make this work?”

People are getting more specific and asking more challenging questions.  Discussions are more in-depth and there are lightbulb moments around the building.

Designing for what’s next

One thing that kept coming up today was the idea of designing for the workforce you need going forward — not just the one you have today.

A lot of it comes back to practical things:

• how quickly someone can get up to speed
• how complex the tools feel when you first land in them
• whether people feel confident using them

And underpinning all of this is AI, and how we can adopt it fast and smart enough.

From mainstage to real world

What came through clearly from mainstage today was how the big themes are starting to connect.

Joe talked about five core stories — Software Defined Products, Simcenter, Intelligence Center X, Factory of the Future, Cloud — and how they need to work together.

Then Ed Pleet from Shape Corp brought that to life.

He walked through their transformation journey — and what stood out was the pace of change once AI was embedded into simulation.  They’ve moved from something slow, expensive and reactive… to AI‑accelerated part design, and from 18-month development cycles down to around two weeks.

And even then, his message was: we still want to go faster!

It’s a good reminder that this isn’t a fixed end state, and the bar keeps moving.

Inside the conversation

We ended up sneaking into the Transformation Network Executive Q&A — Joe Bohman with Ed Pleet from Shape Corp.

Ed built on his mainstage session and talked through their transformation journey — connecting design, simulation and AI into a single backbone, but also what it actually took to bring people along with that.

It was the reality of doing both at the same time — building the platform and shifting how teams work.  There’s a lot in that for anyone trying to do something similar.

We asked Joe Bohman for a simple takeaway from his session earlier in the day.

He didn’t overcomplicate it: Teamwork

It echoed the comments from Steven Hoinka yesterday, think big, act small and go fast. In fact, it seems everyone who’s going fast, wants to go faster still!

Community Corner

A nice moment from the Community Corner as well.

Frederik Vanhee and Jan Bos ran some hybrid webinars, live from the event, with over 200 people joining from different parts of the world with those in Detroit.

It’s something the team does regularly — community-led sessions — but making it hybrid made a difference. 

Day two highlights

• clear shift towards application and real use cases
• stronger focus on workforce, onboarding and usability
• Transformation Network sessions grounding things in reality
• Community going hybrid and reaching beyond the event
• A consistent theme around connecting things — both technically and organisationally
• and yes… we still have one day to go!

Looking ahead

If you haven’t already, it’s worth checking out Braindate.

It’s a good way to have the conversations you don’t get in a formal session — smaller, more specific, and often more useful. These are the hot topics for tomorrow:

• PLM teams share real AI tool’s experiences. Each person brings a use case
• How are you digitizing Life Science R&D?
• Multi-die in 2030: what breaks first?

You can join via the app.

And finally…

If Magnus turns up with goggles tomorrow, we’ll know where this is heading.