“Fall in Love With the Problem, Not the Technology”
“Fall in love with the problem. Don’t fall in love with your technology,” said Dr. Irit Eden, a KPMG adviser and former vice president of R&D at Rafael, at the Ximusnxt change leaders forum, led by KPMG. Once a quarter, the forum holds a dedicated workshop with experts and senior KPMG executives who meet with the forum members, who are now at the forefront of transformation in their organizations.
About 80 members were selected for the first Ximusnxt cohort, managers, entrepreneurs, investment professionals, senior executives in product, marketing, finance and technology. The workshops focus on practical tools for driving progress and organizational change under the influence of technology. The community of Israel’s promising managers serves as a platform for the next generation of leadership. The forum connects outstanding talent from across industries and offers opportunities for leadership development, high-quality networking and the creation of impactful collaborations.
Eden, an astrophysicist by training and adviser to companies and venture capital funds in Israel and abroad, was the first to present her thinking and spoke yesterday, Wednesday, at KPMG’s offices in Tel Aviv about navigating a changing world. Dina Pesca Raz, partner and head of KPMG’s technology department, opened the event and told the members: “I have been advising and working in the business sector for more than 25 years, and I do not remember an event like this, in which the levels of uncertainty and the pace of change are unprecedented, are taking place simultaneously on several levels and are creating a complex reality. You are the next generation, building ventures that are supposed to be breakthrough in a changing and complex environment, and we thought it was right to share with you the factors that most dramatically affect ventures and advise you on what you need to take into account when planning ahead in a complex and changing environment.”
Eden referred to the AI revolution. “From 2022 to 2023, when OpenAI and ChatGPT came into the world, we began to accelerate, and we are on an exponential path that keeps accelerating. This event affects our daily lives, industry, companies, startups, HR, funds, it affects the Israeli economy, it affects the world. How do you navigate in such a world? How do you build something that will be relevant today, but make sure it will be relevant tomorrow and five years from now?”
Eden touched on several points to explain how to navigate. “AI is only one layer, but it is accelerating the other tracks, autonomous systems, quantum, robotics. Every six months there is something new. Today Anthropic’s new model was released, and even the myth meant for defense companies. We have not yet started working with it, but it is completely different from what existed until now. So this whole event of change, the giant IPOs awaiting us from SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI, the world will not be the same.”
Eden added everything that is happening in the world, the geopolitical tension, the change Europe is undergoing as it begins to invest money in places it had not invested in before, and the investments flowing in other directions: a wave of investment in AI, defense, robotics and autonomous systems. “This is a change in mindset. So if you are startups that want to conquer the world, or venture capital funds that want to invest in the right places, you need to feel these things,” she said.
According to Eden, the most important thing is agility, the ability to change and adapt quickly to changing circumstances. “The world is not fixed, and the only way to navigate it is to build flexible things and look at how I change over time.”
Eden reviewed the development of artificial intelligence from 2022 to today, when LLMs and generative AI were born, and now designing next-gen AI. “The latest models were trained by the model itself. We are entering a loop in which AI builds the next model that builds the next model. We do not have understanding or control. When companies I advise tell me they need AI, I ask, ‘What do you want to do with it?’ And they answer that everyone uses it, the board demands it and employees want it. To that I answer, ‘This is FOMO. The wisdom is not to say we need it.’ For example, at Salesforce in 2025, 95% of engineers use AI, about $951 million in tokens, and zero increase in features shipped. At Uber in 2026, the entire AI budget was used up in four months. Employees start using it and even the simplest lines of code are given to AI to do. AI is not because I need it. You have to control the process and manage the event. You must define what you are doing with it, otherwise you will end up in places you do not want to be.”
Eden’s motto is, “Start with the problem, not the solution. As a manager, investor or company, you need to show very clear KPIs. Manage the event. When you stay with the same number of people, invest huge sums and do not get output, you have a problem. Today there are fields that need to make strategy decisions every six months. When you are in love with the problem, understand it, break it down and track it, the technology comes later. It is only the way to solve the problem, but it is not the main thing. Then customers know how to look at you and evaluate you because you are speaking their pain.”
Eden recommends building the product architecture properly so that the capabilities are flexible, comparing it to building with Lego, modular. “Building properly means that if tomorrow morning there is a change, one cube is replaced with another. Build the systems correctly. You have to be prepared for the fact that artificial intelligence is going to change the worlds every six months, and you have to follow it. You do not build an organizational structure and then look for the problem, you build the organizational structure according to the problem.”
Eden spoke about two ways to lose: “The first is to run fast but in the wrong direction, nobody uses it, or AI can solve the problem. On the other hand, there are companies that hesitate to take this step, sit on the fence and watch competitors run ahead.”
Pesca Raz said, “The fact that the three axes, the geopolitical one, AI, and the shift of funds into space and defense, is a tectonic event. This is not just another big wave, we are in a tsunami. A venture capital fund manager told me that once they used to fear the company would fail, that the team was not good, but today they have three companies with an excellent team and a good idea, but they were wiped out because of AI, because it became irrelevant. The world of venture capital, which has been operating according to certain models for 20 years, has also had the rug pulled out from under it.”
How do you stay focused? “The question a CEO or entrepreneur should ask is whether I am still solving the problem or just defending my solution? A development manager should ask whether I am adding another tool or building a capability? And an investor should ask whether the team loves the problem more than its product?”
In conclusion, Eden said: “Fall in love with the problem and not with the technology because it will change every six months. Build it like Lego, in a modular and flexible way, and move quickly in the right direction. The fastest way to build the wrong thing is to never stop and ask why.”
Summing up the meeting, Pesca Raz said, “The opportunities are enormous, and if in the past there was great dependence and a need to invest a lot in how we build teams and motivate them, today AI enables very fast development and a rush into the field, but you constantly need to adapt yourself and change the endless, constant pivots.” She also said, “It does not make sense that software costs little today, but it is impossible to find air conditioner technicians. There is a big gap between the things that can be done easily and accessibly through online software and the physical world. We need to connect the real physical world with the power, computing and ability to perform analyses. That is the next wave. We see enormous opportunities to electrify or move the physical worlds into the worlds of software and AI. We are standing on the threshold of a technological tsunami and should be afraid, but more than that we should enjoy this event. The potential is insane. Strategy is the basis for the proper management of a company.”
