‘We have to rethink everything’

By Michael R. Malone [email protected] 10-21-2025

New disruptive technologies fueled by complex, fast-paced, and dispersed intelligence have permeated nearly every aspect of our lives with profound implications for society and particularly for businesses and their leaders, asserts Dr. Ingrid Vasiliu-Feltes, a business technology lecturer at the University of Miami Patti and Allan Herbert Business School.

Vasiliu-Feltes, a global thought leader who has operated at the intersection of academia, business, government, and not-for-profit sectors for decades, referred to the altered landscape that blends technology and the physical world as a "tsunami tectonic shift."

"The 'phygital era' has already begun. Almost every workflow in our daily life-our educational realm, our employment realm, our entertainment realm-now combines technological and traditional workflows," said Vasiliu-Feltes. "For the economy, for trade, and even for the way we envision investment-we have to rethink everything in order to be successful in this era."

In a recent Forbes magazine article, Vasiliu-Feltes explored challenges and strategic considerations for leaders who want to be future-ready and future-proof their enterprises in this new era.

"Business models need to be completely reconfigured. Our governance and budgeting styles are not suitable for emerging and frontier technology deployments. Our quality assurance, risk management and auditing methods are also outpaced by the scale and pace of advanced technology deployments," said Vasiliu-Feltes, a digital strategist who serves on the boards of several organizations. "I wanted to signal to boards and C-suites that they really need to think first about how their people, the governance structure, business model, and budgeting operation all need to be adjusted to support technology and deployment."

Vasiliu-Feltes cited a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) report indicating that more than 90 percent of AI use cases fail to show return on investment.

"People don't understand that just deploying technology hoping to enhance effectiveness and ROI is not sufficient. We need to ask instead: How do we govern this novel hybrid workflow? What new business models are needed? If the new governance aligns with the hybrid workflows, that's when you see success," she said.

Vasiliu-Feltes earned an Executive M.B.A. in 2011 from Miami Herbert Business School and has earned postgraduate certifications from MIT, Harvard, and Stanford, and completed a medical residency and fellowship at Columbia University's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

A passion for teaching

Twice selected "Teacher of the Year" while an assistant professor and University of Miami Medical Group faculty member at the University's Miller School of Medicine, Vasiliu-Feltes centered her teaching success in her expansive real-world experience.

"For me, teaching has been foundational to my career. It challenges me to think of novel ways to explain complex processes. Translating digital transformation, digital innovation, health care informatics, or population health into students' verbiage so they can understand and apply these concepts in their careers is always rewarding. I keep teaching because I love it."

Her career began with research at Columbia University, but she grew frustrated that the lag time from clinical trials to benefiting patients was too long.

Vasiliu-Feltes then transitioned to the clinical enterprise where she served as medical director, while maintaining an administrative research role as director of clinical trials. She held several executive leadership roles. At a regional level she served as chief quality and safety officer for UHealth, while at MEDNAX (currently Pediatrix), she held national chief innovation officer, chief quality and safety, vice president of education, and president of Detect Genomix.

A changing business environment

Vasiliu-Feltes embodies the kind of leadership that she believes is needed for success in the business world today and uses a music metaphor to describe that approach.

"While each musical instrument can sound beautiful on its own, you need a director to attain a harmonious orchestra performance. Similarly, you can't blame the instruments and must accept responsibility for poor outcomes," she highlighted. "It used to be that being 'ambidextrous' was sufficient. Still, today you need a highly skilled orchestrator who understands the technology, the business, human resources, cybersecurity, ethics-every part of it."

Vasiliu-Feltes sometimes counsels boards and C-suite members who lament that they've spent an inordinate amount of money on a failed initiative that they believed would be a success.

"But they didn't take the time to train their employees adequately, or they didn't train them in time. When you deploy a multi-agentic AI or blockchain or multi-cloud computing-powered platform, you need to train people six months or more in advance for these new hybrid workflows," she said. "It's not like before when you had a simple technology upgrade-the whole way of doing business has been disrupted."

Dr. Vasiliu-Feltes will discuss "Practical Applications of AI' on March 20, 2026 as part of a new University webinar series.