
Breaking AI Paralysis,
Building What Lasts
Fifteen data and AI leaders. Three key questions and five discussion threads: Why isn't enterprise AI paying for itself yet And how to build what lasts.
5 November 2026 | 18:00pm - 21:00pm | Duck & Waffle, London
What to Expect
Most enterprise AI programmes are stuck between pilot and payoff.
AI spend is rising faster than the value it returns. This session sets the context, then puts the room's judgement to work on what's actually blocking scale, how to hold spend to a measurable return, and what a data and AI foundation built to last looks like. It's also the start of a standing peer group for the industry.
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Industry Trends
Where data and AI actually stand in healthcare and life sciences today.
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AI Paralysis: What's Stopping You from Scaling?
The organisational, technical and regulatory blockers keeping pilots from becoming platforms.
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Enterprise AI ROI
Why spend keeps outpacing value, and how to prioritise the use cases that actually pay back.
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AI + Tokenomics + Compute
The real cost of AI at scale, from model choice and token economics to where you spend versus where you experiment.
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What Does "Good" Look Like?
The reference architecture that won't need rewriting in twelve months.
Agenda
18:00 PM
Arrival & Welcome
Private dining room, 40th floor. |
18:10 PM
Seated discussion & dinner
Five threads, facilitated, off the record. |
20:00 PM
Networking
The City skyline, lit up for Bonfire Night. |
Live polling throughout, covering AI maturity, top challenges and priorities for the next 12–18 months, with results shared back to the room in real time.
Event Details
Join a small, seniority-matched table of data, digital, and AI leaders from life sciences organisations for an evening at Duck & Waffle, forty floors above the city.
We'll sit with three questions worth asking: why AI spend keeps outpacing the value it returns, whether the applications being built now will need rewriting in twelve months, and whether anyone can prove what their AI did, with whose data, and under which rules.
During the Dinner, You Will:
- Work through five facilitated discussion threads with peers holding equivalent seniority, CDOs, CDIOs, Heads of AI/Data Science, and VP/Director-level Digital, Data & Analytics and IT/Tech Strategy leads
- Take part in live polling on AI maturity, top challenges, and priorities for the next 12–18 months, with results shared back to the room in real time
- Close out with networking over the City skyline, lit up for Bonfire Night
About Dinner:
- Where: Duck & Waffle, 110 Bishopsgate, Heron Tower, 40th floor, London EC2N 4AY
- When: 5 November 2026, 18:00pm
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