×
🎧For more with Kavanaugh, listen to The BizSTL Podcast.
Long before St. Louis had a Major League Soccer team—and longer still before World Wide Technology co-founder and CEO Jim Kavanaugh became a part-owner of St. Louis CITY SC—he was a boy tasked with maintenance work in a lot across from the future site of CITYPARK in Downtown West. Kavanaugh's father was a bricklayer and the business manager for the Bricklayers Union when it moved into the building at 2000 Market that now houses Maggie O'Brien's. While his father worked out of an office on the second floor, Kavanaugh toiled outside, pulling weeds and shoveling rocks in the parking lot. “To think that someday in the future we’d be building a state-of-the-art soccer stadium right across the street is pretty amazing and humbling,” he says. That boy pulling weeds also could not have imagined what his adult self would be doing, leading a massive company that offers technology solutions for organizations around the globe. Now, World Wide Technology is betting big on artificial intelligence. Late last year, the company announced plans to invest more than $500 million in AI services for its clients. “It’s an investment that we’re absolutely committed to,” Kavanaugh says. “I truly believe that AI is going to be the most transformational technology that mankind has ever experienced.”
What can your customers expect from this push toward AI?
It will come in a number of different ways. At World Wide, we have what we call our Advanced Technology Center, which started out as an individual rack of equipment 12 to 15 years ago. It has evolved into multiple data centers and multiple buildings here in St. Louis, and there are also virtual and physical labs around the world. We’re going to very aggressively build out what we call our AI proving ground, which is an innovation ecosystem that will allow us to test next-generation, generative AI capabilities. So it will involve the physical building out of these very complex technology platforms that we will have in our labs that customers can use to test what they may deploy in their data centers. There will also be capabilities that hyperscalers will use to consume and evaluate things that they may be doing in their specific cloud environment.
You’ve said that AI will be our most transformational technology. What are some real-world applications that could change our lives?
We're in the very early stages. Sometimes, when certain new technologies come out, there’s this hype cycle that people go through. A lot of times, the hype cycle may not end up materializing to be as impactful as people thought. But I truly believe that AI will. There are two different tracks to think about when you consider how AI is being consumed today. One is the general consumers. Those are individuals like you and I. We might go to ChatGPT or these other behemoths like Microsoft Azure or Google Gemini and use them more like a search engine. These large language models are going to allow you to go out and write prompts, which are similar to a search question you might enter into Google. But they're going to give you much deeper and richer information.
What are some examples of deeper, richer information?
You’ll get much more than data. It may provide you with content. It may write a paper for you. It may render images that you otherwise would never have been able to create. It will be able to do all these things from a consumer standpoint that individuals are tapping into right now. It’s evolving at such a rapid rate.
What’s the other track to consider?
Big companies are going to take a different route. They have their own proprietary data. The challenge that they’ll have to figure out is how to create a more unified data fabric and aggregate all of these different structured and unstructured data sources to bring everything together. Until they do that in an organized way, you can’t fully exploit and take advantage of these large language models or smaller, what I would call more purpose-built, language models that will be used to drive these outcomes. Some of that is happening, but there will need to be a lot of heavy lifting required for companies to do it.
How careful do companies need to be when it comes to organizing and protecting their data?
You have to be thoughtful about how you organize that data and who gets access to that data. The governance, controls, and the cybersecurity around it are important. You’re going to have bad actors. Hackers are going to be trying to hack into your organization to get into these large language models and these purpose-built models. That can be very, very disruptive. For companies to do it, it’s going to take more time, more thought, and more design, but I believe that the outcomes are going to be every bit as significant as we think.
Are there strategic questions that leaders ought to be asking themselves or their organizations about AI implementation?
It's a good question, and I'm dealing with a lot of this right now. Every customer that we're working with, from the chief executive officer to their executive team and, at times, their board, they're thinking about a few things from a technology standpoint. There are three of them that I think are core to every organization. One question is: What are we doing in regards to digital transformation?In other words, how are they thinking about differentiating their business by digitizing things that may have been done manually. Another is: How do we incorporate that digital strategy, while leveraging AI? You have to figure out how to organize your data in a very unified way. Then, it’s: How do we do it securely?And not just securely, but in a way that's governed.
Beyond AI, how much more are companies emphasizing IT capabilities?
If you think about it, 20 or so years ago, it was really a back-office function. It was not necessarily front and center, and strategic to the CEO and all of the executive team. Now, it is front and center, and it’s incredibly important. It's game-changing. I believe that companies that aren’t thinking that way are going to get left behind.
Shifting gears, World Wide Technology is regularly ranked as one of the country’s best places to work. What are some strategies for building a healthy culture?
It’s something any company can do, but it’s a lot easier said than done. There has to be a real commitment to doing it the right way. Whether you’re a startup of a couple people or an organization with 100,000 people, ask yourself: How do I want to be perceived? What are the values and behaviors that I want to demonstrate? It’s not about memorizing those values. It’s about understanding what they really mean.
Can you give me an example?
When we were younger, we hired people that had the mindset of being team players. We were ambitious and passionate, but we actually really cared about each other. It was very important to us to support our teammates and make sure we were there for them. When we got bigger and started hiring more employees, we needed to be clear that these are our values and this is what we expect out of our employees and how we expect people to behave. It’s part of the interviewing process. If they don’t align with what you think are important, maybe World Wide is not the right company for you. We just recently had our sales kickoff, and Joe Koenig—one of my college roommates and the president of World Wide Technology—and I were talking about how, at one of our early sales meetings, it was just five or six of us at a table. At the one we had a few weeks ago, there were about 2,000 people there—and that’s only part of the company. The great thing was that the culture feels even stronger with everyone we have today. It’s amazing how our employees rally around not just winning, growth, and the great opportunities that we have around AI and digital transformation—they’re really, really passionate about our values. I'll tell you where I get my greatest inspiration. It's when we see people within the organization support each other when someone is experiencing a challenge. The ways we've seen people come together to support each other are probably some of the most inspiring things that I've seen.
Along those lines, you’ve been part of a team environment since your soccer playing days. Now, you’re part of St. Louis CITY SC’s ownership group, bringing Major League Soccer to your hometown. What was your favorite moment from last season?
It’s difficult to pick just one, but I will say that the experience that the fans have created—and the team across the board—has been off the charts. It’s been so exciting to see the excitement, enthusiasm, and passion from the fans before and during the games. It’s just been great. I think it’s had a great impact, and I couldn’t be happier and more proud of what’s going on.
Mike Miller
Miller isSt. Louis Magazine's associate editor. Like this story? Want to share other feedback? Send Miller an email atmmiller@stlmag.com.
Read more by Mike Miller
