Sumith Jayawickrama

Events & speaking

Where the conversation has been happening.

A short record of recent talks — boards, faculties, panels — on what AI actually does for the way organisations think and decide. The slides change. The argument doesn't.

Most recent

Date
April 2026
Host
CINEC Campus
Location
Malabe, Sri Lanka
Format
Panel · keynote remarks
Audience
University students · faculty

Themes

  • The Unified Decision Engine
  • Resilience over hype
  • AI as second brain
  • From labour to logic

AI & Entrepreneurship — Scaling Smart, not just Starting Up.

Invited by CINEC Campus to join a panel on the intersection of artificial intelligence and entrepreneurship. The talk argued that AI is not a tool a founder 'uses' — it is a team member they 'deploy', and that the UDE is the framework that turns a student with a laptop into the operational equivalent of a multinational.

“AI is not a tool you use. It is a team member you deploy.”
“Don't just aim to be a manager. Aim to be an architect of intelligence.”

Read the full post on LinkedIn →

What the talks are about

Four arguments, in different rooms.

The audience changes. The slides change. The four arguments below are the spine — pick the room, and one of them is doing the work.

  1. The deliverable of management is a decision.

    Reports, dashboards and meetings are not the work. The work is the call you make on Monday. Everything before that is cost.

  2. AI exposes management.

    When the data is clear and recall is fast, the next thing to surface is the quality of your decisions. That is uncomfortable, and that is the point.

  3. From labour to logic.

    After 40 years in tea, engineering and FMCG, I have watched brilliant managers drown in manual work. AI is the first technology that credibly lifts them out.

  4. The Unified Decision Engine.

    A simple shape — sources, engine, outputs — for putting AI inside the company instead of next to it. The spine of every keynote.

Formats

How the conversation tends to be set up.

Four shapes I keep being asked to do. They share a thesis, but the room — the time you have, the people in it — decides which one earns its keep.

  1. 01

    Boardroom keynote

    60–75 minutes for boards and leadership teams. Grounded in operations, not models. The central question: which decisions in your business could finally be made well, given AI?

    Boards · C-suite · investor offsets

  2. 02

    University & faculty session

    Built for ambitious students and the people who teach them. The framing: don't aim to be a manager — aim to be an architect of intelligence. Pairs the UDE with practical examples from tea, manufacturing, and FMCG.

    Universities · MBA cohorts · faculty

  3. 03

    Closed-door executive session

    Workshop format, smaller room. The UDE applied to the host company's actual decisions. Walks out with a one-page test for whether each AI initiative is doing real work.

    Executive teams · operating partners

  4. 04

    Fireside / panel

    Conversational. Best when the moderator pushes on the operations versus AI tension. I argue the unfashionable side of most questions, on purpose.

    Conferences · industry panels

“The slides change. The argument doesn’t.”

Inviting Sumith

A short note gets a faster reply.

The most useful invitations name the audience and the question you actually want answered — not "a talk on AI", but "our board cannot agree on whether to spend on this; can you frame the decision for us?"

Speaking enquiries from Sri Lanka, the GCC and Southeast Asia get priority on travel slots.

inquire@sumithj.org → LinkedIn → Read the UDE →