Igor Mikhalev is a Business Technology & Innovation Strategy leader and a researcher with more than 15 years of experience in startup, academic as well as state-of-the-art corporate and consulting environments. His focus is on helping clients deliver competitive advantage and business performance improvement through rigorous application of state-of-the-art Business Strategies and use of emerging technologies – Blockchain, Machine Learning, Data Science and Data-intensive architectures. Prior to joining BCG as a Project Leader at Platinion, Igor headed up a Life Sciences software engineering group at Elsevier and later built a successful start-up that delivers data science services. Igor holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration and Economics (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands) as well as a Master’s degree in Software and Automated systems engineering. He is also expected to earn his PhD from UvA (New Venture Performance, strategy and innovation) in 2020. He built successful teams and worked in multiple geographies: Netherlands, Russia, United States and Germany.