Malcolm Gladwell

I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and you're listening to Smart Talks with IBM.

Most of what happens in a UFC fight is too fast to see.

A fighter drops their shoulder for a split second.

Did you catch it?

A shift in position that looks insignificant but changes everything.

Were you watching?

Alon Cohen is the head of R&D for UFC.

His job is to help people see those moments, not by slowing things down, but by knowing what to point to after it happens.

By the time you realize something mattered, his data systems have already figured out why.

It's taken 15 years to get here, first with paper scorecards and a TiVo, now in partnership with IBM.

And along the way, Alones learned something that applies far beyond fighting.

The best technology is the kind you don't notice at all.

It just helps you see.

I thought you were going to be like tattoos, muscle shirt.

I thought you were going to represent the brand in that respect.

That you yourself would be a kind of mixed martial arts type.

You are not, in fact, a mixed martial arts type.

Where were you in the tech world before?

What were you doing?

Oh, I see.