Discover-X 2026 | The Future of Intelligent Operations

Discover-X Brings Southern Africa’s Senior Leaders to Interrogate the Future of Intelligent Operations

Johannesburg, 21 July 2026 — On a crisp winter morning at The Saxon in Johannesburg, some of Southern Africa’s senior executives gathered for something special: a conversation with no easy answers.

Discover-X, the inaugural executive forum hosted by Industry Software Solutions and Support (IS³), was designed to create a space where leaders could sit with complexity, challenge their assumptions, and begin to discover what comes next for their organisations.

Interrogating What We Think We Know

The day opened with a provocation from IDEX Africa’s Edgar Kasenene, whose session set the intellectual tone. Kasenene invited the room to interrogate an uncomfortable truth: that expertise, as organisations have traditionally understood and rewarded it, may be the constraining factor to what they can achieve.

In uncertain times, he argued, the leaders who will define the next decade are those willing to move from expertise to continuous discovery as a discipline, not simply strategy.

The session was participatory and deliberately unsettling, providing a grounding premise for the remainder of the day.

Watch: Discover X – Future of Intelligent Operations

The Renewable Energy Crisis

Keynote speaker Dan Ginsberg of Discovery Green brought one of the region’s most urgent operational realities into sharp focus. His session — Dirty, Expensive and Scarce Electricity — moved the conversation beyond familiar load-shedding fatigue.

Ginsberg presented the more challenging questions of risk, sustainability, and what forward-looking enterprises are doing to get ahead of an energy environment that is only growing more complex. His presentation focused on South Africa’s rich renewable energy resources like solar and wind.

For many in the room, it reframed electricity not as an infrastructure problem but as a strategic and financial exposure that demands executive-level attention.

A Panel Built for the Moment

The cross-industry panel, featuring Tshisi Mkhari, Donald McKechnie, Devesh Roopnarain, and Corne De Beer, examined the new reality of the digital economy with the kind of candour that only a closed, peer-level room can produce.

The conversation ranged across AI and data infrastructure, OT and cybersecurity convergence, digital twins, asset management, and the human challenge of leading organisations through genuine uncertainty and complexity.

The throughline, however, was certain: the old playbook is no longer sufficient, and the leaders who know that are already moving differently.
Read more about OT and cybersecurity here.

The Beginning, Not the End

Discover-X was conceived as the start of a longer conversation.

“We’re trying to push ourselves into the zone of discomfort because growth and progress always come from discomfort,” said Dion Govender, Chief Executive. “The idea today was not to sell any solutions or products. Rather to pique the interest of organisations looking to take a giant step forward.”

The invitation now is to continue that conversation. To take the questions that surfaced, the connections made, and the ideas that haven’t quite settled yet and to keep going.

Discover your X. The journey continues.

Ready to continue your discovery journey?