Siti Rahman, the CEO of Malaysia-headquartered NVF Bank, hurried through the corridors of the university’s computer engineering department. She had directed her driver to the wrong building—thinking of her usual talent-recruitment appearances in the finance department—and now she was running late. As she approached the room, she could hear her head of AI innovation, Michael Lim, who had joined NVF from Google 18 months earlier, breaking the ice with the students. “You know, NVF used to stand for Never Very Fast,” he said to a few giggles. “But the bank is crawling into the 21st century.”

A version of this article appeared in the May–June 2024 issue of Harvard Business Review.