Inside Outside Innovation

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with the legendary co-creator of the Apple retail experience, Ron Johnson. He's the author of the new upcoming book called Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple's Genius. Let's get started. Podcast Interview with Brian Ardinger and Ron JohnsonRon Johnson’s Journey from Target to Apple[00:00:00] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today, we have Ron Johnson. Ron was the visionary co-creator of the Apple Store with Steve Jobs. He's former CEO of JCPenney, worked at Target, and he's author of a new upcoming book called Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple's Genius. Welcome to the show, Ron. [00:00:36] Ron Johnson: It's great to be here, Brian. Thank you for having me on. [00:00:39] Brian Ardinger: Hey, Ron. I am super excited to have you on the show. I've been a big fan of Apple and the whole retail experience. We were talking before I hit record about how my kids often joke that anytime we go anywhere in the world, we have to stop at the Apple Store.So I'm lucky enough to have been to a lot of them everywhere from Paris to Hong Kong to London, et cetera. So, love your work. Maybe to get started, for people who may be unfamiliar with your background and your work as being one of the retail leaders out there as far as innovation talk a little bit about your career in retail.How did you get started in it, and how did you get to the place where you created one of the biggest retail empires in Apple and then further from there? [00:01:17] Ron Johnson: Yeah. I'll just go quick. I grew up in the Midwest, like you, outside of Minneapolis. And coincidentally, I grew up two miles from the first enclosed shopping mall in the world that was invented, innovated, and opened the year before I was born.And I grew up loving stores. And I went to Stanford for undergrad as a soccer player. Went to Harvard Business School, got my degree, was going to go onto Wall Street, and I said, Ron, what do you want to do for a lifetime?" And I thought about all the people I admired. They were doing something they loved, whether it was an athlete, an artist, a musician, or a business leader.And I just decided that retail was something I was going to put my head down and learn how to do. And I went from Harvard Business School to unloading trucks in a store, and I worked my way up through a lot of things. Eventually, I got back to Minneapolis to Target and helped really Target during a a big decade.How Target’s Design Strategy Caught Steve Jobs’ AttentionThe '90s was when Target and Walmart were the big battle, and that was a big retail battle, and Target emerged the winner at that time. Stock went up 12 times. But I had done this big design initiative where we brought design to the masses with a partnership with a guy named Michael Graves. [00:02:32] Brian Ardinger: Yes. [00:02:33] Ron Johnson: That led Steve, who I learned, you were there. Steve had just returned to Apple, had launched the iMac. I know you were at the keynote at that time. Yeah. It was a huge moment that got a lot of attention, but it sold to the Mac faithful. It didn't really accomplish the goal of getting out to the PC owner to switch or a new person to get on the computer.And Steve believed that if he was going to win, he had to control the customer experience. And so, he called me to come out and meet him to talk about leading an effort to create the Apple Store. So that's enough on my background, but it gives you a flavor. I love retail, and I've been doing it my whole career.[00:03:12] Brian Ardinger: I got a chance to read a preview copy of the book that's coming out here in September and loved it. Quite frankly, the, the stories and the insights that you provide are well worth people picking up a copy.But one of the things that stood out is you spent two chapters, I think talking about how love is a strategy. The- book devotes, two chapters to that concept of love is a strategy. Can you break down what you mean by that, and how does that manifest itself?[00:03:34] Ron Johnson: Yeah. I had been at Harvard Business School, and they taught me to manage, and that's where you kind of, you set a goal, you hold people accountable, you have very disciplined processes, checkpoints, and things you do to make sure the business is on track. And that's how most businesses are run.I'm on boards, and it feels that way. But leadership's a very different thing. And when I got to, Target, I realized that I was not a great manager. But I was a great leader. I knew how to inspire people. I knew how to identify a North Star. I knew how to encourage people. And I read a book by Marianne Williamson called Return to Love, and it gave me this vision for how to lead with love.Why Love Became a Leadership StrategyAnd that's how I grew up in my personal life, my family, my neighbors, my friends. I wake up every day thinking, "How do I secure their good?" And I thought, "What if I brought that to work?" And so, I did that at Target, and it seemed to work quite well. And people always wanted to work on my teams.And when I went to Steve, he asked me a question. We had met for three hours, and he said, "What tell me what our customer service philosophy will be." And I said it's very simple. We're going to love our customers." And he said, "We're going to love our customers?" He said... I said, "Exactly what you do, Steve."He said, "No, I don't. I design great products." I said, "But that's an act of love. When you make something easy to use, that's an act of love. That secures the good of the customer. When you allow mere mortals to create a movie." At that time, they had a app called iMovie where you could take a camcorder and then edit and share.I said, "You're allowing people to do something that's gonna change their life. Those are acts of love, and that's what we're going to do in the store. We're going to close the gap between people's interest in technology, that fear, and being able to do great things, and we're going to do that through loving them."And he said we're the most secular ZIP code in the world. Find another word." So, we ended up saying we're going to enrich lives, which worked great. But it is. And so, the book talks a lot about it because I'm a believer, and I learned this from Marianne. There's two ways to manage, essentially out of love and out of fear.Leading Through Love Instead of FearOut of love, you help people soar with your strengths. As a manager, you're asking questions all the time like how can I help today? Is there anything I can- you want to share with me that I can, help you with? What do you need? What kind of research do you need to be successful?"Managers say, "Okay, how's this project going? Are you on plan?" Et cetera, et cetera. And the one promotes a little bit of a culture of fear. You're being held accountable. The other is a much more creative culture, one of love, and they go hand-in-hand. And Steve agreed with it. In the book we talk about Steve said, "Ron, the highest form of kindness is telling the truth."And Steve did th...

They debate the rise of high-impact individual contributors who use AI and agents to create team-level value. They explore how startups may create fewer jobs and what that means for communities and fundraising. They question whether AI will be catastrophic or just reshaping tasks. They also stress treating customer conversations as experiments and the risks to junior training when AI takes over routine work.

Johan Roos, co-creator of LEGO Serious Play and author of Human Magic, blends leadership and creativity expertise. He discusses AI's effects on creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration. He explores risks of overreliance on algorithms and ways to preserve practical wisdom. He also outlines how leaders can balance automation trade-offs and foster human-AI partnerships.

They explore synthetic user research and the rise of AI-generated personas for interview practice. They debate how companies are unprepared for AI and why processes must be redesigned. They discuss the concept of an AI fog and why making small, flexible bets can protect long-term options.

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about why AI agents should speak Latin, how to avoid the agentic convergence trap, and the power of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper-uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, and Mile Zero's Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Let's get startedPodcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton [00:00:30] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and with me I have Robyn Bolton. Robyn, hello, how are you today? [00:00:47] Robyn Bolton: I am great today. How are you? [00:00:49] Brian Ardinger: I am doing well. We are coming off our all directors meeting this week for Nelnet, where we brought in about 250 of our directors from all over the world to talk about AI and other things that are going on in the business, and it's been quite eye-opening. So that's where I've been. I hear you're out on a beach. [00:01:05] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, I'm kind of doing the opposite of your highly productive week. I'm being highly unproductive and am on vacation here in Turks and Caicos. So, I just dragged myself in from laying poolside so that we could talk about innovation, because there's some really, really cool stuff going on.Why AI Agents Speak Latin[00:01:21] Brian Ardinger: We'll get you back to the beach very shortly, but I always appreciate your insights. We will jump right in. The first article on the list is from Tristan Kromer. In his blog, he talks about why my agents speak Latin. I thought this was a very interesting take by Tristan. Tristan, if you've been following the podcast, he actually came and spoke at the IO Summit most recently.He was talking about, in this blog post, about how he is doing a lot more coding and creating AI agents, and he has kind of a unique way to see if the agent is going off the rails. So, what he's done is he creates these personas for his agents, and one of them he calls Cicero, and has it speak to him in Latin phrase to give it a personality.And what he's found, by giving his agents particular personalities and quirks, that they actually come back, and over time we do know that AIs tend to lose the context. You know, they tend to drift over multiple rounds of dialogue. He says by incorporating this little tick of a personality into his agent, he can tell when the agent is drifting to the normal way because it stops speaking in Latin to him, or it's, it drops phrases, or does a couple of other things that make it known that the context is getting too full and the agent's going off the rails.What I found so fascinating about that, not only the fact that it actually goes off the rails, but the fact that it was a way to give the layperson a way to understand if the AI was not doing what he had originally programmed it for. I just thought it was a great insight into it. Using AI Personas to Detect Context Drift[00:02:47] Robyn Bolton: Fascinating. It's funny, because Tristan and I were actually talking about this at the IO conference over breakfast the morning of the conference, and he mentioned that his chief of staff spoke Latin. And we didn't have a chance to get into why that was, so it was great to read this article, and it was also incredibly timely 'cause a couple of weeks ago I had decided to make the jump into using Claude Code and VS Studio and trying to get into the vibe coding.And I told Claude Chat, "Hey, you are an expert in blah, blah, blah," and pretty quickly I noticed the chat lost the thread. And was just being chat and not being the expert and the coach I had asked for, and which then led me to typing in all caps as I usually, is usually how our chats end up. And it was just interesting to read in this article the research about why that was happening, what it is kind of in the background that causes any of the chats to lose that thread and then this kind of little safety net, we put it in there. So great, super actionable article, and now I'm thinking of all the personas my little agents can have. [00:04:00] Brian Ardinger: He was saying that, you know, when the tick disappears from the output, you know, the persona has left the building as well. So you'd kind of treat your quirk as your instrumentation panel and your dashboard. Quite clever. [00:04:11] Robyn Bolton: Yes, very clever. Beware the Agentic Convergence Trap[00:04:13] Brian Ardinger: All right, the second article I want to talk about today is from HBR, and it's talking about beware the agentic convergence trap. And in this case, they talk about three case studies that have recently, in 2024, a federal class action named six major hotel chains, Hilton, and Hyatt, and Marriott, and the gang, of alleging that they had shared AI pricing platform that had produced coordinated room rates across competing properties.The hotels had never communicated directly, but the DOJ and the FTC called it price coordination. A second example of this kind of convergence is a regional grocery store chain replaced its human promotions planners with an AI system and trained it to look at all the same public market signals every competitor uses, and within two quarters of this promotional calendar had converged with the market leaders, and shoppers could no longer articulate why they preferred one chain over the other.And then a third example, they talked about a national landlord had adopted an AI rent optimization platform and used by competing property managers, and it raised the rents in step with rivals it had never spoken to before. And so the US Department of Justice was looking into that as well. What I found fascinating, obviously, about the individual case studies, but the fact that relying heavily on AI as your determination of your strategy has some additional potential downsides if AI is converging the thought and converging the output across particular industries.Why Human Judgment Creates Strategic Diversity[00:05:38] Robyn Bolton: Two big thoughts as I was reading through this. One was I just loved this quote from the article. You know, it's kind of asking why. Why is this convergence happening, and why haven't we seen this before? Because everyone's using all the same data. And, you know, the quote, "Human judgment introduces natural variation. One manager overrides the suggested action. One team moves slowly. One regional leader reads the market differently. Those frictions, often regarded as inefficiencies, are the mechanism that produces strategic diversity."And I think this, as we've talked about in past episodes, is why we need human in the loop, why humans are still valuable, and it made me think of so many companies I've heard that are using AI to brainstorm new ideas.And, you know, the caution is, like, if you want radical innovation, if you want something radically new, AI isn't going to help you. But this is also a caution for you're going to get the same ideas as everybody else because you're sourcing from the same kind of data set, and it's th...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Eric Ries, founder of the Lean Startup Movement, and author of the new book, incorruptible, why Good Companies Go Bad, and How Great Companies Stay Great. Eric and I talk about the challenges and opportunities of creating incorruptible company, the difference between value creation and value extraction, and how companies like Costco and Patagonia build value by violating conventional best practices. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact, let's get started.Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Eric RiseEric Ries on Incorruptible, The Lean Startup, and Building Companies That Last[00:01:00] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have Eric Ries. If you followed this podcast, if you followed the world of. Startups and innovation you know of Eric. He's the author of the Lean Startup, the Startup Way, and he is got a brand new book out called Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Companies Stay Great. Welcome, Eric. [00:01:17] Eric Ries: Thanks so much. Appreciate it. [00:01:18] Brian Ardinger: Eric, I'm super excited to have you on this show. I'm surprised we haven't had a chance to have you on before to talk about some of the previous work with Lean Startup and Startup Way, but I'm excited to talk about this new book because it takes off where the previous books let go.If these books in the past show you how to build or scale new ventures, this book teaches you how to build companies to last without selling out. You know, you open the book talking about by saying you taught people how to build companies worth protecting, but not how to protect them. What did you miss about that first time around and how did this book come about based on what you've learned?[00:01:52] Eric Ries: Well, thank you first of all, thanks for the kind words. And thanks for seeing it as a continuity, because that's really how it's felt to me. I feel like I've been on this journey now, you know, over the course of my career, and when I look back on it, I think I keep discovering things that I'm sure is the most powerful force in the universe.So I feel like when I first learned to code program computers, I was like, this is the most powerful thing in the universe. And then I realized that in writing individual programs was nothing, if you could build, you know, technology platforms. And build whole scale, in large scale technology. I was in love with technology from an early age.And over time as I watched, you know, so many technology products fail, I started to realize that no management is the most powerful force in the universe, right? Human beings make technology, and if you can't manage human beings, you can't do it. And this book came out of my recognition that although over the past 20 years we have gotten so much better at the science of management, and especially thanks to Lean Startup and tools like that. We've been able to really build brand new companies and take them public. Been able to revitalize more abundant old companies and making them more modern.And yet I always felt like we were up against this other force that was even more powerful than management and what I didn't understand, what nobody ever told me I was, I was coming up as an entrepreneur, as an innovator, is that for mission-driven companies especially, success becomes a liability because the more golden the goose, the more temptation there is to butcher it.And I got sick and tired of it. I felt like I was feeding one company after another into a meat grinder. Help people create these really wonderful companies and then have them you know, turn into something almost unrecognizable. And I just felt like we need to stop doing that. And so, this book is the culmination of a many, many year journey to try to figure out like, what is this force that causes this and what can we do about it to stop it from turning?Why Eric Ries Uses the Word “Corruption” in Business[00:03:39] Brian Ardinger: You label the book about corruption, you know, incorruptible. Why is it more accurate word than like mission creep or bad leadership? What about the word corruption? [00:03:48] Eric Ries: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for asking that question because I do think it's something that a lot of people have struggled with, with the book, which is when we say the word corruption, people like think I'm talking about embezzlement or bribery, and of course those things are bad.But one of the really deep insights that I've had, banging my head against this, I think I always think of that famous Mahler quote, you know, I'm banging against my head against the wall, and the wall is starting to give. That's how it felt to me, like it took me a really long time to understand that these actions that transform value creating economic activity into value destroying economic activity, that actually corrupts the foundation of our entire economic system.Because when you ask people to defend capitalism, you know, this is going back hundreds of years now, all the way back to, you know, to Adam Smith, let alone Bastiat and Milton Friedman, and you, you name it, you name it. Someone who's made an attempt to give a moral defense of capitalism. We always say that when people are engaged in fully informed voluntary transactions, then both parties are better off, and that is why free commerce ultimately leads to value creation.And that's like a very logical, very tidy argument. And yet it has preconditions. In order for a transaction to be value creating, it must be fully informed and it must be voluntary. And what we're seeing now in our modern economy is so many ways to make money without creating value. In fact, many of the ways that we consider to be just normal ways of making money are grandparents would've seen as theft, as crimes.So I think we've kind of gradually lost the plot. And so to me, using a bracing word like corruption and, and naming the book Incorruptible, to me was what is necessary to say, look, these actions are not wrong just because they're immoral or even because they're illegal, but rather because they corrupt the economic logic of our whole civilization.Value Creation vs Value Extraction in Modern Capitalism[00:05:36] Brian Ardinger: You talk a lot about this difference between value extraction versus value creation. Can you tell us a little bit more about the dichotomy between those two and, and where the challenges lie. [00:05:45] Eric Ries: Yeah. I saw this incredible video and he was telling this story about going out to dinner with a friend at one of the friend's favorite restaurants. They walked in the door, they sat down, they ordered. The guy took a bite of the food and he, he took, he took out his phone and, and the guy's telling the story. He's like, that's kind of rude, why you taking out your phone? He's like, has this restaurant been bought by private equity? He's like, what are you talking about? He's like, looki...

They debate how lean analytics needs rethinking in an AI-driven world. They unpack why conventional engagement metrics can be misleading when AI is involved. They challenge the idea of human oversight as a reliable safeguard. They explore what breaks first when teams move fast and why intentional friction can actually boost creativity.

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about how to stop forcing motion and start building momentum, the value of design in the AI era, and the comeback of the physical store. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front-row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, and Mile Zero's Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Let's get started.Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton Midwest Venture Capital Momentum and the Greater Plains Summit[00:00:30] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and with me I have Robyn Bolton. Robyn, how are you? [00:00:48] Robyn Bolton: I am doing great today. It is sunny and warm for once in Boston, so couldn't be better. How are you doing?[00:00:54] Brian Ardinger: I think it's maybe the first time that Boston is warmer than Lincoln at this point. I think you said it was 80, and it's 56 right here, so... [00:01:00] Robyn Bolton: I was going to say, we've got one day a year where I have better weather, so I will take it. [00:01:04] Brian Ardinger: Well, things are going well here in Nebraska. Last week was the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders weekend in Omaha, so if people are familiar with that, that's when all the Warren Buffett fans come into town to spend money at Borsheim's and Nebraska Furniture Mart and to learn what's going on.This year, there was a group, the gener8tor and NMotion Group, hosted a Greater Plains Summit where they brought in some investors and angel investors and want to be angel investors to tag along with what was going on at the Berkshire event. It was interesting because there were multiple different venture funds from around the Midwest that all came in.I think it was probably the first time I've seen all of us in the same room, which was quite good, and we had a number of different discussions about what was going on in the Midwest when it comes to venture capital, and it's nice to see more and more folks looking at the Heartland as a place that you can actually invest in new startups and new ideas and that.[00:01:57] Robyn Bolton: That sounds like an awesome week because there is so much potential in the Midwest and the Heartland and the Plains. It always warms my heart when I hear about the venture community and the startups, and that it's not all concentrated on the coasts.Innovation Lessons from Massive Events and the IO SummitSo this week, school is wrapping up. The end of the semester's coming, so I've been reading graduate theses. I read one, it was fascinating. It was a design solution to a crowd problem, but it's about a festival in India. It happens every 12 years, and it draws between 250 million and 300 million people. [00:02:39] Brian Ardinger: Wow.... [00:02:39] Robyn Bolton: To a single town over the course of several days. And I was like, that is bringing the population of America to a town in India and, like, having to create the city and the infrastructure and everything, a temporary city to house a country's worth of people, and it just blew my mind [00:03:02] Brian Ardinger: That puts Burning Man to shame, I think. And the 350 folks that we hosted in Lincoln the other week for the IO Summit, I guess we're going to have to up our game, so. [00:03:10] Robyn Bolton: I'm not sure you want to shoot for 350 million, and actually the festival that occurred last year was a big momentous one, only happens every 144 years, 600 million people. Yes, so I'm like, yay, 350 people for IO. That's my speed. That's my size crowd. [00:03:30] Brian Ardinger: At least you had a chance to meet all of them. [00:03:33] Robyn Bolton: Yes, yes, and have great conversations with them, and at no point did I feel like I was about to be crushed in a stampede, so ... kudos to you. Corporate Innovation: Stop Forcing Motion and Start Building Momentum[00:03:42] Brian Ardinger: Well, let's get into the meat of our podcast. As you know, each week we try to find three or four articles that we've come upon in the world of innovation to share with folks.First one is a short blog post by Tendayi Viki. Tendayi's with The Strategizer Group, and he's got a short little blog post called Stop Forcing Motion, Start Building Momentum. What I liked about this, it was a very just short reminder about what we're seeing in corporate innovation and a lot of places where all these transformation efforts, people spin them up, generate a lot of impressive movement you know, new structures are announced, new teams are announced, dashboards are filled up, and it's a lot of motion.And what Tendayi really talks about is the fact that motion is great, but what really, you're trying to build is momentum. You know, motion peters out as soon as you stop pushing, but momentum keeps going. And so what are some of the things that you can do to kind of build momentum rather than just activities around it?I think that's a good important lesson to remember, especially as you're spinning up new teams or new initiatives, that it's more than just doing things. It's like how do you create things that actually create momentum that allow the initiatives to continue to go forward and continue to build excitement, et cetera.[00:04:49] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, this is a great reminder. You know one of the things that, that like you, that I, I see often and say often is people confusing activity for achievement. Tendayi's first tip in this article to start where belief already exists is so spot on, because rarely is that where things actually start. It's usually like, oh, you know, we need this much revenue, or we need to use this technology, and usually in those places there's a ton of skepticism.Building Credibility and Emotional Energy in Innovation TeamsWell, we should do this, but we've never done it before, and we'll never do it well and blah, blah, blah. So instead, start where belief exists, where people already feel the need, but also feel like it's possible. You get the quick wins, and then you do get the momentum. You get that motion and the velocity and the results and all of those good things that make innovation kind of self-perpetuating.[00:05:40] Brian Ardinger: And just even a little bit of credibility creation goes a long way to, you know, stop the naysayers and/or give you a little bit more runway to actually continue to push that rock up the hill. [00:05:50] Robyn Bolton: Yes. You got to believe you can push the rock. [00:05:54] Brian Ardinger: I think the other point that he makes is how you design for emotional energy and doing things such that the emotions become contagious so that, again, it's not just work, but there's a meaning behind the work that you're doing.[00:06:07] Robyn Bolton: Yep, and we are humans after ...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about how AI may be exposing you, why executives may be more enamored with AI than individual contributors, and how to become AI native in five levels. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Miles Zero's Robyn Bolton, as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Let's get started.Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton[00:00:30] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And with me I have Robyn Bolton. Robyn, welcome back. [00:00:48] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Pleasure to be back. [00:00:49] Brian Ardinger: It's nice to see you in person a week ago at the IO Summit and to have you back on the show. Let's start there. We had a great week last week. You came out and spoke along with some amazing other guests, and we had over 350 people that showed up at the Sheldon Museum of Art for an amazing day of innovation. Thanks for being part of that. [00:01:08] Robyn Bolton: Yeah. Oh no, it was my pleasure. It was an incredible event. The weather was perfect. I don't know how you arranged 80 degrees and sunny, but kudos to you. The venue was absolutely fantastic.You know, to be surrounded by art and you know, we're talking about the art and science, and it's just a beautiful, beautiful venue. And to be on the campus, the University of Nebraska.Had never been there was. Surprised, but should not have been by the size of the football stadium. I told someone, I'm like, I think it may be the tallest building in Lincoln, which is surprising and not, but [00:01:45] Brian Ardinger: it's not the tallest, the capital is the tallest, which is also a beautiful building, but it does become the third largest city in the state during game days. So... [00:01:53] Robyn Bolton: I believe it. Having spent a little bit of time, a football season living in Arkansas, I believe it. It was a fantastic event. All of the speakers were great. So thought provoking. I mean it just like I wrote, if you want to see the future, go to Nebraska. Go to the IO Summit. Lived up to the billing. [00:02:12] Brian Ardinger: Well, I appreciate that. If you follow the newsletter, we'll be posting out some videos and that in the near future. And yeah, look forward to the next one. Maybe IO 2028. We've gone into these two-year cycles because it's fairly big ordeal to pull off. But appreciate all the folks that are in the audience listening who came out for it or supported it. We've got some amazing sponsors, including the weather, that we're there including to help us out. But yes, thank you for being part of it. [00:02:36] Robyn Bolton: And that was not the only big thing going down in Lincoln. A couple weeks ago, Brian, you won the Entrepreneur Advocate Award from the University of Nebraska Center for Entrepreneurship. So massive congratulations to you well deserved. [00:02:52] Brian Ardinger: Well, thank you for that call out. One thing about advocating for entrepreneurs, it really is about the communities. And actually to point to that, one of the interesting things about that particular award is the very first time they gave out the award many years ago, the first recipient was a person called Greg Christensen. Greg was one of my early mentors.I go back to high school, and I was the state DECA president, the vocational training DECA program. People may have heard of that. I was the state president in 1986, and Greg was in charge of the state officer's training and became an early mentor of mine. And so, to get that award many years later when your original mentor was the original recipient of it, it felt very good to continue that legacy and to see where the ecosystems come from.[00:03:36] Robyn Bolton: Yeah. No, that's amazing. I love that it came full circle and thank you for letting me put you on the spot. I knew you were gonna be too humble to mention it, so I had to. [00:03:46] Brian Ardinger: Well, I appreciate Robyn. Alright, well let's get into the meat of our episode today. We've got a couple of articles we want to talk about in the world of innovation. The first one. So, my friend Barry O'Reilly, he has a new book out, but this particular post is called AI Ain't Making You Better, it's Exposing You. In this post, he talks about the rise of the productivity flex. I've also heard this called like token maxing and some other things where people are putting all their effort into AI generating things for the sake of generating.And the question is, is it actually making you better or is it exposing you for the patterns and the things that you're doing, is it actually helping you or are you just creating stuff for creating stuff? So, I thought it was an interesting topic to have a conversation around, to talk about, you know, what are people doing with this stuff?[00:04:31] Robyn Bolton: Yeah. I think this is definitely one of those, and not, or situations is, yeah. It ain't making you smarter, but maybe it's making you smart enough in some things, but not smart enough in others. So, one of the things that struck me, I'd wrote about this research earlier, but he calls out some 2025 research that Harvard Business School professors did with 776 professionals at P & G, my old stomping grounds, and no surprise individuals using AI, fared just as well as teams not using AI.But when you put a team of humans together with AI, their productivity tripled. And I just thought this was such a great example of the importance of teams and having, you know, diversity of teams, different perspectives, multiple people working together. Making AI kind of one member of a bigger team.[00:05:33] Brian Ardinger: I think the other thing is the fact that, again, it's not the tool or it's not AI, and if you're using it, it's what you're using it for. And the people I talk to in that, you get a report back or something, it's like, hmm, okay, Claude obviously helped you with this. And so, you have to be careful to not rely on that as your sole thing.You still have to bring back the human, you know, we talked about that quite a bit at the conference and that. But this focus on being intentional about what you're creating and what you're using the tools for and not relying on it just to put out output. It's easy to fall into the output phase where it's very easy to ask a question and get it, you know, everything put back into it.And the AI's very good at adding onto the thing. So, you know, you ask it a question, it answers it, and then it says, oh, here's five other things you hadn't thought of, or six other questions you need to ask. And all of that adds up to the stuff that you have to go through and understand. And if you're just pushing it back out into the world, are you really creating and moving things forward?[00:06:29] Robyn Bolton:

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about the addictive nature of AI, the levels of innovation metrics, and how peer influence can make or break your AI rollout. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper-uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, and Miles Zero’s Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Let's get started.Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn BoltonAI Addiction, Innovation Metrics, and Peer Influence in AI Rollouts[00:00:30] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and with me, I have Robyn Bolton from Mile Zero. Robyn, welcome. [00:00:47] Robyn Bolton: Thank you very much. Great to be here as always. [00:00:50] Brian Ardinger: It's another amazing week in innovation and we thought we'd get right to it. The first article we want to talk about is called Acceleration Flow by Raymond Mark from the publication Mold and Yeast.Why AI Feels Addictive to Builders and CodersFascinating article. The basic premise of the article talks about how Raymond is an addict. Not a metaphorical addict, but he is now addicted to building using AI such the fact that he's spending tokens like it's the end of the world. And he talks about this environment where the AI now has created almost a gambling type of a feeling where you vibe code your way to something. You put your tokens in and you pull a slot machine and out comes some type of output that's just good enough to get you to put the next tokens in to try the next prompt and the next prompt.So, it was a fascinating look behind the scenes that I think just now more and more people are beginning to discover this particular anomaly or environment that people are becoming to find when they start doing this AI stuff. [00:01:53] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, this was really interesting. I mean, I use AI every day and I felt this deeply. It actually reminded me of a conversation that I had with someone probably a year and a half, maybe two years ago, who astutely predicted she's like, I think AI is going to become the next cigarettes in terms of being addicting and it's now, it's cheap and plentiful and it's getting us hooked on it. The Dopamine Loop of Generative AI and Vibe CodingAnd then they can raise prices because we're addicted and we'll keep going with it. And this article lays out a really good argument for that. Not using cigarettes but using gaming and gambling as a metaphor and kind of everything that it outlines of, like you said, it's almost right. It's enough to get you to put the next token in. The feeling that you're upleveling and you're gaining capabilities when you're really kind of not. In fact, you're with kind of outsourcing tasks and things, you're actually losing capabilities, but you have the illusion that you're gaining capabilities. It was just really fascinating all of these almost mind tricks that happen when we use AI. [00:03:07] Brian Ardinger: I read the article earlier last week and then three people came up to me this week unprompted and said, I'm addicted to this stuff. They just started to, you know, use Claude code or started to get a little bit more deeper than just prompting a chat bot and the word they used was addicted. One, again, it's so easy to get something back out that dopamine hit of, oh, I tried this and actually it's pretty good and let me try if I can go again.AI FOMO, Always-On Agents, and the Fear of Falling BehindAnd then the second addiction is, I'm addicted to the fact that I'm falling behind. I had a coder come up to me and said, I am very worried that I don't want to take a break because what, during my break, I want my agent to be doing something for me.And so, this constant pressure to interact with the device to continue to move forward is interesting. I think the flip side to that is what are we building and what are we doing? Are we just putting tokens into the machine or are we actually creating value in the process? And I think that's the next phase that people will be hopefully going through. [00:04:04] Robyn Bolton: This line struck me, making yourself obsolete feels like freedom, dressed up as ambition. And I just thought, Ooh, that, that hits a little close to home. [00:04:14] Brian Ardinger: And well, we will see what happens. I am addicted as well. Probably not to the extent that some of these folks I'm talking to, but, but who knows, you know, there's always next week. [00:04:21] Robyn Bolton: Exactly. How Peer Influence Drives AI Adoption at Work[00:04:23] Brian Ardinger: The second article I want to talk about today is from HBR. It's talking about Peer influence can make or break your AI rollout.Fascinating thing about this is HBR took a look at how companies were deploying AI and which ones were being successful at deploying it and which ones were not. And one of the primary findings was the fact that companies and the people that were actually peer reviewing or showing what they were building with their colleagues, and that using peer influence as a way to encourage adoption was actually a more effective way than either a mandate or just giving people the opportunity to interact with these particular tools.[00:04:59] Robyn Bolton: The degree to which the peer-to-peer learning influences, it was surprising. The fact that it has an influence I didn't find surprising. What I did find really shocking was that leadership communication and leader encouragement had little to no impact on AI usage.Why Leadership Messaging Alone Does Not Increase AI UsageAnd you know, the article does go on to say that like, hey, even though there's no measurable impact, leaders do still play a really important part in encouraging the experimentation. Encouraging the sharing of learnings. I was surprised by that. And also, as I said, not surprised by the peer-to-peer because when somebody you work closely with and trust is like, hey, I'm doing this. It's just kind of this reassurance of like, oh, if I log into the GPT, I'm not going to get fired like, because I've been replaced. Here's someone who's still employed using AI. I can do it. [00:05:54] Brian Ardinger: I'm hearing more and more people tell me, oh, I used this tool to do this. Versus in the past, you could see their work and say, you obviously used something for this. But they're more open about sharing those things, and I think that environment in your company to be open to sharing both the good and the bad and like, what's working, what's not working, here's what I'm using it for, I think opens up a lot of doors because I think a lot of people just don't know necessarily how to use this or what particular use cases could be valuable.It's all about, at this stage, kind of the experimentation and understanding and seei...