Inside Outside Innovation

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with New York Times bestselling author and founder of Moves The Needle, Brant Cooper. Brant and I talk about his upcoming book, Disruption Proof, and provide a sneak peek into our upcoming IO Live event on September 20. Let's get startedInside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help you rethink, reset, and remix yourself and your organization. Each week we'll bring you the latest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses, as well as the tools, tactics, and trends you'll need as a new innovator.Interview Transcript with Brant Cooper, CEO of Moves The NeedleBrian Ardinger: [00:00:30] 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 Brant Cooper. He's the founder of Moves The Needle, New York Times bestselling author of the Lean Entrepreneur, and author of an upcoming book, which I'm so excited to talk about called Disruption Proof: Empower People, Create Value and Drive Change. Welcome Brant. Brant Cooper: [00:01:07] Thanks Brian. Pleasure as always. Brian Ardinger: [00:01:10] I'm excited to have you back. As our audience knows you've been a part of the lean scene for a long time. You had a chance to speak at our IO2020 Summit. And we're going to do a little something different with this podcast episode, because we're having you back on September 29th for a live event. It's part of our IO Live series. Basically, we're going to have an hour to talk about the book and have audience questions and do a little bit more in depth stuff with you. So, I wanted to save this episode more as a preview to get folks excited about the book and excited about some of the things we're going to be talking about. So, with that, you got a new book out called Disruption Proof. Tell us how you got to the point of writing a new book and what's it all about? Brant Cooper: [00:01:50] Yeah. So, I guess it's been in the works for a couple of years, actually. It seems like so pandemic ready, but that was maybe just fortuitous that I was already embarking on it. And then of course the pandemic itself hit and business kind of dried up. So that gave you the opportunity to really crank it out. You know, over the last seven, eight years taking some of that lean stuff into the large enterprise. And it's just, that was an interesting journey in the sense that, you know, all of this lean startup, lean innovation stuff really started in Silicon Valley startups.I mean, honestly it preceeded all of that, but you know, us tech startup people like to feel like we've invented everything. There was a movement. Right. And so, starting in startups and then we bring it into the big companies. And inevitably we start with the innovation groups. As I'm trying to work through the change that is required inside of these companies, I really realized that there's uncertainty everywhere inside the enterprise.There's something happening here, way bigger. And this is perhaps obvious to a lot more people. It takes me awhile. I think really this fundamental shift from the industrial age and management practices and even management organization, that's based around the industrial, really this level of complexity and endless disruption that is in the digital age, leads to this uncertainty.And we continue to try to tackle the uncertainty the way we did in the industrial age. And it just creates more angst, and it creates more doubt and people just really wondering what the heck is going on. Then the pandemic hits. And I think we blame all of that angst and anxiety on the pandemic. And now people are like, ah, man, I can't wait to get back to the old normal. And yet the old normal was still filled with that uncertainty. And so that's really what the book ended up addressing. So again, I didn't start out with writing, you know, sort of this post pandemic book, but because I was writing it right in the middle of all of this, there really ends up being these pandemic…and how do you respond to it? And what does this mean in that bigger picture that ends up being what the book is about? Brian Ardinger: [00:04:05] It's interesting because I think, you and I have I've been talking about disruption forever. And innovation groups have been talking about it and trying to figure out how to do this. And the pandemic really seems to have taken that theory and made it real for most people.I mean, everybody on the planet to some extent has been disrupted by various means of, of what happened during the last 18 months. And it really, I think has brought out the conversation where it's no longer theory we're talking about. It's like, yeah, I get it. But now I really get it. But I still don't know what to do about it.So, you know, I've seen a proof of your book in that you really capture it and talk about the five elements of what you need to be doing to embrace this new world of work. So maybe talk through a little bit about that and some of the things you found out. Brant Cooper: [00:04:48] Yeah. So, to me, the key is to all of this, is that it's not really the technology, even though we're in a digital revolution and we're doing digital transformation and we're working in innovation. It just really isn't about the technology because there's not that much uncertainty around the technology.It's really about the mindset and the way we have to change our thinking and our behavior relative to this massive change in technology. And so, I described the behavior change that we need based upon these five elements. And so, empathy, exploration, which is basically admitting what we don't know. And so going out and learning. Leveraging evidence, so data plus insights to help us inform decisions. We don't want just algorithms and AI deciding for us, but certainly what we go and figure out needs to inform our decision. This concept of equilibrium, which is building a balance between the execution, everything that we know we have to get done, and this exploration work, meaning that we have to go and learn something first. That's a continuum throughout the organization. Even your core business needs to do some amount of exploration. It's not this bifurcation of one side of the house is execution. And one side is exploration. I think that's industrial age innovation thinking. And then the final one is ethics. And with all of the data problems that we have, and with livable wages and all of these other things that have really come to the fore, it's really incumbent upon businesses to figure out how they live up to their own values that they establish and that they broadcast.And again, that ends up being something that we have to drive down into the human behavior. And so rather than some of the big management theories on how you do change, which is very top down. I wanted to describe the behaviors of what people actually have to do day in, day out inside of their jobs. And it really is a ground up initiative.It requires obviously leaders to buy in and go, yes, we're going to change. It's kind of a pincer move, but you have to start with developing that behavior on the ground. And I guess the one other point I would make about it is the reason why I'm somewhat optimistic about that is this behavior already exists, right?The people that are subscribing to your podcast and tha...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation. And we sit down with Jennifer Henderson, CEO and Founder of Tilt, Jennifer and I talk about Tilt's startup journey and helping companies reimagine the HR leave process, as well as the trends, challenges, and opportunities companies are facing in this dynamic new world of work. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, pioneers, and businesses. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript with Jennifer Henderson, CEO and Founder of TiltBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today with me is Jennifer Henderson. She is the CEO and founder of Tilt. Welcome to the show. Jennifer Henderson: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to chat today. Brian Ardinger: Hey, I'm excited to have you on the show as well. We met through, I think the Rocky Mountain Venture Club and Nebraska Angels and Tilt is an amazing company. I'm very excited to be a part of having this conversation with you. It's in the HR talent tech space. And it's re-imagining leave management to help companies with retention and streamlining their processes, helping with compliance, but to think you called it, bringing the human back to leave.How about you tell us a little bit about the Tilt story. How did you conceive the company and how did it get started? Jennifer Henderson: Yeah, sure. The origin story for Tilt. Not that unique, I'm sure to a lot of the other guests that you have that have founded a company. It was completely born out of personal experience. So, my past life was in corporate America.I worked for 15 years in Fortune 500 companies and I loved it. I absolutely loved my career. I gave everything I had to it. I got very accustomed to promoting every two years and being the go-to person and being in the top of the nine box. Really just got comfortable sitting at that proverbial table, so to speak.And then I got pregnant and overnight everything changed. I wasn't that person anymore. And that was devastating to me and frustrating to say the least. So, at the time stage of my career, I really turned the other cheek and kept moving forward, you know, clamoring my way back up the ladder. And then five years later, different company, different stage of my career I became pregnant with my second. And this time I actually had a promotion rescinded. So that was enough for me to say this isn't right. I don't quite know yet what the solution is, but I do know that I just can't turn the other cheek again. So, I founded Tilt four years ago. Again, not really knowing what the solution would look like at that time, but we've done all your necessary stages of a startup: iterate, MVP, beta tests, listen to users, see what sticks, and here we are. Brian Ardinger: So, moving from that corporate world to the startup space, how did you start adapting to the fact that you were moving from, you know, that exploit stage working in a company that knew its business models were on that certain kind of path. Versus jumping into a startup environment, which is much more in the exploration phase, where pretty much everything is uncertain and unknown. Talk me through how that process went for you. Jennifer Henderson: Very humbling is how that process went. I felt pretty competent in my business acumen, my ability to build a team, my financial acumen, kind of everything that comes with to your point of more put together and structured organization. Turns out that doesn't all translate, and the world of entrepreneurship has been a very, yeah, I just I'll use the word again, but humbling experience to know that it's not a translatable and, you know, this worked here, so it's going to work there, type of a scenario. I actually used to in interviews say, Oh, dealing with ambiguity is one of my towering strengths. I didn't even know what ambiguity was until I entered this world of entrepreneurship. It is a whole different world. The short answer to the question, it was a very, very jarring transition and I was not ready for it. And I've spent four years adjusting and learning and throwing myself into doing work different as an entrepreneur. Brian Ardinger: Are there particular resources or hacks or things that you've learned along the way that you would recommend to those early-stage founders going through the same thing? Jennifer Henderson: Yeah, it's a great question. My road to competence in entrepreneurship was just leaning into every free webinar, resource, book, person, who back in the day that we could sit and have coffee would have coffee and teach me. And I really leaned into one of my early leaders, told me to be a sponge. And I love that advice. And I really truly like embodied that and tried to soak up, who's done this before, what lessons have they learned? And how can I learn from that? I think structurally I'm a big fan of Brad Felds. So, I love really all of his books, course works, podcast interviews, et cetera. I think he speaks in a very accurate and real translatable way to being an entrepreneur. Brian Ardinger: You just went through the Techstars workforce development cohort and congratulations on getting through demo day. What's that journey been like going through Techstars program and more importantly, I think, what do you see the journey is post demo day? Jennifer Henderson: Well, I got into this program with Tilt after four applications. So, we tried four times to get into Techstars. It's been an aspiration of us as a company for quite some time for a lot of reasons. Most notably, it is very high on the brand recognition spectrum in terms of validation of coming out of Techstars as a graduate. And that was something that we wanted quite honestly to have on our resume. So to speak is a Techstars alum. And, you know, hindsight 2020, everything happens for a reason. This was the first cohort of the workforce development track in the Techstars ecosystem. And it was absolutely meant for us. Right. We had 11 other brilliant companies around us that were either selling to the same customers or fighting the same ecosystem battles. And it was just a lot of great synergy going through that program.Everything that we would have hoped for and more in terms of plugging into the Techstars network, having the validation of being an alum, as well as the content, I was very firm in that I wanted our organization to have a strong foundation of all of the components of building a scalable and sustainable startup.And I mean, you really can't look to much more tried and true than Techstars to get that type of a foundational acumen. So that was delivered. And then some. And then to answer your question and where we go from here, we have a lot of great tailwinds, both internally and externally in terms of the problem that we're solving at Tilt. And coming out just this week as a grad of Techstars, we plan to continue that momentum through the network connection...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Josh Linkner, Author of the upcoming book, Big Little Breakthroughs: How Small, Everyday Innovations Drive Oversized Results. Josh gives us a sneak peek of his new book, shares some of his research and stories about how you can take action and be more creative and innovative every day. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat to what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript with Josh Linkner, Author of Big Little BreakthroughsBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today with us is Josh Linkner. He is a creative troublemaker, jazz guitarist, founder of five tech companies, keynote speaker. I think you've done over a thousand keynotes. And you've written a new book that's coming out called Big Little Breakthroughs. Welcome to the show Josh. Josh Linkner: Thanks so much for having me. Pleasure to be with you. Brian Ardinger: Hey, I'm so excited to have you on the show. And I'm excited to have you because you have a brand-new book coming out. You're an author and have written a lot of stuff out there. What made you decide to start in another book and what's it all about? Josh Linkner: Well, so Brian, you and I share the passion and love for human creativity in all its forms. And bringing that to life and in the business sense. And that's really been my whole career again. I started as a jazz guitarist and I built and sold several companies.I've been involved in a launch of about a hundred startups. But what happened is that to me, Innovation, I think is so misunderstood. And even though I've written three other books on the topic, I really said, could we flip it upside down? Now, most often we think of innovation as these massive change the world things.But in that context, that's not for most people. You know, most people aren't wearing a hoodie or a lab coat. And so, I tried to make this like Innovation for the rest of us. It's really focused on helping everyday people become everyday innovators. So, I tried to demystify the creative process, lots of fresh research.I spent over a thousand hours in research and interviews with people all over the world. And what we came up with is this notion of big little breakthroughs, which are small everyday acts of creativity that add up to big stuff. It's sort of like the little baby steps of creativity, but when you think about it, in terms of high velocity, lots of little approaches, it's way less risky.It's way more accessible. It's way more fun. And they can all add up to great things, while we're developing the skills. So I think that most people have Innovation backwards. It's not swinging for the fences. It's actually going after it. One little, teeny idea at a time. Brian Ardinger: Well, and I think that's so important. You know, the work that I do with companies and that. A lot of the times, first thing we have to do is kind of level set of what innovation means. And I think you're right. A lot of people think that innovation has to be, you know, I've got to create the next Uber or the next Facebook or whatever the case may be. And a lot of the real value is created at that iterative approach almost. Where it's like, how do I spot problems in my workplace or in my life? And how do I solve those? And it can be something, you know, fairly simple or small. But those things add up over time and it's good to have that level set of what innovation means. Josh Linkner: By the way real quickly. So new research out of Harvard shows that, you know, we think that our economy is driven by Elon Musk, inventing some new spaceship or whatever, and yes, that grabs the media attention.But a new study from Harvard shows that 72% of our gross domestic product here in the United States is driven not by crazy giant ideas. It's by the little ones. And yet sometimes they show up as incremental. Sometimes there's just little things that don't capture the media attention, but maybe you make a tweak in the way you pitch your product or service, and your sales go up 11%. Or maybe you hit your factory floor. You, you find a new way to be more efficient and those little things are less glamorous, but they're absolutely impactful. Brian Ardinger: Absolutely. What holds people back from taking these creative steps and that. You know, is this something that's found in every one of us or what holds people back from creativity?Josh Linkner: Absolutely in every one of us. And the research here and I've been studying human creativity now for 20 plus years is crystal clear. That all human beings have enormous reservoirs of creative capacity. Much of it is dormant, but we all have that capacity. Our hardware's there. Like your brain and Picasso's brain are pretty darn similar.You know, we all can be creative. Now, we don't all develop those skills, which is kind of sad, but we all have the capability to do so. That level set number one. What holds most people back is not natural talent, it's fear. So, fear is that poison of course that robs us of our best thinking. And you know we've all done it.You're in a meeting and you have a crazy cool idea. But instead of sharing that one, you share your safe idea. Because you don't want to look foolish or be embarrassed or whatever. And it's a totally natural thing, but fear and creativity cannot coexist. So, we've developed, and I share in the book a number of systems and processes, and even techniques. Think of them as like idea extraction techniques that are way more fun than brainstorming, way more effective than brainstorming, but they essentially help people cut through the fear to get their best thinking forward.Brian Ardinger: So, talk a little bit about that. Like how do you generate the best ideas and actually take something small that you may think is meaningless at the time, and then create something of value from it?Josh Linkner: Well, I've studied this a lot, you know. If the premise is that we all have dormant creative capacity and by the way, mine's dormant to. I still have, you know, extra capacity, we all do. Then the question is like, how do you extract it? What's the best technique to get it out into the surface and drive the outcomes that matter most to all of us. And so, what I've learned is that brainstorming, which is the technique that most people well use, is just awful. Like it was started in 1958. I mean, a lot of things have changed since 1958. And furthermore, it’s actually a good tool if you want to generate mediocre ideas. Because again, you know, fear creeps in, right. Just not a good technique. So, over the years I've developed a toolkit of like 13 way more effective and way more fun techniques that help people get that creativity really flowing.Just a couple of quick examples. One of them Brian is called role storming. So instead of brainstorming as you, you're brainsto...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with the legendary Steve Blank. Steve is the author of the Startup Owner's Manual and is also known as father of modern entrepreneurship. Steve and I had a chance to talk about the evolution and changes since the inception of the lean startup movement, as well as some of the coming changes we see in the world of work, education, government, and more. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast that brings you the best and the brightest in the world of startups and innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger, founder of insideoutside.io, a provider of research events and consulting services that help innovators and entrepreneurs build better products, launch new ideas, and compete in a world of change and disruption. Each week we'll give you a front row seat to the latest thinking, tools, tactics, and trends in collaborative innovation. Let's get started. 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 with me we have Steve Blank. Welcome to the show, Steve.Steve Blank: Thanks for having me, Brian. Brian Ardinger: Steve. I'm so excited to have you on board because you have led the way when it comes to lean startup and all the methodologies around that. For the two people in my audience who haven't heard of you, I'm going to give a quick bio. You're a serial entrepreneur turned educator. You're known as the father of modern entrepreneurship. You've helped create the lean startup movement, which has really changed the way startups are built, how entrepreneurship is taught, how science is commercialized, how companies and governments are looking at this whole space. You're author of a couple of books called The Four Steps to the Epiphany and the Startup Owner's Manual.Both of which I recommend highly to my clients and startups. You also teach at Stanford and Columbia and the list goes on and on. So, I'm super excited to have you on the show. But I thought we'd start off going back to 2013. You wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review titled why the Lean Startup Changes Everything. And it was one of those quintessential articles that I think kicked off a movement and kicked off a lot of conversation around innovation. What surprised you the most since you wrote that article and what surprised you during that journey? Steve Blank: That's a great question. You know, the lean startup big insight was that the startups weren't the smaller versions of large companies. For the seven years, since the HBR article, we've discovered that companies aren't larger versions of startups. Meaning that corporations started adopting startup methodologies because they were being disrupted by startups and globalization and China, and then new technology and said, Hey, we can run incubators and accelerators and we could just operate just like that.But in fact, what I think we've created in the last seven years is mostly innovation theater, rather than innovation in large companies. And not because anybody is being stupid, but because we're learning, what people have been talking about for 20 years, is that 99% of your company is actually doing execution. That is executing that known business model. And all the processes and procedures and OKR and KPIs are designed for execution. But those things tend to strangle innovation in its crib. And unless you're going to fix all those processes. And that is specifically create what was labeled in the 20th century, the ambidextrous organization, that is one that could innovate and execute. You're going to end up having great posters and coffee cups about innovation, but not much innovation because what'll happen is, you'll create these islands of innovations as innovation activities, but they really won't be connected to the rest of the corporate infrastructure. The output of those incubators will die. And it's again, not due to malice, but due to the fact that you really need to make some more fundamental changes, if you want that to happen. Or you just need to acquire companies rather than try to do it internally. Brian Ardinger: It speaks to an interesting point. So, for years, we've seen major shifts coming on the horizon, whether it's the rise of startups, accelerating technologies. Now we have a pandemic. Why do you think companies are still getting caught flat footed when it comes to disruption and being better able to handle the new next? Steve Blank: If you really think about who runs large companies, if you're great at managing hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of people, you're a world-class executer. There are very few companies that are still run by their innovators or by innovators. You know, the ones that are, we see both the good and the bad. The canonical poster child right now is the Elon Musk. Created industries from scratch and as certifiably insane. There's good news about working at Tesla and there's bad news in directly reporting to Elon. And before him, the poster child was Steve Jobs. Created industries from scratch and probably, you know, a horrible human being to work for. Versus working in a stable corporation where there are processes and procedures and things unfold in a regular basis, and you can know what to expect when you show up in the work. That works great when your competitors are operating the same way, and it's a steady state world outside. That's in fact exactly who you need is an executer. Well, when things are chaotic and disruptive or technology has changed or something else, those world-class executor's have a real hard time figuring out what innovation looks like.And in fact, the worst case that I see, and I don't mean it as a dis, but you sometimes will even get the innovation head nod from those leaders. Is that you'll try to describe to them what they need to do inside their corporation, and they'll nod and "Oh yes, you know," in fact, sometimes they'll even say, "Oh, innovation is third pillar of our agency and whatever."And then, okay, well where's the exec staff table. "Oh, it's three layers down in our org." Well, have you changed any of your HR or security or policy or anything else or "no." Or do you have a 10% contingency for unplanned innovation? "Oh no innovation stands in line for next year at the budget table." And then you realize it's gotten nice words, but it's really not baked into the DNA.You know, I'm not a believer that everyone in the company needs to be an innovator. I believe that we need to understand that the people who do world-class innovation and world-class execution come to work for very different reasons. And we can build innovation processes into existing P & Ls in divisions for what McKinsey used to call horizon one and two. We also need horizon three people who are working on disruptive stuff. And as I said, some companies just can't change their culture to do that. So they need a process to acquire innovation, whether it's people or product line, or P & L, etc. But again, as some of those companies run into problems, when they try to integrate those acquisitions, they tend to kill innovation. Google, and all the robotics acquisitions or Google and Nest are great case studies of what happens to innovation companies when they meet execution organizations. Brian Ardinger: So now we're living in this pandemic and I think you've called this a mass extinction event for a lot of comp...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with David Roger, founder of Felix Gray, the e-commerce eyewear company with proprietary blue light filtering technology. David and I talk about the founder's journey of launching a new category of eyewear and the challenges along the way. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help you rethink, reset, and remix yourself and your organization. Each week, we bring the latest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses, as well as the tools, tactics, and trends you'll need to thrive as a new innovator.Interview Transcript with David Roger, Founder of Felix GrayBrian Ardinger: [00:00:30] 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 David Roger. He is the founder of Felix Gray, an e-commerce eyewear company with proprietary blue light filtering technology. And he's got quite an interesting story. So welcome to the show, David. David Roger: [00:00:57] Thanks so much for having me. Brian Ardinger: [00:00:58] Our paths have not crossed until today, but a lot of our common network have in the past. You started your company, Felix Gray in 2016. Let's go back to the beginning and let's talk about how you got involved in becoming an entrepreneur. David Roger: [00:01:13] In college, I initially thought I wanted to be a lawyer. That's what I went to school for and by sophomore year I realized I did not want to do that. And I kind of loved this idea of starting businesses. And this is the time where TechCrunch was starting to get really popular, and you'd read a lot of different things and different entrepreneurial things. And it was something really exciting. I ended up starting my first business in college, which was a secondary school newspaper. And I had to sell print advertising to local stores and shops and businesses. And if you want to learn how tough selling is, try doing that. And then when I left Cornell, I went and joined Venture for America, which is basically Teach for America, but applied to startups and entrepreneurship. Founded by Andrew Yang, who is running for democratic nominee couple of years ago and is now running actually for Mayor in the New York Mayor race. And so that's kind of how I got into entrepreneurship.Brian Ardinger: [00:02:06] I think you started in Vegas, is that correct? Working with Tony Shay and the Downtown Project. And maybe tell us a little bit about that Vegas Tech Fund and some of the stuff that you've done in there. David Roger: [00:02:17] Through Venture for America, they are in partnership with Tony's Downtown Project. And so that's how I got connected with them. I interviewed out there, really bought into the mission, really thought it was an amazing thing to fill a walkable livable downtown area, which is, Vegas is not known for that. It's basically all suburbs. And then essentially the strip, which is a transient first population.And so, I thought that was an amazing mission. I was part of the biggest tech fund, but my primary job was on their operations team. Basically, when I got there, Tony had put in $350 million of his own money into revitalize the area, and we had no idea if projects that we had going on ranging from a million, to twenty-five million dollars, we're going to make money or lose money. It's kind of the wild west.And they threw me in, and they said, go figure this out. And so, it was really cool. Great job right out of school. I will say it did mean that I was in front of Excel, building financial models, 12 hours a day. That's when my eyes started to absolutely kill me. I was looking around, looking at everyone else, complaining about the same things our eyes being tired at the end of the day, their eyes being dry, headaches, blurry vision. And kind of looked and said, okay, why is this a thing. Everyone I know at work and half the people I know in my friend group that are in different jobs all around the country, why are we all complaining about the same thing? That's when I started talking to Optometrists Ophthalmologists.  Learned around what screens produced, which is blue light and glare and basically that caused a lot of these issues that get categorized as digital eye strain. So, if you get filtered blue light, you can eliminate glare. You create this more comfortable experience. Brian Ardinger: [00:03:50] I love the genesis of that. But not every new idea becomes a company. And so how did you make that jump from, hey, I've got an individual problem from the standpoint of, you know, my eyes are getting strained from all the work I'm doing on screens to, hey, I think there's something here that I can create a company around?David Roger: [00:04:08] So the first thing was really recognizing that problem. Right? So, recognize the problem myself and then recognize that problem in a lot of other people. Whether it was people complaining about it firsthand, or me saying, hey, do your eyes ever get exhausted at the end of the day? You ever deal with a headache?And everyone's saying, yes. You're like, okay, there's something here. So, then I start to understand, okay, what is going on? So that's when I started talking to eye professionals for a better understanding what could be these root causes. And so when I'm talking to ophthalmologists and optometrists they are saying look, screens are a large driver behind this, and particularly what screens produce, light and glare.And so like, look, you can filter blue light, and you can eliminate glare. You can create a more comfortable experience. There are these glasses out there, they're yellow or orange lenses, and basically, they're going to help. So, I look, and they're not only yellow and orange lenses, but they look like hunting goggles.And if you put them on your face you look like one of the X Men. And I'm like, I can't wear that, and we'll show this to plenty of other people like, hey, this will solve your problems. They're like, I'm not wearing that. Right. So basically, the idea was okay, well, how do you create something that is functional, but also can look good. At the flip side, there were a couple other things in the market at the time, and this is still the case today. But these clear lenses, basically the Optometrist, the Ophthalmologist, the real eyecare professional said this stuff is not really filtering real blue light. It's filtering 2 to 3% of blue light where it actually matters, which produces blue light. It is basically placebo. It's not worth buying. So, what I did then was said, okay, well, how can you marry the fashion function?How can you create something that has a beautiful frame, but a really functional lens? And that's when I started working through a lot of networking with, with different lens suppliers and ended up developing a proprietary way of filtering blue light that can still have a clear lens. But be highly effective, right?So, Felix Gray's lens, even today, filters 30% of blue light instead of 2% of blue light at the 455-nanometer range, which is where screens produce blue light. Right. So basically, we filter 15 times more blue light where it's important. And that's why 9 out of 10 people who wear Felix Gray report significant improvement, but that was the genesis.So, it was okay,...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Amos Schwartzfarb, Managing Director of Techstars and Co Author of the new book Levers: The Framework for Building Repeatability into Your Business.  Amos and I talk about the framework for going from idea to scalable repeatable company and the challenges startups face in the process. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help you rethink, reset, and remix yourself and your organization. Each week, we'll bring you the latest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses, as well as the tools, tactics, and trends you'll need to thrive as a new innovatorBrian Ardinger: [00:00:00]  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 Amos Swartzfarb.  He is the Managing Director of Techstars Austin, Author of the book Sell More, Faster and Coauthor of a new book and the reason we have him on today's a new book called Levers: The Framework for Building Repeatability into Your Business. Welcome Amos. Amos Schwartzfarb: [00:01:01] Hey, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Brian Ardinger: [00:01:04] I'm excited to have you here too. You've been in this space of spinning up new ideas and helping companies get off the ground. You've got a new book coming out called Levers. And so, I wanted to have you on the show to talk about that and give some insight into what it takes to build a business. So maybe let's start off with what's this new book about, and we can go from there. Amos Schwartzfarb: [00:01:25] What the book is and I should clarify it is, it's a book, but it is more a book that you do versus read. And that gives you a little sense of what it's about and the goal that my coauthors and I had when putting this together was, we're all investors and operators for many, many years.And as we sort of looked around, and this is the stuff that we teach and profess to the companies we work with, and we realized that there wasn't really a great place, resource to go, accelerators included where the focus is on, what are the fundamental things you need to do to operationalize a business. How do you get it to repeatability? And how do you scale it? I like to say this is sort of like a recipe book. Like you open it up and follow the instructions and it doesn't guarantee you're going to get there, but it certainly will help you figure out the right ingredients so that you can have the recipe for the cake you're trying to bake. Brian Ardinger: [00:02:18] What I like about the book is the fact that it really does start at the very beginning. And I think a lot of startup founders take the startup journey. They see the big vision of where they want to go and that and they start 25 paces ahead of where they really are. And the book really starts off with who are you really trying to serve. What are you trying to build? And that, so maybe talk through that initial W Three methodology and your belief around that. Amos Schwartzfarb: [00:02:42] So I think maybe just for the listeners to give context here, the book is a five-chapter book. Each chapter is dedicated to a piece of the overall framework. It's very intentional in the order that we have everything and the way that we see it makes most sense to think about building the business.And I should also clarify that the framework absolutely works when you're sitting in the coffee shop and the writing an idea in the back of a napkin. And really where we focus our energy is working with founders that are a little further along than that. Usually there's some customers or some revenue. There's no repeatability in the business. And so our thought process is regardless of the business you're building, it all starts with really having a deep understanding of who you're serving. And who you're serving is who your customers ultimately are. And so, the, the W3 framework is a way to answer three fundamental questions, which are, you know, when I say them, everyone's like, yeah, of course these are the questions you need to answer. But getting to the right answer is the hard part. So, the three questions are who is your customer and what is the very specific and narrow definition of the customer that, you know will say yes, 100% of the time. That doesn't mean that your prospects will, that's not your entire tam. It's just like, what are the attributes of someone who, you know, will say yes, a hundred percent of the time.That's the first W. The second W is what are they buying from you. Not what are you selling to them? And that's a really important, often subtle nuance. And you know, I think as you know, the reality is your potential customers. They don't care what you do. They only care what you do   for them.And so, we just try to really get at that so that when you're talking to them, you can talk in the language that they understand. And then the final W, the third W is why are they buying it? What's the impact on the business? Have a clear understanding of what that is. And more importantly, or equally as important is how are they going to measure that impact? Because if they don't know, they won't know if there's an impact and they won't be a customer for very long. In the book, we also get at that there's two different parties that you need to understand the why from. There's the obvious one, which is the business why. But then there's also the individual buyer. What's their motivation and making sure that their motivations are aligned to.So even if the business looks like the perfect customer for you, they might not be because of the kind of person they have in the role or the exact person they have in the roles. Understanding that deeply as important to getting at, figuring out who your customer is on a deep level. Brian Ardinger: [00:05:00] Yeah. Specifically, based on the business model too. Oftentimes you have multiple different stakeholders where you have to figure out what that why is for not only the user of the product, for example, but the buyer or the influencer, whatever the case may be. Amos Schwartzfarb: [00:05:12] Yeah, you have to understand why they're going to care. If you're going to get them to understand why, what you're doing matters. Or conversely, to understand why maybe they're not actually the right customer for you right now, even if they look like it from the outside. Brian Ardinger: [00:05:23] Right. And then we could grow into it. But those early adopters are sometimes a little bit different than the ones that buy longer term. So you mentioned at Techstars, you tend to have companies that have thought through that a little bit more, and maybe they're in the early stages of developing that customer network and stuff. What's the next step? Where do startup founders typically get tripped up? Once they've started that business and have gotten a little bit of traction. Amos Schwartzfarb: [00:05:44] There's sort of two things that I see most often are the    operational trip ups. The first is the notion that they have product market fit literally years before they actually have it. And so, this goes around, figuring out who your W3 is, but saying like, okay, we've got a couple of customers, we've got a bunch of people that have said they would buy, ...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Seth Levine and Elizabeth Macbride, authors of the new book, The New Builders: Face to Face with the True Future of Business. We talk about the current and future state of entrepreneurship and hear some stories about new builders making an impact in their local communities. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help you rethink, reset, and remix yourself and your organization. Each week, we'll bring the latest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses, as well as the tools, tactics, and trends you'll need to thrive as a new innovator.Interview Transcript with Seth Levine and Elizabeth Macbride, Authors of The New BuildersBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have some amazing guests. Today, we have Seth Levine and Elizabeth Macbride, authors of the new book, The New Builders: Face to Face with the True Future of Business. Welcome to the show. Elizabeth Macbride: Thank you very much.Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you on. Let me start out with a little background and bios for our audience. Among other things, Seth, you are the co-founder of the venture capital firm Foundry Group and Pledge 1%, which is a global network of companies that have pledged equity and time and product back to local communities.And Elizabeth, you are an award-winning business journalist, and founder of Times of Entrepreneurship, which is a new publication covering entrepreneurs beyond Silicon Valley, which is a topic near and dear to our heart. So welcome to the show. The first question I want to start with is what's the current state of entrepreneurship and what led you to write this book?Elizabeth Macbride: So, the current state of entrepreneurship in the United States is not nearly as good as people think it is. We concluded after our two years of working on the book, that entrepreneurship in the US is in this, in a state of profound decline. It's been declining over the past 40 years for a whole host of reasons. And I know we'll get into that some more. But I'll just answer the question as well about how we came to write the book, which is that I'm the original, like overlooked, not the original one, but an overlooked founder myself. Right. So I got a divorce seven years ago and had to reinvent my career pretty fast as a business journalist to feed my two kids. In doing that, I ended up founding this publication times of entrepreneurship. And along that journey met Seth, who has, a side specialty to being a venture capitalist, which is really supporting overlooked entrepreneurs. And so, we bonded over that and decided to write a book two years ago. That's how it came about.Seth Levine: Brian, I guess I'd add to that. We knew that there were really interesting stories, right? You tell many of them on your podcast of people building businesses that were for starters outside of Silicon Valley, and the big tech hubs. But also, really interesting businesses, but that weren't necessarily these sort of high growth tech focused businesses.And we wanted to tell their stories. Frankly, we thought it'd be kind of a lighthearted book. Interesting look at some founders that maybe were a little bit different than what people think of when they think of founders. But as we did all the research, we realized for starters, what Elizabeth just described, which is that entrepreneurship in the US is actually dying.And then we also learned that the types of people that are starting new businesses are very different than those people realize. Specifically, that the majority of new business owners are black, brown, female, and also quite a bit older than most people realize. And that, we realized as we came across these data, that these stories really need to be told. That it sort of went from a lighthearted, Hey, this will be fun. And we'll tell some interesting stories of people doing things out of the mainstream media eye. To, oh wow, there are some critical stories that we need to be telling here because we have a window here to change the trajectory of entrepreneurship in the us, and we'd act on it. Brian Ardinger: You know, and I think that's one of the things that we obviously talk about, you know, Tech Crunch and you hear the stories of the unicorns and things along those lines. And obviously that's important and that. But can you define, like, what is entrepreneurship to you? It's not just the tech giants that we're hearing about. How do you define a new builder? And what's the difference that you saw out there? Elizabeth Macbride: The way entrepreneurship traditionally has been defined is broader than the way it's currently defined. And so, when we looked at it and really, there's no reason why we should think of entrepreneurship as only the tech founders of Silicon Valley. They're part of the universe. They're not really the center of the universe. And definitely not the entire universe right. They're maybe 1% of all businesses in the US get venture capital funding.So, the fact that we're so consumed by that is sort of crazy. Because the other 99% are in fact, the drivers of a lot of jobs, they're actually drivers of innovation, we would argue as well. And they support and are part of our communities in just a host of important, different ways. And as the economy transitions, I think they're going to be even more important. So we define entrepreneurs as a very fundamental basic thing, right. They're  people starting businesses. Seth Levine: And that's always been the case in the US. And really, if you look back, I mean, certainly the US was founded by entrepreneurs. I mean, in some cases, quite literally, right? The Massachusetts Bay Companies, you know, all of these initial settlers that came over were essentially entrepreneurs, right? Who are in business ventures to go and settle new land and send raw goods and other materials back to Europe? And still, we have this long history of entrepreneurship and something changed in the last maybe 30 years or so, where the concept of entrepreneurship, use to be very broadly defined a shopkeeper is an entrepreneur, a local business owner was an entrepreneur.It got eaten up by the tech narrative, right? And this idea that the only entrepreneurs that were worth talking about were technology, business founders, and frankly, the only businesses that were worth talking about in the entrepreneurship context are businesses that are, have this aspiration for growth. Right? You referenced unicorns. And we think that that's incredibly dangerous to the overall dinosaur and frankly just the health of the US economy, because it really only describes such a small number of businesses. And frankly, and I say this from inside the world of venture capital, I'm not convinced that venture is a very good model for creating. Certainly, it's not a good model for creating broad-based economic development. Right. I mean, we know it can create some really big companies. And by the way, those companies are incredibly important. And other businesses end up being built on those companies. So Shopify or Google, like those are incredible innovations that help other small businesses, but it's just, it's not the only ...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Alistair Croll and Emily Ross, co-authors of the upcoming book Just Evil Enough. We talk about the changing role of marketing and how companies can subvert systems, undermine industry norms, and get platforms to behave in unexpected ways that tilt the scales to generate attention and demand. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help you rethink, reset, and remix yourself and your organization. Each week, we'll bring you the latest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses, as well as the tools, tactics, and trends you'll need to thrive as a new innovator.Interview Transcript with Alistair Croll and Emily Ross, Co-authors of Just Evil EnoughBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have some amazing guests. Today we have Alistair Croll and Emily Ross authors of the new book, Just Evil Enough, which is a book about getting noticed in this noisy environment and subversive go-to market strategies. Welcome to the show guys. Alistair Croll: Thanks for having us. Emily Ross: Thanks a million. Brian Ardinger: Well, I'm super excited to have you on this call to give our audience a little bit of a sneak preview of the upcoming book. But first let me give a little bit of background. So, Emily Ross, you are a founder of a tech marketing consultancy company called Ink Vine based in Ireland. So we appreciate you coming across the pond to give us some insights on what's going on. And Alistair and I go back a long time back in the days of Lean Startup. And he's the coauthor of Lean Analytics. We brought him back to Nebraska about six or seven years ago, I guess it was, when I was working with Nmotion to help with our startup teams in that. So thank you for both being on the show. The title of the book, Just Evil Enough. How'd  you come up with that  and what's it all about? Alistair Croll: So I'll tell you a quick story. We ran an accelerator in Montreal called Year One Labs. And one of the companies in Year One Labs was a company called Local Mind. And Local Mind was a platform for asking people questions, asking strangers questions about an area.It was later acquired by Airbnb and Lenny Rachitsky,  the CEO ran supply-side growth there. And he's now the author of one of the most prominent newsletters for startup growth marketing, Lenny's Newsletter. And in the early days they were doing what every startup does, which is building lots of stuff. But because we were very Lean Startup focused, we have them ask what the biggest risk was.And it turns out the biggest risk was that whether people would answer questions from strangers. So they ran a very quick study, which we talk about in Lean Analytics. And they found that 94% of people on Twitter would answer a question from a stranger. But this happened because I had been asking Lenny, are you being evil enough?And they were like, we're not evil. And I said, yeah, but just a little evil, because it turns out that people answer questions, but people on the platform won't ask questions. The real risk is the supply of questions. And so they actually built a system that would ask fake questions of new users. So they get in the habit of asking questions. Now you can debate the means versus the end, but what we have found ever since that time is that almost every startup that's successful has some little dirty secret in their background, where they were able to take advantage of an emerging technology or subvert the way a platform is supposed to work and turn it to their advantage.And so the basic idea behind Just Evil Enough is that almost all the time, the problem isn't whether or not you can build something it's whether anyone will care. So your job should be creating attention you can turn into profitable demand. Emily Ross: I think the subversive word is really, really important because we want to clearly differentiate between nefarious, which is downright evil and subversive, which allows you to think a little bit differently.And it's very hard for people who've been conditioned to think a certain way, to try and think differently.  So the book is about trying to teach people how to think subversively, and to show examples and frameworks in order to do that. And I remember working at a platform years ago and one of the engineers said, right, I'm going to put this button on the website to test if people will click it.And my instant reaction was, but it doesn't go anywhere. That's a terrible idea. They're going to have an awful experience and that's bad for them. And he's like, no, but I don't want to build something unless I know they're going to need it. So I'm just going to put that button there and yeah, I'm going to burn a few thousand clicks and they're gonna have a terrible experience. I don't care. I'll learn something. And he was prepared to be disagreeable in order to learn something different and to save an awful lot of time and money. And it was funny. It was like, okay. I need to think a little bit differently about how we're treating users sometimes. Alistair Croll: Yeah, we did a similar thing at Gradient. We had a reporting feature. Gradient was a startup that I launched in 2001. Eventually got acquired by BMC, their TrueSight product line. And we were about to launch reports in the product. And so we created our reports tab, and the reports tab went to a survey page. It says, we're going to do reports soon, what would you like to see?And people put in their email address and the report they'd like to see. And of course we were building a generic reporting tool. So what we did is we then generated like the top 20 requested reports. Made them defaults and then mailed those people saying we loved your feedback. Thank you so much. We've built the report you're looking for. Forget about the fact that 40 other people ask for the same report. Every one of them felt like they were a unique and special snowflake. And so we were exploiting the asymmetry between what we knew, which was 20 people asked for it and what they knew, which was, Hey, look at this, I'm special. You listened to me. And the customers loved it. Right? Is that evil? Well, it meant that we were able to build the default reports people wanted, which made the product better, but it's a little subversive. Brian Ardinger: Well, I think part of that learning is the fact that I think a lot of people think that they need to build the entire thing, because that's what shows the value. But, you know, again, you have to incrementally de-risk some of these new startup ideas. And so how do you do that with building just enough to get the learning that you need so that you can move it to the next level and build it out if you need to? Alistair Croll: Well, I would say that the problem's not minimum viable product, it's minimum viable attention.Emily Ross: Yeah. And actually, if you think about, and this is the one thing that the book, I suppose, hammers home, is that getting your go-to market strategy right, is as important, if not more important than getting your product right. Because if you can't capture attention and turn it into profitable demand, then no one's going to know about ...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Atholl Duncan, author of Leaders in Lockdown: Inside Stories of COVID-19 and the New World of Business. We talk about his interviews with senior executives from around the world during the first 100 days of lockdown and what he learned about crisis management, leadership development, and what's next in the post COVID hybrid world. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help you rethink, reset, and remix yourself and your organization. Each week, we'll bring the latest innovators, entrepreneurs, pioneering businesses, as well as the tools, tactics, and trends you'll need to thrive as a new innovator.Interview Transcript with Atholl Duncan, Author of Leaders in LockdownBrian 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 Atholl Duncan. He is author of Leaders in Lockdown: Inside Stories of COVID-19 and the New World of Business. Welcome to the show. Atholl Duncan: Thank you. It's great to be here and great to be a guest of yours. I'm looking forward to chatting about innovation and how we lead out of lock down Brian. Cause that's the question that everyone's trying to get their heads around there.Brian Ardinger: We have gone through disruption and I think people understand a little bit what that means. You have written this book. You spoke to 28 senior executives around the world in the United States, Europe, Asia, during the first hundred days of lockdown, to understand and get their feedback on what we were going through when it comes to disruption. So maybe we'll start with the book, give us a little hint and insights into what it's all about and what did you learn from it? Atholl Duncan: The way the book came about was in March of 2020, I sit on the boards of various businesses. And all of these businesses were in some state of jeopardy and certainly in a state of crisis. And I was pretty stressed by the whole situation. I think as most people were. And I decided that there was what I thought was a crossroads and history. Certainly, a crossroads, probably the defining moments of this century. And I wanted to capture them. So, I followed 28 business leaders, people who, whose businesses were spread from Asia to Europe, to UK, and many leaders in the US. And really to answer a couple of questions from them. How were they leading through the pandemic? And how did they think the world would change because of what we've all been through. Brian Ardinger: When you reached out to these leaders, what was the initial kind of feedback that you got? Was it nervousness? Was it excitement? What kind of what were the emotions that people were going through and specifically, how did they adapt to that sudden disruption? Atholl Duncan: I got remarkable access because these people were locked down in their kitchens. And it was like they'd witnessed some predictably dramatic accident because they just wanted to share with someone. They wanted to talk to someone about what was happening to their businesses, which were getting pretty smashed up at the time.So, they opened their Zooms to me. And they talked to me. They talked from the heart and they talked about how they hoped the world would change. And that the remarkable thing was that many of these people whose businesses, which they had built themselves over many years, lying, smashed round  about them.They remained remarkably humble and remarkably steady in their thoughts. But yeah, they knew this was a major moment. So, you know, even a year ago we knew this was a pretty significant moment. And the general message was that even back then, was this is a time to reset. Is a time to reset how we run our businesses and is a time to reset how we run society.Brian Ardinger: So, in the book and through the conversations you defined, I think seven core themes that came out through that. Can you walk the audience through a little bit about what are those core themes that you uncovered? And let's talk a little bit about each one of them. Atholl Duncan: Yeah. So, seven major themes. The first theme was the new age of purpose. And the feeling as one business leader said to me, that purpose was on steroids at the peak of the crisis. And that purpose now was no longer just words that you emblazoned on a website. It was now something that your employees, your customers and your investors would demand was delivered through action. And not just words. The second theme was the new world of work. Because we saw this remarkable thing that, you know, most people talk about, regarding Covid, which was the move to homeworking. And you know, one of the business leaders that I've talked to is a very senior executive at Tata, which is based in India. They moved 600,000 people to homeworking. Even 6,000 is big Brian, but this is 600,000 people. And you know, many, many major corporations were doing the same thing all around the world. As a crisis went on, people have realized that the new world of work was not just about home or remote or hybrid or flexible. We were really seeing defined probably a new, psychological relationship between the employer and the employee.Third theme was widening inequality. Because the virus widened inequality in so many ways. Obviously, it raised the Black Lives Matter, raised diversity and inclusion in a way that we hadn't seen before, but also homeschooling raised equality. The people who had access to digital. Homeworking raised in equality in terms of it was very comfortable for some people to be working from their homes. But those who had dysfunctional homes are in multi person homes, difficult for them. And then the vaccine. You know, we already see that there's 130 countries around the world, which haven't delivered one jab of the vaccine. 95% of the vaccines have been delivered in the richest countries in the world. So, there's this really quite a defining moment. Roundabout, the widening inequality gap. Fourth theme was about global cooperation, because at that moment when we hope that our politicians would be cooperating across global boundaries, they were doing, they were falling out. And I think generally, wherever you are in the world, we were pretty well let down by our politicians. Whether you were in Asia, Europe, or the U S it was a pretty, sorry ceiling. You actually saw large corporations, doing far better at global cooperation. If you look at the pharmas that developed the vaccines. If you look at the big tech companies who came together to try and work out track and trace. Next thing was resilience. Not just personal resilience, but you know, when the crisis comes, cash is king financial resilience is everything. And the resilience of the operations of these large corporations. Sixth theme was all about resetting the supply chain. Particularly if we're in manufacturing, we couldn't get stuff anymore. Borders were closed and we still see, you know, big shortages and computer chips, big shortage use in raw materials, and the prices of raw materials going up.So, this really brought the global supply chain to a shuttering halt. And I think a major cause to rethink 40 years of decisions that were made on productivity an...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger and Wilson Pang, authors of the new book, Real World AI: A Practical Guide for Machine Learning. We sit down and talk about some of the biggest misperceptions about AI, as well as some practical advice on how to tackle creating, building, and maintaining AI projects. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help you rethink, reset and remix yourself and your organization. Each week, we're bringing the latest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses, as well as the tools, tactics, and trends you'll need to thrive as a new innovator.Interview Transcript with Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger and Wilson Pang, Authors of Real World AI: A Practical Guide for Machine LearningBrian Ardinger:  Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing set of guests. Today we have Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger and Wilson Pang, authors of the new book called Real World AI: A Practical Guide for Machine Learning. Welcome to the show.Wilson Pang: Thank you, Brian. Really excited to be here. Brian Ardinger: We are excited to have you both here. This is an exciting world of technology and new trends that are happening. AI is obviously on the forefront of a lot of people's minds. And I'd love to get your input on what do you really mean when you say real-world AI and how does that differ than people's perceptions out there?Alyssa Simpson: I think one of the things that we wanted to address with this book is sort of the in-between space between, you know, the hype and maybe what you read about AI and the headlines, or what you see AI or very smart futuristic systems depicted in the movies. And then, you know, also a very academic or technical approach to machine learning that you may have come across a textbook or learned in school.And this is kind of the middle reality, right? Is, you know, what are real companies who are using machine learning based technology? How are they using it? You know, what struggles are they having? What successes are they having? And then how does it work in the real world. In the reality that we all live in and share and products that you probably use frequently in your everyday life?Brian Ardinger: Well, I think there are a lot of misconceptions about what AI even is. Maybe Wilson, can you tell us a little bit about some of the myths or misconceptions about AI that people commonly struggle or fumble over? Wilson Pang: There's a few major common misconceptions. Number one, it's really, a lot of people think AI, they think is the kind of a machine can do whatever human can do, right? This is called Artificial General Intelligence. Basically, AI can repeat human. So that's happening in those small ways but it's far away from the reality. In reality, what AI, all the real-life AI, is really the application, which can be taught or learn to carry a specific task without being programmed to do soSo, the machine can learn from data. And then performing some tasks. So that's kind of a like what real world AI is. So that's number one misconception. Number two misconception is that people are thinking to build an AI, the team needs to spend a lot of their time to tune the model, work on the model, and get the best performance. It is more related to the signs or the model tuning.  In reality, science is a big part of AI, for sure. But for the AI team, they spend a majority of their time, on data. Need to collect the right data, clean up the data, make sure the data has all of the representatives and also make sure that data has quality. And then the data complete the magical part is to really improve the AI performance. So those are the two major misconceptions. I hope everyone can really learn and understand that. Brian Ardinger: You know, you often see two sides coming out, when you talk about AI. You have one side of the spectrum where everybody talks about AI as a panacea of opportunity. And it's going to change the world for the better. On the other side, you have the folks that think AI is a massive danger and a menace and a lot of unknown repercussions. Where do you guys fall on that spectrum? Alyssa Simpson: I'll argue all sides of that one. I think both are true and neither are true. As with anything, machine learning and AI technology is disruptive. It already has changed the world as we know it and will continue to be an incredibly powerful and disruptive technology in almost every industry. On the other side, it's just technology, right? And there's a lot of things that are powerful and it's only as powerful as what you put it towards and how you shape it.And in other ways, it's incredibly brittle and really narrow as Wilson was referring to, this is not a magic eight ball. It's not generalized. AI often is very narrow and specific, and only is able to accomplish a fairly narrow and specific tasks that you train it for, if you have all the data available to train it really successfully to perform that task.And so, you know, what we see in reality is companies having a lot of success. If they are able to find a use case that this technology can perform really well and do things that previously were undoable before and open up new streams of opportunity. Brian Ardinger: Where are some of the industries that are getting the most out of AI right now. And where do you see the trends moving, when it comes to folks capturing the benefits of AI? Wilson Pang: AI only become a buzzword in recent years. But in reality, AI has been there for a long time and high-tech industry who has big company like Google, Facebook, all those tech giants. They have been using AI for a long time. And AI has been used to optimize their price sprints, to help you find the right product, to give you a better recommendation. To show you a better content. So those have been there for a while. The usage of those AI technologies is pretty mature, and that's also almost embedded in every part of their product. So, for high-tech industry, very mature. Meanwhile, in recent years, it's also a lot of other industries, they are catching up. Like the finance industry. The medical industry.  All kinds of industries are catching up.So, you can see the train of AI is already, the adoption of AI has become much broader. And also, the speed to adopt AI is also a leverage spot. Meanwhile, as you mentioned earlier, AI can really bring on a lot of benefits. Can also create a lot of harm. So, with this even wider adoption, we really need to make sure people understand how to use AI in the responsible way. So that way we can get the benefit part, but meanwhile not really doing a lot of damage to the society. Brian Ardinger: Yeah, you definitely hear that. And you hear the use case scenarios when it goes bad and that's oftentimes hyped up. I actually just read this morning. I think it was a fast company article talking about how the New York City Council is considering new rules meant to curb bias in hiring when it comes to AI and putting AI in hiring practices and that. What's your take on some of those challenges that you're seeing in that particular space. Alyssa Simpson:...