Inside Outside Innovation

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:...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Lauren Golembiewski, CEO and Co-founder of Voxable. Lauren and I talk about the future of voice and other wearables and the challenges of designing for new technologies and applications. 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 newInterview Transcript with Lauren Golembiewski, CEO and Co-founder of VoxableBrian 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 Lauren Golembeski. She is CEO and co-founder of Voxable which is an agency that designs and develops chatbots and voice interfaces based in Austin, Texas, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So welcome Lauren. Lauren Golembiewski: Thanks for having me.Brian Ardinger: Hey I am excited to have you on the show. You and I connected pre pandemic. I had been reading some of your work in Harvard Business Review. You wrote a couple articles, one entitled How wearable AI will amplify human intelligence. And another one more recently called, Are you ready for tech that connects to your brain?And I thought those articles were so insightful. I want to get some insight into some of the things that you're seeing in some of the new technologies when it comes to wearables and voice and, and things like that. So maybe to kick it off, why don't you tell the audience a little bit about how you got started in this field and tell us more about what Voxable is.Lauren Golembiewski: Yeah, absolutely. So Voxable is a design platform for teams that want to build better voice and chat apps. We had been consulting in the voice and chat app design and development space, helping companies, large enterprise teams build their voice and chat experiences. And then we pivoted to creating this product because we realized that every team, no matter how much they invested in creating a great conversational experience, they still had no tool that was available to them to efficiently build that experience and define it in a way that created a great user experience for their end customers. So that's what we're currently doing today.And we got into the voice space just by tinkering in our own homes. I was mentioning to you before we started the show that I started the business with my husband who's a software engineer and my background is in product design. And we basically, as soon as, you know, early voice technology had become available to us, we started playing around with integrating it into our smart home devices.And we realized that in creating our own voice experiences, that this was really going to be the next paradigm shift in human computer interaction. So, we quit our jobs and started Voxable, the consulting business, or what became the consulting business. And then, like I said, through those five years, recognizing that the significant problem in the industry is that there's no good design tools. That's kind of our current mission is seeking to change that and to help teams create a better UX in the process. Brian Ardinger: That's pretty amazing. My career started back in internet 1.0 in the UX UI design research field and designing for new technologies back then when it was a screen-based kind of thing, it's obviously evolved in that. And you mentioned this term conversational design. Tell us a little bit about what does that mean? What does it entail? Lauren Golembiewski: Conversation Design is a new term and conversation designers is a new role that has come about on the market. And these are people who focus on creating that voice or chat experience and defining what that looks like for the end user.And so just like today, you might have a product designer or a user interface designer. The way that we talked about that role in a voice application or a chat application is just by calling them a conversation designer because they're focusing on the actual substance of the conversation, writing the words that will be said, be spoken by, for example, an Alexa skill or sent through a chat bot in a chat application. They're dealing with those substances as opposed to, you know, HTML CSS that a web designer would be considering or iOS framework that a mobile designer would be considering. And so, a conversation designers are focused on affordances of conversational experiences, which includes synthesized speech. It includes new conversational AI. So that would include something like natural language understanding, that can now take the natural words that a user says and translates that into something a machine or an application can actually do something with and can perform actions based on a more natural interaction.And so, these types of affordances are what conversation designers become experts in, and then can craft these experiences that help fulfill the end user's goal, whether it be getting help, they have a support issue in, you know, your product. And that's one big place that people are automating these types of interactions is on customer support chat.As well as, you know, people want to be able to speak to their mobile device and they want to be able to play music and perform actions without having to use their hands. So, whether that's on a mobile device or on one of these smart speakers. And I think the other really big sector that this is exploding on is in the wearable markets because now not only do we have like a smart speaker that's sitting in a room or a personal mobile device, but we now have a kind of always on piece of personal accessorizing that people are wearing almost throughout the entire day. And it's like a whole other channel through which conversational interaction can happen. And it can be both very personal and on consumer level interactions where I'm playing music or tracking my fitness. Or can be on a very enterprise level where I'm trying to automate certain parts of my job and do my job more intelligently by having an assistant that can kind of help me do that on the go, either hands-free or site free. Brian Ardinger: One of the things that the whole field is still fairly new and it's fairly new, even for the user to understand, you know, obviously a lot of people use the Alexa to ask, you know, what the weather's going to be. What are the core applications that you are seeing that are really having an impact in this new field? Lauren Golembiewski: So, very similar to the early days of the mobile market, when mobile apps became really popular gaming has established itself as a very early craze. And I think a lot of people are gravitating towards voice only games. And then there is the whole media consumption landscape. Podcasting is a very big interest of a lot of enterprises and consumers alike. It's a channel that a lot of people are starting to recognize the value of. And so, creating voice experiences in new places where...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Cactus Raazi, Author of the new book, Price: Maximizing Customer Loyalty Through Personal Pricing. We talk about the important, but often overlooked topic of price innovation, and how companies can use technology and experimentation to move from the traditional model of revenue maximization towards that of loyalty maximization. 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 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, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.Interview TranscriptBrian 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 Cactus Raazi. He is the founder and former CEO of Elephant. Now part of EXOS Financial, and author of the new book, Price: Maximizing Customer Loyalty Through Personal Pricing. Welcome Cactus. Cactus Raazi: Thank you very much. Appreciate you having me. Brian Ardinger: Cactus, I'm excited to have you on the show because this is a pretty important topic that doesn't often get talked about in the innovation front. You know, if you think about pricing, a lot of the pricing models have probably been around for 50 years. And yet when I'm working with startups or people introducing new products, they're always talking about how do I set my price and that. So, I'm really excited to hear your thoughts on that. To get started, in the book you talk a lot about, and you encourage companies to look at price differently. So, we'll dig into the details, but how did you get involved at researching and writing about the topic of price?Cactus Raazi: You know, it's interesting. My day job is in financial markets. And what we, myself, and the team have been working on for years are various algorithms to be able to automatically price different bonds at different times of the day for different customers under a wide variety of different conditions. And we started thinking about on the one hand data analytics and I had done a masters program at NYU in business analytics recently. And then on the other hand, I started thinking about the challenges of running a business in today, particularly in the B2C world. But a lot of what I had thinking about also has applications in B2B and really thinking about internet price transparency, and the destructive effects on pricing power for companies, large and small.And so, I kind of put everything together and started really thinking about why do we think so simplistically around pricing? Why has my professional experience, as you mentioned, generally been a table of old wise men and women sort of guesstimating a price or using a sort of rudimentary cost-plus approach.And most importantly, I think with everything that's going on around us, so many of the pricing approaches fail to take into account the individual customer, or they made it an unspoken assumption of homogeneity of the customer base. Or sort of an indifference. I don't care really who buys this good or service so long as they pay a certain price.And I don't think that that's going to be a useful way of thinking about the world going forward. There's a whole host of tools at our disposal. Referred to generally as data analytics. And there's a whole host of new threats that one needs to be thoughtful about, particularly around internet-based price comparison. Browser-based automated discounting. And we could go on and on, we talk about it in the book. Put these two things together and you think to yourself, look, am I in the business of maximizing the revenue of any potential transaction in the moment, or am I actually in the business of cultivating an increasingly loyal customer base. Such that my enterprise value starts to gravitate towards sort of that have recurring revenue streams.And this conversation is applicable for businesses, large and small. And we use a lot of examples in the book, anything from a sole proprietorship, maybe a hairstylist, all the way up to multinational corporations, airlines, things like that. Brian Ardinger: And I love that thought of moving from revenue, maximization to loyalty maximization. And a lot of that probably again, hasn't been really dealt with because of technology. And now we have some tools and data and that, that we didn't have at our fingertips to make some of those leaps that we can now. What do you think is holding people back from taking advantage of some of these technologies and actually going towards a more loyalty maximization model? Cactus Raazi: You know, in my survey of the landscape, I'm not necessarily aware of an impediment to use data in increasingly sophisticated ways. As we all know, there's so many off the shelf products. There are so many courses, everything from sort of how to use Excel on Coursera, all the way to, you know, a PhD in artificial intelligence or something along those lines at the other extreme. I feel that, particularly when it comes to pricing, just to not give you too general and answer, when it comes to pricing, I feel the fundamental question has yet to be asked, are we doing this correctly?And have we really unpacked the assumptions of our approach to be thoughtful around whether this is the right approach and whether we should be using a different set of tools. You know, even industries that are renowned for their ability to differentiate with price something. We could use airlines as an example.And I'm sure at maybe at one point in your career, you were probably some form of a frequent flyer. And I'm sure you would probably agree that while you were perfectly happy to pay different prices, based on various profiles and times of day. That that was not a price for you personally, it was a price meaning that if you were to log into a website, as a loyal customer and I were to log in to the same website you and I were to try and book the same thing, we wouldn't see a difference in price. We would see a difference in price on different days or, or, you know, you name it. There's a variety of obviously supply and demand techniques. And so right there you say, well, that's a sophisticated industry, but it hasn't really moved forward with thinking about the customer, rather than thinking about any customer who's willing to sit in the seat.And that's really at the core of the suggestions in the book is to say that step one, start collecting data about your customers. Obviously in an appropriate fashion and in a transparent fashion, such that you can start to identify behaviors, objectives, or any other elements of the customer, which you can then correlate to the types of behaviors you'd like to see from your customer base.And the book really exists at the level of strategy. And frankly, this conversation exists at the level of strategy. How should we be thinking about some of these questions and are there a new set of tools to be able to answer some really interesting questions around what the right price is, and right is defined as in my case, as maximizing loyalty. And also at the same time, there's this elephant in the room, which is the internet, and mobile commer...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Adriana Cisneros Basulto, Founder of Maxwell. Maxwell was the winner of the IO 2020 Get Started Showcase competition and maker of the employee benefit and work-life management software platform. Adriana and I talk about the changing world of work from flexible benefit options, to diversity and inclusion, as well as the impact COVID has had on accelerating these changes. Inside Outside Innovation is the 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, pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript with Adriana Cisneros Basulto, Founder of MaxwellBrian 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 Adriana Cisneros Basulto, founder of Maxwell. Welcome to the show. Adriana Cisneros Basulto: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Brian Ardinger:  Adriana I'm excited to have you. Maxwell, you were the winner of the IO2020 Get Started Showcase competition that we had back in October. It seems like a lifetime ago, but we've been trying to figure out a time to get you on the show, to talk about what you're doing, what you're building, and really have a heart to heart with some of the things that you're seeing when it comes to the future of work. So, let's start by telling the Maxwell story. How did you conceive of this company and how did it get started?Adriana Cisneros Basulto: Yeah, well, first and foremost, I'm still pinching myself from the win and yeah, I cannot believe that that was October, but I suppose in COVID time, everything just kind of flows at its own rate. I'm not going to say it was, you know, like a Eureka moment or something that all of a sudden just came to mind that this is what's going to be. It's really been an evolution.And it has taken several years from sort of an idea into actually becoming what it is today. And it's probably going to continue to market. A lot of it was just, many founders, personal experience. As my life got just more complex, on the personal side, and by complex, I mean, just a very traditional path and the personal side, you know, like you, you get married, you decide to get a dog, you have a mortgage, that sort of thing. In terms of complexity, kids. At the same time, my career, and that of my spouse was also progressing and getting more complex and had more accountabilities.And then we happened to both be very similar in terms of wanting to do a really good job in both fronts. So, we were always feeling spread thinly. So that was one aspect. And then the other aspect was the type of work that I did. So, my last corporate job was leading the efforts of inclusion and diversity for the largest private bank in the U S.And one of the things that I remember vividly sitting down and listening to the results of Gallup, on one of their studies about women at work. And I mean, this is years ago, but the trend was that women were leaving the workplace. And one of the number one competitors was this aspect of how hard it was to manage work and life and keep it all together.And that, that was the biggest competitor. And I was just like, oh my goodness, we're not coming up with better solutions is the same solutions that we had five years ago or before, like lots of things go through my mind. That was one moment there was like, there's got to be something better. So that was sort of the genesis of it, both from the personal side. And then also from a professional standpoint, me wanting to see more women stay in leadership positions because that's the work that I was doing. Brian Ardinger: So, talk a little bit about what Maxwell is and how are you tackling that problem? Adriana Cisneros Basulto: Yes. What I'd like to say is we make it easy for employers to support their teams. And to support them with benefits it's slash, support services that make it easy to manage work and life. Sometimes it's easier to understand when using an example. So, I'll try to do that. Let's say it's company, ABC company, ABC. They choose which of the services that we have on Maxwell already embedded in our mobile app to offer their employees and to fund. And then we do also something that we're testing right now. I'm curious to see how that evolves, but one of the things we're testing is the ability for employers to also integrate into Maxwell, other things that they're offering today, that don't require an additional subsidy from them. So maybe they already paid for an EPA program from an employee assistance program, so they can also show it on Maxwell. And then the employee now decides how much money they want to provide their employees to use on the services of Maxwell. Brian Ardinger: Got it. Adriana Cisneros Basulto: So then fast forward to now, you know, employees are onboarding into Maxwell. They can use their funds on those benefits, those support services that are going to be the most valuable for them. Maybe Tom, really what he struggles with is spending his weekends doing laundry. Yeah. He could use his, you know, the money that he got from his employer, on tackling laundry. So, he doesn't have to be doing that over the weekends. And maybe, you know, you have Kate, which laundry's not really an issue for her, or maybe that's, you know, she doesn't care for other people touching her laundry. She can use her funds on things that matter to her, like maybe healthy meals and getting support that way. So that's in a nutshell how it works. Brian Ardinger: I like the idea, and this and this movement that we're seeing towards how do you make things very customized for the employee. You know, it used to be where employee benefits, were you get your health care and, and maybe you get a couple of things else, but for the most part, it was here's your cookie cutter things that were available. But by services like Maxwell that allow the employer and the employee to find that right balance. What are you seeing when it comes to that? Adriana Cisneros Basulto: Yes. No, you're absolutely right. It's been, it's been, talked about for a long time on the HR space. How to really put the employee at the center of that. So providing employee centric experiences. But it really hadn't taken off. And I think we are at a moment in which this is actually going to happen, because now, well, a multitude of things are happening, but one of them is as HR teams are honestly trying to help their employees. One of the barriers that they're facing to do that, is that there is so much variety of needs. Like the example I gave was simple. Right. But like, how do you provide enough variety of support that is really going to meet the need of all of your employees? And actually, that is sometimes paralyzing them because they're like, well, you know, I could get this particular solution in house and use it here, but that's going to serve only my, you know, my working parents.And that's going to inevitably cost these feeling of the haves and have no...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Susan Lindner, cultural anthropologist, founder of Emerging Media, and author of the upcoming book, Innovation Storytellers. Susan, and I talk about the importance of storytelling to the new innovator and what companies can do to have their stories resonate and spread in today's changing media landscape. 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 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, pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript with Susan Lindner, Cultural Anthropologist, Founder of Emerging Media, and Author of Innovation StorytellersBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. We have Susan Lindner. She is a cultural anthropologist, disruptor and founder of Emerging Media, which is a brand marketing and PR agency. And we're very excited to have Susan on the show. Welcome. Susan Lindner: Thank you so much, Brian. Brian Ardinger: I am so excited to have you on the show. I want to get you on because a lot of your work is really focused around this concept of storytelling. And it's so important. And so maybe we'll start off with why is storytelling so important to innovators and entrepreneurs? Susan Lindner: It's so critical. And 20 years of working in tech and innovation has taught me this as the golden rule. Stanford has been very helpful to us. They have shown that a story and statistics together are 22 times more memorable than just statistics alone. And that is because the human brain is wired to receive story, not Excel spreadsheets. Not even bullet points.So, it's critical. If you want someone to remember that fantastic innovation that you're pitching, that you actually wrap it in a story with a hero, with a plot, with a conclusion. That if you want funders, investors, stakeholders, to remember it, you had better wrap that incredible data, in a story that people can take with them and actually act on it.Brian Ardinger: That makes perfect sense. And obviously we've seen a lot of companies that have done good at that. Telling stories that work. And others that have flamed out because they couldn't really communicate effectively with what they're doing. What's the process of developing a story? Especially at that early stage, when you're trying to get somebody to notice your new creation?Susan Lindner: For Innovation storytelling, which is different than every other kind of storytelling, right? We're not talking about soap. Or maybe you're innovating soap, fantastic, give me a call, happy to help with a new, the next thing that will be soap. Great. But Innovation storytelling takes a different look. And so, I'm an anthropologist by training, but I was also a religion major in college. And I was fascinated by how the profits moved the word around the world.How did they get the word to move? How did they get all the early adopters? How did they get people to convert in the midst of great danger and peril? Right? Every considerable, social, racial, economic, lions eating you alive. Who got these people to adopt an idea that was not even provable right, in the empirical sense?And yet people did it. How did they do it? And so, I looked at the prophets, Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Moses, and tried to create the framework to understand how do you move a message around the world? How did the prophets do it? And it turns out there's five clear steps that all of the profits employ. So, step number one is history.You'll notice that Jesus didn't say that Judaism was wrong. Right. He certainly saw himself as a Jew called himself a rabbi. He was referred to as a rabbi, as a teacher. So, you take, what is historical about what came before us and say, this is the foundation of what the story is built upon. We all come from a common shared history.That makes us a group, right. That makes us a try step one. It is the same reason why we employ the term email to describe transatlantic electronic correspondence that goes through a tube under an ocean and arrives in my computer. Right? It's why we call it an inbox. Cause there used to be one sitting on your desk.It's why we use the save icon. Or it used to be a floppy disk. My kids have never seen a floppy desk. They don't even know what it is. I was cleaning out my house actually, found a floppy disk and showed it to my son. Twentytwo years old, goes to the Rochester Institute of Technology and looks at me and said, why did you 3d print a copy of the save icon from work? Because that's what I'm doing in my spare time, Brian. I'm printing a copy of the save icon. Brian Ardinger: You can bring those back along with the AOL CDs. Susan Lindner: Which, you know, some archeologist is going to have to explain one day. So, step one is the history, right? It makes it really easy to understand where we all came from. Cause that's how we transitioned into change.Step two, what are our values and our purpose? So, the prophets were really good about describing the shared values, not just the place we come from, but the value surrounding that Innovation and our purpose. What is it that's really driving us today? That may be a little bit different than what was driving us historically.So, you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Could be one of those, like it's always been done that way. That's one of those things. So, as we shift out from what was to what could be, what are the values and the purpose. Can we get that really clear for the listener? Step three is the message, right? This is when we burn all boats.This is when we say we're taking what works and we're leaving what doesn't. So, we're going from an eye for an eye to turn the other cheek. That's the shift we're making. And the next is finding those early adopters. So, we know that we only need about 13.3% of the market, right? Our innovators and our early adopters who are going to go forward and go, I'm going to take a risk.I'm going to take a chance on this Innovation. So, who are those people who now that we have the message, will carry it forward? And it's not always the cheerleader in the room. In fact, better when it's the biggest skeptic. I said, gosh, I never thought that could be, but now I'm standing outside of the Apple store for three days before the iPhone comes out.And the last is viral language. Step five is using viral language. So, we really want to look at the things that you learned in English class. Alliteration, tagline designer. We want to think about rhetoric that actually moves people. And does it incorporate emotion? We know that the way a story sticks is actually by activating brain chemicals, adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin, fear, anger, lust. Name all of the seven deadly sins. Right? If we can actually generate emotion, the story now has a biological marker, a physiological marker that says it's in my body and I can take it with me. And that's how stories are powerful. I was just giving a talk and I was asking people to remember the first time they...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Hege Barnes, Director of Americas at Innovation Norway. Hege and I talk about the new innovations in green tech, clean tech and electric vehicles, as well as how Norway is working with startups to help grow and support innovation, both inside Norway and around the world. Inside Outside Innovation is the 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, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.For the past six years, Inside Outside has been helping innovators and entrepreneurs around the world launch, grow, and thrive. Today we want to celebrate the community and their commitment to innovation. At a time of accelerated disruption and uncertainty, it's never been more important. Thanks for listening, engaging, and being a positive force for innovators everywhere. Interview Transcript with Hege Barnes, Director of Americas at Innovation NorwayBrian 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 Hege Barnes. She's the Regional Director for Americas at Innovation Norway. Welcome Hege. Hege Barnes: Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Brian Ardinger: Hey, we're excited to have you as well. We got connected after the Will Ferrell Superbowl ad for GM, where Will declared that he was coming after Norway. And so, we wanted to set the record straight and go straight to the source and see what's actually happening when it comes to the world of Innovation in Norway. So, what is Innovation Norway? Hege Barnes: Yeah, the whole EV campaign with Will Ferrell was sort of funny though. And we were very, very happy to tag along in that and sort of play along and have some fun. But it is actually true the way that we develop the country and the green innovations, our slogan is Powered by Nature. You that's how we live and that's how we develop our destination.But Innovation Norway. Yeah. It's the government entity for trade and industry. So, we are sort of the trade council Invest in Norway. We are the tourist boards and the development agency for Norway. We help companies from birth to success, the growth, the global success. So, we have offices all over Norway and in 30 countries I think, all over the world. We work very efficiently within the unique sort of competence areas that we have in Norway, where we see that we are stronger than have competitive advantages.And then we matched that with the opportunity areas in the markets we are in. So, I'm representing America. Ee look at what's happening in the US, Canada, and Brazil in particular. Looking at all the developments and matching that with what companies and where we can compete and use our resources efficiently.Brian Ardinger: That makes a lot of sense. And obviously, probably a lot of us aren't familiar with everything that's going on within Norway, where you hear of, you know, green tech and clean tech and a lot around the electric vehicles. I think you're the largest market share of electric vehicles in the world. And I believe you're also expanding into other areas like the first, fully electric autonomous container ship. So, what's happening in Norway that makes it this destination or a testination for some of the new technologies when it comes to green and cleantech. Hege Barnes: Based on again, what I said, it it's like this powered by nature sort of mentality that we have after we discovered oil and became this big offshore industry. We are now saying that we need to move beyond that. We need to transition from an industry heavily dependent on fossil fuel into new green technologies, into new greener solutions. So, in addition to the whole offshore industry sort of technology and deep insights that we have, we also always been a seafaring nation and shipbuilding nation.So, the whole Maritime’s there, the whole Innovation above the water and underwater has been aquaculture has been sort of core of who Norway is and our industry and the development that we've had. We live in a big country with a lot of space, but we had to innovate to sort of survive. And we built up the industry and we built our communities, basically the whole destination development over the last few years with this, the sort of as a fundament and we are a destination or a country that's full of smart engineers, you know. Engineers that are used to working in even harsh conditions, you know, half the country's above the Arctic circle.We're working out deep into the ocean areas and underwater and cold-water temperatures. And we have the four, really four distinct seasons. We're used to working in tough conditions. And with this sort of engineering mentality, we have now shifted from sort of traditional industries into new technologies. New green technologies and solutions, smart solutions across sectors and industry as well.And this has been driven a lot by the government. A lot of this is mandated by the government, by people themselves. People want a greener development. They want a sustainable development of our economy, our society, and our industries. So when they met, so this whole, the government policies meeting the locals demands and what has led to the Innovation in certain areas that has actually been very successful for us.Brian Ardinger: Can you talk a little bit about some of the programs that have helped businesses or help entrepreneurs set up and, or get moving when it comes to this? What are some of the things that the Innovation Norway actually does? Hege Barnes: We can help companies. We have offices in all the different regions in Norway.  So, we can help companies fund and launch their programs. But we also build communities. We build ecosystems so we can fund clusters and networks and sort of smart Innovation groups, and from a research stage to actual commercialization stage. And these sort of clusters, they learn from each other. They learn and grow together. And we can fund this environment and help sort of support this environment.We can also add competencies. You know, we have a qualified staff that can help companies scale and grow together with the industry. And this is probably the, the success of the model is to trust that we have in society. So, we work a lot with government and private industry. And private industry and government together actually makes things happen. And it makes it happen in a speedier fashion than a lot of other countries like here in the U S.Brian Ardinger: So, are most of your programs focused on helping Norwegian companies get off the ground and move to the United States and get market share and that? Or are you working with companies like in other countries that want to work and build things in Norway? Hege Barnes: So, both, you know, we want this to help our smart sort of, the companies that comes from a green shipping cluster, you know, we see that they can win big contracts abroad. We work with the offshore wind development on the East coast here, you know, ...