The EPAM Continuum Podcast Network

Sridhar Iyengar has been around the innovation block. Several times. With his business partner Sonny Vu, he created the diabetes-care company AgaMatrix, then Misfit wearables, and now he’s the CEO and Founder of Elemental Machines. In a wide-ranging conversation with Continuum SVP Kevin Young, Iygengar’s intelligence shines through, illuminating the worlds of medical devices, consumer health, and tech entrepreneurialism. Among the many wise words of this podcast, you’ll hear these: · “We did predictive analytics before the phrase was sexy.” · “What we thought with Misfit is—let’s do something in health and wellness, where we can iterate really quickly without having the regulatory burden. And once we understand the UI and the user experience, we can then put a quality system together and then move that into medical.” · “We had to design the product in such a way that the Apple decision-maker would fall in love with. So, of course, we mimicked the Apple design language. We actually got a very nice compliment by one of the folks there saying, ‘Wow, this looks like something we would’ve designed.’” · “Quite simply, our market research involved one intern sitting in front of a laptop for two weeks, and reading every negative review on Amazon for the competing products. We told her: just tell us what the top three complaints are.” · “There’s no de-bugger for physical processes—and that’s kinda what we’re doing at Elemental Machines.” · “As somebody runs that assembly line over and over and over again, our system learns where the critical variables are, and then alerts them and basically guides our customers to say: ‘OK, step number 14—the variability there is what’s causing quality problems in your product.’” · “One of the best ways to spot an opportunity is to solve a problem that you’ve had yourself.” · “Solving an existing problem is generally not as exciting as working on a new technology. But if you solve an existing problem, it gets a foot in the door, you can build a business, and then you can start investing in the new sexy exiting things that are swirling around.” Host: Pete Chapin Editor: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

It’s not every day that a 1,000-bed floating naval hospital parks across the street from your studio. (From our studio, anyway.) And it’s definitely not every day that said ship’s Commanding Officer invites you aboard for a tour—and then sits down to record a podcast. But all of this recently happened to us, and the result is a superb new episode of "The Resonance Test," featuring the USNS COMFORT’s Commanding Officer Captain Lanny Boswell in conversation with Continuum’s Mike Dunkley. Some highlights from Boswell: • “In some of these countries where healthcare is few and far between, when we move in, we can impact and change the health of a small country for years, with a three-week stay.” • “We are in what we call Ready Five status. We have to be prepared from when we’re given a go signal, to be able to throw the lines within five days. That’s our requirement. And we usually do it in three days.” • The Comfort’s unilateral design creates a “leapfrogging of communication” which is “not done by going up two or three flights of stairs or into another level or into another building. They’re literally down the hall.” • “The challenges are so intense and so immense, it really is the belief in the mission to begin with that carries the day.” • “We represent the best of who we are, as a nation, and our alliances. The multiple countries we take on board. We represent the benevolence of a great thought—that we’re all in this together.” Host: Pete Chapin Editor: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

If you love innovation, you must—must!—listen to *Innovation Hub,* the smart and entertaining radio program that emanates from the WGBH studios in Boston. At *The Resonance Test,* we admire *Innovation Hub* and the show’s host and executive editor, Kara Miller. However, this admiration is eclipsed by that of Continuum SVP Jon Campbell, who admits, on this episode of the podcast, to being a fanboy of the show and Miller. Listen up, as he turns the tables on Miller and asks her some great questions—and she says things like: • H.J. Heinz was “just trying to sell people not just on ketchup or pickles but on the idea that you could buy pre-prepared food, and it was safe to do that and it wouldn’t kill you or anything.” • “We try to find people who can take a deeper dive than the stuff that is coming at us a hundred miles an hour at us every day.” • “Makeup for television is terrible to take off. Terrible.” • “If you wanna think deeply about something, about how you want to change the world or how you wanna create something new, you have to step away for a little while from those emails.” Host: Pete Chapin Editor: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

Jessica Helfand resists taking center stage. If anything, she wants to give her place in spotlight to the audience. An author and Yale professor and co-founder of *Design Observer*, Helfand thinks that the time has come to stop gawking at the stars pontificating the podium and instead start conversations—meaningful ones—with each other. To this end, she recently prototyped something she calls The Next Stage, in our Boston studio. And the moment that experiment ended, our Lee Moreau jogged her over to a conference room to record a podcast reflecting on the experience. Listen closely, and you’ll hear her say some bright, provocative, and deeply humane things, such as: • “Performance is fine if it’s theatre. Performance is fine if it’s sports. But why does performance have to happen in social engagement, in personal interaction?” • “Even failure has become a buzzword. Failure ™.” • “I love podcasting because just as I loved like this conversation this morning because, the minute you put other people in the mix, the vocabulary changes, and you get much more of a rich soup. There’s more flavors.” • “The whole point is to spawn better, easier, more mindful, more consistent, more connected ideas in the world. That’s civilization in progress.” • “Viral is not a word that’s good if you’re an epidemiologist or an immunologist.” • “Designers are really good at making stuff look cool. At making stuff look shiny. And I don’t think that the world is a shiny place. And so, we would be doing ourselves and each other a disservice if we didn’t ask some ruthlessly objective questions about what that means.” • “Why are we autodidacts in terms of technology and not of philosophy or ideas?” • “I write to figure out what I can’t make in the studio. And I make things to figure out what I can’t write. And I teach to keep myself inspired by the ideas of others—and it’s just not enough to do it in the classroom.” Host: Pete Chapin Editor: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

Soon Yu is, according to his seven-year-old son, “really goofy, and he drinks way too much Coke.” He’s also an acclaimed speaker and author who trains his vision on what he calls the Iconic Advantage. In the latest vintage of The Resonance Test, our Toby Bottorf gets Yu to unbottle his opinions on the elements of iconic branding, finding untapped value in one’s brand portfolio, the differences between management consultancies and design firms, and learning to own iconic benefit. He also analyzes the reasons Bottorf digs wearing his Adidas Sambas. Tune in and hear Yu say: • “If it means that our cash cow is gonna basically get milked away and die, that’s OK.” • “If you can capture the essence of how an Audi makes you feel, then you can design an entire experiential system focused on delivering that feeling throughout the experience journey that consumers have with the product.” • “Becoming iconic allows you to reach the highest form of branding there is... It goes to what you believe. And when you get into the belief system, and you own it, you are given so much more credit for being trustworthy, for being relevant to ‘me,’ and for being meaningful to ‘me.’” • “If you really drive iconicity, you’re actually going to be more profitable.” • “When you have a brand you love… you don’t want to sit on the fence on that, you want to be all in… Your role is to make sure that your consumers are all in for your products. They don’t want to fall out of love with brands they love—they want to stay in love.” Host: Pete Chapin Editor: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

Digital health is alive and kicking—and funded—in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts! We know this because Mike Dunkley, Continuum SVP, recently sat down with Nick Dougherry, Program Director of PULSE@MassChallenge, for an episode of *The Resonance Test.* PULSE is a vibrant new program that, Dougherty says, “actively creates the future of healthcare.” Tune in and hear how PULSE plays matchmaker between aspiring startups and established sponsor organizations, and turns startup ideas and energy into scalable solutions. “The real core of this program is working,” says Dougherty. “These startups and partners are working together in ways that they haven’t been able to do in the past.” How is PULSE different? Well, for one, they brig a whole lot of scientific attitude to the proceedings. “We want to make sure that we’re not just talking about the great work that we’re doing—that we’re *measuring* it," says Dougherty. “And if we’re off track, we have the data that shows us that we’re off track so that we can course-correct.” And, in a very cool move, PULSE embeds MBA students with their startups, and it’s their task to produce a case study for each new business. Like what you hear? Scroll down and click away… Host: Pete Chapin Editor: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

Have you heard the good news? Chili’s has, at long last, lifted the lifetime ban on *The Office*'s Pam Beesly. To help celebrate this important event, we’re releasing a great podcast conversation Kelli Valade, Chili’s President, recorded with our Lee Moreau months ago. Listen up, and you’ll hear what Valade has to say about leadership, the role of storytelling at Chili’s, and what it’s like to have 70,000 ChiliHeads report to you. Host: Pete Chapin Editor: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon

“Biology is awesome!” says Christina Agapakis, Creative Director of Ginkgo Bioworks, the synthetic biology firm, and who would argue with that? Not us. Just the opposite, in fact. The 78th person on *Fast Company’s* list of the Most Creative People of 2016, Agapakis recently jogged over to record a fine episode of *The Resonance Test* with Continuum SVP Mike Dunkley. The pair had a fascinating exchange on rational design, user needs, mushroom fungus as furniture material, synthetic biology phobia-phobia, and more. Tune in to hear Agapakis say things like: • “We brew these microbes and out of that beer, effectively, we get ingredients that might end up in perfume, in food, in cosmetics, all sorts of different products.” • In the future, “our computers might not be using DNA, but anything that is made of physical stuff is something that’s going to be potentially impacted by the field of biology.” • “You have to build not just the understanding of the biochemistry and the understanding of the cells, but you have to also build automated tools to help you access that rapid prototyping.” • “It’s not like my yeast is going to become a lizard.”

If you build an awesome maker space in Boston’s Innovation District, they will come. That was the hypothesis behind Autodesk's BUILD Space. Filling those 34,000 square feet of robots, water jet cutters, and other assorted items of mechanical awesomeness with people and projects? That's the task of one Rick Rundell. In this edition of *The Resonance Test,* Rundell and Continuum Principal Lee Moreau chat about how the BUILD space “allows people to fail in interesting ways," the merits of creating an external incubator in-house, and how the Cheesecake Factory uses a water jet to slice, believe it or not, cheesecake.

Should we be surprising and delighting our customers? Thomas A. Stewart and Patricia O’Connell, who co-authored a new volume, "Woo, Wow, and Win: Service Design, Strategy, and the Art of Customer Delight," say, "Erm, let's stick with 'delight'..." Listen to the spirited conversation between our service-minded co-authors and Continuum VP Toby Bottorf to learn how service design connects strategy to customers, the critical importance of delivery, and how the customer is—wait for it—*not* always right. Host: Pete Chapin Editor: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon