The Remarkable SaaS Podcast

The theme of this podcast is product innovation, and in particular how the combination of AI and people can create value beyond the sum of its components. My guest on this week’ podcast is Louis Rosenberg, CEO of Unanimous.AI Louis is a technologist, prolific inventor, entrepreneur, and writer. He attended Stanford University, where he earned his bachelors, masters, and PhD degrees. His doctoral work focused on robotics, virtual reality, augmented reality, and human-computer interaction, and resulted in the Virtual fixtures system for the U.S. Air Force, the first immersive Augmented Reality system ever built. In 2014, he founded Unanimous A.I., an artificial intelligence company that enables human groups to amplify their collective brainpower by forming real-time "hive minds" modeled after natural swarms. Unanimous AI became well known in 2016 when its Artificial Swarm Intelligence technology (Swarm AI) made a series of accurate predictions about world events, including predicting the Academy Awards, the Kentucky Derby, the Super Bowl, and the rise of Donald Trump. This triggered me, hence I invited Louis to my podcast. We explore product innovation concept of swarm intelligence, and how this fills an important gap in the evolution of AI. Here are some of his quotes: “We amplify the intelligence of human groups by connecting people together in real time, using AI algorithms to enable them to make more accurate forecasts, more precise predictions, better assessments, judgments and decisions. We use AI to turn network groups of people into artificial experts that can act as a superintelligence. There's actually a scientific name for that, called Swarm Intelligence. In nature, Swarm Intelligence is the reason why birds flock, fish school, and bees swarm. The inspiration for me was to say, "Well, if birds, and bees, and fish can get smarter together, why can't people do it?" The results that we started getting even early on were remarkable, that we could take a group of people and make them so much more accurate by connecting them together.” By listening to this podcast, you will learn three things: How big business problems can be solved instantly by leveraging the knowledge and wisdom of groups of people in combination with AI Why we’ve underutilized the power of collaboration up to now, and how swarm intelligence takes it to the next level That we’re just scratching the surface with regards to how we can amplify human abilities – a mega opportunity for everyone. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this podcast I’ll focus on product innovation in the Higher Education space and my guest is Ray Blackwood, Vice President of Product Management at Campus Management Corp   Ray is a futurist who is passionate about technology, business intelligence and leadership. He’s in particular passionate about solving problems in higher education through technology. As he puts it on his LinkedIn profile: “I invent solutions that run colleges”.   Ray received his undergraduate degrees from the University of Advancing Technology in Multimedia and Digital Animation and Production and his Master In Business Administration and Technology Management from the University of Phoenix. In my hunt for compelling stories about the value we can unlock when technology and people blend in the right way, I stumbled upon Campus Management’s new product: Occupation Insight. It’s promise: “How institutions can better align academic programs and student skills with industry needs”. This triggered me, hence I invited Ray to my podcast. We explore the big changes in the education space, where the focus is now shifting from graduation to employability as the ultimate outcome. We discuss product innovation approaches on how technology can play a meaningful role to help students stay on the optimal path to achieve their aspirations in a world where teachers are a scarce resource. Here are some of his quotes: “It's hard for students to choose the right thing or we have so much advisement to coach the student. That it can be overwhelming I wanted to know what I was going to learn in a class more than what classes I needed to take. How cool would it be if I was a student, and I was sitting there and I just wasn't being told what to take because I needed a certain number of credit, but I could actually see what skills am I going to learn and what careers could I be interested in while I'm in school and be thinking about that." Technology is changing so rapidly. What you're going to learn in the classroom your freshman year might even be irrelevant by the time you graduate. The skill that technologists need to learn is not the technology itself, but it's how to learn. It's how to solve problems and how to think.” By listening to this interview, you will learn three things: Why the challenge is not to solve the problem at hand, but to prevent it all together How you can create larger impact and circumvent scarcity by changing behavior – and one thing to do that is to inspire curiosity. What mindset you should create as a business software vendor to transform and accelerate your success. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The focus on this weeks’ podcast is product innovation in the area of recruitment, and my guest is Ashutosh Garg, CEO of Eightfold.ai – a company that has the idea and potential to transform the way we’ll look at recruitment forever. Eightfold has recently been designated by Gartner as a cool vendor for human capital management in Talent Acquisition. This is what happens if you build your company around a strong vision – remarkable things will happen. Ashutosh understands this like no one else. He is a true guru of all things AI, with 10 years of information retrieval, machine learning and search experience. Previously, he was Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of BloomReach. Prior to that, he was at IBM research. He is also a prolific publisher/inventor, with a book on machine learning, 30+ papers, and 50+ patents. Ashutosh holds a Bachelor of Tech from IIT-Delhi and a PhD from University of Illinois UC. He has won numerous awards, including best thesis award at IIT Delhi, IBM Fellowship and outstanding researcher award at UIUC. What triggered me to invite Ashutosh was the phrase on their website:  “Uncovering the Future Potential of Talent”. The company was founded around the believe employment is the backbone of our society and everyone deserves the right job. What Ashutosh and his team realized is that up to today you get the job based on who you might know and not what you are capable of doing. Eightfold is solving this problem and thereby changing the paradigm by intelligently augmenting the recruiter as well as the applicant. Here are some of his quotes “when people are looking for a job, they are not switching the job to do the same thing they have been doing. But they want to do something more, something different, they want to grow in their career. And through AI, what we can do today is we can predict what someone is likely to do next in their career. This helps us understand who will be a good fit for this role in which organization. And then we connect people to those opportunities. So, we've changed the paradigm: Instead of people applying for a job we go and recommend them: John and Lisa, these are the three jobs in our company that our most relevant to you. If you're only looking to hire people, based on what they have done, not what they are capable of doing? Losing value proposition. Everyone deserves the opportunity and we want to enable that in people.” By listening to this interview, you will learn three things: That a lot of value potential in any solution is locked up because we neglect to connect the dots between various data points. How you can change the paradigm with your solution by doing the opposite of the norm Why business could run a lot better if we take the bias out of decision making. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This focus of this weeks´ podcast is product strategy, and in particular what we can do to not only make jobs more productive, but also more enjoyable. I discuss this with my guest Olaf Groth. He’s is a professor, adviser and executive for the evolving global innovation economy with 20 years of experience in corporations, consulting firms and academia. He has helped build new ventures and change management initiatives for employers and clients in energy, technology, telecommunications, aerospace and transportation sectors in 30+ countries. The topic of his book triggered me, hence I invited Olaf to my podcast.  Here are some of his quotes: “We believe that AI is here to stay, and that we as human beings, and certainly we, as business decision makers need to get used to what we call symbiotic intelligence. So symbiotic intelligence between humans and machines. We have an opportunity here to shape these jobs such that they are not more not just more productive, but also much more enjoyable We should get engaged and shape it and not over regulate too early, but rather say: in a perfect world, what would that world look like? And what do we need to do to get there. What the work is that is being done, where the value is being added, and then try to understand where humans and machines could collaborate much more elegantly, and in a much more integrated fashion. We will find out as humans, that there is so much more fun to be had, once we get used to this transition, right? The real fun is when we, as humans, see images of what we want evolving, emerging from the current picture.” By listening to this interview, you will learn three things: Why a design goal for solution should not just be increased productivity, but more importantly how it shapes a more enjoyable work experience. That to create the solutions of the future you should anticipate the job profiles of the future Why choosing augmentation over automation will give you golden opportunities to deliver not only unique value for your customers, but also the highest adoption rates. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The guest on this weeks podcast is Dr. Levanon, Chief Science Officer at Beyond Verbal, and we discuss the product innovation that´s going on in the area of voice recognition.  Dr. Levanon has multiple degrees in Physics, Mathematics, Statistics and Operations Research from the Hebrew University and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. This multi-disciplinary background is the fuel behind various breakthroughs in the field of Emotions Analytics. At Beyond Verbal he’s responsible for the core research team and its scientific discoveries. In that role they developed technology that can not only understand the clicks, typed texts, speech or touch, but also how they feel and what they mean. I got triggered by the phrase on their website “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it”, hence I invited Dr. Levanon to my podcast. I really wanted to know how this technology can intelligently augment people in various industries to deliver remarkable impact. As such we discuss how voice analysis can be used to impact one’s health and wellbeing, but also how the same technology can for example help marketers improve the relationship with customers by obtaining a deeper understanding what they really mean. Here are some of his quotes: The idea is the voice is telling us a lot about our self. We have recognized until now many mental problems and diseases through the voice. Now I understand that through the voice I can recognize your wellbeing. Our wellbeing can be recognized through the health status, but also through the emotional status. Therefore, the idea was, "How shall we improve your wellbeing, to understanding both sides of you?" it's not only that, how I can improve the relationship between a company and its clients, or its employees, We can look at every inch of the organization as a group of people in what gets the results, the achievements, is the spirit, the group spirit. When somebody is fighting the other, the results will be very problematic. By listening to this interview, you will learn three things: How to add new levels of differentiation to your company/solution:  emotions drive everything we do, yet voice-driven emotions analytics remains the most important, unexplored interface today. How, by applying voice analytics, you could change the performance of any role. Why analyzing voice could have a large impact on society (and thus your customers) because of its ability to solve the problem of skills shortage. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is focused on product innovation in the water infrastructure sector, and my guest this week is Doug Hatler, Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Fracta. Beyond sales and marketing Doug brings many years of experience as a management consultant, environmental regulatory specialist, and as a civil/environmental engineer. He is a published industry expert and featured speaker on the Environment, Sustainability, Compliance and Risk. He earned a Bacherlor’s Degree in Environmental Science and an MBA from Rutgers University. He earned an Master’s Degree in Environmental Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. I got intrigued by the headline on Fracta’s website: Bringing Artificial Intelligence to infrastructure to solve a $1 trillion problem”. This is why invited Doug to my podcast. We explore the growing issue of aging water infrastructure and why a conventional approach is not going help. We discuss how technology such as AI is used to augment engineers, and how that human/machine combination brings exponential impact by preventing the waste of precious time, money, and water. Here are a couple of quotes from him: We are looking to digitally transform and revolutionize how the water industry is looking at water mains, looking at condition assessments. Any asset is designed to work a number of years and then you may get some extra time out of it, but eventually, it has to be replaced. That's what happening now. The rough numbers are a million dollars a mile to replace a mile of pipe, so you're looking at about a trillion dollars. Some cities are ahead of it, some cities are behind. On average, most cities are somewhere between a quarter to a half a percent, maybe six tenths of a percent so they're pushing to get up. The struggle they have is we have a very, very wide socioeconomic and demographic spectrum. Anything you going to do is going to put pressure on the ratepayers to pay higher rates We're at a point where we can't shy away from it. By listening to this interview, you will learn three things: That you should always keep challenging your approach – your initial idea might be the most obvious, but looking at the desired outcome in different ways might give you better routes to success – if so, be ready to pivot. Why it is important to always keep looking around you for alternative market you could deliver value – there might one that’s easier to enter and own right in front of you How one of the largest roadblock to get a solution market can be inertia - especially in industries that have been working in a similar way for decades See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is about product strategy and my guest on the podcast is Nadia Muller, Founder and CEO or iThrive, a personal coach on your smartphone that helps you to transform counterproductive habits on order to thrive. It’s a common fact healthy and happy employees are generally more productive, but many people still experience stress and burnout issues. This is what iThrive is designed to transform, and doing so it promises to increase productivity at work with 400% This triggered me, hence I invited Nadia to my podcast. We explore what it means to make people thrive and how technology can play a fundamental role in that transformation. We thereby discuss what is required to win the hearts of the user by creating a solution they trust and actually want to use on a day to day basis. Here are some of her quotes: Thriving means that people are strong, they're successful, they're healthy, they're imbalanced The idea is to help people to move towards secure attachment, towards that's thriving, towards the balance. When you look at longitudinal studies that have been studying people for a long time seeing how they're changing their behavior, it is this that actually only 10 percent of the time we succeed on our own. People that were able to succeed they had either coach or a supportive partner or they had a mentor or something else that was really strong supporting figure in their life. That's basically what we are aiming to do with Jean and doing it on a really low entry barrier ways. Everywhere available, 24/7, it doesn't cost much when an employee is happy, less sick the productivity goes up. It has a positive effect on the entire team which again inspires higher productivity is on you. It's just amazing what happens in an organization when you have thriving people. By listening to this interview, you will learn three things That a strong way to grow adoption of your solutions is to understand what makes the user tick – what motivates them. How real value can be created by not just focusing on getting things fixed, but to actually focus on changing the underlying behaviors that cause the issue in the first place That your business gets really convincing for a customer when you’re able to convince them about the upside your solution will bring them beyond the notion of just cost reduction See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Marketeers can deliver remarkable impact through Product Innovation with AI An interview with Dan Mallin, co-founder and CEO of Equals3 This interview focuses on the product innovation opportunity for the marketing community, and my guest on the podcast is Dan Mallin, co-founder and CEO of Equals3. For nearly 20 years, he has established a solid track record in creating, growing and transforming businesses, ranging from technology services, sales, marketing and business development. Dan has twice been recognized as a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, he is a finalist for the MHTA Tekne award and he has been recognized by the Business Journal as one of 40 Under 40. On my hunt for compelling stories that demonstrate the value we can create when technology augments the unique strength of people I stumbled up Equals3 – and as the name reveals – their mantra is: Better than the individual and better than the machine, are the two together. You + Lucy = 3 And this intrigued me, hence invited Dan to my podcast. During our interview we explore the day to day challenges of CMOs and marketeers with regards to analysing and reporting on market data to drive segmentation and positioning decisions and how this can be addressed with product innovation. We discuss how technology such as AI can help to not only speed up this process exponentially, but actually help to take outcomes to complete new levels of impact by revealing new insights, enabling marketeers to ask different and better questions, lowering Cost Per Action (CPA) and even guiding them communicate more clearly. That’s pure competitive advantage.  Here are some of Dan’s quotes: “Equals3 is all about augmented intelligence, not artificial intelligence in the concept of 1+1=3 or you+Lucy=3. Lucy makes you better than she would be alone and better than you would be alone Lucy is an answer engine, not a search engine It gives access to places in the corporation where data exists. If I have to spend a hundred, two hundred hours doing something to get the analysis that I need to get to, and that can be multiple people but the equivalent of that, or if I can do it in four hours or five minutes, what is that speed worth to the organization? If your competition is doing it and you're not, then they'll be able to move faster, market faster, may react to whatever you're doing, understand things and deliver in a superior way.” By listening to this podcast, you will learn three things: How exponential value can be created by going beyond ‘just’ automation and embrace intelligence augmentation for any use case Why the way to explore innovation opportunities is not about optimizing the process as such, but to find ways to eliminate the process all together to shift the focus to what really matters And why investing in machine learning is not about value creation today, but even more about value creation tomorrow by using all new insights to just get better and better See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The focus of this podcast is product innovation and my guest is Rob Bromage, CEO of IntelliHR. Rob is the founder and CEO of intelliHR – an Australian HR technology business developing and marketing a next-generation people management Platform which is stocklisted on the ASX index. Before he became the CEO of IntelliHR he ran APRG - a Human Capital Management Consulting organization. He also founded Resource Partners – an investment organisation for the incubation and development of Intellectual Property in the Human Resources Sector. As you can guess his passion is people, performance and enabling technologies.  Rob believes people are an organisations greatest asset and there is a great opportunity for every business to leverage this valuable and powerful driver for economic success.  This triggered me, hence I invited Rob to my podcast. We explore the secrets of driving performance through people in order to become a high-performance organization. We dive into the role of disruptive technologies such as predictive analytics and natural language processing, and how these tools can raise performance and engagement. Here are some of Rob’s quotes: I think fundamentally, a lot of leaders don't necessarily have the information or the tools that they need to look after their staff. I think a lot of businesses exactly that, they think that the way we get performance is from top down, but it's really about empowering people bottom up. if you focus on connecting staff with their leaders and improving their conversations, really creating meaningful conversations and supporting them to be aligned around expectations, then you're just going to naturally create a circle of understanding HR, in my opinion, is the best place, function, role in any organization to impact performance They really should be involved in connecting the customer strategy with the people's strategy or the people strategy with the customer strategy. If they're spending their time on administrative or compliance tasks, they are wasted asset in my opinion. By listening to this interview, you will learn three things: How old traditional processes (such as for example applicant tracking) can be disrupted by re-imagining it with the concepts and technologies from other processes around us. Why HR and People management is not about software, but about creating meaningful outcomes that change behaviour and impact on culture That in order to drive significant increase in performance and people engagement, a core design goal should be to make solutions addictive.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest on this weeks podcast is Danny Saksenberg, Co-founder / CEO Emerge He started his career as an actuary at Deloitte and then started to immerse himself into the world of machine learning and AI. He was part of the team at Jemstep.com to build one of the first and leading robo-advisors for the Financial Services industry.  In 2012 he founded Emerge together with Laurence Rau. Emerge helps companies to make money from operations by making them super-efficient and improving customer experience. To accomplish this Emerge works in partnership with the world’s largest and most trusted consulting companies, software giants and directly with corporates to develop constantly-learning, operational solutions to valuable and consequential problems. He refers to himself as passionate about thinking differently and unlocking potential. In his words “I am always looking for more problems” This triggered me, hence I invited Danny to my podcast  We explore what’s required for AI and Machine Learning to reach their full potential in solutions; Data is just a part of that puzzle. We review the difference in impact between solutions that improve efficiency and solutions that improve experience. And last but not least we address how the outcomes of AI will reveal new insights, help transform thinking inside organizations, and in turn inspire the creation of new processes and procedures. Here are some of his quotes: “people are spending a lot of time focusing on interesting problems and not so much on valuable problems. we genuinely believe that the solutions to the world's biggest problems are in data and there aren't enough people tackling that properly What gets people excited is that you identify a problem that is hurting their business or an opportunity and you develop a solution that takes advantage of that. What we're finding is that we're able to get machines to do things that far exceed what humans can do. But where humans become much more useful is where we can get them to be strategic in terms of working out where they would like the machines to be deployed We're getting businesses starting to ask more of the right questions. Identify the bottlenecks in their business and focus on that. I think ultimately it boils down to what can you do to serve the public better? The more value you add to them or to more people, the better your business will do.” By listening to this interview, you will learn three things: That to solve the world’s biggest problems and build the most impactful solutions for the future we need to develop multi-disciplinary people who blend expertise in AI and business. Why it’s critical to view your customers as partners (not as clients) in order to create meaningful and lasting impact How by building solutions that go beyond ‘just insight’, but instead also actively help ‘solve’ the problem by changing behaviour, you can grow value exponentially. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices