Cornell Tech and SC Johnson College of Business professor Karan Girotra joins the Cornell Keynotes podcast to explore what’s new in the world of AI, including updates on Apple Intelligence, Anthropic and advancements in China. We examine late-breaking technical advances in generative AI such as new video capabilities, autonomous agents, robotics and the next generation of models.

The Cornell Keynotes podcast is brought to you by eCornell, which offers more than 200 online certificate programs to help professionals advance their careers and organizations. Karan Girotra is an author of three online programs:

• Generative AI for Productivity
• AI for Digital Transformation
• Digital Leadership

Learn more about all of our generative AI certificate programs.

Follow Girotra on LinkedIn and X, and register to attend his upcoming AI Today Cornell Keynote.

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Inventions can make day-to-day life easier or revolutionize industries. However, most novel ideas wither on the vine. In this episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast from eCornell, professor Richard Cahoon from the global development department at the Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences joins host Chris Wofford to discuss how creativity can shift a good idea that might be a flash in the pan to a great idea that stands the test of time.

Key Timestamps

• 03:45 - Cahoon’s background and international work in technology transfer
• 07:33 - Creativity’s role in invention as a catalyst to validation and longevity
• 11:10 - Right brain/left brain dichotomy and metacognition (thinking about your own thinking)
• 14:52 - “Inventiveness analysis” and “failed” inventions—like Post-it® Notes
• 19:13 - Blending analytical and creative thinking as entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs
• 20:55 - Jumping to conclusions
• 21:40 - Intellectual lenses and value proposition
• 24:05 - Entrepreneurial mindset in team dynamics
• 26:40 - Getting support for entrepreneurial endeavors through angel investors and networking
• 28:15 - Impact of AI on inventiveness and innovation
• 30:23 - Collecting the dots (data) and connecting the dots by looking for patterns
• 36:20 - Finding the target audience for your invention
• 39:04 - Maintaining momentum with your invention and knowing when to set things aside
• 42:35 - Common mental blocks that can inhibit the creative process

Relevant eCornell Programs

Learn more in Cahoon’s Invention and IP Management online certificate program and these technology, leadership and business programs from eCornell:

• Innovation Strategy
• Intrapreneurship
• Startup Funding and Finance
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets

Reading List and Resources

• “A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future” by Daniel H. Pink
• “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” by Carol Dweck
• “The Power of Mindfulness” by Nyanaponika Thera
• Google Patents
• United States Patent and Trademark Office - Prior Art Search

Did you enjoy this episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast? Watch the Keynote.

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As co-founder of Eisengard AI, Clarence Lee spends his workdays examining how businesses can leverage cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technology to improve their workflows. The use cases for marketing and sales are abundant — from copywriting, A/B testing and customer relationship management to pipeline operations, pitching and cold call strategy. Lee, a former professor at Cornell’s SC Johnson College of Business, shares how companies can apply academic theory to create AI business frameworks for those routine lead- and revenue-generating practices in this episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast from eCornell.

In conversation with host Chris Wofford, Lee explores:

• The importance of prioritizing customer and stakeholder outcomes
• AI applications for customer lifetime value and customer-based corporate valuation
• How AI can help workers map their days
• Time freedom gained from AI
• The future of AI agents and possibilities of AI org charts
• Differences between smart AI and wise AI
• Personalized AI that knows you
• Sales and marketing pain points that can be addressed with AI
• Opportunities for AI to guide corporate leaders as external consulting firms do
• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems
• Mental modeling of what’s important — and what’s not — in accomplishing work tasks
• How AI frameworks could be used for eCornell learners

Discover the latest best practices for AI in eCornell certificate programs:

• Designing and Building AI Solutions
• Generative AI for Productivity
• AI Strategy
• AI for Digital Transformation
• Applied Machine Learning and AI

Additionally, Clarence Lee is an author of five marketing certificate programs:

• Marketing AI
• Digital Marketing 360
• Growth Marketing
• Integrated Marketing 360
• Digital Marketing

Learn more about Lee on his website and get the latest updates from his company at eisengard.ai.

Books and authors mentioned in this episode:

• “Principles” by Ray Dalio
• “How Brands Grow” by Byron Sharp
• “Tribe of Mentors,” “Tools of Titans,” and “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss

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Concern about honey bees, and the possibility of human extinction, has swept the nation. Marina Caillaud, Ph.D., a lecturer in the Department of Entomology at Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, shares the facts about the state of bees in the U.S. and around the world in this episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast from eCornell.

Her conversation with Marc Faris, an instructional designer for eCornell’s Bees and Us course, covers:

• Colony collapse disorder observed in 2006
• Causes of the decline in managed honey bee colonies in the U.S.
• Global increases in managed honey bee colonies, particularly in Asia
• Significance of pollination in our ecosystem
• Stressors on honey bee colonies: pests and parasites, pesticides and poor nutrition
• Diversity of bee species around the world, including 4,000 different types in the U.S.
• Endangerment of bumblebee species
• Effects of habitat loss on non-honey bee species
• Steps individuals can take to protect bees
• Proper removal of honey bees from houses

Learn more in the Bees and Us online course, co-authored by Caillaud, and in eight other beekeeping programs from eCornell.

Read recent news and research about bees:

• “Honeybees Invaded My House, and No One Would Help” (The New York Times)
• "450,000 honeybees have been occupying the walls of this home for 35 years. They just got rehomed" (CNN)
• Rusty Patched Bumble Bee (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)
• Pollinator Conservation Resource Center (Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation)
• Honey: Annual report of the number of colonies producing honey (U.S. Department of Agriculture)
• Honey Bee Colonies (U.S. Department of Agriculture)
• Managed Colonies Over Time (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations)
• “Worldwide occurrence records suggest a global decline in bee species richness” (One Earth, Volume 4, Issue 1 – ScienceDirect)
• “Global Consequences of Land Use” (Science, Volume 309, Issue 5734)

Read more about pollinator-friendly native plants in your region of the U.S.

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Some business leaders believe artificial intelligence is set to replace human workers in the not-so-distant future. Time will tell. In the interim, advances in AI are helping professionals streamline their daily workflows in exciting ways.

In this episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast, Karan Girotra — the Charles H. Dyson Family Professor of Management and professor of operations, technology and innovation at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business and Cornell Tech — explains the current capabilities of AI and shares the most newsworthy updates about the technology. His conversation with host Chris Wofford covers:

• Recent announcements from OpenAI, Microsoft and Google
• Advantages Microsoft and Google have over OpenAI
• Advancements in making AI more like the human brain
• Integration of classification and generation capabilities
• Improvements to reduce latency in generative AI
• Distinctions between small and large language models
• AI agents and the task plans they can create
• Reductions in cost as the technology improves
• Ethical concerns and unintended consequences
• Science fiction’s influence on society’s understanding of AI
• “Scalable dumbness” vs. sentient brilliance
• Value of AI as a general-purpose technology in business
• AI experiments and endpoints for businesses
• Reducing anxiety and fear of AI among employees
• Structures of change, innovation engines and intelligent failure

The Cornell Keynotes podcast is brought to you by eCornell, which offers more than 200 online certificate programs to help professionals advance their careers and organizations. Karan Girotra is an author of three online programs:

• Generative AI for Productivity
• AI for Digital Transformation
• Digital Leadership

Follow Girotra on LinkedIn and X, and register to attend upcoming Cornell Keynotes in his AI Today series:

• July 1, 2024
• August 12, 2024

Learn more about OpenAI:

• Introducing GPT-4o Playlist
• Spring Update

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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) estimates that one in five American employees are bound by noncompete agreements that impose time or location restrictions on their ability to pursue work with or create competitor companies. In April, the FTC issued a rule banning noncompetes with the intent to “generate over 8,500 new businesses each year, raise worker wages, lower health care costs and boost innovation.”

Will a court issue an injunction against the rule? Does the FTC even have the power to make the call on noncompetes?

In this episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast from eCornell, Stewart J. Schwab, the Jonathan and Ruby Zhu Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, joins host Chris Wofford to discuss these issues. The conversation covers:

• Schwab’s approach to teaching noncompete agreements
• Employee duty of loyalty
• Purposes of noncompete agreements for employers
• Infamous noncompetes at Jimmy John’s and Amazon
• Applications of antitrust law in the labor market
• Organized labor and workers’ rights
• Non-disclosure, non-solicitation and training reimbursement agreements
• Potential for injunctions and decisions from Congress and the Supreme Court

Read about the FTC’s final rule on noncompetes.

Explore employee duties, including noncompetes, wage and benefit regulations, anti-discrimination principles and more in Stewart J. Schwab’s Employment Law for Leaders online certificate program from eCornell.

Interested in other aspects of law and business? Consider these programs:

• Legal Essentials
• Employment Law
• Labor Relations
• Employee Relations and Investigations

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In this episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast, Marielena Hincapié, Distinguished Immigration Fellow and Visiting Scholar at Cornell Law School, interviews Jonathan Blitzer, staff writer at The New Yorker and immigration expert, on his recently published book Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis. They discuss how the politics and policy of immigration in the United States have been forged from the 1980s to the present, offering a look at living history, told through individuals from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras who’ve had to risk everything to save themselves and those around them.

Co-sponsors:
Cornell Law School Migration and Human Rights Program
Cornell Migrations Initiative
Cornell Latino Studies Program
National Immigration Law Center (NILC)
Migration Policy Center (MPI)
FWD.us

To learn more about immigration law and policy, check out eCornell’s immigration law certificate program.

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Unionization is shaking up the auto industry, delivering meaningful gains toward fair pay and other benefits for workers in the U.S. The efforts are particularly significant in the South where a legacy of racist labor laws continues to propagate disparity within the workforce.

In this episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast from eCornell, Andrew Wolf, a professor of global labor and work at Cornell’s ILR School, delivers insights on the recent union vote at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the implications for similar efforts led by auto workers – and employees in any industry – in the South and beyond.

Hosted by Keynotes senior producer Chris Wofford, this episode explores:

•  The UAW victory at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, TN on April 19th
•  Right-to-Work and Jim Crow laws, and the Southern Discount
•  What to expect for the UAW vote at Mercedes plants in Tuscaloosa, AL
• The future of the auto industry and auto unions with the shift towards electric vehicles

Learn more in Andrew Wolf’s April 2024 Vox interview covering the potential impact of Volkswagen’s unionization in Tennessee on auto workers across the nation.

Follow Wolf on X (formerly Twitter).

Enroll in eCornell’s labor relations certificate program, and check out other law and human resources online certificate programs to discover the latest best practices for labor-related legal issues in the workplace.

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Current legal and political challenges to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs are causing confusion for employers that want to act on good intentions toward equal opportunity in talent acquisition and retention.

In this episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast from eCornell, Paul Wagner, an adjunct assistant professor at the Cornell Nolan School and shareholder in Stokes Wagner law firm, and Holly Lawson, SVP of human resources for Noble House, join guest host David Sherwyn, the John and Melissa Ceriale Professor of Hospitality Human Resources and a professor of law at the Nolan School, to explore how organizations can navigate shifting legal approaches to DEI.

This episode covers the:

• Civil Rights Act of 1991, the mixed motive standard and its early effects on employment discrimination cases
• Evolution of DEI policies from positive reception to legal backlash
• Nonexistence of “reverse discrimination”
• Unlawfulness of quotas
• Alignment of DEI efforts with organizational core values and goals
• Recruitment source expansion to promote diversity in hiring
• Possible legal challenges on DEI policies employers can face
• Meticulous record-keeping necessary to withstand legal scrutiny of hiring practices
• Individual-focused application of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Improved outcomes of organizations with diverse workforces
• Right-wing political views of DEI programs as charity
• Omission of intersectionality in the law
• Intentionality in creating space for underrepresented voices
• Development of employee resource groups
• Use of the term “affirmative action”

eCornell offers dozens of online professional certificates in human resources, diversity, equity and inclusion and law to guide you in crafting policies and practices for your organization. Continue your learning in our HR in Hospitality, Hospitality Labor and Employment Law or Business Law programs — all authored by David Sherwyn — or in one of our DEI certificates.

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In this episode of the Cornell Keynotes podcast from eCornell, astrophysicist Lisa Kaltenegger joins host Chris Wofford to discuss her research into the possibility of life beyond Earth. Kaltenegger, associate professor in astronomy and director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University, explains the new technology scientists are using to investigate whether we are alone in the universe.

Tune in to learn:

• How a team of diverse scientists at the Carl Sagan Institute are working together to find life on distant worlds
• Methodologies for studying exoplanets and factors for determining if a planet or a moon can host life
• What we might do as humans if we indeed discover new life in the cosmos

Order your copy of Lisa Kaltenegger’s book “Alien Earths,” read her article “She Dreams of Pink Planets and Alien Dinosaurs” in The New York Times and follow her on Instagram.

Explore new worlds of knowledge in certificate programs from eCornell.

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