Hello and welcome to the bottom up skills podcast I might pass since I'm the CEO of quality science and we are continuing this adventure into emerging technology and trends. And, uh, we're taking a bit of a pivot, a bit of a turn because this time we're going to talk about some of the flops that I picked in recent years now, in the previous show, we looked at the ones I got, right.

And we asked ourselves, well, what did we learn from that? And that's exactly what we're going to do in this show. We're going to look at the pics that did not work out and we're going to say, okay, why didn't they work out? Because all of this will lead to our next show, which is what's got us excited in 2021.

Okay. So let's do this in reverse order and look at some of the picks over the last four years. And let's [00:01:00] start with 2020. Uh, now we got quite a few right there. I think we got a helping hand from, uh, COVID in quarantine. We saw cloud, um, and a number of, uh, automation trends that we picked, but one that we did not get right.

Is five G we really expected 5g to take off me. Maybe I was a little bit of a victim of all the hype from the telcos and the handset manufacturers, because the truth is, uh, 5g is not the easiest thing to find. And I know some of you might say, well, there are certain neighborhoods, certain cities, but let's think about it for 5g to really.

Be alive and well, you should be able to live in New York, be traveling in Chicago and stay on your 5g connection. You need to be in Sydney and fly to Melbourne and easily access 5g. And there are truth really is. That's not possible right now. [00:02:00] Here's what I think the big thing is is you gotta, you gotta take into consideration that the handsets are there.

The telcos are willing, but I think this story is one of infrastructure. You know, 5g is tricky because we've got long wave, short wave. We actually need more towers in order to deliver 5g. And I think part of that is just the simple effort. The push the time, the cost of rolling out infrastructure in a way that it's sustainable to offer a complete.

5g all day, every day service. And what you have to remember here is we had many years of this hype and we still in many, many, many major cities around the world. Don't have this quality of service with 5g yet. And I think that this is a real lesson, that anything that requires really fixed analog infrastructure, you [00:03:00] have to factor in the delays and the time that that takes to roll out.

So moving on to 2019, um, and this is a bit of an interesting one. Um, we, um, we really picked mixed reality. Now I will say this one for, in my own defense, uh, you know, the ARV, uh, and anything in between that I think while it certainly didn't happen in 2019 and 2020. All of a sudden, I will say, I think we've deferred it for two years.

I think 20, 21 mixed, uh, extended reality will take off because there's finally, this is the big insight around mixed reality. There's finally a problem to solve, which is whether we talk about retail or health. Both of them now are really investing in mixed reality solutions because they are unable to have contact based interaction with customers or patients.

So [00:04:00] retailers can no longer deploy a in-person experience. So they need mixed reality. And in the same way we look at telemedicine, we look at AR VR solving many health problems. We see virtual consultations ramping up incredibly. This means that whilst I will admit it didn't happen, uh, when we thought it would, we said 2019, we're now in 2021.

I do think it is deferred. I think it's going to happen in 2021, but I think the lesson here is that mixed reality. Be it AR VR or anything else? We're still needing a problem to solve. There weren't enough constraints, uh, in users' lives in businesses world. That meant that it could play a role, but post COVID now there is.

Autonomous vehicles. Well, this one, much like 5g, I'm going to admit it. I think it was a bit of a victim to the hype, a lot of chit chat about autonomous vehicles [00:05:00] and we're still not there. Uh, and yes, I know we see the funny Reddit videos of someone falling asleep at the wheel. But I think the truth is we are such a long way from true autonomous vehicles for the everyday person.

And I think this is a lesson in complexity. Because you don't only have your product challenge, like say a handset for, for Apple. You've also got the fact that there is all this complexity that the car, which is the product in this case must work in integrate within the major road systems, road regulations.

And on top of that, if that wasn't enough millions of other drivers. So the variables and the permutations of all the things that could go wrong are endless. So whilst I am sure the folks at Tesla are doing great work. I think the truth is it's [00:06:00] been really over height. We try to pick this in 2018. I think we're crazy.

In retrospect. I think the lesson here is complexity. So when we see an emerging technology come along and there's a lot of complexity, I mean, think of that thing that you've got all the tech in the car and you've got to get the car on the road. The road has to be part of assistance of the cars, got to work on the road in the highway system with other drivers.

Holy smokes. That's a lot of variables, a lot of, a lot of product complexity. It's a long term bet. I think it feels like a very inevitable technology because this, the benefits are huge. The disruption is equally huge. We totally underestimated the complexity lesson learned, look out for complexity. And let's go back to 2017, our first year of pics.

And we were huge on virtual reality and hollow VR and goodbye VR because it came in, [00:07:00] it went, uh, it was so high to back in the day. And a lot of lessons here, I'm going to start with the handsets or the headsets in this case, uh, they were big, they were bulky, terrible video quality, um, terrible battery life.

And the, he looked pretty awful big and bulky and heavy and strapping on your head and all this crazy stuff. Um, and two interrelated things is it was actually really expensive to make VR content. I worked on a couple of big VR projects, huge amount of effort for a small VR experience. Everything has to be custom designed, created, developed engineered, um, yeah, a lot there.

And as a result, put these two things together. Big expensive headsets that nobody wants really expensive to make content. Then there is no content. So there was no big hit. There was no app store, like moment, like the iPhone had. VR, just too many barriers. [00:08:00] I think the lesson here that too early, too early, and as you'll note, I do think that VR will come back as some sort of mixed extended reality play in 2021 because simply retail and health providers need it.

It solves a problem. So some interesting lessons here. So infrastructure takes a long time, watch out for complexity, make sure there's a problem we're solving and look out for the expense. Um, I mean VR and so funny. It's amazing. It's this too damn expensive to make. And it's a really fascinating product insight.

So there you have it. Those were the flops and the lessons learned if you want to learn. And you want to dive into the world of being a product person, head over to bottom-up dot IO, where you can learn design thinking. You can check out all our, uh, old emerging tech, uh, presentations in keynotes. There's a ton of free courses there.

Bottom-up dot IO. It's the perfect place for product [00:09:00] people. All right, that's it. For the bottom up skill...