What a great talk with Florian Pestoni! He’s been working at both startups and well-recognized tech companies like Microsoft and Facebook. Right now, he is working as a co-founder with InOrbit. So where is his heart - with established corporates or startups? (I believe you will guess the right answer…).

For Florian, the new robotics generation which is perceptive smart robots, we are finding a lot of new application areas and don’t need to keep humans away from them. The automation and collaboration human-robot will allow for a lot of efficiency increases and helping us humans to avoid a lot of physically demanding jobs.

This new generation of robotics is creating so many new opportunities - at the same time there has been both fear and expectations of perhaps empathy in robots for a hundred years (NOTE: R.U.R. is a 1920 science-fiction play by the Czech writer Karel Capek "R.U.R.”, from where the word ROBOT was first derived into the English language - I haven’t seen it, but have read the play many years back. My affection to robots and science-fiction started in my youth).

Are robots taking away our jobs - what is the future of work?

At least for entrepreneurs there are vast opportunities into robotics. In this field it has never been easier to make a startup.

And Florian has a great wisdom to share: “don’t fall in love with your technology, but with…”. Listen to the podcast and you will learn about this and many other things.

A big thanks to Florian, and I am looking forward to the evening when we can enjoy a pizza together.

/Mika

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Bikes have seen a lot in material and design changes, think about how mountain bikes have changed in frame design, material choices etc. But what about crank arms - they have looked very much the same for ages (maybe a century!) - Sean showcases how generative design and additive manufacturing was used in collaboration with the company SRAM. With the new methods the future of making is allowing for new shapes, cloud computing (extremely fast results) and collaborations are taking new forms in terms of the creation of meeting places and innovation ecosystems, which are helping companies with agile and better decision making.

Customer wants “bigger - faster - lighter - stronger”: as a service provider you have to use the tools and have the customer as your co-designer.

Autodesk Generative Design Fieldlab in Chicago is located at the MxD (Manufacturing x Digital), a 100,000 squarefoot innovation center.

Automation is helping to leverage product creation and improving processes - listen further to understand how this is part of defining the future of work and the future of making.

A big thanks for the amazing insights Sean, looking forward to a keeping in touch.

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This was such an engaging and interesting discussion with Eva Nahari, DNX Ventures.

She has had a career in tech, product development and customer projects prior to switching over to the venture capital side. How has her career shaped her, what learnings are helpful in her present role?

How to match founders with the right investors - what should you consider?

And what about nordic innovation and innovators - what are we good at? What can we learn from the Silicon Valley mentality. And there could be really good combinations to consider! We can benefit from each others’ superpowers!

And the conversation leads us to flavors of ice cream…

But what does Eva think about 2022?

Listen to the podcast with a lot of deep insights, engaging talk and advice for both founders and investors.

Thank you for your time Eva, I enjoyed this a lot and looking forward to when we actually can meet in person.

/Mika

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A talk about what’s happening in the world of manufacturing and production systems research with Lennart Malmsköld, University West. And as a matter of fact, he is one of my former teachers (yeah, some hundred years ago or so…). So instead of him asking me a lot of questions from those days, I had the opportunity to ask him!

Talking with Lennart, I think the future of manufacturing is super-exciting! It is about data, collaborative robots and with the much improved technology the frontier of automating with flexibility is up for grabs.

And is actually local/inhouse manufacturing becoming an advantage?! Insourcing production is happening, I would believe that is also part of the complexity of production systems, need for skills and competence and the pandemic is also part of disrupting the value chains.

And sorry for my mix up, I meant of course the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), in terms of statistics (ifr.org)... Here is a graph on robot density from IFR:

And did you know that the five major markets for industrial robots are China, Japan, the United States, the Republic of Korea and Germany. These countries account for 76% of global robot installations. The electrical/electronics industry is the new king, overtaking automotive in amount of new robots installed. (Again statistics from IFR).

Education systems and courses are also being adapted, listen to what Lennart has to tell about the new opportunities at University West.

Thanks for the insights, I enjoyed this talk very much.

/Mika

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A view on the Norwegian Process Industry:

It was great to have Lars Petter Maltby as a guest - he has a long career working in the processing industry with material production. But also he has a keen interest in business development and innovation.

18% of Norwegian exports (excluding oil /gas) comes from the processing industry.

Additionally he has been in the Norwegian expert group working on the Prosess21. So he is a man with many hats… The Prosess21 has involved over a thousand people, creating a large open innovation and collaboration group.

Norway is known for being an exporter of natural resources (oil, minerals, metals) - with the transformative times, how can new business opportunities be created?

Key materials for batteries are required and the Norwegian industry could profit and contribute - but this is requiring adaptions to the innovation ecosystems and governmental agencies support in the early phase for business development. Also Norway needs to look at how to collaborate with other nations, especially the close Nordic neighbors.

The Battery Norway initiative including the Eyde Cluster is working on key topics to gain knowledge and to foster cooperation.

Learn more about these topics by listening to the podcast.

/Mika

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This was actually my first recording for the Season 2! However I have been saving this recording until now. We did have some technical challenges with Filippo being on a remote Greek islands, but nevertheless we manage to talk about his startup UNFIA and how to disrupt and make an business like wine (from farm/vineyard to table) more efficient and reduce overall costs.

I am after the same in general industries, but great to listen and learn from another angle and a business you might not have considered the disruption occuring in. It will be most interesting to follow Filippo and UNFIA in their further progress.

Enjoy your glass of wine and the episode!

/Mika

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I had the opportunity to meet Roger Atkins, EV-angelist (and much more!) in-person. We had the opportunity to chat and talk about the future, EVs and his recent experiences at the Nordic EV Summit held in the Oslo region. The future of mobility is changing and those changes are huge. Listen for more insights, and don’t forget to subscribe! :)

Und wir haben unsere Show in Deutsch angefangen…

What is the USER EXPERIENCE with EV’s - charging is still an issue.

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It was very insightful talking with my friend Robert Widell, Teradata on how data is enabling business improvements with examples taken from the automotive sector.

How important the product creation is, and the data gathering and possibilities to utilize use/user data to reduce the amount of required testing and simulation.

This also made me refer to Munro&Associates/Sandy Munro’s “who casts the biggest shadow”:

The amount of data will just increase, the business systems will take even more of AI and deep learning in use.

Data is also an enabler for ESG monitoring and enabling decarbonization - listen to the podcast for more insights. This will probably also support the further work to change value chains and ways of manufacturing and producing goods and services - we have pollution and emissions from all activities - the lifecycle aspect for the Bill of Material is key but also complex to figure out. But certainly more research, development and work in this field is going to support the further push towards carbon-neutral activities.

Going digital allows us to spend more time on creative activities:

Robert and myself were “early-adaptors” of electronic music, utilizing computers (from the early age of Commodores…) and software to create music. It gave us so many opportunities using and manipulating sounds and samples in the product creation phase. This probably also contributes today to us both working with making data useful for industry and users to improve efficiency and making an effort to make the future better.

More insight you can find on the blog by Robert/Teradata:

https://www.teradata.com/Blogs/Connecting-R-D-to-the-Digital-Thread

And what about the music - have a listen to DPOINT (available on Spotify):

My favorite lead is “The Higher I Fly”, which I once made a cover version of and also performed that live.

Thank you for the great talk Robert!

Rate this episode:

https://www.podchaser.com/MikaTienhaaraSeeBeyondShow

/Mika

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About industrial design, and learning more about industrial design guru Einar Hareide how design and artistic expressions belong together.

I have been looking so much forward to this talk with Einar, I remember in my early career days that I had the fantastic opportunity to visit SAAB Automobile’s Design Center where Einar was leading the design efforts. It was just a fantastic experience!

What is so interesting is that Einar has background also as a welder, building things. His focus on ergonomics and materials is at the core. Actually I wanted to hear more from him on the SAAB story, but that will be another time…

Did you know that Einar took the Mercedes-Benz heritage with round headlamps and brought it back as a statement of the design.

Cars are sculptures! Aren’t we missing this today in car design?

And do business people have more fun in the US?

Material science is pushing the boundaries - design very much starts with what type of materials you select.

We also hear Einar’s views on the future of automotive.

My learnings from this talk: To do great design, also see how you can express your artistic sides and embed that with ergonomics and smart use of materials.

Thank you Einar, you are one of my industry heroes, and I look forward to talking to you again.

/Mika

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With clean energy investment banker Laurent Segalen.

This was in a sense part two on the hydrogen development - are going to use a fuel to produce another lower grade fuel... I agree with Laurent’s comments - show me the buyers! But if you find the right use cases, there are some potential.

But there was so much more:

Gas - not cheap (look at the huge price hikes recently), not reliable and not clean.

Do we need more inventions, or do we need innovation to be scaled up (make an impact)?

So what is the future of energy? The outlook and opportunities are enormous - and think about how you are managing the risks…

A big thanks to Laurent for the inspiring talk!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mikatienhaara.substack.com