Each month, “Lochhead on Different” episodes will explore the need to differentiate people, products, and services in a world that encourages a lot of imitation. A best-selling author, top podcaster, and former tech-industry CMO, Christopher Lochhead is a student of not only business and technology and marketing but also human nature, human folly, human genius, and very human joy.

Episode 10

In this episode, Chris kicks off with John Doerr of the legendary venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins – who famously said the internet was underhyped. He took heat for it – but guess what, John was right. Also, he says Kevin Maney, who co-authored Play Bigger with Chris says the cloud is also underhyped.

He says his buddy Big Ben Rewis is advising a startup called Verdant Robotics. They have sensors on plants that are able to detect moisture levels – a/k/a chill hours – and the more chill hours the better, because trees sleep longer in hibernation when it’s colder.

He goes on to say that Steve Pratt has a company called Noodle.ai, and their mission is to optimize manufacturing and supply chains. Forty-percent of the food on the planet rots. And 40% to 50% of trucks on the road are empty because they are not optimized – and that creates 42 billion wasted miles, and over 97 million tons of CO2.

He says when he was with a company called Mercury that got its start in quality testing it went like this: “Test, test, test. Monitor, monitor, monitor.” Not so for Shadow Inc., which produced an app in two months that screwed up the entire Iowa Caucus.

Chris says that a podcast featuring a husband and wife team called Phelim McAller and Ann McElhinney are following the Harvey Weinstein trial, day by day. They have actors in LA read the pieces, and they stitch things together overnight. He says it’s groundbreaking.

I tell Chris that people are saying this is the end of innovation. And I say that a bureaucrat was running the U.S. Patent Office in 1907, and he said, “We should now shut down the U.S. Patent Office because everything that can be invented has been invented.”

He then turns to the Coronavirus. Corona beer surged over 3,200% globally on Google, and Chris says, “Are those people allowed to vote – or to procreate?” I joke that, “I've got to run because I've got a case of Corona beer that I've to get rid of. I just heard that it's deadly.”

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