The eForum

How can a startups partner with a larger, more established company for the benefit of both? The startup gets the funding, distribution channels and access to other resources of the bigger company. And the bigger company gets the technology and creative spark of the startup -- without smothering the innovative fire for which the bigger company has paid dearly. This is just one of the challenges Bernd Schoner discusses in this interview about his book, "The Tech Entrepreneur's Survival Guide." (Originally released 5/24/14)

An Institute Professor at MIT, Dr. Mildred Dresselhaus received the Presidential Medal of Freedom Award in November 2014 for her outstanding scientific research, principally in carbon science and carbon nanostructures. But she is also widely known for promoting the advancement of women in science and engineering -- the subject of this interview.

There is a new word (or actually two words) for the kind of tech that’s getting today’s generation of entrepreneurs, industry visionaries, and venture capitalists excited — frontier tech. And the poster child of frontier tech is virtual and augmented reality. It’s cool, it’s on the cusp of creating major disruptive impacts, and it’s generating significant returns for those with the insight to see how the disparate pieces of the VR/AR ecosystem will come together. So . . .

What makes VR and AR cool?

What will be the disruptive impacts?

And what are the key constituent components of the VR/AR ecosystem?

These are some of the questions we asked one of the speakers at our VR/AR event on May 3rd, Sarah Downey, a principal with the Cambridge VC firm Accomplice. Here is what she said when we asked her, in a Forum podcast, why aren’t we already seeing more of VR and AR in our everyday lives:

"It’s so early that the hardware required to do things, AR especially, is super demanding. Like, in AR, in order to have a system work really well you have to have extremely precise geolocation, extremely precise head and movement tracking, and also eye tracking. Because in cases where images are being projected onto your eye to make it appear that they are stable and right there … you really have to align that perfectly to the person’s eye. So, there’s a ton of processing power that’s going on, a ton of bandwidth usage. And you don’t want to release something where you’ve got a huge cord coming off of the glasses, the glasses are giant and clunky and uncomfortable to wear. You have to carry a battery pack around. If you are okay with all that stuff then there are headsets that work today. But we kind of need like the Apple version of AR to make this thing really take off. You know, Apple’s never the first to come out with a product but they’re the ones that really nail it. So we need the iPhone of this stuff."

And here is the podcast:

What is SAP doing with the Internet of Things? To find out, we invited Alan Southall, VP Engineering, Head of IoT Predictive Maintenance, SAP, to present a keynote at the Connected Things 2017 conference. And just before he spoke to a standing-room-only audience, he spoke one-on-one with one of the conference organizers, Mark Thirman, for a preview podcast. Here is what Alan said when Mark asked him what advice he would share with an enterprise just starting its IoT journey:

“So I would say, focus in on a very specific business case that’s going to provide value. Because if you’re just creating something that’s a nice to have or could have been done in a different way, it’s not going to convince your CTO or CEO. And then focus in on that and start simple and then build it out from there. That’s the advice that I would give. Don’t try and do, you know, kind of a Big Bang scenario where you do everything in one go, but really focus in on where the value is, start small and then build it out.”

And here is the podcast . . .

This month the Forum’s Innovation Series will present a program titled, “Connected Health: Emerging Technologies Poised to Make our Lives Better.” It includes a panel of thought leaders including executives from companies like Boston-based Orbita, a startup that works with technology partners to enhance the efficacy of their solutions through improved patient engagement. In fact, the Orbita story is a lesson in how connected health is a complex puzzle best solved by companies coming together in synergistic relationships.

Here’s how Orbita’s president, Nathan Treloar, describes how Orbita, and ultimately patient engagement, fits into connected health:

“In the healthcare space our customers range from providers, people who are providing care for patients outside clinical settings as well as in clinical settings, to device manufacturers who are trying to create experiences around medical devices that engage patients, to pharmaceuticals who are trying to figure out how to drive better adherence to medications, etc. In the end, patient engagement is a means to an end for those organizations. An engaged patient is more likely to adhere to their treatments, more likely to recover from an acute event, more likely to have a properly managed chronic care issue. So patient engagement for our customers is really about [achieving] the triple aim of healthcare: improving the quality of care, improving patient satisfaction, and ultimately driving costs down.”

Nate joins Orbita CEO, Bill Rogers, in this Forum podcast:

Lisa Jerram will be moderating our upcoming Forum event titled, “Warning: The Future of Transportation Is Closer than it Appears.” A principal research analyst at Navigant Research, Lisa has been studying the market impact of advanced transportation technologies for more than 20 years. In this podcast, we asked her what that transportation future will look like when it does appear. We also asked her about the impact autonomous vehicles are likely to have on our environment and on our infrastructures -- and which industries are most likely to be disrupted.

Here’s one takeaway: even if the future of transportation is close, it is certainly far from clear.

Following his remarks at a recent MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge Innovation Series panel on climate change, Professor John Sterman, a leading expert on the subject who teaches system dynamics and engineering systems at MIT, sat down for an interview to take a deeper dive into his views.

Here is part of what he said when asked if he was an optimist about climate change. It is perhaps not what you might expect from an MIT professor:

And this is extremely important. This is why climate change is no longer about the science. It’s a political issue. It’s a social issue. It’s a personal moral issue. And on that score I look at what’s been happening in the world. And there are many situations in which terrible conditions — things that no one thought would ever change — actually changed. So, for example, in my lifetime when I was young and for many years after nobody thought that they would live to see the fall of the Berlin Wall or the end of the Soviet Union. And yet we did. No one believed we would see peace in Northern Ireland and yet we have peace in Northern Ireland . . . No one believed there would an end to apartheid in South Africa or if it did end it would only be as the result of a long and bloody civil war. And yet it ended peacefully. There are many many other examples. This is another example of complex systems. Institutions that have been in place for decades, centuries, or even longer can suddenly change as a result of people becoming active, people becoming aware and shifting from “It’s just the way it is and it may be regrettable but it’s always been that way and it always will” to “This is morally wrong and we need to do something about it.”

Bill Ruh, CEO of GE Digital and Chief Digital Officer of General Electric offers a preview of what Connected Things conference attendees can expect to hear at the event. His colleague, Harel Kodesh, Vice President, Predix and Chief Technology Officer, GE Digital, will be keynoting the event in place of Bill, who will pop into the event via video instead.

Here’s what he says about the transformation big companies need to make if they’re going to succeed as digital businesses against more agile startups.

"There are only two things that matter in terms of building digital businesses. You can either go with speed or you can go with scale. Startups have speed. Big companies don’t have speed; they have scale. So what you’ve gotta do in trying to make that transformation [to a digital company] is to figure out how to leverage the scale while you try to make the company go fast, faster than traditionally it would. And it’s never maybe as fast as a startup but startups don’t have that scale that they can take advantage of. And I think that’s the thing we’ve done well, is we’ve managed to balance the scale piece — taking advantage of the scale — while trying to go fast. And I think that’s what every company is going to struggle with — any existing company will struggle with — but if it doesn’t get it right, it won’t compete [well] against a startup."

This month the co-founder of NorthBridge Energy Partners and a contributing writer on energy issues at Forbes.com, Peter Kelly-Detwiler, will moderate a discussion of leading innovators from science, technology, and government on what’s being done, and can be done, to combat climate change.

Peter gives us a sampling of the discussion here:

 

For more info about the upcoming event, or to register, click here.

Benji Rogers is a British-born, New York-based entrepreneur, technologist, musician, and founder of two startups: PledgeMusic and Dot Blockchain Music.

An early pioneer of the direct artist-to-fan model of distributing music, Rogers founded PledgeMusic based on the belief that artists should share the process of their artistic output, not just the finished product. Benji now operates as the Chief Strategy Officer at PledgeMusic.

But it is his second company — Dot Blockchain Music — that is likely to have the biggest impact on music. As he discusses in this podcast, Benji’s vision is to radically upend how everyone who contributes to a piece of music gets paid when that music is published, adapted, streamed, posted to YouTube or otherwise used.

Take a listen: