The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney

Among the emerging technologies, gadgets and hype, what innovation standouts were at CES 2018? What trends have staying power?

With almost every startup claiming AI, I'm having flashbacks to the dot com era when every business changed its name to get in on the buzzword bandwagon. Is there something behind the AI buzzword that substantiates the fervor? Interestingly enough, while the competition intensifies in areas of innovation, I notice a new level of cooperation among industry leaders in other areas.

I welcomed three guests-Tim Bajarin, Steve Guggenheimer, and Teresa Hsu- to the mobile studio to discuss the innovation standouts we'll see in 2018.

Tim Bajarin is President of Creative Strategies, Inc, and a renowned technology trends analyst. During the interview, he shared his view of some innovation standouts in Augmented Reality (AR), 8K TV and Voice User Interface.

[shareable cite="Tim Bajarin"]Don't create what you think the customer wants – address the pain points to create the solution.[/shareable]

Tim's eyes weren't on AI so much as AR. He anticipates AR becoming more sophisticated in its capabilities and uses. He envisions an evolution of AR technology that eventually delivers real time information and overlays of data through a pair of voice command AR glasses.

Tim considers the leap in TV resolution to 8K remarkable. Sometimes the drivers that propel innovation come from unusual places.

Voice User Interface technology is a neck and neck competition in an ecosystem battle. In Tim's opinion, Amazon has emerged as an unexpected leader because they asked the right questions. He advises clients: don't create what you think the customer wants – address the pain points to create the solution.

Interested in hearing more from Tim? Follow him on Twitter @bajarin or visit his website Creative Strategies

Steve Guggenheimer has been a long time executive at Microsoft having most recently been Microsoft Chief Evangelist. In his new role as Microsoft Corporate Vice President of AI Business, Steve has shared what he sees as the real benefits of AI solutions. In summary -- he sees AI as a phenomenal area for innovation.

[shareable cite="Steve Guggenheimer"]Take time to experiment and apply AI to focused areas for innovative solutions.[/shareable]

Three types of industries Steve believes AI can be applied to are:

1. Businesses with voice driven and agent based front ends.

• Explore cognitive services, agent technology or bot framework and know how to use them.

1. Businesses with a significant amount of data.

• Apply machine learning tools to data to drive real insight.

1. Businesses with a horizontal problem.

• Build a solution from the ground up using AI.

His advice: take time to experiment and apply AI to focused areas for innovative solutions.

You can follow Steve on Twitter @stevenguggs and discover more about AI and what it can do for your business at www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai.

The technologies on display cover a broad spectrum across all avenues of our lives. Teresa Hsu, Senior Manager with Consumer Technology Association (host of CES), shared that the trend is not just gadgets, but the technology inside and behind products that make them smarter.

What technologies are on the innovation horizon for this year? I had a chance to sit down with acclaimed Silicon Valley tech analyst, Bob O'Donnell, at the The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), to discuss the highlights of the show and where tech innovation is headed.

Bob shared that many of the products on view at CES were technologies debuted in past years, but with tweaks, improvements and continuing development. In his opinion, we are now coming in to the necessary, but less thrilling, phase of making things work together – a gradual progression, migration and integration - steps that need to happen to make these innovations a viable reality.

One of the biggest features at CES that Bob was most excited about was the fully autonomous vehicle. The timeline for final market release of these vehicles is a good example of how public expectation and actuality are not synchronized. Bob shared that this is a great example of where the public may expect an innovation to become accessible within six months, but in reality it will be three to five years before we are closer to these vehicles hitting the road.

Voice-based computing was everywhere and the competition is stiff in the area of voice-assisted tech. Bob proclaimed that this is the new OS war with a lot of contenders. The advances and possibilities in smart home technology were impressive although smart home and voice assisted technologies are not without their problems.

[shareable cite="Bob O'Donnell"]Voice-based computing is the new OS war[/shareable]

Some of Bob's predictions for 2018 (You can see his predictions in more detail at Tech.pinions, Techspot and Seeking Alpha):

1. Empathetic AI: You will see AI drive empathetic computing. Our devices are still not smart, there's no sense of context, but you will start to see that at end of 2018.
2. The Year of the Accelerator: Development of neural network accelerators using chip technologies that operate more efficiently and are extremely power sensitive, allowing you to put more intelligence on the Edge.
3. Growth of Edge computing: Now everything connects to the Cloud. Companies are innovating in the realm of Edge computing as an alternative to Cloud based computing.
4. Voice computing: This year we will see refinements and enhancements in voice computing.
5. Streaming services: As such services multiply – in media and beyond, the integration of these services will be a focus.

Want to keep up to date with what Bob is tracking? Check out www.Technalysisresearch.com

[callout]Click below to listen to Bob O'Donnell's discussing the technology and innovations at CES 2018[/callout]

Have you ever circled around a busy city block searching for parking? You know how frustrating it can be. If you run a business that depends on drivers finding a parking space, parking becomes mission critical. Is there an innovative parking solution that addresses this problem?

This weeks guest, Jeremy Leval, discusses the parking challenge and how Parknav addresses it. He shares his journey from entrepreneurial youth to becoming a part of an innovative solution to a very common problem.

[shareable cite="Jeremy Level"]Don't overlook the benefit of accelerators and incubators to grow your business[/shareable]

As a child with the lemonade stand, Jeremy had the idea of offering free pretzels to keep the customers coming back for more. His desire to challenge himself and stand out compelled him to try new things, learn new skills and use these skills to establish start-ups. Jeremy continued to move into new avenues of entrepreneurship, seeking ways to solve everyday problems in creative ways.

While enrolled in an MBA program, Leval kept the entrepreneurial flame burning by teaming up with a colleague, now Parknav CEO, to establish a forum for engaging a community of entrepreneurial-minded people. Jeremy found that listening to and learning from others' mistakes was especially useful in side-stepping potential pitfalls in his own venture. He emphasizes the value of having input from people who are disconnected from your particular venture and are willing to provide a critical, independent and qualified viewpoint.

After college, he met a University of Illinois professor who had a simple problem: finding street parking in the city. Such was the beginnings of Parknav, a navigation system that finds that elusive street parking space for you.

As Parknav began to come together as a business entity, Jeremy and his business partners had to determine where to focus their product offering – who was their best target audience. They came to a decision to pivot from their original consumer focus to focus more on a business-to-business solution.

[shareable cite="Jeremy Leval"] Don't give up on the first no. Persevere.[/shareable]

During the interview, Jeremy shares his advice to innovators:

• Have a community and advisers,
• Knowing when to pivot
• Take advantage of business accelerators to help launch your business that will bring the right partnersto the table.

Show Links:

• Parknav
• Parknav on Facebook
• Parknav on LinkedIn

[callout]Click below to listen to this weeks show on innovating solutions to very common problems[/callout]

Innovation is not something restricted to Silicon Valley or other Silicon Valley like location (e.g. Austin, Boston, etc). Innovation can happen anywhere. If you are willing to invest some time and little effort, you can find non-obvious innovation happening in some very unusual locations.

This week, we take the new mobile studio to Paducah, Kentucky to interview the founders of Fin Gourmet Foods. The business challenges some basic assumptions of innovation including:

• Turn other peoples trash into a product: Fin takes the Asian Carp, which is an invasive species that is taking over the Mississippi and Ohio river systems., and innovate a way to turn it into a great food source.
• Give opportunities to people overlooked: In addition to locating in a rural part of the country, Fin works with local halfway houses to offer jobs to former prison inmates and others down on their luck.
• Breathe life back into a industry overlooked by others: Fin pays a premium price for what many considered "trash" to help local independent fishing families to transition to this new species of fish and the economy it can support.

Fin has two patented processing techniques:

1. To debone Asian Carp fillets and
2. To make all-natural surimi (Japanese fish paste) from the Carp without using water or chemicals.

Started in 2010, Fin's mission and vision are that the Asian Carp provide economic opportunities for our communities, fostering jobs creation and revitalizing the inland fishing industry. Together with fisherman like Ronny Hopkins, we will better manage the Asian Carp so that our rivers/lakes/estuaries are better protected while employing people who need second chances from incarceration, drug court, domestic violence, or just to have a better life path.

[callout]Click below to listen to this weeks show on non-obvious innovation from unexpected places.[/callout]

Lets face it. Innovation is hard word and requires leadership support if an organization is going to be successful at it. Thus every CEO needs an innovation coach who can come alongside and help the CEO achieve innovation success.

Why does an organization success with innovation fall in the lap of the CEO? Because the CEO needs to own the innovation agenda. This is not something that can easily be passed on to the others. While an organization may hire an CINO (chief innovation officer), the innovation success of an organization is not something that can be handed off.

1. Innovation Coach Can Help A CEO Find Their Blind Spot: We all have blind spots and we need an outsiders perspective to see them. This is especially true when it comes innovation blind spots.
2. Innovation Coach Takes A Dispassionate View: Innovation can become very political inside an organization. A CEO needs a dispassionate independent adviser who doesn't have a dog in the hunt.
3. Innovation Coach Can Ask The CEO Questions No One Else Can: CEO needs to be able to talk and work through issues with someone who has the role and permission to challenge and advise. The CEO cannot have this same level of conversation with their Board or team. The coach must ask the questions no one else will.
4. Great Performers Have A Coach: People and team who want to outperform their peers have coaches. These include business, leadership and personal coaches. If innovation is import to your organization, then you need an innovation coach.

As a CEO myself, I can attest to the challenges and loneliness of the role. Having a team of advisers and coaches are invaluable to achieving personal and leadership success. Innovation should be the next area of coaching every CEO should take advantage of.

[callout]Click below to listen to this weeks show on the 4 reasons every CEO needs an innovation coach. [/callout]

Show Links:

For peer-to-peer coaching, check out TheInnovators.Community. A private Slack community of people who are passionate about innovation.

Additional Resources:

• Innovation Coach: 4 Questions You Should Ask Before Selecting One
• Finding and Benefiting From A Coach and Mentor
• Innovation Mentoring vs. Innovation Coaching: Which Do You Need?

[callout]Click below to listen to this weeks show on the 4 reasons every CEO needs an innovation coach. [/callout]

To some organizations, starting an innovation effort seems easy. Just hire some consultants, host a few all-hands meetings and then decree that the organization is embracing innovation. Sustaining innovation over time is incredibly hard. Without a long term commitment, most organizations experience innovation collapse.

Are there weak signals that an organization is heading towards innovation collapse?

Here are four signs that organizations should keep a look out for.

1. Innovation Out Of Fear: For sustained innovation, an organization needs to have a bedrock reason why innovation is important. For some, it's out of fear. Fear that share price is suffering because of a lack of innovation. Fear that everyone else is doing it and the organization is being left behind. While fear is a catalyst for innovation, its not a sustainable motivator.
2. Competitive Urgency: For many organizations, their idea of innovation is responding to their competitors actions. When a competitor launches a new product or service, the organization responds by catching-up. Its innovation effort is reactionary which is not a sustainable approach to innovation.
3. Innovation Silos/Innovation Fragmentation: Some organizations will attempt to catch-up by starting a large amount of innovation projects. The innovation version of throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. Projects will make everyone feel like they are doing something but without coordination and prioritization, the odds of success are slim.
4. Lack of Will Power: For an organization to create a sustainable innovation program, their leadership will need to make some changes. Do they have the will power to do whatever it takes for innovation success?

During this weeks show, we discuss in more detail each of the 4 signs of pending innovation collapse.

We also share what you can do to avoid it.

[callout]Click below to listen to this weeks show on innovation collapse.[/callout]

While many are familiar with the story of how DARPA (actually it was its predecessor ARPA) invented the internet. What few are familiar with is the untold stories of of DARPA and how its innovators solved some of the most pressing problems we faced.

DARPA was created in 1958 in response to the launch of Sputnick with the mission to ensure that the United States didn't find itself behind the Soviets when it came to technology - especially in space. While its focus was on technology and innovation for the Pentagon, its work has had significant impact on civilian life.

This weeks guest, Sharon Weinberger, shares some of the untold stories abut DARPA based on her newly released book, The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World

DARPA is responsible for some of the most important technologies of the past six decades. Some of its projects are successes, some are failures, and some are best left to history to judge. Here is a list of DARPA's most notable—and in some cases notorious—contributions to science, technology and warfare.

Driverless Cars: Today's driverless automobiles being developed by Google, Uber and others are a direct result of DARPA's robotic car races that began in 2004, with a course that ran across the Mojave Desert. The first winner of it's Grand Challenge competition was recruited by Google to start work on the company's autonomous vehicles.

The Internet: More than any single person or agency, DARPA can lay claim to having "invented" the Internet. In the 1960s, it sponsored development of a system of networked computers called the ARPANET, the predecessor to the modern Internet. DARPA's work on areas such as networking, packet switching and time-sharing laid the foundations for personal computing.

Drones: During the Vietnam War, the agency was responsible for developing the first armed drones. In the 1990s, the agency funded an Israeli aerospace engineer to build an unmanned aerial vehicle, which later evolved into the Predator, the armed drone most closely associated with targeted killings.

Agent Orange: In the 1960s, DARPA introduced chemical defoliation to Southeast Asia, believing that it could help eliminate jungle cover used by communist insurgents fighting the U.S.-backed government in South Vietnam. The work grew from early experiments into a widespread military spraying program that today is held responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and sicknesses.

Border Wall Technology: In 1962, scientists working for DARPA outlined a proposal to create a barrier between North and South Vietnam. Eventually, that proposal morphed into the infamous McNamara Line, an electronic barrier that failed. Yet many of the concepts and technologies developed by DARPA, such as tethered aerostats and seismic sensors, are now used along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Stealth Aircraft: In the 1970s, DARPA sponsored development of the first "invisible aircraft," a stealth prototype codenamed Have Blue. The stealth aircraft was designed to be invisible to radar in order to slip past Soviet air defense systems. The U.S. military's current fleet of stealth aircraft, including the stealth helicopters used in the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, can all be traced back to DARPA.

Nuclear Test Detection: One of DARPA's earliest projects was a network of sensors and satellites to detect foreign nuclear tests. President John F. Kennedy relied on DARPA's results in deciding to go forward with a Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963 that halted nuclear tests in the atmosphere, oceans and outer space.

Modern Seismography: To advance work in underground nuclear test detection, DARPA invested heavily in the discipline of seismography and built a worldwide network of seismograph stations. The sensor network, and DARPA funding, is widely credited with advancing seismography and allowing scientists to collect the data needed to confirm the theory of plate tectonics.

M-16: During the Vietnam War, DARPA bought the Armalite-15 rifle for South Vietnamese soldiers. Eventually, it became the M-16, the standard weapon used by all three U.S. military services.

Artificial Intelligence: In the 1980s, DARPA launched a billion dollar initiative to develop artificial intelligence. The agency invested in everything from computer vision—teaching machines to "see" —to thinking computers that could help military pilots fly aircraft. The program was shut down in less than a decade and branded a "failure" at the time. Yet now some of the technologies DARPA invested in, like voice recognition, are widely used in the commercial sector (iPhone's Siri, for example, was a spinoff of a DARPA project).

Robotics: DARPA has been the leading investor in robotics in the United States for decades. Many of today's most recognizable robots, like iRobot's PackBot, a bomb disposal robot used in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Roomba, the vacuum cleaner robot, can be credited to DARPA.

Data Mining: In the days after 9/11, the agency was responsible for creating one of the most high profile and controversial data-mining projects, called Total Information Awareness. The project was designed to trawl through large amounts of data, from car rental records to intelligence reports, to ferret out domestic terrorists. It was accused of being an Orwellian spy program and the work was moved to the National Security Agency.

Presidential Protection: After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the agency ran a top-secret project to protect the president. Though many of its ideas were rejected as too fanciful, like a proposal to protect the president with a mirage-producing system, DARPA was responsible for the first armored presidential limousine.

Neuroengineering: DARPA in the 1970s helped lay the foundation for Brain-Computer Interface (brain-driven computers), imagining a future where humans could control machines, like drones, with nothing more than their minds. Today, DARPA is working on neural chips designed to help those with brain injuries recover memories and prosthetics controlled directly by the brain.

Satellites: Created in 1958 as the nation's first space agency, it was responsible for developing the first communications satellite and first spy satellite. The agency also played a brief but critical role in sponsoring the Transit satellite, which led to the Global Positioning System.

Sharon shared three lessons from the success from DARPA:

1. Price of Success is Failure: Be willing to try, fail and then learn from it.
2. Be Clear About What Problem to Solve
3. Function is More Important Than Form

[callout]Listen to this weeks show to hear Sharon Weinberger share some of the untold stories of DARPA.[/callout]

Sharon Weinberger is the executive editor for news at Foreign Policy. Her most recent book, published in March 2017, is The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World (Knopf, 2017). She is currently a non-resident global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Nature, Discover, BBC.com, Slate, Wired, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and the Financial Times, among other publications. She was previously a senior editor at Aviation Week and a co-founding writer and editor for Wired's national security blog, Danger Room.

[callout]Click below to listen to hear Sharon Weinberger share the untold stories of DARPA.[/callout]

To invent and deliver innovation at scale, infrastructure can quickly become the roadblock that will turn a great idea in to nightmare. For those of us who have been on Twitter for any amount of time, how can we forget the "fail whale" whenever it went down.

While many may consider infrastructure the "boring" part of launching a new product or service, its not something innovators can overlook.

So do you have to reinvent or can you learn from the hard earned lessons of others?

Fortunately there are a number of open source projects that shares the lessons learned from companies who deliver their innovations at scale such as Twitter, Google, Facebook. Microsoft and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

This weeks guest, Florian Leibert, brings his experience of being part of the team that solved the "fail whale" problem at Twitter. Florian is the co-founder and CEO of Mesosphere - the company that brings infrastructure that allows its customers to create and launch their innovations at scale.

To date, Mesosphere has secured nearly $126 million from 14 Investors, including A Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Microsoft. The company counts more than 100 enterprise customers, including Autodesk, ESRI, Verizon, Netflix, and Deutsche Telekom. This summer, the company was added to the Forbes Cloud 100 and selected as a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum.

[callout]Listen below to this weeks show to hear what is required to deliver your next innovation at scale.[/callout]

Florian Leibert is the CEO and co-founder of Mesosphere, the company behind DC/OS – the premier platform for building and running data-rich, containerized applications. Prior to founding Mesosphere, Florian was technical lead at Airbnb, where he built the company's data infrastructure and co-authored a popular open source tool called Chronos. Before that, he was technical lead at Twitter. At Twitter he built the company's distributed search service and introduced Apache Mesos to improve the scalability and reliability of Twitter's platform. This helped to eliminate the then infamous "fail whale." Leibert has been a researcher and software engineer developing distributed systems for more than a decade.

[callout]Listen to this weeks show to hear Florian Leibert's experience of delivering innovation at scale.[/callout]

Building an innovation ecosystem of support across your organization is critical to achieving success. Without it and you will struggle taking and idea and making it real.

This week, we take a look at another listner question on how to get support across the organization.

[shareable cite="Fotune 50 Innovator" text="What kind of incentive program should we put in place for new innovative products and services?"]A problem in large organizations with innovative ideas is getting the sales team engaged to proactively sell your idea to customers. It's relatively easy to setup a market trial but getting 5 account teams to sell this to help prove out the market trial is a challenge: the sales teams are just too busy meeting their targets with current products. What kind of incentive program should we put in place for new innovative products and services? What other ideas? Be good if you could take a service as an example - rather than the usual product focus. Innovation can happen in services too![/shareable]

By building an ecosystem of groups and departments that you need support from to make your innovation successful, you greatly enhance your chances for success. This innovation ecosystem can consists of:

• Operations (finance, IT, legal, etc)
• Manufacturing/supply chain
• Product development/services delivery
• Sales and Marketing

Why is so hard to get them to support innovation? Many believe that with executive, or even CEO support, the rest of the organization will fall in. Top down "declarations" that innovation is important is NOT enough.

As an innovation leader, you need to create an environment that invites and encourages others to be a part of the work you are doing.

1. Build innovation interface points across the organization. Treat them like they are part of your team. Their role is to be your evangelist inside the silo's when you need their support. Do NOT wait until you need them. Have the relationships well in place before the first crisis appears.
2. Identify the "catching team" early. Who will own the innovation after launch? Get them engaged early. Don't ask for a lot of resources. Ask for a named individuals who will own it.
3. Ramp up the resources. As an innovation gets traction, ramp up the resources from the teams as needed.
4. Ramp down your involvement. At the same time as other resources are ramping up to support the innovation, you and your team need to ramp down. Minimize your role in leading the innovation effort. Instead, move the ecosystem to take on leadership roles.
5. Let the catching organization get the credit. The easiest way to win over the innovation ecosystem inside your organization is to not focus/worry on who gets credit.

What incentives should/could be in place? Here are two examples:

• # of innovations that resulted in new product/services.
• % of revenue from new products/services launched in the last x years.

These are just a start. There is a lot more to consider when it comes to incentives. If there is interest in this topic, we will cover it in a future show.

[callout]Listen below to this weeks show to learn how to build a strong innovation ecosystem within your organization.[/callout]

I'm not sure how many people would up and quit google and sell their house to fund an innovation. On top of that, the idea was in an area that many say had no room for new innovation. A very typical innovation antibody response to this persons idea.

Many innovations that go on to become market leaders are the result of the innovators own personal frustrations. For Renee, that frustration came from wanting a better way to search and find audio content that allowed her to stay up with everything going on.

While many believe that world does NOT need yet another podcast application, Renee believed that allowing for audio keyword search was one such innovation that others would find helpful.

I was one of those people. While I've tried just about every podcast app going back almost 14 years, CastBox did create something unique.

What are you willing to do to take your idea and create the product or service you envisioned? Some will use some of their savings or maybe even borrow from a few credits cards. Few will go the levels Renee has done. In her case, she quit the ultimate job with Google and sold her house to fund what became CastBox.

That is true sacrifice to fulfill a vision.

Renee Wang started her technical career working for Google. Her passion for listening to spoken audio led her to asking the questions, "why can't I search for keywords in audio?." This simple question led her down the path of finding a solution to this obvious question.

Renee quit her job and sold her house to launch CastBox. What is it? It's a global audio platform pioneering in-audio search and delivering contextual recommendations to listeners of podcasts, on-demand radio and audiobooks.

[callout]Listen to this weeks show below to hear how Renee Wang, founder and CEO of Castbox, went from idea to innovation in audio.[/callout]