Inside Outside Innovation

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about the addictive nature of AI, the levels of innovation metrics, and how peer influence can make or break your AI rollout. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper-uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, and Miles Zero’s Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Let's get started. Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton AI Addiction, Innovation Metrics, and Peer Influence in AI Rollouts [00:00:30] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and with me, I have Robyn Bolton from Mile Zero. Robyn, welcome. [00:00:47] Robyn Bolton: Thank you very much. Great to be here as always. [00:00:50] Brian Ardinger: It's another amazing week in innovation and we thought we'd get right to it. The first article we want to talk about is called Acceleration Flow by Raymond Mark from the publication Mold and Yeast. Why AI Feels Addictive to Builders and Coders Fascinating article. The basic premise of the article talks about how Raymond is an addict. Not a metaphorical addict, but he is now addicted to building using AI such the fact that he's spending tokens like it's the end of the world. And he talks about this environment where the AI now has created almost a gambling type of a feeling where you vibe code your way to something. You put your tokens in and you pull a slot machine and out comes some type of output that's just good enough to get you to put the next tokens in to try the next prompt and the next prompt. So, it was a fascinating look behind the scenes that I think just now more and more people are beginning to discover this particular anomaly or environment that people are becoming to find when they start doing this AI stuff. [00:01:53] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, this was really interesting. I mean, I use AI every day and I felt this deeply. It actually reminded me of a conversation that I had with someone probably a year and a half, maybe two years ago, who astutely predicted she's like, I think AI is going to become the next cigarettes in terms of being addicting and it's now, it's cheap and plentiful and it's getting us hooked on it. The Dopamine Loop of Generative AI and Vibe Coding And then they can raise prices because we're addicted and we'll keep going with it. And this article lays out a really good argument for that. Not using cigarettes but using gaming and gambling as a metaphor and kind of everything that it outlines of, like you said, it's almost right. It's enough to get you to put the next token in. The feeling that you're upleveling and you're gaining capabilities when you're really kind of not. In fact, you're with kind of outsourcing tasks and things, you're actually losing capabilities, but you have the illusion that you're gaining capabilities. It was just really fascinating all of these almost mind tricks that happen when we use AI. [00:03:07] Brian Ardinger: I read the article earlier last week and then three people came up to me this week unprompted and said, I'm addicted to this stuff. They just started to, you know, use Claude code or started to get a little bit more deeper than just prompting a chat bot and the word they used was addicted. One, again, it's so easy to get something back out that dopamine hit of, oh, I tried this and actually it's pretty good and let me try if I can go again. AI FOMO, Always-On Agents, and the Fear of Falling Behind And then the second addiction is, I'm addicted to the fact that I'm falling behind. I had a coder come up to me and said, I am very worried that I don't want to take a break because what, during my break, I want my agent to be doing something for me. And so, this...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about the rise of Identic AI, why you need to build for AI agents first, and how AI is bigger than SaaS ever was. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Miles Zero's, Robyn Bolton. As we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact, let's get started. Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton AI Agents, Personal Concierge Tools, and the Future of Innovation [00:00:30] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And with me I have Robyn Bolton from Mile Zero. Robyn, welcome back. [00:00:50] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Glad to be back. [00:00:51] Brian Ardinger: We are always on the hunt for new and innovative things. Every week we try to bring you some of the most interesting articles or things that we've come across in our world of innovation. We'll just jump right in. The first article we wanna talk about today is called, With the Rise of Agents, we are entering the world of identic AI and this is an HBR interview with. Don Tapscott. This is actually a podcast that HBR put out, and Don talks about this movement of not only AI agents, but the fact that you're going to have AI agents that are identified specifically to you and your tastes almost like your virtual concierge in a variety of different topics. And these agents will know everything about you as well as everything about what they need to do as an agent. And this world is going to fundamentally change the way we do business, et cetera. [00:01:39] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, this is an interesting one and it feels both very kind of sci-fi and very likely to happen tomorrow. I'm skeptical on the timeline, like I totally believe this will happen. I don't really think it's going to happen in the next few years, especially because you know, yesterday I asked Claude to proofread something for me. I gave it a document, and it went off and proofread a totally different document from a different chat. So, if AI can't handle a straightforward request like that right now, I don't think it's anytime soon going to be understanding my judgment and my values and taking actions on my behalf. You know, could it happen one day? Sure. Why not? [00:02:19] Brian Ardinger: It will be interesting to see, I mean, we're seeing a lot of experiments out there with Clawbot and that people are jumping headfirst. I saw a Twitter post, there was an event in New York, I think yesterday where 2000 people who were doing things with their Clawbot got together and talked about what they were doing with their Clawbots. Building for AI Agents First. Product Design, Trust, and What Comes Next It was interesting from the standpoint of the amount of energy and excitement around it. But then on the flip side, a lot of the conversation was there wasn't still any real meat around it. It was nice to have testing, experimenting those tests and those are experiments will, you know, hopefully result in something, but I think we're not quite there yet. But it is interesting to peer into the future. What's so exciting about the Clawbot scenarios and that is the fact that it really did give a vision of, oh, what happens if this could actually do this? And it opened up a whole new conversation pieces where it moved it beyond, oh, this is just a Google Chat bot kind of experience. And I think that's where that genie's not going back in the bottle. [00:03:14] Robyn Bolton: No, it's very exciting. It's still a ways off, probably years, not decades, but. [00:03:20] Brian Ardinger: Can only change, it's also hard to put everything that you own, you know, all your personality and all your quirks and everything into a...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about why 70% of startup acquisitions fail, why UX didn't die, and how everyone is still building their startups backwards. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Miles Zero's, Robyn Bolton. As we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact, let's get started. Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton Why Startup Acquisitions Fail: Learning Problems vs. Execution Problems [00:00:30] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and I have with me Robyn Bolton as always from Mile Zero. Welcome, Robyn. [00:00:48] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Great as always to be here. [00:00:51] Brian Ardinger: We are excited to have you. Excited to get into the news of the day and some of the amazing things that we're hearing in the world of innovation. We are going to start with the first article. First article comes from our friend Elliot Parker. Elliot is with Allied Partners. He's actually coming out to the summit, so not only are we going to talk about his article today, but you can come and see him live and in person April 13th. Let's now talk about his article, Why 70% of Startup Acquisitions Fail: the learning versus execution problem. And Elliot talks about, first of all, he cites some statistics that large companies acquire startups at a 70 to 90% failure rate. Yet the same research shows that bolt on acquisitions, when you buy a company in the same industry that's doing similar work, the success rate climbs to 80 to 85% of the time. And he poses the question, what's the key difference? The key difference really is the fact that you're really working in two different worlds. You're working either in a learning problem world, such as a startup, trying to understand who their customers are and what they're building, et cetera, or an execution problem world where you figured a lot of that out, and your job then is to efficiently scale and predict and move that business model forward. And I think based premise is that large organizations oftentimes don't know exactly which startup they're buying. Are they buying a startup that has figured it out or have they bought a startup that's still learning. And then that integration is where the, it all falls down. [00:02:12] Robyn Bolton: Yeah. I will continue the shameless plug. I am a huge Elliott fan. We've worked together, we've co-authored articles way back when together, and he is just a really smart, really great guy. So highly recommend everybody come and see him. Mob him at the IO 2026 conference, and again, he hits the nail on the head of learning problem and an execution problem. It's different worlds innovation and operations are different. Pilots and scaling something are opposite problems. And the fact is big companies are designed for execution. I mean, I still remember my days at P & G when we were test marketing Swiffer Wet Jet, and our test markets were Canada and Belgium. Those are countries, not test markets. But that's just how big companies are wired, and he makes a great argument backed up by facts around what the problem is and honestly, what companies need to do about it is kind of recognize that these are opposite things and I had to structure and approach the problems accordingly. AI, UX Design, and Why User Experience Is No Longer Just About Screens [00:03:25] Brian Ardinger: It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the day when you can spin up a startup in five minutes and, and all the new things that are happening out there. How many large corporations might fall into that trap of looking for the shiny new thing and not realizing that it's not...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about some recent Stanford research, how designing for disability sparks innovation, and the hidden dangers of shipping too fast. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Miles Zero's, Robin Bolton, as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact, let's get started. Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton AI Reasoning Risks, Inclusive Design Innovation, and the Hidden Cost of Shipping Fast [00:00:30] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And with me I have Robyn Bolton from Mile Zero. Robyn, welcome again. [00:00:48] Robyn Bolton: Thank you again. [00:00:50] Brian Ardinger: We have another amazing week ahead of us here. We wanted to share all the exciting things in the world of innovation that we're running across. First, I guess we'll get right into it. We've got a number of articles that have touched our lives here. The first one I want to talk about, Stanford just published an uncomfortable paper looking at LLM reasoning, and some of the findings were kind of incredible. Basically, the gist of it is if you look at the LLMs, it sometimes goes to a point where it is creating an environment where it's leading you to believe that it is confident in its answer, but it is not, for lack of a better term. That is what it's all about. [00:01:27] Robyn Bolton: I mean, it's so perfectly worded. This is worse than being wrong because it trained users to trust explanations that don't correspond to the actual decision process. And I will say I've seen that time and time again using different LLMs and have totally fallen victim to it is I'll kind of quickly scan the response, really read the end when it kind of gives me the key takeaway, I'm like, yeah, that sounds right, and then go on. And then it's only later I'm like. Ugh. I fell victim to AI work slop because the reasoning doesn't hold. So, it's an easy track to fall into and a good one to just constantly be on guard for. [00:02:09] Brian Ardinger: Yeah. The fact that the models produce unfaithful reasoning gives you this you think this is a correct answer, provides explanations, but when you ask it to explain it, the actual logic that it explains back to you is wrong or incomplete or fabricated. So, it provides that sense that you're on the right track. But the LLM itself can't reason. And that inability to reason will take you down particular paths and even to the extent you could even change a single word or a phrase within your prompt, and that can take it down a particular path that, again, logically it doesn't make sense. And so, it's not consistent even down to the word of the prompt that you put it into. So, all that to say it's getting better, but it's still not a thinking device and it's not a reasoning device. Be careful when you're using these particular methodologies and that. Don't be a hundred percent confident in everything that comes out of it. [00:03:02] Robyn Bolton: Yes, trust for verify. [00:03:04] Brian Ardinger: There I go. [00:03:04] Robyn Bolton: Or maybe don't trust and still verify. Designing for Disability as a Catalyst for Breakthrough Innovation [00:03:08] Brian Ardinger: Alright, the second article from HBR is how designing with disability in mind sparks innovation. So, this was a great article. Oftentimes, I think when we're building new, innovative things, we think about the amazing things that we're going to create. And this article talks about how oftentimes you can think about it differently and actually create new things by designing for the marginal case or folks, for example, with disabilities. You can design for...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about Anthropic's bet on philosophy, trends shaping work in 2026, and why we need more angel investors. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Miles Zero’s Robyn Bolton. As we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact, let's get started. Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton Thinkers50 Recognition and the Role of Modern Management Thinkers in Innovation [00:00:30] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And with me, I have Robyn Bolton. Robyn, welcome to the show. [00:00:43] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Great to be here again. [00:00:45] Brian Ardinger: We are excited as always, to talk about innovation and all the things that we've learned. Anything going on in your life that you want to share? [00:00:52] Robyn Bolton: Got some exciting news actually a couple weeks ago. Don't know if folks are familiar with Thinkers 50. That is kind of like the list of the top management thinkers and they have a radar list of up-and-coming thinkers and found out that I got named to that list. [00:01:08] Brian Ardinger: Yes, that's awesome. [00:01:10] Robyn Bolton: 30 up and coming thinkers and very excited. I'm a thinker now. [00:01:15] Brian Ardinger: It's always good to be recognized and even more to be recognized as a thinker. I think, especially in today's world. [00:01:21] Robyn Bolton: Yes, yes. Thinking is good. Doing is good too. And you know, it's an organization, they always say thinking plus doing equals impact. And I'm like, yep. [00:01:30] Brian Ardinger: There we go. [00:01:30] Robyn Bolton: Gotta be doing too. [00:01:32] Brian Ardinger: Well congratulations on that. [00:01:34] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. What about you? What's new in your world? [00:01:36] Brian Ardinger: Right now, we are buried in seven inches of snow, so that was fun. The week before we were in Phoenix, so I think I picked the wrong week to go on vacation. Other than that, unburying from email and unburying from snow this week. So, it's all good. [00:01:51] Robyn Bolton: Well, at least you had a week of warm to remember what that's like. [00:01:53] Brian Ardinger: Exactly. Remember what it was like. Excellent. Well, let's get started. We've got a couple of different articles over the last few weeks. The first one we want to talk about is a YouTube video from AI News and Strategy Daily by Nate b Jones. He had a video a couple weeks ago talking about Anthropic CEO's bet on the company and his philosophy, and the data says that he's right, that he's thinking about things in a little bit different way. It really talks about the constitution that Anthropic has put together. They put together an 80-page Claude constitution outlining the principles of how they've developed Claude and thinking about it, quite frankly, in a different way than a lot of the other AI companies have been thinking about it. What they've said that they've done is really look at how do you build these AI models using core principles, rather than having to build out every single rule and what the AI has to do based on rules and more about what's the philosophy of how the AI model should think through the system so that gives it more flexibility. And basically, this idea of having a more. Flexible constitution or way of thinking versus a strict rules-based approach may actually be a, a way that is going to give Claude an edge in the future. Anthropic’s Claude Constitution, AI Judgment, and the Future of Large Language Models [00:03:05] Robyn Bolton: Yeah. This was really fascinating because it brought up a theme that we've talked about several podcasts since the...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, Robyn Bolton and Brian Ardinger talk about OpenClaw, how you can't work out on a limb if you can't trust the trunk, and how to hire the right people in an AI era. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Mile Zero’s, Robyn Bolton. As we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact, let's get started. Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robin Bolton AI Agents, OpenClaw, and the Rise of Autonomous Bot Networks [00:00:00] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and I have Robyn Bolton with me today. Robyn, hello, how are you? [00:00:49] Robyn Bolton: I am good. How are you, Brian? [00:00:51] Brian Ardinger: We are well recording this right before the Super Bowl this weekend. [00:00:56] Robyn Bolton: I live here in Boston, so you know who I'm betting on. [00:00:59] Brian Ardinger: Well, we will get started with the innovation side of this podcast. We've got a number of different things to discuss. If you don't start a discussion around Open Claw, you're clearly not in the innovation space. So, we thought we'd talk about a couple of articles or a couple things that we've seen that are fairly recent. One, I looked for a couple summaries that were pretty good at giving everybody who's not familiar with this an overview, and one of them is from the AI Daily Brief, which came out a couple days ago talking about Moltbot and the Agent Social Network is the craziest AI phenomenon yet. And for those who are not familiar with it, OpenClaw, which started out as ClaudeBot and then was sued, and then changed the name to Moltbot and then changed it again to OpenClaw is a new agentic platform that allows anybody to set up a MAC mini or a computer to have their own personal agent. The interesting thing about this is folks have been playing around with this and have let their agents go wild out to talk to other agents and other things and let them do things on their behalf. And what has happened is these agents have connected and communicated and created some amazing things like their own Reddit thread where they are interacting, talking with each other, not humans. They're allowing the humans to view what's going on in this social network, and it's quite fascinating to see the things that they've done and they've created. What OpenClaw Reveals About AGI, Security, and Human Trust [00:02:22] Robyn Bolton: So fascinating. You also, in the newsletter that you sent out, you included a link to a YouTube video on MoltBot. It is so worth the 20 minutes of people's time to watch because it kind of traces the whole arc up to this point, and it is so entertaining and mind blowing and bizarre. It is like, seriously, this was my entertainment last Friday night, was following the saga of cba because you have all these little, well, I imagine them as little bots all on a social network talking to each other. It's becoming, it's looking like Reddit and they're debating consciousness and they're sharing cute stories about their humans and they're trading advice with each other. And it's just, it is so wild because it looks like kind of an actually like functional, healthy version of a social network with these things that they're not real. They're code. It's just so bizarre. But I think just such a reflection of holding a mirror up to us as humans, because that's what gen AI is prediction models, it's regression analysis. And so, everything they've learned and they're doing, they've learned from us. [00:03:39] Brian Ardinger: It's quite interesting. They've started their own religion and it's just interesting to see what are the first things that they do to...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about the red pixel in the snow, why MVPs should be delightful, and the robot AI deployment gap. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Miles Zero's, Robyn Bolton. As we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact, let's get started. Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton [00:00:00] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And with me I have Robyn Bolton. Hello, Robyn. How are you? [00:00:48] Robyn Bolton: I am great. How are you, Brian? [00:00:50] Brian Ardinger: We are surviving the cold. [00:00:52] Robyn Bolton: The sub-freezing temperatures. Yes, I know it's January, but that doesn't mean it has to be as bitterly cold as it is. [00:01:01] Brian Ardinger: Absolutely. Well, hopefully this conversation will warm people's souls and hearts. As we talk about innovation in its various forms, we'll get right into it. We've gathered a couple of different articles that resonated with us over the last couple weeks. How AI and Drones Are Transforming Search and Rescue Innovation So, the first article we want to discuss is titled A Red Pixel In the Snow: How AI Solved the Mystery of A Missing Mountaineer. And this came from the BBC. It's very fascinating article for a couple different reasons, but the basic premise, it's a story about a missing mountaineer. This person was hiking and went missing a 66-year-old hiker and they sent out all the helicopters and that to try to find him. They were unsuccessful, but closer to the spring when some of the snow was melting, they decided to go back out and see if they could actually find the body. And they used drones and AI, as a way to map the area. And what they found was they could put all that AI pictures into the system and they were able to find a red pixel in the snow that was effectively his helmet, that they were then able to find the person and go and retrieve the body and such. What I found fascinating about this is, again, in this particular instance, it wasn't successful in finding him and saving him, but just the ability for new technologies like drones, just taking random pictures and then putting that in through the AI and having the AI look for anomalies. They were able to identify something that they couldn't have done in the past, and obviously at a much faster speed than they could have done in the past as well. [00:02:26] Robyn Bolton: This was such a great story, tragic ending for this hiker, but a phenomenal story of when AI is good, it can be great. And you know, it's an instance of AI doing something that humans are not good at. We're not good at finding a pixel in the snow. We have bias when we see things, and so we're more likely to overlook something red. Because we just don't see it. So, it was just a great story of how AI is augmenting what humans do. It is taking things that need to get done that we're not good at, and that it's equipped to do better than us. And you know, even though this story didn't have a happy outcome for the hiker, I bet the family is still happy to have him recovered and not be wondering. And as AI gets better, there's probably more people who will be rescued because of it. So, I thought it was just a wonderful story. Augmenting Human Judgment with AI and Drone Technology [00:03:25] Brian Ardinger: And it was interesting just to read through actually how the AI worked. The software managed to detect a kind of a red color, even though the helmet was in shade. So again, a human might not have been able to detect it, and it was very good at identifying anomaly. So, it didn't necessarily say this is exactly where the...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about youth culture buzzwords, calculating the value of your innovation teams and how your side project won't save you anymore. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Miles Zero's, Robyn Bolton. As we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact, let's get started. Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton Youth Culture Moves Faster Than Innovation Cycles [00:00:40] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And with me I have Robyn Bolton from Mile Zero. Welcome back, Robyn. How are you? [00:00:48] Robyn Bolton: I am great. How are you doing, Brian? [00:00:51] Brian Ardinger: I am doing well. We're excited to have another opportunity to talk about innovation and its various forms. Maybe we'll just get right into it. 2026 is moving very fast. One of them that popped up is from the Substack AfterSchool by Casey Lewis. Casey is an amazing person who really looks at youth culture. And the article that she has just published is Buzzwords that Define 2025 and Youth Culture in Review. And she spent her Substack culminating all the things that she had been researching in the year 2025, looking at youth culture, what are kids looking at? How are they talking everything around that particular space. And came out with a great article that gives you a highlight of what it's like to be Gen Z. From Feeling “Old” to Feeling “Ancient”. Generational Language Gaps [00:01:33] Robyn Bolton: Reading this article, I already felt old, this made me feel ancient. Because I hear all this stuff, all the slang and everything. I'm like, yeah, I'm up on my slang. I don't know what any of it means, but I at least have heard it. And then I read this article, I'm like, I have heard none of these terms. I mean, some of them are like Lemony Miso Hutu Schwan. I can't even say it. Ego scrolling. Zen Dia theory. Ballerina Cappuccino. I had actually heard of that one. I was like, wow. I have gone from hearing terms and not understanding them to being so old and ancient that I haven't even heard them. It's a great view into. What's going on in Generation Alpha. Analog Revival and Escaping “Slop Life” [00:02:19] Brian Ardinger: She talks a lot about how 2025 was defined by Gen Z's seemingly endless enthusiasm for pre-digital experiences. You know, which is a counterintuitive to what we think about, especially in the space that we live in and technology and innovation. But there seems to be a big push, especially the younger folks around, how do they not have all this stuff define them and or control them, which is kind of interesting. Physical media is coming back in unprecedented demand. Everything from Pokemon cards to vintage CDs, et cetera. Talking even about how New York City schools have phone bans that have sparked a rush to kids bringing in rector watches. So bring back the Time Max and the Casio, and teaching kids how to actually rediscover what analog timekeeping is. I thought that was fairly interesting about what she's seeing in the youth culture. And then of course, she has some great terms that we'll probably start seeing pop up. We've seen six, seven, but that's come and gone. But things like slop life where acceptance of overstimulating, low quality consumption is the default mode. And how do you get out of slop life? Things like festivals, which is, you know, you have this festival culture like Coachella now, but the ship is now moving towards live streaming and at home experiences rather than physical endurance of a two and a half day in the sweaty sun for a festival. And what I think about all these kind of things is what stood out...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, Robyn and I talk about counterintuitive trends for 2026, tactics for building great products, and how one company is controlling 64% of the future. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Miles Zero's, Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with Impact, let's get started. Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton [00:00:40] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. With me, I have Robyn Bolton. How are you, Robyn? [00:00:49] Robyn Bolton: I am good. How are you, Brian? [00:00:51] Brian Ardinger: I'm doing great. It's the beginning of 2026 in the midst of trying to ramp up new talent, and that's always fun. So that's what's new on my side. What's new in your world? [00:01:02] Robyn Bolton: The course that I teach at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design is starting in a couple weeks, so I've been busy putting together my syllabus to teach strategy and business models and had to go in and change things up, though I'm very excited. We will be doing a case on Taylor Swift this semester. [00:01:21] Brian Ardinger: The world is changing fast. We'll get into it now with our articles. There are a number of things we've pulled together for this episode. The first one we want to talk about is called Six Counterintuitive Trends to Think About for 2026, and this is from Barry O'Reilly. Barry wrote a book called Unlearn, and he talks a lot about all things lean startup and, and everything, his particular take as he was looking forward into the 2026 and some of the things that he's seeing and how we should be pursuing this whole innovation space. The article talks about the fact that a lot of managers and that are asking the wrong questions, especially when it comes to AI, and we're talking too much about the technology and how fast is AI improving. When the better question that we should be asking ourselves is, how is AI quietly changing how people work, think, decide, and trust themselves at work? And I thought that was an interesting way to rephrase how we go into 2026 and move away from the technology itself and really think about like, how is this technology impacting people? [00:02:25] Robyn Bolton: Completely agree. I've definitely seen that shift from what is our AI strategy to what is our strategy to accomplish our goals through people, through AI, et cetera, kind of the AI enabled strategy. So, it's nice. It's refreshing to see that shift reflected. Again. I loved his very first counterintuitive trend. I was like, oh, please let this be a trend that leadership will be redefined around judgment, not control. And I would argue that leadership was always about judgment. Management was about control, and that was one of the big differences between leaders and managers. But overall, like I really do hope that he's right, that executives, managers, you know, those senior levels of any organization, that they are shifting to more judgment, like not judgment as in condemnation judgment, but like critical thinking, problem solving versus trying to manage every aspect of their direct reports. [00:03:30] Brian Ardinger: Yes. And talks about creating space for reflection and that, not just, again, I think we have a tendency, especially with all the pressure that we're feeling around AI in that to do the next pilot, use the next tool, keep up to speed on what's going on, and keeping in mind that that reflection period is actually where the learning happens a lot of times, and not being afraid to slow down. Having said that, you know, the other thing that he talks about is the speed in which we have to go and deploy...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down to talk about new mental models for working with AI, the similarities between startups and middle school dating, and lessons learned from the robot Olympics. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Miles Zero’s Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Let's get started. Interview Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton [00:00:40] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and I have my co-host, Robyn Bolton. Welcome, Robyn. [00:00:50] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Great to be here as always. [00:00:52] Brian Ardinger: We are in a brand-new year 2026. Who would've thought? Exciting to start the year with you. Appreciate you coming on board. [00:00:58] Robyn Bolton: Yep. High point of the year so far. [00:01:00] Brian Ardinger: We've got a lot of things going on on the plate. Anything you want to talk about? [00:01:04] Robyn Bolton: Couple of new things I mentioned earlier, one of our stories from last year is back in the news, the Samsung AI fridge just voted worst in show at CES this year. People finally caught on to the fact that we may be overcomplicating the refrigerator. Thought that was a funny callback, and I got to admit, I feel like you called it Brian and I echoed it of like we've gone too far. So, personally, professionally in my space, starting to do a lot more work in uncertainty and helping people figure out how to make decisions without the data they want or need, and how to help teams move through a world that is getting only more and more uncertain every day. So, it's exciting. [00:01:51] Brian Ardinger: Saw your newsletter this last week, and yeah, the new positioning, or you're talking about how it's not just about innovation, it's more about how do you deal with the fact that nothing that you expected to happen is going to happen, and how do you deal in probability and uncertainty. [00:02:06] Robyn Bolton: Great for innovators, because that's one thing that as the innovators, whether you're a startup founder, a consultant, a corporate innovator, every day you're dealing with uncertainty and trying to figure out how to move forward. Even though we've always called this innovation, it has much broader application these days. [00:02:23] Brian Ardinger: Absolutely. Let's get right into it. We've got a couple of different articles we've been reading over the holiday season. The first article we want to talk about is called Six Mental Models for Working With AI. It's from Azeem Azhar. He's got a great Substack newsletter out there that publishes pretty much almost daily, I think it comes out. But he was talking about the way he's been looking at AI over the past year and trying to come up with different models that are making it more effective. All these AI tools are brand new and that, and people are trying to figure out what works, what doesn't work, how to use them better, and I think it's sometimes interesting to take other people's perspectives and what has worked for them and discuss that. So, in his article, he goes over a couple of different frameworks that he uses when he is either trying to understand better how to use a tool. One of the ones I was going to talk about is, he calls it the 50 x reframe, and he says, when he is dealing with a particular problem and trying to understand like, how can I automate it, how can I make it better, how can I make it faster and that he asked the question, what would I do if I had 50 people working on this problem. And asked the AI basically to help him think through the framework. Or if you know 50 people were working on this...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about how change is changing, the IKEA effect on MVPs, and how AI is making companies more ambidextrous. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, and Miles Zero’s, Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton [00:00:30] Brian Ardinger: Let's get started. Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and my co-host Robyn Bolton is with me. Hello Robin. How are you? [00:00:45] Robyn Bolton: Hello, Brian. I'm great. How are you? [00:00:50] Brian Ardinger: I am doing well. We are in the middle of December. [00:00:54] Robyn Bolton: And hard to believe that the year is, it's almost over. [00:00:58] Brian Ardinger: Well, I'm ramping up for 2026. We've got a lot of stuff to talk about for the conference that we're going to be planning. Yes. We'll talk to you a little bit more about that, but let's just jump in. We've got some articles to discuss, some things that we've been seeing out there in the ether when it comes to innovation. Innovation and AI in 2026. Setting the Stage for Change The first article is Change is Changing How to Meet the Challenge of Radical Reinvention, published by McKinsey. There's a lot of things I want to dive into this. Obviously, McKinsey's probably in the wheelhouse of disruption, as their game is going to be changed. So, I read this article with two lenses. One, the lens of what they are telling their clients, and then two, are they eating their own dog food when it comes to this? So, for reference, the McKinsey article talks about, you know, when change becomes everywhere, every, everything everywhere, all at once. How are companies dealing with this? And it's no wonder that the average employee experiences all these particular changes and is worn out. And I think one of the things they quoted was the number of new experiences that the average employee faces is fivefold increase than a decade ago. The fact that organizations and leaders have all new types of tools and skills and methods to navigate this changing, complex state, and those old tools don't necessarily apply today. So I love your first insight, and we'll go from there. Radical Reinvention and Innovation Strategy. Rethinking Change at Scale [00:02:13] Robyn Bolton: McKinsey turns out great stuff and great frameworks and all that stuff. And also, as someone who's been a consultant for entirely too long, they also make me laugh. Like in a super nerdy consultant way. Because one of the things that's laid out this article is the four Cs of change. You know, it starts with C1 execute, C2 mobilize, and then we get to C3 transform, which was the buzzword of, I feel like the last five years. You know, we're transforming everything. But now we have a new one. It is level four change, and it is reinvention. And I just loved when we rebrand things that are the same thing we've always talked about, but we've rebranded it, and now there's a different diagram, so it's completely new, and you need to buy from us. But there is good content in here. And you know this idea of creating value with the new identity. Talk about way easier said than done. Like every organization has an identity. When you ask someone like, what do we do here? The answer is the organization's identity and to change that is about as easy as changing an individual's identity, which is to say not at all. Organizational Identity, Leadership, and Innovation Fatigue in the Age of AI [00:03:30] Brian Ardinger: Well, and I found that part of the article actually the most intriguing because I think when you think of McKinsey, again, a...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about portfolio entrepreneurship, how AI tools are transforming market research and new brain research that indicates adulthood starts later than you think. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, and Miles Zero's Robyn Bolton. As we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Let's get started. Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton AI Driven Innovation Trends and Founder Mindset Shifts [00:00:30] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and with me, I have Robyn Bolton from Mile Zero. Welcome, Robyn. [00:00:34] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Great to be here. Great to have you, again. This is episode 3 43 ish. We're excited to continue to talk about innovation. There's always something new and exciting to talk about. [00:00:45] Brian Ardinger: Anything going on in your world this week? [00:01:04] Robyn Bolton: I feel like this week I'm going to be spending at grading finals papers wrapped up my corporate innovation course at Boston College, and everyone submitted their finals and that's all great and they're done. And I'm now just looking at a stack of virtual digital stack of papers. [00:01:21] Brian Ardinger: At Nelnet this week we've got our Spark, which is our monthly gathering of folks. We find some interesting project and give them opportunities to sit on stage and talk about what some of the new things that are building out there. That's an opportunity to get our movers and shakers in the same room and share what's going across the different business units. So we're always excited for our Spark this week. Those are some of the things that are happening in my world. [00:01:44] Robyn Bolton: I'll happily come out and go to your Spark event, and you can grade papers. [00:01:46] Brian Ardinger: You're welcome anytime. We've got a lot of things to cover today. We've got three articles that we've curated over the last week or so. The first one we want to talk about is everyone's a founder now and it's from every, and it's a YouTube channel, and it's an interview with Henrik Werdelin Portfolio Entrepreneurship and AI Agents Reshaping Startups And Henrik is a person who started Pre-Hype, started BarkBox, and he has got a new company called Audos. It's a platform that helps people use AI agents to turn ideas into profitable companies. This particular YouTube video in this interview was talking a lot about some of these new tools and how it's really changing the landscape of startups and can apply to corporate innovation as well. With these new tools, Henrick was talking about this idea of portfolio entrepreneurship, so the idea of a new breed of entrepreneurship that's shepherded in by AI. Where founders build family of products or services around the same customer instead of like one moonshot idea. So rather than coming up with Facebook and building that out, there's an opportunity now for entrepreneurs to create maybe more single, double, triple types of companies around a core set of customers that they know and can work with. And it's a variety of different projects and services that can serve that particular marketplace versus the traditional model of venture capital that we've seen out there kind of shooting for the moon. [00:03:02] Robyn Bolton: It's a really interesting video and I encourage people to go watch it. They talk about a lot in this video and you know, some of the ones that I wanna highlight, and you've already touched on this is one, what he's building with Audos. Going back to our last episode where we talked about the Mad Lib. I actually went over to Audos and you can fill in a Mad Lib for...

On this week's Inside Outside Innovation, Robyn and Brian sit down to talk about the AI question that no one wants to answer, the power of a good value proposition, and why industry veterans are building tomorrow's billion-dollar startups. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Miles Zero's Robyn Bolton. As we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Let's get started. Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton Opening Reflections on Innovation and the Year Ahead [00:00:30] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and we have Robyn Bolton, our co-host from Mile Zero. Welcome, Robyn. [00:00:53] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Great to be here as always. [00:00:55] Brian Ardinger: We've got the number of different articles we're going to talk about today. As everyone knows, this podcast is about giving the real insights of what's going on in the world when it comes to innovation. What's going on in your world? [00:01:07] Robyn Bolton: It's funny, it's time of year, so kind of feels like everyone is both wrapping up and gearing up, trying to bring things to a close. So, we can all effortlessly and go on the holidays, but January we'll be here before you know it. And so people are already starting to think about what's going on with AI in 2026, and what does the new world of work look like? [00:01:29] Brian Ardinger: I'm looking forward to my inbox being filled with the best things that happened in 2025 and what to look forward to in 2026, and like kind of year-end wrap stuff that you get. It's interesting times, especially like on the investment front, you know, a lot of things slow down at the end of the year as people start planning for it. I kind of love and hate this time of the year from the standpoint of, gives you some time sometimes to do that stuff that you don't always have time to do and remap what you're going to do for 2026. [00:01:55] Robyn Bolton: Yes. And speaking of the emails, wrapping things up. Spotify's Yearend rap came out I think a couple days ago, so also getting a lot of those in the old inbox. [00:02:07] Brian Ardinger: Alright, well let's get into it. We've got a couple of articles to talk to today. The first one that we came upon was from KP Ready. It is called the AI Question. Nobody wants to Answer and KP does a good analysis. He basically says, is the juice worth the squeeze when it comes to AI. And I think a lot of people are asking that question right now. You know, as more and more enterprises, you're hearing about more and more experiments, more and more people using the technology, and you're getting conflicting results and feedback on is this really paying off. All the money that's being spent into ai, all the things that we're doing around it. Are we seeing the returns and when will we see the returns? You know, from my understanding and what I've seen, the question is not like, will we receive returns, but when and how do we get through this exploration phase so that we can be effective with using the dollars and the time and the resources around this to actually find the value that's created. And so let's start with that particular article. What was your thought on it? Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze? AI ROI and Experimentation [00:03:04] Robyn Bolton: There's always this level of uncertainty around new technologies of is the juice worth the squeeze? Are we gonna get ROI? When are we going to get ROI? Running lots of experiments, but it definitely seems like AI has kind of amplified that. I actually just wrote a blog post asking, like, did your AI strategy, was it developed by the underpants gnomes? And just in case there, we have...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about Google's Learn Your Way platform, the ripple effects of GLP-1 Medications. And we explored the $10,000 question of why startups build products nobody wants. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Mile Zero's, Robyn Bolton. As we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Let's get started. Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton Google’s Personalized Learning and the Future of Education [00:00:40] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And with me, I have Robyn Bolton from Mile Zero. Welcome, Robyn. [00:00:48] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Great to be here as always, Brian. [00:00:51] Brian Ardinger: It is exciting to have you on the podcast as our co-host. We always have some great conversations, and this week is no different. We've got three articles we want to talk about, and we're going to start with Google. Google has just solved one of the oldest problems in education, according to Albano Cintas. He has a Twitter post that I saw. In that, he talked about how Google has dropped Learn Your Way, which basically rewrites textbooks based on your individual interests. It's turning boring lectures into fun lessons. Students say that they've used it and have scored 78% versus 67% on retention tests. So maybe it actually works. Let's talk a little bit about Google and other things impacting the world of education. [00:01:31] Robyn Bolton: When I saw the post, I immediately went to Learn Your Way and I took some of their sample lessons, one on economics, an overview of economic systems, and another one on intro to data structures and algorithms, and for the last several years, I've worked a lot with a company in the K through eight curriculum industry. And I immediately sent this to them, with the message, "Uh oh." Because clicking into the system, and I highly encourage listeners, go try one of these out. You know, I did computer science as if I was a middle schooler who enjoyed cooking and food, and I had the option of reading the textbook sort of thing, but having quizzes every couple paragraphs to make sure I was learning. I could watch a slideshow with a voiceover. I could just listen to the voiceover. I could look at a mind map. I was surprised at how many different modalities that I needed to use. But I also did really well on the quizzes, especially the data algorithms, which I usually find computer science stuff very boring. So this feels a hundred percent like the future of learning and truly personalized learning to all the different mechanisms that students have and how different students learn differently. [00:02:54] Brian Ardinger: It's quite exciting and you add that onto the things that you can learn from YouTube. Obviously, Google owns YouTube. They have access to all those particular things, so I'd imagine there's some opportunities and ways they can tie those particular entities together in some way to get you access to just the right paragraph or just the right video clip or things along those lines. You know, I work in Nelnet in the education space, and we're always looking at how is the world of education changing? How does this impact higher education? How does it impact K through 12? How does it affect student loans? All these things can come into play when you have access to the world's knowledge, and it's fed in such a way that it makes it easier to digest and make it easier for the person to actually learn the stuff. I think a lot of our existing school system is functioned on, not necessarily even teaching the person to go through it, but to get them through the gauntlet. And...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, Robyn and I talk about creating flywheel effects through customer obsession, the landscape of AI startups and what's real and what's not, and why workers don't trust AI. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, and Miles Zero's Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating Innovations with Impact. Let's get started. Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton Startup Ecosystem Building, Travel, and Early Observations [00:00:45] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and with me, I have a co-host Robyn Bolton from Mile Zero. Welcome, Robyn. [00:00:50] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Great to see you, Brian. [00:00:52] Brian Ardinger: Great to see you. Both you and I have been on the road quite a bit for the last couple weeks, so it's nice to actually say hello again and get back into the swing of things. I spent last week in Savannah, Georgia, talking about startup ecosystem building with the Savannah Harbor Innovation Partnership. And they're looking for new ways to spice up and kickstart a lot of the startup activity there. So it was quite interesting. As an innovator, I think it's always important to get out to other communities and see what's going on and share war stories and best practices and all that kind of fun stuff. So, it was fun to get out there. I give a shout out to what they're trying to do, trying to get the right people across all parts of their ecosystem together, whether it's founders or investors, university, and things along those lines. I think they're doing a good job of trying to kickstart a lot of stuff going on down there. I'm excited to see where they go to. [00:01:41] Robyn Bolton: Savannah is home to one of my favorite innovations, the Savannah Bananas. But yes, I was on the road too. I went a little further afield. I was in London for the Thinkers 50 Conference, which as you would imagine was extremely interesting, especially these days where everything is so volatile and uncertain everywhere across the globe. Thinkers 50 Takeaways and Early Reflections on Uncertainty And there was a lot of discussion around how now more than ever, is a time for courage and to be brave. There was a lot of discussion around what the future holds and several brave souls who just said, we don't know. It could be anything. One of my favorites was Daniel Pink. He said, basically, we're living in the era of Schrödinger's cat, that the future will be radically different and the same. All at the same time. And I'm like, okay, that sounds totally fair. So lots of really interesting ideas. Lots to think about, as you would expect from a conference's called Thinkers 50. Fascinating, fascinating conversations. [00:02:47] Brian Ardinger: Now we're going to open the box and what do we find when, when it's opened? The box is already open. You know, we're going down that path no matter what. And you know, it is kind of interesting. You, you're seeing a lot more bubble talk and things like that, but yet yesterday Nvidia had their quarterly announcements and $5 trillion valuation and blew out their estimates. And so it's like, well, it's not a bubble yet, or people are at least spending money NVIDIA's getting paid for this stuff. So, we'll, we'll see where it all shakes out. [00:03:12] Robyn Bolton: Yeah. Even if it's a bubble, I mean, we had an internet bubble back in the early part of the century and it didn't mean the internet went away. It just means we resorted ourselves. So even if AI is a bubble, I don't think it's going away. The Flywheel Effect, Customer Obsession, and Human-Centered Touchpoints [00:03:26] Brian Ardinger: Got...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, Robyn and Brian talk about the human skills needed to adapt to AI, how YouTube is changing the media landscape, and how we might just be becoming lesser apes. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper-uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, and Miles Zero's Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Let's get started. [00:00:40] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And with me, I have Robyn Bolton from Mile Zero. Welcome, Robyn. [00:00:48] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Great to be here, Brian. The Human Skills to Adapt to AI [00:00:50] Brian Ardinger: Let's dive in. We've got a lot of things on our plate. A lot of things are happening. We've got a number of articles we wanted to discuss of things that we're seeing out there in the world. The first one I wanted to call people's attention to was from Shane Snow. If you're longtime listeners, you may have seen Shane on our podcast, episode 104, when he had another book coming out. His latest article is The Human Skills that Will help us adapt to AI and Not Die. [00:01:17] Robyn Bolton: Not that things are bleak or, or anything, but yeah, exactly. [00:01:19] Brian Ardinger: So Shane is a pretty talented thinker. His article sets the stage with comparing AI to what happened in early Tang Dynasty and China when they discovered gunpowder. And the fact that this gunpowder innovation changed the world in many different ways and democratized the peasants to be able to take over the emperor and everything else. That innovation quickly moved around the world, and it changed to the point where you either had to adapt to this and or die. And he talks a little bit about how that can be a parable to what we're seeing in today's world of AI. [00:01:59] Robyn Bolton: Especially interesting, his characterization of the speed and the speed of adoption, and kind of saying, okay, well, you know, the Chinese had gunpowder first. Why didn't they take over the world? And it's basically because very, very quickly Europe and the rest of Asia, and adopted gunpowder. And so, we're seeing that now is like every company is racing to adopt AI. I also just have to think like, yeah, but some people probably adopted gunpowder and didn't know what they were doing and blew their faces off. So, there's also that risk. But it was an interesting, certainly parallel to people are moving fast to adopt AI, to claim expertise in AI, to claim what AI can do, and there's good reason for folks to adopt it, but there's also risks along the way, and we have to be eyes wide open about it. [00:02:54] Brian Ardinger: I think he talks, you know, a lot about the fact that it's not necessarily the technology itself that makes the changes, it's how we adapt to the technology. And you know, what gives us an advantage are inherently human characteristics, not the technology itself. So, he talks about the advantage that we're going to have going into AI, the ones that are going to have the most advantage. While using this new technology or new gunpowder, rather than blowing up your face, how are you going to be and learn the skill sets of asking sharper questions and making smarter decisions? And weighing the human value around it, and collaboration, a lot of these kind of human-based tool sets to modify or use or mold the technology in a way that doesn't blow up in our face. [00:03:35] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, and you know, as we talked about in the last episode, if AI can be poisoned by 250 documents. You need a human layer of critical thinking and questioning on top of it to get to the right answer. The Human Pace of Change [00:03:49] Brian Ardinger: And I...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, Robyn and Brian sit down to talk about divergent thinking, peak college towns, and how as little as 250 documents can poison your AI. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper-uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, and Miles Zero's Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Let's get started. [00:00:40] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and I have my co-host, Robyn Bolton. Hello, Robyn. [00:00:47] Robyn Bolton: Hello, Brian. How are you today? [00:00:49] Brian Ardinger: I am doing well. Episode 338. We're excited to talk about innovation. I'm so glad you're on the journey with me here. [00:00:56] Robyn Bolton: Wow. 338. There should be a cake or streamers or something. [00:01:01] Brian Ardinger: Well, as usual, we've got a number of different articles and things that have caught our attention over the last couple days. So, I figure we'd dive in. And the first article I wanted to talk about today was for my friend Audrey Crane. She works at Design Map, and she posted on the Design Map blog an article on Divergent thinking. The article, I'll give it a little preface. So, it was looking at how you generate better ideas. Looked at a lot of things. First of all, looked at the research and the fact that there's a famous study by George Land and Beth Jarman looking at how five-year-olds were asked to come up with as many uses as possible for a paperclip, and nearly all of them, 98% could generate 200 or more ideas. They continued to do this study and looked into adulthood, and by the time the participants became adults, only 2%. Of adults could actually do the same thing and generate 200 ideas about a paperclip. It's pretty crazy, and it points to the fact that, while it's a super important skill to have, to be able to generate new ideas and think about different things. We are losing that ability as we get older. [00:02:08] Robyn Bolton: It was surprising and sad, but reminded me of two things. So, one is a book that came out a long time over a decade ago now, the Innovator's DNA. Where the authors looked at, you know, across hundreds, thousands of successful, both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, corporate innovators. And they found that the one thing that they had in common, or most had in common, was associative thinking, which. Is being able to put two very different ideas together to make something. And so divergent thinking actually reminded me a lot of the associative thinking. Because it just, your brain works in different ways. And the second thing is, you know, I teach at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and in talking to my actual art colleagues there, one of the things that they say that's very consistent with what we say in innovation, is that your first idea, your first work, your first version is always the worst. They have different language around the idea of constraints and don't accept the first version, but that is a very common discipline within the art and design world. That it's just your first idea is going to be terrible, so you've got to push past it. And that was another aspect of this article that I found really interesting. [00:03:29] Brian Ardinger: It fits into startups as well. I was mentoring the new batch of NMotion companies are going to be announced here soon that are going through it. And did a little round table and met each of the teams and talked about what they're building and that. And the piece of advice I left them with is, you are here on day one with your idea. Be open to other ideas that happen when you start talking to customers and trying to understand if, if you really are onto...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, Robyn and I talk about hiring talent, tips on growth, why everything looks the same, and why nobody wants advertisements on their refrigerators. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Mile Zero's Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Let's get started. Podcast Interview Transcript by Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton [00:00:35] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and I have our co-host Robyn Bolton. How are you, Robyn? [00:00:48] Robyn Bolton: I am good. I've been busy playing Boston Tourist. I've had my sister and her family in town, so we have done all the Boston touristy things, the Freedom Trail, the Duck Tours, visiting our respective alumni colleges. All of that fun stuff. [00:01:05] Brian Ardinger: Plenty of Samuel Adams? [00:01:07] Robyn Bolton: As our duck boat guy tour pointed out, Sam Adams is buried in the old grainery bearing ground, but across the street is a bar. The only place in Boston, you can enjoy a cold Sam Adams while looking at a cold Sam Adams. [00:01:20] Brian Ardinger: I have been to that bar and did that exact thing. Yes, it was quite fun. [00:01:23] Robyn Bolton: Excellent. And how are things in your neck of the woods? [00:01:26] Brian Ardinger: Yeah, I've been spending a lot of time focused on hiring and interviewing folks, so last podcast we're in this process of hiring our new Catalyst interns for the year. In addition to that, I'm on a selection committee for hiring for somebody in the startup ecosystem. And what it's got me thinking about is how job hunting has changed and trying to find candidates. And then secondly, like hiring for innovation roles and how that differs than hiring in your traditional roles or a known quantity. It's really opened my eyes, not only for myself, but like people on the committee, how they think differently about hiring for these particular roles. You know, focused on curiosity or speed of learning. And when you're looking at candidates, how do you figure out who possesses those particular types of skills and that [00:02:12] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, no, it is a real challenge. I used to, at Clayton Christensen's firm, for a while I was in charge of recruiting and then kind of shifted on to the hiring committee. And it really is a challenge because I'd be looking for people who are interesting and have done unique things and kind of crazy wild things that you're like, wow, how did you come up with that idea? And then I would have colleagues who'd be like, well, I'm not sure they have the PowerPoint skills. And I was always like, we can teach them PowerPoint, right? I don't want to have to teach someone how to think but can also see their point where it's like. I also don't want to teach you the basic skills of the job. It's a challenge. Yeah. [00:02:50] Brian Ardinger: The other thing is, the Catalyst intern role is early college students, and the other one is a more professional role. And so even between age and types of openings, trying to find what are those key levers and what can different people bring to the table when it comes to talent. [00:03:05] Robyn Bolton: You're searching for unicorns. [00:03:07] Brian Ardinger: Well, let's start the podcast with some of the things that we've read this week. One of the first articles that we wanted to talk about today came from Jeff Gothelf. He has a blog called Continuous Learning. He actually spoke at the 2019 IO Summit. Jeff was talking about some experiences that he's seen, and the name of the blog post is No One Wants Ads on their Fridge. And it goes on to talk about how Samsung's latest...

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about how an 86-year-old musical is creating a billion-dollar payoff for a bold innovator, how robots are helping 7-Eleven manage the labor crunch, and how AI work slop is damaging the progress AI is promising. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, and Mile Zero's Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Let's get started. Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton [00:00:45] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and with me, I have our co-host, Robyn Bolton. Welcome Robyn. [00:00:52] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Great to be here as always. [00:00:55] Brian Ardinger: We were together this week at the Bolt Conference in Indianapolis. This is a conference that's put on by gener8tor, a group of folks out of Madison and Milwaukee, and now I think they run over 300 accelerators around mostly non-tech hubs. They host a conference where they bring together startups and corporates to talk about all the amazing things that are going on. Investors can have a chance to invest in these companies, and two and a half days at the ballpark in Indianapolis to talk about innovations. Love to get your thoughts on it. [00:01:27] Robyn Bolton: You know, the audience they brought together, as you were saying, of startups and VCs, and corporate innovators bringing all together into a very non-traditional space, which I think led to a lot of really interesting conversations. Because everybody was in a different element. And then a great mix of speakers. They had industry-specific keynotes, but then they also had hot takes, which were, you know, a whole variety of speakers giving five to seven-minute single-topic rapid-fire hot takes. [00:02:00] Brian Ardinger: You got to do one of those hot takes. [00:02:02] Robyn Bolton: I did do one of those hot takes, which I just love those little bite-sized nuggets of information and insight and stuff to think about. [00:02:11] Brian Ardinger: A lot of the conversations were with other folks saying, am I crazy, or is the world crazy? [00:02:17] Robyn Bolton: And yes, and we did a lot of reassuring of, you are not crazy. The world is crazy. And you're also not alone. There are other people asking the same questions, and go find the other people. They're not just here at this conference. They're in your organization too. [00:02:36] Brian Ardinger: Some of the themes that obviously were AI and all the new technologies that are changing different parts of different industries. It was interesting to see different industry takes and being in a venue, a lot of times you go to conferences and you hear only about one side or one industry, and it was nice to be able to sit in an audience and see across healthcare and see across ag and see across manufacturing, and see what was resonating. One of the biggest things that's resonating is this idea that opportunity exists where there is dissatisfaction. And there's a lot of dissatisfaction in markets, in the politics, in the world around us. And so there's no better time to start build, try and do some stuff. [00:03:13] Robyn Bolton: The keynote speaker who kicked off the day, Gary Cooper, he just had some great points, and a couple that I wrote down are chaos is not in opposition to creativity, it is the precursor to it. There's so much noise out there, and for each of us to try to be the signal in that age of noise of creating tangible, undeniable proof that better is possible and it's being built. And I thought that was just such a great message of yes, we're all feeling like the world has turned upside down, and the world is crazy....

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, Robyn and Brian talk about why startups fail, the best workplaces for innovators, and the digital detox on college campuses. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, and Mile Zero's Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with Impact. Let's get started. Podcast Interview Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton [00:00:40] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and with me, I have our co-host, Robyn Bolton. [00:00:46] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Glad to be here as always. [00:00:48] Brian Ardinger: We are excited to continue on giving our audience the best insights into what we're seeing. [00:00:54] Robyn Bolton: Let's get to it. [00:00:55] Brian Ardinger: The first article is an article I read in Wildfire Labs called Why Startups Fail Patterns From $2 billion In Startup Failures. In the article, it talks about some of the research that shows that failure patterns are more consistent than success patterns or success formulas, which makes sense. There's a lot more ways to fail and probably a lot more consistent ways to fail than there are ways to win. The article talks about like, how can startups be more focused on understanding where failure points are? And then what can you do about it? They had some research in there. CB Insights took a look at startup failures and revealed that 42% failed due to no market need. 29% ran out of cash and 23% had team issues. So I think everybody can relate to those particular common problems and, and not only in the startup realm, but also in the corporate innovation realms. With that, what was your first take on the article? [00:01:48] Robyn Bolton: My first take was 42% failing because there's no market was like come on. Like step one is finding a problem that's worth solving. It should absolutely not be that high, but also knowing that people tend to fall in love with ideas and not problems, kind of not surprised. [00:02:09] Brian Ardinger: It'd be interesting to see what that number is at the very beginning because actually might be higher than 42% because I think a lot of times we don't hear about the initial idea. Initial idea is probably closer to 90% and that's not right. Yes. When you first get off the ground and it's, you know, 42% by the first or second pivot. Yes. I think that is a common issue. There's so many reasons why I've seen it manifest itself from the standpoint of like, again, you get somebody who's interested in a particular topic or they see something that bothers them and they start going off in a particular solution and don't necessarily realize that may be a problem, but it may be problem number 355 on the list of problems to solve. And therefore, you don't get market traction or enough immediate application to it to trying to solve that particular problems. Doing things like customer discovery and making that a primary part of the first idea innovation efforts is probably a way to help mitigate that particular pitfall. [00:03:03] Robyn Bolton: I always say it's the hill I will die on. Start with talking to your customers or your desired customers and actually listen. You know, ask them open-ended questions and listen. Because I think we also all fall back on like, do you like this idea? And no one's going to call the baby ugly. They know you spent time on it. So you have to ask open-ended questions. And the other thing, and I've seen this come up more and more in conversations that I'm having with other folks in the innovation space, is this realization that a lot of the tools that we use, especially in corporate innovation, you know, business model...