AI questions, value propositions, and industry veterans with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

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 BoltonOpening 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 listeners who don't know who the underpants gnomes are, they're from South Park, and basically their business plan is phase one, collect underpants, phase two, question mark, phase three profit. And it just seems like there are so many AI startups, companies, experts, consultants, et cetera out there who have become underpants gnomes. And kind of just have this like, hi, put it on top of everything, and profit, and no one's kind of slowing down to kind of like, well, do we even need AI? How do we need it? Like, what makes sense here? [00:04:04] Brian Ardinger: I think a lot of people are not necessarily thinking. They feel the pressure to start doing something with AI, and so they start immediately deploying and doing things without looking at, well, is this a particular area that really would benefit? Or could we create real value if we can get this right? And they oftentimes overlook some of the other kind of hidden costs when you talk about it, deploying technology that's new or different.And I think more importantly, how it affects the culture of the people deploying it. So, you've got the, you know, the data infrastructure costs, you've got the integration complexity, you've got the change management, ongoing maintenance, all these kind of hidden costs when you're dealing with a brand new technology that you don't necessarily know.And some of the things I saw in the article that were interesting and I've seen in real life too, is how you can kind of maybe think through this process of, you know, which particular project should we deploy and that? Don't be afraid to kill experiments quickly if you're not seeing ROI in a particular area, you know, maybe shelve that particular idea and focus on one that is showing some value to it.Don't focus on having to deploy it everywhere, all at once. Again, try to find the particular areas or the particular people that are more willing and able to make those steps. And then thinking about that, you have to build everything yourself.I think that's another place where I'm seeing a lot of brand new tools and folks out there that are trying things that have already built some things that maybe you can go out and purchase and buy and experiment rather than having to come up with your own team to do and make all the mistakes that they're probably already going through it and made that tool in the first place.[00:05:00] Robyn Bolton: So, all great advice, and I just want to underscore the people aspect is you have people who are going to use this, people that you hope will benefit from it. Some people who will be resistant, and so don't underestimate the people, the human. AI interaction and all of those dynamics as part of the rollout, the implementation, the change management, all of that.Sharp Value Propositions in the AI Era[00:05:30] Brian Ardinger: All right. The second article is from our good friend Ben Yoskovitz. He always puts out some great stuff. His article on his substack called Focus Chaos is called the Real Differentiator in the AI era, A sharp specific Value proposition. Ben talks about how a lot of folks are falling into particular traps of, again, thinking that, well, I've got AI so hot, I'm going to be deploying AI, and let's go out there and build a startup around that, and without thinking about, well...

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 BoltonGoogle’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 what if we created a world that allowed them to actually learn and created folks that had better tool sets, mindset, skill sets around that. How would that change the world? It's one of those few things of AI that's positive. GLP-1 Medications and Shifting Consumer Behavior[00:03:58] Robyn Bolton: Yes, that is positive. We always have to look at the systems out there. And you know Google, yes, has YouTube. It also has Google Classroom, which is the learning management system. So, you already have a lot of teachers in schools plugged into Google, already using it for so many aspects in the classroom. This just fit perfectly, seamlessly, fits in, especially to get better results. It's a wild new world. I love making it relevant to students and their interests and how they learn. [00:04:28] Brian Ardinger: The second article is a good transition because it moves away from ai, but it's yet another innovation that could have significant effects on a lot of different things.And the article's from Harvard Business Review, and it's how GLP-1 medications are changing consumer behavior. They took a look at PWC analysis, looked at GLP medications like Ozempic. They're actually. Looking at the behavior, and it's pretty incredible in the analysis, more than 11,000 households, they looked at the grocery spending and it declined 6 to 8% within the first 12 months of a household that went on GLP-1 as their primary food purchaser.Not only that, so it was a sharp contraction of a category that doesn't typically shift that fast or it's much more likely to shift slowly if you are gonna change your diet and grocery spending habits. But it also, the total household spending outlays only failed 2 to 3%. So it's showing that it actually was pointing to some reallocation of those savings towards other categories. So, you know, I'll pose the question to you. You used to work at P&G. If the entire consumer product space is changed by one particular drug, how is that going to shape the world? [00:05:37] Robyn Bolton: It's a really great question. What I found so interesting about the data is that, and I have a family member who is on a GLP-1 and so know that like their appetite just shrinks. Like they just get to a point very quickly in a meal where they're like, I'm done. I don't want to eat anymore. So you're consuming less food, which then leads to a decision at the store like, well, I used to buy, you know, hamburger meat, but we're eating so little. Why don't I upgrade the beef that I get?Like, so instead of ground beef, let's get filet mignon. And so that's why you're seeing the dichotomy of the data in there. So, I think what it does is it actually puts, especially for food and beverage companies, I think it actually puts the onus on them to start creating more premium products. And instead of how cheap can we get this? How can we get a lot of food really cheap into bags, into boxes? It's flipping it to say, how can we create these premium experiences that are, it's a bite of chocolate instead of a bag of chocolate. [00:06:40] Brian Ardinger: Well, how can we not necessarily have to pack every single calorie into every single bite? There's a whole food process industry that's been designed to create and pack high-calorie content that tastes good. You know, the other thing I've seen about the GLP-1s is it's not necessarily all...

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 BoltonStartup 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 UncertaintyAnd 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 three articles to talk about today. First one's called the Flywheel Effect: How Customer Obsession Creates Self-Reinforcing Advantages. This is from Wildfire Labs. They've been putting out some great content. The Flying Wheel Effect talks about building a startup isn't about growth hacking. It's really about how do you create customer experiences and these flywheels that generate self-reinforcing momentum because there's so many things out there taking aways attention and competing for dollars and mindset.So how do you build into your process different ways that you can create a flywheel to differentiate and build it up? So, one of the examples they talk about is chewy.com and how Chewy built into their experience the idea of when a person's pet passes away, they actually sent them flowers. And created an experience and a touchpoint as part of that to relate to their customers but also create a means for further conversations. And, you know, creating a positive experience with that brand and with that company. [00:04:27] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, I think it's so interesting and this idea of flywheel, it's one of the things mentioned in the article is the first step is creating an exceptional experience that creates emotional impact.Rising Customer Acquisition Costs and the Decline of Consumer TrustAnd you just think of our world right now, which is focused on cost cutting and on driving waste out of the system and on AI. The first step of creating this flywheel and this incredible loyalty and retention and word of mouth is so very human.You know, I think more and more we're going to start seeing that the more human you can be, you know, a handwritten card, sending flowers. That's something probably you could get AI to do, but it's a very human thing to acknowledge the grief that comes with the loss of a pet.The more human businesses can be, especially at key moments, that's where they're going to win. That's where they're going to differentiate themselves, in a world that is increasingly kind of more robotic and lean. [00:05:27] Brian Ardinger: The ironic thing is, startups have the exact same tools to create and reach customers as in the past. So it's being commoditized, the ability to actually grab a customer and have that first interaction.But the cost of customer acquisition, I think some of the statistics they had in the article talked about what costs, you know, a hundred dollars in 2019 now costs $160. You know, a startup that spends 61% of their new capital on customer acquisition up from 28% in 2018. So those are massive jumps and it's hard to make a business model work if you have that much to acquire the brand new customer and you can't keep them from churning or going somewhere else.Community Building, Trust Signals, and Real Startup DifferentiationAnd the other things, the idea of trust and how consumer brands are, the ability to trust brands is going down 73%, I think they said reported increased skepticism toward marketing claims, and that makes sense that you're seeing a lot of AI slop and a lot of things. Who do you trust anymore?And then finally, this idea of how do you build a community around your company, not just a product or service, word of mouth being so important. 78% of successful seed stage companies ...

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.Podcast Transcript[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 don't think a lot of people or enough people are talking about the human aspect of it. A lot of times we've been talking about it internally in that, and you think the valuations of all these AI companies and all those folks are pushing it so much and the best case scenario is going to be what this is, but I don't think a lot of folks are really understanding the human aspect of it around just the consumer behavior or the adoption behavior.I think people are underestimating the fact that it takes a long time for humans to really want to do something different. And so, it may not be tomorrow that this happens; it may actually end up taking 10 years for people to get into their head or learn how to use it or whatever the case may be.So, there's this pushing and pulling about how fast and the adoption, and I just inherently think that humans in general take a little longer to come around to some of this kind of stuff, especially game-changing stuff. [00:04:38] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, absolutely. And that may not be a bad thing. I heard at a conference I was at a couple weeks ago, people describing AI as like, it's in its infant state, it's not even yet a toddler, let alone elementary school. So we're getting promises of, oh hey, it's in college. Trust it. But maybe we shouldn't. So it is a push and pull on the human side, on the technology side. It's very interesting. Lots of sparks. [00:05:04] Brian Ardinger: Yeah, absolutely. I think the skillset that's gonna be most valuable is your ability to adapt.[00:05:09] Robyn Bolton: Yes, absolutely.YouTube Ate TV[00:05:11] Brian Ardinger: Well, our second article is from the Hollywood Reporter and it's YouTube, just ate TV: it's only getting started. So, a Hollywood reporter talks a little bit about the rise of YouTube and how effectively it is becoming the TV of today, and it is changing the dynamics of basically all media, podcasts, and other things, and how is this going to affect the world?[00:05:33] Robyn Bolton: I have to say, in a coincidence of timing, I was. Was flipping through Instagram last night, and the Detroit Lions put out a little video and it has one of their players talking to a kid who looked like he was probably six. And the player's like, Hey, what cartoons do you watch? And the kid was like cartoons? Whatcha talking about? He is like, I watch YouTube.And the player was like, no cartoons. What cartoons? And you just saw this player who's probably like maybe 24, like just crumble into a pile of ancient dust. He's like, dude, I am not that old. What do you mean you don't watch cartoons? And I thought it was just such a perfect encapsulation of what the article talks about of YouTube is taking over, not just TV, but entertainment and there's still places it's wading into. The article talks about how it's trying to get into scripted series, or creators are trying to get into scripted entertainment, but it is remarkable just the numbers and the article and what it talks about.[00:06:36] Brian Ardinger: I think Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher on Pivot, one of their most recent episodes, they were talking about, where do you get your news? And it's l...

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 something.Because a lot of times you get into an accelerator or you get some early traction and you think, okay, I've got all figured out. I got the solution. I'm just going to barge ahead. But you have to be open to that divergent thinking and different ways of doing things just so you don't necessarily leave opportunity on the table. [00:04:08] Robyn Bolton: It's the old adage, right? The fall in love with the problem, not the solution. And it's so easy to fall in love with the solution, but the divergent thinking article was a great reminder. Data-based reminder of why we've got to nurture the skill to go beyond that. [00:04:26] Brian Ardinger: Yeah, and I love the article too, because Audrey goes into a number of different techniques, brainstorming techniques, and that. Mm-hmm. So, I encourage people to check that out, to learn some tactical things about how you go about building up that divergent thinking muscle.The second article, this one made me a little nervous. It's from the Neuron Daily, which is a fantastic newsletter, and this one came out a couple weeks ago, but the title was Poisoning AI Models just got scarier. 250 documents is all it takes.And it goes on to look at some research that came out of Anthropic that looked at the number of documents that you could ingest into the LLM that would make it start spewing out nonsense and making it bad. The original thinking was, well, the more larger models that you have, you'd have to have more malicious documents put into it to make it go off the rails. What they found out was that's actually not the case.It takes a very small amount of wrong data to be put into it to actually make it start going the wrong direction. Actually, I think in the article talks about a 13 billion parameter model trained on 260 billion tokens, got backdoored with the same 250 documents as the 600 million model trained on just 12 billion tokens.And previous research assumed that attackers needed to control 0.1 of the training data. And so for larger models you need millions more documents. What actually happened is the math was 250 poison documents was, is only 0.00016 of the training data was enough to actually poison the model itself. Crazy stuff to think about it.When we think about. All the things that'll be putting into the web and everything else. It's a wonder why we're not seeing more and more hallucinations. I guess [00:06:07] Robyn Bolton: it was terrifying, and I'll be honest, the numbers went so over my head, but it had an analogy in there. It's like putting a teaspoon of a toxin into an Olympic sized pool. Yeah. And you'd kill all the swimmers. And I was like, uh oh. That is. So much more awful than I thought when you were just saying 250 documents.And you know, I think it just goes to pis. There's incredible promise with Gen AI and there's risks that we don't even know about. It's one of those things of use with caution.[00:06:39] Brian Ardinger: It'll be interesting to see what other research comes out to either debunk this or to fill up the back holes of this. But it's just something to keep in mind and follow the research and see what's actually going on out there. Because we are in brand new territory and the exploration mode, we need to be wary of the pitfalls that are ahead as well.[00:06:57] Robyn Bolton:

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, Robyn Bolton and Brian Ardinger 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 innovation is an $1,800 fridge that shows advertisements. So the New Smart Fridge will be a walking billboard in your kitchen. He goes on to talk about why that may not be a good idea.[00:03:43] Robyn Bolton: It kind of sounds like the worst idea ever because I still watch TV that has ads. Well, I mean, streaming still has ads. And when the commercials come on, that's when I go to the fridge. I don't want to see ads when I go to the fridge. And also, if I'm going to be forced to watch ads, I want the fridge to pay me. No, I don't want another billboard in my house. It's a terrible idea. [00:04:09] Brian Ardinger: It makes you wonder that Samsung's not a, a dumb corporation. How could they fall into this particular trap where they clearly probably didn't test this or if they did test it. It was testing for a different use case scenario than the majority of people I would imagine want in their kitchen. What are your thoughts on testing products and how this might have happened? [00:04:27] Robyn Bolton: I suspect you're right. Either they didn't test it or they tested a different kind of prototype, but I think it all goes back to what we've talked about before. Innovation is something new that creates value. So often I feel like companies forget that implied in that creating value is creating value for the customer, not just creating value for the company.And so I feel like with Samsung, you said there are no dummies there. They're really smart folks, and they're like, Hey, this is innovation because it's creating value for us. I cannot comprehend a story where it's creating value for the customer. [00:05:04] Brian Ardinger: Yeah. It will be interesting to see, obviously, they have a lot of products and they're probably thinking, well, how do we leverage what's on your TV into the living room, into the kitchen? And then obviously the proof will be in the pudding as far as how do they execute this. But just like Jeff, I think the thing that struck our minds was this can't be a good idea. So, we'll see if an or becomes one. [00:05:22] Robyn Bolton: Well, and now I'm imagining ads following me of, you know, I get up while there's, you know, a Domino's Pizza ad and it just follows me to the fridge to be like, or you could have Digiorno in the freezer.[00:05:32] Brian Ardinger: Well, and then you'll have AI-based Siri talking to you in the background, telling you what to do as well. So, alright, well, the second article, or actually it's not an article, it's a YouTube clip, Lenny's podcast. If you follow my newsletter. A lot of times, I've actually posted about Lenny and his newsletter. Does a great job of finding interesting guests and talking about interesting subjects.His latest podcast is an interview with Albert Chang, who is head of growth at a variety of different subscription-based companies like Duolingo and Grammarly, and I think currently at Chess.com. And his interview with Albert really talks about the growth role within a corporation and how do you find like hidden growth opportunities in your product?I encourage folks to go out and take a listen to the entire interview, because it goes through a lot of d...

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. And we all have agency to do something about it, even in our small own individual way. [00:03:55] Brian Ardinger: Yeah, I like that talk as well. I like the fact that he emphasized that startups and founders should be thinking less about their product and solution and more about their impact. I think oftentimes we forget about that, you know, or we start the journey that way, but then you get into the weeds of like, okay, what feature do I have to ship or whatever. And you oftentimes lose sight of the fact of what's the impact we're trying to do here, regardless of the solution we created around it. [00:04:18] Robyn Bolton: In the face of uncertainty, don't despair, build. And I just thought that was a great rallying cry for all of us. Regardless of where we play in this space.[00:04:29] Brian Ardinger: We've got a couple of different articles that we're going to discuss today, as our normal convention suggests. So the first thing that we wanted to throw out, there's an article in Bloomberg called The Falls First blockbuster is an 86-year-old musical. I stumbled upon this with Trung Phan. He's on Twitter, and he does a great job with a Saturday newsletter. He calls SAT News on Substack.He outlined what this article was and some of the things that are going on with the Sphere in Las Vegas. The Sphere, if anyone's not familiar with it, it's that big globe new venue that they built for two plus billion dollars in Vegas as a way to create unique, innovative experiences and the article and Trung's analysis walk through the idea of the Wizard of Oz and how the founders of the sphere bought the rights to that film and decided to recreate it so that could play in this unique venue. And the economics in that, that were behind this particular new innovation.So James Dolan, he licensed the classic, and from the 1939 Classic, spent about a hundred million dollars adapting it for the LED screen there, and since August 28th when it launched, it's making about $2 million a day with a full target run of about a billion dollars over the course of the time that they're going to run it. 4,000 to 5,000 people are seeing it, and they're paying $150 to $200 each time. And it's really taken off, and it's pretty incredible. So, I'd love to get your thoughts on it. [00:05:59] Robyn Bolton: The numbers blew my mind. I mean, I knew of the Sphere. It's huge and you see it all the time whenever they show Vegas, but I knew of it mostly as a concert venue. You know, I think U2 has done a residency there, some other performers, and this was like, okay, this makes, you know, this makes sense. This is a cool event venue.But then we're talking about the Wizard of Oz, which you can watch on tv, but then the numbers of how many people were going to see it and they're paying a $100 to $150 for a ticket to see a movie that they've probably seen who knows how many times, and can see for free on their phone. That this almost a hundred-year-old movie is going to make a billion dollars.It was mind-boggling. And I think in Trung's post, he had a video from inside the Sphere during a viewing, and the hilarious thing is that everybody had their phones out. Videoing capturing the Wizard of Oz on the sphere, and as I'm watching it, I'm actually getting motion sick. It was just the mind-warping experience to see the numbers and se...

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 canvas, lean startup, things like that are actually best used to develop an idea of once you already know that there's a problem. And in the rush that both entrepreneurs and corporate innovators have of like, oh my gosh, we need to like do something, get something out in the market.We have all these tools that are proven that are great for getting things out into the market. We naturally gravitate to the canvases and to the frameworks that are like, this is how you go do stuff. [00:04:06] Brian Ardinger: You can use those canvases in a way, even at the earliest stages, but you have to look at it from the standpoint of like, this is our best guess day one, and these are going to change, and as long as you're open to changing it. The reason why I do like those particular tool sets is that it is a little bit easier to change than, back in the day when you had to write a hundred page business plan and 65 Excel sheets to justify it. At least it's much easier to take a look at a business model and say, okay, I'm going to take that sticky note off because I talked to a customer and it's like idea wasn't exactly where it needs to be. So, we need to change the sticky note out and try something else or change the model in some way.But I think a lot of people, again, they go through the. First canvas or the first iteration, and say, okay, this is the plan. We're going to execute the plan. Versus saying, this is a snapshot in time and our assumptions in time. How can we move this particular thing forward and make sure that the canvas maintains reality with what's going on in the marketplace? [00:04:57] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, and I think the key is. Post-it notes on the canvas, don't write on the canvas. [00:05:02] Brian Ardinger: Right.[00:05:02] Robyn Bolton: Because then it feels permanent. Post-it notes. [00:05:05] Brian Ardinger: The other thing, in this particular article, they talk about solution sets or things, and I encourage people to go take a look at Wildfire Labs. Talk about a clever way to think about the major ways and pitfalls that folks go through. It's fail, fit, acquisition economics, internal alignment, and liquidity planning.And so, I thought we could talk a little bit about each of those particular ways to checklist, I guess to look at a particular idea. So obviously fit, we just talked a little bit about it, but you know, how do you evaluate the solution? Is it urgent customer need or is it a minor inconvenience in trying to understand that relativity and the fit of the problem.But not only that, but I think fit to the people trying to solve that problem. And you've probably seen this in the corporate realm as well. You know, a lot of companies go shooting off towards the, the shiny object, whether or not it's a fit for their company or they're good at it or whatever. [00:05:54] Robyn Bolton: So many companies when they start their innovation journey, so to speak. They're really hesitant to put any sort of constraints on the work. They're like, blue sky, do anything white space. And the reality is there's always constraints and those are actually really helpful.Thinking about fit as ...

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 discussed, the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Let's get started.Robyn’s book, Unlocking Innovation, is available on Kindle for $.99 on September 18, 2025.  Grab your copy today!  Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton[00:00:30] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm Brian Ardinger, and today we have our co-host, Robyn Bolton, back. Welcome Robyn. [00:00:35] Robyn Bolton: Glad to be back. [00:00:37]  Brian Ardinger: We are excited to be back talking about innovation. We were ranked one of the top 15 corporate innovation podcasts out there, so I'm excited to continue this journey and helping our audience understand this world of innovation for this new format that we've been trying. Robyn came on as a co-host. Anything new going on in your world? [00:00:54] Robyn Bolton: I think you're being very humble. You weren't just kind of in the top 15 podcasts by a hair. You were... [00:01:01]  Brian Ardinger: I think we were four.[00:01:02] Robyn Bolton: You were up there. [00:01:03]  Brian Ardinger: Yeah. It was a sweet spot. It was nice to be recognized.[00:01:07] Robyn Bolton: Well, and they nailed it.[00:01:09]  Brian Ardinger: One of the articles that I wanted to talk about today, and actually was a newsletter of a friend of mine, and people who've listened to podcasts or know of innovation, might know of David Bland.He's the author of Testing Business Ideas, among other things. In his most recent newsletter. He had a little article talking about why most execs regret the projects they didn't cut. The gist of the article was talking about how every executive has a few projects that haunt them, and it's usually the ones that drag on too long and consume too much capital.And we always hear about the winner, so to speak, and or not betting on the winner, but the idea of a portfolio of things that you've got within your corporate environment of things that you should cut or look at. Could it be a big win if we got rid of this thing? How do you prevent that burning capital on projects that you don't want or don't warrant additional investment and time, energy, and money?I'd love to get your thoughts on what you've seen in the corporate environment and this idea of cutting your bets off or making sure that you don't continue bets down the wrong line. [00:02:07] Robyn Bolton: Sadly, I see it all the time. You know, we call them zombie projects. They're the living dead and sadly kind of the people that are staffed on them. Eventually figure it out. And I feel like they become zombies too. Zombie projects eat their brain.The thing is, they are consuming really valuable resources. They're taking up the time of really smart people. They're taking up the funding that could be used to go to another great idea that has better potential.I think back to my early days in P & G's kind of new business development group, in just one single BU, and I think there were probably, at one time, eight different projects, all new brands that were in different phases of development, and ultimately only Swiffer launched nationally and survived for several years.There was another one called Dryel that launched but didn't quite survive the first several years, and then a whole bunch that just petered out, like you kind of had to wait for the next CEO to come in and do the culling that every CEO does. But in the meantime, it was years of people working really hard on things they cared about that just were never going to work. It was heartbreaking. [00:03:26]  Brian Ardinger: It's interesting because I think about why does this happen? Because if you're a startup and you're going down the wrong path, you probably don't hear about it because you just kind of run out of runway and it goes away. Where the challenge in a corporate environment is typically you do have some capital that can continue to be funneled in different ways down projects that may or may not be deserving of it.And so, I think one of the traps that a lot of corporates fall into is this, okay, we've sunk costs into it. Let's just keep going with it. We know the expectations. It's not going to be a big win or whatever, but it's not going to be a loser if we get rid of it and branded as a loser, or a minimal amount of capital that maybe it is bringing in, the revenue it is bringing in. It's like, well, why should we get rid of it? It's bringing some revenue versus thinking about it from the standpoint of what if we got rid of that $30-50 million investment that we're making every year and reallocated that into newer things that could have more explosive growth or more opportunities.[00:04:17] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, I think you're spot on. And it's funny that no amount of mentioning, naming, whatever the sunk cost fallacy will deter people because there's always the rationalization and this feeling like in order to be successful, I need to launch a successful thing into the market. And years ago I was working with a big pharmacy chain, and to try to head it off, we actually created a enterprise wide award for the biggest hill.It comes down to what we're rewarded for, right? And if you have an award for killing a project to free up the most resources, and of course, embedded in this reward was what were your learnings? What are the resources getting used for? How are they getting funneled back into innovation? It was amazing that first year, how many zombies got put out of their misery. [00:05:10]  Brian Ardinger: And I think it's one of those fundamental things that, again, the momentum, it's very easy in a corporate environment to continue because again, most corporate environments are about executing. And so the momentum of execution continues to push you down a path when maybe your customers aren't asking for the thing that you're doing, or the market's switched or changed, or competitors have come in, and it's no longer the path.But to change that, there's a cultural thing that I think has to be at least thought about. It's not just trying to find the big wins from an innovation perspective. If you're in corporate innovation, you should also be thinking about what can we cut or what can we do to allocate our resources appropriately and not just go down some particular path because it's what we've been told to do.[00:05:51] Robyn Bolton: A hundred percent.[00:05:53]  Brian Ardinger: The second article was actually came from your newsletter. The newsletter talked about what chickens and innovation teams have in common.[00:06:01] Robyn Bolton: Unexpected reading, but the article starts off with a story of a study that was conducted out of P...

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 MileZero'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 BoltonBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and today we have a brand-new format. If you've been listening to the podcast for the last eight or nine years, every week I bring in an amazing guest to talk about innovation. I thought we'd try to mix it up and innovate on the format itself. And for the next few weeks, we're gonna have a guest host.My guest host is Robin Bolton. She's been a guest on the podcast a couple of times in the past. She spoke at our Inside Outside Innovation Summit in 2022. She's the bestselling author of Unlocking Innovation, founder of MileZero, and a good friend. So, Robyn, welcome to the show. [00:01:03] Robyn Bolton: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here and co-hosting. [00:01:06] Brian Ardinger: We need to innovate. We need to eat our own dog food. So I figured after all these years of interviewing amazing people about innovation, we'd mix it up a little bit, and every week we'll try to bring you some insights into innovation from what we've seen in the field and use it as a way to get your feedback from the audience as well.One of the things we thought about is to talk about innovation and what we're seeing, and so one of the things we do, both Robyn and I publish a newsletter, and we're constantly running into new information sources and new people, new insights into what's going on. Thought the first thing we're going to do is talk about the article of the week or what we've been reading.We have both called together a, a couple of different articles to start the conversation. Since people may not have heard you on the podcast in the past, why don't you give a short intro of how you got into the innovation space and some of your background? [00:01:58] Robyn Bolton: I was lucky enough to get into the innovation space kind of as it was forming, which now saying that makes me feel very old, but coming straight out of university, I went to work at P&G and it's when they were doing the very first iteration of creating new products and new brand teams.And so straight out of school went into a brand team that was working on a new business, and that new business eventually became Swiffer. I got to experience the life of a corporate innovator and all the scars and all the great stories that go with it very early on.Then, you know, a couple meanderings later, you know, meandered into Arkansas, the Walmart sales team meandered up to Boston to get an MBA, meandered over to Denmark to work for a big consulting firm. Then I ended up back in Boston and had the pleasure of working with Clayton Christensen at his firm. Spent almost a decade there working across a ton of industries, tons of different types of organizations, but always on innovation.Then, about six, seven years ago, went out on my own, started MileZero, and you know, have continued the innovation adventure since. [00:03:15] Brian Ardinger: We've talked a lot about some of the past things that you've done and the ability that you have to work across different aisles, to work in the corporate innovation space from the trenches. I think a lot of people talk about innovation, have seen it in various formats, but not necessarily the depth and the breadth that you've seen it. So that's where I'm excited to have you as a co-host on the shows. [00:03:35] Robyn Bolton: Thank you very much. I'm really glad to be here and talking about all this because it's a tough time out there for innovators. You know, whether you're in a company, you're in a startup, you know, you're an entrepreneur, it's tough times and there's always a way through. I think we're relentless optimists, maybe sometimes delusional, but relentless optimist. So it's great to be chatting about it. [00:03:58] Brian Ardinger: One of the articles you sent over was CNBC has come up with a Disruptors 50 List, the top 50 disruptive companies out there.[00:04:06] Robyn Bolton: Anyone hears a list of innovative companies and immediately our heads go to AI and CNBC delivered on that. You know, their number one disruptor is a company that's actually in the military and defense system space using AI. Number two is Open AI. I mean, it's just all the usual suspects, but what caught my attention was that there were actually non-AI companies on there.It was exciting to see that. So, there was Thrive Market. You know, full disclosure, I'm a member of Thrive Market and basically, it's kind of like a membership to get discounts on what's essentially kind of Whole Foods online. But they’re, I think in the top 10 of the Disruptors 50 list and because of their supply chain.So, it was great to see something that you could easily consider pretty old school, grocery online, to be in a a Disruptor's 50 list. So, there were some other examples of that that I was just like, alright, okay. Like where the traditional guys were hanging in there. [00:05:10] Brian Ardinger: The one that stood out to me was Fruitist, basically innovating on the ancient art of fruit, creating now blueberries the size of your head, and things along those lines. And again, I think it points to the fact that every company has the ability to be an innovator, even in an industry that's been around literally since the beginning of time. How can you do things differently, build things differently, create different types of value in such a way that it disrupts the existing players in the market. [00:05:37] Robyn Bolton: And that you don't have to just go all in on AI. We should all be getting more conversant, but AI and innovation are not synonyms. [00:05:48] Brian Ardinger: It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. I think in the article it also talked about how the top 10 are largely AI companies and the top five have a valuation of under 500 billion, which I guess is combined total valuation of the past list.And so the amount of money that's being thrown into the pit of AI, it'll be interesting to see who actually comes out on the other end. And if all the dollars being spent are really being spent wisely, we'll see. But it's definitely, yeah. Obviously driving markets, driving everything that we're talking about right now. So that's important to keep in the conversation but know that it's not the only way to innovate in the world. [00:06:22] Robyn Bolton: There are plenty of other ways and you know, the valuations of people far smarter than I look at that and I'm like, you know, I remember the.com boom and bust. I also remember the internet coming out, so you know, we'll see. As you said, we'll see. But there's still lots of opportunity. [00:06:39] Brian Ardinger: And it's driving value. I mean, there's actual revenue with these companies, unlike dot.com when it came out, so it's a little different from that perspective. I'm sure this is not th...