The Next Generation| Building What Moves the World

Once again, it was a privilege to attend the HBS Tech Club Conference this past Saturday.  Coincidentally it was Valentine’s Day which didn’t escape the speakers who admitted only a group of techies would plan this event on this holiday!

The bookends of the event were keynotes from Boston Dynamics and Amazon Prime.  Clearly both spoke directly to the theme “building what moves the world” but in very different ways. My overall conference observation was that AI is no longer its own topic (as in the past two years), but assumed to be part of every tech operation and strategy as a key tool for doing more and redistributing human tasks.  Since the conference is student-oriented, the emphasis is on highlighting the skills needed now in the workplace and where and how to apply them – whether as operators, leaders, or investors.  What’s special about this event is that it is clearly welcoming to those outside the academic community.   As a local business advisor in marketing – I am grateful for its generous spirit!

The Future of Autonomous Mobile Robots

The first keynote, Marc Theermann, CSO at Boston Dynamics presented use cases for three different types of robots used to “amplify human potential.”    Robots are helping solve the massive labor shortage for many “dirty” jobs that humans are not filling.  More importantly, there’s no argument as to the massive number of critical tasks that can be taken on by robots -but the investment is clearly very long term.  To use robots properly requires massive re-tooling of factories to capture the immense amount of data generated from the tasks at hand. 

SPOT, the anthropomorphistic “dog” robot was a huge hit on the stage and in the lobby where I was lucky enough to have an interaction.  On screen, we were treated to videos of SPOT at work in dangerous situations.   This type of robot is being used in hostage situations, nuclear waste situations, evaluating fire damage, and many more amazing applications.   Similarly, the other two types of robots – STRETCH the logistics robot and ATLAS, the humanoid were shown in various iterations of their development and applications inside factory environments.  What stands out is the use of AI to train the robots to accomplish more through creating massive databases for each task and learning experience.   Using AI, training has for many tasks has been reduced from 24 months to 12 hours!

Additionally, the hardware is constantly being re-thought to make parts that are more universal and interchangeable.  Thus, the front and back or upper and lower leg will look the same.  The improvements are geared toward having nearly everyone on the shop floor being able to both use and maintain these mechanical co-workers!  The progress is inspiring and the applications are limitless as these early deployments become more affordable and accessible.  As per an audience question, however, the limitation is ENERGY to power robotics.  

This session was followed by a Q & A with the founder of Thinking Machines CTO, Soumith Chintalla  as per their website “Emphasis on human-AI collaboration. Instead of focusing solely on making fully autonomous AI systems, we are excited to build multimodal systems that work with people collaboratively”

One of the key discussion items here was privacy and turning AI into more of a local tool to be used on your own device as a virtual assistant through applications like Open Claw.

To build on the discussion of the future bank of job skills – he argued that technical skills will become less critical and being able to meet people where they are with technology will become more important.  He encouraged future product managers to spend time “understanding the world in a deep human way” in order to design AI products that truly meet human needs.

Health Tech & Wearables|

I chose this breakout to learn about the news in this field. The speakers were from IXANA, Neurable, and OZLO.   These companies are attacking everything from the field of bandwidth around your body to how to sleep better.   Advice to fellow makers of consumer products – try to find out how your customers are hacking your product and you will learn a lot about what users want.   

There was a healthy discussion about “agency” and just how much you would like to actually know about what’s going on in your body.  Neurable’s products are striving to detect neurological issues before any actual symptoms are obvious.

As for product development, manufacturers traditionally hate to make product changes, it takes a lot of research and data to push these wearable products into the next generation.   The GTM models are also challenging in that many are “wellness” vs. “health” and that’s the difference between FSA and HSA payments.  User data is also critical to acquire the HSA status.

AI Tools for Consumers|

Following another consumer trend, this panel consisted of speakers from Plaud, Suno, and Otter respectively discussing voice capture dictation at the desktop level, music making, and meeting note-taking.  Both Plaud and Otter are being used inside of many familiar apps like Zoom. Suno is bringing together the larger creative community to use technologies in way no one expected.   At the center of this discussion – voice is KING and surfacing as the key tool for online interaction even going so far as to say we will never need to write again. Wow – what repercussions could this have?

Food for Thought Before Lunch

HBS alums from BELI shared their success to date launching a NYC-centric food app that acts as a private online home for foodies to share their reviews and experiences among friends.  Acting almost as a “club” this app brings together its members through special FTF events as well. Building user traction with 100M ratings and a focus on TRUST, the business model is evolving.  Lean and mean, the pair of co-founders is operating with a modest budget and small team.   The key is data and identifying and leveraging all the transactions leading up to and following finding a great place to eat.  Just now expanding beyond NYC – it will be interesting to see how this evolves.

Careers in Tech Business Roles:

This panel breakout featured speakers I heard before and they were quite informative about what skills will stand out for the new alums as they get back into the workforce.  I recognized two of the panelists from last year from Amazon and Rippling – both impressive as they were the first time but with similar advice.  Ndonga from Aprio added a new dimension have been in her new role as Sr. Director of AI transformation (due to being acquired) for just a few months. Having gone from a startup where things were always moving forward – being acquired by a larger company required her to take a step back to do internal selling and education on the value of AI.   Her biggest challenge was to balance between the naysayers and the extreme – those who think every problem can be solved with AI.  She was highly engaging and on point! Collective advice – ask the right questions, focus on improving your judgement, learn to recognize patterns, focus on industry knowledge, then function.

Industrial Tech:

This area certainly does not attract the same crowds as other tech, but has incredible potential to solve serious problems.  Panelist represented Pensa Technologies; MIT’s new manufacturing initiative, TAKT, and an MIT Advisory/Investor.  Among the key topics were the shortage of manufacturing engineers, challenges in the supply chain, and the intersection between design and manufacturing due to the fact that design was left in the U.S. and manufacturing went overseas.  This disconnect has created a gap in meeting user requirements.  Using AI and multi-model technology, the hope is to reduce some of the more burdensome aspects of manufacturing such as testing, accounts payable reconciliation, and other non-sexy tasks that are hurting ROI in the sector.

Prime takes the Stage:

The final keynote was well worth the wait!  With presumed 100% of the audience as Prime Members, Jamil Ghani  unlocked the secrets to customer loyalty – defined as “ongoing commitment to and consistent preference for your product.”   But he distinguished first that Prime is not a loyalty program.  It’s a paid subscription with the goal of getting members to use it more.   He cleared up a series of myths throwing out “breakage” as a broken marketing ploy and advocating for delivering fresh value regularly with every day being the first day of the rest of your customer experience!  He focused on PRODUCT as being 80% of this equation followed by timely relevant PROMOTION, and appropriate PROGRAMS that focus on specific geographic or demographic targets. With 8B item delivered same or next day and average $550 savings in delivery per member, the points were well made.  He finished up by giving away ten Echo Dots and exiting in a splash.