Inside Outside Innovation

Hosted by Brian Ardinger, Founder of Inside Outside Innovation podcast, InsideOutside.io, and the Inside Outside Innovation Summit

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Inside Outside Innovation explores the ins and outs of innovation with raw stories, real insights, and tactical advice from the best and brightest in startups & corporate innovation. Each week we bring you the latest thinking on talent, technology, and the future of innovation. Join our community of movers, shakers, makers, founders, builders, and creators to help speed up your knowledge, skills, and network. Previous guests include thought leaders such as Brad Feld, Arlan Hamilton, Jason Calacanis, David Bland, Janice Fraser, and Diana Kander, plus insights from amazing companies including Nike, Cisco, ExxonMobil, Gatorade, Orlando Magic, GE, Samsung, and others. This podcast is available on all podcast platforms and InsideOutside.io. Sign up for the weekly innovation newsletter at http://bit.ly/ionewsletter. Follow Brian on Twitter at @ardinger or @theiopodcast or Email brian@insideoutside.io

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June 16, 2026Episode 36122 min

AI Risks and Opportunities for Creativity & Critical Thinking with Johann Roos, Author of Human Magic

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Johann Roos, author of the new book, Human Magic. Johan and I talk about the risks and opportunities that AI brings to the world of creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and much more. Let's get started. Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Johan RoosJohan Roos on Human-AI Leadership and Human Magic[00:00:00] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today, we have Johan Roos. He is the co-creator of the Lego Serious Play method, chief academic officer at Hult International Business School, and author of the new book, Human Magic: Leading With Wisdom in an Age of Algorithm. Welcome, Johan.[00:00:41] Johan Roos: Thank you, Brian. [00:00:43] Brian Ardinger: You've got an amazing career, worked with some amazing companies. Maybe to start the conversation, can you give a brief overview about your background and what led you to writing this book?[00:00:54] Johan Roos: So, I spent, about three decades in the, you can say, in the business of business schools and business education and business research and business consulting and business advising, all of that stuff that comes with it. So, I have an academic background with everything that goes with it, all of the publication, all that stuff.But also, became more and more interested the very notion of not just talking or studying leadership, but actually doing leadership. So, I've spent also quite a few years, decades now, as a leader or part of a leadership team of various organizations in sort of the field of, you can say, higher education, including think tank as well.So, I've been in smaller, larger, private, public, so I'm starting to get a feel for it. But as, of this stage, I'm phasing out of all operational roles getting more into the advisory work.How LEGO Serious Play Changed Strategy Conversations[00:01:43] Brian Ardinger: Like to hear a little bit about some of your background. When you started this Lego Serious Play, I think you're fairly well known for that particular methodology and how it changed the way businesses- could think about creativity in that.So, let's start there and tell me a little bit about how that came to be and what were some of the learnings and from that particular methodology? [00:02:01] Johan Roos: It's very interesting. This is right now almost three decades ago that we started to experiment with this. My good friend Bart Victor who is now an emeritus at Vanderbilt. But it was at a time when, a lot of companies used the same kind of frameworks, the same kind of models, the same kind of tools, same kind of consultant, or even the same consultants, the same professors, the same everything, to develop strategy. So I was a professor of strategy, and my buddy Bart was a professor of leadership at IMD in Switzerland.He's doing a lot of executive education. And we came to the realization after a while that it's pretty amazing. They're using the same kind of stuff all the time, but they expect a different outcome. And as we all know, that's almost the definition of insanity and all that. But this idea of couldn't there be anything else to do?Why Hands-On Creativity Unlocks Better ThinkingTo make a long story short, we started to experiment with basically what comes out of what's called creative art therapy, I learned later on. And it's the whole idea of using stuff, using color, size, shapes, forms rigidity, whatever, texture as a language, as a language. I've described this in an article. I'm actually working on a book on it right now.But this idea of using stuff as a language actually changes a lot. When we're kids in kindergarten we tend to be, or we tell our children or grandchildren or when we were children, to play with stuff. Use your hands, break stuff, mud, dirt, whatever.Do things because that's for good for you, we think, yeah? And then we put them in school and tell them to shut up and listen to a teacher and sit on their hands. So, it's this brutality of going from this kindergarten idea to then being very much like focused on the cognitive, and today just look at a screen, that is a brutal thing if you think of it.Bringing Play Back Into Serious Business WorkSo, the whole idea of the serious play approach, which we then developed with and for Lego was to let's go back to this early idea of using your hands even as adults, serious adults. And I was playing around with serious leadership teams at that time, vand I can tell you not everybody thought I was in- sane, if I put it this way.But it was pretty cool because we could see the effect was enormous. Like rather than having a more cognitive level conversation, suddenly people start to smile, they started to see new things, they shape with their hands again, they could take a 3D look at it, and they laughed and they pointed, and you can have a even a difficult conversations easier through a thing rather than look the other one in the eyes, et cetera.So there was a whole range of things that happened during a couple of years of development times which I think has influenced me and I think now a lot of people in the world to start to look at things, not just use your cognitive, pure cognitive stuff, but also your emotional, your social capability and let things emerge in new ways through that approach.So that is, you can say, the essence of that method. It's actually to open up, to see things in a new way, to together create entirely new perspectives that you don't get with a pen or paper and certainly not get through a Zoom lens. The Human Side of AI and Digital Transformation[00:05:08] Brian Ardinger: And it seems like your new book, The Human and Human Magic, it's the next chapter.It, it seems like we are moving away from the ability to build and touch and play and the creativity side of things when we start relying on AI and the screens, as you said, as the core tools that we use. So, walk me through about how you decided to write a book about the human side of AI and how people can actually start tapping into that.[00:05:33] Johan Roos: It's interesting because I, even if I'm academic, I've more and more moved into leadership and also leadership development. That interests me more in the sense. So, you can say that LEGO SERIOUS PLAY is the most interesting thing I've done on this stuff. But about 10 years ago, I worked with about a dozen of leaders in large branded European companies, and they were all concerned about the effect of what, at that time, you remember, we talked about the digital transformation.All these business analytics capabilities, big data, everything that come in, and look at patterns, and have evidence-based decision makers on anything. And interestingly enough, during a year of conversations, they came up with this, and one of them stopped and said, "Hey, with all of this information, with all of this data, with all of these patterns, it's served on a plate for us through digital transformation. What should I as a leader do?" And that sort of question struck with me because, if you have sensors and everything and you get everything what should you do?How Generative AI Changed the Leadership Ques...

June 9, 2026Episode 36016 min

Synthetic user research, AI fog future, and AI readiness with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about synthetic user research, the future of AI fog, and why most companies aren't anywhere near ready for AI. Let's get startedPodcast Interview 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. Robyn, how are you? [00:00:21] Robyn Bolton: I am doing great. How are you, Brian? [00:00:24] Brian Ardinger: We are doing well here in Nebraska. We're getting ready for summer, all the fun things that are happening. So it's always fun to start a new season with some new information about innovation, so I figured we'd have a podcast and talk about it. [00:00:36] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, let's definitely do it. [00:00:38] Brian Ardinger: All right. We've got a number of articles that we want to talk about today. The first one we're going to talk about is The Counterintuitive Case for Building in Markets VCs Don't Understand by Todd Gagni. He's from Wildfire Labs. He has a interesting blog post talking about how startups can actually get a pretty big advantage if they zig instead of zagging when it comes to VCs and focus it on how do you actually build in particular markets that are very specific and niche such that you can gain some flywheel effect of knowledge and create a moat that a lot of other companies that are out there trying to do it if they're trying to go too horizontal.One of the interesting things in the article, he talks about the, it's not the technology or first mover advantage, it's not funding, it's the learning that you have when you start working with specific customers in a specific market and it's over and over again, and that mode is that you understand the customer's world so well that it will help protect you against horizontal competitors that would need to catch up and they don't have the breadth and depth that you would have in that particular market.Thought it was a fascinating way to look at how do you actually break into a market as a startup. [00:01:44] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, I love this. And usually, the advice I think that all entrepreneurs in any industry get is, pick an industry, pick a niche, and go all in. And, usually I don't love that for myself because I love the randomness of consulting.But this I fully agree with because, success, in my opinion, is all about customer empathy and deeply understanding your customer and serving your customer. And especially if you're an entrepreneur who's building something, an app, a platform a whatever, a widget really deeply understanding your customer and their pain points and how they use things and what works and what doesn't. That will always get rewarded.One size fits all doesn't exist, and so when companies come out like, "Hey, we do everything," I'm reading more and more about the Everything app, it's ugh, you're not going to do anything well. But that's what VCs want to hear, right? That's what funders want to hear, because it's a big total addressable market.And so I was just, I thought it was great that this got called out as hey, you know what? Go really narrow, deeply understand your customers, and don't worry about VC, because the market will reward you. And that's ultimately what you want. [00:02:57] Brian Ardinger: And I think the other thing that often gets missed, and I think we talked about this in past episodes, is the fact that a lot of times it's very easy to say, "Go and find your particular niche and just nail that particular customer profile," and that.But a lot of times at the early stages, you have a hunch about a particular problem or s- solution out there, and y- you have to hunt and wander and explore sometimes to find that core niche... to find those early adopters that actually you know, match the problem and solution that you want to try to build with them.And so it's not, it's not to say that you have to have the niche from day one, but the closer you can find to finding that group of people that have that particular problem that you can solve, and you know inherently how to solve that for them you have a much better chance of creating those relationships, creating that moat versus trying to serve everybody at once. [00:03:43] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, it's a great point. You want to be flexible, and I think that's why so many of the entrepreneurs or the startups we look at now who've been wildly successful, a lot of times it's the founder who had that problem and was in that niche and- was that customer and, went from there to, to make sure it wasn't just a market of one.... But that there were other people, and so they were out there willing to learn. [00:04:05] Brian Ardinger: Absolutely. All right. The next article is from our friend Ben Yoskovitz. He has an article launching his new synthetic user research platform called Candor. And so, I've got a call with Ben next week. I think you met with him this week. And what Candor is a synthetic user research tool. So basically, what they're trying to do is create a AI that creates personas that allow you to interview the personas and get, feedback from what are effectively AI customers either manually or automatically through a particular process that allows you to get some additional insight versus having to go out and interview real humans.And obviously there's, nuances to all that. But I'd love your take on the move from AI to kind of creating personas and using AI as your customer. [00:04:50] Robyn Bolton: Yes, so this is something that actually for the last couple of years I've been looking at. So, a couple years ago I tried a service for quantitative research using synthetic personas, and I was really impressed by what it did, but I was still very skeptical about synthetic personas for qualitative research.I think I've talked before about how jobs to be done is the hill that I will die on. It requires a very specific way of interviewing that is much more natural conversation. It's not following, a script. And for that reason, I was like, "There's no way synthetic personas in qual will work."And so after reading this article a couple weeks ago, I reached out to Ben and had a, actually, as you said, had a conversation with him this week, and he took me through Candor. And I haven't used it, but I was impressed with what I saw, because what Candor does is it actually, as it's ... It's funny, you can have the AI Candor, interview the synthetic persona, so it is bots talking to bots.But the interview, and you can get a transcript of the interview, follows a conversation. It doesn't follow a script. And, having trained a lot of people on how to have jobs to be done interviews, I can tell you that's the hardest thing to train a person to do, which is have a conversation and not follow a script.So, I was really impressed with the thoughtfulness and what looks like, a really high-quality experience, high-quality learning. Now, like I said, I haven't used it yet, so I can't say how well does it work, how well do the personas come in. But this really was the first thing that I loo...

June 2, 2026Episode 35912 min

AI Agents, Innovation Antibodies, and PB&J with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about why AI agents should speak Latin, how to avoid the agentic convergence trap, and the power of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. 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 startedPodcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton [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, hello, how are you today? [00:00:47] Robyn Bolton: I am great today. How are you? [00:00:49] Brian Ardinger: I am doing well. We are coming off our all directors meeting this week for Nelnet, where we brought in about 250 of our directors from all over the world to talk about AI and other things that are going on in the business, and it's been quite eye-opening. So that's where I've been. I hear you're out on a beach. [00:01:05] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, I'm kind of doing the opposite of your highly productive week. I'm being highly unproductive and am on vacation here in Turks and Caicos. So, I just dragged myself in from laying poolside so that we could talk about innovation, because there's some really, really cool stuff going on.Why AI Agents Speak Latin[00:01:21] Brian Ardinger: We'll get you back to the beach very shortly, but I always appreciate your insights. We will jump right in. The first article on the list is from Tristan Kromer. In his blog, he talks about why my agents speak Latin. I thought this was a very interesting take by Tristan. Tristan, if you've been following the podcast, he actually came and spoke at the IO Summit most recently.He was talking about, in this blog post, about how he is doing a lot more coding and creating AI agents, and he has kind of a unique way to see if the agent is going off the rails. So, what he's done is he creates these personas for his agents, and one of them he calls Cicero, and has it speak to him in Latin phrase to give it a personality.And what he's found, by giving his agents particular personalities and quirks, that they actually come back, and over time we do know that AIs tend to lose the context. You know, they tend to drift over multiple rounds of dialogue. He says by incorporating this little tick of a personality into his agent, he can tell when the agent is drifting to the normal way because it stops speaking in Latin to him, or it's, it drops phrases, or does a couple of other things that make it known that the context is getting too full and the agent's going off the rails.What I found so fascinating about that, not only the fact that it actually goes off the rails, but the fact that it was a way to give the layperson a way to understand if the AI was not doing what he had originally programmed it for. I just thought it was a great insight into it. Using AI Personas to Detect Context Drift[00:02:47] Robyn Bolton: Fascinating. It's funny, because Tristan and I were actually talking about this at the IO conference over breakfast the morning of the conference, and he mentioned that his chief of staff spoke Latin. And we didn't have a chance to get into why that was, so it was great to read this article, and it was also incredibly timely 'cause a couple of weeks ago I had decided to make the jump into using Claude Code and VS Studio and trying to get into the vibe coding.And I told Claude Chat, "Hey, you are an expert in blah, blah, blah," and pretty quickly I noticed the chat lost the thread. And was just being chat and not being the expert and the coach I had asked for, and which then led me to typing in all caps as I usually, is usually how our chats end up. And it was just interesting to read in this article the research about why that was happening, what it is kind of in the background that causes any of the chats to lose that thread and then this kind of little safety net, we put it in there. So great, super actionable article, and now I'm thinking of all the personas my little agents can have. [00:04:00] Brian Ardinger: He was saying that, you know, when the tick disappears from the output, you know, the persona has left the building as well. So you'd kind of treat your quirk as your instrumentation panel and your dashboard. Quite clever. [00:04:11] Robyn Bolton: Yes, very clever. Beware the Agentic Convergence Trap[00:04:13] Brian Ardinger: All right, the second article I want to talk about today is from HBR, and it's talking about beware the agentic convergence trap. And in this case, they talk about three case studies that have recently, in 2024, a federal class action named six major hotel chains, Hilton, and Hyatt, and Marriott, and the gang, of alleging that they had shared AI pricing platform that had produced coordinated room rates across competing properties.The hotels had never communicated directly, but the DOJ and the FTC called it price coordination. A second example of this kind of convergence is a regional grocery store chain replaced its human promotions planners with an AI system and trained it to look at all the same public market signals every competitor uses, and within two quarters of this promotional calendar had converged with the market leaders, and shoppers could no longer articulate why they preferred one chain over the other.And then a third example, they talked about a national landlord had adopted an AI rent optimization platform and used by competing property managers, and it raised the rents in step with rivals it had never spoken to before. And so the US Department of Justice was looking into that as well. What I found fascinating, obviously, about the individual case studies, but the fact that relying heavily on AI as your determination of your strategy has some additional potential downsides if AI is converging the thought and converging the output across particular industries.Why Human Judgment Creates Strategic Diversity[00:05:38] Robyn Bolton: Two big thoughts as I was reading through this. One was I just loved this quote from the article. You know, it's kind of asking why. Why is this convergence happening, and why haven't we seen this before? Because everyone's using all the same data. And, you know, the quote, "Human judgment introduces natural variation. One manager overrides the suggested action. One team moves slowly. One regional leader reads the market differently. Those frictions, often regarded as inefficiencies, are the mechanism that produces strategic diversity."And I think this, as we've talked about in past episodes, is why we need human in the loop, why humans are still valuable, and it made me think of so many companies I've heard that are using AI to brainstorm new ideas.And, you know, the caution is, like, if you want radical innovation, if you want something radically new, AI isn't going to help you. But this is also a caution for you're going to get the same ideas as everybody else because you're sourcing from the same kind of data set, and it's th...

May 26, 2026Episode 35827 min

Building Companies That Last Without Selling Out with Brian Ardinger and Eric Ries, Author of Incorruptible

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Eric Ries, founder of the Lean Startup Movement, and author of the new book, incorruptible, why Good Companies Go Bad, and How Great Companies Stay Great. Eric and I talk about the challenges and opportunities of creating incorruptible company, the difference between value creation and value extraction, and how companies like Costco and Patagonia build value by violating conventional best practices. 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, as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact, let's get started.Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Eric RiseEric Ries on Incorruptible, The Lean Startup, and Building Companies That Last[00:01:00] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have Eric Ries. If you followed this podcast, if you followed the world of. Startups and innovation you know of Eric. He's the author of the Lean Startup, the Startup Way, and he is got a brand new book out called Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Companies Stay Great. Welcome, Eric. [00:01:17] Eric Ries: Thanks so much. Appreciate it. [00:01:18] Brian Ardinger: Eric, I'm super excited to have you on this show. I'm surprised we haven't had a chance to have you on before to talk about some of the previous work with Lean Startup and Startup Way, but I'm excited to talk about this new book because it takes off where the previous books let go.If these books in the past show you how to build or scale new ventures, this book teaches you how to build companies to last without selling out. You know, you open the book talking about by saying you taught people how to build companies worth protecting, but not how to protect them. What did you miss about that first time around and how did this book come about based on what you've learned?[00:01:52] Eric Ries: Well, thank you first of all, thanks for the kind words. And thanks for seeing it as a continuity, because that's really how it's felt to me. I feel like I've been on this journey now, you know, over the course of my career, and when I look back on it, I think I keep discovering things that I'm sure is the most powerful force in the universe.So I feel like when I first learned to code program computers, I was like, this is the most powerful thing in the universe. And then I realized that in writing individual programs was nothing, if you could build, you know, technology platforms. And build whole scale, in large scale technology. I was in love with technology from an early age.And over time as I watched, you know, so many technology products fail, I started to realize that no management is the most powerful force in the universe, right? Human beings make technology, and if you can't manage human beings, you can't do it. And this book came out of my recognition that although over the past 20 years we have gotten so much better at the science of management, and especially thanks to Lean Startup and tools like that. We've been able to really build brand new companies and take them public. Been able to revitalize more abundant old companies and making them more modern.And yet I always felt like we were up against this other force that was even more powerful than management and what I didn't understand, what nobody ever told me I was, I was coming up as an entrepreneur, as an innovator, is that for mission-driven companies especially, success becomes a liability because the more golden the goose, the more temptation there is to butcher it.And I got sick and tired of it. I felt like I was feeding one company after another into a meat grinder. Help people create these really wonderful companies and then have them you know, turn into something almost unrecognizable. And I just felt like we need to stop doing that. And so, this book is the culmination of a many, many year journey to try to figure out like, what is this force that causes this and what can we do about it to stop it from turning?Why Eric Ries Uses the Word “Corruption” in Business[00:03:39] Brian Ardinger: You label the book about corruption, you know, incorruptible. Why is it more accurate word than like mission creep or bad leadership? What about the word corruption? [00:03:48] Eric Ries: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for asking that question because I do think it's something that a lot of people have struggled with, with the book, which is when we say the word corruption, people like think I'm talking about embezzlement or bribery, and of course those things are bad.But one of the really deep insights that I've had, banging my head against this, I think I always think of that famous Mahler quote, you know, I'm banging against my head against the wall, and the wall is starting to give. That's how it felt to me, like it took me a really long time to understand that these actions that transform value creating economic activity into value destroying economic activity, that actually corrupts the foundation of our entire economic system.Because when you ask people to defend capitalism, you know, this is going back hundreds of years now, all the way back to, you know, to Adam Smith, let alone Bastiat and Milton Friedman, and you, you name it, you name it. Someone who's made an attempt to give a moral defense of capitalism. We always say that when people are engaged in fully informed voluntary transactions, then both parties are better off, and that is why free commerce ultimately leads to value creation.And that's like a very logical, very tidy argument. And yet it has preconditions. In order for a transaction to be value creating, it must be fully informed and it must be voluntary. And what we're seeing now in our modern economy is so many ways to make money without creating value. In fact, many of the ways that we consider to be just normal ways of making money are grandparents would've seen as theft, as crimes.So I think we've kind of gradually lost the plot. And so to me, using a bracing word like corruption and, and naming the book Incorruptible, to me was what is necessary to say, look, these actions are not wrong just because they're immoral or even because they're illegal, but rather because they corrupt the economic logic of our whole civilization.Value Creation vs Value Extraction in Modern Capitalism[00:05:36] Brian Ardinger: You talk a lot about this difference between value extraction versus value creation. Can you tell us a little bit more about the dichotomy between those two and, and where the challenges lie. [00:05:45] Eric Ries: Yeah. I saw this incredible video and he was telling this story about going out to dinner with a friend at one of the friend's favorite restaurants. They walked in the door, they sat down, they ordered. The guy took a bite of the food and he, he took, he took out his phone and, and the guy's telling the story. He's like, that's kind of rude, why you taking out your phone? He's like, has this restaurant been bought by private equity? He's like, what are you talking about? He's like, looki...

May 19, 2026Episode 35714 min

Lean Analytics, Human in the Loop Lies & Moving Fast with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about the changes in lean analytics, how the human in the loop is a lie we tell ourselves, and the first thing to break when moving 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 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 BoltonAngel Investing, AI Travel, and What’s Ahead[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. Hello, Robyn. How are you? [00:00:46] Robyn Bolton: I am good. How are you, Brian? [00:00:47] Brian Ardinger: I'm doing well. I'm actually heading to Minneapolis tomorrow for the Angel Fest conference. Meeting with our former colleague, Emily Kist, who's with Groove Capital, Mickayla Russard, who spoke at the IO Summit in 2024.They host an annual event called Angel Fest, and we're excited to go up there and represent the Nebraska Angels and see what's going on north of what's going on in our world from angel investing. So that's what's going on in my world. [00:01:12] Robyn Bolton: Awesome. Well, probably by the time these airs, I will either be on or be back from my AI-planned summer vacation. So, long-time listeners of the podcast may remember where I talked about my husband and I's usual vacation to Key West was upended by the Key West regulation changes about short-term rentals, and so AI planned a trip to Turks and Caicos for us. [00:01:36] Brian Ardinger: Oh. [00:01:36] Robyn Bolton: So, the proof is about to be in the pudding. The next podcast, I will report back as to whether or not you should let AI be a travel agent.[00:01:46] Brian Ardinger: That's right. You'll probably end up in St. Barts, but who knows? [00:01:50] Robyn Bolton: You know, at some point it doesn't really matter as long as it's warm and sunny and there's a beach. [00:01:55] Brian Ardinger: That's right. Sand is sand. [00:01:57] Robyn Bolton: Sand is sand. Lean Analytics in the Age of AI[00:01:59] Brian Ardinger: Excellent. Well, let's get started with some interesting articles that we've come across over the last week or so. First one is from our friend Ben Yoskovitz, and it's an article that he wrote about lean analytics, and it's Lean Analytics Reconsidered.So, people familiar with the podcast know Ben and Alistair Croll. They wrote Lean Analytics back in the early days of the whole lean startup movement, and now it's become one of the, I think, one of the core Bibles out there when it comes to, you know, how do you measure and understand what you're building in the world of technology and that.Ben goes back and looks at; the book's probably a dozen years old now. How much does it hold up, the frameworks that they developed, and what's changed in the world of AI? And what I liked about the book is it really kind of walks you through the stages that a company can go through, and the stage gates that you have to go through to kind of create traction and create product market fit, et cetera.And, you know, everything from starting at empathy, stickiness, virality, revenue, and then finally scaling. And so the core portions of the book as far as the stages you go through and the, what you're trying to solve at each particular stage rings true. But he talks about some of the things that are different when it comes to AI and how that may be changing the game from that perspective. What were your thoughts? Rethinking Engagement Metrics for AI Products[00:03:07] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, this was really interesting. I mean, it was thrilled, not surprised, that the principles hold. I mean, if you have good, grounded principles, they should be able to survive a lot, and granted, AI is a lot, but it was great to see that the principles hold. What really struck me was one of the shifts, shift three, on engagement is directional, and basically this is talking about how traditionally you look at engagement, and the more time spent on site is good.You want people to spend a lot of time on a site. You wanted people to spend a lot of time in a session, and AI is essentially flipping that on its head, and it just made me think of like, yeah, the more time I have to spend on a site is actually more indicative of the more time I'm struggling to get done what I need to get done.So he breaks it down into there's time spent struggling, there's time spent with AI doing the work on user's behalf, time spent exploring or creating, and then zero user time tasks completed. And I just saw my AI usage, my site usage in all four of these categories, and realizing I go back to the tools, the sites, et cetera, that don't make me use a lot of time or engages me in the right amount of time.But if I spend too much time struggling, which given my attention span is like 10 seconds, it is not good. It is not a good metric to be like, "Oh, she spent three minutes on the site." That is bad for you, my friend. Why Quality Is Becoming a First-Class Metric[00:04:38] Brian Ardinger: Yeah, so if more engagement, the more money, and as long as dynamics works, that's great, but you have to be at least aware of it.The other shift that I think is kind of interesting is he calls it quality is a first class metric now, and again, it goes back to this idea that just because you can build it and it, you can build it 80% doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be the right solution out there for the marketplace. An 80% good product versus a 95% good product feel completely different to a product or a user, and so, you know, how can you build for quality of those interactions and that, because everybody can get to an 80% now.If we think about, again, what is making AI stand out and then where can you stand out and differentiate yourself, it comes back to a lot of those human things, taste, quality, access to the customers, relationships. And I think we have to continue to pound that home again, because we're living in a world where commoditization of the actual product is becoming more easily built.[00:05:34] Robyn Bolton: Plus, he paired that point with a Ron Swanson GIF. [00:05:37] Brian Ardinger: GIF, yes. [00:05:38] Robyn Bolton: From Parks and Rec, which just tells you how important that point is. The Problem with Human-in-the-Loop AI[00:05:43] Brian Ardinger: Excellent. All right, the second article is from Alvis Ng. He has an article in Medium called Human in the Loop is the Lie We Tell Oursel...

May 12, 2026Episode 35615 min

Building Momentum, Design's Value, and the Physical Store with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about how to stop forcing motion and start building momentum, the value of design in the AI era, and the comeback of the physical store. 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 Midwest Venture Capital Momentum and the Greater Plains Summit[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, how are you? [00:00:48] Robyn Bolton: I am doing great today. It is sunny and warm for once in Boston, so couldn't be better. How are you doing?[00:00:54] Brian Ardinger: I think it's maybe the first time that Boston is warmer than Lincoln at this point. I think you said it was 80, and it's 56 right here, so... [00:01:00] Robyn Bolton: I was going to say, we've got one day a year where I have better weather, so I will take it. [00:01:04] Brian Ardinger: Well, things are going well here in Nebraska. Last week was the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders weekend in Omaha, so if people are familiar with that, that's when all the Warren Buffett fans come into town to spend money at Borsheim's and Nebraska Furniture Mart and to learn what's going on.This year, there was a group, the gener8tor and NMotion Group, hosted a Greater Plains Summit where they brought in some investors and angel investors and want to be angel investors to tag along with what was going on at the Berkshire event. It was interesting because there were multiple different venture funds from around the Midwest that all came in.I think it was probably the first time I've seen all of us in the same room, which was quite good, and we had a number of different discussions about what was going on in the Midwest when it comes to venture capital, and it's nice to see more and more folks looking at the Heartland as a place that you can actually invest in new startups and new ideas and that.[00:01:57] Robyn Bolton: That sounds like an awesome week because there is so much potential in the Midwest and the Heartland and the Plains. It always warms my heart when I hear about the venture community and the startups, and that it's not all concentrated on the coasts.Innovation Lessons from Massive Events and the IO SummitSo this week, school is wrapping up. The end of the semester's coming, so I've been reading graduate theses. I read one, it was fascinating. It was a design solution to a crowd problem, but it's about a festival in India. It happens every 12 years, and it draws between 250 million and 300 million people. [00:02:39] Brian Ardinger: Wow.... [00:02:39] Robyn Bolton: To a single town over the course of several days. And I was like, that is bringing the population of America to a town in India and, like, having to create the city and the infrastructure and everything, a temporary city to house a country's worth of people, and it just blew my mind [00:03:02] Brian Ardinger: That puts Burning Man to shame, I think. And the 350 folks that we hosted in Lincoln the other week for the IO Summit, I guess we're going to have to up our game, so. [00:03:10] Robyn Bolton: I'm not sure you want to shoot for 350 million, and actually the festival that occurred last year was a big momentous one, only happens every 144 years, 600 million people. Yes, so I'm like, yay, 350 people for IO. That's my speed. That's my size crowd. [00:03:30] Brian Ardinger: At least you had a chance to meet all of them. [00:03:33] Robyn Bolton: Yes, yes, and have great conversations with them, and at no point did I feel like I was about to be crushed in a stampede, so ... kudos to you. Corporate Innovation: Stop Forcing Motion and Start Building Momentum[00:03:42] Brian Ardinger: Well, let's get into the meat of our podcast. As you know, each week we try to find three or four articles that we've come upon in the world of innovation to share with folks.First one is a short blog post by Tendayi Viki. Tendayi's with The Strategizer Group, and he's got a short little blog post called Stop Forcing Motion, Start Building Momentum. What I liked about this, it was a very just short reminder about what we're seeing in corporate innovation and a lot of places where all these transformation efforts, people spin them up, generate a lot of impressive movement you know, new structures are announced, new teams are announced, dashboards are filled up, and it's a lot of motion.And what Tendayi really talks about is the fact that motion is great, but what really, you're trying to build is momentum. You know, motion peters out as soon as you stop pushing, but momentum keeps going. And so what are some of the things that you can do to kind of build momentum rather than just activities around it?I think that's a good important lesson to remember, especially as you're spinning up new teams or new initiatives, that it's more than just doing things. It's like how do you create things that actually create momentum that allow the initiatives to continue to go forward and continue to build excitement, et cetera.[00:04:49] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, this is a great reminder. You know one of the things that, that like you, that I, I see often and say often is people confusing activity for achievement. Tendayi's first tip in this article to start where belief already exists is so spot on, because rarely is that where things actually start. It's usually like, oh, you know, we need this much revenue, or we need to use this technology, and usually in those places there's a ton of skepticism.Building Credibility and Emotional Energy in Innovation TeamsWell, we should do this, but we've never done it before, and we'll never do it well and blah, blah, blah. So instead, start where belief exists, where people already feel the need, but also feel like it's possible. You get the quick wins, and then you do get the momentum. You get that motion and the velocity and the results and all of those good things that make innovation kind of self-perpetuating.[00:05:40] Brian Ardinger: And just even a little bit of credibility creation goes a long way to, you know, stop the naysayers and/or give you a little bit more runway to actually continue to push that rock up the hill. [00:05:50] Robyn Bolton: Yes. You got to believe you can push the rock. [00:05:54] Brian Ardinger: I think the other point that he makes is how you design for emotional energy and doing things such that the emotions become contagious so that, again, it's not just work, but there's a meaning behind the work that you're doing.[00:06:07] Robyn Bolton: Yep, and we are humans after ...

April 28, 2026Episode 35516 min

AI Exposure, AI Exec Love, and AI Native with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about how AI may be exposing you, why executives may be more enamored with AI than individual contributors, and how to become AI native in five levels. 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[00:00:30] 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 back. [00:00:48] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Pleasure to be back. [00:00:49] Brian Ardinger: It's nice to see you in person a week ago at the IO Summit and to have you back on the show. Let's start there. We had a great week last week. You came out and spoke along with some amazing other guests, and we had over 350 people that showed up at the Sheldon Museum of Art for an amazing day of innovation. Thanks for being part of that. [00:01:08] Robyn Bolton: Yeah. Oh no, it was my pleasure. It was an incredible event. The weather was perfect. I don't know how you arranged 80 degrees and sunny, but kudos to you. The venue was absolutely fantastic.You know, to be surrounded by art and you know, we're talking about the art and science, and it's just a beautiful, beautiful venue. And to be on the campus, the University of Nebraska.Had never been there was. Surprised, but should not have been by the size of the football stadium. I told someone, I'm like, I think it may be the tallest building in Lincoln, which is surprising and not, but [00:01:45] Brian Ardinger: it's not the tallest, the capital is the tallest, which is also a beautiful building, but it does become the third largest city in the state during game days. So... [00:01:53] Robyn Bolton: I believe it. Having spent a little bit of time, a football season living in Arkansas, I believe it. It was a fantastic event. All of the speakers were great. So thought provoking. I mean it just like I wrote, if you want to see the future, go to Nebraska. Go to the IO Summit. Lived up to the billing. [00:02:12] Brian Ardinger: Well, I appreciate that. If you follow the newsletter, we'll be posting out some videos and that in the near future. And yeah, look forward to the next one. Maybe IO 2028. We've gone into these two-year cycles because it's fairly big ordeal to pull off. But appreciate all the folks that are in the audience listening who came out for it or supported it. We've got some amazing sponsors, including the weather, that we're there including to help us out. But yes, thank you for being part of it. [00:02:36] Robyn Bolton: And that was not the only big thing going down in Lincoln. A couple weeks ago, Brian, you won the Entrepreneur Advocate Award from the University of Nebraska Center for Entrepreneurship. So massive congratulations to you well deserved. [00:02:52] Brian Ardinger: Well, thank you for that call out. One thing about advocating for entrepreneurs, it really is about the communities. And actually to point to that, one of the interesting things about that particular award is the very first time they gave out the award many years ago, the first recipient was a person called Greg Christensen. Greg was one of my early mentors.I go back to high school, and I was the state DECA president, the vocational training DECA program. People may have heard of that. I was the state president in 1986, and Greg was in charge of the state officer's training and became an early mentor of mine. And so, to get that award many years later when your original mentor was the original recipient of it, it felt very good to continue that legacy and to see where the ecosystems come from.[00:03:36] Robyn Bolton: Yeah. No, that's amazing. I love that it came full circle and thank you for letting me put you on the spot. I knew you were gonna be too humble to mention it, so I had to. [00:03:46] Brian Ardinger: Well, I appreciate Robyn. Alright, well let's get into the meat of our episode today. We've got a couple of articles we want to talk about in the world of innovation. The first one. So, my friend Barry O'Reilly, he has a new book out, but this particular post is called AI Ain't Making You Better, it's Exposing You. In this post, he talks about the rise of the productivity flex. I've also heard this called like token maxing and some other things where people are putting all their effort into AI generating things for the sake of generating.And the question is, is it actually making you better or is it exposing you for the patterns and the things that you're doing, is it actually helping you or are you just creating stuff for creating stuff? So, I thought it was an interesting topic to have a conversation around, to talk about, you know, what are people doing with this stuff?[00:04:31] Robyn Bolton: Yeah. I think this is definitely one of those, and not, or situations is, yeah. It ain't making you smarter, but maybe it's making you smart enough in some things, but not smart enough in others. So, one of the things that struck me, I'd wrote about this research earlier, but he calls out some 2025 research that Harvard Business School professors did with 776 professionals at P & G, my old stomping grounds, and no surprise individuals using AI, fared just as well as teams not using AI.But when you put a team of humans together with AI, their productivity tripled. And I just thought this was such a great example of the importance of teams and having, you know, diversity of teams, different perspectives, multiple people working together. Making AI kind of one member of a bigger team.[00:05:33] Brian Ardinger: I think the other thing is the fact that, again, it's not the tool or it's not AI, and if you're using it, it's what you're using it for. And the people I talk to in that, you get a report back or something, it's like, hmm, okay, Claude obviously helped you with this. And so, you have to be careful to not rely on that as your sole thing.You still have to bring back the human, you know, we talked about that quite a bit at the conference and that. But this focus on being intentional about what you're creating and what you're using the tools for and not relying on it just to put out output. It's easy to fall into the output phase where it's very easy to ask a question and get it, you know, everything put back into it.And the AI's very good at adding onto the thing. So, you know, you ask it a question, it answers it, and then it says, oh, here's five other things you hadn't thought of, or six other questions you need to ask. And all of that adds up to the stuff that you have to go through and understand. And if you're just pushing it back out into the world, are you really creating and moving things forward?[00:06:29] Robyn Bolton:

March 24, 2026Episode 35415 min

AI Addiction, Innovation Metrics, and Peer Influence with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

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 BoltonAI 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 CodersFascinating 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 CodingAnd 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 BehindAnd 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 constant pressure to interact with the device to continue to move forward is interesting. I think the flip side to that is what are we building and what are we doing? Are we just putting tokens into the machine or are we actually creating value in the process? And I think that's the next phase that people will be hopefully going through. [00:04:04] Robyn Bolton: This line struck me, making yourself obsolete feels like freedom, dressed up as ambition. And I just thought, Ooh, that, that hits a little close to home. [00:04:14] Brian Ardinger: And well, we will see what happens. I am addicted as well. Probably not to the extent that some of these folks I'm talking to, but, but who knows, you know, there's always next week. [00:04:21] Robyn Bolton: Exactly. How Peer Influence Drives AI Adoption at Work[00:04:23] Brian Ardinger: The second article I want to talk about today is from HBR. It's talking about Peer influence can make or break your AI rollout.Fascinating thing about this is HBR took a look at how companies were deploying AI and which ones were being successful at deploying it and which ones were not. And one of the primary findings was the fact that companies and the people that were actually peer reviewing or showing what they were building with their colleagues, and that using peer influence as a way to encourage adoption was actually a more effective way than either a mandate or just giving people the opportunity to interact with these particular tools.[00:04:59] Robyn Bolton: The degree to which the peer-to-peer learning influences, it was surprising. The fact that it has an influence I didn't find surprising. What I did find really shocking was that leadership communication and leader encouragement had little to no impact on AI usage.Why Leadership Messaging Alone Does Not Increase AI UsageAnd you know, the article does go on to say that like, hey, even though there's no measurable impact, leaders do still play a really important part in encouraging the experimentation. Encouraging the sharing of learnings. I was surprised by that. And also, as I said, not surprised by the peer-to-peer because when somebody you work closely with and trust is like, hey, I'm doing this. It's just kind of this reassurance of like, oh, if I log into the GPT, I'm not going to get fired like, because I've been replaced. Here's someone who's still employed using AI. I can do it. [00:05:54] Brian Ardinger: I'm hearing more and more people tell me, oh, I used this tool to do this. Versus in the past, you could see their work and say, you obviously used something for this. But they're more open about sharing those things, and I think that environment in your company to be open to sharing both the good and the bad and like, what's working, what's not working, here's what I'm using it for, I think opens up a lot of doors because I think a lot of people just don't know necessarily how to use this or what particular use cases could be valuable.It's all about, at this stage, kind of the experimentation and understanding and seei...

March 17, 2026Episode 35313 min

Identic AI, AI agents, and Bigger than SaaS with Brian Ardinger & Robyn Bolton

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 BoltonAI 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 NextIt 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 bot so that it can do things for you when you don't trust the bot. So. [00:03:31] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, I just imagine trying to do that with a bot and being like, no, thank you. [00:03:34] Brian Ardinger: There are things I don't like.[00:03:35] Robyn Bolton: You can keep your quirks. Yeah. [00:03:38] Brian Ardinger: Alright with the second article, Why you need to build your product for AI agents first. So tangentially similar to what we were talking about previously. This is Peter Yang wrote an article talking about since the structure of how you are building is changing. If indeed agents are going to do the bidding for you in a variety of these things, you no longer need to necessarily build for people going to your website or using a user interface because you are building for agents who are talking to other agents who are doing things.So if you're in a new builder today, some of the things you should be looking at is how can you actually build for agent flow and how can you build so that the agents can work faster, and what might you strip away and what might you change? Based on that particular paradigm shift. [00:04:23] Robyn Bolton: Yeah. I mean, I am always one for, you know, simplicity, like getting to the root, getting really clear, really simple. And there's a certain amount of complexity that's required and things. It does get stripped out by AI as it, you know, goes through and kind of does the regression analysis or the prediction analysis and all of that.Designing Products for AI Workflows, APIs, MCPs, and Human ExperienceSo I've really conflicted reading this one because I'm like, well, I don't know how to design for AI. I don't know what that means, especially because things are moving so fast and since another instance where Clawbot shows up as a big character in the story. But I was also like, what if I don't want to?Like what if there's more nuance? What if there's more richness? What if there's things that will get lost if I design for AI? And that of course could sound like the death throes of the human. So yeah. So I was really conflicted. But I think it's, it makes a really interesting point and an important point that we've got to figure out.[00:05:24] Brian Ardinger: If you strip away the beautiful UX that people have designed to make you feel the emotion around the product, and the agent never interacts with that, how does that change the product itself? Yeah. Or the experience that you're creating. The article also goes on to give you some of those skill sets of like how to think about this if you are building.He has some talking about the APIs or the tools, the skills are the recipes, and then the MCPs are actually the kitchen and how it bundles it all together and how these particular components of AI. The way these AI tools are coming together, you can create environments and that such that you're building for agents to make it easier for those folks to do y...

March 10, 2026Episode 35211 min

Learning vs Execution with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

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 BoltonWhy 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 fully baked, and then it won't necessarily fit into the existing structures that they have and kill it from that perspective.Or we'll get it to a place where you can build a startup and get to execution much faster, such that those acquisitions can dovetail right into an existing business. So it'll be interesting to see how that changes over the time period as well. [00:03:59] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, and you know, will organizations, the failure mode I see most often is they think, oh, you know, there's market traction, there's revenue. The startup may even be profitable, and they think great. It's no longer a learning problem, it's an execution problem. So realizing that just because there's revenue, just because maybe it's even cashflow positive, doesn't mean it's ready for scale. [00:04:20] Brian Ardinger: Absolutely. Alright. The second article is UX Didn't Die, it just stopped being about screens. This is from Nurkhon, if I'm reading that right. N-U-R-K-H-O-N. He has a medium article talking about this particular thing and he's basically saying that the skills that matter are different than what they've been in the past. So he's goes through an example where he asked Cursor to, you know, re redesign a checkout flow for a thing he was building.It generated the perfect uI in 30 seconds, all the correct ratios, proper button states, et cetera. Then he showed it to three customers and they all abandoned the project at the exact same stop. The UI was perfect, but the problem was something else. And this gap between what it looks right, the functionality and what actually works is where UX value really lives in 2026. And that's an interesting thing that we're seeing more and more. What's your take on that? [00:05:13] Robyn Bolton: I think it's another great example of what noted innovation philosopher Mike Tyson said that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. And this is another example of AI designing something that is perfect, but then what exposed to reality and that reality being the unusual, illogical, wonderful nature of human beings. It just gets punched in the face. It doesn't work.So I was actually really glad to see the seven skills that he listed as mattering: systems, thinking, feedback, translation, there's judgment again, I feel like that's becoming a theme, pattern recognition, trust building. All of these skills are fundamentally human skills, and I think it's just another great illustration of how AI can't replace us yet.Customer Discovery Still Matters: Why Startups Keep Building Backwards[00:06:04] Brian Ardinger: It'll also be interesting to see from the perspective of, again, if these systems are, they're basically coming to commodity decisions. They look at everything out there. Yep. They find the best route to it and say, here's what the average says about it. Most people shouldn't be building average. You have unique customers with unique problems with unique environments around that. And so at the end of the day, that's still your job as a UX UI designer or a business o...