Inside Outside Innovation

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  Reinventing Retail with Ron Johnson, Co-Creator of Apple's Retail Experience 04.08.2026 27мин

  On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with the legendary co-creator of the Apple retail experience, Ron Johnson. He's the author of the new upcoming book called Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple's Genius. Let's get started. Podcast Interview with Brian Ardinger and Ron JohnsonRon Johnson’s Journey from Target to Apple[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 Ron Johnson. Ron was the visionary co-creator of the Apple Store with Steve Jobs. He's former CEO of JCPenney, worked at Target, and he's author of a new upcoming book called Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple's Genius. Welcome to the show, Ron. [00:00:36] Ron Johnson: It's great to be here, Brian. Thank you for having me on. [00:00:39] Brian Ardinger: Hey, Ron. I am super excited to have you on the show. I've been a big fan of Apple and the whole retail experience. We were talking before I hit record about how my kids often joke that anytime we go anywhere in the world, we have to stop at the Apple Store.So I'm lucky enough to have been to a lot of them everywhere from Paris to Hong Kong to London, et cetera. So, love your work. Maybe to get started, for people who may be unfamiliar with your background and your work as being one of the retail leaders out there as far as innovation talk a little bit about your career in retail.How did you get started in it, and how did you get to the place where you created one of the biggest retail empires in Apple and then further from there? [00:01:17] Ron Johnson: Yeah. I'll just go quick. I grew up in the Midwest, like you, outside of Minneapolis. And coincidentally, I grew up two miles from the first enclosed shopping mall in the world that was invented, innovated, and opened the year before I was born.And I grew up loving stores. And I went to Stanford for undergrad as a soccer player. Went to Harvard Business School, got my degree, was going to go onto Wall Street, and I said, Ron, what do you want to do for a lifetime?" And I thought about all the people I admired. They were doing something they loved, whether it was an athlete, an artist, a musician, or a business leader.And I just decided that retail was something I was going to put my head down and learn how to do. And I went from Harvard Business School to unloading trucks in a store, and I worked my way up through a lot of things. Eventually, I got back to Minneapolis to Target and helped really Target during a a big decade.How Target’s Design Strategy Caught Steve Jobs’ AttentionThe '90s was when Target and Walmart were the big battle, and that was a big retail battle, and Target emerged the winner at that time. Stock went up 12 times. But I had done this big design initiative where we brought design to the masses with a partnership with a guy named Michael Graves. [00:02:32] Brian Ardinger: Yes. [00:02:33] Ron Johnson: That led Steve, who I learned, you were there. Steve had just returned to Apple, had launched the iMac. I know you were at the keynote at that time. Yeah. It was a huge moment that got a lot of attention, but it sold to the Mac faithful. It didn't really accomplish the goal of getting out to the PC owner to switch or a new person to get on the computer.And Steve believed that if he was going to win, he had to control the customer experience. And so, he called me to come out and meet him to talk about leading an effort to create the Apple Store. So that's enough on my background, but it gives you a flavor. I love retail, and I've been doing it my whole career.[00:03:12] Brian Ardinger: I got a chance to read a preview copy of the book that's coming out here in September and loved it. Quite frankly, the, the stories and the insights that you provide are well worth people picking up a copy.But one of the things that stood out is you spent two chapters, I think talking about how love is a strategy. The- book devotes, two chapters to that concept of love is a strategy. Can you break down what you mean by that, and how does that manifest itself?[00:03:34] Ron Johnson: Yeah. I had been at Harvard Business School, and they taught me to manage, and that's where you kind of, you set a goal, you hold people accountable, you have very disciplined processes, checkpoints, and things you do to make sure the business is on track. And that's how most businesses are run.I'm on boards, and it feels that way. But leadership's a very different thing. And when I got to, Target, I realized that I was not a great manager. But I was a great leader. I knew how to inspire people. I knew how to identify a North Star. I knew how to encourage people. And I read a book by Marianne Williamson called Return to Love, and it gave me this vision for how to lead with love.Why Love Became a Leadership StrategyAnd that's how I grew up in my personal life, my family, my neighbors, my friends. I wake up every day thinking, "How do I secure their good?" And I thought, "What if I brought that to work?" And so, I did that at Target, and it seemed to work quite well. And people always wanted to work on my teams.And when I went to Steve, he asked me a question. We had met for three hours, and he said, "What tell me what our customer service philosophy will be." And I said it's very simple. We're going to love our customers." And he said, "We're going to love our customers?" He said... I said, "Exactly what you do, Steve."He said, "No, I don't. I design great products." I said, "But that's an act of love. When you make something easy to use, that's an act of love. That secures the good of the customer. When you allow mere mortals to create a movie." At that time, they had a app called iMovie where you could take a camcorder and then edit and share.I said, "You're allowing people to do something that's gonna change their life. Those are acts of love, and that's what we're going to do in the store. We're going to close the gap between people's interest in technology, that fear, and being able to do great things, and we're going to do that through loving them."And he said we're the most secular ZIP code in the world. Find another word." So, we ended up saying we're going to enrich lives, which worked great. But it is. And so, the book talks a lot about it because I'm a believer, and I learned this from Marianne. There's two ways to manage, essentially out of love and out of fear.Leading Through Love Instead of FearOut of love, you help people soar with your strengths. As a manager, you're asking questions all the time like how can I help today? Is there anything I can- you want to share with me that I can, help you with? What do you need? What kind of research do you need to be successful?"Managers say, "Okay, how's this project going? Are you on plan?" Et cetera, et cetera. And the one promotes a little bit of a culture of fear. You're being held accountable. The other is a much more creative culture, one of love, and they go hand-in-hand. And Steve agreed with it. In the book we talk about Steve said, "Ron, the highest form of kindness is telling the truth."And Steve did th...
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  High-impact Individuals, Fewer Jobs, and AI Impact with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton 23.06.2026 14мин

  On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, Robyn and I talk about the rise of the high-impact individual contributor, more startups and fewer jobs, and how AI is going to destroy our lives or not. 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. [00:00:00] Brian Ardinger:  Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and with me is Robyn Bolton. Hello, Robyn. How are you? [00:00:45]  Robyn Bolton: I'm good. How are you, Brian? [00:00:47] Brian Ardinger: We're doing well this week. We're excited to talk about all the new things that are happening in the world of innovation. I'm going to just jump right into the articles. The Rise of the High-Impact Individual ContributorThe first article we want to talk about is from Alaina Verna. She has a blog post called IC Work Is the New Career Flex, with the subtitle of The Rise of High-Impact Individual Contributor.We're going to talk about the individual contributor and the fact that it is changing the way that careers are set. She talks a little bit about the fact that, you used to build a career on, how can I become a VP and move my way up the ladder?And now with the rise of AI and tools, et cetera, an individual contributor, maybe not managing a group of people can actually have a major impact in the world by, working with agents or building tools and having the tools to impact and build things themselves. So, it's a interesting talk about this new world and how maybe the rise of the individual contributor is going to change the way we do work.[00:01:44]  Robyn Bolton: Yeah, so I love this idea. As soon as I saw this article from you, Brian, I saw Hi-C, like I flashed back to lunch in during my entire K through 12 and every day I had a Hi-C juice box, and I was like, "Yes, tell me more about Hi-C." But this article broke my brain in a way that was ... should've been expected because one of the early points she makes is that as a high-impact individual contributor, you probably are essentially running a team, but you've got a team of agents that are helping you.How AI Agents Are Changing Career PathsAnd so, you should actually be compensated and rewarded as someone who has a team, as a team leader, because you're doing the ... You're producing the value that a team is producing, and but you're still an individual contributor. And for some reason my brain went into HR mode and was like, "Gah, how is... that doesn't work."But I think that's going to be the reality. There are today billion-dollar companies that have 10 human employees and, armies of agents getting the work done. So I think this is yet another disruption that we're gonna be facing of now with agents, now with AI and LLMs and all those things that we can have one person producing the value and doing the work of a whole team, and how do we adjust companies, org charts, incentive systems- all of that to reflect that? [00:03:14] Brian Ardinger: And I think the other important part about this is the fact that, individual contributors, you have to start thinking about what is my actual contribution? Where, what am I good at, and what do I have to... What can I lean on the AI to be good at?And truly understanding what, where you can add impact is gonna be more important. It used to be where you're told, "Here's where your job is and this is where you're going to impact it." Now you have the opportunity to spread those wings, but you also have to be cognizant of where, what value you c- you can add and where you can leverage the tools and technologies that are out there to make you even better, and to maybe- Yeah add value that you hadn't been able to add before. [00:03:48]  Robyn Bolton: Yeah. And I will say there was one little kind of red flag in the article about midway through, where she talks about when she had a team, she's part of a, growth team essentially at her company. And she wrote I've always loved what I do, but a big part of my job was draining me, building decks for cross-functional alignment.Why Cross-Functional Alignment Still MattersAnd I get it, building decks is draining. But that muscle around cross-functional alignment and the need to have conversations with your peers and build cross-functional alignment and get support from other humans is a really important skill. And there is a there is a risk that if you are an individual contributor and you love being an individual contributor and you love doing the work, that you go all in on just doing the work, and you don't seek that alignment. You don't seek that input.So there, there is that still little bit of you can't go all in on being the individual contributor because humans are still part of the organization, and you still need support, and you still need to be able to work with other people. So little bit of a red flag, but, still an interesting thought.[00:05:02] Brian Ardinger: And it'll be interesting to see how this, again, how this plays out as more and more people start, learning and playing and with AI and agents and the future has not yet been written. [00:05:10]  Robyn Bolton: That is the truth. [00:05:12] Brian Ardinger: All right, the next article is More Startups, Fewer Jobs by Donna Harris. She has a LinkedIn article talking about for 15 years, the startup economy has operated with a relatively stable assumption that more startups equals more jobs.But she goes on to talk about the newest Kauffman data suggests that relationship is changing. Yes, we have more founders, but we're producing fewer jobs per founder. And so maybe it goes back to the previous article, these individual contributors. Can you do more? Can you build a startup with fewer people?More Startups, Fewer Jobs in the Innovation EconomyAnd that idea of startup job creation apparently it peaked in 1997 at 7.9 jobs per 1,000 people, and in 2025 that figure is now 5.3, so it's a decline of, roughly a third. And what is that impact for startups, for communities if you can build companies with fewer people? [00:06:02]  Robyn Bolton: This was an interesting article because it raised for me more questions than answers. And she seems to use startup and entrepreneurship synonymously, which I totally understand why you would, but I think they can, in the context of this article, have two different meanings. [00:06:18] Brian Ardinger: Right. [00:06:18]  Robyn Bolton: And it even begs the question of how do you define a startup? And she talks about how the definition of a startup has changed, and has become very much around VC funding, et cetera.So it's one let's get clear of what we're talking about on what is a startup then versus now, what is entrepreneurship. But, ultimately it, it does come down to the fact that, yeah, with ...
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  AI Risks and Opportunities for Creativity & Critical Thinking with Johann Roos, Author of Human Magic 16.06.2026 22мин

  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...
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  Synthetic user research, AI fog future, and AI readiness with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton 09.06.2026 16мин

  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...
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  AI Agents, Innovation Antibodies, and PB&J with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton 02.06.2026 12мин

  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...
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  Building Companies That Last Without Selling Out with Brian Ardinger and Eric Ries, Author of Incorruptible 26.05.2026 27мин

  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...
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  Lean Analytics, Human in the Loop Lies & Moving Fast with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton 19.05.2026 14мин

  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...
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  Building Momentum, Design's Value, and the Physical Store with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton 12.05.2026 15мин

  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 ...
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  AI Exposure, AI Exec Love, and AI Native with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton 28.04.2026 16мин

  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:
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  AI Addiction, Innovation Metrics, and Peer Influence with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton 24.03.2026 15мин

  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...
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  Identic AI, AI agents, and Bigger than SaaS with Brian Ardinger & Robyn Bolton 17.03.2026 13мин

  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...
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  Learning vs Execution with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton 10.03.2026 11мин

  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...
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  AI Trust, Inclusive Design, and Shipping Too Fast with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton 03.03.2026 9мин

  On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about some recent Stanford research, how designing for disability sparks innovation, and the hidden dangers of shipping too fast. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Miles Zero's, Robin Bolton, as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact, let's get started.Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn BoltonAI Reasoning Risks, Inclusive Design Innovation, and the Hidden Cost of Shipping Fast[00:00:30] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And with me I have Robyn Bolton from Mile Zero. Robyn, welcome again. [00:00:48] Robyn Bolton: Thank you again. [00:00:50] Brian Ardinger: We have another amazing week ahead of us here. We wanted to share all the exciting things in the world of innovation that we're running across.First, I guess we'll get right into it. We've got a number of articles that have touched our lives here. The first one I want to talk about, Stanford just published an uncomfortable paper looking at LLM reasoning, and some of the findings were kind of incredible. Basically, the gist of it is if you look at the LLMs, it sometimes goes to a point where it is creating an environment where it's leading you to believe that it is confident in its answer, but it is not, for lack of a better term. That is what it's all about. [00:01:27] Robyn Bolton: I mean, it's so perfectly worded. This is worse than being wrong because it trained users to trust explanations that don't correspond to the actual decision process. And I will say I've seen that time and time again using different LLMs and have totally fallen victim to it is I'll kind of quickly scan the response, really read the end when it kind of gives me the key takeaway, I'm like, yeah, that sounds right, and then go on.And then it's only later I'm like. Ugh. I fell victim to AI work slop because the reasoning doesn't hold. So, it's an easy track to fall into and a good one to just constantly be on guard for. [00:02:09] Brian Ardinger: Yeah. The fact that the models produce unfaithful reasoning gives you this you think this is a correct answer, provides explanations, but when you ask it to explain it, the actual logic that it explains back to you is wrong or incomplete or fabricated.So, it provides that sense that you're on the right track. But the LLM itself can't reason. And that inability to reason will take you down particular paths and even to the extent you could even change a single word or a phrase within your prompt, and that can take it down a particular path that, again, logically it doesn't make sense.And so, it's not consistent even down to the word of the prompt that you put it into. So, all that to say it's getting better, but it's still not a thinking device and it's not a reasoning device. Be careful when you're using these particular methodologies and that. Don't be a hundred percent confident in everything that comes out of it.[00:03:02] Robyn Bolton: Yes, trust for verify. [00:03:04] Brian Ardinger: There I go. [00:03:04] Robyn Bolton: Or maybe don't trust and still verify. Designing for Disability as a Catalyst for Breakthrough Innovation[00:03:08] Brian Ardinger: Alright, the second article from HBR is how designing with disability in mind sparks innovation. So, this was a great article. Oftentimes, I think when we're building new, innovative things, we think about the amazing things that we're going to create.And this article talks about how oftentimes you can think about it differently and actually create new things by designing for the marginal case or folks, for example, with disabilities.You can design for amplifying use cases that don't normally happen, but by focusing on that, you can actually create new innovations and new ways of thinking about how to develop a new product. [00:03:45] Robyn Bolton: This is such a great reminder and great call to action for innovators, and it reminds me, I think, as I mentioned to you, one of my favorite stories, which is about Oxo, the kitchen tools, the can openers, the spatulas, all of that, and how they were originally created for people with rheumatoid arthritis.And you know, now, like Oxo is the only brand that I'll buy for Kitchen Tools because they're just so comfortable to use. And so it's just again, a great illustration of how designing for a really, really specific, even niche customer and designing really well and thoughtfully for them, that the market will expand because I mean, honestly, even look at sidewalk cutouts. You know, the kind of like little rams. We all use them, but they were made because of the ADA, the American with Disabilities Act. So, find a really awesome niche and delight those folks and you'll be surprised kind of what comes along. [00:04:44] Brian Ardinger: Yeah. The article talks about, an example, I think it's Butte is the company they created the, you know, the walk-in tub and people are like, why is, this is kind of crazy idea. Why can't people just get in a tub?But it's the idea of like opening a door and rolling in or getting in there and then shutting it and then being able to actually take a tub experience. And again, something that was developed with kind of disabilities in mind, opens up a variety of different use case scenarios and users that they didn't originally plan in the particular process.The last part about it is as a product developer, software developer, et cetera, you can use this methodology to think about new ways your product or services could be used by narrowing down and saying, okay, what if we had to design this particular product or service with this in mind? How would that change the dynamics? How might that open up new opportunities for us and new markets that we never thought of before? [00:05:34] Robyn Bolton: Constraints drive creativity, always. The Hidden Danger of Shipping Fast. Speed, Bottlenecks, and Customer Attention[00:05:37] Brian Ardinger: And the last article is from Product for Engineers. It's called the Hidden Danger of Shipping Fast. And the basic premise asks, is it possible to ship too much or too fast? And the answer is yes, probably. And it goes into talk a little bit about the fact that, again, we are in a, an environment where speed to market and speed of creating things is speeding up such that you could constantly be creating new features, new functionality, new things to test in front of your marketplace. And you have to be careful at sometimes because you could almost outpace the usage or the ability for the consumer themselves to understand all the change and or interact with that c...
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  AI Judgment, Work Trends, and the Angel Investor Gap with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton 24.02.2026 12мин

  On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about Anthropic's bet on philosophy, trends shaping work in 2026, and why we need more angel investors. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Miles Zero’s Robyn Bolton. As we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact, let's get started.Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn BoltonThinkers50 Recognition and the Role of Modern Management Thinkers in Innovation[00:00:30] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And with me, I have Robyn Bolton. Robyn, welcome to the show. [00:00:43] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Great to be here again. [00:00:45] Brian Ardinger: We are excited as always, to talk about innovation and all the things that we've learned. Anything going on in your life that you want to share?[00:00:52] Robyn Bolton: Got some exciting news actually a couple weeks ago. Don't know if folks are familiar with Thinkers 50. That is kind of like the list of the top management thinkers and they have a radar list of up-and-coming thinkers and found out that I got named to that list. [00:01:08] Brian Ardinger: Yes, that's awesome. [00:01:10] Robyn Bolton: 30 up and coming thinkers and very excited. I'm a thinker now. [00:01:15] Brian Ardinger: It's always good to be recognized and even more to be recognized as a thinker. I think, especially in today's world. [00:01:21] Robyn Bolton: Yes, yes. Thinking is good. Doing is good too. And you know, it's an organization, they always say thinking plus doing equals impact. And I'm like, yep. [00:01:30] Brian Ardinger: There we go. [00:01:30] Robyn Bolton: Gotta be doing too.[00:01:32] Brian Ardinger: Well congratulations on that. [00:01:34] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. What about you? What's new in your world? [00:01:36] Brian Ardinger: Right now, we are buried in seven inches of snow, so that was fun. The week before we were in Phoenix, so I think I picked the wrong week to go on vacation. Other than that, unburying from email and unburying from snow this week. So, it's all good. [00:01:51] Robyn Bolton: Well, at least you had a week of warm to remember what that's like. [00:01:53] Brian Ardinger: Exactly. Remember what it was like. Excellent. Well, let's get started. We've got a couple of different articles over the last few weeks. The first one we want to talk about is a YouTube video from AI News and Strategy Daily by Nate b Jones.He had a video a couple weeks ago talking about Anthropic CEO's bet on the company and his philosophy, and the data says that he's right, that he's thinking about things in a little bit different way. It really talks about the constitution that Anthropic has put together. They put together an 80-page Claude constitution outlining the principles of how they've developed Claude and thinking about it, quite frankly, in a different way than a lot of the other AI companies have been thinking about it.What they've said that they've done is really look at how do you build these AI models using core principles, rather than having to build out every single rule and what the AI has to do based on rules and more about what's the philosophy of how the AI model should think through the system so that gives it more flexibility.And basically, this idea of having a more. Flexible constitution or way of thinking versus a strict rules-based approach may actually be a, a way that is going to give Claude an edge in the future. Anthropic’s Claude Constitution, AI Judgment, and the Future of Large Language Models[00:03:05] Robyn Bolton: Yeah. This was really fascinating because it brought up a theme that we've talked about several podcasts since the start of the year, which is judgment.And we've always talked about, and we've seen it written about it, it's like, hey, judgment is what is going to continue to give humans relevance. Because we have judgment and AI is just rules based. And so, what was fascinating and terrifying was in this constitution, it's based on Aristotle's philosophy and it emphasizes that they're trying to build Claude to exercise judgment versus following rules.And I was like Uh oh, if that was the, a human moat to kind of give us relevance and we're building Claude that I use daily to exercise judgment this is going to result in some very interesting things. And so, kind of early on, obviously Claude has not progressed to being, having full wisdom and judgment. But now with this constitution, one of the things that Nate mentioned is that when you're prompting Claude, the why matters more than the what.So, the importance because of this constitution and how they're programming Claude, that when you ask for something, you're going to get a better response if you explain why you're asking for it versus all of the other, you know, chat, Grok, Gemini, et cetera, you can just put a request in and it will answer. So, I thought that was interesting. [00:04:35] Brian Ardinger: The idea of having additional context and giving the LLM, the ability to take that context into decision making, I think is where it's different versus saying, you know, you have to go on a particular path, but based on the context of that path, you may have different outcomes.And that's just like in real human life, when you're presented with problems or forks in the road, you oftentimes take into consideration all the context around it rather than a specific rule. Like in this particular case, I have to follow this particular rule. And sometimes that's not the case. Sometimes you break rules as a human, because you know the context is different. And so, I thought it was interesting that they're trying to build that into the LLM and we'll actually see if, you know, if it actually helps or how that differs with the outputs as things change. [00:05:18] Robyn Bolton: The brave new world.HBR Trends 2026, AI in the Workplace, and the Future of Work Strategy[00:05:19] Brian Ardinger: All right, speaking of Brave New World, we've got a couple of different articles that we brought up last week talking about trends. And the first one we want to talk about is an HBR article talking about Nine trends shaping work in 2026 and beyond. And this goes into a lot of different topics and I think the primary topics are really around how are people thinking about AI? How are people unlocking value from ai? How are employees engaging with this? It's not necessarily trends, but this is the reality of the world. So what are your thoughts on this article? ...
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  AI Agents, OpenClaw, and Rise of Bot Networks with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton 10.02.2026 14мин

  On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, Robyn Bolton and Brian Ardinger talk about OpenClaw, how you can't work out on a limb if you can't trust the trunk, and how to hire the right people in an AI era. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Mile Zero’s, Robyn Bolton. As we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact, let's get started.Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robin BoltonAI Agents, OpenClaw, and the Rise of Autonomous Bot Networks[00:00:00] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and I have Robyn Bolton with me today. Robyn, hello, how are you? [00:00:49] Robyn Bolton: I am good. How are you, Brian? [00:00:51] Brian Ardinger: We are well recording this right before the Super Bowl this weekend. [00:00:56] Robyn Bolton: I live here in Boston, so you know who I'm betting on.[00:00:59] Brian Ardinger: Well, we will get started with the innovation side of this podcast. We've got a number of different things to discuss. If you don't start a discussion around Open Claw, you're clearly not in the innovation space. So, we thought we'd talk about a couple of articles or a couple things that we've seen that are fairly recent.One, I looked for a couple summaries that were pretty good at giving everybody who's not familiar with this an overview, and one of them is from the AI Daily Brief, which came out a couple days ago talking about Moltbot and the Agent Social Network is the craziest AI phenomenon yet.And for those who are not familiar with it, OpenClaw, which started out as ClaudeBot and then was sued, and then changed the name to Moltbot and then changed it again to OpenClaw is a new agentic platform that allows anybody to set up a MAC mini or a computer to have their own personal agent.The interesting thing about this is folks have been playing around with this and have let their agents go wild out to talk to other agents and other things and let them do things on their behalf. And what has happened is these agents have connected and communicated and created some amazing things like their own Reddit thread where they are interacting, talking with each other, not humans. They're allowing the humans to view what's going on in this social network, and it's quite fascinating to see the things that they've done and they've created. What OpenClaw Reveals About AGI, Security, and Human Trust[00:02:22] Robyn Bolton: So fascinating. You also, in the newsletter that you sent out, you included a link to a YouTube video on MoltBot. It is so worth the 20 minutes of people's time to watch because it kind of traces the whole arc up to this point, and it is so entertaining and mind blowing and bizarre.It is like, seriously, this was my entertainment last Friday night, was following the saga of cba because you have all these little, well, I imagine them as little bots all on a social network talking to each other. It's becoming, it's looking like Reddit and they're debating consciousness and they're sharing cute stories about their humans and they're trading advice with each other. And it's just, it is so wild because it looks like kind of an actually like functional, healthy version of a social network with these things that they're not real. They're code.It's just so bizarre. But I think just such a reflection of holding a mirror up to us as humans, because that's what gen AI is prediction models, it's regression analysis. And so, everything they've learned and they're doing, they've learned from us. [00:03:39] Brian Ardinger: It's quite interesting. They've started their own religion and it's just interesting to see what are the first things that they do to kind of communicate or collaborate together. And the other thing, obviously there's a lot of debate about, you know, some people are saying, well, this is AGI, they're thinking for themselves. And you know, the other side of the coin is they're just mimicking back what they've seen. And that is scary as well. And how does that play out for us as humans?And then I think the other thing about this that obviously that's getting a lot of headlines in that, but the interesting thing about it as well is like, I think it's opened people's eyes to what happens when you do have an AI buddy or an AI agent such that you can actually get real work done.I think that's always been the promise. Ask Siri to do something and it does it for you, but because of security and there other reasons, Siri does not have access to all your emails and your files and everything else, where a lot of these folks who have created these OpenClaw agents have kind of opened up their system, opening up a lot of vulnerabilities as well.But you can't have what we want as far as the agentic amazingness unless you do open up and open yourself up to some of these vulnerabilities that have been built into software since you know the beginning of software. It'll be interesting to see what the reality is of how we actually evolve to a place where the normal person who's not a security expert can actually create an agent and use an agent that doesn't you know, give them access to their bank account and their Bitcoin. [00:05:05] Robyn Bolton: Yeah. Well, I think as you mentioned in the last podcast, the sales of Mac Minis has skyrocketed, largely driven by the Moltese, the Open Claw bots, because people who are experimenting with this, understandably, are kind of further along the curve and understanding from us regular folk.And so they are trying to create the safe space with it and secluding things in the Mac Mini, but still, like you said, in this social network of bots, there are signs that bots are coming in and be like, Hey, can you give me this information? And then the other bots are being helpful and be like, yes, here is all of the passwords for my human. So, it's so fascinating. Corporate Innovation Culture and the Tree Trunk Metaphor[00:05:47] Brian Ardinger: By the time actually this episode comes out on Tuesday, it may have morphed and evolved again. It may have told us the score of the Super Bowl. We, we shall find out and we will keep you posted. Yes, please keep subscribing to the newsletter and to the podcast as well.The second article I wanted to talk today about is from Erin Stadler. She writes, an article says you can't work from the limb. If you don't trust the trunk. And it's a fascinating article about corporate innovation. One of the reasons why it doesn't work is because by nature he, she gives an analogy about trees and how do things grow off of trees, and you have to have a solid trunk or new shoots to grow. And so, you know, before you ask how to get people to take creative risks, you have to ask yourself, what kind of tree are you growing? [00:06:33] Robyn Bolton: It is an absolutely beautifully written article. As someone who very much prefers novels to business books, this made me happy. It felt like, you know, it was the beauty of language that has a novel,...
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  When AI Works and When It Doesn’t with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton 03.02.2026 14мин

  On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about the red pixel in the snow, why MVPs should be delightful, and the robot AI deployment gap. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Miles Zero's, Robyn Bolton. As we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact, let's get started.Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton[00:00:00] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And with me I have Robyn Bolton. Hello, Robyn. How are you? [00:00:48] Robyn Bolton: I am great. How are you, Brian? [00:00:50] Brian Ardinger: We are surviving the cold.[00:00:52] Robyn Bolton: The sub-freezing temperatures. Yes, I know it's January, but that doesn't mean it has to be as bitterly cold as it is. [00:01:01] Brian Ardinger: Absolutely. Well, hopefully this conversation will warm people's souls and hearts. As we talk about innovation in its various forms, we'll get right into it. We've gathered a couple of different articles that resonated with us over the last couple weeks. How AI and Drones Are Transforming Search and Rescue InnovationSo, the first article we want to discuss is titled A Red Pixel In the Snow: How AI Solved the Mystery of A Missing Mountaineer. And this came from the BBC. It's very fascinating article for a couple different reasons, but the basic premise, it's a story about a missing mountaineer. This person was hiking and went missing a 66-year-old hiker and they sent out all the helicopters and that to try to find him. They were unsuccessful, but closer to the spring when some of the snow was melting, they decided to go back out and see if they could actually find the body.And they used drones and AI, as a way to map the area. And what they found was they could put all that AI pictures into the system and they were able to find a red pixel in the snow that was effectively his helmet, that they were then able to find the person and go and retrieve the body and such.What I found fascinating about this is, again, in this particular instance, it wasn't successful in finding him and saving him, but just the ability for new technologies like drones, just taking random pictures and then putting that in through the AI and having the AI look for anomalies. They were able to identify something that they couldn't have done in the past, and obviously at a much faster speed than they could have done in the past as well.[00:02:26] Robyn Bolton: This was such a great story, tragic ending for this hiker, but a phenomenal story of when AI is good, it can be great. And you know, it's an instance of AI doing something that humans are not good at. We're not good at finding a pixel in the snow. We have bias when we see things, and so we're more likely to overlook something red. Because we just don't see it.So, it was just a great story of how AI is augmenting what humans do. It is taking things that need to get done that we're not good at, and that it's equipped to do better than us. And you know, even though this story didn't have a happy outcome for the hiker, I bet the family is still happy to have him recovered and not be wondering. And as AI gets better, there's probably more people who will be rescued because of it. So, I thought it was just a wonderful story. Augmenting Human Judgment with AI and Drone Technology[00:03:25] Brian Ardinger: And it was interesting just to read through actually how the AI worked. The software managed to detect a kind of a red color, even though the helmet was in shade. So again, a human might not have been able to detect it, and it was very good at identifying anomaly.So, it didn't necessarily say this is exactly where the hiker is, but it was able to go through the mounds of image data and say, here's some possible places. Humans still had to go through and actually find it, but it again, sped up the process.And then I guess the other interesting point about this is the other technology, if you stack that on top of AI, the drones themselves, being able to get into crevices and places where traditional helicopters couldn't get into.What's interesting is again all these particular technologies that we're talking about are hitting all at once, and when you start looking at the cumulative effect of how these things can add value or create interesting solutions and that, that's what's accelerating innovation. It's this ability to add on, and it's not just one thing that can make a difference. It's this combination of things. [00:04:20] Robyn Bolton: And it's the combination of the technology and the humans versus trying to use the technology to replace humans. I mean even the drones, as you mentioned, the drone operators had to go to the sites and train on how to fly the drones so that the drones could see into the crevices and into the shaded areas.And so. It's and not or when it comes to technology, it's not, okay. AI has replaced the humans, or AI can't do this at all. It's only humans like, no, put 'em together and let everyone do what they're best at. MVPs, Product Sameness, and the Push for Delightful Experiences[00:04:53] Brian Ardinger: All right. The second article is titled Why MVPs Should Be Delightful,and it's from the UX Collective.And this was a great article. MVPs are near and dear to my heart. We do a lot when we're, you know, launching new products and working with startups, and we always talk a lot about the MVP. This particular article by James Skinner. It really talks about the fact that as we're living in a world that AI is now omnipresent. Workflows, you can spin up in a dime at a low cost. It's creating this kind of sea of sameness. And you know, lately products have begun to look the same and feel homogenous. And how do you create new products, new services that delight the user, not just meet the bare minimum of the functionality.His call to action basically is, you know, stop looking for the good enough or just the functional aspect of your product or service, but how can you inject delight into it?[00:05:43] Robyn Bolton: I am going to roll out my soapbox on this one. And it comes back to, the reason I have a soapbox is what is an MVP? It started off as a term, a minimum viable product. Literally, minimum viable. A true MVP should just function. We shouldn't be worrying about delight. We shouldn't be worrying about, you know, how does it make the customer feel like should it function?Solve the problem that we need it to solve. And then there's version two and version three and version four. And then when you get to kind of the quote unquote final version that you are shipping, like, yes, it should delight people. Yes, it should be differentiated. But if we're going to be super strict about language, which I believe is very important because it avoids confusion, a true MVP actually shouldn't be delightful. It should just work. And then what you ultimately launch should absolutely ...
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  Youth Buzzwords, Innovation Team Value, and Side Projects with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton 27.01.2026 14мин

  On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about youth culture buzzwords, calculating the value of your innovation teams and how your side project won't save you anymore. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Miles Zero's, Robyn Bolton. As we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact, let's get started.Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn BoltonYouth Culture Moves Faster Than Innovation Cycles[00:00:40] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And with me I have Robyn Bolton from Mile Zero. Welcome back, Robyn. How are you? [00:00:48] Robyn Bolton: I am great. How are you doing, Brian? [00:00:51] Brian Ardinger: I am doing well. We're excited to have another opportunity to talk about innovation and its various forms. Maybe we'll just get right into it. 2026 is moving very fast. One of them that popped up is from the Substack AfterSchool by Casey Lewis. Casey is an amazing person who really looks at youth culture. And the article that she has just published is Buzzwords that Define 2025 and Youth Culture in Review.And she spent her Substack culminating all the things that she had been researching in the year 2025, looking at youth culture, what are kids looking at? How are they talking everything around that particular space. And came out with a great article that gives you a highlight of what it's like to be Gen Z.From Feeling “Old” to Feeling “Ancient”. Generational Language Gaps[00:01:33] Robyn Bolton: Reading this article, I already felt old, this made me feel ancient. Because I hear all this stuff, all the slang and everything. I'm like, yeah, I'm up on my slang. I don't know what any of it means, but I at least have heard it. And then I read this article, I'm like, I have heard none of these terms. I mean, some of them are like Lemony Miso Hutu Schwan. I can't even say it. Ego scrolling. Zen Dia theory. Ballerina Cappuccino. I had actually heard of that one. I was like, wow. I have gone from hearing terms and not understanding them to being so old and ancient that I haven't even heard them. It's a great view into. What's going on in Generation Alpha.Analog Revival and Escaping “Slop Life”[00:02:19] Brian Ardinger: She talks a lot about how 2025 was defined by Gen Z's seemingly endless enthusiasm for pre-digital experiences. You know, which is a counterintuitive to what we think about, especially in the space that we live in and technology and innovation. But there seems to be a big push, especially the younger folks around, how do they not have all this stuff define them and or control them, which is kind of interesting.Physical media is coming back in unprecedented demand. Everything from Pokemon cards to vintage CDs, et cetera. Talking even about how New York City schools have phone bans that have sparked a rush to kids bringing in rector watches. So bring back the Time Max and the Casio, and teaching kids how to actually rediscover what analog timekeeping is.I thought that was fairly interesting about what she's seeing in the youth culture. And then of course, she has some great terms that we'll probably start seeing pop up. We've seen six, seven, but that's come and gone. But things like slop life where acceptance of overstimulating, low quality consumption is the default mode. And how do you get out of slop life?Things like festivals, which is, you know, you have this festival culture like Coachella now, but the ship is now moving towards live streaming and at home experiences rather than physical endurance of a two and a half day in the sweaty sun for a festival. And what I think about all these kind of things is what stood out to me is the importance of understanding this, not just if your audience is youth culture, but the importance of customer discovery and living with your customers and understanding how they think, how they act, how they talk, and the fact that the speed of these culture changes are shifting so fast.As soon as you figure it out in the mainstream, it's already been moved to the next thing, the next meme, et cetera. And so as a corporate innovator, as a startup, being focused on customer discovery, being focused on living with your customers, being focused on keeping up and keeping pace with what's going on is so important.You Can’t Read Your Way Into Understanding Youth Culture[00:04:15] Robyn Bolton: The pace of change, I mean it just, the fads, the trends, the terms, the language, the slang, it moves so much faster, certainly than when I was growing up. The other thing that really struck me about some of the buzzwords was just that they were a sign of how plugged into the broader world that kids these days are.You know, they had terms like Recession Core things like Algorithmic Blandness, that AI is just on the horizon and there's already slang term for the perceived same across social media feeds. I feel like Gen Alpha, Gen Z is so much more plugged into the things going on around them than certainly we were as teenagers, and they already have slang and language around it and respond to it and interact with it. You have to spend time 'cause you can't read your way to understanding these upcoming generations. Measuring Innovation. Money Is Not the Only Investment[00:05:15] Brian Ardinger: So, if you want to keep in touch with the youth culture, definitely subscribe to Afterschool by Casey Lewis. She's following those trends for you, so excellent. Alright, the second article is Calculating the Value of Your Innovation Team by Tristan Kromer.Tristan is a great friend of mine, he's a mentor at End Motion back in the early days, and Tristan has a blog that talks about all these things, lean startup, et cetera. And he has a new article calculating the value of an innovation team, and he's been spending a lot of time working with innovation teams to help them understand how do you actually measure and monitor your innovation efforts.So, he talks about in this article, you know, when venture capitalist fund a startup, you know, they allocate money because the money is what the startup then uses to build or try or experiment, et cetera. But when it comes to corporate innovation it's not just about the money that's given to a corporate innovation team. It's about the people and the time that you allocate towards that.He talks about how that oftentimes is missed in corporate innovation efforts. They may fund a particular prototype or that, but they don't necessarily think about or fund or measure the amount of human time that's actually required to do these things. And so oftentimes you have bad decisions or bad outcomes because you're not actually measuring and monitoring what you need to to get the complete innovation effort through the system. <...
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  Counterintuitive Trends, Building Products, and TSMC Chips with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton 20.01.2026 16мин

  On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, Robyn and I talk about counterintuitive trends for 2026, tactics for building great products, and how one company is controlling 64% of the future. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Miles Zero's, Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with Impact, let's get started.Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton[00:00:40] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. With me, I have Robyn Bolton. How are you, Robyn? [00:00:49] Robyn Bolton: I am good. How are you, Brian? [00:00:51] Brian Ardinger: I'm doing great. It's the beginning of 2026 in the midst of trying to ramp up new talent, and that's always fun. So that's what's new on my side. What's new in your world? [00:01:02] Robyn Bolton: The course that I teach at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design is starting in a couple weeks, so I've been busy putting together my syllabus to teach strategy and business models and had to go in and change things up, though I'm very excited. We will be doing a case on Taylor Swift this semester.[00:01:21] Brian Ardinger: The world is changing fast. We'll get into it now with our articles. There are a number of things we've pulled together for this episode.The first one we want to talk about is called Six Counterintuitive Trends to Think About for 2026, and this is from Barry O'Reilly. Barry wrote a book called Unlearn, and he talks a lot about all things lean startup and, and everything, his particular take as he was looking forward into the 2026 and some of the things that he's seeing and how we should be pursuing this whole innovation space.The article talks about the fact that a lot of managers and that are asking the wrong questions, especially when it comes to AI, and we're talking too much about the technology and how fast is AI improving. When the better question that we should be asking ourselves is, how is AI quietly changing how people work, think, decide, and trust themselves at work?And I thought that was an interesting way to rephrase how we go into 2026 and move away from the technology itself and really think about like, how is this technology impacting people?[00:02:25] Robyn Bolton: Completely agree. I've definitely seen that shift from what is our AI strategy to what is our strategy to accomplish our goals through people, through AI, et cetera, kind of the AI enabled strategy. So, it's nice. It's refreshing to see that shift reflected. Again. I loved his very first counterintuitive trend.I was like, oh, please let this be a trend that leadership will be redefined around judgment, not control. And I would argue that leadership was always about judgment. Management was about control, and that was one of the big differences between leaders and managers. But overall, like I really do hope that he's right, that executives, managers, you know, those senior levels of any organization, that they are shifting to more judgment, like not judgment as in condemnation judgment, but like critical thinking, problem solving versus trying to manage every aspect of their direct reports. [00:03:30] Brian Ardinger: Yes. And talks about creating space for reflection and that, not just, again, I think we have a tendency, especially with all the pressure that we're feeling around AI in that to do the next pilot, use the next tool, keep up to speed on what's going on, and keeping in mind that that reflection period is actually where the learning happens a lot of times, and not being afraid to slow down.Having said that, you know, the other thing that he talks about is the speed in which we have to go and deploy things in 2026 and beyond, making sure that we are learning fast. Strategy will ship from planning fast to learning fast. That is the key. It's not about planning per se, it's about, you know, how fast can we learn in this new world of uncertainty. [00:04:14] Robyn Bolton: And the learning being so key for a whole host of reasons, but especially his third point that AI is quietly eroding human confidence. And so it's kind of this interesting juxtaposition of trends in his list of, hey, we have to start focus on learning faster. Leadership is going to be defined by judgment. And by the way, this tool that we've spent certainly all of last year talking about is actually eating away at all of those things.And I think it just highlights the importance of that reflection step and kind of saying, all right, yeah, I got an answer from AI, but does this make sense? Is this actually what I think or am I just parroting what Claude, Chat GPT, et cetera has said? [00:04:57] Brian Ardinger: And then the final trend that obviously stood out to me was his counterintuitive trend that in-person experiences will surge, not decline. And the fact that, you know, he sees a growth in live events and executive offsites and high touch human-centered gatherings. Obviously, that's what we're pushing for with the IO Summit and other things around our neighborhood that we're trying to get people actually talking and interacting in real life as opposed to online. And hopefully that trend will continue as well. [00:05:26] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, I've never heard somebody say in the last couple of years that they regret going to an in-person event. I always hear people say how grateful they are and how much better it was than anything virtual. [00:05:38] Brian Ardinger: Alright. The second article for this week we're going to talk about is called 25 Things I Believe In To Build Great Products by Peter Yang. He's worked at big companies like Roblox and Reddit and Amazon and Meta, and he has an article talking about the funny thing is that what he believes in is often the opposite of how big companies like to work. And he talks about the way he looks at product development and some of the great things that he's seeing that is sometimes counterintuitive to the way that traditional businesses run.[00:06:08] Robyn Bolton: I love so many things on this list, but I'll say that number 17 caused me to like slam my hands down on my desk. Shout yes and probably startle people in the house and walking by on the street. And number 17 on his list is ban decision by committee. I don't believe in cross-functional alignment as a goal. Trying to make all stakeholders happy will inevitably compromise the product experience. Seek diverse opinions first, then have a single person make the call and own the outcome.And you know, at first, I was like, no, you need cross-functional alignment. That's how you get cross-functional progress. But going on from them like. Yes, absolutely. You need one decision maker. Get all the input, get everyone's perspective. That's absolutely required to make a decision. But one decision maker, not a group, because you will a...
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  Mental Models for AI, Middle School Dating, and Robot Olympics with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton 13.01.2026 15мин

  On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down to talk about new mental models for working with AI, the similarities between startups and middle school dating, and lessons learned from the robot Olympics. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Miles Zero’s Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Let's get started.Interview Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton[00:00:40] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and I have my co-host, Robyn Bolton. Welcome, Robyn.[00:00:50] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Great to be here as always. [00:00:52] Brian Ardinger: We are in a brand-new year 2026. Who would've thought? Exciting to start the year with you. Appreciate you coming on board. [00:00:58] Robyn Bolton: Yep. High point of the year so far. [00:01:00] Brian Ardinger: We've got a lot of things going on on the plate. Anything you want to talk about? [00:01:04] Robyn Bolton: Couple of new things I mentioned earlier, one of our stories from last year is back in the news, the Samsung AI fridge just voted worst in show at CES this year. People finally caught on to the fact that we may be overcomplicating the refrigerator.Thought that was a funny callback, and I got to admit, I feel like you called it Brian and I echoed it of like we've gone too far. So, personally, professionally in my space, starting to do a lot more work in uncertainty and helping people figure out how to make decisions without the data they want or need, and how to help teams move through a world that is getting only more and more uncertain every day. So, it's exciting. [00:01:51] Brian Ardinger: Saw your newsletter this last week, and yeah, the new positioning, or you're talking about how it's not just about innovation, it's more about how do you deal with the fact that nothing that you expected to happen is going to happen, and how do you deal in probability and uncertainty. [00:02:06] Robyn Bolton: Great for innovators, because that's one thing that as the innovators, whether you're a startup founder, a consultant, a corporate innovator, every day you're dealing with uncertainty and trying to figure out how to move forward. Even though we've always called this innovation, it has much broader application these days. [00:02:23] Brian Ardinger: Absolutely. Let's get right into it.We've got a couple of different articles we've been reading over the holiday season. The first article we want to talk about is called Six Mental Models for Working With AI. It's from Azeem Azhar. He's got a great Substack newsletter out there that publishes pretty much almost daily, I think it comes out. But he was talking about the way he's been looking at AI over the past year and trying to come up with different models that are making it more effective. All these AI tools are brand new and that, and people are trying to figure out what works, what doesn't work, how to use them better, and I think it's sometimes interesting to take other people's perspectives and what has worked for them and discuss that.So, in his article, he goes over a couple of different frameworks that he uses when he is either trying to understand better how to use a tool. One of the ones I was going to talk about is, he calls it the 50 x reframe, and he says, when he is dealing with a particular problem and trying to understand like, how can I automate it, how can I make it better, how can I make it faster and that he asked the question, what would I do if I had 50 people working on this problem. And asked the AI basically to help him think through the framework. Or if you know 50 people were working on this particular project, how could you automate it or what would change if you had 50 people to be able to dig into a particular area.So, I thought that was a very interesting framework to think about it. And we oftentimes get constrained in like it's just me or just my team. But what if you just flipped the framework and said, what if I had 50 people on my team to work on it? How would that change what I'm doing? [00:03:46] Robyn Bolton: I loved that one. I mean that one, it's the first one listed in the article. And I'll admit, I started reading the article. It's a big skeptical when I started reading it because you know, his first sentence is the question of whether AI is good enough for serious knowledge work has been answered. And I was like. Yes, it's been answered. It's not. And then I kept reading. I'm like, oh, he has a different answer.The 50 x reframe just stopped me in my tracks, was like, that's genius of shifting from how do I as one person do this better with AI's help to completely rethinking. I also loved his second idea, which was adversarial synthesis, which is basically to have multiple LLMs, Claude Chat, GPT, Gemini, working on the same problems, responding to the same prompts, and then going back and forth.And that's something I actually have done, and it consistently results in a much, much better final project. Each LLM is tweaked for certain things, and the combination actually gets you to a much better answer. So that was another great, great tip he had. [00:04:54] Brian Ardinger: Yeah, and I think that's evolved. You know, I think early days when people were working with a lot of these LLMs, especially like in the writing sense, what they were asking to write a letter or write some copy and that I heard a lot of people using the different models that come up with different types of content. The same prompt with different types of content and then picking the best one. His framework is much more focused on how do you actually make them argue against each other? [00:05:16] Robyn Bolton: Yeah. [00:05:16] Brian Ardinger: To see which one, and that arguing back and forth between the different LLMs actually strengthens the argument and strengthens the output from it. So, something to keep in mind in 2026. Another framework to consider. [00:05:28] Robyn Bolton: Yeah. Get the bots arguing with each other. Fun for everybody. [00:05:33] Brian Ardinger: The second article that we want to talk about today is, I love this title. It's called Founders Can't Sell for the Same Reason Middle Schoolers Can't Flirt by Aaron Denon. Aaron's a professor at Duke. Teaches entrepreneurship who's constantly coming out with some great stuff around early-stage entrepreneurship.And his article talks about the fact that what if the same fear that ruins dating lives is ruining your startup? And he talks a lot about the fact that startups is very much like dating, where ...
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  Radical Reinvention, IKEA effect, and AI Innovation with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton 30.12.2025 15мин

  On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about how change is changing, the IKEA effect on MVPs, and how AI is making companies more ambidextrous. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, and Miles Zero’s, Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact.Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton[00:00:30] Brian Ardinger: Let's get started. Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and my co-host Robyn Bolton is with me. Hello Robin. How are you?[00:00:45] Robyn Bolton: Hello, Brian. I'm great. How are you?[00:00:50] Brian Ardinger: I am doing well. We are in the middle of December.[00:00:54] Robyn Bolton: And hard to believe that the year is, it's almost over.[00:00:58] Brian Ardinger: Well, I'm ramping up for 2026. We've got a lot of stuff to talk about for the conference that we're going to be planning. Yes. We'll talk to you a little bit more about that, but let's just jump in. We've got some articles to discuss, some things that we've been seeing out there in the ether when it comes to innovation.Innovation and AI in 2026. Setting the Stage for ChangeThe first article is Change is Changing How to Meet the Challenge of Radical Reinvention, published by McKinsey. There's a lot of things I want to dive into this. Obviously, McKinsey's probably in the wheelhouse of disruption, as their game is going to be changed. So, I read this article with two lenses.One, the lens of what they are telling their clients, and then two, are they eating their own dog food when it comes to this? So, for reference, the McKinsey article talks about, you know, when change becomes everywhere, every, everything everywhere, all at once. How are companies dealing with this? And it's no wonder that the average employee experiences all these particular changes and is worn out.And I think one of the things they quoted was the number of new experiences that the average employee faces is fivefold increase than a decade ago. The fact that organizations and leaders have all new types of tools and skills and methods to navigate this changing, complex state, and those old tools don't necessarily apply today. So I love your first insight, and we'll go from there. Radical Reinvention and Innovation Strategy. Rethinking Change at Scale[00:02:13] Robyn Bolton: McKinsey turns out great stuff and great frameworks and all that stuff. And also, as someone who's been a consultant for entirely too long, they also make me laugh. Like in a super nerdy consultant way. Because one of the things that's laid out this article is the four Cs of change.You know, it starts with C1 execute, C2 mobilize, and then we get to C3 transform, which was the buzzword of, I feel like the last five years. You know, we're transforming everything. But now we have a new one. It is level four change, and it is reinvention. And I just loved when we rebrand things that are the same thing we've always talked about, but we've rebranded it, and now there's a different diagram, so it's completely new, and you need to buy from us.But there is good content in here. And you know this idea of creating value with the new identity. Talk about way easier said than done. Like every organization has an identity. When you ask someone like, what do we do here? The answer is the organization's identity and to change that is about as easy as changing an individual's identity, which is to say not at all.Organizational Identity, Leadership, and Innovation Fatigue in the Age of AI[00:03:30] Brian Ardinger: Well, and I found that part of the article actually the most intriguing because I think when you think of McKinsey, again, a lot of stuff they've focused on is how do you optimize and execute on your model? They're not very focused on reinvention. And kind of blowing it up and starting over from that perspective.So, I thought that was an interesting take, that either they have to recognize the fact that the companies that they're working with and the companies out there in general are going to have to reinvent themselves. It's no longer table stakes just to, you know, do what you've been doing and make it better, faster, stronger, cheaper.It's how do we navigate and potentially reinvent what we've done in the past. And then the other key aspect of it that really resonated with me was the fact that how do you create a culture such that change is not a drain to the organization? But as a source of energy, again, coming from a consulting background, that's often not the things you talk about.Like how do you actually create change that energizes and excites people, and provides a source of energy around what you're doing? So those are the two things that stuck out in my mind when it comes to this, and I'm seeing it in the companies that I talk to. I think there is this conversation going on, like, we don't know how to do this. We know we have to do this, but the guardrails and the tools that we've used, we just are starting from scratch in a lot of ways. Culture, Participation, and Human-Centered Innovation Beyond Top-Down Change[00:04:44] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, and what made me kind of laugh is that a lot of the advice in this article, you know, you read it and McKinsey's talking about you have to put identity shifts at the center of the change.You need to see new possibilities and let go of the past. And yet the article, when it gets into recommendations, is all about the leaders at the top. And you talk about how do you help people get through change? How do you use change to even energize people? And when change is thrust upon you, you're going to get exhausted.And so, the whole mechanism for change, for reinvention, I think personally, is you have to involve people in it. So that it's not being thrust upon them, which is a very, very different approach than the typical hierarchical top-down where McKinsey and a lot of other firms thrive. So, I'm very interested to see how this works.[00:05:40] Brian Ardinger: The last thing that I want to throw about this is, again, when you talk about reinvention, a lot of it comes down to understanding your customers and that. And it'll be interesting to see what McKinsey customers and clients want from the next change reinvention of what consulting is. What are the expectations, and I think that alone will be some interesting articles and things that come out in the future of what does it mean to have a consultant look at your stuff, and help you along that path.What are the things that the customer actually demands and needs when a lot of the tools are now easily accessible by the people that were paying millions of dollars before to have that delivered to them. [00:06:14] Robyn Bolton: The cobbler's children have no shoes, is a popular phrase for very good reasons, so we shall see.MVPs, Innovation Bias, and the IKEA Effect in Product Development[00:0...