AI Innovation, Customer Trust, and Startup Strategy with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, Robyn and I talk about creating flywheel effects through customer obsession, the landscape of AI startups and what's real and what's not, and why workers don't trust AI. Let's get started.

Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, and Miles Zero's Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating Innovations with Impact. Let's get started.

Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

Startup Ecosystem Building, Travel, and Early Observations

[00:00:45] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and with me, I have a co-host Robyn Bolton from Mile Zero. Welcome, Robyn.

[00:00:50] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Great to see you, Brian. 

[00:00:52] Brian Ardinger: Great to see you. Both you and I have been on the road quite a bit for the last couple weeks, so it's nice to actually say hello again and get back into the swing of things.

I spent last week in Savannah, Georgia, talking about startup ecosystem building with the Savannah Harbor Innovation Partnership. And they're looking for new ways to spice up and kickstart a lot of the startup activity there. So it was quite interesting. As an innovator, I think it's always important to get out to other communities and see what's going on and share war stories and best practices and all that kind of fun stuff. So, it was fun to get out there.

I give a shout out to what they're trying to do, trying to get the right people across all parts of their ecosystem together, whether it's founders or investors, university, and things along those lines. I think they're doing a good job of trying to kickstart a lot of stuff going on down there. I'm excited to see where they go to. 

[00:01:41] Robyn Bolton: Savannah is home to one of my favorite innovations, the Savannah Bananas. But yes, I was on the road too. I went a little further afield. I was in London for the Thinkers 50 Conference, which as you would imagine was extremely interesting, especially these days where everything is so volatile and uncertain everywhere across the globe.

Thinkers 50 Takeaways and Early Reflections on Uncertainty

And there was a lot of discussion around how now more than ever, is a time for courage and to be brave. There was a lot of discussion around what the future holds and several brave souls who just said, we don't know. It could be anything. One of my favorites was Daniel Pink. He said, basically, we're living in the era of Schrödinger's cat, that the future will be radically different and the same.

All at the same time. And I'm like, okay, that sounds totally fair. So lots of really interesting ideas. Lots to think about, as you would expect from a conference's called Thinkers 50. Fascinating, fascinating conversations. 

[00:02:47] Brian Ardinger: Now we're going to open the box and what do we find when, when it's opened? The box is already open. You know, we're going down that path no matter what. And you know, it is kind of interesting. You, you're seeing a lot more bubble talk and things like that, but yet yesterday Nvidia had their quarterly announcements and $5 trillion valuation and blew out their estimates.

And so it's like, well, it's not a bubble yet, or people are at least spending money NVIDIA's getting paid for this stuff. So, we'll, we'll see where it all shakes out. 

[00:03:12] Robyn Bolton: Yeah. Even if it's a bubble, I mean, we had an internet bubble back in the early part of the century and it didn't mean the internet went away. It just means we resorted ourselves. So even if AI is a bubble, I don't think it's going away.

The Flywheel Effect, Customer Obsession, and Human-Centered Touchpoints

[00:03:26] Brian Ardinger: Got three articles to talk about today. First one's called the Flywheel Effect: How Customer Obsession Creates Self-Reinforcing Advantages. This is from Wildfire Labs. They've been putting out some great content. The Flying Wheel Effect talks about building a startup isn't about growth hacking. It's really about how do you create customer experiences and these flywheels that generate self-reinforcing momentum because there's so many things out there taking aways attention and competing for dollars and mindset.

So how do you build into your process different ways that you can create a flywheel to differentiate and build it up? So, one of the examples they talk about is chewy.com and how Chewy