September 10, 2024 • 53 mins
In this episode of "Building Brand Gravity," Steve Halsey interviews Kim Losey, CEO of Rapid Robotics, about her journey from designer to marketer to one of Silicon Valley's few female CEOs. The discussion centers on the transformative power of AI-driven manufacturing and the importance of design thinking, customer experience and bold innovation.
Kim shares insights from her diverse career, including her time at Hasbro, where she learned to integrate design thinking into business strategy. She explains how Rapid Robotics is revolutionizing manufacturing with adaptable, scalable and efficient AI and robotics solutions. The concept of "smart fields," which are dynamic, ever-evolving manufacturing environments, is highlighted as a key innovation.
Kim also emphasizes the need for robotics to be intuitive, cost-effective and able to handle the variability of modern business demands. She advocates for a customer-centric approach, ensuring that technology serves a clear purpose and delivers tangible results.
Highlights of this episode include:
Kim shares insights from her diverse career, including her time at Hasbro, where she learned to integrate design thinking into business strategy. She explains how Rapid Robotics is revolutionizing manufacturing with adaptable, scalable and efficient AI and robotics solutions. The concept of "smart fields," which are dynamic, ever-evolving manufacturing environments, is highlighted as a key innovation.
Kim also emphasizes the need for robotics to be intuitive, cost-effective and able to handle the variability of modern business demands. She advocates for a customer-centric approach, ensuring that technology serves a clear purpose and delivers tangible results.
Highlights of this episode include:
- Losey’s transition from creating toy robots at Hasbro to developing real-world automation solutions at Rapid Robotics.
- The concept of "smart fields" in manufacturing, which are adaptable and scalable environments optimized for efficiency.
- The importance of design thinking and customer-centricity in driving innovation.
- The challenges and opportunities in the AI-driven robotics industry.
- The need for transparency and simplicity in deploying and scaling robotics solutions.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
When one thinks about robotics, oftentimes what comes to mind
are the robots from the movies and from TVs. Some
may automatically go to the terminator. Me myself, I go
to Rosie, the robot from the jetson. She could think,
she could see, she could do, She was basically part
of the family. We're going to be joined by Kim Losi,
(00:28):
CEO of Rapid Robotics, who's going to talk about the
lessons that she's learned going from a designer to a
marketer to now one of the few female CEOs in
Silicon Valley, and the importance of design, thinking customer experience,
and never being afraid to think big. Join us in
(00:50):
Kim Losi on the next episode of Building Brand Gravity.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
You are listening to Building Brand Gravity Attracting People into
Your Orbit, a GNS business communications podcast. This is a
show for communications pros across industries looking to gain an
inside of you into industry influence. You're about to hear
a conversation with leading industry professionals talking about the importance
(01:22):
of building business impact through sound brand strategy.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Let's get into the show.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Building Brand Gravity.
I'm Steve Halsey. In this episode, we'll be talking with
Kim Losey, CEO of Rapid Robotics, on the topic of
AI driven manufacturing as more and more automation and robotics
seem to be taking over the world. We're going to
explore how her innovative leadership approach was inspired in part
(01:53):
by the design thinking she learned at Hasbro, and how
she's applied that in a really customer set metric focus
to move from creating and marketing toy robots to developing
real ones that are fundamentally changing the face of automation.
Kim is a serial entrepreneur and a business designer. She
has a passion for manufacturing, marketing, and really leading high
(02:17):
growth businesses. And I'm really excited about today's conversation because
she really seems to have a knack for joining companies
at inflection points in their journey and really helping kind
of speed their transformation. So let me just give you
a little bit more about her background. She's led global
teams and being responsible for growth of some of the
(02:37):
most well known toy and entertainment brands. She's built award
winning omni channel retail businesses. She was part of the
founding team of Modio, which Audiodesk acquired in twenty fourteen,
and from there she became responsible for their emerging products,
acquisitions and growth, including Fusion three sixty. That wasn't enough,
(03:00):
she moved on joined Rapid Robotics, where she served as
a Chief Growth Officer and Chief Marketing Officer before being
recently named as their new CEO. And she is one
of the few female executives in both robotics and technology space,
so some rare air. Indeed, Kim, welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
So now that I embarrassed you with like the official bio,
maybe you can give our listeners a little bit of
background about about who Kim is and how you got here.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Thanks, Well it's really been you know, as I sit back,
and there are days honestly that I think, like, how
did I even get here? I don't know, you know,
it's an honor to be in this position, and I think,
you know, even as a little kid, I was always
sort of dreaming up new ways of being able to
do things. And I think that's where like the business
(03:57):
designer came from you know, I actually I did go
to school originally for design, and then I realized, you know, recognized,
I guess my parents aren't famous. I don't have a
giant trust fund that was going to support this dream
business that I wanted to make.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
So I better go do something else.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
So I really got into marketing and entrepreneurship, and but
still with that strong design angle, and so, you know,
I tend to really think about everything in terms of why,
why is it this way?
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Does it? Is it optimal? This way?
Speaker 4 (04:28):
How could it be better? What really matters to people?
And then that usually leads us to you know, leads
myself and my teams to big ideas that kind of
make businesses grow. So so that's that's been sort of.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
The continuous path.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
I guess They've taken a lot of different steps to
kind of get there, but that's been the similarity across
my career.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
So you've been doing design thinking before design thinking was
a buzzword, Yeah, I suppose. So let me let me
at the stage a little bit for our conversation for
our listeners here in terms of just really understanding the
need for AI driven robotics, automation and all those other things.
(05:13):
You know, a broad range of companies from manufacturings to
third party logistics providers, food and beverage processors, companies and
consumer package good technology and electronics I'm not done yet,
retail and e commerce, fulfillment center, pharmaceutical and med device manufacturers,
automotive industry, agriculture operations, and even the assembly of things
(05:38):
that are fundamental for renewable energy. They all seem to
have one thing in common, and that's that they all
need really adaptable, scalable, and efficient models for operations to
stay competitive and meet market demands that seem to be
evolving at a better and faster pace. Yet almost all
of them face some pretty common chatchallenges workforce, capital, investment,
(06:04):
supply chain chaos, just the speed of the change of
consumer preferences and the list of that all goes on.
So this kind of inflection point, not just of rapid
robotics but of the industry, you know, really is where
I think the promise of AI robotics and automation come in.
So from where you sit, how have all these different
(06:27):
factors really kind of driven how you guys think at
rapid robotics and where you're going.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
I always when I'm trying to solve problems like this,
always put myself in the shoes of the customer. You know,
it's tricky sometimes working for a technology company where you're
surrounded by amazing ideas that honestly are very easy to
get excited about, but it really comes back to what's
going to change somebody's change the life or the trajectory
(06:54):
of a company and the executives and the people at
that company, and so I put myself in their shoes,
and I just think, you know, I have less time.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
I am.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
I really want to do the right thing for our
sustainability initiatives and for the earth, and for my people
and for you know, bringing products to market that the
company has this vision for and I can't do it
because I don't have enough human labor to be able
to do it. The work that I do have for
(07:27):
those humans really shouldn't isn't very rewarding work for humans.
I think that I'm just like, there's less time, less money,
more constraints on everything, and it really adds to this
complexity that just becomes very hard to manage. And so
I think, you know, I think as a service provider,
as a robotics company. How can I think I can help.
(07:49):
I can help solve that problem. And that's where I
think AI is very exciting because we're just really at
the forefront of what's possible. And in a very non
technical way of thinking about AI, I think I go
back to my toy roots and toys and think, it's like,
you know, it's like a superpower, a power up right,
all of a sudden, I can do ten times more
(08:10):
than what ever possible before. I can handle much more complexity.
I can solve problems faster. I can solve them in
ways that I never would have even thought of, as
you know, with the usual human constraints that I have.
And that to me is, you know, is super exciting.
So I think, how do we harness that to be
able to solve these really big problems that customers are
(08:33):
facing in terms of being able to find ways to
use automation to do those you know, the dull, dirty, dangerous.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Kind of tasks.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
And I think the reason that automation has been so
hard for so many companies to handle is because there
is so much variability in in skews, and I think
the automation industry has been plagued by delays and uh,
you know, just sort of a lot, yeah, a lot
(09:03):
of stops and starts, and a lot of traditional thinking
about how things happen, and a lot of there hasn't
been a lot of transparency around pricing. And I just
think all that needs to stop. There's such a huge
opportunity ahead for all of us to be able to
win and to help customers win. We need to think
differently about it, and I think that you know, AI
(09:25):
can really help.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Us get there.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Well, And that's what I think so powerful about what
companies like yours are doing is you know, really embracing
that idea that you just hit of the variability of
SKUs and in a lot of ways think in an
industry agnostic way. Right. I just covered everything from ag
operations to manufacturing, to logistics to putting together you know,
(09:49):
turbines for win power. But that ability to think in
an agnostic way and embrace that variability really seems very powerful.
So when you sit there at Rapid and when you're
talking to new employees that you bring on, what do
you tell them about what is their mission? What are
they actually solving for the world?
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Well, I, I mean we are an American based company
right now. I mean, and we do have bigger plans
beyond that, but to start with, like, I am very
passionate about seeing manufacturers win and all the things that
become possible with that. And so, you know, I think
that's it. I think it's helping in some ways at
a very big, high level, Like we're helping we can
(10:32):
help to make a better world, and we can make
better products, we can make products more sustainably, we can
help companies be able to harness the human talent that
they do have to do really meaningful, thoughtful work rather
than you know, standing at a machine moving a thing
(10:53):
from one place to the other and people getting hurt
in terrible conditions, often very hot.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
And so I think that we're making things better, and
I think we're making things allowing things to be made
more cost effectively, which hopefully we'll bring manufacturing back to
this country in many ways, and for people to be
able to companies that if they're saving money in that way,
I think can use it toward more innovation that actually
(11:24):
makes better products.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
And I think there's a lot of power in what
you're saying, because what's interesting to me is it's not
all about technology. It's not about technology for the technology's sake.
It's ultimately what is it that we're trying to solve
and improve and in a lot of ways, how can
we make the world a better place? And I want
to want to kind of cover a topic here. You know,
(11:48):
we're marketers, so you know we can't have a marketing
discussion without coming up with new terms, right, that would
just be no flood, I mean, no fun.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Yeah, that's right. We should give it an acronym.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Too, exactly. So we'll come up with an acronym here.
But when you and I were chatting a little a
little while ago, we got into this riff where we
were talking about green fields and brown fields. And I
know everybody knows this, but just to kind of center
us for our listeners, you know, green fields are things
(12:22):
that are completely bespoken, built from scratch, right, it's really
starting from a virgin site and idea and building things up.
Brown Fields are when you're taking existing facilities or operations
that have become outdated and you need to update and
retrofit to basically breathe new life into them. And then
when you and I were talking, we really got to
(12:43):
this notion of it doesn't have to be greenfield or
brown field. What if we could create something that we
called the smart field. So we'll have to make an
acronym before we're done, but for the term smart field
to give some context to our listeners. It's essentially the
idea idea that you could create a next generation of
warehousing or manufacturing facilities where you kind of reimagine every
(13:07):
aspect of operations to find the optimal efficiency for a
particular workflow. Right. So that's central to the idea of
being smart is that you're not static. You can be
ever changing as customer preferences or consumer choice changes, as
market dynamics changes. Because in that case, and what we're
(13:30):
seeing with just the pace that you need to adjust
optimal basically changes from day to day, year to year,
So you can't retrofit the facility every time that you
do that. You basically need something that can help you
evolve with speed and with agility and can deploy things
in a different way. And from my very simplistic layman's viewpoint,
(13:54):
you know that's why stationary robots don't work for the
long term. You got these high setup call it's not
real easy to move them from one task to the other,
let it alone, from one part of facility to the other.
You got to retrain them, you got to work on
the new task. That means down down time, competitive disadvantage.
But what you guys are doing is really using adaptive
(14:17):
AI and particularly computer vision to really kind of turn
all that it's on its end. And that's what I
mean about, like kind of creating these smart fields that
you can adapt on the fly and you can move.
Can you tell me just a little bit about that,
I mean, tell me about smart fields, how do we
bring them to life? And then in particular, how can
(14:40):
that be a point of competitive advantage for companies like rapid.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
So I think, you know, going back to I don't
know for the past for ten years, I guess you know.
Ten years ago I started working for Autodesk on the
design and manufacturing organization and and learned although I learned
a lot about manufacturing in the toy industry, really spend
a lot of time with manufacturers through my work at Autodesk,
(15:10):
and I started to understand, you know, the whole concept
of digital transformation and the state that all of these
different companies were at you know, the complete range, and
even today you see very large companies that you know,
world renowned companies that are still in the early phases
(15:31):
of a digital transformation. And so you go into their
facility and they want robotics. They need robotics because they
don't have you know, their worker safety is a high
priority for many of them, and so they say, look,
these are the types of tasks where we're getting the
most injuries. We really would love to automate this thing.
And you see, well, there's all this infrastructure automation, old
(15:51):
equipment or other infrastructure that's in there, and a lot
of times robotics and automation take up it takes up
a lot of space, there's a lot of mechanical components,
it's not very agile, and it just doesn't work or
it costs so much money that then the ROI is
(16:12):
years later, and by then you're really needing to retrofit
the facility again. And as we were talking you know
that that week over breakfast, the green field concept, we
heard a lot about it over the past few years
when money was you know, quote unquote free. Right now
money is very expensive, much more expensive anyway, and we're
(16:34):
seeing more and more companies that are looking to retrofit
and modernize, you know, their the brown field kind of facility,
and that's where I think traditional solutions just don't work.
We need something that is agile, we need something that
is with a more minimal footprint. And for that's where
companies like Rapid I think can really come in. I
(16:56):
think if we think about automation in a different way
and think, why does it have to be so big?
Why does it have to be so permanent? Why does
it have to be so expensive and have so many components?
And there are good reasons that historically it has, but
with the increase in AI, generative AI and three dvision,
(17:17):
that doesn't have to be the case.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
You know.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
I kind of think about robotics like in terms of
you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and at the bottom
it really comes down to the fundamental layer is really
about perception. That robot needs to be able to understand
what is it seeing, where is it and what is
it seeing? And so we built rapid Id to be
(17:42):
able to do that. So all of a sudden, we're
giving this human like instinct to robots because they're able
to perceive what's in front of them, which means that
you can create systems or then you apply sort of
an application layer to the perception layer, and then you
apply the physical manifestation of that the hardware component, and
(18:06):
it can be optimized as a result of the bottom
two layers, and it gives you you know, means that
all of a sudden, you can deploy robots that have
a camera, a robot, and much more minimal footprint than
you've ever had before, which makes it fit more easily
into some of these you know, into like a smart
field kind of situation. It you know, means that it
(18:29):
costs less, it means that it has fewer components to
break it, and most importantly, I think it has the
ability to handle the variability of modern business. You don't
have to spend hours and days training waypoints for a
robot to know how to go to a thing. It
can see the thing, and then all of the the
(18:51):
AI and training models that go into it.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Tell it exactly.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
It knows here's where I have to go, Here's where
that thing is, Here's how I grasp it, Here's what
I grasp it with, here's the model. You know, it
can run an analysis almost instantly on which model should
I be using to pick that thing because I kind
of know what it is, or I know the classification.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Of that thing.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
So it all of a sudden gives you that agility
that you're looking for for a variety of products with
that small footprint, and that's applicable, and like you said,
all of those different industries, whether you're in you know,
consumer package goods, automotive industry. You know, all of these
customers I talk to, I sort of joke with them
(19:40):
about how complex their SKUs are.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
And someone very smart person.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Once said to me, you know, the thing that we
know that we can predict about consumers is they will
change their minds. And so when I talk to people
in the manufacturing space about that, they laugh and they're like,
you have no idea.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Actually, so many skews.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
I can imagine. Then I can only imagine, like what
the Amazon warehouse is like trying to pick and pack
in something like that. But that's that's absolutely fascinating thinking
about it in terms of the perception layer of being
able to actually see and process that with the application
level layer, the hardware layer, and then once you get
(20:24):
the AI on that that ability just to rapidly adapt
and deploy. And you know, you gave me a challenge.
We talked about smart field as our new term, not
saying we need to take these, but two possible acronyms
for you, right, So we could have that's our a's,
which would be smart field robotics agility that's what we
could deliver. Or we could have ar s's, which would
(20:48):
be agile robotics smart field. So we can come up
with some different acronyms that bring this together. But kind
of playing that concept out a little bit more then,
you know, a lot of what you're talking about is
then creating a paradigm shift, and a paradigm shift I
(21:08):
would think across the organization. So when you're trying to
tell this story about how to set up agile robotic
smart fields, shall we say, you know, between the engineering
department and the procurement department and other groups, does that
make storytelling that much more important to really unify the
(21:31):
challenge that you're trying to solve.
Speaker 4 (21:33):
Yeah, it's definitely one of the big challenges. And I
kind of go back to how I tend to approach
all the problems and think about, like, who does it
really well, right, or where is this working? And I
think in how can it relate to that sort of customer?
And you think, okay, well, if I'm a manufacturer in
(21:55):
an automotive facility, maybe I'm the head of operation for
this facility, and I'm I've been through the painful process
of procuring robots and convincing my purchasing team.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
And this, that and the other.
Speaker 4 (22:08):
And then you say to them, like, look, why why
couldn't it be as easy as going to you know,
your local hardware store and buying a tool or a
leaf blower or like something so simple. Why does it
have to be that complicated? Or we even think about,
you know, how the car industry and or the automobile
(22:29):
industry has been disrupted a little bit in terms of
like the somewhat not so great dealership experience. I guess
it depends on the dealership. But you know, then Carvana
came along and CarMax and all of these companies that
are really trying to make that process less painful. I
would love to see robotics as an industry get to that.
(22:51):
Like I would love to see us be able to
go to a website say that's the thing that I
need to solve that problem.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
I know that it starts.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
It's at this price, you know, get started, like make
it as easy as shopping on Amazon is. I mean,
it's it'll It'll be a long while before we get there,
But I think working toward that, it shouldn't take weeks.
It shouldn't take months. It shouldn't be so buried in
I don't know, just all of the conversations that have
(23:21):
to happen in the skirting around, like what is the price?
Speaker 1 (23:25):
You know?
Speaker 4 (23:25):
I have to use a car analogy there too, And
I tell my teams like, I just think our customers
want to know. I know that you can't quote them
a specific price because there are a lot of details
that go into actually building a solution for a customer.
But I need to know is it the you know,
am I buying a Ferrari or am I buying a
(23:47):
nice Honda? Or am I buying a scooter? That's all
I need to know? What budget do I need to
allocate for this thing? And we should be able to
tell them, like, it shouldn't be this mysterious black box
of Oh you have to wait for a quote and
talk to five people and well, it's terrible.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah yeah, yeah, well well no nobody, nobody wants to
feel like they're being being held captive. Right, That's that's
that's not a good that's not a good good customer experience.
And and again, I think part of that storytelling and
the understanding about things like the flexibility, the adaptability, you know,
talking about perception and the ability to see and know
(24:26):
what to pick and move where to me those become
really powerful when you're working through the C suite because
you don't just have to have a PhD in engineering
to understand what needs to what needs to be done.
And and the other thing that's interesting is I hear
you talk about that, and this is where I can
really hear the uh the former chief growth officer and
(24:48):
the chief marketer in you really coming coming through. And
I guess I would ask the question, you know, as
you're you know, evolving into your role as ce know,
how have those previous roles maybe changed the way you
look at it a little bit differently than the typical
Silicon Valley CEO who may have come up from programming
(25:11):
or heavy hardware or or different aspects than than where
you came from.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
I think that you know, it's still I guess, like
any role, right, it's going to take a little more
time to fully grow into this role. So I'm embracing that,
trying anyway to embrace a little bit of that uncertainty.
But I think, look, when when things get really hard,
and there have definitely been hard days like there are
(25:38):
there are running and running any startup is like is
an emotional roller coaster foreshore, and so on the days
where it's really hard, you know, I think it's the
customer that's going to is the north star on this
What does the customer need? I need to make decisions
that align with the best thing, you know, obvious profitability
(26:00):
for our company, but the best thing for the customer,
and we develop technology accordingly. So it's almost like giving
technology purpose is the way I tend to approach it
rather than we don't do things because we can, We
do things because we should, or we do things because.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
There is a real need for them.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
And I think that that, in my experience, has given
gives engineering teams a really good goal to work toward,
because sometimes it's you know, it's like in design, right,
you can design anything, but when really good design happens,
there are good constraints and so if you can apply
good constraints to the company overall. And in my role
(26:47):
and growth was really around optimizing you know, our funnel
and driving top of you know, driving business growth. And
now my role is more expanded in terms of like
the the product be, you know, so much, so much more,
but still thinking about it in that way, we're solving
a customer problem. We believe as a company that simplicity
(27:09):
is better than complexity. Always how do you make it
more simple for everybody? And then how do you talk
about it in a way that people can really relate
to it and talk about it at the different layers,
you know, As a marketer, one of the things I
always think about, and we were you know, this was
(27:30):
a big Hasbro learning is thinking about marketing as a cake, right,
you should always have the layers of a cake. And
in those layers, you know, a few marketing tactics is
not a marketing plan. And so I think about communications
that way. I think about how we drive the vision
(27:52):
for the company. In that way, what is our what
is that vision? How do we articulate it to our engineers,
to our stays people, to our customers, to our investors,
to our analysts, all of the people that we interact with,
to our communications partners, And I think that that is
probably the skill that that I bring to the CEO
(28:13):
role is really that the passion for the customer and
the ability to communicate or kind of translate sometimes very complicated,
complex concepts into a very relatable thing, you know, or
a very easy to understand analogy. Maybe that makes it
(28:34):
sort of a no brainer for anyone across the organization
to understand. You know, it's a focus on results, not
on technology. You know, it's really about the results.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Really, really about the results, and you know what I'm
here from you really about those pain points that you're
looking to solve and kind of as you you've gone through,
you know, helping companies at the point of transformation. What
is something that you think far too many CEOs or
other leaders miss about the importance of brand building and marketing,
(29:08):
especially when you're bringing out emerging technologies or building emerging
markets like AI robotics. What is something that gets missed
or where do people get caught up? And then how
can we as communicators or marketers help them.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Well, one of the things I tell people is that
everything communicates you know I was working with one of
our vcs, I think it was.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
I think it was be Partners the.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Other day at a post on LinkedIn where they talked
about the opportunity of the data room, which is a
you know, where all of your data goes as you're
raising money or going through mergers and acquisitions and things
like that, and ways to organize even in the organization
and structure of that, how it communicates, there's it's an
opportunity to represent how you're thinking about the business, how
(29:58):
things are organized, what's important. And it just reminded me
that that it is one of those fundamental marketing things, right,
everything communicates, and so reminding our teams about that, you know,
in the customer experience, whether it's.
Speaker 5 (30:17):
The the UI, the the how we deploy those robots,
how we communicate to the customer when they're coming and
anticipate all the questions they're going to have and be
proactive about that business.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
So I think that's where I think that's one of
the ways that marketers can really help. I also think
that when given marketing sometimes it's been my experience, marketing
can have a very bad reputation, depends on the company,
but sometimes you know, I've heard everything from like, oh,
marketing is where good ideas go to die, to like, oh,
(30:56):
my gosh, don't you know the marketing team is going
to whatever? Or they'll gloss over all of this and
it won't matter, or oh, I don't know anyway. Lots
of lots of cliches I think about about marketing teams.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
But I think.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
Marketers are very good at understanding people. And I think
that if you bring in your marketing team at an
early stage and build a strong partnership with them, it
can be really powerful. And I think in technology that
takes time, there are there are a lot of marketers
(31:31):
that come from entertainment, you know, classic sort of consumer
package goods marketing. Transitioning into technology is not always that easy.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
But I think what you learn in running.
Speaker 4 (31:46):
Those types of businesses is very translatable to the technology industry.
And I would say the technology industry needs that sort
of classic marketing expertise and understanding of you know, early
sixs of what's happening with the product, or early indicators
that something is wrong. How do we adapt quickly? And
(32:08):
in technology we have the great ability to do that.
In consumer goods, when things take nine to eighteen months
to manufacture. You can't be so agile. And so I
think that's where marketing can really help, you know, in
the technology space, if they're brought in at the right stage, it.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Brought in, it brought in at the right stage. Yeah.
But I think you know, when you're talking about the
customer experience, very good at understanding people. I would add
in speaking their language right, which becomes really really important.
So maybe you can if we go back to the
Autodesk experience, maybe you can talk a little bit about
what did you learn about speaking their language there? I mean,
(32:47):
you know, you're coming out of you know, entertainment toys,
all this really cool stuff, and then you're thrust in
the world of advanced manufacturing. So what did you learn
about talking their language?
Speaker 4 (33:02):
Yeah, that's a really good question. What did I learn
about talking their language? Well, one thing I do also
tell people is I learned a lot about manufacturing in
the toy industry. It is definitely not like you know,
Santa's workshop. There is a lot of work that goes
into planning toys, manufacturing toys. You know, I worked, I
(33:26):
had the luxury of working on a lot of different
toy businesses Transformers was one in particular, one of my favorites.
But but writing, you know, signing, we had to sign
tooling appropriations to build these toys. And for those of
you who may not you know fully understand that process.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
There are like.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
These tools are big, big pieces of metal that have
all kinds of different cavities in them. It costs a
lot to make. If you have a big holiday toy,
you have to create multiple molds to be able to
fit that. You know the supply and demand, and it's
really cool. You learn, you learn a lot about it,
and to see it live is also also really cool.
(34:07):
So I knew some of it. I didn't know all
of the deeper technical details, but I think just spending
time with it, I learned it.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
And I had a team.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
I think showing my team that I was or my coworkers,
you know that I really was interested in not only
being able to talk to the customer, but in deeply
understanding what it was that they were doing. And we
got to this place where you know, I was working.
I think at the time I did some product marketing
and technical marketing for netfabs and additive manufacturing software from Autodesk,
(34:45):
and I knew. I'd say I was maybe a little
bit more than beginner level understanding of additive manufacturing, but
over time developed a much deeper expertise and sat down
would sit down with my team and walk through like
pages and pages of documentation in what they were developing
and ask questions. And then I would come back to
(35:07):
them when we got to this place where at the end,
after working with them for a few months, you know,
I could come back and say, I just read this
ten page.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
Paper that you wrote.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
Here are the three key points I think that are
most critical.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
And they were like, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
And so rather than dismissing my sort of you know,
simplification of all of this big thinking, they actually appreciated
it because I was able to encapsulate the depth of
complexity and what really matters in that from a technical capacity,
(35:45):
but also how does it translate to results for the customer,
and so being able to merge those two things was
really important.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Yeah, I think I think that becomes really powerful. Like
you said, you got to make sure you take the
time at the front end to stop up, to ask
the questions, to learn to be inquisitive and then really
understand all these things that you've been saying, you know,
what are you trying to solve? What is the ultimate
end result you want to do? And then how do
(36:14):
you how do you put that together in a story
that makes sense? I mean, you know, you've affectionately referred
to yourself as and not going out too much for
a limb, But you affectually referred to yourself as a
nerd whisperer with with a source of pride and and
and I think it should be because to me, that
really illustrates the importance and the power of storytelling. But
(36:37):
you can only do good storytelling if you have a
if you truly understand the subject that you're trying to
put together and why it matters to the audience. So
maybe you can tell me a little bit about about
your badge of nerd whisperer.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
Yeah, I hope it's not offensive to people. I use
it in the most endearing way. I'm surrounded by lots
of very smart people in my life. I do joke
with my teams that I am sort of like wish
that I was an engineer. I don't think I really
have the patience to be an engineer, but I have
(37:11):
a great admiration for engineers and for the people who
are doing this really important work, and so I have
tried really hard to understand it and to be able
to be sort of their voice to the world, because
it's been my experience also that a lot of these
people don't want to be the ones talking about what
(37:33):
they're doing necessarily, they want to be the ones doing it.
So it builds this really great symbiotic relationship I think,
where you know, I get a lot of appreciation and
satisfaction for learning from them and the work that they're
doing and being able to represent that to the world
in a way that really gives it life.
Speaker 5 (37:55):
You know.
Speaker 4 (37:55):
I sort of hate to see smart people with big
ideas that never really make it to see the light
of day because they don't really know how to talk
about it or they don't really know how to apply
it in a way that it can reach its full potential.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Yeah, And I always find, you know, with what we do,
we talk to a lot of engineers and chemists and developers,
and like I said, extremely smart people that oh my god,
what they're doing, I can't even fathom what they do,
and the patients to apply the scientific method. But I
always find it so fascinating once you get into that
(38:31):
discussion with them, the amazing stories that you can find
and translate to the market in terms of what's inspiring
them to do different things or what's that spark of innovation,
because there's always that spark, and then how do you
put that into context of how you make the product
better or how do you make the programming better, or
(38:53):
how do you allow the robot to see better? Is
just absolutely absolutely fascinating. So I brought that up not
in jest, but really I think as a as a
means of admiration for just these incredibly gifted people that
are so deep in the technology and the innovation, but
then letting them know they're actually the heroes here and
(39:16):
we need to bring that to life.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
Yeah, And I think it's a you know, in the beginning,
it's still something that is very important to me as
being able to you know, earn the trust, honestly and
respect of those people because it's not easy what they're doing, and.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
I think that.
Speaker 4 (39:39):
I try really hard to be able to represent it
in a way that is that makes them proud to
stand behind the work that they're doing, not just a
trivial banner headline or something like that. I mean, I
love a good billboard, but but it's.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Got to be more than just that.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
H So let's kind of take this back to where
we started, because it just kind of is naturally leading
us to this whole notion of design thinking right and
thinking outside of the box, and discovery and ideation and imagination,
which are all really really powerful things. And maybe there's
(40:20):
some lessons you learned from your early days at Hasbro
and with the transformers and all that stuff that you
worked on. But how should we think about design thinking
and everything that we do to really be the best
that we can to innovate in new ways? Are there
are there lessons from what you did in toys and
(40:40):
entertainment that apply to robotics or solving these really huge
operational challenges at these companies we've been talking about.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
I think on the people front, I had some great
managers that I learned a lot from when I was there.
And one of the things that you know that I
member very clearly as a new manager. I often tell
people that I'm working with and people i'm mentoring.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
You know the.
Speaker 4 (41:06):
Story that I was leading a new team. I came
in one morning and said to my manager. You know,
here are the things that I've done. And she closed
the door and she sat me down and she was like,
you're leading a team. I never want to hear again
about what you've done. I want to hear this is
about the team. You're representing the team. And I was like,
oh my god, she's right, Like I totally screwed up.
(41:30):
And I mean there's you know, probably time for both
of those things. But it is a really good lesson
in that whatever you're doing, you're representing your people, and
your job as a manager is to you know, to
motivate those people, support those people, break down barriers for
those people, for them to be able to achieve their
(41:51):
greatest potential. So so that was sort of on the
people side of things, one of the important lessons that
I learned. I think in terms of thinking really big
is something else that I learned.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
You know, it's sort of.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
A thing across all entertainment kind of businesses. But I
believe there was an exercise that we were part of
with our communications team very early on the early days
of the Transformers business. You know, Transformers has been a
toy brand for a very long time. We had the
TV show and we started to think, how do we
(42:29):
make this bigger? You know, this was before the movies,
and we got into a brainstorming exercise that started with,
you know, think for a minute about our wildest success.
What would the news headline be? So I don't know
if the news ali whether it's the I don't know
(42:50):
if that is as relevant today, but maybe the on
social media, I don't know what the headline or And
then let's work backwards, you.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
Know, from that.
Speaker 4 (43:02):
So we sort of like went down this interesting path
of like, you know, Optimist Prime does this you know thing.
We we sort of turned it into a news headline
and said, well, of course it's going to happen on
July fourth, and the robot's going to be a seven
forty seven, and then we've got this seven four seven
(43:24):
launch date, and it just sort of like the energy
of that yes and design process. Design thinking and thinking
really big, like beyond the constraints of your business today
is something that I really learned there that I have
brought with me through my career and I try to
sort of instill that sense of imagination in all of
(43:49):
my teams and think, like, imagine, if you know our
budget wasn't a problem. Our regional constraints weren't a problem.
We had unlimited resources. What would we do you and
how would we do it? And I think that gets
people really thinking, like, Okay, you know, I don't have
to think about what is my problem I'm solving for
(44:11):
next month or this sprint.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
It can be.
Speaker 4 (44:14):
Really outside of the box. You know that the concept
of playing bigger and play to win. So I think
those are some of those are some other things that
I learned there, and then I would say, finally is
how to harness that big idea and translate it into
(44:36):
an actionable plan. There's you know, I am as maybe
you can tell from this conversation like my mind is
a thousand places all at once. I sometimes have a
hard time staying focused on like how are we going
to get something done? So I build frameworks for myself
to be able to do it, and I, you know,
with my team. In the past few months, I've been
(44:56):
talking about the what I call the two two two plan.
What are we doing in the next two weeks, two months,
and two quarters to get to where we need to
go and where we need to go. Obviously, there's a
vision beyond two quarters. But in the world of startups,
things change so fast that I think the two quarters
is as far as we're really really planning at the
moment in great detail.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
So thinking two quarters ahead, okay, I'm going to I'm
going to ask you to think like three years ahead.
How's that forgetting in the crazy future machine? So what
do you see as the future of AI robotics all
of that, Where are we going and how is the
work that you and your colleagues are doing today? How's
(45:39):
that going to change the world to the better? Getting
back to some of the early framing you were talking about.
Speaker 4 (45:45):
Well, first, I'd like to see a world in three
years where we get rid of what I call the
robot graveyard, which is the place where all of the
failed deployments go to die. We often go into these
manufacturing facilities and we say to customers, you know, tell
us about your experience with robotics, and they're like, oh,
(46:06):
I have a robot. You know, we had robots stopped working,
you know, now we don't have anything. And I'm like, well,
tell me more, how did that happen? Where are they
And they're like, oh, let me show you, and they
walk me to some back closet, it's like covered in,
you know, like moved to the back closet, you know signs.
So I want to see that go away because I
(46:29):
think it's created a sense of understandably distrust of robotics,
distrust of the industry. And I don't think nobody's doing
anything malicious. I just think that it's the state of
robotics as they used to be. I don't think it's
the state where it needs to be. So I think
that robots are getting smarter. I want to see people
embracing technology to be able to make them work. And
(46:52):
again it comes back to results. We as a robotics
industry have to help our customers succeed and to do that,
we have to make it as intuitive and as streamlined
as possible. Like these customers are dealing with this immense complexity.
(47:13):
They are dealing with changing priorities, shrinking budgets, fewer people,
higher goals.
Speaker 3 (47:21):
They don't have.
Speaker 4 (47:22):
Time to be robotics experts. You want your you want
your customers to be manufacturing experts or logistics experts. We
can be the menu, we can be the robotics experts,
but we have to do it in a way that
is easy, you know, a way that makes it easy
to buy for us, easy to deploy, easy to scale.
(47:43):
You know, think about all of the other industries that
do this really well, that serve that are have this
customer first mentality and try to adopt those kinds of
practices into the robotic space.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Really interesting approach, and again, so much of what I'm
getting out of this conversation is just kind of reframing
and being willing to change our own paradigms to think
big and to think differently, but then really embrace the possibilities.
But then behind that, you've got to have the confidence
(48:20):
that the technology is going to work, that you've got
the flexibility to adapt and redeploy it, that you can
constantly reinvent, which I think was has been really really powerful.
I've really enjoyed this conversation. So I can just summarize
a little bit of our conversation with Kim Losey, who's
CEO of Rapid Robotics. We started by talking about her
(48:44):
amazing path, very atypical one, I would say, for a
CEO of a Silicon Valley company, starting off as a designer,
working through marketing teams, ultimately becoming a chief growth officer
before becoming CEO, but really thinking about out how the
design thinking that you learned at an early age has
(49:04):
just really opened up. How you've looked at solving problems
and thinking about the customer experience and what it is
that you want to solve. We went a little bit
in depth on the AI, automatic and robotics industry, talking
about kind of can we apply Maslow's hierarchy of need
to think about that level of perception where we can
(49:28):
get the robots to see and know what it needs
to pick up application layers, physical hardware layers overlay that
with AI. We've introduced a new term smart field. It'll
be coming soon to a publication near You also created
an acronym ars agile robotics smart fields. But I think
(49:50):
for me, as we really got to talking about things,
the powerful points were giving technology purpose. Remember everything communicates,
every interaction, every customer experience point. And then you know,
for me, Cam it was really you summing it up
with kind of these these four steps to success, regardless
(50:12):
of what industry. You know, you've applied it across multiple industries.
You're applying it now with rapid. Number one, don't be
afraid to think big. Number two, embrace the power of imagination.
Number three play to win, and number four harness that
big idea with an actionable plan. Did I miss anything?
(50:36):
Anything you want to add before we wrap our conversation.
Speaker 4 (50:39):
I guess the last thing I would add, the last
tip that I will often share with people. It's my own.
You know, I don't know that this works for everybody,
But when I think about when you start thinking big,
things can sometimes get scary. You know, you put yourself
out there and your ideas out there. You know, certainly
as the CEO of this of rapid Robotics, I am.
Speaker 3 (50:59):
You know, it's a bit of a vulnerable place to be, right.
Speaker 4 (51:01):
It's this company is depending on me to help help
it succeed. But I always think, what's the worst that
can happen? Right Like in all of these big moves
I've made in my life, I always ask myself, what's
the worst that can happen? Is it really likely to happen?
And is it really that bad? Can I you know,
(51:22):
can I design my way out of it? Probably? And
so that's kind of my you know, last layer of
decision making criteria before I do something crazy.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
No, that's that's that's really that's really good advice. Well, Kim,
thank you very much for joining us on building brand
Gravity and sharing your experiences and being vulnerable about the
challenges that you yourself effacing as you're evolving into the
new role and really trying to in a lot of ways,
upend the way an industry has typically done things. And
(51:56):
you can learn more about the exciting things that Kim
and our team are doing at rapid row Robotics by
visiting their website, which is rapid Robotics dot com. You
can visit her on LinkedIn at KIMBERLYLOSEI Again, thank you
very much Kim for joining our conversation. Thank you for
our listeners. If you liked what you heard today, we
(52:18):
encourage you to learn more about rapid We encourage you
to subscribe, rate, review the podcast, and tune in for
future episodes. Thank you for joining Building Brand Gravity. I'm
one of your hosts, Steve Halsey. Have a wonderful day.
Speaker 2 (52:33):
We are GNS Business Communications. We are a team of
media strategists, storytellers, and engagement experts who meet you at
the intersection of business and communications. To learn more, visit
gscommunications dot com. You are listening to building brand gravity,
attracting people into your orbit. AGNs Business Communications Podcast.
Speaker 3 (52:57):
Keep connected with us by subscribing to the show.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
In your favorite podcast player. If you like what you've heard,
please rate the show that helps us to keep delivering the.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
Latest in industry influence. Thanks for listening, Until next time.
When one thinks about robotics, oftentimes what comes to mind
are the robots from the movies and from TVs. Some
may automatically go to the terminator. Me myself, I go
to Rosie, the robot from the jetson. She could think,
she could see, she could do, She was basically part
of the family. We're going to be joined by Kim Losi,
(00:28):
CEO of Rapid Robotics, who's going to talk about the
lessons that she's learned going from a designer to a
marketer to now one of the few female CEOs in
Silicon Valley, and the importance of design, thinking customer experience,
and never being afraid to think big. Join us in
(00:50):
Kim Losi on the next episode of Building Brand Gravity.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
You are listening to Building Brand Gravity Attracting People into
Your Orbit, a GNS business communications podcast. This is a
show for communications pros across industries looking to gain an
inside of you into industry influence. You're about to hear
a conversation with leading industry professionals talking about the importance
(01:22):
of building business impact through sound brand strategy.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Let's get into the show.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Building Brand Gravity.
I'm Steve Halsey. In this episode, we'll be talking with
Kim Losey, CEO of Rapid Robotics, on the topic of
AI driven manufacturing as more and more automation and robotics
seem to be taking over the world. We're going to
explore how her innovative leadership approach was inspired in part
(01:53):
by the design thinking she learned at Hasbro, and how
she's applied that in a really customer set metric focus
to move from creating and marketing toy robots to developing
real ones that are fundamentally changing the face of automation.
Kim is a serial entrepreneur and a business designer. She
has a passion for manufacturing, marketing, and really leading high
(02:17):
growth businesses. And I'm really excited about today's conversation because
she really seems to have a knack for joining companies
at inflection points in their journey and really helping kind
of speed their transformation. So let me just give you
a little bit more about her background. She's led global
teams and being responsible for growth of some of the
(02:37):
most well known toy and entertainment brands. She's built award
winning omni channel retail businesses. She was part of the
founding team of Modio, which Audiodesk acquired in twenty fourteen,
and from there she became responsible for their emerging products,
acquisitions and growth, including Fusion three sixty. That wasn't enough,
(03:00):
she moved on joined Rapid Robotics, where she served as
a Chief Growth Officer and Chief Marketing Officer before being
recently named as their new CEO. And she is one
of the few female executives in both robotics and technology space,
so some rare air. Indeed, Kim, welcome to the show.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
So now that I embarrassed you with like the official bio,
maybe you can give our listeners a little bit of
background about about who Kim is and how you got here.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Thanks, Well it's really been you know, as I sit back,
and there are days honestly that I think, like, how
did I even get here? I don't know, you know,
it's an honor to be in this position, and I think,
you know, even as a little kid, I was always
sort of dreaming up new ways of being able to
do things. And I think that's where like the business
(03:57):
designer came from you know, I actually I did go
to school originally for design, and then I realized, you know, recognized,
I guess my parents aren't famous. I don't have a
giant trust fund that was going to support this dream
business that I wanted to make.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
So I better go do something else.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
So I really got into marketing and entrepreneurship, and but
still with that strong design angle, and so, you know,
I tend to really think about everything in terms of why,
why is it this way?
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Does it? Is it optimal? This way?
Speaker 4 (04:28):
How could it be better? What really matters to people?
And then that usually leads us to you know, leads
myself and my teams to big ideas that kind of
make businesses grow. So so that's that's been sort of.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
The continuous path.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
I guess They've taken a lot of different steps to
kind of get there, but that's been the similarity across
my career.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
So you've been doing design thinking before design thinking was
a buzzword, Yeah, I suppose. So let me let me
at the stage a little bit for our conversation for
our listeners here in terms of just really understanding the
need for AI driven robotics, automation and all those other things.
(05:13):
You know, a broad range of companies from manufacturings to
third party logistics providers, food and beverage processors, companies and
consumer package good technology and electronics I'm not done yet,
retail and e commerce, fulfillment center, pharmaceutical and med device manufacturers,
automotive industry, agriculture operations, and even the assembly of things
(05:38):
that are fundamental for renewable energy. They all seem to
have one thing in common, and that's that they all
need really adaptable, scalable, and efficient models for operations to
stay competitive and meet market demands that seem to be
evolving at a better and faster pace. Yet almost all
of them face some pretty common chatchallenges workforce, capital, investment,
(06:04):
supply chain chaos, just the speed of the change of
consumer preferences and the list of that all goes on.
So this kind of inflection point, not just of rapid
robotics but of the industry, you know, really is where
I think the promise of AI robotics and automation come in.
So from where you sit, how have all these different
(06:27):
factors really kind of driven how you guys think at
rapid robotics and where you're going.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
I always when I'm trying to solve problems like this,
always put myself in the shoes of the customer. You know,
it's tricky sometimes working for a technology company where you're
surrounded by amazing ideas that honestly are very easy to
get excited about, but it really comes back to what's
going to change somebody's change the life or the trajectory
(06:54):
of a company and the executives and the people at
that company, and so I put myself in their shoes,
and I just think, you know, I have less time.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
I am.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
I really want to do the right thing for our
sustainability initiatives and for the earth, and for my people
and for you know, bringing products to market that the
company has this vision for and I can't do it
because I don't have enough human labor to be able
to do it. The work that I do have for
(07:27):
those humans really shouldn't isn't very rewarding work for humans.
I think that I'm just like, there's less time, less money,
more constraints on everything, and it really adds to this
complexity that just becomes very hard to manage. And so
I think, you know, I think as a service provider,
as a robotics company. How can I think I can help.
(07:49):
I can help solve that problem. And that's where I
think AI is very exciting because we're just really at
the forefront of what's possible. And in a very non
technical way of thinking about AI, I think I go
back to my toy roots and toys and think, it's like,
you know, it's like a superpower, a power up right,
all of a sudden, I can do ten times more
(08:10):
than what ever possible before. I can handle much more complexity.
I can solve problems faster. I can solve them in
ways that I never would have even thought of, as
you know, with the usual human constraints that I have.
And that to me is, you know, is super exciting.
So I think, how do we harness that to be
able to solve these really big problems that customers are
(08:33):
facing in terms of being able to find ways to
use automation to do those you know, the dull, dirty, dangerous.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Kind of tasks.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
And I think the reason that automation has been so
hard for so many companies to handle is because there
is so much variability in in skews, and I think
the automation industry has been plagued by delays and uh,
you know, just sort of a lot, yeah, a lot
(09:03):
of stops and starts, and a lot of traditional thinking
about how things happen, and a lot of there hasn't
been a lot of transparency around pricing. And I just
think all that needs to stop. There's such a huge
opportunity ahead for all of us to be able to
win and to help customers win. We need to think
differently about it, and I think that you know, AI
(09:25):
can really help.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
Us get there.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Well, And that's what I think so powerful about what
companies like yours are doing is you know, really embracing
that idea that you just hit of the variability of
SKUs and in a lot of ways think in an
industry agnostic way. Right. I just covered everything from ag
operations to manufacturing, to logistics to putting together you know,
(09:49):
turbines for win power. But that ability to think in
an agnostic way and embrace that variability really seems very powerful.
So when you sit there at Rapid and when you're
talking to new employees that you bring on, what do
you tell them about what is their mission? What are
they actually solving for the world?
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Well, I, I mean we are an American based company
right now. I mean, and we do have bigger plans
beyond that, but to start with, like, I am very
passionate about seeing manufacturers win and all the things that
become possible with that. And so, you know, I think
that's it. I think it's helping in some ways at
a very big, high level, Like we're helping we can
(10:32):
help to make a better world, and we can make
better products, we can make products more sustainably, we can
help companies be able to harness the human talent that
they do have to do really meaningful, thoughtful work rather
than you know, standing at a machine moving a thing
(10:53):
from one place to the other and people getting hurt
in terrible conditions, often very hot.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
And so I think that we're making things better, and
I think we're making things allowing things to be made
more cost effectively, which hopefully we'll bring manufacturing back to
this country in many ways, and for people to be
able to companies that if they're saving money in that way,
I think can use it toward more innovation that actually
(11:24):
makes better products.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
And I think there's a lot of power in what
you're saying, because what's interesting to me is it's not
all about technology. It's not about technology for the technology's sake.
It's ultimately what is it that we're trying to solve
and improve and in a lot of ways, how can
we make the world a better place? And I want
to want to kind of cover a topic here. You know,
(11:48):
we're marketers, so you know we can't have a marketing
discussion without coming up with new terms, right, that would
just be no flood, I mean, no fun.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Yeah, that's right. We should give it an acronym.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Too, exactly. So we'll come up with an acronym here.
But when you and I were chatting a little a
little while ago, we got into this riff where we
were talking about green fields and brown fields. And I
know everybody knows this, but just to kind of center
us for our listeners, you know, green fields are things
(12:22):
that are completely bespoken, built from scratch, right, it's really
starting from a virgin site and idea and building things up.
Brown Fields are when you're taking existing facilities or operations
that have become outdated and you need to update and
retrofit to basically breathe new life into them. And then
when you and I were talking, we really got to
(12:43):
this notion of it doesn't have to be greenfield or
brown field. What if we could create something that we
called the smart field. So we'll have to make an
acronym before we're done, but for the term smart field
to give some context to our listeners. It's essentially the
idea idea that you could create a next generation of
warehousing or manufacturing facilities where you kind of reimagine every
(13:07):
aspect of operations to find the optimal efficiency for a
particular workflow. Right. So that's central to the idea of
being smart is that you're not static. You can be
ever changing as customer preferences or consumer choice changes, as
market dynamics changes. Because in that case, and what we're
(13:30):
seeing with just the pace that you need to adjust
optimal basically changes from day to day, year to year,
So you can't retrofit the facility every time that you
do that. You basically need something that can help you
evolve with speed and with agility and can deploy things
in a different way. And from my very simplistic layman's viewpoint,
(13:54):
you know that's why stationary robots don't work for the
long term. You got these high setup call it's not
real easy to move them from one task to the other,
let it alone, from one part of facility to the other.
You got to retrain them, you got to work on
the new task. That means down down time, competitive disadvantage.
But what you guys are doing is really using adaptive
(14:17):
AI and particularly computer vision to really kind of turn
all that it's on its end. And that's what I
mean about, like kind of creating these smart fields that
you can adapt on the fly and you can move.
Can you tell me just a little bit about that,
I mean, tell me about smart fields, how do we
bring them to life? And then in particular, how can
(14:40):
that be a point of competitive advantage for companies like rapid.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
So I think, you know, going back to I don't
know for the past for ten years, I guess you know.
Ten years ago I started working for Autodesk on the
design and manufacturing organization and and learned although I learned
a lot about manufacturing in the toy industry, really spend
a lot of time with manufacturers through my work at Autodesk,
(15:10):
and I started to understand, you know, the whole concept
of digital transformation and the state that all of these
different companies were at you know, the complete range, and
even today you see very large companies that you know,
world renowned companies that are still in the early phases
(15:31):
of a digital transformation. And so you go into their
facility and they want robotics. They need robotics because they
don't have you know, their worker safety is a high
priority for many of them, and so they say, look,
these are the types of tasks where we're getting the
most injuries. We really would love to automate this thing.
And you see, well, there's all this infrastructure automation, old
(15:51):
equipment or other infrastructure that's in there, and a lot
of times robotics and automation take up it takes up
a lot of space, there's a lot of mechanical components,
it's not very agile, and it just doesn't work or
it costs so much money that then the ROI is
(16:12):
years later, and by then you're really needing to retrofit
the facility again. And as we were talking you know
that that week over breakfast, the green field concept, we
heard a lot about it over the past few years
when money was you know, quote unquote free. Right now
money is very expensive, much more expensive anyway, and we're
(16:34):
seeing more and more companies that are looking to retrofit
and modernize, you know, their the brown field kind of facility,
and that's where I think traditional solutions just don't work.
We need something that is agile, we need something that
is with a more minimal footprint. And for that's where
companies like Rapid I think can really come in. I
(16:56):
think if we think about automation in a different way
and think, why does it have to be so big?
Why does it have to be so permanent? Why does
it have to be so expensive and have so many components?
And there are good reasons that historically it has, but
with the increase in AI, generative AI and three dvision,
(17:17):
that doesn't have to be the case.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
You know.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
I kind of think about robotics like in terms of
you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and at the bottom
it really comes down to the fundamental layer is really
about perception. That robot needs to be able to understand
what is it seeing, where is it and what is
it seeing? And so we built rapid Id to be
(17:42):
able to do that. So all of a sudden, we're
giving this human like instinct to robots because they're able
to perceive what's in front of them, which means that
you can create systems or then you apply sort of
an application layer to the perception layer, and then you
apply the physical manifestation of that the hardware component, and
(18:06):
it can be optimized as a result of the bottom
two layers, and it gives you you know, means that
all of a sudden, you can deploy robots that have
a camera, a robot, and much more minimal footprint than
you've ever had before, which makes it fit more easily
into some of these you know, into like a smart
field kind of situation. It you know, means that it
(18:29):
costs less, it means that it has fewer components to
break it, and most importantly, I think it has the
ability to handle the variability of modern business. You don't
have to spend hours and days training waypoints for a
robot to know how to go to a thing. It
can see the thing, and then all of the the
(18:51):
AI and training models that go into it.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Tell it exactly.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
It knows here's where I have to go, Here's where
that thing is, Here's how I grasp it, Here's what
I grasp it with, here's the model. You know, it
can run an analysis almost instantly on which model should
I be using to pick that thing because I kind
of know what it is, or I know the classification.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Of that thing.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
So it all of a sudden gives you that agility
that you're looking for for a variety of products with
that small footprint, and that's applicable, and like you said,
all of those different industries, whether you're in you know,
consumer package goods, automotive industry. You know, all of these
customers I talk to, I sort of joke with them
(19:40):
about how complex their SKUs are.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
And someone very smart person.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Once said to me, you know, the thing that we
know that we can predict about consumers is they will
change their minds. And so when I talk to people
in the manufacturing space about that, they laugh and they're like,
you have no idea.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Actually, so many skews.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
I can imagine. Then I can only imagine, like what
the Amazon warehouse is like trying to pick and pack
in something like that. But that's that's absolutely fascinating thinking
about it in terms of the perception layer of being
able to actually see and process that with the application
level layer, the hardware layer, and then once you get
(20:24):
the AI on that that ability just to rapidly adapt
and deploy. And you know, you gave me a challenge.
We talked about smart field as our new term, not
saying we need to take these, but two possible acronyms
for you, right, So we could have that's our a's,
which would be smart field robotics agility that's what we
could deliver. Or we could have ar s's, which would
(20:48):
be agile robotics smart field. So we can come up
with some different acronyms that bring this together. But kind
of playing that concept out a little bit more then,
you know, a lot of what you're talking about is
then creating a paradigm shift, and a paradigm shift I
(21:08):
would think across the organization. So when you're trying to
tell this story about how to set up agile robotic
smart fields, shall we say, you know, between the engineering
department and the procurement department and other groups, does that
make storytelling that much more important to really unify the
(21:31):
challenge that you're trying to solve.
Speaker 4 (21:33):
Yeah, it's definitely one of the big challenges. And I
kind of go back to how I tend to approach
all the problems and think about, like, who does it
really well, right, or where is this working? And I
think in how can it relate to that sort of customer?
And you think, okay, well, if I'm a manufacturer in
(21:55):
an automotive facility, maybe I'm the head of operation for
this facility, and I'm I've been through the painful process
of procuring robots and convincing my purchasing team.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
And this, that and the other.
Speaker 4 (22:08):
And then you say to them, like, look, why why
couldn't it be as easy as going to you know,
your local hardware store and buying a tool or a
leaf blower or like something so simple. Why does it
have to be that complicated? Or we even think about,
you know, how the car industry and or the automobile
(22:29):
industry has been disrupted a little bit in terms of
like the somewhat not so great dealership experience. I guess
it depends on the dealership. But you know, then Carvana
came along and CarMax and all of these companies that
are really trying to make that process less painful. I
would love to see robotics as an industry get to that.
(22:51):
Like I would love to see us be able to
go to a website say that's the thing that I
need to solve that problem.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
I know that it starts.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
It's at this price, you know, get started, like make
it as easy as shopping on Amazon is. I mean,
it's it'll It'll be a long while before we get there,
But I think working toward that, it shouldn't take weeks.
It shouldn't take months. It shouldn't be so buried in
I don't know, just all of the conversations that have
(23:21):
to happen in the skirting around, like what is the price?
Speaker 1 (23:25):
You know?
Speaker 4 (23:25):
I have to use a car analogy there too, And
I tell my teams like, I just think our customers
want to know. I know that you can't quote them
a specific price because there are a lot of details
that go into actually building a solution for a customer.
But I need to know is it the you know,
am I buying a Ferrari or am I buying a
(23:47):
nice Honda? Or am I buying a scooter? That's all
I need to know? What budget do I need to
allocate for this thing? And we should be able to
tell them, like, it shouldn't be this mysterious black box
of Oh you have to wait for a quote and
talk to five people and well, it's terrible.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah yeah, yeah, well well no nobody, nobody wants to
feel like they're being being held captive. Right, That's that's
that's not a good that's not a good good customer experience.
And and again, I think part of that storytelling and
the understanding about things like the flexibility, the adaptability, you know,
talking about perception and the ability to see and know
(24:26):
what to pick and move where to me those become
really powerful when you're working through the C suite because
you don't just have to have a PhD in engineering
to understand what needs to what needs to be done.
And and the other thing that's interesting is I hear
you talk about that, and this is where I can
really hear the uh the former chief growth officer and
(24:48):
the chief marketer in you really coming coming through. And
I guess I would ask the question, you know, as
you're you know, evolving into your role as ce know,
how have those previous roles maybe changed the way you
look at it a little bit differently than the typical
Silicon Valley CEO who may have come up from programming
(25:11):
or heavy hardware or or different aspects than than where
you came from.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
I think that you know, it's still I guess, like
any role, right, it's going to take a little more
time to fully grow into this role. So I'm embracing that,
trying anyway to embrace a little bit of that uncertainty.
But I think, look, when when things get really hard,
and there have definitely been hard days like there are
(25:38):
there are running and running any startup is like is
an emotional roller coaster foreshore, and so on the days
where it's really hard, you know, I think it's the
customer that's going to is the north star on this
What does the customer need? I need to make decisions
that align with the best thing, you know, obvious profitability
(26:00):
for our company, but the best thing for the customer,
and we develop technology accordingly. So it's almost like giving
technology purpose is the way I tend to approach it
rather than we don't do things because we can, We
do things because we should, or we do things because.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
There is a real need for them.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
And I think that that, in my experience, has given
gives engineering teams a really good goal to work toward,
because sometimes it's you know, it's like in design, right,
you can design anything, but when really good design happens,
there are good constraints and so if you can apply
good constraints to the company overall. And in my role
(26:47):
and growth was really around optimizing you know, our funnel
and driving top of you know, driving business growth. And
now my role is more expanded in terms of like
the the product be, you know, so much, so much more,
but still thinking about it in that way, we're solving
a customer problem. We believe as a company that simplicity
(27:09):
is better than complexity. Always how do you make it
more simple for everybody? And then how do you talk
about it in a way that people can really relate
to it and talk about it at the different layers,
you know, As a marketer, one of the things I
always think about, and we were you know, this was
(27:30):
a big Hasbro learning is thinking about marketing as a cake, right,
you should always have the layers of a cake. And
in those layers, you know, a few marketing tactics is
not a marketing plan. And so I think about communications
that way. I think about how we drive the vision
(27:52):
for the company. In that way, what is our what
is that vision? How do we articulate it to our engineers,
to our stays people, to our customers, to our investors,
to our analysts, all of the people that we interact with,
to our communications partners, And I think that that is
probably the skill that that I bring to the CEO
(28:13):
role is really that the passion for the customer and
the ability to communicate or kind of translate sometimes very complicated,
complex concepts into a very relatable thing, you know, or
a very easy to understand analogy. Maybe that makes it
(28:34):
sort of a no brainer for anyone across the organization
to understand. You know, it's a focus on results, not
on technology. You know, it's really about the results.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Really, really about the results, and you know what I'm
here from you really about those pain points that you're
looking to solve and kind of as you you've gone through,
you know, helping companies at the point of transformation. What
is something that you think far too many CEOs or
other leaders miss about the importance of brand building and marketing,
(29:08):
especially when you're bringing out emerging technologies or building emerging
markets like AI robotics. What is something that gets missed
or where do people get caught up? And then how
can we as communicators or marketers help them.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Well, one of the things I tell people is that
everything communicates you know I was working with one of
our vcs, I think it was.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
I think it was be Partners the.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
Other day at a post on LinkedIn where they talked
about the opportunity of the data room, which is a
you know, where all of your data goes as you're
raising money or going through mergers and acquisitions and things
like that, and ways to organize even in the organization
and structure of that, how it communicates, there's it's an
opportunity to represent how you're thinking about the business, how
(29:58):
things are organized, what's important. And it just reminded me
that that it is one of those fundamental marketing things, right,
everything communicates, and so reminding our teams about that, you know,
in the customer experience, whether it's.
Speaker 5 (30:17):
The the UI, the the how we deploy those robots,
how we communicate to the customer when they're coming and
anticipate all the questions they're going to have and be
proactive about that business.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
So I think that's where I think that's one of
the ways that marketers can really help. I also think
that when given marketing sometimes it's been my experience, marketing
can have a very bad reputation, depends on the company,
but sometimes you know, I've heard everything from like, oh,
marketing is where good ideas go to die, to like, oh,
(30:56):
my gosh, don't you know the marketing team is going
to whatever? Or they'll gloss over all of this and
it won't matter, or oh, I don't know anyway. Lots
of lots of cliches I think about about marketing teams.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
But I think.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
Marketers are very good at understanding people. And I think
that if you bring in your marketing team at an
early stage and build a strong partnership with them, it
can be really powerful. And I think in technology that
takes time, there are there are a lot of marketers
(31:31):
that come from entertainment, you know, classic sort of consumer
package goods marketing. Transitioning into technology is not always that easy.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
But I think what you learn in running.
Speaker 4 (31:46):
Those types of businesses is very translatable to the technology industry.
And I would say the technology industry needs that sort
of classic marketing expertise and understanding of you know, early
sixs of what's happening with the product, or early indicators
that something is wrong. How do we adapt quickly? And
(32:08):
in technology we have the great ability to do that.
In consumer goods, when things take nine to eighteen months
to manufacture. You can't be so agile. And so I
think that's where marketing can really help, you know, in
the technology space, if they're brought in at the right stage, it.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Brought in, it brought in at the right stage. Yeah.
But I think you know, when you're talking about the
customer experience, very good at understanding people. I would add
in speaking their language right, which becomes really really important.
So maybe you can if we go back to the
Autodesk experience, maybe you can talk a little bit about
what did you learn about speaking their language there? I mean,
(32:47):
you know, you're coming out of you know, entertainment toys,
all this really cool stuff, and then you're thrust in
the world of advanced manufacturing. So what did you learn
about talking their language?
Speaker 4 (33:02):
Yeah, that's a really good question. What did I learn
about talking their language? Well, one thing I do also
tell people is I learned a lot about manufacturing in
the toy industry. It is definitely not like you know,
Santa's workshop. There is a lot of work that goes
into planning toys, manufacturing toys. You know, I worked, I
(33:26):
had the luxury of working on a lot of different
toy businesses Transformers was one in particular, one of my favorites.
But but writing, you know, signing, we had to sign
tooling appropriations to build these toys. And for those of
you who may not you know fully understand that process.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
There are like.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
These tools are big, big pieces of metal that have
all kinds of different cavities in them. It costs a
lot to make. If you have a big holiday toy,
you have to create multiple molds to be able to
fit that. You know the supply and demand, and it's
really cool. You learn, you learn a lot about it,
and to see it live is also also really cool.
(34:07):
So I knew some of it. I didn't know all
of the deeper technical details, but I think just spending
time with it, I learned it.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
And I had a team.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
I think showing my team that I was or my coworkers,
you know that I really was interested in not only
being able to talk to the customer, but in deeply
understanding what it was that they were doing. And we
got to this place where you know, I was working.
I think at the time I did some product marketing
and technical marketing for netfabs and additive manufacturing software from Autodesk,
(34:45):
and I knew. I'd say I was maybe a little
bit more than beginner level understanding of additive manufacturing, but
over time developed a much deeper expertise and sat down
would sit down with my team and walk through like
pages and pages of documentation in what they were developing
and ask questions. And then I would come back to
(35:07):
them when we got to this place where at the end,
after working with them for a few months, you know,
I could come back and say, I just read this
ten page.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
Paper that you wrote.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
Here are the three key points I think that are
most critical.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
And they were like, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
And so rather than dismissing my sort of you know,
simplification of all of this big thinking, they actually appreciated
it because I was able to encapsulate the depth of
complexity and what really matters in that from a technical capacity,
(35:45):
but also how does it translate to results for the customer,
and so being able to merge those two things was
really important.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Yeah, I think I think that becomes really powerful. Like
you said, you got to make sure you take the
time at the front end to stop up, to ask
the questions, to learn to be inquisitive and then really
understand all these things that you've been saying, you know,
what are you trying to solve? What is the ultimate
end result you want to do? And then how do
(36:14):
you how do you put that together in a story
that makes sense? I mean, you know, you've affectionately referred
to yourself as and not going out too much for
a limb, But you affectually referred to yourself as a
nerd whisperer with with a source of pride and and
and I think it should be because to me, that
really illustrates the importance and the power of storytelling. But
(36:37):
you can only do good storytelling if you have a
if you truly understand the subject that you're trying to
put together and why it matters to the audience. So
maybe you can tell me a little bit about about
your badge of nerd whisperer.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
Yeah, I hope it's not offensive to people. I use
it in the most endearing way. I'm surrounded by lots
of very smart people in my life. I do joke
with my teams that I am sort of like wish
that I was an engineer. I don't think I really
have the patience to be an engineer, but I have
(37:11):
a great admiration for engineers and for the people who
are doing this really important work, and so I have
tried really hard to understand it and to be able
to be sort of their voice to the world, because
it's been my experience also that a lot of these
people don't want to be the ones talking about what
(37:33):
they're doing necessarily, they want to be the ones doing it.
So it builds this really great symbiotic relationship I think,
where you know, I get a lot of appreciation and
satisfaction for learning from them and the work that they're
doing and being able to represent that to the world
in a way that really gives it life.
Speaker 5 (37:55):
You know.
Speaker 4 (37:55):
I sort of hate to see smart people with big
ideas that never really make it to see the light
of day because they don't really know how to talk
about it or they don't really know how to apply
it in a way that it can reach its full potential.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Yeah, And I always find, you know, with what we do,
we talk to a lot of engineers and chemists and developers,
and like I said, extremely smart people that oh my god,
what they're doing, I can't even fathom what they do,
and the patients to apply the scientific method. But I
always find it so fascinating once you get into that
(38:31):
discussion with them, the amazing stories that you can find
and translate to the market in terms of what's inspiring
them to do different things or what's that spark of innovation,
because there's always that spark, and then how do you
put that into context of how you make the product
better or how do you make the programming better, or
(38:53):
how do you allow the robot to see better? Is
just absolutely absolutely fascinating. So I brought that up not
in jest, but really I think as a as a
means of admiration for just these incredibly gifted people that
are so deep in the technology and the innovation, but
then letting them know they're actually the heroes here and
(39:16):
we need to bring that to life.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
Yeah, And I think it's a you know, in the beginning,
it's still something that is very important to me as
being able to you know, earn the trust, honestly and
respect of those people because it's not easy what they're doing, and.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
I think that.
Speaker 4 (39:39):
I try really hard to be able to represent it
in a way that is that makes them proud to
stand behind the work that they're doing, not just a
trivial banner headline or something like that. I mean, I
love a good billboard, but but it's.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Got to be more than just that.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
H So let's kind of take this back to where
we started, because it just kind of is naturally leading
us to this whole notion of design thinking right and
thinking outside of the box, and discovery and ideation and imagination,
which are all really really powerful things. And maybe there's
(40:20):
some lessons you learned from your early days at Hasbro
and with the transformers and all that stuff that you
worked on. But how should we think about design thinking
and everything that we do to really be the best
that we can to innovate in new ways? Are there
are there lessons from what you did in toys and
(40:40):
entertainment that apply to robotics or solving these really huge
operational challenges at these companies we've been talking about.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
I think on the people front, I had some great
managers that I learned a lot from when I was there.
And one of the things that you know that I
member very clearly as a new manager. I often tell
people that I'm working with and people i'm mentoring.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
You know the.
Speaker 4 (41:06):
Story that I was leading a new team. I came
in one morning and said to my manager. You know,
here are the things that I've done. And she closed
the door and she sat me down and she was like,
you're leading a team. I never want to hear again
about what you've done. I want to hear this is
about the team. You're representing the team. And I was like,
oh my god, she's right, Like I totally screwed up.
(41:30):
And I mean there's you know, probably time for both
of those things. But it is a really good lesson
in that whatever you're doing, you're representing your people, and
your job as a manager is to you know, to
motivate those people, support those people, break down barriers for
those people, for them to be able to achieve their
(41:51):
greatest potential. So so that was sort of on the
people side of things, one of the important lessons that
I learned. I think in terms of thinking really big
is something else that I learned.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
You know, it's sort of.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
A thing across all entertainment kind of businesses. But I
believe there was an exercise that we were part of
with our communications team very early on the early days
of the Transformers business. You know, Transformers has been a
toy brand for a very long time. We had the
TV show and we started to think, how do we
(42:29):
make this bigger? You know, this was before the movies,
and we got into a brainstorming exercise that started with,
you know, think for a minute about our wildest success.
What would the news headline be? So I don't know
if the news ali whether it's the I don't know
(42:50):
if that is as relevant today, but maybe the on
social media, I don't know what the headline or And
then let's work backwards, you.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
Know, from that.
Speaker 4 (43:02):
So we sort of like went down this interesting path
of like, you know, Optimist Prime does this you know thing.
We we sort of turned it into a news headline
and said, well, of course it's going to happen on
July fourth, and the robot's going to be a seven
forty seven, and then we've got this seven four seven
(43:24):
launch date, and it just sort of like the energy
of that yes and design process. Design thinking and thinking
really big, like beyond the constraints of your business today
is something that I really learned there that I have
brought with me through my career and I try to
sort of instill that sense of imagination in all of
(43:49):
my teams and think, like, imagine, if you know our
budget wasn't a problem. Our regional constraints weren't a problem.
We had unlimited resources. What would we do you and
how would we do it? And I think that gets
people really thinking, like, Okay, you know, I don't have
to think about what is my problem I'm solving for
(44:11):
next month or this sprint.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
It can be.
Speaker 4 (44:14):
Really outside of the box. You know that the concept
of playing bigger and play to win. So I think
those are some of those are some other things that
I learned there, and then I would say, finally is
how to harness that big idea and translate it into
(44:36):
an actionable plan. There's you know, I am as maybe
you can tell from this conversation like my mind is
a thousand places all at once. I sometimes have a
hard time staying focused on like how are we going
to get something done? So I build frameworks for myself
to be able to do it, and I, you know,
with my team. In the past few months, I've been
(44:56):
talking about the what I call the two two two plan.
What are we doing in the next two weeks, two months,
and two quarters to get to where we need to
go and where we need to go. Obviously, there's a
vision beyond two quarters. But in the world of startups,
things change so fast that I think the two quarters
is as far as we're really really planning at the
moment in great detail.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
So thinking two quarters ahead, okay, I'm going to I'm
going to ask you to think like three years ahead.
How's that forgetting in the crazy future machine? So what
do you see as the future of AI robotics all
of that, Where are we going and how is the
work that you and your colleagues are doing today? How's
(45:39):
that going to change the world to the better? Getting
back to some of the early framing you were talking about.
Speaker 4 (45:45):
Well, first, I'd like to see a world in three
years where we get rid of what I call the
robot graveyard, which is the place where all of the
failed deployments go to die. We often go into these
manufacturing facilities and we say to customers, you know, tell
us about your experience with robotics, and they're like, oh,
(46:06):
I have a robot. You know, we had robots stopped working,
you know, now we don't have anything. And I'm like, well,
tell me more, how did that happen? Where are they
And they're like, oh, let me show you, and they
walk me to some back closet, it's like covered in,
you know, like moved to the back closet, you know signs.
So I want to see that go away because I
(46:29):
think it's created a sense of understandably distrust of robotics,
distrust of the industry. And I don't think nobody's doing
anything malicious. I just think that it's the state of
robotics as they used to be. I don't think it's
the state where it needs to be. So I think
that robots are getting smarter. I want to see people
embracing technology to be able to make them work. And
(46:52):
again it comes back to results. We as a robotics
industry have to help our customers succeed and to do that,
we have to make it as intuitive and as streamlined
as possible. Like these customers are dealing with this immense complexity.
(47:13):
They are dealing with changing priorities, shrinking budgets, fewer people,
higher goals.
Speaker 3 (47:21):
They don't have.
Speaker 4 (47:22):
Time to be robotics experts. You want your you want
your customers to be manufacturing experts or logistics experts. We
can be the menu, we can be the robotics experts,
but we have to do it in a way that
is easy, you know, a way that makes it easy
to buy for us, easy to deploy, easy to scale.
(47:43):
You know, think about all of the other industries that
do this really well, that serve that are have this
customer first mentality and try to adopt those kinds of
practices into the robotic space.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Really interesting approach, and again, so much of what I'm
getting out of this conversation is just kind of reframing
and being willing to change our own paradigms to think
big and to think differently, but then really embrace the possibilities.
But then behind that, you've got to have the confidence
(48:20):
that the technology is going to work, that you've got
the flexibility to adapt and redeploy it, that you can
constantly reinvent, which I think was has been really really powerful.
I've really enjoyed this conversation. So I can just summarize
a little bit of our conversation with Kim Losey, who's
CEO of Rapid Robotics. We started by talking about her
(48:44):
amazing path, very atypical one, I would say, for a
CEO of a Silicon Valley company, starting off as a designer,
working through marketing teams, ultimately becoming a chief growth officer
before becoming CEO, but really thinking about out how the
design thinking that you learned at an early age has
(49:04):
just really opened up. How you've looked at solving problems
and thinking about the customer experience and what it is
that you want to solve. We went a little bit
in depth on the AI, automatic and robotics industry, talking
about kind of can we apply Maslow's hierarchy of need
to think about that level of perception where we can
(49:28):
get the robots to see and know what it needs
to pick up application layers, physical hardware layers overlay that
with AI. We've introduced a new term smart field. It'll
be coming soon to a publication near You also created
an acronym ars agile robotics smart fields. But I think
(49:50):
for me, as we really got to talking about things,
the powerful points were giving technology purpose. Remember everything communicates,
every interaction, every customer experience point. And then you know,
for me, Cam it was really you summing it up
with kind of these these four steps to success, regardless
(50:12):
of what industry. You know, you've applied it across multiple industries.
You're applying it now with rapid. Number one, don't be
afraid to think big. Number two, embrace the power of imagination.
Number three play to win, and number four harness that
big idea with an actionable plan. Did I miss anything?
(50:36):
Anything you want to add before we wrap our conversation.
Speaker 4 (50:39):
I guess the last thing I would add, the last
tip that I will often share with people. It's my own.
You know, I don't know that this works for everybody,
But when I think about when you start thinking big,
things can sometimes get scary. You know, you put yourself
out there and your ideas out there. You know, certainly
as the CEO of this of rapid Robotics, I am.
Speaker 3 (50:59):
You know, it's a bit of a vulnerable place to be, right.
Speaker 4 (51:01):
It's this company is depending on me to help help
it succeed. But I always think, what's the worst that
can happen? Right Like in all of these big moves
I've made in my life, I always ask myself, what's
the worst that can happen? Is it really likely to happen?
And is it really that bad? Can I you know,
(51:22):
can I design my way out of it? Probably? And
so that's kind of my you know, last layer of
decision making criteria before I do something crazy.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
No, that's that's that's really that's really good advice. Well, Kim,
thank you very much for joining us on building brand
Gravity and sharing your experiences and being vulnerable about the
challenges that you yourself effacing as you're evolving into the
new role and really trying to in a lot of ways,
upend the way an industry has typically done things. And
(51:56):
you can learn more about the exciting things that Kim
and our team are doing at rapid row Robotics by
visiting their website, which is rapid Robotics dot com. You
can visit her on LinkedIn at KIMBERLYLOSEI Again, thank you
very much Kim for joining our conversation. Thank you for
our listeners. If you liked what you heard today, we
(52:18):
encourage you to learn more about rapid We encourage you
to subscribe, rate, review the podcast, and tune in for
future episodes. Thank you for joining Building Brand Gravity. I'm
one of your hosts, Steve Halsey. Have a wonderful day.
Speaker 2 (52:33):
We are GNS Business Communications. We are a team of
media strategists, storytellers, and engagement experts who meet you at
the intersection of business and communications. To learn more, visit
gscommunications dot com. You are listening to building brand gravity,
attracting people into your orbit. AGNs Business Communications Podcast.
Speaker 3 (52:57):
Keep connected with us by subscribing to the show.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
In your favorite podcast player. If you like what you've heard,
please rate the show that helps us to keep delivering the.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
Latest in industry influence. Thanks for listening, Until next time.
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