Podcasts about Rony

Join me and my special guest, Rony Zagursky as we discuss scaling a healthy business and decentralizing the organization from the owner. Rony specializes in Change Management and transitions, helping people and organizations improve their environment, processes, and objectives. With a mindset of accelerating revenue, increasing profitability, improving operational performance, retaining and attracting top talent, designing and shaping corporate culture, and igniting growth. Transforming the organizations into communities of collaboration where members are aligned. He has also been a keynote speaker at conferences. In this episode, you will learn: 1. What are DAO organizations? 2. What is the self-employment trap 3. How to avoid the trap or get out of it 4. What are the most common toxic habits in midsize organizations? Tune into this EXCITING episode of Stand Out & Grow with Kat Ramirez and get the DISC assessment for free after leaving a review of the book on Amazon.

O Palmeiras está mais uma vez na semifinal do Campeonato Paulista. O Verdão bateu o São Bernardo por 1 a 0, com gol de Rony, e agora enfrenta o Ituano em busca de uma vaga na decisão do estadual. Lucas Garbelotto conversa com Henrique Toth, Thiago Ferri e Leandro Bocca sobre tudo das quartas de final, da busca por reforços e o “caso Scarpa. Dá o play!

O Palmeiras venceu mais uma. No Allianz Parque, bateu o Red Bull Bragantino por 2 a 0 com gols de Rony e Breno Lopes. Tudo sobre o jogo, o choro de Endrick após substituição e o mercado palmeirense. Com Lucas Garbelotto, Emilio Botta, Henrique Toth e Leandro Bocca. Dá o play!

The hosts are focused on AI this week, and in particular its application to immersive media. Bigscreen's making a VR HMD, and guest Alex Herrity, CEO of Anima, has launched a line of AI enabled virtual pets which you see and interact with in AR. Rony's full of startup advice for his developing business. Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar!Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

O Palmeiras segue invicto no Paulista. Com dois de Rony, o Verdão empatou fora de casa por 2 a 2. Lucas Garbelotto conversa com Thiago Ferri, Henrique Toth e Leandro Bocca sobre tudo do jogo, o interesse pelo volante Andrey Santos e muito mais. Dá o play!

O Palmeiras venceu mais uma no Campeonato Paulista. Com gol de Rony, o Verdão bateu o Água Santa por 1 a 0 e segue invicto no estadual. Agora, o Alviverde foca todas as suas forças no clássico contra o Corinthians, em Itaquera, na próxima quinta-feira. Dá o play!

This week we're talking about real Holograms, Realwear's $375M SPAC, and $50M new financing for Light Field Lab, whose CEO Jon Our Karafin is our guest. Mawari and Looking Glass also raised money this week. There were more layoffs at Microsoft. Rony says he thinks XR is doing a big exhale. Karafin's Light Field Lab means Holograms, and Rony knows a lot about this topic. Ted is scouting new tech for the six new theme parks Paramount Global, and is planning a trip to San Jose to see LightField Holograms in the Lab, too.Thank you to our sponsor, Zappar!Don't forget to like, share, and follow for more! Follow us on all socials @ThisWeekInXR! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

durée : 02:29:40 - Le 7/9.30 - Bernard Guetta, député européen Renew et vice-président de la sous commission "Droits de l'homme" au Parlement est l'invité du 7h50. Rima Abdul Malak, ministre de la Culture est l'invitée du 8h20. Arnaud Fraisse, fondateur de Secours sans frontière et Rony Brauman, médecin, sont les invités du 9h10.

Today we are tackling a topic that is crucial to the success of many companies when they go from startup to the next phase of growth. It's the question that many founders especially technical founders or scientific founders who start as CEO's have to ask themselves at some point. When is it time to bring in a new CEO? How do you find the right CEO? And how do you set up the partnership for success.To help us answer the questions we have Gil Blander, Founder and Scientific Officer of InsideTracker, and Rony Sellam, the CEO.InsideTracker is a company that by tracking our biomarkers what's inside us, blood and DNA, leverages science and technology to provide personalized solutions that allow people to improve their overall quality of life and longevity.KEY TAKEAWAYS [01:34] - How you find the right CEO for your company when you are a Founder. [03:12] - Gil introduces himself.[03:39] - Gil shares his fascination with the aging process and the inspiration and concept behind InsideTracker. [04:30] - Rony introduces himself and shares his background and why he wanted to get involved with Inside Tracker. [05:57] - Gil shares some of the challenges—from financial to people management—of starting a business as a scientist and someone unfamiliar with managing a company. [06:42] - Gil shares the keys he held onto to be a successful leader when he was first starting InsideTracker. [07:31] - Rony shares the value of having mentors and how the lessons he learned from other captains of industry taught him the importance of vision, mission, and values. [08:43] - How a heavy dose of humility helps grow successful leaders. [10:29] - Gil explains that in the company's early stages, he emphasized the science making it the foundation of its activities while remaining profitable. [13:00] - Gil describes his goal of finding a CEO for the company from the start and the consideration he put into finding the right fit for that role.[16:10] - The need for two different roles to take a company with a strong scientific backbone and turn it into an impactful business. [17:35] - Rony shares how his desire to work with a company that is helping people live better and longer played into his decision to become CEO of InsideTracker. [18:09] - How InsideTracker uses personalized, science-backed information to help individuals take control of their health from the Inside out. [20:49] - The significance of maintaining a solid scientific foundation within a science-based company.[22:05] - Rony recounts the two things that impressed him the most when he initially met with Gil.[25:04] - Gil highlights the two most important criteria he sought in a CEO for InsideTracker.[26:03] - Sharing stories of the Sunday Scaries and how that doesn't apply to Gil and Rony's partnership.[27:34] - Rony shares how they formulated the rules of engagement for their relationship, established trust, and the surprising key to solving more problems.[31:35] - Rony shares why it's vital to establish and stick with the chain of command in a business. [32:01] - Gil shares how having a sounding board helped him transition the role of CEO to Rony (and why he continues to have a coach in his corner). [34:23] - The costs and constraints of upholding the values of being

Keynote speaking requires a unique skill set. It's not an easy job, but how can you find joy in speaking and consulting in sales? Here to share his story is Rene Rodriguez. Rony is a best-selling author, keynote speaker, leadership advisor, and transformational speaker coach. In this episode with host Michael Zipursky, he shares insights from his book, Amplify Your Influence: Transform How You Communicate and Lead. Rony shares his career story, and why he chose the path he's on now. He also lets us in on what it's like to work as a keynote speaker and offers advice for those pursuing this career. Rony talks about what you need to expect when working as a public speaker, what you can gain from it, and what you need to work on to succeed. There are a lot of nuggets in this episode that you won't want to miss, so listen in to learn all about it.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://www.consultingsuccess.com/podcast

Nachum Segal hosts Rony Timsit for an update on The Inbal in Jerusalem, he hosts the legendary Gershon Veroba live at JM in the AM to celebrate the release of "Man To Man – Anniversary Digital Edition," he presents great Jewish music, the latest news from Israel and Morning Chizuk with Rabbi Dovid Goldwasser.

Charla: Inspirada y útil para enseñar. Por: Rony Ramos

Rev. Rony Freire - Poder De Una Vision The Power of a Vision - 11/20/22

É o Super-Homem? É um Disco-voador? É o Starlink? Não! É mais um Bate-Papo Ufológico com nosso amigo Rony Vernet, explicando os avistamentos recentes no Sul do Brasil! O Relatos do Além está crescendo e precisa de uma força sobrenatural! Você poderia nos ajudar? www.apoia.se/relatosdoalem Quer enviar o seu relato? Manda um oi pra mim, lá pelo whatsapp: +1 (647) 830 0422 Siga o Relatos do Além nas redes sociais! Instagram - Twitter - TikTok

NEWS MATIN Mercredi 09 Novembre 2022 Invité Jean Rony DUVELSAINT ancien directeur SNGRS , Natif de Saint Marc.

News matin mercredi 9 Novembre 2022 Jean Rony Duvelsaint dossier Youri et Lambert

Conservaphobia: https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=144168 Conservative Claims of Cultural Oppression: The Nature and Origins of Conservaphobia, Part Two, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=144294 Conservative Claims of Cultural Oppression: The Nature and Origins of Conservaphobia, Part Three, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=144821 REVIEW: The Star Chamber of Stanford: On the Secret Trial and Invisible Persecution of a Stanford Law Fellow, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=143937 Stanford Star Chamber, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=143824 Reaction to Stanford Star Chamber, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=143994 https://ronyguldmann.com/ Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSFVD7Xfhn7sJY8LAIQmH8Q/join https://odysee.com/@LukeFordLive, https://lbry.tv/@LukeFord, https://rumble.com/lukeford https://dlive.tv/lukefordlivestreams Superchat: https://entropystream.live/app/lukefordlive Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/lukeford/ Soundcloud MP3s: https://soundcloud.com/luke-ford-666431593 Code of Conduct: https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=125692 https://www.patreon.com/lukeford http://lukeford.net Email me: lukeisback@gmail.com or DM me on Twitter.com/lukeford Support the show | https://www.streamlabs.com/lukeford, https://patreon.com/lukeford, https://PayPal.Me/lukeisback Facebook: http://facebook.com/lukecford Feel free to clip my videos. It's nice when you link back to the original.

Magic Leap Founder Rony Abovitz is a serial tech entrepreneur and visionary. He co-founded Mako Surgical in 2004 — a robotics company specialising in manufacturing surgical robotic arm assistance technology utilised by hospitals worldwide. MAKO was acquired by Stryker Corporation in 2013 for $1.65 billion.Rony went on to found Magic Leap — a spatial computing company which envisaged a futuristic world, many years ahead of its time. Starting out of his garage in 2010, Rony worked on Magic Leap at night whilst still working at Mako during the day. He partnered with award-winning Weta Workshop in New Zealand and assembled a world-class team of creative scientists before building their own high-tech factory in the US. He remained Magic Leap's CEO until 2020 when he helped recruit Peggy Johnson to be his successor. Rony remains on the Board of Directors at Magic Leap and is also founder and CEO of Sun and Thunder – which incubates creative tech experiments. He is also strategic advisor to Lamina1, the Layer-1 blockchain for the Open Metaverse co-founded by none other than Neal Stephenson - who famously coined the term “metaverse” in his book, Snow Crash.Rony is also working on another startup which we weren't able to talk about but I am looking forward to having him back on the podcast next year to discuss it.This interview was recorded during the pandemic and the sound quality isn't great so please forgive me for that but it's still a fascinating interview with a pioneer of our times. Enjoy!-----------------You can read our interview hereRony on Twitter / Magic Leap / Sun and Thunder /  MediumDanielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and  Instagram @daniellenewnham   / Newsletter 

Charla: De la prisa al reposo. Por: Rony Ramos

We're talking about Kabbalah and past lives with Rony. Also we talk about our life purpose and Tikkun. If you love Kabbalah you will love this episode! No doubt about it. Follow them on Instagram and Facebook @HavayahWellness for daily tips and info on Spirituality and Wellness! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/divinehealingbyd/support

O Palmeiras confirmou seu 11° título do Campeonato Brasileiro ao atropelar o Fortaleza, por 4 a 0. E como não poderia ser diferente, o episódio da semana é dedicado ao Alviverde. Para falar sobre mais uma conquista de Abel Ferreira e seus comandados, Cleber Machado recebe dois dos principais nomes do elenco: os atacantes Dudu e Rony. Qual o segredo desse Palmeiras? Até onde esse time pode chegar? Como é a competitividade no elenco? Tudo isso e muito mais. Dá o play!

#finanaceandcreditawareness #blackandfinanciallystable #blackfinance #blackpodcastersofinstagram Tune in on Tuesdays 6 PM ET to “The Credit Podcast,” hosted by Your Favorite Credit Hero Rony Francois (@MrRony_CreditHero) streaming live on YouTube at He Said What Finance and interact amongst the rest of the guests. This show is designed to help bring financial and credit awareness into the Black Community. We have failed due to a lack of resources, knowledge, and the will to make a change. Join Rony and be the change you want for our current and upcoming generations. If you have questions regarding finance or credit that you would like our host to talk about, DM@TheCreditLabPodcast and speak with Rony directly. Visit www.HeSaidWhatNetwork.com and check out more of our shows on available across all streaming platforms. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/hesaidwhatnetwork/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/hesaidwhatnetwork/support

Conferencia: El Reino de Dios ha llegado. La sanidad de las relaciones. Por: Rony Ramos

Conferencia: El Reino de Dios ha llegado- La sanidad del espíritu. Por: Rony Ramos

Rony is a Brazilian UFO researcher & Electronics and Computer Engineer. He Is also the founder of UAP Brazil. Rony will be giving a speech and presentation at the Brazilian Senate UFO Hearings on June 24th 2022. Rony Twitter: https://twitter.com/RonyVernet Website: https://uapbrazil.com/ !! SUPPORT DISCLOSURE TEAM !! Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/disclosureteam Buy me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/disclosu... Disclosure Team Merch: https://disclosureteam.bigcartel.com/ Disclosure Team Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/disclosure_... Disclosure Team Twitter: https://twitter.com/disclosureteam_ Disclosure Team is part of the Anomalous Podcast Network: https://audioboom.com/channels/5069292 Vinnie Adams is an abassador for UAP Society: https://uapsociety.com/

Tune in on Tuesdays 6 PM ET to “The Credit Podcast,” hosted by Your Favorite Credit Hero Rony Francois (@MrRony_CreditHero) streaming live on YouTube at He Said What Finance and interact amongst the rest of the guests. This show is designed to help bring financial and credit awareness into the Black Community. We have failed due to a lack of resources, knowledge, and the will to make a change. Join Rony and be the change you want for our current and upcoming generations. If you have questions regarding finance or credit that you would like our host to talk about, DM@TheCreditLabPodcast and speak with Rony directly. Visit www.HeSaidWhatNetwork.com and check out more of our shows on available across all streaming platforms. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/hesaidwhatnetwork/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/hesaidwhatnetwork/support

O Palmeiras empatou com o Atlético-GO, fora de casa, e segue invicto longe do Allianz Parque. Agora, o Verdão viu a vantagem na ponta da tabela cair para 10 pontos, mas ainda segue tranquilo na ponta. Lucas Garbelotto (@l_garbelotto) conversa com Emilio Botta (@emiliobotta) e Leandro Bocca sobre o resultado, as mudanças de Abel e o substituto de Rony para enfrentar o São Paulo. Dá o play!

#finanaceandcreditawareness #blackandfinanciallystable #blackfinance #blackpodcastersofinstagram Tune in on Tuesdays 6 PM ET to “The Credit Podcast,” hosted by Your Favorite Credit Hero Rony Francois (@MrRony_CreditHero) streaming live on YouTube at He Said What Finance and interact amongst the rest of the guests. This show is designed to help bring financial and credit awareness into the Black Community. We have failed due to a lack of resources, knowledge, and the will to make a change. Join Rony and be the change you want for our current and upcoming generations. If you have questions regarding finance or credit that you would like our host to talk about, DM@TheCreditLabPodcast and speak with Rony directly. Visit www.HeSaidWhatNetwork.com and check out more of our shows on available across all streaming platforms. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/hesaidwhatnetwork/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/hesaidwhatnetwork/support

O Palmeiras fez mais uma vítima no Campeonato Brasileiro. No Allianz Parque, a equipe de Abel Ferreira não tomou conhecimento do Coritiba e venceu por 4 a 0 com gols de Mayke, Rony, Gómez e Breno Lopes. Com o triunfo, o Alviverde tem 12 pontos de vantagem na ponta e segue forte rumo ao título. Lucas Garbelotto conversa com Emilio Botta, Felipe Zito e Leandro Bocca sobre a goleada, o desempenho do time, Endrick e muito mais. Dá o play!

Capítulo Vinte e três: O Baile de Inverno Sinopse: O baile acontece e Hermione surpreende a todos. Harry e Rony ao invés de curtir a noite ficam amargurados pelos cantos do castelo. Os arbustos no jardim escondem mais segredos que Durmstrang e Hogwarts juntas. MANDE SUA CORUJA PARA: mundopottercast@gmail.com Redes: @mundopottercast @ithasant e @rodriguesph Ajude a gente: padrim.com.br/mundopotter PIX: mundopottercast@gmail.com Grupo do Telegram: @mundopotter Apresentado por Itamar Santos e Paulo Rodrigues Roteiro: Itamar Santos Edição: Itamar Santos

#finanaceandcreditawareness #blackandfinanciallystable #blackfinance #blackpodcastersofinstagram Let's discuss the Ten Credit Commandments, brought to you by Rony Francois and understand why it is important to find value in your credit profile. RULE 1: ALWAYS pay your bills on time! RULE 2: Always live within your means RULE 3: Your credit profile is your financial lifeline RULE 4: A healthy credit mixture is like a well-balanced diet. RULE 5: Add new credit but use caution. RULE 6: Tap in a family member. RULE 7: Add your children as authorized users while they are still minors. RULE 8: It's time to break the cycle. RULE 9: Having good credit can change your whole life! RULE 10: Negative marks stay on your credit report for seven to ten years. Tune in on Tuesdays 6 PM ET to “The Credit Podcast,” hosted by Your Favorite Credit Hero Rony Francois (@MrRony_CreditHero) streaming live on YouTube at He Said What Finance and interact amongst the rest of the guests. This show is designed to help bring financial and credit awareness into the Black Community. We have failed due to a lack of resources, knowledge, and the will to make a change. Join Rony and be the change you want for our current and upcoming generations. If you have questions regarding finance or credit that you would like our host to talk about, DM@TheCreditLabPodcast and speak with Rony directly. Visit www.HeSaidWhatNetwork.com and check out more of our shows on available across all streaming platforms. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/hesaidwhatnetwork/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/hesaidwhatnetwork/support

A conversation with Rony and Samantha from Chicago Bike Grid Now. Car Free Midwest is an Omaha based podcast exploring the stories, barriers and joys of getting around the midwest without a car. Building community around more transportation equity and less car dependency. Hosted by: @sj_obc & @joshualabure A production of Figure Podcasts w/ support from Mode Shift Omaha. Theme song:The New Deal by Big Quiet https://open.spotify.com/track/4rPvzZzNhhnWDnNFhoFPJ4 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/carfreemidwest/message

Rony, of PeerSpace, developed a marketplace where you can book unique spaces for any event, including your big day! Rony Chammas is the Founder and Chief Product Officer of Peerspace. Rony came up with the concept of Peerspace as an MBA student at NYU Stern, and has been on a mission to give the world more choice and reason to meet, create, and celebrate together ever since. Things You'll Learn How to find unique locations that you won't find anywhere else Finding an extraordinary venue within your budget Simplifying the process of booking event spaces for your wedding How to know if a venue is within your budget from the get go Links We Referenced https://www.peerspace.com https://www.instagram.com/peerspace/  https://www.peerspace.com/resources/wedding-podcasts-2020/  https://madein.peerspace.com/space-for-change  https://madein.peerspace.com/?ddc4ac96_page=3 The Big Wedding Planning Podcast is... Hosted and produced by Michelle Martinez. Edited by Veronica Gruba Music by Steph Altman of Mophonics On Instagram @thebigweddingplanningpodcast and be sure to use #planthatwedding when posting, so you can get our attention! Inviting you to become part of our Facebook Group! Join us and our amazing members. Just search for The Big Wedding Planning Podcast Community on Facebook. Easy to get in touch with. Email us at thebigweddingplanningpodcast@gmail.com or Call and leave a message at 415-723-1625 and you might hear your voice on an episode On Patreon. Become a member and with as little as $6.99 per month, you get 2 exclusive, ad-free episodes, + Zoom Happy Hour with Michelle and fellow patrons every month! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

O Palmeiras conseguiu mais uma boa vitória no Campeonato Brasileiro. Depois de uma dura eliminação na Libertadores e uma sequência de empates no torneio nacional, Rony e Zé Rafael garantiram os três pontos fundamentais no Allianz Parque. Lucas Garbelotto (@LGarbelotto) conversa com Emilio Botta (@emiliobotta), Thiago Ferri (@b_ferri) e Leandro Bocca, do Voz da Torcida, sobre o triunfo, a ótima rodada, cirurgia de Veiga, Endrick e muito mais. Dá o play!

Rony Deville Bonnis Maxx - The Sound Of The Drums RELEASE DATE - 10-18-2022 @beatport @traxsource AND MANY MORE: more info here

Ronald Rossenouff, Rony Deville, Bonnis Maxx - Selfish ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// RELEASE DATE - 10–11-2022 @beatport @traxsource AND MANY MORE: more info here

#finanaceandcreditawareness #blackandfinanciallystable #blackfinance #blackpodcastersofinstagram When you're getting to know someone for potentially the long haul, is it appropriate to discuss credit on the first date? Should you be interested in their spending habits so soon? Is it important the way they spend their money if in fact it's not yours? Tune in on Tuesdays 6 PM ET to “The Credit Podcast,” hosted by Your Favorite Credit Hero Rony Francois (@MrRony_CreditHero) streaming live on YouTube at He Said What Finance and interact amongst the rest of the guests. This show is designed to help bring financial and credit awareness into the Black Community. We have failed due to a lack of resources, knowledge, and the will to make a change. Join Rony and be the change you want for our current and upcoming generations. If you have questions regarding finance or credit that you would like our host to talk about, DM@TheCreditLabPodcast and speak with Rony directly. Visit www.HeSaidWhatNetwork.com and check out more of our shows on available across all streaming platforms. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/hesaidwhatnetwork/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/hesaidwhatnetwork/support

André Rizek, PVC e Alexandre Lozetti falam sobre a rodada do Brasileiro que tem um novo vice-líder e a vantagem do Palmeiras, ainda confortável, que caiu para sete pontos. Outros temas abordados são a preocupante situação do Botafogo na tabela e a possível venda de Antony para o Manchester United pode ajudar nos cofres do São Paulo.

O Palmeiras conseguiu um ótimo empate com o Fluminense pelo Campeonato Brasileiro. No Maracanã, Rony fez de bicicleta e o Verdão voltou com um ponto na mala. Agora, o foco é na Libertadores. Os comandados de Abel Ferreira visitam o Athletico-PR pelo primeiro jogo da semifinal. Quais as opções para Danilo e Scarpa? Flaco ou Tabata? Rony de ponta? Lucas Garbelotto conversa com Thiago Ferri e Leandro Bocca sobre tudo isso e muito mais! Dá o play!

Ele tem 4 cidadanias, já trabalhou em 7 países diferentes e hoje é o Head da Área Terapêutica de Hematologia, Nefrologia e Neurologia na Alexion Internacional,  Astrazeneca.Rony Golczewski é um dos grandes líderes atuantes da indústria farmacêutica, falamos muito sobre liderar em diferentes países, culturas e quais as grandes dificuldades de uma vida fora do seu país de origem.Rony indicou o livro The Millionaire Fastlane e o seriado La Casa de Papel.Só aqui no Via Oral, o Podcast da Indústria Farmacêutica!

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In episode 24 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Emerging Interfaces for Human Augmentation. Our guest is Pattie Maes, Professor at the MIT Media Lab.In this conversation, we talk about augmenting people instead of using or making smart machines, AI summers and AI winters, parallels between AI and expert systems and why we didn't learn our lessons, enabling people to perform better through fluid, interactive, immersive and wearable systems that are easy to use, how lab thinks about developing new form factors, and much more.After listening to this episode, check out MIT Media Lab as well as Pattie Maes's social profile:MIT Media Lab: @medialab (twitter) https://www.media.mit.edu/ (web)Pattie Maes: https://www.media.mit.edu/overview Trond's takeaway: Augmenting people is far more complex than developing a technology or even experimenting with form factors. Instead, there's a whole process to exploring what humans are all about, discovering opportunities for augmentation and tweaking it in dialogue with users. The Media Lab's approach is work intensive, but when new products make it out of there, they tend to extend a human function as opposed to becoming just a new gadget.Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 19, Machine Learning in Manufacturing, episode 7, Work of the Future, or episode 13, Get Manufacturing Superpowers. Augmented--industrial conversations. Transcript: TROND: Augmented reveals the stories behind a new era of industrial operations where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In Episode 24 of the podcast, the topic is Emerging Interfaces for Human Augmentation. Our guest is Pattie Maes, Professor at the MIT Media Lab. In this conversation, we talk about augmenting people instead of using or making smart machines. We discuss AI summers and AI winters, the parallels between AI and expert systems and why we didn't learn our lessons, enabling people to perform better through fluid, interactive, immersive, and wearable systems that are easy to use, and how the lab thinks about developing new form factors, and much more. Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders and operators hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time, every Wednesday. Augmented — the industry 4.0 podcast. Pattie, how are you today? PATTIE: Hi. I'm doing great. Thank you. Thanks for having me. TROND: Oh, sure. I'm very excited to have you. And in fact, I just feel like the audience should get to know you. I know a lot of them do because you have become an innovator that has a stage on TED. And obviously, a lot of people at MIT know you. But I wanted to just recognize that you were one of the early PhDs in AI, right? 1987 is not a time when -- PATTIE: Yeah. [laughs] TROND: Is that what we call the second wave of AI? It's certainly not the -- [laughs] PATTIE: The grandmother of AI, yeah. [laughs] TROND: You're not a recent convert to this topic. That's for sure. PATTIE: So yes, I actually studied artificial intelligence long before it was such a big deal or the big deal that it is right now. But actually, soon after doing my Ph.D. in AI, I became more and more interested in a related problem, the problem of not artificial intelligence but intelligence augmentation, or how can we make people more intelligent, more productive, support them in making better decisions? So soon after my Ph.D., I veered more in that direction. TROND: Well, and that's what we will talk about because you have indeed been on the MIT faculty for 30 years exploring these topics in various kinds of bifurcations. And you have been the advisor to scores of startup founders also. And, of course, people might think that goes through the territory at MIT, but the numbers are really still staggering, and also the performance of some of those startups, including Tulip, which we'll talk about, but also many other startups and many other innovation projects that didn't quite make it to startups. But they still created a lot of attention around the world for the promising demos or the things they suggested about what the future of technology might look like. So I would like first to just recognize that you've achieved, I guess, the amazing feat of not just innovating a lot yourself, but you must be an amazing innovation mentor. And you certainly have inspired a lot of people that I personally know in AI, and in human augmentation, and beyond. And I wanted, first of all, just to see if I could have you reflect a little bit on your journey, which I imagine...well, first of all, it's a nice wordplay from Belgium to Boston. PATTIE: Yeah, so I came here after my Ph.D. actually, and of course, wanted to be in the place in the world where the most exciting research was going on in my area. [laughs] And so initially, I ended up at the AI Lab, but I soon after actually accepted a job at the Media Lab. And what really attracted me there was that the lab is very application-driven. We're very interested in really working towards things that can be deployed in the real world, that can make a difference in the real world, that can be through for-profit startups. But sometimes that is actually in other ways by just freely giving away tools and technologies or maybe starting a not-for-profit to really disseminate something and make something accessible to larger groups of people. So I've always been very attracted to the practical aspect and trying to make a difference really with the work that we do. And as a result, several companies have been created out of my research group. TROND: Was this something you set out to do? When you were in Belgium, getting your degree at the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels, were you thinking I am going to go to America and become an innovator? Was that in your mind? PATTIE: No, I think a lot of that sort of happened accidentally, actually. And one reason I think why I'm interested in practical applications and real-world deployment is that I was never really interested in the technology for the sake of the technology. I'm not one of these people who gets really excited about purely just the technology, the algorithms, and so on. I want to make my life easier and other people's lives easier. And that has always been what motivates me and my work. TROND: And that gets us to intelligence augmentation. Because I guess in some sense, the Media Lab is all about that topic to some extent. And I wanted to also address the fact that not only are you doing the work in your lab, but I think at least for the last few years, you've had the academic responsibility across the lab, and you have shepherded the lab, arguably, through one of its more difficult times. So surely, you have also experienced innovation and the tricky things that show up with innovation across a plethora of fields. But generally, people at the Media Lab are hired, I guess because they think about application. What is it that is so different when you...so let's just start with that. When you start with a human in mind from the get-go, what is the difference that makes? PATTIE: So I think; indeed, our philosophy is always to be, like I said, application-driven. And what that means is that we take a closer look at the ultimate target users and their place or where they live or work, and how the technology could make a difference there and could change things there. So rather than starting from the technology and trying to maybe optimize some algorithm that does X, we actually work closely with target users. We really study their lives today to understand what the pain points are, what the opportunities are for technologies to make a difference and support them in being more effective, more productive. TROND: But you have experienced both sort of AI summers and winters. Is one of the reasons that AI [laughs] tends to get into trouble that it always is very myopic about the technology focus, or is it a more complicated reason why there are these summers and winters? [laughs] PATTIE: Well, I think that that is indeed a primary problem. So yes, there have been several AI summers and winters. Probably a lot of your listeners are young enough that they don't realize that there was another hype cycle for AI that happened sort of in the '80s and '90s with the emergence of expert systems, so-called expert systems. These were not based on machine learning and neural network techniques but instead were typically based on rule-based systems. But they were very sophisticated. They had typically a lot of knowledge built in about a particular problem like, say, making a certain diagnosis, or doing some planning, or what have you. So the systems in laboratory settings were very impressive and were often outperforming experts at doing some scheduling problem, or planning problem, or diagnosis, or recognition problem. But what happened when they were put into the workplace or when people tried to integrate them into the real world was that they basically encountered all sorts of obstacles. One of the obstacles was that people wouldn't necessarily trust the machine, the expert system. They didn't quite know how to work with it or where to fit it into their workflow. They weren't always able to get explanations for why the machine was making a certain decision. It was very hard to correct the knowledge of the system and give it new information or to update its information if it wasn't correct. So there wasn't really a lot of transparency, a lot of controllability, interpretability. And that ultimately was the downfall of expert systems. And so yeah, at that time, just like now, there were many startups, millions of dollars pumped into all of this. The conferences and exhibits were extremely popular, and all of that died down. And we entered an AI winter where suddenly there was very little interest from the real-world businesses in AI. Now, of course, we are in another summer, in another hype cycle. And I am actually very worried that we are making exactly the same mistakes because most of the AI systems that are being developed are being developed very much not in the context of where they ultimately will be used or not with the collaboration of the people who ultimately will use these tools. And so we will encounter exactly the same problems of trust and transparency, and controllability, and interpretability. So, in my work, I've always been emphasizing a different approach. And I like to not call it artificial intelligence but rather maybe augmented human, or augmented intelligence, or maybe human-centric AI because our approach is one where we start out by studying what people are already doing in a certain work environment, whether that is a manufacturing floor or a doctor in the hospital, and so on. And we actually work together with them or think about how we can support the people that are there to do their work better, to be more effective at their work. And so it's a totally different way of looking at a problem. We try to optimize for the person and the technology together to perform better. We don't try to optimize for the algorithm or the system to become better without thinking about how that system will be integrated into our real lives and real-world scenario. TROND: Well, this is super interesting. I want to go into a couple of examples of things that you have done with your students and otherwise in a second. But first, why have we not learned collectively this lesson? I mean, what is it? I mean, is this something you think is happening across the board with technology? Or is it even just specific to this machine learning AI environment that we...are we so tempted by the potential impact of the use cases that we're just getting carried away into the algorithms'depth and then forget the user? Or why haven't people said this is not good enough? PATTIE: I think that it is actually a broader problem with development of digital technologies. All of the technologies that we use today whether it is maybe AI systems or whether it is social networking services and so on, they mostly have been designed and built by engineers, by teams that just consist of engineers and not people that come from very different backgrounds, for example, more social humanities backgrounds, et cetera. One of the reasons that I was very excited to join the Media Lab as opposed to a computer science department is that it is very interdisciplinary. And we really recognize and try to emphasize that interdisciplinarity is extremely important in innovation, in creating things that ultimately will be successful and will be able to make a positive difference basically and a positive impact. So that means involving not just engineers but also designers, people who can really think about making things fluid, seamless about how it integrates into workflow, and so on. But also people from humanities backgrounds, and social scientists, and so on. So I think it's important to have that broader perspective to make or to create technologies that ultimately are desirable and ultimately really improve our lives. TROND: But, Pattie, take me inside of a week in the Media Lab. Because when you describe it this way, it sounds almost so intuitive and simple that I'm wondering why people need to travel to the Media Lab to learn this. Because if it was just simple to just hire a team with different skills, and it will happen, there surely is some other type of magic ingredient. What does a week look like in your lab? How do you draw out the kind of creative energy...maybe it's helpful if you take Arnav Kapur's AlterEgo, which most people know as just that video that went viral. And they're like, imagining the future of computing with just this device where he's not even speaking, but he's kind of just basically controlling, it would seem, the computer with his jaw. Now, fantastic video; how does something like this come out of your lab? PATTIE: So we are a very open laboratory. So, in addition to attracting creative, entrepreneurial people and really cultivating a very interdisciplinary team, we engage a lot in conversations, in discussions with others, with the outside world, which is actually pretty rare still for people in universities. [laughs] So, for example, we have member companies. We have a consortium of companies that fund the Media Lab, and they, pre-COVID at least, come and visit on a daily basis. Every day we have at least ten different companies visiting to see the work, to engage in discussions, to give us feedback. They don't direct the work, but they can be critical. They can see opportunities for where to take it, and so on. And we engage in a very iterative type of style of work, where we quickly prototype something. Like in the case of AlterEgo, it looked pretty ridiculous the way it was glued together with some cardboard and other things that we could find in the lab. [laughs] But we create these very early prototypes that are very clunky, don't work very well. But those make a certain future more visible. They envision what is possible or make it more concrete. And then we invite a lot of feedback from all of these visitors, from all of these people with different backgrounds. And they see opportunities for oh, maybe I would use it this way. Or maybe it's really exciting in that application domain, or I see this or that problem with the technology. So that's really the technique that we pursue, attract a very diverse team of highly creative entrepreneurial people but from very different backgrounds, and engage in a lot of team innovation, and do very iterative types of design, making prototyping, and then getting feedback from really everyone, not just these companies that come and visit but our own families, and of course, the target users of the technologies that we build. So that's the secret sauce, so to speak, [laughs] or the secret to how Media Lab innovation works. TROND: Take us back maybe to 2012 or something. And in the lab, you have two bright people; one is Rony Kubat, who also had a background from the Computer Science and AI Lab at MIT, but then had already come over to study with you. And then you had Natan Linder, who had industry background and had been already head of a Samsung lab in Israel. Now the two of them show up during their masters, I guess, and then ultimately PhDs but masters, I guess, in this context, and they start developing something. Can you tell me a little bit about those early days, early conversations you had with them about what each of them were doing, and your reflections on to what extent some of the early work they did with you how that transpired into what now, 2014 I believe, turned into Tulip Interfaces? And now, in 2021 went on the Gartner calendar, essentially, as a manufacturing execution system. And more broadly, aspirationally, it's a frontline operations platform that can transform the way that workers are working at the frontlines, augmenting them and really changing manufacturing as we know it today with a kind of a no-code system. So this was like fast forward 2012 to 2021. Where were they back then? What was it that you taught them specifically? What were they working on? And how did you work together? PATTIE: What motivated this work initially was this whole realization, in 2012, that we were living in these two parallel worlds, and it's still very much the case. [laughs] We live in the physical world, and then there's this whole digital world with information about all the things around us in the physical world that we are engaged in and so on, the people we're meeting with, and so on. And we realized that or we were frustrated really that these two types of experiences were not connected. For example, if I pick up a book, I can look at the pages, the beautiful pictures in the book, read the back cover to see what people have to say about it. But ideally, at that moment, I will also have access to the rating on Amazon and what others have said about that book or not because that's extremely relevant at that moment when I'm considering whether that book may be an interesting book for me to read. So we were very interested in creating experiences that are more integrated, where our physical lives are more integrated with the digital information that exists about everything around us and all of our actions and experiences. So we experimented with different types of augmented reality systems to bridge that gap and to make the digital information and services available in the physical world. So that's really where the work that Natan and Rony did and what led to Tulip where that started. They were experimenting with building systems that have an integrated camera and projector so that the machine can see what is happening and can project relevant information onto whatever it is looking at. So that people can get, for example, relevant reviews when they're looking at a product that they want to buy. So we actually developed all sorts of prototypes to illustrate this vision of this integrated augmented reality. For example, at that time, together with Intel, we built up an example of a store that has the two integrated, that has physical products; I believe it was cameras. And then there was a projector system that would recognize what camera you were looking at or picking up, and it would give you additional information about it. So it would point out the features by actually pointing at the different buttons on the camera and what was so special about them, et cetera. We also built an augmented desk for a learning context, for an educational context. And in all of these cases, we worked with partners, for example, for the education context to think about how this augmented reality could be used in the context of schools. We worked with Pearson, who's the leading developer of course books and school books, and so on. We then also worked with Steelcase on how this augmented reality technology could be used on the manufacturing floor. How could it help people in real-time by giving them feedback about what they were doing, maybe giving them real-time instructions projected onto their workspace, or maybe alerting them that something wasn't done right or a step was forgotten, and so on? And that work with Steelcase ultimately and with some other sponsors as well like GSK, for example, which does drug development, all of that led to the spin-off to Tulip being created as a company that can really realize that whole vision of an augmented manufacturing place where you can have real-time information provided. But you can also track the whole manufacturing floor in real-time and have very detailed data, and analytics, and intelligence about which steps may cause more errors or which steps in the process, say, take a lot of time, and so on. So you have this real-time insight also into the manufacturing floor that we've never had before. TROND: It's fascinating that you picked this...that they picked this example and that you are kind of explaining it now. Because I want to give people the right sense of what it takes to produce an innovation that turns into a commercial, true product because I saw a version of the product you were explaining now in 2014, in the fall when I was at the Startup Exchange. And I was one of the first in their then Tulip lab with seven employees. But that demo of something that had a camera and a sensor only this spring turned into what Tulip called their vision product. And it's only now coming to market. So here is arguably some of the brightest people working with you, a very experienced mentor, working from 2012 to a demo in 2014. But then they had to take all kinds of other things to market first, and only now, in 2021, is this coming out. I find that an incredible timeline and path. PATTIE: Yeah, it's surprising to me as well, although I have seen it happen multiple times. We think that technology moves really fast. But then, in practice, for an invention like this to ultimately make a difference in the real world typically takes ten years or more. I have had that experience with other technologies that we've invented in the past. Actually, an earlier technology that we invented in our lab was recommendation systems that recommend a book to you because you also liked these other books or because people who also liked the books that you buy also bought this book that is being recommended to you. We invented that technology in '94 [laughs] when browsers were just available. And we were talking a lot to Media Lab member companies about how exciting this would be and how it would personalize the whole online experience if you could get these recommendations from other people like you. And there was excitement among the member companies, but they were at that time saying, "Well, we're not sure that people are ultimately going to feel comfortable giving their credit cards over the internet to buy something. So it seems very exciting, and it's a great vision, but we don't see this happening." [laughter] That was companies like Blockbuster [laughs] and other companies that now are bankrupt, maybe because they didn't take this seriously enough. [laughs] But so because these larger companies were a little bit skeptical about this whole vision that we were portraying of online commerce and recommendations and so on, we started a company ourselves called Firefly in '94 and ultimately sold it to Microsoft actually in '98. But we were just way too far ahead. We were too early. And most people weren't ready to buy things online. Most companies weren't ready to partner with us. And we actually sold a company in '98 at a time when briefly, everybody thought that internet commerce was dead, was not going to take off. A year later, [laughs] our company would have been ten times as much or worth ten times as much as what we sold it for. So, unfortunately, we sold it at the wrong time when there was a lot of pessimism about...and it's hard to believe that now, [laughs], especially now during COVID, that everybody pretty much buys everything online. But yeah, back then in '98, that was not at all clear. And we were too early, basically. So in my experience, it always takes at least 10 to 15 years, even for a technology that seems ready to be deployed to ultimately make a difference in the real world. TROND: Well, the digitalization of physical infrastructure like you started with is a different thing, though, and even more complicated than the trust to buy something online, which I guess is vaguely related to you have to trust that something abstract is actually going to have a consequence. But Rony and Natan told me that they even basically slept over in factories and studied these workers for days and weeks on end, and I guess Tulip is still studying workers. It's not immediately obvious what is the contribution on the factory floor, is it? I mean, it's not as easy as to say, "We have this fancy digital thing that we're going to give you." But why is it so much more complicated? PATTIE: Yeah, I think it's always complicated. [chuckles] And it is important to really understand the context, the actual context of where some technology is going to have to fit in. I remember very well when Rony and Natan were visiting the factories, and they would come back with amazing stories, to our minds, very primitive ways in which everything [laughs] was being done at that time, still a lot of use of paper records, for example, for collecting information. So it was a big gap that had to be bridged [chuckles] really between the vision that we had of this totally connected manufacturing place with all of this real-time data, real-time instructions and advice, being able to also modify things and edit this whole digital layer or digital support system in real-time by the people on the floor, and the managers, and so on. There was really a big gap from that reality of paper-based systems in a very low-tech context to that vision that we had of this smart manufacturing floor. TROND: And how far are we getting with this, and how quickly will it go now? Would you say that this has been a decade of exploration and a lot of these things have been sorted out? Or would you say some quick wins happened, and then some of the slower things they are just slow? Any kind of technology will take the time it takes to fully understand how you can contribute. I guess I'm asking this in the context of another technology that a lot of people are putting a lot of hope in these days, especially perhaps during COVID, you know, robotics on the manufacturing floor and maybe the merging of AI or machine learning and robotics. How do you see these things? How disruptive will any kind of digital device, or software system, or augmented system that should benefit workers how disruptive can these devices and systems become? And have we hit some sort of momentum, or is this still going to be kind of case-by-case basis, and the hype is just not going to be true in this domain? PATTIE: I think we have to accept that progress necessarily is slow. [laughs] I mean, I think the potential is there. But in my experience, really reaching that potential involves learning a lot of hard lessons along the way, but progress is being made. It's just not as quick as we would like it to be. And I think the same will be true for this vision of smart manufacturing, including the use of robotics, which is even more challenging because you have moving parts, [laughs] which means that things break down quicker and that there are also more safety constraints and so on as well. But yeah, progress will continue to be made. And I think it's very important for companies to engage with all of these new technologies, and to do experiments, and to start integrating some of these new technologies in their workplace, or you end up like the Blockbuster [laughs]example that I gave earlier where they said, "We'll deal with this later or when it becomes more important," and then they were bankrupt. TROND: Well, it strikes me that you're not going to give me timelines because it depends on so many things. But if you look at the future of, I guess, cognitive enhancement more generally or certainly these immersive and sometimes wearable systems that you have been building for 30 years, you have an interesting role because you are, of course, inspiring a lot of hype just because the products you build are so fascinating, and they seem so simple. But you are also combining this with being very careful about the predictions that are surrounding it. So tell me a little bit about what the future holds for these things. I mean, are we to expect more of these fascinating devices coming on market, or are you exploring a lot more of those in your lab right now? PATTIE: Oh yeah. TROND: Where is it at the moment on the experimental stage? PATTIE: There's never a shortage of interesting new ideas for us to work on. I always have way too many or more than I have students to work on them. [laughs] But one area that we are exploring in the lab right now is we want to go beyond systems that help people with providing information. The focus on digital technologies, whether it is laptops, or watches, or smartphones, has been primarily on communication and also the system giving you information. And with the work that we talked about so far today, the focus was on giving them that information integrated into whatever they are doing so that they don't have to try to juggle between the physical and then the digital information that may be relevant to whatever physical stuff somebody is doing. But we're trying now to go beyond systems that give you information and are interested in looking at how digital devices can help people with issues such as attention, motivation, memory, learning, grit even, creativity. We think that given that all of us are now sort of forever after cyborgs, we always have technology with us. We have our smartphones never far [laughs] away from our body. Many of us wear a smartwatch as well. And so we have this opportunity now to use these systems to help people with a lot more than just giving them access to information. The systems increasingly have sensors integrated that can sense what the person is doing, where they are, maybe even what their heart rate is, and whether they are maybe a little bit anxious at the moment or not, or maybe the opposite. Maybe they're too sleepy; they're not engaged. So increasingly, systems will have a better sense like that of the state of a person, the cognitive state of a person, and will help the person with being in the state that they want to be in. For example, we've been building glasses that have built-in sensors for sensing brainwave activity as well as for sensing eye movements. And that pair of glasses it's called the AttentivU project. It can actually give you feedback about your own attention level. Are you being highly attentive right now? Or are you being distracted? Are you fatigued? And so on. And we use that information to help a person to be aware of the fact maybe that a driver of a truck should be taking a break because they're too fatigued, or it can help a person who's listening to a lecture be more attentive because the system can tell them when their attention is waning. So we think that this is an exciting new direction to really go beyond just giving a person information about whatever job they're doing, or whatever they're working on, or are thinking about, or doing, but going beyond that and helping them with those skills that are really important for being successful in life that all of us struggle with, and that all of us keep having to work on. TROND: Fascinating. That's fascinating. I want to ask you what is your goal with all of these activities? Because you are an innovator, but innovators are always motivated. Good innovators are always motivated by something. What is it ultimately that you have been trying to achieve over these years? PATTIE: I really want to help people. [laughs] I did study computer science and artificial intelligence. But my goal is not to create smarter, more capable machines or algorithms. I ultimately want to help people with machines, with AI. I want to enable them to live their best lives and to grow and learn and ultimately become the person that they would like to be. TROND: So you have a very optimistic view on a future that a lot of people are scared about right now. Some people might be scared about AI. They might be scared about what they're seeing around them. How do you maintain this very optimistic vision? Is it because you feel like you have agency? You get clever students come in and work on your ideas. I guess I'm just trying to say that usually, I would ask people what is the best way to stay up to date and kind of model what you're doing? And the obvious thing would be they should try and come and apply and come to your lab. Now, some people will achieve that, not very many, right? It's a small space, so there are limits. PATTIE: [laughs] [crosstalk 43:43] TROND: The other advice would be to pay to get to the Media Lab and become a corporate sponsor; that seems to be another avenue. But do you have any other less obvious ways that people can emanate some of this spirit that I think you...because you're sharing an entire approach to how to understand technology, how to develop technology, but also a vision of what technology should be doing for us. You kind of have a philosophy. You told me a philosophy with a small p about technology. How should people try to learn more about it, engage with that kind of philosophy? PATTIE: Yeah, I do think it is the role of the Media Lab to be optimistic really and to see the potential of emerging technologies in improving people's lives. That is really sort of our unique focus among all university research laboratories. We look at emerging technologies, and we try to be positive thinkers or optimistic thinkers in terms of how those technologies can ultimately empower people to improve their own lives, their communities, and their environment, the natural world around them as well. We try not to be naive, [laughs] in that quest at the same time. And we are very much aware that all of the powerful technologies that we work on can be abused, can be used in very negative ways as well. But I think that that is ultimately not a reason not to engage in these endeavors. Basically, we try to invent the future that we want to live in, [laughs] or that's really what we are working on. And we try to be inclusive in that process by, again, not just involving the students and researchers in the lab but really the target communities like people on a manufacturing floor and how do they want to work with AI, and robotics, and augmented reality, et cetera? So we basically involve the target users, companies that are involved in a particular sector, and so on as well. And so yeah, I think that there are many opportunities really for people to be involved. I would also like to say that, especially now with COVID, all laboratories have become much more open and, for example, lecture series, showcases, virtual open houses, and so on. There are no limits to how many people can attend because it's all [laughs] online anyway these days. So it's actually nice that that has opened up the laboratory more and makes it possible for more people to get involved, to be part of conversations, to listen to talks, see demonstrations, and so on. TROND: That's fascinating. And I think just in closing, you mentioned this acronym that's typically used in psychological studies, the WEIRD acronym, Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. And it seems to me that that is a very, very specific user group, but it is far from the only one. So maybe in closing, my last question would be, how does one, you know, because others might be developing technology on other continents or other places. How do you avoid this bias of jumping into a lane that other people have created that is this lane? It's maybe demos from Western labs. It's use cases in highly industrialized factories or whatever it is or created for the New York Fifth Avenue consumer market. Those are not the only technologies we should be building. So how do we do it otherwise? PATTIE: Yes, I fully agree. And meanwhile, today, I talked about my work. And my work is indeed mostly focused on the Western developed world and technologies that might be available here. There's a lot of work happening at the Media Lab with other communities, both within the United States, less fortunate communities, maybe than the ones that many of my technologies are designed for. There's a lot of work, for example, with people in Africa on use of different technologies. So we try to...maybe we cannot develop technologies for everyone, [laughs] but we try to be explicit about who some technologies are designed for and not assume that they would generally be usable. And we try to work with the target communities that they are designed for. And definitely, we're not exclusively working with or designing technologies for the Western, richer world. TROND: Well, thank you so much, Pattie. This has been very enlightening. It turns out that advanced technology is complicated and slower, but perhaps more sustainable when it's developed that way. And that's an interesting lesson. Thank you so much. PATTIE: Thank you. It was a pleasure. TROND: You have just listened to Episode 24 of the Augmented Podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. The topic was Emerging Interfaces for Human Augmentation. And our guest was Pattie Maes, Professor at the MIT Media Lab. In this conversation, we talked about augmenting people instead of using or making smarter machines and enabling people to perform better through fluid, interactive, immersive, and wearable systems that are easy to use, developing new form factors, and much more. My takeaway is that augmenting people is far more complex than developing a technology or even experimenting with form factors. Instead, there's a whole process to exploring what humans are all about, discovering opportunities for augmentation, and tweaking it in dialogue with users. The Media Lab's approach is work intensive, but when new products make it out of there, they tend to extend a human function as opposed to becoming just a new gadget. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 19: Machine Learning in Manufacturing, Episode 7: Work of the Future, or Episode 13: Get Manufacturing Superpowers. Augmented — industrial conversations. Special Guest: Pattie Maes.

Photo of The Beast Prototype courtesy of Rony Abovitz I had a chance to sit down with Magic Leap founder Rony Abovitz for two hours

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In episode 10 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod)), the topic is “A Brief History of Manufacturing Software.” Our guest is Rick Bullotta, Partner, TwinThread, and co-founder, ThingWorx. In this conversation, we talk about how Rick has shaped manufacturing software history and the lessons learned from being an early employee of Wonderware, the famous precursor to manufacturing automation, back in 1993, a company first sold to British engineering giant Siebe in 1998, which merged with BTR to form Invensys, which, in turn, merged with French multinational Schneider Electric, and later the CTO. Rick Bullotta was also the co-founder of Lighthammer Software which was later acquired by SAP, then in 2009 founding ThingWorx, the first complete, end-to-end technology platform designed for the industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) which was acquired by PTC in 2003. We also touch on his current advice to founders in the industrial space, his board role at Tulip, and what he sees lie ahead for the industry. After listening to this episode, check out Thingworx as well as Rick Bullotta's social profile. * Thingworx (https://www.ptc.com/en/resources/iiot/product-brief/thingworx-platform) * Rick Bullotta (https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickbullotta/) Trond's takeaway: Wonderware, Lighthammer, and ThingWorx are prominent parts of manufacturing software history, and there's a chance that the 4th company he now is involved with, Tulip, also will be. I do things with things is Rick Bullotta's motto. The things he does, he does them well, and it is an internet of things, more than anything else. I, for one, am eagerly listening to what he predicts will happen next. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 4: A Renaissance of Manufacturing or episode 5: Plug-and-Play Industrial Tech. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast. Transcript: Augmented reveals the stories behind a new era of industrial operations where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In Episode 10 of the podcast, the topic is a Brief History of Manufacturing Software. Our guest is Rick Bullotta, Partner at TwinThread and Co-Founder of ThingWorx. In this conversation, we talk about how Rick has shaped manufacturing software history and the lessons learned from being an early employee with Wonderware, the famous precursor to manufacturing automation, back in 1993, a company first sold to British engineering giant Siebe in 1998, which then merged with BTR to form Invensys, which in turn merged with French and multinational Schneider Electric and later the CTO. Rick Bullotta was also the Co-Founder of Lighthammer Software which was later acquired by SAP. Then in 2009, founding ThingWorx, the first complete end-to-end technology platform designed for the industrial internet of things, which was acquired by PTC in 2003. We also touch on his current advice to founders in the industrial space, his board role at Tulip, and what he sees lie ahead for the industry. Augmented is a podcast for leaders hosted by futurist, Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the manufacturing app platform, and associated with MFG Works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented - the industry 4.0 podcast. TROND: Rick, how are you today? RICK: Good morning. TROND: Well, it's a nice morning. I wanted to talk to you about some history. RICK: Sure. TROND: Well, you are a bit of a legend in this field, Rick. You've been basically part of almost every development in this field for several years. I wanted us to spend a little time today, not just going into your history of background as the founder of several startups that have had very significant impact on the industry but also just bring people in a little bit to the environment and how it has changed, and how based on your perspective, you see it evolving. You had a degree from Cornell, and then you went on to fund several companies. Can you bring us back to those days when you were studying industrial engineering at Cornell? What was the environment then for manufacturing? And what was it that brought you into the thought that you would start engaging sort of entrepreneurial software development in manufacturing of all fields? RICK: Just to be clear, I barely graduated. [laughter] So I had a fantastic time in college. But that was when I think we thought of engineers as mechanical engineers, or chemical engineers, the physical aspects of making things, building things, vending product as opposed to...I think software and technology was kind of a nascent concept there, at least certainly in manufacturing. But I actually switched degrees from mechanical engineering to operations research mid-stride there, realizing that looking at pieces of broken metal under a microscope wasn't for me. So I graduated. My degree was in operations research, and actually, my first position was at a very progressive steel company called Lukens Steel, doing essentially industrial engineering work. However, this was what? 1985, dawn of the PC, dawn of a new gen of computing. And some opportunities opened up there to kind of take on some additional responsibilities that involved applying computing to simulations and optimization models, all the stuff that I studied but never thought I'd actually practice. So I'd spend a lot of time in the local library checking out software, take the disc home, teach myself to code. An opportunity then opened up to go into steel plant operation. So I used to run a heat-treating process. And that's one thing that a university degree won't prepare you for, having 15 steelworkers working for you. That's where you get a real education. You also quickly realize that the exception is the rule on the manufacturing floor. And we'll talk later about how it gave me a great appreciation of the importance of the role of people in this whole process and not just technology. But yeah, I spent a few years in that role and then moved back over to an industrial computing group. And we were applying at the time very advanced technology, mini computers, very innovative user interfaces, high levels of automation to some of these processes back at the very site that I worked. And the very operations that I worked at was one of the first places for that. So that's kind of where I got into the technology side of things. But I like to say I was blessed and lucky, right? This crusty, old steel company happened to be very, very committed to investing in technology. And it was a learning opportunity for me. And then, across the years, I moved into systems integration. I did some stuff in discrete manufacturing. I had the opportunity; again, luck sometimes happens here, to work for arguably the first well-known company in the industrial software space company called Wonderware, first IPO in the space. And I joined very early, which is kind of cool. TROND: The Wonderware story is somewhat famous for people inside of manufacturing, but just in case, there are some listeners here who don't really appreciate how early Wonderware was. What was the situation when you created your first product? And why, in your account, has it become so emblematic of that early-early era? And what year are we talking about exactly when that entered the stage with Wonderware? RICK: So late '80s, early '90s Wonderware came on the scene. I joined in; I believe it was '93. And my role there was actually in sales. So you'll find that a lot of my life experiences are all the elements that help build a successful business: sales, marketing, technology. So the founding team there...and there'll be a circle of life moment here in a little bit when we talk about how ThingWorx came to be. The two key co-founders there, Dennis Morin and Phil Huber, recognized the value. And they harnessed the PC revolution and Microsoft Windows. So we're talking Wayback Machine when Windows looked like the Mac user interface. There wasn't a lot of PC application on the plant floor. There were some very interesting companies that I had worked with, competitors to Wonderware but a bit earlier companies like [inaudible 7:28] But we were just kind of at that inflection point where people were comfortable with the role of the personal computer as this kind of human interface to all the automation systems that we had. What Dennis and Phil did was really twofold. And this, I think, ties into a lot of the innovation we're seeing today is they democratized the ability to build applications. They made it easy and fun. So the whole experience wasn't coding; it was very visual. It leveraged kind of a drag and drop experience. You didn't need to understand software to apply it. You could build these incredible applications literally in minutes or hours, connect them to the physical world. I don't know if you've ever seen some of the classic applications they've built. But they're those process mimics, very dynamic graphics that represent the physical world. And I learned a lot during that period about the importance of two things: one is ease of use and empowering others to build applications, particularly in the manufacturer domain. Second was, ironically, the importance of marketing. If there's one thing, that company did extraordinarily well in addition to having a great product was getting the message out there, maintaining a larger-than-life image. And the company grew rapidly to 5 million, 10 million, 15, 20, and on and on, and then IPOed. But there wasn't anybody in history that didn't know the name. Go to a trade show...this is a company that kind of put some perspective. I think the first year I was there; we did about 20 million in revenues. We spent about a million-five on a party. That's kind of the priorities were well balanced there. But what an extraordinary group of people to learn from; I developed lifelong mentors and friends at that company that fast forward to my last company, some of those same people came and joined my team. So it was a complete honor to work with them again, so yeah. TROND: So back in those days, what was it that Wonderware apart from the marketing side, and like you said, the menus and things...first of all, who was the target audience at this point? Was this still process engineers that were doing this, or was it still the IT department managing? RICK: Typically process engineers, and that was the democratization, taking it out of that...let's go back to my time in the steel industry. We were writing Fortran code, PL/M code. We were writing code. We were creating database schema, all the kinds of classic development processes. And it was part of a corporate IT function. Now, this shifted to empowering two main groups, process engineers inside these manufacturing companies and, secondly, a new breed of systems integrators that were very, very focused on this automation domain. So historically, they may have done the physical automation, the PLCs, the actuators, sensing distributed control systems. Now they were able to take on this role. Two other things happened. Just prior to the advent of things like [inaudible 10:42] and Wonderware, that user experience was physical gauges, and push buttons, and things like that, and sliders. Now, it became digital. In a way, this was almost like magic at the time. It's virtual reality. It's like a lot of people the first time...I'll never forget my mother the first time she played solitaire on a PC and that virtual card dragging. It was just utter magic. Well, similar experience here, right? People were able to reproduce these and rapidly reconfigure. But to your point, I would say, yeah, it was those in-house process engineers and the systems integrators that helped implement these systems. TROND: Were you all aware of how innovative you were? I mean, clearly, the marketing department thought you were something special. But did you realize at the time how timeless and etched into manufacturing history Wonderware would become later? Were you aware of how far ahead this was? Or were the customers telling you that clearly? RICK: That's a great question. I think it was a combination of both. We had an almost cult-like customer following that was pretty unique, and it created a lot of energy. They knew we were doing something interesting. But we had very legitimate competitors who were also doing super cool stuff. I think another life lesson here was a lot of companies create great products. To bring great products to market at scale is a whole nother task. It's a whole nother challenge. And I think what we had going for us was an absolutely extraordinary distribution channel, global distribution channels, and very energetic, bright people, independent businesses that could sell, support, implement this technology. That allowed us to achieve scale pretty quickly. But the customers were the primary feedback loop. We won all kinds of awards from the trade rags, all that kind of stuff. I definitely think it was the kinds of applications that the customers were building. That always gives you energy when you see that. TROND: Rick, give me another sense of as we're sort of moving to your next company, just bring us back to that time with the early years of Wonderware. What were some of the things that were challenging to you on the application side then that today we would laugh off and it would just be like a line item? What were some of the things that were really complicated that you were so proud of having accomplished? RICK: Well, let's just take the obvious, which is sort of the inverse of Moore's law. If we turn the clock back that many years, we have half as much compute power every year. And to have a very graphical dynamic user experience, it had to be reliable. I would not underestimate the incredible work that that development team did to take not only a new product in what we built with InTouch, which was the product at the time but also Windows itself. It wasn't evolved. It wasn't mature. It certainly wasn't targeted at these kinds of mission-critical applications. So those were the kinds of things you had to work with. You had to make it robust, reliable, and take advantage of very, very limited compute and visualization capability at the time. It changed the modalities by way...people typically, you know, we were all used to keyboards at the time. Now it's touch; it's a mouse. It's a different means of interaction. And then how do you bring that? Some interesting challenges. Like, I'm a task worker down on the floor in protective equipment and gloves, and how do I interact with that? So all kinds of creative stuff to try and bring a whole new modality of human interaction to a pretty demanding segment. TROND: So what then happened to you? What happened around you leaving Wonderware and moving on to the next challenges? Because you've also had a foray in larger companies, but then you immediately went back to the startup world. Give me a sense of what was your thinking then? RICK: Sure. So there was a little detour as there are often in our careers. [laughs] I left and experimented. I actually came back to Wonderware a second time prior to my first startup in a product management role. I got to see M&A. So we got involved in a couple of key acquisitions that I was intimately involved in. So that was another learning experience for me. Then I saw this opportunity at a level above the Wonderwares of the world, of the OSIsofts of the world, of all these kinds of operational systems that we had. They were islands. No one had that holistic view, a supervisor, an operator. No one was sharing information. And so the light bulb went off. This is actually about when the web technologies were starting to get a little traction, the browser, the Netscape effect, ubiquitous TCP/IP connectivity, Ethernet, and the plants. So that's when the light bulb went off. Let's see if we could do something not dissimilar from the way a Wonderware product will connect all your centers and controllers. Why not provide a unified way to see all the systems that you have? So basically, that's what became Lighthammer, and that was in 1998, we started that company. But the intent was, again, to provide that unified view of first...it was called the Plant Information Portal. That was another cool word at the time, right? Portals. And so that was the objective, it's kind of unified visibility. I started the company with some colleagues that I knew from Wonderware. And we built, I think, something pretty groundbreaking there. TROND: And the situation then was there was this need for almost like an information service to kind of...it was almost like an early portal for the industry in a sense. RICK: I think what we found...the unique thing about the industrial space I like to say that everything's a legacy the moment it gets put in. Everything has proprietary APIs, interfaces, and protocols. My approach has always been solve hard problems because you're going to have fewer competitors, and the value is there. So we tried to solve a pretty hard problem, all these like debubblizing all these different crazy systems that were scattered around. Yeah, so that's really what the objective was initially, unified visibility. But then we realized if people can see that information, why can't other systems? So it rapidly progressed from just being empowering people with information to empowering other lines of business systems. So your supply chain systems, warehouse systems, ERP systems can now be informed with real information in a timely manner. And that was what got us on SAP's radar. TROND: Well, because the point was there that you started discovering the importance of standards. And there were standards at that time, but they were very basic web standards. And you started realizing that even in the side of the industrial field, you had to start depending on that. Is that also what got you involved in the intersection of interoperability and also open sourcing certain types of software? RICK: Yeah. In fact, we were actively involved in a lot of open-source projects. I think that was also early in the open-source world. So if something was broken, no one was going to fix it for you; you fix it, right? TROND: [chuckles] RICK: So yeah, if you want to leverage and get value out of open source, you better be prepared to give back. So as a company, we definitely gave back to a lot of interesting projects that became part of the Lighthammer stack. The other thing that I think is important to understand is, and this pattern repeats itself in my career, is building tools, not applications. My goal was always to empower people to build interesting stuff. They've got the ideas. They've got the innovations living inside them. But if it's hard, if there's friction at every point in the process, cost, time, whatever, they're not going to undertake it, so whether it was Wonderware stuff we were implementing, Lighthammer, ThingWorx. And nowadays, with solutions like Tulip, it really was all about that takedown friction, empower non-technical people to be innovators and do it fast. TROND: So, Rick, then you got on SAP's radar. Tell me a little bit about not necessarily your experience there per se but just the difference for you in having straddled a startup that gets on the radar of a large company, and now you're working in a large company. What's the situation there? What is their understanding of the shop floor, and how does that all work? Because it gets more complicated when you're that kind of a software environment. RICK: Well, I think SAP was a very good place to be for a number of reasons. SAP was dominant in the manufacturing vertical in terms of cost manufacturing. Customers, the vast majority of them ran SAP for their back-office systems. SAP had kind of light solutions for the manufacturing domain but a desire to go deeper. Secondly, they were launching a partner ecosystem at the time. We wanted to prove that, in fact, partners are an integral part to their offerings. So we were able to kind of get that visibility, but also, we started stealing some revenue. So when you start taking customer spend instead of upgrading that module in my ERP system, I'm going to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars on my plant floor. That gets you on the radar too. Interesting sidenote, so after SAP, the salespeople told us something fascinating. If you think about in a typical manufacturing company, there's arguably four to seven times more blue-collar...I hate the term blue-collar, task worker, you know, frontline workers, so to speak. But that's got a new meaning nowadays as opposed to back office. Secondly, we had something that not only had a user license for each manufacturing worker but also manufacturing site costs. So think about comparing selling something to the CFO's office that will run in a data center. The scale and size of the deals were pretty substantial, and there was real value being created. So I think in the first year, our sales grew like 800%, 900% from a pretty good base, having that ready base of manufacturing customers to sell into a global company with global sales and support presence. It's pretty easy to get traction there. TROND: But then you had a stint back at Wonderware before you went on to found a new company. What was that like? So you came back and now kind of almost running the show at Wonderware for a little bit. RICK: No, not really because I think the company...this was an interesting dynamic. The company had grown substantially by that point, so from 60 people in my first experience to probably 800 at that point. I was a remote CTO. This was long before remote work was a thing. It was extremely challenging. And I just think those dynamics kind of made it probably not as effective as I could be. That said, some work that I had done in SAP research is what kind of led to the ideas behind ThingWorx. And I actually think, to be blunt, I think Wonderware at the time could have realized those pretty well. Collectively, we could have brought that product to market probably faster of what became ThingWorx. But it just for a variety of reasons, it wasn't the right time, fit, location, all those kinds of things. So dove back into it again, got the band back together, so to speak. TROND: How did that happen? Because at this point, you're not new to startups, and you have had a taste of the corporate world, in fact, in two leading positions, I guess. What is it that then motivates you to go back into that grind, and then you found a groundbreaking company? [laughs] RICK: Part of it is you feel like you cheated on the test. You've got the scars. You've had the lessons learned. I think we had a pretty well-rounded idea on what the new product was going to be, how we were going to take it to market. So I think we actually went in with a pretty solid plan rather than just A; we're going to do some R&D. Secondly, my business partners at Lighthammer were my business partners at ThingWorx, common investors. And some new folks that I worked with at Wonderware joined the team. It was sort of...I'm not going to say we couldn't fail. There were a lot of things we could have done wrong. But we had an incredible team of people with a lot of experience building companies like this, selling software like this. I had a pretty good feeling that we were on the right track there. TROND: And what exactly was ThingWorx in the early days? Because you read things like machine to machine, and those are terms that only much later...today we call internet of things. But you guys were very, very early, honestly, in that domain to produce products in that space when most people were just starting. Machine to machine didn't mean anything to people back then. RICK: And I think where we did well was going a little bit beyond that. And you'll see, once again, it's a pattern that repeats itself, the importance of people, the machines, and the other systems and processes that people have in their companies. Synthesizing all those together is actually where the value nexus is just massive. Any one of those taken in isolation or the connections between them, yeah, there's value to be done. But so we went in kind of with a broad...rather than just machine to machine. And there were some companies doing cool stuff just for getting updates down to an MRI machine or whatever. But we tried to go beyond that. We also realized early on the classic issue; it's good to know what you don't know. And remote access over unreliable links and all that stuff was something...My team had primarily lived in what we would jokingly call the internets of things. Everything's on the local network. You have different considerations. So we acquired a company, a super team, a small company that had a lot of expertise in the kind of internet of things and that remote connectivity, remote management, and that was this the second wave of rocket fuel to get things going. TROND: That's interesting you say that because I think that temptation for many would be you're so far ahead, and you start building things, and you're building things in the future. But I mean, surely, the reality is the shop floor and other things, and you're dealing with poor internet connections. Forget skills. I mean, you're actually dealing with a network that doesn't scale to your idea. RICK: Exactly right. And it was a very interesting balance between...I oversimplify kind of that industrial IoT is smart, connected operations and things like that, so factories, power plants, and then connected fleets of stuff, trucks, MRI machines, light towers, and cities, radically different requirements. One's 98% on-prem, one's 99.9% cloud, one's intermittent, unreliable, expensive connectivity, one's reliable, isolated. So we built a platform to serve both of those tests. In retrospect, we probably made compromises along the way to accommodate that. But still, today, I think PTC's revenue with ThingWorx is fairly well split between those two domains. But that was an interesting challenge on its own because the requirements were dramatically different. TROND: But again, you got acquired. So is this a pattern in your companies? Or is it more a pattern in the field that, at a certain point...because, I mean, I'm making this up here. But is there something about the industry itself that lends itself very easily to just in order to get that scale, you have to be acquired, and it's very desirable? Or is it more a choice that you each time made to say we've built it to a certain scale? RICK: I think in our segment, there are the rare few that an IPO track makes sense, and it's achievable. I think, for the most part, companies in our domain are...they're talking acquisitions to technology companies, cloud companies, enterprise app companies, industrial automation companies. So they have the luxury of we can be the innovation engine. It doesn't have to come off... If you think about a BigCo that wants to build something organically, every dollar they submit...first of all, they're typically 10 to 20 times, and it's just reality, less efficient in developing software for a variety of reasons. And that money comes off the bottom line. So it's actually an interesting dynamic that it's almost more attractive for them as well. But the ThingWorx story is super interesting in the sense that I told someone the other day...so Jim Heppelmann super visionary right there. He had this concept of the digital twin and IoT connected with products way back. And he actually took some of his best and brightest people, his CTO, a number of other people, moved them out of their office, put them in the Cambridge Innovation Center, and said, "Go create something." Well, along the way, we got introduced to that team. And they came to the conclusion that, hey, it's going to be faster, cheaper. We can get to market capture mindshare quicker through acquisition. And if you think about it, that's a very...immature is not the right word. I don't even know what the word I'm looking for here, but it's you've just been given an opportunity to intrapreneur. You've got a clean sheet of paper, all the fun stuff after grinding out your day job for years. And you make that decision to well; we're not going to do that. We're going to go buy a company. I have huge respect for that. And it turned out to be a very good decision for everyone involved. So that's actually how that happened. We were an intrapreneurial effort at a relatively large company, decided to go and become acquisitive instead. And that's worked out quite well. TROND: So we haven't talked so much about the surrounding companies throughout these years. But were there other companies doing innovative things? I'm not so familiar with the history of all of the kind of less successful or less visible manufacturing IT companies throughout the early '90s. What was wrong with some of those, and why don't we talk about them? I mean, are they also still part of the picture? Were there smaller acquisitions that go into this history? RICK: Yeah, there's actually a lot that we were doing right. It was a big enough pie that the gorilla, you know, in the segment might only have a 20-something percent market share. So it was still fairly fragmented. It's partially because of geography, partially because of different segments, and partially just because it was such a big opportunity. The companion market to a lot of what I was doing, for example, at Wonderware and Lighthammer, was the data side of it. So that's the historian companies. Greatest example of that recently is the acquisition of OSIsoft by AVEVA for $5 billion, biggest little company you never heard of. I mean, just a fantastic success story. They stuck to what they did very well and built essentially a dominant market position. They had competitors with good products as well. But I think they're one of those success stories in that space that's only visible to most people now. We had competitors in almost every company I've ever worked at that had great solutions. But this is, again, where I think the X factor stuff comes into play. Your go-to-market machine, the passion that your team and people have that's contagious. If people really believe and they interact with customers and partners, it's just magic. The second thing was, again, where you're really doing useful stuff for customers. Some companies were software companies. Some companies were really just integration companies masquerading as software companies. But, Trond, you know this. There's no shortage of bright people on this planet, and it's -- TROND: Well, sure, there's no shortage of bright people. But I guess this is the third segment that I wanted us to get into. You kind of have a third career now, which is this portfolio life, I guess. [laughs] You can characterize it yourself, but I don't know how to explain it otherwise where you're seeing, first of all, a number of companies and the maturity, I guess, in the space, that's a little different. But you are in a different stage in your career. And I want to eventually get to Tulip and discuss why you got involved with that. But first, maybe you can address some of these portfolio things that you're doing right now. RICK: Sure. TROND: Obviously, mentoring a lot more and getting involved on the board side. How do you see even just the last five years? What's happening right now? Where are we right now with manufacturing software? RICK: So generically, I would say I'm doing manufacturing and adjacent stuff, kind of IoT industrial. I am so excited that it's cool again, right? Because it was for two decades. It was like -- TROND: Well, you were never concerned about that, surely. [laughs] RICK: But, you know, what's the old...in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. So if you were cool within your segment, you didn't have to be that great. And you could have done underselling what we achieved at the different companies. But I think it really has visibility now. There's investment money flowing into it. I think the increasing importance of...we kind of hit that little productivity inflection point where it started to flatten out. People are investing in technology. The challenges around people there's just not a lot of know-how, or there's much less know-how about everything from manufacturing operations to the different tasks that get performed to the technologies. So, how do we offset that? So technology is starting to fill an increasingly important role of focused VCs, and focused investors, and focused incubators around this kind of stuff. I think that's probably the biggest change. And then, like any technology segment, the building blocks, the Lego blocks that we build from, just get better and better and better. Someone that wants to add AI capabilities to their solution today, it's never been easier. I want to add Vision. Now, what you do with it can be very differentiating. But my point is that the building blocks we have today are just better than ever. I think the challenge...what's changed maybe in a negative, I think the way you get to customers, get to market has changed and become more challenging. An example, if you think about a venture-funded or otherwise funded startup, turn the clock back 10 or 15 years. We primarily sold perpetual licenses plus maintenance. So you get a big chunk of revenue upfront. Today in the SaaS and subscription world, in essence, we're all in the financing business. We're financing our cost of sales, our R&D., So the capital requirements for companies in our segment are bigger than they ever have been. And we see that with some of the raises, but that's just a reality. That dynamic perhaps even gets ignored sometimes, but it is a big change. Yeah, and then, you know, just to -- TROND: And what got you to Tulip? RICK: So I think it was actually indirectly through Wonderware, if I recall. So Natan and team and Rony and team were looking around at comparables. What are some companies that have been successful growing a business in this space? And he kind of had the hit list of Wonderware folks that he wanted to talk to. And somewhere, somehow, I don't recall the exact moment, but we connected up, and I got it. When he explained what they were doing. The light bulb went off, and I said, "I'd love to be part of this." So I'm both an investor and advisor in the company. And also, I love smart people, like innovative people. TROND: [laughs] RICK: And there's no shortage of those in Natan's team. So first visit there, seeing what they were doing, meeting the team, it was like, all right, there's something going on here. TROND: So tell me what it is that you saw because I was also...I was at MIT at the time when Natan created the company. And I remember vividly going into the lab or whatever you want to describe his early workspace. Because that's what it was, right? It felt like a lab. RICK: Sure. TROND: But the stuff that was coming out was incredible. What do you think? Was it the product vision, or was it just a capability of the people that you saw early on? And now that you're looking at Tulip and its environment, what is being accomplished right now, would you say with this new app reality? RICK: I think it was the aggregate of all the above. Because great example, if you recall the first demo scenario with the mixed reality projecting instructions onto the work –- TROND: That was crazy. That demo was for me, the demo of all demos in the -- [laughs] RICK: Absolutely. TROND: It was crazy. RICK: And I said, wow, you're taking a very fresh look at a problem here. And obviously, with their collective backgrounds, really interesting mix of skill sets, they're going to do cool stuff. And I think Natan and team would be the first to admit they were coming in with not a lot of domain knowledge. They had been involved in companies that made stuff, but there was a learning curve for sure. And that's what a lot of...not just myself, but they had a lot of advisors, customer feedback, brought in some folks into the team, and then just learned on the job training, engaging with customers, engaging in pilots. So I think it took a year or two to kind of get grounded in what are some of the realities of the shop floor, not that they didn't have a good idea. But once that kind of confluence of smart people, customers starting to do cool stuff with it, and the end the product itself evolving, then that's kind of when the rocket took off. TROND: Well, this is interesting what you're saying here because as I'm interviewing a lot of people who have innovated in this space, time and again, what comes back is this is not just your average software innovation garage. A lab is not a garage. Literally, you can be as smart as you are. You can have a big team of smart people. But unless you get coupled up with that manufacturing shop floor experience, you don't stand a chance, or you just can't build. You can't get past the demo. Tell me more about that one because you have had it ingrained. We talked about this a few minutes ago. You started out that way. But there are so many more innovators these days that they can't; well, maybe they can start out, but they haven't started out on the shop floor, so many of them. RICK: I wish they would...everybody who wants to get in this space needs to do...the equivalent of in law enforcement would be a ride-along. You go and spend a couple of nights working the streets. You realize how things really work. It's not like TV. It's not like you read in your textbooks. So there's no substitute for it, even if it's like super-concentrated real-world experience actually going out and spending some time with customers, real-world experience. But I also think it's the third leg of the stool, which is important. It's the technology expertise and creating products. It's manufacturing domain knowledge and then figuring out how to get it in front of customers and sell it. We can never underestimate the importance of that. So that's another thing that I think Tulip took a lot of very iterative and A/B style testing approaches to go-to-market models and continue to innovate and experiment. It's a challenging space to do low-touch, but they've found a niche with that, particularly as a means to plant seeds of customers that can take a first taste of the technology like, wow, that's pretty awesome. The holy grail, I think, for a lot of companies in our space to try to figure out how to do that. No one's really completely cracked the code yet. So it's a kind of combination model. But the domain expertise, a couple of key hires, for example, a great example is the hires they made in the pharmaceutical industry. So life sciences now has become a really, really powerful vertical for Tulip as a result of bringing in civilian expertise plus the evolution of the product from a platform and tooling and some hardware to application, so the app marketplace that they launched. Now when I'm a buyer, you can approach not only that developer buyer, that integrator buyer, but now you can approach a business buyer and say, "I've got all these apps you can assemble together or just use as is." That was also a maturity thing. So it took the domain knowledge, interaction with customers, and then you can progressively build more into the software itself and less that the customer has to configure. That maturation has been pretty exciting to see. TROND: Rick, we've been through a history here that's very, very exciting to me and, I think to listeners. What's next for the digital factory, for the manufacturing, execution systems, all these acronyms? I tried to shy away from them a little bit because we had so many, many other interesting things to talk about today. But if you're looking to the next decade, the holy grail you mentioned, or this final integration project that would marry software, hardware, shop floor, and considering all the challenges that just the past year has brought us, and let's not even bring into it all of the other challenges of this decade and of this century, if you're going to go into the big words. Where are we headed? RICK: I'll maybe focus on where I hope we head, which looks perhaps a little bit different. I started the discussion with one of the things that I learned in my first job working in the plant flow is the importance of people, the knowledge that they have, the experience that they have. People in a lot of our processes are still the sensor, the algorithm, and the actuator. Like it or not, we haven't yet reproduced the human hand. We haven't yet reproduced the human brain. There are some really unique things about humans. And in that context, I hope that the next decade or so is about collaborative technology and how we use robotics, and AI, and information, and mixed reality to help people be better at what they do. And there's always a risk of dehumanization in something like that where people become interchangeable and they don their Iron Man assembly suit. But I'll maybe take a more optimistic view that it's really...we're going to continue to increase productivity output. But there are so many roles like that that could benefit from the synthesis of all these cool technologies that we have. I maintain that there's no such thing as an AI market. There's no such thing as an IoT market; that they're all just building blocks, right? It's what we assemble to solve some actual problem that is interesting. I'm hoping, and I'm confident, that the bar to implement these things becomes increasingly lower. AR is a great example today. It's hard. Building content is time-consuming and difficult. So maybe that's the next one that needs to bring the content creation to mixed reality, next-gen robotics, codebots, and some really interesting stuff happening there. The democratization of machine vision, and audio, and meta sensing that's happening. TROND: But it's interesting you're saying they're still our building blocks, and they're still our collaboration challenges. And maybe those collaboration challenges are going to have to last longer than a decade, and maybe we need more building blocks. But what comes after that once a critical mass of building blocks get assembled? And you have watched this decade by decade that there's a certain coalescence of building blocks, and then a new platform is formed. But still, in this industry, as you have said, so far, most of the time, these new platforms merge into the more traditional platform players, or they merge into more established. Is that a pattern that you see also in this decade? Or will we see the first mega conglomerates come out of completely new manufacturing combination platforms that are integrating all of these technologies and doing something truly new and can sustain their own new creation, whatever iteration of the manufacturing industry that would become? RICK: And I don't know if it's going to be necessarily the suppliers that become the mega innovators. What may well happen is that the manufacturers themselves start to become because the tools have become so powerful that they become the mega. If you actually take a deep dive into a lot of really innovative manufacturing companies, it's the machines that they built to make the product. It's the processes they use to make the product. That's where some of the real breakthroughs happen. That doesn't come from outside. Now, sometimes suppliers can provide some of that equipment. So maybe this is just an amplifier for that. And the second thing is I know is coming is this massive disintermediation of manufacturing. So we already have companies where the brand owner contracts the design of the product. It contracts people to make the products. It contracts people to service the product and sell the product. So they're literally just the brand name on top of it. Now you matrix that, right? Where you have companies with very, very flexible manufacturing capacity that's additive or traditional. Who knows, right? But I think a manufacturing supply chain 10-20 years from now is going to look radically different. Fewer companies will be making stuff on their own. But the companies that are making stuff will be really applying some innovative technology to be flexible, versatile. That's never going to happen for grunt commodity stuff where the cost to produce matter; you do purpose-built. But increasingly, look at the proliferation rate on new product introductions and electronic products and so many different things in our lives, clothing, right? There are so many things that we could innovate faster if the manufacturing systems themselves could adapt faster. Maybe that's an outcome. TROND: Well, I mean, whichever of these scenarios pan out, it seems to me that at least segments of this industry, if it remains, you know if you can talk about it as one industry anymore, is going to be super exciting. So that brings me, I guess, to just my closing question. If you were to advise a young person today who is maybe thinking about college, or they're thinking about should I follow my passion, which happens to be actually going and making and building things? Or should I get a theoretical education, or is that a false choice? Where should they go today? There's this dichotomy between getting a four-year education versus just going and getting some skills like we have been talking about, so you have some inkling of where you actually need to be to understand in order to produce the innovations. RICK: I think all the above, and let me elaborate on that a little bit. When I was in university, I created my own co-ops in the summer. So I worked...I sought them out. My son's at Drexel University now, and a co-op program is an integral part of his education there. For a lot of folks, getting kids particularly exposed to co-ops and those kinds of internships give you two things. It might tell you what you don't want to do just as much as you want to do, which is I think a lot of people in their career would wish they knew that earlier. It helps you get that real-world experience and just interacting with people. So I think that aspect of in your university education doing a diverse and interesting set of co-ops would be very valuable. Having a liberal arts aspect to any technical education or focus skills education is still valid. You have to know how to read, write, speak, those kinds of things. Design is ever increasingly important. The polymath is going to be a great skill to have. Secondly, learning has never been easier. You've got so many online resources as well. If you need a technical skill, I mean, I could probably learn neurosurgery on YouTube if I really needed to if there was no other option, you know, 60% chance that patient would live. TROND: [laughs] RICK: But we have so many different resources. I'm a believer in lifelong learning. So it's not a static thing. Certainly, a highly specialized skill if you're going to be geneticists doing CRISPR whatever, you need to spend 8-10 years of true rigorous study to master a lot of that kind of stuff. Maybe not; maybe that's even getting easier. TROND: Ricky, you just brought me back to eighth grade and my one-week internship at the National Geological Lab, where I was sorting through minerals. And it's incredible how one week is etched into my mind. I don't think about it every time, and I haven't thought about it for years. But while you were just describing with seeking out these internships, you brought it all back to me. And I can almost remember how the Monday was different from the Tuesday rotation when I went through that institute. There is just no comparison to that kind of real-life experience. RICK: And the other advice that I give any person is versatile set of skills. Do a sales role sometime in your life. You might hate it, you might despise it, but you're going to learn what the salespeople in your company go through. You might love it, and it becomes a career. Communications, what your marketing folks have. Having a diverse set of skills and getting exposure...maybe it happened accidentally for me. Those were the opportunities that presented themselves, but I think having that diverse skill set and toolbox is extremely valuable, particularly if you want to start a company. TROND: Rick, I thank you so much. We have gone way over what I had promised and even my promise to our listeners to be very succinct. But this has been, for me, at least a fascinating roller coaster through your career and throughout manufacturing, both history and future. I thank you very, very much. RICK: My pleasure. TROND: You have just listened to Episode 10 of The Augmented Podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. And the topic was A Brief History of Manufacturing Software. Our guest was Rick Bullotta, Partner at TwinThread and Co-Founder of ThingWorx. In this conversation, we talk about how Rick has shaped manufacturing software history and the lessons learned from being an early employee at Wonderware, the famous precursor to manufacturing automation, back in 1993, a company first sold to British engineering giant Siebe in 1998, which merged with BTR to form Invensys, which in turn merged with French multinational Schneider Electric and later the CTO. Rick Bullotta was also the Co-Founder of Lighthammer Software, which was later acquired by SAP. Then in 2009, founding ThingWorx, the first complete end-to-end technology platform designed for the industrial internet of things, which was acquired by PTC in 2003. We also touch on his current advice to founders in the industrial space, his board role at Tulip, and what he sees lie ahead for the industry. My take is that Wonderware, Lighthammer, and ThingWorx are prominent parts of manufacturing software history, and there's a chance that the 4th company he now is involved with, Tulip, also will be. I do things with things is Rick Bullotta's motto. The things he does, he does them well, and it is an internet of things, more than anything else. I, for one, am eagerly listening to what he predicts will happen next. Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 4: A Renaissance of Manufacturing or Episode 5: Plug-and-Play Industrial Tech. Augmented- the industry 4.0 podcast. Special Guest: Rick Bullota.

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