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Tag: Innovate

  • Paraplegic Engineer Becomes the First Wheelchair User to Blast Into Space

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    A paraplegic engineer from Germany blasted off on a dream-come-true rocket ride with five other passengers Saturday, leaving her wheelchair behind to float in space while beholding Earth from on high.

    Severely injured in a mountain bike accident seven years ago, Michaela Benthaus became the first wheelchair user in space, launching from West Texas with Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin. She was accompanied by a retired SpaceX executive also born in Germany, Hans Koenigsmann, who helped organize and, along with Blue Origin, sponsored her trip. Their ticket prices were not divulged.

    An ecstatic Benthaus said she laughed all the way up — the capsule soared more than 65 miles — and tried to turn upside down once in space.

    “It was the coolest experience,” she said shortly after landing.

    The 10-minute space-skimming flight required only minor adjustments to accommodate Benthaus, according to the company. That’s because the autonomous New Shepard capsule was designed with accessibility in mind, “making it more accessible to a wider range of people than traditional spaceflight,” said Blue Origin’s Jake Mills, an engineer who trained the crew and assisted them on launch day.

    Among Blue Origin’s previous space tourists: those with limited mobility and impaired sight or hearing, and a pair of 90-year-olds.

    For Benthaus, Blue Origin added a patient transfer board so she could scoot between the capsule’s hatch and her seat. The recovery team also unrolled a carpet on the desert floor following touchdown, providing immediate access to her wheelchair, which she left behind at liftoff. She practiced in advance, with Koenigsmann taking part with the design and testing. An elevator was already in place at the launch pad to ascend the seven stories to the capsule perched atop the rocket.

    Benthaus, 33, part of the European Space Agency’s graduate trainee program in the Netherlands, experienced snippets of weightlessness during a parabolic airplane flight out of Houston in 2022. Less than two years later, she took part in a two-week simulated space mission in Poland.

    “I never really thought that going on a spaceflight would be a real option for me because even as like a super healthy person, it’s like so competitive, right?” she told The Associated Press ahead of the flight.

    Her accident dashed whatever hope she had. “There is like no history of people with disabilities flying to space,” she said.

    When Koenigsmann approached her last year about the possibility of flying on Blue Origin and experiencing more than three minutes of weightlessness on a space hop, Benthaus thought there might be a misunderstanding. But there wasn’t, and she immediately signed on.

    It’s a private mission for Benthaus with no involvement by ESA, which this year cleared reserve astronaut John McFall, an amputee, for a future flight to the International Space Station. The former British Paralympian lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident when he was a teenager.

    An injured spinal cord means Benthaus can’t walk at all, unlike McFall who uses a prosthetic leg and could evacuate a space capsule in an emergency at touchdown by himself. Koenigsmann was designated before flight as her emergency helper; he and Mills lifted her out of the capsule and down the short flight of steps at flight’s end.

    “You should never give up on your dreams, right?” Benthaus urged following touchdown.

    Benthaus was adamant about doing as much as she could by herself. Her goal is to make not only space accessible to the disabled, but to improve accessibility on Earth too.

    While getting lots of positive feedback within “my space bubble,” she said outsiders aren’t always as inclusive.

    “I really hope it’s opening up for people like me, like I hope I’m only the start,” she said.

    Besides Koenigsmann, Benthaus shared the ride with business executives and investors, and a computer scientist. They raised Blue Origin’s list of space travelers to 86.

    Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, created Blue Origin in 2000 and launched on its first passenger spaceflight in 2021. The company has since delivered spacecraft to orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida, using the bigger and more powerful New Glenn rocket, and is working to send landers to the moon.

    Copyright 2025. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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    Associated Press

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  • Your Business Has Weak Spots. AI Knows Where They Are

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    There is a long intellectual lineage of psychologists and business theorists who have pointed out that organizations routinely work on the wrong problem.

    This tendency to misdiagnosis isn’t a failure of intelligence or effort. It’s a cognitive default. Humans are inexorably pulled towards the symptoms they can see, not the structure underneath. Behavioral scientist Daniel Kahneman called this theory-induced blindness, while management consultant Peter Drucker warned of the dangers of getting the right answers to the wrong question.

    Yet all these thinkers faced the same constraint: humans, and our factory-installed limits: Limited cognition. Limited time. Limited perspective. Limited data.

    AI, and its ruthless objectivity, removes those limits.

    Problem-finding revelations

    AI changes the game in ways that would have delighted Kahneman and his behavioral cronies, by providing cognitive diversity on-demand:

    1.Pattern chaos

    At the core of working on the wrong problem is an inability to zoom in on an issue because the trees are distorting the forest view.

    The solution:

    LLMs trained on trillions of tokens recognize structures across marketing, psychology, operations, economics, and design. They make cross-functional and competitive connections instantly.

    AI will aggregate and curate how others have successfully triangulated to the actual problem in the forest.  

    2. The white flag of satiation

    Business leaders are so overwhelmed with data that synthesis becomes impossible and so they return to the corporately accepted and institutionally normative definition of the problem.

    The solution:

    AI reads, synthesizes, and identifies implications from whatever you throw at it.  It thrives on heterogeneous data.  It finds correlations and latent drivers that are scattered, buried, and obfuscated in data like: 

    • Demographic and psychographic segmentation
    • Sales reports
    • Financials and spreadsheets
    • PowerPoints and emails
    • Sales call transcripts
    • Web analytics
    • Marketing plans and results
    • Customer reviews, social media commentary, NPS scores, research and survey data

    This creates a single interpretive surface no human could replicate.

    3. Assumption-challenging prompts

    AI responds to the most pointed and disruptive prompts in search of lasering in on the right problem, not the expected one.  AI can also sharpen those prompts, pushing for narrative inconsistencies

    The solution:  

    A new epistemology of leadership will emerge, one that puts assumptions under a savage microscope and helps straw man the other side of the argument. (This is a process I have written about here.) 

    Some of that brutal questioning is embodied in prompts like:

    • “Viciously challenge the assumption that pricing is our core friction.”
    • “Show my team up big time; Identify more plausible root causes than they found
    • “Dig deep – horizontally and vertically – to show what our data implies that we never articulated.”
    • “Show how wise you are by finding contradictions in our internal narrative.”
    • “Destroy my problem statement.”
    • “Reverse-engineer the problem from customer behavior.”
    • “Reveal the problem we would discover if we weren’t afraid to see it.”

    Fixing the misdiagnosis economy

    Here are eleven examples that instantly demonstrate how AI, with access to your data, can help find the actual problem across the organization: 

    1.“We have a churn problem.”

    AI reveals:  Your product is becoming irrelevant faster than your update cycle. Customers aren’t leaving because of service, it’s that the category moved and you didn’t.

    2. “We need more leads.”

    AI reveals: Your targeting is generating massively unqualified leads, and your salespeople are wasting their time.

    3. “Our pricing is too high.”

    AI reveals: Your value narrative is off.  Customers don’t reject the price—they reject the framing. Your language, or comparison sets distort perceived value.

    4. “Competitors are out-innovating us.”

    AI reveals:  They are only out-innovating you with a small percentage of buyers, who are not your customers anyway.  Your opportunities lie in finding the large market you are overlooking.

    5. “We have a talent gap.”

    AI reveals:  You have a feedback gap.  Patterns in internal messaging show employees don’t know how to improve.

    6. “Our emails aren’t working.”

    AI reveals: You don’t have a subject line problem, you have an over-promotion problem.  Social media is overrun with snarky mockery of the number of times you insist that “This sale won’t last.”

    7. “We need more people.”

    AI reveals:  Your people are working at cross-purposes, and you are burdened with bureaucracy and project collisions.

    8. “Our meetings suck.”

    AI reveals:  The meetings aren’t the problem; the issue is an absence of clarity about goals, and faux delight in simply ending the meeting with the aura of progress. 

    9. “Our close rate is terrible.”

    AI reveals:  Considering how unqualified your leads are, your close rate is good.  

    10. “Our innovation record is weak.”

    AI reveals:  The problem is a lack of risk-taking and a paucity of imagination, as your prompt reveals patterns showing that teams only generate ideas adjacent to what they already know.

    11. “Engagement is poor”

    AI reveals:  Ambiguity, not workload, is crushing morale. The most common sentiment revealed in internal communication is “I’m not sure what matters.”

    The automated brilliance of blind-spot detection

    Problem-finding might be the most effective management application of AI yet.  As a synthetic extension of executive function, it can integrate every form of data, see what humans overlook, challenge leadership assumptions, and hypothesize hidden causes.

    What’s more is that AI doesn’t just find problems. It helps fix them. Once AI identifies the subsurface challenges, it moves into solution design, ranging from prototyping new product features to reshaping pricing architecture to identifying the smallest change with the greatest impact.

    This all happens after AI finds the real problem – often the most deniable one – that was hidden in plain sight.

    Go ahead. Start now, upload your messy data, and push the delete key on your assumptions.

    Because your biggest business threat isn’t the problem you see. It is—you guessed it— the iceberg you don’t.

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    The extended deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 19, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

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    Adam Hanft

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  • Lifelong Drugs for Autoimmune Diseases Don’t Work Well. Now Scientists are Trying Something New

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    Scientists are trying a revolutionary new approach to treat rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, lupus and other devastating autoimmune diseases — by reprogramming patients’ out-of-whack immune systems.

    When your body’s immune cells attack you instead of protecting you, today’s treatments tamp down the friendly fire but they don’t fix what’s causing it. Patients face a lifetime of pricey pills, shots or infusions with some serious side effects — and too often the drugs aren’t enough to keep their disease in check.

    “We’re entering a new era,” said Dr. Maximilian Konig, a rheumatologist at Johns Hopkins University who’s studying some of the possible new treatments. They offer “the chance to control disease in a way we’ve never seen before.”

    How? Researchers are altering dysfunctional immune systems, not just suppressing them, in a variety of ways that aim to be more potent and more precise than current therapies.

    They’re highly experimental and, because of potential side effects, so far largely restricted to patients who’ve exhausted today’s treatments. But people entering early-stage studies are grasping for hope.

    “What the heck is wrong with my body?” Mileydy Gonzalez, 35, of New York remembers crying, frustrated that nothing was helping her daily lupus pain.

    Diagnosed at 24, her disease was worsening, attacking her lungs and kidneys. Gonzalez had trouble breathing, needed help to stand and walk and couldn’t pick up her 3-year-old son when last July, her doctor at NYU Langone Health suggested the hospital’s study using a treatment adapted from cancer.

    Gonzalez had never heard of that CAR-T therapy but decided, “I’m going to trust you.” Over several months, she slowly regained energy and strength.

    “I can actually run, I can chase my kid,” said Gonzalez, who now is pain- and pill-free. “I had forgotten what it was to be me.”

    ‘Living drugs’ reset rogue immune systems

    CAR-T was developed to wipe out hard-to-treat blood cancers. But the cells that go bad in leukemias and lymphomas — immune cells called B cells — go awry in a different way in many autoimmune diseases.

    Some U.S. studies in mice suggested CAR-T therapy might help those diseases. Then in Germany, Dr. Georg Schett at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg tried it with a severely ill young woman who had failed other lupus treatment. After one infusion, she’s been in remission — with no other medicine — since March 2021.

    Last month, Schett told a meeting of the American College of Rheumatology how his team gradually treated a few dozen more patients, with additional diseases such as myositis and scleroderma — and few relapses so far.

    Those early results were “shocking,” Hopkins’ Konig recalled.

    They led to an explosion of clinical trials testing CAR-T therapy in the U.S. and abroad for a growing list of autoimmune diseases.

    How it works: Immune soldiers called T cells are filtered out of a patient’s blood and sent to a lab, where they’re programmed to destroy their B cell relatives. After some chemotherapy to wipe out additional immune cells, millions of copies of those “living drugs” are infused back into the patient.

    While autoimmune drugs can target certain B cells, experts say they can’t get rid of those hidden deep in the body. CAR-T therapy targets both the problem B cells and healthy ones that might eventually run amok. Schett theorizes that the deep depletion reboots the immune system so when new B cells eventually form, they’re healthy.

    Other ways to reprogram rogue cells

    CAR-T is grueling, time consuming and costly, in part because it is customized. A CAR-T cancer treatment can cost $500,000. Now some companies are testing off-the-shelf versions, made in advance using cells from healthy donors.

    Another approach uses “peacekeeper” cells at the center of this year’s Nobel Prize. Regulatory T cells are a rare subset of T cells that tamp down inflammation and help hold back other cells that mistakenly attack healthy tissue. Some biotech companies are engineering cells from patients with rheumatoid arthritis and other diseases not to attack, like CAR-T does, but to calm autoimmune reactions.

    Scientists also are repurposing another cancer treatment, drugs called T cell engagers, that don’t require custom engineering. These lab-made antibodies act like a matchmaker. They redirect the body’s existing T cells to target antibody-producing B cells, said Erlangen’s Dr. Ricardo Grieshaber-Bouyer, who works with Schett and also studies possible alternatives to CAR-T.

    Last month, Grieshaber-Bouyer reported giving a course of one such drug, teclistamab, to 10 patients with a variety of diseases including Sjögren’s, myositis and systemic sclerosis. All but one improved significantly and six went into drug-free remission.

    Next-generation precision options

    Rather than wiping out swaths of the immune system, Hopkins’ Konig aims to get more precise, targeting “only that very small population of rogue cells that really causes the damage.”

    B cells have identifiers, like biological barcodes, showing they can produce faulty antibodies, Konig said. Researchers in his lab are trying to engineer T cell engagers that would only mark “bad” B cells for destruction, leaving healthy ones in place to fight infection.

    Nearby in another Hopkins lab, biomedical engineer Jordan Green is crafting a way for the immune system to reprogram itself with the help of instructions delivered by messenger RNA, or mRNA, the genetic code used in Covid-19 vaccines.

    In Green’s lab, a computer screen shines with brightly colored dots that resemble a galaxy. It’s a biological map that shows insulin-producing cells in the pancreas of a mouse. Red marks rogue T cells that destroy insulin production. Yellow indicates those peacemaker regulatory T cells — and they’re outnumbered.

    Green’s team aims to use that mRNA to instruct certain immune “generals” to curb the bad T cells and send in more peacemakers. They package the mRNA in biodegradable nanoparticles that can be injected like a drug. When the right immune cells get the messages, the hope is they’d “divide, divide, divide and make a whole army of healthy cells that then help treat the disease,” Green said.

    The researchers will know it’s working if that galaxy-like map shows less red and more yellow. Studies in people are still a few years away.

    Could you predict autoimmune diseases – and delay or prevent them?

    A drug for Type 1 diabetes “is forging the path,” said Dr. Kevin Deane at the University of Colorado Anschutz.

    Type 1 diabetes develops gradually, and blood tests can spot people who are brewing it. A course of the drug teplizumab is approved to delay the first symptoms, modulating rogue T cells and prolonging insulin production.

    Deane studies rheumatoid arthritis and hopes to find a similar way to block the joint-destroying disease.

    About 30 percent of people with a certain self-reactive antibody in their blood will eventually develop RA. A new study tracked some of those people for seven years, mapping immune changes leading to the disease long before joints become swollen or painful.

    Those changes are potential drug targets, Deane said. While researchers hunt possible compounds to test, he’s leading another study called StopRA: National to find and learn from more at-risk people.

    On all these fronts, there’s a tremendous amount of research left to do — and no guarantees. There are questions about CAR-T’s safety and how long its effects last, but it is furthest along in testing.

    Allie Rubin, 60, of Boca Raton, Florida, spent three decades battling lupus, including scary hospitalizations when it attacked her spinal cord. But she qualified for CAR-T when she also developed lymphoma — and while a serious side effect delayed her recovery, next month will mark two years without a sign of either cancer or lupus.

    “I just remember I woke up one day and thought, ‘Oh my god, I don’t feel sick anymore,’” she said.

    That kind of result has researchers optimistic.

    “We’ve never been closer to getting to — and we don’t like to say it — a potential cure,” said Hopkins’ Konig. “I think the next 10 years will dramatically change our field forever.”

    Copyright 2025. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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    Associated Press

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  • Most Gen-Z Employees See Traditional Career Paths Coming to an End

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    Many employers and co-workers have voiced exasperation at Gen-Zers’ reputed resistance—if not defiance—to conforming with traditional workplace roles and demands. New data indicates the workforce’s youngest members not only don’t plan on bending to that criticism, but even view the long-held business models those gripes are based on as doomed.

    That view of traditional work and career paradigms being destined for the ash pile of history appears to explain many why many Gen-Zers are behaving in ways that alternatively confuse and annoy older colleagues. According to the latest Next Gen of Work report by freelance job platform Fiverr, its survey of 12,000 workers born between 1995 and 2012 found a majority saying the model of working one’s way through the corporate ranks will soon be sleeping with the fishes alongside cradle-to-grave employment. That view explains why many cohort members are not only disinclined to comply with workplace expectations and demands, but think conforming to a mold in order to keep a long-term job has become a road to nowhere.

    As a result, a mere 18 percent of Gen-Z respondents cited ascending a profession with a single employer as a smart way of getting ahead in the world. Bolder still, over half of survey participants—or 54 percent of the total—predicted traditional employment itself will become obsolete in coming years. And only 14 percent of Gen-Zers questioned listed working for a well-known corporation as one of their career ambitions—furthering the cohort’s break with the tenets that dominated post-war employment.

    Not illogically, many Gen-Zers who view career paths that older generations adhered to as living on borrowed time are instead creating alternatives to the 9-to-5, five-day week, working for a single employer models. As part of that, many of them are turning to income stacking—or generating multiple sources of revenue by juggling several professional activities. Fully 67 percent of Fiverr survey participants said they considered having an array of revenue sources as essential to attaining financial security.

    But in addition to Gen-Zers’ (in)famous determination to blaze their own trails tailored to their personal interests—often at the expense of workplace conformity and harmony—there’s another factor driving their multi-activity alternative. The survey found many cohort members are haunted by worries that a single job and income won’t allow them to get by.

    “Faced with economic uncertainty, Gen Z is experiencing what we’re calling ‘single-paycheck panic’—they’re diversifying income streams because relying on one job feels too risky,” said Michelle Baltrusitis, Fiverr’s associate director of community and social impact in comments on the survey results. “Instead of waiting for stability, they’re betting on themselves by embracing freelancing and building financial resilience as the smarter path forward.”

    But Baltrusitis stresses that “Gen Z isn’t rejecting work, they’re redefining it.” The survey found respondents often start doing that even before quitting the full-time jobs they consider doomed. Nearly 40 percent of survey participants said they had or currently were taking on freelancing work in addition to 9-to-5 jobs they held down.

    The reason for that transitioning? Nearly half of respondents cited not making enough money as their biggest career worry. In addition to whatever presumably insufficient salaries they were earning from full-time positions, many Gen-Z survey participants said external costs like high rents, increasing prices, and paying off student loans have made working just one job too risky.

    And as they shift from a single job to the independence of juggling multiple gigs full-time, a large portion of Gen-Zers are adapting their use of artificial intelligence at work in ways that are also beneficial to their outside activities. Nearly 60 percent of respondents said they trust the tech to assume some of their professional responsibilities. Meanwhile, 20 percent or more of survey participants said they used apps for help in brainstorming their multiplying workflows, generating content, and improving creative ideas.

    But even as they define what they consider post-modern work paradigms, the survey found Gen-Zers remained conscious of—and a bit hacked off by—the ways former and future co-workers viewed them.

    Nearly a quarter of respondents said older colleagues were off base in considering members of the younger cohort as lazy. As an apparent reflection of their willingness to toil away alongside previous generations, just 17 percent of respondents listed early retirement as a career ambition.

    That attitude may well earn Gen-Zers more respect from older colleagues, but they’d get even more props—plus heartfelt thanks—if they’d do something about the stare.

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    Bruce Crumley

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  • How Tiny Drones Inspired by Bats Could Save Lives in Dark and Stormy Conditions

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    Don’t be fooled by the fog machine, spooky lights and fake bats: the robotics lab at Worcester Polytechnic Institute lab isn’t hosting a Halloween party.

    Instead, it’s a testing ground for tiny drones that can be deployed in search and rescue missions even in dark, smoky or stormy conditions.

    “We all know that when there’s an earthquake or a tsunami, the first thing that goes down is power lines. A lot of times, it’s at night, and you’re not going to wait until the next morning to go and rescue survivors,” said Nitin Sanket, assistant professor of robotics engineering. “So we started looking at nature. Is there a creature in the world which can actually do this?”

    Sanket and his students found their answer in bats and the winged mammal’s highly sophisticated ability to echolocate, or navigate via reflected sound. With a National Science Foundation grant, they’re developing small, inexpensive and energy-efficient aerial robots that can be flown where and when current drones can’t operate.

    Last month, emergency workers in Pakistan used drones to find people stranded on rooftops by massive floods. In August, a rescue team used a drone to find a California man who got trapped for two days behind a waterfall. And in July, drones helped find a stable route to three mine workers who spent more than 60 hours trapped underground in Canada.

    But while drones are becoming more common in search and rescue, Sanket and researchers elsewhere want to move beyond the manually operated individual robots being used today. A key next step is developing aerial robots that can be deployed in swarms and make their own decisions about where to search, said Ryan Williams, an associate professor at Virginia Tech.

    “That type of deployment — autonomous drones — that is effectively nil,” he said.

    Williams tackled that problem with a recent project that involved programming drones to choose search trajectories in coordination with human searchers. Among other things, his team used historical data from thousands of missing person cases to create a model predicting how someone would behave if lost in the woods.

    “And then we used that model to better localize our drones, to search in locations with higher chances of finding someone,” he said.

    At WPI, Sanket’s project addresses other limitations of current drones, including their size and perception capabilities.

    “Current robots are big, bulky, expensive and cannot work in all sorts of scenarios,” he said.

    By contrast, his drone fits in the palm of his hand, is made mostly from inexpensive hobby-grade materials and can operate in the dark. A small ultrasonic sensor, not unlike those used in automatic faucets in public restrooms, mimics bat behavior, sending out a pulse of high-frequency sound and using the echo to detect obstacles in its path.

    During a recent demonstration, a student used a remote control to launch the drone in a brightly lit room and then again after turning off all but a faintly glowing red light. As it approached a clear, Plexiglas wall, the drone repeatedly halted and backed away, even with the lights off and with fog and fake snow swirling through the air.

    “Currently, search and rescue robots are mainly operational in broad daylight,” Sanket said. “The problem is that search and rescues are dull, dangerous and dirty jobs that happen a lot of times in darkness.”

    But development didn’t go completely smoothly. The researchers realized that the noise of the bat robot’s propellers interfered with the ultrasound, requiring 3D printed shells to minimize the interference. They also used artificial intelligence to teach the drone how to filter and interpret sound signals.

    Still, there’s a long way to go to match bats, which can contract and compress their muscles to listen only to certain echoes and can detect something as small as a human hair from several meters away.

    “Bats are amazing,” Sanket said. “We are nowhere close to what nature has achieved. But the goal is that one day in the future, we will be there and these will be useful for deployment in the wild.”

    Copyright 2025. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. 

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    Associated Press

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  • Pfizer Sues to Stop Rival Bid for Drugmaker Metsera by Denmark’s Novo Nordisk

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    Pfizer is suing over some unsolicited competition in its nearly $5 billion bid to buy the drugmaker Metsera.

    New York-based Pfizer said Friday after markets closed that it was suing Metsera and a third drugmaker, Denmark’s Novo Nordisk, over a bid for Metsera that Novo announced Thursday.

    Novo said it planned to buy Metsera in a deal that could be worth up to $9 billion, and Metsera said the offer appeared to be superior to Pfizer’s bid, which was announced in September.

    Metsera Inc. has no products on the market, but it is developing potential oral and injectable treatments. That includes some potential treatments that could target lucrative fields for obesity and diabetes.

    Novo already has the treatments Wegovy and Ozempic on the market in those respective categories.

    Pfizer said the offer from Novo cannot be considered superior to its bid because it carries significant regulatory risk that makes it unlikely to be completed.

    Pfizer, which ended development of a potential pill to treat obesity this spring, also said Novo’s offer represents “an illegal attempt by a company with a dominant market position to suppress competition.”

    Representatives of both Novo and Metsera did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.

    Copyright 2025. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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    Associated Press

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  • Why You Should Think Like a Startup With Nothing to Lose

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    As a strategic coach, one of my primary objectives is to drive innovation within leadership teams. The problem is that most established companies struggle to innovate, not because they lack smart people, but because their own success traps them. Current investments, relationships, and processes create invisible constraints that limit strategic thinking and decision-making.

    I’ve run a strategic innovation exercise with dozens of growth-stage teams, and the results are consistently eye-opening. The exercise is simple but uncomfortable. Teams temporarily abandon their attachment to what they’ve built and think like a startup competitor with nothing to lose. The concept comes from Clayton Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma. Established companies get disrupted because they’re too focused on existing customers, current investments, and established relationships. Meanwhile, startups enter unburdened by these constraints, free to reimagine how problems get solved.

    Here’s how it works: I break the team into small groups, we agree on seed capital, and give them thirty minutes to develop a business plan for a startup that would take down their company. Each group presents its attack strategy, revealing vulnerabilities and opportunities. When teams stop defending and start thinking like attackers, constraints become optional, investments become liabilities, and relationships become anchors. The exercise surfaces six key areas where assumptions limit innovation.

    1. Underserved segments you’re ignoring

    When teams design their startup attack, they consistently discover customer segments they’ve been ignoring. Established companies naturally optimize their operations around their most profitable customers, building processes, pricing, and delivery models that cater to this core group. But this focus creates systematic blind spots around smaller segments, newer markets, or customers with different needs. The startup teams immediately identify these underserved groups because they’re not constrained by existing infrastructure or worried about cannibalizing current business. A professional services firm might realize it has ignored companies willing to spend $5,000 to $15,000 annually because all their systems are built for $50,000 clients.

    2. Key talent that competitors will poach

    The exercise forces uncomfortable conversations about talent vulnerability that leadership teams typically avoid. When thinking like a competitor, teams quickly identify the individuals who hold critical knowledge or capabilities. They realize that extracting just a few key individuals could replicate competitive advantages without rebuilding entire organizations. This reveals how much companies take talent stability for granted while failing to document knowledge, cross-train capabilities, or understand what makes key roles vulnerable. A manufacturing company might recognize that hiring three senior engineers would transfer its entire proprietary production process to a competitor.

    3. Underutilized assets sitting idle

    Teams consistently discover how much complexity they’re carrying that doesn’t drive competitive advantage. The startup attack reveals which assets, relationships, and capabilities truly matter versus those that exist merely because of historical decisions or relationship commitments. When designing the lean competitor, teams identify the minimum viable version of their business that could compete effectively. This ruthless prioritization reveals how established companies often maintain underperforming locations, carry slow-moving inventory, or service marginal accounts, simply because unwinding these commitments feels more complicated than keeping them. A distribution company might realize that a focused competitor could operate with a fraction of their warehouses, suppliers, and product lines.

    4. Technology advantages you’ve ceded

    The exercise surfaces how legacy technology creates competitive disadvantages that companies rationalize as acceptable. When designing the startup, teams realize that new competitors will deploy current cloud platforms, modern tools, and integrated systems that deliver superior functionality at a lower cost. This forces an honest assessment of whether defending sunk technology investments makes strategic sense or feels easier than change. Teams recognize they’ve been justifying outdated systems based on switching costs rather than competitive advantage. The gap between what customers expect and what legacy infrastructure can deliver becomes impossible to ignore. A logistics company might confront the fact that its twelve-year-old warehouse system lacks the real-time tracking and integration capabilities that competitors would launch today.

    5. Thinking that’s blocking innovation

    Teams discover that their current approaches persist not because they’re optimal, but because they’re familiar, and changing feels risky. The startup design reveals how competitors could challenge industry norms around pricing models, engagement structures, or service delivery that customers prefer. This shows how companies prioritize maintaining existing approaches over serving customer needs to protect operational predictability. The exercise forces an examination of which business model elements exist for internal convenience versus those that provide a competitive advantage. A financial services firm might realize clients prefer month-to-month agreements with real-time dashboards over annual contracts with quarterly reviews.

    6. Operational flexibility you’ve lost

    The exercise reveals how processes designed to ensure consistency have sacrificed speed and adaptability. When teams design the startup competitor, they identify which procedures exist to manage risk versus which prevent past problems that may no longer be relevant. This exposes accumulated operational weight that slows response time and limits flexibility. Teams recognize that competitors unencumbered by these procedures could move faster and adapt more readily to client needs—the gap between process as an enabler versus process as a constraint becomes clear. A software agency might realize that its structured methodology, with defined phases and approval gates, could be challenged by rapid iteration and flexible scope adjustments.

    The most valuable insight isn’t just identifying vulnerabilities; it’s also understanding how to mitigate them. It’s recognizing how assumptions, investments, and relationships limit strategic thinking. When you think like a startup with nothing to lose, you see opportunities you’ve been missing and constraints you’ve accepted as unchangeable.

    Teams that benefit most use discoveries to drive decisions. They launch pilot programs, challenge assumptions about customer segments, accelerate technology modernization, and streamline operations. Your biggest threat isn’t the startup you haven’t heard about. It’s your blind spots, unquestioned assumptions, and constraints you’ve accepted as permanent.

    What customer segments have we systematically overlooked because they don’t align with our current business model?

    Which of our current processes exist to prevent old problems rather than solve current customer needs?

    If we were starting this business today with seed capital, what would we do completely differently?

    Why Your Biggest Threat Isn’t Your Competition – It’s Your Blind Spots

    Hook: Most leadership teams think they know their vulnerabilities, but they’ve never systematically explored how a smart startup would actually attack their business. “The Takedown” exercise forces senior teams to become their own disruptors, revealing defensive blind spots and innovation opportunities that normal strategic planning completely misses.

    Why This Matters Now: The innovator’s dilemma has accelerated – established companies get disrupted faster because they’re too attached to existing investments and approaches. Leadership teams that regularly challenge their own assumptions through competitive threat modeling stay ahead of disruption while others get blindsided by more agile competitors.

    Key Framework: The “Strategic Vulnerability Assessment” – systematic exploration of competitive blind spots:

    • Niche customer targeting that reveals underserved segments being ignored
    • Problem redefinition that exposes gaps between what companies deliver versus what customers need
    • Talent poaching analysis that identifies retention risks and capability vulnerabilities
    • Technology acquisition strategies that highlight innovation gaps and outdated infrastructure
    • Asset prioritization that reveals resource misallocation and operational inefficiencies
    • Startup advantage leverage that forces recognition of organizational constraints limiting innovation

    Practical Takeaway: Readers will understand how to systematically examine their business through a disruptor’s lens, identifying specific vulnerabilities and innovation opportunities that transform from defensive insights into competitive advantages through strategic action.

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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    Bruce Eckfeldt

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  • Music Could Help Ease Pain from Surgery or Illness. Scientists are Listening

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    Nurse Rod Salaysay works with all kinds of instruments in the hospital: a thermometer, a stethoscope and sometimes his guitar and ukulele.

    In the recovery unit of UC San Diego Health, Salaysay helps patients manage pain after surgery. Along with medications, he offers tunes on request and sometimes sings. His repertoire ranges from folk songs in English and Spanish to Minuet in G Major and movie favorites like “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

    Patients often smile or nod along. Salaysay even sees changes in their vital signs like lower heart rate and blood pressure, and some may request fewer painkillers.

    “There’s often a cycle of worry, pain, anxiety in a hospital,” he said, “but you can help break that cycle with music.”

    Salaysay is a one-man band, but he’s not alone. Over the past two decades, live performances and recorded music have flowed into hospitals and doctors’ offices as research grows on how songs can help ease pain.

    Scientists explore how music affects pain perception

    The healing power of song may sound intuitive given music’s deep roots in human culture. But the science of whether and how music dulls acute and chronic pain — technically called music-induced analgesia — is just catching up.

    No one suggests that a catchy song can fully eliminate serious pain. But several recent studies, including in the journals Pain and Scientific Reports, have suggested that listening to music can either reduce the perception of pain or enhance a person’s ability to tolerate it.

    What seems to matter most is that patients — or their families — choose the music selections themselves and listen intently, not just as background noise.

    How music can affect pain levels

    “Pain is a really complex experience,” said Adam Hanley, a psychologist at Florida State University. “It’s created by a physical sensation, and by our thoughts about that sensation and emotional reaction to it.”

    Two people with the same condition or injury may feel vastly different levels of acute or chronic pain. Or the same person might experience pain differently from one day to the next.

    Acute pain is felt when pain receptors in a specific part of the body — like a hand touching a hot stove — send signals to the brain, which processes the short-term pain. Chronic pain usually involves long-term structural or other changes to the brain, which heighten overall sensitivity to pain signals. Researchers are still investigating how this occurs.

    “Pain is interpreted and translated by the brain,” which may ratchet the signal up or down, said Dr. Gilbert Chandler, a specialist in chronic spinal pain at the Tallahassee Orthopedic Clinic.

    Researchers know music can draw attention away from pain, lessening the sensation. But studies also suggest that listening to preferred music helps dull pain more than listening to podcasts.

    “Music is a distractor. It draws your focus away from the pain. But it’s doing more than that,” said Caroline Palmer, a psychologist at McGill University who studies music and pain.

    Scientists are still tracing the various neural pathways at work, said Palmer.

    “We know that almost all of the brain becomes active when we engage in music,” said Kate Richards Geller, a registered music therapist in Los Angeles. “That changes the perception and experience of pain — and the isolation and anxiety of pain.”

    Music genres and active listening

    The idea of using recorded music to lessen pain associated with dental surgery began in the late 19th century before local anesthetics were available. Today researchers are studying what conditions make music most effective.

    Researchers at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands conducted a study on 548 participants to see how listening to five genres of music — classical, rock, pop, urban and electronic — extended their ability to withstand acute pain, as measured by exposure to very cold temperatures.

    All music helped, but there was no single winning genre.

    “The more people listened to a favorite genre, the more they could endure pain,” said co-author Dr. Emy van der Valk Bouman. “A lot of people thought that classical music would help them more. Actually, we are finding more evidence that what’s best is just the music you like.”

    The exact reasons are still unclear, but it may be because familiar songs activate more memories and emotions, she said.

    The simple act of choosing is itself powerful, said Claire Howlin, director of the Music and Health Psychology Lab at Trinity College Dublin, who co-authored a study that suggested allowing patients to select songs improved their pain tolerance.

    “It’s one thing that people can have control over if they have a chronic condition — it gives them agency,” she said.

    Active, focused listening also seems to matter.

    Hanley, the Florida State psychologist, co-authored a preliminary study suggesting daily attentive listening might reduce chronic pain.

    “Music has a way of lighting up different parts of the brain,” he said, “so you’re giving people this positive emotional bump that takes their mind away from the pain.”

    It’s a simple prescription with no side effects, some doctors now say.

    Cecily Gardner, a jazz singer in Culver City, California, said she used music to help get through a serious illness and has sung to friends battling pain.

    “Music reduces stress, fosters community,” she said, “and just transports you to a better place.”

    Copyright 2025. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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    Associated Press

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  • 2 Programs That Gave $4.7 Billion to Small Businesses Last Year Just Shut Down

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    The plunge into American entrepreneurship is anything but easy. Just ask Daniel Spokoyny, who took the leap this month after leaving academia to start BeeSafe AI, a San Diego-based startup aimed at combatting cyber criminals that use social engineering methods to scam consumers. If you have a phone and have ever received an SMS message inviting you to apply for a job, or maybe suggesting that you won the lottery, then you’ve likely encountered one of these schemes.

    Spokoyny and his co-founder, Nikolai Vogler, are gathering intel on scammers, building out so-called “honeypot” chatbots, which will mimic real-life victims. This will help map out the networks of these cybercriminals in real-time.

    To pay their salaries, build infrastructure and purchase software services, the co-founders applied for and received $305,000 worth of funding from The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. Without that program, Spokoyny says, BeeSafe wouldn’t be in business.

    “The fact that these ventures are high-risk for academics is particularly what drives innovation because we tried to go out and raise money last year, and our technology was too high-risk for investors,” Spokoyny says. “That’s why we applied to the Small Business Innovation Research.”

    SBIR and its peer, the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) are decades-old programs that have doled out more than $70 billion in funding to entrepreneurial research projects that show promise for innovation and mass commercialization. More than 30,000 companies owe their success in part to SBIR and STTR.

    The main difference between the two is that SBIR, which started in 1982, has mainly focused on small businesses conducting their own R&D efforts while STTR, which started in 1992, often involves a partnership between a university or research lab and an entrepreneur. The three phases of the program are broken down into research, prototyping, and commercialization, respectively. 

    Notable beneficiaries of SBIR include Qualcomm, which received $1.5 million in funding in the 1980s to build the technology underpinning our modern cellular networks.

    But as of this month, both SBIR and SBTT are on ice.

    Funding for the programs ran out on Oct. 1 and was the subject of heated debate in the Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship between the committee’s top lawmakers: Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), committee chair, and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), ranking member. 

    “The SBIR & STTR programs fuel America’s innovation engine,” Markey, who has sought to make the program permanent, said last week. “Cutting successful small businesses out would be like cutting your top scorer before a big game.”

    Sen. Ernst introduced her own bill as well, arguing that the programs are vulnerable to abuse from foreign adversaries like China. She pointed to a report she released that found 835 applications were flagged for having foreign risks between 2023 and 2024. (Of those applications, 303 were denied.) 

    “Even one case is too many,” Ernst said. 

    To the benefit of thousands of small companies, the government sought to obligate $4.7 billion across the two programs during fiscal year 2024.

    And for as much funding as SBIR and SBTT have given out, they’ve also helped save the government money as well. A total of $4.5 million in SBIR awards allowed the Scottsdale, Arizona-based W5 Technologies, a mobile communication company, to come in and enhance a global communication network used by the government. In doing so, they helped the Department of Defense save $30 million, according to company CEO Jason Ferguson.

    How did they do it? In essence, by taking a cell tower and extending the antenna out by 20,000 miles with unique satellite technology.

    W5’s system uses what’s known as geosynchronous satellites. No bigger than two shoeboxes glued together, these satellites orbit the moon more closely than they do Earth. What’s special about them is that they rotate around the equator at the same speed as that of the Earth’s rotation. So from our perspective from Earth, the satellite is stationary. Because of this, W5 uses these satellites as cell towers to bounce signals off of. The technology helps American warfighters communicate in real-time (For security reasons, the military doesn’t use commercial networks like Verizon or Comcast for their comms.)

    “The SBIR program allowed us to make the transition from only supporting large primes to us being a prime ourselves and really taking an idea, turning it into a working product, marketing it, and then selling it back into the Department of Defense,” Ferguson says.

    In fostering American innovation, the programs have not just heightened national security, but strengthened economic security in the commercialization efforts of some of these projects. (More successful ventures allow for their expansion, which injects more jobs in a local ecosystem.)

    So what happens to American innovation and to the small entities that might flounder without the benefits derived from SBIR and STTR? Just ask BeeSafe’s Spokoyny. “There’s a very good chance that without [SBIR funding], I wouldn’t have started the company with my co-founder.”

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    Melissa Angell

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  • How Cleveland Helps Startups Compete in This $3.4 Billion Market

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    When public organizations decide to tackle large problems confronting the communities they represent, they often turn to private sector partners offering effective solutions. When the Cleveland Water Alliance (CWA) tried to do that in its efforts to improve the management and health of Lake Erie, it discovered a shortage of businesses capable of filling its needs. In response, CWA created its own, enormous testbed that it allows water sector startups to use for developing, perfecting, and marketing their products—and for propelling their companies into full commercial operation.

    Launched in 2014, CWA initially brought together industry, civic, and political leaders determined to create a new and effective economic development cluster. Early on, the organization homed in on the objective of forging partnerships between public organizations and private sector companies.

    Fast forward to 2022, when CWA began building out the Smart Lake Erie Watershed, a collection of 200 sensors placed on buoys and in shore positions that together provide a Long Range Wide Area Network—or a de facto WiFi coverage—of 7,740 square miles across the lake.

    The result is a continuing feed of data on water nutrients, contaminants, wave conditions, and other information that’s valuable to a wide array of partners in utilities, agriculture, maritime research, and even to recreational users. It also serves as a 24/7 communications infrastructure that can be used for early warning and disaster response purposes.

    The network is also offered as an invaluable testbed to startups developing new water quality technologies. That allows them to trial and improve their platforms in real world situations—and take them to market faster as proven products.

    In doing so, it seeks to help startups overcome what CWA identified as a major hurdle for companies to enter and prosper in a water sector that’s difficult to crack.

    “We meet with hundreds of companies annually and consistently hear that real-world testing is a major barrier to market,” CWA president and executive director Bryan Stubbs told Inc. in emailed comments. “In response, we built a regional testbed network that connects innovators with end-users — like utilities and government agencies — for pilot projects. These collaborations provide valuable data for tech developers and low-risk access to new solutions for network partners. Leveraging our region’s cooperative ecosystem, rich in industrial expertise and entrepreneurial support, CWA has cultivated Cleveland as the ideal launchpad for water innovation with global impact.”

    Meanwhile, CWA’s Smart Lake Erie Watershed facilitates recruitment of both public funding and private investment for small business tech partners. That’s significant for two big reasons.  

    Early on, CWA realized companies focusing on water solutions often fizzed out before making it to market. Such startups are typically under-financed, as investors favor more mature technologies with bigger profitability potential. Meanwhile, even established sector businesses like GE Water have frequently been sold off by parent companies that had provided the financing necessary for future tech development.

    CWA recognized that as a mistake by big businesses and investors who underestimated the rising demand for water protection technologies.

    According to many estimates, the global market for sensor-based monitoring of water and soil is set to reach $3.4 billion by next year, with some forecasts doubling that figure. The worldwide market for the kind of smart water management tech systems CWA continues developing with business partners is slated to exceed $23 billion by 2027.

    In responding to that rising activity, CWA facilitates partner businesses that test and review over 250 emerging technologies each year using the Smart Lake Erie Watershed. So far, that activity has attracted $15 million in direct investment in CWA, with partner startups having raised over $50 million on their own.

    One of those startups is Ohio company CLEANR, which used the Lake Erie Watershed to continue testing and improving its water filtering tech. As a result of that, the company’s microplastics filtration system now removes 90 percent of microplastics that usually flow out into waterways from washing machines and other appliances. Moreover, it also clears those pollutants from water flowing into households, and is now sold to third party washing machine and appliance manufacturers.

    “CWA has been a crucial partner for us in raising awareness of the risks of microplastic pollution to our water systems and food supply,” said CLEANR co-founder and CEO Max Pennington, noting that as the shallowest of the Great Lakes, Erie is the most susceptible to rising temperatures, and has the highest degree of microplastic pollutants.

    “They were quick to understand why the Great Lakes are becoming ground zero in this public health threat and how our technology can make a massive impact on this problem upstream where it starts,” Pennington added. “They’ve connected us with the right players around the Great Lakes to test and launch our technology at a key juncture as the U.S. Senate and a half-dozen state legislators introduce bills that mandate or incentivize filters for all new washing machines starting in 2030.” 

    More recently, CWA teamed up with several Ohio businesses to test technologies designed to prevent nitrogen and phosphorus in agricultural fertilizer from draining into Lake Erie and connected waterways, where they provoke destructive algae blooms. Last week the organization announced it had retained Ohio industrial engineering company Neundorfer as the selected partner in a pilot project. That solution sends electric charges into manure used to fertilize farmland, which separates phosphorus in it and causes it to remain in the field rather than running off during rains.

    Neundorfer’s participation in CWA’s program is all the more significant in the company broadening its previous focus on air quality and pollution control solutions to water. That expansion was a direct result of it seeing potential business opportunities in helping solve challenges the CWA and the wider public face in protecting the lake.

    “We’re established leaders in industrial air pollution control, and we’re excited to explore the water tech space through this CWA pilot project,” said Neundorfer president Steve Ostankek, noting that transition comes as the Northeast Ohio company celebrates its 50th anniversary. ”It allows us to explore a new market in a low-risk environment and apply our expertise to a cause that could protect our waterways and help farmers.”

    That kind of response from both startups and established businesses has allowed CWA to generate momentum, and build on that as it moves ahead. As more companies test their new technologies in the Smart Lake Erie Watershed project—and develop mutually beneficial solutions with CWA support—the appeal of tackling public sector problems with commercially based projects grows for other entrepreneurs.

    “This is a prime example of connecting the dots across Ohio’s water economy,” Max Herzog, CWA’s deputy director of programs and partnerships, said a blog post on the farming initiative. “We are leveraging our world-class testbed network to support an innovative Ohio company, address a critical environmental issue, and provide economic benefits for farmers—all while accelerating the commercialization of cutting-edge technology right here in our region.”

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    Bruce Crumley

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  • How This AI Tool Can Empower Businesses | Entrepreneur

    How This AI Tool Can Empower Businesses | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing business operations in subtle yet unprecedented ways, though it undoubtedly arouses apprehension. Amid cries of “the robots are coming for our jobs,” it’s easy to perceive AI as an impending threat. However, individuals who invest time in understanding and utilizing AI can unlock tremendous opportunities for personal and professional advancement.

    AI’s goal isn’t to displace roles but to enhance human potential. It automates repetitive, low-value tasks, enabling people to upskill and shoulder more strategic responsibilities. Entrepreneurs who can harness AI as a tool of empowerment are likely to advance in their careers and increase their earning potential. Let’s dive deeper into discussing the problems one of the hottest AI solutions can solve today.

    Related: Does AI Deserve All the Hype? Here’s How You Can Actually Use AI in Your Business

    Challenges of bootstrapped startups and solopreneurs

    Bootstrapped startups and solopreneurs encounter a plethora of challenges. One is the inability to afford a big team due to constrained finances. As a result, founders often multitask, handling every aspect of the business. This approach frequently leads to burnout as the workload outstrips capacity, and critical business needs may fall by the wayside due to a lack of resources.

    Areas like sales, marketing, finance, HR and customer support demand dedicated focus for effective execution. However, bootstrapped businesses rarely have the budget to support entire departments or multiple hires. Even outsourcing these responsibilities to external agencies can prove cost-prohibitive in the long run.

    The scarcity of human resources also inhibits innovation and strategic thinking. Founders caught up in firefighting daily issues often have little time left for high-level planning and product development. Neglecting these priorities can curtail a startup’s growth potential over time. With limited access to talent and expertise, bootstrappers need to stretch every dollar.

    Constant bootstrapping also caps the upside, making it tough to compete with well-funded ventures. Therefore, finding affordable solutions to address human resource gaps is vital for solopreneurs and startups building sustainable, thriving businesses. The advent of AI-powered virtual staffing emerges as a promising new avenue worth exploring.

    Related: 10 Ways to Preserve Cash as a Bootstrapped Startup

    AI virtual staffing: A smarter approach

    The idea of our AI virtual staffing agency, Olympia, was born from the inability to hire top (more expensive) experts in a startup I previously worked for. I constantly had to redo someone else’s work instead of building more partnerships and launching creative campaigns to increase our revenue. My future co-founder then offered to create a couple of AI specialists for me to play with, and it was a game-changer. Today, Olympia’s early adopters love them like I do, and we continue building our startup with our own product.

    Traditional staffing models are evolving with AI integration. AI-powered virtual staffing emerges as an innovative solution, providing startups and solopreneurs with affordable expertise and expanded capabilities.

    AI-powered virtual assistants and consultants can handle various responsibilities, from content creation and SEO to legal consulting and marketing. Operating round the clock, these AI team members efficiently manage tedious yet crucial tasks, allowing business owners to concentrate on high-level strategy and innovation.

    The benefits for resource-strained startups and solopreneurs are considerable. AI virtual staffing delivers the expertise and support of entire human teams at a fraction of the cost, expanding capabilities without inflating payrolls. This model points to a shift towards hybrid intelligence, where humans and AI collaborate to propel business success.

    By adopting AI virtual staffing, entrepreneurs can optimize productivity, reduce costs and compete effectively. Combining human creativity and AI power equips startups and indie hackers with a formidable competitive edge. This tech innovation paves the way for a future where humans focus on responsibilities best suited to their cognitive strengths, backed by an AI workforce handling tactical execution. Unquestionably, AI virtual staffing is an affordable solution for founders aiming to scale their businesses sustainably.

    Related: Generative AI Is Enabling Creators To Take On Massive Workloads. Here’s How.

    Staying ahead with AI

    In today’s digital era, incorporating AI into business operations is necessary to remain competitive. Companies that hesitate to leverage AI risk falling behind as their more forward-thinking competitors surge ahead. Beyond cost savings, AI integration offers numerous advantages, enabling organizations to embrace the future today.

    AI virtual assistants empower businesses to develop products and services cost-effectively, efficiently and in less time. Moreover, AI enables hyper-personalized customer experiences based on predictive analytics, fostering brand loyalty.

    Another advantage lies in AI systems’ continuous self-improvement, allowing companies to keep pace with technological advancements. As these AI solutions access more data and process power over time, they become more intelligent. Businesses that adopt AI now will reap the benefits as the technology evolves.

    Embracing AI grants businesses amplified abilities to ideate, create, problem-solve and make data-driven decisions. It also liberates resources to experiment with emerging technologies such as AR/VR and the metaverse. For solopreneurs and startups seeking venture capital, demonstrating AI integration signals technical prowess and future readiness.

    Failing to integrate AI could lead to obsolescence. Companies that ignore traditional operational methods in favor of AI adoption position themselves as trailblazers in their industries. With AI woven into their business DNA, they are well-equipped to dominate markets for years to come.

    Related: 6 Ways Small Business Owners Can Get Their Employees to Use AI

    Conclusion

    The new AI era is brimming with opportunities for entrepreneurs and businesses. For startups and solopreneurs restricted by resources, AI-powered virtual staffing emerges as a transformative solution, offering affordable expertise and supercharged productivity.

    However, embracing change is not without its challenges. Transitioning to new systems demands technical expertise and a readiness to reshape traditional mindsets. But transformation is rarely effortless or seamless — it nudges us out of our comfort zones, prompting growth. The key lies in perceiving AI as an empowering tool rather than a potential threat.

    Those committed to continuous learning and adopting the right mindset towards AI stand at the beginning of exciting new times. The future belongs to the bold and pioneering companies that harness AI.

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    Victoria Loskutova

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  • Assuming Innovation Requires In-Office Proximity Is Wrong. Here’s Why.

    Assuming Innovation Requires In-Office Proximity Is Wrong. Here’s Why.

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Apple, Google, and other companies mandating that employees work in the office for most or all of their time claim that any time spent working remotely stifles innovation. According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, “Innovation isn’t always a planned activity. It’s bumping into each other over the course of the day and advancing an idea that you just had. And you really need to be together to do that.”

    Yet is this true? On the one hand, research at MIT found that remote work weakens the cross-functional, inter-team “weak ties” that form the basis for the exchange of new ideas that tend to foster innovation. A study by Microsoft similarly found that remote work weakens innovation since workers communicate less with those outside their own teams.

    On the other hand, McKinsey research points to a different conclusion. It found that, during the more than two years of the pandemic, there’s been a record number of new patents across 150 global patent filing authorities. Moreover, in 2021, global venture capital more than doubled from 2020, rising 111%. McKinsey suggests that it’s because more innovative companies developed new ways of connecting remote workers together to build and sustain the cross-functional, inter-term ties necessary for innovation, thus widening the pools of minds that could generate new ideas. Deloitte similarly highlights how adapting the process of innovation to remote settings offers the key to boosting innovation for hybrid and remote teams.

    Related: Maintaining a Collaborative Culture in a Hybrid and Remote World

    My experience helping 21 organizations transition to hybrid and remote work demonstrates that innovation is eminently doable. But it requires adopting best practices that address the weakening of cross-functional connections and lack of natural spontaneous interactions that breed innovation. Unfortunately, companies like Apple and Google have adopted a traditionalist perspective on how to innovate, which ironically hinders innovation.

    An excellent technique for innovation in hybrid and remote teams to replace innovation-breeding random hallways conversation involves relying on collaboration software like Slack or Microsoft Teams. What you need to do is set up a specific channel in that software to facilitate the creativity, spontaneity and collaboration behind serendipitous innovation, and incentivize employees to use that channel.

    For example, in a late-stage SaaS start-up that used Microsoft Teams, each small team of six to eight people set up a team-specific channel for members to share innovative ideas relevant to the team’s work. Likewise, larger business units established channels for ideas applicable to the whole business unit. Then, when anyone had an idea, they were encouraged to share that idea in the pertinent channel.

    We encouraged everyone to pay attention to notifications in that channel. Seeing a new post, if they found the idea relevant, they would respond with additional thoughts building on the initial idea. Responses would snowball, and sufficiently good ideas would then lead to the next steps, often a brainstorming session.

    This approach combines a native virtual format with people’s natural motivations to contribute, collaborate and claim credit. The initial idea poster and the subsequent contributors aren’t motivated simply by the goal of advancing the team or business unit, even though that’s of course part of their goal set. The initial poster is motivated by the possibility of sharing an idea that might be recognized as sufficiently innovative, practical and useful to implement, with some revisions. The contributors, in turn, are motivated by the natural desire to give advice, especially advice that’s visible to and useful for others in their team, business unit or even the whole organization.

    Related: Six Tactics To Improve Collaboration For Remote Teams

    This dynamic also fits well the different personalities of optimists and pessimists. You’ll find that the former will generally be the ones to post initial ideas. Their strength is innovative and entrepreneurial thinking, but their flaw is being risk-blind to the potential problems in the idea. In turn, pessimists will overwhelmingly serve to build on and improve the idea, pointing out its potential flaws and helping address them.

    Remember to avoid undervaluing the contributions of pessimists. It’s too common to pay excessive attention to the initial ideas and overly reward optimists — and I say this as an inveterate optimist myself, who has 20 ideas before breakfast and thinks they’re all brilliant! Through the combination of personal bitter experience and research on optimism and pessimism, I have learned the necessity of letting pessimistic colleagues vet and improve my ideas. My clients have found a great deal of benefit in highly valuing such devil’s advocate perspectives as well.

    That’s why you should both praise and reward not only the generators of innovative ideas but also the two to three people who most contributed to improving and finalizing the idea. And that’s what the late-stage start-up company did. The team or business unit leaders made sure that they both recognized publicly the contributions of the initial idea generators and the improvers of the idea, and also gave them a bonus proportionate to the value of their contributions. Indeed, several of these ideas ended up generating patent applications.

    While this technique helps address the problem of spontaneous interactions, what about the weakening of cross-functional ties? To help address that problem, while also improving the integration of recently-hired staff, we had the SaaS company set up a hybrid and remote mentoring program.

    The program involved several mentors. One came from the recently-hired staff’s own team. That mentor assisted the mentee with understanding group dynamics, on-the-job learning and professional growth.

    However, we also included two mentors from other teams. One of them came from the same business unit as the junior staff, while another came from a separate business unit. The role of these two mentors involved getting the new employee integrated into the broader company culture, facilitating inter-team collaboration and strengthening the “weak ties” among company staff to help foster collaboration.

    Six months after these two interventions, the SaaS company reported a notable boost in innovation across the board. The channels devoted to innovation helped breed a number of novel projects. The mentor-mentee relationships resulted in mentees providing a fresh and creative perspective on the company’s existing work, while the mentors from outside the team helped spur productive conversations within teams that bred further innovation and collaboration.

    If a late-stage start-up with 400 employees could adopt these techniques, so too can Apple and Google. Certainly, some tasks may best be done in person, such as sensitive personnel conversations, intense collaborative discussions, key decision-making and strategic conversations and fun team-building events. Yet the more tasks you can do remotely, the better. The future belongs to companies that can best make use of human resources around the globe while minimizing the time wasted in rush hour commutes. Doing so requires adopting best practices for hybrid and remote work, instead of being stuck in the past.

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    Gleb Tsipursky

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