The Future of Collaborative Innovation, Media, IP, Digital Platforms with 4IR and AI

here we go and we are live hello everybody uh welcome to this uh session here today uh my name is joe ma reyes and i'm hosting an amazing mind of innovative and collaborative minds the type the topic that we're covering today is the future of collaborative innovation uh media intellectual property uh digital platforms for ir which i've discovered is the fourth industrial revolution and artificial intelligence so just give her a wave everyone uh to the uh to the audience um we have um uh dr ricardo uh greenfield who's the branch manager of europe aeg in portugal and brussels subash gosha who's the founder and ceo of technoplat in the uk rona morel who's the founder of coco alley consulting in the uk uh renata ramal hoza who's the founder of uh beta veda if i got your name uh incorrect you can throw something at me later uh my name is jeremy reyes i'm the founder of uh brand leadership community and i've been kindly invited by dina squatter who's the creator of this event to host today welcome everyone thank you it's uh it's been great to get to know you guys in the green room and and um and get to know a bit a bit about you i don't think any of us have met before maybe maybe not but it's uh it's always nice being thrown into a random bucket where you've got something in common now in the in in doing my research uh i've thanks to linkedin i can stalk quite effectively on you guys but one thing that really came across was um i i saw that innovative minds you guys are really pushing the boundaries in your fields and in some cases trying to make a difference in society so if i could start with you um ricardo um you're the branch manager of uh of eur ag uh in portugal and and brussels and i believe you're also a managing director there as well but you started your career at uh at brands like bosch and deloitte consulting so can you can you take us a bit in a couple of minutes uh of your journey from from really your beginnings of the career to where you are today and and and why you're in the direction that you're doing and what you're doing as well sure um thank you very much for the introduction and uh thank you also uh subscribe so thank you very much i'll try keep it very very short uh so i started as an electrical engineer and of course i joined an electrical and engineering company at bosch that was when i first did my internship and i learned a lot especially i liked the way that they were organized and focused on engineering um i then thought okay engineering maybe we're a little bit too um focusing on small details i like the big picture so then i moved into deloitte into management consulting uh there i felt a little bit that i was missing actually getting my hands dirty and and and messing around with technology so from then the next step was to do the phd in engineering systems which is basically a mixture between engineering and social sciences management and this i think is where has actually set me on my course focusing on innovation um and my pg was in university of porter with um also with the mit in the u.s and i focus mostly on innovation ecosystems so innovation networks uh networks of smes research institutes uh large corporations uh that get together to create new technologies new innovations that it's not really possible for them to create it on their own and um this actually brought me to the company that i'm working now at your age so i actually founded the branch here in portugal and now we're also working in brussels work a lot with the european commission and uh i won't go into too much much about that but i'm very happy to be able to work with innovation ecosystems we're managing a lot not only in germany but also in europe um and it's very cool to um basically uh be working in practice in some of the most interesting innovation ecosystems in europe and having it related to the research that i was doing when i was doing a phd so in a nutshell i wouldn't take too long about that but of course we can go into a greater deal detail on these networks a little bit later yeah thanks uh thanks ricardo now sebash uh your beginnings of your career was was in india and interesting enough in the area of isp and communication with uh with vodafone and then a company gtl which is uh is partly owned by the disney company so getting really involved from telecommunications into content and media tell us a bit about that background and and moving forward to bring to you where you are today well yeah thank you thanks john so yeah it's a bit of a long journey i guess close to about 28 years now um started my journey with vodafone way back in 95 and then obviously moves up the value chain from mobile to move into core networks which is where gta want to happen and then from there we moved to uh digital media and high level content play so i guess 20 years of work life which ended with being the head of digital for a company owned by disney india but i was the head of digital and svp but 2011 when i kind of started my own journey as an entrepreneur which has been 10 years now um i started with a very very niche advisory company um and and while in one side we sort of do stuff like technology transfer knowledge transfers on the other side i also hold the patent for an audit service and globally with only ones for offering that kind of audit service um my my second calling came with the company technoblack which i sort of representing today we are purely in the innovation space because over the last 30 years of my employment days i've been part of some real game game-changing innovations and technopad essentially talks of innovating uh some incubating innovations and growth of the startup community we kind of are based out of uk and singapore helping a lot of kickstarters globally through this virtual incubator and my belief is very simple innovation is a great word everyone talks of innovation it even does innovation but only one percent of the innovation actually goes to make that whole sustainable revenue and to take the plant we're trying to self identify those innovations and see how we can create value for the startup community and for the entire ecosystem thank you very much yeah thanks now rona you have uh a very interesting background with two or at least one of my favorite brands we have uh red bull uh and and heineken so you know two brands were very strong red bull obviously innovating uh media and the way that things are done not just by producing a drink and you've gone to now where you've got your own consulting company you want to tell us about about your journey and what really drives you yeah sure thank you for the intro and it's great to be on the panel with everyone today um i guess i liken my 20-odd years in a career very much to having the um we were joking about it earlier around having the amazing boyfriend and the really really bad one um and i i i think that exposure to many brands and businesses over the years just there was always this inner ability in me to get frustrated by process and procedure and you know the people who had great ideas on the ground and i spent four years working in an innovation too and kind of practicing the principles around you know staging gait and incubation and sealing and all of those sorts of things and culminating in you know what there's got to be a better way of doing this and sort of going out on my own which has been sort of four or five years now so i spend a lot of my time in the startup world looking at agility new news new tech but i also do a lot in the sustainability side of the world and new tech developments in that space which is a huge passion for me um and again kind of coming across but i think the entrepreneurialism and the innovation part and we'll talk about this later is really about i i get a ton from my work with the prince's trust um to some of the work i do as a trustee it's that constant need and want and excitement to learn and and and that for me is is innovation doesn't mean thanks thanks rona now renata you have you're the odd one out here you've had a like a government background in the sense of when we think of bureaucracy and and how things should be done now to break out of that in terms of founding a beta i can can you tell us a bit about what it was like you've worked for the department of international trade the dig and the foreign commonwealth office for 16 years so i i don't see those areas as areas you'd find people that would be have that startup mentality so tell us what what made you the exception well it's all about about the mindset but thank you very much for the invitation to to the niche to ilton and to um you know the team that organized this forum to all my colleagues here today um i'm based in brazil in in sao paulo and i'm the co-founder and ceo of bethe brazil which actually is part of the beta as a group which was founded in in portugal in lisbon by my colleagues co-founders of beta brazil and i started by studying chemistry and then environmental engineering and the first part of my career was really working as an engineer in water and wastewater management systems in the netherlands car batteries in france and really kind of on the ground on the industry ground and then because i also like the macro sort of strategic geopolitical area i got into the uk government um you know working for first for the um fco foreign commonwealth office um and then on the climate change area uh during the time where the uk government still is but at that time was very very vocal um on climate change on the carbon markets it was a time of kyoto so i worked very much on that area and then i moved on to um economic diplomacy and traded investment which i did in lisbon and then in brazil the reason why i came to brazil was to be the deputy council general in sao paulo and to add that uh trading investment for brazil and an investment for latin america so um after that i thought oh my god i think i need to do something different um it was quite hard because you know it was a great job actually um but i really wanted to see how this new world was about i always played an interest i mean i think engineers always bring that with them you know to understand how things work how can things uh be done differently um and then i was challenged to open uh betty in brazil as a hub for latin america and i accepted i mean i was really afraid it's not easy to change from one thing to another uh but i'm loving it and we do collaborative innovation which i'll be able to expand a bit later um but yeah it was very hard and i think that anyone wants to change a career uh from a very stable one wonderful comfort zone to a very sort of shaky one it's um it's a brave one and i think i was but i'm it's been a great journey and i think we have great stuff to uh to share especially of our work here in brazil and latin america in the past two years fantastic that's a great story now on on the topic of uh collaborative innovation uh and i'm suspecting that this is gonna be a terminology that's going to be more and more prominent we've all spoken about innovation it's probably one of these words that a lot of i know copywriters hate because it's it's a word that's constantly thrown around maybe used misused but this whole word of of collaboration uh and and i'm really interested to hear from from all of you uh what does collaborative innovation mean to you what has it meant to you in your career path and then and moving forward so ricardo if you want to to open uh your thoughts of of what's your experience with collaboration and innovation sure uh so uh thanks for watching um i mean i will take sort of the say the engineer stance in it and be very pragmatic all these i think i see it very pragmatically it's in our experience um when one company alone is not able to uh pull the necessary um resources or competencies to actually create an innovation it makes sense to actually bring with other partners together and this is somewhat that we have tend to be doing so we've actually created over 50 of these networks um in a very specific field so this okay let's say for example a concrete example um uh self-driving cars for example this is something that in europe has been lagging behind a bit right so we pulled together with the german uh ministry for technology and economy economics and they um co-funded or sponsored a network where we bring together um companies that are niche experts in um self-driving uh technology then we can bring some end users for example with uh the airport in in frankfurt uh frapport and together you build a new technology trying to innovate to address certain needs where you would never be able to do it alone so this from um let's say looking at the players more or less on the same playing field this is something that um we tend to work um a lot um there is also some other situations where we talk about cooperative innovation and this is where the playing field is not level and here for example the work we're doing with the european innovation council business celebration services so here we are talking about the portfolio of around seven companies uh seven thousand smes some of the most innovative in europe and we're trying to bridge them together with investors and with large corporations here we're still talking about um cooperative innovation but the let's say the playing field is not really even and here we try to get um sme friendly corporations to present their challenges right how they i mean what a challenge that they are they are bringing and then on the other hand we try and match them with these um innovative smes that we have from the european commission and as i would say this is the other side that we normally deal with uh corporations so i think it's always about creating something new that you can't create on your own if i were to to sum it up and at the same time look at what dynamics you have within the ecosystem um what interest you have sometimes um you can leave um the actors to themselves and they will come up with something when the playing field is not as even it's good to have like a helping hand and to make sure that the corporations you're working with are more friendly in our case things have worked pretty well um we have some friendly rules to help this corporation um but maybe we could go into a little bit uh that uh future on so this is a network that we're focusing on and the final point that we're really trying to bring now is um also focusing on specific domain which is on the hydrogen um topic and this is also where we really need to bring together um players from all over the valley chain so we have the creation you have storage and you have transportation you have the end users and this is something we're developing also now which is called the hydrogen bond and it's basically um a hydrogen community that gathers startups universities research centers and large corporates here we're really trying to have a level playing field to bring these um together right offering challenges networking events among other things but we can go into detail but at most these other points just to give you a little overview of these different ways how we see cooperative innovation from us yeah and that was one of the things when i point out where you're really changing society and looking at hydrogen in a different way that's that's that's super interesting right now now i'll jump to you rona from in in your case uh a collaborative innovation i mean uh you've been working independently so i would imagine that that you would have needed uh to seek out some some collaboration to to foster some of this innovation in your own role but tell us in your own words what what does collaborative information innovation mean to you i guess the the core fundamentals from fundamentals for me is around the the culture whether that's you as an individual or you as an organization i think often innovation and sustainability is kind of like separate departments and i believe that actually those things should run through the dna of of the company it shouldn't just be an innovation team and you know i've seen where you have very open businesses um where genuinely some of the simplest and the best ideas come from you know people on the on the workforce people in the in the manufacturing sides etc and um and we remove egos i think it's important to allow that that kind of risk taking and and culture within a within a business i guess as a single entrepreneur um you're constantly having to be innovative because as renata was saying earlier it's really scary when you go out on your own but actually that's a little bit like innovation we all know the stats on how many actually succeed but there's another final piece for me which is around um the wider collaboration is when the when the cause is greater that's when true innovative leaders come together because it's not about them or them making money on the bottom line and equally for those who want to do brand extension and things like this let's let's be honest about the true definition of innovation and true white space tech versus all brands or ideas versus what is just a brand extension so anyway that's me yeah that's a fantastic uh some fantastic viewpoints there about having that greater vision um jump over quickly to sebash and also with i suppose the uh coming from india with like a a country with with hundreds of millions i can't remember the exact number of uh the population there three billion percent 1.3 billion people so so is that uh is collaborative innovation does that have a different mindset coming from that cultural background and bringing it into london and and what's your experience with uh with uh collaborative innovation no i think that's a very good question because if anyone in this world is thinking that they were doing innovation on their own it's a very foolish idea because the whole it's in essence of uh collaborative innovation is that you are trying to leverage on each other's strengths best practices and knowledge okay because if you're innovating something sitting in some corners of the world sitting all alone you just don't know how that innovation could really impact positively negatively to your business it's really worthwhile okay to me you know to answer your question is collaborative inhibition is something is one plus one equals to 11 is not two because that gives you the multiplied effect it has to been such stable revenue i can make 20 pages hundred pages thousand pages worth the document saying hey look that's a great innovation great stuff what's next so only when you sort of in my life of 30 years or whatever little bit of time i've spent his mother earth uh when i launched it audit business back in india way back in 2012 i was very clear that hey look i'm going to call this an audit right now again audit is a word which is synonymous to people who are into audit business like delores and kpmgs of the world okay so i made sure that hey while i insist on calling this an audit service let me make sure i also get this cell a sold through the market to the audio players we started talking to audio players the lord became my first customer and a partner who started selling my services to their media clients now this is where a whole collaboration comes in they understand my strength i understand their strength what that leads into that leads when due to faster access to customers who probably i would have never got in touch never could connect yeah similarly in today's live if you look at what we're doing with tecnoplat same stuff we are collaborating with university of edinburgh large technology companies helping the startups to create a product and fine-tuning their product for larger markets and and to get back to the core of the core of your question india is a market is a place where innovation is happening probably by the hour or by the by the day it's a huge market you don't know who's doing what in which part of the world but how many of them are coming to world platform how many are really getting their attention not many it's not the value it counts is the quality which counts and the impact is creating in terms of revenue development and so on so forth yeah fantastic ideas there and really uh deep thoughts as well from a from uh from your home country is uh as well um renata uh your experience with collaborative innovation i'm sure you've got a very different journey uh with uh with your background yes i mean i think i think nowadays we often say that collaboration is the words of the future or is already part of our of our lives i think i think we always collaborated i think the difference now and that's why innovation needs to play a role is that the challenges that we all face are so huge that we really need to organize our collaboration in order to tackle those challenges so i mean if we look at innovation and and all the methodologies around i mean before we used to call it open innovation where in fact we would open our challenges to be solved or to be helped solved by an external community which could be a laboratory or could be a university or a startup or an ecosystem that's collaboration right i mean you have a a business challenge and you want to solve it and you know that internally you probably do not have the tools or the people that can solve their challenge and you need to collaborate with the external ecosystem now the thing is that nowadays for example innovation can bring collaboration amongst competitors if for example you want to tackle a challenge that is common to all such as for example climate change or taking plastic out of packaging or uh tackling uh deforestation in the amazon so and and that's a different level of collaboration is for you to put aside your your business and your profit into something wider which innovation methodology can help you to do that and like that you need to share more you need to share success you need to share failure and you need to work together in a different way with a different governance that can help trust to be built amongst all with very clear processes with very clear methodology so that people feel that they are coming into a win-win situation i mean we have several examples of that that i can then uh share but there there is a uk thinker that i really like i mean it's charles need peter that he has a phrase that i often use um you know in many moments of my life which is we are what we share and and that's exactly what collaboration is about uh and what uh innovative uh collaboration can be is that we are going on this together we are trying to solve this huge challenge that we do have together and we will have to share stuff either being successful or a a seller and i think that's really the big jump that we have to do as uh as individuals as organizations and as countries uh i mean kovid is a good example of that i mean we have just we are just living epidemic um always been collaboration is that been good i mean the science parts say that is good and the probably geopolitical part is not so good uh is innovation good i mean are we already actually innovating together to tackle some of the impact that pandemics has bring to the real society to the to the business probably not not enough so how can we actually build up innovative mechanisms uh that can boost that collaboration and bring really value and impact uh to our society and to our planet are there some some fantastic points there and bringing kobe into play i mean i think we've that has really forced the world to collaborate and it's really um shown okay who really has the ability to you know jump out of their comfort zone and and think differently with other people so you know there are players out there that have income countries and companies that have done it well those ones that haven't done it now um i'm having something sort of wanted to add out here which i think renata kind of uh highlighted very nicely collaborative innovation is not about competing it's about complementing each other absolutely that's a very very important point so thank you thanks for mentioning that and also the fact and i think rona you mentioned it earlier about having that greater sense of purpose is what can bring everyone together so so there's some really really good enlightening things there now now on to the next question um this is going to be a favorite of mine because i'm guessing that we we can all remember the fax machine and the remain remember working before the uh that thing called the internet but but you know if we look at it trying to you know you're denying it um okay so so i started my career in 1986 and at ibm we had uh profs which was like email but no one knew what email was there was no sense that people were still typing letters and stuff but for those of us who can who can who have really lived through those that that age uh you know obviously we've seen the facts machine come and go etcetera we now live in a very hyper-connected world and this thing called the internet um really can be seen as the global enabler of uh of collaboration and then innovation for you look at some of the mega brands today the top 10 brands are are all technology brands where once upon a time it was coca-cola and and other food products right so um you know the pandemic has really brought to light uh the importance or the challenges that we have with with the online world but i just want to throw around the room um you know the internet whilst it's been an enabler has some challenges like with privacy you know regional regulations and uh then we have rights management uh what are some of the challenges that that that use that that you all seen i'll start with uh with uh with you uh ricardo uh the internet what are some of the challenges that we'll see what can we do to overcome to continue to foster the collaboration uh that online and things like social media gives us oh you're on mute sorry i'll be here yes thanks so this is a far-reaching question i can give you my two sense of what how i think at least in europe where uh we're looking at this um definitely the i would say one two two things here um making sure that people's rights uh and and and people's uh let's say privacy is taking into account here not only the purpose of your own data but how your view is is is can be skewed a certain point i mean but this definitely there's a there's a this is a big topic the second point that i think would be definitely interesting to see is how do we ensure a level playing field uh when we have these tech giants and we have certainly have these very large platforms um how are we able to have all this data for example um how we sure to um enable a leveling playing field with um you know if i'm a sme that's also relying on data that also want to have access you know and i don't have this big user base you know how can i make sure to to gain some code and this is how can i get some advantages and this is definitely going to be something that um that is going to have some time to work on um i know we know of the whole uh digital services act that the european commission is trying to put forward right so this is new gen legislation that um will to some extent also govern this so um we'll on the one hand force some moderation um to content that is right and for some responsibility also to to add some transparency especially if you have recommender systems you know how these are targeting you and on the same time democratized to some extent the access to uh data right i mean if a large platform especially consider a very large platform they have this distinction there and this is something that definitely um is interesting to see it and it'll be interesting to see how this um pans out um so that's definitely a point i mean on a more pragmatic perspective more closer to home so to see i mean you you've seen um the internet has enabled corporation to happen over various regions and there has been this different emergence of smaller platforms that try and bring together actors and you do see some interesting initiatives as for example for example the open business council is one and for example one that we work with the olympic commission which is a european innovation council community they're also trying to create a larger network where you can have a place of business um with multiple actors and with larger momentum so this could also be interesting to see some emergence of some dominant platforms there of course it's interesting to see if they don't crowd out and don't make the play field too unleveled right so this is going to be interesting especially if you have neutrality in these platforms i think that would be a key point yeah and that's a great great point that you bring up with this event with the open business council is it's enabled to bring us together and really collaborate with our with our experiences and and our thoughts now um uh rona your thoughts on this i'm coming from the uk uh where let's throw the cambridge analytica uh if you want to answer for that that's just one sample of that that's really made everyone rethink uh privacy and data you know what what are some of the things that that you see uh that that should where we should be heading from a regulatory uh an infrastructural side for the for the internet yeah absolutely um i think um as time's gone on in the last 18 months and more people have reflect reflected on their lives and what's important i think there's two elements for me going forward in the future and we talked earlier about these you know the kind of the big companies being tech one of them is around a movement towards more human-centric tech let's be honest most people are pretty peeved when they start to learn more um around how their data is treated what they can do with it and and basically the power that the likes of you know facebook and google actually have so from a human individual consumer level that's frustrating so as they've learned more about brands and marketing and and reading between the lines and greenwashing they're now entering the space of data secondly if you're a a brand or a business and you want to engage in communities with genuinely interesting content you can't because facebook included the own the rights and and the systems to do it so i think personally there'll be a huge drive towards more human-centric tech and then secondly as we go into the world of blockchain ai nfts um you know i'm learning more at a pace that i never thought i would um around how we can actually how how reality is going to get warped and you know could the real person and physical cash be the enemy in in 50 years time and that's the illegal way to do things you know that's very far-fetched but i think the reality about how tech potentially could could go in that space so listen i think yes we're very much more aware about our data and what could be done with it um but it's a huge space i love i love having conversations and learning more about the the the kind of future centric side of it yeah absolutely renata your thoughts from uh from from your side of the world on on the engineering internet and applications so so i i i agree that data is then you know is the greatest i would not like to call it threat but in fact it is a big challenge to to solve not just in terms of um regulation but all around ethics i think is is a huge issue um how do you use data for what uh does the person that you are using data about knows that you are using and understands why you are using so that there are all these issues that can be seen as moral and ethical issues that i don't think have been addressed yet i also think that this is a global issue and that our global institutions are still very much uh focused on some of the challenges after the second world war so probably we need some some rethinking of what these international institutions might be doing in the future i'm not suggesting that they should stop doing some of the things that they are doing that are still very uh very impactful but others probably they need to substitute to what are going are being at this stage uh something that really threatens societies and our future as well and um and i also think that regulation and that comes back to the international institutions needs to be global as well i mean at the moment you have one in china we have one in europe one in the us brazil has its own and that's quite complex as well because you know the the world is globalized and and we actually and you know and companies are working everywhere and i know that you know companies are used to work with the different regulations in different countries but this is a bit different because going back to rona's point he sees about people this is about our stuff my data that is probably going to be used in a product in china or in india or in portugal or elsewhere so it's quite complex and and sometimes we we kind of bring this down to a regulatory framework which i don't think is as simple as that and so i i would like to see a bit more investment into this by the global institutions i would like to be discussed in international forums such as g7 g20 because you know this is something of real importance if we are going to continue and nothing is telling us that we are going back with no internet uh we need to sort of come up with something a bit more solid uh that brings this playground uh this baseline that is equal to all and makes um you know something that is positive to all and not just for sam yeah you made a really interesting point there i mean uh having moved to europe uh and and loving war movies in the second world war it's so true that we are still living in the shadow of the second world war a lot of these uh global forums were created for peace uh in the second world war and also the privacy model i mean in the europe we have the gdpr but still germany has its own privacy regulations here in copenhagen we have our privacy regulations so for as brands and marketers it's it's really scary so how can we collaborate and innovate when the playing field is different on a platform that is inherently global now sebas you have have worked at an isp and you work for a media provider and you have been waiting to answer this question i've you can say that i've been saving the best to last tell us your thoughts about uh internet and uh and uh and media content privacy what are your thoughts and and your thoughts on what everyone else has as well i'd love to hear it thank you sometimes always good to get the last chance you know that that really helps you to formulate your thoughts the last word last one but indeed you know something uh the way i look at it is that uh as for the internet is concerned and the privacy is something it's like you have a car once you have a car you got to be pretty pretty much sure some day or the other you're going to bang it with someone and only thing which can shave you probably your insurance now if you use the same analogy internet is either you're there you're not there right there's nothing really you can prevent from getting leaked out and the way i define is that till such time someone gets to know my account balance in my bank or gets into my bedroom sorry everything is pretty much out there known to every goddamn person in the world because we are living in a connected world there's nothing much you can really hide right the problem out here is not privesi i would i would say the problem is who's in charge of maintaining this privacy unfortunately what we happened today every policy maker worth the assault and every agency they are having their own battle a lot to do with their own interest unless you do it more more from people prepassing unless they come together okay i mean give an example if you look at crypto for instance some countries work on crypto some countries don't and crypto is going to be the order of the day few months few years down the line that's a virtual currency everyone will be using it now in that space itself every country has their own finicky way of looking at it or funny way of looking at it both extremes right so so i guess that that's one thing and and over the last 15 16 years the way internet has developed is it's grown by lifts and bounds okay internet came to us in the form of hotmail usa.net today has gone beyond everything classic example i don't know if you recall somewhere a few years back i get two years back there was a big issue of alex uh yeah amazon alexa devices hearing out every goddamn conversation happening in the household and it is something which everyone knows is all over the globe all over google all across all news agencies has that stopped the sales of alexa siri or google device or anyone for that matter not not really so therefore the question comes in two ways how concerned are we in terms of privacy and b what are the policies which are available today and how long these policies are working together again collaborative way of working together across multiple agencies so i don't think i mean if you ask me i don't think there's a definitely answer to it because there's no definitive solution okay one cannot stop google from working any country one can install facebook from entering that country to the largest facebook office largest uh development center for facebook google microsoft is in india one of the biggest guys who got advantage of cambridge analytica was india and indians still scream about privacy you can't mess this door together which is bad i think it can feel quite overwhelming can't it for the everyday users a little bit like sustainability or climate change they know they want to do something they know about it but having that right knowledge and education and information you feel overwhelmed you feel like you don't stand a chance because the powers that be are so much greater than you but when we when we change that mindset and we change the communication actually it is your data as renata said this is me why are you earning money from it i should be earning money from it so that human-centric tech needs to develop a wider education the whole thing off i mean it's like you're sitting in a tennis match you're just watching someone saying privacy someone saying hey we're going to stop it you're just walking both sides you don't get a solution yeah absolutely and i think what what ronald did mention is tech forgot the human centric approach which everyone is talking about but no one is really implementing it which is the need of the r yeah yeah sorry ricardo i can see you're in deep thought i was told somewhere if someone's looking at the top left they're really processing something there is there something you need to come out with i i i was i'm still wrapped in thoughts i haven't really been able to verbalize it yet but um i will i was just listening to what what you were saying um now uh what i was thinking again to the point is i think it's in these cases as a especially as ronald's saying where you don't feel the power that you really need legislation to come in right and and it might not we might not all be happy with it right because it can stifle to some point and there was a lot of discussion when we had the gpdr that this was going to stifle innovation and we weren't going to be able to develop as quickly i mean on the other hand this can be also a driver for innovation i mean one example where there were these covid detection apps right to detect contacts that were able to be developed and used in europe although sorry while respecting privacy for data so here i i would say that it does make sense to rely a little bit on on legislation because it's something that we do feel that on a day-to-day basis we can't do anything about although we would all argue that it is important but at the same day i mean am i going to google something in google or am i going to use duckduckgo for example which is a search engine that will have a little bit more privacy we're going to use google so it's the same as the alexa example right we're going to use what's more convenient so here i do think it makes sense to have some legislation in place that can actually you know um put some stops in places and again to allow people to innovate but i i may have some push back on that but that's more or less what i was doing okay before i jump to you sebastian i just want to quickly add that for me working in marketing gdpr was fantastic why because it made it took the cowboys out of the equation it gave the control back to the individual that you own your own data so as a brand when you have consent you have a greater value a greater asset from someone so i think that was everyone was expecting something different they were expecting you know the world's going to implode but but but but it did change that sebastian did you have any thoughts that you wanted to build i mean i i think the perfect example of privacy is gdpr absolutely i completely agree with you but that's only in one country of 65 million people oh one continent but we still have german privacy regulations yes that's what i'm saying so so just to build on what i what ricardo had just mentioned there needs to be a resolution yes that indeed there needs to be as desolation but has to be a global resolution yes yeah it has to be followed approved accepted by everyone and we're still not as the data owner money from it we should be earning the money from it it's our data oh absolutely look i've built a network on on linkedin that has 30 000 members uh and i can't do anything with it now i've mentioned i never owned the data but guess what you can go into linkedin and you can advertise to that group and the the hundreds of hours i've put into it i'm not seeing anything and i'm a little bit okay that's that's a bit of it but you know this is the world this is the wild west and this is how we're changing how things are changing let's move on to the next question because because we could really go deep dive into a lot of these things i really want to talk about the culture of innovation and one thing that's fantastic about this group i wish i could take credit for collecting you guys because what we have is a really nice spread of different cultures i suppose we're missing some americans i'm kind of australian um but but uh but uh but renata can i can i start with you in terms of what is culture and how is it important to collaborative innovation if if you think about work culture uh culture from a country or a uh you know an old an individual's culture it could be religious based but in general what what effect does culture have on on uh on collaborative innovation yeah i mean i i if collaborative innovation is a recipe i think uh culture is the the ingredient that needs to be there i mean it is really very very challenging uh for um for do any sort of innovation if the culture is not there or if that innovation is not um impacting on culture i mean we work with a number of of the corporates here in brazil um which obviously want to invite want to bring fast um you know results from innovation to their um to their businesses uh you know that there is this very strong relation that innovation needs to bring impact impact in terms of cash in terms of profit which is right and i think you know we should uh follow that path too but most of the times we say what about the culture you know like that you probably are going to have business units working together that never really did that before or probably you have your boards talking about innovation which was something that they avoided uh until the moment that you started an innovation program or probably you are doing an entrepreneurship um event that really brings up all these ideas all this talent that exists in your company that by the way you don't know that exists to actually solve some of the small problems that you think are huge from them by the fact that you are open um you know your company to others to invite so so and that is difficult to measure and most of the times i mean i sit in in some boards as well and and also um you know and and i see the difficulty of talking about innovation because of okay so what are the kpis of innovation okay so what how are you going to measure uh the impact of this investment i mean is this investment uh going really to put me on the digital company on the more digital company of my sector is it going to solve me this and that huge challenge that i have and sometimes it doesn't you know and that's really the thing that we really need to be very clear about is that sometimes just by uh doing um an investment in an innovative and innovation program doesn't mean that you are going to become the next google or the next facebook so so there is a lot of that's you know there is a lot of this expectation that if you do innovation you are going to be the next unicorn in the next wow and i think we need to sort of manage that expectations a bit better because you know we have always innovative in fact we are here today as human beings because we have been able to innovate i mean that's great we have this wonderful brain in mind that has been able to uh keep curiosity going now the problem is that we find is how do we bridge the gap between what what is culture and what is uh the business return or from innovation and that really has been our greatest challenge you know how to uh bring that as i said to the ceo to the shareholders uh to the various units to to the engineers that actually by the way i mean i'm an engineer i can say that they think that they already innovate you know they are great and they don't need to work with a startup or an external entrepreneur because they know it all and sometimes again open mind be able to to share be able to risk your own knowledge your own assumptions is extremely important so what i often suggest for for culture is that you know is a slower process uh is not something that you actually do like that you know you can probably solve a business unit problem or a factory energy efficiency issue very quickly but you cannot change the mindset of 10 people sitting around the table that actually make the decision that way you really need to think what sort of actions are you going to do in a medium long term short medium and long term to actually start changing that mindset and that is a lot with benchmarks of what is happening outside is a lot of having champions inside the companies the organizations is a lot of uh of educating in fact of bringing examples of uh of the good things and also the bad things and it's a process it's not uh it's not something um very straightforward i would say that is the greatest challenge of innovation is not actually coming up with a solution it's actually having someone that decides that they want to invest and they want to go forward with innovation within their companies and organizations absolutely now rona you're as a consultant i imagine you've been and seen many different companies now over the last five years it what's your take on on innovation having learnt from seeing the different or the culture behind uh innovation is there any patterns that you've seen in your consulting days yeah i think picking up really on the flow of um renata is uh one of the things i often before i start working with a client or what of the things that i i see as around enablers or blockers is around the the board and the c-suites so you know you can tell quite quickly actually how open they are to that opening their hearts and and their knowledge being questioned um but also i think around often we look at culture and think different countries for me as well it's around the the diversity and inclusion across the business on who who's involved in decision making who's involved in innovation processes um and and one of the biggest things that i talk to a lot of clients about is we all talk about roi and yes as so said earlier you know we don't put all this effort into to not make any money from it however what i would say is that roi for me and my clients is very much around return on investment return on impact return on interest and then i slightly got my spelling wrong and talked about written on environment um let's just replace the e with the eye and and so it's actually looking at those holistic causes around culture and innovation aligned with kind of diversity so for me it starts at the top um and then yes as renata says it it takes time and i've worked with some cool companies where i could process that very quickly and we can create change very quickly and then others honestly i've walked away from no absolutely because it's just more effort dealing with the internal uh culture that's just toxic sometimes now ricardo uh you're saying this is one of your favorite uh questions in our preparations you're you're in a leadership position and as rona said uh this whole culture comes from the top uh and and has to move down what what are your thoughts and experience on that with yes so i i realize this question because it relates a lot to what we do right uh i mean and this also relates to what renata uh i think was saying as we also work a lot with large corporations trying to bridge the gap between smes and and corporates but also in networks where we have more of a level playing field as i said before um i would just touch about the culture um sort of transparency versus secrecy i would say sort of a general try and push for transparency but respect secrecy so this is something that you know don't force people to come out if they don't feel like because they're just going to hamper interesting conversations right i mean being very pragmatically we should try and people for people to share and try and have things as open and transparent as possible but if it's a certain stage you have to start going behind closed doors and normally you know you should just let that process happen because otherwise you might people put people uncomfortable not let allow actual um um projects to happen um what i relate to other two points here that i have heard i think was ron and renata discussed which is on the kpis in our experience we see this a lot when working with corporates those that come from more let's say a cbc background so when you have metrics um that's related to return on investment hard metrics you see this a little bit harder to actually bridge in with new companies right because here what matters is okay uh i need uh 10x return here right one good investor portfolio five and a nu10x returns whereas if you're working with the ones that are that whose open innovation department actually came from um wanting to create this culture of innovation you're going to have normally some kpis that are much more flexible more qualitative and actually align with the strategic uh goals of the the corporation and here you have lots of different um lots of different configurations but it's interesting to see that this is actually more innovation-friendly because it was created with that purpose um not wanting to take too much china uh uh we know out of time i would like to do another point that i think was also touched upon here by my colleagues before and it's the question of people um when you're relating to corporates in the work that we do we see different constellations sometimes you have a large open innovation department that's already working sometimes you have like a one-person show that's we say thrown to the walls and say okay now you're the innovation manager get innovation in our company and it's interesting to see especially in these situations where you can have corporations that are not very innovation prone and they're thrown into an environment where they suddenly have the goals and the pressure to start creating innovation and basically this starts a lot with people and their relationships with um the plant managers or the department managers right basically their goal is to try and find innovations outside and we normally try and help them do that but at the same time they have to be sure that they are first selling the innovation to the right person internally for two sides on the one hand they want to make sure that the company actually has success internet because that's part of their metrics but on the other hand i mean okay they're the same corporate but the plant manager xyz if the technology doesn't solve the problem in six months if the pilot doesn't really return the results maybe they won't be as keen to help the colleague from the from the corporate so it's this soft um power or convincing that has to be done inside the corporation which is very very interesting and there um you know it's important to have the right initiative initiatives and the right points to actually bring um to convince people to work together it's very exciting but i don't want to go into too long because i know we only have a couple minutes and we've got a couple minutes and sebastian looks like you can have the last words on this in terms of the culture of innovation so so so your thoughts sure say no and technoplate one of the mantras that we follow is importing all those companies all those ideas all those startups which looks at creating a difference uh using technology as a tool for the critical mass and that's what to me is what innovation is innovation is not for one person or two people are few in the organization you got to create come up with those kind of stuff be it in a collaborative way or working with others that impacts a million lives if not a thousand lives and helps them to create a little more value in in the way they're living their life it could be banking it could be e-commerce it could be simple education but still that's what comes is the most important thing and secondly which i think is is is more relevant today is you also got to ensure that collaborative innovation and and you know so working together with everyone has to bring all the right set of partners okay it's important to choose the right set of partners otherwise all that innovation that we'll be talking about intending to do falls flat on our face so identifying the rights to the partners and to whom we are sort of creating the difference and these are two sort of key points which i think are very important for any kind of innovation with corporate be collaborative i think that's what i would love to sort of rest my comments hmm no fantastic we've got a a quick lightning round uh the fourth industrial revolution let's do a quick round of thoughts is this is this going to be real artificial intelligence blockchain internet things robotics drones virtual reality 3d printing let's go a quick lightning round starting ricardo very quickly i think it's here i think it's already part of our life um fourth industrial revolution with data in europe i think this is something that we can well while date on people we kind of lost or we're kind of losing i think data on industry and tech we can we actually have some thing that's that's what's happening is aligned with the european strategy here um artificial intelligence blockchain robotics drones 3d printing i see places for all of this and it is happening i mean within our networks we are developing this right now in in our company in germany and next to the minute so this is definitely here and happening rona thoughts on the fourth industrial revolution in 30 seconds go yeah it's it's definitely here i've seen my client using droning drones for sampling because of covid um i'm involved in a ton of networking groups around crypto blockchain nfts um and i do a lot of that in kind of my podcasting conversations as well so it's absolutely here what i hope to ricardo's point is that we take people on that journey and we don't freak them out by it so they are better informed and i'm not scared renata absolutely very quickly yes all of these technologies are already a reality here in brazil lots of good examples and i fully agree that we need to um you know explain a bit more the advantages of this to our society and to our planet sebash it's here you just got to go and embrace it yes that's fantastic and uh look thanks everyone guys it's been so much fun and i think from uh working on our google doc last week and uh and and meeting you guys uh you know like an hour ago uh has been great denise and the team at uh at um the open business council thank you for the invitation um and i think we wave out right on one hour right so we've got uh like 10 seconds to go so maybe we can just wave to everyone and say thanks hope you've enjoyed it and yes look us up on linkedin as well um yeah thanks guys and thanks so much for the great motivation one sequence if you guys still here one sec just

Channel: Dinis Guarda

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Id: 6K6_TaWZcrk

Length: 60min 15sec (3615 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 20 2021