Momenta I Digital Thread

Mike Flannagan’s extensive experience in technology and Connected Industry has placed him at the nexus of the evolution of industrial IoT and digital transformation. Our conversation explored best practices around digital transformation, the role that technology companies can play in helping to drive changes to business processes and the value add of analytics in broad context. He shared perspectives on how best to bridge the culture gaps between technology and core business along with framing priorities and considerations to best position for digital success. The discussion turned to AI – the implications, potential and challenges as these technologies have moved to the forefront of business discussions. Most important, we discussed the risks of historical biases becoming encoded in future algorithms, and the imperative to ensuring that diverse voices and opportunities harness the best talent in the fairest possible manner.

With the growing adoption of solar power generation across homes and businesses there’s growing need for solutions that simplify the evolution of the grid, and improve ROI. PowerLedger is at the forefront of a new generation of Distributed Energy Management Systems (DERMS), with a platform that enables energy to be sourced from multiple modes of generation and monetized in different ways. Our conversation explored the key macro drivers behind the company’s origins. David Martin explains the company’s origins, the role of blockchain in its technology, and the different aspects of its solutions. Of particular note are the company’s live projects, including a microgrid in Bangkok, projects in Japan and California. While the transition to clean energy generation is revolutionary in many respects, PowerLedger is seeking to ease the challenges of transition and make change as evolutionary as possible.

Joe Weiss works as the Managing Partner of Applied Control Solutions and Managing Director of the ISA99 standards organization. He has a deep background in control systems security, and has been active in the cyber security community around control systems for decades. Control systems are everywhere in every type of power generation, substation, pipeline, manufacturing, transportation, medical, pharmaceuticals – and security is often not understood. Our conversation covered a range of topics including how security is only a small part of control system challenges, the three “legs” of security (physical, IT security and control systems), the cultural challenges to raising appropriate security awareness, and areas where security has been overlooked. He provides a look into the magnitude of the problem, while pointing to encouraging areas of progress.

Bill Ruh is CEO of Digital Business at LendLease Group, a global developer and construction company for high rise and other real estate developments. Previously, he was the Chief Digital Officer for all of GE and CEO of GE Digital. Our conversation explored the nature of digital transformation, the considerations for creating goals and aligning the organization for success. One of the key insights is that transformation for industrial firms draws from best practices of technology companies, and the core principle is that technology companies’ missions are tied to asset optimization and better outcomes. He also shared how large companies need to think of transformation in two speeds – shorter term and longer term, where Speed 1 is the quarter to quarter focus and Speed 2 is the long term “moon shots”. He compares and contrasts the innovation mindset and approaches between startups and established companies, and shares best practices for larger companies to bridge the cultural gaps between their legacy and digital businesses. He also shares his views of the futyre of the construction and real estate industries enabled by the transformative impact of new technologies, which he is spearheading in his new role at LendLease.

Dan Nadav is the CEO of EnviroPower, a company that is innovating traditional technology to create a cheap, alternative approach to generating primary and secondary power from a unique modification to a boiler that is typically employed in homes and apartment buildings. We discuss how EnviroPower has developed a micro-generator solution that turns energy that ordinarily would be wasted into electricity, and how this approach avoids the challenges faced by other alternative forms of generation such as solar by building on equipment that’s already widely used. Our conversation explores the potential use cases for the SmartWatt technology, such as the ability to create virtual power plants from communities that network homes into a micro-grid. We also discuss the types of customers the company is working with, along with the attractive ROI.

SK Reddy is a the Chief Product Office of AI at Hexagon. Our conversation went deep into AI some of the critical developments in the market, notable research in the area, key industry applications and use cases of the technology. The conversation covers some of the key enabling factors, in particular the rise of collaboration and open sourcing playing a key role accelerating the development and adoption of technologies. He details several dramatic innovations including Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Back Propagation, AI Frameworks from Google, Facebook, Amazon and others, as well as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANSS) and Reinforcement Learning.

Rick Bullotta founded two companies that have been pivotal in the development of connected industry: Lighthammer (acquired by SAP in 2005) and Thingworx (acquired by PTC in 2014) and he is now an adviser to Microsoft Azure IoT. He’s a passionate advocate of new technologies and innovation, and enjoys the disclaimer that “80% is fact and 20% is BS - and I don’t know which is which”. Our conversation explores his personal background in industrial technology, and how the insights gained from his experiences at Wonderware helped shape the vision for the companies he started. Exploring the genesis of Lighthammer and Thingworx, the discussion touches on why blue-collar tasks benefit from an IT-driven “multiplier effect”, how innovation comes from empowered customers, and how simple visibility can kick-start profound changes in industrial businesses. Other topics covered include the market landscape around IoT platforms, potential of AI and machine learning, the potential and pitfalls around blockchain, and the future of connected industry. Areas of particular interest in technology include meta-sensing technologies around drones and robotics, simplifying the last foot of connectivity, 5G technologies and a company called Wave.io that seeks create events and alerting without relying on audio.

Donna Moore leads The LoRa Alliance™, a 500-strong consortium dedicated to advancing innovation, interoperability and adoption of the LoRaWAN™ Standard. Our conversation explores the background of the Alliance, the key characteristics of LoRaWAN™ chips and the open standard, and some of the work that the Alliance is facilitating across the ecosystem. LoRa benefits from being a second mover in the low-power wide area market, with much of the evangelizing benefiting awareness of the advantages and implications. Currently there are over 100 network carriers and presence in over 100 coungtries, so the standard is becoming truly global. With the rapid growth of the ecosystem, The LoRa Alliance™ is helping to accelerate adoption across use cases, industries and markets.

This is the first episode of our Digital Leadership Series, which highlights the insights of digital transformation leaders in industry. Our first guest is Guido Jouret, the Chief Digital Officer of ABB, who was also a previous guest on our Edge podcast. Our conversation explored Guido Jouret’s core principles around digital transformation, best practices for implementation as well as key lessons as they have applied in his career. Notably, we explore the implications of how the coming transition in transportation from internal combustion engines to self-driving electric powered transportation has implications all across the value chain.

Wienke Giezeman is Initiator of The Things Network and CEO of The Things Industries. His work is deeply focused on the LoRa standard for low-power wide-area connectivity. Our discussion explored some of the factors that drove the creation of the LoRa standard, some of the critical use cases that provide proof points for adoption, the critical role of collaboration and alliances in building the ecosystem and some of the early use success stories in the LoRa ecosystem. In particular, Wienke shares the story of connected mousetraps in Amsterdam, connected buildings and connected cows in New Zealand. Some notable startups include Teralytic, a soil health company, myDevices, which has built a layer on top of LoRa and Xignal, the smart mousetrap company.

Rumi Morales is a Partner at Outlier Ventures, an investment firm focused on early stage companies with an investment horizon of 10-20 years driven by an investment thesis focused on convergence of AI, Blockchain and IoT. Our conversation covers her experience surviving the Asian Financial crises, the burst of the dot.coms and the global financial crisis - and how lessons from those experiences helped shape her views. She shares her experience managing venture investments at CME Group, navigating the digital disruption in trading and the appeal of AI and blockchain technologies in financial markets. The discussion also covered promising use cases for blockchain and IoT, the implications of “Crypto Winter” and comparisons of Blockchain and AI as the “troubled child who talks about everything” and the “quiet teenager that goes to their room and closes the door without saying anything”. Companies discussed include SmartCognition, Haja Networks, IOTA, Sovrn, Fetch.AI, Ocean Protocol and Botanic/SEED.

Bill Schmarzo is CTO of IoT and Analytics at Hitachi Vantara and Executive Fellow at the San Francisco School of Management. Our discussion covered Bill’s origins in data warehousing and business intelligence, how and why he had to “unlearn” traditional approaches to embrace Big Data techniques. The conversation explores some of the differences in approach between business intelligence, big data and IoT analytics, along with how Hadoop fundamentally changed the economics of data. He shares some of the vision Hitachi Vantara and the application-first approach along with the benefits that come with having Hitachi’s other businesses as a customer. Companies he’s most interested in are those that are automating machine learning to bring it to the masses including Big Squid.

Bonnie Lind is VP of Business Development for Pathion and Trevor Curwin is VP of Energy Market for Greensparc are both passionate and articulate advocates for a future of decentralized clean energy as both work at clean-tech companies. Our conversation covered some of the recent history of clean-tech – the overshoot of initial technologies a decade ago, why and how there have been positive changes that pave the way for adoption of clean energy generation. Topics covered in the discussion include the dynamics of micro-grids, the challenges and opportunities involved with integrated multiple types of generation into traditional grids, and the role that software plays in orchestrating and managing a more decentralized, heterogeneous energy infrastructure. We also explore the challenges ahead for utilities, both economic and structural, as well as the potential opportunities ahead for new players to enter the market. We discuss the potential role of AI and advanced analytics along with interesting new companies such as Pisces and ElectriQ Power.

In our conversation with David Mount, parter at the VC firm G2VP, he shares some of his experiences working with companies in the energy and industrial sector. He discusses some of the unique characteristics that lead to success, the interactions with key customers, and the need for VCs to adjust their perspective to customer success when working in the industrial sector. He also compares and contrasts how and why certain industries have been moved faster and been more successful in digitalizing their businesses, and discusses the potential unleashed by AI, machine learning and other technologies. Finally, he highlights notable startups in the space including Kelvin, Alea, Zomi, Xage and Particle.In

Mark Jeffrey is Co Founder and CEO of Guardian Circle, a blockchain-based startup focused on enabling people anywhere in the world to summon critical help from their smartphone. He’s an accomplished entrepreneur and CEO as well as a published author. Our conversation explores his path through technology, becoming one of the first podcasters to serialize fiction, the characteristics that make blockchain special and some of the key applications. We discuss the origins and goals of Guardian Circle, the ongoing regulatory challenges in the cryptoasset market, key distinctions between the NEO, EOS and Ethereum blockchains, and the obstacles to mainstream adoption of blockchain based applications. He also shares commentary on notables startups including Spotcoin, EOS Lynx and Neon Wallet.