Innovation Adventures in Silicon Valley

What a whirlwind trip to Silicon Valley and the Bay Area and there’s more to come. Even though the main event doesn’t kick off until tomorrow, it’s already been absolutely remarkable. I came to Israel Dealmakers Summit #IDS18 to learn valuable lessons from serial entrepreneurs and experienced investors, to figure out a way to accelerate delivery in more mature organisations. Or, you could think of it as bringing a bit of the start-up culture to the companies and corporations that may be traditionally a bit slow moving.

IBM Watson Labs

Our first stop was IBM Watson Lab in San Francisco. However Almden is the name of the West Coast research laboratory that IBM first established in 1956. Now home to a rapidly growing team of scientists and researchers, Almaden has helped to create what is now known as Silicon Valley. Watson’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities range from the mundane through to state-of-the-art empathy detection and character assessment. Using natural language processing in real-time, one wonders how these new tools will feature in the future of leadership. With the widespread democratisation of data science, and predictive modelling widely available, one thing is clear: we need to elevate the discussion of data ethics and predictive model governance today before it is too late.

Uber

Our next stop was Uber. They have a breath-taking ambition to solve mass transportation challenges the world over. Incredibly we learnt that is some major cities in North America it can be more cost-effective to mobilise a small army of subsidised Uber drivers to service the city's commuters than to create traditional structures for mass transportation. The hundreds of data scientists in Uber’s teams are deployed across the entire organisation, including within product and policy teams. For a kiwi, the scale was hard to comprehend. How can businesses here build an elastic data & analytics operating model to compete?

Salesforce

Then we moved onto Salesforce. Salesforce have a unique employee culture which enables them to remain competitive in a tough Silicon Valley (and indeed global) labour market. They use their own products to run their business, helping staff become champions of the product. Unique cultural initiatives like no free lunch (they want their staff to support local businesses and get up from their desks!) as well as radical and transparent feedback between managers and employees mean that they can attract and retain the staff they need.

Kiwi Landing Pad

Our final stop of the day was the Kiwi Landing Pad (KLP). Established in 2011, KLP exists to help New Zealand high growth technology companies expand into the US market. They now have over 4000 members located in over 36 countries around the world. Located in the heart of San Francisco, it is such a fantastic initiative to support kiwi entrepreneurs to get a foothold in the Bay and Valley.

Day 2 – Google and CSIRO

Day two kicked off with a visit to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). It was a real warts-and-all presentation on the cold reality of start-up success. Their research shows that only two out of every 10 startups will make it. They want to encourage first-time entrepreneurs, but also want to make sure that they know that even the best ideas don’t always make it, and the humble kiwi persona might fail to spark the imagination of a venture capitalist.

Then we headed on to Google. After a nostalgic walk through the history of the internet, the Google presentation took us guide us through buzz-word bingo covering deep learning, neural networks, AI and the cloud, demystifying these terms. Our speaker did a wonder job of reminding us to simply and that sometimes the solution to the problem might be an Excel spreadsheet and a pivot table – you don’t always need AI!

Their main advice to entrepreneurs is to ask four simple questions:

1.      What is the problem you are trying to solve – in plain English!?

2.      Who owns that problem, or who is the customer?

3.      What is your solution?

4.      What proof do you have that this works?

More tomorrow!

What an eclectic and exciting few days it has been, and it’s not over yet! Tomorrow, we kick off with the main event with many exciting keynotes to come.