A couple of interesting things happened these past days, and they were all extremely surprising for the experts, to say the least.
First, AlphaGo, Google's DeepMind AI machine, beat the world's best human Go-player, Lee Sedol from South Korea. AlphaGo not only beat the human, but humiliated him. And in addition, AlphaGo used moves that the Go-world had never seen before. The machine opened humans a totally new way of playing the game. And the machine learned by playing against itself.
Second, a Twitter-bot from Microsoft had to be turned off only 24 hours later after other Twitter-users (humans) taught it racist slurs.
Third, machine learning includes one interesting aspect: a machine playing video-games with photo-realistic landscapes such as Assassins Creed may teach machines for self-driving cars faster. I kid you not!
If AI piqued your interest, you may want to prepare for the Applied Artificial Intelligence conference in San Francisco this May 25th with speakers from Uber, Airbnb, and ToyTalk, and an expected audience of 400(!).
Get my book on Amazon! 400 pages, €19,99.
Innovation Outposts were the topic of a fireside chat that I had with Evangelos Simoudis last week at the Vodafone Innovation Outpost in Redwood City. Companies are seeking to embed themselves and understand Silicon Valley better by having a presence here and bring the entrepreneurial and creative spirit into their own organizations.
Some tips of how to properly set up an Innovation Outpost can be found here. And I know that because I maintain a list of 170+ Silicon Valley innovation Outposts, met wieht a lot of them and worked 13 years in such an outpost. So don't miss our next fireside chats and join my Innovation Outpost meetup group.
A few days ago the American SAP User Group (ASUG) invited me to conduct a webcast on The Silicon-Valley-Mindset. By now you should know that I wrote a book about it (in German), but the webcast is in English.
Enjoy the 45 minutes webcast on what we can learn about the mindset and apply it, as well some deeper dive into the disruption that's unfolding in the automotive industry.
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After the fireside chat on innovation outposts I present a related topic: the innovation lab. Having a space dedicated to innovation at the headquarter may make you easily miss that it's not about the space or the fancy equipment that you filled it with, but the people that occupy it and make it their own.
Invite everyone, make it accessible round the clock at any time of the day or week, and provide help and expertise. Innovation after all is not the task of an R&D-department or the "innovation guys", but should be everyones' effort in the company.
A recent conflict between labor union representatives, a school district, and a family trust in Germany shows how far we still have to go with teaching entrepreneurship. A trust from an entrepreneurial family had donated money for entrepreneurship classes in a school, and the labor union quickly branded this effort as indoctrination on behalf of bad corporations. But countries need entrepreneurship skills more than ever, and we are not teaching them.
On a positive note, a Shark-Tank-style show on Austrian private TV is currently in its third season and not only experiencing record viewership, but also record investments. The show's investors - aptly titled "2 minutes, 2 millions" - just handed out $7mio to a startup - a record sum for the show.
An upcoming keynote of mine at an innovation conference back in my home town of Vienna/Austria is titled "Why Vienna is too beautiful for innovation." In fact, the clash between two opposites often makes for good innovation, and can create an innovative environment. San Francisco is a great example. A beautiful city with some really worn-down neighborhoods. The right mix, the right people, the right attitude, and you have all the basics for great innovation to create magic.
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NSFW - Man versus Machine
Today's NSFW - internet lingo for Not Safe For Work - is a duel between man and machine. More precisely, between the table tennis champion Timo Boll and a Kuka robot. And it's one of a kind duel with flying - no, not fists - but flying fingers, fragile glasses, and fierce looks and hand gestures.
