Mika Tienhaara's See Beyond Show

Host Mika Tienhaara, ROCSOLE, guest Tushar Kansal, Kansaltancy Ventures.

A talk around Venture Capital and Startups. And a lot about cultural differences.

It was great to talk to Tushar, with his background from corporates, as an investor from venture capital working with startups - what should startups look for: should you be looking at your local/regional market. What to learn from this. And what if you have global aspirations?

Remember to understand the variations in culture and what the expectations are in terms of price, service and quality. What are the local habits and taste? Use that as an opportunity to excel!

Thinking about your team, where are the co-founders, tech guys and the rest of your team - what are your cumulative capabilities. Show leadership!

Be a top 3 potential in your category, get the investors to flock around you.

Figure out the stickiness of your product. Build habits.

And what is Tushar’s one wish for this year? Listen and you will learn...

It brings joy and “quality of life” talking and engaging with Ernesto Sirolli.

Sirolli and his team has been part of starting some 55,000 business globally!

For those who wants to climb the mountain as entrepreneurs, they are self-selected and Ernesto can be the “sherpa” to guide and support you getting to the peak.

How to get to the position where you can do what you love and get paid? The entrepreneurial know-how is essential to get there. Remember, you cannot do this by yourself, there needs to be a trinity of fantastic product (service), exquisite marketing communication and perfect financial management. (NOTE: I apply this myself, in terms of my BLACK DIAMOND rules, for TEAM, Marketing, Product and Funding). This is a form of entrepreneurial elegance.

And what did Ernesto tell in the “Millionaire” magazine interview about the NEW ELEGANCE...or the true legends of Silicon Valley - listen to the podcast and you will learn this and much more about the new beautiful and quality of life. The story about Henry Ford, how he became one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, going through two prior bankruptcies.

A big thanks to Ernesto, with such engaging topics and his absolute passion about how to bring entrepreneurs to the peak.

Check out Sirolli’s Trinity of Management courses, here is a fantastic source for entrepreneurs: https://sirolli.com/trinity-of-management

/Mika

I met Vivek several years ago in Houston, TX and have been in contact every now and then. With his knowledge and expertise in technology shaping the future and his engagements with Harvard, Stanford, Carnegie-Mellon, Duke, I thought it was great to hear Vivek’s opinions on where we are heading.

Here we are, still enduring the pandemic; we are able to create new deadly viruses and look at how quickly we, humanity, have been able to develop solution. This shows on how quick technology development is taking place. For just a few years ago this would not have been possible.

The next 8-9 years will be more amazing than the previous 80-90 years. This decade will bring more progress than the last 100 years.

What we see happening now is our adaption of technology with electric vehicles, autonomous drive, clean energy and cleaning up our planet. We will see more drone technology and 3D printed housing and food. Living will get cheaper. This transition will create a big mass of new jobs, however the automation and robots will then take over the jobs. Some of Wadhwa’s views on technology you can read about in his book “the Driver in the Driverless Car”

Technology adoption is key, find ways to embrace the new and share the knowledge. We need to work jointly for the benefit of humanity. Sharing equally is key.

(NOTE: listen to the episode with Ernesto Sirolli, he has the same message).

The future needs to give us freedom of choice, not just rigid control.

AI, what is it? Are we overhyping it or are we able to utilize it properly? The bias in pattern recognition is happening many places, which can be scary and dangerous, so we need to be very careful in how it is put in use.

And is the innovation and venture capital going to stay/grow in Silicon Valley, is the magic still around? We ended up discussing the quality of life in the Silicon Valley vs. other regions.

As a matter of fact this is the cliffhanger - as a follow-up we are going to have a second round of discussion in a couple of months on how innovative and good life is in Silicon Valley but also the Nordic region. And we need to discuss his most recent book also - “From Incremental to Exponential”. Until then, I hope you enjoy this episode!

Guest: Professor Göran Roos, a Swedish academic, technologist, author and businessman. He is a specialist in the field of intellectual capital and an expert in innovation management and strategy. (wikipedia)

Pandemics come and go. We are still in a pandemic, but hopefully coming out of this pandemic soon, we have an altered society and world. Apart from being a very bad, difficult and devastating COVID-19 pandemic, there is a dramatic change ongoing in how we interact using digital and online resources - with virtual meetings (like this podcast as an example), online shopping, deliveries and streaming. All this is now part of the new normal.

But also as supplies drawing from international sources have been difficult and partly impossible impacting the sovereignty, the national strategies are incorporating more of manufacturing of critical equipment to have secure supply sources.

The supply chain disruptions have also impacted large corporates. That is also reshaping their strategies, having a deeper direct control of even the raw materials.

We have to go green and that means for mobility and transportation we are going electric. This is not the only impact, but materials, such as steel, will in the future be produced with carbon neutral processes. That in turn means that there is a need for green hydrogen - en mass. For this transition taking place, there is an enormous need for electricity.

According to prof. Roos the world is shifting from a dependency of petrol (OPEC) to a dependency of metals (China).

The semiconductor supply shortage recently is showing also how this is a critical and strategic product. Semiconductor development and production is an extremely high risk venture every time. The winners will be those with unique and required tools, machine and process knowledge.

All in all, there are great opportunities for science, technology and manufacturing.

Don’t stay in a dying business, for instance in automotive business, you need to shift to a strategy and product architecture with batteries/electrical motors and away from internal combustion engines. A lot less components, meaning also that this will be a challenge for the supplier companies.

Above picture is from Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, by coincidence I watched it recently. We are up for a new big transformation which also creates a vast amount of opportunities.

There will be fights over the scarcity of talents, and in Europe, there is the dilemma -EU has about 1 million unfilled IT positions presently. The Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence is not stopping; automation will continue to grow in sophistication, at the same time, there will be a huge amount of new jobs created.

Speed is critical. You need to be agile. Not just as an individual or company. It applies also for the nation and the administration.

Discussion between journalist and union representative:

Journalist: "Are you not afraid of jobs disappearing with new technology?

Union rep: “We are not afraid of new technology, but of old technology. Companies with old technology go under.”

For Prof. Roos the technology shifts in the sectors of agriculture and aquaculture are behind but the potential is enormous and we can expect some deeper insights from these areas from him in the times coming.

NOTE: For a discussion on technology readiness, TRLs and MRLs, you may listen to the See Beyond episode with John Saiz, S1E5: https://mikatienhaara.substack.com/p/s1e5-sometimes-its-ok-to-fail-from?r=foifx&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy

Amazing, I’ve reached 20 episodes of the Season 2!

This episode could have been named: Who ate my ramen noodles? We’ll get back to that in the podcast.

In early May I was in Houston, TX, moderating (MC!) an innovation panel at the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC). We wanted to recap our learnings from this event and also talk about what else is going on in the energy industry, how to fund startups and to deploy technology at scale.

We give some of our feedback and recommendations for the coming year - what do we want to see more of. What to focus on, and how to attract Gen. Y.

The energy transition is so key for our future and we need to build strong collaborative forums, deploy new technology at scale (impact) and much more. What is the format for License to operate with ESG and energy transition on the agenda for oil and gas operations? And is energy transition really about energy management?

Also, how can we build a sharing culture also cross-borders, and cross-industries? For profound knowledge, we have to look outside. In my own opinion, the entrepreneurs and innovators need to get a larger focus and place at the table in committees and organizations.

We use ROCSOLE as a case study as scaleup, what is Thomas’ advice to us and the industry for the adoption of new technology.

I am also looking forward to the next OTC and other industry events in Houston coming up...

I enjoyed very much this dynamic discussion with Thomas.

/Mika