Learning Smarter, Eating Less, and Innovating Better with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about Google's Learn Your Way platform, the ripple effects of GLP-1 Medications. And we explored the $10,000 question of why startups build products nobody wants. Let's get started.

Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Mile Zero's, Robyn Bolton. As we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Let's get started.

Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

Google’s Personalized Learning and the Future of Education

[00:00:40] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And with me, I have Robyn Bolton from Mile Zero. Welcome, Robyn. 

[00:00:48] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Great to be here as always, Brian. 

[00:00:51] Brian Ardinger: It is exciting to have you on the podcast as our co-host. We always have some great conversations, and this week is no different.

We've got three articles we want to talk about, and we're going to start with Google. Google has just solved one of the oldest problems in education, according to Albano Cintas. He has a Twitter post that I saw. In that, he talked about how Google has dropped Learn Your Way, which basically rewrites textbooks based on your individual interests.

It's turning boring lectures into fun lessons. Students say that they've used it and have scored 78% versus 67% on retention tests. So maybe it actually works. Let's talk a little bit about Google and other things impacting the world of education. 

[00:01:31] Robyn Bolton: When I saw the post, I immediately went to Learn Your Way and I took some of their sample lessons, one on economics, an overview of economic systems, and another one on intro to data structures and algorithms, and for the last several years, I've worked a lot with a company in the K through eight curriculum industry. And I immediately sent this to them, with the message, "Uh oh." 

Because clicking into the system, and I highly encourage listeners, go try one of these out. You know, I did computer science as if I was a middle schooler who enjoyed cooking and food, and I had the option of reading the textbook sort of thing, but having quizzes every couple paragraphs to make sure I was learning.

I could watch a slideshow with a voiceover. I could just listen to the voiceover. I could look at a mind map. I was surprised at how many different modalities that I needed to use. But I also did really well on the quizzes, especially the data algorithms, which I usually find computer science stuff very boring. So this feels a hundred percent like the future of learning and truly personalized learning to all the different mechanisms that students have and how different students learn differently. 

[00:02:54] Brian Ardinger: It's quite exciting and you add that onto the things that you can learn from YouTube. Obviously, Google owns YouTube. They have access to all those particular things, so I'd imagine there's some opportunities and ways they can tie those particular entities together in some way to get you access to just the right paragraph or just the right video clip or things along those lines.

You know, I work in Nelnet in the education space, and we're always looking at how is the world of education changing? How does this impact higher education? How does it impact K through 12? How does it affect student loans? All these things can come into play when you have access to the world's knowledge, and it's fed in such a way that it makes it easier to digest and make it easier for the person to actually learn the stuff.

I think a lot of our existing school system is functioned on, not necessarily even teaching the person to go through it, but to get them through the gauntlet. And what if we created a world that allowed them to actually learn and created folks that had better tool sets, mindset, skill sets around that. How would that change the world? It's one of those few things of AI that's positive.

GLP-1 Medications and Shifting Consumer Behavior

[00:03:58] Robyn Bolton: Yes, that is positive. We always have to look at the systems out there. And you know Google, yes, has YouTube. It also has Google Classroom, which is the learning management system. So, you already have a lot of teachers in schools plugged into Google, already using it for so many aspects in the classroom. This just fit perfectly, seamlessly, fits in, especially to get better results. It's a wild new world. I love making it relevant to students and their interests and how they learn. 

[00:04:28] Brian Ardinger: The second article is a good transition because it moves away from ai, but it's yet another innovation that could have significant effects on a lot of different things.

And the article's from Harvard Business Review, and it's how GLP-1 medications are changing consumer behavior. They took a look at PWC analysis, looked at GLP medications like Ozempic. They're actually. Looking at the behavior, and it's pretty incredible in the analysis, more than 11,000 households, they looked at the grocery spending and it declined 6 to 8% within the first 12 months of a household that went on GLP-1 as their primary food purchaser.

Not only that, so it was a sharp contraction of a category that doesn't typically shift that fast or it's much more likely to shift slowly if you are gonna change your diet and grocery spending habits. But it also, the total household spending outlays only failed 2 to 3%. So it's showing that it actually was pointing to some reallocation of those savings towards other categories. So, you know, I'll pose the question to you. You used to work at P&G. If the entire consumer product space is changed by one particular drug, how is that going to shape the world? 

[00:05:37] Robyn Bolton: It's a really great question. What I found so interesting about the data is that, and I have a family member who is on a GLP-1 and so know that like their appetite just shrinks. Like they just get to a point very quickly in a meal where they're like, I'm done. I don't want to eat anymore. So you're consuming less food, which then leads to a decision at the store like, well, I used to buy, you know, hamburger meat, but we're eating so little. Why don't I upgrade the beef that I get?

Like, so instead of ground beef, let's get filet mignon. And so that's why you're seeing the dichotomy of the data in there. So, I think what it does is it actually puts, especially for food and beverage companies, I think it actually puts the onus on them to start creating more premium products. And instead of how cheap can we get this? How can we get a lot of food really cheap into bags, into boxes? It's flipping it to say, how can we create these premium experiences that are, it's a bite of chocolate instead of a bag of chocolate. 

[00:06:40] Brian Ardinger: Well, how can we not necessarily have to pack every single calorie into every single bite? There's a whole food process industry that's been designed to create and pack high-calorie content that tastes good. You know, the other thing I've seen about the GLP-1s is it's not necessarily all about food too. There a number of folks that seem to have other cravings and such turned off or lessened by being on this medication. Yeah. So whether it's, you know, alcohol or other craving type of things, it'll be interesting to see how the research plays out on that as well.

[00:07:10] Robyn Bolton: It'll be interesting to see how it plays out in other aspects of the food industry. So, you know, going out to eat, I know we go out to eat a lot less because family member who's on a GLP-1 is just like I'll get so much more food than we need. It just doesn't make any sense. So, it'll be interesting to see the future of the ripple effects across these consumable industries as well.

Why Startups Build Products Nobody Wants (and How to Avoid It)

[00:07:33] Brian Ardinger: Alright, well, we'll shift gears again. The third article I was going to throw out there, from Wildfire Labs, articles titled the $10,000 Question, why Most Startups Build Products Nobody Wants And How to Prevent It.

So, we've talked about this topic a couple different times and we'll probably continue to talk about this topic until we get everybody converted to the fact that don't just build things just because you can. But this particular article is interesting because it did talk about some of the core concepts of, you know, understanding what is it you're trying to do, what kind of value are you trying to create, and then going from there as the main stepping off point.

[00:08:07] Robyn Bolton: I feel like this is one of those things where it's like if you build it, they will come works only in the movies. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. Like we have so many mantras about this, and yet we all fall in love with our ideas. You know, especially as founders, it's important to have people around you who can pull you out of that tunnel vision of like, I need this, I want this. I can make this.

Having advisors, having friends, having family members, whoever it is who can pull you out and be like, you need to go share this with someone. Like just getting you out of your workspace and out into the world and sharing the product. It just speaks to the importance of having that person.

[00:08:59] Brian Ardinger: I think a lot of folks think that this process of customer discovery and that is, is really the only thing you do at the very beginning, and once you do it, you check it off and you continue just to build your product and go on. I think it's more important to, how do you build this into your culture itself?

It's an ongoing process, so it's not just the first five customers you talk to. Okay. We now know the answer, let's go. It's a constant like checking in and trying to understand what did we miss or what else is new or what else can we add to this conversation? The article goes on and talks a little bit about some ways you can think about this and how you can build this behavior into your company.

One of them is looking at how do you have like weekly accountability, like sharing your customer conversations with your colleagues and your and your team on a weekly basis so that you're constantly saying, okay, what did we learn from our customers this week? Setting a floor of like, Hey, we're going to talk to five meaningful conversations with customers before we build anything else.

Or they have something called the 48-hour rule when you feel the urge to build something, wait 48 hours, and conduct one more customer interview before you go out and actually build the thing you want to build.

And then this is another key point with it, I don't think a lot of folks do, is this idea of celebration rituals. So, I think a lot of people don't do customer discovery because it, you feel like you're slowing down sometimes. And so you know, celebrate the fact that we had a conversation and we were brutally rejected, or we found this pivotal insight into this conversation. So celebrate those rituals and the fact that you are out there having the market tell you and feed you real information versus guessing.

Tactics for Founders and Innovators in Emerging Ecosystems

[00:10:28] Robyn Bolton: And especially a ritual because it is scary to go out there and talk to customers and hear that your baby is ugly. To put it nicely. One of the things that also in the article was this 50% rule is that at each stage, especially if you show them a concept, this will stop working, if you don't get 50% of the people that you show the concept to, to sign up for free beta. I mean, that is a high hurdle of 50% and human nature, you're not gonna do that unless there's a celebration, if you fall short. Like you need a celebration on both ends of that ask. 

[00:11:08] Brian Ardinger: And we can trick ourselves a lot of times, especially if we're enamored with our product or a solution, it's like, okay, this one person said it was great, so let's just keep going based on that one person. And a lot of times you need more than one person.

So, you know, having a high bar that 50% or more forces you to say, okay, let's double check. Let's make sure that this is really something that's in demand and, and something we need to build off of.

Well, those are the articles for the week. We've got some tactics to try. I think I mentioned on last episode, I went down to Savannah and talked to a lot of folks in the startup ecosystem down there, and one of the conversations that came up with, we were talking about how we were building the Lincoln Omaha ecosystem and what were some of the things that worked. How can founders play a role in building a startup ecosystem?

And one of the conversations we started talking about is one of the founders asked me, well, I'm having a tough time finding other startups in my industry, you know, in my backyard. How would I go about figuring that out? Or, you know, building some momentum in this particular space?

I thought back to a time in the ag tech space here in Nebraska, and I had a founder asking the same question. He's like, how do we find, or how do I find other founders that are similar to me or building in similar spaces so we can share networks and things like that? And the tactic, I said, why don't you just try starting a meetup?

Start the Ag Tech meetup for Nebraska. It seems like a simple thing, but it's like, well, that's pretty easy to do. If doesn't work, I'm not out a lot, and if it does work, I've started to build a network and oh, by the way, I'm the one who started it, so therefore I can help direct the network and be a prime cog for that.

So I would say if you're a founder out there, or even a corporate innovator who's trying to figure out how can I find the other curious and restless folks out there in the world, you don't be afraid to test or try some things as simple as throwing out to the world, Hey, I'm trying to find others that are as crazy as I am to take this journey.

Final Takeaways and Ways to Learn Faster

[00:12:54] Robyn Bolton: Awesome. I love that. So my tactic to try very simple, go check out, Learn Your Way. You don't have to sign up for anything. You don't have to disclose who you are to Google. Super simple. On the front page, they have a couple of examples, actually, quite a few example lessons. Just go and play around with it.

And then kind of let your mind wander, like, what could this mean for schools? What could this mean for your business? Use it as a jumping off point, but at the very, very start, just go play with it and see what it's like. 

[00:13:29] Brian Ardinger: I think that's key for anything. How can you learn faster? And this is a, a great way to test it or try it. So go out there and learn fast. Thank you for coming on Inside Outside Innovation. Thanks to the audience. We'll see you next time.

[00:13:40] Robyn Bolton: See you next time.

[00:13:44] Brian Ardinger: That's it for another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. Today's episode was produced and engineered by Susan Stibal. If you want to learn more about our teams, our content, our services, check out insideoutside.io or if you want to connect with Robyn Bolton, go to MileZero.io, and until next time, go out and innovate.

What is Inside Outside Innovation?

Inside Outside Innovation explores the ins and outs of innovation with raw stories, real insights, and tactical advice from the best and brightest in startups & corporate innovation.

Each week we bring you the latest thinking on talent, technology, and the future of innovation. Join our community of movers, shakers, makers, founders, builders, and creators to help speed up your knowledge, skills, and network.

Previous guests include thought leaders such as Brad Feld, Arlan Hamilton, Jason Calacanis, David Bland, Janice Fraser, and Diana Kander, plus insights from amazing companies including Nike, Cisco, ExxonMobil, Gatorade, Orlando Magic, GE, Samsung, and others.

This podcast is available on all podcast platforms and InsideOutside.io. Sign up for the weekly innovation newsletter at http://bit.ly/ionewsletter. Follow Brian on Twitter at @ardinger or @theiopodcast or Email [e-mail]

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about Google's Learn Your Way platform, the ripple effects of GLP-1 Medications. And we explored the $10,000 question of why startups build products nobody wants. Let's get started.

Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger and Mile Zero's, Robyn Bolton. As we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact. Let's get started.

Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

Google’s Personalized Learning and the Future of Education

[00:00:40] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And with me, I have Robyn Bolton from Mile Zero. Welcome, Robyn.

[00:00:48] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Great to be here as always, Brian.

[00:00:51] Brian Ardinger: It is exciting to have you on the podcast as our co-host. We always have some great conversations, and this week is no different.

We've got three articles we want to talk about, and we're going to start with Google. Google has just solved one of the oldest problems in education, according to Albano Cintas. He has a Twitter post that I saw. In that, he talked about how Google has dropped Learn Your Way, which basically rewrites textbooks based on your individual interests.

It's turning boring lectures into fun lessons. Students say that they've used it and have scored 78% versus 67% on retention tests. So maybe it actually works. Let's talk a little bit about Google and other things impacting the world of education.

[00:01:31] Robyn Bolton: When I saw the post, I immediately went to Learn Your Way and I took some of their sample lessons, one on economics, an overview of economic systems, and another one on intro to data structures and algorithms, and for the last several years, I've worked a lot with a company in the K through eight curriculum industry. And I immediately sent this to them, with the message, "Uh oh."

Because clicking into the system, and I highly encourage listeners, go try one of these out. You know, I did computer science as if I was a middle schooler who enjoyed cooking and food, and I had the option of reading the textbook sort of thing, but having quizzes every couple paragraphs to make sure I was learning.

I could watch a slideshow with a voiceover. I could just listen to the voiceover. I could look at a mind map. I was surprised at how many different modalities that I needed to use. But I also did really well on the quizzes, especially the data algorithms, which I usually find computer science stuff very boring. So this feels a hundred percent like the future of learning and truly personalized learning to all the different mechanisms that students have and how different students learn differently.

[00:02:54] Brian Ardinger: It's quite exciting and you add that onto the things that you can learn from YouTube. Obviously, Google owns YouTube. They have access to all those particular things, so I'd imagine there's some opportunities and ways they can tie those particular entities together in some way to get you access to just the right paragraph or just the right video clip or things along those lines.

You know, I work in Nelnet in the education space, and we're always looking at how is the world of education changing? How does this impact higher education? How does it impact K through 12? How does it affect student loans? All these things can come into play when you have access to the world's knowledge, and it's fed in such a way that it makes it easier to digest and make it easier for the person to actually learn the stuff.

I think a lot of our existing school system is functioned on, not necessarily even teaching the person to go through it, but to get them through the gauntlet. And what if we created a world that allowed them to actually learn and created folks that had better tool sets, mindset, skill sets around that. How would that change the world? It's one of those few things of AI that's positive.

GLP-1 Medications and Shifting Consumer Behavior

[00:03:58] Robyn Bolton: Yes, that is positive. We always have to look at the systems out there. And you know Google, yes, has YouTube. It also has Google Classroom, which is the learning management system. So, you already have a lot of teachers in schools plugged into Google, already using it for so many aspects in the classroom. This just fit perfectly, seamlessly, fits in, especially to get better results. It's a wild new world. I love making it relevant to students and their interests and how they learn.

[00:04:28] Brian Ardinger: The second article is a good transition because it moves away from ai, but it's yet another innovation that could have significant effects on a lot of different things.

And the article's from Harvard Business Review, and it's how GLP-1 medications are changing consumer behavior. They took a look at PWC analysis, looked at GLP medications like Ozempic. They're actually. Looking at the behavior, and it's pretty incredible in the analysis, more than 11,000 households, they looked at the grocery spending and it declined 6 to 8% within the first 12 months of a household that went on GLP-1 as their primary food purchaser.

Not only that, so it was a sharp contraction of a category that doesn't typically shift that fast or it's much more likely to shift slowly if you are gonna change your diet and grocery spending habits. But it also, the total household spending outlays only failed 2 to 3%. So it's showing that it actually was pointing to some reallocation of those savings towards other categories. So, you know, I'll pose the question to you. You used to work at P&G. If the entire consumer product space is changed by one particular drug, how is that going to shape the world?

[00:05:37] Robyn Bolton: It's a really great question. What I found so interesting about the data is that, and I have a family member who is on a GLP-1 and so know that like their appetite just shrinks. Like they just get to a point very quickly in a meal where they're like, I'm done. I don't want to eat anymore. So you're consuming less food, which then leads to a decision at the store like, well, I used to buy, you know, hamburger meat, but we're eating so little. Why don't I upgrade the beef that I get?

Like, so instead of ground beef, let's get filet mignon. And so that's why you're seeing the dichotomy of the data in there. So, I think what it does is it actually puts, especially for food and beverage companies, I think it actually puts the onus on them to start creating more premium products. And instead of how cheap can we get this? How can we get a lot of food really cheap into bags, into boxes? It's flipping it to say, how can we create these premium experiences that are, it's a bite of chocolate instead of a bag of chocolate.

[00:06:40] Brian Ardinger: Well, how can we not necessarily have to pack every single calorie into every single bite? There's a whole food process industry that's been designed to create and pack high-calorie content that tastes good. You know, the other thing I've seen about the GLP-1s is it's not necessarily all about food too. There a number of folks that seem to have other cravings and such turned off or lessened by being on this medication. Yeah. So whether it's, you know, alcohol or other craving type of things, it'll be interesting to see how the research plays out on that as well.

[00:07:10] Robyn Bolton: It'll be interesting to see how it plays out in other aspects of the food industry. So, you know, going out to eat, I know we go out to eat a lot less because family member who's on a GLP-1 is just like I'll get so much more food than we need. It just doesn't make any sense. So, it'll be interesting to see the future of the ripple effects across these consumable industries as well.

Why Startups Build Products Nobody Wants (and How to Avoid It)

[00:07:33] Brian Ardinger: Alright, well, we'll shift gears again. The third article I was going to throw out there, from Wildfire Labs, articles titled the $10,000 Question, why Most Startups Build Products Nobody Wants And How to Prevent It.

So, we've talked about this topic a couple different times and we'll probably continue to talk about this topic until we get everybody converted to the fact that don't just build things just because you can. But this particular article is interesting because it did talk about some of the core concepts of, you know, understanding what is it you're trying to do, what kind of value are you trying to create, and then going from there as the main stepping off point.

[00:08:07] Robyn Bolton: I feel like this is one of those things where it's like if you build it, they will come works only in the movies. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. Like we have so many mantras about this, and yet we all fall in love with our ideas. You know, especially as founders, it's important to have people around you who can pull you out of that tunnel vision of like, I need this, I want this. I can make this.

Having advisors, having friends, having family members, whoever it is who can pull you out and be like, you need to go share this with someone. Like just getting you out of your workspace and out into the world and sharing the product. It just speaks to the importance of having that person.

[00:08:59] Brian Ardinger: I think a lot of folks think that this process of customer discovery and that is, is really the only thing you do at the very beginning, and once you do it, you check it off and you continue just to build your product and go on. I think it's more important to, how do you build this into your culture itself?

It's an ongoing process, so it's not just the first five customers you talk to. Okay. We now know the answer, let's go. It's a constant like checking in and trying to understand what did we miss or what else is new or what else can we add to this conversation? The article goes on and talks a little bit about some ways you can think about this and how you can build this behavior into your company.

One of them is looking at how do you have like weekly accountability, like sharing your customer conversations with your colleagues and your and your team on a weekly basis so that you're constantly saying, okay, what did we learn from our customers this week? Setting a floor of like, Hey, we're going to talk to five meaningful conversations with customers before we build anything else.

Or they have something called the 48-hour rule when you feel the urge to build something, wait 48 hours, and conduct one more customer interview before you go out and actually build the thing you want to build.

And then this is another key point with it, I don't think a lot of folks do, is this idea of celebration rituals. So, I think a lot of people don't do customer discovery because it, you feel like you're slowing down sometimes. And so you know, celebrate the fact that we had a conversation and we were brutally rejected, or we found this pivotal insight into this conversation. So celebrate those rituals and the fact that you are out there having the market tell you and feed you real information versus guessing.

Tactics for Founders and Innovators in Emerging Ecosystems

[00:10:28] Robyn Bolton: And especially a ritual because it is scary to go out there and talk to customers and hear that your baby is ugly. To put it nicely. One of the things that also in the article was this 50% rule is that at each stage, especially if you show them a concept, this will stop working, if you don't get 50% of the people that you show the concept to, to sign up for free beta. I mean, that is a high hurdle of 50% and human nature, you're not gonna do that unless there's a celebration, if you fall short. Like you need a celebration on both ends of that ask.

[00:11:08] Brian Ardinger: And we can trick ourselves a lot of times, especially if we're enamored with our product or a solution, it's like, okay, this one person said it was great, so let's just keep going based on that one person. And a lot of times you need more than one person.

So, you know, having a high bar that 50% or more forces you to say, okay, let's double check. Let's make sure that this is really something that's in demand and, and something we need to build off of.

Well, those are the articles for the week. We've got some tactics to try. I think I mentioned on last episode, I went down to Savannah and talked to a lot of folks in the startup ecosystem down there, and one of the conversations that came up with, we were talking about how we were building the Lincoln Omaha ecosystem and what were some of the things that worked. How can founders play a role in building a startup ecosystem?

And one of the conversations we started talking about is one of the founders asked me, well, I'm having a tough time finding other startups in my industry, you know, in my backyard. How would I go about figuring that out? Or, you know, building some momentum in this particular space?

I thought back to a time in the ag tech space here in Nebraska, and I had a founder asking the same question. He's like, how do we find, or how do I find other founders that are similar to me or building in similar spaces so we can share networks and things like that? And the tactic, I said, why don't you just try starting a meetup?

Start the Ag Tech meetup for Nebraska. It seems like a simple thing, but it's like, well, that's pretty easy to do. If doesn't work, I'm not out a lot, and if it does work, I've started to build a network and oh, by the way, I'm the one who started it, so therefore I can help direct the network and be a prime cog for that.

So I would say if you're a founder out there, or even a corporate innovator who's trying to figure out how can I find the other curious and restless folks out there in the world, you don't be afraid to test or try some things as simple as throwing out to the world, Hey, I'm trying to find others that are as crazy as I am to take this journey.

Final Takeaways and Ways to Learn Faster

[00:12:54] Robyn Bolton: Awesome. I love that. So my tactic to try very simple, go check out, Learn Your Way. You don't have to sign up for anything. You don't have to disclose who you are to Google. Super simple. On the front page, they have a couple of examples, actually, quite a few example lessons. Just go and play around with it.

And then kind of let your mind wander, like, what could this mean for schools? What could this mean for your business? Use it as a jumping off point, but at the very, very start, just go play with it and see what it's like.

[00:13:29] Brian Ardinger: I think that's key for anything. How can you learn faster? And this is a, a great way to test it or try it. So go out there and learn fast. Thank you for coming on Inside Outside Innovation. Thanks to the audience. We'll see you next time.

[00:13:40] Robyn Bolton: See you next time.

[00:13:44] Brian Ardinger: That's it for another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. Today's episode was produced and engineered by Susan Stibal. If you want to learn more about our teams, our content, our services, check out insideoutside.io or if you want to connect with Robyn Bolton, go to MileZero.io, and until next time, go out and innovate.