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Inside Outside Innovation

Inside Outside Innovation

By: Brian Ardinger Founder of Inside Outside Innovation podcast InsideOutside.io and the Inside Outside Innovation Summit
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 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 brian@insideoutside.io2022 Economics Leadership Management Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • AI Addiction, Innovation Metrics, and Peer Influence with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

    AI Addiction, Innovation Metrics, and Peer Influence with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton
    Mar 24 2026
    On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about the addictive nature of AI, the levels of innovation metrics, and how peer influence can make or break your AI rollout. 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 Miles 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 BoltonAI Addiction, Innovation Metrics, and Peer Influence in AI Rollouts[00:00:30] 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. Robyn, welcome. [00:00:47] Robyn Bolton: Thank you very much. Great to be here as always. [00:00:50] Brian Ardinger: It's another amazing week in innovation and we thought we'd get right to it. The first article we want to talk about is called Acceleration Flow by Raymond Mark from the publication Mold and Yeast.Why AI Feels Addictive to Builders and CodersFascinating article. The basic premise of the article talks about how Raymond is an addict. Not a metaphorical addict, but he is now addicted to building using AI such the fact that he's spending tokens like it's the end of the world. And he talks about this environment where the AI now has created almost a gambling type of a feeling where you vibe code your way to something. You put your tokens in and you pull a slot machine and out comes some type of output that's just good enough to get you to put the next tokens in to try the next prompt and the next prompt.So, it was a fascinating look behind the scenes that I think just now more and more people are beginning to discover this particular anomaly or environment that people are becoming to find when they start doing this AI stuff. [00:01:53] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, this was really interesting. I mean, I use AI every day and I felt this deeply. It actually reminded me of a conversation that I had with someone probably a year and a half, maybe two years ago, who astutely predicted she's like, I think AI is going to become the next cigarettes in terms of being addicting and it's now, it's cheap and plentiful and it's getting us hooked on it. The Dopamine Loop of Generative AI and Vibe CodingAnd then they can raise prices because we're addicted and we'll keep going with it. And this article lays out a really good argument for that. Not using cigarettes but using gaming and gambling as a metaphor and kind of everything that it outlines of, like you said, it's almost right. It's enough to get you to put the next token in. The feeling that you're upleveling and you're gaining capabilities when you're really kind of not. In fact, you're with kind of outsourcing tasks and things, you're actually losing capabilities, but you have the illusion that you're gaining capabilities. It was just really fascinating all of these almost mind tricks that happen when we use AI. [00:03:07] Brian Ardinger: I read the article earlier last week and then three people came up to me this week unprompted and said, I'm addicted to this stuff. They just started to, you know, use Claude code or started to get a little bit more deeper than just prompting a chat bot and the word they used was addicted. One, again, it's so easy to get something back out that dopamine hit of, oh, I tried this and actually it's pretty good and let me try if I can go again.AI FOMO, Always-On Agents, and the Fear of Falling BehindAnd then the second addiction is, I'm addicted to the fact that I'm falling behind. I had a coder come up to me and said, I am very worried that I don't want to take a break because what, during my break, I want my agent to be doing something for me.And so, this constant pressure to interact with the device to continue to move forward is interesting. I think the flip side to that is what are we building and what are we doing? Are we just putting tokens into the machine or are we actually creating value in the process? And I think that's the next phase that people will be hopefully going through. [00:04:04] Robyn Bolton: This line struck me, making yourself obsolete feels like freedom, dressed up as ambition. And I just thought, Ooh, that, that hits a little close to home. [00:04:14] Brian Ardinger: And well, we will see what happens. I am addicted as well. Probably not to the extent that some of these folks I'm talking to, but, but who knows, you know, there's always next week. [00:04:21] Robyn Bolton: Exactly. How Peer Influence Drives AI Adoption at Work[00:04:23] Brian Ardinger: The second article I want to talk about today is from HBR. It's talking about Peer influence can make or break your AI rollout.Fascinating thing about this is HBR took a look at how...
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    16 mins
  • Identic AI, AI agents, and Bigger than SaaS with Brian Ardinger & Robyn Bolton

    Identic AI, AI agents, and Bigger than SaaS with Brian Ardinger & Robyn Bolton
    Mar 17 2026
    On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about the rise of Identic AI, why you need to build for AI agents first, and how AI is bigger than SaaS ever was. 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 Miles 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 BoltonAI Agents, Personal Concierge Tools, and the Future of Innovation[00:00:30] 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. Robyn, welcome back. [00:00:50] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Glad to be back. [00:00:51] Brian Ardinger: We are always on the hunt for new and innovative things. Every week we try to bring you some of the most interesting articles or things that we've come across in our world of innovation. We'll just jump right in.The first article we wanna talk about today is called, With the Rise of Agents, we are entering the world of identic AI and this is an HBR interview with. Don Tapscott. This is actually a podcast that HBR put out, and Don talks about this movement of not only AI agents, but the fact that you're going to have AI agents that are identified specifically to you and your tastes almost like your virtual concierge in a variety of different topics.And these agents will know everything about you as well as everything about what they need to do as an agent. And this world is going to fundamentally change the way we do business, et cetera. [00:01:39] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, this is an interesting one and it feels both very kind of sci-fi and very likely to happen tomorrow. I'm skeptical on the timeline, like I totally believe this will happen.I don't really think it's going to happen in the next few years, especially because you know, yesterday I asked Claude to proofread something for me. I gave it a document, and it went off and proofread a totally different document from a different chat. So, if AI can't handle a straightforward request like that right now, I don't think it's anytime soon going to be understanding my judgment and my values and taking actions on my behalf. You know, could it happen one day? Sure. Why not? [00:02:19] Brian Ardinger: It will be interesting to see, I mean, we're seeing a lot of experiments out there with Clawbot and that people are jumping headfirst. I saw a Twitter post, there was an event in New York, I think yesterday where 2000 people who were doing things with their Clawbot got together and talked about what they were doing with their Clawbots.Building for AI Agents First. Product Design, Trust, and What Comes NextIt was interesting from the standpoint of the amount of energy and excitement around it. But then on the flip side, a lot of the conversation was there wasn't still any real meat around it. It was nice to have testing, experimenting those tests and those are experiments will, you know, hopefully result in something, but I think we're not quite there yet.But it is interesting to peer into the future. What's so exciting about the Clawbot scenarios and that is the fact that it really did give a vision of, oh, what happens if this could actually do this? And it opened up a whole new conversation pieces where it moved it beyond, oh, this is just a Google Chat bot kind of experience. And I think that's where that genie's not going back in the bottle. [00:03:14] Robyn Bolton: No, it's very exciting. It's still a ways off, probably years, not decades, but. [00:03:20] Brian Ardinger: Can only change, it's also hard to put everything that you own, you know, all your personality and all your quirks and everything into a bot so that it can do things for you when you don't trust the bot. So. [00:03:31] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, I just imagine trying to do that with a bot and being like, no, thank you. [00:03:34] Brian Ardinger: There are things I don't like.[00:03:35] Robyn Bolton: You can keep your quirks. Yeah. [00:03:38] Brian Ardinger: Alright with the second article, Why you need to build your product for AI agents first. So tangentially similar to what we were talking about previously. This is Peter Yang wrote an article talking about since the structure of how you are building is changing. If indeed agents are going to do the bidding for you in a variety of these things, you no longer need to necessarily build for people going to your website or using a user interface because you are building for agents who are talking to other agents who are doing things.So if you're in a new builder today, some of the things you should be looking at is how can you actually build for agent flow and how can you build so that the ...
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    14 mins
  • Learning vs Execution with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

    Learning vs Execution with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton
    Mar 10 2026
    On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about why 70% of startup acquisitions fail, why UX didn't die, and how everyone is still building their startups backwards. 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 Miles 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 BoltonWhy Startup Acquisitions Fail: Learning Problems vs. Execution Problems[00:00:30] Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and I have with me Robyn Bolton as always from Mile Zero. Welcome, Robyn. [00:00:48] Robyn Bolton: Thank you. Great as always to be here. [00:00:51] Brian Ardinger: We are excited to have you. Excited to get into the news of the day and some of the amazing things that we're hearing in the world of innovation.We are going to start with the first article. First article comes from our friend Elliot Parker. Elliot is with Allied Partners. He's actually coming out to the summit, so not only are we going to talk about his article today, but you can come and see him live and in person April 13th. Let's now talk about his article, Why 70% of Startup Acquisitions Fail: the learning versus execution problem.And Elliot talks about, first of all, he cites some statistics that large companies acquire startups at a 70 to 90% failure rate. Yet the same research shows that bolt on acquisitions, when you buy a company in the same industry that's doing similar work, the success rate climbs to 80 to 85% of the time.And he poses the question, what's the key difference? The key difference really is the fact that you're really working in two different worlds. You're working either in a learning problem world, such as a startup, trying to understand who their customers are and what they're building, et cetera, or an execution problem world where you figured a lot of that out, and your job then is to efficiently scale and predict and move that business model forward.And I think based premise is that large organizations oftentimes don't know exactly which startup they're buying. Are they buying a startup that has figured it out or have they bought a startup that's still learning. And then that integration is where the, it all falls down. [00:02:12] Robyn Bolton: Yeah. I will continue the shameless plug. I am a huge Elliott fan. We've worked together, we've co-authored articles way back when together, and he is just a really smart, really great guy. So highly recommend everybody come and see him. Mob him at the IO 2026 conference, and again, he hits the nail on the head of learning problem and an execution problem.It's different worlds innovation and operations are different. Pilots and scaling something are opposite problems. And the fact is big companies are designed for execution. I mean, I still remember my days at P & G when we were test marketing Swiffer Wet Jet, and our test markets were Canada and Belgium.Those are countries, not test markets. But that's just how big companies are wired, and he makes a great argument backed up by facts around what the problem is and honestly, what companies need to do about it is kind of recognize that these are opposite things and I had to structure and approach the problems accordingly.AI, UX Design, and Why User Experience Is No Longer Just About Screens[00:03:25] Brian Ardinger: It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the day when you can spin up a startup in five minutes and, and all the new things that are happening out there. How many large corporations might fall into that trap of looking for the shiny new thing and not realizing that it's not fully baked, and then it won't necessarily fit into the existing structures that they have and kill it from that perspective.Or we'll get it to a place where you can build a startup and get to execution much faster, such that those acquisitions can dovetail right into an existing business. So it'll be interesting to see how that changes over the time period as well. [00:03:59] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, and you know, will organizations, the failure mode I see most often is they think, oh, you know, there's market traction, there's revenue. The startup may even be profitable, and they think great. It's no longer a learning problem, it's an execution problem. So realizing that just because there's revenue, just because maybe it's even cashflow positive, doesn't mean it's ready for scale. [00:04:20] Brian Ardinger: Absolutely. Alright. The second article is UX Didn't Die, it just stopped being about screens. This is from Nurkhon, if I'm reading that right. N-U-R-K-H-O-N. He has a medium article talking about this ...
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    12 mins
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