See Beyond the ‘New Normal’ to the Future Reimagined: People, Process, Technology and the Technology Revolution!
People are the key to innovation and in fact the growth of technology and humanity. People in technology are how we make things happen, they are the drivers of innovation. In this interview series 4 episode 6 of the Influential Visions Podcast we discuss so many different things, from Blockchain to People in technology and how they are the key to innovation and our guests share their insight from many decades of wisdom in the technology space.
Innovation in technology is crucial to the future of our lives and the future of the planet, at Influential Visions Podcast we aim to include people from all walks of life and areas in technology to inspire thought and inclusion.
In this episode of the Influential Visions podcast: People Process Technology and Opportunity, Nathaniel Schooler and Nishadi Ranasinghe discuss so many different things with their two guests, Tobias Hooton and Dr Ir Johannes Drooges; from Blockchain to People in technology and how they are the key to innovation and in fact the growth of technology and humanity. We explore the importance of diversity in the technology industry and the importance of hiring people with an open mind.
In this interview, Influential Visions Series 4, Episode 6. I am joined by Nishadi Ranasinghe and we are privileged to interview Tobias Hooton and Dr Ir Johannes Drooges. We discussed the future of technology and how people are fundamental to that and the development of embracing technology for the betterment of humanity.
About our guests:
Tobias Hooton: Over the last 15 years Tobias has led numerous technology companies from high tech startups to large multi-national scale-ups. A focussed technologist with an eye for investment in emerging technologies, developing real-world applications and platforms that deliver tangible benefits to businesses globally. A Gartner ‘one to watch’ individual, and a metaverse evangelist. Learn more about Tobias’s business here.
Dr. ir Johannes Drooghaag: CISO/DPO Wedo, CEO Spearhead Management, Founder Internet Safety for Kids. People First Digital Transformation and Cybersecurity Evangelist. I might be the only Star Trek fan who doesn’t like The Original Series. Learn more about Johannes’s business here.
The full transcriptions from People Process Technology and Opportunity are below:
Nathaniel Schooler
00:00:10
Welcome to influential visions. Here we interview futuristic leaders who share their deep industry knowledge and business experience with you, ensuring you have your finger on the pulse and your eyes wide open. My name is Nathaniel Schooler, and I am your host. Thanks for tuning in
Nathaniel Schooler
00:00:34
Well, it’s, it’s lovely to be joined by so many, so many great experts in technology and Nish. Nish is helping me to host this, this series, Kim, hopefully will be joining us, but welcome to, to both of you or all three of you. It’s lovely that you took the time to, to join us. And yeah, we’re gonna talk about all sorts of people related technology problems, I think today. And yeah, I mean, what do you think Toby, is it a big problem for you? People and technology,
Toby Hooton
00:01:07
People in technology is it is 95% of technology is really people. You know, we often forget in technology that we build platforms for people to achieve outcomes. And so people are absolutely critical to everything, everything about technology.
Nathaniel Schooler
00:01:28
Sorry, I just have to unmute my microphone there. So, so how about you, JD, if you, what do you think is people and technology like, do they, does it cause like massive problems for you or companies?
Dr. Ir Johannes Drooghaag
00:01:40
Well, it’s, it’s, it’s not the people causing the problems. It is the fact that we develop and deploy technology significantly faster than we educate and enable people to work with it in an optimal and secure way. So that knowledge gap, that experience gap, the mindset gap, the skillset and mindset gap we see between the pace of technology and the pace in how we educate people. That is the problem. But the people themselves, not, nobody wants to go home and say, well, I did a lousy job today. Right?
Nathaniel Schooler
00:02:12
Of course, of course. So, so would you mind just telling, telling everybody what, what, what background you have in, in technology JD before I move on to, to Toby, if that’s right.
Dr. Ir Johannes Drooghaag
00:02:26
Well, my background started in applied information technology, which I promoted in and then very fast considered boring because you keep doing the same things. That was my view. And I also got infected with this desire to help people become better at using technology. So that’s why I started, I went through all kinds of corporate roles in that area. And some five years ago, I decided to go on my own, founded my company, spearhead management, and started working on the human element in cyber is a pub publication. You can find on my website, it’s education programs, et cetera, et cetera. And since the beginning of this year, I joined, we do as a CISO and, and DPO. It’s a fast growing platform. We’re building a fantastic community and I want to make sure that we do that in the right way. So for me, it’s now my chance to show that all the experience I have and all the lessons I learned to other people that I can also implement in myself
Nathaniel Schooler
00:03:27
Super, super well. Thank you. And how about you Toby? I know you’ve, you’ve founded lots and lots of companies over the last sort of 15 years. Where did you sort of start in tech and where are you now?
Toby Hooton
00:03:38
So my journey in technology started at 12 years old breaking printer drivers and an old Helen X laptop. If you remember, pen and one and 1 66, that’s where my foundation started many years ago. From there, I, I grew into an information security role primarily in designing networks as part of a, a government division and then seeded in various positions around the world, working for elements of, of government departments from then, yes, I’ve, I’ve seeded founded and grown a number of internet service providers, all with different boutique elements, some working in high growth content media, some working in sort of global elastic fabrics. And I work with and scale up a number of, of private cloud businesses as well. So my background’s very much an information security, but from a networking engineering angle.
Nathaniel Schooler
00:04:29
Super super, and I know niche, you, you are involved with lots of, lots of projects as well, aren’t you and digital transformation and stuff like that. And I know you’re dying to answer the question about people and technology, so go for it.
Nishadi Ranasinghe
00:04:47
No, yeah. So I’ve, I’ve not got a huge amount of experience in security, but there is an absolute, you know, yeah. Every single job that I’ve done, every single technology that I’ve implemented, which is what brings me here to this series, it is all to do with, I have a very firm belief and ethos is in that you can build as fantastic technology as you want, but if you don’t do the necessarily necessary process to land that with the people who are using it, then you, then you are, you basically built nothing because it is people that have to end have to use the technology that you’re implementing. And I’ve seen like a hundred million budgets be cut to 2 million, be cut to zero because people weren’t able to deliver technologies to the satisfaction of the end user. And yeah, it, it, it is the making or breaking of technology budgets.
Nishadi Ranasinghe
00:05:41
And it has been for the last, you know, 10, 15, 20 years. So it, it is a problem to crack and it’s always, should be always factored into delivery processes that the people element has to be considered as well as a people psychology element to all technology projects is what I’ve seen. And across this whole series depen, it didn’t really matter who we’ve spoken to. We talk, we’re now talking about network security, cyber security, and everybody says the same thing. It’s, it’s this whole element of enabling people to, to utilize what it is that you are, you are developing and what you’re creating or deploying. And I’d be interested to find out if you don’t mind me asking the next question, that’s please do Toby your, you know, your experience in government. I I’d be interested to find out how that plays out in that sector, actually, because historically for me, and maybe this is just some ignorance, I always thought that government sector is a little bit behind in technology, and I’d be interested to find out how, how it’s landed for you yourself, bringing new technologies into that environment, how it’s been in terms of the people journey that you’ve had to take people on.
Toby Hooton
00:06:56
Sure. So in my experience as a massive divide, there are some incredibly smart initiatives and incredibly bright minds at the very forefront of that development cycle. That really are a ground level incubating technologies, building platforms. They have a finger very acutely on the pulse. And at the back of the process is an organization effectively that does want to move in the right direction. They understand the requirement for change, and they understand the gaps that are there, the trouble that a larger division such as a government department has, is trying to bridge that gap. And, you know, you’re talking about tens of thousands of people here. It’s a complex organization, whereas at a private entity, you can, you can division and point managers and leaders to, to carve that down. You don’t have the same levels of flexibility in the government department. So in my experience will I have seen is that people do adopt the change. They want to promote the change. They understand the gaps, but there is this huge void in the centre of a government department where people need to, to fall into that. And I think the reason that doesn’t happen is because of a skill shortage and cause of a, a lack of cultural incubation and the right thought processes and training people, how to become better people in that, in that part of a business as such.
Nathaniel Schooler
00:08:17
Yeah. Yeah. It there’s, there’s a massive, massive gap, right? Like I’ve been, I’ve been sort of studying a little bit about cybersecurity over the, over the years, myself. And, you know, we were talking about this before, weren’t we JD and how there’s like some sort of massive skill gap. We were all, we were all talking about it and how, you know, basically the, the technology, I mean, you put it rather eloquently. You said we developed technology faster than we educate people was sort of what you, what you said. And, and I think absolutely, it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a tricky one though, isn’t it? Because it’s almost like HR needs to turn around and, and, and be more involved in, in the sort of structure within, within that environment. Right. But actually they’re not, are they, they’re, they’re sort of like over there working in the silo when actually they need to be more involved really, you know?
Dr. Ir Johannes Drooghaag
00:09:11
Yeah. I, I think, I think we need to reflect on two things on, on the one side, we have an enormous bottleneck at the moment in cybersecurity experts specifically. And in it specialist in general, that bottleneck is not going to go away by sending people on a social event or a team working event or such things that is going to go away. If we make very important changes in the structures of how we educate those people, but also at how we select people, we don’t need five master degrees and 20 years of experience for all the tasks that we have. But we are looking for those people. There’s a wonderful concept of boot camps, where you, where you send a group of people and they get a boot camp training of two, three weeks for very specific specialized task. You bring them back in the organization and they perform those tasks because you have a backlog there and after three months, maybe they’re done with that big project.
Dr. Ir Johannes Drooghaag
01:10:14
Well, send them to the next bootcamp, bring them the new skills. And don’t look for the universal soldiers all the time with the high qualifications and, and the many years of experience, because yes, you need them at a certain level, but you don’t need them everywhere. But what, we also need to look at the people already in the organization, the it expert, the cybersecurity expert, what is their current workload? How much pressure do they get? How much education opportunities do they actively get? How well are they trained for the technology? They are actively managing and deploying. We see enormous gaps there. So that bottleneck has two significant consequences. One is the people now in the industry are not getting enough time to do the things they should be doing and to educate and prepare themselves for everything that is coming. And second impact is that because we have not enough people and a growing amount of responsibilities, we’re just building bigger problems. And if we’re not changing that it’s gonna hurt us big.
Nathaniel Schooler
01:11:28
Yeah. So what do you think, have you got a, have you got a good question up your sleeve? I know you like a good question.
Nishadi Ranasinghe
01:11:36
Yeah. So I was actually, I, well, so I’ve been watching the, the background flash up behind you, JD, and I’m interested to find out for yourself. So you mentioned, you know, you told us a lovely, a little, just before we started recording, you told us a lovely story about your daughter. And I’m interested to find out along this thread of technology being developed fast than we can educate people on how best to use it. I can’t one of the biggest use cases for that for me is social media and this idea that that was developed and organically created, and then just became this behemoth that is now really ingrained in our society today. And you know, you yourself have, have a, have a 15 year old. And I’ve always, when you know, I look at my life and you know, how it’s gonna move forward.
Nishadi Ranasinghe
01:12:22
And my biggest fear is how would, if, if I’m ever blessed with a child, how would I engage in that de debate? Like so social, media’s not going anywhere. You know, how do you, what is your view on the level of engagement that you allow for your teenage daughter with that sort of hat on of security and, you know, cyber security in that space? Because we know, we know that it, you know, the world didn’t evolve fast enough, really to a actively put those checks and balances in place when social media is, is around and that’s created a whole slew of problems. So I’d be interested to find out your view on this.
Dr. Ir Johannes Drooghaag
01:13:03
Well, let me, let me start with a little anecdote. I was preparing in security training and my daughter, when she was little, she was always very interested in what are you doing? And she wanted to watch and she wanted to see, and so I told her what I’m doing. And she was like, oh, what do you mean? And at that moment, she confronted me with all my knowledge, doesn’t make any sense for kids because they think completely different. They have completely different usage. And that made me think about how can we help kids understand the staff that most adults have issues with understanding.
Dr. Ir Johannes Drooghaag
01:13:46
And that initiated the project, internet safety for kids, which I’m doing now for many years, with a lot of, of, of experts supporting us, we built an international platform, but the foundation is a curious kit wanting to know what I’m doing, and I’m not able to actually explain it in the way that she understands. So we took that and, and I quickly found a lot of parents and a lot of teachers who really want to help those kids, but don’t have to write instruments themselves as well. And we started working on what is important, or the first thing that is important is that we need to change our thinking when we talk to kids and when we help them understand what is good and what is not good. I use the example of, of photography. When I take my vantage point and take a picture of a kid, you will always have this stupid ki picture where the kid is looking upwards because I’m taller.
Dr. Ir Johannes Drooghaag
01:14:42
And my camera’s up there. And when I go down on my knees, put myself at the same level of that same kit. And I then take a picture of that kid. Now, suddenly the kid is involved in the picture. She’s the kid is looking in the camera, you see the face, you see the expression you see, and you no longer have this stupid looking up, right? That is when you want to explain something much more complicated than, than you can imagine. And what we developed is, is basically two things. One is educate the parents because as soon as we start talking to the kids and we do that a lot to test the program and to improve it, kids are telling us interesting things. They say you, yeah. Yeah. You tell us that we need to tell our parents what we want to do on our mobile phone or on computer.
Dr. Ir Johannes Drooghaag
01:15:36
And so they understand, but they never have time when I come up with my new game and I want to show it to my father. My father says, no, no, no. Show me tomorrow. Or yeah. Yeah, it’s fine. But you told us that we should explain it. So we need to educate the parents. That’s one thing. And the second thing we learned is when you actually explain it to children, why it is important to not share your mobile phone number everywhere, to not share pictures of your family everywhere. They become very involved. And they start really understanding that. But then suddenly parents get confronted with kids five times a day asking, can I share this?
Dr. Ir Johannes Drooghaag
01:16:22
Well, you have to take time for that. You have to reward them from that. You should not say I don’t have time for that. And that’s a challenge. And then we learned interesting ways of explaining kids. We explain privacy with the example of a toilet and kids love it. We say, what is the toilet? And you have to go to the toilet. So you go to the toilet. But unfortunately it’s in the middle of the street. It’s in a big shopping mall. Everybody can see you. You don’t like that. You don’t have privacy. What you want is a toilet where you can close the door and nobody can see you a no cameras. And you can go to the toilet UN disturbed. That is privacy. Now, if you want that, you also have to accept that everybody else wants to go to their own toilet. So don’t put people on the toilet, in the middle of a shopping mall where everybody can see them and kids go, oh, right. That makes sense.
Dr. Ir Johannes Drooghaag
01:17:26
When you start, when you start forbidding them things, they find ways to do it anyway. Yeah. When you show them why something should not be done and you help them understand that that is best for them and for their friends and their family, they become involved most of the time. Not always. Sometimes you have to remind them and sometimes you have to negotiate, but it works when you explain it in a way that they understand, and then you don’t have to look that much at restrictions or, or all the risk because they come to you and ask you questions. The war in Ukraine, which is horrible, the educated kids who have understood the program are sending us messages, asking what should they look at? What, how can they see if it’s true or not? Things like that. So they do. And they want to, and they are, they’re really involved. You just have to help them with communication, which they understand.
Nathaniel Schooler
01:18:26
Yeah. Yeah. I think also being understanding that actually they’re smarter than you think. Right. And, and actually, you know, if you explain why, like you said, in a simple, simple terms, then they actually are much smarter than you think. And actually we worry about, you know, predators and this and that, but actually it’s not really about the predators as much as it is, in my opinion, as much as it is about the access to applications, bullying from friends. Yeah. Bullying from people who aren’t their friends, like it’s a, it’s a whole conversation. We should do it. We’ll do another, we’ll do another interview sometime and, and have a, have a long conversation about it. Cuz it’s just like, it’s just massive. Right? Like it’s, it’s never-ending the child’s problem with privacy and, and, and everything else, you know, it’s just, it’s just huge, but don’t panic. N it’ll be okay. Yeah.
Dr. Ir Johannes Drooghaag
01:19:29
We’ve got already 20 videos for you available. So you can practice.
Nathaniel Schooler
01:19:35
She’s getting married soon. You see? So she’s making preparations for five years down, 10 years down the line. Right. Fantastic. I love that!
01:19:46
That’s
Nathaniel Schooler
01:19:47
Fantastic. So, so I’m gonna jump in there really and, and sort of just mix things up a little bit. Right. So, Toby, I know you’re working on loads of really cool, like new tech. Yeah. So what, what, what interests you the most about like the latest tech that’s out there? Like what’s exciting for you at the moment,
Toby Hooton
02:20:09
Being honest, it’s having absolutely no idea what’s coming next. So we’re in a really unique and interesting period in time in technology and technology always moves faster than we can educate people, but also in your, when you’re in an internet startup or when you’re in the scale-up technical organization, you are. So in the moment in that current new technology, by the time you are six months in something else is coming through, I mean, the simple analogy for that is looking at blockchain, but back 10 years ago, even longer than that, we knew it was there. And it was a thing. And all of a sudden, the last 24, 36 months, we’ve all gone, oh my God, what was that? And it, it has been there for a long time. People are slow to adopt it and slow to recognize it. So, you know, one of them, the critical things that we try and do in, in technical startups is be acutely aware that we right now on the tip of an iceberg, but there’s another one coming and we can see it in the distance right now, but I can’t see it clearly enough to understand quite what it’s yet or how to deal with it, bringing that back to the culture and people piece of that.
Toby Hooton
02:21:13
What we look for are people that are highly adaptable. So we need to understand that the generalist skillset supports certain technological developments, but you can’t have a specialist for something that doesn’t exist yet. And trying to forecast for that and embrace that as a technical organization is, is really what gets me out of bed in the morning. It’s exciting right now, there’s so much innovation going on. We’re bridging this gap all the time between software and hardware embedded systems are getting closer and closer and closer. And now we’re finding new ways to exchange information and to take, you know, full use of platforms such as blockchain. We’re building, a security-first platform that is solely based on blockchain as a fully encrypted network operator it’s never been done before. So, no, I think at the moment, and certainly, for the foreseeable future, we are in a period of rapid technological change and rapid incubation of brand new technologies that we are only just beginning to understand how to utilize.
Nathaniel Schooler
02:22:14
Yeah. I, I, I was talking, I think last week or the week before about like this, this productivity curve that we, that we are just at the beginning of, right. Because everyone’s, everyone’s like, who’s really into productivity for the past few years. They haven’t really had that much amazing stuff in tech. Right. But now, like with all the writing tech, that’s out there with, you know, the way that you can like integrate things like I’m, I’m just, I can’t wait to see kind of the next, the next few years or even months of how fast these, these things are gonna kind of move forwards really, to be honest. And, you know, it’s yeah. It, the whole thing, it just it’s fascinating. Right. But you can’t be an expert in everything. Like there is so much going on that it is, it is so vast that I think, you know, keeping your special speciality is, is really, really crucial. No doubt about it, you know, and medicine as well. Like it’s big, is a big one for, for me. So what about you were JD? What, what, what are you really interested in at the moment in, in technology?
Dr. Ir Johannes Drooghaag
02:23:21
Well, for, for me, the most important development at this moment is that we see technology coming that is going to add to sustainability. That is going to actually find solutions for things like climate change. That is one thing I’m very, very excited about. On the other hand, we see that what we have seen in the past three to five years is this hype wave of everything new, right. Blockchain was going to cure cancer and 5g was going to solve all the connectivity problems and, and all those things that is decreasing. Fortunately, there’s no longer this, somebody comes up with a popular hashtag and then everybody’s going to make predictions about whatever it’s going to. We learned a little bit from that phase, maybe because we have other problems to deal with, like the pandemic and war and, and, and climate change. So that is also something that I’m, I’m excited about because now that big noise is gone and we are focusing again on what the real opportunities of technology is.
Dr. Ir Johannes Drooghaag
02:24:31
And one of the great opportunities, of blockchain, for example, is the encryption is embedded in the data. There’s no data without encryption. There’s no encryption without data. And we are generating a fact factor of 10 times more data per six months at the moment. So, yes, please. But now in blockchain, we are also focusing on the efficiency of blockchain, which has been a huge, huge, huge problem in the past. But because we were so excited about how it was going to solve every problem, we stopped focusing on improving blockchain and that improvement is currently happening. So if we continue in this space two to three years from now, we have actually learned how to build blockchain platforms that are as efficient and energy efficient as standard cloud platforms. And then we add all the benefits, like smart contract embedded encryption. I mean, quantum computing is going to have a huge problem with good blockchain platforms. And by the time quantum computing becomes something we can throw around then, well, blockchain is quantum as well. So we still have all the benefits of that. And that’s what I am excited about. We’re focusing now on reality and no longer on the
Nathaniel Schooler
02:25:57
Exactly, exactly. And a lot of these technologies like VR and AR, like they’ve been around for a long, long time now. Right. So now we’re just getting to the stage where they’re becoming, you know, a real market, right. And that with gaming and everything else, it’s gonna, it’s gonna create so many jobs in the, in the world as well. Like I’ve got a friend that’s running a podcast about gaming and he’s, and he’s talking to all sorts of people like over in Africa and you know, her just creating jobs like, right. I mean, that’s, that’s what we want. Right? Like, this is what we want is to change the world. And with 48% of the, of the, of the world still without technology, without access to the internet, right. Like if we can change that, we can just help so many people. And, that excites me as well. So what about you N what, what, what, what are you excited about? I know we talked about, we talked about this last week as well.
Nishadi Ranasinghe
02:26:50
Yeah. So there’s, there’s a few areas that I’m interested. And I think the biggest thing for me is medical technology and the ability to potentially, you know, have, have people have medications that attend to themselves or vitamin packages and things like that, that tailored to themselves. The other thing that you mentioned, JD is sustainability technology, the advancement of electric vehicles, for example, and how, you know, I think there’s a, there’s a, there’s currently, it’s not necessarily most carbon neutral to making electric car, but you know, the advances in technology that, that will bring and, and how, you know, that will advance our society in terms of limiting climate change, all of that sort of, all of those things, technology to the advancement of the human race is probably what I’m really interested in and what I’m, what is, what is really floating my boat at the moment, I suppose, where, where I can, where I can put my, put my hat on, as I’m a technologist, I work in technology and I’d love to, you know, get into projects which actually move that, that, you know, movement forward.
Nishadi Ranasinghe
02:27:54
The other thing is you mentioned productivity. I think over the last couple of years, we’ve also realized that we are a remote community, a remote society. Like I remember over the pandemic doing quizzes with people in like a massive 10 people quiz with people all over the world and bringing people together using technology. And that was just on a Saturday morning at two o’clock. I think we had people from Iran and, you know, South Africa in Australia. And it’s that idea of, you know, we are, we can be connected even like, and that, and that was all through the advancement of technology, even small educational pieces, like teaching, we’ve talked about it a lot here, actually in that teaching your parents how to use zoom. You know, I actually had a zoom the other day with my mom just because she works. She knows how to use it now, you know, so bringing people together like that, our team in fact is a completely remote team.
Nishadi Ranasinghe
02:28:43
We do all of our contracts remotely and what that will do for the workplace workplace, culture and productivity as a whole. That is, and we’re in an interesting period at the moment where I think just today, I was chatting with some people about, you know, management decisions and workplace culture decisions that have to be made around flexible working. People are gaining more time for themselves and, and realizing what productivity means to them working less and spending more time on themselves. And any technology that can advance that through productivity tools, through, you know, video conferencing tools, anything that moves that forward is also something that is very exciting to me.
Nathaniel Schooler
02:29:22
Yeah. I mean, I think giving, giving everyone, you know, a real life and actually them being able to work when they want, from where they want for as long as they want, it enables more control. Right. I’m not saying everyone has to work 10 hours a week, 20 hours a week, but I’m saying that it should be more of a choice, right? Like, you know, I appreciate in the early stages of a business, you know, you need to work considerable amount of hours. Right. But once you get that business to a certain level, you can, you can just hire a team of people. You don’t need to work that many hours. And that, that becomes quite exciting. The whole prospect of, of having more leisure time having, you know, having what they promised us at the beginning of the industrial revolution. Right. Like I’ve been talking about this for ages.
Nathaniel Schooler
03:30:08
Everyone’s like, well, we’re in number three. It’s like, well, not really. We’re, we’re still in industrial revolution. Number one, just cuz some, some tech, you know, tech analyst, nothing personal. I used to be a tech analyst. Right. But like a lot of them love talking about like these concepts, but in fact, they’re not new. Like they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re, they’ve been around for, you know, since we came out with mechanized farming, right. Like, you know, it just, it just makes me, makes me smile really, to be honest. So what do you think Toby you sick of, of, of people coming up with all of these concepts and driving you a bit mad or what?
Toby Hooton
03:30:47
Hmm. I think ideas, people are absolutely critical to the ongoing evolution technology and we’ve got constantly try and build new things that constantly go wrong to learn from them. And we see that all the time right now and what JD was saying about the evolution there, of, of, of biotechnology effect and sustainable technologies and the, and the blockchain crypto marketplace is currently. And we’re seeing that evolution. And we built these technologies that require enormous amounts of compute power. That’s now led people to develop that further into having the same outcome with less energy. And, but, so we have to constantly throw these new ideas up in the air to try and find one that will stick and then we’ll find 10 more of them and throw them up in the air. And that’s, I think how, how the, the rapid pace of innovation is happening currently, what’s different in the current situation is more people are throwing more things up in the air it’s so much easier. And these new technical platforms are so much more accessible for people now. Cause we have things like remote working and we have that, that culture behind that too, that accessibility piece is really key. And that’s driving this rapid pace of innovation currently in my view.
Nathaniel Schooler
03:31:58
Very interesting. Yeah. I, I agree completely the more, the more, the more work that we put in the faster we’re gonna get somewhere, right. I mean, that’s, that’s where, where it is really. So, so what do you think, what do you think JD, on this, on the innovation side of things, do you think we’re, we’re kind of at a good, good place with that or?
Dr. Ir Johannes Drooghaag
03:32:19
Well, the two things that we have done in the past few years, we have developed an ecosystem and, and toolbox where others can innovate in before that it was that the, the people creating technology are the ones who were innovating. Now we have created cloud ecosystems, AI driven ecosystems. You can, you can shop and you can pick all the components that you need to build your own solutions and become creative with that. And innovative with that. And the pace of bringing new items into those ecosystem has increased significantly. So we, we are much more capable to innovate and we have reduced the cost and the impact of that innovation. So more and more people, we don’t know where the next Einstein is, but we also know if we give that new Einstein, the tools and the connectivity to do whatever he or she wants whenever he or she wants that we’re not getting one new Einstein, we are going to get hundreds and thousands of new Einsteins, right? If, if you just look at what Elon Musk has done and you don’t have to agree with all his statements, but just look at what he has done. He has built a car company against all the odds, but also against all the concepts. He has built a rocket launching company against the odd and against all the concepts. You can challenge the boring company if it makes sense or not, but he’s doing it.
Dr. Ir Johannes Drooghaag
03:33:51
And he’s doing that because he’s driven by whatever drives him, but he’s also willing to put his money and his knowledge on the table. I I’m told recently that until he was trying to buy Twitter, he has never sold any of his stock unless he was selling his entire company. So he’s putting his own money on the plate and he’s driving innovation in a significantly faster pace than we have done that before now, a 12 year old boy in India or in Africa or in Germany or in the UK, is looking at all that and things. When he can do it, I can try it as well. And a smart girl being told that she has no place in tech because girls have to cook and clean house and whatever she can now go online, watch a bunch of tutorials, how she can code. And without a lot of costs, she can start coding her own programs that wasn’t possible 10 years ago.
Nathaniel Schooler
03:34:55
Absolutely.
Dr. Ir Johannes Drooghaag
03:34:56
I think that those changes are driving in innovation much faster than anything else.
Nathaniel Schooler
03:35:04
Absolutely. Absolutely. I like that a lot. So Nish what do you think before we, before we wrap up?
Nishadi Ranasinghe
03:35:13
I think, you know, you bring up a really good point. I wa you know, I think that it is all about sort of role model role modeling the next generation of technologists, and this idea that, you know, there is a huge, you know, still a bit of a gap in, you know, Fe women in stem subjects. You know, I know for, from, from recent experience, trying to get women into our development team is just, is, is, is almost impossible if I, if I can almost say so as something that we’ve been actually driving towards quite significantly finding, just having recruiters find that particular talent pool is like finding a complete needle in a haystack. And it’s just that idea of, you know, like you say, there’s just more, more, it just brings more opinions to the table. It brings more, more perspectives. And then it rounds off a technology solution in a way that is a little bit more human than if you just had one perspective, one type of person making a program.
Nishadi Ranasinghe
03:36:17
So I think that that’s a really interesting point about different types of people that come into it, where you mentioned people from different backgrounds, poor people in Africa, or in India, or, you know, rich people in Africa and India getting into these, getting into these subjects and doing these things. Everyone comes with their own baggage and their own experiences. And it means that if you can build, if you can start role mod becoming role models to these people and inspiring them to take up, take up a technology role or technology path, then they will inherently enhance our future technology offerings. Because, because of just inherently where they’ve come from and they’ll build things for their, for the, for the people that they have seen the people from where they have come from. So, you know, if we can get, you know, developments, you mentioned that as well before, like getting more, getting more technology into those communities that don’t have it, you know, MI building micro ecosystems or micro-economies within small villages. You know, all of those sorts of technologies are also important to the furthering of, of, of, of, or I’d say humanity. It feels like a little bit loaded, but that’s where it feels like it’s going really. Yeah.
Nathaniel Schooler
03:37:36
Well, thank you, Nish. And thanks Toby. Thank you, JD. Appreciate you guys. I think we’ll get a, we’ll do some, have some more interviews, hopefully in the next couple of months. Thanks for listening.
Nathaniel Schooler
03:37:50
Thanks very much for listening. Please make sure you share this episode with your friends and business connections, and don’t forget to drop us a review wherever you listen.