Can Companies Predict the Future?

0:00Welcome to We Fixed It. You're welcome. The show where we take over companies, you come along for the ride. We try to put them back better than we found them. Hey everyone, this is Aaron. I am super excited for today's episode. Let's start with a quick story. A long time ago, I was brought in to work on an automotive dashboard where get this you could access the internet in your car from a touchscreen infotainment system. Today, we all have those. Back then, it was a proof of concept, but the car company liked what they saw. They invested heavily in and ultimately, it worked out pretty well. That's what we're talking about today. Companies that aren't limited by what's possible. They're working toward future outcomes that may take years if not decades to prove out. Of course, there are winners and losers. Some companies spend millions if not billions chasing something that never had a chance. So how do companies predict the future? What's the secret to staying grounded in reality while also taking big swings that pay off eventually? Because the

1:00wrong move could be catastrophic. That's what we're here to fix. And you know we're going to need some help. Joining Melissa and me today is Alan Nija. Alan is the founder and CEO of Sunman Engineering where he's been for over 35 years. He's done a ton of product development and prototyping across automotive, aerospace, robotics, telecom, and more. He's also a serial entrepreneur and a professor at San Jose State University. And I think he might understand the future better than any of us. Alan, welcome to our show and tell us a little bit more about you. Hi, Aaron. I'm Melissa. Thank you for having me in your show. I appreciate that. Yes, my name is Alan Nija. My background is aerospace mechanical engineering. We have worked with small companies, many startups. We have worked with mid-sized companies. We have worked with a lot of larger companies like IBM, Sony, Samsung, Apple. We've been doing over today. I think we have 1,670 some projects. Wow.

2:03Wow. It's a lot of work. That's a lot of work. That's a lot of work. I've been here the day last 35 years, trust me. And even when I'm on vacation, I'm still working. Well, thanks, Alan. We're really happy to have you here. You're going to be instrumental to our conversation, Melissa. Companies are profit driven. They want sales this quarter or not eventually. So why invest so heavily in the future? So here's the thing about the future. The future, everybody wants to bet on it, but almost nobody wants to actually pay for it. So there's a stat that really stopped me cold while I was prepping for this. A 2024 study from Ernst & Young looked at advanced manufacturing companies, the ones building genuinely new stuff, and found that only 12% of them successfully commercialized their innovations at scale, 12%. And here's the kicker. 95% of the patents these companies filed never generate a single dollar of revenue ever. So picture you're in a boardroom, you're out of company, and someone pitches a technology that might be

3:05viable in five years or 10 or 20. The math is not exactly in your favor. As we like to say, the math is not mapping. And yet some of the biggest companies on the planet keep doing it anyway. Amazon spent almost 80 billion dollars on capital expenditures last year. Most of it on AI infrastructure that isn't paying for itself yet, but NVIDIA keeps plowing money back into R&D while it's already winning. So there's research out this year published in management science showing something kind of wild. The more pressure a public company feels from quarterly earning calls, the less ambitious its innovation gets, less bold, less wild, less future forward. So which is such an interesting tension, right? Because companies willing to look a little out there for a few years, the Amazon's, the NVIDIA's, the early Teslas. Those are often the ones that end up owning the future. But for every one of those, there's a graveyard of companies that bet big, waited and it never came to fruition.

4:12So here's the question I think every leader quietly wrestles with. How do you know if you're building the next iPhone or the next set way? Is there actually a way to predict where the puck is going or is it just conviction, timing, luck, and being willy to be wrong in public a few times before you're actually right? And honestly, I can't think of a better person to help us answer that than someone like Alan who spent his entire career building these types of things before the world was ready for him. So let's get into it. Yeah, Alan, you've looked into the future several times and you've probably seen your share of, I'd say, a bunch of winners, but there's gotta be some cautionary tales in there too. Can you tell us just a story of one of your favorite things you've been involved with? I have this right here. So we built this back in 2005. And I mean, today, they said, okay, it's a tablet. There were no tablets. There were no

5:15iPhone. There were no nothing. You know, for big companies, you know, that's part of their growth. It's true. Yeah, I said at the beginning, some companies had the wrong idea and they chased the wrong idea, but some companies had the right idea. And maybe their years were decades too early and it's just not feasible. So their instincts are all right. But someone also come along later and pick up the pieces and then own that market. As a large company, you have a responsibility to your shareholders and to your customers. And so growth at 10% is a lot to your point, Alan. That's a lot. And so to be able to take monies and actual monies and time and resources and invest those in innovation, just sometimes doesn't seem like the right rhythm to go for. Like, that doesn't seem like the right, you know, Aaron, you know, this more than I do, but the right go to market strategy to actually get something, you know, get growth in revenue. So I do think that like,

6:18as you get larger and more successful as a company, even though you might have more means, you also have more pressures on you. So then that makes it seem like, okay, gosh, how can we actually do this? And I know that I have been at some larger companies that have had what we would call innovation labs where they would actually set aside a group of people, engineers, product people, UX people, customer experience folks, to just work on those types of things and they would be given kind of, you know, a room by themselves, they get to do whatever they would like to do and then be able to kind of present that. And to me, that's really great way to kind of also make sure that your company is always looking to the future because things are always changing. You don't want to discourage moonshot ideas. You don't want to discourage people from really trying something

7:19kind of outlandish, right? And if you use KPIs that are for a more structured and conservative company environment, you're kind of limiting yourself, you know, you're self limiting the team. You write on that's exactly what we had to do. You know, you always think about the coolest stuff. What you can do, what's the next and so on, right? But from business point of view, that's totally opposite way. You've got to see what's out there, what's needed, how to get there and all that right? Just to push back. But if you have, let's say you come from a company with a culture of innovation and that's internal and inherent to what your company does, then you're creating the right conditions for those moonshots or someone coming up with this that bold idea. But what if your company is just a company, you know, and you have your profit driven, you've got shareholders, you've got investors, everyone's kind of skittish. I'm not saying do no harm, but consumers were trained on appreciation for incremental innovation. So version three comes out, then

8:23version four comes out and we buy version four and you know, we're all we're all reasonably happy. You know, we know that the deal at how it works. Why would a company like that listen to someone that says, Hey boss, you know, I thought of this thing that is going to take years to pay off and it may cost the company a lot and it may fail. What's the motivation for that company to disrupt what's practically working? I don't think there is necessarily a huge motivation, Aaron, I think that like that would be to me, it would be maybe a conflict and, you know, purpose for whoever is introducing those types of innovations versus the company that they're at. And I've been at companies that are 100 year old fortune 50 companies that that's not their cup of tea. They they've said that. And I think as long as you're self aware enough to just say it and be it, I think that's okay. And to

9:23me, I think it's really important that companies who want to be in that innovative space have that bandwidth and have the wherewithal and knowledge of how to organizationally and build that culture around that and and really read those operational signals, really understand what future consumers might be in looking for. But we still need the basic foundations of, you know, a lot, thousands of companies that are out there and businesses that are out there. I think that what I've also seen, which has worked is there's a company I used to work for that actually built out their innovation in a separate company. If you've ever worked for any company anywhere, you know, there's the process that's supposed to happen and that there's whatever one actually does. The problem is most leaders can't see that gap, which makes it pretty hard to know it's actually worth fixing. That's why I like

10:24scribe optimized, which automatically discovers workflows across your approved business applications. No interviews, no workshops, just how work actually happens. It's live dashboard gives you a clear view of how work gets done across all your teams. So you can see which tools are being used, where times being spent, and where the biggest inefficiencies are hiding. And it doesn't just point those out. It explains why they're happening and recommends ways to fix them with estimated time savings built in. That's way more useful than just knowing where the problems are. What I also like is that this is about leadership visibility, not employee monitoring. In fact, user level data is anonymized by default and sensitive information is automatically redacted. And none of it ever leaves your firewall. So you're getting true operational insights without compromising anyone's privacy. To see scribe optimize an action like I did, had describe dot how slash fixed it and mentioned fixed it for a 30 day risk free trial. That's SCRIBE.HowSlasHFIXEDIT.

11:24Support for today's episode comes from Square, the business platform that helps sellers become the best in the neighborhood. Whether you're growing your business or just trying to keep up with it, Square knows what you need. You can take payments online orders, manage your inventory staff and more all in one place. That means that when you're with a customer, you're actually with that customer and they can tell you got things under control. For one, you're focused to not running around like crazy. That's because the whole thing's designed to be easy to use. The last time I stopped by a cafe where I saw the Square logo, I was like, yeah, they get it. I knew my experience would be a great one and it was. It was good coffee too. And Square now offers three plans so you can pick the tools you need. So what are you doing about your business? Well, let's help you out. Square's offering our listeners up to $200 off Square Hardware when you sign up at Square.com slash GO slash WEFIXEDIT. Again, SQU-AR-E.com slash GO slash WEFIXEDIT and set up your business the way it works for you. You know, like some of my engineering has two arms, right? One arm is that we

12:29provide engineering and product development, engineering services to other companies or their garment agencies or whatever and the other arm. We develop technologies in house and we utilize those technologies for future clients, right? So as you know, so we have to do this. Otherwise, you know, in five years from now, we don't have much to offer as far as how we can help the other companies because now we already built some technology upfront that we can utilize it, you know, for the next few years. So yeah, that's fairly normal for most of companies, but it's, as you said, you know, for us, we use the cash flow here and we invest it into these technologies and then eventually we utilize this technology to, you know, for more business. What about a case like, all right, like NBC and Peacock where the streaming

13:30services had already proved out, the model was working elsewhere, but they launched six years ago and they just hit their first profitable quarter. So you could say, you know, yes, they saw trends were changing consumer behavior is changing that a library of content that needed to go somewhere, but they, you know, there was an established template for it. Why, what was the price of entry there? What do you think that just, you know, they needed to play catch up? It's still innovation because we're still kind of doing that conversion to streaming first, but six years to profitability of on a proven model, you know, do you see that happening across industries too when there's already been a disruption? You know, when you're looking to something five years down the road, obviously, you don't get the revenues for a few years, that's for sure. So that's not unusual and again, for big companies, they can handle that, they can't afford that, they begin off to take that loss upfront and then back end, they can make them make it back

14:34for smaller companies, it's more difficult, they don't have the type of cash flow to support all these other extra expenses. So it's really, you've got to see what type of company you have, what kind of cash flow, you know, what kind of investors you may have for that technology, and then I would go after it. You know, one of the things I see, a lot of it start up making a mistake, you know, they have a great, you know, great, great idea, great idea that they have not been prepared for funding, they not have prepared for marketing, they only think about the idea and the technology and prototyping part of it. So yeah, you got it sort of go backward, really a lot of times and that's what really, you know, be company too, they go backward, they go from customers side and backward to the product. I think, you know, I always go from product to customer, you know,

15:38all the fancy, interesting stuff, right, but that's wrong, that's very wrong. And I made that mistakes many times I have made multi million dollars mistakes a number of times, you know, because of that, you know, well, I think that we should talk about that because to be honest, you know, we're talking about the 10% or 12% that was reported by Ernst & Young of positive innovation projects and patents. And then there's a 90% that's not what about the failures and how to recover from an investment and a failure that may have taken you 18 months to put together a prototype and you're like, wow, this is like not at all what we want. This has happened to my husband, he's a research scientist where they get scooped, right, somebody else comes out fast with the same idea, but faster, you know, does a paper gets published before he can get it published? So what are the, you know,

16:39what are the kinds of things that companies and leaders really need to think about and organizations need to think about in terms of setting up people for failure and those kind of flags and being able to kind of lift them and say, hey, this is what we were looking for. We were looking for you to take a risk. Now we're going to keep moving on because I think that at the same time that we've talked about like rewarding people for successes and milestones and the steps that get there, what about the folks that are self-aware enough to say, oh, hell, this didn't work at all? There's so many obstacles that, you know, taking it, bringing a product to market, it's not easy, it's very, very challenging. Number one is that you have to understand that industry, you have to be part of that industry. You know, if you're not part of that industry, don't even touch that. So you got to have a big, good, you got to have their language, you got to have to understand,

17:44you know, everything that is important in that industry, you got to understand their needs and so on and then kind of go back and get involved in trying to bring a technology or product to a company. Honestly, most of failures I see, especially with startups, again, as I said, they have a great idea, they're great engineers, you know, or maybe, but you got to have the multiple number of different hats and you got to be knowledgeable on all different hats and the most important one is how to go to market, you know, that's the most important part of it. And how to go to market part of it is timing, right? Yeah, I worked with an automotive company years ago and they had this, they have this brilliant, beautiful future looking vehicle. It's got, they added solar panels to the roof, so it's got some self-charging capabilities and it's just, you know, it just makes sense. And like I said, years ago, they're still around, they're still, I think they're crowd raising, like, we don't

18:50see them on the road. So are they a failure? They're still functional to some degree, you call it a question mark or an asterisk or they have success? No, you can't call it that, but there's, you know, there's companies somewhere in the middle that are on to something and they just haven't accelerated or kickstarted it. Well, and like, you know, I'm just taking the words, Alan, that you just shared, like, go to market, having the right go to market, timing and strategy and Aaron, you understand this, but it's not even just go to market, it's like, do you know your market? Right? So Aaron, you brought up a great example. So the solar panels on the on a vehicle to really get it going, you know, they're still around. Maybe it's about what is that market? Because maybe it should be long haul truckers, right? Like, you know, you see what I'm saying? And so like, you know, it's about understanding, I really feel like you have a great idea, but you may not understand the industry, the ecosystem,

19:50the competitors, what's already in market, right? And why certain things have gone a certain way. And so to be able to really be very objective and look at things and really do your research is really important. And I feel like the marketing teams usually do such a great job with that, because you're always looking at competitors, right? You're looking at, you're looking at the entire ecosystem. And so really thinking about, you know, how are you going to actually get this product out to everybody? You know, needs to happen at the beginning, not after you have the pretty. If you've ever worked for any company anywhere, you know, there's the process that's supposed to happen, and then there's what everyone actually does. The problem is, most leaders can't see that gap, which makes it pretty hard to know it's actually worth fixing. That's why I like scribe optimized, which automatically discovers workflows across your approved business applications. No interviews, no workshops, just how work actually happens. It's live dashboard gives you a

20:52clear view of how work gets done across all your teams. So you can see which tools are being used, where time is being spent, and where the biggest inefficiencies are hiding. And it doesn't just point those out. It explains why they're happening and recommends ways to fix them with estimated time savings built in. That's way more useful than just knowing where the problems are. What I also like is that this is about leadership visibility, not employee monitoring. In fact, user-level data is anonymized by default, and sensitive information is automatically redacted. And none of it ever leaves your firewall. So you're getting true operational insights without compromising anyone's privacy. To see scribe optimized in action like I did, at describe.how slash fixed it and mentioned fixed it for a 30 day risk free trial. That's scribe.how slash f-i-x-e-d-i-t. Support for today's episode comes from square. The business platform that helps sellers become the best in the neighborhood. Whether you're growing your business or just trying to keep up with it, square knows what you need. You can take payments online orders,

21:55manage your inventory staff, and more all in one place. That means that when you're with a customer, you're actually with that customer, and they can tell you got things under control. For one, you're focused on not running around like crazy. That's because the whole thing's designed to be easy to use. The last time I stopped by a cafe where I saw the square logo, I was like, yeah, they get it. I knew my experience would be a great one and it was. It was good coffee, too. And Square now offers three plans so you can pick the tools you need. So what are you doing about your business? Well, let's help you out. Square's offering our listeners up to $200 off square hardware. When you sign up at square.com slash go slash we fixed it again. SQU ARE.com slash go slash we fixed it and set up your business the way it works for you. Car as well. If I guys see them on TV, like maybe a couple of weeks ago, it's still trying and they had a beautiful car now, you know, it's, you know, that it only goes 50 miles and it's very small.

22:5870,000 or 80,000. And so the map doesn't work, right? The map does not work out at the end. For people to buy, you don't build it for, you know, like that's what I'm saying. Your engineer, at, you know, when you engineer, you build things for your own. A good CEO, a good business person, always focus on the customer first, always focus on the market first, always understand that industry in and out before comes to thinking about the ideas or, or incrementing the idea. Now that's very true, Alan, because the company I was talking about was part of a wave that was labeled as the next, they were going head to head with Tesla, you know, and were they going to be the next Tesla? All indicators said yes, but a lot of those companies that were the next Tesla are not, they're not around anymore, they're a casualty. And maybe they had a superior product after that, something that within their technology that was better at the time. And they still didn't make it, they got squashed. Well, a lot of times, and this has happened to us,

24:04the B. your company is coming and, and take you out right off. And there's nothing you can do. You know, they, they actually, I had a situation actually on this car technology, they, they came after us because we had this patent on this technology and they, they claim we are patent petrol. That means the corner of technology and don't let anybody, you have the patent on it that, that says that. So they, they could go out and cancel your patent, they can go out and come up with a million different reasons why your patent is not valid. They can drag you through court system for years and years and they have it as a matter of fact, the law firm that came after us is the, is the nonprofit law firm that the members are the, all the big boys. And when they're looking for something, they come after you. And as a matter of fact, I've been threatened that they're going to put me in jail. I'm not kidding you, you know, because I have

25:05these patents. It's much easier for big boys than a small company. Small companies are, you know, it's fact is too. Well, you know, that's the thing is a large company, a billion dollar company or you know, a hundred billion dollar company has the resources behind them. You're going to probably go, okay, thanks. And so I, I do agree that, you know, when you think about the environment for innovation, it's, it's hard. There are a lot of risks involved personal risks, Alan, you just said you could end up in jail. I mean, I remember, you know, I've worked at companies do where chief compliance officer is like, your job is to make sure that I'm not going to jail. And I'm like, no, your job is to help us not do stuff that's going to put us in jail. So, you know, like when you're, you know, faced with those kinds of decisions, it's really hard to stay on your passion that purpose driven mission, you know, to get something done. And so I love that, you know,

26:10you've done it and you've failed and you've succeeded. But, you know, I, again, I think that when push comes to shove, it's about revenue, it's about profitability, it's about getting something out there usually. And I think that it's, it's interesting because I feel like the people that I know that are kind of these inventor mindset, like that is less than their mind than the actual thing they're creating and building. And so in the world of revenue and growth, how do you, you know, how do you reconcile that? Because that makes it very difficult, you know, because maybe Alan, I don't want to wait 20 years for that idea to come to fruition, right? That's true, Melissa. And sometimes, sometimes the little guy wins. Right. You know, sometimes you're fueled by Red Bull in a dream and, and yeah, you have no profit, but no one's told you what you're doing is impossible. And it turns out it's not. And if you are

27:13protective of it and you're first to market and you have patent, defendable IP and all those things and then investors jump on it, you can, you can have a win for the little guy. Absolutely. No, no, I don't want to make a wrong impression that that no one should get in technology or start off. No, I'm not saying I, as a matter of fact, you know, it's a challenge. It's a challenge. And it's normal. You know, always, the guy that's bigger is always been a, you know, no matter what. So that's, that's part of the nature, part of the, you know, that's there, you know, nothing we can do. So no, there's always a lot of opportunities for success and a lot of, you know, I guess, all I was saying is that think about its customer's side fears and then back for, you know, right? Melissa, you mentioned the concept of having a spin-off company or a company dedicated to innovation. And I like that approach because it allows it to get out of the constraints and parameters of the big gray building next door

28:15where things just operate the way they operate. You got people standing on desks and having picnics or, you know, getting, getting dancing in the halls, getting out, shaking it off and then saying, all right, let's go do something different and they're not being weighed down by the expectations of business as usual. Well, and I also think it's important, you know, and I think about like fixes for companies that are considering this. Is it like to allocate the money from, I'm just going to be mean and say it this way, but the cash cow, which would be the big gray building company, right? Allocating that money not away from their operations that are the red and butter of what they do, right? So they're, they're making widgets, they're selling those left and right and they're steadily growing by 8% every year. Shareholders are happy, blah, blah, but like to be able to kind of allocate just money for like a high velocity innovation lab

29:16that is set separately so that there is not the same sort of, you know, really tension on that team to create something that's revenue generating in a set timeframe that's a corporate calendar. And so again, that gets back to having metrics that are maybe really based on milestones of and signals of that project, of that innovation project, as well as allowing them the opportunity to be that 90% of the time, even if it doesn't go to market the way you thought it was going to go, you've learned during that journey. I tell you how we how we do it generally. So I said we have two different arms, right? So one arm is that we provide, you know, our engineering services, product development to other companies and one that we develop our own technologies. We take advantage of the time slots that the engineers are available. That's when we develop our own technology.

30:19And our primary gold cash flow here, but then as we have time, we spend time on this technology over years and we build it. We don't work on our technology unless we get to the point we say, oh wow, now we like, we have work on some technology for automatic transport for robotic transmission for cars or for any other machinery as a matter of fact, I haven't here. This is smallest transmission in the world for a car. So two of these guys, they created a transmission for a car and with this this is robotic, robotic transmission. So what you're showing us is blue and it looks like a plus sign, it's got gold accent on the front. What is the gold part of the front? Well, the tradition. It's kind of gears that goes up and down and okay, it's all robotic. So as a matter of fact, based on our understanding and research we have done based on this technology

31:22that we developed, we could increase EV cars range by 40% which is huge. It's huge. But unfortunately, taking this to market is for big boys or small companies. We've got a lot of, you know, yeah, like on this one, I've been working on this technology since 2017. Every time we have time, we spend more time on it. As a matter of fact, I'm developing the next version which is going to go into the car. This is the kind of more version that we kind of model in it and so on. This is the one that goes into the car as a robotic transmission. Like I like all these. So this is yellow, it's bigger. It's like a like a Lucer plus sign for our audio listeners. So if you've ever worked for any company anywhere, you know there's the process that's supposed to happen and then there's whatever one actually does. The problem is

32:23most leaders can't see that gap, which makes it pretty hard to know it's actually worth fixing. That's why I like scribe optimized which automatically discovers workflows across your approved business applications. No interviews, no workshops, just how work actually happens. It's live dashboard gives you a clear view of how work gets done across all your teams. So you can see which tools are being used, where times being spent, and where the biggest inefficiencies are hiding. And it doesn't just point those out. It explains why they're happening and recommends ways to fix them with estimated time savings built in. That's way more useful than just knowing where the problems are. What I also like is that this is about leadership visibility, not employee monitoring. In fact, user level data is anonymized by default and sensitive information is automatically redacted. And none of it ever leaves your firewall. So you're getting true operational insights without compromising anyone's privacy. To see scribe optimize an action like I did, I had described how slash fixed it and mentioned fixed it for a 30 day risk free trial.

33:24That's SCRIBE.HowSlasHFIXEDIT. Support for today's episode comes from Square, the business platform that helps sellers become the best in the neighborhood. Whether you're growing your business or just trying to keep up with it, Square knows what you need. You can take payments online orders, manage your inventory staff and more, all in one place. That means that when you're with a customer, you're actually with that customer. And they can tell you got things under control. For one, you're focused to not running around like crazy. That's because the whole thing's designed to be easy to use. The last time I stopped by a cafe where I saw the square logo, I was like, yeah, they get it. I knew my experience would be a great one and it was. It was good coffee too. And Square now offers three plans so you can pick the tools you need. So what are you doing about your business? Well, let's help you out. Square's offering our listeners up to $200 off Square Hardware when you sign up at square.com slash go slash we fixed it again. SQUARE.com slash go slash we fixed it and set up your business the way

34:28it works for you. With this technology, even though we've been working on it for seven years, it still we have challenged how to get it to the market. It's not easy. So yeah, just keep working on it until we find a window to jump into it. So that's what we're looking for. Yeah, but there even if even if those never got a market and I hope they do and I hope they're wildly successful, there's still value in passion projects and still value in exploration and experimentation as a sidetrack to whatever your commission to do, right? Absolutely. So okay, but then at a certain point, you either call it a passion project and you say this is what I do in my spare hours or my off time or you know, there's a knock at the door and someone says, how's it going with that thing? We talked about, you know, when is it going to be ready? When can we commercialize? And if the answer's three weeks from now, maybe that's acceptable. If it's next December, maybe there's a little bit less

35:28appetite or patience for it. If it's four years from now, you know, you really have to set that expectation that no, no, no, hold on. This is this one's going to be worth it. And then I'd figure you have to deliver on that. Otherwise, there's jobs on the line or other other negative impact that happens because that thing never materialized. Don't get me wrong, even on this guy that we developed so far, it costs us a few million dollars or development. It's a lot of firmware, a lot of stuff in it, but anyhow, it's like a puzzle really, it's like a puzzle. You know, I see it as a puzzle, so you have to be able to see through the puzzle, see the end of it, you know, see, and then try to solve the problem. Yeah. Yeah. And you work on enough of those even passion projects just fueled by your own ambition. I think Google Maps came from that, it was, I believe it was an employee just doing something on the weekend saying, hey, Google, my employer, you might want to see what I've been, what I've been devoting my time to you. And they

36:31said, oh, that looks like a Google product. And here we are with Google Maps now. There you are. Let's see if we can fix this. I think we've created some of the right conditions for companies to avoid some of the landmines and things that are associated with going the wrong way for far too long and burning too much capital and resources. All right. So we'll call it a passion project, is a passion project. Sometimes those can be commercialized and they sometimes they do materialized. Sometimes they change an entire company in reverse fortunes and that becomes the company. But not always. Sometimes it's just an ancillary revenue or it just helps or comes and goes. But if you are an innovative minded company, you have to allow for innovation. You have to allow for experimentation. There's some understanding that the metrics are different. The accountability is different. Not necessarily going to be held to the same standards as the big gray building next door. But

37:33if you are a profitable or profit driven company, there's some expectation that there will be a payoff somewhere down the road. So it's important to communicate what that is and keep tabs on it. Again, there's that knock on the door for accountability where I think maybe between the engineers and the innovators and those responsible for being cracking down on the engineers and innovators, there has to be some kind of mutual understanding of like give us breathing room and there's an expectation that you've got to deliver. So I think that's probably the most critical part of this is having that align understanding that is nurtured and understood from an organizational perspective that you they're going to be people that are dedicating their careers within the company. They're going to be heads down. Don't question them too much, but do question them because leave them too far along to their own devices. They could burn through endless amounts of time and capital and maybe

38:37have nothing to show for it. So there's got to be some checks and balances. If you do that, you might be on to something. You might be on to something worth protecting. Of course, take the legal protections. Hopefully no one throws you in jail for owning a patent, but that sounds like an extreme case. But if you really are on to something, find the right align partners that are going to help you take it to market. Make sure what you have is defensible. Make sure what you have has an audience waiting for it because you never want to go to market with this beautiful, glorious technology. And then people say no. It doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong, but you might be way too early. Or you might be wrong by a tenth of a degree and another company comes along and says thanks for that. And they're much bigger and they just wipe you out of existence. So those are some of the cautions, some of the, I think the roadmap we're building for companies to we're not the scourging innovation. We're not the scourging new technology. We want everyone to have a fair crack at it. But if we give them this advice and say here you go, did we just save, I don't know,

39:43some billions of dollars and point them in the right direction? Did we fix it? Melissa, what do you say? I think this is one of those things where it's more, just like you said, it's more a playbook for innovation. And I think that it's really important to understand that the cost of innovation to your company, especially if you're an established company, can be the entire company in of itself. Like a cautionary tale is codec, right? Like to not be, uh, have innovation lab looking and saying, oh, we're going to be going from film to digital, you know, and what can we do? And how can we, you know, because we have like just a beloved brand. Uh, how can we make sure that we are keeping up with everything that's going on? Because evolution happens and that's what happens in every marketplace. So to me, it's about funding it with the cash cow, which is the larger company and source if you have that and not the the general operations. So that there is that ability to have just,

40:46you know, no fences, you know, just allow innovation to happen in its own time and in its own pace without the pressures of what's on the revenue calendar. I also think rewarding the kill, not just the win is really important because I do think a lot of companies, especially bigger companies, pilot the hell out of things and it doesn't, it just doesn't go anywhere and it's just a waste and it's because people are afraid to really kind of say what needs to be said. So I really want there to be integrity and authenticity and in and purpose in this journey. And then have the team be involved from an organization perspective. And I think Alan, you've brought up how this has really been something that you've done really well, which is let them create the milestones, let them create what operational signals or what kind of innovation signals they're going to use to say this is working for us. Or this is where we take a step back and pivot. So I think we've definitely set up some

41:49really good ideas for companies, founders, innovators, innovation teams to really think about how do they become the next big thing. Nice. Thank you, Melissa. Alan, did we encourage companies without discouraging them? Did we create the right advice for going forward and did you think we fixed it? I feel like I've been a little bit discouraging here, but I really did not mean it. I'm a soccer player and I always utilize the soccer philosophy into the business. So I'm falling down if I get triple, I've only the other way back into the game and I get up the stand-up and run. Any other way, I'm not playing, somebody else is playing. So that philosophy is always the stays with me. When I fall down, I clean myself, I get up, get the dust off, get the dirt off,

42:51and start running again. That's the only way. Being in business, the first rule of being in any business doesn't have to be a technology business. You cannot give up, you've got to have very strong personality, strong personality is very important to run a company. I don't care who you are, Elon Musk, be all-fail. Everybody keep failing. There's nine failure, only one success. Don't be afraid of failure. It's inevitable, but then there's success. At the end of some of those roads too, there has to be, we'll add that to our fix. Well, that's going to close out this episode. If we fix it, you're welcome. Before we go, thank you Melissa, a big thank you to our guest, Alan Neha, a sun man engineering. Alan, I've been in marketing for a long time. I've got some good product ideas. If I want something developed or prototyped, how do I find you? They can always refer to our websites on mentechnology.com or they can call us color office at 408-441-1500 and we'd be happy to help them.

44:00We got the hotline. Thank you, Alan. To all of you, to our new listeners, our long-time fixaholics, I have looked into the future and we have more great episodes ahead for you. We've lined up amazing guests for you and topics that I can't wait to jump into. So if you love our show, you're in for a treat. Remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Give us a rating. Raven about us on social. All those good things. Thank you for having me, you should. Thank you, Alan. We hope you enjoyed this episode of We Fixed. You're welcome. We go into every episode somewhat cold and nothing we say should be construed as legal advice, financial advice or anything that would get us in trouble. All trademarks, I.P. and brand elements remain property of their respective owners.