Inspiring Minds: Recent Episodes
Justin Starbird
Welcome to the "INSPIRING MINDS" podcast, hosted by Justin Starbird and presented by, The Edison Awards. Listen as Justin talks with innovators & pioneers that are changing the world around us, TRUE modern-day Thomas Edison's walking among us. Guests will answer the most difficult of questions facing start-ups, established brands, and folks with great ideas that are just getting started. Learn how these amazing innovators have gone from concept to commercialization and what it took to get there.
Tor Alden, Principal of HS Design - a SteriPack Company, joined host Justin Starbird to talk about medical device design and empowering your team can help create better products as they go through the commercialization process.
HSD is a product development firm based in Morristown, NJ where they work across several domains to help their clients take a concept and bring it all of the way forward to commercialization. Today's guest, Tor Alden summed up his role, "... from my perspective my role, has evolved over the years. My role is principal of HSD. Most recently, I'm helping to bridge the gap between the client's expectations and the development staff's understanding of the program depending on the type of program we have."
"Winning an Edison Award affects the business a great deal because it gives us a moment to pause and celebrate the hardworking that we have done. There's a lot of sweat equity that gets into putting products together. Sometimes, the end of a program can be somewhat you just move on to another program and it is anti-climactic. We're usually going right on to the next project. That time to breathe is really where I see these awards coming into for our team's benefit in that. At the end of the day, having a capstone Edison, is great for designers and engineers to get that exposure and recognition."
Preston Pan, R&D engineer for the US market of EBM Technologies, joins host Justin Starbird to kick-off season 2 of Inspiring Minds, a podcast powered by the Edison Awards.
Listen as Preston talks about how EBM Technologies has evolved over the years and continues to iterate to give doctors and clinicians in the field tools that they need to make real-time diagnosis. EBM Technologies, provides medical imaging systems and specialize in picture archiving and communication system, also known as PACs. The company was founded in 1988 in Taiwan with over 150 employees located in four offices. EBM Technologies has installed their PAC system in nearly 3,500 hospitals across regions of Asia, North America, and are planning to enter the Middle East market soon.
As the 2021 Edison Awards showed, more recently, EBM Technologies started to shift their focus to mobile medical applications. The 2021 Edison Award Winner, the EBD Technologies UDE app, turns an iPad Pro into a medical image viewer, and also a server. Additionally, users have artificial intelligence models that are integrated inside for clinicians to easily utilize this type of work that other people, that research engineers in AI companies have developed.
Listen as Preston dives deeper into what it means to win an Edison Award and what is next from EBM Technologies!
The first two time guest of the Inspiring Minds podcast, CEO of Whipsaw Design, Dan Harden joins Justin Starbird again to talk more about device and product design. When Dan was on last time, he and Justin talked in depth and detail about product design, how design companies go about working with clients, and how they create expectations about projects. On this episode, Dan dives deeper into how projects move through the process from concepts, to design, and then into commercialized products.
It is an important topic at the Edison Awards, because we have been fortunate to recognize some really amazing projects that followed this exact process.
As Dan points out, "it's a mystery, or maybe customers don't even think about where products come from. You go to the store and you see these things and you're like, Oh, it just exists. There are countless hours, weeks, and even years that go into the development of a lot of products out there, especially the more innovative ones that requires a lot of R&D, a lot of development, a lot of brainpower to pull it off. Process is everything. Process is key to innovation. You've got to have a sound process to get you there. Every project is different."
Dan has no secrets to success. Whipsaw has worked hard to bring many every day products to life in a way that help create an impact, improve our lives, and make the public more healthy.
Listen to Dan and Justin on today's episode of Inspiring Minds!
Olympus, the large, global med-tech company, is celebrating being over 100 years old and still being recognized for innovation. With excellent objectives, planning, and strategy, Olympus has really broke barriers down in what many consider a 'stayed technology' in optics. With their Edison Award Win for X Line Objectives with ultra-thin convex and concave lenses they've taken it to a whole new level and are excited to be recognized for the hard work.
Olympus has developed a proprietary lens polishing technology to manufacture X Line Objectives with ultra-thin convex and concave lenses. The X Line Objectives break optical barriers and improve optical performance such as numerical aperture, image flatness, and chromatic correction.
David Rideout, Executive Director of Marketing for Life Science for Olympus Corporation of the Americas, joined Host Justin Starbird and explained that, "our focus is on clinicians, researchers, and pharmaceutical companies. That means that we're bringing solutions that we pull for clinicians, we're going to speed up diagnosis and accuracy of diagnosis, which we have researchers with new tools to deepen our understanding of the human body, and diseases that impact it, and help pharmaceutical companies bring new therapies to market faster. Obviously, all three of these have never been more important as we all weather this new storm in our lives."
As the world has changed around us, Olympus has been set for long-term success because of a shift in mindset that occurred a few years ago with the mantra "Your Science Matters." As David explains, "Everything we do is with that Your Science Matters mindset. "Working with people who are trying to cure Alzheimer's, cure cancer and now, find a cure for COVID-19, for Olympus, it's just natural to do everything we could to make sure the worker, our customers, and our users are doing continues as best as it can in this kind of time."
Innovation is often met with adversity, whether it be setbacks in development, resistance within the market, or external forces that hinder progress. Yet, the truly gifted are able to take these challenges in stride. In 1914, Thomas Edison himself was struck with ill fortune when his laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey burnt down, causing him to lose more than half of his operation and inventions. Ten buildings were lost in the catastrophic blaze. Still, Edison pushed forward undeterred, viewing the fire as an opportunity to start fresh and improve further, reportedly commenting, “We’ve just got rid of a lot of rubbish.” This ability, to move forward despite even the most oppressive of circumstances, was a key to Edison’s success and continues to be found in the forefront innovators of today.
The MIT Hyperloop II Team, this year’s gold medalist in Nextgen Logistics, is one such group. In 2019, they placed first in the United States at the SpaceX sponsored Hyperloop Pod Competition with the Hyperloop II, in spite of a devastating blow suffered on the journey there. Featured on the Inspiring Minds podcast, Hyperloop II team captain and Arrow Electronics Director of Innovation and Product Strategy Vik Parth, as well as Corporate Social Responsibility Director Joe Verrengia, talk to host Justin Starbird to discuss the challenges faced up to their Edison Award win, the adversities they expect to face as they move forward with the Hyperloop II, and Arrow Electronics’ role in making their success a reality.
Learn more (http://news.mit.edu/2019/overcoming-obstacles-hyperloop-competition-0828)
There are over 25 million asthma sufferers and over 80 million allergy suffers in the United States alone. This creates a large group of people that are all hyper-aware of the air they breathe. Although they may not refer to the air they breath in the technical terms that the air purification industry speaks about, these people do talk about mold and bacteria. It is a very important topic. Today, air quality and airborne illness, Covid-19, are at the forefront of people's mind.
Jaya Rao, CEO and Co-Founder of Molekule, joins host Justin Starbird for the latest episode of Inspiring Minds to talk about what led to the founding of such a game changing company.
Jaya's brother is a life long allergy and asthma sufferer and "He lived it and so we knew he was feeling it (the poor air quality) and a whole bunch of other people were feeling the pain of breathing dirty air, and that we could meet them there and talk about how we're different." Jaya's father had developed a technology that could purify the air right in your home instead of through an HVAC system in the ducts of your home.
The next challenge was, "Okay, you've had filtration for years. Here's something new. Would you want to try it?"
"A lot of times aesthetically, people end up using it (the product) and then throwing it on the side of the road because they're done with it and throwing it into the trash. We wanted this (the Molekule Air) to be an object that really felt compelling to you, that you felt like it belongs in your home, it belongs as a centerpiece in your home because it's doing something important. It's cleaning your air."
I think the biggest step was trying to come up with something fundamentally different in the way it looked, and then getting that manufactured and finding partners. We took it one step at a time but now as I look back at it, I just think, "I don't know how we did it with, at that time, a really small team." I think it was just we were naive maybe to the challenges ahead and we just kept going. Ultimately got the product out, which at the time, a lot of Silicon Valley hardware companies were not able to do. That was really just a big moment to finally arrive at.
Today, Molekule is a multi-Edison Award Winning Company and forever part of the Edison Awards amazing community. Listen to the full interview with Justin and Jaya now!
On this episode of Inspiring Minds, host Justin Starbird welcomes good friend of the Edison Awards, serial entrepreneur, part owner, developer, and all-around awesome guy, Ryan Fogelman. Ryan is the CEO of Conversion Development is leading Gold Edison Award Winner Fire Rover, CO-hatch and former Edison Award Winner Re-Grip.
Listen to Ryan talk about how he has over come obstacle after obstacle to find success.
He says it best in this expert, "I’ve typically not had deep pockets in anything that I’ve worked on. I’ve never been one where a company like Accenture would say, “Okay, why don’t you become part of my research and development team and help us figure out what the next product market would be.” What I do is I’d like to work from the ground up. I’d like to work with inventors. I’d like to understand. I’m curious. I think that’s where the Re-Grip.
I fell in love with the innovation, in the simplicity of what the invention was. With Fire Rover, the same thing. It’s a very complex product and I work with the inventors and it was one of my really good friends who actually had the idea for the company and he did the first year of building prototypes and then I got involved.
Again, when I get involved, I think it’s the next level. You have the inventor who creates that product. Then I look for products. Number one that I think are going to make it because nobody wants to waste their time. I don’t want to say I refuse to fail. I’d like to think that I refuse to fail. Of course, I fail, but at the same time, it’s always going to be a calculated risk on the projects that I want to work on.
Then there are the surprises. You work on a passion project, like CO-hatch that actually now has a mind of its own and a life of itself. I think I’m always looking for innovation. I’m looking for things that excite me. Then, from my perspective, when I get involved, it’s, “Okay, what’s the best way and channels to start to drive awareness.” Then from that perspective, it’s, “Okay, now, we get awareness, let’s prove the product works, and then let’s try to go out and actually get real sales.”
You get real sales, it turns into a real business. There are some great ideas out there and there’s a lot of very naive inventors and I say that with the most respect. Inventors should be naive. They should stay naive. They should believe that the world is simple and that they can create a product because what’s made the US and what’s made the American way it’s our innovation.
It’s looking at a problem and trying to find something new, which is why I love the Edison Awards. Because when you go there, there are all of these different products of people who’ve created something or a different mousetrap or something. That’s huge. Now, bringing it to market is different.
Sometimes I feel like I crush the inventor’s dreams when I’m like, “Create your product. Get your patent, be done.” Then bring someone in like myself or a group that licensed it to a company that has the money and the deep pockets that can really bring it to market. Again, as we all know what the internal combustion engine, it’s not the most efficient product that’s out there.
My great grandfather used to say, “It was the biggest forest that was sold to all of us as Americans.” At the end of the day, that product made it because of the deep pocket. We would have had electric cars 50 years ago if it was for what the best and most innovative products are. There’s always the reality of business. I think that’s the hard part for people to understand."
3D printing, or digital manufacturing as it is also known, is a very complicated subject. To get to an end product, it involves lots of different types of scientific backgrounds. Companies that are successful commercializing 3D printing have been able to build a team that is capable of speaking all kinds of different scientific languages that are pushing for the same goal. That end goal being to deliver great technology that people can use, can design with, can build and iterate with, and that helps create products or projects on time.
HP has been investing in 3D printing and because of their history, have the supply chain set-up for and can deliver game changing technology that is resetting the market. Lihua Zhao, the Global Head of 3D Printing Lab at HP Labs and an HP Distinguished Technologist, joined Justin Starbird for the latest episode of Inspiring Minds to talk about the future of 3D printing.
Lihua shared that, “We have been developing our technology for quite a few years. One of the big things you may know is HP has a strong position in delivering fluids. We have a lot of engineering know-hows to build a printing-like technology. (We have worked hard to) leverage a lot of the existing assets and to assess the world’s needs. This combination of developing and delivering our technology for plastic additive manufacturing, as well as for metal, has led to producing goods in a different fashion.”
HP created the technology, called Multi Jet Fusion, to meet the demands of printing for plastic. This type of powder-based system has been integral to being able run around the clock so that there are no time limits for manufacturing and new parts, materials and objects are delivered on time.
“We’re living in a 3D printing world. How do you start with zeros and ones and end up with a physical thing? At HP we fuse this physical with the digital together to bring that experience and that performance to create new technology.”
Zsquare develops high performance, ultra-thin, single-use endoscopes for a broad range of indications. They have created a single-use endoscopic platform that completely eliminates the risk of cross-contamination which is caused by endoscopes that are reused. These endoscopes dramatically cut healthcare cost and improve diagnostics quality.
Asaf Shahmoon, Founder and CEO of Zsquare, patented miniature fibers that allow for unprecedented access for doctors, serving indications that never been available before. "I think that we have started out very ambitiously by reconsidering endoscopy in general. Once we researched the market, we knew that rather than tackle a single barrier or a single trend, we were going to disrupt the way people approach endoscopy. We mapped out basically three components in the clinical, in the healthcare, as well as the market. We set out to create a sustainable technology that would significantly shift all of these elements," shared Asaf on the most recent episode of Inspiring Minds with Justin Starbird.
For example, meeting the demands of the global pandemic has been at the forefront of their scope of work. The Zsquare tiny endoscope, can access the Eustachian in ENT, the Fallopian tube in gynecology and go deeper down the lungs in bronchoscopy.
Asaf explained "I think that from the clinical aspect, we needed an endoscope that was from one side flexible enough but at the same time, very small in order to go inside areas that no other endoscope can go, but still provide high-resolution images. In terms of health care, we had to solve the cross-contamination problem that is actually affecting the entire environment of the multi-use. I think that specifically in these days when a pandemic is being spread around the globe, we're witnessing the magnitude of cross-contamination. Therefore, single-use endoscope can play a vital role in avoiding this."
Vocera has always worked under the philosophy of following the customer and developing solutions centered around human-centered design techniques. Meaning that in order to design your product to be effective and to support the workflow in the business, you need to be immersed in the business and understand what happens from a workflow perspective.
As Kathy English, the Chief Marketing Officer of Vocera told Justin on this episode of Inspiring Minds, "The thing about healthcare is it's always changing. A nurse's day is never the same as it was intended to be when it started out when you end the day, because you have patients crashing, you have doctors coming in and wanting to talk to the nurse at any given time. You have new orders, you have new patient arrivals. It's this dynamic environment and the only way to design a product that's going to solve for that is to be immersed in it."
Kathy explained how the product managers actually go onsite, follow the clinicians, and understand what happens on any given day and the way that workflow might need to change. The team at Vocera is inspiring folks each day to solve communication problems in healthcare.
EVP of Healthcare Solutions at DJO Global, Steve Ingel, joins Justin Starbird to talk about working to continue to innovate and meet customer demands in an ever changing world.
DJO, the 7th Largest Orthopedic company in the world, is a leading global provider of medical technologies designed to get and keep people moving. The Company’s products and software solutions address patient care from injury prevention to rehabilitation after surgery, injury or from degenerative disease, enabling people to regain or maintain their natural motion.
The DJO software platform, MotionMD, recently won a Gold Edison Award for its web based, integrated solution, with Internal development teams. Steve shares how "we test new features and modules on our own business (insource/outsource), and then also pilot with direct Customers for Voice of Customer and work closely with industry leaders and Industry groups and associations. Recently we reached 3 Million Patient Agreements, have well over 2,500 locations across the US and now Canada using our software, 25k providers, and integrated with 47 EMR vendors. We did a very rapid pivot to tele-health to support Customers with unique software features, and we continue to add more features to our platform to meet evolving Customer and Industry needs."
Listen as Steve explains how... "nobody else in the industry is as uniquely positioned as DJO to deliver on the continuum of care promise. Nevertheless, we continue to focus on the innovation gap, on solving real Customer and market needs, provide even greater value, while also leveraging our strengths. My goal is to constantly challenge my teams to widen our competitive advantage."
Steve and DJO are a great example of how to lead and continue to innovate as the world changes all around us.
Dan Harden, CEO and Founder of Whipsaw joins Justin Starbird today to discuss leading a company through adversity. Dan and his team are a group of true pioneers and innovators in the product design space.
Dan shares that, “We bring that attitude to our clients, that optimistic like good old fashioned girl American, “let's roll up our sleeves and solve this problem” attitude lives in those companies so strongly that it's benefited us during this pandemic. Our clients feel that they're really grateful to us for sticking with them and helping them through this difficult time.”
Listen as Dan talks about how his team works explaining that I’t’s really just about the celebration and the joy of creative problem solving.” Everything that we do stems from this belief and this purpose, that the world can be a better place. If you think openly and creatively, we live and breathe innovation. It is our way of expressing ourselves. It feels natural.
If you are not familiar with Whipsaw, they have had a lot of big hits ranging, from Google Chromecast, Nike FuelBand many products for Brita, Dell products. The list goes on and on. They’ve helped clients produce and ship well over a thousand products since Dan founded the company back in 1999.
Listen now.
Industrial Technology Research Institute is located in the northern part of Taiwan, Hsinchu, won two Edison Awards for 2020 for their contributions to innovation.
In the first of their two wins, ITRI took the Edison Award Gold in the Adhesives category for their product Celluad, a product developed in part by Dr. Lin, Research Director of Materials Research and Development at the company. Dr. Lin joined Justin Starbird and explained how Celluad was created using cellulose, an organic material found in plant cell walls, this adhesive is low-cost, strong, water-resistant, and environmentally friendly.
Compatible with existing manufacturing processes, Celluad provides excellent adhesion when applied to plywood, flooring, and lumber core board. Most importantly, ITRI’s adhesive is completely free of formaldehyde, a carcinogenic chemical found in the resin used to construct most artificial wooden boards. In this way, ITRI offers an adhesive solution that is effective and affordable as well as healthier for manufacturers, consumers, and the environment.
The second award ITRI received this year was bronze in Cellular Research for iKNOBEADS, the world’s first and only biomimetic magnetic beads capable of fighting cancer by stimulating, expanding, and strengthening T cells through imitation of the immune system. Dr. Chen also joined Justin and worked directly on their development, explains that the knobby shape which gives iKNOBEADS their name and makes them so effective was the result of a happy accident that occurred while experimenting with different bead sizes when it was found that the addition of texture to the beads increased expansion rate. Because of this, iKNOBEADS not only fight cancer but do so with an incubation period reduced by three to four days, reducing opportunities for contamination and saving money.
Listen as Dr. Lin and Dr. Chen talk through innovation, commercialization and what winning an Edison Award has meant for ITRI.
Jenny Yiu, Director of Operations at Nano and Advanced Materials Institute Limited (NAMI) in Hong Kong, joins Justin Starbird to talk about how NAMI achieves technological advancements and commercialization of technologies that are developed within their organization. NAMI focuses their research and development on five market sectors which have the highest potential; construction, electronics, energy, environmental, and healthcare. As of this posting, NAMI has already commercialized over 20 products that have launched to the market in 2020.
Jenny shares that "... We (at NAMI) believe in this miniature (nano) world of materials because our focus is on the materials. Materials can take on distinctive chemical, electrical, magnetic, mechanical, optical, and other properties. When working at the nano-size, our researchers are able to exploit these properties and we leverage our cutting-edge equipment, laboratory and infrastructure to create solutions that will have commercial success."
Listen as Jenny and Justin discuss the business model, the types or relationships that are successful, and insights on what can work to help you commercialize your next project.
Wayne Liu, SVP of Perfect Corp, joins Justin Starbird to discuss how a hardcore technology company applies their innovation to the beauty industry.
Yes, to their roots, Perfect Corp incorporates R&D, engineering and innovation to all of their projects. According to Wayne, "...More than two-thirds of our employees are really technically driven. However, it's not only technology. The spirit of the Edison Awards is really how to apply the technology into the real world and commercialize it, and then create benefit for the majority of the people. That's really something we are looking at. We use our technology to create a product, and then we find a place where it can be useful and can benefit all the people. Then we commercialize, and get the business successes."
That business model is confirmed by winning the Edison Award. Wayne adds that, "we recognize that we are having an impact on the market which we are choosing, which is the beauty industry. We are really mainstream now."
This is the Sanitizing Solution that could "Re-open the World!" Chris Vazzana talks about www.Klean-Pak.com and the journey to a whole new product line with Host Justin Starbird.
In true Edison fashion, Chris and his team asked themselves if, "... there is a way that we could take some of our existing core technology and change it up so that it can be consumer-ready?"
On this Inspiring Minds Podcast, one exciting piece we learn from Chris is how he and his team went over to their Director of R&D's house (because of the Covid-19 quarantine) and they sketched out and developed an entirely new product with a couple of other folks and a couple of our key engineers here. They said, "We can take the core technology that we have, change some orifices and pressures and inlets and outlets, make it simpler and make it consumer-ready and be able to put a sanitizing and disinfecting solution into the apparatus and allow for the mixing and the ratio mixing to occur."
Incredibly, the team was able to take 25 years of experience in technology and existing products and reconfigure it all to be in a new application that could help us open up society, help us open up the world!
Ryan Morris, Exec. Chairman of Software Motor Company, has always viewed business and companies as vehicles for solving important problems in the world. He shares and explains the SMC mission is to transform all motors in the world to be optimally efficient systems.
Software Motor Company, a 2020 Edison Award WINNER, is poised to disrupt an industry that relies on patents over 100 years old. As the leader of SMC, Ryan shares how his quest started at a very young age and continues to evolve as the company keeps breaking down barriers. Listen as Justin and Ryan discuss innovation, best practices, and true leadership during the most challenging of times.
Ken Gray, Edison Awards Steering Committee member and former Global Director of Innovation at Caterpillar Inc., joins host Justin Starbird. Today they discuss Ken's unique and insightful perspective on the elements companies should consider while focusing on innovation. Justin & Ken go back nearly 10 years and their friendship started at the Edison Awards in Chicago in 2012 when Ken and his team at CAT disrupted an entire industry by launch the Hybrid Excavator and won GOLD that year. Ken also explores how the size of an organization redefines the appropriate approach to innovation, informed by an extensive career working with companies from large corporations to nonprofits and startups.
Listen today as Justin talks with Edison Awards Executive Director, Frank Bonafilia about how the Edison Awards got its start, who was first recognized and what makes him so committed to innovation.
The Edison Awards is one of the few global platforms that really recognizes, honors, and fosters innovation innovators. Frank shares how, "it's really the teams that we're looking to recognize and honor. We're doing this in the name of Thomas Edison, who we see as one of the greatest innovators of all time."
Frank continues to be amazed how someone like Thomas Edison who's been passed away over 100 years ago is still revered, and is the icon of innovation around the world. The world has come a long way from the recognition of a calling card compared to putting someone in space or making people's lives secure.