Guest: Rob Wolcott and Kaihan Krippendorff

Kelly sits down with Robert Wolcott, adjunct professor of innovation at the Booth School of Business and adjunct professor of executive education at the Kellogg School of Management and Kaihan Krippendorff CEO of Outthinker Networks to talk about their new book: “Proximity: How Coming Breakthroughs in Just-in-Time Transform Business, Society and Daily Life.”  

 

Although AI is new, it’s not like we haven’t always faced new technologies, right? 

“There are always learning curves for any new technology. And what we tend to do is see the new thing, and we say, ‘What can I do with this? To be a little better at what I already do?’ And that’s a good exercise, but that’s not enough. What people have to recognize in any field is that the technologies that are arising today allow us to do things we could never have done before. And that’s where the pivots come.’ 

 

The proximity idea is really embodied by the story you tell of Dr. Lang. 

“Dr. Lang is a radical guy. He is one of my heroes: 6 tours of duty in the Middle East. So, he’s in the field hospitals, and they keep running out of generic drugs. And everybody else is trying to figure out supply chains, and they will fly the drugs in on an F16 from Germany to Afghanistan to solve the problem. So, he said, this is ridiculous. Generic drugs are made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. If I had the right equipment, I could make the drugs here myself. And so, he went back to the United States, got a grant from DARPA, worked with a team from MIT, which, by the way, is also the team that helped Coca Cola build the freestyle machine. It’s the same technology, a little more advanced. And they can do it on demand. Pharmaceuticals can be created from basic ingredients – almost any generic drug you want on demand. And it’s the size of a refrigerator.” 

 

So, we shouldn’t worry about the robot’s taking over? 

“I believe that your improv skills and telling stories and creating meaningful experiences with others will actually become far more important in the future, not because computers won’t be able to do it, they will. But because we’re going to want humans to be in the game. We’re going to want humans to do it. Let me give you an example: we still watch Usain Bolt run and say, ‘Oh, my God! Isn’t that amazing?’ But he can’t run as fast as a Honda civic.”