AN INNOVATOR'S JOURNEY: 5 LESSONS LEARNED

Curiosity about the composition of networks and the activities of their components and users is what drove me to develop Snort, an open source cybersecurity project, in the late 90s, and then launch network security company Sourcefire, which Cisco later acquired.  The lessons I learned as a first-time entrepreneur and "ideas guy" helped shape the trajectory and success of the company and the product set, not to mention set a new course for me personally. I still lean on those lessons today and would like to share some of the most impactful lessons here, to help other entrepreneurs make the most of their experience.

1. Focus on the journey, not the destination.

Whenever someone asks you what your exit strategy is, the answer should always be: I'm building a great company and good things happen to great companies. If you have a specific outcome in mind, you're going to structure your business for that outcome and that outcome might not be achievable. A more durable strategy is to optimize for building something sustainable, that has intrinsic value and will produce the opportunity for many options as time marches on.

2. Innovative ideas must come from within, but validate.

Everyone has ideas. However, relying solely on your gut as you execute them and turn them into reality has limitations, especially in a realm where that reality is reflected in growth rates and your success as an organization or as a leader. It's important to really know when you need to ask questions, and what questions you should be asking. There is only so much you can do yourself before you need to check in with people who have operational and functional hands-on knowledge of where you are striving to innovate. I test theories with trusted peers and potential users to sanity check and make sure I have a durable idea before I even think about executing it.

3. Early decisions impact the road ahead.

There is always tension between analysis paralysis and making a seemingly inconsequential decision that stays with you for a vastly longer time than you anticipated. When you're building a company, there are lots of decisions that need to be made but very few that will prove fatal if you're wrong. Knowing the difference between the fatal ones and those that aren't is important. Amazon categorizes these as Type one decisions and Type two decisions and each type requires different decision-making processes. Especially on the engineering side of things, you must understand the gravity of the decisions you are making in terms of how long the consequences are going to be with you, or with your customers/clients. Make decisions quickly but carefully. For potentially fatal decisions, work to compartmentalize them so if you make a mistake, like standardizing on the wrong type of technology, it's possible to create workarounds or to compensate for those mistakes down the road.​

4. There's magic in metaphors.

As a leader, it's important to be able to build rapport with a wide variety of people because many times you'll need to be able to communicate with someone who has no foundation to understand what you're talking about. The world of cybersecurity is a good example. It is incredibly esoteric, so good metaphors give you a way to communicate that resonates with people, whether they are customers buying a product from you, bankers investing in you, or your family trying to comprehend what you do all day every day. Keep in mind that metaphors only work if you can simplify the technical, relate it to something else that is simple to a broad audience, and understand that analogous thing well enough to draw parallels. When you sit down and grind on the problem long enough you can come up with some really useful ideas.

5. Home-in on eternal problems.

Some problems never go away, like knowing what you've got on your enterprise network, what it is doing, and what's happening to it. So, coming up with durable technologies, the application of which will last for decades, is the game. How you architect for that will change over time in order to remain effective as infrastructure, devices, applications, and technologies change, but the fundamental need to solve the problem will remain. So, look for problems that will remain relevant and become an expert in that space, in your technology area, and in what is possible.

As an entrepreneur your opportunity is to change the way that people think and solve problems. It's exciting and what's driven me throughout my career. Hopefully these tips will help you find success on that journey as well.

BY MARTIN ROESCH, CEO, NETOGRAPHY@MROESCH

WHY A.I. COULD CHANGE HOW YOUR EMPLOYEES SPEND THEIR TIME

Artificial intelligence may soon be your workers' best friend.

While fears about generative A.I. eliminating jobs will likely persist for years to come, the technology could eventually free up 40 percent of working hours across all industries, leaving employees to focus on other tasks. That's according to Jan Willem Van Den Bremen, technology lead of the professional services company Accenture's Europe, Middle East, and Africa operations. At a conference hosted by enterprise management company Workday in Barcelona last week, Van Den Bremen said that companies like his have had so much success using generative A.I. to streamline work that leaders at those companies are now rethinking what tasks should be assigned to human workers and which can mostly be handed off to algorithms. 

Accenture has inked several A.I. partnerships with companies such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, and in June announced plans to invest $3 billion in A.I. over three years. As part of that investment, the company is planning to double its A.I. staff from 40,000 to 80,000. According to Van Den Bremen, Accenture is currently in the process of "redeploying" and "upgrading" its staff, "in order to be relevant in new jobs."

As an example of what this shift in responsibilities could look like, Van Den Bremen told conference attendees that computer engineers currently tasked with writing software and programs could refocus on validating new programs developed by A.I., allowing for the creation of more new programs in less time. 

Large firms like Accenture aren't the only ones hoping that A.I. can help them to accomplish more with breaking either the bank or their employees. Smaller companies are using A.I. tools to accomplish tasks like generating emails, creating marketing campaigns, and troubleshooting business strategy.

SAM ALTMAN IS RETURNING AS CEO OF OpenAI. 3 THINGS IT MEANS FOR THE FUTURE OF TECH'S MOST IMPORTANT COMPANY

For anyone who has been following the OpenAI debacle, it's been a long five days. Even if you haven't been paying attention, the drama that unfolded over the weekend will directly impact how you use technology in the near future, so it's worth understanding what's going on here.

As a brief recap, on Friday, the company's board fired its CEO, Sam Altman, over Google Meet without explaining its reasoning beyond that he had "not been consistently candid." That left a lot of room for people to wonder why the most important tech company in the world would push out the person who had become the primary ambassador and evangelist of A.I. 

Then, over the weekend, Altman tried to get his job back with the help of pressure from investors, employees, and Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella, who has basically bet the world's second-largest tech company's future on OpenAI's technology. It looked as though Altman and the board might reach a deal, only to have OpenAI announce that Emmett Shear, the former CEO and founder of Twitch, would become CEO instead. Nadella then announced that Altman and OpenAI's former president, Greg Brockman, would become Microsoft employees.

Almost all of OpenAI's employees then threatened to resign if the board didn't reconsider. Actually, they threatened to all go to Microsoft if the board didn't rehire Altman and then themselves resign.

On Tuesday, talks between Altman and the board resumed. By Wednesday morning, it was official: Altman was back as CEO. A new, three-member board has been appointed, led by Bret Taylor, the former co-CEO of Salesforce, who also served as the chair of the board at Twitter. Reportedly, the board is vetting candidates who will make up a larger, nine-member board.

I know that's a lot, and I'm leaving out even more. If you're interested in the drama, I highly recommend reading The Wall Street Journal's recap. 

If you're not someone who spends that much time following tech companies, you might wonder why anyone cares this much about Silicon Valley drama. That's a reasonable thing to ask, but there's a simple answer: OpenAI isn't just the company with the fastest-growing tech product ever (ChatGPT), it's the most important tech company in the world right now. 

And, even though Altman is back as CEO, and most of OpenAI's employees didn't have to resign, things aren't quite returning to normal. You don't go through this much in this short a period of time and expect things to go back to the way they were. In fact, I think there are a few things that are worth considering:

First, the most obvious thing is that OpenAI avoids what was looking like a total collapse. That's important because OpenAI is the undisputed leader in the space at this point. In the race to develop artificial intelligence capabilities, OpenAI has a significant lead over its rivals, including several of the biggest tech companies in the world like Google and Meta. 

Since launching a year ago, ChatGPT has attracted more than 100 million monthly users and now generates $1 billion a year in revenue. It's hard to see a scenario where all of OpenAI's employees quit but the company manages to continue the pace of development it has had over the past year.

Second, Microsoft really did tie its future to OpenAI. You can argue whether that was wise--given the latter company's instability and corporate governance issues--but there's no way around it. Microsoft built ChatGPT into almost every software product it makes. It also offered it as an enterprise product to corporate customers through Azure, its cloud-computing platform. 

There's a reason Nadella took such an active role in resolving the mess at OpenAI, and that's because of the existential risk it posed to all of his future plans for Microsoft. For now, they get back to working the plan, though Nadella has already said he expects changes in the way OpenAI is run in the future.

This leads to the last thing the whole ordeal means for OpenAI, which is its mission and structure. I'm not going to get into the complicated way the for-profit company is owned and controlled by a nonprofit organization that was--until this weekend--controlled by a board of independent directors whose mission was to make sure OpenAI was building A.I. that benefits all of humanity.

I will just say that I expect the structure of OpenAI is going to look a lot more like a normal company in the near future. If you ask investors for huge amounts of money to build the most important technology of the next 50 years, they will want to have some say in how the company is run. That OpenAI got this far without that being true is weird, but there's no way investors--especially its biggest investor, Microsoft--will let this happen again. 

5 NEW WAYS TO BUILD A.I. INTO YOUR COMPANY'S CORE

In the evolving landscape of AI, sticking strictly to the traditional playbook is unlikely to yield the best results. Integrating new technology like AI into your business operations is often met with resistance. It's human nature - we're generally wary of change. To truly get your employees on board with AI, you'll need to think differently. Flipping the script on conventional wisdom could be the catalyst you need for change. 

Here are five unconventional yet potentially transformative ideas to encourage broader AI adoption within your organization.

1. Launch an AI Immersion Week

Imagine dedicating an entire week to going "all in" on AI. Encourage your team to use AI for every task, whether big or small. It may seem a bit audacious, but the potential for learning and transformation is significant. In my experience, this kind of full-throttle exploration into AI can demystify the technology for team members and boost their confidence in using it. 

In workplaces today, AI tends to play a more peripheral role in day-to-day work. In our research at The Work Innovation Lab, Asana's internal think tank, we found that only 36 percent of employees use AI on a weekly basis. An AI Immersion Week is designed to deepen this engagement, pushing beyond sporadic use to a more in-depth exploration and understanding of AI's capabilities. 

There are two key benefits of AI immersion. First, it allows employees to uncover the most effective applications of AI, some of which they may have never expected. Second, it provides clearer insight into AI's limitations. Understanding what AI can't do is just as important as recognizing AI's strengths. It sets realistic expectations, dispels myths, and alleviates fears and apprehensions. 

2. Bring a contrarian into AI strategy conversations

In our research, we've found that executives are much more optimistic about AI than other employees. 61 percent of executives believe using AI will help their companies hit their objectives more effectively than not using AI, while only 46 percent of individual contributors say the same. 

This enthusiasm is valuable, but there's a risk of developing a rose-tinted view of AI's capabilities. To mitigate this, consider appointing a "designated contrarian" in important AI strategy meetings and brainstorming sessions. This isn't about creating conflict for its own sake but about enriching the discussion with diverse viewpoints. 

Research suggests that teams benefit from having a contrarian. By thoughtfully considering varied viewpoints, you can sculpt an AI strategy that's not only ambitious but also realistic and grounded in diverse insights. 

3. Launch an AI Brain Boost

Another effective method to kindle enthusiasm for AI is to put your employees in the driver's seat. Introduce an "AI Brain Boost," where each team member selects an AI use case they believe will enhance their human capabilities. The activity is designed to shift the perception away from AI being a top-down directive to a tool that employees can control.

By giving employees more choice in how AI is integrated into their roles, you'll address a critical concern--especially among junior employees--about being overpowered or replaced by AI. You'll also tap into the "IKEA effect," the concept that people value and are more committed to what they have a hand in creating.

4. Incentivize AI adoption

Without proper incentives, AI adoption in your workforce is likely to fall short of your expectations. One way to encourage employees to embrace AI is by incorporating AI skills development into performance reviews. This should include both "hard" AI skills, such as basic coding and prompt engineering, as well as "softer" skills like empathy and a willingness to experiment. 

Incorporating AI skills into performance metrics does more than just equip employees with necessary competencies; it also helps mitigate resistance to technological change. Our research has found that when companies provide training on AI, employees become more confident in using the technology and develop a more optimistic outlook toward it. 

5. Make AI fun 

In the often-serious world of AI, injecting fun into the mix is key to encouraging adoption. One way to do this is by celebrating AI "wins" within your organization, both big and small. Organize workshops, hackathons, or brainstorming sessions where employees can experiment with AI tools, explore their capabilities, and see how AI can enhance their work. Consider hosting internal competitions for employees to develop AI-based solutions for current problems or new projects. 

The goal should be to cultivate "deep fun"--the kind of enjoyment that comes from meaningful and engaging work. This doesn't just make AI more approachable; it turns its adoption into a collaborative and stimulating experience for the entire team.

A new approach to AI adoption

Integrating AI into your organization isn't just about rolling out new technology. It's about rethinking how we work. These five unconventional ideas can be strategic steps toward greater AI adoption. The ultimate payoff? A more adaptable workforce that's fluent in AI and also poised to lead and innovate with it. 

BY REBECCA HINDS, ORGANIZATIONAL PHYSICIAN AND ENTREPRENEUR@REBHINDS

MADE FOR HEIGHTS

The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights (Hab 3:19). The book of Habakkuk inspired Martin Luther’s reformation and the book “Hinds Feet on High Places” by Hannah Hunnard. Habakkuk encourages us to question what God is doing in our lives. When we are thrown into suffering for a period of time, or our enemies are prospering while we are just barely getting by, we wonder about the equity of God and life. Habakkuk affirms that God is God and we are made to scale the mountains of adversity. We just need to be still and know He is at work. He is who He says He is and does keep His promises. God equips His people to scale the heights even in the midst of great challenges. He enables us to go to the higher places with Him where we are set apart from the world. Sometimes the way we have to go to get us there is through suffering and sorrow, but if we rest in Him and trust Him we come out where He wants us. When Jesus told the disciples He was going to send the Holy Spirit to them, it was in order for them to scale the mountain before them with a new form of power they had not experienced. “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8). If you find yourself in a place of doubting God and His plan for your life, know that this is a normal aspect of your journey in God. However, know that God has made available His Holy Spirit in order for you to accomplish the tasks that lie ahead. Ask the Holy Spirit to enable you to achieve the heights for which He has created you.

4 UNIMAGINABLE WAYS A.I WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE WITHIN THE NEXT 5 YEARS, ACCORDING TO BILL GATES.

In the next five years, you will have your own artificial intelligence assistant, or agent, that will be a frequent voice in your ear and will help you with everything from deciding where to go on vacation to managing your friendships and more. That's according to Bill Gates, who says he's been thinking about agents for 30 years.

What, exactly, is an agent? In a new blog post, Gates defines it as a type of AI software that "responds to natural language and can accomplish many different tasks based on its knowledge of the user." And he makes some predictions about how we'll all be using agents five years from now that are mind-bending and completely logical at the same time.

1. You won't bother with software or operating systems anymore.

Do you use Windows, macOS, or Linux? iOS or Android? Today, these seem like meaningful choices, but five years from none of us will care about any of those because our agents will function as operating systems or platforms, Gates writes. Today, if you want to write an email, you might open Gmail or Outlook. If you want to create a document, you might open Microsoft Word or Google Docs. But five years from now, you won't do any of that, Gates predicts. 

"You won't have to use different apps for different tasks," he writes. "You'll simply tell your device, in everyday language, what you want to do. And depending on how much information you choose to share with it, the software will be able to respond personally because it will have a rich understanding of your life."

2. Your agent will be a frequent voice in your ear.

Companies working in AI have been exploring various ways for people to interact with their agents, "including apps, glasses, pendants, pins, and even holograms," Gates writes. "All of these are possibilities, but I think the first big breakthrough in human-agent interaction will be earbuds. If your agent needs to check in with you, it will speak to you or show up on your phone."

He seems to believe that most of us will wear at least one earbud most of the time so that our agents can talk to us whenever they need to. And he might be right because having an assistant in your ear could turn out to be quite useful. It could let you know when a flight is delayed, remind you of the name of an acquaintance, or even help you better understand someone with a heavy accent, and do many other handy things.

3. Your agent will get involved in your personal relationships.

Just as a human personal assistant might do today, in five years an agent could remind you when a friend is about to have a birthday, come up with some suggestions about what they might like as a present (perhaps by asking your friend's agent), and then purchase the present for you. And--as with a human assistant today--the recipient of the present might perhaps value it less, knowing that the agent was the one who picked it out.

If you want to get together with a friend, rather than calling or texting or even sharing a calendar link with them as you might do today, your agent could work with their agent to find a time when both of you are free. And Gates considers an awkward possibility. "Suppose you want to see a friend," he writes. "If your agent talks to theirs, you don't want it to say, 'Oh, she's seeing other friends on Tuesday and doesn't want to include you.'" 

4. It might even help you solve personal problems.

One of the most intriguing predictions Gates made is that your agent could also become your therapist. In fact, this is already happening, he notes, with Wysa and Youper offering chatbot therapy.

The idea might seem odd, but Wysa and Youper both have research to back up their claim that their chatbots do help lessen symptoms such as anxiety and each has been used by more than 2 million people. Odd as it may sound, these algorithms are fulfilling a real need. "Today, weekly therapy sessions seem like a luxury. But there is a lot of unmet need, and many people who could benefit from therapy don't have access to it," Gates writes, noting that the RAND Corporation estimates that half of all U.S. military veterans who need mental health care don't get it. There are multiple reasons why not, but a shortage of available therapists, high costs, and the social stigma some associate with seeking help are all part of the problem. Chatbots can help with all three of these issues.

Could an AI agent really act as your travel agent, social secretary, therapist, constant companion, and more? It seems certain that they can and will, and sooner than you might expect. They'll probably do a lot of other things for you too. Maybe even some that Gates hasn't thought of yet.

ANTROPIC'S PITCH TO PRODUCE SAFE A.I.

Business leaders should take action to benefit many groups of people. By that I mean, that CEOs should make employees, customers, investors, and communities better off. Companies that trade off the well-being of employees, customers, and communities to reward their investors are taking a big risk.

This comes to mind in considering Anthropic, a San Francisco-based provider of technology used to build Generative AI chatbots. In 2021, Daniela Amodei and Dario Amodei, previously OpenAI executives, started Anthropic out of concern their employer cared more about commercialization than safety, according to Cerebral Valley. 

By October 2023, the 192-employee company had raised a total of $7.2 billion at a $25 billion valuation - five times more than the company's value in May. With clients including Slack, Notion, and Quora, Pitchbook forecasts Anthropic's 2023 revenue will double to $200 million and The Information reported the company expects to reach $500 million in revenue by the end of 2024.

Caring about employees, customers, and communities

Anthropic's cofounder Dario Amodei, a Princeton-educated physicist who led the OpenAI teams that built GPT-2 and GPT-3, is Anthropic's CEO. His younger sister, Daniela Amodei, who oversaw OpenAI's policy and safety teams, is Anthropic's president. As Daniela said, "We were the safety and policy leadership of OpenAI, and we just saw this vision for how we could train large language models and large generative models with safety at the forefront," The New York Times reported.

Anthropic's cofounders put their values into their product. They believe that the company's Claude 2 - a rival to ChatGPT - can summarize larger documents and produce factually correct, non-offensive results. Claude 2 can summarize up to about 75,000 words - the length of a typical book, Users can input large documents and receive summaries in the form of a memo, letter or story. In contrast, ChatGPT can handle a much smaller input of about 3,000 words, according to the Times. 

Arthur AI, a machine learning monitoring platform, concluded Claude 2 had the most "self-awareness" - meaning it accurately assessed its knowledge limits and only answered questions for which it had training data to support, CNBC wrote. Anthropic's concern about safety caused the company not to release the first version of Claude -- which the company developed in 2022 -- because employees were afraid people might misuse it. Anthropic delayed the release of Claude 2 because the company's red-teamers uncovered new ways it could become dangerous, according to the Times. 

Using a self-correcting constitution to build safer Generative AI 

When the Amodeis started the company, they thought Anthropic would do safety research using other companies' AI models. They soon concluded innovative research was only possible if they built their own models. To do that, they needed to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to afford the expensive computing equipment required to build the models. They decided Claude should be helpful, harmless, and honest, the Times wrote.

To that end, Anthropic used Constitutional AI - the interaction between two AI models: one operating according to a written list of principles from sources such as the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a second AI to evaluate how well the first one followed its principles -- correcting it when necessary, according to the Times.

In July 2023, Amodei provided examples of Claude 2′s improvements over the prior version. Claude 2 scored 76.5% on the Bar exam's multiple choice section, up from Claude's 73 percent. The newest model scored 71 percent on the Python coding test, up from the prior version's 56%. Amodai said Claude 2 "was twice as good at giving harmless responses," CNBC wrote. Anthropic is a valuable Generative AI resource for companies eager to limit a chatbot's risk to their brand.

BY PETER COHAN, FOUNDER, PETER S. COHAN & ASSOCIATES@PETERCOHAN

WORK SMARTER NOT HARDER BOOK SUMMARY

 

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This summary is ideal for anyone looking for some quick tips on how to improve their productivity.

Productivity is all about getting more done in less time, it’s about being smart about how you work, you don’t necessarily have to work any harder. If you find yourself struggling to get everything done in a day or at a loss for what to focus on next then check out this summary!

This summary will briefly discuss each Kiander’s 18 ways you can improve your working day. Ranging from avoiding distractions to processing emails and what to do before a vacation I’m sure there will be plenty of tips you can take away and implement into your workday routine.

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SOMETIMES THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT THING A LEADER DOES IS SAY NO.

In a recent interview with CBS News, Tim Cook talked with John Dickerson about a range of topics including the company's efforts to become carbon neutral. He also talked about Apple's upcoming mixed-reality headset, Vision Pro. It was something he said about Apple's success, however, that I think stuck out the most, so much so that I think it's worth considering. 

Look, whatever you think about Tim Cook, I think we can agree that he has some expertise in running a business. He does happen to run the most valuable company in the world--a milestone it reached on his watch. In fact, during the time Cook has been CEO of Apple, the company has more than tripled its revenue, and its market cap has grown from around $350 billion when Cook took over, to more than $2.7 trillion today.

Of course, it's always tricky trying to find transferable lessons for small businesses when you're looking at a company the size of Apple. What is true at the scale of a company with more than 100,000 employees is a lot different than a local retailer or accounting firm. On the other hand, if you're running a business that you'd like to grow--maybe there's something you could learn from the guy running the biggest one on earth.

One particular quote from the interview stood out because it's exactly that kind of lesson: 

Dickerson asked Cook about focus: "Given the amount of cash that Apple has and the skill and proven success over time, how much is restraint a part of what you and your team do?" Dickerson asked. "In other words, staying in your lane? How much of a challenge is that?"

When you think about it, the question applies to every business to some extent. Almost every business has to choose its lane, and a lot of the job of a CEO is saying no to things so that you can stay there. Obviously, it's a particular problem for a company like Apple, which has billions of dollars it can use to try just about anything.

"We believe in focus," Cook responded. "And, so, we think that we can only do a few things well. And we really believe this. We will debate and argue and discuss and go back and forth on entering a new area to make sure it's something that we can do at a quality level, at a deep level, and really contribute."

There's a lot of great insight in that paragraph. For example, the way Apple decides whether to enter a new product market is certainly an interesting insight for people who lead businesses. The thing I found most interesting, however, is the 11 words he says about focus. 

"We think that we can only do a few things well," Cook says. Let that sink in. It might be the best business advice you hear all year.

Look, there are several important aspects of this advice. The first is that Cook is acknowledging that Apple isn't going to be great at everything. It's really good at making iPhones and Macs. It also makes really great software. 

There are also a lot of things Apple might want to do but won't be great at. The challenge is recognizing it and saying no. 

Honestly, it's important to say out loud, if for no other reason than that it can be easy to forget that a company that plays such a prominent role in the lives of so many people can't do everything. It's also important because the reality is that it's true for every company. If the most valuable company on earth isn't good at more than a few things, than neither is any other. 

Your job, as a leader, is to only do what only you can do. For the company you lead, the challenge is to define the things you are good at, and be honest about where you draw those lines. Then, your job is to say no to everything else. If you lead a business, it just might be the most important lesson you learn.