679: Director of the K. Lisa Yang Global Engineering and Research Center at MIT, Amos Winter on Global by Design

0:02Amos Winter: And when there is no vision, the people perish. We choose to go to the moon. If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. Welcome to the Strategy Skills Podcast, where strategy partners teach you the tools and techniques to solve mankind's greatest problems.

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1:28There you can download a resume template that we love to use with our clients. And today we have with us Amos Winter, who is a professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Global Engineering and Research Center at MIT. And his research focuses on something very important, on using mechanical design and product design to create high-performance, low-cost technologies for resource-constrained communities around the world. And he has written a book on his innovation and design approach, Global by Design. Amos, welcome.

2:04Amos Winter: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Let's start with your career. How you ended up doing this work? I'll give you the full origin story. So I've always been interested in machines and technology and knew I'd be a mechanical engineer. ever since I was a kid. And I studied that in college. And then in graduate school, I was working on, I was really interested in like defense and space and deep sea robot stuff. But I was dating a woman at the time who was doing work in Tanzania and had a year-long fellowship there. And I wanted to find a way to spend the summer with her after my master's completed.

2:44Amos Winter: So at MIT, I was a grad student at MIT at the time. I talked to an organization there that did summer long fellowships for students and would pay for you to work internationally. I talked with Amy Smith, who started the D-Lab program at MIT that does international development work. And they hooked me up with an organization in San Francisco called Whirlwind Wheelchair International, which was an organization that designed wheelchairs for developing countries. And so they said, boy, we'd love to get an assessment of the current state of wheelchair technology in Tanzania. We're going to hook you up with an organization in Tanzania called TATCOT.

3:26Amos Winter: That was the acronym TATCOT. It went by that taught people how to make wheelchairs and start their own workshops. And they too wanted to understand the state of technology and also how well their workshops were doing in Tanzania. So through all these partners, I put together this project of assessing the current state of wheelchair technology in Tanzania and how well it was meeting people's needs. And so I spent a summer talking to wheelchair users, wheelchair manufacturers, and disability advocacy groups. And what came out of that experience was realizing there was a large gap in the market where a product did not exist to meet the needs of people who particularly live in rural areas.

4:11Amos Winter: There wasn't a product that could both go long distances on rough terrain in order to go from school to your home or to your job. And also, that was small enough to use indoors like a regular wheelchair. So, I came away from that summer. This was the summer of 2005. I came away from that summer realizing that, boy, I'm a trained machine designer. I have a skill set that could be applied to this problem. I want to work on an improved wheelchair for developing countries. And that launched me on this very fruitful and rewarding path that led to creating the Leverage Freedom Wheelchair, which we talk about in the book.

4:53Amos Winter: And that then grew into a company called Grit, which still sells a version called the Grit Freedom Chair throughout the U.S. market. And so that's what really got me started in this field, because in the underlying motivators were I saw that developing countries have problems that persist for generations, even though solutions exist in wealthy countries for that very similar problem. The problem still persists in poor countries because the U.S. or European solution is too expensive or not robust enough. And so the problem just remains unsolved. And because so many of these problems are technical in nature, they need real engineering innovation.

5:37Amos Winter: And so that combination of compelling real-world problems in low-resource settings and the engineering innovation in science that's needed to solve them formed the research program I run now at MIT, the K. Lisi Yang Global Engineering Research Center or GEAR Center. incredible how this work led you so far down the road in terms of your career development and your contribution to the world and even writing this book because when i spoke to vg your co-author as you know he was mentioning that when you invited him to speak at mit you spoke about this project and you connected on yes yeah and that's another good story i think that's worth sharing um so at At the time we were starting the wheelchair company, Grit, I read VG's book, Reverse Innovation.

6:34Amos Winter: And when I read it, I said, God, this guy's talking about what we're doing. Like we literally have made this high performance, low cost developing world product that we at that point had realized had a lot of value in wealthy markets as well. People in the US and Europe and Canada, they also wanted a low cost all-terrain wheelchair that you could fix locally. And so that turned our eyes to the reverse innovation of the LFC, which became the Grit Freedom Chair. So this was around, I think, 2012, 2013 or so. I reached out to VG and I said, hey, I love your book. You're talking about from a business strategy perspective what I'm doing from an engineering perspective.

7:18Amos Winter: I'd love to get together. So we had lunch first in Boston, and we immediately hit it off. We are fast friends. And then he came to MIT and gave a talk in my class and at a center at MIT that worked on projects in India. And through those interactions, we landed on the idea of, hey, why don't we write a Harvard Business Review article about engineering reverse innovations? How do we do that? So we wrote that article, I think in 2015 is when it came out. And it ended up winning the best article of the year in Harvard Business Review. It won the McKinsey Award. And at that point, Harvard Business Review Press said, you guys should write a book on this.

8:02Amos Winter: And so I said, sure thing, after I get tenure. So I got tenure in 2019. And that's when we started working in earnest on the book. And it brought us all the way to now. Why did you have that condition that you could only write? Oh, why did I say I would only do the book after I get tenure? Because I had a full plate. Getting tenure at any institution is a big undertaking and really an all-consuming job. So, you know, in those few years before getting tenure, I was traveling constantly. There was a period where like one in every three days I was on the road. I was building my research group, generating research funding, writing papers.

8:48Amos Winter: And so I had to focus on that because I knew if I got tenure, it would lead to a career, a lifetime of doing this type of work. So I wanted to make sure I could apply my full efforts to that first. And then once I got tenure, I went on sabbatical during the fall of 2019. And that's when I focused on the book and really laid. I had aspirations of finishing it that semester. You know, that was ridiculous. But I did lay the groundwork and really work on it in earnest. And VG and I went back and forth on the scoping and the outlining. And we set the contract with HBR Press. And then I just continued working on it with VG through the following years until we launched it right now.

9:38That is amazing. What were your first impressions of Vijay? Because when I met him, he's such an open person, and you cannot love him immediately.

9:49Amos Winter: Yeah. So I'll break down my first impression in a few stages. My real first impression was reading his book. And the idea that you could innovate for resource-constrained communities first and use the value that you generate to then bring back to wealthy countries through this process of reverse innovation that he coined. That's a profound idea and really stands in contrast to how the product design community has really operated for the last 200 or so years since the Industrial Revolution. Most product design has been focused on poor, sorry, on wealthy markets and then been expected to trickle down to poor markets.

10:32Amos Winter: And I think VG really turned that on its head and said, no, if you focus on poor markets first, You can create valuable innovations that are valuable globally. So that was my first impression and really inspired me and also resonated with me because I was doing that. But he really put a name to it. Then when I met him, yes, he's very charismatic and charming, full of ideas, incredibly energetic. He's ageless. But I would say what I appreciate most about VG is his friendship and mentorship. He's been a wonderful friend and sounding board for many aspects of my life beyond the book as well. And he's always been very available.

11:19Amos Winter: And I really, really appreciate him as a friend as well as a collaborator. Of course. What do you feel were the key things you learned from him so far? He has a saying of planned opportunism. And so what that means is that when you look at like your calendar and what's scheduled in your life, or you look at maybe a speaker who's coming to your university, you can actually plan an opportunity of engaging with that speaker or best utilizing an opportunity given to you to create something of value and lasting value in your life. And so, you know, an example VG says is anytime a CEO of a company comes to Dartmouth, he makes sure he gets on the meeting schedule of that person.

12:10Amos Winter: And that leads to further engagements oftentimes. So I think that that idea of planned opportunities, planned opportunism resonated with me. And I'd say, you know, I already looked for good opportunities, but I think it added a level of strategy to that. I think like VG is good at seeing interconnectivity in the business community and like cause and effect relationships, value propositions that move things. And he's able to boil that down in a digestible, concise way and articulate it to people in a compelling and exciting way. And so I like that. I try to do that, too, certainly in engineering.

13:01Amos Winter: And I think that's one of the reasons we get along so well is that I think we both try very hard to articulate often complicated ideas from our own communities in a more digestible way to the general public. So I think that ethos was a connection point to us, for us as well. Incredible. I think he's very good at scanning the world and spotting trends and often emerging trends or trends like basically spotting case studies that show broader trends. And I think this is what happened with reverse innovation. He saw some companies doing this and leading in GE Healthcare being one of the big ones and was able to articulate that in a more generalized strategy that's very useful for the global innovation community.

13:58Amos Winter: You know, it was 25 years ago that GE Healthcare started engaging in Asia, in China and India and started doing some R &D work locally there and starting to bring that technology back to wealthy countries. But I think it was VG who really characterized that and put a name to it and generalized it and made it much more usable to a broader audience. So I really appreciate that about him, his ability to do that. So Amos, for people who will read the book, what do you want them to take away? So there's a few key things that I want people to take away from the book. First, I want them to see the tremendous opportunity that resource-constrained communities present, both from a pure economic opportunity standpoint, in that you have the biggest economic growth in emerging markets, and you have enormous collective purchasing power just because of the population sizes.

14:59Amos Winter: So if you want to grow your country, your company, that's where the action is. But then also resource constrained communities present the greatest humanitarian challenges facing the world right now that we have to address around poverty and food and water and energy and housing and health care. And so just I think society owes it to our brethren to try to solve those problems. And we try to instill in the reader this understanding that even though solutions to these problems exist, they don't map over necessarily to poor countries. And it's because of a price performance mismatch. So, yeah, the first appreciation is really seeing that opportunity.

15:47Amos Winter: And if you can capture that opportunity well, you can actually make tremendous social impact, but using a viable business model to do so that scales and sustains through free market mechanisms. We really highlight that. The second teaching of the book is providing guidance to the innovator about how to go after those opportunities. And that's the really core of the book. And we break that up into three parts. The first is guiding the reader in how to identify meritorious challenges that are worth tackling. And by worth tackling, we break that up into three areas of merit. The first is what we call problem merit.

16:35Amos Winter: And what that means is that you're looking at a meaningful problem that if solved would impact ideally a large population of people in a very meaningful way. And that ideally has a business opportunity behind it too. The second area of merit is what we call innovation merit. And that is an exercise in convincing yourself that there's an actual innovation opportunity and that the problem needs innovation to solve rather than just being a problem that can be solved through adaptation or charity or some other mechanism. And then the final area of merit we talk about is what we call value merit. And what that exercise is, is aligning value propositions to ensure that consumers will want to adopt your solution and producers will want to sell it.

17:23Amos Winter: So all the value propositions are aligned to really drive large scale adoption. And this exercise of distilling merit, distilling the problem, what that leads you to is really understanding the requirements that have to be solved to fully address the challenge. And that's such an important point for innovators because a lot of innovation is done in kind of a tech push way where you create a solution and then go find a problem. It's really like creating a hammer and then going and finding a nail. And that leads to playing darts blindfolded. There's too much chance in success. Instead, if you can actively assess all your requirements as comprehensive as possible, you put yourself in the best solution for success because if you know the requirements, you're going to address them.

18:16Amos Winter: You're going to try to solve them. So the first part of the book is all focused on elucidating requirements through that process. Then the second part of the book is about actually generating a solution and designing a solution. And we give the innovator many approaches and tactics about how to leverage creative product design processes, as well as leveraging more quantitative mathematically based engineering innovation. And I would say the really important learning out of that section of the book is realizing that if you're looking at a problem, particularly one that's been solved in wealthy countries but isn't solved in resource-constrained settings, the solution will come from the intersection of deep market insights that tell you what unique requirements you have to solve, and then also deep technical insights that tell you why there's limitations in the prior art, how the prior art could be maybe modified to solve your problem, and how physics and math math and chemistry and other engineering sciences may show you a path to a new solution.

19:26Amos Winter: And so all of the innovations that I've ever done, and I would say most of the innovations we present in the book come from this convergence of opening your eyes to the differences in the requirements that these new markets are demanding, and then seeing a path of how to realize them through really clever design and insights into the math, physics, and also creative product design. So we also got the reader in that section about how to test and validate solutions. And then the third section of the book guides the reader in how to really think about globally disseminating solutions. And that really comes down to understanding what the core value is in a high performance, low cost solution that may work in an emerging market and understanding how that core value is going to translate back to a wealthy market.

20:17Amos Winter: And if you understand that core value, then you can modify features or add and remove features to tune an innovation to different markets. And so one example I talk about in the book is our wheelchair, the leverage freedom chair. And in developing countries, we had to make it really low cost. We had to use bike parts for all the moving parts to make them very locally accessible and repairable. But we had to understand in wealthy markets, people still wanted the core value of the product, which was the drivetrain, the lever propelled drivetrain where you push on two levers to propel the chair. But we had to understand that users in like the US market were going to transport the chair in their car much more frequently than people would in developing countries.

21:08Amos Winter: And so that drove the feature addition of making the chair easily collapsible to fit inside the trunk of a car. where we didn't have to do that in developing countries. So the same core platform, the same core value was the same between the developing world LFC and the Wealthy Market Grit Freedom Chair, but it was the features that we tweaked to make them work between markets. And we give a bunch of other examples of products that did that very successfully as well. I'd say the main takeaway of the book is to empower innovators for how they can successfully tackle emerging markets and how they can translate those innovations to global markets.

21:47Amazing. One of the ideas in the book was about constraints, focusing on constraints and not just features, which is something that many people are not paying enough attention to. And you're giving a great example of Honda Super Cub that was designed so Soba, Noodle, Delivery Man could ride one-handed. Such an amazing story. Can you tell us more?

22:09Amos Winter: Sure. Sure. The Super Cub motorcycle is a really anchoring case study in the book to demonstrate how a product was global by design from the start. And it's a historical example. It was designed in the late 1950s, but it's still produced today. It is literally the most widely produced vehicle in history. There's been over like 175 million of them produced ever. So your question about constraints driving the innovation is a good one. in that Honda understood that a new form of transportation would be greatly valuable in emerging Japan following World War II. And the market segment they looked at first was soba noodle delivery men.

22:57Amos Winter: And soba noodles is a very common lunchtime staple in Japan. And you have to put yourself in the mindset of post-war Japan in that it was still emerging. It was still rebuilding. There was rough roads. There was resource-constrained populations. The Soba noodle delivery person had to hold the noodles some way, so they couldn't necessarily use both hands to operate the motorcycle. It had to be reliable as well. And so they did an excellent job understanding all the requirements of that beachhead market in Japan. And they ended up making a much more cost-effective, much higher power-to-weight ratio motorcycle with bigger wheels that can navigate rougher terrains better.

23:46Amos Winter: And that needed only one hand to operate. So the noodle delivery men could hold the noodles with the other hand. But what Honda also did that really makes this brilliant was understanding how the core value of the Super Cub would translate to different markets. And those core values were, one, it was an extremely reliable motorcycle compared to other motorcycles like Triumphs or Harley-Davidson's of the day. And so you didn't have to always be getting your hands dirty and working on it and fixing it. And so they were able to offer it to a wider population that might not be as handy, but but also mitigate the association with kind of the greasy, ruffian motorcycle riders of the day.

24:35Amos Winter: And the example we give is Marlon Brando from the movie The Wild One, you know, that ruffian that you would not want dating your daughter, you know, because they're just kind of a rough, you know, violent, dirty individual. So they made it much more accessible. They also made it accessible by making it extremely low cost. And they had a bunch of tricks in the production. Instead of having a tubular frame, they just had stamped sheet metal. The fairing, so the front wind deflector of the bike, was a single piece of injection molded plastic. And so it made it much more cheaper and accessible for consumers.

25:09Amos Winter: Another brilliant innovation is they made the frame step through. So you don't actually straddle the Super Cub. You can sit on it with your knees together. That opened up a huge additional user group of women in communities where it may be viewed as inappropriate for women to sit straddling a motorcycle. Instead, they could sit with their knees together. And then I'd say maybe the most brilliant insight around the Super Cub is they understood that psychology of getting away from the ruffian motorcycle rider to the degree where they created this brilliant ad campaign where they said, you meet the nicest people on a Honda.

25:53Amos Winter: And they would show this preppy college couple, this man and woman riding on the Super Cub on a college campus. And there are these like nice all-American ideals of the people you want to become and you want to associate with. So they made it an aspirational product, even though it was a low-cost product. And it sold like crazy everywhere. And they also set up production everywhere so they could mitigate importation duties and they could really keep costs low. And all of those approaches led to its massive global dissemination and lasting power. It is still made today in multiple places around the world.

26:36Amos Winter: But going back to your question, they understood constraints of multiple global markets, but they also understood value propositions and the requirements that would have to be satisfied to achieve those value propositions in global markets. And that is why the Super Cup was so successful. And this also reminds me of another example in your book about a car that was designed that was only$3 ,000, but people didn't want it to buy it because they didn't want it to be associated. Basically, they didn't want it to be seen driving that car. Can you compare two examples? That's a wonderful comparison you're making between the Honda Super Cub motorcycle, which was aspirational.

27:21Amos Winter: People wanted it and wanted to be seen with it versus the Tata Nano, which you just talked about. And so it really came down to the ad campaigns where with Honda, they said you meet the nicest people on the Honda and you want to be one of those people. whereas the Tata Nano was sold as the cheapest car in the world. And you don't necessarily want to be associated with the cheapest car because you're viewed as a cheap person. And there's an additional level to this in India where I think compared to other global markets, there's a particular sensitivity around being viewed as a cheapskate and a cheap person.

28:09Amos Winter: You know, you want to be viewed more with a high value product or a prestige product. And so it really hurt the brand value and the association with the Nano. And as a result, it didn't sell anywhere near as well as they had expected. And it's unfortunate, actually, because as an engineering exercise, the Nano is a brilliant piece of design. It's unbelievable how low they were able to press the cost. It sold for about$3 ,000. You know, a full legitimate car that can fit five adults quite comfortably, has the basic amenities you'd want in a car, has air conditioning and everything. But yeah, it was just that association.

28:53Amos Winter: There was a couple other negative associations with the car as well. One in that it sounded a bit like a tuk-tuk, the little three-wheeled taxis that you find commonly throughout India. So it sounded cheap because of the engine note. And then another weird association I think they didn't expect is that people had the perception of a car being safer if it had the engine in the front because it gives you some distance between what you run into if you have a front end collision. That's not true at all. Like the engine can get pushed into the passenger compartment and really hurt somebody. You know, a counter example that's very safe is a Porsche 911 that has the engine in the rear and it gives you a big crumple zone in the front.

29:36Amos Winter: But anyway, because people thought engine in the rear was more dangerous, that hurt the Nano's perception because it has the engine in the rear. And then also there was just some just poor luck timing of a few fires with the Nano. And people thought the car could easily catch on fire, even though I don't think that was really common, but it got heightened in the press. And so people were wary of its safety. So all of these kind of negative social factors combined together and made the Nano kind of a flop. And when people connected car catching fire and then it being cheap, they connected the two and thought, no, I'm not going to put my family in danger just because I'm trying to save some money.

30:26Amos Winter: but also public perception. So another way to put the cultural element here is perception of one's family, right? And how they're viewed and that they're standup people and ethical people and hardworking people. That strength of family perception is even stronger in India than it is in like Western cultures. And so how you live your life and how it reflects on you and your family is very important. So when you're seen driving around in that safe, potentially, or sorry, in that unsafe, potentially dangerous, cheap car, you're viewed as a cheapskate. And that hurts your reputation. And that was part of why people didn't adopt it.

31:15I also have a quick question. Maybe, you know, with the test example of Honda Super Cup, You would think that if someone needs to deliver noodles, you just create a place for them to put noodles in while they're driving and they still should use two hands because it's safer. Do you know why they went with one handed driving?

31:37Amos Winter: You know, I thought about that, too. I think it's likely because of balance that you might actively move your hand around so the noodles don't slosh or spill. So and I also think maybe they were delivering just one at a time. They didn't have to take big orders because I suspect they had to deliver quickly while the noodles were still hot. So I think those were the reasons to have one hand free. And also, I would guess as well, it was it was delivery time going from the Super Cub to the person's house. You know, if you have to open a box or open another door or unstrap something down that you're holding down so it didn't fall off, that takes more time.

32:23What have you came across in your career so far in terms of design that was the most impressive to you personally? Some kind of product where you thought this is just such good thinking and design and so smart.

32:37Amos Winter: The Super Cub. I know we've talked about it extensively, but the Super Cub is that gold standard for me that I think is one of the most beautifully designed products ever that it just resonates with everybody. And the sales are testament to that. But there's so many design features of the Super Cub that are brilliant. And I appreciate it on many different professional levels. So, you know, one is the engineering. The Super Cub makes, I think, about five times more power per the size of the engine compared to prior motorcycle designs. So it's much more functional in terms of going fast and climbing hills.

33:23Amos Winter: it's also brilliantly manufactured so using the steel stamping and injection molding to cut costs but it's also a beautiful product you know the color choices and the curves on it so they they were able to lower cost but not lower aesthetic value it's cultural acceptability like i said was beautifully thought out so men and women could both use it easily And then to add onto it the foresight of the ad campaign is like a whole other level. Like engineering product design companies don't always get involved in the marketing campaign, but Honda was able to look at this holistically. They probably hired an ad agency.

34:05Amos Winter: But even so, I think because of all this happened in a very short span of time, they were strategically thinking of this altogether. Like all the different facets of the design, including the marketing. And the marketing campaign is so brilliant to make it widely adoptable. So I hugely appreciate that. Another example in my lifetime that I hold up as a gold standard is the iPhone. And that's because of the absolute disruption it caused. When you think about the kind of candy bar phones of the early 2000s that people were using or the flip phones that were kind of clunky to text with or like Blackberries that had limited screens, the iPhone was such a step change in its interface, in a touchscreen instead of buttons, in terms of internet connectivity and like GPS connectivity.

35:04Amos Winter: it is a complete, like calling it a phone, it doesn't capture all the things that it does. It's really a mini computer that has way more functionality beyond a computer because of the GPS connectivity. And I love the iPhone too, because it also spurred many other companies that couldn't have existed without that feature interconnectivity of the iPhone. So you look at a company like Uber, where because you have maps and GPS connectivity and internet connectivity, you can start a business like Uber with the iPhone and now other smartphone platforms. Mobile banking, you know, has helped with all of that.

35:46Amos Winter: And so there's, you know, you look at many of the apps on all of our phones nowadays, they were made possible with the iPhone. And then And another thing I appreciate about the iPhone and the Super Cub is that they were able to sell across markets globally with zero customization. They had so much intrinsic value and were affordable enough and conveyed a high status that people wanted them everywhere. And so I think if you can create that type of product where you don't have to customize it between markets and you could just make a gazillion of them and everybody wants them and everybody buys them, that's the grand slam.

36:30Amos Winter: Coca-Cola also falls into this category in a product that I hold up and is also brilliantly designed because it's made with the cheapest commodities and then sold at an insane markup given it's a beverage. and then is so easily distributed because you don't have to make it centrally. You just ship the syrup everywhere and then you add the water, the carbonated water locally. It's just such a brilliant business model. So those type of products that really translate globally and resonate globally with little to no modification are the ones that really inspire me. How do you think AI and automation will now be changing further and further the ability to design products?

37:14and even Walt in general?

37:16Amos Winter: I love this question. And I think our book is so well positioned actually right now as a kind of counterpoint to the AI boom. And so what I mean by that is AI is transforming how people design things. I use AI constantly every day. It enables me to gather and aggregate information and generate some concepts very quickly in ways I never could before. So it's wonderful. I'm very much a proponent of AI. However, the problems that we focus on in this book around healthcare, water, energy, housing, in resource constrained settings are so far away from being solved by AI. And this hype that I feel all the time, you know, I'm at MIT, right?

38:06Amos Winter: AI is ever present. But this hype I feel all the time of like AI in a matter of time will solve all our problems. It's a farce. And I'll tell you for three reasons why it's a farce for the type of problems we're talking about in this book. The first is that the type of design I do requires integrating data sets that are not formally recorded and are very different in the type of data that I have to synthesize. So for example, I have to somehow synthesize sentiment of consumers and preferences and wants and needs. I have to combine with that economic behaviors. I have to combine with that physical principles and mathematical functions.

38:53Amos Winter: I have to combine with that business models. And so, these are cross disciplines. And oftentimes, data I have to tease out of people that has never been recorded before. So, there's no way a large language model can synthesize all that data and understand how to create a solution. The second is my type of work, because I work on physical technologies, requires so much firsthand physical interaction with the real world. So I have to understand, like just recently, I was in a production line opening up an extrusion mold to understand the surface features and the size and the surface finish and like all these physical nuances that are not formally recorded and AI does not have access to.

39:42Amos Winter: And you only get by like taking things apart and feeling them with their fingertips. Like the friction between surfaces, the way like different materials feel because of how they transfer heat. Like the fact that Apple laptops have aluminum surfaces where you dress the palm of your hands, that feels very different than a plastic surface. And that heat transfer, match with that sensation, AI doesn't fully understand that type of stuff yet, certainly on a broader scale. So, physical world is the second point that AI doesn't fully get. The third is rapport building with stakeholders. I have to connect as a person with other people all the time and build rapport, build commonality around interest or a life experience.

40:31Amos Winter: And when I can understand, oh, a person's child was sick or a person's dad was a jerk or a person's girlfriend broke up with them, that type of human life experience that I can empathize with and I have shared experience with and enables me to connect with people and understand them at a deep level, AI can't do that because it doesn't have real life experience and it's not a real participant in the physical world with people. And so for all those reasons, that like the ability to acquire and assess and manipulate that information is what enables me to do my job and what enables us to solve problems in really difficult settings and is what is still far away from AI.

41:22For someone listening to us right now, how should they think about AI beyond design?

41:28Amos Winter: Well, I think AI is a tool that's here with us to stay. And I think it's tremendous in terms of its breadth of information it can process. In terms of like, like for me, let's say I have to understand very quickly government standards around like, let's say microgrids in India. Right. Like for me to read all the government documentation, particularly if it's not even in English, forget it. That's incredibly difficult to do. But AI is very good at distilling what the core teachings are of many documents and summarizing all that in a digestible way and even giving you citations for where it got it.

42:16Amos Winter: And so you can check it. So I think as far as tasks that require manipulation of existing data and consolidation and aggregation in ways that we can't do very quickly as humans, it's wonderful for that. As far as doing routine tasks that there's prior examples of, like if you have to, you know, generate, say, a document for a tax filing or something like that that a million other people have done, it's wonderful at that because it's got a lot of prior data. So those are in coding, too. Oh, my God. It's amazing at coding because it can pull from a lot of examples. So any examples or any tasks that require that accessible data and doing something routine and aggregating a lot of data, it's amazing at.

43:06Amos Winter: What I would say people are still far better at is coming up with new ideas with very little prior data to draw from because we're ingenious. You know, we have to come up with solutions all the time to problems. And then also people are really, really good at getting orthogonal inspiration. So a few examples about that. One example we use in the book is how Bell Labs was really, really thoughtful in how it did innovation because it was part of AT &T. So it had lots of market insights about telecommunication. And at one point, it realized it needs to transmit signals over long distances to do long distance phone calls.

43:57Amos Winter: And initially, it did that with vacuum tubes that used to make amplifiers. But because it had great market knowledge, it realized, boy, to really scale this technology up, it would be great if we could make amplifiers much, much cheaper and smaller. And so what it did is it invested in really fundamental research, like really like quantum mechanics research to explore different ways to make amplifiers, but still with that eye towards market value. And what came out of that was the invention of the transistor, which is still the backbone of all telecommunications today. And all the inventors won a Nobel Prize for this.

44:36Amos Winter: And AT &T grew massively because of their invention of the transistor. But why I'm using that as an example is that you somehow had to take market insights, which AT &T was getting from a company. You somehow had to have some insights into maybe we should invest in physicists who aren't even working on vacuum tubes, which is the current standard of amplifiers. And then those physicists had to be very innovative in physics, but then connect that back to market utility. And they did all of that within Bell Labs. And that's why it's so brilliant. I don't know. That's like making so many orthogonal jumps between fields and gaining inspiration from quantum mechanics to then make a telecommunications device.

45:23Amos Winter: Like that's so orthogonal. I don't, AI is not there yet. It can't really do that. And it can't really do that ground up disruptive, like total deep inside innovation. AI also struggles a little bit not knowing technology readiness. I see this all the time. So we do exercises in my group where we say, hey, AI, what do you think could be a better solution for, say, like greenhouses in the Middle East? And it will read a number of articles from like university newspapers about the latest and greatest scientific breakthrough. But it doesn't understand that breakthrough may not scale very well. It may not be cost effective versus the existing art.

46:05Amos Winter: It may not realize that to realize a solution, you have to get stuff off the shelf, existing solutions, and do a bunch more research to validate something. So it can't really assess like multi-factored innovations. And then one more kind of orthogonal innovation I like, an orthogonal inspiration that people are good at that I like to use as an example is imagine you took all Broadway shows pre-2016 and fed them into a large language model and said, all right, AI, make the next greatest Broadway hit. There is no way it would come up with Hamilton from that because Hamilton's too orthogonal. Hamilton, you know, Hamilton's crazy.

46:52Amos Winter: It has a founding father as the basis. Like who would think that's attractive as a Broadway show? It has hip hop influence, which has more limited kind of adoption within the Broadway community. And Lin-Manuel Miranda somehow synthesized all these crazy orthogonal things into something that was profound and disruptive within the industry. I just don't think, you know, AI is just not there yet, being able to do that. People are still better at that. For someone listening to us right now, what do you think are the skills they should focus on? Let's say they are in the early 40s and they're relatively senior and they're worried about not being relevant in the world.

47:36Amos Winter: I would try to identify those tasks that you can do as a person that AI just is not going to be well positioned to do. So there's a number of categories there. You know, one is the synthesis of multiple sources of information and coming up with solutions where there may not be prior solutions. And so, like, for example, one thing I think about, there's a lot of push to make like humanoid robots that can work on assembly lines. And I'm really interested to see how this plays out and if it actually comes to fruition, because the really dull drudgery type tasks or many of them are ones that require high forces or high speed.

48:28Amos Winter: People figured out how to use robots for that, you know, starting 50 years ago, right? Like assembly line robots. And so then the people working on the line could use their dexterity and perception to add a lot of value. So, you know, if you drop a part on the floor, Do you want to stop the whole line? Or if like, you know, something got bent a little bit because it got knocked by something and you got to tap it back with a hammer. A person is really good at assessing all that super quickly and adjusting to it and making it work. Um, we use, uh, we have an example in the book where, where the subsection is called don't reinvent the shovel unless it's a steam shovel.

49:13Amos Winter: And the whole point of that is it talks about the history of, um, how, how the steam engine transformed humanity because it could dramatically increase the power output and force output of a human. And so we could build buildings and railroads and do all these great things much faster. However, let's say you're a landscaper and you need to just put a little bit of mulch around some flowers, you don't need a steam shovel for that. Human's dexterity and perception is still really good at doing that. So just use a shovel. You don't have to reinvent it. So it's only in situations where you really have to, I think, overcome oftentimes limitations of people where you need like technological intervention.

49:53Amos Winter: But there may be a lot of applications where human dexterity and perception and ingenuity is still really valuable. And so I can see like, even in like a customer service job, I'm thinking about like an insurance company. If you're working with people who have gone through some sort of trauma, there might be some real value in being able to connect with them as a fellow human being and share some life experience. That is a very innately human thing. Whereas the paperwork processing to file the claim, well, yes, that's AI. It can do a faster and it's boilerplate stuff, Right. I think another category that's going to be AI proof for a while are jobs that require interaction with the physical world.

50:41Amos Winter: You know, so I don't think we're going to have AI plumbers or AI builders or AI electricians anytime, because if you've ever watched those people work, they're not just doing a routine task over and over and over. There may be a mouse nest or flooding or there's a shortage of some part. And so they have to be creative and use a part in a nonstandard way. All that stuff people are really good at. So I think there's going to be jobs there for a long time. And I think what we're going to find, actually, even in industries that are worried about AI taking them over, is that people will start specializing in these tasks that people are really good at, that either require dexterity, perception, ingenuity with very little prior training, or interpersonal skills, you know, connecting with other people.

51:34Amos Winter: And so they will kind of tailor their job to those aspects of the job. And then let AI do the more routine stuff, the drudgery stuff that is just kind of boilerplate. And AI can speed up significantly. That's my prediction. We'll see if I'm wrong. There may be the new AI model that is truly creative and innovative, but certainly what I experience right now, we're very far away from that. Amos, you are such an interesting person to speak with. Thank you so much for everything you shared. What are your final words of wisdom? And also, where can our listeners learn more about you, buy your book, anything you want to share?

52:13Amos Winter: Sure. I think my final words of wisdom is that everybody has perspective on the world and their own lives and perspective on challenges that people face. And it's that perspective that makes you a powerful innovator. And so in the book, we talk a lot about this, about building your perspective, because you typically don't want to rely only on your own soul perspective. you want to try to see the world through the eyes of other people and build your perspective because perspective is the most powerful tool an innovator has because what it does is show you requirements. And the only reason products fail is because requirements weren't satisfied.

52:56Amos Winter: So if you can assess all the requirements, then you can satisfy them and you can make a successful product. And so build your perspective and know that your perspective gives you innovation capabilities. But then another important part of the book we talk about is being a tempered dreamer. And what we mean by that is nobody has all the skills and resources to solve every problem in the world. And so it's really valuable for you to reflect on what resources do you have? What capabilities do you have? What knowledge do you have to best leverage your perspective to actually make an impact? And so like one example is I care really a lot about U.S.

53:41Amos Winter: security and security in the Middle East, but I'm not a policymaker. However, that promotion of security is a big driver behind my work on irrigation and water technology, because I know if farmers can grow more crops in poor countries, they can make a good living, provide for their family, and are less likely to pursue extremism as a way to provide for their family. That's a reason why people go into Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups a lot of times. So that's an example of like, I'm not a policymaker, I'm not the military, but I can do my part in technology innovation to try to help a cause that I care about.

54:23Amos Winter: So everybody has an innovator capacity. And I think you can actively suss that out by understanding your resources, your limitations, and really looking at the world through your perspective and trying to gain perspective of others. And then I think the other big takeaway of this book is the potential for global impact if we focus on low resource settings. The potential for dramatic economic impact in the fortunes that can be made by engaging rapidly growing emerging markets and the huge collective buying power of poor countries. and the massive humanitarian impact we have to make in resource-constrained countries to fight challenges around hunger and health and water and energy and so on.

55:13Amos Winter: So I want people to come away inspired that not only those problems need to be solved, there's great impact potential when you solve them, and also they are empowered to do so because they bring skills and perspective to the table. Thank you so much, Amos. Really appreciate you being here. Where can our listeners learn about you, buy your book, anything you want to say about your work? Yep. So listeners can find Global Buy Design at any of the common book retailers. So Amazon, Barnes & Noble, as well as a lot of independent book retailers are carrying it. So if you just Google Global Buy Design book, you can find it out.

55:54Amos Winter: And then if you want to learn more about me, my research program's website is gear.mit.edu. So, gear.mit.edu. That's the Global Engineering and Research Lab website. And then, yeah, if you want to learn about my crazy engineering hobbies and what I do in my spare time, you can follow me on Instagram at TheMechanic. So T-H-E-M-I-T-C-H-A-N-I-C. Amos, thank you again so much. Our guest today was Amos Winter. I hope you guys enjoyed this great discussion. And our podcast sponsor today is strategytraining.com. You can get some gifts from us. You can get access to episode one of how to build a consulting practice at firmsconsulting.com forward slash build.

56:49You can also access the overall approach used in well-managed strategy studies at firmsconsulting.com forward slash overall approach. And you can get a template resume we use with all our clients at firmsconsulting.com forward slash resume PDF. Thank you so much for tuning in and I'm looking forward to connecting with you all next time.

57:20Thanks for listening to this episode of the Strategy Skills Podcast. Stay up to date on all of our latest training by signing up for our email updates on firmsconsulting.com. We look forward to helping you develop your strategy, critical thinking, decision-making, and communication skills next time here on the Strategy Skills Podcast.

57:49Thank you.