Eyes On Impact: The Human Side of Tech | AVI Systems

00:00:06:03 - 00:00:30:23
Brad Sousa
Hey, everyone. Brad Sousa here, CTO of AVI Systems, and I get it. We talk about Return to the Office like a lot, and quite honestly, we should. It's one of the biggest challenges we face and the organizations that we serve well, they're asking us to help them solve this big issue. Now, I think it takes more than just the worker to create a successful return to the office strategy.

00:00:30:26 - 00:00:59:04
Brad Sousa
I even think it takes more than just amazing tact, If you can believe I actually said that out loud. What if I told you that that this problem that we're solving isn't just about the office? What if it's about how smart the city is, how connected the city that my office is in, and how that connectivity and profoundly impact the success or failure of our return to the office plan?

00:00:59:06 - 00:01:22:06
Brad Sousa
Well, today on Eyes on Impact, we have joining with us Dr. Jonathan Reichental, who has insights to this conversation that will absolutely blow your mind. Jonathan is a world leader and author and speaker on the topic of Smart Cities. He's a professor at the University of San Francisco, the CEO of Human Future, a business that helps focus on innovation and tech and focus on smart cities.

00:01:22:08 - 00:01:41:07
Brad Sousa
The conversation that we had with Jonathan earlier today, quite honestly, caught me by surprise. So I'm looking forward to sharing it with you. But before I do, I want to share our thanks with Logitech, a U.S. and tech partner that has helped us deliver on return to the office strategies that have made a huge impact for our customers.

00:01:41:08 - 00:02:01:12
Brad Sousa
So thanks largely for partnering with us and for sponsoring Eyes on Impact today. So get ready for an unexpected conversation again about smart cities, innovation, leadership and human impact. It's going to be amazing. So let's get after it.

00:02:01:14 - 00:02:18:14
Brad Sousa
Well, I am excited. Today, we have Dr. Jonathan Reichental, who's going to be joining us, CEO of Human Future. Professor, author, sought after speaker who is super human in a lot of these topics. Jonathan, thanks for joining us today. I'm excited about having you as well.

00:02:18:14 - 00:02:22:07
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Thanks, Brad. I look forward to the conversation with you today.

00:02:22:09 - 00:02:44:02
Brad Sousa
How about we start by by giving people a peek at who you are and the different maybe facets of your world. You're a CEO, you're a professor. I think University of San Francisco is right. And and author and all of this. How how does this come together? What what's the connective tissue between all of us?

00:02:44:03 - 00:03:04:18
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Yeah, it does look like a little random, but there is a thread that holds it all together. I have to say. I'll try to share that with you. Hmm. I mean, fundamentally, I'm a technology person. That's where my passion lies. Yeah, at the age of about ten or 11 years old, I was writing software and I actually sold my first piece of software to a to a gaming company.

00:03:04:21 - 00:03:25:15
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Didn't make a lot of money. I think it was like the equivalent of about $200 at the time, but it felt like a lot of money for a 11 year old. So I was yeah, yeah, I was hooked on tech. And so that's been something that has continued to be a deep passion of mine. Yeah, I grew up in Europe but emigrated to the U.S., so I'm an immigrant here and it's been good.

00:03:25:15 - 00:03:51:28
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
I have to the extent I could, I have tried to fulfill the American dream and try to fulfill my entire, my, my potential. I think, which which is what that's all about. Yeah. And I started off in Florida working for a big professional services firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers. But everyone was like, you know, I was I was actually running a technology innovation for them and a lot of fun.

00:03:51:28 - 00:04:16:04
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
And I built a small team and I worked for some great clients and also delivered a lot of interesting insights and technologies internally. But everybody kept saying to me, You ought to go to Silicon Valley. Like, that's where you'll be best utilized and you'll you'll make you'll integrate with the network there. And so finally I found a way out here, and I came to work for Tim O'Reilly up at Riley Media.

00:04:16:07 - 00:04:40:28
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
And then Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was that was neat. Just north of the city of San Francisco in the, in the within the apple orchard of Santa Rosa. And then I headhunter called me and said, Hey, would you, would you be interested in being working in a city, working for an interesting city, doing innovation and technology? And I think my first question was what city?

00:04:41:05 - 00:05:03:21
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
You know, because that was going to be a big determinant for me. So it was the city of Palo Alto, birthplace of Silicon Valley. So it seemed like an interesting place. I met the city manager who turned out to be a really great guy and somebody that I knew I would enjoy working for and with. And for the next seven years, we we, I, we're going to talk about this.

00:05:03:21 - 00:05:26:02
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
I think today we explore the possibility of how can you deliver not just government, but city services in a completely new way in a world of awash in technology and data. And then just a few years ago, you know, I did everything I wanted to do there. And what I was doing was getting I got a lot of recognition myself and my team and then the city staff.

00:05:26:02 - 00:05:50:02
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
What we were doing was interesting to other cities, of course, and I was invited all over the world to speak about our successes and our challenges. And finally I decided, you know, I want to do this full time. I want to go. I want to deliver insights and work with cities and communities all over the world, not just one community, although I did love that work.

00:05:50:05 - 00:06:15:06
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
So I started a company around that, as you said, Human future and site. So that's my core. But the connective tissue. So what is it? It is education. It is education. When I think about whether I was leading teams, building my own business, working with clients or, you know, obviously being a university professor or a writer, I also have written many books.

00:06:15:08 - 00:06:33:27
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
It's education, which brings it all together. I love to teach and I love to learn, which happens when you're teaching. I love working with clients and love working with students of all types. And and so so that's that's my journey now. You know, I have my own business. I, I have a lot of freedom to, to pursue lots of different interests.

00:06:33:27 - 00:06:42:07
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
But the core is education. And the topic is sort of tech in the broadest sense of of of meaning.

00:06:42:09 - 00:07:08:19
Brad Sousa
Yeah. You know, so I'm you and I have, I think, a lot of things, a lot of passions in common. I love to teach. I'm I'm absolutely curious about everything. I'm a technology innovator. Here's another thing that I think we might have in common. You first of all, you have a contagious passion about you. And I love that.

00:07:08:22 - 00:07:32:29
Brad Sousa
And one of the passions is really around. I'm going to quote this leveraging technology for human progress. Our our our our language around that is human impact. It's it's not what does the technology do or what's the foundational elements of tech. It's how do people consume it and what how does it change their life. I mean, that's that's our passion.

00:07:33:01 - 00:07:36:12
Brad Sousa
What inspired you to kind of focus on that?

00:07:36:15 - 00:07:58:04
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Yeah, So that that resonates a lot with me. You know, I would I would just add to that the way you described it is saying I want technology to be a positive force in the world. And that and that's what I that's what I look with on yeah every technology has the capacity for for bad things and bad people will do bad things with them with it.

00:07:58:06 - 00:08:32:02
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
But my orientation is to what degree can technology help to deliver a better human experience to the most amount of people in the world? So children can grow up into a world that is abundant and healthy and sustainable, and that's good for the planet too. I've always been interested in this topic, you know, I've always sort of used tech and deliver tech with that mindset, but it got reinforced when I worked for a city, you know, I think, Yeah, yeah.

00:08:32:04 - 00:08:54:29
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Look, I've told anyone who knows my podcast or seen me, they know I tell the story every time. But it's worth saying because it really is very much defining of of who I am and what I do, which is when I went to work for the city, my intent was to work with my team to deliver a better experience and to change the city in a very positive way.

00:08:55:01 - 00:09:26:04
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
And I think we did that. I can later on perhaps provide some examples, but that was not the takeaway. That was not the big thing that happened. The big thing that happened was this experience changed me and that's what I walked away with, was this idea that I didn't realize the role of cities in the world, it being the central context for the future, the central context for humanity in the 21st and 22nd century, all things being being equal.

00:09:26:06 - 00:09:45:18
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
So as I sort of got deeper and deeper, you know, I thought, Hey, I'm going to be a technology guy in a city. I'm going to, you know, do your typical CIO stuff, run a data center. We'll have databases and email and, you know, wireless and everyone will get laptops and smart phones, all the stuff you do as a technology leader, basic stuff.

00:09:45:19 - 00:10:32:29
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Sure. But so that's that is a big part of it. So, you know, me, maybe I would say 40% of the work. Is that what I really uncovered as I kind of got deep into the weeds was the world of cities and the other 60% that the the the most successful human machine in history is the city. If you think about it through that lens, and if you're going to, for example, provide a healthier life, more sustainable world, more education, more opportunity, it's it's really in an urban context and and then you can ask the question, well, what what what instrumentation do we have to sort of affect that Well, process and attitude?

00:10:33:00 - 00:11:09:10
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
You know, there are things you can to some degree bring to the table and control. But the big instrumentation is is digitalization is is walking in terms of tech. You know, we're going to spread opportunity and economic progress, hopefully in a sustainable way through the levers of tech. And and it's proving itself as I work with cities from, you know, locally here in the Bay Area, just south of San Francisco, right through to Eastern Europe, in Australia and New Zealand and South America and elsewhere.

00:11:09:13 - 00:11:30:29
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
So that has sort of amplified my interest and my passion because I want to make the biggest impact. I mean, that's you know, when I think about in the name of my business, a human future, how can I work with others, with partners and teams to have the biggest impact? I'm going to be a little bit sort of selfish and say, three cities, three cities.

00:11:30:29 - 00:11:34:21
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
And that's that's where my passion comes from.

00:11:34:23 - 00:11:56:13
Brad Sousa
So. So let's unpack a little bit of that. Let's talk about some smart cities. I've been involved in a number of smart community initiatives. Some of them, you know, way back in the day where I helped architect the first integrated network for education, health care and public services in the state of California. So that was a really cool experience.

00:11:56:13 - 00:12:24:26
Brad Sousa
I've done a lot of design and architecture around intelligent transportation and all these other kinds of things that today for us, the community, the definition of community is less about a municipality and it's more about a workplace. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in a little bit. The changes in how people work has really impacted the the economy of the urban environment.

00:12:24:28 - 00:12:38:12
Brad Sousa
It seems right. Businesses, when people are not gathering in the city to go there to work, you know, businesses struggle and all of that kind of saying is this all part of the perspective that you have around the work you're doing it?

00:12:38:12 - 00:13:01:00
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Smart said. It really is. It's such a great point and question you're asking. There's there's few things that don't fall into the urban context. There really is. It's all encompassing. I mean, look, it's let's just think about some of the stats here. We are an urban world. We're like almost 60% of all humans living today on a planet of 8 billion people.

00:13:01:03 - 00:13:21:17
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
We live in cities. So, you know, there's still people outside. There's still rural communities, which, of course, are very important. But we're we're celebrating. We're we're we got about 3 million people moving into cities every single week. Our cities are natively growing as well. And so we think by the middle of this, you know, the century will be at 70%.

00:13:21:17 - 00:13:46:09
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
And as we head towards the end of the 21st Century, closing in on 80%. So we want whatever it is that humans do, you know, go to school, go to work, play, you know, whatever, you know, get, get, get their health care needs addressed, create meaning in their lives. Yeah. Just practically it's going to happen in a city.

00:13:46:09 - 00:14:14:20
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
So. So city intersects with everything, including sort of the future of work and what it means to have community. Now, I'm not painting some big rosy picture this second. I'm kind of more articulating the situation. What we do have are enormous challenges, you know, phenomenal challenges that in many ways, if we don't address them, that the trajectory is in completely wrong direction.

00:14:14:23 - 00:14:34:02
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
You know, we can't keep adding millions and millions of new cars to, you know, roads that we don't that can't be expanded or it's actually a law of diminishing returns. You know, you're you're trying to add more cars, you're expanding the roads, whatever. But it's really going in the negative situation. You got to reinvent, you got to rethink.

00:14:34:04 - 00:14:54:04
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
You got to innovate intensely. How we address things like like transportation. Right. So I hope I kind of got to to the heart of, you know, part of your question. Yeah. If you if we want to talk about just the future of work, it is an urban question largely.

00:14:54:06 - 00:15:21:03
Brad Sousa
Yeah, it's interesting to me. So, I mean, I'm going to I'm going to I'll use the pandemic not as a global health care crisis, but just as kind of a marker of time for a moment. And I'll say that I'm prepared. D'amérique the pre-pandemic, the workforce generally went to the work place or the office because that's where all the stuff was, that they needed to do their work.

00:15:21:03 - 00:15:38:28
Brad Sousa
It's people had workstations and computers at a desk, so they had to go there to to do their work or the data was stored in a data center. So they had to go there or, you know, the people that they that they did work with, that they had to solve problems with or build consensus. They were all there.

00:15:38:28 - 00:16:02:22
Brad Sousa
But but today, today, all of that is actually here. And and so the concept of why do we go to a workplace, I think has changed. I think there's a new relationship between the work here and the workplace or the office. And I think that that has a huge impact on the potential outcomes or trajectory of a of a city.

00:16:02:22 - 00:16:03:28
Brad Sousa
These do you see some.

00:16:04:05 - 00:16:32:02
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Huge, huge, you know, the Web takeover is definitely one of the historical turning points. We won't know the full consequences probably for another couple of decades because you need to actually look back to be able to understand what happened. It's much harder to understand it when you're in the moment here. So I think what you described is is perfectly understandable.

00:16:32:02 - 00:16:50:03
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
And and you've got that quite a few communities, quite a lot of inner cities in many parts of the world that, you know, continue to be quite empty, You know, a lot of vacant space. Not great if you're in the commercial real estate business. Some communities, though, are seeing, you know, a bit of a comeback, like San Francisco, for example, starting to get some good occupancy.

00:16:50:03 - 00:17:22:12
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
And companies are moving in and new companies are merging. So but that won't be like so many things won't be necessarily the trend we see see everywhere. But I would take your point even further in that, Yes, we were asking questions about where we work and what tools we use to work. I think we're now asking what is work and very form of like how we deliver it timewise.

00:17:22:15 - 00:17:47:23
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
You know, the notion that there are seven days in the week and of which five you work in those two days that are the weekend, you know, has its foundations in a different time, right. Yeah. Not the fact that we still, you know, so many people in the United States and around the world start work. I don't a day and we're going to just say they get to the office and wrap up at 530, 6:00 y y right, right, right.

00:17:47:25 - 00:18:10:04
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
And so now you've got questions of what does it mean to work? You know, is it if I do the same amount of work in 3 hours, is that not good enough? Perhaps, you know, or should I work three days a week or six days? Like, why are we why have we been in such a fixed mode for so long?

00:18:10:06 - 00:18:35:22
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
And this is not me just sort of like sitting at the end of a bar, just kind of musing on, you know, some interesting ideas. This is what organizations are thinking about deeply. And in fact, there's kind of a tension between an older leadership and, you know, the new employees trying to figure that out like a new employee wants massive flexibility but prepared to work hard and smart.

00:18:35:25 - 00:18:56:26
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
The older the old guard wants people to come to cubicles every day. You know, for 40 hours a week at minimum. Well, it can't both can't exist and have, you know, the same level of demand. There's got to be there's going to be some sort of new form of that emerging. And you start to see, for example, companies saying, I think four days are acceptable.

00:18:56:26 - 00:19:16:12
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Now you can choose the four days you work. A lot of companies are saying now of those four days you can choose to have up to three at home or in the office. You know that seems to be where a lot of businesses are kind of landing is in the three days, you know, at home or in the office mode.

00:19:16:14 - 00:19:37:26
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
And then and then people are asking what we sold. So was people sort of saying, well, am I actually doing work that's meaningful or well aligned with my interest areas? And that's created a in of itself a unique workforce dynamic right now where you we don't have a match between need and supply. And that's right. Take some time to, to actually find itself too.

00:19:37:26 - 00:20:00:24
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
So I love this topic. I'm so glad you bring it up. I absolutely believe that obviously, the world's economics are driven through our cities more so than countries, right? That the highest level of GDP production is in an urban context and the future of work of the work we do, how we generate that economic activity in of itself is being redefined.

00:20:00:24 - 00:20:04:25
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
So really, a lot of these pieces. Yes.

00:20:04:28 - 00:20:25:28
Brad Sousa
Yeah. So I want to share with you something that we think we are seeing, and I wonder if it has a context to the world that you're in around smart cities. So I'm I'm talking about now smart workplace, the context of smart workplace and and the the argument that we make. So let me let me just find my community.

00:20:26:00 - 00:21:11:25
Brad Sousa
So the community that we're connecting together is truly diverse. It's large multinational or global logos. And so we don't have a community that shares the same laws or the same cultural values or even the same language. Right? It's it's not limited to a geographical location, which is really been a really interesting challenge. And so the way that we talk about it is can we create a workplace worth returning to something that that rivals what I have working from home, recognizing that at any given time a third of our workforce is not going to be there.

00:21:11:25 - 00:21:28:15
Brad Sousa
They're going to be someplace else. And one of the things we think we've learned on this journey now that we've been on for almost two years is that the worker wants their idea of what the purpose of the office is to adapt them.

00:21:28:17 - 00:21:29:17
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Sure.

00:21:29:20 - 00:21:36:12
Brad Sousa
They don't want to have to adopt the office or move towards it. They want the office to adapt to them.

00:21:36:15 - 00:21:37:15
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Yeah.

00:21:37:17 - 00:21:42:13
Brad Sousa
So is that is there a similarity in like smart cities?

00:21:42:15 - 00:22:03:28
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Well, I love where you guys are thinking and how are you thinking of where you're going? I mean, we need every type of idea and that might be sort of like that meeting place where the older leadership meets your employee, right? If aspirations and you figure out sort of what's the sweet spot, if it certainly exists right. Yeah.

00:22:04:00 - 00:22:26:09
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
So of course, you've got the tools of change. Right? And we know for a long time now in a highly hyperconnected digital world, you just need a laptop or, you know, I'm hearing more and more people are just working on their smartphones. I can't do that, by the way. I have to have a laptop. Yeah, but I certainly have several colleagues who say they don't even open their laptop these days.

00:22:26:09 - 00:22:57:05
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
They they run their work and their lives from a smartphone. That's pretty remarkable. And that says, you know, well, what what does it mean then to be in the office or to be in the smart workplace you're describing? Is that more about what I've often described as sort of like kind of almost corporate serendipity, right? Where you being in the presence of colleagues or generates ideas, it creates knowledge, it creates opportunity.

00:22:57:08 - 00:23:21:28
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
You know, one of the things that came out of this, all of us going home, you know, during COVID was was with the loss of community and corporate community. That's right. And this is a lot of the conversations I was having. You know, I have to say I have a portfolio startup companies that I advise I think is a 10 to 12 companies, and I meet with them regularly.

00:23:21:28 - 00:23:41:18
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
I meet with the CEOs regularly, and they're all relatively These are new startups, like either just thrown around a year or a little over a year old, and all of them got rid of their offices, every one of them. Yeah. So pre-COVID, they all have they all have a little office that somewhere to go cover. They all went home when they said we're not renewing the lease or we get originally.

00:23:41:21 - 00:24:08:20
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
So they and they so how's it going? And so for you know, this for example, people were hired. A lot of people are leaving, like people hiring. So these are some of these startups with 20 people, 25 people like 18 of the people were brand new. They had met each other. They'd never actually been together. Right? So so they said, Look, we're able to produce work, but we have no community and people feel no sense of belonging or loyalty, right?

00:24:08:22 - 00:24:32:05
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
So we got to fix that. We can't throw that away. You know, if you throw that away, well, there's less meaning, I think, to life, less meaning to work. Work is such a big part of our lives. However, way whatever way you spin it, one hopes that you you personally create meaning or the organization creates meaningful mess for you, you know, with your participation.

00:24:32:08 - 00:24:58:04
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
And so, you know, okay, you can you've got a very flexible toolset, cloud based apps on a smartphone or a laptop, let's say, for a lot of information workers. What the startup started telling me is they're at least going to meet or they will periodically meet in a physical location, the ones that are very spread out, and then the ones that are kind of local, they said, well, we'll have a place that you can check in and we would like you to be in there a few days a week.

00:24:58:06 - 00:25:19:21
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
And because we want the opportunity to be with you, to have you present and to work with you, I think the bigger picture, perhaps the bigger picture of your question, sort of the intersection with how we design cities and think about the future of urbanization that's in flux right now. I don't know that we we have a full understanding.

00:25:19:21 - 00:25:58:07
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
You know, we had a lot of people who, for example, said, if I don't need to be in an office because remember, people, particularly in the United States, live in a place, it's not because they have parents or family or some roots. They're there in a place probably because of the job they're in. You know, they live in San Francisco because the jobs in San Francisco, if you separate those two things now, you can kind of live anywhere because you you don't have now the the the essential motivation for where you live is now disconnected outside of, you know, natural roots or where you were born.

00:25:58:09 - 00:26:12:02
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
And so so we had a lot of people move. They went from San Francisco. They wanted to pay less tax, for example, or maybe buy a bigger home in a low cost place. And what we're hearing right now, it worked for a few people. A lot of them want to come back. They actually want to come to the city.

00:26:12:05 - 00:26:36:04
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
I want to come back to the office that maybe didn't work out. Now, again, it's early and I'm a data guy, so I don't like to, you know, give definitive answers without supporting data. But anecdotally, I can say that this maybe is not the future that some people ask me. For example, you know, Jonathan, you've been working on the future of cities for about a decade, and it seems like with COVID, nobody cares about cities.

00:26:36:04 - 00:26:54:12
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Everybody wants to live anywhere. And that's like cities. And I said, Well, first of all, I don't think the trend is so big that it's redefining cities yet. I, I don't know. I guess people who are leaving are going to stay large. You know, if you move to a rural community somewhere in the middle of the country, could be absolutely beautiful.

00:26:54:14 - 00:27:08:21
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
But if you were kind of living in Austin or Miami or New York or San Francisco for a while, you're going to start to miss that. You may need that. And so we have seen sort of like that presence and community come back to some degree, starting to.

00:27:08:21 - 00:27:10:01
Brad Sousa
Work. Yeah, it's.

00:27:10:03 - 00:27:28:00
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
As you and I speak in, you know, in the middle. So the late summer of 2023, I think there's a lot of unknowns, too. But the only known is that there is some significant change in how we organize and how we work together.

00:27:28:02 - 00:27:54:28
Brad Sousa
So I what you said is brilliant and I love it. The one of the takeaways for me is that the learning cycle has is three or four times faster than what it used to be. And so the unknowns that we're dealing with right now, they're going to become better known in the next cycle. But that cycle can't we can't let that cycle be five years or eight years.

00:27:54:28 - 00:28:24:19
Brad Sousa
That cycle has to be 18 months or two years. And and there's adjustments that are made along the way. I'll share with you that one of the lessons we think we've learned is that there's three reasons why workers want to get back to the office, and it's really driven around consensus community and experiences. You and I can share information back and forth on a video call like we're doing today, and that's awesome.

00:28:24:19 - 00:28:48:25
Brad Sousa
But if you and I, we're going to create something transformational for a city. I'd get on a plane and I'd fly to where you are and we'd sit down and, you know, shove pizza under the door until we work out whatever the issues are. And we bring in stakeholders and we build consensus, right? That consensus building doesn't work as well over video.

00:28:48:28 - 00:28:52:26
Brad Sousa
There's something about proximity that drives consensus building.

00:28:52:26 - 00:29:42:26
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
And in fact, there this I know, has data to support it, even even pre-COVID when because we were we've been talking about telecommuting. It seems like such an R word now. Sure. Yeah. The artifact of the 1980s or nineties, telecommuting. Yeah, I think it's just work from home now is a WFM. Yeah and so the questions were asked like if in a world where, you know, you have tools like the Internet and digitalized nation where you can work in groups but over geographically spread areas, what is, what are some of the values of being a person and the data And again, pre-dating COVID was that if you're going to work on a project so you

00:29:42:26 - 00:30:12:02
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
know, projects, by the way, you probably know the hard to get right and the failure rate for a lot of project, right is is higher than most of us would actually like to admit. You know if you're you're good you know, slick team with good experience, you know you have a better chances of a good outcome. But if you compare, you know, teams delivering similar types of projects, the team that started in person and then continued in other modalities are more successful projects from those.

00:30:12:02 - 00:30:17:26
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
That's your own form together. That's real data. That's real data. Yeah.

00:30:17:28 - 00:30:57:05
Brad Sousa
One of the things that we've also seen is that workers in particular younger workers, want to consume the office. They it's not a place they go to. It's a thing that they consume because they're an experience there or an expectation that they have of what the office is supposed to be like. And I when I think about the smart city programs that I've been involved with, I think there's a correlation there where, as an example, the last transportation Smart transportation project that was on, nobody wanted to see the cameras or the sensors or the Iot devices.

00:30:57:09 - 00:31:06:09
Brad Sousa
They just wanted the congestion to go away. They wanted to consume the road. They didn't care about the tech that made that possible. Are you is that something that resonates with.

00:31:06:09 - 00:31:26:02
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
You so in so much, so much. I'll give you a quick story. You know, when I was the head of tech and innovation at the city of Palo Alto, you you know, in every respect myself and the city manager, we wanted to question every traditional way of doing things as long as it fell within the rules and all that.

00:31:26:02 - 00:31:45:20
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Because there's the rules, right? Sure. But there's some freedom within that. I was you know, I, for example, created the I.T area and, you know, to to to look like physically look like a startup. You know, it went from that sort of stuff, stuffy kind of what you might imagine the local government looks like to looking like you're walking into a Silicon Valley startup.

00:31:45:22 - 00:32:14:16
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
So physically we changed and then we changed the process, you know, moving faster, taking more risks, using more agile methods of project where waterfall was the only way people had sort of said, we're going to deliver government. But one of the things I did was I had an open door policy, so I wanted to hear and this comes from my innovation background, is I wanted to be able to hear all sorts of ideas from all sorts of people, have a really open door policy and and people knew that.

00:32:14:18 - 00:32:32:14
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
So, you know, word got around that, you know, if, if, if you want an opportunity to get some feedback, just give Jonathan a call at the city of Palo Alto. He'll invite you in and yeah when one guy tells a story, one startup you know, and I have great again, respect for a lot of my colleagues in the government space, but he tells a story.

00:32:32:14 - 00:32:55:15
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
He's a you know it was a sort of a over the course of a few days he called various Bay Area cities and there's about 40 cities here in Silicon Valley. And he went through, I don't know, ten or 15. He got voice mail, he left messages, he sent emails. Not a single response. When he called me, I answered the phone and then I invited him on the same day and he came with his team to my office.

00:32:55:15 - 00:33:13:19
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
He said that never happened before. It was so completely different than any other government experience we'd had. So it just shows you it doesn't take a lot to sort of tweak the system a little bit and sort of be able. Wow. But here, getting back to your question, I would have a lot of startups come into my office and say, Jonathan, we have a world changing idea, whatever.

00:33:13:19 - 00:33:37:07
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
And I'm like, I'm we're going to listen. And not every idea is world changing. I think we know that. But somewhere neat. And I would give, you know, sort of say, nice idea, keep working on it, whatever, you know, or, you know, maybe we'll experiment together. And actually, I fought because I was there for seven years. For for a few years, I was a little bit too nice, you know, It was like and I thought to myself, by being too nice, I don't think I'm being that helpful.

00:33:37:10 - 00:33:58:23
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
You know, they feel good when they leave my office, but I don't think I've actually given them the value of of the experience of of interacting as anything. Yeah, exactly. Or I work in government every single day. Here's the reality, you know, versus what you perceive the experience to be. So I decide, I don't know, like three, maybe four years.

00:33:58:23 - 00:34:17:16
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
And I'm like, I'm going to give them the hard feedback. I'm going to give them the tough feedback. And I started doing that. And the reality is they did respect that more the startups and that and the innovators and entrepreneurs who came to visit me started to actually find that very appealing. You got to have some thick skin if you're going to be an entrepreneur anyway.

00:34:17:18 - 00:34:43:04
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
But here's the thing. They would often start with Jonathan. We want to talk to you today about our new Iot based sensor system that collects data and produces, you know, these reports or, you know, it's an Iot system, collects data. We put the data into blockchain, we distribute it. And after a while I was like, stop, stop with the tech and like, tell me how you know, start with how you're going to benefit the community.

00:34:43:06 - 00:35:03:27
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
You know, if you're building a, as you say, traffic system, don't tell me that it's, you know, the protocols you're using, the languages you built, the software and tell me, is it going to reduce traffic or, you know, we were very much focused on Vision Zero, which was about reducing accidents to zero, you know, in terms of bicycle accidents, car accidents.

00:35:03:29 - 00:35:23:04
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
And and that's kind of a California thing. I think many other communities have a right. And so I said, I want to know that whether your solution delivers on that and, you know, show me the supporting evidence. And then I just started to coach them about when when I get in front of the city manager or the or the chief transportation official.

00:35:23:06 - 00:35:42:24
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
I want you to start with that. And somebody is going to be I'm going to be interested eventually in the tech, you know, because I'm just that's I'm a curious guy and I'm like, what did you build this? And or, you know, how is it architected? But for the other decision makers, let's be real clear about describing it the way you did, which is does it make the traffic flow better?

00:35:42:24 - 00:35:52:12
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Does it reduce congestion? Does it reduce accidents? That's that's the best advice I can give to any company. By the way, pitching to a city or to any organization, frankly.

00:35:52:15 - 00:36:17:19
Brad Sousa
Yeah, that's exactly right. What is it? What does it matter to the people that are going to consumer? Yeah, right. And that's that's the real thing. So we've been talking about innovation and technology through the lens of smart cities. I actually want to talk about innovation specific only because a lot of the people that that are listening in on the podcast were tech leaders and innovators on our own.

00:36:17:22 - 00:36:27:18
Brad Sousa
But you talk often about responsible innovation. Yeah, and I'd like you to unpack that a little bit for us. What does that mean and how do you do it?

00:36:27:18 - 00:36:54:12
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Yeah, more important than ever before. So this topic is sort of like risen to the surface just over the last few years. And I'm going to tell you this is going to be a priority topic for all leaders and all technology leaders. I just finished writing a new video series called Introduction to Techno Ethics. Techno Ethics, and that's sort of an academic term for the ethics of technology, right?

00:36:54:12 - 00:37:21:05
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
If you hadn't figured out that. Yeah. Yeah. And so, in fact, when I titled the video course it'll be coming out, I think in the, in the first of the year. I did call it Introduction to Techno Ethics. But I realized people, you know, I need to say the ethics of technology and in brackets then techno ethics so they so they know what both the you know, the the plain language version is plus the actual academic word which, which may answer the broader vocabulary eventually.

00:37:21:08 - 00:37:38:28
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
But but it was fascinating to to to write this video series. One of the hardest things I've I've ever done I have been teaching it and talking about this for a long time. But, you know, that's a different experience than when you are forced to write it down and actually produce a, you know, a two hour video series on it.

00:37:39:00 - 00:37:52:02
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
And so I had to get it to the so the heart of of of what's going on. I mean, there's some basics here, right? But when it comes to responsible innovation and by the way, I'm kind of I'm conflating the two things on purpose.

00:37:52:05 - 00:37:53:05
Brad Sousa
Yeah, yeah. Get it.

00:37:53:08 - 00:38:21:06
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Right. How you how you behave which is the definition of ethics, right? Is is the behavior of doing things right or doing things wrong is ultimately sort of responsible behavior on the level. Right. So when when when I started to write about this, one of the questions that immediately jumps out is, well, why hasn't this always been important to why is it more important today?

00:38:21:09 - 00:38:47:18
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
And and I think anyone who you know, any of your listeners or viewers who I imagine a lot have a technology background, understand that the role of tech has sort of moved from sort of the periphery to the center and that every organization, the technology organization, it doesn't matter what you do if you're running a farm or a funeral home or whatever it is, You know, at the heart of what you do is it's driven by by tech.

00:38:47:20 - 00:38:56:02
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Some organizations, by the way, having recognized that yet and are struggling, you have to recognize that you're in the tech business now. I don't know. You know, again, it's sort of work.

00:38:56:04 - 00:39:27:02
Brad Sousa
For so so I'm going to step in on this because it's crazy to me how many CEOs I work with that are at logos that you would recognize, who believe that their role is to provide a utility to their workers like plumbing. I.T. is a utility, and I just fundamentally can't get my head around that. Right. So I'm sorry for cutting you off, but I just really, really agree with.

00:39:27:02 - 00:39:48:16
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
All of the transition. I mean, you've got to you've got to the the I used to look at this when I worked in a city. A lot of my cohorts were near retirement. And so what's the likelihood that they're going to completely think differently about what they do if you're going to retire in a year or two years?

00:39:48:16 - 00:40:12:22
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Probably not. It does require a new generation. It does require somebody maybe mid-career to sort of reinvent themselves. I'm sorry. You definitely see that with with a lot of CIOs. And and and so it's also, you know, the CEO has to recognize and invites the CIO and the CTO into the C-suite and, you know, realize that they're part of it.

00:40:12:22 - 00:40:41:22
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
What I what I was funny, I come back to your central question, but when I started the city of Palo Alto in 2011 and I left in the end of 2017 or 18, seven years later, whatever that is, I guess, and the 2010 and at the beginning, you know, the city had a lot of tech, as all communities do, but it wasn't really central and it didn't work that well When I first joined.

00:40:41:22 - 00:41:24:11
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
I mean, that was one of the big motivation for me being there. By the time I was leaving seven years later, there was not a single meeting or conversation about the future of the city that didn't involve tech. And I was at every single meeting. So even in that seven years, the mentality of the city and the role of tech in the city had completely transformed such that if there wasn't a technology person in the room talking about some part of the city's delivery, whether it was health care, education, public works, libraries, public safety, it wasn't happening without a technology person or a technology to support it.

00:41:24:13 - 00:42:15:04
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Yeah, and this is a nice segue way back to the original question about, you know, the role of responsible innovation. If technology is having such an enormous role to play, including its implications to the community, whether that's privacy and, you know, being a the ultimate custodian of of data that is often very, very personal or it is about the consequences of the systems that you deploy, you know, public safety systems that sometimes are a little controversial, whether it's about using the cameras or, again, data or other ways to identify individuals like surveillance technology, all of these things have consequences that go beyond just, you know, how much does it cost and how long will it

00:42:15:04 - 00:42:38:18
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
take us to build. There's an area now consideration a whole deep layer of responsibilities that all organizations have. So we just can't sort of say if the technology can do it, let's do it. We have to say, can the technology do it? Yeah, can be 40. Yes. And then the next question is, should we do it? Should we do so?

00:42:38:18 - 00:43:20:02
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Responsible innovation is all about asking, should we do it, not whether we can. And I don't think we asked this question enough, you know, through my work, you know, both researching my series and then writing it, the really the outcome is everyone will acknowledge the, you know, the impact of tech and how it can how it can at some levels be life and death for sure, but even can be a source of controversy, sensitivity issues can be the difference between a good experience and a bad experience when you're interacting with some government service or city service.

00:43:20:05 - 00:43:57:25
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
I think very quickly people recognize this. But then the question is always how are we acting? How are we behaving as a consequence? And what is the model through which we should behave? I do. We have a code of ethics. Do we ask the right questions when we're implementing artificial intelligence? Of course, that's the hot one. And that's where we see, you know, questions needing to come up about responsible innovation, because the consequences of some of the stuff we're going to do are doing with they are so consequential.

00:43:57:25 - 00:44:23:03
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Right. So I would just kind of conclude by saying responsible innovation or techno ethics, the ethics of technology are not abstract peripheral topics shouldn't be sort of on a list of we'll get to it eventually. I'm making the case day in, day out. Now, this is a this is a 21st century leadership competency, and it needs to be up there in the top five.

00:44:23:04 - 00:44:43:15
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
You know, if you're obviously you're worrying about growth, you're worrying about having the right skills, you know, competition. Yeah. And you're your ethics and your innovation, your responsible innovation needs to be in there too, because you might get the other stuff right. But if you mess up on responsibilities, game over your company will be canceled. Right?

00:44:43:18 - 00:45:07:07
Brad Sousa
Wow. So, Jonathan, I told you earlier that when I learned that you're going to be with us today, I was, like, excited in anticipation of what this conversation would be like. You did not disappoint. It's been a wonderful time. Great conversation. Thank for giving us your time today. It's been an absolute pleasure.

00:45:07:10 - 00:45:20:20
Dr. Jonathan Reichental
Thank you, Brad. Great, great questions. I loved hearing your perspectives, too, from both you, what you believe personally, but also what you're doing as a as an organization, a very impactful organization. So it's been a pleasure to be with you today, and I've enjoyed it very much.