What if Your Twin Was Living In Your Computer? An Interview With Claus Torp Jensen.

Claus (00:05):

You can instrument your car, you can instrument your house. To a degree, you can instrument your body at least a little bit, because you can have wearables that tell you things about your environment. What if you could harness all that power to have someone that always watched out for you, looked for bad things and celebrated good things? So it wasn't in the way, it was ambient, it was just part of the environment, and it would be there as your personal life assistant.

Jim (00:32):

Welcome to What If? So What?, the podcast where we explore what's possible with digital and discover how to make it real in your business. I'm your host, Jim Hertzfeld, and we get s**t done by asking digital leaders the right questions what if? So what? And, most importantly, now what?

Jim (00:48):

Our guest today is Claus Torp Jensen, and he's done it all. Chief Architect, Chief Technical Officer, Chief Digital Officer, and Chief Innovation Officer With IBM, CVS, Memorial, Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Teladoc, and others. Also, a published author on the topics of whole person care, digital transformation, hybrid cloud, APIs, and I still call it SOA. Some call it SOA; others call it service-oriented architecture. Not only that, he's a Guinness Book of World Records holder. In 1987, in Denmark, he helped set the record for the world's largest solitaire game with 200 decks of cards. Claus, welcome to the podcast. Did I leave anything out?

Claus (01:26):

Thank you very much. That was more than enough.

Jim (01:29):

I'm glad to be here. Do you still hold the record? I'm curious. I'm dying to know.

Claus (01:33):

I have no idea. The way this thing works is they don't always publish the same records every year, so possibly somebody broke the record, who knows, but it was fun at the time.

Jim (01:41):

It sounds like fun. You've seen and done so many different thing,s and when you and I are preparing for this episode, you mentioned a couple of related things that we're hearing a lot about from our clients ambient computing and digital twin. I would say they've not quite made the everyday lexicon. I'll point out they both sound like electronica duos great names if they aren't taken. Could you give us an overview of these two concepts ambient computing and digital twin, kind of, in your words, your perspective?

Claus (02:11):

So, I think what's important about them is their real-world capabilities. We talk a lot about technology and technologies all around us and all the bosses around AI, but AI doesn't do anything in and of itself. What can you do with it? AI, but AI doesn't do anything in and of itself. What can you do with it If you go back in time 10 years?

Claus (02:26):

I was at the point in time when I was moving from IBM to Aetna at the time, and somebody at a conference asked me, you know, look forward in time five years. It is like ridiculous, but if you're a technologist, you can't look forward in time for five years. But they wanted to know what do you think is going to happen? And you have to say something. So what I said was, I think five years from now, we're going to be beginning to see science fiction become real, which is an interesting statement, because, if you think about what is science fiction, it's not about spaceships, it's not about flying cars, but fundamentally, the evolution of technology has moved us to a space where we're beginning to fuse technology, people, sensors, analytics and how we live our lives. I mean, that is, in many ways, the essence of what a science fiction-like society looks like, and the root of both digital twins and sort of this whole notion of invisible but benevolent computing solutions, the ambient solutions lives in that, if you think about it, we've got more sensors than ever. We can sense pretty much most things we want. You can instrument your car; you can instrument your house to a degree, you can instrument your body at least a little bit because you can have wearables that tell you things about your environment. What if you could harness all that power to have someone that always watched out for you, looked for bad things, and celebrated good things? So, it wasn't in the way it was ambient, it was just part of the environment and it would be there as your personal life assistant at knee. I think that's meaningful.

Claus (03:58):

As you said, you know, the last book I published talked about this whole notion of ambient computing in healthcare. But it's not limited to healthcare. I mean, you see the same thing in transportation. You see it in the electrical grid if you want to monitor the electrical grid. That's meaningful. So, there are lots of industries that are beginning to see the notion of this mix of analytics, sensors, insight, invisibly present but actively taking action, when necessary, be a fundamental part of society.

Claus (04:22):

So, in my mind, that's taking action when necessary to be a fundamental part of society. So, in my mind, that's a real-world capability, ambient solutions, and it goes hand in hand, as you mentioned, with the notion of a digital twin. Because what's a digital twin? It's a data representation of something, an item, a system, and the examples could be the electrical grid, it could be a building, ultimately, maybe aspects of a human where we have enough data about it that we can start predicting things, because it's not reasoning about what might happen if so-and-so was to occur, because you don't always want to experiment in real life. So, if you take the notion of ambient solutions that give us this constant awareness, they also collect a bunch of data which you can then use to build digital twin representations or whatever you were monitoring, and that then helps you reason about good and bad things that might happen. So, two real-world capabilities that are closely connected.

Jim (05:17):

I'm glad you pointed out the benevolence factor in that in your definition. So, speaking of science fiction, a lot of science fiction is based on the opposite of that, which makes it makes great entertainment. But what I'm always curious about, when a particular technology or converges or begins to take off or enter our consciousness, is what changed to do that in this case? Was it the prevalence and the economics of sensors? Was it the other end of the life cycle where we were better able to conduct the analysis and the compute on the data sets? What do you think has sort of made this change?

Claus (05:54):

It's a great question. I don't know whether it was one thing. I mean. Sometimes you just live at a time where you have this confluence of factors, and if you go look back in history, the history of society, combined with the role of technology in society, there's sort of been moments in time where that happened. Think about the portable computing device, whether that's a laptop or a phone, as we call them now. But, the whole notion of a portable computing device was a combination of hardware and software in a society that was changing.

Claus (06:26):

Yeah, you can go back in time. You can talk about the internet. Same thing you can talk about, I don't know telephon-y. You could even go far enough back and talk about electricity, and you see the same notion that society is changing and has different needs. There are different technology components that come together, and all of a sudden, you have this transformative power that gets unleashed. And we live in one of those times because change is happening more rapid than ever before, and it's going to happen, whether we grasp the opportunity or not. I do think that the forced acceleration of societal change that came from Two years of pandemic conditions have probably contributed to why there is this moment in time, and it's not a decade. It's a year or two where all of a sudden everything is coming together. We're thinking about it differently because we were forced to disrupt paradigms that had served us well for a long period of time, out of necessity. We didn't have a choice.

Jim (07:26):

Yeah, trust comes to mind. Convenience, you know, I remember years ago walking into a hotel room in Las Vegas and finding a remote control for the shades, and I thought, I do, I really need this. Then I got home, and I found I probably needed this. So, the convenience factor, the certainly yeah, like I said, the balance of trust and so forth. So that's, I'm glad you brought up sort of the societal shifts and changes and the cultural changes, because I agree, I think that's a significant part of it.

Claus (07:54):

And trust is important. I mean, as you brought up, because if you try to change what looks like it's driven by technology for technology's sake, you will very often end up in a distrust scenario. But on the other hand, if you just continue down the same path, then there's a limit to what you can do. I think it was Henry Ford who said in the early 1900s if I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

Jim (08:19):

Because, at the time, horses were the thing.

Claus (08:22):

I mean, they were the easiest way to get around from a personal transportation perspective. And the reality is the breakthrough for the combustion engine wasn't actually people's transportation; it was trucks, it was the transformation, it was the transportation of goods. And that's why we still measure all engine power in horsepower, because how many horses is equivalent of goods can you transport? So, it's just fun to dive back in history and say I think he was right. If he had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. And a lot of things wouldn't have happened if we'd been satisfied with faster horses.

Jim (08:54):

Yeah, that's the essence of innovation, for sure. So, as different companies and I like that you crossed over different industries. It's kind of easy to go from connected vehicle, you know, to a connected power grid, to and beyond, as I would say, say sort of non-traditional, maybe unexpected companies with different types of products and services. Think about this what are some of the and are getting into the possibilities of ambient or digitally connected products or formulating digital twins? What are some of the barriers and challenges that you see other companies running into as they explore adopting these into their value proposition?

Claus (09:33):

I think, more than anything else, it's probably mindset, and I mean it's how do you think about the problem? And then the second part is you know what is the coalition for change that you can create and be that internal, be it with partners, be it with clients, because you can't need both. You need the right mindset to think about innovation, and you need the right coalition to drive the change that results from innovation. What's innovation? If you go to patent law, patent law says that you can patent something that is novel, not new novel. You get a new car, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the notion of the car is novel. It has to be non-obvious. So, somebody has to think outside the typical box, and it has to be valuable.

Claus (10:13):

I actually, I've always thought that that was a wonderful way of measuring innovation. You got to be novel, it's got to be non-obvious, and it has to be valuable. And in fact, I've run classes on that with the teams I've had myself, where we just talk through what is innovation. It's a mindset. Look, it's a personal journey. It's a mindset. Look, it's a personal journey. It's a mindset. It's a way of thinking about the world and looking for things that are novel and non-obvious and valuable, and sometimes they're small. You've got incremental changes that are really meaningful, valuable, and they don't have to be monster, big, sometimes a little bit more radical. You haven't changed what you're doing, but you're changing how, and sometimes they're transformational, disrupted. You're completely changing what it's all about and what it is you do as an organization, and all three have value. They happen in different ways, in different cycles, but it's not like one is better than the other. I don't think any organization can survive in the long run without, at the right moments in time, doing all three.

Jim (11:09):

Right. Well, I'm glad, it's a great callback. I think we often think of the emerging technology or a technology breakthrough as a sole driver for innovation. I think thinking broadly, I'm thinking of the Doblins 10 types of innovation, but the mindset is critical. I think there are a lot of ways, and we've talked about this on this podcast, how you bring the mindset in. Sometimes it's a cross-industry point of view, but how do you see organizations overcoming some of these challenges? And I want to call out there's a profile of you I read that said you've seen the best and worst of how organizations approach change. I like that, I believe it. So, thinking with the mindset in mind, with that different, I believe it. So, thinking with the mindset in mind, with that different, with that definition of innovation.

Claus (11:52):

I think the worst are things like insisting on change but not accepting that it takes time and resources. I mean, that's like just a conundrum that you can't really resolve. Look, we need to be efficient with our time and resources. I'm talking about squandering it, but you can't insist on change and not being willing to have the conversation about what it's going to take in terms of time and resources. I think that's the one pitfall that people fall into, and you often see it when you're talking about you know, ambient solutions, digital twins. That's all about the data and the insight.

Claus (12:24):

So, since the data is in many organizations, scattered, siloed, is not put together, that often becomes a barrier, and the conversation about how do you put the data together in a cohesive fashion becomes a fabric that can help you drive positive impact. It's a difficult conversation because nobody wants to just invest in the data. I want to move on to AI. When can we get going on the AI thing? You need to create cohesive data before you can do good artificial intelligence. So, I think that's the one thing, right? Not being willing to have the conversation about it takes time and it takes resources.

Jim (12:56):

I was just going to mention. On the topic of data, we just finished a pretty significant project with a pharmaceutical company that it was really built on the promise of AI, but about 90% of the effort was gathering the data, as you mentioned. So for sure.

Claus (13:10):

It's just. The other part is, if you don't have a chief storyteller, it doesn't have to be someone who comes from a particular pedigree. You can have a chief storyteller that comes from the business side. You can have a chief storyteller that comes from the technology side. I like to describe myself as technology's turned chief storyteller. If you think about what is the essence of the role of Chief Innovation Officer, I mean we had a CIO, a CTO, a CDIO, a chief architect, and they were all part of my organization. So, what's my role? Chief storyteller? I mean, somebody has to put together the pieces of the story and say, hey, if Andrew isn't a faster horse, what might be some ideas, some things that we can weave together? And how do we tell the story so that you overcome the organizational inertia? With, hey, I just want a faster horse.

Claus (14:00):

So not naming a chief storyteller, not knowing who is the storytelling persona in the room, preferably someone in the senior leadership role, the tip becomes a detractor more often than not in terms of how you go about driving innovation and positive change. And then how do you overcome it? Well, it's quite simple. You have the open, honest, and transparent conversation, as launched by the chief storyteller, about the fact that which of these ideas do we think are valuable enough and how do we balance the value against the resources and time it's going to take to get there? So, it's like yin and yang it's two sides of the coin. I mean, the things that are detractors are also the things you have to do to make sure that you can be a little bit more thoughtful about how you drive innovation.

Jim (14:51):

That's a great one. I have a meeting with my CEO in two days, and I realized we may not have the storyteller that we need, and actually, that's great now. What's next for me? So that was great advice, but for our listeners, with this in mind, what would you give them in terms of a now? What a simple step that they could take to maybe adopt the mindset or tell a better story.

Claus (15:13):

I think those are all relevant. You know, have the conversation about the mindset and that innovation doesn't come in one shape or form. Innovation should be part of the day job, not something we do on the side. And it's not done by a special team, it's done all the time across the organization, knowing who your chief storyteller or tellers because it can be more than one person are, and being willing to think about them. You know, one year out, three years out, five years out, you know what is meaningful and valuable to invest in.

Claus (15:47):

And then this is going to sound a little bit weird, but don't despair, don't get tired. Things take time. They require energy, perseverance. To quote Thomas Edison, opportunity is missed by most people because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work. And I love that quote and I've actually used or misused it a number of times and said innovation is missed by most people because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work. If you want to quote another known person, Einstein said you know, genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. He's not wrong. It takes work, effort, and thoughtfulness to actually be innovative. We should be proud of it when we accomplish it, but we shouldn't be afraid of the work.

Jim (16:35):

Claus, next time we do this, I'm going to wear my overalls, so I expect the same from you. Claus, thanks for sharing this insight. You've earned it. We've worn the overalls, you've done the hard work, and thanks for sharing part of your story. I'm looking forward to see how your story unfolds. So, thanks again for joining us here.

Claus (16:53):

My absolute pleasure. Thanks for the invite.

Jim (16:55):

Cheers. You've been listening to What If? So What? A digital strategy podcast from Perficient with Jim Hertzfeld. We want to thank our Perficient colleagues JD Norman and Rick Bauer for our music. Subscribe to the podcast and don't miss a single episode. You can find this season, along with show notes, at perficient.com. Thanks for listening.