Trond Undheim, Futurist and Podcaster, on the Consequences of Actions and Inactions

Colin Hunter: [0:07]

Hey folks, and welcome to another episode of the Leadership Tales podcast. My name is Colin Hunter. And today, I'm joined by Trond Undheim. Trond is a new contact of mine just over the pandemic and but a brilliant guy. I was a guest on his podcast Futurized which you'll hear about today. But he described himself as a futurist. And when I first heard the term, I thought, wow, okay, so let's explore a bit about that. And when we go into the exploration of it, some fascinating pieces about no one knows the future, but we can have a thought about the consequences of possible futures. And that's what I love about not only futurized his podcast, but his other thinking in his work, and we're going to explore that we're going to go into the immersive learning process that he has, that equals his life, he describes himself as a jack of all trades. But his immersive learning process means that he goes into many different things in great depth, is a great thinker, loves this conversation.I look forward to hearing your feedback and how you enjoyed it as well.

Today, I'm delighted to be joined by a new contact of mine, one that I've been fascinated to talk to already, but today fascinated for to have him share about himself and about his thoughts. Trond Undheim, on time, is a futurist, podcaster, investor, author, speaker, entrepreneur, and also a former director of the MIT start-up exchange based outside of Boston and has helped launch over 50 start-ups. So Trond welcome. Thank you for being on.

Trond Undheim: [1:44]

Thank you, Colin. It's a great pleasure to be here. I enjoyed so much our conversation just a little while ago, which is coming up on my podcast futurized in a little while.

Colin Hunter: [1:55]

Yeah, tell us a bit about yourself; Trond, I mean, Futurized is where we met. But tell us a bit more about yourself.

Trond Undheim: [2:00]

I don't know what there's to tell; maybe there is a little bit to tell. I mean, I'm a jack of all trades; Iíve done a lot of things, as you pointed out. The challenge with being a jack of all trades is that we tend to do a lot of things at the same time. This can be somewhat frustrating for people around us. But it does have a benefit. First of all, it makes me happy, right? So, I've done a bunch of different things, not just sort of to sample things, but really, my learning process is very immersive. And I'm not very good when I'm learning in an non-immersive way. So really, I treat my career, I guess, a little bit like a learning journey. I don't find that there's kind of a rhyme or reason to where I've been in my career. And I've, you know, worked in every type of organization, whether it be government, think tanks, I've started companies, and I've worked for large multinationals, universities, I've pretty much been around the block. And now I, you know, I work as an investor both on the corporate side and for a small, or for a seed early-stage, kind of seed-stage fund. So, I guess my life is all about learning. And I think that is really what ties in the experiences that I have. And maybe that's very easily explained because I come from, you know, my both my parents were teachers of sorts, you know, university and, and even elementary school. So

Colin Hunter: [3:31]

Nice. No, and we have that in common. My grandfather was a professor of theology. And as we talked about before, you knew, you know, his work. So, it's that piece about curiosity and learning this interesting. I'm fascinated by a couple of things. I'd love to talk about the futurized podcast because that was almost a new avenue, a new journey for you, which you started. The 100th podcast episode is coming up. Is that right?

Trond Undheim: [3:57]

Yeah, I'm super excited. And it's been one year of podcasting. And there's actually a be more wrong aspect to it, which I'll, which I was going to get into later. But since you brought it up.

Colin Hunter:

Yeah.

Trond Undheim:

I mean, the whole reason I started the podcast was out of failure, which I'll get to, you know, much later, but I wanted to tee that up. I mean, nothing starts at a, you know, in a vacuum. I started it because I was in a transitional moment. But also, interestingly, I mean, it is almost a failure that I started it that late. So, I have come to realise that I love audio and conversation so much. And especially given this learning journey of mind calling. It's I cannot believe how many conversations I've had over the past 20 years in my life. That were professional conversations that could have been recorded and could have been podcasts. So why I didn't, I come up with this before I consider it a personal failure of grand proportions.

Colin Hunter: [5:00]

Yeah, to be the father of the podcast would have been a great place. Yeah.

Trond Undheim: [5:03]

Yeah, exactly. So, when you were a futurist, you know, and you just started a podcast a year ago, that's already set up. That's a failure in a note self.

Colin Hunter: [5:13]

I was remember one of my colleagues, he was attending a strategy and forecasting workshop. And the day before the email came through saying, unfortunately, the workshop is cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. And I always just love that it always makes me smile when I think that. So, talk to me about the future and the futurist, because for people listening, they might say, so what is a futurist, and it's how you labelled yourself, talk to me about that?

Trond Undheim: [5:38]

Well, first off, it's a fairly new label for me. And the only reason I could is that I stepped out of academia for a moment, probably only for a moment. Because in academia, you can't really call yourself a futurist, it's not a serious title, you know, in that sense, but when you're going to actually have a message to people and that is what you talk about, plus you, you know, maybe run some consulting efforts. It is a label that has a meaning in the commercial sphere. And I actually find it an important role to take, and I'll explain what it is. But, just as a caveat, you know, it's not an academic title in, you know, in any meaningful sense, right, because no one knows the future. So, what a futurist really, at least smart futurists, they don't really predict the future or attempt to do so, you know, what we do is we talk about the consequences of possible futures, right? So, we paint pictures based on driving forces that we do spend some time identifying. And there can be academic or non-academic underpinnings to the frameworks you use. So, to look at forces, but I'm kind of a historically bounded futurist like the only reason I think I know a little bit about the future is that I have assembled a lot of experiences, you know, around technology and how it has failed or succeeded. And I've studied history and also recent history. So, you know, what a futurist does is really just remind people who are mostly, you know, I guess in leadership positions in companies and governments about the consequences of their actions or inactions.

Colin Hunter: [7:18]

And a consequence of actions or inactions. It's interesting because one of the things obviously would be more wrong is that if you live it as a principle, is to act as the key thing. Yeah, whatever that is, and actually learn from it and work with it. So, to make a decision, and one of the things in my mind is that I almost have a mantra in my head, which is I don't do history, because in theory, like Taleb said in his anti-fragile on Black Swan, he said, it is very difficult to predict the future from the past. So, talk to me a bit about the action based on history, because I'm fascinated, I think there is a role for it. But what's your view on it?

Trond Undheim: [7:57]

Well, I just Well, first of all, to be honest, be more wrong, I think is a great topic in and of itself. But because I think we do need to be more wrong, I don't think people should seek being wrong. But I think the potential once you are wrong, and realize that you are wrong, to try to dig in to figure out why you are wrong, or other people are wrong. It's just much more interesting as a learning experience. But to your question about history, I find that history is a teacher only because, you know, we disagree about our history, and we will always disagree. But you know, if you think about the future, absent history, you end up just talking about either the sky is falling or all of these shiny objects. And either is just a mistake, I think, you know for a futurist because you need to anchor it in meaningful things that exist in society, right? Technologies don't just show up. And, you know, when I think of history, in that sense, what I mean is just examples, for example, you know, of technologies, and some that succeeded and didn't succeed for you know, as a just a tiny example. And then I think history can be a guide because you can sort of look at product launches that failed. And you can think back and try to argue, well, you know, that product was introduced so early and didn't really wasn't really explained well, or it was never tested with real human beings. So, it looked fantastic and failed. And there are many, many of those and even, you know, the top companies of our day, you know, the Amazons, and you know, they try to phone I guess, you know, there are so many products that, you know, they were failures, historically, but they brought the company one step closer to some of their more successful products. So that's just in, in product development, but I think history. I think history is a great teacher, but I also think history, you know you can't just assume that history is a teacher that teaches you, you know one straight path, there are so many lessons to take from reflecting on a country's history or a company's history or your own individual history. I just think it's part of being a human being. But it's not as simple as that. All right,

Colin Hunter: [: 10:19

No, no, yeah, no. And we've got a classic example with Brexit at the moment in the UK, which it's, you know, I think, in my personal opinion, we failed the exam, but I'm not sure that anybody really could have understood the exam question to start with, or could have understood everything that was involved in that. So, I'm with you; I think it's about learning and picking up certain learnings about how we deal with the future and make our decisions. Talk to me about sailing the ship out of the harbor because I normally ask this question. And then I have somebody maybe said, three sales of ships out of the harbor examples, but you seem to have done so many, it probably be difficult for you to pick which is the story you want to tell us. But you've got one in your mind.

Trond Undheim: [: 11:05

Yeah, I actually had a couple, but let's start with this one and see how it goes. So, while back, I was given the opportunity to go down, you know, from Norway to the EU as one of the very few people because Norway's not a member of the EU, but we do have this national expert program where we work for, you know, three to four years in the European Commission, as essentially somewhat diplomatic posts. But that sounds very flashy because when you get down there, of course, you're not a member state, and you have other lowest possible, you know, you're just one step up from an intern. But the interesting thing is, you know, anything can happen when you are in that system, and I happened to be thrown a bunch of, you know, R&D projects to manage. And in the middle of it was a consulting project. And the EU, you know, certainly has a lot of those; they try to dig into various things. And this one was about building a knowledge platform for E-government across Europe and huge ambitions. I took it over mid-project; it had about apparently 100 passive users. And most people just said, you know, pick this product up, nothing's going to happen there. They've spent half the money it's over. And we didn't succeed. So, they said, essentially, just, you know, we're giving it to you because nobody wants it.

Collin Hunter:

Nice, nice.

Trond Undheim:

And I said, well, okay, started working on it. And, you know, after a little while, I figured out that I could partner with some guy, another unit of the EU, and we could just join forces, suddenly, we had double the money, and we could start doing face to face events. Of course, then everyone said, don't, that's not worth it, don't do these face-to-face events. You're building and digital platform, so it's across Europe. So, this is never going to work. And we didn't listen to them. And they had, you know, started doing monthly face-to-face events in Brussels, and I guess, in a couple of other places, but mostly in Brussels, people start showing up. And as success came to this initiative, people were also sharing because we'd said, you know, let's everyone just share, including, you know, not just your successes, but to your point, also the failures, you know, how hard is it really to build an E-government project, you know, and it's very hard, because, you know, its government money, it's like, slow, it's expensive, and a lot of failure points. Suddenly, people start flocking to this platform, the events, and the platform. So as success came, all the leaders, including the ones that have given me the project said, please don't do this, stop interfering, and all of our stuff. And you know, it's becoming a problem, because my boss knows about it now. So essentially, every bit of the way, everyone said, please don't do this anymore. And that's the end of it. We had 100,000 actives,

Colin Hunter:

Wow!

Trond Undheim:

Users across Europe. And, you know, I left the EU went on to work or actually of all companies, but the project lived on for a while and then got swallowed up by some other project by somebody who wanted a piece of the pie. But anyway, you know, if I had listened to people at any point during that process, we would never have 100,000 users.

Colin Hunter: [: 14:20

And it is interesting that concept, because it's one-note we haven't explored on the podcast or in the work so far is this ability to just not listen, because we always talk about being curious. But you were being curious to the project. You must have seen something in there that said, right, this is worthwhile. We've got to get stuck into this. Yeah.

Trond Undheim: [: 14:40

Well, there's a lesson here about mentorship. And I think about it as I am being asked to mentor others, whether it is a lot of the start-ups that I have worked with in my career, or it is anybody else when you're trying to mentor people because well-meaning advice is one thing, but it is very hard to be on the receiving end because that's a good thing. citizen, you know, you were told to like, listen to your mentors and do what they say and learn from others and be positive. But essentially being an entrepreneur, which this is all about, I think any project, whether it's in government or you know, intrapreneur, entrepreneur, essentially, you have to figure out, do these people know, what they're talking about? Or what is it in what they're saying? That's correct. And what is it that, you know, you do need to take as a great input because you should listen to other people, you just shouldn't do exactly what other people say? So, it takes a lot of contextual knowledge, a lot of confidence, and you will be wrong, you know, many times. So, we'll get to that, you know, the third question. But there were also times where I should have listened and disaster and sued because I didn't.

Colin Hunter: 15:49

And I suppose that there's a piece in there, I'm listening to the undoing project at the moment, which I'm loving, but there's a bit in that book about almost taking a contrary path, to listen and understand. So yes, as you say, the mentors if we, if I had listened to what I did, in the first part of my career, listened to all my mentors, took completely the wrong path for me and spent the rest of my career trying to change it. We're back. So those inner voices that you hear, but there's almost sometimes it's worth, in terms of the shaping the future to look at a contrary path to start to work. And I think that's what you're starting to say, when did you feel it was successful? And I suppose the next question is, why did you leave it? Yeah.

Trond Undheim: 16:32

Well, I, when did I feel it was successful was, I guess, when people started bombarding my phone and talking to me around these events, or just, you know, really just showing up when the boss's boss's boss comes in, you know, to my office and says, this is a fantastic project, right. So that, you know, three levels above, it was a great project, you know, two levels down, it was a horrible project. It was just, you know, when I started understanding that, and plus when everyone wanted to partner with us.

Colin Hunter:

Yeah

Trond Undheim:

right, so it goes that there's this inflection point where everybody thinks it's a failure. And I actually have another example, which might be even better in this regard. But and I'll tell you about it very briefly. But anyway, the time you know, the point is very clear. It is when it goes from everybody saying this is going to fail to everybody saying, you are the most wonderful person and no one else could have done this. And this is fantastic.

Colin Hunter:

interesting

Trond Undheim:

that literally is overnight. Yeah,

Colin Hunter: 17:36

Yeah, yeah. I suppose there's a piece in there that you've got to keep yourself humble at that point because you're still in the mode, and you're still progressing in there. So, talk to me about that leaving point about why you left, I'm always fascinated when something is successful, and people leave, and we go, so why did you go? Yeah.

Trond Undheim: 17:53

well, two reasons. I guess, in every project, you have to realize your limitations. So even though I was doing a fantastic thing, as I said, I was there on a temporary contract, it was going to end up four years, no one leaves early, by the way, I left after three and a half because I was, I guess you could call it headhunted into Oracle. You know, which is nice. So that's nice to have as a storyline. But I don't think it was that it was just that, you know, after a little while, I realized that I had done what I could do with that project, because I saw that the next hurdle would have to make the bosses five chains up. There are many bosses in the EU.

Colin Hunter:

Yeah

Trond Undheim:

And I realized that you know, the next boss up wouldn't be as kind to the kinds of things I wanted to do. And that's really the history of a lot of the successful projects that I've done is that eventually, you hit that glass ceiling where you realize that if this shatters, either, you know, my boss's boss's boss gets into big trouble. And, you know, they could really, you know, we could do something great. Or it's just not worth it. Because the odds of this just failing or just bumping up against this very big glass ceiling is just against me, in my case, I got a very wonderful opportunity and sort of said, you know, it was nice to get this experience. But I want to move on with my career, and I don't think that I personally could take it any further. And there are also more clever people than me. That should be taking it further. And they know I think that's what they did.

Colin Hunter: 19:32

Yeah, brilliant. So, what was the other example? You said you had a short example.

Trond Undheim: 19:37

Yeah, well, just briefly so I did run, as you pointed out, to MIT start-up exchange. So, it was a brilliant idea, which I wish was mine. And you'll know why and it's relevant to the question. So, the idea was, why don't we put together all of the start-ups that MIT has produced, you know, essentially throughout its history, and then match them with corporates? You know, who are interested in start-ups and they come to campus all the time. Now, it sounds like a fantastic idea that's already done, right?

Colin Hunter:

Yeah.

Trond Undheim:

So, I was at the Sloan Management School at the time, and I was scratching my head, why is someone coming to me and saying, you know, we want to build this initiative. Turns out there was a need because no one had actually mapped these start-ups in any meaningful way. Or if they had mapped them, they hadn't talked to them. So, I took it on, started talking to people discovered that nobody had talked to them, really. And I certainly didn't know what they were up to. And there was no structured program for it. The beginning was hard, even though it seems so obvious. We walked around campus and pretty much everybody says, Yeah, you could do that, but don't do it. Because we are already doing something on innovation. We have our own program, so please don't do it. Colin Hunter: Interesting.

Trond Undheim:

Right.

Colin Hunter:

Yeah.

Trond Undheim:

And then as we continued, because it was my job description, right.

Colin Hunter:

Yeah

Trond Undheim:

One guy, a very high up Professor wrote to the MIT President's office and said, Trond is doing this institution disservice and he's not listening. And I got hold of that email, and I'm thinking okay, well, I've heard that before maybe I don't listen. So, well. But honestly, this is what I was hired to do. So, how could I do otherwise? Like I wished it was my idea at that point

Colin Hunter:

Yeah

Trond Undheim:

it would have been an even better story, right?

Colin Hunter:

Yeah.

Trond Undheim:

And, you know, literally, we just sort of fought that off and built, you know, again, like a whole program with events and, you know, started to see some attraction. Although at the moment, I knew we were about to break through. It was just a question of like months, my boss said, Trond, do you think we should give up? I mean, we're not seeing any names? Yeah. So, I said, Look, I kind of see it diametrically opposing, like we are about to break through and give me one more month, right?

Colin Hunter:

Yeah.

Trond Undheim:

and he was like, Yeah, okay, we'll give it one more month, we ended up being one of the most successful innovation programs on campus, so successful that I think, you know, that became a problem in the end, both for him and for me, and, you know, I also left that program, you know, you when you become successful, you become dangerous. And that's one of the big lessons. So, I actually, like failing more than I like succeeding, for that reason, a love market more to learn,

Colin Hunter: 22:24

though is what I love is a theme coming through, which is, you get a job description, you get a role, and you go for it. Yep. And the person who has written the job description of the role is starting to regret that you're in there. Because there's a, you know, there's, there's a real drive for you to, to get it and, and you continue and you're exploring, and you're almost pushing the boundaries in there. And there are so many people who just take a job description. And once they hit a barrier, they don't do anything about it. They just say, okay, well, I'm not allowed to do that. That's a political rant here so, I don't do it. But you seem to just want to go through that.

Trond Undheim: 22:57

It's just Yeah, so that's maybe a futuristic attitude. I spend a lot more time now on future workforce development issues in manufacturing and other sectors. And I happen to think that the way that I approach things is basically the only way you're going to succeed, I think, in the future. So, I know I'm onto something, but it is painful as you're doing it.

Colin Hunter:

Yeah

Trond Undheim:

And there, it's certainly not the past path of least resistance.

Colin Hunter: 23:21

No, I would agree wholeheartedly. So, told me, because it sounds like you've created a career out of creating playgrounds for yourself because you sound like somebody who's passionate about enjoying what you do. But there's also a peaceful I'm ready to move on. Let's find something else to do. So, talk to me about what if you had to pick one or a theme of a playground? What would it be your professional playground?

Trond Undheim: 23:46

Yeah, I thought about that question, because you gave it to me beforehand. And it's really easy for me. And it ties into what we've been started starting the conversation with conversing with people that matter, who have thought deeply about their own field, and extracting their knowledge in some meaningful, interesting, differentiated ideally, and certainly accessible way that you know, is a little better than they would have come up with themselves if they were trying to talk about their own ideas. That really fascinates me. And I think I have that from my upbringing, where my parents just really brought back smart people to our house, and I'm sure you can relate to this.

Colin Hunter:

Yeah.

Trond Undheim:

And I had, like, you know, these honorary professors at my local university, you know, show up and just stay overnight, and I had these incredible conversations from when I was five.

Colin Hunter:

Wow.

Trond Undheim:

And I've just enjoyed that so much. And I think there's something there of bringing together strands of knowledge into one. So yes, it's a jack of all trades, because that's how you find all this stuff. I guess if you want to use the metaphor. I like to pick fruit from other people's orchards and bring it back home and instead of planted in mind, right, I'm a gardener that way I'm you know, I can't just stick to my own stuff.

Colin Hunter: 25:02

And I suppose it's playing into that famous quote by Jimi Hendrix. It says, that knowledge speaks wisdom listens, that surrounding yourself with conversations to be able to pick up the fruit or the seeds and create fruit for yourself is a core piece. That's what I'm hearing is, is what you love. Yeah,

Trond Undheim: 25:20

that is what I love. It is, unfortunately, not always what pays the best. So that effort, right people around me, but you know,

Colin Hunter:

Yeah

Trond Undheim:

I've always been a far better salesman of other people's ideas. And that is, of course, a good thing. Because other people's ideas are usually or maybe always better. But it does have, you know, it does have some negatives, right? Because if you kind of are really good at just selling your own stuff that that there is an economic engine to that. So, I think there's a trade-off, I just happen to have come to the realization that I can tweak certain things and reap the benefits of some experiences I've had, I just had a conversation with a friend the other week, actually, and he or last weekend, and he said, you know, Trond, you should really start harvesting more of what you're creating, you should start asking more, because I don't ask, right,

Colin Hunter:

Yeah

Trond Undheim:

I just make favorites. And his point was, you know, the last year you made an introduction, and you know, your friendsí company's now worth $300 million. Why, you know, why didn't you ask to, you know, to get something out of that favor that introduction? And, yeah, I mean, I didn't ask so.

Colin Hunter: 26:31

Yeah. But for me, it's a principle of paying it to forward it. It depends what your life is about, isn't it? And I, you know, money is important as an enabler of things.

Trond Undheim:

But it's very important,

Colin Hunter:

not the be-all and end-all either.

Trond Undheim: 26:43

So well, I don't have a commercial fiber that way, like I can create an enormous value I hope to make an outsized difference in society, but monetary value for me doesn't motivate me. Like it would be very nice. But, you know, on my epitaph, I don't want to have anything to do with Trond created a lot of wealth.

Colin Hunter:

Yeah,

Trond Undheim:

I just want to say Trond was an interesting person to be around and created some great conversations.

Colin Hunter: 27:12

Nice, I love that. So, let's go into the final question then Trond because I think this is the one that we've been preparing for and the principle in here is about how you been more wrong to be more successful, you've given us a number of examples, and maybe we've talked about it. But if you had one example, where you've done this, what would it be?

Trond Undheim: 27:34

Yeah, and I know why you asked this one last, if you had started with this, you probably get people to choke early on.

Colin Hunter:

Yeah.

Trond Undheim:

But about I mean, it's now more like seven years ago, I had this concept, which was to build an insight network of only the knowledge that matters. The company, you know, was then actually is still around called yegii, which actually means conversation, it fits with the flow of what weíve been talking about. Because I was so passionate about a couple of things. I think that you know, there's this trope about information overload. And you know, it's so hard to navigate, you know, what, how we're going to focus on things. Part of it is, I thought, not actually true because it's all about filtering. Part of it is true. But I stuck to this idea that there must be a better way to filter things than search engines, right? They're essentially just outsourcing the filtering to you every morning, an empty search window, you got to find out yourself. And as I was trying to build this, everyone said, the early mentor said, you know, nobody needs this. And we don't understand what you're trying to build. Plus, Google has already built it. So, I started cataloging the world's high-quality information on specific industries and specific emerging technologies. And all my mentors said, pick one technology, pick one industry, at least do that. And I didn't pick that I just went on with this whole cataloging the world of moving emerging tech, right, which is many, many different things. And everybody said, you know, if you haven't gotten any attraction, you should really just give up. And at the end, I would say, you know, the tech solution that I came up with didn't really work. The contractors I brought in perhaps weren't good enough. My leadership skills probably didn't cut it. We almost made it several times, we did take a tiny bit of capital, more like angel capital, but we never, you know, secured a big round of any sort. And at the end of the day, it was probably about five to seven years too early to start. And right now, I guess I you know, in a sense, I almost ruined myself, financially, but mostly because the opportunity cost there wasn't you know, there was a lot of money being poured into the venture, but it was also the opportunity cost of working on it for like four to seven years. So, you could say, tragic mistake, you know? Or Colin Hunter: yeah.

Trond Undheim:

And if you're talking to people around me, many of them would say even good friends, even family would say, why did he invest so much energy in this?

Colin Hunter:

Yeah.

Trond Undheim:

And retrospect, you could say, Yeah, many of them made, they were all right. On the other hand, I was right about the initial concept

Colin Hunter:

Yeah.

Trond Undheim:

this is needed, somebody will build this, maybe I still will build this. And I keep trying. And, I mean, in all of this desperation, as I said, I pivoted into writing four, now Three new books out of this material, because think about it, I, the product, I couldn't create the digital platform that solves all these things. For other people, I still haven't fully built it,

Colin Hunter:

Yeah

Trond Undheim:

I have prototypes. But I learned so much because I investigated, you know, all emerging technologies, I took everything I was learning at MIT, all of the professors I talked about, I distilled basically, I have lists of the top Nobel Prize winners, I have the TED speakers, I have organized all of them into all these digital lists, and I track them digitally. So, I started now to podcasts, right? You know, invite those same people now come on the show and share their experience. So, in a sense, maybe it's a long-term productization play, and it's going to take me maybe 20 years, instead of the six months that I had promised my family it would take to build this thing. And, you know, I mean, most of what I do, right now, I work for two investment firms, one corporate, and one early stage, I do some consulting. And I work near the full time for a start-up on something super exciting, which is changing, you know, perhaps the way that 1 billion manufacturing workers are going to be trained and you know, the stuff they do, and all of that really flows from the insights that I learned in a start-up that most people would consider a total failure.

Colin Hunter: 32:12

Interesting. That's, fascinating to me because it's everything as you're going through that all I was thinking was everybody tells me the value of data, the data in your business, but it's also the data that we hold when we're needing to have conversations made decisions as leaders. And as you save conversations as the future, then there's your data, all these conversations you can have through the network, you've built it. So yeah, fascinating.

Trond Undheim: 32:37

Well, I probably have material through the combination of the Yegii knowledge process that I built, which I have in a demo prototype for myself, and for those few people who are sort of looking at it. And plus, the stuff that I learned from interviewing right now 100 people, but with another podcast, 25 episodes, and you know, rapidly rising, right? So several 100 interviews, and it's not just the interviews, but I learned so much, transcribing them, thinking about them, even starting to pitch them. So, you learn things because you don't, it's not just a conversation that disappears. It becomes you know, part of you. So every time it's almost like you're appropriating part of the people you speak to, it's very strange.

Colin Hunter:

It is,

Trond Undheim:

you know, someone's you know, this because, you know,

Colin Hunter:

I know

Trond Undheim:

you interview people, and when you engage with somebody over time you enter so deeply their kind of epistemic world, I guess, would be the advanced terminology, but essentially, it just, you know, you understand more where they're coming from. So it's not just about, oh, this guy wrote a book. And most people I have on the podcast, have written books,

Colin Hunter:

books, Yeah

Trond Undheim:

it's not about their books, it's about why did they write that book? What pivoted them into putting, you know, and why did they introduce that example? And where is that coming from? And, you know, the kinds of stuff you asking me about,

Trond Undheim:

I mean, you can't hide on a podcast,

Colin Hunter:

No

Trond Undheim:

you can try. And you can no one can hide over an hour.

Colin Hunter: 34:09

No, no, I would agree. And it was fascinating to me is the two books that you've got. So one I just wanted to briefly talk about is the pandemic book that you've written and the learnings out of that. I would love to know. You know, some people listening to pandemic aftermath is the title. What is your because we're talking hybrid working now, we're talking in leadership terms, how do you cope with that? What's the subject that you pick out of there that you would give to people who are listening?

Trond Undheim: 34:41

I mean, the short answer is that the pandemic aftermath is going to be one of augmentation. Right? Its augmenting humans was a nice concept, you know, that took very long to realize technologically, but there never was a use case. There never was a real truth need not meet face to face. And that never really was a true need to expand beyond kind of the office worker? Well, in order to produce the things that we need to produce, our factories now need to be somewhat virtual. Everybody needs to be able to get their goods and have, you know, alternate sort of routes of producing those things. So, anything from like the acceleration of 3D printing, and distributed production, to augmenting what individual workers do to entertainment and all the things that our kids had to do? You know, I thought ed-tech solutions were pretty decent. Yeah. And I thought zoom was a no okay, conferencing solution, which we all thought for a while. But the thing is, all of these solutions, they were just really, really early-stage exploration. So, what is coming now? And I haven't really seen those products in their final state. But I know with the amount of money and energy, but most importantly, the need. We have changed fundamentally, I think, over the last year. So anyway, that was pandemic aftermath, what I thought you were going to ask me about was the book where I wrote about failure.

Colin Hunter: 36:17

You can talk about that when I was fascinated because I've had so many conversations this week. But over that one.

Trond Undheim: 36:23

Well, I wrote about disruption games, I called it you know,

Colin Hunter:

Yeah

Trond Undheim:

using kind of the metaphor of the Olympic Games, I think you have to train for failure and success the same way you train for sports. So, the subtitle is how to thrive on serial failure. And again, you know, I talk about my failures. But I mostly talk about MIT start-ups and how they pivot and fail, even at that level. So, think about it, you know, these are some of the brightest young minds and sometimes professors of the world. And many of those start-ups fail to,

Colin Hunter:

yep.

Trond Undheim:

Or they pivot. Of course, they pivot in extraordinary ways. That wouldn't perhaps happen with others. So, I write about this process of thriving on serial failure, essentially, I 100% agree with you.

Colin Hunter:

Yeah

Trond Undheim:

It's not about seeking to be more wrong. It is about deeply embracing being wrong. And then there's one important thing that I want to say I've done, that's the crux of the book, Silicon Valley has taught us to fail fast. And there are many good reasons to fail fast when you want to make money. But as I've indicated to you, if your goal is wider than that, actually, even if your goal is earning money, failing fast is sometimes the short circuit

Colin Hunter:

Yeah

Trond Undheim:

you need, in my opinion, maybe I'm too Freudian for a UK audience. But basically, I think that unless you embrace your own failure deeply, you don't learn.

Colin Hunter:

Yeah

Trond Undheim:

you donít learn deeply.

Colin Hunter:

Yeah.

Trond Undheim:

And that takes time.

Colin Hunter: [: 38:01

I would totally agree with I think that's the depth of that and looking to yourself first. And I think that's, that's been my learning. But I think you're right, maybe the UK culture is not ready for that. But I think there's a lot of people who've started to do that over this last year, to think more deeply than they've done before, which is, you know, in a sad state is the benefit. So yeah, fascinating. And I love the playground analogy in that. So, I've got to end if we need to end because this is probably the future tech piece. We're doing something on VR, we're looking at, you know, fascinatingly, I felt we're just exploring it to start with, we've got a product in there. But when I started to talk to you on the podcast, I felt that you had much more knowledge than I do in this space. So, talk to me about that book. And what that is telling us. Yeah,

Trond Undheim: 38:49

yeah, so thank you, future tech is, I think, I don't think is true, by the way, I don't have more knowledge than you on, you are actually exploring it together with a few people I have on my podcast, I just had one recorded an episode with a guy who has his digital avatar is now running around on doing speaking gigs around the world and not pointing out that his digital avatar can do simultaneous speaking gigs, which I thought was very cool.

Colin Hunter:

Absolutely

Trond Undheim:

But yes, future tech is my most recent book, and it's about I mean, the subtitle is how to capture value from disruptive industry trends. Trends is perhaps the wrong word here because I do again speak about the next decade and I think there are five core technologies that people should worry quite a bit about and not worry about actually maybe just more embrace and understand. So, AI pretty obvious blockchain as a kind of financial decentralised protocol that's going to be relevant far, far beyond the finance world. Robotics, because it's deeply scary to some people, but in fact, it's just actually potentially quite empowering. To have machines work alongside us, if we just understand and embrace the opportunities of that, I mean, there are start-ups now that can train you from being a metal worker to operating robots in, you know, in the week. So, these things are getting easier and easier,

Colin Hunter:

Yeah

Trond Undheim:

ssion is going to kick off in: 2022

Colin Hunter:

Wow,

Trond Undheim:

that's a long-term project. And there are many, many other things that come into play. But for this decade, these five technologies really are what we should focus on. And you know, my message is, don't just kind of read the first thing that a consulting firm or a blog says about this. And also, don't just get a Ph.D. in one topic, either approach is going to get you into trouble. You essentially have to be a polymath. So, I'm passionately, maybe arguing for my sick start-up, basically, you know, that everyone has to become a polymath. But I want to enable everyone to be and have the chance to become a polymath. And I fundamentally believe in that and I will make an impact. And I will make a dent in that maybe not through my start-up maybe through the other companies that I work with at the moment, they maybe have a bigger chance of success, I have learned some things calling, which is when you are not the only chance of finding your own hero's journey, you can align yourself with another hero. Yeah. And that I mean, that is perhaps a much better strategy. Because we are not always going to be number one. I am maybe more a number three, yeah, number five, or number seven, but I am a pretty good number seven. So, there are a lot if I pick, you know, winners to associate myself with and help them achieve their goals. I think I can make a great change in the world.

Colin Hunter: 44:04

So basically, to translate that into Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, you're either a Samwise Gamgee, depending on how you are Yeah. Or you're all you're never the long bottom in terms of you know, doing that final act, which are two great characters for me.

Trond Undheim: 44:19

I love that there's always a good reason to introduce Harry Potter.

Colin Hunter: 44:26

Absolutely, Trond Itís been brilliant to talk to you if you had to leave one thing for people to think about, you know, for this coming year, what would it be? What would be your final comment to people

Trond Undheim: 44:36

fail slowly and painfully?

Colin Hunter: 44:40

For those listening is thinking, oh, that sounds too much. It's a good

Trond Undheim: 44:44

well, I'm an upbeat guy, so you're going to come out of it. All right.

Colin Hunter: 44:48

Positive Thinking slowly and painfully. I love that. Trond has been a real pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for taking the time. If people want to find out more about you. How would they do that?

Trond Undheim: 44:59

Oh, that's pretty easy as long as they can spell my name or spell a future tech or futurized or anywhere. I mean, they could just link my name is so unique that it's all over. So Trond, you know, Norwegian d at the end in time horrible spelling. But if you have, you know, any strands of my name will find me on the internet. And I would love to talk and reach out to many of you future tech is perhaps a little harder to search on the internet, but it exists on Amazon and other places. So, there are plenty of ways to find me.

Colin Hunter: 45:33

I will put details into the podcast as well at the bottom so they can do the trial an absolute pleasure, sir, look forward to having some more conversations with you in the future. And if some of your predictions work out, you might be still alive in 50 years to see whether your predictions actually land in there. So that'd be good.

Trond Undheim: 45:50

Thanks for that we hope to be alive yet. Definitely.

Colin Hunter: 45:52

Excellent, sir. Good. Take care.

Trond Undheim:

Alright, you too.

Colin Hunter:

What a conversation. If I could just get Trond on a regular basis to this podcast, it'd be great just to explore different things, whether it's his work on health care, other things about looking into the future of what we're going to face consequences of possible futures. But I think the key bit that stuck out for me was the consequences of actions and inactions, looking back at some of the history looking back at some of the product launches or other things that have failed. And that concept of post mortem around the ideas and thoughts and looking at history in a different way. So, therefore, learn for the future. So, love that conversation. Hopefully, you did love to hear your feedback and hopefully, we'll welcome you on another episode of the leadership tales podcast very shortly.