Arno Selhorst

"What if...?" I asked myself this very question so many times I lost track. Experimenting starts in your mind and should continue into your workflow. It takes boldness, curiosity, creativity and an open mindset. Experiments should stress-test the fringe and travel inside until they click with business demands. Experimenting can be dirty, rough, scary but also fun, engaging, mind-bending at their best and hopefully eventually fruitful for your businesses success. The Apollo 13 crisis is a role model for experimentation. Faced with limited resources and time, the teams had to experiment. They repurposed available materials to build a new filter adapter, showing that experimentation, ingenuity and creativity are key to success.

Being an Innovation Manager is like strapping on a spacesuit every day and preparing to navigate an uncharted planet. A daily adventure. An endeavor into the unspeakable. You dance, you stumble, research, laugh and iterate into the unknown. Failure is part of the journey. You become a seasoned looser. Learning to fall is a central skill for survival. You're a veteran scrimper, your backpack is light and you always stay hungry. Amidst all the uncertainties and risks, your mission stands tall: to harness the immense potential that lies ahead, ensuring your inner compass and business stand resilient and future-ready. This is what it's all about. If you enjoy this kind of thing, we welcome you in our midst, young innovation pioneer!

Follow untrodden pathways. Seek out subcultures off- as well as online. Look for the early adopters and read up on the visions they publish in smaller publications like blogs, specialized forum entries and articles. Ask your kids without being cringe what they experience in their daily routines. Listen closely on your commutes to what people deal with, what are their dreams, fears and ambitions? Get a feeling for how culture is shifting. Swim with the current but tap your feet into the undercurrents more often than not. Establish a network of trusted trend explorers. The ones who are always so far ahead of the curve that they seem erratic to the mainstream. Develop genuine empathy for your surroundings, stay alert and always on the edge.

I strategically employed an internally executed Alternate Reality Game (ARG) at Ogilvy & Mather to meticulously identify individuals best suited for the impending innovation lab. In navigating through a pool exceeding 100 employees, the game seamlessly blurred the lines between real-life and the digital realm. This unconventional approach allowed me to discern the most engaged, curious, and open-minded colleagues who actively participated in the game, showcasing not only their professional skills but also their adaptability and creative thinking.

Challenges: 1. Complexity: Complex interactions make their integration into NLP algorithms computationally intensive. 2. Data Requirements: Models require extensive, well-structured data, which might be limited in NLP contexts. 3. Interpretability: resulting algorithms may be hard to be interpreted, posing difficulties in understanding and improving them. Opportunities: 1. Enhanced Understanding: Game theory can model nuanced human interactions, potentially improving NLP understanding of context and sarcasm. 2. Strategic Interaction Modeling: It offers tools to better handle dialogues and negotiations in NLP systems. 3. Robustness: These models can help in developing more robust systems against adversarial attacks or biased data.

Open-source projects are highly effective. I've explored various projects on GitHub and Hugging Face, particularly in natural language processing (NLP). These platforms have a wealth of resources that have been instrumental in my learning process. Additionally, I've dabbled with tools like Oobabooga, Automatic1111, and Face Fusion to gain a broader perspective on AI's capabilities. Experimenting with these tools has been crucial in developing my understanding of AI, especially in areas like language processing and facial recognition. The open-source community has been a valuable resource, providing insights and fostering a collaborative learning environment.