By Dani Shae Thompson

“If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”

At the Colorado Innovation Network (COIN) Summit 2015, four Colorado change-makers proved that they exemplify what Alexander Hamilton, Peter Marshall, or a whole host of other notable folks (quote origin is under heavy debate) encouraged in this quote.

These four driven individuals were panelists for the COIN session, “Taking a stand for change”, during which, they explained what they are doing to encourage positive social change. Their organizations are reaching people all around the world—but they were proud to say they all got their start right here in Colorado.

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By Daniel Webster Jr. 

Julie Hanna, the Executive Chair of the Board of Kiva, opens with a salient statement during her presentation at The COIN Summit:

“I’m an Egyptian immigrant, and until I arrived in Silicon Valley, my journey to the front lines of the technology revolution began at the front lines of war. And my life had been defined by a different kind of access. A lack of access and that shaped the way I came to view the world.”

She went on to explain that her family fled to America during Black September, a year long civil war between Jordanians and Palestinians. Here they faced a lack of resources for immigrants, her mother and father taking on 2-3 jobs to clothe, feed, and provide an education for their kids.

Her philosophy is not bitterness over this childhood, but a quote attributed to Rye Barcott: “Talent is universal, but opportunity is not.”

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By Daniel Webster Jr. 

Resiliency Post Hurricane Sandy. Robocall elimination. Maximizing parts of space shuttles. Revamping Personal Protective Suits. All have been challenges issued by the federal government for the general public to solve. And all have been answered by individuals and organizations, not just in the U.S., but all around the world. For the winning solver, money is granted based on the size of the impact challenge. A win-win for all who are involved.

“Do you know what the Orteig Prize is,” asks Jenn Gustetic, the Assistant Director for Open Innovation at the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, of the COIN Summit’s audience sitting in the Seawell Grand Ballroom.  

A smattering of hands raise up.

“Do you know who Charles Lindbergh is?”

Most of the hands in the room shoot up.

“We remember Lindbergh, but not the prize, but the prize is why we know about Lindbergh,” referring to the $25,000 the pilot won for his non-stop flight from New York to London.

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During last week’s Colorado Innovation Network (COIN) summit, we had to opportunity to witness numerous sharp minds share their thoughts, ideas and visions for the future. One of those sharp minds was Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, who sat down with us to discuss Colorado’s entrepreneurial spirit and its place as a leader among the nation in all things cutting edge.

In part two of our interview with Gov. Hickenlooper, we get conceptual, dissecting the very meaning of innovation, the future of COIN and Colorado—plus, the governor gives some very good advice to those looking to think differently.

Innovators Peak: Do you find that, when talking about things like COIN, that the word “innovation” is hard to define?

Governor Hickenlooper: Innovation is doing anything different. It’s the same way that people talk all the time about leadership. What is leadership? I think we just keep distilling it and leadership is any time you persuade someone to do something they weren’t originally planning to do; to believe something they didn’t believe before.

The beauty of that is everybody can be a leader because we all persuade people from time to time and we all are leaders from time to time. That’s one of the things we’re looking on how to infuse that into COIN, because COIN is basically leadership.

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The Colorado Innovation Network (COIN) summit featured a slew of successful, wise, encouraging leaders from all over Colorado and the country, including none other than John Hickenlooper, the Governor of Colorado.

Serving since 2011, this visionary Democrat wants nothing more than to see the people in his state innovate, succeed and excel. We had the chance to sit down with him at the Capitol and talk about the state of Colorado, its authenticity, clean ethics and how he plans on attracting and keeping America’s entrepreneurs.

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When I was a kid, the movie Apollo 13 scared the ever-loving bajeezus out of me.

The huge flames shooting out of the rockets. The weightlessness of space. And the thought that if something went wrong, there was nothing, no one there to help you.

Nowadays, those fears are still there, but they are immensely overcome by my wonder about space exploration and what humanity might look like 10, 100, even 1,000 years into the future.

So you can imagine my giddy, childish excitement as I sat down to hear Salvatore Bruno, president and CEO of United Launch Alliance talk about the future of spaceflight that’s emerging right from the heart of Colorado at COIN 2015. He kicked off his presentation quite humbly, I thought, considering the enormous responsibility he and his team are tackling.

“We are America’s ride to space. We are on the cusp of the true commercial potential of space,” Bruno said.

“And Colorado is going to transform it in fundamental ways. We’re getting ready to unleash a new business model that will revolutionize how we transport cargo to space, and allow us to build infrastructure piece by piece in space like never before. In your lifetime, you’re going to see things you haven’t even dreamed of or imagined yet.”

Bruno discussed the tremendous challenges of spaceflight and how to properly motivate a team of engineers who were tasked with achieving this incredible feat.

“It’s all about people,” said Bruno, about how he manages his team at ULA.

“They have such a vast capacity for creativity. And when you want to transform and go after a bright future, you have to paint a picture for your team about what that picture might look like. Then you give them permission to get out of the box and be creative.”

But ultimately, the mission is what kept them together, and allowed them to collaborate even if they were in competing companies.

“I had one of those moments, you know, 5 a.m., in my office thinking about the degree of transformation, and the speed at which we need to accomplish it, was unimaginable,” said Bruno. “But I got to know my team and there was so much pent up energy that I knew they could pull it off.”

Being one year into CEO at ULA, Bruno is still pushing his programs forward, even if he doesn’t receive much help from Washington. But he’s found private partnerships that are helping him and his team to keep innovating. He has spoken with every person in America who’s even sketched a rocket engine on the back of a napkin, and they’re using all that collaborative energy to drive his mission forward.

“It’s all about the mission. That’s what gets me up in the morning. We’re saving lives every day. We’re exploring the universe. We’re pushing the bounds of the human presence.”

It’s a huge mission, and it’s clear that Bruno is the perfect man for the job.

“Coming up with the strategy isn’t the hard part — have a vision, understand the market, that’s easy. The hard part is how to bring your people with you and support the culture change to make that possible.”

“Here on earth today, we toil and struggle in conflict, due to a shortage of resources. Yet right now above our heads, just beyond our grasp, we have resources beyond human imagination,” Bruno said.“It’s all about the mission. That’s what gets me up in the morning. We’re saving lives every day. 

“We’re exploring the universe. We’re pushing the boundaries of the human presence.”

Not to be confused with the beer guy (though he did make it once), Mark Sirangelo CIO of Colorado and Corporate VP of Sierra Nevada Corporation, closed out the final panel of COIN 2015 with a discussion about where innovation is headed in Colorado and beyond.

He started by discussing the two big subject areas tackled in the XFINITY Innovation Think Tank, as well as panels throughout the two day summit: healthy lifestyles and advanced communities. Both of these big ideas are going to be tackled in the coming year with an innovative new crowdsourcing platform unique to Colorado.

Normally to solve the big issues at the state or federal level, the government would have come up with an idea and pitched it to the public. But Colorado had a different idea. They’re going to be opening a new platform called Imagine Colorado to ask the community to help them what Colorado could be. The state is ready to invest the money and time into solving problems across communities, why not give the people in the state a chance to voice what they want the government to look at?

“It’s a wonderful time for where we are with COIN and where we’re going,” said Mark about the state of innovation in Colorado. “So many wonderful ideas and so many wonderful people come here. Now let’s try to bring it out further so everyone can see the innovation happening in Denver and take it forward.”

Mark then went on to introduce Governor Hickenlooper, who often likes to throw out quotes in his speeches, with one from George Bernard Shaw.

“You look to the future and some people say why. Other people look into the future and say why not?”

The governor is one of those people who says why not. Why not have something like COIN? Why not reach out to the people of Colorado and ask them how they want to innovate? The governor start to speak about his hopes for COIN, and the collaborations he saw throughout the summit.

“I hope all the ideas that came through today and yesterday are cross-pollinating across all industries,” said Governor Hickenlooper as he closed out COIN 2015. “Government’s primary role is to be the convener. To make sure everyone who should be there, is there. And when good ideas come out of it, we should be implementing it in real time.”

The governor also spoke about how small communities want to invest in their local schools and infrastructure, but are often hindered by state-wide backlash. That’s why advancing communities was such an important topic during the summit, to look for ways to promote growth and innovation starting at the community level, and then growing outward.

The governor closed his interview by exhausting the essence of the people of Colorado, their incredible ability to take risks and their constant need to innovate.

That’s all from this year’s COIN summit, but you know Innovators Peak will continue to highlight the amazing spirit of Colorado and the incredible people that make it such an incredible place to live, work, and innovate.

“01110011001011100101011 1001 1011101”

Translation: Robots are embedding themselves into our everyday lives. Better brush up on your binary.

Robotic technologies are going to enable us to do incredible things in the future. And one panel at COIN 2015 spent their time discussing the implications of robotics working their ways into our lives. Will they come in peace? Or do we have to start accepting our new robot overlords?

You’re probably thinking of the Google self-driving car, but we can also include most unmanned aerial vehicles into this category, even though we don’t like to categorize them that way because of their lack of mobility and robotic personalities.

One thing’s for sure, though: The robots are coming.

The bot talk kicked off today at the COIN Summit, led by Session Guide Leah Hunter, a technology writer for Fast Company. Joining her were a panel of experts: Alex Ferworn, Professor of Computer Science at Toronto, Canada’s Ryerson University; Tim Haynie, Founder of Spectrabotics; and Pramila Mullan, Senior Manager Infrastructure & Systems at Accenture Technology Labs.

Our tech experts began with a look into what fuels industrial robotics and glimpsed at the future of the robotics economy.

“The industrial Internet is about embedded sensors, cloud storage, and cloud computing coming together to fuel this industry,” said Pramila.

“What’s interesting in this industry is a lot of the emphasis is starting today with folks looking at operational efficiency: How do we take our existing assets and use them better? But that’s just the start of the journey. And it’s going to take us to our next destination, which is an outcome-based economy.”

“Outcome-based economy” simply means that instead of paying for services, we’re actually purchasing the outcome we desire. I.e., in healthcare, we pay physicians to keep us healthy instead of paying for a routine checkup. But that means we need to work smarter, using tools like wearables and other embedded sensors to gather and analyze data. That’s how we transform our workforce into the next generation, by empowering humans with robotic counterparts (wearables and UAVs).

But now we’re inching ever closer to a completely autonomous robotic workforce, where humans are the ones in control, or even simply monitoring the overall output, rather than micromanaging. It’s becoming more of a collaborative process, where humans are building machine-learning capabilities into robots so we can begin to step away and let them handle the menial and dirty tasks, while humans can focus on the high-level problem solving.

Think about the agriculture industry, where automation replaced a lot of the handwork that was taking place on farms. And those workers, once they were freed from the farm, were able to kick off the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution of our time is going to come down to data. Because the more we measure and show people and organizations we can capture data, the more they want. And faster!

“The biggest impact that drones have made in our society is in the incredible amount of data we can retrieve from them,” said Haynie about UAVs.

“They also have the added benefit of being able to fly at different altitudes, and fly whenever, and almost wherever, they want. But it’s all about the sensors. Better data leads to expanding public safety, increasing operating efficiencies, and enhancing situational awareness.”

In the past, it was governments that empowered the university system to make breakthroughs in these types of areas. But now, organizations like DARPA host competitions where they offer large cash prizes to the team with the best prototype. And, not surprisingly, their most recent competition focused on Robotics and their ability to help humans in dangerous situations, like being trapped in a collapsed building.

Ferworn discussed the DARPA challenge, and some of the challenges they face.

“I don’t care if a robot can turn a valve, or open a door, we want them to recognize us buried under the rubble and come save us,” said Ferworn about rescue ‘bots. “We’re still using the same technology that we’ve used to save people who are trapped since World War I: dogs. Because they have an incredibly refined sense of smell, they’re fast, and work for play.”

But Ferworn says there’s a lot we can learn from our canine companions, and how they save people trapped in rubble, that we can apply to future robotics. He even performed a live demonstration with a canine member of the Colorado rescue squad. The furry savior rushed under the stage to save the “trapped” human.

So how can we make humans want to use robotics, if there’s no stopping them?

Firstly, they’ll have to show us their advantages. People are only going to appreciate how robots are going to save them time or make their life easier. The right situation for robotics is in the dirty, dangerous jobs that humans should no longer be doing. Then, if we add in the computing technologies, artificial intelligence, and real-time streaming of data from UAVs, you’re met with an incredibly powerful robotic companion who can tackle almost any task his (Or her? Its?) human handler wants to assign.

Each and every one of these incredible technologies exist in one form or another today. Now we need each sector to come together, collaborate, and help shape the robotic workforce of the future.

Let’s be honest, women have made some serious strides in the workplace. As a matter of fact, women are running nearly 50% of all businesses in the United States. But even with that statistic, businesses with all male teams are four times more likely to receive funding from venture capital investors. There is a serious problem with our investment engine if it continues to keep half of their bench on the sidelines.

If Chip Kelly or whoever runs the Denver Broncos decided to only play half their team, how long do you think they’d stay as head coach?

This topic was the feature of one of the most riveting talks of the first day of COIN 2015 Summit – Invest in Women, Everybody Wins, given by Loretta McCarthy, Managing Partner of Golden Seeds, an early-stage venture capital fund that invests in women-owned businesses, as well as champions women’s place in the investment community.

“In 2004, women made up about 5% of the angel investors in the United States,” said McCarthy. “Today they make up approximately 26%. Meaning there’s 80,000 women who are angel investors.”

Don’t say we didn’t tell you, this is starting to become a movement.

There’s even been an increase in the amount of men who will fund women-led startups, being fondly referred to as Golden Dudes. And there need to be more of them. The more men can take a stand and show that not investing women isn’t just simple minded, but bad business sense, the faster this movement will grow.

And women have had a lot of help over the past 4-5 years due to the tremendous growth of seed accelerators that have sprung up across the country. Now there are well over 100 across the US, and they do an incredible job of keeping their workforce local, and keeping capital and job security nearby.

Yet, women continue to face funding challenges and myriad other obstacles when it comes to scaling their business. And then, having run out of options, they’re forced to turn to overseas funding pools or family offices that to often do not invest the proper time, energy, or money, into their seed companies.

“From 2011 to 2013, less than 3% of venture capital funded companies had female CEOs. And 85% of the companies that were funded had no women executives on their teams,” said McCarthy.

So maybe it’s more than gender diversity in the startup company. We need more diversity in the venture capital firms funding startups. In fact, VC firms with women partners are 2.5 times more likely to invest in a women-owned company.

Investment is all ones and zeros. Black and red. Balance sheets and EBITA. Yet for some reason investment leaders are ignoring the obvious truth that the numbers are clearly pointing towards: spending money on women in the investment community will not only pay dividends, but almost double the investment landscape.

If you handed me that term sheet, I’d sign it every day and twice on Sunday’s. The simple truth is, if you invest in women, everybody wins.

Governor John W. Hickenlooper welcomed a packed house of innovators, leaders and change agents at the 4th gathering of the Colorado Innovation Network Summit, held in Denver, CO. He challenged the group to be present over the next two days, to think outside the box and to foster collaboration to reduce friction and accelerate opportunities for Colorado.  Most importantly, he echoed the summits mantra of curiosity: “Start asking questions!”

But what is “innovation?” Mark Sirangelo, Chief Innovation Officer for the State of Colorado and Vice President of Sierra Nevada Space Systems, defines it as “being able to look at a situation or challenge and realize that it can be done differently.” Innovation doesn’t apply only to technology and startup entrepreneurs, it transcends arts, culture, business, education, healthcare, community organizing and government.

This year’s summit will focus panels and discussions around four key session questions all through the lens of the theme “curiosity:”

     1. How do our digital selves define us?

     2. How are the ways we connect changing?

     3. What do the communities of the future look like?

     4. Who will advance global progress?

Panelists and attendees come from across the city, state and nation. COIN 2015 will address issues around healthcare information from experts such as Dhruv Jaggia from the IBM Watson team, gender-diverse business best practices from Loretta McCarthy of Golden Seeds, the technologies of tomorrow by Tony Werner of Comcast and innovation within local Colorado companies like Wild Goose Canning.

Comcast VP of Competitive Planning and Mobility Michael Soileau took the stage before the Governor to highlight the curious areas of innovation that the COIN 2015 presenting sponsor is participating in. He highlighted how the company’s Comcast Labs division employs 40 PhD’s and 10 distinguished fellows to push the envelope of innovation everyday, developing products like the X1 voice remote and the media solutions of tomorrow for customers and communities across the country.

The next few days are on track to be a curious confluence of communities and ideas. Let’s take the State of Colorado on a journey that the rest of the world can learn from.