Ep. 29 - Venture Client as a discipline

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean for me it's two things. One is shots on goal. So just people sometimes they'll ask me, you know, how did you get so many projects? How are you so successful? Well, I knocked on doors. I had meetings with over 100 teams and some of those were tough. Uh, but some of them, a project or two came and just knocking on those doors, kind of getting out there, that was number one. I got to do as many projects as possible. So some of these are going to lead to something. And that's what I've seen. Now number two is I try to head that off at the very beginning. Someone says, oh, hey, I need this new technology xyz. Okay, great. Where are you going to pilot that? Who's going to fund that? And then I want that person to be there in the room when we get started. I want law in the room. I want everyone in all these stakeholders that can derail things, I want them in the room from day one. And I want to make sure everyone is nodding their head. And you know, I'll tell you what, sometimes in those discussions we find something, a new piece of information and we decide to not proceed. And that's okay, that's about 20% of the time. But to your point, I find if you don't have that all lined up ahead of time, I don't think the chance of success can be very high. Uh, you can get derailed 20 different ways along the way. So.

Speaker B: In depth interviews with the most influential innovation executives of the tech arena. Exclusive data and insights on major and emerging ecosystems all around the world. The hottest news on technology and open innovation at a global level. This and much more in every new episode. Welcome to Open Innovation Talks. Mind the bridge chat with industry leaders.

Speaker C: Today we have uh, the pleasure to discuss uh, with uh, Kyle Basler, reader. Kyle is global open innovation lead at ExxonMobil. Hi Kyle. Hello. So Kyle, I think will be super interesting to deep dive in what a big company like ExxonMobil is currently innovating again today. Open innovation is the, is the keyword but as most of the keyword there are multiple meanings, multiple ways of doing multiple uh, different tools that might be used. Uh, as far As I know, ExxonMobil has been uh, mostly focusing on one, uh, across the multiple tools that open innovation, the open innovation building is based upon. It's focused mostly on one tool that is venture client. But first of all be interesting for our audience too know you. So might be good to get a bit of your background and maybe just for the One that do not know ExxonMobil. Provide a bit of context and ExxonMobil.

Speaker A: All right, well, great. Well, hey, it's great to be here. And I think what I'll do is I'll start with an introduction, a little bit about who I am in my journey and I'll blend that, I'll blend that into what are we doing at Exxon Mobil in 2024 in the innovation space. So my name is Kyle Bos, the Reader. I joined the company about nine years ago as an exploit exploration geophysicist. Uh, my role was to help, uh, geologists and engineers build images of the earth and figure out where to drill our wells. So where we're exploring for hydrocarbon resources in the subsurface. I did a number of rotational assignments, machine learning, imaging, uh, all sorts of different things. And what I found over the last, uh, three to four years, I started really learning innovation as a discipline and not just as innovation is cool new stuff. Innovation is a science, it's a system. It has processes, workflows, etc. And I really started to delve into those flows. This was about three or four years ago. Uh, we did an innovation accelerator round in the company. The classic, you kind of put an idea in the box, they pick their favorite ones, you do a pitch. Uh, I actually progressed with one of those projects and at the end of that project they, the feedback was, Kyle, you really set the gold standard is the quote. Uh, essentially the way that I approached it. I used a design thinking approach, really got in there, uh, thought about decision science, boundaries, et cetera. And they really liked that work. So they brought me back as a senior sort of innovation coach. This is all just a hobby at this time. It's on the side. I'm reading some books, uh, things like that. What happened is the company. So now I'll kind of get into where does this fit into what Exxon Mobil is doing? Uh, again, this is about three or four years ago, the company started to see, uh, the need for more external leveraging. We needed to get more externally engaged. You know, you're very well familiar with this, but the external landscape is huge. You know, we're talking like over a billion freelancers, 300 million startup companies coming in every year, 600 million entrepreneurs are out there. So there's a huge amount of activity outside. And there was a recognition that even though we have huge amounts of talent and information and data and really well established processes, et cetera, there was still a huge opportunity outside. And so I started to get involved in that effort. And what happened is I was essentially put into a full time position. My title when I started was actually external leveraging coordinator. So literally coordinating different external efforts, trying to get the maximum leverage. And you know, back at that time about three years ago, I really didn't know a whole lot. I'll just put it that way. I was learning and I was reading and you know, I looked around in the company and what I did is I did this very broad interview campaign. So I interviewed over 200 people, put all those learnings into a series of basically PowerPoint packs is how I got started. I had about 20 different PowerPoint packs. You know, I had one for open sourcing, one for crowdsourcing, one for, you know, venture clienting, working with vendors, et cetera. And then I started using those tools. Now this was all in the upstream. Remember I come from where we're actually finding the oil, drilling for oil. Um, what happened a few months into that effort, basically they said, hey, why don't you just broaden your scope to the whole company. Now that's a whole other series of learnings. This is a big company, you know, chemicals, fuels and lubes. Uh, there's a lot uh, of parts after the oil is drilled before it gets to the consumer. So I had to, it took me a while to kind of get to know those different folks. I engaged with about 110 teams over the last year and a half across the company. And uh, now I would say I am firmly a Exxon mobile wide open innovation program. You know, problems small to large, things that are fast, things that will take years. And ExxonMobil, I'll just say it, in short, uh, innovation, uh, is booming at Exxon Mobil. We have a lot of new businesses we're launching. You can go on our website and see for yourself. Read more. Um, but particularly in our low carbon, uh, uh, solutions business, there's a lot of new segments that are coming and those new segments, they need new solutions and they need new ideas. And I think that's a great place for open innovation. But don't forget these other parts of ExxonMobil. These are very large organizations. So even a small win, if you scale that across it, it can be a huge success. Um, so even some of those more core innovations, we're finding a lot of activity and we're finding a lot of success.

Speaker C: I think you say a couple of things that are uh, super relevant. Number one is you say, oh, you know, when I started doing this job and you came from your Own background. By the way, I'm interviewing, uh, most of people doing your job. Uh, and I think the only constant that I found is each of you has his own path and his own background. So we have people with humanistic studies, with engineering studies, with science. Yeah. And that have done different experiences. So substantially what we are discussing here, that this novel practice called open innovation, substantially, we are still, uh, in an experimentation phase to see how it works. And each of you is finding its own formula. And so I think I like when you say, I didn't know what to do. I just start talking to people, trying to find my own way and then test it and make it work. This is number one that I think is interesting. The second part that you say that I liked a lot is innovation sounds like creativity, but at the end is discipline. At the end is project management, at the end is sales. And so can you explore a bit more this final part? Because I think it's relevant because, again, particularly in large organization, you can move a dent. But again, you need to prepare the field, drill down, open the doors, walking the corridors. How this is the daily job of open innovation.

Speaker A: Well, let me just say when I got started in open innovation, I agree that, uh, we all have different pathways on how we get here. They say the same thing about, about geophysics, by the way. You know, we come in through very different ways. So I guess I'm just. I'm just wondering through all these different journeys. But I would just say that, uh, when I came into the role, I really had this vision of basically a flowchart. That was my goal. I want a flowchart. Someone comes into my office, they say, I need some help. I want to be more external. And then, you know, boom, I start asking questions. I can actually proudly say, after more than two years of doing this, I believe I do sort of have this flowchart. So what I would say, open innovation at ExxonMobil. It starts with a series of, uh, questions that are going to help you frame how you proceed. Uh, those questions at a high level, um, the most important one is, how much time do you have? I've had people come and they say, yeah, I need to get some external opinions, et cetera. Yeah, I have two days. Okay, if you have two days, there's only a few tools that I have that can actually fit that. Next question. How much, how much funding do you have? You know, some folks, they don't have any funding at all. Some folks, they basically say, you know, tell me everything you have, because I'll Consider whatever you got. Um, next up, you know, what about. What about ip? Okay. Some teams, they're trying to build something proprietary, novel. IP is very important. Another team, they may be saying that's not really important for what I'm trying to do. I'm just trying to get this done. I'm not trying to build a new hammer. You know, just find me the best hammer and I'll buy it. Uh, so sort of some of those framing questions. Do you want to remain confidential, uh, etc. There's a few others in there that I might ask about, but that's going to help me frame what's the right tool for the job. Now, if we have some time, if we have at least, you know, a few months. I like to do very rigorous internal landscaping. This is a really big place, a really rich history. I mean, we're talking about 150 years of history. Huge company, lots of diverse skill sets. I like to start connecting those people to other units inside the company. And what I have found is that there's often a. There's often a unit over in some other place. Like if this is someone who's drilling the oil wells like I used to. Well, guess what? There's other people who deal with pipes, right? There's our refineries. They have to deal with pipes. There's our midstream with pipes. So if you have a question about a pipe, uh, problem, let's go talk to those other folks. And I find that roughly about half of the time, um, it's pretty consistent. I can connect that team to another team. They start a dialogue, and then they basically say, kyle, this was great. We'll let you know if we need some more help. Pretty much is what happens. Uh, so that's pretty common. Once you're sort of through internal landscaping, you haven't found anything. You have a good idea on the parameters, how much time you have, the budget, et cetera, then that's really where I start to choose what tool I'm, um, going to bring into bear. And that really, to me, that really boils down to a TRL question. If we're talking about a trl, two is, okay. This is a research team. We're looking for fresh ideas. You know, we might go out there with something like a crowdsourcing approach. If they're looking for something a bit more developed, TRL5 plus something that they don't want to start from scratch. We don't have a research team that's really more like a request for proposals type approach. And and uh, that's where you know, we, we really prefer to get into this kind of venture clienting role, working with them. Um, you know, we're basically a customer. We're telling them what we need. Now we're a big customer. We have a lot of technical expertise, a lot of history. So we can really help those startups grow. Uh, and then the third one is really around these talent models. These are very common that I like to use. Some people call them expert interviews. Ah, we might bring in a group of different experts into a workshop format. Um, now those, those are a bit of a different tool. Now that's not necessarily a TRL thing. That might be, um, you're just looking for some insights at the very beginning of a project. A new area, new to ExxonMobil space that we're not familiar or it could be a very developed space. It's just a big decision you're making and you're looking for increased confidence. And so let's kind of have a workshop with some experts and get their opinions. Make sure that we haven't had any blind spots. That's at a high level. There's about 30 other tools that I use, but I think that was a decent take. Uh, you know, and then on the back and let's not, let's not talk about procurement and legal and IT and these other processes because that's not exciting. Uh, but I do also, I do include those in my sort of flowchart, right, because those things are important and you can't forget about those because otherwise your projects aren't going to work.

Speaker C: Have you introduced, while working with external entity, I think startups have you able to implement a sort of fast track to onboard them, um, a bit faster than usual or you still, this is something where there is some internal barriers.

Speaker A: So, so when I'm talking to these teams, right, I'd put it at about 120 teams I've talked to so far. It's very, very common that somebody comes off the microphone and they say, you know Kyle, I like what you're saying, but I don't have time to go through all these process barriers, XYZ and abc. And you know what I would tell you is I have basically fast tracked everything. Uh, if it's procurement, if it's legal. I've put together really simple to follow guidelines on how to do it, how to do it fast. I went and interviewed those people, I asked them, I said, what's important to you? Why does this take so long? So the places where it can be sped up. Uh, templates, tricks, guidelines. I've put all that in one place. I've made it easy for folks, the places where it can't be sped up. What I tried to do there is help people have a sense of empathy. So why do I have to fill out this form? Why do we do this? I tried to go and get the other side and get the stories so that I think it makes it easier for people to do something if you can at least tell them why. Um, so, yeah, I would say I fast track pretty much everything. Um, within the company, there's always efforts to make things faster and more streamlined. Uh, all of those processes at ExxonMobil are improving. And then again, I tell people, if that's the problem you have, I have a PowerPoint for that. You know, I'll send them over. My, my procurement pack, my legal pack, my IT pack. All of these have those tips, tricks and guidelines to help them get through quicker.

Speaker C: Talking about venture clients. So still, uh, this is, I think, the, the most interesting part of your job. Can you tell us a bit about the overall numbers, which is the deal flow or solution that you, you scout every year? Uh, how many ballpark number of pilot projects that typically, how long does it take from, from the first meeting to get to the pilot start, which is the average length of a pilot, which is the ratio from turning those pilot in something that has actually has been deployed at scale. Can you give us some numbers just to understand which is the current flow?

Speaker A: I can take a shot. You know what I would, what I would tell you is it's, uh, a big place and, uh, you know, I don't get to see. I probably get to see 5% of what we're actually doing, just, just to be totally honest. Uh, however, what I could tell you is if I were to talk about how many, how many opportunities are we seeing? We have tried to estimate that, you know, this is in the thousands as a company. There's thousands of opportunities that are coming, startup companies, you know, new ideas, uh, so that it's in the thousands in terms of execution. What I would tell you is, so this term venture clienting, right? In the States, I find not many people actually are familiar with this phrase. Uh, when I learned about venture clienting and I said, what is that? What exactly are you saying? I said, wow, that's what we like to do. Okay, so the way that we like to operate is we like to operate as a customer, as a big customer. We have global facilities that we can test your Solutions in. We have really deep expertise that we can bring to bear and I've been on some of those calls and I think those companies are getting a lot of value from these discussions that they're having with some of our technical folks. If the startup runs into a challenge, well guess what, that's our challenge now too. And that's something I think that we're really good at is helping you find solutions to problems and challenges. So, so that's the mode we run in. The ones that I've had my hands on. These have an extremely high chance of success. I mean in terms of actually doing a pilot, getting it in, getting it done, getting uh, it funded. This is a very high percent, uh, it's well over 50% of these opportunities that we chase. We actually do something with it. Now the real, the real test of this type of thing for me in my, I'll just speak to my program because I don't really have a good feeling for the entire corporation but the opportunities that I've been involved in, I would just tell you that I get this question a lot. It's a fair question. We have had some pilots that were successful that are, that already added value. You know, they're already uh, have a good uh, return if you will. But, but I do believe that we're going to need some more time in order to really get to some of those other metrics around percentages and things like that. Um, and what I would say is it's a portfolio approach. That's the way that I look at it. Some of these bets are small, some of them are big, some are risky, some are not and in aggregate it's extremely successful. That's all that I could really say at a high level, um, is that this works, it's fast, it's pretty lightweight in fact and people are seeing really good results. And so one of the big things I'm trying to do is raise awareness around the company of these types of workflows. Uh because it can be done actually pretty easily and pretty quick. Uh, and it's going to save you a ton of time instead of trying to build it from scratch.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's for sure. Another big topic. Again we work and speak with many corporates that over the years uh, developed this way of approaching startups. Now is, is commonly referred as venture client. Venture clienting, uh, is this is not just actually for the venture client but broadly speaking for anything that is attached to open innovation is to measure impact.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: Find the proper KPIs to show the progress and show the value has been created because one of the problem that we most of the time we do have is that I honestly working with many corporate like you, uh, I know that you are producing value for the company. This is a given the problem is how to show the value produce the impact produced to the constituency A and B to show it uh while you are not at the destination by a mid of the journey, during the journey because again you are producing something that is going to reshape the company to change the company and then it's something unfortunately you cannot measure. Uh, uh, pregnancy halfway again or you get to the point at the end. Yes, you can estimate what the Essentially I'm just estimate and still also when you deploy a pilot you start scaling up. Uh, the value is still at. So you need to make some assumptions. So the question for you is how do you manage communication Internal mostly because again you need to keep your constituency up to date. You need to continue to get support. Uh, you know we are in a period of time when there are budget cuts across uh departments and sometimes innovation is one of the first to be hard because again it's the one that's probably perceived as yes, it's nice to have. It's not something very, very critical in the time of need. So how do you communicate in order to keep uh attention and proper that your activities proper value B which KPIs are you using for, for measuring the activity that you're running and see how do you measure impact. So this is the question for you.

Speaker A: So I'm really glad you asked me that question because I'd like to give uh, mind the Bridge a shout out for when I was doing all those interviews. I didn't just stay internal. I also interviewed 50 to 100 people outside roughly. And I did connect with your organization and what you all taught me. One idea that has really resonated with me is this idea that there are different eras of a program. Uh, when I got started doing these interviews talking to these people, I had a lot of people looking at me saying what are you doing? Are you serious? You're doing five interviews a day for months. Uh, there was a little bit of a question there of the value, uh, do you really need to do more than about 20, Kyle? Um, so I was in that earliest phase where there really were no metrics. The metric was how many interviews have I done? Uh, getting into the early execution, I think the input metrics were really important. How many people am I talking to? How many problems am I scoping how many am I connecting to internal solutions? Like I said, how many were rejected and why, et cetera? How long is it taking? As I started to get into the more advanced execution era, if you will, which is where I would say I am today, we obviously it's important to track how many projects are we doing, how many teams are we scoping? All of those are important. We're starting to get into value metrics. So the way that I approach it is I ask the team three questions and I follow up every now and then, uh, to check in. The first question is, do you have any actual implementations planned? If the answer is no, that's a metric, right? So we found ideas, they're not being used yet. There's some things I might want to do there. Follow up, do they need resourcing, etc. The second question, you have an implementation planned. Okay, that's great. What's the projected value of that implementation, if it works? And what do you think the chance of success is Now? Chance of success is tough. That's not an easy thing to estimate. Uh, that's another area that I've spent considerable amount of time is trying to help teams figure out how to estimate that. But that's the first thing that I like to probe on is things that are in the future. The second one is which pilots have you completed and did they produce any value? So if you have a completed pilot that actually added some value, that's great. You have a planned pilot, that's great. The last bit is, if this thing is successful and we scale this across the other implementations across the company, which. This is the most important question in my opinion. What do you think the total projected value would be and what do you think the chance of success of that would be? So even if your pilot is successful in one place, it's not 100% chance you're going to scale it everywhere else. There's a lot of other organizational considerations, et cetera, timing considerations. Uh, so those are the questions that I like to ask. And then you basically just really simple, I'm multiplying that chance of success by those three outcomes and then I'm doing a sum. Um, that's where I'm at. It's pretty basic. I am starting to look at things like, um, how long did the project take? How long did it go from the first meeting to the actual execution to the pilot? Now I'm getting into what I call, again, this is credit to your organization. I call this the era of optimization, which is where we're really going to start to fine tune on those metrics now when it comes to uh, you know, chance of success of a project in general, return on investment, those types of optimized parameters. I am currently my communication is. I don't know how to answer that yet. So give me some time. But I can tell you just that front end, that front piece of pilots that were executed, that added value that alone is powering the rest of this entire program. So we're doing some risky moonshot type stuff. I don't. I don't know if they'll go anywhere, you know. But that's okay because I'm keeping along with those, those things that you plug in, you get a quick win. Those stories are sufficient to keep people happy. No?

Speaker C: Very, very well said. I think again what you say makes a lot of sense. Obviously devil is in the details. Meaning that I think one of the main hurdles that many open innovation units like yours are facing on a daily basis is the ability to follow up after pilot. Because when you hand over is being handed over and uh, technically speaking you don't have the right to the opportunity to really understand what is actually happening. So you start with a sort of best case, you remain with a sort of business plan and then you don't know exactly what uh will be of it. Also because if you are putting some technology inside something else is very difficult to look like the value out of that. And so what we are being discussing with many leaders that are exactly facing the same issues is that probably we need to force these sort of audit to understand exactly what is happening. Obviously you cannot do across the entire organization, across all the pilots, across all the implementation because you get nuts. But what can really be done is to cherry pin the one that have the largest potential and to follow a measure properly enforcing the organization during the. In the condition of the endeavor that you have substantially the the audit. Try to understand what is that if not at the end you're becoming just sort uh of gatekeeper. Open the door inside the organization, then you open the door inside the business unit and what happens outside of this door is no longer in your control. Or maybe you are penalized for something that happens after the second door technically is not your responsibility anymore. And we know how bad in organization the sentence is not my responsibility, it's not my job can produce some results. So that is what we technically trying to to facing again. We are trying to to find some KPIs and be replicated. Trying to find some best practice to measure the outcomes. Because at the End. What I really believe is that the job of you guys is a sort of a roic because again you are in between uh, a word that is huge as you pictured before. And on the other end, huge organization that have the daily job as a forced line of duty and whatever is beyond that, they actually do not care. They care minimally. And uh, and then uh, if you are not able to, to continue to communicate the value and get someone, get some audience about that at the end when there is a, some uh, recession, reorganization, badly, internal condition, whatever, you got cut and then here's a good job, uh, trash away. So the dirty water and the kids. So this is what we are really fighting to find. Best way to defend the job that we believe as a gigantic value. Mhm.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean for me it's two things. One is shots on goal. So just people sometimes they'll ask me how did you get so many projects? How are you so successful? Well, I knocked on doors, I had meetings with over 100 teams and some of those were tough, but some of them, a project or two came and just knocking on those doors, kind of getting out there, that was number one. I got to do as many projects as possible. So some of these are going to lead to something. And that's what I've seen. Number two is I try to head that off at the very beginning. Someone says, oh, hey, I need this new technology xyz. Okay, great. Where are you going to pilot that? Who's going to fund that? And then I want that person to be there in the room when we get started. I want law in the room. I want everyone in all these stakeholders that can derail things. I want them in the room from day one. And I want to make sure everyone is nodding their head. And I'll tell you what, sometimes in those discussions we find something, a new piece of information and we decide to not proceed. And that's okay. That's about 20% of the time. This early alignment meeting phase, we don't proceed. But, but to your point, I find if you don't have that all lined up ahead of time, I don't think the chance of success can be very high. You can get derailed 20 different ways along the way.

Speaker C: So no, I, I like the metaphor. Shots on goal. Yes, again you need to try. And then one thing that we notice is that most of the time, particularly in the early days, uh, you need to be politically picking up, uh, the units to work with. That might sound strange, but at the end there is not the same sensibility in the same mindset across the organization. So start working with the one that a bit more open, get some um, quick wins, get some results and then you scale to other places. Despite probably, if you look at the potential values to be extracted, are not probably the first places to start with. But again, if you start the most complicated challenges, probably turns into nothing. So I think this is the stuff that most of the time we see.

Speaker A: Yep. And I'll just, I'll just say this, you know, coming into a meeting with a bunch of organic chemists as a physicist, uh, and not knowing a lot about what they do, you know, you don't really know what you're walking into in that room. And so yeah, some of these teams, no follow ups, no nothing and nothing came. And that's okay. But you're right, there are certain teams, uh, that have higher organizational readiness. As we describe it, those teams, those are the ones that you go and you execute the project and then what you do is the next year you come back to that team that wasn't ready and you have that person who's, who's in an adjacent unit, that person halfway through you say, okay, we're going to have Sarah come up now and she's going to talk about the project. And they look over and they say, whoa, we did something here. And I've seen it happen. I've seen the body language shift from who is this guy? To oh, uh, wow, we actually did that. This actually works. Um, so that was a big part of my strategy with going broad in the organization. Just like you said, you got to find those early adopters and those early adopters, I gotta tell you, these sometimes are not the typical employee. I'll just put it that way. Yeah.

Speaker C: Because again at the end innovation is a mindset. And again, another important component, another important outcome of the work that you are doing is culture. Because you are spreading culture, spreading different ways of doing things, bringing openness into organization that most of the time are based on not invented your syndrome. They are not exactly super excited to work with four parties. So you are seeding and this job has a value. The problem again, how to measure it and to make the rest of the organization know that uh, you have done this and then we have a better organizational culture. You have a better, mhm. Organizational readiness to do innovative things. That probably was three, five years ago. So probably if you take 10,000ft and then look at what you have done in the over three, four years of doing your job, you see totally different organization. But it's Very difficult to measure. It's very difficult to perceive on a daily basis. And so that's the sum of the big outcomes of the job that you're doing. And again, intangible. And all the intangible things are difficult to be measured.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean in short, I'll just say it uh, is a culture change journey. And it took me almost a year, I would say into this program I thought to myself, oh this is cool, I'm going to go execute some projects and work on cool technical problems and you know, work with outside companies. This sounds fun. And then I realized I've actually been asked to lead a culture change journey and that really flipped my entire way of thinking about what I'm doing. Uh, you're spot on. It is a culture change journey and I don't believe you can manually change a culture. But what I do believe is executing these projects, showing people how it works. I've really been focused on recognition. I implemented uh, a uh, recognition program. These commendation coins, uh, that I handed out to teams. I try to get them in front of their senior management. I try to send messages to their management and inform them about this great work they're doing and how they're leading the company and innovation and, and all of this. And so you're spot on that that is, that is the name of the game for a program like mine when you're just a couple years old.

Speaker C: Yeah, I agree and I think that's going to be a good definition to define um, your job profile. And again it's a big task. It's not something that happens overnight. So it will be too easy. And so you're through different tools, you actually spreading culture and make it the company to what I believe is the ultimate goal, that is survival. Because again organization get obsolete, business lines dried out, paid out. Uh, and you are actually helping the company to, to get a brighter future. And unfortunately working long term, uh, uh, is difficult to be measure and assess in between. So particularly short term. So this is all the, the beauty and fascinating challenges that people working in open innovation has to face. So I think you are one heroes that are on the front and in this large organization. And so again congratulations for the job that you have been done. And let's keep uh, talking and updating about uh, your progress because I believe probably if we talk again in uh, six to 12 months, you have a lot of new things and experiences and learnings to be shared with our audience. Thank you so much guys.

Speaker A: Well, thank you and thank you for providing me some great resources when I was at that very beginning. I think your organization has a lot to offer folks that are trying to learn more about open innovation.

Speaker B: Thank you for being with us today and see you in the next episode of Open Innovation Talks. Mind the bridge. Chat with industry leaders.