Harnessing Emerging Tech: Imagination and AI in Brand Growth, and the Perils of 'Too Big to Fail"

When technology can do everything for us, what is left? Imagination. That is the intrigue in a soon-to-be-released book coming by Dr Lydia Kostopoulos, who holds a PHD in International Relations, Security and Political Science, having attended the Harvard Kennedy school for Cybersecurity. We discuss: Harnessing Emerging Tech: Imagination and AI in Brand Growth, and the Perils of 'Too Big to Fail".

• ·      ways to grow brands by adapting to emerging tech,
• ·      how to use imagination in brand growth,
• ·      risks in believing you are TOO BIG TO FAIL,
• ·      how AI is effecting brand imagination, 
• ·      how technology has changed society,

Chapters

• 02:44 The Significance of Cybersecurity and Cybercrime
• 05:04 Exploring Web3 and Digital Ownership
• 08:23 The State of Web3 and the Metaverse
• 12:21 Digital Assets and NFTs
• 15:08 Apple's Vision Pro and Avatar Technology
• 19:20 Challenges and Risks in the Metaverse
• 20:41 Convergence of Technologies and Convergence Literacy
• 24:27 Emerging Technologies and Strategic Advisory Services
• 26:46 The Importance of Convergence Literacy
• 27:15 Navigating Exponential Advancements
• 27:44 The Need for Packaging Solutions
• 30:19 The Imagination Dilemma
• 33:01 The Impact of Emerging Technologies
• 36:16 Packaging and the Circular Economy
• 40:08 The Imagination Dilemma: Explained
• 52:49 Reimagining Business Focus
• 53:42 Protecting Competitiveness

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Chapters

• 2:21 The Significance of Cybersecurity and Cybercrime
• 5:00 Exploring Web3 and Digital Ownership
• 7:53 The State of Web3 and the Metaverse
• 12:21 Digital Assets and NFTs
• 15:29 Apple's Vision Pro and Avatar Technology
• 19:25 Challenges and Risks in the Metaverse
• 24:33 Emerging Technologies and Strategic Advisory Services
• 29:23 The Need for Packaging Solutions
• 35:09 The Impact of Emerging Technologies
• 41:16 The Imagination Dilemma: Explained
• 51:42 Reimagining Business Focus

Transcript

How AI Is Effecting Brand Imagination, 

When technology can do everything for us, what is left? Imagination. That is the intrigue in a soon-to-be-released book coming by Dr Lydia Kostopoulos, who holds a PHD in International Relations, Security and Political Science, having attended the Harvard Kennedy school for Cybersecurity. We discuss:


• ways to grow brands by adapting to emerging tech,
• how to use imagination in brand growth,
• risks in believing you are TOO BIG TO FAIL,
• how AI is effecting brand imagination, 
• how technology has changed society,

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Background
02:44 The Significance of Cybersecurity and Cybercrime
05:04 Exploring Web3 and Digital Ownership
08:23 The State of Web3 and the Metaverse
12:21 Digital Assets and NFTs
15:08 Apple's Vision Pro and Avatar Technology
19:20 Challenges and Risks in the Metaverse
20:41 Convergence of Technologies and Convergence Literacy
24:27 Emerging Technologies and Strategic Advisory Services
26:46 The Importance of Convergence Literacy
27:15 Navigating Exponential Advancements
27:44 The Need for Packaging Solutions
30:19 The Imagination Dilemma
33:01 The Impact of Emerging Technologies
36:16 Packaging and the Circular Economy
40:08 The Imagination Dilemma: Explained
52:49 Reimagining Business Focus
53:42 Protecting Competitiveness

TAGS: ways to grow brands by adapting to emerging tech, Risks In Believing You Are Too Big To Fail, how to use imagination in brand growth, how ai is effecting brand imagination, how technology has changed society, danger believing you are too big to fail, when companies think they are too big to fail, brand growth by adapting to emerging tech , new brand growth adapting to tech advances, growing brands through adapting to tech advances, adapting to tech advances for brand growth, new ways brands can adapt to tech advances, how brands should adapt to technology advances, 


D. Mauro (00:04.27)
When technology can do everything for us, what's left? Imagination. That's the intrigue in a book coming out, Q1 of 2025, by Dr. Lydia Kostopoulos, who joins us here today from Scotland. She has a PhD in international relations, political science and security policy, attended Harvard's Kennedy School for Cybersecurity, the intersection of policy and technology. She's a board member volunteer at the Valkyrie Project.

which is a nonprofit focused on female military service members providing training programs, support, and resources. Welcome Cyber Crime Junkies I am your host David Mauro Lydia, welcome to the studio.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (00:47.881)
Thank you for having me.

D. Mauro (00:50.286)
No, I'm very excited about being here and to hear about the book and to talk about a lot of issues that are facing organizations in a lot of different ways. All, since technology is that kind of river that flows through every aspect of an organization, it affects us all. So you and your personal experience, you've transcended beyond the cybersecurity field, more into a global policy and emerging tech field.

Walk us through kind of before we get to the topics and what drove you into emerging tech and to create this book. Walk us through kind of what intrigued you in the first place about the field of cybersecurity.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (01:36.649)
actually it was terrorists, if I'm honest. I finished my PhD focusing on counter -terrorism.

D. Mauro (01:42.286)
Ah, the lovely terrorists. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. It's always either like 9 -11 military or just I was hacked or I met a hacker. It's always some interesting story. That's why I always ask. So I really apologize for cutting you off. Go ahead, please.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (01:45.801)
Thank you.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (02:02.153)
So there is a 9 -11 story because that's how I got into national security and focusing on terrorism. And then when I finished my doctoral studies, I started doing research at a think tank and it was focused on insurgencies and guerrilla groups and terrorists. And what I noticed is that they were using cyberspace as a medium to disseminate their ideology, to plan attacks and to conduct attacks through cyberspace. And so I thought,

This is a very interesting paradigm change in terms of attacking and organizing. And since then, it's always just been emerging tech and the edge.

D. Mauro (02:44.078)
Yeah, it really seems that, I mean, when we think of cybersecurity, there is no cybersecurity without cybercrime. There's no need to secure anything if nobody's going after it. Right. And so cybercrime, when you think about it, it's crime. Like people really try and make it this esoteric, very complex thing. And the technologies can be complex and the organization of it. I don't mean to minimize that, but it's crime.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (03:11.881)
YES.

D. Mauro (03:13.358)
It is crime, it's organized crime. There's recruiting involved. There is organization, there's money disbursement, money laundering. It's all done online or through a combination, a hybrid combination. And that's what makes it cyber crime as opposed to just crime. Back in the 80s, organized crime was organized crime because they didn't have computers. Now it's just, they call it cyber crime, but it's still organized crime. Here's my question. So,

It's used for a lot. When we think of cyber crime, we think of cybersecurity. It's a lot more than hack what people think what the what the media has done by like making these rock star figures of hackers, right? And like making hackers look cute, right? Even though it's the criminals. It's it's not all hackers. I'm talking about the black hat hackers, obviously. But when you think of the terrorist organizations,

What did you find? I mean, weren't they using and don't they continue to use online means to recruit and disseminate their messages?

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (04:22.857)
Absolutely. And so you mentioned crime and at the end of the day, whether it's terrorism form of crime or traditional form of crime, they're using the latest in technology to see how it is they can achieve their means. So, you know, whether it's Bitcoin or any type of like Web3, any any of the latest edge technologies, they'll try and use them.

D. Mauro (04:48.846)
Web3, when you mentioned Web3, that you're referencing like the metaverse, which is a component of Web3, things like that, right? Could you elaborate on the state of Web3 today? Very broad statement, but I'm curious to get your perspective.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (05:04.009)
Sure. So I think it's better to like, just go back a few steps. And if we think about the first version of the internet, the 90s version, that's the version where we just kind of consumed information. And it was, we went on for those who remember America Online, you went on, you looked at what there was, and that was kind of it. And then the next version of the internet came in the like early mid 2000s. And it was really about you being able to participate in this,

D. Mauro (05:11.086)
Yeah.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (05:33.449)
content creation and posting and sharing. And social media did a lot to bring that forward. And that's what's considered web two, the being able to post and share. And then web three, which is meant to connotate the next version of the internet is where we get to share and own. So right now we don't own digital assets. We don't have like digital wallets per se where we get to own these things. We own them.

D. Mauro (05:58.382)
YES.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (06:04.041)
air quotes through other platforms. So we can monetize our content through other platforms who do take a cut out of it. But we don't get to own it 110%. And so Web3 is meant to bring about this new kind of infrastructure whereby you would be able to fully own your domain. It would be a digital asset that you buy instead of a digital asset that you rent. And also where there would be digital currencies.

ways to pay through digital currencies. And what I mean by that is it's not just the cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, but it is also the CBDCs, which is the central bank backed digital currencies. So it would be a digital currency backed by a government. And so, for example, China has been experimenting quite a bit with their digital yuan.

D. Mauro (06:57.582)
And so in that, when we think about that, we've seen and we've had people on this show that have talked about the metaverse and how to capture that ownership, right? Because I think that's a way of Web3 that people don't really think about. When a lot of people think of Web3 in the metaverse, it seems like

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (07:09.609)
YES.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (07:13.353)
YES.

D. Mauro (07:26.926)
they believe it's like the Facebook VR version where we're walking around with avatars. And it's basically like a video game that's going to take a long time. And it was very popular a couple of years ago, a little bit less mass adoption now, but it seems to be there's going to be a resurgence as they start to see it the way you just described. So when you say they can, people can own. So in the web,

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (07:34.537)
YES.

D. Mauro (07:56.174)
three world, we would be able to create our own content. Let's say we create a picture, a painting that is uniquely ours. We don't use AI for it. We create it. And then we can own a piece of digital real estate in some metaverse world. Like there's a whole host of them. We've talked about them before. And then we could display that or we could sell copies of it. Right. And we would own it.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (08:03.113)
Mm -mm. Mm -mm.

D. Mauro (08:23.31)
Like it would actually be ours as opposed to we're paying YouTube or Facebook the right to post this on their platforms. Is that is is that of a simplistic version of it?

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (08:38.249)
Yes, I think that it would be good to talk about the infrastructure of it all. I think that's how it can make more sense. So I think the metaverse, first of all, is a term that's kind of hard to understand because everyone seems to have different definitions of it. But ultimately, I think 3D website is a good way to kind of explain it in very simple terms, 3D website. But let's go back to like the infrastructure part and the digital assets.

D. Mauro (08:46.158)
Let's. Yeah.

D. Mauro (08:56.654)
YES.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (09:07.465)
The example I think I want to use to illustrate this is improbable. They are trying to build the infrastructure of metaverse spaces and metaverse worlds. So if you think about it, Facebook is kind of like a world and so is Instagram and all these others. And we're not able to interoperate between them. I'm not able to cross -pollinate my picture, my profile from LinkedIn into Twitter.

or into Instagram, I have to manually do each one. But if you think about how when we sign in, there's many options when you like go to a website and they say sign in using your Google ID or sign in using your Facebook ID. That's like letting you use a different identity. So it's bring your own identity, so to speak, and you're able to sign in using those credentials. So what Improvable is trying to do is they're trying to do that for the 3D website worlds.

And they're trying to create a way where you will be able to take your avatar and just like go into other worlds with your avatar. You don't have to create a new one, no new profile, no new clothes for your avatar and you're just there. But the reason I want to use them as an example is because they experimented with something last summer and I've written about it. I called it the inception on live sports. And so what they did is they did a digital twin and digital twin, a physical.

a digital copy of a physical baseball field. And so that digital twin was replicated in a 3D website, which could be watched on your computer or in a VR headset. It's either or. And they created the game exactly the stadium as it was, and then the game was live as it was playing. So instead of watching it on TV and you watch actual humans,

D. Mauro (10:48.91)
YES. Yep.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (11:02.313)
in the 3D website that they had digitally twin created the stadium. They also had a digital twin of each player and each player, their avatar was live.

D. Mauro (11:11.566)
Although it was actually playing in... Oh, that was really... That was actually playing on the live field. They had created a digital avatar of each one. So you were actually watching the actual game that was going on in the physical realm.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (11:22.537)
Yes. Yes. Yes. So you're watching it live broadcast with avatars. And so the stadium was exactly replicated the same. So you would get your seat and you'd be able to go and sit in your seat. But then the very interesting aspects here is that it creates a whole new paradigm for digital asset sales. And so like, you know, you could sell a digital jersey, but you could also buy a real jersey online. You know, you could do both at the same time, but you could buy a digital jersey, a digital cap.

D. Mauro (11:28.622)
Oh, that's fascinating.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (11:52.073)
And then you are able to also interact.

D. Mauro (11:54.702)
And the ball field, yeah, the ball field could. Oh, yeah, it becomes a 3D website. Then you can have a store where you can walk around and see in 360 all the different jerseys, all the different hats, and you could perhaps buy one, a physical one that you can have. Right. Or you can buy a digital one. Yeah. Or you can buy a digital one and keep it in your digital wallet.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (12:03.593)
Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (12:13.897)
will come to your home, yeah? Yeah.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (12:21.033)
Right. And you would be able to sell that to other people. So for example, if they had like a commemorative first time ever digital live broadcast baseball game cap, you know, and there's only, you know, a certain amount of them and you bought that, like that's something that you can sell. But then another thing that's really interesting about digital assets is, is that you can also create an NFT version of them, which, which what that does is it creates a, you can have a contract in it and.

D. Mauro (12:22.414)
That's fantastic. Yeah, right.

D. Mauro (12:33.646)
Right.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (12:50.313)
So it's assigned, let's say, to your digital wallet. And when that happens, you are also able to be the beneficiary of other things should that brand that you bought the cap from want to give you free stuff. And so it's as if like you've subscribed to something and all of a sudden you get freebies in your inbox, except for your inbox would be your digital wallet. And then you would get free digital assets. And I can give you an example of that. And that was Damian Hirst. He's a famous British artist.

and he sold some NFT art and people who bought it later, a few months later, received an airdrop, which is just basically him putting stuff in their wallet of other art as well. But all of that has value and it can sell. And so all of these are these environments are being created and in due course, it'll make more sense. And if you'll allow me, I'll give another example of why I think we can see this slowly like being more of a thing.

with the new Apple.

D. Mauro (13:48.142)
Yeah, let's step back. Hang on, let's just step back. Can you just define terms because some of our listeners are more business executives that don't understand this. They may understand, but for those that don't, like you mentioned NFT, whenever I hear acronyms, I just want us to explain. It means like non -fungible token. But what is that? Can you explain that in English for us?

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (14:10.537)
corrupt.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (14:14.185)
Yes, so it is a digital asset that is connected on a chain where people can see who has owned it before, which wallet has owned it before, and how much it was sold for. And so you can see like this entire chain on a distributed ledger. It's a technology distributed ledger technology is basically. Yes.

D. Mauro (14:34.19)
It's just like the title to a vehicle. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a title to a car, essentially. Like you can tell when it was made, who registered it first, whether it was in an accident, who bought, sold it, et cetera. What liens have been on there, et cetera. It kind of just shows the story from birth on. OK, I can relate to that. Yeah, we have to simplify things for me. That's why I like to say it's translating cyber. Really, I'm dumbing it down so I can understand it.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (14:50.633)
I love that.

Yeah, that's a great example.

D. Mauro (15:03.662)
So, okay, so now you were just talking about Facebook and what they were doing. Walk us through that.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (15:08.553)
Right, so it was Apple. So Apple just released their Vision Pro. And something really cool about it is that they have this option where they can create an avatar of you. So for example, you want to have a FaceTime call with somebody, but you're wearing your Google, your Apple Vision glasses, you can't do a FaceTime call with them. So instead, what

D. Mauro (15:10.99)
Or no, Apple. I'm sorry, it was Apple.

D. Mauro (15:16.91)
Correct.

D. Mauro (15:26.094)
Yes.

D. Mauro (15:33.934)
Vision Pro, right.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (15:37.641)
they have is this version where they create an avatar of you that really looks like you. And the other people you're FaceTiming with them, but you're FaceTiming through your avatar. So your avatar is moving and talking as you're talking. And then the other person, same thing. And so if you're looking at them through your glasses, you would be seeing them in kind of like a hologram format of an avatar talking to you. And so I think that this is the gateway into kind of

having avatar versions of ourselves more in our lives. And then the moment we start using that, we're going to start saying, OK, great. Well, I don't want this bland t -shirt. I want to express myself through my avatar that other people are seeing. Exactly. And so there is the option to buy more digital assets around that. And I imagine they will be in some store.

D. Mauro (16:16.43)
Right. I want to deck it out. Yes, exactly.

D. Mauro (16:26.093)
Well, any parent that has ever...

D. Mauro (16:31.406)
Yeah, any parent that's ever played Fortnite with a child has seen them deck themselves out in their avatar. It is the first thing that kids will do. So let me ask you about this. What's the impact behind this and is there a plan for more of this? You said, what was the organization that created the live digital version of the live baseball game?

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (17:01.929)
Improbable.

D. Mauro (17:03.406)
What improbable and are people able to access that today? Could they go to improbable purchases subscription and watch more things like this?

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (17:14.825)
Not that I'm aware of. It was kind of a proof of concept as far as I'm aware from last summer. But I think it was a really great proof of concept because thousands of people were able to be there at once.

D. Mauro (17:27.886)
It sounds amazing actually because it's so reflective. It's not just all in a virtual reality. It actually reflected what was going on in the physical world.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (17:39.209)
YES.

D. Mauro (17:40.59)
So let me ask you this, there are other metaverse worlds, right? There's Decentral Land what are some of the other ones? Like sand, sand, what are, what are,

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (17:50.953)
Decentralize it. Yeah, so it's a sandbox.

D. Mauro (17:57.742)
Yeah, I thought it was like sandbox. There's a couple others and I apologize for not. Yeah.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (17:59.945)
Roblox. I mean, there's many that the kids play with. But I think it's a, but you also see like brands are, Decentraland is like the one I think that you were mentioning before. But I think that there's also different smaller versions, not big platform ones where brands are experimenting with their own kind of mini 3D website to kind of explore how people want to shop. Right.

D. Mauro (18:20.718)
Correct. Yeah, a lot of law firms are. Yep. Yeah, a lot of law firms I've seen, you know, and when you go into these worlds, you're basically walking down a street and you can go into a store and see 360 and they have law firms there. You can go in and you can literally talk to somebody, set up an appointment, talk, you know, ask certain Q &A. There's there's, you know, I think Snoop Dogg had a whole like big

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (18:43.657)
Yes.

YES

D. Mauro (18:50.542)
place there where he had music going and stuff. There's a lot of different worlds out there. My question to you is, what are the risks there? Like is the, will this, will this be a, this is going to sound such an obvious question. Will this be a challenge to secure and to keep secure? I would think it would because of the, a couple different things, right? Securing the transactions I would hope could be made relatively secure.

Would you say, well, what is your, do you have any concerns over the purchase of NFTs, the transaction through digital currency? I would think that could be secured down since it's tied to some type of blockchain or something.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (19:38.825)
Well, I think there's many moving parts. And just like any other kind of like digital transformation, digital modernization, there's different endpoints, there's different third parties, and all of those need to be secured appropriately, as makes sense in each person's kind of environment. There's cloud components. So I mean, there's, there's many moving parts here is what I'll say. And so the moment you have more,

D. Mauro (20:06.094)
Certainly.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (20:07.337)
Parts, there's more to secure.

D. Mauro (20:11.374)
Absolutely. And then in terms of protecting our identities, do you feel this will help evolve us or would it create another layer of risk? In some ways, as I think about it in first blush, I would think that it could help us because we could literally solidify our identities and own it. Right? We could be the sole keeper of it and bring it wherever we go.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (20:35.913)
YES.

D. Mauro (20:41.262)
What are your thoughts?

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (20:41.769)
So I think my thoughts are yes and no. So yes, when we have self sovereign identities, we can control them. However, it's we still need an interoperable infrastructure, a system where we all agree. So for example, when I send you a PDF, you receive the PDF and you can open it, you know, when I send you an email, it's a format, we need to have similar ways that we all agree we're going to communicate in terms of how we

exchange our identity, how our identity is preserved and stored. And I don't know that we are there yet internationally in terms of like finding a way to accept that. And then obviously, government involvement is needed to be able to recognize self sovereign identities. Because right now, it's the government that gives us an identity that we like our ID cards. And then on the internet, we've we've got, you know, Facebook and Microsoft.

D. Mauro (21:32.942)
Right.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (21:38.025)
who give us other identities, including Amazon as well. But then the side that I would be more concerned about is really the rise of deep fakes around our identities. Because when you're able to copy somebody's voice and somebody's face and have it move in certain ways, and I think then we're already living kind of in this space of like what's real and what's not.

D. Mauro (21:50.158)
Yes.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (22:05.193)
And so I think we need to find new ways to be able to kind of like verify, validate and explain like that's us, that's not us, but also to be able to understand that's not them, that is them. So I think that we need to be more proactive about how we think about that individually, but also as organizations. So.

D. Mauro (22:06.99)
Hmm.

D. Mauro (22:25.774)
Yeah, and the concern for deepfake is real because the technology just in the last few months has advanced so quickly. And there have been, there was the incident, I don't know whether you were aware, the incident of the financial institution in Tokyo, it's an international institution, but in Tokyo, the...

the CFO over in the UK had purportedly sent an email about a secret transaction. They needed them to wire $25 million, the equivalent of 25 million in US currency. They said no, they found it a little bit suspicious. So they called a video meeting and there was seven, eight people on the meeting. Every one of them was deep faked except for the mark, except for the target. And the target was able to ask questions, but they...

manipulated the conversation and they were on video as well as audio. And some of these people, the mark had known and said it was identical. The face, the intonations, the pauses, the little idiosyncrasies was identical. And that is where we cross a point of potentially no return where we're gonna have to verify in another independent way.

who it is that we're actually speaking. You.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (23:53.257)
I mean, this is a great opportunity for the identity, the digital identities to come in so that you have like a digital fingerprint that other people can't replicate.

D. Mauro (23:58.99)
Yeah, it really is. It creates that void. Yeah, it really creates that void, doesn't it? Yeah, that would be very good. In your work in emerging technologies, what is some of your work involved? I know that you work, you do consultancy through Abundance Studio, you do strategic advisory services for leaders across various industries. Can you walk us through what drove you into

emerging tech and what it is that you're seeing that would be of interest to people that want to know about the evolution of technology because it's involved.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (24:41.193)
Yeah, so basically I help organizations understand how emerging technologies converge and what it means for their markets and their competitiveness. But what I would want leaders to understand is that technologies are not happening in a silo, that they are converging with others and it creates new value propositions. And that I think we need to have what I call convergence literacy, where we need to be more knowledgeable about how technologies mix and match together.

and how they create new value. And so, for example, it's not just AI, but it's then AI mixed with robotics, or, you know, everybody's different kind of process or technologies that they have. It can be bettered by that. And it's like, well, how do you put those two together? And then also to understand that we're living in an exponential times. And even myself, even though I'm like looking at exponential technologies every day, I find it mind boggling to deal with exponential numbers. And so,

Exponential numbers are, for example, 30 linear steps. If you were to take 30 linear steps, you would be 30 steps in front of yourself. However, if you were to take 30 exponential steps, you would be 26 times around the world. And so when we try to understand how AI is improving, it's very hard to anticipate. And even people who are at the edge of AI advancement today have a hard time understanding what's going to happen in five years. And so I think that...

spending a lot of time grappling with exponentials and AI and really being imaginative about what the future could look like is a really important space to consider, is what I would say.

D. Mauro (26:24.782)
So when you talk about the convergence of technologies, what do you mean? I mean, are the technologies themselves converging or do you talk to owners of brands or leaders of brands that can combine this technology with that technology and create a new offer?

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (26:46.217)
All of the above. So I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example from a client I had. They are in the packaging industry. And they said, you know, what is the future for us? You know, look like what are some kind of like ideas, strategic areas we need to explore. So we did an exploratory futures workshop. And I said to them, all right, you know, let's let's look beyond like what we already know, you know, the advancements in material science that

D. Mauro (26:46.318)
Which one can you all of the above? OK, make sense.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (27:15.881)
help packaging kind of detect all kinds of things from spoilage to humidity to whatever. I said, why don't we look at how other things, other technologies are converging in this market space? And so I said, you know, the vertical takeoff and landing industry is really booming. And I said that, so vertical takeoff and landing is basically like a helicopter that takes off vertically, but it's like your air taxi, so to speak.

And I said, they're going to need packaging solutions as well. And what would you think about for this space? Who's looking into it? And what kind of types of packaging will be needed? And one person said that, oh, that's kind of far away. And so in that same conversation, I pulled up a website of a company that was dedicated to vertical takeoff and landing cargo. And I said, well, here you go. There's many reasons why you would need

D. Mauro (28:10.318)
Hargo, right there. Yeah.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (28:13.769)
a small kind of distance cargo transfer. And then separately, I said, you know, also in terms of the circular economy, there's other kinds of ways to involve society. And I brought in kind of some macro trends around social isolation and the loneliness pandemic. And I said that there's ways that packaging can also be a part of this trend in a positive way. And for them, it,

ignited a lot of passion that they have for what that company means for society and how they've helped society. And so it was a great kind of like way to converge macro trends and then like other technologies and mash them up together. And

D. Mauro (28:56.59)
to help them almost, yeah, to almost help them rebrand themselves, right? Or to think about their own brand and their own offering in a different way.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (29:00.457)
Yeah.

Exactly, exactly. And where they want to go moving forward.

D. Mauro (29:06.926)
When you mention, yeah, yeah. When you mentioned that, it just reminds me of what Steve Jobs pioneered back in the day when you open up an Apple device, right? You know, you used to get back in the day, you used to get a Windows device. It came like in a brown bag or some cardboard box. You would like rip it open, throw all the junk away and whatever. And, you know, Apple and Steve Jobs made it an event.

Right. They made it Instagram worthy where you like every single thing is peeled off its design. It presents itself. It opens up a new layer. That's done on purpose. Right. It's done because they're not there with you. Right. And it's and it's reminding you that you made a great purchase and it builds that brand loyalty. I mean, there's a reason why people waited in line for hours for the iPod and not the Microsoft Zune. Right. I mean, it was kind of.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (29:46.505)
YES.

D. Mauro (30:01.966)
there was a reason behind it, right? Because it was the go -to -market strategy. It was how they did that. So that ties me into your book. So the Imagination Dilemma. What does that mean? What does the Imagination Dilemma mean?

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (30:19.369)
So the imagination dilemma.

D. Mauro (30:19.79)
Like, what does that phrase mean? Like, why? Yeah.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (30:23.113)
So I think many in your audience will be familiar with the book, The Innovator's Dilemma, which came out in the 90s and it continues to be a bestseller today. And it's Clay Christianson's big thesis around why companies fail. And, you know, he's not the first to explore this topic of, you know, the challenge of staying relevant and staying competitive. But so his main thesis was that they weren't able to innovate because they were successful and they were not able to kind of

step out of their success, and so they failed. And so the imagination dilemma is meant to kind of look at the exact same problem set, but look at it from a different lens instead of the innovation part, look at it from the imagination part and say that basically it's a lack of imagination for not being able to imagine the future, imagine their market in a different way, but also imagine themselves differently. And I think ultimately that's the most important.

This is why I always ask my clients, what are you in the business of doing? Because it makes such a huge difference. And the example I give to explain why it's so important is Kodak. And I say that Kodak thought themselves to be in the business of film and print photography. And so if that's the lens in which you start your strategic planning and your investments and, you know, looking at your market share, then you are looking at the market share for film.

and for print photography, and you are looking at the emerging technologies in film and print photography. However, if you saw yourself to be in the business of memory preservation, your aperture would have been much bigger. You would have looked at how are people storing their memories? How would they like to preserve their memories? And this would lead you into the digital asset NFT space. It would even lead you as far as the companies who are...

preserving brains literally when you die to somehow upload them in the future. It takes you to many different places when you see yourself as being in the business of something different.

D. Mauro (32:33.23)
That's amazing. So and that's exactly a struggle that a lot of brands that we recognize that seem to be decaying. It's a challenge that they're facing, right? They're like, well, we're in this space. It's like, well, no, that's what you do. That's where you've had great success in the past, right? That's what you do. That's how you execute today. But what take us a couple steps back? What really are you doing for the public?

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (32:51.433)
YES. YES. YES.

YES.

YES. YES.

D. Mauro (33:01.806)
for society, what value are you actually bringing? And then open up your aperture and you'll see that there are various other places to invest R &D, other products, like there's a whole bunch of different, that would all be on brand still, really? Because when you define yourself as memory preservation, then having a...

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (33:19.337)
YES.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (33:23.977)
YES. YES.

D. Mauro (33:26.382)
having a Neuralink adoption strategy, right? And having things like that can really, right? They can really play a key role and it's still on brand because you're in the role of you're on the brand of memory preservation. That's fascinating. That's great. So what what got you to want to write the book? What's the void? Like what was the spark that said I need to get this down? This needs to be codified.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (33:29.961)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (33:56.681)
It's because so I work with emerging technologies and a lot of them are sometimes hard to understand. And some of them are uncomfortable. And I have found, thankfully, not all the time, but enough times that made me want to write this book, where I would come across people who would refuse to accept new technology refuse to accept the coming changes. And I've

I think this is a lack of imagination. And I think that that lack of imagination is detrimental to business continuity, business success, business competitiveness. I mean, you don't have to be a business. Your organization, you can be a nonprofit, you can be a government entity. It is still the same point. If you can't imagine and have an open mind to how things will change. Like many years ago, there was some luxury brands for cars, like sports cars.

who said that they were never going to do electric, that this was ridiculous. And it's just a lack of imagination, you know, that it's like, this is coming, this is a thing. And so they couldn't imagine themselves, you know, they saw themselves as this, you know, traditional luxury sports car brand that has to have, you know, the engine, the internal combustion engine, and it has to roar, and it has to make this noise and whatever else.

D. Mauro (34:58.83)
I remember that.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (35:23.177)
instead of saying that we're in the business of sports cars that are at the edge, that the technological edge, instead of saying we're going to make sports cars the way we always have. And instead of understanding that change is coming, but not just from a technology perspective, but also from a social perspective. So for example, you talked about the unboxing of Apple boxes. Today, though, I think that there are some people who would find that to be

environmentally concerning, that our unboxing experience shouldn't hurt the environment. And so now organizations are going to have to reimagine how they are creating an unboxing experience that is, you know, Instagram worthy, etc, etc, brings excitement without hurting the environment. And frankly, the this box is recyclable is not enough.

And so I anticipate there's going to be augmented reality kind of angles that'll make it way more fun and things like that that don't have to hurt the environment.

D. Mauro (36:27.373)
Excellent point there too, because that really is the next evolution of that, of the packaging and the delivery as so many people are remote and they don't walk around malls as much as they used to. Yeah, and I've seen that there are certain technology products and other products for the home that we've opened up and there's been a virtual component to it. Like the packaging itself was fine.

and it was all recyclable or made from recycled whatever. But then you had a QR code or you had something and then it walked through a video. It kind of showed you it in action and it really presented it. It had a very similar effect. Right. It really did. I mean, I was I was referencing kind of back in the day 20 years ago, 25 years ago when Apple would be doing that. Right. And at a time when that wasn't common.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (37:05.065)
YES.

D. Mauro (37:21.806)
And now you even see, I mean, now even Windows devices and Dell devices and all of those, they all come with a nice presentation when you get it, because I think the response has been good. But yeah, the environmental concern is a serious one. So that leads itself to, the item still has to arrive undamaged. So there has to be some component of recycled packaging or whatever, but make the experience a 3D experience.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (37:22.281)
YES.

D. Mauro (37:49.582)
makes perfect sense and I've seen that. Like I've seen certain various brands begin to do that which is excellent. So what are the next steps in the book and what's on your horizon?

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (38:05.161)
Sure, so in the book, I identify profitable facets of imagination. And there's going to be many case studies of companies which are categorized within these facets. So for example, one facet is convergence. So convergence grandmasters, one is NVIDIA, who are able to understand the convergence of technologies and imagine what could be. And so to, you know,

pulled the thread on that in the early 2010s, they decided that they were going to pursue the graphic processor unit chips for gaming. But they knew that AI was coming. And this is how they understood the convergence of its advancement. And they said, we're going to be there to meet that moment. And that's where we're going to go all in and make our bets. They set aside any kind of phone chips. And they did well. Today,

D. Mauro (38:49.742)
YES.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (38:59.241)
They announced their chips for humanoid robots because humanoid robots are going to exponentially increase in use. And they're there to meet that moment. But it's not just that. They also understand that software is necessary to be able to manage all of these things and have a digital twin of them so you can have data to be able to process and automate. The next version of our digital modernization is going to be digital twins. And so they understand that. And they've been able to put all the pieces together to have the offering.

And so to those who think that Nvidia is in the business of chips, I would say that, no, they're in the business of ushering whatever the next revolution is. And if it's humanoid chips, humanoid chips it is. If it's a digital twin, they're there to bring you that software and those chips to bring them together. So that's one facet of imagination, being a convergence grandmaster. But then there's others like identity, dreams, humanity. And so those are things that are going to be captured of how different companies are.

weighing in, leaning into these things imaginatively and making a profit. So that's what's to come with the book.

D. Mauro (40:08.686)
That is absolute cutting edge. So let me ask you this, for those that might be listening and not watching, when you say humanoid robots, what are they supposed to picture in their minds?

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (40:22.857)
So a robot?

D. Mauro (40:23.406)
Like is this, yeah, when you're talking about, yeah, when you mentioned they were looking at and developing humanoid robots, like what does that, is that the robots in factories that walk like humans? Is that what you're talking about? Or is it more the robotic process automation?

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (40:38.569)
That was.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (40:44.169)
So first of all, they are not making humanoid robots. They are making the chips that can be used in humanoid robots. So that's even a bigger market. And so what that looks like is, so it could be a robot that's kind of a human size and has arms and machine vision, obviously, in what would be the head kind of part. That is probably going to first be used in factories.

D. Mauro (40:52.206)
to go into humanoid ruins.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (41:13.737)
The idea is for some factories such as car factories, where robots would entirely be making, you know, some of them would be in like a human format, two legs, two arms, etc. And then others would be kind of the big appendage arm doing things and pulling things around. And then there's others that are used right now in Amazon, which are the floor robots. They're not humanoid robots, but they're like little floor ones that are like square.

and they like lift things and move them around.

D. Mauro (41:44.366)
Right, and they zip around really fast. Yeah, and they zip around really fast. Yep.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (41:47.305)
And yes, but then also for food, cooking, and there's already some robots for making burgers and things like that. And so more and more, we're going to see them start to replace human jobs in these kinds of environments. But then eventually the idea is to have them at home, where at home they would be helping cook or helping put things away, et cetera. And there's some demos now of putting dishes.

D. Mauro (41:56.718)
Hmm.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (42:17.193)
from the sink to the countertop and stuff like that. But I think it's a space to watch.

D. Mauro (42:18.766)
Yep.

D. Mauro (42:26.734)
Well, what effect do you think this will have on people's ability to be employed? Right? To me, I know people are always afraid, oh, robots are going to take my job, but I don't look at it that way. I just look at it as a new skill set. No, we might not need you to lift the box, but you can learn how to control five things that are lifting 20 boxes and actually earn more money. Right? Like it's...

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (42:38.953)
YES.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (42:52.393)
YES.

D. Mauro (42:55.95)
that type of involvement. What are your thoughts? You see things at an international macro level, so I'm curious to get your insight. Because we hear that feedback a lot.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (43:05.481)
So I was.

And that's a fair, fair feedback. So I was commissioned by the International Standards Body IEEE to write a paper on what the differences are between human characteristics and machine capabilities. And ultimately, like what the, I guess if you had to pick one thing, it's our curiosity, you know, that they don't have that we would have. But to like drill into your question, I think that more technology brings us more work is what we've seen.

And there's some people who say, oh, no, but this time it's different. Well, let's put that on hold for one second. Let's talk about how it has been true. When the calculator came about, we didn't lose mathematicians. We just needed more mathematicians to crunch more numbers. And the same thing with artificial intelligence is that we have artificial intelligence and we can use it with understanding genetics. And they're using it for drug discovery. Something that would have taken years and decades now takes

D. Mauro (43:44.91)
YES.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (44:06.889)
minutes, days, months to do. And what that means is that we're going to have more solutions to many more diseases and many more problems that we have. From a physical perspective, yes, there's going to be some, and an AI software perspective, I mean, there are some jobs that won't be as necessary, but it is, I think, the responsibility of organizations that start to weave them in to start to think about what it means for the people that they have.

and want to keep and the people that they want to let go. And then individually, we have to ask ourselves, how is emerging technology affecting us and not to believe that it wouldn't affect us. So for example, for me as a strategist, I look at what can AI do and I have to articulate, what is it that I do that's different that an algorithm can't do? And I think this goes back to the thesis of the book, which is,

when technology can do everything for you, what is left is imagination. And so right now, I mean, you know, you can even design your own home. There's an AI called Virtuous, and it's by Icon, and it just came out, and you can design your own home. It'll give you the floor plan and everything. So you might say, I don't need architects. And it's like, yeah, you could design it, but don't go straight away to 3D print it, because there's things you don't know that an architect knows. And so...

D. Mauro (45:18.062)
Hmm?

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (45:32.873)
Now an architect and a civil engineer could help people as they've designed.

D. Mauro (45:33.518)
Right.

D. Mauro (45:38.126)
Right, because when you put that 3D -designed house, yeah, you put that on real land and you haven't taken into consideration all of the topography and everything else, then you're still going without the proper skill set. Right. Yeah.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (45:53.001)
Yeah, so for example, like an example that I have right now, I am going to be doing some decoration. And I had a professional painter come and we talked about what I wanted to do. And he said, all right, you're going to need this type of paint for that wall. You're going to need this type of paint for that door. But as I'm looking at your door, I'm going to need this other type of paint undercoat so that the gloss that you want is going to look right. Like,

I mean, I need, I don't know this. I don't know. I just think, oh, this is a color I want. And I have no idea about like all these other intricate things that an expert would know. So the same thing with an architect, even if the machine, the AI could like give you your exact specs, that would be civil engineering sound, you would still need to talk to an architect to run you through like, okay, do you like sunlight in the morning in your bedroom? Because if so, we would need to tilt the house like this.

D. Mauro (46:30.702)
Right.

D. Mauro (46:43.566)
Hmm.

D. Mauro (46:50.702)
Right.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (46:51.977)
There's all these other things. And so this is where we need to be more creative and a bit more aggressive, frankly, about talking about our value and what we bring to the table.

D. Mauro (47:00.878)
Yeah.

D. Mauro (47:06.158)
That's a great point because the actual manual labor part of doing the draft, that can be done by machine, sure. But the context of what to do, when to do it, and have the human to human discussion so that it has this result, that can never really be replaced because it's subjective. It's still, you know, what you may like, somebody else may not like. There isn't a black and white version.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (47:33.641)
Exactly.

D. Mauro (47:36.142)
And so, especially when you're talking about art and homes and education and things that, you know, there's always going to be a human component. But the manual, I mean, it's the reason we don't sit here with, you know, the typewriters with the double -sided, where you had to put in two different pieces of paper.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (47:36.521)
Exactly.

D. Mauro (48:04.142)
and you had the the ribbon so you could type it. Then you can have two copies, right? You're like that was a huge advancement. And you're like, yeah, but like just because we did this didn't get rid of, you know, like typing skills like you still have that. It's just what context do you do you do you need it on? Now you don't need to physically do that. The the the two copies you can literally just copy and paste. But it didn't that didn't kill a job like that part doesn't kill a job.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (48:08.649)
YES.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (48:22.761)
So you.

D. Mauro (48:32.942)
It's just an evolution. That was probably a terrible example, but.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (48:36.297)
Yeah, I thought maybe I should also give, because those were two physical examples, the painting and the home, but to return back to like non -physical examples. So for example, my job as a strategist and then somebody else's job, for example, as a creative ad agency. So with a creative ad agency, in essence, because I delivered a presentation for a design creative agency studio that was worried about chat GPT.

D. Mauro (48:57.262)
YES.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (49:05.513)
And I said, you know, at the end of the day, your job is not making ads, your job is not, you know, designing graphics for ads, your job is you're in the business of cultural fluency and effective communication. And so the algorithms and all these other things can help facilitate you storyboard and get there faster. But the thing that you do is understand the changing shift in dynamics in society and

the social contract changes that the company would need to understand how to best communicate their message, how to best advertise their message to you. And then for me, with strategy, I'm looking at it from a tech convergence perspective, exponential and macro trends, climate change and all of that. But then at the end of the day, it's a really kind of human approach because you look at a board, you look at executives and you have to understand the cultural dynamic.

and where their heart is and where kind of some of the political challenges are in the organization. And so it's not just like a, hey, here, it's really, you're really need to get a lot of people involved when it's around like strategy and ideation. And so it's facilitating, I guess, a space where these ideas can safely be talked about and thought through.

D. Mauro (50:33.486)
And that gets to the heart of the imagination dilemma, doesn't it? Because what you were just talking about about the ad agency, they were concerned that AI is going to harm their business, harm their revenue, right? Perhaps result in job loss, career damage. But you had to have them take a step back and realize what you do today is design an ad and AI might design an ad, but what they can't do...

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (50:46.505)
YES. YES. YES. YES.

D. Mauro (51:03.534)
is help organizations through effective communication, cultural fluency, right? Like understanding to be able to ask the questions of your client to understand the culture and the communication that needs to be resonated by the recipient of that advertisement. And then write into a locomotion when they see the image, like all of that.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (51:25.033)
and it requires compassion.

D. Mauro (51:33.838)
Right? If you prompted AI to do a task, it can do the task, but it can't do what you're doing. But they didn't see it that way. It was a natural fear that a lot of organizations have. So this really is a call to action in light of AI and deep fake and everything for organizations to really reimagine what it is that they do. Is that a fair statement?

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (52:02.505)
reimagine what it is they do, but also reimagine how they're going to protect their economic moat, how they protect their competitiveness. It's just not enough to reimagine what you do. It's also reimagine how you're going to protect it. And I always say that it's important to look at the edge of every market and every industry because the edge becomes center in some way or form at some point in time.

D. Mauro (52:28.96)
And how do they go about doing that? Like what are some of the, what's a sample, just one of like a way that you've not only helped an organization reimagine what it is they do, like you gave the codec example, right? Or the advertising group. But then how do they protect their competitiveness?

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (52:49.705)
So first thing that's the first is what are you in the business of doing? Because that dictates to me how I'm going to approach it. So again, with Kodak, if you're in the business of film photography, and I will then say, great, let's look at how that's improved. And let's look at the edge of that market. What are the ways people are looking at analog, et cetera? But if you told me that you're in the business of memory preservation, then I would look at the edge differently.

D. Mauro (52:59.854)
Hmm?

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (53:16.553)
So I always spend time working on what are you in the business of doing, because then it tells me what edge I'm looking for to bring to them.

D. Mauro (53:26.542)
Right. And then you look at the emerging tech and the edge of that emerging tech and say, what is your competitive advantage or disadvantage that you need to work on to become competitive in relation in the context of that edge?

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (53:42.761)
Exactly.

D. Mauro (53:45.582)
Excellent. That is great. Well, thank you so much for your time today. This was a really, really interesting topic from a macro international view for a lot of the topics that we've been talking about for two years. This is really, really insightful. So we really appreciate this. And will you consider, is it too much to ask that you consider coming back after the Imagination Dilemma is published?

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (54:16.425)
Yes.

D. Mauro (54:16.43)
at least give it consideration. Because that will be exciting too. Yeah. Well, that is fantastic. Well, best of luck wrapping that up. I know we've had a lot of authors on here and book publishing is quite an ordeal. There's a lot to it. So you can't just, again, you can't just go onto an AI app and just have your book published. I know there are a lot of companies, you see those ads out there.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (54:19.273)
Yeah, let's do that in Q1 when it's out.

D. Mauro (54:45.358)
but basically you'll just have your work in a PDF, it looks like to me, as opposed to an actual publication that resonates with the world. So thank you so much. We appreciate your time and the insight.

Lydia Kostopoulos, PhD (55:01.257)
Thank you very much if anybody wants to follow the updates.