A: Simply put, augmented reality and its sister, virtual reality, involve creating an immersive virtual world. Think of the Holodeck in "Star Trek." Augmented reality is the ability to project digital content into a physical space — something that's not real that looks real. Virtual reality is the creation of entirely virtual worlds.
Q: The comparison to a science-fiction show is interesting.
A: A lot of things are invented in science fiction and find their way into the real world. Part of my TED talk will be about how things get invented, and how science-fiction thinking can impact the process of invention.
Q: First, tell us about your company.
A: We're Marxent Labs, and we go by Marxent — a combination of "marketing" and "entertainment." We have 42 people today, and we've been growing 100 percent a year since we started up three years ago. We have headquarters at Kettering Research Park and a smaller office in St. Petersburg, Fla. Our team is a combination of graphic designers, game developers and web and mobile developers. My brother, Barry, and I are from Tipp City. We started a company called Copient in 2000, back in the dot.com days, a marketing tech solutions company. You know how when you shop and use a loyalty card, you get a long receipt that reflects your purchasing behavior and offers you coupons and offers? We invented that. We sold the company to NCR in 2003. I stayed with them a few years, then worked for another company that gave me a lot of experience with startups. Then in 2011, we started Marxent.
Q: So, back to science fiction.
A: For a number of years, my jobs have involved predicting the future. I've developed this sort of framework that examines different levels of predictive thinking. For instance, you can predict the future by extrapolating from the present. Financiers and accountants do that to forecast growth and decline based on current trends. But you also have something called "confirmation bias," where if you have a vested interested in an existing product, it's hard to predict the viability of something new. There's a great quote from Lee De Forest, one of the developers of radio, to the effect that television was kind of cute, but it wasn't really practical. So, confirmation bias can hinder your ability to predict the future.
Q: Seems like something most people are at least slightly guilty of.
A: Right. Another really interesting part of the framework is, how do you define your space? For example, the people who invented the refrigerator weren't the same as the people who invented the icebox. You have to ask yourself, do I make iceboxes, or am in the business of keeping food cold? Or, the people who invented CDs didn't end up making MP3 players — they didn't ask themselves, are we defined as CD makers, or is our business distributing music? It's another variable that can affect your ability to innovate.
Q: Does this relate back to the science fiction idea?
A: It does. What's interesting about science fiction is that it's one of the few creative places where there is no confirmation bias. The market — the space you're defining — is infinite. It can be what you want. Science-fiction thinking is one of the most broad, creative places you can be. Which is why some of the most interesting, forward-thinking inventions come out of it or are inspired by that thinking. Virtual reality and augmented reality were invented in that space, and we find there's a real-world demand for them now. But there is something to the idea that we predict the future in an almost naive way, drawing it up based on what we see today. It always turns out to be much more advanced than we can possibly imagine.
Q: To play mild devil’s advocate, is there a which-came-first thing there? Is it possible that rather than the science-fiction writers inventing, that the actual inventors are the kind of folks who are drawn to science fiction?
A: I think there's some truth to that, which is that people who desire to break the mold, do something different and blaze their own path are very open to creativity wherever they find it — either in their superheroes, role playing or video games. But those all tap into a very similar part of the psyche. Of course, I say that looking at the superhero posters on the walls of my office.
Q: Really?
A: When you join our company, you pick your favorite movie and superhero, and we get those posters and put them up. It looks like a bunch of 14-year-old boys work here. It's our way of saying, welcome to our culture, you're part of it now.
Q: Who’s yours?
A: Mine is Robin, actually.
Q: Hmm. A sidekick, not the boss.
A: I guess. I watched the old "Batman" TV show and liked the idea of being a superhero as a kid. But everyone's favorite is Ironman.
Q: Movie?
A: "The Shawshank Redemption." For science fiction, the original "Tron."
Q:
Since you predict the future, what do you see in it?
A: People are just beginning to see the possibilities of augmented reality — but it has applications in everything from design to decorating. It will speed sales, reduce travel, cut manufacturing costs, and reduce ambiguity when you're trying to describe or show something to someone in the real world — you'll be able to show them the idea. It will be incredibly powerful. It started in gaming and marketing, but there are industrial, medical, entertertainment applications — every single vertical will be impacted very soon by augmented and virtual reality.
Q: What’s the hold up?
A: Maybe the limitations of what platform it's used on. If you think of Oculus Rift, the 3D headset for gaming, it's a big mask that's kind of awkward. But Samsung just came out with Gear VR, where your phone itself becomes a virtual reality device. If you think about Day 1 of when the App Store opened for iPhone, and think just how big apps have become, we're just at Day 1 of the VR ecosystem and marketplace. We've just been waiting for the platforms to mature and be available. In three to five years, VR and AR wlll be everywhere.
Q: What do you want people to take away from your talk?
A: I'd like them to be able to improve their ability to invent and predict the future by being aware of their own limitations — being much more self-aware of what impacts their thinking process, so that they can be much more able to affect change and create value.
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