Can Companies Predict the Future?

Can companies predict the future? Allen Nejah, founder and CEO of SunMan Engineering, joins Aaron Wolpoff and Melissa Eaton on We Fixed It, You're Welcome to explain why he built a connected, voice controlled car dashboard in 2005 and then watched the rest of the industry sell it fifteen years later.

This is a conversation about corporate innovation strategy and the distance between a good idea and a good idea at the right time. We get into why only 12% of advanced manufacturing companies ever commercialize an innovation at scale, why 95% of filed patents never earn a dollar, how quarterly earnings pressure quietly shrinks R&D ambition, why a corporate innovation lab has to be funded and measured differently from the rest of the business, and how large companies use patent litigation to push small inventors out of a market.

In 2005, Allen Nejah built a touchscreen tablet that lived in a car dashboard, connected to the internet, and answered when you spoke to it. He called the voice assistant Genie. The iPhone did not exist yet. Tablets did not exist yet. The carriers he pitched asked him whether he was trying to get people killed. Twenty years later every car on the lot ships a version of what he built, and he is not the one selling it.

Aaron Wolpoff and Melissa Eaton use his story to work through the question sitting underneath every innovation budget: how do you tell an idea that is wrong from an idea that is only early? The conversation runs from Ernst and Young's finding that just 12% of advanced manufacturing companies ever commercialize at scale, through the legal machinery large companies use to squeeze small patent holders out of a market, and lands on a practical playbook for funding, measuring and killing innovation projects without punishing the people who ran them. It is for founders, R&D leads, product people and anyone who has been asked to justify a project that will not pay off this quarter.

About the guest

Allen Nejah is the founder and CEO of SunMan Engineering, where he has spent more than 35 years doing product development and prototyping across automotive, aerospace, robotics and telecom. His team has delivered over 1,670 projects for clients including IBM, Sony, Samsung and Apple.

He is a serial entrepreneur and a professor at San Jose State University, and he holds patents on the connected car technology he started building in 2005. He is currently developing what he describes as the smallest transmission in the world, a robotic transmission his research suggests could increase EV range by 40%.

What you will learn

• Why Allen's 2005 connected car system was allowed only a seven inch screen, and what that reveals about how organisations decide what is possible

• The two numbers Melissa opens with: 12% of advanced manufacturers commercialize at scale, and 95% of filed patents never earn a dollar

• How a nonprofit law firm funded by the largest players in an industry can invalidate a small holder's patent, and why Allen was told he could go to jail for owning one

• Why Allen says engineers build from product to customer, and why reversing that order is the mistake that has cost him millions

• The case for funding an innovation lab out of the cash cow rather than the operating budget, and giving it milestones instead of company OKRs

• Why "fail fast" is mostly a slogan when pilots run for eleven years, and what rewarding the kill instead of only the win looks like in practice

• How Sunman builds its own technology in the idle gaps between client projects, and what that funding model makes possible

In this episode:

- The driverless car project Allen started in 2005, and the tablet he had to build himself because none existed yet

- Why carriers and automakers told him internet in the car would get people killed

- The Ernst and Young numbers sitting underneath most failed innovation programs

- Why engineers build from product to customer, and why that order has cost him millions

- Funding an innovation lab out of the cash cow instead of the operating budget

- Rewarding the kill and not just the win, and why "fail fast" usually is not fast

- The robotic transmission that could add 40% to EV range, seven years in and still waiting for a window

Connect with Allen Nejah

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allen-nejah/

Connect with We Fixed It, You're Welcome

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Disclaimer

A quick disclaimer. We are going into this somewhat cold, and nothing we say should be construed as legal advice, financial advice, or anything that would get us in trouble. These are simply our views and opinions. We're here to ask the kinds of questions everyone is thinking, have engaging conversations, and explore ideas worth discussing.

If, by the end, we fixed it... you're welcome.

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