Episode 243: Building an Innovation Ecosystem in Tulsa with James Spencer

Name: Episode 243: Building an Innovation Ecosystem in Tulsa with James Spencer
Uploaded: 2024-10-03T17:28:30.000Z

Published 2024-10-03

Guests: James Spencer

Topics: Drones & Robotics, Leadership, Artificial Intelligence

Episode notes

What is an innovation ecosystem, and how can it serve your community?

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy!

In this episode:

How to build innovation ecosystems for community value

Integrating firefighting wisdom with cutting-edge drone technology

How driving advanced air mobility creates value for underserved communities

Learn from James Spencer - the Director of the Launchpad Center for Advanced Air Mobility at the Oklahoma Aerospace Institute for Research and Education .

James talks about innovation ecosystems and their parallels to natural ecosystems. He explains how these ecosystems aim to create assets, resources, and capital for communities, focusing on jobs, products, services, and new businesses.

James also emphasizes the importance of diversity for a robust innovation economy and the mission of the Launchpad Center to bring advanced air mobility technology to underserved communities. He highlights the collaboration with various entities to advance drone technology for firefighting and ensure ethical technology deployment.

So take a listen to hear what he has to share!

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources!

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Chapters

0:00 Intro to the Metro Fire Chiefs miniseries in Tulsa
0:36 James Spencer of the Launchpad Center joins
0:59 What an innovation ecosystem is
3:44 From Boeing and NASA to his first robotics company
8:20 How Tulsa's drone first responder effort began
11:28 Current projects: detect and avoid, drones and the FAA
15:25 Building technology that serves people
16:44 Lessons from nature for an innovation ecosystem
24:54 Who strengthens the ecosystem
28:35 Drone as first responder in simple words
30:49 What's next: automation, AI and robots
35:05 Sustainability and replenishment
38:35 What James is reading
42:55 How companies can get involved with Launchpad
45:01 Areas of focus and the fellowship program
48:40 Technology that changes lives
50:03 Final words: Tulsa's spirit of collaboration
54:08 Wrap and the Technology Summit International invite
55:27 Outro

Questions answered in this episode

What is the Launchpad Center and what does it do?

James Spencer says the Launchpad Center for Advanced Air Mobility received a $39 million U.S. EDA grant to create an innovation ecosystem. Its mission is to create jobs, products and services, and new businesses in advanced air mobility, while ensuring underserved communities and the general population have access to the technologies.

Hear it at 0:59

How did Tulsa's drone first responder program get started?

After the 2023 TRAM Summit, Oklahoma State University brought together local companies working in advanced mobility. Gabe, a firefighter who was an EMS responder at Tulsa Fire and a hobbyist drone operator, spoke up with Josh O'Leary from Airwise and proposed doing a drone first responder project. The group agreed and that became the genesis for the program.

Hear it at 0:59

What is drone first responder and why does it matter?

James Spencer describes drone first responder as a solution for integrating firefighting wisdom with state of the art drone technologies. It uses drones to gather data around an incident before sending human firefighters in, helping crews understand the intensity of a fire, its location and how it is spreading so they can be strategic and stay safer in dangerous and toxic situations.

Hear it at 29:27

What is the Theta tech hub designation?

Theta, which stands for the hub for equitable, trustworthy and autonomy, is a $70 million tech award given in partnership with the Tulsa Innovation Lab. It funds projects that allow automated systems to be trustworthy and equitable, ensuring drones and automated technologies are safe and gain public adoption.

Hear it at 0:59

How does Oklahoma State University approach technology commercialization differently?

James Spencer says the university uses a holistic research protocol that is multi dimensional, looking at social, economic and technological impacts. It is not enough to develop technology for profit. Researchers and commercial entities look at problems from all dimensions, asking how technology deployment will impact people's lives.

Hear it at 17:44

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 243 transcript

Building an Innovation Ecosystem in Tulsa with James Spencer

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, James Spencer

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to this mini-series of the Smart Firefighting Podcast. Today, we're covering stories from outside Metro Fire Chiefs Conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where fire chiefs from the world's largest metros gathered. We had various sessions with drone experts to discuss drone hardware, software, and innovation ecosystem developments. Tulsa Fire Department and Oklahoma State University are spearheading some impressive new technology initiatives like drone as a first responder, and it was an honor to witness their cutting-edge efforts firsthand. Enjoy. Very fortunate to be sitting in the office of James Spencer, the director of the Launchpad Center for Advanced Air Mobility, Oklahoma Aerospace Institute for Research and Education. Oh, where? Did I get that right, James?

[0:48] James Spencer: That's right. It's a mouthful, but you did great. Yes.

[0:51] Kevin Sofen: Thanks, James, for having me here. This is a cool office you've got. We've got little helicopters, little drones, little spaceships, a little bit of everything in here.

[0:59] James Spencer: What's really interesting is, you know, my background is robotics, but to be able to take what I've learned about technology commercialization, working in industry and working also with universities to do commercialization, this position was amazing to me because I had left my work at RPI, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, back in 2018 to start my own company, Agile Ecosystems. And while I was recovering from a medical situation back in 2016, I basically developed a methodology for creating innovation ecosystems. And what does it look like? And so actually I've shown how to model an innovation ecosystem like a an ecosystem in nature. It's like the human metabolic system is a model for how we are actually organizing people, resources, facilities, and relationships to create a sustainable innovation economy. And so what's the innovation ecosystem, right? The purpose of an ecosystem is to create new assets, resources, and capital for a community. In this case, advanced immobility is how do we create assets which are basically jobs for the people in that community. And then the resources are the products and services, and then capital in this model are creating new businesses. And so that's really what the Launchpad Center has been funded to do. So we received a $39 million grant from the U.S. EDA back last year in partnership with the Tulsa Innovation Laboratory. And TIL is kind of like our equity product, excuse me, our equity partner, and equity from the standpoint of social equity. So this grant was, it was really, when they reached out to me for this position, I was actually doing an aerospace consortium. I was creating one in an ecosystem in Florida, helping smaller businesses to work together to have the impact of working with a prime. How could you go after more complex projects as an ecosystem or consortium? So I was doing that and that was fine. But this opportunity, and I wasn't really interested in going back into the university space as such, because challenges in working in traditional grant environments where you have technology, I've been doing technology for 35 years. I was building my first robots as a kid and did that through high school. And then I went to school at Brown University and got my electrical engineering degree and started my first, you know, my career started in 89, working at the Kennedy Space Center as a robotics engineer. And then, you know, doing that for a couple of years. And then when the project, the contract was novated so that my lab was no longer being run by a contractor, but they were going to do it at NASA. The new contractor who was taking over the engineering support contract wanted me to be the supervisor. So I went from being a design engineer and a project manager at Boeing to being the supervisor for the robotics application development lab team. And this was back in 1991. And so I started my first company, robotics company, Intelligent Machines Corporation, back in 94. I basically left the Space Center and I took my team with me. So this is the first case of true technology transfer. When you think of tech transfer, you think of, okay, I created a new thing, a little widget, and then I go through the patenting process and then I wanna then commercialize it, right? So I realized that my first real experience in tech transfer was transferring expertise. So when I think about tech transfer, I think of the people. Because we always focus on the widget or the technology. And that's important. But more importantly, organizing the people. And that's really what the innovation ecosystem starts with. We have to develop expertise and people who can do the work to build solutions. And then you can scale, and you can sustain it. So you can't sustain on a cool technology only. You have people who are creative who can send the gap. instead of treating people like resources, you start saying every person, every company in your ecosystem is an asset capable of generating value. So to the extent that you have a healthy innovation economy, you start with the people and you connect them in ways that synergize to create more value. And what's interesting is some of the things that you have to deal with an economy instead of an ecosystem. So the notion of corruption makes no sense or racism makes no sense. Why? Because the more people that are bringing solutions, because an ecosystem takes something that's new and integrates it with the status quo to make something that's better and newer. So to the extent that you have more diversity, that's when you have a healthy, what they call biodiversity, tech diversity. The more people you have in the problem space makes it better. So when I was recruited for this position, it was interesting to me because the EDA grant was different than going to NSF or some other DOE or DOD project. But EDA was interested in creating value for technical value leading to jobs and impact has to be demonstrated in the communities in which the technology is kind of based in or going to be deployed in. So now our mission is not only to create cool technology for advanced air mobility, we're going to make sure that underserved communities as well as the general population have access to the technologies. That's what really was really exciting for me to say, okay, you know, I'll leave my own entrepreneurial dream for now to work with OSU and take this grant and work with the university personnel. And also, you know, I started right after the TRAM Summit from 2023, which is the Tulsa Regional Advanced Air Mobility Summit, which is the first time, its first year was in 2023. I started my job basically that week, and right after the event, I was immersed into advanced air mobility. So I have a deep commercialization and technology background, but not a lot in advanced air mobility as such, but I have a lot of robotics and automation. So this conference really gave me context about what does this community need as far as creating an innovation economy and how can the university could support that. And so after the conference, Dr. Jacob, who was my boss, who was the executive director for O'Air, organized, he basically had a meeting here in this building with several companies that are doing advanced mobility in Tulsa slash Oklahoma. And I was like, oh wow, this is the basis of an ecosystem. I saw the companies, I saw their enthusiasm and then I saw how they talk to each other. And I saw the relationship with the university, the respect and the consideration. And then I don't remember the exact details, but we started talking about what could we do as a region? And I'm like, this is the basis of an ecosystem. So you have companies that are sovereign, have their own technology. But then they said, you know what? Now we can work together with other companies to create a bigger impact that none of us could do by ourselves. So that's the thing with an ecosystem. Unlike the traditional mergers and acquisition, that's kind of the traditional approach for growing. The ecosystem says, no, don't take over a company. Respect the sovereignty of that company and its value. It's an asset. Don't try to break it up and take pieces of it. So starting out with the basis of everybody here who has a contribution, wants to make a contribution, identifying the companies that had synergy, and then say, what can we do together? And then it was, this is where Gabe, who was the firefighter, who was EMS responder at Tulsa Fire. Vyra said, he's a, he's a hobbyist and kind of a drone operator. So he spoke up and talking to, also with Josh O'Leary with Airwise. And he said, let's do a, you know, a drone first responder project. And everyone in the group was like, let's, let's do that. Let's figure out how to do this. And that was the genesis for where the drone first responder program started. And that was my first project action for the launchpad. Now, to be at the Metro Fire Chiefs Association Conference, this was exciting because we now have contexts beyond just Tulsa. So we have other fire departments that are working on trying to get the benefits of automation and using this technology to make the firefighting response times shorter, make those operations are safer. So what we do is we are domain experts in the technology, but we partner with companies who are specialists in particular areas of technology that are part of the equation for having safe autonomous drone operations. And so where we are right now is working with other municipalities, people who want to use this technology and what can we do as a university? And our thing is not just commercializing the technology, but through our industry consortium, getting companies to work together and identifying deficits or gaps in the technology. So for example, the big issue in advancing mobility is PV loss, it's beyond visual light of sign. Like we have to do that, we have to basically, so which means for autonomy, you have to have, you have to convince the FAA that you can safely control, you know, navigate that drone or make, you know, give it a command and it within the complexity of an urban environments where there are structures, moving vehicles, animals, flying, you have your birds. So you have active collision avoidance, we call it detect and avoid. So we're working with company like Vigilant Aerospace Systems, who has a suite of hardware and software tools for DAA. And then we're also working with Airwise Solutions, who has a suite of tools, basically a platform, software platform that allows drone operators to get situational awareness about their flight plans. So they have the gathering data from streaming services that regarding weather patterns, as well as flight zones like restriction of flight flying conditions. All the things that you need to safely execute a CONOPS for a drone deployment. And so we're managing new technology development and integration with our partners. And of course, we're currently working with the drone manufacturer, Skydio. So their drone technology is what we're using for our DFR implementation or demonstration. And then the next step is also working with the FAA make sure that, and really what our long-term mission is to not only develop solutions around particular technologies that are going to make the drone operations more efficient and safer, but also working with the FAA for creating standards that we can help deploy drones faster at lower costs, right? So that's kind of our mission as a university. We're doing research, we're giving a lot of data to the FAA so they can say, okay, this particular configuration of drone technology, we feel it's safe, it's reasonably safe. So I know there's a word or a frame, a phrase that the FAA is using, it's reasonable risk tolerance or something like that. So there's no guarantee that any technology is going to be perfect, but you can have some level of assurance that it's highly probable that it will not do the bad thing. So we also received, in partnership with the TIL, the Tulsa Innovation Lab, we also have a tech hub designation called Theta, $70 million tech award for funding projects that allow automated systems to be trustworthy and equitable. Theta is the hub for equitable, trustworthy and autonomy. So what it means is think about the world of the Jetsons, right? So you have these flying vehicles and everybody's happy, you know, it's a safe way, safe world. And then you have the other manifestation of this advanced technology, advanced air mobility technology like, you know, Skynet, right, so they have drones that are, you know, the threat of technology that goes haywire, right? So we are practically, in our research, so I developed a research commercialization protocol, it's a holistic protocol, which that looks at the technology, the actual technology that you're trying to develop, the features that you're developing, but you have to integrate safety as well as equity and then a level of testing that leads to some level of trust. So theta is not only the mechanics of flying autonomously, but that giving these systems confidence so that we can have more public adoption of drones and automated technologies. And that's a big part of our mission. It's not just the technology itself, but it's-

[16:44] Kevin Sofen: James, only a hundred other things I really want to double click into and dive into. I want to go into one of the things you said earlier, was talking about this, the whole idea of biodiversity within the ecosystem and kind of turning that into a not only, how can we use nature as inspiration? I love the concept of biomimicry and bio inspiration with how can we study how trees work and how trees function in a different system and how multiple different types of trees in the forest have a strong root system to keep water together, to be able to allow different types of birds, and just having all these different types of species working together to create a strong, diverse foundation. And I think I liked how you talked about how you kind of saw what OSU had. It had the makings of this very strong pieces and how this is kind of now driving these different potential opportunities. One kind of two-part question. I'd love to kind of know your thoughts on that, sort of how we can continue to look at nature as a form of inspiration. And then what are some of these pillars of innovation that are you trying to build on top of the ecosystem here?

[17:44] James Spencer: Absolutely. So when you think about biodiversity and you think about the success of nature, the means of years of evolutionary growth or an adaptation, just think about the human nervous, I mean, the human metabolic system as an example, right? So when I learned about what the metabolic system does and how it creates capital. So what is capital for us? So that when you're eating, if you stop eating and you're fasting, you don't die, right? How does your body generate energy when you're not eating? Well, because it's using the glucose, but when you're out of the glucose, you have stores of fat. And then when I learned that the human body generates these, the capital, which are basically these ketone bodies, ketone bodies are basically highly efficient energy sources. So like, for example, if you have ketones, it goes right into your brain and it can be burned like fuel. And so when I saw the model of the human metabolic system and said, okay, so if we have different layers of consumption, where you have macros, like you have carbohydrates and you have proteins and fats, right? And you eat these things and your body during that metabolic process, you know, extracts energy while it's creating water, carbon dioxide, and acetone, these are the bioproducts and outputs of your body's generation. What was interesting was, I said, I googled, when I used my methodology, and it showed that acetone was part of the, I didn't know, it wasn't obvious, even in the books on where acetone came from. But then there are in them like acetone or carbon dioxide is poisonous to humans. So like why is your body in okay to waste products? So but who needs carbon dioxide plants? When you think of a closed system, when you think of an ecosystem, if you're going to take from the ecosystem, then you have to continue to replenish the environment in which it's working. So I learned biomimicry when I said, okay, what is the mechanism in the human innovation ecosystem that's going to replenish the input? So in this case is where you have STEM outreach, so I'm doing a STEM event for 35 middle school students on June 10th. And as we help the next generation of entrepreneurs and scientists and engineers and technicians, we have to cultivate the educational system to create the mindset, to create the next generation of workforce. And so at every level of the ecosystem, there are biological analogs that you can learn from and say, how do we apply, how do we adapt that? And that's really what I spent right after I actually, I left RPI, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, as the executive director for technology commercialization and also the technology part to do this, to start my company, because we are trying to understand how do we as a as a nation, as a country, as a world, what does it mean to be sustainable? And so you cannot hope to bring sustainability without an ecosystem's approach because most of our normal capital-based approaches is that it's supply and demand and then you can only take so much, but an ecosystem says you have to replenish. And to the extent that we are looking to nature for what has been very successful, and when something, it's also very robust, it's resilient, when you have to, but you have to build those robust mechanisms into the ecosystem. And so my challenge is to, one, it's not obvious, so you have to build in the mechanisms. And to answer the second part of your question is that the way that I am doing that with Launchpad is we have developed a holistic research protocol. So that means that holistic means is that it's multi-dimensional. So we're not just looking for the technology, but we're also looking at how that technology deployment it's gonna impact people's lives. And then of course you have to have a business case, so the economic piece. So you have social, economic, and then technological. And then as researchers and commercial entities, we look at all the problems from all dimensions and which is kind of an unusual approach, but that's the only way you can do it. So a lot of times you say, I want to make some money. So I'm going to develop this technology and I'm going to sell it. I want to scale it up and I'm going to make a profit. OK, that's great. But sometimes, well, what's the social impact of how that technology is going to be deployed? So thinking about, being intentional about, thinking about what's the impact, that's kind of a different way of approaching this. We'll call it socioeconomic development or holistic development, where we are looking at beyond, we're looking more beyond, looking beyond our financial or profit motive and say, well, how is this going to impact the people? And the university here, I was also drawn to the fact that one of the core values of the university as a land-grant school has the notion of extension, where it's not enough to discover new things and do research and discovery, but we have to show how do we apply it to people's lives to make the world better. And then this notion of servant leadership was very in line with the notion of an ecosystem. Because servant leadership, it seems like an oxymoron, right? But truly the notion of servant leadership says, I have to serve, but I'm doing it in such a way that I'm going to lead to create positive change doesn't mean you're a slave. means that, servant leadership means that you're taking an approach that it's not just about you, that you're creating value for others. And so that's what gets me up in the morning.

[24:54] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. Well, and another way to kind of, I want to look at it is, you know, talked about the ecosystem of what we're creating here, but the other is I sometimes think about when we're trying to host a social gathering or a party, you've got a couple of things. You got, you got the setting, you've got the music, you've got the beverages, you've got the food, You kind of need a couple of these pieces to really have a really good gathering. And as I'm starting to hear and see, and I've been talking to you for a couple of days now, there's a couple of these pieces that are needed with OSU as this foundation, but now we're talking about Tulsa Fire Department, some of these startups to some of the stuff that DHS, S&T, NIST, PSER, tell me about some of these sort of other tertiary pieces of the puzzle that you're kind of striving, have already brought in or kind of, what are their partners are you looking to try and bring into this ecosystem that is really going to continue to strengthen what we're doing here?

[25:47] James Spencer: I'll give you an example of we, as part of our research process, we also are finding other research universities to partner with who have research focus or foci that we don't have in our own university. So we're very open to collaborate. I mean, truly, Tulsa and OSU is an uber collaborator. There's just a mindset. So we are working also with University of Notre Dame. And they have a AI department. And there's a company that we're working with that has a architecture, a platform for drone swarms. And so we are working with them. And in fact, they're actually planning on having facilities here in Oklahoma, relocating from where they are right now in San Jose. And so we're trying to find gaps in our technology and our ecosystem and finding companies and universities who are willing to work with us in a collaborative way to advance the state of the art for advancing mobility, specifically around drone first responder. So they have a platform that enables macro level operations by using multiple drones for gathering data, doing other kinds of intelligent, called macro level activities. And that's an example of the university's approach in this collaborative, and that we don't have to try to do it all here, but finding other universities. In fact, with our program, we have some of the mechanics are, we do commercialization by creating our fellowship program, which then powers graduate students and faculty to pursue their interests. So there's money and resources to help them take a technology and make it viable as a commercial project, a product. So that's one of the ways that we stimulate this process. And then when the company, the technology is mature, they can, to the point where they're actually gonna commercialize it, they're gonna license it, and they'll roll out the technology as the basis of a new startup. And that's really what Launchpad's ultimate objective is, to create new companies around this technology that's going to create more of jobs and create more, you know, impact.

[28:35] Kevin Sofen: And that's exciting. And I, and you mentioned one a few times already, and I've had the fortune of having a few interviews earlier today with people you mentioned from with Skydio, Airwise, Gabe with Tulsa Fire and seeing this who, what, when, where, why drone's first responder and kind of what does that mean? And I know there's been some early adopters and Chula Vista was first the block with really launching it. But Tulsa is now kind of taking their own spin to it and implementing drone as a first responder. I'd love to know in kind of your words of what is drone as a first responder and why is it something that is relevant and something that public safety should consider. And I know even there's like, there's maybe there's various security concerns or whatnot, but I'd love to kind of hear in the simplest words, what is it in your words and why is something that is something we need to be paying attention to.

[29:27] James Spencer: Sure. Drone first responder is a solution for integrating the wisdom that has been accumulated over the years for firefighting operations with the state of the art in drone technologies. How do we take the efficiencies, the coverage available for geographical coverage using a drone to gather data around a incident by, you know, not just for search and rescue. you, but also where you are trying to understand the environment before you're going to send human firefighters in. So we want to make it safe for them if we know the intensity of a fire, its location, how it's spreading, all that data allows them to be strategic when they decide when they're going to actually deploy human firefighters into a dangerous and toxic situation. drone first responders is our solution, our approach, and a systematic approach that says we want to integrate the wisdom of firefighting operations with advanced technologies in the form of drones and sensors and other types of technologies that are tertiary. They say it's secondary or tertiary, but they are integrated with solution set.

[30:50] Kevin Sofen: And then that's a great example in terms of, like you said, taking best of what we know with firefighting and applying tech to it. What are some other future use cases? I mean, you're talking about this ecosystem here of, you know, of maybe these crazy harebrained ideas that, you know, 10 years ago, people thought we were crazy. But, you know, in five, 10 years, where do you see some of the rise of some of these other opportunities, whether it's with robots, or whether it's with wearables, or whether it's with VR? What are you excited about in terms of what this ecosystem can create to find that alignment between tech and fire service wisdom?

[31:25] James Spencer: Yeah, so the integration of automation technologies with the trusted component, that excites me because I know how easy it is to, when you develop a new technology, if you don't ask questions about the why and how it's going to impact people's lives, we don't want to look back 10 years from now and say, we did an amazing job creating this new BV loss technology where drones can fly around unattended because they have the technical ability to do it. So I'm excited about finding a way to integrate a set of ethics really into how drones are deployed because there are a lot of people that are concerned about. You know, they've seen the science fiction, they've seen Skynet, you know, the Terminator. And so, you know, that is a cause for concern. So if you're not actively creating technologies that are not vulnerable, that are vulnerable to that, then you're kind of like abdicating your responsibility as a human being. So I'm big on technology in the service of humanity. And so it's not enough to get excited by a particular technical development, but we have to take it with a grain of salt and say, okay, we wanna make sure that this technology is gonna serve us and our children. And so if we don't ask those questions, then we end up creating this generation's version of an extinction level event. Imagine, you know, what's the next level of nuclear? You know, like what happened, you know, during the Manhattan Project? You know, it's got some brilliant scientists together and said, we wanna do this, we wanna create this bomb. And, you know, I'm sure there's political reasons why, you know, we wanna say, well, you know, it stopped the war, you know, but it's, you know, you created an instrument of mass destruction, you know, that has, so we don't wanna be those people. We want to create something that has mass value for all life, all people. And so what I see is I see the next generation of AI and machine learning that allows us to bring that level of hyperintelligence into our day-to-day lives, but making sure that technology is always in the service of humanity, not being enslaved to it. I have books from 1980s, when I started my company, about artificial intelligence. It's changed a lot. There was no generative, large language models back then, but it's more expert rule-based back then. But it's been on my mind for 33 years. And to see some of the technologies, the integration of when you take the intellectual cognitive simulation or whatever you call it, generation through this artificial intelligence, and then connecting it to machines like the Atlas robot from Boston Dynamics.

[34:56] Kevin Sofen: Oh, okay, yeah.

[34:56] James Spencer: Yeah, Boston Dynamics.

[34:58] Kevin Sofen: I've seen those.

[34:58] James Spencer: Yeah, and I'm a roboticist, and it's amazing, but it kind of scares me a little bit.

[35:05] Kevin Sofen: I mean, sometimes every day we feel like we're getting closer and closer to Matrix style reality. But I like your point of kind of always thinking about the tech development to be in service of humanity. And I think we've probably both seen our fair share of entrepreneurs or ideas or widgets that sound good or a land or a cash grab in some capacity, but really isn't actually doing anything to better society. Granted, there's exceptions for maybe entertainment in some ways and in certain aspects of convenience, which also is a different story in terms of our obsession with convenience and how we're killing the planet in certain ways with our consumption habits. But I really like that focus of how to be of service of others and also that idea of reciprocity and replenishment. I actually had the fortune of, I work with DePaul University, I'm an adjunct professor for a class called Developing Sustainable Strategies and actually just last night had a guest lecture from Dr. Michael Katoa. He is a Hopi farmer and he talked about that exact point of replenishment and it's the same things with farming in terms of a lot of Western ideology and capitalism is as trying to be as efficient and have as much quantity as possible in a lot of ways, but in a lot of ways, and granted, we're at sometimes a little bit of a precipice of, well, we have 9 billion people, how do we feed them? But there's also, if you take too much, you just continue to degrade the soil and then there's something left. But finding that balance of replenishment, I think, is a good, and being of service of yourself and the community, is a good ethos.

[36:41] James Spencer: I love that. Yeah, that's, you articulated kind of what I believe about how technology should be used for the modern world that we're in, and that we have to change our mind. How do we get, we have to have a sustainable mindset first. We have to care about the results and that we have to give by what we're taking, we have to give back. So just thinking that way, you know, we're so far away from our ancestors did, you know, in farming, right, where they saw the cycles of nature. They see, you know, if you don't plant seeds for the next season, you don't have a crop. That reality still exists, but we don't, we're so divorced from that reality because we don't see it daily, we don't honor that cycle of seasons. And as we look at, you know, an ecosystem that takes technology and you have to start thinking, how do we extract, extrapolate these lessons from nature that we operate outside? Human beings, because we're not based on instinct, we can think ourselves out of a sustainable situation because of our selfishness or we're short-sighted. So to me, ecosystems, it's kind of like a forced, not forced word, it's an intentional way of looking at sustainability and it gives you a model saying, okay, if I'm going to take something from you, I've got to give you something back so that you can continue to do it again tomorrow. And if you don't have that, there's no chance of getting to sustainability. You have to say, okay, I have to replenish the supply and figure out a way to do that systematically. Yeah.

[38:35] Kevin Sofen: Well said. And so I'm fortunate to be sitting here in the office with you and I'm kind of looking around and I see you got a couple of books on the shelf there. What book are you reading right now? That's gracious. Or what books, plural?

[38:46] James Spencer: Yeah. So, you know, I've been writing. I had to write this new research commercialization plan. So it's not really. So I'm actually working, reading. It's called Traction. It's the idea of the entrepreneur ecosystem, or no, sorry, the entrepreneur operating system. So as a tool for making, having more efficiency in the organizations. I'm focused now on building the organization of LaunchPad. So I'm using these tools that are proven to be used to kind of make the organizational structure more sustainable. So trying to take those same things. So for example, I can't be a director in an organization of one. You have teams. You have individuals who have different roles to play. And then once you identify what those roles are, then having a systematic way of looking at, how do you take a vision for the organization and making sure that everyone who is part of the organization's output understands how the vision rolls into their day-to-day work functions. And then building the organization around this notion of organizational sustainability, starting with vision, and then the tasks that you need to do every day to demonstrate this notion of traction, where you actually can deliver value in sustainable ways, and do it in a way that you're not losing your hair and you're not losing it, you're stressed out because you're working 90 hours a week and you're not, what's the word, delegating and you try to do it all yourself. So Launchpad is a university program, but it is a startup because it's a new thing that we're doing for the university where you have a center that is focused on commercialization, not research. We have researchers who are doing applied research, but they're solving problems in the industry. And they're doing it to support companies And also to help the development of new intellectual property, that's what we do. So from that perspective, from the beginning, I've come into this as it's well-funded business for business operations, but it's still a startup because it's building the bones of the organization and the Innovation Foundation, which is also part of the OSU And in fact, so OER is the, so the way OSU is organized, when you leave the world of research and publications and education, like there's teaching, you have these centers that just specialize in a particular area of application. So we have another center for health and nutrition, high performance and nutrition. And then you have OER, it's another center, which is Oklahoma Aerospace Institute of Research and Education. And my center is a center within that institute. And it's basically, how do we apply advanced air mobility? And it just sort of turns out that the area we're doing, the focus is on drones as first responders. That's our first. Now, we'll do other things as we do more, as we grow, but this is a higher priority. Because even at NASA's Advanced Air Mobility Playbook, public safety was one of the highest priorities in the 12 areas where they're looking on and doing more research. And we're trying to align our sense systems in our research enterprise with NASA's playbook.

[42:55] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. Well, and so you mentioned DFR, and you mentioned the alignment with Notre Dame. What would be your message to the different potential stakeholders that can get involved? And I'm talking about other universities, other startups, other government organizations, or even other established companies. How can they get involved with what you're building here, and what should they be thinking about?

[43:20] James Spencer: Yes, what Launchpad is, and it's funded by the federal government, even though it's a university, it's a state university, it's a land-grant university, we are, by definition, we are a hub. So I think of Tulsa and Launchpad as the hub of a national innovation ecosystem around advancing mobility. my self-concept for what Launchpad is and how we want to share what we're doing with others. So, because the beautiful thing with an ecosystem, the ecosystem is how do we integrate something new into whatever we call the status quo? So the integration of any new entity, whether it's a research institution, whether it's a not-for-profit or it's a startup, we have room for all these relationships within the ecosystem. And to the extent that others who want to be a part of this journey to help us to create these new standards for advancing mobility, solution sets that we can share as like, imagine we're creating libraries, models, and con ops that we're developing with our partners. And we're open to partnering with companies of all sizes, whether they're public-stranded companies or they're startups, we have an appetite to do all of it. So, yeah, and it depends on, like for example, our currently has mostly smaller companies that are local, but our plans are to go have larger companies that are also gonna actually benefit.

[45:01] Kevin Sofen: I can tell you that there's a lot of companies that would be interested in getting involved, and my next question for you would be, it seems like you have the ability with the lab here to kind of go a lot of directions, but I know we can't do everything, is do you have any sort of maybe pillars of a roadmap of like, hey, you know, aspects of wearables, aspects of VR, you know, drones in this capacity, land robots in this capacity, is there any, is it kind of like an open ass to all these partners or do you have a couple kind of areas of focus?

[45:35] James Spencer: That's a good question. You know, we are so focused on building the infrastructure of the organization. So for example, we have created this fellowship program, and now we also have the consortium. And so we have these organizational constructs, and we haven't identified a particular vertical technology other than DFR. But as time goes on, and as we develop more, we have more faculty who are, we're hiring to beat LaunchPad, their research will generate more focus in a particular area. So again, we have a faculty who has, not a faculty, but he's an applied researcher, just got his PhD in acoustics, you know, and in fact, so one of the students, one of the, so the program that is the STEM program that I mentioned to you earlier, that we're doing demo for them here on the 10th. The program coordinator for the program, her son is quadriplegic and he's very brave, very smart, but has impediment speaking. And she said, you know, is there anything you think of that, you know, could your researchers help my son? And I said, let me think about this. So actually I talked to a researcher who was an acoustic engineer, And he said, you know, there might be a way to create a machine learning system or an algorithm that the young man could train it so that when he wants to say the word executive, it comes out as something else that other people can't recognize. But if there is a machine learning algorithm that could be trained on his voice, then now he can change the quality of his life by doing a text-to-speech, right? And then he said, you know, that same approach could actually be used for some of the work that we're doing is using acoustics, not only for sound suppression in urban environments, but how do we use sound to identify different types of configurations of drones? And so that same level of similar algorithms could be used to do that. So now, to your point, speech-to-text application doesn't seem like that's something that would be interesting to advance immobility, but it turns out that we're looking at all types of problem sets, but here's one where we might be able to help that young man, you know, have a, to create a tool that he can use to change the quality of his life.

[48:40] Kevin Sofen: Absolutely, and you're making me think on that one, my wife is a speech therapist and works at a one of the top rehab hospitals in the world called the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, and they're doing some really cool stuff in terms of applying very basic but also extremely advanced technologies for stroke patients, brain injury patients, quadriplegics, and so if that's something of interest, I have met the head researcher of their lab, and there are always this kind of tinkering and playing, so you know if that area is of interest, I'd love to make that connection.

[49:13] James Spencer: Oh for sure, that'd be great, yeah. In fact, after we finish out, I'll introduce you to a doctor, Dr. Wilson.

[49:19] Kevin Sofen: Oh, fantastic. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I'm excited for the tour here. I mean, we just walked around for a little bit, and I was looking at each window in the door, And I can just, you know, there's something, I'm really glad there's NASA flights between Chicago and Tulsa because I have a feeling I'll be coming back here, but there's, there's, there's definitely a, there's this, like, there's some sort of magic and special energy here that I'm really excited about with what Gabe and Chief Baker and really having OSU being a piece of this puzzle and I, you know, they kind of wrap us up here. any sort of final parting thoughts you know to call it called out some people call the mic drop but you know if you have a I'd love any kind of quotes or words wisdom or any sort of ideas that you could leave us with today? I'd love to hear it.

[50:03] James Spencer: Well, the thing that really has blown my mind, and I'm grateful every day, the level of collaboration, the spirit of collaboration in Tulsa, not just at the OSU, but I mean, there is a, there's a level of willingness to reach out and connect with others. You know, or the circle of trust is pretty robust. And I've never worked and lived in a city where the people were so open to collaborate and willing to trust each other to do complex things together and the willingness to take the risk. And so it's not just entrepreneurship, But it's this notion of serving leadership, this mindset that it's not about me, it's not about my company, what can I do to serve the greater good and make money in the process, right? I have to live, right? I have to prosper. And that's actually happening in Tulsa as a city. And so I have this experience, not just going in high level meetings and conferences, but I have the same level of care in the medical establishments and going to retail. So anybody who's trying to look for some place to expand their dreams, and there's so much money and so many resources in Tulsa looking for people to work on projects in economic development and also this money for entrepreneurs and of course programs like Launchpad. I'm just, I'm so blessed to have an environment where I feel valued in a way that I've never felt in other places. So I'm grateful for the city, for the ethos that exists here, and the Kultner Tulsans, they're special. I'm from New York, Brooklyn, New York, coming to Tulsa.

[52:23] Kevin Sofen: I'm just loving it.

[52:25] James Spencer: Loving it. I'll never go back. Then my wife is here right now and she's loving it. And so, I'm just saying that this is a great place, great school. I mean, OSU gets it. I mean, I worked for a private university on the East Coast, working for Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Great school, great engineers, great programs. But the land-grant university says it's not just research and teaching, but we have this third component called extension. It's not enough to show that we've got all this beautiful discovery and all this data. But what are we doing with that data? So you're asking the question, why? So the why is to make the communities that we live in better. So what we do, we do it for posterity, for ourselves and our children and our children's children. Having that long view of life and value creation takes our entrepreneurship beyond the traditional, I made a billion, I'm going to make a billion dollars. This culture truly is, that supports that, and that's my following. If I could tell everyone in the sound of my voice from your podcast, place is important because you can find empowerment in certain environments and the people that are there, that can help you to accelerate your vision, your dreams as well. And I found this is a, this, you know, OSU and Tulsa are amazing places.

[54:08] Kevin Sofen: Well, they found the right guy in you. And I'm excited to continue to be a piece of a puzzle myself. And we'll be at the Technology Summit International with the International Association of Fire Chiefs. It's happening the first week of December in Oklahoma City, so right down the road. So this isn't me asking you. I mean, this is me telling you that you're going to be there. And we would love to have some, you know, we're looking to do some student posters, you know. And not quite just like posters, but one of the, I mean, it is some opportunity for students to have poster sessions, but also really trying to do some workshops. And I think DFR program and workshopping in terms of how people can do it, how should they go about it, how they talk with city stakeholders, how they talk with the public, things like that. But also, that might be a cool time to workshop of what are some of these other potential next things besides DFR, so I think we could use that and I know the International Association of Fire Chiefs would be really excited about that, as well as all the people that attend. We had about a little over 500 people last year, so it's not a mega conference, not a mini conference, but it's manageable. Yeah, it's a good, it's really good, the right kind of stakeholders in the room. So, you know, if I don't see you before then, I know we'll talk soon, but I'm looking forward to at least going back to Oklahoma one more time this year.

[55:20] James Spencer: That's awesome.

[55:21] Kevin Sofen: All right, All right, James, I really appreciate it. Thanks, man.

[55:23] James Spencer: Thank you. Appreciate it.

[55:27] Kevin Sofen: Thanks for listening to today's episode. What did you think? What'd you learn? Hopefully something, right? Please reach out on social media with your thoughts on this episode and any other suggestions for future content. We look forward to capturing more important stories across public safety and are here at your service.