Robotics are here, just look to my right.

Say Hello to my little friend. 

That little robot to my right is Igi. Igi serves as the mascot for my innovation laboratory at UNLV but also makes a terrific prop as he bows and greets the audience at the beginning of my talk. So much so that I dare say, there were more tweets about the cute little robot than the speaker (me). But I suppose that's ok, since the point of my speech was robotics. 

The conference had titled the session, Robotics in Hospitality: The Future or Just a Gimmick and I was most fortunate to be accompanied on the panel by the CEO of robotics startup company. I delivered a twenty minute lecture on my observations on the state of robotics and in particular focused on one critical point: that the concept of robotics in service industry has less to do with replacing a certain position with a robot THAN in redefining processes because of the multi-sensory nature of the machines. 


The media stories are replete with an image of a humanoid robot replacing a worker at a fast food restaurant. And while that may make for good reading, I challenge that thinking on four basic reasons:

1. The economics. The cost of the technology and the current capabilities are still prohibitive from large scale replacement of humans in basic service roles with robots.


2. Why do it that way anyway? Consider a simple robot. That robot could contain an array of sensors; be completely IoT (Internet of Things) connected and quite possibly be powered by an Artificial Intelligence. What then are the implications of these multiple features? From my perspective it is that the enterprise should consider how this multi-sensor, multi-feature robot may enable it to redefine entire departmental structures and internal processes. The era of the true multi-tasker has arrived. A robot such as this can perform multiple tasks perhaps simultaneously or separately...the master of all trades if you will. So why limit the discussion to replacing an order taker with a machine?

3. Assist humans don't replace them. I have a long tenured experience in the hospitality industry. As in nearly every other industry, the markets are global. The customer segmentation changes in the last ten years are obvious. Today a hotel may see guests from Ohio with the next guest in line from South Korea or Estonia but chances are that front desk clerk speaks only English. Imagine a robot at the front desk that performs many tasks but among them it stands by to assist the agent by instantly recognizing and speaking to the guest in their native language. What possibilities does that open up to provide enhanced services to the guest? Suddenly the front desk is no longer limited to handling the transaction of the check-in and check-out but can market the amazing prix fixe dinner special in the restaurant that evening or the nearby walk to one of the city's finest museums. The team together, the warm greeting of the human and the flawless translation of her colleague, the machine. 

4. Forget about the science fiction humanoid appearance. Robots already exist in highly productive and non-humanoid form. Neil deGrasse Tyson said it best,

With regard to robots, in the early days of robots people said, 'Oh, let's build a robot' and what's the first thought? You make a robot look like a human and do human things. That's so 1950s. We are so past that. 

He is right. Take a look at the automotive industry as the most basic example, the robotics employed in the manufacturing process are non-humanoid machines performing exacting steps in the assembly. 

Another example and the one I used in my speech was the autonomous vehicle. Another popular topic for the media, scarcely a day without reading about self-driving cars. But isn't a self-driving car a robot? By my definition, yes.

While my talk was centered primarily on the hospitality industry it is not difficult to project the implications to nearly any B2C segment. If you are thinking about robotics for your industry then I suggest you start by looking at the processes and not simply the people.

My little friend, Igy represents something very real and quite profound. He represents the development of technologies that we are just beginning to understand how best to apply them. Technologies and machines that should be looked in a different light than simply technology to replace a single human function. We and they are capable of so much more.Robotics are here.

International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking

https://www.unlv.edu/igi/conference

Hospitality of the Future

Today is the last day of class for my Hospitality Innovation Lab here at UNLV. It has been an amazing journey, along the way I became friends with an amazingly talented colleague and thinker Dr. Mehmet Erdem; some extraordinarily smart and innovative students; and a support network within the International Gaming Institute that redefines how Universities can work. I'm proud to be associated with such a great school and a great program. 

Tonight we debut the first steps for Hospitality of the future.

Iggy, the Hospitality Lab's new robotic mascot.

TV news piece about the Hospitality Innovation Lab and robotics

Vegas Magazine Article on Hospitality Lab

Click here for article.

Midpoint in the semester - 8 solid innovations

Last night marked the midpoint in the semester for Hospitality Lab. The evening also marked the class session where the eight student teams presented two of their innovative ideas. While I can't reveal the extraordinary ideas yet, I can share some of my observations about this talented group of millennial dreamers.

The first thing that is apparent is how differently they view the world and in particularly the business of hospitality. Their lens into the experiences that ultimately drive satisfaction from guests and revenues in the hotel are very different from the baby boomer or gen x. I recall sessions in my career where new innovations were described by their ability to "wow" the guest or impress them with advanced technology...this is not the case with the millennial inventor. Instead they see unbounded opportunity where status quo is an old Latin term of little relevance to them. They don't feel the need to incrementally improve and in fact all 16 ideas presented demonstrated a departure from that incremental innovation theory. The ideas spoke to their own personal behaviors, their likes and their perspective on travel and hospitality. The sociology of the millennial hospitality innovator is fascinating.

The millennial innovator also does not see solutions from a technology perspective, they see technology only as an enabler not as a solution in itself. They are truly digital natives, in that they have always known the Internet, the smart phone and social media. These things have no "wow" potential in them, they are simply factors that enable a higher level of engagement with each other or between a hospitality brand and it's guests. You cannot wow a millennial with technology, period. You cannot engage them with the same thinking you use today. They proved this theory last night.

The ideas ranged from the incredibly simple to large scale. They see hotels not as boxes for honeymoons and conventions but as places where you live temporarily, places that can facilitate whatever it is that you are doing. They become part of the travel journey and no longer the destination.

The remaining half of the semester is devoted to taking the highest scoring idea of the two they presented and then developing a prototype or a simulation to prove the concept in a start up pitch format. The hard work of taking a dream and executing on a minimum viable scale now begins. Along that path, I will include mentors who can help, guide and advise them as they put real design effort into these ideas. And at the end, produce something wonderful.