Breathing fresh air into the UK startup ecosystem

With the continued Brexit fug stagnating our business world, it's a rare moment that you experience genuine glee and (dare I say it) laugh-out-loud moments triggered by the pure joy of doing your job. Well, that's what been like as a judge for the D/sruption50 Index which as announced in London last week https://disruptionhub.com/the-disruption50-index-winners-announced/#.XXfOpIKW4do.twitter.

Thanks to https://www.binumipro.com/ for fantastic video

Since launching IBM's first startup programmes back in 2010, I've been privileged to be asked to take part in many conferences and events that focus on innovative startups. This year's highlight has to be taking part in the judging panel for D/sruption50 Index. The whole process a breath of fresh air to the usual routine employed by countless accelerator programmes and challenge competitions.

What made this special?

It has to be use use of A.I technology to help gain consensus with the judges using https://unanimous.ai/. Swarm is an interactive platform that uses the principle of Swarm Intelligence to amplify the wisdom of teams online. Once the judges had created user ID's, we were asked to dial into a conference call and answer questions about which startup (which we'd previously reviewed) we thought was most innovative. Using our web browser, we then had to move a graphical puck until we converged on consensus which combined our intelligence. Each judge influenced the motion of the puck using an animated magnet, pulling with all the other participants in real-time. Swarm AI algorithms process the changing behaviours of the participants and help guide the puck to an optimised answer.

A great experience for me and even though I was not in the same room as the other judges I really felt that that we were woking together to reach a consensus on the eventual ranking.

And there's more..

I got to meet a great new company offering editing as a service of videos - quick and effective and a great option for those of us that accumulate tons of video but have no time to edit and publish our work. Thanks to https://www.binumipro.com/

Hat's off to the organisers of D/sruption @Disruptionhub - great job.

And well done to all the companies that applied - there are some real corkers amongst you!

For more inspiration for how Artificial Intelligence can be infused into your business, check out https://www.ibm.com/watson/developer