November 2022
In the tenth episode of our ‘In Conversation with…’ podcast series for 2022, Partner Lucy Lewis speaks to Elizabeth Bieniek, Director of Innovation at Cisco and an internal start-up founder.
Elizabeth’s particular focus is on the interface between people and emerging technology, developing technologies that will help build a bridge between our experiences today and the experiences that might be possible as technology advances.
In this fascinating discussion, Elizabeth and Lucy consider how technology can be used to build trust and a sense of belonging to make hybrid and remote working more ‘human’. Elizabeth explains the important focus that is needed on the underlying human motivations driving societal trends when anticipating future technology that will successfully enable human interaction when people can’t be together physically.
Finally, with growing discussion on the impact of the metaverse and other emerging technologies on work, Elizabeth lays to rest any confusion we might have had about the differences between augmented and virtual reality and their role in the future world of work.
In Conversation with…Elizabeth Bieniek
Series 2: Episode 10.
Lucy Lewis: Hello, and welcome to The Future of Work Hub’s ‘In Conversation With…’ podcast. I’m Lucy Lewis, a partner in Lewis Silkin’s Employment Team and in this podcast series, I’ll be hosting exclusive discussions with innovators, business leaders and thought leaders to explore their perspective on what the future of work holds.
The pandemic has accelerated longer term societal, economic and technological trends, and we have a unique opportunity, a once in a generation challenge, to rethink who, how, what, and where we work. But although the pandemic has been a significant catalyst for immediate change, it’s only one of the many drivers of change in the world of work, and rapid advancements in technology, when they’re combined with the impact of the pandemic, are propelling really profound changes, particularly in where and when we work. And it’s becoming increasingly apparent that successfully navigating those shifts towards hybrid working and remote working relies heavily on the quality of our interactions and our connections with each other, and technology has a really significant role to play in that.
And today, I’m really fortunate to be joined by Elizabeth Bieniek; she is an internal start-up founder, and Director of Innovation at Cisco. Elizabeth scales up start-up concepts within Cisco’s multi-billion dollar collaboration and security business, but with a particular focus on the interface between people and emerging technology, and how to build a bridge between our experiences today and the experiences that might be possible as technology advances. She’s a disruptive innovator, developing new technology solutions that will ultimately shape the future of work. Elizabeth previously co-founded Webex Hologram, which was the industry’s first holographic collaboration system and I’m really looking forward to talking to you a bit about that Elizabeth later on, but before we get to that, I just wanted to welcome you to the podcast, so welcome!
We’re so excited to have you, and there’s such a lot for us to discuss! I’m particularly wanting to get into a bit of how we can harness emerging technologies to make that hybrid and remote working, make it a little bit more human. But I wondered if we could just start by allowing you to tell us a bit about yourself, tell us a bit about your work, and how the work you do can drive innovation and change in organisations.
Elizabeth Bieniek: Sure, absolutely. As you mentioned, I work in an innovation organisation inside of Cisco’s collaboration and security group. My role is really focused on being disruptive, which I absolutely love because I don’t think I can not be disruptive, even if I tried. And it’s not really a role that existed, or really does exist even. I haven’t had a job description for, I think, 8 years or more, it’s more something that came about organically, and I think those are always the best opportunities. When you see a need, fill it, see a new need, fill that and it continues to evolve from the ground up as you grow into a role. And that’s really where I’m at now.
The position is part of our secure organisation, and we’re really looking at how we can disrupt the future of collaboration.
The benefits of a human approach in the technology industry and how to build trust in hybrid and remote working models
Lucy Lewis: One of the things we’ve been talking about quite a lot on this podcast series, and I’m interested particularly in this, because I know you’ve previously talked about yourself as being in the human business, not just in the technology business. It’s this idea of trust and belonging, in the workplace particularly, and how that works in the hybrid and remote working model, particularly when you’ve got geographically dispersed teams. And we know there have been lots and lots of studies on hybrid working, remote working and in the main, irrespective of whether you ask employers or employees, irrespective of geography or demographics, in the main, people are really embracing the opportunities that hybrid and remote working offers.
But if you look at the drawbacks, that kind of human connection, the feeling that we’re losing that human connection is one of the things that we often hear is a drawback. I know personally, you know we got back to the office after Covid, it felt great to see your colleagues again. You know, we see the business benefit of supporting more junior colleagues in their growth and their development, so before we get on to the technology bit, I’m interested in your views on the human bit. What is it that makes us human? Why is it so important that we have those connections?
Elizabeth Bieniek: Sure, I think this is perhaps my unique advantage of being in this technology space, is that I am not from a technology background. In fact, I think I spent the first, I don’t know, 10 or more years working in high tech saying, “I’m not a technology person”. I finally, once leading innovation inside of a CTO organisation, inside of an engineering group, I had to give up saying that. But, I think, because I came from a non-traditional background, my undergraduate is in the English language, I was very interested in pursuing fine arts, impersonating writing. I end up getting my Masters in business and going some different routes before I…I’ll say fell into the technology world.
But inside of that, I think I’ve always taken that sort of human approach. Really hyper-focused on the language and how we interact, and we communicate, and applying that to the technology space. So, often we disadvantage our technology by focusing too much on the technology itself and then trying to apply that to, “okay, now how would people use this?” rather than starting with “What do people need? How do people interact? How do we use technology to enhance that?” And again, I’m obviously overly biased on the collaboration and communication space, because that is the technology domain in which I operate, but by starting with the people that are… it’s not an awful concept to start with young users, but starting with the people. There’s so much about our current way of working that is not natural, not by any stretch of the imagination. So, going back to how would you want to interact with people, when you’re just getting together with friends, going to just blow off steam? Going to just enjoy and have a walk, have a chat? What you do in those environments that makes you feel relaxed, makes you able to quickly sort of build a relationship with the new people that you encounter. What makes you comfortable, what makes you come alive, and how do we hone in on that and then use our technology to enable and enhance that, not to replace it.
Lucy Lewis: That’s fascinating! And this idea of trust, we’ve sort of grown up with an idea that trust is developed by seeing people, by connecting with people and I’m interested in your thoughts about how that kind of connection can be brought into our technology or actually if you think we can build trust in different ways.
Elizabeth Bieniek: Yeah, I think getting together in person is the holy grail. I think almost everything I do in technology is to get as close as possible to that. Seeing someone, hearing someone, being able to shake a hand, share a hug, you know, squeeze somebody on the shoulder or have some sort of physical interaction as well as take part of all the non-verbal cues that come through in communications. So much of the human language is non-verbal. We use body language, gestures. We have different interactions that are based on different customs and cultures and much of that is lost when you’re using purely a technology platform to remotely communicate with someone.
So, a lot of my interest is focused on, how do you bring those non-verbal cues back into that interaction? And all of that is what helps the person on the other end of the phone call, other end of the video call, other end of the chat, seem more human and therefore seem more relatable and, because of that, you can start to build a relationship. You can start to build and establish trust. You can’t build a deep relationship or significant relationship, or establish trust with a chatbot, it doesn’t work. There has to be a human on the other end of the interaction. So then looking at how do we enable those human interactions?
I do think beyond visual, there are a lot of other ways to build trust. It is repeat behavior, you end up working with the same vendor or a colleague, or a customer again and again and again. You get to know each other and their nuances, and you begin to have this back and forth in a relationship and that’s what builds trust. But a lot of what goes into that back and forth is the dynamics of the communication.
The Webex Hologram and technology as a bridge for human connection
Lucy Lewis: That’s really interesting and it comes back to this idea that, actually, there’s a real willingness I think to make hybrid and remote working work, there’s so much that’s good about it. And if we can use technology as this bridge for these human connections, we can really accelerate the speed at which we’re able to make remote and hybrid working work, but also the success of it and, I wonder, because I know our listeners will be really interested, if you’ve got any real world examples of when you’ve seen technology be that bridge? Talking to us about the Hologram would be fascinating but there may be other examples of that bridge that you’re able to share with us.
Elizabeth Bieniek: Sure, yeah you mentioned Webex Hologram earlier in the intro and I think that’s naturally where my mind goes because I’ve spent the last 7 years of my life working on that. But the real impetus behind that was enabling that human interaction when you can’t be physically together. At a really high level, Webex Hologram is an end-to-end photo-realistic holographic collaboration system. It’s a way to see, if you are sitting in your home office, rather than having a video call with a colleague, that colleague could be appearing in holographic form right in front of you. You can pull up a 3D model, you can share that, you can interact, it’s a way you could be doing a presentation to multiple speakers and they could all be seeing you as a 3D hologram, completely lifelike, completely photo-realistic and it could be in wherever they are. One could be in their home office, one could be sitting in their living room, one could be, you know, sitting in a classroom somewhere. It’s a way to bring people together when they can’t physically be together. I think our early on tagline was really focused on ‘a new way of travel’. It’s a way of bringing someone into your experience, and this was well before the global pandemic and well before the idea of remote work became such a global concept that everyone is facing and trying to figure out their interaction.
But I think the things that really stood out to me, during that process and during the journey, were a couple of things. One is, very early on, one of our early phases, it was very rough around the edges, but we did our first round of user testing, with external users and, seeing people who had never met before and who were not in the same space…So, when you’re outside viewing this, you just see a person sitting there wearing a headset and they’re having this completely animated, in-depth, hand gestures, everything going conversation with somebody that only they can see. In that instance the other person could see them and they were just chatting back and forth and they just built this rapport so quickly, it was very impressive! It was very different than what I’ve seen when someone is just doing an audio call with someone for the first time, or a video call with someone for the first time.
So that, observing that as a third party, just a fly on the wall watching that, was the first clue that we were really on to something. I think the other thing came up in another user testing scenario where we were still figuring out the call controls inside of the experience and we hadn’t yet really built in, end of call experience and so, at that point, when you ended the interaction, we would just turn off the hologram, and the user that was doing it for the first time they almost like jumped out of their chair and like “woah where’d they go?”. And I think, for me, that stood out as, that’s not a video call, that is very different. In that case, that person felt as if the other person was right there with them, we had achieved the concept of co-presence and that just stood out as…wow that’s powerful, that’s amazing.
How emerging technologies, virtual and augmented reality, may impact the future of the workplace
Lucy Lewis: Yeah, it is really amazing and actually, you don’t think about it do you? It is quite a human part of our interactions isn’t it, how you end a call. It’s really fascinating.
One of the things that I wanted to go on and ask you a bit about, because lots of the people listening will have a high level of knowledge and information about technology but others, not so much, and, you know when we look at emerging technologies and we look at the future of work, we hear words like ‘metaverse’ and ‘virtual reality’, ‘avatars’, ‘augmented reality’ and obviously all of that is emerging technology and it’s opportunities and issues for employers but, the thing that I think people are sometimes confused about is the difference between augmented reality and virtual reality. I’m interested in your thoughts around that and your thoughts around how those two different things might play out, particularly in the workplace?
Elizabeth Bieniek: Sure, and I think the average person that doesn’t work in the technology space is probably much more familiar, or comfortable, with the concept of virtual reality than necessarily augmented reality because, unless you’re working in a field that exposes you to augmented reality, not that many people have access to it day to day. Virtual reality, I think of as, I think the best way to think of it is, think of your 14-year old nephew playing a video game and they put on a headset, it completely blocks out the world around them. They are viewing another world and they could be driving a car, shooting a gun, doing some sort of interaction in that other world. It’s a very immersive experience, it’s completely fictional and, it is appealing to multiple senses. So, you can see things, you can hear things, sometimes it could be a haptic interaction, you could feel things as you’re interacting with virtual things in that world.
Augmented reality is a bit different in that, it doesn’t block out the physical world. You often times are still wearing a headset, though that’s not necessary in all scenarios, you can put on a headset but think of it more like a pair of glasses where you still see the world around you, but now, those goggles or glasses are interjecting virtual content into your physical world. That is a very different experience because you’re now augmenting, that’s the name, augmenting your physical world with this new virtual interaction so you have all the benefits, pros and cons of the physical world, and then you can layer in there virtual content as well. So, if you start thinking about things like designing with someone who is in another part of the world, and you want to be able to see them and see when you’re mentioning, “hey I want to change this piece here”, how they respond, or what’s their facial reaction? Do they shrug, do they smile, do they lean forward, how did they respond in all of their non-verbal cues? But I also want to see the object that we’re sharing and the design piece that I’m showing, we both need to interact. And I say, “hey can you move this piece?” and he says “what about this one over here?” and we …“Um perhaps if we made this a little bit larger and rotate it this way”, you can do that with someone on the other side of the world in augmented reality and get the beauty of that face-to-face physical interaction and the benefit of virtual content.
Virtual reality is different in that it blocks all that face-to-face augmented interaction in the real world.
Lucy Lewis: And it seems to me when we look at the future of work and, obviously, that’s what this podcast is about, that there’s probably a greater value, for all the reasons and actually the example you gave was a really great one, of augmented reality. I think people have, particularly in a workplace context, have a kind of nervousness about virtual reality that you won’t know who you’re interacting with, you won’t sort of know where the boundaries of what’s real world and what virtual is.
Do you see that when we look at the future of work, augmented reality, and I guess it goes back to some of those trust issues I talked about, has a greater place in the future of the workplace, not necessarily the wider gaming world, but the workplace use of technology?
Elizabeth Bieniek: Yeah, I think there’s a time and place for both. I do think virtual reality is fantastic for things like simulations. If you want to go through a simulation or training to understand what it would be like if a nuclear plant is melting down and what are the safety protocols you’d run through and you want to hear it and feel the vibrations and experience all those things, that’s great in a virtual simulation where you can jump into it. Where you couldn’t replicate that in real life because of the dangers of it. So, I think in certain scenarios, like training simulations, virtual can be very applicable in a workplace setting, but for the majority of user cases and a more broader application…think of the remote design like I was talking about, getting sign off on something from a board of executives that could be in all different locations and you needed to make a high profile presentation to them. Or training, where you have one person who is a subject matter expert on one piece of machinery perhaps, and they need to train multiple people in multiple field offices. Being able to have those interactions where you can both see the person and have that face-to-face interaction and see all the benefits that come with virtual content and the interaction with that. I think it’s a much more broadly applicable use case.
The sorts of emerging technologies we might see in the not too distant future
Lucy Lewis: That’s really great and actually, we’re coming close to the end, and I wanted to take you back to that disruptive influence that you talked about right at the beginning because, you know, we all know that technology is advancing at pace and, you know, you can read about some really quite terrifying things. You know I think I read about neuro-technology and it had the potential to monitor how much we’re concentrating at work. But I wonder, just using your experience and knowing audience, whether you’d share any insight you’ve got into the sorts of emerging technologies that you think we might see in the not too distant future? I mean one of the things you mentioned actually was haptic interactions and whether we might see that in the workplace?
Elizabeth Bieniek: Yeah, I do think specifically if we’re talking about augmented and virtual reality and that whole realm of virtual content, I do think haptic interfaces are an area that we have not fully explored and have great potential.
A haptic interface is just the way to air the sensation of touch into a virtual experience, whether that be an augmented experience or fully immersive virtual experience, and think about this if you’re doing a training scenario with someone and say, “okay when you rotate this part and slide this into here it feels like this”, being able to feel that rather than just see it, would be amazing. It adds a whole other layer of sensory input and, going back to my whole premise of humans are what’s most important here. If you think about human kind, from the very beginning, the sense of touch is the first sensation we as humans learn. It is how babies make sense of the world around it, it’s actually formed before birth in the womb, it’s the first sensation babies interact with and there’s been a lot of science around how they interact inside the mother’s womb. It’s the first sense that is developed as a human so, having an interaction that completely removes the sense of touch can be a bit jarring, especially when you’re trying to make it as realistic and lifelike as possible. So, adding that sensation of touch into a virtual experience instead of just having audio, instead of just having a video, now you can have a sensory tactile input, that makes it much more compelling and then you really get into a multi-dimensional experience.
I think outside of the virtual and augmented reality areas, I’ve talked about this other topic as well, I haven’t had as much time in my professional career to explore it, but I think there is so much potential in augmented information and adding that to our 2D experiences, not staying away from augmented virtual reality entirely, but just thinking about, you know day to day interfaces and once so many people are working with a laptop or a tablet or a phone, or some sort of device, if we could really tap more into the power of AI in order to curate all the information that is available, sift through that using AI to filter that for us, to what is pertinent and then push that to us, such that we can be augmented workers. So, if you’re having a conversation with a colleague that you haven’t, or a vendor that you haven’t spoken to in several months, maybe your memory has a feeling of “I know I talked to them about something last time”, but you could have curated information with an AI agent that’s pulling that up and it could be running as a side bar in, on whatever device you are using and saying “here’s your last conversation, here are a couple of bullets I’ve pulled out from this. Oh! Since then, they’ve been published in the news as saying, they’re facing this challenge”. It makes you a smarter person, a smarter worker, so I think that element of having augmented information is something I would love to see more advancement on over the next couple of years.
Getting back to the root of humanity
Lucy Lewis: Really really fascinating! It’s fascinating and terrifying in equal measure but it’s also so exciting, isn’t it? The last question I’ve got for you, and it’s one I’m asking all our 2022 guests on this podcast series, we know that the world of work is going to look completely different in 10 years’ time and probably in ways that we can’t even predict now, but if you had the power to ensure that there was one change for the workplace of 2032, what would it be?
The Future of Work
Elizabeth Bieniek: Don’t forget the people! I think the biggest thing is really getting back to the root of humanity and my favourite place to look for future technology trends and make fairly accurate predictions of what I think might be happening 5, 10, 15 years down the road are looking at societal trends. Looking at how people are interacting, looking at how the new generation is interacting, what are the biggest challenges they’re facing, what are the things that they list as the fears that are keeping them up at night? What are the various tools or experiences they’re gravitating to? What becomes a fad, what becomes popular and why? It’s not so much important what the fad is, it’s the underlying human motivation that is driving that. Is it connection, is it meaning, is it belonging, is it communication, is it touching in with ancestors, what is it about the underlying motivation behind that fad? And then think about technology and how we can facilitate establishing that more readily in the workplace. I think those are the technologies that will be phenomenally resilient and applicable in the future.
Lucy Lewis: Thank you Elizabeth, and I love that because it takes us right back to the beginning where I said one of the things I’d really liked that you’d said was that you feel like you were in the human business not just in the technology business and I think, you know, it’s a really sage reminder that technology can’t exist without the human interaction and we do need to see it as that bridge. So, thank you for the discussion because it’s been really, really, really fascinating, really enlightening.
Elizabeth Bieniek: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
Lucy Lewis: If any of you listening would like to find out more, you’re welcome to connect with Elizabeth on LinkedIn. Thank you again Elizabeth.