The Intersection of Physics and Business: A Conversation with Bob Rogers, CEO of Oii.ai

As someone constantly seeking innovative ways to drive business growth, I recently had the privilege of sitting down with Bob Rogers, the CEO of Oii.ai. With a background in physics and a deep understanding of supermassive black holes, Bob shared insights on how his scientific knowledge shapes his business strategies. Our conversation delved into pivotal moments for startups, the importance of adapting course when needed, and the value of merging ideas from diverse disciplines to create customer-centric innovations and groundbreaking patents.

Key Quotes:

“You literally have to find the right level of granularity and detail to tell your story effectively. And that’s a physics concept, but it’s also a storytelling concept, and it’s a business concept for me.”

“I’ve seen a few organizations putting AI into this, this, this and this. And it’s like, ooh, it’s a big mistake. Because you really want to think of it as just a tool. It’s not like, oh, let’s just hammer everything and see what happens. You wouldn’t do that just because you got a new hammer, right?

“The most important thing is that every person in your organization has patents within them. That is the starting point. Start with that mindset. Everyone has patents within them.”

‘This is the tricky part about the pivot point. When you’re building a business, a bullseye is a two-dimensional object, like the X-axis and the Y-axis. But in business, it is a multi-dimensional space. So you turn two degrees in an unknown direction. You have to figure out the orientation and the angle, and that’s why it’s not easy.”