8 of the Best Quotes from TEDxDayton Salon | Innovation

After five years of the highly successful annual TEDxDayton event each October, 2018’s event featured an exciting announcement that 2019 would see additional opportunities to enjoy the TEDxDayton experience in the form of TEDxDayton Salons. Just like the main, annual event, these smaller, more intimate gatherings would include local speakers from a variety of backgrounds sharing their stories around a central theme. TEDxDayton Salons are shorter as well, just a half day investment of time. The most recent TEDxDayton Salon focused on Innovation and took place at the newly-renovated event venue, The Steam Plant. With eight stand out talks by some seriously impressive local movers and makers, this TEDxDayton Salon was highly informative, persuasive, and above all, quotable. Here are some of the best quotes of the day.

Try a New Path

Entrepreneur Charles Nick has had quite a varied career spanning organizations like NASA, the US Air Force, and Virgin Atlantic before deciding entrepreneurship was the path for him, founding The Wright Cup coffee shop and co-founding Third Wave Water. During his talk, he explained that “Most people know that ninety percent of first businesses fail, however fewer people realize that ninety percent of second businesses succeed.” He shared that it helps to have a mentor in business to help keep you from making some of the mistakes common for first-timers.

Find Your Purpose

IT professional, Kelly Dolan, achieved every typical measure of success before deciding she wanted something more. She started Ingage Partners with the idea of shaping a consulting firm around the idea of giving back and using business as a force for good in the community. Dolan explained that there are many people in poverty who can’t be placed in high earning jobs because of a lack of training while there are thousands of IT jobs that go unfilled. She created Thrive Impact Sourcing to help bridge this gap, thereby fulfilling her quest to find purpose in her career, explaining “we are meant to do something meaningful with our lives.”

Be Very Wrong

Beck Besecker, co-founder and CEO of Marxent, delivered his second TEDxDayton talk, remarking that in 2015’s talk he knew he was probably wrong about the future of virtual reality and augmented reality. He focused his 2019 talk on how to keep innovating when you’re wrong about the future. One of his five tips is to find innovative partners and make sure to ask them “what happened the last time you failed?” – if they killed the project after one failure, they are likely not going to be the right partner for your vision.

Heed H.G. Wells’ Warnings

Andrew Cothrel, president of Blue Marble Medical, explained that thanks to medical technology innovation “Darwinism is dead” as far as human evolution. We now have the tools to engage in self-directed evolution with genetic engineering, however Cothrel warns that this will mean a slippery slope, especially if only the wealthy will have access to these epigenetic tools.

Be Bold (and a Little Spicy)

In what turned out to be the most moving talk of the morning, Air Force veteran, motivational speaker, and founder of Mutt’s Sauce, Charlynda Scale, described the recipe of success. Despite growing up close to her grandfather, she was still shocked that she was chosen to receive his secret sauce recipe after his passing. She decided to distribute this sauce but with no culinary background, she decided to reach out to a free mentorship program for guidance. Her mentor told her to set up her business and that it would “move at the speed of determination” meaning the progress would speed up or slow down depending on how motivated and determined she was to get it going.

Innovation for Humanity, Not Instead of Humanity

Greg Simpson, senior VP and Chief Technology Officer at Synchrony, discussed artificial intelligence, or rather ‘augmented intelligence’ and the need for safety measures, much like when the automobile gained a seatbelt. He explained that despite the exponential advancement in technology, “the antidote is humanity.” Simpson said that as long as we fight the possible bias of AI with diverse teams and regular dialogue, we should escape some of the potential risks of the rapidly expanding presence of AI in our lives.   

Dream Big

In arguably the most energizing talk of the day, research and development consultant, Greg Loughnane, explained how and why our wildest, ‘pie-in-the-sky’ dreams are within reach thanks to advancements in new manufacturing innovations. He argues that thanks to game-changing 3D printing, “we can become a planet-faring species” by having the ability to simply print new parts to replace damaged ones while in flight.

Be a Cyber Citizen

Seth Hamman, Director of the Center for the Advancement of Cyber Security at Cedarville University, encouraged the audience to champion the guardians of the cyber galaxy. These people are the superheroes we rely on to protect the lawless digital expanses of the Internet from the super villains threatening to steal our information. He explained that these super villains are particularly bad because “cyber personas are much more daring than their physical counterparts.”

A version of this article was published on Nova Creative’s blog June 6, 2019. TEDxDayton Salon | Innovation took place June 4, 2019 at The Steam Plant in Dayton. For information on TEDxDayton, visit their website.