The algorithm of innovation

By Bart Brouwers

In our Sunday newsletter, we, as editors, reflect on the past seven days. We do this on the initiative of our cartoonist Albert Jan Rasker. He chooses a subject, draws a picture, and we take it from there.

According to our columnist Eveline van Zeeland, every innovation issue is characterized by the same formula, the same number of steps: 1) what do we want to achieve with the innovation, 2) what do we need to do to achieve that, 3) how will that intervention work, and 4) within what context will that work? The answer to those questions works like an algorithm. That algorithm has a name: the CIMO logic.

In her column, she then explains how that CIMO logic (context [C] intervention [I] mechanisms [M] and outcome [O]) works and what you can do with it as an innovator. Highly recommended for anyone with an innovation dream. Albert Jan already shows us what happens between intervention and outcome. You can’t put a pin in it 🙂

Read Eveline’s entire column here.

Laio (part 3)

For the past two weeks, I have already told a bit about how we work with Laio – our AI-supported editorial assistant. An important aspect that has remained unsaid so far is the reliability of the outcomes. The importance of this is obvious, not only because the creators of GPT-4 frankly admit that their model is still quite hallucinatory at times, but also because it is vital to journalism.

There are two ways we are addressing this issue now. The first is from our own ongoing development: Laio 2.0 has several additional safety valves that greatly reduce the risk of nonsense. From the process principle of human-machine-human (we see Laio a bit like the trainee who is first given an assignment and eventually will be supervised and checked), this means a further upgrade in reliability. But that’s not all.

Support Us!

Therefore, we are also enormously pleased with the support we have received from Metropoolregio Eindhoven. Their grant will help us enormously in this endeavor to achieve 100% truthfulness. And what’s extra nice is that it also allows us to enlist the help of two AI startups: Fruitpunch AI and Chunkx. One will help us improve the front end of the process, and the other will look for additional control elements on the back end.

This project will last for a year; we have our kick-off meeting next week. We will keep everyone informed about the progress, but for now, the conclusion is that we will make great new steps with Laio.