Dragonfly Thinking Demo Day Pitch

Dragonfly Thinking

 

 

[Image appears of an article from The Daily News, and then images move through to show two more news headlines each with an article and picture, and text appears: The Daily News, Geopolitical Uncertainty, Climate Crisis, Rise of AI]

 

Narrator: Geopolitical uncertainty, climate crisis, the sudden rise of AI.

 

[Camera pans out to include multiple articles with black connection lines over them and headings in boxes that connect various articles into a circle]

 

Current global challenges are escalating exponentially while becoming ever more interconnected.

 

[Camera pans up and in to show the top left corner of the articles, then moves to the right and then then to the bottom of screen to show more articles, and text appears: Complexity, Our cognitive ability to cope with that complexity goes down]

 

As the complexity of these interacting factors goes up, our cognitive ability to cope with that complexity goes down.

 

[Camera pans down to show articles that encircle text: Globalization or Deglobalization, Prosperity or Security, Health or Wealth, Economic or Environment]

 

We become more rigid and black and white in our thinking,

 

[Camera pans to the top right to show a profile of a male looking right with a blue and grey field of vision, and the camera zooms in and rotates anticlockwise to show a stopwatch, and text appears: Narrowing field of vision, Shortening time horizon]

 

narrowing our field of vision and shortening our time horizon.

 

[Image changes to show a dotted sphere with text on the right: Dragonfly Thinking]

 

That is, unless you adopt Dragonfly Thinking.

 

[Images move through to show a female’s face profile looking to the left with connection lines over the brain area, a bar graph, an AI symbol, and a coloured spirograph diagram, and text appears: System upgrade, A series of structured analytic technique, AI-Powered tools, Think through complex problems in more holistic ways, MLA Multi-Lens Analysis]

 

Dragonfly Thinking is an upgrade to our human operating system, a series of structured analytic techniques, and AI powered tools that help you to think through complex problems in more holistic ways, enabling you to see the world through multiple lenses,

 

[Images moves through to show three overlapping coloured circles within a grey circle, a close up of an eye, and a flow chart, and text appears: RRR Risk Reward and Resilience TM framework, Clear-sighted decisions, Foresight for the past, now and future]

 

integrate many perspectives into a coherent vision, make clear sighted decisions, and act with greater foresight.

 

[Images move through to show three speakers, and the camera zooms out to show the previous images and symbols already shown set inside the eyes of a dragonfly, and text appears: Policy makers, Business leaders]

 

From policymakers to business leaders, Dragonfly Thinking empowers decision makers to balance risks and rewards in order to build systemic resilience.

 

[Image changes to show a dotted sphere with text on the right: Dragonfly Thinking www.dragonflythinking.net]

 

Dragonfly Thinking. Clarity from complexity.

 

[Music plays. Video screen goes to black with logo for Australian National University appearing in the middle. Anthea Roberts stands to the right of the screen.]

 

Anthea Roberts:  Hi. I’m Anthea Roberts and I'm the founder of Dragonfly Thinking.

 

[Image on screen changes to logo for Dragonfly Thinking with a closeup of a dragonfly on the left of screen]

 

When the intelligence agencies in America wanted to work out who was best at understanding complex problems so that they could predict forward about what was going to happen they found a group of individuals who did this better than any others. What did this diverse group of individuals have in common? They saw the world through dragonfly eyes. Dragonfly eyes are very unusual because they have thousands of different lenses that they incorporate into a single. I'm going to have to lose this guy.

 

[Anthea changes her wireless headset/microphone for a handheld microphone]

 

Dragonfly eyes are extremely unusual because they have thousands of different lenses that they incorporate into a single, more holistic view of their environment, and they use that as the basis to project forward without being blindsided. Well, it turns out that for individuals, whether they're in business or in government, dragonfly thinking and seeing through dragonfly eyes is incredibly powerful but it's hard to do. And that's why at Dragonfly Thinking, we are pioneering AI tools to help decision makers navigate this complexity.

 

[Image on screen changes to a heading of Analytic Techniques. Underneath are two icons, one labelled Multi-Lens Analysis and the other as Risk, Reward and Resilience]

 

Our journey begins with two, I sorry, two analytical tools Multi-lens analysis and Risk,  Reward and Resilience. These are these are techniques that we have developed at the ANU.

 

[Image on screen changes to have the Multi-Lens Analysis icon move to the top left. Underneath it are the banners for Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Freaknomics and Fortune]

 

And the first one allows us to look at complex problems from many different lenses, just like dragonflies. This has been featured in a number of outlets, as you can see, but it also gave us the chance to go and see many different government departments to talk to them about their current problems. And what we discovered was that using this technique, they were better able to understand the problems that they were facing today. And yet they came to me with another problem, which is “now that I understand, what do I do next?” And that's what led us to our second technique, a Risk, Reward and Resilience framework that encourages decision makers to think in much more holistic ways about the pros and the cons, and how to bring about systemic resilience over time.

 

[Image on screen changes to have the Risk, Reward and Resilience icon move to the top right. Underneath it are the banners for Australian Government “Building secure and resilient global supply chains”, the New South Wales government AI Assurance Framework and the University of Oxford.]

 

As we have presented this technique to multiple government departments, it has been picked up by the Office of Supply Chain Resilience in AI Policy Making and by the new UK National Security Adviser. But again, we have seen from our customers a problem, which is that they need some help in applying these techniques and the number of requests that have come to us is too much for us to handle on an individual scale.

 

[Image on screen changes to heading: AI tools & SaaS Model. Below are the icons for Multi-Lens Analysis and Risk, Reward and Resilience.]

 

And that's why we actually spun out Dragonfly Thinking from the ANU for the express purpose of creating AI tools, in order that we could take these techniques and give them at speed and at scale using the new LLM technologies. And that's what we are doing now in our company.

 

We are already taking our first steps. Our first step is actually in an area that we know best, which is with the Commonwealth Government.

 

[Image on screen changes to heading: Government Pilots. Subheading is: APSREFORM. Below that are the logos for four government departments - Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Department of Industry, Science and Resources, The Treasury, Office of National Intelligence.]

 

We have had these four departments in the last budget put forward a bid about how to integrate AI into the Federal Government, and part of their bid was actually to pilot our AI tools. They are doing that again across very diverse areas of the Commonwealth Government, with our hope that we will then be able to scale it up and out from there. But we are also conscious that the tools that we are creating are not just suitable for government, they are also suitable into the private sector.

 

[Image on screen changes to heading: Next Steps. Below this are two subheadings: Consulting, Financial. Underneath Consulting are the logos for Digivate, Development Intelligence Lab and People Decisions. Underneath Financial are the logos for Commonwealth Bank, ANZ and Chief Investment Officers Forum 2024.]

 

And that's why we have been speaking both to consulting agents that could be channel partners for us, but also directly into the financial services where we have seen keen interest from both banks and Chief Investment Officers about the potential for our tools in their line of work. We are a company that is looking not just at government and business in Australia, but we also have the world in our eye and that is why we are starting to think ahead as to what we will do in terms of pitching this on the global scale.

 

[Image on screen changes to heading: US Workshops. Underneath and on the right is a picture of Anthea presenting with a Harvard University logo in the background. Other logs on the left are Blackstone, Citizens, ThermoFisher Scientific, AIG, eBay, Vanguard, BlackRock, Wayfair, Bridgewater, IAC and Maersk.]

 

In addition to my appointment in Australia, I am also a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and I have just got back from running executive training sessions with people from C-suites from these companies about how to do Dragonfly Thinking and how to use our tools. And we are going to be going back in September to reconvene this group to work out what are our next steps.

 

[Image on screen changes to heading: Our Core Team. Underneath are five headshots labelled from left to right as Prof Anthea Roberts, Prof Miranda Forsyth, Nick Lothian, Bernard Duggan, Aishwarya.]

 

In order to do all of this, we've had to put together a talented but also very diverse team. So in addition to the academic background we have on everything from geopolitics to economics, security, peace and violence, we also have a technical team that includes people with specialities in machine learning, in large language models and in software coding, as well as considerable start up experience within the team.

 

[Image on screen changes to Dragonfly Thinking logo]

 

Which brings us to here, to this room. And today we are not going to make a traditional ask for you in terms of investment funding at this point. We are very fortunate that we have sufficient funding to be able to take the next few steps of our journey by ourselves. But I am going to have two requests of you here today. The first request is that if you know any companies that you think might benefit from Dragonfly Thinking, please reach out to us because we would love to help. And the second is as we hopefully start to lift off and take flight, please follow with us on this journey because as we perfect our product market fit over the next six or so months, we think we will then be coming back and looking for investment in order to scale because we want businesses and governments everywhere to be able to use our tools to find clarity amid complexity.

 

[Image on screen remains as Dragonfly Thinking logo with the added text below: Clarity amid complexity.]

 

Thank you.

 

[Anthea exits the stage. Screen changes to a shot of the team from Dragonfly Thinking, a QR code and the Australian National University logo].