insaine viewing
"I'm telling you, it could be huge." Gunther paces alongside Carrie as she power-walks to the board meeting.
"I get that, I really do," Carrie checks her phone. "But can you honestly tell me you really, genuinely believe that Joe Schmoe is going to pay upwards of $2,000 to wear a full-body suit while they're rotting on the couch?"
Gunther sighs. "I've run the numbers, Carrie, I know it's steep. But you're completely underestimating how insane fans can be."
"Trust me, I'm not." She stops abruptly before the conference room to straighten her blazer. "I went to the original Eras tour. I've seen that shit up close."
Gunther shakes his head. "I mean the use cases alone, Carrie. We haven't had something with this much potential market share in years. Concerts, TV, sports, gaming — anything you want to experience, just at home."
Carrie turns to Gunther, placing a hand on each shoulder. "I appreciate the hard sell. It's just not a priority right now." She gives him a pat to settle the conversation and marches into the conference room.
She watches Gunther sulk off as she takes her seat at the conference table. A few of the board members are already seated, chatting about last night's extravagant dinner. She can still feel the five-course meal sitting heavy in her stomach.
"Gentlemen," she nods to them.
"Carrie! How are you?" John asks. Dressed, as usual, in a designer suit, he is nonetheless always the friendliest to her.
Before she can strike up a conversation, her CEO, David, struts into the room and begins the hours-long quarterly meeting. Carrie tries hard to pay attention to the financial updates, but all she can think about is her portion of the presentation. As Head of Innovation, it's her job to inspire the board members with the latest and greatest from their R&D labs. To reassure them that Gilded is still best-in-class for consumer tech.
In years past, it felt like the easy part of every board meeting. Gilded was so ahead of the curve on AI adoption, it was like they couldn't miss. But a series of ill-fated investments have put her back to the wall, and she knows she is one more miss away from being politely pushed out.
Too soon, it's time for her section. She projects her slides on the screen, and puts on her most dazzling smile. This quarter she has a few product updates to share on their best-sellers. She figures playing it safe until the next great idea came along is the way to go, but when she wraps up her closing remarks, she looks around the table to blank faces.
John clears his throat. Never a good sign.
"Carrie." He folds his hands on the table and leans toward her. "These updates, we absolutely see the value in them. And we appreciate you moving forward our biggest revenue-drivers."
She puts her hands in her lap so no one can see them shaking.
"But Gilded is where it is today because we take risks. It's in our DNA. Now, it goes without saying, some of our more recent risks haven't paid off."
John looks around, nodding at the other board members. "Still, Aptitude is too close on our tails to take our foot off the gas. We can't lose any more ground to them."
"Of course, I understand that, John. We have some exciting products in the lab that should be ready to prototype by Q3's meeting."
"I'm afraid that's just not going to work. My intel says that Aptitude has a big launch coming in June. We need something big to steal their sunshine."
Carrie turns to David, who had assured her just yesterday that her presentation would suffice until Q3. He shrugs. No help.
"Ok, ok," Carrie's heart races as she mentally scrolls through her team's latest pitches. Everything is either too early-stage or too irrelevant. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.
"Well, there is something."
John smiles with his perfect veneers, almost blindingly white. "Wonderful! Say more." He looks at his Rolex. "I have another 15 minutes before heading to the airport."
"Ok, so as you just saw, our full-body haptic suits lead the industry in sales with high-profile clients in the military and select hospitals."
John squints as though trying to remember.
David jumps in, "Haptic suits, as I'm sure you know, are essentially wearable computers that simulate touch and other sensations."
"Right. Our current clients use them for high-intensity training, to simulate real-world conditions for scenarios that are typically too dangerous or difficult to practice." Carrie continues.
John fiddles with his watch. "And aren't we losing money on these suits?"
"Well, right now our customer base is so small that we continue the product line mostly to maintain the relationships we've built. If, however, we can feasibly expand their application, it opens a huge market."
She pauses, trying to remember how Gunther had phrased his pitch.
"Imagine a world where every superfan can simulate the exact experience of their favorite concert, game, TV show — anything that used to be a 3D viewing experience, can now be 4D. From seen to felt."
John nods so she continues with even more energy.
"All you have to do is put on your haptic suit, select your activity — maybe even down to the exact character in a particular show — and voila, you can really feel what the person you're watching feels in the moment."
She looks to David for reassurance, seeing his approving smirk.
"It would be like feeling the adrenaline of a 60-yard touchdown. Or the beat of Rachel's heart when Ross said they were on a break."
John chuckles, "You're dating yourself Carrie."
She smiles.
"I'm interested in the concept. It sounds cool. But I can't see how we could profit on a suit that costs," John flips through the board pages, "upwards of two grand on a consumer budget."
"That's what I thought too," Carrie bites her bottom lip, a habit she's been trying to kick with her executive coach.
"But, but!" She nearly jumps out of her chair. "Ok the suit imitates the physical effects of real-world scenarios for wearers. That's what's in it for the consumer. But it also gathers biometric data on how the human body responds. Which means…"
"We can sell that data to advertisers." David cuts in with the same realization.
"Exactly!" Carrie snaps her fingers, wondering why she hadn't thought of this angle before. "We'll have just invented the only quantifiable media metric for the effectiveness of a product placement or ad. Brands have been dying to measure this since the dawn of advertising."
"It could be worth billions," David says in a mock whisper.
John mulls it over. He taps the table twice as he stands, "I want a full business case by Monday."
Carrie's heart doesn't slow down until all of the board members have left the room. She falls back in her chair and lets out a huge sigh of relief. She texts Gunther, good news - i owe you.