Board Member Profile: Nirav S. Desai
CEO, Moonbeam
Nirav S. Desai has advised corporations and agencies in the technology, health, manufacturing/logistics, and government sectors in how best to benefit from their own and others R&D investments. He led an initiative in a major consulting firm to establish a strategy to invest in and source technology from innovation economies across the nation. This resulted in a North American innovation index, founding of a 100+ person immersive technology (virtual reality, augmented reality, etc.) practice, and numerous channel partnerships leading to win-wins between corporations, government, and startups.
He is CEO of Moonbeam a startups that is disrupting corporate innovation and corporate venture capital using data science, artificial intelligence, and immersive technology. Additionally, he advises startups and consults with corporate clients working with innovation labs, government research centers, universities, and incubators and accelerators, to identify and embrace edge technologies.
He mentors startups through TechStars Seattle, the TechStars/Amazon Alexa startup accelerators, and the University of Washington’s CoMotion Labs. He serves as an Innovation Co-Chair for the Pacific Northwest Economic Region with a focus on helping states, provinces, and municipalities embrace disruption and position for the future economy.
We sat down with Nirav to hear a little more about his perspective on the Tactical Athlete. Here is what he had to say:
(TA-LB): The themes of the Tactical Athlete Leadership Board are Readiness, Resilience, and Recovery. From your perspective, why are these themes essential, and what about them resonates with your experience in the human performance industry?
(Nirav): Human performance is not merely about a person's ability to run faster, jump higher, or lift more. It's about enhancing a person's readiness for whatever physical and mental challenges they face, recover from impact or injury quickly, and maintain peak performance for longer. To that end, Readiness, Resilience, and Recovery are key themes that the industry should keep in mind as we enhance performance with the aid of technology.
(TA-LB): Looking to the future, what technological innovation do you think will have the most significant impact on tactical athletes?
(Nirav): Human performance extends beyond physical fitness to mental readiness. I am excited to see the benefits of brain computer interfaces applied to human performance. Portable EEGs and other sensor technology show potential to help maximize the benefit of training, improve recovery, and even with neuromorphic engineering overcome physical limitations.
(TA-LB): The spirit of the TALB is to bring a diverse set of perspectives to the table aligned toward a singular purpose: to sustain the tactical athlete of today and preparing for the tactical athlete of tomorrow. Why is it essential for the broader human performance industry to work together towards this end?
(Nirav): As the spirit of the Olympics demonstrates, amazing feats can be accomplished in the spirit of unity in competition. It is with this spirit that I approach advancement in human performance technology -- guided by ethical collaboration towards maximizing human potential.
(TA-LB): What is the greatest challenge to innovation in the human performance sector?
(Nirav): It is critical in the human performance space that we get the balance right between security controls right to get the value of big data and sensory input and privacy. While data is key to helping us understand how to maximize performance, we are dealing with sensitive and intrusive data sets. The big data sector has not been very good at respecting privacy, and that is something we need to address as we growth the human performance sector.