Career
Early ventures (1992–2002)
Rose established Interactive Factory in 1992 after gaining experience as a software engineer in speech recognition and robotics. The company created interactive museum exhibits, educational software, and smart toys, including the award-winning LEGO Mindstorms Robotic Invention System. The company, now known as iFactory, operates as a division of RDW Group.
After Interactive Factory's acquisition in 1997, Rose patented the first online photo-sharing service and founded Opholio. [2] The start-up was acquired by Flashpoint Technology in 1998. [3] Rose then established Viant's Innovation Center, where he served as director for four years, working with Fortune 500 clients including Sony, General Motors, Schwab, Sprint, and Kinko's. He helped build Viant to over 900 people, $140M in revenue, and a successful IPO.
Ambient Devices (2002–2008)
In 2002, Rose co-founded Ambient Devices, a spin-off from the MIT Media Lab [4] and a pioneer in embedding Internet information in everyday objects. [1] One of Rose's inventions was the Ambient Orb. [5] [6] The company developed over a dozen internet-connected objects, including the Ambient Umbrella, the Ambient Dashboard, the 5-day Weather Forecaster, and the Energy Joule. The company was funded by Nicholas Negroponte and Hiroshi Ishii.
Vitality and GlowCap (2008–2011)
In 2008, Rose founded Vitality, a high-tech healthcare startup where he conceived and led the development of the GlowCap, the first cellular-connected pill cap. [7] The product was proven in randomized clinical trials to increase medication adherence to over 90% and was a recipient of the 2010 Medical Design Excellence Awards. Vitality was acquired in 2011 by biotech investor Patrick Soon-Shiong and rolled into NantHealth. [8]
Ditto Labs (2012–2017)
Rose was the founder and CEO of Ditto Labs, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup focused on image-recognition software that analyzed visual social media content for brand insights using computer vision for logo detection and scene understanding. [2]
IDEO (2017)
In 2017, Rose was a futurist-in-residence at IDEO, where he worked with a team to design and prototype gesture-based interactions and developed computer vision technology for people to perform one and two-handed gestures to control light and sound in the environment. Rose filmed dancers, American Sign Language teachers, mimes, and an orchestra conductor to learn about the communicative power of subtle gestures. He published "Why Gesture is the Next Big Thing in Design" on the IDEO Blog. [9]
LOOKOUT (2020–present)
In 2020, Rose co-founded LOOKOUT, where he serves as CEO. LOOKOUT develops computer vision systems for marine collision avoidance, detecting vessels, debris, whales, and people in the water using AI-powered object detection. [11] The company has deployed over 100 systems globally, with integration to marine electronics from Garmin, Furuno, Raymarine, and Simrad.
In 2025, LOOKOUT won the IBEX Innovation Award for OEM Electronics, judged by Boating Writers International and selected from 112 entries. [12]
Rose holds multiple patents related to the technology, including patents on obstacle avoidance systems, situational awareness, dynamic lighting control, and projecting bathymetric data in augmented reality. [13]
Other roles
Rose also served as the Chief Technology Officer and advisor for Home Outside, an AI landscape design service that uses computer vision and scene segmentation on aerial and street view images to automatically redesign residential landscapes.
Rose was a Fellow at Samsung Electronics (2016), advising on emerging technology platforms including augmented reality, wearables, and ambient computing. He was also a Fellow at Gensler (2015), where he created the Balance Table (with Tellart) for Salesforce—interactive furniture that uses real-time illumination to show speaker participation and promote conversational balance.
Books
In July 2014, Rose published Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire, and the Internet of Things (Scribner). [15] Rose argues that the cell phone monopolizes attention and that there is an opportunity to unglue society from these screens by spreading apps into everyday objects like clothing, jewelry, and rooms. [16] The book is widely adopted in design curricula.
In 2021, Rose published his second book, SuperSight: What Augmented Reality Means for Our Lives, Our Work, and the Way We Imagine the Future (BenBella Books). [17] The book received the National Indie Excellence Award for Nonfiction and the Independent Publisher Book Award Bronze Medal in Science. [18]
Rose is currently working on a third book, Dancing with AI, about human-AI collaboration frameworks.
Rose appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in August 2014 to discuss Enchanted Objects and the Internet of Things. [16] His work has been parodied on The Colbert Report .
Rose is represented as a keynote speaker by The Lavin Agency and has spoken at TEDxBeaconStreet, TEDxBerkeley, South by Southwest, the Institute for the Future, and CES 2025. He has been featured in The New York Times , WIRED , The Economist , Forbes , The Wall Street Journal , Fast Company , and MIT Technology Review .
Rose has appeared on podcasts including the Singularity University Feedback Loop, [19] The Informed Life, [20] and Product Mastery Now. [21]
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