Dr. Diane Bowser is Senior Manager of Emerging Technologies at Lenovo and founder of CodeReal, bringing a rare blend of R&D leadership, arts background, and startup hustle to the world of XR (extended reality) and wearables.

Key Takeaways:

• Bridging Startup and Enterprise: Diane operates at the intersection of nimble startup energy (CodeReal) and scale-driven corporate innovation (Lenovo). She encourages founders to blend creative, non-technical perspectives with technical knowhow.
• Making Innovation Human: Her goal is building technologies (especially wearables and XR) that respect users' privacy, data, and trust—extending Lenovo’s reputation for security into new product lines.
• From Arts to Tech: Diane credits her arts background for resilience, negotiation skills, and a user-centric approach—highlighting how creative, non-traditional founders can thrive in tech if paired with the right collaborators.
• Focus & Letting Go: She shares the importance of time-blocking, realistic metrics, and having the humility to let go of bad ideas (or mismatched team members) to focus on what works, both for individual startups and within global R&D.

Diane’s journey spans classical music, philosophy, teaching, and company-building, united by a drive to break barriers and make technology human-centric. Her story is one of continual reinvention, boundary-crossing, and championing both technological progress and the people behind it.

About Dr. Diane Bowser, PhD

Dr. Diane Bowser, PhD is a Senior Manager guiding Lenovo’s Emerging Software UX Team. The Emerging Software UX Team designs experiences for new technologies, AI, and XR hardware products from inception to two years as they enter Lenovo’s commercial product portfolio.
For 2025-26, her work centers on building next-generation AI and Spatial XR technologies. The Emerging Software UX team looks forward to new lighter spatial form factors in XR and agentic AI in spatial computing with integration into the commercial Think Series hardware.
Before joining Lenovo, Diane was, and is, a co-founder of CodeReal, LLC, a company that develops augmented reality (AR), mixed-reality (MR), and virtual reality (VR) applications for companies, institutions, and manufacturers that require targeted spatial components.
As an academic (Ph.D. in Philosophy, AOC - Technology), Diane spent 20 years teaching in various public and private institutions at the university level. Most notably Clarion University and the University of Pittsburgh where a technology prototyping class inspired her to work exclusively with start-ups over the last decade to seed business growth in 3D design, augmented reality, mixed reality, and virtual reality enterprise-level ventures.

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