From Turnstiles to a New Category called “Presence”

Steve Caroselli, the CEO of Orion, joins us to talk about the next generation of entrance controls and his unique approach to innovation in collaboration with his clients. Just when you thought you were talking about turnstiles, Steve opens our eyes and minds to a new sensor driven world. 

He will tell you he is not a turnstile company, although he is a leader in that product category. To Caroselli, turnstiles are access control systems. To innovate and lead in this rapidly expanding category, Orion must be a technology company. To Caroselli, that is important. With technology rapidly evolving, every security product that you purchase today will likely be disrupted by new and imaginative approaches to identity, presence, and access control. 

To Caroselli, innovative technology companies must practice "speed lane" thinking. “We must own our responsibility for getting our customers brand right as well as mitigating the risk to their company”, he said. And mitigating the risk from a ‘speed lane’ requires Orion to know the use case that impacts their people, process, and other technologies in the building. “We must be the ones that help our customer ask the right questions.”

And Caroselli takes his own medicine. One of his main jobs is to stay in front of leading indicators of change including the risk, the uberization of core assumptions we make about situational awareness and actionable response, and the technology. Today one of his biggest projects is reimagining and repurposing the turnstile. “The age of Covid has taught us that we need to not just validate entrance, but also validate presence”, said Caroselli. And that means we have to be tied into other security, building, and enterprise systems. And we have to reimagine the internal and external entries and the behavior in and around it.” Caroselli believes that this will radically expand the market for Orion’s solutions.

As you listen to our conversation, you will hear how his mind works, and why a bet on his success might be a sound investment.