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#435110 5 Coming Breakthroughs in Energy and ...

Posted on May 18, 2019 by Android

The energy and transportation industries are being aggressively disrupted by converging exponential technologies.

In just five days, the sun provides Earth with an energy supply exceeding all proven reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas. Capturing just 1 part in 8,000 of this available solar energy would allow us to meet 100 percent of our energy needs.

As we leverage renewable energy supplied by the sun, wind, geothermal sources, and eventually fusion, we are rapidly heading towards a future where 100 percent of our energy needs will be met by clean tech in just 30 years.

During the past 40 years, solar prices have dropped 250-fold. And as these costs plummet, solar panel capacity continues to grow exponentially.

On the heels of energy abundance, we are additionally witnessing a new transportation revolution, which sets the stage for a future of seamlessly efficient travel at lower economic and environmental costs.

Top 5 Transportation Breakthroughs (2019-2024)
Entrepreneur and inventor Ramez Naam is my go-to expert on all things energy and environment. Currently serving as the Energy Co-Chair at Singularity University, Naam is the award-winning author of five books, including the Nexus series of science fiction novels. Having spent 13 years at Microsoft, his software has touched the lives of over a billion people. Naam holds over 20 patents, including several shared with co-inventor Bill Gates.

In the next five years, he forecasts five respective transportation and energy trends, each poised to disrupt major players and birth entirely new business models.

Let’s dive in.

Autonomous cars drive 1 billion miles on US roads. Then 10 billion

Alphabet’s Waymo alone has already reached 10 million miles driven in the US. The 600 Waymo vehicles on public roads drive a total of 25,000 miles each day, and computer simulations provide an additional 25,000 virtual cars driving constantly. Since its launch in December, the Waymo One service has transported over 1,000 pre-vetted riders in the Phoenix area.

With more training miles, the accuracy of these cars continues to improve. Since last year, GM Cruise has improved its disengagement rate by 321 percent since last year, trailing close behind with only one human intervention per 5,025 miles self-driven.

Autonomous taxis as a service in top 20 US metro areas

Along with its first quarterly earnings released last week, Lyft recently announced that it would expand its Waymo partnership with the upcoming deployment of 10 autonomous vehicles in the Phoenix area. While individuals previously had to partake in Waymo’s “early rider program” prior to trying Waymo One, the Lyft partnership will allow anyone to ride in a self-driving vehicle without a prior NDA.

Strategic partnerships will grow increasingly essential between automakers, self-driving tech companies, and rideshare services. Ford is currently working with Volkswagen, and Nvidia now collaborates with Daimler (Mercedes) and Toyota. Just last week, GM Cruise raised another $1.15 billion at a $19 billion valuation as the company aims to launch a ride-hailing service this year.

“They’re going to come to the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Houston, other cities with relatively good weather,” notes Naam. “In every major city within five years in the US and in some other parts of the world, you’re going to see the ability to hail an autonomous vehicle as a ride.”

Cambrian explosion of vehicle formats

Naam explains, “If you look today at the average ridership of a taxi, a Lyft, or an Uber, it’s about 1.1 passengers plus the driver. So, why do you need a large four-seater vehicle for that?”

Small electric, autonomous pods that seat as few as two people will begin to emerge, satisfying the majority of ride-hailing demands we see today. At the same time, larger communal vehicles will appear, such as Uber Express, that will undercut even the cheapest of transportation methods—buses, trams, and the like. Finally, last-mile scooter transit (or simply short-distance walks) might connect you to communal pick-up locations.

By 2024, an unimaginably diverse range of vehicles will arise to meet every possible need, regardless of distance or destination.

Drone delivery for lightweight packages in at least one US city

Wing, the Alphabet drone delivery startup, recently became the first company to gain approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to make deliveries in the US. Having secured approval to deliver to 100 homes in Canberra, Australia, Wing additionally plans to begin delivering goods from local businesses in the suburbs of Virginia.

The current state of drone delivery is best suited for lightweight, urgent-demand payloads like pharmaceuticals, thumb drives, or connectors. And as Amazon continues to decrease its Prime delivery times—now as speedy as a one-day turnaround in many cities—the use of drones will become essential.

Robotic factories drive onshoring of US factories… but without new jobs

The supply chain will continue to shorten and become more agile with the re-onshoring of manufacturing jobs in the US and other countries. Naam reasons that new management and software jobs will drive this shift, as these roles develop the necessary robotics to manufacture goods. Equally as important, these robotic factories will provide a more humane setting than many of the current manufacturing practices overseas.

Top 5 Energy Breakthroughs (2019-2024)

First “1 cent per kWh” deals for solar and wind signed

Ten years ago, the lowest price of solar and wind power fell between 10 to 12 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh), over twice the price of wholesale power from coal or natural gas.

Today, the gap between solar/wind power and fossil fuel-generated electricity is nearly negligible in many parts of the world. In G20 countries, fossil fuel electricity costs between 5 to 17 cents per kWh, while the average cost per kWh of solar power in the US stands at under 10 cents.

Spanish firm Solarpack Corp Technological recently won a bid in Chile for a 120 MW solar power plant supplying energy at 2.91 cents per kWh. This deal will result in an estimated 25 percent drop in energy costs for Chilean businesses by 2021.

Naam indicates, “We will see the first unsubsidized 1.0 cent solar deals in places like Chile, Mexico, the Southwest US, the Middle East, and North Africa, and we’ll see similar prices for wind in places like Mexico, Brazil, and the US Great Plains.”

Solar and wind will reach >15 percent of US electricity, and begin to drive all growth

Just over eight percent of energy in the US comes from solar and wind sources. In total, 17 percent of American energy is derived from renewable sources, while a whopping 63 percent is sourced from fossil fuels, and 17 percent from nuclear.

Last year in the U.K., twice as much energy was generated from wind than from coal. For over a week in May, the U.K. went completely coal-free, using wind and solar to supply 35 percent and 21 percent of power, respectively. While fossil fuels remain the primary electricity source, this week-long experiment highlights the disruptive potential of solar and wind power that major countries like the U.K. are beginning to emphasize.

“Solar and wind are still a relatively small part of the worldwide power mix, only about six percent. Within five years, it’s going to be 15 percent in the US and more than close to that worldwide,” Naam predicts. “We are nearing the point where we are not building any new fossil fuel power plants.”

It will be cheaper to build new solar/wind/batteries than to run on existing coal

Last October, Northern Indiana utility company NIPSCO announced its transition from a 65 percent coal-powered state to projected coal-free status by 2028. Importantly, this decision was made purely on the basis of financials, with an estimated $4 billion in cost savings for customers. The company has already begun several initiatives in solar, wind, and batteries.

NextEra, the largest power generator in the US, has taken on a similar goal, making a deal last year to purchase roughly seven million solar panels from JinkoSolar over four years. Leading power generators across the globe have vocalized a similar economic case for renewable energy.

ICE car sales have now peaked. All car sales growth will be electric

While electric vehicles (EV) have historically been more expensive for consumers than internal combustion engine-powered (ICE) cars, EVs are cheaper to operate and maintain. The yearly cost of operating an EV in the US is about $485, less than half the $1,117 cost of operating a gas-powered vehicle.

And as battery prices continue to shrink, the upfront costs of EVs will decline until a long-term payoff calculation is no longer required to determine which type of car is the better investment. EVs will become the obvious choice.

Many experts including Naam believe that ICE-powered vehicles peaked worldwide in 2018 and will begin to decline over the next five years, as has already been demonstrated in the past five months. At the same time, EVs are expected to quadruple their market share to 1.6 percent this year.

New storage technologies will displace Li-ion batteries for tomorrow’s most demanding applications

Lithium ion batteries have dominated the battery market for decades, but Naam anticipates new storage technologies will take hold for different contexts. Flow batteries, which can collect and store solar and wind power at large scales, will supply city grids. Already, California’s Independent System Operator, the nonprofit that maintains the majority of the state’s power grid, recently installed a flow battery system in San Diego.

Solid-state batteries, which consist of entirely solid electrolytes, will supply mobile devices in cars. A growing body of competitors, including Toyota, BMW, Honda, Hyundai, and Nissan, are already working on developing solid-state battery technology. These types of batteries offer up to six times faster charging periods, three times the energy density, and eight years of added lifespan, compared to lithium ion batteries.

Final Thoughts
Major advancements in transportation and energy technologies will continue to converge over the next five years. A case in point, Tesla’s recent announcement of its “robotaxi” fleet exemplifies the growing trend towards joint priority of sustainability and autonomy.

On the connectivity front, 5G and next-generation mobile networks will continue to enable the growth of autonomous fleets, many of which will soon run on renewable energy sources. This growth demands important partnerships between energy storage manufacturers, automakers, self-driving tech companies, and ridesharing services.

In the eco-realm, increasingly obvious economic calculi will catalyze consumer adoption of autonomous electric vehicles. In just five years, Naam predicts that self-driving rideshare services will be cheaper than owning a private vehicle for urban residents. And by the same token, plummeting renewable energy costs will make these fuels far more attractive than fossil fuel-derived electricity.

As universally optimized AI systems cut down on traffic, aggregate time spent in vehicles will decimate, while hours in your (or not your) car will be applied to any number of activities as autonomous systems steer the way. All the while, sharing an electric vehicle will cut down not only on your carbon footprint but on the exorbitant costs swallowed by your previous SUV. How will you spend this extra time and money? What new natural resources will fuel your everyday life?

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Posted in Human Robots

#435080 12 Ways Big Tech Can Take Big Action on ...

Posted on May 14, 2019 by Android

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have invested $1 billion in Breakthrough Energy to fund next-generation solutions to tackle climate. But there is a huge risk that any successful innovation will only reach the market as the world approaches 2030 at the earliest.

We now know that reducing the risk of dangerous climate change means halving global greenhouse gas emissions by that date—in just 11 years. Perhaps Gates, Zuckerberg, and all the tech giants should invest equally in innovations to do with how their own platforms —search, social media, eCommerce—can support societal behavior changes to drive down emissions.

After all, the tech giants influence the decisions of four billion consumers every day. It is time for a social contract between tech and society.

Recently myself and collaborator Johan Falk published a report during the World Economic Forum in Davos outlining 12 ways the tech sector can contribute to supporting societal goals to stabilize Earth’s climate.

Become genuine climate guardians

Tech giants go to great lengths to show how serious they are about reducing their emissions. But I smell cognitive dissonance. Google and Microsoft are working in partnership with oil companies to develop AI tools to help maximize oil recovery. This is not the behavior of companies working flat-out to stabilize Earth’s climate. Indeed, few major tech firms have visions that indicate a stable and resilient planet might be a good goal, yet AI alone has the potential to slash greenhouse gas emissions by four percent by 2030—equivalent to the emissions of Australia, Canada, and Japan combined.

We are now developing a playbook, which we plan to publish later this year at the UN climate summit, about making it as simple as possible for a CEO to become a climate guardian.

Hey Alexa, do you care about the stability of Earth’s climate?

Increasingly, consumers are delegating their decisions to narrow artificial intelligence like Alexa and Siri. Welcome to a world of zero-click purchases.

Should algorithms and information architecture be designed to nudge consumer behavior towards low-carbon choices, for example by making these options the default? We think so. People don’t mind being nudged; in fact, they welcome efforts to make their lives better. For instance, if I want to lose weight, I know I will need all the help I can get. Let’s ‘nudge for good’ and experiment with supporting societal goals.

Use social media for good

Facebook’s goal is to bring the world closer together. With 2.2 billion users on the platform, CEO Mark Zuckerberg can reasonably claim this goal is possible. But social media has changed the flow of information in the world, creating a lucrative industry around a toxic brown-cloud of confusion and anger, with frankly terrifying implications for democracy. This has been linked to the rise of nationalism and populism, and to the election of leaders who shun international cooperation, dismiss scientific knowledge, and reverse climate action at a moment when we need it more than ever.

Social media tools need re-engineering to help people make sense of the world, support democratic processes, and build communities around societal goals. Make this your mission.

Design for a future on Earth

Almost everything is designed with computer software, from buildings to mobile phones to consumer packaging. It is time to make zero-carbon design the new default and design products for sharing, re-use and disassembly.

The future is circular

Halving emissions in a decade will require all companies to adopt circular business models to reduce material use. Some tech companies are leading the charge. Apple has committed to becoming 100 percent circular as soon as possible. Great.

While big tech companies strive to be market leaders here, many other companies lack essential knowledge. Tech companies can support rapid adoption in different economic sectors, not least because they have the know-how to scale innovations exponentially. It makes business sense. If economies of scale drive the price of recycled steel and aluminium down, everyone wins.

Reward low-carbon consumption

eCommerce platforms can create incentives for low-carbon consumption. The world’s largest experiment in greening consumer behavior is Ant Forest, set up by Chinese fintech giant Ant Financial.

An estimated 300 million customers—similar to the population of the United States—gain points for making low-carbon choices such as walking to work, using public transport, or paying bills online. Virtual points are eventually converted into real trees. Sure, big questions remain about its true influence on emissions, but this is a space for rapid experimentation for big impact.

Make information more useful

Science is our tool for defining reality. Scientific consensus is how we attain reliable knowledge. Even after the information revolution, reliable knowledge about the world remains fragmented and unstructured. Build the next generation of search engines to genuinely make the world’s knowledge useful for supporting societal goals.

We need to put these tools towards supporting shared world views of the state of the planet based on the best science. New AI tools being developed by startups like Iris.ai can help see through the fog. From Alexa to Google Home and Siri, the future is “Voice”, but who chooses the information source? The highest bidder? Again, the implications for climate are huge.

Create new standards for digital advertising and marketing

Half of global ad revenue will soon be online, and largely going to a small handful of companies. How about creating a novel ethical standard on what is advertised and where? Companies could consider promoting sustainable choices and healthy lifestyles and limiting advertising of high-emissions products such as cheap flights.

We are what we eat

It is no secret that tech is about to disrupt grocery. The supermarkets of the future will be built on personal consumer data. With about two billion people either obese or overweight, revolutions in choice architecture could support positive diet choices, reduce meat consumption, halve food waste and, into the bargain, slash greenhouse gas emissions.

The future of transport is not cars, it’s data

The 2020s look set to be the biggest disruption of the automobile industry since Henry Ford unveiled the Model T. Two seismic shifts are on their way.

First, electric cars now compete favorably with petrol engines on range. Growth will reach an inflection point within a year or two once prices reach parity. The death of the internal combustion engine in Europe and Asia is assured with end dates announced by China, India, France, the UK, and most of Scandinavia. Dates range from 2025 (Norway) to 2040 (UK and China).

Tech giants can accelerate the demise. Uber recently announced a passenger surcharge to help London drivers save around $1,500 a year towards the cost of an electric car.

Second, driverless cars can shift the transport economic model from ownership to service and ride sharing. A complete shift away from privately-owned vehicles is around the corner, with large implications for emissions.

Clean-energy living and working

Most buildings are barely used and inefficiently heated and cooled. Digitization can slash this waste and its corresponding emissions through measurement, monitoring, and new business models to use office space. While, just a few unicorns are currently in this space, the potential is enormous. Buildings are one of the five biggest sources of emissions, yet have the potential to become clean energy producers in a distributed energy network.

Creating liveable cities

More cities are setting ambitious climate targets to halve emissions in a decade or even less. Tech companies can support this transition by driving demand for low-carbon services for their workforces and offices, but also by providing tools to help monitor emissions and act to reduce them. Google, for example, is collecting travel and other data from across cities to estimate emissions in real time. This is possible through technologies like artificial intelligence and the internet of things. But beware of smart cities that turn out to be not so smart. Efficiencies can reduce resilience when cities face crises.

It’s a Start
Of course, it will take more than tech to solve the climate crisis. But tech is a wildcard. The actions of the current tech giants and their acolytes could serve to destabilize the climate further or bring it under control.

We need a new social contract between tech companies and society to achieve societal goals. The alternative is unthinkable. Without drastic action now, climate chaos threatens to engulf us all. As this future approaches, regulators will be forced to take ever more draconian action to rein in the problem. Acting now will reduce that risk.

Note: A version of this article was originally published on World Economic Forum

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Posted in Human Robots

#435070 5 Breakthroughs Coming Soon in Augmented ...

Posted on May 11, 2019 by Android

Convergence is accelerating disruption… everywhere! Exponential technologies are colliding into each other, reinventing products, services, and industries.

In this third installment of my Convergence Catalyzer series, I’ll be synthesizing key insights from my annual entrepreneurs’ mastermind event, Abundance 360. This five-blog series looks at 3D printing, artificial intelligence, VR/AR, energy and transportation, and blockchain.

Today, let’s dive into virtual and augmented reality.

Today’s most prominent tech giants are leaping onto the VR/AR scene, each driving forward new and upcoming product lines. Think: Microsoft’s HoloLens, Facebook’s Oculus, Amazon’s Sumerian, and Google’s Cardboard (Apple plans to release a headset by 2021).

And as plummeting prices meet exponential advancements in VR/AR hardware, this burgeoning disruptor is on its way out of the early adopters’ market and into the majority of consumers’ homes.

My good friend Philip Rosedale is my go-to expert on AR/VR and one of the foremost creators of today’s most cutting-edge virtual worlds. After creating the virtual civilization Second Life in 2013, now populated by almost 1 million active users, Philip went on to co-found High Fidelity, which explores the future of next-generation shared VR.

In just the next five years, he predicts five emerging trends will take hold, together disrupting major players and birthing new ones.

Let’s dive in…

Top 5 Predictions for VR/AR Breakthroughs (2019-2024)
“If you think you kind of understand what’s going on with that tech today, you probably don’t,” says Philip. “We’re still in the middle of landing the airplane of all these new devices.”

(1) Transition from PC-based to standalone mobile VR devices

Historically, VR devices have relied on PC connections, usually involving wires and clunky hardware that restrict a user’s field of motion. However, as VR enters the dematerialization stage, we are about to witness the rapid rise of a standalone and highly mobile VR experience economy.

Oculus Go, the leading standalone mobile VR device on the market, requires only a mobile app for setup and can be transported anywhere with WiFi.

With a consumer audience in mind, the 32GB headset is priced at $200 and shares an app ecosystem with Samsung’s Gear VR. While Google Daydream are also standalone VR devices, they require a docked mobile phone instead of the built-in screen of Oculus Go.

In the AR space, Lenovo’s standalone Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 leads the way in providing tetherless experiences.

Freeing headsets from the constraints of heavy hardware will make VR/AR increasingly interactive and transportable, a seamless add-on whenever, wherever. Within a matter of years, it may be as simple as carrying lightweight VR goggles wherever you go and throwing them on at a moment’s notice.

(2) Wide field-of-view AR displays

Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 leads the AR industry in headset comfort and display quality. The most significant issue with their prior version was the limited rectangular field of view (FOV).

By implementing laser technology to create a microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) display, however, HoloLens 2 can position waveguides in front of users’ eyes, directed by mirrors. Subsequently enlarging images can be accomplished by shifting the angles of these mirrors. Coupled with a 47 pixel per degree resolution, HoloLens 2 has now doubled its predecessor’s FOV. Microsoft anticipates the release of its headset by the end of this year at a $3,500 price point, first targeting businesses and eventually rolling it out to consumers.

Magic Leap provides a similar FOV but with lower resolution than the HoloLens 2. The Meta 2 boasts an even wider 90-degree FOV, but requires a cable attachment. The race to achieve the natural human 120-degree horizontal FOV continues.

“The technology to expand the field of view is going to make those devices much more usable by giving you bigger than a small box to look through,” Rosedale explains.

(3) Mapping of real world to enable persistent AR ‘mirror worlds’

‘Mirror worlds’ are alternative dimensions of reality that can blanket a physical space. While seated in your office, the floor beneath you could dissolve into a calm lake and each desk into a sailboat. In the classroom, mirror worlds would convert pencils into magic wands and tabletops into touch screens.

Pokémon Go provides an introductory glimpse into the mirror world concept and its massive potential to unite people in real action.

To create these mirror worlds, AR headsets must precisely understand the architecture of the surrounding world. Rosedale predicts the scanning accuracy of devices will improve rapidly over the next five years to make these alternate dimensions possible.

(4) 5G mobile devices reduce latency to imperceptible levels

Verizon has already launched 5G networks in Minneapolis and Chicago, compatible with the Moto Z3. Sprint plans to follow with its own 5G launch in May. Samsung, LG, Huawei, and ZTE have all announced upcoming 5G devices.

“5G is rolling out this year and it’s going to materially affect particularly my work, which is making you feel like you’re talking to somebody else directly face to face,” explains Rosedale. “5G is critical because currently the cell devices impose too much delay, so it doesn’t feel real to talk to somebody face to face on these devices.”

To operate seamlessly from anywhere on the planet, standalone VR/AR devices will require a strong 5G network. Enhancing real-time connectivity in VR/AR will transform the communication methods of tomorrow.

(5) Eye-tracking and facial expressions built in for full natural communication

Companies like Pupil Labs and Tobii provide eye tracking hardware add-ons and software to VR/AR headsets. This technology allows for foveated rendering, which renders a given scene in high resolution only in the fovea region, while the peripheral regions appear in lower resolution, conserving processing power.

As seen in the HoloLens 2, eye tracking can also be used to identify users and customize lens widths to provide a comfortable, personalized experience for each individual.

According to Rosedale, “The fundamental opportunity for both VR and AR is to improve human communication.” He points out that current VR/AR headsets miss many of the subtle yet important aspects of communication. Eye movements and microexpressions provide valuable insight into a user’s emotions and desires.

Coupled with emotion-detecting AI software, such as Affectiva, VR/AR devices might soon convey much more richly textured and expressive interactions between any two people, transcending physical boundaries and even language gaps.

Final Thoughts
As these promising trends begin to transform the market, VR/AR will undoubtedly revolutionize our lives… possibly to the point at which our virtual worlds become just as consequential and enriching as our physical world.

A boon for next-gen education, VR/AR will empower youth and adults alike with holistic learning that incorporates social, emotional, and creative components through visceral experiences, storytelling, and simulation. Traveling to another time, manipulating the insides of a cell, or even designing a new city will become daily phenomena of tomorrow’s classrooms.

In real estate, buyers will increasingly make decisions through virtual tours. Corporate offices might evolve into spaces that only exist in ‘mirror worlds’ or grow virtual duplicates for remote workers.

In healthcare, accuracy of diagnosis will skyrocket, while surgeons gain access to digital aids as they conduct life-saving procedures. Or take manufacturing, wherein training and assembly will become exponentially more efficient as visual cues guide complex tasks.

In the mere matter of a decade, VR and AR will unlock limitless applications for new and converging industries. And as virtual worlds converge with AI, 3D printing, computing advancements and beyond, today’s experience economies will explode in scale and scope. Prepare yourself for the exciting disruption ahead!

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Posted in Human Robots

#434772 Traditional Higher Education Is Losing ...

Posted on March 22, 2019 by Android

Should you go to graduate school? If so, why? If not, what are your alternatives? Millions of young adults across the globe—and their parents and mentors—find themselves asking these questions every year.

Earlier this month, I explored how exponential technologies are rising to meet the needs of the rapidly changing workforce.

In this blog, I’ll dive into a highly effective way to build the business acumen and skills needed to make the most significant impact in these exponential times.

To start, let’s dive into the value of graduate school versus apprenticeship—especially during this time of extraordinarily rapid growth, and the micro-diversification of careers.

The True Value of an MBA
All graduate schools are not created equal.

For complex technical trades like medicine, engineering, and law, formal graduate-level training provides a critical foundation for safe, ethical practice (until these trades are fully augmented by artificial intelligence and automation…).

For the purposes of today’s blog, let’s focus on the value of a Master in Business Administration (MBA) degree, compared to acquiring your business acumen through various forms of apprenticeship.

The Waning of Business Degrees
Ironically, business schools are facing a tough business problem. The rapid rate of technological change, a booming job market, and the digitization of education are chipping away at the traditional graduate-level business program.

The data speaks for itself.

The Decline of Graduate School Admissions
Enrollment in two-year, full-time MBA programs in the US fell by more than one-third from 2010 to 2016.

While in previous years, top business schools (e.g. Stanford, Harvard, and Wharton) were safe from the decrease in applications, this year, they also felt the waning interest in MBA programs.

Harvard Business School: 4.5 percent decrease in applications, the school’s biggest drop since 2005.
Wharton: 6.7 percent decrease in applications.
Stanford Graduate School: 4.6 percent decrease in applications.

Another signal of change began unfolding over the past week. You may have read news headlines about an emerging college admissions scam, which implicates highly selective US universities, sports coaches, parents, and students in a conspiracy to game the undergraduate admissions process.

Already, students are filing multibillion-dollar civil lawsuits arguing that the scheme has devalued their degrees or denied them a fair admissions opportunity.

MBA Graduates in the Workforce
To meet today’s business needs, startups and massive companies alike are increasingly hiring technologists, developers, and engineers in place of the MBA graduates they may have preferentially hired in the past.

While 85 percent of US employers expect to hire MBA graduates this year (a decrease from 91 percent in 2017), 52 percent of employers worldwide expect to hire graduates with a master’s in data analytics (an increase from 35 percent last year).

We’re also seeing the waning of MBA degree holders at the CEO level.

For decades, an MBA was the hallmark of upward mobility towards the C-suite of top companies.

But as exponential technologies permeate not only products but every part of the supply chain—from manufacturing and shipping to sales, marketing and customer service—that trend is changing by necessity.

Looking at the Harvard Business Review’s Top 100 CEOs in 2018 list, more CEOs on the list held engineering degrees than MBAs (34 held engineering degrees, while 32 held MBAs).

There’s much more to leading innovative companies than an advanced business degree.

How Are Schools Responding?
With disruption to the advanced business education system already here, some business schools are applying notes from their own innovation classes to brace for change.

Over the past half-decade, we’ve seen schools with smaller MBA programs shut their doors in favor of advanced degrees with more specialization. This directly responds to market demand for skills in data science, supply chain, and manufacturing.

Some degrees resemble the precise skills training of technical trades. Others are very much in line with the apprenticeship models we’ll explore next.

Regardless, this new specialization strategy is working and attracting more new students. Over the past decade (2006 to 2016), enrollment in specialized graduate business programs doubled.

Higher education is also seeing a preference shift toward for-profit trade schools, like coding boot camps. This shift is one of several forces pushing universities to adopt skill-specific advanced degrees.

But some schools are slow to adapt, raising the question: how and when will these legacy programs be disrupted? A survey of over 170 business school deans around the world showed that many programs are operating at a loss.

But if these schools are world-class business institutions, as advertised, why do they keep the doors open even while they lose money? The surveyed deans revealed an important insight: they keep the degree program open because of the program’s prestige.

Why Go to Business School?
Shorthand Credibility, Cognitive Biases, and Prestige
Regardless of what knowledge a person takes away from graduate school, attending one of the world’s most rigorous and elite programs gives grads external validation.

With over 55 percent of MBA applicants applying to just 6 percent of graduate business schools, we have a clear cognitive bias toward the perceived elite status of certain universities.

To the outside world, thanks to the power of cognitive biases, an advanced degree is credibility shorthand for your capabilities.

Simply passing through a top school’s filtration system means that you had some level of abilities and merits.

And startup success statistics tend to back up that perceived enhanced capability. Let’s take, for example, universities with the most startup unicorn founders (see the figure below).

When you consider the 320+ unicorn startups around the world today, these numbers become even more impressive. Stanford’s 18 unicorn companies account for over 5 percent of global unicorns, and Harvard is responsible for producing just under 5 percent.

Combined, just these two universities (out of over 5,000 in the US, and thousands more around the world) account for 1 in 10 of the billion-dollar private companies in the world.

By the numbers, the prestigious reputation of these elite business programs has a firm basis in current innovation success.

While prestige may be inherent to the degree earned by graduates from these business programs, the credibility boost from holding one of these degrees is not a guaranteed path to success in the business world.

For example, you might expect that the Harvard School of Business or Stanford Graduate School of Business would come out on top when tallying up the alma maters of Fortune 500 CEOs.

It turns out that the University of Wisconsin-Madison leads the business school pack with 14 CEOs to Harvard’s 12. Beyond prestige, the success these elite business programs see translates directly into cultivating unmatched networks and relationships.

Relationships
Graduate schools—particularly at the upper echelon—are excellent at attracting sharp students.

At an elite business school, if you meet just five to ten people with extraordinary skill sets, personalities, ideas, or networks, then you have returned your $200,000 education investment.

It’s no coincidence that some 40 percent of Silicon Valley venture capitalists are alumni of either Harvard or Stanford.

From future investors to advisors, friends, and potential business partners, relationships are critical to an entrepreneur’s success.

Apprenticeships
As we saw above, graduate business degree programs are melting away in the current wave of exponential change.

With an increasing $1.5 trillion in student debt, there must be a more impactful alternative to attending graduate school for those starting their careers.

When I think about the most important skills I use today as an entrepreneur, writer, and strategic thinker, they didn’t come from my decade of graduate school at Harvard or MIT… they came from my experiences building real technologies and companies, and working with mentors.

Apprenticeship comes in a variety of forms; here, I’ll cover three top-of-mind approaches:

Real-world business acumen via startup accelerators
A direct apprenticeship model
The 6 D’s of mentorship

Startup Accelerators and Business Practicum
Let’s contrast the shrinking interest in MBA programs with applications to a relatively new model of business education: startup accelerators.

Startup accelerators are short-term (typically three to six months), cohort-based programs focusing on providing startup founders with the resources (capital, mentorship, relationships, and education) needed to refine their entrepreneurial acumen.

While graduate business programs have been condensing, startup accelerators are alive, well, and expanding rapidly.

In the 10 years from 2005 (when Paul Graham founded Y Combinator) through 2015, the number of startup accelerators in the US increased by more than tenfold.

The increase in startup accelerator activity hints at a larger trend: our best and brightest business minds are opting to invest their time and efforts in obtaining hands-on experience, creating tangible value for themselves and others, rather than diving into the theory often taught in business school classrooms.

The “Strike Force” Model
The Strike Force is my elite team of young entrepreneurs who work directly with me across all of my companies, travel by my side, sit in on every meeting with me, and help build businesses that change the world.

Previous Strike Force members have gone on to launch successful companies, including Bold Capital Partners, my $250 million venture capital firm.

Strike Force is an apprenticeship for the next generation of exponential entrepreneurs.

To paraphrase my good friend Tony Robbins: If you want to short-circuit the video game, find someone who’s been there and done that and is now doing something you want to one day do.

Every year, over 500,000 apprentices in the US follow this precise template. These apprentices are learning a craft they wish to master, under the mentorship of experts (skilled metal workers, bricklayers, medical technicians, electricians, and more) who have already achieved the desired result.

What if we more readily applied this model to young adults with aspirations of creating massive value through the vehicles of entrepreneurship and innovation?

For the established entrepreneur: How can you bring young entrepreneurs into your organization to create more value for your company, while also passing on your ethos and lessons learned to the next generation?

For the young, driven millennial: How can you find your mentor and convince him or her to take you on as an apprentice? What value can you create for this person in exchange for their guidance and investment in your professional development?

The 6 D’s of Mentorship
In my last blog on education, I shared how mobile device and internet penetration will transform adult literacy and basic education. Mobile phones and connectivity already create extraordinary value for entrepreneurs and young professionals looking to take their business acumen and skill set to the next level.

For all of human history up until the last decade or so, if you wanted to learn from the best and brightest in business, leadership, or strategy, you either needed to search for a dated book that they wrote at the local library or bookstore, or you had to be lucky enough to meet that person for a live conversation.

Now you can access the mentorship of just about any thought leader on the planet, at any time, for free.

Thanks to the power of the internet, mentorship has digitized, demonetized, dematerialized, and democratized.

What do you want to learn about?

Investing? Leadership? Technology? Marketing? Project management?

You can access a near-infinite stream of cutting-edge tools, tactics, and lessons from thousands of top performers from nearly every field—instantaneously, and for free.

For example, every one of Warren Buffett’s letters to his Berkshire Hathaway investors over the past 40 years is available for free on a device that fits in your pocket.

The rise of audio—particularly podcasts and audiobooks—is another underestimated driving force away from traditional graduate business programs and toward apprenticeships.

Over 28 million podcast episodes are available for free. Once you identify the strong signals in the noise, you’re still left with thousands of hours of long-form podcast conversation from which to learn valuable lessons.

Whenever and wherever you want, you can learn from the world’s best. In the future, mentorship and apprenticeship will only become more personalized. Imagine accessing a high-fidelity, AI-powered avatar of Bill Gates, Richard Branson, or Arthur C. Clarke (one of my early mentors) to help guide you through your career.

Virtual mentorship and coaching are powerful education forces that are here to stay.

Bringing It All Together
The education system is rapidly changing. Traditional master’s programs for business are ebbing away in the tides of exponential technologies. Apprenticeship models are reemerging as an effective way to train tomorrow’s leaders.

In a future blog, I’ll revisit the concept of apprenticeships and other effective business school alternatives.

If you are a young, ambitious entrepreneur (or the parent of one), remember that you live in the most abundant time ever in human history to refine your craft.

Right now, you have access to world-class mentorship and cutting-edge best-practices—literally in the palm of your hand. What will you do with this extraordinary power?

Join Me
Abundance-Digital Online Community: I’ve created a Digital/Online community of bold, abundance-minded entrepreneurs called Abundance-Digital. Abundance-Digital is my ‘onramp’ for exponential entrepreneurs – those who want to get involved and play at a higher level. Click here to learn more.

Image Credit: fongbeerredhot / Shutterstock.com Continue reading →

Posted in Human Robots

#434767 7 Non-Obvious Trends Shaping the Future

Posted on March 21, 2019 by Android

When you think of trends that might be shaping the future, the first things that come to mind probably have something to do with technology: Robots taking over jobs. Artificial intelligence advancing and proliferating. 5G making everything faster, connected cities making everything easier, data making everything more targeted.

Technology is undoubtedly changing the way we live, and will continue to do so—probably at an accelerating rate—in the near and far future. But there are other trends impacting the course of our lives and societies, too. They’re less obvious, and some have nothing to do with technology.

For the past nine years, entrepreneur and author Rohit Bhargava has read hundreds of articles across all types of publications, tagged and categorized them by topic, funneled frequent topics into broader trends, analyzed those trends, narrowed them down to the most significant ones, and published a book about them as part of his ‘Non-Obvious’ series. He defines a trend as “a unique curated observation of the accelerating present.”

In an encore session at South by Southwest last week (his initial talk couldn’t fit hundreds of people who wanted to attend, so a re-do was scheduled), Bhargava shared details of his creative process, why it’s hard to think non-obviously, the most important trends of this year, and how to make sure they don’t get the best of you.

Thinking Differently
“Non-obvious thinking is seeing the world in a way other people don’t see it,” Bhargava said. “The secret is curating your ideas.” Curation collects ideas and presents them in a meaningful way; museum curators, for example, decide which works of art to include in an exhibit and how to present them.

For his own curation process, Bhargava uses what he calls the haystack method. Rather than searching for a needle in a haystack, he gathers ‘hay’ (ideas and stories) then uses them to locate and define a ‘needle’ (a trend). “If you spend enough time gathering information, you can put the needle into the middle of the haystack,” he said.

A big part of gathering information is looking for it in places you wouldn’t normally think to look. In his case, that means that on top of reading what everyone else reads—the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Economist—he also buys publications like Modern Farmer, Teen Vogue, and Ink magazine. “It’s like stepping into someone else’s world who’s not like me,” he said. “That’s impossible to do online because everything is personalized.”

Three common barriers make non-obvious thinking hard.

The first is unquestioned assumptions, which are facts or habits we think will never change. When James Dyson first invented the bagless vacuum, he wanted to sell the license to it, but no one believed people would want to spend more money up front on a vacuum then not have to buy bags. The success of Dyson’s business today shows how mistaken that assumption—that people wouldn’t adapt to a product that, at the end of the day, was far more sensible—turned out to be. “Making the wrong basic assumptions can doom you,” Bhargava said.

The second barrier to thinking differently is constant disruption. “Everything is changing as industries blend together,” Bhargava said. “The speed of change makes everyone want everything, all the time, and people expect the impossible.” We’ve come to expect every alternative to be presented to us in every moment, but in many cases this doesn’t serve us well; we’re surrounded by noise and have trouble discerning what’s valuable and authentic.

This ties into the third barrier, which Bhargava calls the believability crisis. “Constant sensationalism makes people skeptical about everything,” he said. With the advent of fake news and technology like deepfakes, we’re in a post-truth, post-fact era, and are in a constant battle to discern what’s real from what’s not.

2019 Trends
Bhargava’s efforts to see past these barriers and curate information yielded 15 trends he believes are currently shaping the future. He shared seven of them, along with thoughts on how to stay ahead of the curve.

Retro Trust
We tend to trust things we have a history with. “People like nostalgic experiences,” Bhargava said. With tech moving as fast as it is, old things are quickly getting replaced by shinier, newer, often more complex things. But not everyone’s jumping on board—and some who’ve been on board are choosing to jump off in favor of what worked for them in the past.

“We’re turning back to vinyl records and film cameras, deliberately downgrading to phones that only text and call,” Bhargava said. In a period of too much change too fast, people are craving familiarity and dependability. To capitalize on that sentiment, entrepreneurs should seek out opportunities for collaboration—how can you build a product that’s new, but feels reliable and familiar?

Muddled Masculinity
Women have increasingly taken on more leadership roles, advanced in the workplace, now own more homes than men, and have higher college graduation rates. That’s all great for us ladies—but not so great for men or, perhaps more generally, for the concept of masculinity.

“Female empowerment is causing confusion about what it means to be a man today,” Bhargava said. “Men don’t know what to do—should they say something? Would that make them an asshole? Should they keep quiet? Would that make them an asshole?”

By encouraging the non-conforming, we can help take some weight off the traditional gender roles, and their corresponding divisions and pressures.

Innovation Envy
Innovation has become an over-used word, to the point that it’s thrown onto ideas and actions that aren’t really innovative at all. “We innovate by looking at someone else and doing the same,” Bhargava said. If an employee brings a radical idea to someone in a leadership role, in many companies the leadership will say they need a case study before implementing the radical idea—but if it’s already been done, it’s not innovative. “With most innovation what ends up happening is not spectacular failure, but irrelevance,” Bhargava said.

He suggests that rather than being on the defensive, companies should play offense with innovation, and when it doesn’t work “fail as if no one’s watching” (often, no one will be).

Artificial Influence
Thanks to social media and other technologies, there are a growing number of fabricated things that, despite not being real, influence how we think. “15 percent of all Twitter accounts may be fake, and there are 60 million fake Facebook accounts,” Bhargava said. There are virtual influencers and even virtual performers.

“Don’t hide the artificial ingredients,” Bhargava advised. “Some people are going to pretend it’s all real. We have to be ethical.” The creators of fabrications meant to influence the way people think, or the products they buy, or the decisions they make, should make it crystal-clear that there aren’t living, breathing people behind the avatars.

Enterprise Empathy
Another reaction to the fast pace of change these days—and the fast pace of life, for that matter—is that empathy is regaining value and even becoming a driver of innovation. Companies are searching for ways to give people a sense of reassurance. The Tesco grocery brand in the UK has a “relaxed lane” for those who don’t want to feel rushed as they check out. Starbucks opened a “signing store” in Washington DC, and most of its regular customers have learned some sign language.

“Use empathy as a principle to help yourself stand out,” Bhargava said. Besides being a good business strategy, “made with empathy” will ideally promote, well, more empathy, a quality there’s often a shortage of.

Robot Renaissance
From automating factory jobs to flipping burgers to cleaning our floors, robots have firmly taken their place in our day-to-day lives—and they’re not going away anytime soon. “There are more situations with robots than ever before,” Bhargava said. “They’re exploring underwater. They’re concierges at hotels.”

The robot revolution feels intimidating. But Bhargava suggests embracing robots with more curiosity than concern. While they may replace some tasks we don’t want replaced, they’ll also be hugely helpful in multiple contexts, from elderly care to dangerous manual tasks.

Back-storytelling
Similar to retro trust and enterprise empathy, organizations have started to tell their brand’s story to gain customer loyalty. “Stories give us meaning, and meaning is what we need in order to be able to put the pieces together,” Bhargava said. “Stories give us a way of understanding the world.”

Finding the story behind your business, brand, or even yourself, and sharing it openly, can help you connect with people, be they customers, coworkers, or friends.

Tech’s Ripple Effects
While it may not overtly sound like it, most of the trends Bhargava identified for 2019 are tied to technology, and are in fact a sort of backlash against it. Tech has made us question who to trust, how to innovate, what’s real and what’s fake, how to make the best decisions, and even what it is that makes us human.

By being aware of these trends, sharing them, and having conversations about them, we’ll help shape the way tech continues to be built, and thus the way it impacts us down the road.

Image Credit: Rohit Bhargava by Brian Smale Continue reading →

Posted in Human Robots