One of the most elusive elements of entrepreneurship is to imagine the context of your initiative when you expect it to have an impact. In other words, what will the future demand, opportunity, and challenge be in your enterprise’s future as it matures. Yogi Berra loved to quip about the future, from “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future” to “The future ain’t what it used to be.” Here are a few entrepreneurs and futurists whose vision shows us how to think about our future enterprise and how to plan for future success.
Timing Rules!!!
Bill Gross founded many startups and incubated many more. In this TED talk (6:40 min) he shares what he learned about why some startups succeed and other fail. To his surprise, it wasn’t the great idea behind the company, it was the TIMING. Watch his talk see how important timing is to your success. Then study the rest of the page to learn how to time your venture. Here’s his talk, The Single Biggest Reason Startups Succeed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNpx7gpSqbY
Isaac Asimov was a prolific and respected science and science fiction writer who was asked in 1983 to imagine the world in 2019, 35 years in the future. You can judge how well he understood the factors that have produced our current world in the full text of his article: https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2018/12/27/35-years-ago-isaac-asimov-was-asked-by-the-star-to-predict-the-world-of-2019-here-is-what-he-wrote.html
Combine Timing with Exponentially-Evolving Technology
Here’s Ray Kurzweil presenting the BIG IDEAS of GNR that really will change you life (1:19 min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZlg_YoxW6M
Wayne Gretzky was the greatest ice hockey player because he played the game, continuously anticipating the future, skating to where he anticipated the plays and the puck to be. The most successful inventors and entrepreneurs invest their time and money in innovative enterprises they anticipate will have a ready market when the product or service is launched. Note: They focus more on when the market is ready than when their service or product is ready. The Market timing determines their product timing. Apple is a perfect example of this. they had no interest in launching the first home computer, the first digital music player, the first portable phone or first portable computer. They launched when the world was ready for a break-the-mold product, yielding the Apple ][, the Macintosh, the iPod, the iPhone, and the MacBook. If they had launched any of them earlier, neither the technology nor the market would have favored success. Launching later would have been just as bad.
Here’s an education example. In 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act imposed requirements for “Adequate Yearly Progress” on academic standards as measured by accepted standardized tests. Based on new legal requirements, education testing and curriculum companies went into high gear to create materials aligned to academic standards to sell to states and schools. Was there ANY research to support this approach? Here’s an 2012 except from the Brookings Institution, a decade after academic standards were federally mandated:
One approach to enhancing schools’ efficacy in this area is improved educational standards. Standards are routine in American life. Sports have them; businesses have them; professions have them. Standards are useful in clarifying the knowledge, skills, and competencies that society expects from individuals and organizations.
In this quote, do you see any shred of evidence for academic standards other than they are “routine in American life?” In fact, in 2002 there were no accepted standards for American schools. The Act called for states to select standards to which their students would be held. An unintended consequence was that states with high standards which many students couldn’t meet (like Massachusetts), actually lowered their state standards to comply with federal law. Companies like Pearson and the states worked to develop standards that could be uniform across most of the U.S., and they called these the Common Core standards. Nearly 50 states initially said they would adopt Common Core. But after push back from schools, communities, and political groups, Common Core standards and tests have become radioactive. The companies that invested millions (like Pearson) in CC tests and curriculum lost their millions. Pearson has learned from this error, and they are selling their textbook business (their primary product). In its place, Pearson is pursuing artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches to personalize learning. In other words, rather than responding to a short-term opportunity, they are now investing in a fundamental exponential technology that will impact schools. This time, they are following the Wayne Gretzky, Ray Kurzweil approach!
note: there is still no research that supports “standards-based education.” Yet school administrators are advised to use empirical evidence (meaning research or hard data) to guide their schools. By definition, there is no evidence available from past studies to determine how social science (like education) will behave under future conditions. Our “backward-looking” research model fails in an exponentially-changing environment. There are research models that can address this (like Bayesian probability models), but they are not usually used by governments or educational institutions. One more reason to expect disruptive innovation in education. ~srg
How Do You Identify Emerging Technologies and Markets?
You could follow Bill Gates’ advice and listen to futurist & inventor Ray Kurzweil. Ray has been inventing since he was 17 years old. By age 20, he had invented the flatbed scanner, text recognition, text-to-speech, and the first book reader for the blind, and his Kurzweil Reader was purchased by libraries around the world. He applied his knowledge of the production of speech patterns to the production of music patterns to create the music synthesizer. His Kurzweil synthesizer has graced many concert stages and played for many recordings. Google hired him as Director of Engineering when he was in his late 60’s because he had a younger, more grounded perspective than many in their 20’s and 30’s. He now predicts that rapid technology innovation that will cause massive economic and social change will happen in Genetics (Genomics,) Nanotechnology, and Robotics (AI) in the 1920’s and 30’s. Entrepreneurs are already pushing these envelopes, hoping to be ready in time, and Investors are already fueling their young companies.
Genetics/Genomics (biotechnology)
Through our understanding of genes, DNA, RNA, and other parts of living cells, scientists have now designed new life forms and created them (one-cell organisms). This field promises so much, it would take a dozen courses to scratch the surface, but think of personalized medicine, tailored to your DNA, or gene therapy to CURE color blindness caused by genetic defect. To get a taste of how to think about this field, here’s a 19-min TED talk by Juan Enriquez on how our genetic knowledge may produce the next species of human. The video’s a decade old, but his delivery and context makes his talk as relevant today. Please watch it all:
Nanotechnology: Molecular-Level Manufacturing
Nanotechnology was conceptualized by the great physicist, Richard Feynman, in a 1964 talk where he challenged an audience to build an electric motor that would fit inside a human hair (it was done a few years later). In 1981, Eric Drexler published his stunning book, Engines of Creation, in which he suggested how engineers could design manufacturing systems that work the same way living cells work, using individual molecules as building blocks. Consider that each of your human cells has the complexity internally of a human city, complete with transportation, communication, nutrition, and security systems. Your cells “manufactured” you. There have been lots of demonstrations of how this could work, but it’s devilishly hard. Since Eric Drexler is not a dynamic speaker, watch the 5-min video below to see the concepts at work. Remember that this, in a way, is how your own cells work:
For a MUCH better idea of how this works, let’s look inside your own cells in this amazing TED talk by medical animator David Bolinsky showing video he made to train Harvard biology students. I suggest you start watching the clip at the 3:00 min mark (it will go for 6 amazing minutes). There are two misunderstandings that the video suggests because 1) it’s REALLY crowded and bustling with molecules bumping into each other — more like Manhattan rush hour, 2) but at speeds hundreds of thousand times faster than in the video. Nanotechnology is bringing the manufacturing of life to the manufacturing of designed products that could be, in theory, as complicated as you. Here’s the video:
Robotics and Artificial Intelligence
This is also a huge field, but to give you an idea of where the field is going, here’s Kevin Kelly’s 13-min talk on our future with AI. No fancy images, just thoughtful ideas from a VERY bright and well-informed guy!