Change Itself Doesn’t Hurt. What Hurts is Our Resistance to Change.

“… will require changes in product design and business approaches that have ripple effects throughout supply chains and economic systems.”

What are multi-level solutions? How is MIT driving innovation towards zero waste in circular economies?  Can apps really fuel data-rich pictures to save the planet? What’s on the near horizon for healthcare? Is money really the root of all evil? Or, is it simply an entrenched mindset highly resistant to change?

And, finally why are physicists “high-fiving” themselves for discovering a formula for water drops?  Is it about the potential commercial opportunities from the formula’s cascading, rippling effects?

We Need a Data-Rich Picture of What’s Killing the Planet

To tackle the marine litter mystery, Eriksen and other antipollution groups built an app that hundreds of volunteers used to map the banks of the Los Angeles River, where trash was entering the marine ecosystem. Now cities can use that data to do surgical interventions, like identifying hot spots that need more trash cans or more frequent cleanup. “It’s totally scalable,” Eriksen says, and groups from Ecuador to Hawaii plan to use the app for their own surveys.” WIRED · by Clive Thompson Illustration CAITLYN GRABENSTEIN

Calling Innovators To Join The Circular Economy Challenge

This realization, fuelled by escalating consumer concern, is driving businesses to find multi-level solutions for circular economies with zero waste. In support, MIT’s Solve initiative is calling for innovators to submit their sustainable solutions. The leading question is, ‘How can people create and consume goods that are renewable, repairable, reusable and recyclable?’ Generating these solutions, Solve proposes, ‘will require changes in product design and business approaches that have ripple effects throughout supply chains and economic systems.’” by Natalie Parletta ROMOLO TAVANI, ADOBE PHOTO STOCK

Curated by Steve Howard in “The Journal of 2020 Foresight,” the Know Laboratories’ digital magazine.

The next frontier in health care: regenerative medicine

This is done through diet, lifestyle, acupuncture — which stimulates the body’s own stem cells — mindset and other practices. Regenerative medicine is an exciting aspect of this care. ‘Prescriptions and surgery certainly have their place in health care, but I think people in general are recognizing the need to be stewards of their own health,’ Dr. Lawrence said. ‘If we can look at the whole person and picture, we can see a long-term better result. Hopefully this is where we’ll see healthcare going — with different health care providers coming together.’” By Lauren Glendenning Shutterstock images

Rise of the Extinction Deniers

What does all of this serve? Obviously, just as with climate denial, the more you deny that extinctions happen or that they’re a problem, the more you can drill, blast, pave, extract or eliminate—all so you can remove any barriers to your “freedom” and make as much money as you want. Amidst a very real extinction crisis affecting species around the globe, that’s the type of mindset that needs to go extinct.” Scientific American By John R. Platt Credit: Paul Brennan Pixabay

Scientists Discover an ‘Unexpectedly Simple’ Formula Behind The Nature of Water Drops

This infinitesimal phenomenon has been studied by physicists for decades, but while the overall concept may be easy to imagine, discerning the mathematical relationships that underpin such electrified explosions has been anything but. Now that it’s been figured out, scientists say this one formula could lead to new advancements in everything from space propulsion to mass spectrometry, high-resolution printing, air purification, molecular analysis, and more.” BY PETER DOCKRILL (peter bocklandt/iStock)

If you find this digest valuable,  please visit us at Know Laboratories and sign up to receive free email updates about “Thriving in an Age of Accelerating Uncertainty.

Knowing About New Possibilities Gives You More Choices. Check These Out.

When compared with previous industrial revolutions, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace.

What is it that big companies don’t understand about 83 million of their customers? What’s hiding in  Mary Meeker ‘s 333 slides this year? If you don’t know what the 4th Industrial Revolution is all about, will there be any hope for you in the future? Why isn’t separating your recycles from your garbage bins at your curbside enough? What’s hiding in your gut and why does it mean to your response to drug treatments – especially if you suffer from Parkinson’s? And, what’s this about floating solar panel islands, CO2 conversion and sea water?

Here’s the 1 Eye-Opening Statistic About Millennials That Big Companies Are Finally Beginning to Notice Hint: 35 percent.

“But a new report suggests that big companies are having a sudden realization–something that almost every one of the 83.1 million Millennial Americans knew a long time ago, and in fact that they’ve been screaming from the proverbial rooftops. It’s that while as a generation Millennials are “digitally native, mobile oriented, media savvy, politically progressive, ethnically diverse, well-educated and culturally savvy,” as Adweek put it recently, they also have one other giant defining characteristic: They’re kinda broke. The big culprits? There are two (neither is a big surprise). Number 1 is housing. Millennials are spending far more than their predecessors just to keep a roof over their heads. Half are still renting, and they’re paying a larger share of their income in rent than previous generations did. Number 2 is student debt. Americans under 30 owe $384 billion in student loans. Go back to 2004 — and honestly, student loans were a big issue then already — and the number was just $148 billion for that cohort.” By Bill Murphy Jr.

Mary Meeker just published her highly anticipated internet trends report

Well-known venture capital investor Mary Meeker is out with her annual internet trends report, which has become required reading for tech investors. After splitting with Silicon Valley investing giant Kleiner Perkins in September, Meeker started a new firm called Bond Capital, which has raised $1.25 billion so far.  The 333-slide report highlights the rise in digital media and visual communication like Instagram, wearable technology and digital payments, among other trends. More than half of the human population is online, Meeker said on stage at Recode. Public and private investments into tech companies is at at a two-decade high, nearing $200 billion last year. Wearable technology is booming, and users have doubled in the past four years. E-commerce and ride-share driven digital payments are rising. Image-based communication like Instagram, is on the rise. YouTube and Instagram are gaining the most for time spent on online platforms. Interactive games like Fortnite are gaining ground. Total players have accelerated at 2.4 billion, up 6% this year. “Privacy concerns are high but they’re moderating,” Meeker said on stage at Recode. Media time spent on mobile hit “equilibrium.” China makes up 21% of total global internet users vs. 8% in the United States.” Kate Rooney

Curated by Steve Howard in “The Journal of 2020 Foresight,” the Know Laboratories’ digital magazine.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means, how to respond

“When compared with previous industrial revolutions, the Fourth is evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace. Moreover, it is disrupting almost every industry in every country. And the breadth and depth of these changes herald the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance. The possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge, are unlimited. And these possibilities will be multiplied by emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing.”  Klaus Schwab  Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum

United States of Plastic Where does your plastic go? 

“Global investigation reveals America’s dirty secret A Guardian investigation has found that hundreds of thousands of tons of US plastic are being shipped every year to poorly regulated developing countries around the globe for the dirty, labor-intensive process of recycling. The consequences for public health and the environment are grim. A team of Guardian reporters in 11 countries has found:Last year, the equivalent of 68,000 shipping containers of American plastic recycling were exported from the US to developing countries that mismanage more than 70% of their own plastic waste.” Guardian US · Erin McCormick, Bennett Murray , Carmela Fonbuena , Leonie Kijewski, Gökçe Saraçoğlu , Jamie Fullerton, Alastair Gee and Charlotte Simmonds 

Rigorous study explains how a single gut bacteria species can eat Parkinson’s disease drug

One of the most compelling, and burgeoning, areas in medical research today is the influence of our gut microbiome on a whole host of mechanisms in our body. A Yale University study just last week catalogued how 76 kinds of gut bacteria can negatively affect 176 commonly prescribed medicines. Ultimately this new research paints the most complete picture to date of how a specific bacterial species can disrupt the metabolism of a commonly used drug. The striking study offers a new insight into why medicines do not work the same way in every person, and better understanding these mechanisms may suggest ways to significantly improve the efficacy drugs we have already developed, instead of producing entirely new ones.” Rich Haridy

Giant Floating Solar Farms Could Extract CO2 From Seawater, Producing Methanol Fuel

“Millions of floating islands, clustered together, that convert carbon dioxide to methanol fuel could help reduce the amount of green house gases in the atmosphere, according to researchers from Norway and Switzerland. In the paper, the researchers suggest floating islands similar to large-scale floating fish farms. They would use photovoltaic cells that could convert solar energy into electricity. This would then power hydrogen production and carbon dioxide extraction from seawater. The gasses produced would then be reacted to form methanol that can be reused as a fuel.” Scott Snowden

Steps:

6)   Anticipate changing circumstances and economic cycles.

7)   Persist and pivot to navigate external threats and opportunities.

17) Sketch out your trajectory in 5-year timeframes.  Will we fall into another recession?  Absolutely.  Will you be ready this time with future-proofed strategies?

Is Doing What You Already Know Ever Enough? New Possibilities. More Choices.

“Handle today with an eye to the future.  Accept full responsibility for your part in creating it.”

Vitality follows those on the edge of the known.  Anyone doing what they know they can do is playing it too safe to feel successful. Knowing about new possibilities gives you more choices.  

Economic Trends

Recession “So, without fanfare, here is a straightforward look at what is going on, and why the coming recession itself is NOT the issue for you.  It is how you prepare for it.  Because if you do, you actually have a chance to profit from it.

Technology Trends

AI predicts your expiration date.

Curated by Steve Howard in “The Journal of 2020 Foresight,” the Know Laboratories’ digital magazine.

“Scientists recently trained an AI system to evaluate a decade of general health data submitted by more than half a million people in the United Kingdom. Then, they tasked the AI with predicting if individuals were at risk of dying prematurely — in other words, sooner than the average life expectancy — from chronic disease, they reported in a new study.”

Medical Science Trends

Cancer. Will this breakthrough upset AI’s prediction?

The team then tested it on 11 patients with advanced stage lymphoma as part of a clinical trial, where some experienced full remission for periods ranging from months to years. Buoyed by these promising results, the researchers have already kicked off clinical trials for lymphoma, breast, head and neck cancer patients, and lab tests are continuing on liver and ovarian cancer. 

Startups and Innovation

What about the 94% failure rate?

Group work produces more feasible ideas while individual work produces more original ideas. To get both original and feasible ideas, you need to combine individual time with group time as the researchers did in the hybrid structure.

Science

STEM? Why does it matter? Then what?  

Science knowledge can help you navigate a variety of everyday situations — “such as making health care decisions or deciding what to eat. Communities can benefit from higher levels of science knowledge, particularly as they make sense of potential health hazards in their environment.

In 2030

If your AI expiration date is delayed by a decade, how will your world change?

Homes: By learning your preferences and your habits, and automatically adjusting the light, heat, even your TV channels, before you have to ask. “It’s about how that home reacts to you and makes you comfortable. 

Ease of Changing Reality: Solving fake news requires rebuilding the news ecosystem, and educating people to critically think and be more responsible on the social networks.

Genome Editing: Presumably different cultures will find different approaches and applications ethical. So it’s going to be a very complex future.

Memory: working on how we encode memory as electrical signals in a part of the brain called the hippocampus.

Steps:

6)   Anticipate changing circumstances and economic cycles.

7)   Persist and pivot to navigate external threats and opportunities.

17) Sketch out your trajectory in 5-year timeframes.  Will we fall into another recession?  Absolutely.  Will you be ready this time with future-proofed strategies?

What Do You Need To Know As AI Changes Your World?

Deep learning involves feeding data to large neural networks that crudely simulate the human brain

 

Image credit: Getty Images
The picture out there and the one painted above is one of massive and rapid change to the way people think and operate, which will affect material pain.

 

The AI Survival Guide For Leaders

“I am not a huge fan of perpetual clichés like, “The world will be changing faster than ever before,” and “This time is different,” but this time is different. The picture out there and the one painted above is one of massive and rapid change to the way people think and operate, which will affect material pain. But with change also comes excitement and opportunity. And those reading articles like this one will react to the impending change with a sense of enablement, not shock. Avoiding amygdala hijacks in favor of optimistic clarity will allow leaders to harness the newfound time — freed up by artificial intelligence — to steer an ever-growing enterprise.” Forbes CommunityVoice by Laura Berger photo Pexels

The A-Z of how artificial intelligence is changing the world

a is for… artificial intelligence

“Since the early days of computers, scientists have strived to create machines that can rival humans in their ability to think, reason and learn – in other words, artificial intelligence. While today’s AI systems still fall short of that goal, they are starting to perform as well as, and sometimes better than, their creators at certain tasks. Thanks to new techniques that allow machines to learn from enormous sets of data, AI has taken massive leaps forward. AI is starting to move out of research labs and into the real world. It is having an impact on our lives. BBC future” By Richard Gray Image credit: Getty Images

One of the fathers of AI is worried about its future

“Yoshua Bengio wants to stop talk of an AI arms race and make the technology more accessible to the developing world. Alongside Geoff Hinton and Yann LeCun, Bengio is famous for championing a technique known as deep learning that in recent years has gone from an academic curiosity to one of the most powerful technologies on the planet. Deep learning involves feeding data to large neural networks that crudely simulate the human brain, and it has proved incredibly powerful and effective for all sorts of practical tasks, from voice recognition and image classification to controlling self-driving cars and automating business decisions.” View on technologyreview.com by Will Knight ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE | FLICKR

The difference between AI and machine learning, explained

“Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence, just one of the many ways you can perform AI. Machine learning relies on defining behavioral rules by examining and comparing large data sets to find common patterns. This is an approach that is especially efficient for solving classification problems. For instance, if you provide a machine learning program with a lot of x-ray images and their corresponding symptoms, it will be able to assist (or possibly automate) the analysis of x-ray images in the future. The machine learning application will compare all those different images and find what are the common patterns found in images that have been labeled with similar symptoms. And when you provide it with new images it will compare its contents with the patterns it has gleaned and tell you how likely the images contain any of the symptoms it has studied before.” thenextweb.com By BEN DICKSON 

What is machine learning? We drew you another flowchart

Machine learning is the process that powers many of the services we use today—recommendation systems like those on Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify; search engines like Google and Baidu; social-media feeds like Facebook and Twitter; voice assistants like Siri and Alexa. The list goes on. In all of these instances, each platform is collecting as much data about you as possible—what genres you like watching, what links you are clicking, which statuses you are reacting to—and using machine learning to make a highly educated guess about what you might want next. Or, in the case of a voice assistant, about which words match best with the funny sounds coming out of your mouth. Frankly, this process is quite basic: find the pattern, apply the pattern.” MIT Technology Review View on technologyreview.com by Karen Hao

Steps:

6)   Anticipate changing circumstances and economic cycles.

7)   Persist and pivot to navigate external threats and opportunities.

17) Sketch out your trajectory in 5-year timeframes.  Will we fall into another recession?  Absolutely.  Will you be ready this time with future-proofed strategies?

19) Anticipate the growing shifts in life and business. Nobody wants to swim upstream if the current is moving everything in the opposite direction. Clue your fans in.

If a New Era of Technology is in the Driver’s Seat, Where Are We Going?

4 tech developments that will impact every business this year

Could a robot ever replace you? Predictions from LinkedIn, Kemosabe, Quantcast, and more

 

The Industrial Era Ended, and So Will the Digital Era

Today digital technology is all the rage because after decades of development it has become incredibly useful. Still, if you look closely, you can already see the contours of its inevitable descent into the mundane. We need to start preparing for a new era of innovation in which different technologies, such as genomics, materials science, and robotics, rise to the fore. You can’t rapidly prototype a quantum computer, a cure for cancer, or an undiscovered material. There are serious ethical issues surrounding technologies such as genomics and artificial intelligence. We’ve spent the last few decades learning how to move fast. Over the next few decades we’re going to have to relearn how to go slow again. So while the mantras for the digital age have been agility and disruption, for this new era of innovation exploration and discovery will once again become prominent. It’s time to think less about hackathons and more about tackling grand challenges.” hbr.org Greg Satell TARA MOORE/GETTY IMAGES

Could a robot ever replace you? Predictions from LinkedIn, Kemosabe, Quantcast, and more

I don’t think my job will be taken over by robots, but that doesn’t mean my role won’t change significantly as a result of AI. Although AI ‘stealing’ jobs is a hot topic, we need to look at the array of benefits tech has had on our working lives, and the solutions AI can offer, helping to remove some of the repetitive elements of work and freeing up our time. Looking at the marketing and advertising industry, AI is perfect for picking up some of those admin and data analysis tasks, but technology will never replace humans. With more time available, people can put a greater focus on developing relationships and being more creative with our campaigns, providing the emotional engagement a robot will never be capable of.” By The Drum Photo Tom Pepper, UK director of marketing solutions at LinkedIn, says he’s not threatened by robots.

AI will create as many jobs as it displaces – report

Our analysis suggests the same will be true of AI, robots and related technologies, but the distribution of jobs across sectors will shift considerably in the process.” PwC said about seven million existing jobs could be displaced by AI from 2017-2037, but about 7.2 million could be created, giving the UK a small net jobs boost of around 200,000. Some sectors would benefit disproportionately, however, with jobs in health increasing by 22%, scientific and technical services by 16% and education by 6%. By contrast manufacturing jobs could fall by 25%, transport and storage by 22% and public administration by 18%, PwC said.bbc.com Source: PwC

4 tech developments that will impact every business this year

1. New global landscape. The global economy is being redefined by frequent political and societal changes, which increase uncertainty and risk for businesses, the report noted. 2. Rethinking business models. That means enterprises must rethink the way they have traditionally run their companies, and embrace new tools like digital technologies and data analytics to evolve and remain relevant. 3. Human and machine collaboration. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have already impacted the workforce, and the relationship between humans and machines will likely continue to augment human skills, more so than replace them, the report noted. 4. Digital workplace. The digital workplace involves flexible, connected workspaces, as workers’ digital lives become integrated across their job and home, according to the report.” techrepublic.com/   · Alison DeNisco Rayome Image: iStockphoto/metamorworks

Telling a good innovation story

Appealing to people’s emotions helps new ideas cut through the clutter. A “best beats first” innovator takes the measure of a competitor who may be dominating a market with an acceptable product, and then leaps to the front with something even better. It’s about winning through cunning, instead of using the conventional playbook of scaling a similar product with heavy investment to maintain share. Many innovators told us that the “fast follower” meme is bereft of emotion: no one ever wins people over by talking about their capacity for imitation.” mckinsey.com By Julian Birkinshaw McKinsey Quarterly  Firms Look to Emerging Tech to Drive New Business Models

While CIOs are increasingly being tasked with deploying and overseeing the new capabilities.

They include a set of artificial intelligence technologiescomputer vision, deep learning and natural language generation – aimed at helping firms “build decision engines that increasingly automate operations and engagement processes,” Forrester analysts said in the report. Other key technologies include business networking fabrics, blockchain and other distributed ledgers, edge, quantum and serverless computing, additive manufacturing, and virtual, augmented and mixed reality. Unlike building up a company’s tech foundation by leveraging various IT products and services, CIOs are increasingly being tasked with deploying and overseeing capabilities with the goal of “creating breakthrough business solutions.” Mr. Hopkins said. blogs.wsj.com PHOTO: EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

You May Run From It, But Disruption Is Going to Occur All the Same — Here’s How to Embrace Change

The world is constantly changing and improving, which means any business that does not innovate will be outpaced by the rest of the economy. To ensure your company evolves with the times, consider the following tips: 1. Find inspiration in unlikely places. Some industries, such as health care, endeavor to avoid disruption by placing strict regulations on what and how providers can serve customers. Countless companies have tried to disrupt health care over the years and always encounter plenty of red tape. The latest attempt is a joint venture by Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase. Stay tuned: The disruption there may be big. 2. Stay ahead of technology trends. 3. Lean into disruption as a positive force. In all fairness, disruption is no fun for established businesses. Leaders who are able to view the shifting sands as a prompt to improve their organization and evolve with consumer demands, however, stand to gain financially.” entrepreneur.com  · Per Bylund Image credit: Uber

Steps:

6)   Anticipate changing circumstances and economic cycles.

7)   Persist and pivot to navigate external threats and opportunities.

17) Sketch out your trajectory in 5-year timeframes.  Will we fall into another recession?  Absolutely.  Will you be ready this time with future-proofed strategies?

19) Anticipate the growing shifts in life and business. Nobody wants to swim upstream if the current is moving everything in the opposite direction. Clue your fans in.

8 Forecasts to Help You Stay Ahead of the Curve

By 2018, organizations investing in IoT-based cognitive situational awareness or operational sensing will witness improvements of up to 30% in critical process cycle times.

Through 2020, a lack of data science professionals will prevent 75% of organizations from achieving the full potential of IoT.

 

Most Recent Forecasts (of 269,648) Tracked by “Shaping Tomorrow’s” AI robot, Athena, and sorted by PESTLE Categories – Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Lifestyle and Environmental.

Forecast: Global renewable energy prices will be competitive with fossil fuels by 2019 or 2020.

Solar panels reflecting the sun. 3D render with HDRI lighting and raytraced textures.

Trend: Environmental 

Sector: Energy

Insight and Source: “The Twin Revolutions of Clean Energy & AI will conflate as investment and innovation cut the cost of renewable energy, the sector is set to boom” by Dr. Nasser Saidi

Related Forecasts:

  • “Renewable energy will continue to grow more rapidly than fossil fuels over the next two decades.
  • The United States will endeavor to work closely with other countries to help them access and use fossil fuels more cleanly and efficiently and help deploy renewable and other clean energy sources.
  • Renewable transport fuels of non-biological origin, waste-based fossil fuels and renewable electricity will have to be at least 1.5% in 2021.
  • Renewables will be cost competitive with fossil fuels by 2020, but long-term targets could drive demand further and accelerate cost declines.
  • Fossil fuels will remain a key element of the global energy mix over the coming decades but marginal growth is already coming from an increasing array of renewable technologies.”

Forecast: VMware estimates 50% of operations will be cloud-based by 2021.

Trend: Technology 

Sector: Cloud

Insight and Source: “VMware: Decades of hybrid cloud ahead” Antony Adshead Storage Editor

  • VMware estimates 50% of operations will be cloud-based – public and private – by 2021.
  • By 2030 the public cloud will achieve tipping point.
  • Gelsinger said VMware calculations indicate a 19%/52%/29% split between traditional, public and private cloud in that year.
  • Gelsinger said we face, “the biggest transformation in the history of IT” as businesses embark on digital transformation.
  • That may be the case, but by those calculations it’s going to take almost a decade and a half to just about reach halfway.
  • So, another way of reading VMware’s vision as explained at VMworld is that the transformation to the cloud will actually be very long and drawn-out and that for the foreseeable future – probably two decades, even by VMware’s projections – the most mission-critical workloads, such as financial transactions, will not be ready for the off-prem cloud.”

Forecast: 90 percent of organizations will adopt hybrid strategies by 2020.

Trend: Organizations, Technology 

Sector: Cybersecurity, Digital Transformation

Insight and Source: “Cylance® Extends AI-Driven Security to Hybrid Environments and Private Networks With CylanceHYBRID and CylanceON-PREM

Related Forecasts:

  • “By 2018, organizations investing in IoT-based cognitive situational awareness or operational sensing will witness improvements of up to 30% in critical process cycle times.
  • By 2018, more than 25% of Fortune 500 companies will have deployed IT-supported Google Chromebooks across their organizations.
  • By 2021, 50% of large organizations will have integrated disparate business and IT PMOs into enterprise EPMO hubs to enable digital transformation.
  • Fifty-three percent of organizations have already started their RPA journeys that’s expected to increase to 72 percent in the next two years.
  • In Europe the number of data scientists required by organisations by 2020 is expected to be 346,000.”

Forecast: By 2018, organizations investing in IoT-based cognitive situational awareness or operational sensing will witness improvements of up to 30% in critical process cycle times.

Trend: Technology, Internet Of Things

Sector: Information Technology

Insight and Source: “Digital twins help to reshape manufacturing“. by Ashok Kumar

Related Forecasts:

  • “IoT and AI-are expected to have the largest impact on TMT organizations over the next five years.
  • Organizations are predicted to spend US$1.5 billion on IoT security in 2018.
  • Gartner calculates that organizations will spend $1.5 billion on IoT security products and services in 2018.
  • Professional services will account for $946 million of the $1.5 billion in total that organizations will spend on IoT security this year.
  • Through 2020, a lack of data science professionals will prevent 75% of organizations from achieving the full potential of IoT.”

Forecast: In 2017, Roche’s orphan drugs market share accounted for 8.2 percent of the world’s market and is expected to decrease down to 5.2 percent by 2024.

Trend: Healthcare

Sector: Pharmaceuticals

Insight and Source: “Top 20 pharmaceutical companies worldwide by orphan drug revenue market share in 2024 compared to 2017

Related Forecasts:

  • “The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will require Medicare Part D prescription drug plans to implement a seven-day initial prescribing limit beginning in 2019.
  • Yuana Yuana, PhD, in the Department of Biomedical Technology at the University Medical Center Utrecht (The Netherlands) will study Drug delivery strategies using drug-loaded extracellular vesicles generated by microbubble-assisted ultrasound.
  • There is widespread speculation that the Amazon joint venture will attempt to cut out the “middle man” in the US drug prescription and reimbursement system.
  • The FDA should remove Takeda’s gout drug Uloric (febuxostat) from the U.S. market after findings released this March show significant deadly heart risks.
  • The Global Orphan Drug market is estimated at $145.89 million in 2016 and is expected to reach $265.63 million by 2022 growing at a CAGR of 10.5% from 2016 to 2022.”

Forecast: Self-driving cars could save $325 bn by 2020 by avoiding accidents and reducing fuel costs.

Trend: Political, Technical

Sector: Automotive, Autonomous Vehicles

Insight and Source: “Driverless cars: Let technology take the wheel

Related Forecasts:

  • “Coal severance taxes are expected to decline an additional 5.2 percent in FY 2018-19 to $3.6 million and 5.8 percent to $3.4 million in FY 2019-20 as the demand for coal as a fuel for electricity production declines.
  • Fuel tax collections in Colorado are expected to grow 1.6 percent and reach $639.3 million.
  • Sustainable biofuels could provide 27 percent of the world’s total transport fuel by 2050 and avoid around 2.1 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year.
  • The Trump administration’s decision to weaken fuel efficiency standards could have “serious consequences” for Colorado’s effort to meet its clean energy goals by increasing carbon dioxide emissions from the state’s vehicle fleet by about 1.9 million tons a year by 2030.
  • Weakening fuel oil prices as a result of IMO 2020 could see oil competing again in power generation.”

Forecast: Grouping and infectious disease screening market is projected to reach US$ 7,078.3 Mn by 2026 from US$ 3,079.8 Mn in 2017.

Trend: Healthcare

Sector: Healthcare, Disease

Insight and Source: “Global Blood Typing, Grouping and Infectious Disease Screening Market 2016-2018 & 2026” PRNewswire 

Related Forecasts:

  • “A4NH researchers from LSHTM are working with colleagues from Africa Rice and others to explore how rice intensification can be achieved without increasing the risk of disease.
  • Advances and research in congenital heart disease and significant research funding for various projects are creating enormous opportunities for the global congenital heart disease market in coming years.
  • Environmental groups said they support the NDP’s criticism of open-pen fish farms and a new requirement for Aboriginal consent, but the 2022 deadline is too far off and threatens to further endanger coastal salmon with the risk of disease.
  • The global Polycystic Kidney Disease Treatment market is valued at million US$ in 2017 and will reach million US$ by the end of 2025.
  • The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the health of millions could be threatened by increases in malaria, water-borne disease and malnutrition.”

Forecast: The global edge computing market is expected to reach$ 20,495.24 million by 2026 from$ 7,983.61 million in 2017 at a CAGR of 11%.

Trend: Technology

Sector: Information Technology

Insight and Source: “HPE to Invest $4 Billion for Advancement of Edge Computing“.Zacks Equity Research.

Related Forecasts:

  • A substantial portion of the estimated 46 billion industrial and enterprise devices connected in 2023 will rely on edge computing.
  • More than 20% of global enterprises will have deployed serverless computing technologies by 2020.
  • Yale’s next wave of quantum computing research will get a boost from a $16 million grant from the U.S. Army Research Office.
  • Global Cloud Computing market size was 36700 million US$ and it is expected to reach 285300 million US$ by the end of 2025.
  • Cloud computing spending is expected to grow at a whopping rate of 6 x the rate of IT spending through 2020 and it is found to be growing at 4.5 times the rate of IT spending since 2009.

Steps:

6)   Anticipate changing circumstances and economic cycles.

7)   Persist and pivot to navigate external threats and opportunities.

17) Sketch out your trajectory in 5-year timeframes.  Will we fall into another recession?  Absolutely.  Will you be ready this time with future-proofed strategies?

19) Anticipate the growing shifts in life and business. Nobody wants to swim upstream if the current is moving everything in the opposite direction. Clue your fans in.

What Does It Take to Capitalize on Digital Transformations?

Businesses are changing right before our eyes as the digital transformation takes place around the world.

 

Technology- and data-based transformation has arrived in full force. And if you think that your company or industry is immune, think again.

 

Robots Might Not Take Your Job—But They Will Probably Make It Boring

“For many support workers, robotic surgery is much less satisfying than open surgery. There’s a huge amount of solitary setup work to allow the robot to work, then there’s a big sprint to get the robot draped and docked to the patient. And then…everyone watches the procedure on TV. While the surgeon is operating via an immersive 3-D control console, the scrub folds his arms and waits. The nurse sits in the corner at a PC entering data, or sometimes checking email or Facebook. There’s not a lot to do, but you always have to be ready. Compared to open surgery, it’s clean, safe, and dull work.” www.wired.com/story/robots- Matt Beane ROBERT DEYRAIL/GETTY IMAGES

AI cancer detectors

“Researchers suggest artificial intelligence is now better and faster at detecting cancer than clinicians. Squamous carcinoma. An AI system distinguishes dangerous skin lesions from benign ones. More accurate than dermatologists. An AI system developed by a team from Germany, France and the US can diagnose skin cancer more accurately than dermatologists. In the study, the software was able to accurately detect cancer in 95% of images of cancerous moles and benign spots, whereas a team of 58 dermatologists was accurate 87% of the time.” theguardian.com/technology/    Steve Gschmeissner/Getty Images/Science P

5 Leadership Traits Required For Digital Transformation Success

“Businesses are changing right before our eyes as the digital transformation takes place around the world. And yet many dinosaur leaders, as I like to call them, are still in these businesses risking extinction if they can’t adapt to this ever-changing environment. It’s true that leaders must be willing to accept change in order to remain competitive. However, I believe it goes even further than that. Change-agile leaders must be forward-thinkers who believe that the future is important above all else. They must be able to change quickly and fluctuate as the business world changes – sometimes on the daily. 1. Change-Agile Leaders Have Clear Purpose  2. Forward-Thinking Opportunists 3.They Fix What’s Broken 4. Risk-Takers and Experimenters 5. They Strive for Partnership.” forbes.com Daniel Newman Shutterstock

The Right Way to Try to Predict the Future

“If, for instance, a company has a product development cycle of 18 months, then it should look at least 24 months to 36 months into the future.  Why?  Because we know that if it spots any emerging trend or opportunity that may emerge in less than 18 months, it probably won’t be able to respond (since its own product development cycle is 18 months long).  With this in mind we can say that if you are doing trend spotting or future forecasting, you should look at a future from 1.5 to 2 times your product development cycle. There are caveats to this of course.  In an industry with aggressive competition and shrinking product development and product life cycles, you may want to look further out to skip generations.  In other, longer life cycle industries you may want to consider the life expectancy of your product.” inc.com/jeffrey-phillips  Jeffrey Phillips Getty Images

Competing in the age of disruption

”Technology- and data-based transformation has arrived in full force. And if you think that your company or industry is immune, think again. Only twelve percent of the Fortune 500 companies who were in business in 1955 are still around. Before stepping down as CEO of Cisco Systems in June of 2015, John Chambers spoke at a conference and bluntly told attendees, “40 percent of businesses …unfortunately, will not exist in a meaningful way in 10 years. If I’m not making you sweat, I should be. In an era of constant disruption and economic volatility, more and more companies are being forced to confront the reality of diminishing profits, stagnating growth and organizational uncertainty. Regaining the agility to compete comes down to more than simply cutting costs. It’s about embracing new ways to drive cost-consciousness and transparency, identifying mispent (sic) resources in order to unlock new sources of revenue and growth, and creating an operating model that can deliver on business strategy while supporting a culture of continuous transformation.” partneredcontent.fortune.com/accenture/arc-of-agility/ Paid Content from Accenture Strategy . The Foundry. Meredith Corp.

Turo, The Airbnb Of Car Rental Companies, Offers Corvettes, Ferraris, Teslas

“Turo has a stable of owners who want to rent out their vehicles. Then there are people like me who want to try different makes of cars. Based in San Francisco, Turo makes its money on the margin between what the car owner charges it and what the rental customer is willing to pay, less its costs for insurance, overhead, etc. The company has been around since 2009, but under a different name, RelayRides. It was rebranded in 2015, and has grown exponentially. Turo is now in 49 states (not New York, for insurance reasons) and has about six million customers and 250,000 cars up for rent, according to a company spokeswoman. Satellite operations are now in 56 countries. Once I installed the Turo app on my iPhone and signed up for the service, I put in the dates that I wanted my Corvette, and where I wanted to pick it up.” forbes.com Jim Clash One of Turo’s Corvettes for rent.

How Cloud Can Boost Innovation

“Hosting applications on cloud platforms is becoming increasingly common, if not an enterprise standard. Among the potential benefits are rapid scalability and elasticity—enabling systems to grow with changing business demands while minimizing costs—as well as on-demand availability, providing agility and faster deployment. Such benefits can be particularly valuable for innovation, which may help explain why cloud computing is growing so quickly. Worldwide, public cloud services revenue is expected to reach $411 billion by 2020, up from $306 billion this year. Any time spent on capacity planning, procurement, or waiting for requested infrastructure means less time spent finding solutions to problems and delivering value to the business, says Ragu Gurumurthy, principal and chief innovation officer with Deloitte Consulting LLP. “Every business needs to be digital to survive,” Gurumurthy says. “The cloud offers increased agility and speed to market as well as lower costs and access to cloud-native technologies.” http://deloitte.wsj.com/cio/ Sponsored Content. CIO Insights and Analysis from Deloitte

MIT’s new tech turns power plants and data centers into water sources

“A typical 600-megawatt power plant used at half capacity to handle peak power demand uses as much water as 100,000 people would in a year. Cooling towers at power plants use massive amounts of water–in the U.S., around a trillion gallons a year–to cool down high-temperature steam. Right now, much of that water is just goes back into the atmosphere as plumes of vapor. Varanasi estimates at a 600-megawatt plant, the new technology could save 150 million gallons of water per year.For power plants, or other buildings with cooling towers, using the new equipment could save millions on water bills, in some cases. Industry could reuse the captured water directly. But because the cooling towers create distilled water, it could also be treated further and used for drinking water. “If you install a cooling tower, it’s like doing desalination,” says Varanasi, who estimates that the technology could offset the need for building 70% of new desalination plants in the next decade.” fastcompany.com  · By Adele Peters

Who Knew Blockchain Could Make Government This Easy? This Italian CIO, That’s Who.

“With blockchain technology, South Tyrol can create a chain of certification that authenticates and maintains people’s data indefinitely — instead of having to verify every instance of someone’s data each time a citizen enters their personal information. Moreover, Gasslitter believes blockchain can act as an integration layer to help simplify the province administration’s IT landscape. He says, “We have more than 1,000 different software applications to store and use citizens’ data. Every agency is like a small kingdom and doesn’t share data. Our goal is to simplify processes and increase transparency. We’re creating a model of data sharing within South Tyrol that we hope can be scaled across Italy.” medium.com/sap-innovation-spotlight/ robin_meyerhoff 

Steps:

6)   Anticipate changing circumstances and economic cycles.

7)   Persist and pivot to navigate external threats and opportunities.

17) Sketch out your trajectory in 5-year timeframes.  Will we fall into another recession?  Absolutely.  Will you be ready this time with future-proofed strategies?

19) Anticipate the growing shifts in life and business. Nobody wants to swim upstream if the current is moving everything in the opposite direction. Clue your fans in.

Open Innovation, Crowdsourcing Platforms and Disruptive Technologies

The better the Stitch Fix stylists—human and machines—are at providing their customers with products they will love, the better their business runs.

 

“Here are just 10 of the inevitable changes that are coming over the next 30 years:

 

Where can you get find out about 1,300 of the newest technologies? How is fashion retail adopting AI? Why is open innovation an epic fail in science? What is one expert calling the biggest social and technical shift of the last 100 years? Or how do you separate fact from block chain fiction? And, which are the top 10 big data analytics tools you should consider?

Want To Know What Technologies Are Coming In The Future? There’s a Database For That

“Spider silk transformed into fiber for tissue reconstruction; paper that conducts electricity; renewable diesel fuel; and new techniques for regenerating aging or diseased skin. These are just a handful of examples from a new database of over 1,300 new technologies currently making their way through Israeli Technology Transfer Organizations [TTOs] associated with universities, research institutes, and medical institutions. The new searchable database is designed as a layer in Start-Up Nation Finder, a free-to-use innovation discovery platform from Start-Up Nation Central (SNC), an Israeli non-profit that connects businesses, governments, and organizations around the world to Israeli innovation.” forbes.com Amir Mizroch Shutterstock. A look into the future of Israeli innovation.

Stitch Fix: The Amazing Use Case Of Using Artificial Intelligence In Fashion Retail

“Stitch Fix has combined the expertise of personal stylists with the insight and efficiency of artificial intelligence to analyze data on style trends, body measurements, customer feedback and preferences to arm the human stylists with a culled down version of possible recommendations. This helps the company provide its customers with personalized style recommendations that fit their lifestyle and budgets. The better the Stitch Fix stylists—human and machines—are at providing their customers with products they will love, the better their business runs. As they invest in merchandise they know their customers will love, the less they waste on warehouse space, return costs and donating items that weren’t sold.” www.forbes.com  by Bernard Marr , Adobe Stock

Why Do Open Innovation Efforts Fail? Scientists Want to Solve Problems Themselves.

“It took us months to realize what was going on here: The most resistant scientists and engineers saw open source methods as a fundamental challenge to their professional identities. They defined themselves as “problem solvers,” but open innovation crowdsourcing platforms didn’t let them play that role; instead, they had to frame problems for someone else to solve. “I’ve always been attracted to places that allow you to be able to think and solve greater problems,” one scientist told us, “If I can’t do it at NASA, what is keeping me from going somewhere else?” By contrast, there were other scientists and engineers who perceived the open methods as an opportunity to enhance their role and capabilities. As some engineers described it, this transition was a shift from thinking “the lab is my world” to “the world is my lab.” They argued for the need to let go of the “how” of their work and refocus on the bigger “why.” They called on their colleagues to shift their professional identities from “problem solvers” to “solution seekers.”  hbr.org  by Hila Lifshitz-AssafMichael L. TushmanKarim R. Lakhani DON FARRALL/GETTY IMAGES

This May Be The Biggest Economic And Social Shift Of The Last 100 Years. Are You Ready?

“Here are just 10 of the inevitable changes that are coming over the next 30 years:

  1. Insurance companies will need to adjust models for insuring human-driven vehicles, making car ownership a financial luxury for individual owners.
  2. The role of the automobile as a form of transportation from point A to point B will be transformed into a form of entertainment and socialization creating a new platform for the delivery of content and media. You will basically be living inside of your smartphone!
  3. Autos will function as platforms for socialization in which people connect and gather. Some will be mobile conference and meeting rooms, others mobile restaurants and clinics. Commute time will cease to exist and along with it untold hours of lost productivity. Could this be the Drive-In of the 21st Century?
  4. The AV will finally allow the decongestion of urban city centers, which are today littered with automobiles that occupy valuable land. For example, in the typical large city 50 percent of the land area is dedicated to roadways and parking. Urban and rural areas will see a resurgence of activity as commute time becomes a non-issue.
  5. If projected out to 2050 we may save over one trillion dollars in the US alone since the cost of motor-vehicle deaths, injuries, and property damage in 2016 was $432 billion in the US alone, according to the National Safety Council.
  6. Deaths due to vehicular accidents will be reduced globally by over 1,000,000 lives yearly.
  7. The evolution of EVs and AVs will vary significantly from geography to geography and country to country. While commercial autonomous vehicles will likely develop quickly in developed countries such as the USA, individual non-ownership-based AVs are likely to take longer. Non-intuitively, the inverse is true of developing countries, such as India and China, which will have a higher economic incentive and regulatory latitude to move to AVs.
  8. There will be widespread employment disruption within developed countries that rely heavily on both the manufacture of owner-driven vehicles. Dealerships will disappear entirely.
  9. Lending for auto loans will shift dramatically from human owners to vehicles that own themselves.
  10. And lastly, let’s not forget the impact of vehicles on the planet. According to a study by NASA, vehicles are the single largest contributor to climate change.” inc.com By Thomas Koulopoulos  Founder, Delphi Group

187 Things the Blockchain Is Supposed to Fix

“But in this moment, few business trends can compete with the magic of blockchain technology. Blockchains, which use advanced cryptography to store information across networks of computers, could eliminate the need for trusted third parties, like banks, in transactions, legal agreements, and other contracts. The most ardent blockchain-heads believe it has the power to reshape the global financial system, and possibly even the internet as we know it. Now, as the technology expands from a fringe hacker toy to legitimate business applications, opportunists have flooded the field. Some of the seekers are mercenaries pitching shady or fraudulent tokens, others are businesses looking to cash in on a hot trend, and still others are true believers in the revolutionary and disruptive powers of distributed networks.” wired.com By Erin Griffith. Graphic:ALYSSA FOOTE

Top 10 Big Data Analytics Tools For Successful Data Analytics Developers

“Earlier, entrepreneurs used to call data analysis “business intelligence,” which perfectly characterizes the essence because data could provide a competitive advantage to those who used and interpreted them properly. Nowadays, a new term for referring to business intelligence was coined: “big data.” This name also makes a good sense because since the times of “business intelligence” the volumes of data became incredibly large. As the result, more effort should be applied to deal with them and make it useful for analytics professionals.” 1. Cassandra  2. Hadoop 3. Plotly 4. Bokeh 5. Neo4j 6. Cloudera 7. OpenRefine 8. Storm 9. Wolfram Alpha 10. Rapidminer    http://tecmatters.com by SYED

Steps:

(3) Pick options designed to attract better opportunities.  You don’t want to miss out on lucrative jobs or entrepreneurial ventures that will fuel  a real change in your lifestyle.

(5) Anticipate changing circumstances and economic cycles.

(7) Persist and pivot to navigate external threats and opportunities.

(19) Anticipate the growing shifts in life and business. Nobody wants to swim upstream if the current is moving everything in the opposite direction.

The Future’s Arriving Faster than You Think. Now What?

Here are just a few of the practical examples of blockchain technology.

Scientists at the University of Washington School of Medicine have developed an automated system that uses robots to produce human mini-organs from stem cells.

 

WIRED’S Predictions for Bots, Blockchains, Crispr, and More

“SOMETIMES THE FUTURE shows up so fast it hits us in the face, like a brick wall in a VR headset. Other times the miraculous promises of technology—the rearrange­ment of our very DNA, the blockchain-­enabled toppling of Facebook—are frustratingly slow to arrive. But either way, the future is coming, and we should be ready. In the following pages we lay out a series of predictions, starting with some changes that are immediately upon us. Then, looking down the road, we get ever-bolder in our prognostications, year by not-so-far-off year. —The Editors

  • Cyberattacks Will Hit a Power Grid Near You
  • Robots Will Roam Abandoned Big-Box Stores
  • We’ll Share Our Emotional State as Willingly as We Share Our Photos
  • We’ll Crispr the Hell Out of Things—but Not, at First, the Way You Think
  • Robotrucks Will Crisscross the Country
  • You’ll Go to Work in Virtual Reality
  • The Blockchain Will Rebuild the Internet as We Know It
    https://www.wired.com ILLUSTRATIONS BY SAMMY HARKHAM

3 Things We Need to Do to Revive Innovation and Entrepreneurship in America

1. Start The Low Hanging Fruit
Clearly, the backbone of any innovation economy is entrepreneurship. Yet by a number of metrics, startup activity in America has faltered.
2. Renew Our Commitment To Science And Technology
We tend to think that the best technology is built by entrepreneurs in a garage somewhere or, possibly, in a corporate lab. Yet the truth is that most technology starts with federally funded research that later gets commercialized by the private sector. That’s the engine that drives innovation forward.
3. Build An Innovation Ecosystem For Hard Tech
Yet we often forget that the Silicon Valley model was developed for a specific industry at a specific time and is not transferable to every business sector. These are partnerships between government, academia and the private sector that focus on specific industries, such as chemical processing and advanced fabrics and offer state and local governments the opportunity to build entrepreneurial ecosystems.” https://www.inc.com/ Greg Satell

Why Amazon and Jeff Bezos Are So Successful at Disruption

“No other organization in the world better embodies the power of audacious and continual disruption than Amazon. This is the company that, upon its founding by Jeff Bezos in 1994, took on publishers and booksellers around the world. Along the way, it forced many incumbents to disrupt their business models or turn off the lights. At the heart of everything Amazon does is a short and simple mission statement: “Our vision is to be Earth’s most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.” There is always the risk that Bezos and his team will lose focus in their never-ending quest for the perfect disruption. But for the time being, at least, Bezos has not only sustained his position as the master of business disruption but has also become the richest man on the planet. The company he founded 24 years ago is set to achieve $200 billion in revenue sometime this year, sustaining an annual compounded growth rate of 41 percent.” https://www.entrepreneur.com John F. Furth Image credit: Michael Tullberg | Getty Images

Four Ways Crowdsourcing Drives Health Care Innovation

“Here are four examples where crowdsourcing can help drive healthcare innovation.
1. Medical Research And Discovery
When faced with a numbers problem, crowdsourcing may be researchers’ best hope for speeding up scientific discovery.
2. Raise Capital To Jumpstart A New Venture
RedCrow believes that investors “can come together and collaborate and take advantage of the wisdom and the experience of the greater crowd.”
3. Inspire Entrepreneurial Thinking
The device captures and transmits CHF data to the cloud, providing medical professionals with continuous diagnostic data that streamlines the feedback process, improving health outcomes.
4. Identify The Most Important Unmet Medical Need
Given the urgency to innovate in health care, crowdsourcing is one way to tap people outside your organization who can bring fresh ideas and thinking and quite possibly expedite the path to your goal.” David Goldsmith, Chief Strategy Officer WEGO Health www.forbes.com Shutterstock

Robots can now grow human organs

“Scientists at the University of Washington School of Medicine have developed an automated system that uses robots to produce human mini-organs from stem cells. According to Science Daily, the ability to mass produce “organoids” promises to expand the use of mini-organs in basic research and drug discovery. “Ordinarily, just setting up an experiment of this magnitude would take a researcher all day, while the robot can do it in 20 minutes,” Freedman tells Science Daily. “On top of that, the robot doesn’t get tired and make mistakes. . . . There’s no question — for repetitive, tedious tasks like this, robots do a better job than humans.”
https://nypost.com/ Raquel Laneri Composite; Shutterstock; iStockphoto

30+ Real Examples Of Blockchain Technology In Practice

“While Bitcoin and cryptocurrency may have been the first widely known uses of blockchain technology, today, it’s far from the only one. In fact, blockchain is revolutionizing most every industry. Here are just a few of the practical examples of blockchain technology.

  • Entertainment: KickCity, B2Expand, Spotify, Guts.
  • Social Engagement: Matchpool
  • Retail: Warranteer, Blockpoint, Loyyal
  • Exotic Cars: Bitcar
  • Supply chains and logistics: IBM Blockchain, Food industry, Provenance, Blockverify, OriginTrail, De Beers
  • Insurance: Accenture, Proof of insurance
  • Healthcare: MedicalChain, MedRec, Nano Vision, Gem, SimplyVital Health
  • Real Estate: BitProperty, Deedcoin, Ubiquity,
  • Charity: BitGive, AidCoin, Utopi
  • Financial Services: Bitcoin Atom, Securrency, Ripple, ABRA, Aeternity, Smart Valor, Circle”
    https://www.forbes.com Bernard Marr Adobe Stock

Plastic Bag Found at the Bottom of World’s Deepest Ocean Trench

“The Mariana Trench—the deepest point in the ocean—extends nearly 36,000 feet down in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. But if you thought the trench could escape the global onslaught of plastics pollution, you would be wrong. A recent study revealed that a plastic bag, like the kind given away at grocery stores, is now the deepest known piece of plastic trash, found at a depth of 36,000 feet inside the Mariana Trench. Scientists found it by looking through the Deep-Sea Debris Database, a collection of photos and videos taken from 5,010 dives over the past 30 years that was recently made public.” https://news.nationalgeographic.com Sarah Gibbens A plastic bag floats through Manila Bay in the Philippines. PHOTOGRAPH BY RANDY OLSON, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

We Depend on Plastic. Now We’re Drowning in It.

“If plastic had been invented when the Pilgrims sailed from Plymouth, England, to North America—and the Mayflower had been stocked with bottled water and plastic-wrapped snacks—their plastic trash would likely still be around, four centuries later. If the Pilgrims had been like many people today and simply tossed their empty bottles and wrappers over the side, Atlantic waves and sunlight would have worn all that plastic into tiny bits. And those bits might still be floating around the world’s oceans today, sponging up toxins to add to the ones already in them, waiting to be eaten by some hapless fish or oyster, and ultimately perhaps by one of us.” Laura Parker Photographs by Randy Olson

Steps:

(19) Anticipate the growing shifts in life and business. Nobody wants to swim upstream if the current is moving everything in the opposite direction.

Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Computing and the Future of Work

It will likely take a decade or so until some AI technologies become the norm.

Enterprise teams are content to chew through budgets on the wrong things because they worry they won’t receive the same monies the next year if they don’t.

 

3 Signs Your Innovation Budget Needs a New Approach.

Entrepreneurs and investors operate leanly. They know big-bang innovation rarely ever works. Instead, they take small, smart steps toward a solution without worrying about nitty-gritty features. In contrast, enterprise teams are content to chew through budgets on the wrong things because they worry they won’t receive the same monies the next year if they don’t. Talk about wasteful!  See your product or service from a scrappy, entrepreneurial viewpoint. Don’t waste time on that obscure API or flashy layout. If users want it, they’ll tell you during the prototyping phase. Spend where your product provides value, and innovation will follow. Far too many firms don’t connect the dots between their budgetary input and innovation output. It’s not as simple as spending more money. The truth is, it’s about agile planning, frequent failure, and regular reallocation of resources. The sooner your innovation budget accounts for those things, the better your balance sheet will look.”  BUSINESS.COM Emerson Taymor Image credit: lOvE lOvE/Shutterstock

Why Innovation Tends to Bypass Economics.

Many of these problems can be traced back to a basic economic distinction: the difference between invention and innovation. Invention is defined as the discovery of a new exciting idea, product or approach. Innovation means applying that idea through changes in operating models and mindsets. Too many areas today contain the invention but not the innovation. This harmful decoupling is driven by a combination of biases,  blind spots and inertia (knowing you need to do something different but ending up doing more of the same). In too many cases, the flaw has less to do with the need to come up with a brilliant idea, and more a matter of embracing it and adapting accordingly. That requires being curious, open-minded, willing to listen, open to experimentation, creating safe zones for candid discussions and learning from failure. Economics has persistently failed to address this fundamental — and solvable — problem. The gaps between inventions and innovations have led to too many foregone welfare-enhancing opportunities for individuals, companies, governments and society.” newsmax.com Mohamed El-Erian Bloomberg View One Photo | Dreamstime.com

This Is How to Get Started With AI When the Only Thing You Know Is the Acronym.

Autonomous AI, however, is capable of learning certain tasks that require complex decisions to be made. Autonomous AI often receives the most attention because it makes innovations like self-driving cars possible, but at least in the short term, the business world might have more use for AI’s organizational and triage capabilities. Whatever you choose to do with AI, don’t delay. “AI is going to revolutionize the world more than any other tech advancement of the past 30 years,” Mark Cuban remarked at the recent Upfront Summit in Los Angeles. Like the internet, AI will produce a rich-get-richer environment, and those who get a head start are going to run the table.” So far, the following areas of AI show particular business promise: 1. Predictive analytics. 2. Computer vision. 3. Natural language processing.entrepreneur.com Sourav Dey Image credit: Photographer is my life | Getty Images

AI and the Future of Work.

It will likely take a decade or so until some AI technologies become the norm. While that provides plenty of lead time for the transition, few companies are taking action now to train their workers. Another little-noticed problem is that the AI systems themselves are being created with data and algorithms that don’t reflect the diverse American society. Accenture research shows business leaders don’t think that their workers are ready for AI. But only 3% of those leaders were reinvesting in training. At a Davos meeting held by Accenture, Fei-Fei Li, an associate professor at Stanford University and director of the school’s AI lab, suggested using AI to retrain workers. “I think there’s a really exciting possibility that machine learning itself would help us to learn in more effective ways and to re-skill workers in more effective ways,” she said. ‘And I personally would like to see more investment and thought going into that aspect.‘” wired.com/wiredinsider/  WIRED Brand Lab for Accenture. GETTY IMAGES

A Simple Tool to Start Making Decisions with the Help of AI.

Clarifying these seven factors for each critical decision throughout your organization will help you get started on identifying opportunities for AIs to either reduce costs or enhance performance. Here we discussed a decision associated with a specific situation. To get started with AI, your challenge is to identify the key decisions in your organization where the outcome hinges on uncertainty. Filling out the AI Canvas won’t tell you whether you should make your own AI or buy one from a vendor, but it will help you clarify what the AI will contribute (the prediction), how it will interface with humans (judgment), how it will be used to influence decisions (action), how you will measure success (outcome), and the types of data that will be required to train, operate, and improve the AI.hbr.org Ajay AgrawalJoshua GansAvi Goldfarb MARTIN HOLSTE/EYEEM/ GETTY IMAGES

Physicists Just Discovered an Entirely New Type of Superconductivity: No one thought this was possible in solid materials.

One of the ultimate goals of modern physics is to unlock the power of superconductivity, where electricity flows with zero resistance at room temperature. What they found was odd – as the material warmed up from absolute zero, the amount that a magnetic field could penetrate the material increased linearly instead of exponentially, which is what is normally seen with superconductors. After running a series of measurements and calculations, the researched concluded that the best explanation for what was going on was that the electrons must have been disguised as particles with higher spin – something that wasn’t even considered as a possibility for a superconductor before. While this new type of superconductivity still requires incredibly cold temperatures for now, the discovery gives the entire field a whole new direction.sciencealert.com FIONA MACDONALD (Emily Edwards, University of Maryland)

Australian Scientists Just Solved One Of The Biggest Quantum Computing Challenges Using Material Found In DVDs.

In quantum technology, information is carried on quibits, single photons. For the quibits to be actually useful in quantum technologies, though, they need to be produced by Single Photon Emitters that work at room temperature (it’s just practical, really) and at telecom wavelength (the most efficient way to transfer information via optical fibres) all at once. It wasn’t easy, but they’ve done it. Those plucky Australian Scientists have gone and done it. And they did it using a material found in DVDs.” www.gizmodo.com.au  Rae Johnston Image: NASA

Feynman 100.

”’Dick Feynman relished the pleasure of finding things out, and he had a remarkable knack for conveying the excitement of science to a general audience,’ says John P. Preskill, Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech. ‘We hope this event will capture some of that boundless curiosity and sense of fun that made Feynman such a treasured colleague.’ The event will be divided into two days, with an evening celebration on Friday, May 11, and a scientific symposium during the day on Saturday, May 12.http://m.caltech.edu/news/remembering-richard-feynman-81875 Credit: Caltech Archives  Whitney Clavin

Einstein and the Quantum.

The notion of an underlying quantum probability proved to be too much for Einstein (and Schrödinger as well), who would now turn his back on the new quantum mechanics forever to pursue his dream of a causal unified field theory. In the end, Einstein would never realize this final dream, and the “strangeness” of quantum mechanics continues with us today.https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/einstein-and-the-quantum  Credit: Getty Images Scott Bembenek.

Steps:

(19) Anticipate the growing shifts in life and business. Nobody wants to swim upstream if the current is moving everything in the opposite direction.