An Explosion in Innovation

Peter Diamandis identifies eight technologies ripe for major change

At the CIO Network, X Prize Chairman and CEO Peter Diamandis talks about eight emerging technologies and sciences which will shape the future.

Peter Diamandis is chairman and chief executive of the X PRIZE Foundation, a nonprofit focused on designing and launching large prizes to drive radical breakthroughs for humanity. What follows are edited excerpts of his comments at the CIO Network conference.

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On Why Innovation Will Take off

We're going from, in 2010, just shy of two billion people connected on the Internet, to, by 2020, five billion people. Three billion new minds are coming online who have never been able to help contribute ideas, solve problems and challenges. And those three billion people are coming online when education and health care are going to make them better educated and healthier. I think it's going to be driving tens of trillions of dollars in the global economy.…Add artificial intelligence on top of that, and we're going to start seeing a rate of innovation that will scare all of us.

On Eight Explosive Technologies

1. Biotechnology. It's the field where we're going to see the next $100 billion companies. Synthetic biology in particular, when you start to think of life as a programming language. Craig Venter [decoder of the human genome] just published that he increased the efficiency of photosynthesis 300%. What's that going to do for food production?

Genesis Photos for The Wall Street Journal

2. Computational systems. One of the things that computational systems give us is the ability to model almost anything. Anywhere on the planet you can hire, from cloud computing, 100, 1,000 computers for a minute, an hour, a day, and begin to model things.


3. Networks and sensors. Networks and sensors will give us huge amounts of data that we can begin to mine literally for anything we need, anything you want. It's a matter of asking the right question. We're looking at launching an earthquake prediction X PRIZE.

4. Artificial intelligence. AI has transformed almost every industry and will continue to do so. Imagine an individual with a software shell around them. I'm going to give it permission to listen to every conversation I have, to read everything about me, to scan my genome, to literally deep-dive into everything I've ever produced. It's going to start to literally finish my sentences for me. These AI's are going to become the most powerful assistants we have.

X Prize Chairman and CEO Peter Diamandis talks at the CIO Network about a future where the cost of living becomes essentially free.

5. Robotics. Robotics will be everywhere. In five years, we'll have conferences like this and people will be beaming in if they can't physically be there.

6. Digital manufacturing. Three-D printing, digital manufacturing, will transform global manufacturing. I think about the woman going to a gala that evening who goes online and sees a beautiful dress designed in Bangladesh and prints it out in her closet. The notion is being able to print what you want, where you need it, on demand.

7. Medicine. Medicine is becoming an information technology. We launched a competition to build a hand-held mobile device that any mom could use at 2 a.m. to diagnose themselves or their kid, no matter where they are. We announced it, and a year later, we have 265 teams in 33 countries around the world competing for this.

At the CIO Network, X Prize Chairman and CEO Peter Diamandis says that government regulation cannot prevent technological innovation because 'it will happen somewhere else.'

8. Nanotechnology. We really look at nanomaterials versus nanotechnology. We're working on an X PRIZE on the future of mobility. We're looking at a battery X PRIZE for being able to increase battery energy and power storage densities 300% to 500%.

On Innovations Partners

The question is, what is your relationship with these technologies, and how do you make sure you don't isolate yourself [from key innovations].

If you're a company of 20,000, 30,000, 50,000 people, the question you have to ask yourself is, do you have the right people? How do you position your challenges so that the smartest people around the world have fun solving your challenges for you? You can create something where people who work at the top companies during the day, at night want to prove themselves and have some fun. It's really about asking the right question and putting out the right challenge and the right, clear objective, and letting people around the world beat their brains.

X Prize Chairman and CEO Peter Diamandis tells the CIO council that the loss of privacy may eventually make it difficult for people to do malicious things in the future.
On Being Risk-Averse

Companies, as they get larger, have attributes of reduced risk-taking. If you wanted to reinvent how you do health care, if you're a pharma, a health-insurance company, you could potentially try and develop it inside your company—bad idea.

You could invest in a dozen companies—likely you're going to have conflicts on your board. And you're only going to choose the companies that happen to be in your local area, or that you happen to hear about and so forth.

Ultimately, when you put up these competitions, 99% [of contestants] will fail. And when they fail, they're not on your books. It's not a black line on your company or your research department or whatever the case might be.

Because when the one that succeeds pulls it off and has a true breakthrough—that's a success, and you've won. The world's won in that regard.

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