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 Ray Kurzweil Executives anxious about bridging the gap between business as usual and exponential advances in science and technology have been given a checklist for their attention. These are the technologies recommended by the experts: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Nanotechnology, Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Medicine and Human-Machine Interfaces, Networks & Computing Systems, and Energy & Environmental Systems.
These were the subjects at a nine-day seminar for entrepreneurs, CEOs, venture capitalists, and government leaders from around the world. It was held last Summer at Singularity University headquartered at NASA Ames in Mountain View, California.
The organizers, futurist, inventor, scientists Ray Kurzweil and X Prize founder Peter Diamandis, explained that their purpose at this technology boot camp is to provide a sense of where opportunities lie–and the dangers of failing to prepare for them.
Diamandis commented, “If we do our job right, this will affect where companies invest, the types of companies they acquire or don’t acquire, the type of employees they hire, and where they put their research and development dollars.
Kurzweil alerted the attendees to a reality that will affect the entire business world. He said, “We will have plenty of computation as we go through the 21st century. That is not so controversial. The more controversial aspect is really, will we have the software?”
Chief Executive Magazine asked a cross-section of of CEOs to write about their outlook for the coming year. Editor J.P. Donlon said he was struck by their twin concerns about rising government spending and increasing taxes and regulations, as well as the effect both would have on what they regard as a fragile economic recov ery.
Donlon observed, “If the sentiment we tapped is any guide, more business leaders are sensing that what’s at stake here is not just a routine post-recession recovery but the ability of our economic system to grow and generate jobs for everybody.”
It is Donlon’s opinion that “As frightening as healthcare reform and cap and trade are, the truly scary issue is runaway entitlement spending for the simple reason that our incomes are not growing as fast as our spending. The ‘economic stimulus’ debt alone will cost every citizen $280 a month for the rest of their lives.”
One of the CEOs who responded to the magazine, Patrick Byrne, Founder and CEO of Overstock.com, wrote: “The problem is that the U.S. is hopelessly fiscally profligate We’re living in dreamland as an economy. We’re rapidly approaching the point where we can’t possibly deal with the debt.”
Bob Murray, President and CEO of Murray Energy, a $1.3 billion coal producer, fumed “Excessive regulation and runaway government spending is going to lead to drastic inflation and the destruction of our children’s future.” His solution, “Throw out the Democratic leadership of the House and Senate, then the Obama administration.”
Another highly respected CEO, Peter G. Peterson, former Commerce Secretary and co-founder of the Blackstone Group, editorialized in Business Week that “It’s time to get off our butts, cure ourselves of an aggravated case of short-term-itis, and create a movement that makes it safe for our politicians to opt for the hard choices and unsafe for them to continue to do nothing–to deny the undeniable and pretend we can sustain the unsustainable.”
 Futurist and scientist/inventor Ray Kurzweil welcomes the new year with predictions of how technology will change humanity by 2020. Solar power on steroids, longer lives, the chance to get rid of obesity once and for all, and portable computing devices that start becoming part of your body rather than being held in your hand are among Kurzweil’s forecasts for the coming decade.
He believes accelerating change will continue to be driven by exponential growth in the power of information technology, which approximately doubles for the same cost every year. He notes that there has been a billion-fold increase in the amount computation per dollar since he was a student at MIT in 1965.
Kurzweil foresees, “the very idea of a smart phone will begin to change. Our glasses will beam images directly to our retinas, creating a high resolution virtual display that hovers in the air. Our entire visual field of view will be a three-dimensional full immersion virtual realty.”
In the field of health, he notes that there are over a thousand projects to change our genes away from disease and toward health, not just in newborns but in mature individuals. Health interventions can be designed on computers and tested on biological simulators. These technologies are doubling in power every year and will get a thousand times more powerful in a decade.
Memory will be constantly aided by the information available on the Internet. Kurzweil predicts that memory and the Internet will begin to become indistinguishable. With regard to energy, Kurzweil explains that we have 10,000 times more sunlight than we need to meet all of the world’s energy needs and it is possible to create the technologies to completely replace fossil fuels.
 It is not surprising that corporations are struggling with how to budget for and use the Internet as a marketing tool and interface with customers. After all the Internet is a surrogate for sales people, and sales people are a surrogate for the image and reputation of the legal entity called a corporation.
Until accountants figure out how to put a dollar value on image and reputation, efficiency cotinues to rule supreme in many companies. Customer service departments are treated as necessary but onerous expense as opposed to an investment. Meeting sales quotas trumps customer satisfaction. Advertising budgets are determined as a capricious percentage of sales.
Writing in Chief Executive Magazine, consultant Bob Donnelly stresses, “succesful marketing is owning a share of the customers mind by creating an emotional bond with your brand.” He goes on to say that customers with disengaged employees become unhappy with the level of service they receive and eventually do business elsewhere.
Studies have shown that 60 percent of all customers stop dealing with a company because of perceived indifference on the part of employees. Some other disturbing statistics: about 29 percent of employees are fully engaged, while 19 percent are totally disengaged, which leaves over 50 percent with only average levels of engagement.
It is important for Human Relations executives to assert their role in developing and executing policies and plans that encourage and facilitate employee engagement. Donnelly concludes, “many companies today claim to be customer centric, but pay their employees to sell products rather than compensating them for engaging customers.”
It gets more challenging when HR people and marketing executives begin to think about the Internet as a surrogate for sales people. Donnelly says, “in a world that is changing rapidly and as the speeed of change increases, all product businesses are really becoming service businesses.”
 Google Goggles While marketing executives continue to struggle with what to do about Web 2.0, they face a possible new conundrum just announced by Google. An industry observer made this comment, “This is certainly a rebuke to anyone who believes that Google is through innovating.”
The comment was prompted by Google’s announcement of these developments: 1) the inclusion of real-time information in Google search results; 2) Google Goggles, an experimental image recognition system by which users can submit search queries using snapshots of objects; 3) a “What’s Nearby?’ location-based search capability in Google Maps; 4) Japanese language support for the iPhone and Android voice search apps; and 5) a plan to provide in-conversation voice translation across langages.
Imagine scanning a picture of an automobile that interests you and instantly receiving information on where it is in the inventory at local dealers, the price, special offers, and consumer reports. Location-based search will be able to provide information about whether requested products are in-stock at shops willing to share inventory data with Google. The possible marketing innovations and challenges seem almost infinite.
For observers who have been wondering what Google will do with the hoard of money it has stashed away (estimates range up to $15 billion), these announcements provide clues. It is clear that Google is deepening its commitment to new modes of search: search by voice, search by location, and search by sight.
Google VP of Engineeringt Vic Gundotra, speaking at an event titled “Searchology” at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, proclaimed that computing has changed thanks to cloud computing technology, precurser of a new cloud-powered era.
 Peter G. Peterson A prominent billionaire business man has issued a call to arms to American businesss leaders to “get off their butts” and go on the offensive and play a leading role in helping solve the nation’s economic problems. Peter G. Peterson, former Commerce secretary, CEO of Bell and Howell, and cofounder of the Blackstone Group, urges business leaders to create a movement that “makes it safe for politicians to opt for the hard choices and unsafe for them to do nothing.”
In a column in Business Week magazine, Peterson excoriates business for being on the defensive for a decade resulting in the fact that the public holds U.S. business in low esteem. It is time, he writes, for a private-sector Marshall Plan to rescue our own economy. He describes a vast effort in which business leaders, including CEOs and their boards, organize to be heard on the issues and not just lobby for favors.
Peterson stated, “in my more than 50 years in business, I cannot recall a time when there were so many daunting national challenges, with business engagement so lacking.” It is time, he urged, for business to do the right thing, not just to protect our kids and grandkids but to safeguard our remarkable country’s future.
Stressing the seriousness of the issue, Peterson notes that the U.S. has a staggering $60 trillion in unfunded government liabilities and promises. Foreign lenders could lose confidence in our economy. That, he says, would trigger a true crisis: a plummeting dollar, soaring interest rates, and runaway inflation.
Peterson is backing his convictions with serious money. He created a foundation with an endowment of $1 billion to address fiscal sustainability issues related to federal deficits, entitlement programs and tax policies.
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