building a services market for the transhuman era - tony greenberg - h+ summit @ harvard
Post on 21-Oct-2014
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Innovation, including transhumanist innovation, is mostly the domain of private enterprise, which operates in one of a few market models – goods or services, mass-market or custom, consumer or enterprise, etc. Of these, the services model is the one that is most broken. Of Consumerist's 32 Worst Companies in America, 22 are pure-play services companies – including 7 of the 8 finalists, and the eventual winner, Comcast. The big question is: how do we get further along the transhumanist path when so much of it – uploading, virtual reality, cryonics, and likely even consumer-accessible versions of nanotechnology – are, or will be, delivered as a service? How do we find and reward the companies that won't accidentally unfreeze you after a power outage, lose your backup self, or jerk you out of paradise over a phony billing dispute when none of those things appear in the glossy brochure or the snazzy website? How can we tell the genuine article from marketing hype when our very selves depend on it? The collective stakes for building an accountable and innovative market model are high. If we take a trip 60 years back, one model started off with expectations of a sub-20 unit world market and then gave us a computer in every home – and in every pocket. Another one promised us the Jetsons and instead gave us the Canyonero, fighting tooth and nail against every innovation from safety to fuel efficiency along the way. The individual stakes may be even higher – especially if we ask someone trapped in a virtual reality built by Kafka, or AOL's cancellation department. So what do we know about it? We know how to fix services markets – including those whose participants keep stuff chilled (data centers) and those that treasure uptime and reliability (networks, clouds, etc). We hope to fix your someday. An idea generator turning perceptions and industries sideways since he was 17, Tony Greenberg is currently tearing down and rebuilding 2 markets: IT services and wine & spirits. From driving mass customization in the eyewear industry, to convincing the world that it didn’t need to hug its servers at Exodus, to pioneering online video 5 years before YouTube at DEN, Tony has fearlessly challenged and changed the status quo, while thinking ahead to the endgame when the board was still being set up. He has cut out millions of misspent money and uncovered dozens of industry myths in order to make new markets and innovations flower. Today Tony is the visionary behind RampRate, an IT services decision hub that makes multi-million dollar matches between people that need some really cold space, massive computing power and near infinite bandwidth and companies that can do so reliably, cheaply, and effectively. To the best of his knowledge, these have been used to house hot servers rather than cold bodies and corporate rather than corporeal consciousnesses, but that could change in the long run. His latest project is bringing the same decision engine to the consumer world, helping consumers start on a discovery process about their own palates, tastes, and matches with the optimal liquid refreshment.TRANSCRIPT
BOILING THE HUMAN
CONVENIENCE AND CONFUSIONON THE PATH TO THE SINGULARITY
Tony Greenberg & Alex VeytselRampRate
Eric PulierServiceMesh
BASIC CHALLENGES
Getting There from Here: Change is not inherently positive. Value-driven direction is vital.
Land of the Lost: Exponential Tech can overwhelm Linear Human decision-making.
Madoff’s Law: Anywhere a profit can be made, it will be, regardless of human consequences
THE CONCERN:
Madoff’s Law could thrive, creating an ugly future.
STUMBLING INTO THE LAND OF THE LOST
Technological Progress
Human-Scale Adaptation
De
velo
pm
ent
Time
The LandOf the Lost
INNOVATING PAST THE CHALLENGES…MAYBE
Technological Progress
Business-Model Adaptation
Human-Scale Adaptation Exploitative
Business Models
Failure to Innovate
BOILING THE FROG
DRAWING THE LINE
BUSINESS MODEL ADAPTATION
YESTERDAY’S REVOLUTIONS
Revolutions in Connecting… People to People Information to Information People to Information
And Now in Sharing…
BUILDING THE NEXT REVOLUTION: Bandwidth Heading to Zero
BUILDING THE NEXT REVOLUTION:Storage Heading to Zero
EXPONENTIAL “LAWS”TRANSFORMING BUSINESS
Moore’s Law: Number of transistors on a circuit doubles and price halves every 12 to 18 months.
Metcalfe’s Law: A network’s value rises based on the square of the number of users.
Zuckerberg’s Law: The amount of information shared between people doubles every 12 to 18 months.
Pulier’s Law: The time and cost to launch a venture that reaches 100M people halves every 12 to 18 months.
THE CONVENIENCE EFFECT
AMAZON GOOGLE FACEBOOK TWITTER ZYNGA FOURSQUARE
Then… we turn up the heat a little more…
•Default becomes “open”
•Privacy becomes a “process”
WITH GREAT POWER…
…COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY Or just a great opportunity to make a LOT of money…
INNOVATION: SOME MARKETS ARE WILDLY SUCCESSFUL
1943 (apocryphal) target market: 5 units worldwide (faux photo)
2009 market: 274 million units per year
INNOVATION: the PROMISE
In 1962 In 1989
Innovation: The PAYOFF?
FAILURE TO INNOVATE
Technological Progress
Business Model Adaptation
Human Scale Adaptation
Failure to Innovate
EXPLOITED IN THE LAND OF THE LOST
Technological Progress
Business Model Adaptation
Human Scale Adaptation Exploitative
Business Models
THE PARADOX OF CHOICE
happiness
choices
Alfred Toffler
Greg Easterbrook
FLEEING FROM CHOICE……TO CONFORMITY
CUSTOMER DISSERVICE:2010’S WORST COMPANIES
21 of 32 nominees are pure services companies
3 of 4 finalists- The eventual “winner”?
The Lesson: Services Markets Reward Poor Customer Service
ARE WE BUILDING A TRANSHUMANIST SERVICES MARKET?
Future Services
Virtual reality Bio-Uploading Cryonics Nanotech
OR ARE WE BUILDING A… Transhumanist DISSERVICES Market?
HUMAN-SCALE ADAPTATION:SHIFTING THE CURVE
MUCH ADO ABOUT… SOMETHING?
Fear mongering not the same as organizing behavior change…
We Need Systemic Solutions.
YOUR ASSIGNMENT:HOW TO CREATE THE RIGHT MARKET?
Focus on:
More Innovation Less Exploitation
Resources needed: Regulation – In time? Not co-opted? Covenants – How many altruists are there? Impartial Arbiters – Who’s really impartial? Individual Choice – Did you go open source? Did
you ditch Facebook?
WHERE NEXT?
ERIC’S IDEAS
Create A Singularity Bill of Rights for humans and machines.
The Singularity Stock Exchange SSE rates companies against its Bill of Rights. Capture the conscious capitalist!
The Next Green Movement. Encourage support, pacts with higher-ranked companies.
Create predictable correlation between stock price and market success with Singularity Stock Exchange price.
ALEX’S IDEAS
Divorce political organization from geography
Create self-selecting communities Virtual societies compete for citizens More citizens = More influence Political service becomes political
imperative
TONY’S IDEAS
A world without exploitative sales and salesmanship
But How? Awareness. Expectations. Accountability/Transparency Automagical software that meshes people/technology
needs and consciousness
THANK YOU
Write us at:
This presentation will be available at www.BoilTheMan.com