Every year MIT Technology Review “takes a look at not just where technology is now, but where it’s going and who’s taking it there”. Their Change Issue gives us a glimpse into the future with their ’35 Innovators under 35’ feature. I read a bunch of them: mind blown!. They are all awesome: both the people and the technologies. You can find the magazine here: MIT Technology Review - The Change Issue.
Here’s an extract from just 7 of the vignettes.
Nako Nakatsuka (31) is building tiny sensors that can detect chemical changes in the brain. Currently working in the laboratory, the technology is being refined to work directly in the body. Her sensors are being built using molecules known as aptamers (look it up). The aptamer changes shape in the presence of serotonin, altering the electric current.
Sara Spangelo (34) is the CEO of Swarm Technologies. Swarm’s satellites are ‘roughly the size of a slice of French toast … [they are] the smallest two-way communication device in orbit today’. Nearly 90% of the planet’s surface (eg. oceans; deserts; polar regions) lacks internet access. Swarm’s niche is giving customers the ability to transmit small parcels of information from theses remote areas. How do they get up there? They hitch rides on commercial rockets for bargain prices.
Tammy Hsu (30) is tackling a significant global environmental issue: the indigo colour of your denim jeans. This signature colour requires synthetic chemicals like formaldehyde and cyanide. Tammy and her colleagues have studied how colour is made in nature, and programmed microbes to enzymatically produce the shade they want. Next step: make it cheaper.
Anna Goldie (27) is using AI to design microchips much more quickly than humans. Modern chips are composed of millions or even billions of components. It can take engineers weeks or even months to figure out the best layout for the chips. Goldie’s AI can come up with solutions that match or better the engineers’ solutions in under six hours.
Marc Miskin (34) has figured out a way to give motion to microscopic robots (40x40 microns). He fabricates ‘legs’ from sheets of platinum a dozen or so atoms thick, capped on one side by an even smaller layer of titanium. And if that’s not enough, the legs are activated by a current generated from solar cells ‘attached to the robot brain’
Jinxing Zheng (34) has devised new ways to model how we control plasma at extreme temperatures. Why does that matter? This is critical to our ability to progress work on fusion reactions. In 2018 a fusion reactor in China controlled plasma at a record temperature 50,000,000C (yes, I haven’t made a mistake on the zeroes) for 102 seconds. China is intending to operate their CFETR (China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor) fusion reactor sometime in the 2030’s at 1Gw.
Amay Banddookar (33) is developing light weight sensors that could make wearables much more valuable. Traditionally the sensor was around 3% of the size and weight of the wearable He’s built ‘self-powered’ biochemical sensor that make wearables four times lighter and twenty times smaller. His sensor doesn’t require a battery: it harnesses the catalytic properties of enzymes to generate signals without the need for a power source. And he’s developed a lightweight battery that runs on sweat.
Stories like these remind me of my earliest roots. My first post-grad was an MAppSc (Medical Physics). Ultra-sound was an emerging technology back then. Today you can apparently buy an ultrasound machine the size of your electric razor for less than $5k and download the image onto your iPhone. One of my peers and I wrote a student paper on using electronics to convert lung sounds into analysable digital packages. The logic was that analysis of lung sounds via the stethoscope was a dated and somewhat variable protocol. I imagine today that would be a walk in the park.
But more importantly, these stories as an important reminder of a few key lessons for executives.
Firstly, there’s an adage in technology innovation: technologies take much longer to arrive than we expect, but their impact when they arrive is much greater than we expect. This is an oft repeated truism now. But we are still prone to forget. As futurist Paul Saffo observes:
“Even in that hotbed of Silicon Valley, most ideas take 20 years to become an overnight success”
Secondly, so called ‘breakthrough technologies’ are rare. More usually what we see is a process of evolutionary development within a given domain. The ‘breakthrough’ occurs when the technology shifts from one domain of application to another. This framing of technology evolution allows us to differentiate between a technology’s technical development and a technology’s market application.
And this leads to my final observation. Executives need to spend time outside their areas of expertise. Spending 2 hours chatting to someone who’s industry experience pretty much matches yours is unlikely to lead to a profound insight. Scan widely. Engage with fields of expertise where you are a novice. Allow yourself the luxury of asking ‘dumb’ questions. The last word goes to William Gibson:
The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.
Go find the future. Good luck.
DDB
