Future-Proofing Your Business

Peter Diamandis
7 min readDec 6, 2019

Have you ever wished that you could rewind 10 years, but retain the knowledge you have today?

What investments would you have made, knowing what you know now? What venture would you have started before somebody else made it a 10 billion-dollar company?

Now let’s reverse this logic… Imagine if you could know with certainty the first- and second-order implications of today’s tech breakthroughs and convergences. Look 3 to 10 years into the future. And harness the tools at your disposal right now to capture these business opportunities years in advance.

How would you future-proof your company? What business problems do you have today that you could outsource to software? How can you already double the productivity of your human capital using AI?

Knowing what will emerge as a result of technological convergence is crucial for every business leader… it’s the difference between staying (and thriving) in business, and getting crushed by today’s tsunami of accelerating technological change.

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Future-Proofing Your Business

Whether you’re in financial services, IT, real estate, insurance, health, consulting, manufacturing, retail, F&B, energy, advertising, you name it…

What’s happening this very minute as AI converges with computation, converges with sensors and IoT, converges with surging connectivity, renewables and energy storage, robotics, AR/VR, digital biology, and blockchain… is critically relevant to your life and the longevity of your company.

That’s why this January, at Abundance 360, I’m focusing on the technologies expected to most dramatically impact your business in the next 1–3 years.

What tangible implications do you need to be aware of, what opportunities exist in the next 12 months, and what solutions must you incorporate into your business to stay ahead of the curve?

For instance, how will you transform your advertising strategy when AR allows you to superimpose digital ads on real-world products in real time?

How will you advise your retail client on adopting AI-driven personalization, smart market data capture, and new tech-enabled logistics strategies?

Or what Software as a service (SaaS) products will you use to automate accounting and sales campaigns across your company, giving you back 30% of your human capital and boosting your profit margins?

This is no longer about maintaining your revenue stream, the products and services that have long been your bread and butter, or the business processes that are good enough to hold onto…

The converging tools at our disposal today are enabling us to double our productivity, rethink our business models, and create never-before-possible products and services that sprint us ahead of the competition in the next 3–5 years.

Abundance 360

How would you answer these three questions?

  1. Do you have a clear understanding of what technological breakthroughs transpired during the past 12 months that you should be leveraging in your business right now?
  2. Do you have a good handle on the anticipated breakthroughs that could most dramatically impact your business in the next 1–3 years?
  3. Are you clear about the top 10 meta-trends that will shape the decade ahead? (Autonomous transport networks; Convergence of AR, AI & 5G; Global Gigabit coverage of 8 billion people and 100 billion devices… just to name a few).

Every January, I personally host and curate a 3-day summit in Beverly Hills called Abundance 360, delivered to a membership of 360 select entrepreneurs, executives and investors. A360 answers these three questions, providing the latest up-to-date knowledge required to capture emerging opportunities, and future-proof one’s businesses.

My goal during these 3 days is to get the entire A360 membership excited about the future and to help them harness converging exponential technologies, create wealth, and solve globally significant problems.

What am I planning to cover in January 2020?

While painting a vision of life in 2030, this January we are focusing on near-term business opportunities and the tools at your fingertips today.

In case you’re interested in what I think is *most important* for leaders to understand going into 2020, here’s what I’ve spent the year curating and preparing…

Day 1: Mindsets & Moonshots

To get us started, I’ll be holding an MTP & Moonshots ‘New Member Workshop.’ Here, you’ll build a clearly metricized and powerful Massively Transformative Purpose (MTP) and Moonshot. These will in turn allow you to identify the technologies and measure the capital you need to turn success into significance.

We’ll get coaching during a Moonshot Fireside Chat with Martine Rothblatt, Ph.D, MBA, J.D., an incredible entrepreneur working on her sixth Moonshot. Learn how she’s framed them, pursued them and accomplished them. This is an important how-to session to shape what you believe is possible.

Exponential Tech Update: Next, join Peter Norvig (Google’s Director of AI Research), Avi Reichental (CEO, Nexa3D and Chairman, Exponential Works), Greg Wyler (Founder of OneWeb), and Marc Raibert (CEO, Boston Dynamics) in an Exponential Technologies Overview. Here, you’ll get an in-depth overview of what discoveries transpired in AI, networks, digital manufacturing and robotics during the past year, and what breakthroughs are anticipated in the next 1–3 years.

Day 2: Convergence & Opportunities Workshop

Converging technologies create disruptions and implications, and these create massive opportunities for those who are ready to capitalize on them. Day 2 will focus on opportunities resulting from two specific meta-trends:

The Future of Transportation Workshop: Covering everything from autonomous and flying cars to Hyperloop, this workshop will bring together Josh Giegel (Co-Founder and CTO of Hyperloop One), Nikhil Goel (Uber Aviation’s Head of Product), and Hod Lipson (Autonomous Car expert and Director of Columbia University’s Creative Machines Lab).

A near future of instantaneous and autonomous transit is closer than you might think. These breakthroughs will transform real estate, insurance, finance and entertainment. It will change where you live and work, and how you spend your time. It is critical for any entrepreneur and leader to understand the first-order implications and second-order business opportunities that will emerge as a result.

The Future of 5G & Augmented Reality Workshop: Join Daniel Diez (Magic Leap’s Chief Marketing and Communications Officer) and Mo Katibeh (AT&T’s Chief Marketing Officer) to discuss how the combination of 5G networks, Augmented Reality (Spatial Web) and Artificial Intelligence will transform everything… from retail and advertising to education and entertainment. Take a deep dive into these converging advancements in connectivity and AR, and the entrepreneurial opportunities they will bring about.

Late Night with Ray Kurzweil: Join famed futurist and entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil for a late-night (living room setting) conversation on everything exponential from Brain-Computer Interfaces and longevity, to the future of humanity.

Day 3: Implementation & Longevity

Day 3 is where it all comes together. My primary focus on this day is implementation. How do you apply everything you’ve heard to 10x your business, to take it from linear to exponential? Day 3 is also our annual (and traditional) deep dive into the cutting edge of Human Longevity-related technologies and companies.

Creating an AI & SaaS Driven “Exponential Organization:” There are many critical elements to creating an exponential organization, one of the most important of which is understanding to use AI and Software As A Service (SaaS) to automate your business and double your productivity. You no longer need to build and own all the components of your company (the layers of your stack). An explosion of collaborative and always improving “software as a service providers” will deliver what you need, cheaper, faster and better — allowing you to operate as an exponential organization. Understand what is available and how to apply it to your company.

Longevity Update/Workshop: Billions of dollars are being invested every year to extend the healthy human lifespan, to make “100 Years Old the New 60.” Every year, this highly anticipated module provides an in-depth overview from the top scientists and entrepreneurs in the field. This year, our Longevity module will feature two of today’s leading voices in longevity: David Sinclair, PhD (Co-Director of Harvard Medical School’s Center for the Biology of Aging) and Osman Kibar, PhD (Founder and CEO of Samumed). Plus updates in a few other key fields such as predictive diagnostics, Stem Cells, Senolytic Medicines, and GDF11, just to name a few.

Exponential Entrepreneurship: And last but not least, engage with the heads of game-changing unicorns in our Exponential Entrepreneurship module. Creating an exponential organization capable of changing the world isn’t easy, but success leaves clues. Join Chad Hurley (Co-Founder, past-CEO of YouTube), Joe Gebbia (Co-Founder of AirBnB) and Jordan Noone (Co-Founder and CTO of Relativity Space) to learn from entrepreneurs who built multi-billion-dollar startups in record time.

This year, we are finally reaching a turning point whereby the convergence of AI, computation, sensors and networks, synthetic biology, AR/VR, and additive manufacturing is accelerating the rate of acceleration.

In ten years, what will you wish you would have known today? What tools, community and thinking processes will give you an unfair time advantage? What role will you play in the transformation of humanity?

Join Me

If you’re an exponentially and abundance-minded entrepreneur who would like coaching directly from me, consider joining my Abundance 360 Mastermind, a highly selective community of 360 CEOs and entrepreneurs who I coach for 3 days every January in Beverly Hills, CA.

Through A360, I provide my members with context and clarity about how converging exponential technologies will transform every industry. I’m committed to running A360 for the course of an ongoing 25-year journey as a “countdown to the Singularity.”

If you’d like to learn more and consider joining our 2020 membership, apply here.

(Both A360 and Abundance-Digital (which is included in A360 membership) are part of Singularity University your participation opens you to a global community.)

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Peter Diamandis

Passionate about innovation and creating a world of Abundance. Companies: XPRIZE, Singularity University, Planetary Resources, Human Longevity Inc.