Vivek Wadhwa: “The next Trillion Dollar Opportunities”

Ashish on April 20, 2013

(Opinions expressed here are my understanding of Vivek Wadhwa’s opinion)
“The next Trillion Dollar Opportunities” (in this decade)

China’s manufacturing and India’s call center business is saturated.
PC industry is dead, Laptop is flat and mobile is going up.

Next trilion dollar opportunities

  1. Proactive health care
    Preventive care is much cheaper.
    Expect sensors everywhere (in toothbrush, tiolet, mirror etc.) to give info based on spotted symptoms.
    IBM Watson is being trained on medical data.
    Soon, nanobot’s will go inside body for drug release/monitoring.
  2. Manufacturing
    Robotics taking over (Baxter – 22K robot – will cost 1-2 $ per hour of work after that).
    Manufacturing coming back to USA.
    America is being automated.
  3. 3D Printing
    Current 3D printers 200 (low end) -1500$ (high end).
    Expect prices.to go down to 200$ for high end in 5 years => house hold goods can be printed at home.
  4. Finance
    Square-like mobile payments exploding
    Bitcoin carries a negative image, expect government backed digital currency soon.
    mPaisa in Kenya –  60% of transactions via sms now (25% of Kenya’s GDP).
  5. Transportation
    Robotics drone going to take over for deliveries
    Self-driving cars are imminent.
  6. Computing
    Big data
    Internet enabled devices augmented by  high speed internet (Google Fiber)
    New UIs – touch based interfaces, augmented reaility (Google Glass)
  7. Synthetic Biology

We are taking exponential (and not linear) steps in technology  and humans are not good at predicting impact of exponential changes.

Grand Problems

  1. Energy
    Solar energy ~ 10, 000 times total human energy consumption.
    97% fall in solar energy prices in 35 years and its still falling, in 10 years, it will be grid parity
    (Its already disel parity in India)
  2. Water Shortage
    Energy is free => Water distillation is free.
    Dean Kaeman’s slingshot purifies water (it consumes less energy than hair dryer)
  3. Education
    More education is accessible online now, tablets provide easier/better access.
  4. “In vitro” meat
    Two silicon valley companies working on that.
  5. Connected world
    Better flow of information.
    Helped in social revolution.

 

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