Wednesday, April 23, 2008

ETL – Peter Diamandis peter@xprize.org

What were you excited about as a kid?
That’s what you’re passionate about, VCs will fund you, etc. Life’s do short to do something for somebody else

Government can’t take risk for space frontier as there’re too many issues involved that would cause them to lose out politically
Have to go with the private industry


Long Term Mission – Asteroid Miner, lots of $$ in there

How X Prize Foundation is financed

Spirit of St Louis – Flight across the Atlantic for a prize

If he can do it, everyone can do it – the flying fool, Lindberg

Hence X Prize is the prize to simulate the prize for Lindbergh

Line of Super Credibility - Things you do that no matter what you do it will succeed. Line of credibility only brings you to being acknowledged

Insurance Company took the bet with X Prize that for each trench of advancement, the company will pay out

Founded Zero G airplanes to have fun

Space Adventures – Rocket Racing League

True breakthroughs require taking risk. The day before something takes off, it is a crazy idea. Got to be willing to take these risks.

How can we incentivize really crazy stuff? Originally was by government.

Average age of Apollo program engineers was 26 as nobody was there to tell them what they could or could not do. Same as dot com revolution.

Go do the crazy idea. Have to take risk.

X Prize is to change behavior

http://www.xprize.org/, http://www.gozerog.com/, http://www.rocketracingleague.com/


Leverage on people’s capabilities for sponsorship instead of $$ all the time
When you ask for great advice you get great money
It’s a people process, not a $ process

Make other people heroes


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Wednesday, April 16, 2008

ETL - David Rothkopf

Market Marketism
Banks - Great 14 people
Global financial non-regulation as sovereignty can't control the situation
Risks were "unknow-able", Board doesn't understand the risk, incapable of doing it, opaque systems of modern securities structures - we need to enforce old regulations of board controlling risks
Vilfredo Pareto - the 80/20 rule, a billion people affected by 200m people
More than half of people live on $2 a day - poverty struggles
Cross ownership causes concentration of power
Military power concentrated - less war = good or bad?
Religion concentration
"As scale play a bigger role, and technology allowing for democratizing (though not always - Google, Microsoft, Facebook, MySpace)"
Consequence:
1. Astonishing rapid growth in inequality - absolute poverty going down, real improvements at the base, BUT middle class shrunk especially in India and China
Top 11000 people (billionaires) assets are almost double of the bottom 2.5billion people put together - same as with other examples
3billion salary for the Hedge Fund managers
Growth no longer to be tracked by economic growth? causing political tension?
Backlash - globalization causing backlash

Therefore look at Superclass:
People who have influence over millions, international, on-going
60% from atlantic, 60% from business
Under-represented demographic - Women 94% of super is male, 6% is female
20% of these superclass went to top 20 universities - networking for multipliers
Ethics of leadership not trained in this class of people
More Transcient, but not necessarily more of a meritocracy - instead Geography, Luck is a huge part of of this
People less worthy might be more successful - other factors play a part
Etc parabos but all things are not equal, hence the reason for leadership and government to put rules into place

Other things:
Geographic location of these people (superclass) - fastest growing is Asians (Russia, India and China): 100 billionaires in China over the past few years (but bubble?)
Interest of these superclass align will drive how things are done
DAVOS - Have business leaders come together and talk things through so that through influence, things will be run the way people want it to
Power is skewed, disproportionate, and tools like government don't exist on the global stage anymore - much harder problem than cancer or global warming
Community - now global as we can communicate and do business
however difference in cultures still cause problems
Inequality is unsustainable - hence all the whacky ideas like terrorism, etc.

1 philosophy and won't have another until crazy people come out with new ones that may tip the balance and cause world to change in revolution style

DAVOS problem is that the fastest growing component is not represented (China and rest of Asia)
Scandinavian better wealth distribution than US

Europe is a museum, not much
Sweden wants to get off fossil fuels and be green
Traditional markets are not really market if supply and demand are done by the same people
European model maybe blended with the Singaporean or Chinese model with more government control to resurgent

Green tech
Government policies play a big role in Germany being better in green, US likely to follow once the next President takes over
Last energy bill are ridiculous as its done by random, causes wind and solar subsidies to reduce
Interest tug of war, so not really best policy comes through

Power dynamics
Constantly changing and different in each situation and influence level
Manifests in different ways
Roman Abromavich is a governer of a province in Siberia while he lives mostly in Chelsea
Agenda setting will change with the introduction of Asians
Disagreements with americans mainly due to fact that most countries do not agree with how things are run in US after Guantanomo
Lots of countries in asia have different values of states, how they interact, and what kind of things these states do (e.g. Sudan)

Structural Change within the year - incremental change
Global Financial Markets
Climate change going to motivate the change of the world in green tech emphasis
People rising to the challenge - big challenge is big opportunity

Burden sharing with US and China whether it can be resolved
Survival over climate change issues

Political division tension and not so much social unrest may be a result of how US is run now
CEO salaries and regulatory legislation

Compounded Advantages

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