How To Extract Value From Exponentials - Deloitte CIO - WSJ

How To Extract Value From Exponentials - Deloitte CIO - WSJ

3D printing, for example, is part of the larger exponential robotics. Robots, in turn, are being endowed with artificial intelligence (AI), which will likely move them far beyond stocking shelves to running driverless cars and even performing surgery. By 2020, the Internet of Things (IoT)will connect more than 50 billion devices to the Internet.² IoT devices and trillions of sensors will connect to machines with sophisticated artificial intelligence. Finally, infinite computing power will combine with AI to transform the field of synthetic biology to create everything from new foods to new vaccines.

Vision breeds confidence, which breeds conviction. Both are crucial to surmounting the obstacles of introducing the new. In an age of daunting uncertainty, being the first to disrupt the status quo should be a top agenda item for business leaders. If you don’t disrupt yourself, a competitor surely will.

World Economy Doing Worse in Practice Than Theory Suggests - Bloomberg Business

World Economy Doing Worse in Practice Than Theory Suggests - Bloomberg Business



Lower borrowing costs are probably being stymied by the need to reduce debts, a continued reluctance by banks to lend and tighter financial regulations.

Seven Reasons Cheap Oil Can't Stop Solar Power Anymore - Bloomberg Business

Seven Reasons Cheap Oil Can't Stop Solar Power Anymore - Bloomberg Business



The chart above shows the price of energy from different sources since the late 1940s. The extreme outlier is solar, which only recently entered the marketplace, at a very high price. Prices are falling so fast that solar will soon undercut even the cheapest fossil fuels, coal and natural gas. In the few places oil and solar compete directly, oil doesn’t stand a chance.  

Gates, Pritzkers Take on Musk in $5 Billion Race for New Battery - Bloomberg Business

Gates, Pritzkers Take on Musk in $5 Billion Race for New Battery - Bloomberg Business

Creative Self-Disruption by Mohamed A. El-Erian - Project Syndicate

Creative Self-Disruption by Mohamed A. El-Erian - Project Syndicate

...Central to these companies’ success has been their understanding of a fundamental trend affecting nearly all industries: individual empowerment through the Internet, app technology, digitalization, and social media. ...

Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/consumer-sharing-economy-adaptation-by-mohamed-a--el-erian-2015-04#P8dVgCCqAXdRLmpy.99

Wagner, G. and Weitzman, M.L.: Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet. (eBook and Hardcover)

Wagner, G. and Weitzman, M.L.: Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet. (eBook and Hardcover)

In Climate Shock, Gernot Wagner and Martin Weitzman explore in lively, clear terms the likely repercussions of a hotter planet, drawing on and expanding from work previously unavailable to general audiences. They show that the longer we wait to act, the more likely an extreme event will happen. A city might go underwater. A rogue nation might shoot particles into the Earth's atmosphere, geoengineering cooler temperatures. Zeroing in on the unknown extreme risks that may yet dwarf all else, the authors look at how economic forces that make sensible climate policies difficult to enact, make radical would-be fixes like geoengineering all the more probable. What we know about climate change is alarming enough. What we don't know about the extreme risks could be far more dangerous. Wagner and Weitzman help readers understand that we need to think about climate change in the same way that we think about insurance--as a risk management problem, only here on a global scale.

Demonstrating that climate change can and should be dealt with--and what could happen if we don't do so--Climate Shock tackles the defining environmental and public policy issue of our time.

China Embraces Desalination to Ease Water Shortages - Bloomberg Business

China Embraces Desalination to Ease Water Shortages - Bloomberg Business



... an Diego was at the halfway point in the construction of a $1 billion desalination plant, slated to begin converting Pacific seawater into 50 million gallons of potable water daily by 2016. It will be the largest desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere.

The amount of power consumed by these plants concerns environmentalists. Washington-based World Resources Institute, a think tank devoted to the environment, warns that the high power demands of desalination will encourage more coal-burning and urban smog in China’s northern cities.

Coal-powered desalination isn’t the only option. The Perth Seawater Reverse Osmosis Plant, which opened in 2007 in Western Australia, draws energy from the state’s Emu Downs Wind Farm. And in January 2015, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned technology company Taqnia and Spanish energy company Abengoa announced construction of the world’s first solar-powered desalination plant, near Khafji.