who we are
Vivek Wadhwa and Tarun Wadhwa have been dissecting models of innovation for over a decade. They have pioneered new markets and reached millions of people around the world through their charismatic writing, speaking, and entrepreneurial work. As advisors on cutting-edge technologies and methods, they’ve helped Fortune 500 companies, major institutions, and world leaders transform their practices and tap into trillion dollar opportunities.
the program
The Exponential Innovation Workshop is a crash course on what it takes to compete & thrive in the new industrial era. It distills complex topics about advancing technologies, engineering, and business and makes them accessible to participants of all backgrounds.
The program has taken place in over 24 countries, leading to the creation of thousands of valuable and impactful initiatives, products, and platforms around the world. It combines a series of lectures, group activities, and discussions to teach leaders about the new paradigms of innovation and competitiveness. Participants will learn the fundamentals of exponential technologies; where and how disruption is occurring; and the new tools required for successful reinvention.
customized for you
The programs are one or two day sessions that are action-packed with riveting lectures and engaging group activities. Every workshop is thoughtfully assembled to best suit your organization’s needs and expertly facilitated by Vivek and Tarun.
Who Should Attend
The program is for anybody that wants to understand the changes ahead and update what they do, but especially:
Government officials who are looking to see how the massive changes coming to our social, legal, and civil systems can be harnessed to enhance human potential
CXOs who are seeking to learn about new business models, revenue streams, and ways to grow multi-billion dollar businesses
Large corporations looking to understand how they can apply advancing technologies
Employees aiming to expand their careers and understand where they can grow
Startups and entrepreneurs looking for product-market fit, how to scale up exponentially, and where the next multi-billion dollar opportunities lie
Policy makers seeking to understand how to develop regulatory frameworks that enhance our abilities with technology and unleash creative potential
our Clients
A few of the companies and institutions we’ve educated include:
IBM Global Services, consulting division of world’s largest technology services provider
Nike, multinational footwear and apparel company
3M, a global science company with over $30B in revenue
Group Breca, Peru’s leading banking and industrial conglomerate
Institute of Global Management, executive academy for Korea’s top CEOs
TheFamily, Europe’s hottest startup incubator
AT Kearney, a global consulting firm with offices in 40 countries
Sime Darby, a major Malaysia-based multinational conglomerate
Fujitsu, Fortune Global 500 Japanese multinational company
The Energy Authority, a portfolio management company for America’s largest utilities
Standard Bank, a pan-African finance corporation
Dominion Energy, leading American energy company
Grupo Salinas, a major Mexican corporate conglomerate
ULI Australia, a non-profit research organization promoting responsible use of land
American College of Corporate Directors, an educational organization for directors of world’s largest publicly held companies
go from incremental to exponential
lectures & ACTIVITIES
Exponential technology 101
By 2029, according to Ray Kurzweil's predictions, computers’ exponential trajectory will lead them to exhibit human-level intelligence. Since every technology that becomes information-based also traces such exponential progress, advances have begun similarly accelerating in fields such as artificial intelligence, digital manufacturing, medicine, robotics, sensors, nanomaterials, and synthetic biology.
We will illustrate the driving forces behind related technologies, as well as what they may enable.
Artificial Intelligence
What led (A.I.), the stuff of science fiction, to failure in the ’90s, and the new methods of data analysis and the advent of the GPU that revived it
Separating fact from fiction: the difference between today’s “narrow” or “weak” A.I. and tomorrow’s artificial general intelligence and superintelligence
How A.I. can provide the cheap, reliable, industrial-grade digital smartness to transform decision-making in everything from stock trading, document review, and financial analysis to security, intelligence, fraud detection, and law enforcement
Classes of machine-learning strategies — supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement — and their application in business
Cutting through the hype: the limits and practicalities of business A.I.
Regulatory and reputational concerns arising from A.I.’s opacity and emergent properties.
Digital manufacturing
Advances in 3D printing, and its relatively slow progress
Uses of 3D printing: household goods, electronics, automobiles, and food
The dream of being able to emulate nature in design.
Nanotechnology
The dream of nanotechnology and the reality
Quantum effects: how properties such as melting point, fluorescence, electrical conductivity,
magnetic permeability, and chemical reactivity change as a function of particle size
New materials and the materials genome
Nanotechnology of science fiction: molecular assembly and micromachines.
Sensors
How advances in MEMS sensors — microfabricated from miniaturized mechanical and electro- mechanical elements — underlie IoT devices and the possibility of a new generation of smart cities
Microfluidics/nanofluidics and “humans on a chip” technologies.
Quantum computing
Whether the phantom effects of quantum physics — which Albert Einstein called “spooky action at a distance” — are real and practicable
Applications in machine learning, tumor treatment, logistical planning, ever smarter trading algorithms, airline scheduling, the search for Earth-like planets
Breaking the world’s most sophisticated cryptography system in minutes.
Medicine
Sensor-based medical devices as consumer appliances; epidermal electronics and the Fantastic Voyage into the human body; and the possibilities of telemedicine
How we have become data and our doctors are becoming software
Virtual psychologists, brain–computer interfaces, and robotic surgery
Advances in bionics and prosthetics
DNA sequencing and the dream of precision medicine
How medicine’s new frontier, the microbiome, could disrupt the very foundation of Western
medicine
New methods for exploring treatments for most cancers and many other diseases within a decade.
Robotics
What exactly a robot is, and why we don’t have the robots depicted in science-fiction movies in the past 60 years
The progress of robots: what they can do today, and what we can expect in the next decade
Robots for manufacturing, delivery, retail management, surgery, and personal use.
Synthetic biology
The ability to “print” DNA and create new life forms and school experiments from “biobricks”
Advances in CRISPR: how plants, animals, and humans genes can now be “edited”
Creating drought-resistant and extra-nutritious plants, adding features to animals, removing
problematic genes from humans, resurrecting the woolly mammoth and dinosaurs
Where and how we’ll draw ethical and legal boundaries.
Solving the grand challenges of humanity
The solutions that technology is enabling to the problems that have always plagued humanity, including disease, ignorance, energy shortfalls, and hunger — creating many new problems but solving the oldest:
an era of unlimited, clean, and almost free energy through advances in technologies such as solar and wind generation
the capacity to educate and retrain almost every person on the planet though inexpensive smartphones, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality
health care affordable to billions via inexpensive diagnostics and A.I. doctors
unlimited supplies of synthetic meat and produce from vertical farms.
Convergence, disruption,
and opportunity
Not long ago, you could see your competition coming. Management guru Clayton Christensen coined the term “disruptive innovation” to describe how competition worked: a new entrant attacked a market leader by launching low-end, low-priced products and then relentlessly improving them. Now Christensen’s frameworks have themselves been disrupted — because you can no longer see the competition coming. Technologies are no longer progressing in a predictable linear fashion, but are advancing exponentially and converging.
Practically every industry will be disrupted over the next few years, including finance, insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, education, I.T.services, and communications. By the early 2030s, all but a very few of today’s Fortune 500 companies will have fallen off that list; they will go the way of Blockbuster, Kodak, RIM, Compaq, and Nokia. This is not all bad news, because disruption creates opportunities. New industries will emerge, and the companies that lead the change will have the trillion-dollar market capitalizations.
We will explain how technologies converge and disrupt industries, and the S-curves that they form — which make it very hard to pick specific winners. And we will detail some of the technology convergences in a range of industries — all of which will affect one another.
Agriculture
Robots have advanced to a point at which they can do the grunt work that humans do in farming.
Breakthrough technologies can inexpensively generate Plasma-Activated-Water, Mother Nature’s secret method of fertilizing and protecting the planet’s flora.
Innovative structures and designs have led to dramatic improvements in LED technology and enabled it to be optimized for plant growth. The combination of LED lamps, A.I., and sensors is facilitating rapid advances in vertical farming.
Using sensors, A.I. drones can now monitor crop growth, watering, fertilizer application, and harvesting.
Meatless meat, made of plants and vegetables, is now the rage in Silicon Valley, and technologies such as CRISPR will dramatically accelerate its development. In vitro cloned meat is also becoming a reality.
Communications
AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint have seen their landline businesses disappear.
Wireless networks far exceed the reach of landlines, and smartphones are leapfrogging PCs,
tablets, and mobile broadband.
A race is on to provide Wi-Fi everywhere, via drones, balloons, and microsatellites.
What comes next for mobile carriers?
Finance
Peer-to-peer marketplaces and startups forcing redesign of every part of financial system
Promise of digital currencies and sober assessment of where today’s cryptocurrenices are headed, and where new value is being created
China’s $19 trillion cashless economy, and India’s leap forward
Cutting through the hype to find blockchain’s killer apps
Tokenization and smart contracts transforming ownership, access, and resource sharing
More
Similarly, in this lecture we will cover the transformation of the following industries: manufacturing, energy, insurance, real estate, education, transportation, health care, retail, and technology services.
Exponential vulnerability:
Building new defenses
The rapid pace of technological change is placing companies at unprecedented security risk. Nearly every day brings with it the tale of a corporation newly hacked; but in reality the incidents not publicized far exceed those that are. Executive e-mails, employee health information, and industry contracts are all fair game in this new age of cyber-espionage.
We will provide a roadmap of what corporations can do to protect themselves. We use concepts that everyone in business needs to know and distill the most practical knowledge without getting lost in the technical specifics. Customers, clients, and boards are holding executives responsible for their company’s security, demanding a shift in mindset toward one of proactive defense from the status quo of reactive response.
The changing nature of breaches and attacks
Multiplying points of failure, and the new risks that companies face daily
Why companies will face the same threats as countries, and how they can protect their reputation and resources while under attack
How to design security considerations and controls into every level of a company
A new age of synthetic media, deepfakes, and targeted attacks.
Securing connected devices
How the global debut of Ransomware simultaneously in more than 150 countries has made us rethink management of embedded computers
The next generation of Internet of Things and what securing it will necessitate
The new insurance products, financial strategies, and market-based remedies changing how we think about liability.
The new realities of data collection and analysis
The changing nature of what and how machines communicate about us
How new architectures are enabling companies to capture user data while limiting their own exposure to risk
Navigating regulation and changing social demands for privacy and data security.
Building resiliency in corporate security
Why everything will be breached, and the new defining question: what happens afterward
What blockchain can and can’t do to prevent data loss
How hackers make systems stronger by exposing vulnerabilities — and how to have them work for you rather than against you.
Preparing for the next generation of cyber threats
Preparing for the arrival of quantum computing, its threat to encryption, and the security crisis unfolding exponentially
How offensive and defensive A.I.s will come to define the future of corporate security
Rethinking our current infrastructure, and designing new protocols for tomorrow’s technologies.
how to innovate in
the exponential era — part 1
Corporate leaders are unprepared for exponential disruption. While they focus on existing markets by improving processes, limiting risk, and innovating incrementally, startups set about changing the world and fearlessly conquering new markets. Big companies are organized in divisions, each focusing on its own products and problems rather than those of the company. Their executives believe that they have succeeded in the past, and so can succeed in the future; that old business models can support new products.
Goliath doesn’t stand a chance against David in this new world of exponentially advancing technologies.
We will impart some of the new principles of innovation, including differences between big companies and startups and the emergence of new work paradigms (we are always on, connected; everything is urgent; adapt or perish). We will explain how to turn stodgy business executives into intrapreneurs. And we will discuss the implications of cloud-based information, instantaneous spread of knowledge, of ideas’ coming from anywhere, and of the reliance of success on sharing rather than on hoarding knowledge. We will illustrate the new techniques of crowdsourcing, crowd creation, and contests and discuss the importance of building an entrepreneurial culture that empowers employees.
The new principles of corporate survival, management, and work
Why the silos that companies organize themselves into will ultimately spell their doom
The reputation economy, shifting from trust in institutions to trust in individuals
How markets have moved power from seller to buyer; why intellectual capital and brand no longer lock in customers; why one-way messaging no longer works; and how companies must build loyalty with value or perish
What doesn’t work and why
Government top-down innovation clusters: nearly all have failed
Silicon Valley outposts: setting up an office there won’t save a company
Expensive R&D efforts: it takes more than money to innovate
Traditional hierarchies: managers must facilitate rather than control
Exponential methods
Developing minimum viable products through which early adopters can show you whether you’re solving the right problem
How to develop incentive prizes to jumpstart industries and change perceptions of what is possible
Why ideas can come from anywhere, localization is everything, and the best entrepreneurs steal.
the silicon valley way
How moonshot thinking and demands for tenfold improvement establish new mindsets, encourage lateral thinking, and challenge norms
What makes the ideas economy truly exponential, and why data are the new currency of the information age
Silicon Valley’s enduring advantage: spreading, sharing, and collaborating on ideas.
How to prepare for exponential disruption
Making the cultural transformation from traditional linear to entrepreneurial exponential
How to incubate ideas, invest in startups, acquire runaway successes, and partner with companies that provide strategic advantages
Why bold leaders disrupt themselves.
How to innovate in the exponential era – part 2
Silicon Valley has invented the world’s most sophisticated toolkit for fostering innovative thinking and building cutting-edge companies. How was Elon Musk able to beat Wall Street and defy the odds with both Tesla and SpaceX? How did AirBnB transform the very idea of what a “hotel” is? And what does it look like to apply these ideas to entirely new industries?
In this lecture, we will provide an overview of how to apply design thinking to business practices; what you can learn from the Lean Startup model; the methods that software startups use to constantly update their products and keep them relevant; and why platforms are the ultimate technology-enabled business model.
First Principles
The limitations of reasoning by analogy
What reducing an industry to its core truths reveals of the process of developing innovative solutions — through outstanding examples
How fashion and design principles can drastically improve product quality — through a case study in medical devices and prosthetics.
Design Thinking
Approaching business problems using designers’ frameworks and tools, in a three-step process
Methods and tools that technology startups employ to test concepts and learn needs
Case studies in major corporations’ major cost reductions and service improvements through design thinking.
Lean startup
A methodology for learning as fast as possible what does not work
How to turn anyone into an entrepreneur regardless of age, position, or industry
The importance of metrics; examples of their successful application; and a new framework for tracking progress
The importance of the continual cycle of building, measuring, and learning.
Platforms
Why the fastest-growing companies own no assets, and how that is the key to their exponential growth
What platform owners gain by giving away control; and how Apple, Facebook, and Alibaba have employed this effect to overturn industry after industry
The power of “network effects”, and how they account for the continuing success and dominance of platform companies.
Society, laws, and ethics
Changes that once took centuries now take years or months, and policy, law, and ethics simply cannot keep up with the exponential pace of change. Many technologies are taking part in this revolution, leaving significant areas of law silent in regard to them, leaving them to undermine not only entire industries but also our entire ethical and legal systems as presently formulated.
Where there is disruption, however, there is opportunity. In this lecture, we will discuss how our systems, applications, and business models should evolve to maximize benefit and lower exposure to risk as the technological landscape changes. The fields of enquiry underpinning these considerations fall into three categories.
Transitioning to a future of abundance
A standard of living—for everyone—previously accessible only to kings and popes
Opportunities for social progress
What transformation from scarcity economics to an economics of abundance entails, and our options for dealing with it
The difference between laws and ethics
Technology having always led to developments in law (steel and property, railroad and eminent domain, printing press and copyright), what is different now?
Need for prompt consensus on issues we used to have decades or centuries to sort out
Laws as codified ethics, and ethics as a consensus developed over time
The emergence of leadership from the private sector
New institutions, frameworks, and systems needed for resilience
Emerging importance of the private sector in understanding technological ramifications and recognition that regulatory guidance will come after the fact
The ugly effects of technology’s concentration of wealth and control.
discussions
In relation to these generalities, we will propose discussions on a range of ethical discussion points and scenarios, including:
Where and how autonomous cars and robotics can be successfully integrated into society
Balancing the needs of governments and society against the ability of entrepreneurs to overturn existing systems
How companies can defend intellectual property at a time when physical objects can be rapidly digitized
Ethical and safety issues in ceding control to artificial intelligences
How societies, governments, and companies can deal constructively with rapid job elimination
Limits on the use of powerful, potentially devastating technologies (e.g. CRISPR gene editing)
WORKING GROUP OPTIONS
Assessing disruption readiness
Participants will be asked to select a business area and discuss which technologies and threats might pose a disruptive challenge. Teams will then discuss how prepared that industry sector is for the changes ahead and where the greatest disruptions might occur.
Creating trillion-dollar industries
Assuming the role of nascent entrepreneurs, participants will be asked to develop ideas for products, platforms, or services that will transform their country and create enormous value. Imagining themselves as fresh entrants into their industry, they will be asked to look past constraints and legacy considerations to locate opportunities. They will assess what government can do to remove barriers and what private industry can do to encourage development.
Incentive prize design
Participants will be asked to consider the implications of convergence for their industry or business. They will identify the technologies and business models that would create disruption or opportunity for their business. Then they will be asked to develop an incentive prize to address their most pressing needs.
Startup creation
Participants will be asked to take the role of nascent entrepreneurs. They will be asked to think and act like the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who are gunning for Goliath by developing an idea for a minimum viable product intended to disrupt a specific line of business that the company is engaged in.
Scenarios
The exponential pace of change is going to cause upheavel in all our institutions and systems. Participants will be asked to analyse three near-future scenarios arising from new technologies; to evaluate their ethical and legal ramifications; and to develop means of addressing them.
Harnessing A.I.
Participants will learn how to train, develop, and deploy A.I. modules; the basics of how A.I. systems operate and can be used in business cases; and such systems’ benefits and drawbacks in specific business contexts.
Design thinking
Participants will learn how to apply the principles of design thinking to business situations. Beginning with problem context, they will adopt frameworks for collecting information about their users’ greatest problems and develop prototypes.
Rethinking security
We face daunting challenges in securing the devices we use — but there is a whole new breed of innovations that can help us protect our information. Participants will consider drastically differing approaches to digital security, ranging from deploying new technologies to engaging with the cultural difficulties of security research.
Company demolition
The companies that will overturn today’s corporate giants are being created every day across the world. Participants will pick a business or industry, analyze its business model and products, and create scenarios within which new technologies and startups would disrupt it.
Designing platforms
As the most scalable business model, platforms are one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful secrets. Participants will learn to build and analyze platform ecosystems by identifying their producers and consumers, their core interactions, and how and to whom they provide value — and then will turn a concept into a scalable business model.
sample schedules
WORKSHOP TIMETABLE
Day 1 of 2
9:00am – 11:00am
Exponential technology 101
11:00am – 11:30am
Refreshment break/Q+A
11:30am – 12:30pm
Working group
12:30pm – 1:30pm
Networking lunch
1:30pm – 2:15pm
Exponential Vulnerability
2:15pm – 2:45pm
Refreshment break/Q+A
2:45pm – 4:45pm
4:45pm – 5:00pm
Convergence, disruption, and opportunity
Key takeaways
Day 2 of 2
9:00am – 11:00am
How to innovate in the exponential era – pt 1
11:00am – 11:30am
Refreshment break/Q+A
11:00am – 11:30am
Refreshment break
11:30am – 12:00pm
How to innovate in the exponential era – pt 2
12:00pm – 12:45pm
Working group
12:45pm – 1:45pm
Networking lunch
1:45pm – 2:30pm
Working group
2:30pm – 2:45pm
Refreshment break
2:45pm – 3:45pm
Society, law, and ethics
3:45pm – 4:30pm
Working group
4:30pm – 5:00pm
Key takeaways / Q&A
One-day PROGRAM
9:00am – 10:45am
Exponential technology 101
10:45am – 11:00am
Refreshment break
11:00am – 11:45am
Exponential vulnerability: building new defenses
11:45am – 12:30pm
Group activity 1
12:30pm – 1:30pm
Networking lunch
1:30pm – 2:45pm
Convergence, disruption, and opportunity
2:45pm – 3:15pm
Group activity 2
3:15pm – 4:15pm
How to innovate in the exponential era
4:15pm – 4:45pm
Society, law, and ethics
4:45pm – 5:00pm
Conclusion: The future is what we make it