Between Worlds

Natalie Panek is an inspiring young innovator, with dreams of playing a dynamic role in the future of space exploration. A rocket scientist, she was recently named one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women by the Women’s Executive Network, a Forbes 30 under 30 2015, and “a vocal advocate for women in technology” by The Financial Post. In her spare time she has designed and driven a solar-powered car across North America, and builds space robotics.

I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about logistics. Supply chains might not strike you as a particularly interesting topic, but if you think about it, one of the first industries to be disrupted by our obsession with ordering everything and anything online, is the complex business of moving things around. To get a better handle on just what that kind of complexity entails, I met up with Rob van Egmond in Amsterdam, who runs a company called Quintiq. In Rob’s view, complexity is the natural state of 21st century companies. Trying to control it is futile. The key to mastery is reacting to it with agility.

From humble beginnings as street performance in a small Quebec town in 1984, Cirque du Soleil has grown to become the world’s most diverse, and dynamic brand of creative performances. On a recent visit to Las Vegas, which is home to seven permanent Cirque productions, I caught up with Jay Guilford, who is the creative content strategist for their team building program, SPARK. SPARK helps big companies embrace some of the innovation and creativity that is at the heart of the Cirque du Soleil shows, albeit without some of the accompanying acrobatics of course.

Montreal, it turns out, is ground zero for some of the best and brightest in the emergent AI community. Look closely at the newly hired AI ranks at Google, Uber or Facebook and you will lots of expat Canadians. Now, a new company called Element AI, is working to help other companies apply the very same cutting edge deep-learning research to commercial problems from manufacturing to logistics. One of the co-founders of Element AI is JS Cornoyer, who also started Montreal Startup and Real Ventures. Catching up at his co-working digs in downtown Montreal, we spoke about the future of deep-learning, and the kinds of empathetic skills that will be prized in humans in a post-automation future.

Andy Harries runs Left Bank Pictures - which, if you happen to love shows like the Crown, Outlander, Strike Back, Cold Feet or Prime Suspect - is probably responsible for much of your time spent staring blankly a screen. Andy and I met when I was running a strategy workshop for Sony Pictures Television in London. Catching up over a cup of tea, we chatted about how the rise of ‘OTT’ entertainment brands is changing the business of television, what it was like to raise teenager kids who became overnight YouTube stars, and the strange, dark corners of British creativity.

Starting work in the nineties, I quickly discovered that professional mastery had a lot to do with your ability to manipulate complex Excel spreadsheets. Analysts crunched numbers, programmers cracked code. These days, 21st century companies are trying to do the exact opposite - putting the power to create software and automate activities, in the hands of people closest to the work. Rick Willett, CEO of Quickbase, is one of the people leading this no-code revolution. Formerly at GE, and now focused on reinventing enterprise collaboration, we spoke about the future of work and the power of algorithmic decision making.

I caught up with Jamie Metzl for a coffee in Bryant Park, New York. A fellow futurist, geopolitical expert and sci-fi novelist - suffice to say, we had lots to chat about. Jamie is a Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council, serves on the Advisory Council to Walmart’s Future of Retail Policy Lab, and even ran (unsuccessfully) for the U.S. House of Representatives. It seemed strangely appropriate that our topic of conversation - human performance and leveraging technology to live much longer - was with someone who himself completed thirteen Ironman triathlons, twenty-nine marathons, and twelve ultramarathons.

With more than 200 inches of snow each year, and a good eight hour drive from a major city, Michigan Tech didn’t see many recruiters from outside of the Midwest. That didn’t seem right to Garrett Lord. Why should talent be located just in geographies closest to tech companies? After driving to college campuses across the country, he realized that student access to opportunities was universally unequal, and so along with Scott Ringwelski and Ben Christensen, decided to form Handshake to reinvent the college recruiting business. I caught up with Garrett in Las Vegas, to talk about how data might change the way companies find, recruit and manage talent in the future.

Magnus is a cool guy. As a fellow futurist, speaker and writer, we had met another times professionally over the years, in a variety of cities - but most recently in Kuala Lumpur, we got to properly hang out, and talk about a wide range of seemingly unconnected, but hopefully interesting things. Magnus is Director for Trendspotting and Future Thinking at Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship, and an active member of TED. His most recent book Minifesto (2016) tells us why small ideas matter in the world of grand narratives.

Arthur Hayes has a big idea. He wants to build the Goldman Sachs of Bitcoin. Starting life as an equity derivatives trader, on his first day of trading, Lehman Brothers collapsed. A few years ago, he formed BitMEX, the Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange. BitMEX is trading platform that gives retail investors access to the global financial markets using Bitcoin, the Blockchain, and financial derivatives. BitMEX through the use of Bitcoin as collateral, allows anyone anywhere to trade any type of financial asset. The vision is that even the unbanked in emerging markets, with just a $1 to invest or save, might be served by this entirely new model of financial services.

I met William almost ten years ago when he was a technology analyst in Hong Kong, and I was consulting for Star TV. The Chinese Internet was already rapidly evolving then, and now, a decade later, the combination of a sophisticated technology, a mobile-first culture and relative isolation behind a national firewall, has led to a vastly different digital ecosystem. Based in Shanghai, William is now an Investment Partner at SOSV and the Managing Director of Chinaccelerator. William joined SOSV from SingTel Innov8 where he was the Managing Director supporting China investment activities. Previously William was a Partner at Softbank China & India Holdings, an early stage venture capital firm backed by Softbank of Japan and Cisco.

Whether it be Brexit, terrorism or a tumultous general election - the UK seems to be a crucible for many of the global forces that threaten to overturn the status quo. To get a better sense of what all that might mean for 21st century companies - I caught up with David Mattin in London. David is the Head of Trends & Insights at TrendWatching. Previously a writer at The Times, David’s work has appeared everywhere from Fast Company to the Guardian to Google Think Quarterly. We spoke about his latest research on ‘truthful consumerism’ and how leaders can try and navigate a time of such rapid, and unpredictable change.

Chris is a thought leader in the media industry. He previously ran strategy for the global content infrastructure business known as Akamai, and over the last 12 years, has sourced, negotiated and closed high level media and technology deals and partnerships for companies such as NBC Universal, Hulu, ESPN, ABCNews, Microsoft, 24/7 Real Media and Disney. Over breakfast in NYC, I did my best to gain a crash course in the new economics of attention, and the secret infrastructure that makes today’s streaming platforms possible.

Ted Persson is one of the most interesting and creative thinkers in the Nordic tech scene. Currently a Design Partner with Swedish private equity group, EQT, he previously founded digital agency Great Works, as well as Our/Vodka, a global vodka made by local people in cities around the world run by Pernod Ricard. We met a few years back while I was working on the board of his agency’s parent company, the North Alliance. Reconnecting in Stockholm, we talked about the secrets of Swedish startup success, how brands are changing the way they think about data, and the broader impact of AI on the creative professional.

Juan Senor is somewhat of an international man of mystery. We met in Guayaquil in Ecuador, but it was in the more salubrious settings of the Oxford and Cambridge Club in London that we re-connected most recently. A former foreign affairs reporter and business program host, conversant in six languages, and a partner in a consulting firm that helps newspapers reinvent themselves, Juan had just returned from an expedition in Antartica to study climate change. An appropriate context, perhaps, for our discussion about what the ailing print media industry might do to also save itself.