Peter Diamandis

Passionate about solving some of the world’s grand challenges, speaker Dr. Peter Diamandis is focused on driving breakthroughs in products, companies, industries—and humanity.

Peter Diamandis is the Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, which leads the world in designing and launching large incentive prizes to drive radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. Best known for the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for private spaceflight and the $10 million Progressive Automotive X PRIZE for 100 mile-per-gallon equivalent cars, the Foundation is now launching prizes in Exploration, Life Sciences, Energy and Education. Diamandis is also an international leader in the commercial space arena, having founded and run many of the leading entrepreneurial companies in this sector.

As co-Founder & Chairman of the Singularity University, a Silicon Valley based institution partnered with NASA, Google, Autodesk and Nokia, Diamandis counsels the world’s top enterprises on how to utilize exponential technologies and incentivized innovation to dramatically accelerate their business objectives. In his keynote presentations, Diamandis focuses on the importance of innovation and he looks to the future in explaining how exponentially advancing technologies will transform our companies, our industries, our governments and our lives over the next 5 to 10 years. Diamandis is the author of Abundance: The Future Is Better than You Think (Feb. 2012) which shows how exponential technologies, coupled with the DIY movement and the on-line connectivity of the “rising billion” will enable an age of global abundance providing water, energy, food, shelter, education and healthcare in unprecedented availability for humanity.

Opening the Space Frontier  

Diamandis is the leading figure in the Space Commercialization industry, having founded and run many of the leading companies such as Zero Gravity Corporation, Space Adventures, the Rocket Racing League, and International Space University to name a few. He is the recipient of the Economist No Boundaries Award, the Heinlein Award, Armstrong, Lindbergh, Von Braun, and Arthur C. Clarke Awards for his work. In this engaging, fun and visionary presentation Diamandis outlines Humanity’s future in space — how we will travel there, build industries and launch future civilizations.

Creating an Age of Abundance

Diamandis has co-authored “Abundance” (Simon & Schuster, Feb’12), in which he lays out how we will soon be able to meet and exceed the basic needs of every man, woman and child on the planet. Abundance for all is within our grasp. This bold, contrarian view, backed up by exhaustive research, introduces our near-term future, where exponentially growing technologies and three other powerful forces are conspiring to better the lives of billions. An antidote to pessimism by tech entrepreneur turned philanthropist, Peter H. Diamandis.

Since the dawn of humanity, a privileged few have lived in stark contrast to the hardscrabble majority. Conventional wisdom says this gap cannot be closed. But it is closing—fast. The authors document how four forces—exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion—are conspiring to solve our biggest problems. Abundance establishes hard targets for change and lays out a strategic roadmap for governments, industry and entrepreneurs, giving us plenty of reason for optimism.

In his keynote address, Diamandis examining human need by category—water, food, energy, healthcare, education, communication and freedom—Diamandis addresses how a range of powerful technologies such as synthetic biology, embedded networks and cloud computer, AI and robotics, biotechnology and medicine are transforming what was once scarce into something abundant.

Providing abundance is humanity’s grandest challenge — this is a Keynote about how we rise to meet it.

Achieving Innovation and Breakthroughs

Diamandis is a dynamic inspirational speaker who provides real value to his audience by showing them how to drive and incentivize breakthrough thinking within their company in order to achieve clear, measurable and objective results.

Based on the success of the Ansari X PRIZE (which stimulated the creation of billion-dollar private spaceflight industry) and the success of the $10M Progressive Automotive X PRIZE, Diamandis explains how to incentivize breakthroughs. Diamandis explains how traditional thinking, risk-aversion and incrementalism will cause the demise of companies unable to cope with the coming decades of disruptive innovation.

Through concrete examples and lessons, Diamandis addresses two options:

Internal: How to create a culture of innovation within your company;
External: How to incentivize the outside world to help you solve your biggest problems;

Diamandis explains how the rapid growth of key exponential technologies (Nano, Info, Bio) are empowering individuals and small companies to do what only governments were able to achieve only a few decades ago. Such technologies will drive a period of significant disruption and/or opportunity depending on the company’s mind-set. Diamandis’ ultimate message is that companies cannot remain stagnant. They must evolve or they will die. 

Exponential Technologies Causing Disruptive Innovation

Diamandis provides an overview of the key exponentially growing technologies, covering such topics as:

• Artificial Intelligence
• Computational Systems
• 3D printing
• Medicine/NeuroSystems
• Bioinformatics

• Robotics
• Network Systems
• Nanomaterials
• Biotechnology

Diamandis discusses how breakthroughs in these areas will transform products, companies, industries and even society over the next twenty years. He provides key insights on how human society has transformed from “Local & Linear” to “Global & Exponential.” This change is causing the creation of new billion dollar start-ups out of nowhere, and the demise of 50-year-old billion dollar companies overnight.

Through Diamandis’ work as Chairman and Co-Founder of Singularity University and Chairman/CEO of X PRIZE, he addresses the impact that exponentially growing technology has on companies, governments, and humanity. He speaks to the potential of creating a world of abundance, and the empowerment of small groups of “do-it-yourself” technologists to do what only governments or large corporations could do before.