Shawn DuBravac

Dr. Shawn DuBravac is author of the New York Times Best Seller Digital Destiny: How the New Age of Data Will Transform the Way We Work, Live, and Communicate, which explores how the world’s mass adoption of digital technologies portends the beginning of a new era for humanity in the realms of business, healthcare, finance, transportation and culture.

Dr. DuBravac is an internationally-recognized thought leader and top-rated keynote speaker, delivering pragmatic and provocative insights on the trends, technologies and paradigms transforming the globe. His research focuses on the forces shaping tomorrow that are percolating on the peripheral of society and business today. By providing an elevated view of developing trends, DuBravac empowers leaders and their organizations to improve strategic decision-making capabilities by identifying and understanding the changing landscape and opportunities that lie ahead.

Today DuBravac is president of Avrio Institute. The Institute, which takes from the Greek Αύριο meaning tomorrow, helps leaders prepare for uncertain, divergent futures. It’s clients include Fortune 100 and Global 1000 companies, scrappy start-ups, government agencies and non-profit organizations. Grounded in economics, DuBravac served for over a dozen years as chief economist for the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), the U.S. trade association representing more than 2,000 consumer tech companies and owner and producer of CES.

Digital Destiny: How Innovation Will Affect Your Industry

In 1980, McKinsey predicted that there would be 300,000 mobile phones in use by 2000. Today, there are 330 million in the US alone. DuBravac outlines the “5 pillars of our digital destiny,” which includes among other things the continued proliferation of digital devices, increased connectivity, and the “sensorization” of consumer goods, and illustrates what the business world of the future will look like. DuBravac predicts which experimental technologies will stick and disrupt business models, paints the picture of a continued shift from an analog to a digital world, and customizes his talk to showcase how business innovation has and will continue to affect the client at hand personally. For example, a talk with an insurance company looked at the past effects of online reviews on client relations and then mapped out the associated risks and rewards of the likely roll-out of autonomous cars into 2021.

Artificial Intelligence

Elon Musk argues artificial intelligence (AI) poses a greater threat to humanity than nuclear weapons while Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes AI will save lives. This juxtaposition reveals the existential threat and potential AI possesses. From accelerating information flow on major weather events to writing sophisticated texts, spreading fake news and undermining public trust, AI is ushering in a new digital paradigm. What’s clear is that AI is going to change all that we know about the digital world and in turn, have massive ramifications on the physical world.

Digital Objects: People & The Future in a World of IoT

Ten years ago, the number of “things” connected to the Internet surpassed the number of people on the planet and this technological tsunami continues to escalate. As objects add capabilities such as context awareness, processing power, energy independence the Internet of Things will grow exponentially. Ilion’s or even trillions of connections becomes a network of networks and create boundless opportunities for businesses, individuals and countries. There is a tremendous amount of experimentation taking place today that will redefine our future and influence how we work, communicate and live. The fuel of the next industrial revolution is upon us but it will not be mechanical inventions as it has been through all the ages of history.

The Connected Consumer of Tomorrow

According to Dr. DuBravac, the consumer of tomorrow will use “the internet of me,” rely heavily on predictive customization, and live in a digital world that provides updates on their lives in real time. Dr. DuBravac looks at the rise of wearables and micro-customization, and breaks down how businesses will need to interact with their consumers as the social experiences of things like meetings, shopping, driving, and interacting change, altering with them formerly tried-and-true methods of advertising, marketing, and selling to clients. This talk provides answers to questions such as:

• How will businesses adopt the “insider dialogue” (think emojis, pop culture references) increasingly used by consumers?
• Just how far will consumers want predictive analytics to go?
• How is technology reformatting society?