Singularity University Gives Execs a View of the Future

The school's executive program offers participants the chance to learn and discuss how technology is changing, or even disrupting, their industries

By E.B. Boyd

In his various roles as a computer programmer, an emergency-medicine physician, and the director of Microsoft (MSFT) Medical Media Lab, Michael Gillam stays well ahead of the advances that are transforming health care. Yet even he can be caught unawares by the pace of technological change.

Gillam was reminded of this recently during a nine-day boot camp aimed at instructing professionals on how robotics, nanotechnology, biotechnology, and other cutting-edge disciplines are affecting industries. Gillam, one of 20 participants in Singularity University's inaugural program for executives, was listening to futurist Ray Kurzweil. "We will have plenty of computation as we go through the 21st century," Kurzweil told attendees in the small dining room featuring Spanish Mission-style decor. "That is not so controversial. The more controversial aspect is really, will we have the software?"

Watching the presentation, Gillam realized that the medical industry is woefully unprepared to handle and analyze the vast amounts of data likely to be unleashed in coming years as health records are digitized and physicians are able to track more information. "[I realized] we have to do this quickly," Gillam says. "You look at those graphs and you feel a strong sense of urgency."

That's the kind of conceptual shift Singularity University's creators hope to provoke. Kurzweil, author of The Singularity Is Near, and X Prize founder Peter Diamandis began Singularity earlier this year. Singularity offers a nine-week summer program for graduate students and the compressed session Gillam attended.

Preparing for Disruptive Innovation

Singularity's founders and its executive director Salim Ismail, formerly head of Yahoo's (YHOO) Brickhouse product incubator, want participants to leave with a sense of where opportunities lie—and the dangers of failing to prepare for them. "We want to help them avoid becoming the next Kodak (EK)," Ismail says in reference to the film company that failed to prepare for the advent of digital photography.

Other examples abound, Diamandis says. "The newspaper industry and the publishing industry are falling as a result of digital communications," he says. "You have Detroit in serious trouble.…These are century-old billion-dollar industries, and many of these [disruptions] had been foretold."

Both programs take place at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in the heart of Silicon Valley. The first of the executive programs ended Nov. 15. Attendees hailed from business, nonprofits, government, and academia in 10 different countries; some sessions lasted from 8 a.m. till past 10 p.m. "If we do our job right, this will affect where companies invest, the types of companies they acquire or don't acquire, the type of employees they hire, and where they put their research and development dollars," Diamandis says.

During the first few days, participants heard from thinkers and practitioners in six key areas: artificial intelligence and robotics; nanotechnology; biotechnology and bioinformatics; medicine and human-machine interfaces; networks and computing systems; and energy and environment systems. Instructors included Ralph Merkle, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing who specializes in nanotechnology; Dan Barry, a former NASA astronaut who's now an entrepreneur, taught robotics.

TechShop for Entrepreneurs

It takes more than money to prepare for change, said biologist Andrew Hessel, a veteran of biotech companies including Amgen (AMGN). "You can throw a billion dollars at these types of problems and not really go too far," he said during his session on biotech.

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