“We live in an amazing world. In the last 100 years human life expectancy has more than doubled. Today, integrated circuits are more than 30,000 time faster than they were in the 1960s. Solar panels are more than 250 times cheaper than they were in 1975. DNA sequencing is 100,000 times cheaper since 2001,” he says.
Exponential growth is happening in technologies like biotech, nanotech and information technology. Medical knowledge is doubling every 80 days.
Five critical moments in history
This time will be remembered for five critical moments in technological history, which Toufani terms the quantum, blockchain, solar, biotechnology and artificial intelligence (AI) supremacies:
- Quantum supremacy is the moment when quantum computers become more powerful than visual computers.
- Blockchain supremacy is when the blockchain architecture for databases becomes more useful than conventional databases.
- Solar supremacy is when the marginal cost of solar energy drops below all other forms of energy without government subsidies.
- Biotech supremacy will happen when more than half the population believes the biology they were born with is no longer sufficient and they would like an upgrade.
- AI supremacy is when AI becomes more powerful than the human brain for the vast majority of business applications.
“By all indications, these five supremacies will happen before 2030, and the implications for industries that we lead and invest in are huge.”
These supremacies combined are resulting in lower production and distribution costs, increased ease of entry into industries and rising automation, leading to oversupply and consolidation across industries, warns Toufani.
“We will not need as many banks, retailers, theatres, cars, factories, workers, experts and investment advisers.”
Mapping exponential patterns
Exponential change tends to create exponential winners and exponential losers, says Toufani. As an example, the growth of electric vehicles has been constrained by limited battery capacity, but the development of the million-mile battery will change that, and companies like Tesla are set to replace industry incumbents.
Toufani and his team studied more than 300 businesses, including Discovery, that have experienced exponential growth in recent years to look for “patterns about how and why they grew exponentially”.
They found almost all the companies were based on the concept of a “digital twin”, that is a digital representation of people, property or processes from the physical world. “The moment you create a digital twin you can unleash the power of all these exponentially growing technologies — such as blockchain, AI, robotics, 3D printing — to deliver unprecedented value.”