TEDx Berkeley: Carl Bass on The New Rules of Innovation

As I mentioned this morning, the TED Conference is being held in Long Beach this week. A few weeks ago, Autodesk participated in TEDx Berkeley. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Our President and CEO, Carl Bass, covered the new rules of innovation.

Innovation is happening at an unprecedented pace and will continue to accelerate because of 5 trends:

1. The Age of Access and Experience
   • Amazon Kindle replaces physical books.
   • Spotify replaces records, CDs, and even iTunes files.
   • Netflix replaces VCR tapes, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs.
   • TechShop allows people to be creative without owning tools.
2. Business Un-usual
   • Kickstarter helps entrepreneurs get funding.
   • NASA reaches out to Moon Express rather than build everything on their own.
3. Digital Fabrication
   • Bespoke Innovations 3D prints prosthetic limbs.
   • Science can use biology as building blocks, e.g., repurpose E-coli to smell like bananas.
   • Mass production is no longer required to obtain goods at a moderate price.
4. Rise of Information
   • Newspaper editors used to cull information for the masses.
   • Now the masses individually use methods like Twitter following to select who curates the news for them.
   • Due to internet connectivity, it is possible to share information among large communities of people even on obscure topics.
5. Infinite Computing
   • We’ve been looking at computing as if were a scarce resource, when today, really, it’s more like a free resource, or an infinite resource.
   • Today you can hold in your hand about 30,000 times the computing power that was launched aboard the Space Shuttle.
   • Let’s say you have a problem that will take 10,000 compute-seconds to solve. This will cost you about 30 cents today. But let’s also say that this is an important simulation, and you don't want to wait 10,000 seconds (about 3 hours) for it to be done. Now you can give that same problem to 10,000 computers in the cloud and solve it in 1 second. And it still costs 30 cents.

The CEO is alive in the lab.