Book Ad: The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet

I work in the Corporate Strategy & Engagement team. My teammates include Bill O'Connor, Evan Atherton, Kerry Ann Levenhagen, Maurice Conti, Jonathan Knowles, Shaan Hurley, and Tom Wujec. Jon Pittman is VP of Corporate Strategy & Engagement. Jonathan Knowles manages Autodesk's relationship with Singularity University. Autodesk supports Singularity University's mission to facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies to address the world's grand challenges. We support it through financial contribution, an Innovation Lab, strategic direction, presentations, and instruction.

As a faculty member at Singularity University, Ramez Naam is a friend of Jonathan Knowles. In fact Ramez has gotten to visit our Bay Area office as part of a group from Singularity University. Ramez has a new book coming out that asks the questions:

• Can we innovate fast enough to overcome climate change, fossil fuel challenges, fresh water shortages, and other environmental and natural resource challenges that face us, all while making room for billions to rise out of poverty?
• And if so, how?

The book is entitled The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet, and it comes out April 9th from University Press of New England. Ramez points out that the title might sound highly abstract or aspirational, but it's also a book full of hard cold realities, practical policy steps to encourage innovation and deployment, and a call to action for citizens. In many ways, it's a book about encouraging better and better design — both at the technical level and in the design of our economy.

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The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet

Coming April 9th — University Press of New England

Climate Change. Finite Fossil Fuels. Fresh Water Depletion. Ocean Acidification. Overpopulation. Deforestation. Feeding the World’s Billions. Rising Commodity Prices.

We’re beset by an array of natural resource and environmental challenges. They pose a tremendous risk to human prosperity, to world peace, and to the planet itself.

Yet, if we act, these problems are addressable. For the most valuable resource on earth is not oil, gold, water or land. Instead, our capacity for expanding human knowledge is our greatest resource, and the key to overcoming the very real resource scarcity and enormous environmental challenges we face.

Throughout human history we have learned to overcome scarcity and adversity through the application of innovation — the only resource that is expanded, not depleted, the more we use it.

The century ahead is a race between our damaging overconsumption and our growing understanding of ways to capture and utilize abundant natural resources with less impact on the planet. The Infinite Resource is a clear-eyed, visionary, and hopeful argument for progress.

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Reading will soon be alive in the lab.