Entering a new year, I reflect on the cool stuff that the future might bring. A perfect time to hope entrepreneurship, or that innovative drive to solve old problems with new ideas, will deliver in 2024 and beyond.
My wish list of innovations ranges from ways to resolve societal problems to imagining just-for-fun products. We humans have some serious fundamental issues to deal with as societies, but it’s ok to make everyday life is a bit easier for everyone too. I’ve identified problems that seems like they’d be awesome to solve, and flung out an idea or two about how a solution might come about. I’m sure there are many more approaches, and more will be needed to truly address some of these problems.
The list below starts with problems related to fundamental human needs, then progresses to developed-world issues, ending with some purely hedonistic, but likely economically viable, concepts. I hope for entrepreneurial solutions1 to all.
- Clean water, for everyone, everywhere. This will require many different innovations, such as purification systems, distribution systems, delivery methods (bottles, taps, wells) and economic models that make it accessible.
- The end of restricted availability of necessities like food and housing. These needs arise from complex, multi-factorial problems. Innovations to improve the situations could include more affordable building methods, or revamping existing buildings (how many office buildings and shopping malls are under-occupied while people look for a place to sleep?) through innovative renovations, and approaches to lower food costs, like more efficient methods of growing and harvesting crops and ways to decreased transportation and seasonality costs.
- Accountability and increased awareness in recycling. Tracking and QR codes could provide knowledge of how ‘recyclable’ things are converted into new products, listing the cost and efficiency, and climate impact. The same could be made available for new products with claims of ‘made with recycled materials’. Such a system could be a competitive advantage for product sellers. It might change behaviours in both consumers and producers of goods, and lead to:
- Increased recycling. There is plenty of room for innovation to allow recycling of every product into another viable product and reduce impact on the environment. Saw a great example of this recently2. Take-out food containers are returned to the food provider and reused. The key is in the model : food buyers are incentivized to return the container with rewards and a service is available to refurbish the containers for the food vendor at a reasonable cost. It’s going to take as many innovations as there are non-perishable goods to truly resolve the earth’s garbage problems.
- Real Information. A fabulous innovation would be a way to clearly distinguish valid information from made up shit. Once AI stops hallucinating, it might be able to do this. A related change could be the end of use of what should be social media (i.e. pleasantly interacting with humans for the shear pleasure of interacting with humans) for other purposes. New platforms are emerging, like Mastodon, that work in ways to minimize the commercialization of the platform. I’d like to see a different approach to social media that avoids the broadcast of the same message to all connections. We don’t interact in the same way with various friends, family and acquaintances, so tailoring interactions would be more natural and reduce hidden agendas.
- Products and services that support achieving lifestyle goals. Doing things that are generally known to be good for you, such as exercise and eating a healthy diet, isn’t easy. A recent innovation in auto insurance tracks driving habits and provides a reduced premium to those with safe driving practices. Perhaps grocery stores could institute programs to provide a discount to people whose grocery orders have a higher percentage of healthy foods. Incentives might work for some, others might need schedule support, and some are likely motivated by something completely different. There’s plenty of scope for innovative services and products in this area.
- Definitive medical diagnoses. The key word here is care. My experiences and reading suggest there could be more care in modern medicine. Innovation might bring it back, by changing the way information is interpreted and transmitted to patients. AI, through analysis of massive health datasets, could improve the quality of information provided to patients about their test results and risk factors. But there is also room to make the delivery of this information more patient-friendly. Providing patients with uncertainty, and the need to repeat the test in 6 months, is a terrible approach. Figure out the probability that it’s nothing, or something, and advise the patient on that basis. Studies have shown that people in general aren’t good at incorporating probability into their decisions, so this is another opportunity for entrepreneurship to address. Develop systems that encourage people to understand that if the probability of a shadow on an Xray is 1% predictive of something life-threatening, then their risk of having a life threatening condition is lower than getting spot-checked in a police RIDE program.
- End the battle between privacy and enjoying new products. Just stop. Stop making every new product a person acquires, from a lightbulb to a car, linked to all their other possessions and services (via Bluetooth etc), and accessible to the manufacturers of all of the above. Just stop. The washing machine needs to start once clothes and detergent are loaded. It doesn’t need two factor authentication. All it needs is the person standing in front of it to push ‘Start’. This may looks like anti-innovation, but there is innovation in creating simpler ways to do things. Make it simpler to use simple things and then privacy issues will decrease with fewer electronic links.
- Efficient job placement. No more applying for dozens of jobs, or shifting through a hundred resumes to find potentially suitable candidates. Find a way to match a person’s skills and career expectations with the job requirements, company culture, pay expectations and fit in the team with an instant 1 of 3 for both the applicant and the hiring manager. This is clearly a job for AI.
- Very cool body art. Holographic tattoos (this is likely a nanomaterial product) or regenerating hair dye that only changes colour when the wearer wants it to change, rather that having to redo it as the hair grows out (in principle, might be achieved with genetic engineering of hair follicles).
My hope for 2024 is that the creativity of entrepreneurship makes as many people happy as possible, including those innovative entrepreneurs that bring us innovations.
1 By entrepreneurial solutions, I mean creative ones. Also ones that are self-sustaining, permanent changes that address the problem, rather than charitable approaches to provide for people in need (which are good) but don’t solve the problem without a continuous infusion of cash.
2 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-national-plastics-registry-1.7075740