Chairman and CEO, X PRIZE Foundation
Peter Diamandis is a key figure in the development of the personal spaceflight industry. He has created many space-related organizations, including the X PRIZE Foundation, an educational nonprofit prize institute whose mission is “to create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity.” The foundation, which presents a $10 million award to the first team to achieve its current goal, is best known for the Ansari X Prize, acompetition to launch a reusable, manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. This was the first private-sector manned spaceflight.
Citing anecdotes from X PRIZE competitions in exploration, life sciences, energy, environment, education, and global development, Peter Diamandis shares stories of innovations that are changing the way we think, work, and educate future generations. He promotes intelligent risk-taking, maverick thinking, and environments where failure is allowed and celebrated. Diamandis reveals how organizations can incentivize breakthroughs for new products and strategies and reinvent their industries. His presentations address technology and how to spur innovation.
Author and Expert. Mr. Diamandis is the author of a soon-to-be-released book, Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, which is creating The New York Times best-seller buzz. The book discusses how humanity will soon be able to meet and exceed the basic needs of everyone on the planet.
A Passion and Business Savvy for Spaceflight. Peter Diamandis is an international leader in the commercial space arena, having founded many of its leading entrepreneurial companies. Among many others, he is the co-founder of Space Adventures, a space-tourism company; the co-founder and CEO of Zero Gravity Corporation, a commercial space company which offers weightless flights to the public; and the chairman and co-founder of the Rocket Racing League.
He is the winner of the 2007 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Innovation, the 2006 (inaugural) Heinlein Award, the 2006 Lindbergh Award, the 2006 Wired RAVE Award, the 2006 Neil Armstrong Award for Aerospace Achievement and Leadership, the Konstantine Tsiolkovsky Award, twice the winner of the Aviation & Space Technology Laurel, and the 2003 World Technology Award for Space.
Mr. Diamandis co-founded the Singularity University, an academic institution who aims to foster thoughts leaders who will work on humanity’s largest challenges. Diamandis also co-founded the International Space University (ISU) where he served as the University’s first managing director. Prior to ISU, Diamandis served as chairman of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS), an organization he founded at MIT in 1980. SEDS is currently the world’s largest college and high school-based student pro-space organization
Peter Diamandis attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he received his undergraduate degree in molecular genetics and graduate degree in aerospace engineering. After MIT he attended Harvard Medical School where he received his M.D. In 2005, he was also awarded an honorary doctorate from the International Space University.
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Creating an Age of Abundance. Abundance for all is within our grasp. We will soon be able to meet and exceed the basic needs of every man, woman, and child on the planet. This bold, contrarian view, backed up by exhaustive research, introduces our near-term future, where exponentially growing technologies and three other powerful forces are conspiring to better the lives of billions.
Since the dawn of humanity, a privileged few have lived in stark contrast to the hardscrabble majority. Conventional wisdom says this gap cannot be closed. But it is closing—fast. Diamandis documents how four forces—exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion—are conspiring to solve our biggest problems. Abundance establishes hard targets for change and lays out a strategic roadmap for governments, industry and entrepreneurs, giving us plenty of reason for optimism.
In his keynote address, Diamandis examining human need by category—water, food, energy, healthcare, education, communication, and freedom—and addresses how a range of powerful technologies such as synthetic biology, embedded networks and cloud computers, AI and robotics, biotechnology and medicine are transforming what was once scarce into something abundant. Providing abundance is humanity’s grandest challenge, and Diamandis discusses how we rise to meet that challenge.
Achieving Innovation and Breakthroughs. Based on the success of the Ansari X PRIZE (which stimulated the creation of the billion-dollar private spaceflight industry) and more recently the launch of the $30M Google Lunar X PRIZE, Diamandis discusses how to incentivize innovative thinking and breakthroughs. He explains how traditional thinking, risk-aversion, and incrementalism causes the demise of companies unable to cope with the changes brought by disruptive innovation. Diamandis discusses how the rapid growth of key exponential technologies (nano, info, bio) is empowering individuals and companies to do what only governments were able to achieve in past decades. With the message of “evolve or die,” Diamandis is a dynamic, inspirational speaker who provides real value to his audience by showing them how to drive breakthrough thinking focused on achieving clear, measurable, and objective results.
Exponential Technologies Causing Disruptive Innovation. Diamandis provides an overview of how humanity has evolved from being “local and linear” to “global and exponential” and how this change has caused the demise of companies overnight while bringing about the creation of new start-ups out of nowhere. He explains how key exponential technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, biotechnology, embedded networks, nanotechnology/materials, and human machine interfaces have the potential to transform society over the next twenty years. Through Diamandis’ work as chairman of Singularity University and chairman/CEO of X PRIZE, he addresses the impact that exponentially growing technology has on companies, governments, and humanity. He speaks to the potential of creating a world of abundance and the ability of small groups of “do-it-yourself” technologists to do what only governments or large corporations could do before.
Opening the Space Frontier. Diamandis is the leading figure in the space commercialization industry, having founded and run many of its leading companies like Zero Gravity Corporation, Space Adventures, the Rocket Racing League, and International Space University. He is also the recipient of the Heinlein, Armstrong, Lindbergh, Von Braun, and Arthur C. Clarke Awards for his work. In this engaging, fun, and visionary presentation Diamandis outlines humanity’s future in space – how we will travel there, build industries, and launch future civilizations.
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