This chapter presents an analysis of the exterior context in which investing, company building, finance, and economics are currently operating. It brings to the forefront the biggest task of our time, namely solving the tension between: (1) our current economic model that is based on inflation, ongoing growth and debt in order to survive in the short-term at the expense of growing inequality, loss of asset value, and future generations while risking humanity’s existence; (2) exponentially growing technologies that are massively deflationary while creating abundance; and (3) the global grand challenges with massive existential threats. Therefore, I invite you to look at the hidden evolutionary forces operating under the cover in terms of past and future progress and how disruptive technologies, the compounded ingenuity of humanity’s collective evolution, are currently contributing positively to our planet’s health and humanity’s well-being. Whether the context is health, mobility, transportation, the connected world, the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, artificial intelligence, augmented intelligence, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), brain-computer interfaces, or the convergence of them all, I suspect you will consider the result of the analysis to be rather promising. Evolutionary forces have endowed humanity with the necessary resources, technological know-how, innovation, creativity, and massive amounts of capital to create mindboggling technology and evolving mindsets that can conspire to address existential threats.
The Context of Investing