This year’s Future Investment Initiative’s brought together investors, business leaders, policymakers, inventors, and explorers around the theme, ‘The New Compass’. No surprise the horizons held plenty of dark clouds – World Bank President Ajay Banga and IMF Head Kristalina Georgieva spoke of the widening gap between the Global north and south. The CEOs of Citi, Blackrock, Blackstone, Macquarie and Carlyle spoke of the war in the Middle East and Europe and its human impact as well as effects on risk-taking and investment. But beyond the gloom, I spoke with innovators and pioneers from ocean exploration to gender investing to social media to urban design.
Here are a few of my highlights:
Investigating the Hidden Blue Economy
We know more about the moon than we do about the deep ocean. We’ve mapped the moon’s surface in great detail. The deep ocean on the other hand is a complex and dynamic system. A world unknown to many, our understanding of the deep sea is constantly changing and evolving with less than a quarter of the ocean floor discovered so far. Investing legend Ray Dalio and Dr. Vincent Pieribone unveiled how OceanX is mapping the Ocean floor near Indonesia – looking for fault lines that could help predict earthquakes and tsunamis. Discoveries in the deep that are driving pharmaceutical advances, such as two of the latest cancer drug candidates marizomib and plinabulin derived from marine microbes. Ocean X has a vision to create a deeply engaged global community of explorers, scientists, and storytellers dedicated to educating, inspiring, and protecting the oceans in order to drive positive change. The ocean presents us with an enormous challenge; How do we get the right balance between conservation and exploration? How do we ensure exploration does not lead to exploitation?
New Faces of Global Capital
Money is moving out of public markets and INTO private markets. Where are the next-gen investors putting their money? Gabrielle (Ellie) Rubenstein and Heather Henyon are leading the way with two different approaches – Ellie sits on Alaska’s sovereign wealth fund as well as running a private equity firm. Heather runs a VC fund. Heather describes women in the realm of global capital as ‘endangered species’ and thus invests with a gender lens – specifically in women-led start-ups. Knowing that of 1 in 3 people will get cancer in our lifetime, Heather and Ellie are focusing on consumer health through food, investing in purpose alongside profit. Ellie’s egg and beef protein investments & Heather’s crustaceans are the future of our plates. Heather’s passion for investing in cultured meat stems from recognising the shift towards longevity and the need to feed a growing population. Ellie wasn’t so wild about cultured meat – as a hunter, she prefers a ‘better for you’ meat and dairy. Ellie shares my obsession with Kombucha and the gut biome.
A Conversation with Grace: The Future of Healthcare
My conversation with one of Hanson’s healthcare assistant robots, Grace, was a little creepy but demonstrated the future of healthcare and health technology. In a world where medical systems are at a breaking point, cutting-edge AI robotics will undoubtably be part of the solution. I’ve already been operated on by a surgeon x Da Vinci robot team so I am already favourably predisposed to these AI assistants. The session made me wonder – if a robot could answer some of the questions I’d asked my surgeon (my treatment options, the likely outcomes, when are you free to do my surgery, what is my recovery likely to look like), would I mind? Probably not. She didn’t answer my burning question (what’s your favourite episode of Grey’s Anatomy) though she did have a pretty good robot joke… “why did the robot get upset?” “Because everyone was pushing its buttons!”
Can cities inspire human vitality?
Janus Rostock (AECOM) and Laurent Germain (Egis Group), explored how can we transform our existing cities into interconnected, sustainable, mobile and smart places to live. Laurent celebrates Vienna being a top city for inspiring human vitality with 50% of the city being green and for inspiring inclusivity with a yearly budget dedicated to making sure that the public policies implemented in the cities take into account the interest of women! Janus believes in creating that seed that allows cities to continue, reiterating the importance of designing places that have an identity to inspire longevity. Seeking to better the human experience through architecture and design, Janus is the architect of the Dubai Opera House and District and has extended the outdoor season (which in Dubai means the months in which you are able to to walk outside) through natural means – positioning buildings to create shade and capture the breeze. Laurent spoke about using climate data to make sure that the infrastructure can resist impending climates.
Big Short – TikTok
Why does short form content keep grabbing our attention? How much could you learn from short videos? What’s the new skill you never knew you wanted to learn? Tiktok’s discovery and recommendation algorithm is infamous for feeding you not only what you know you like, but what you didn’t know you liked until Tiktok showed it to you. Shant Oknayan told me about Tiktok’s ‘digital campfires’ that gather 780 million daily active users. Here are a couple of creators he told me about I’m now following: From a small town in Lebanon’s west Bekaa, chef Abir El Saghir has reached millions around the world, with TikTok videos showing her cooking traditional (delicious) dishes. For financial education check out ‘Your rich BFF’ – a former Wall Street trader and BuzzFeed sales partner has amassed 1.4 million followers turning ‘Finance’ into ‘FUN-ance’. And for small businesses – 68% of TikToker’s are more prone to buying something as a result of having enjoyed the content that the brand has provided.