Futurized - thought leadership on the future
185 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 months ago - ★★★★★ - 24 ratingsThe Futurized podcast goes beneath the trends, tracking the underlying forces of disruption in tech, policy, business models, social dynamics, and the environment. Futurist Trond Arne Undheim, PhD, author, investor, and serial entrepreneur, interviews smart people with a soul. Every week, founders, authors, executives and other thought leaders come on the show to discuss the societal impact of deep tech (e.g. AI, blockchain, IoT, CRISPR, nanotech, 3D printing, quantum, robotics) and the emerging future of work, markets, business and society.
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Episodes
Future Proof your Business
September 24, 2020 09:24 - 1 hour - 91.9 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interviews UK futurist Tom Cheesewright, a regular BBC commentator, and author of the new book Future proof your business. In this conversation, we talked about the role of a futurist in a fast-moving world, the tools needed to predict future trends in your industry, how to build in agility, how the pandemic has changed leaders' thinking preparing for future shocks and what the next decade might bring. My takeaway is that the future will not be the same for ever...
The Future of Commoditized Robotics
September 22, 2020 11:04 - 48 minutes - 66.9 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interviews Tom Ryden, Executive Director of MassRobotics, the biggest co-working space and robotics community in the US. In this conversation, they talk about what's happened over the past decade, where is the robotics field now (from R&D, to standardization, to big company implementation, the role of robots in contemporary factories, and consumer applications). They discuss the changing form factors, the pivotal role of AI and IoT towards a "Cambrian explosion" ...
The Future of Work
September 17, 2020 11:14 - 50 minutes - 69.9 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interviews Ian Barkin, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer of Sykes and host of the OneTake podcast. In this conversation, they talk about The Future of Work, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), automated outsourcing, experience-focused call centers, COVID-19, smart tech,Impact sourcing, creative use of talent, scaling and selling a venture, building your personal brand, his OneTake podcast and the future of marketing. The takeaway is that the future of work is h...
The Quest for Artificial General Intelligence
September 15, 2020 11:38 - 1 hour - 120 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interviews Peter Voss, CEO and founder of Aigo.ai. They talk about how the field of artificial general intelligence has evolved, what intelligence really is, whether machines have it and what it takes to bring true progress in this field. They also delve into chat bots. The takeaway is that artificial general intelligence has an interesting future but it is not immediate. Whether an entire generation of software developers are on the wrong path, is uncertain, bu...
Disaster Risk Management
September 14, 2020 11:34 - 18 minutes - 26 MBSpecial guest Chloe Demrovsky, CEO of Disaster Recovery Institute is interviewed by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, host of Futurized. In this conversation, which is a precursor to an upcoming deep dive into risk and resilience in the next decade, they talk about what risk management is all about, how executives can handle disasters, and map out some of the needed vocabulary to start understanding risk in a systemic way. The takeaway is that in order to fully prepare for the next decade, the...
How To Write a Book on the Future of Healthcare
September 10, 2020 12:09 - 1 hour - 133 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interviews Scott E. Burgess, Founder of Healthcare360 Media Group and host of the Healthcare360 podcast. We talked about the importance of having a deep conviction before you write a book, how you go about creating a piece of true thought leadership, and, more specifically, what’s wrong with healthcare today. In the process, Scott starts sketching the solution he envisions, rebuilding healthcare from scratch and where YOU need to become your own best healthcare a...
The Future of Enterprise Blockchain
September 08, 2020 08:06 - 55 minutes - 76.4 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interviews Toby Lewis, CEO and founder of Novum Insights, the frontier tech monitoring company. They talk about the financial services industry in London right now, the influx of fintech and specifically about enterprise blockchain and its impact on corporations and on the investment banks that serve them. The takeaway is that the financial industry which has been slow to evolve has now finally taken on board the impact and potential of blockchain as the emergin...
The Future of the Second Half of Life
September 03, 2020 11:43 - 1 hour - 83.4 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interviews Tom Moebus, Founder of TenXGrow, whose mission is to help small companies grow in dramatic ways. We talk about our mutual background at MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program, why Tom has comes out of retirement for COVID-19, which, echoing Buddhist thinking is a “noble moment”. He tells us how he helps Main Street businesses pivot and learn to operate under new conditions, and learn from each other. We discuss his project to connect young people in America a...
The Future of Inclusion and Diversity in Business
September 01, 2020 11:37 - 1 hour - 83.1 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interviews special guests Alison Maitland and Rebekah Steele, authors of INdivisible: Radically rethinking inclusion for sustainable business results. We talk about why both inclusion and diversity, separately and together matter to the bottom line. We discuss the sensitive aspects of white male earned privilege and how many of us experience a combination of privileges and disadvantages that can link us all on a common journey. We discuss why they are soaring now...
How 5G+AR might revolutionize communication
August 31, 2020 11:22 - 1 hour - 123 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interviews David A. Smith, CEO and founder of Croquet, the augmented reality collaborative operations system. In this conversation, they talk about how augmented reality builds on insights that were present among the precursors of the internet, such as Douglas Engelbart and Alan Kay. They explore whether and how AR can evolve into a communication platform that is in some ways more real than co-presence, or at least can support simultaneous digital collaboration i...
The Future of Engineering Education
August 27, 2020 05:07 - 58 minutes - 80.6 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interiews Babi Mitra, founding Executive Director of the New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) initiative at MIT. They talk about the urgent need to update the way we educate our engineers which is an effort happening at engineering schools worldwide, including at the top schools. The stakes on re-imagining education just got higher because of COVID-19. Is there really a need to rebuild engineering education from scratch? Which schools are at the forefr...
What's next in Energy Storage?
August 25, 2020 12:06 - 54 minutes - 75 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interviews Joe Adiletta, Senior Director at Ionic Materials, the battery storage spun out of Tufts University. After listening, check out Ionic Materials and Joe Adiletta's online profile: Ionic Materials https://ionicmaterials.com/ Joe Adiletta LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-adiletta-992257/ They talk about the technologies behind energy storage. We discuss promising startups in the EV, grid and emerging electric aviation space. Where is the f...
The Future of Child Trafficking
August 24, 2020 10:19 - 46 minutes - 64 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interviews Vassilia Orfanou, founder of Luxembourg Diplomacy and Communications Institute, Ludci.eu, the media diplomacy agency. We talked about child trafficking, the first problem Ludci.eu will devote its attention to. Child trafficking is a global crisis where the fragmentation of actors hampers media’s ability to cover the stories and make progress in the field. Emerging technology is a double edged sword which enables crime syndicates but it also represents ...
The Future of Engines
August 20, 2020 12:08 - 1 hour - 107 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interviews Alec Shkolnik, President and co-founder of Liquid Piston, an MIT spinout. We talk about engines and how they can power robots, vehicles and drones. Our guest has made the bold choice of making a new engine, which hasn’t been attempted since 1954, instead of just capitalizing on his gold plated education in AI, robotics and neuroscience in the most obvious way. The takeaway is that even though engines powered by anything but electricity seem a bit ou...
Digital Health in Future Pandemics
August 18, 2020 11:34 - 1 hour - 91 MBIn this episode, futurist Trond Arne Undheim interviews Greg Licholai, Chief Medical Officer, PRA Health Sciences, Faculty at Yale School of Management, and healthcare innovation columnist for Forbes. We talk about where digital health as a field is right now and where it’s moving, promising startups, vaccine innovation, improving clinical trials and staying ahead by tracking insight in the field. After listening, check out PRA Health Sciences as well as Greg Licholai's online profile: ...
The Future of K-12 Education
August 17, 2020 11:06 - 1 hour - 101 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interviews Jeff Wetzler, co-founder at Transcend Education, a nonprofit leading the way in holistic school design. They talk about learning science, the necessary leaps to make towards 21st century learning, as well as the impact of COVID-19 and coping strategies such as learning pods. They discuss how to stay up to date on the top trends in K-12 education. The takeaway is that K-12 education has never been more crucial. What happens over the next six months wil...
The Future of Industrial Operations
August 13, 2020 11:07 - 1 hour - 92.6 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interviews Natan Linder, CEO and co-founder of Tulip Interfaces, the manufacturing technology platform spun out of MIT Media Lab. They talk about fusing hardware, software and design to create new product experiences, touching on additive manufacturing, augmented reality and the manufacturing industry’s image problem. After listening, check out Tulip Interfaces and Formlabs as well as Natan Linder's online profile: Tulip Interfaces (Twitter, @tulipinterfaces) ht...
Pandemic Aftermath: Introduction
August 12, 2020 11:27 - 52 minutes - 72.6 MBIn this episode, the topic is Pandemic Aftermath: How Coronavirus Changes Global Society. Trond Undheim reads from the introduction to his eponymous book which was published by Atmosphere Press in June, 2020. The first portion of the book is non-fiction. The second portion of the book is fiction The takeaway is that the coronavirus pandemic is so much more than a public health crisis. It will arguably change society. Right now, we are not sure exactly how. But we can look at which areas ...
The Future of Human Perception AI
August 11, 2020 12:09 - 1 hour - 88.3 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interviews Gabi Zijderveld, Chief Marketing Officer at Affectiva, the MIT MediaLab spinout. They talk about perceptive AI, the future of augmented reality, data privacy, and ethical uses of face recognition. The takeaway is that artificial intelligence is getting better and better at understanding humans in context and their cognitive states. This can be useful for autonomous cars, for virtual conference speakers, in telehealth, as well as for advertisers. But ...
The Future of Pre-seed Investing
August 06, 2020 10:49 - 1 hour - 83.6 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interviews Magnus Grimeland, CEO and founder of Antler, the early-stage VC. We talk about trigger points to achieve greatness, promising startups, the globalization of venture capital, the importance of finding founders with drive, spike, and grit. We also discuss the future of work. The takeaway is that the future of pre-seed investing is changing by globalizing and moving beyond the old startup hotspots and into places like Amsterdam, Oslo, Sydney and Nairob...
Post-pandemic Tech
August 04, 2020 12:05 - 1 hour - 93.6 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interviews David A. Bray, Inaugural Director of the GeoTech Center at the Atlantic Council, the esteemed Washington DC-based think tank. We talk about jazz improv, geopolitics, technology, privacy, openness, human dignity, data trusts, quantum computing as well as post-pandemic tech opportunities and constraints. The takeaway is that the world now needs to ensure that new technologies not only contribute to innovation but also simultaneously empower people, in...
Cybersecurity: Review of the RSA Asia Pacific & Japan 2020 Virtual Event
July 31, 2020 12:14 - 24 minutes - 33.3 MBFuturist and author Trond Arne Undheim reviews the RSA Asia Pacific & Japan 2020 Virtual Event, arguably the world's leading cybersecurity event, this time only available as a virtual event. My takeaway is that taking part in a virtual event during COVID-19 is necessary and interesting but it is not how we are going to spend the next decade. The virtual interface is okay, but not great. It lacks a lot of the contextual cues that you find in live events or indeed even in websites. There ...
The Future of Nuclear Waste
July 30, 2020 11:42 - 59 minutes - 82.3 MBFuturist and author Trond Arne Undheim interviews Elizabeth Muller, CEO and co-founder of Deep Isolation, the nuclear waste disposal startup, which she has founded together with renowned physicist Richard Muller, who is also her father. The takeaway is that nuclear waste is indeed a futuristic topic, given that Deep Isolation has a one million year time horizon on the efficacy of their technology. It's also interesting that drilling technology can be deployed to place canisters of nucle...
Disruption Games: How to Thrive on Serial Failure--Introduction
July 29, 2020 11:32 - 15 minutes - 21.7 MBFuturist and author Trond Arne Undheim reads from the introduction to his book Disruption Games: How to Thrive on Serial Failure which was published by Atmosphere Press in May, 2020. The takeaway is that taking part in disruption games, just like the Olympic Games, takes training and effort. The failures along the way can be immensely valuable. However, you cannot fail too fast. For failure to be instructive, it has to have a deep cost in time and energy. You can excel at disruption gam...
The Future of Elderly Care
July 28, 2020 12:22 - 45 minutes - 63 MBFuturist and author Trond Arne Undheim interviews Ken Accardi, CEO and founder of Ankota. The takeaway is that the future of elderly care, and home care specifically, is going to be shaped by predictive population health which will prevent and intervene early rather than wait until it has to deal with chronic disease, treating the symptoms, and enduring the effects of aging. After listening to the episode, find out more about Ankota, check out Ken Accardi's faculty profile at Babson Coll...
Killer Applications of Next Decade’s Edge Computing
July 23, 2020 12:58 - 51 minutes - 71.2 MBFuturist and author Trond Arne Undheim interviews Carlo Daffara, CEO and co-founder of NodeWeaver, discussing the future of edge computing. The takeaway is that the importance of edge computing lies, not in the technology itself, but in what it delivers, namely killer applications across industries. The edge is based on the realization that given the amount of data we now generate, all of that data cannot always be moved around. After listening, check out NodeWeaver as well as Carlo Daff...
Reality and Hype in Deep Learning
July 21, 2020 12:31 - 1 hour - 84.1 MBFuturist and author Trond Arne Undheim interviews Otkrist Gupta, who talks about reality and hype in deep learning, a sub-field of artificial intelligence. The takeaway is that deep learning is a promising technique but faces steep challenges getting out of the black box of explainability, generalizability and data efficiency. The future depends on it. After listening, check out Lendbuzz, where Otkrist leads data science, which provides car loans for expats using machine learning to creat...
The Future of Diversity in VC
July 16, 2020 12:26 - 50 minutes - 69.5 MBFuturist and author Trond Arne Undheim interviews Julianne Zimmerman, Managing Director at Reinventure Capital and lecturer at Tufts University. The takeaway is that there is hope for change with regards to the effect of making a bet on underrepresented founders. Dealflow is attractive. Valuations are good. There is a growing realization that the market is missing a lot of talent. Ultimately, diversity will yield products that span a wider range. After listening to the episode, find out ...
Solving for Surveillance Capitalism
July 14, 2020 11:10 - 55 minutes - 76.8 MBFuturist and author Trond Arne Undheim interviews Mathew Lowry, founder of MyHub.ai, who talks about how he sees the challenge of surveillance capitalism by big tech. The takeaway is that as polarized and broken as the online business model for content is, there is still a chance that humans can become more than raw material for the big tech behemoths that currently rule the space. You can also read Designing social platforms fit for the future where Mathew decribes his current quest. Aft...
The Future of Decentralized Finance
July 09, 2020 13:47 - 49 minutes - 68 MBHost and futurist Trond Arne Undheim interviews Dan Elitzer, investor at IDEO CoLab Ventures, Founder of the MIT Bitcoin Club with an MBA from MIT Sloan. The takeaway is that the promise of open finance is a world where everyone can freely create or deploy new financial instruments and business models without or with less of the intermediary constraints that traditional institutions have put on the system. Even if that will take decades, this is cause for optimism. It may also speed up inno...
The Emergence of Remote Activism
July 07, 2020 15:10 - 45 minutes - 63.1 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interviews Laurent Liscia, entrepreneur, author, ex-diplomat and standards activist, who talks about how remote activism helped by technology can re-ignite politics. The takeaway is that remote activism will be a huge force in society and will enable people to take part in important debates and support political candidates in swing states and places where it really matters. After listening, as it emerges, check out Blunami, stealth social activism dashboard th...
The Remaking of Transportation
July 02, 2020 13:47 - 47 minutes - 65.3 MBHost and futurist Trond Arne Undheim interviews special guest Evangelos Simoudis, technologist, investor and author of the new book Transportation Transformation: How Autonomous Mobility Will Fuel New Value Chains (2020). The takeaway is that new mobility will unfold over the next twenty years, in different speeds depending on the savvy of city governments. The future is multimodal in various ways, but will demand coming up with--and embracing--new business models, whether you are involved ...
The Future of Beverages
June 30, 2020 11:33 - 43 minutes - 59.1 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interviews Ronan McGovern, MIT alum with a PhD in mechanical engineering, serial entrepreneur and founder of Point5 Brewing, who talks about his newly launched non-alcoholic beer and muses about emerging trends in the beverage industry. The takeaway is that serial entrepreneurship takes trust, track record and networks. Also, non-alcoholic beer is becoming a market force to reckon with, both in Europe and now in the US, soon reaching a percentage of the market. ...
How can Corporates Reignite the Entrepreneurial Spirit?
June 30, 2020 11:17 - 45 minutes - 62.6 MBFuturist Trond Arne Undheim interviews Steve Epner, who teaches corporate entrepreneurship at Saint Louis University and was the Entrepreneur-in-residence at Boeing. They discuss how corporations and startups best innovate, together and alone, including Trond's notion of innovation biospheres from his innovation book, Disruption Games. The takeaway is that entrepreneurial spirit is a bit like magic, which forces you to think differently, and a bit like improvisation, but mostly learned by ex...
Futurized Trailer
June 19, 2020 03:00 - 1 minute - 6.15 MBAre you exited or curious about the future? Does your job depend on it? Futurized goes beneath the trends, tracking the underlying forces of disruption in tech, policy, business models, social dynamics, and the environment. Join Trond Arne Undheim, futurist, author, and serial entrepreneur, as he tracks the societal impact of deep tech such as AI, blockchain, IoT, life science and robotics. On the show, he interviews smart people with a soul: founders, authors, executives, and emerging thoug...