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in the new book the industries of the future author Alec Ross takes a deep dive into the specific fields that will
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shape our economic future including robotics and the codification of just about everything the book is based in
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part on his four years serving as senior advisor for innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Alec thanks for
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being here thanks for having me now when you were coming up with these industries
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to highlight in the book was it immediately obvious what would make sense to put in there or how was your
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process of figuring out either what ones to include or just how to kind of mush together the things that you were seeing
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in to clear industries it was actually it was a long process actually my assistant actually totaled up my travel
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and apparently over the last handful of years I've traveled the equivalent of
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two round trips to the moon with a side trip to New Zealand and so the process of identifying the you know let's call
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them eight to ten specific industries that I profile in the industries of the future really is a byproduct of that
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travel 25 circumference --is of the globe so you know some of the ideas that I had going in didn't stick and then
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there were things like the commercialization of genomics which I would not have necessarily intuited will
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be it would be a trillion dollar industry in the future but by virtue of my research it emerged now one of the
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things I thought is really fascinating about the book is you kind of see two different things at work here you see
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economies emerging economies where they're kind of developing industries from the ground up that are these
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cutting into cutting edge industries and then you also see more developed economies where they had had their
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economies were basically shaped on the innovations of the past the innovations of decades ago and they're having to
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retool and what were the lessons you took from each of those I mean do you see is the process somehow different is
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it easier for one versus the other to focus on these things I think that the process of imagination that becomes
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innovation which becomes commercialization is fairly similar country to country but the problem is is
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that different countries have the wherewithal have the access to capital have the employee base to take something
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from imagination to reality and others don't so in the most highly developed
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country you do have baked in a set of advantages that don't exist in frontier markets or
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in developing economies so more often than not I think it's in the developed
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in the developed economies it's in places like Silicon Valley where they're
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going to create entirely new platforms that billions of people will eventually use whereas in developing economies at
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least to this point and it could change in developing economies it's been the
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case that they what I see is building a tool building an application developing something that's specific that solves a
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very specific problem as opposed to building platforms that serve hundreds of millions of people so for those
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economies it's more about if they take can they take the tool and really develop an industry around that or an
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industry around that type of innovation that's exactly right so when I think
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about mobile payments and how mobile payments emerged in Kenya now the reason why mobile payments emerged in Kenya was
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in part because there weren't mainstream banks on Main Street in Nairobi and so
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it was innovation born out of scarcity but the interesting thing there is because it's so good and because it
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appeals to consumers around the world it's something that can scale from developing economies into developed
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economies so there are examples of that now one of the things I thought was interesting though is when you look at
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developed economies so for example you talked a little bit in the book about your background growing up in West
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Virginia and about how what happened to the community when Cole kind of became not a dominant Istra industry anymore
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when it moved overseas to south to other places and I wondered with for developed
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economies like and I actually lived in a place very similar to that in Indiana which had been an industrial economy and
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one of the things that I thought is interesting is is that the government tried to kind of pivot to something to
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something new to what was coming next but you have kind of this pushback from the population that you know they want
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the jobs back that were there before they want it to be the way it was before because that was very sustainable it
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made a good life for you know generations of people so with developed economies how do you kind of get beyond
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how did you see governments or people trying to get beyond that you know this works for us this works for us for years
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we want this back we don't want something new we want the old because the old
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good yeah I mean luck I think one of the lessons of the past 40 years of globalization is that you can't click
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your heels together and say there's no time like 1965 it just doesn't work and
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it's it's regressive and you know those kinds of that kind of regressive
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worldview when it becomes a regressive set of policies tends to lead to nowhere in West Virginia for example I think you
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know one of the reasons why I wrote the industries of the future was because was
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as a response to how poorly the state of West Virginia did respond to globalization and technology driven
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innovation and you know sort of clung on to coal even as coal became automated and so look I think that you've got this
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is where leadership is is necessary you know people cannot curl into the fetal position and and you know wish for
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the prosperity of yesterday you know it's not the strongest of the species that survives or the most intelligent
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but those most adaptable to change and that's as true and you know the highest
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in the in the most highly developed Western economies as it is anywhere now you talked a little bit about how that
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people always ask you for example like how do I become Silicon Valley how does my community become Silicon Valley and
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your answer is they can't that you can't be Silicon Valley because Silicon Valley
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had a special set of things that made it that way but what you can do is sort of
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become take the deep knowledge in your own it in your own community and leverage that now how would you say I
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mean if you have an accountant so for example if you have a can you like Detroit where they're deep knowledge is
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and automobiles and in some sense some of those that that's become antiquated
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that's become developments of the past and some of the things that they're
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doing how would you how do you pivot an industry like that that's very much based on the innovations of yesterday
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and kind of focus them on some of these industries that you talked about in the book I mean what do you see economies do
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you see economies that are doing that well well first you know let's go right
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back to Detroit so the skill sets that are domiciled inside Detroit lend themselves well to in my opinion the
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next generation of automobiles which will be increasingly Internet connected which will be driverless you
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know they ought to assert their own domain expertise in automotive so that they can be a part of that economy
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tomorrow secondly you know against sticking to Detroit they're gonna be emerging fields like drones and it's
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Marc and Marc Andreessen from the venture capital firm andreessen horowitz suggested that Detroit become drone
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Valley so if you do think if you take the industry out of it you know the car industry but think about what the skills
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were that made Detroit what it was for as long as it was that then can lend itself to a set of you know future
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oriented industries you know when I think about the Rust Belt more broadly I think about deep domain expertise in
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manufacturing well there are you know supply chains are growing more sophisticated advanced manufacturing is
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growing more sophisticated there is the emergence of 3d printing so I actually think that the domain expertise in
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manufacturing and the Rust Belt could be turned to its advantage so long as it's
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oriented towards the industries of the future now do you see that type of deep thinking going on in some of these
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economies like in the US and Europe I mean are are there people out there that are thinking about this that way is
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there isn't there enough thought being put into that too that I actually think
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there is you know I actually you know look most people who write books about the future are either wildly utopian or
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wildly dystopian it's either oh we're gonna live 150 years happy healthy
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wealthy wise in life for nothing or it's written you know what sort of fists
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clenched in eyes clothes you know very angry you know I think the life is much more up the middle and when I think
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about you know your question here about you know our communities preparing themselves to pivot and leverage their
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domain expertise I actually think yes you know where I live now in Baltimore there's this very
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strong focus on the commercialization of genomics the life sciences based on you
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know the tremendous research institutions that are there it's close to the NSA and the CIA in the Defense
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Department so there's a big focus on cybersecurity I actually do think that communities
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have grown smarter and smarter about mapping their assets and figuring out how to how to build industries around
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those assets now as these sectors rise I mean as robots and codification and all
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of these other industries that you identify in the book become more prominent how do you feel like that's
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going to kind of change the world balance of power I mean how does that change kind of the global economy and
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who's who's got power who doesn't that's a tremendous question you know I would
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first of all I'd put it into into a certain kind of binary I mean so the first is within the architecture of the
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196 sovereign nation-states and the second is within those nation-states you know what kinds of
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individuals do well and what kinds of individuals do poorly so you can live in a country that is prospering but you can
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be doing very well or you could be doing very poorly or you could be living it live in a country that's foundering and
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you might be able to be doing pretty well so first I think that you know the principle political and economic binary
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of the 20th century was right versus left in the 21st century I think it's open versus closed defining open as
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upward economic mobility not confined to elites social and cultural norms and social cultural and religious norms not
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set from a central authority and sort of broadly rights respecting for women minorities of all type and what-have-you
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and I believe that the centers of innovation and the wealth creation and job creation that comes from that will
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be in the more open societies for the industries of the future I see you know people conglomerating around you know
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what will probably be 10 to 15 major centers over the next 15 years we already see this in development now and
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so I think that the more open societies will be those that compete and succeed most effectively in terms of the
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individuals looking at this on an individual level I think you know look it's going to be a terrible time to be
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mediocre at your job if you're in a high cost labor market you know it's it's an
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absolutely brutal truth when people in Baltimore competing against people in bank
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not just based on cost of labour but also quality of labour which is now increasingly going to be the case I
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think that you know being born middle class or working class in the United States or Western Europe isn't going to
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mean your starting life on second base to the degree that it did in the past and so I do think that you you've got to
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be a committed lifelong learner you've got to be adaptable otherwise you're
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gonna be left behind even if you're even if your country is producing substantial
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growth and you put that out in the last chapter of the book you talk a little bit about kind of advice if you're a
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parent with children these days and you have three correct I do and so what what to do like if you
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have kids who are maybe even if they're decades away from college or a few years
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away like what do you suggest how do you kind of guide them what would how can they adjust to this new type of economy
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and you have some interesting advice and part of its with languages and I think the other interesting part was just the
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idea that it's more important than ever to have stamps on your passport which is
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something I never experienced as a kid and something I definitely got me thinking well this is something I need
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to make a point of hat making sure my daughter does you know it's really interesting there was a World Economic
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Forum study that said that children entering preschool today sixty-five percent of the job types that
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exist when they graduate from college don't exist today so what that means is
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that we aren't preparing our kids for specific jobs rather what we have to do
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is develop a set of skills they can then map into job types that we don't even
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know what they are right now and so there are you know in the last chapter the industries of the future the last
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chapter is called the most important job you'll ever have the most important job
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you'll ever have being a parent and so without pretending to be a parenting guru myself what I did do is I
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interviewed the scores of people who've been very successful in business and
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said alright you know what if skills and attributes that today's kids need in
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tomorrow's economy and there are a handful of lessons in there from foreign language learning to interdisciplinary
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learning to you know making sure that kids are as multicultural affluent as possible because they're going to be
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working in a world where the frontier economies are becoming developing economies in the developing
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common economies are becoming developed economies so it's gonna be a little bit
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of a tricky world I think for kids my age they're 13 11 and 9 when they enter the workforce and
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it's never too early to begin to prepare them for that and now in addition when
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you talk about languages you also talked a lot about preparing them languages including code so including learning
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HTML learning Python learning some sort of technological language in addition to
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a foreign language ya know I think you know I'm I'm all in favor of language
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learning foreign languages and computer languages and you know even if the computer language is that kids are
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learning are not necessarily those that will be used in 15 years it still teaches you a way of thinking it teaches
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you a way of problem-solving and an above-average coder it's got a couple decades of worth of employment in front
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of them now if you are so looking at people like our age or people our companies I mean if you're somebody who
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has maybe had a company that's built on or your career is built on one of maybe
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the old innovations of the past how do you prepare for the future how can you take this book and really use it as
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almost like news you can use I mean what would your advice be to hold our folk gosh you know look I think I think that
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anybody from you know from middle schoolers to people toward the end of their professional careers hopefully can
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draw something from the book the industries of the future but you know what one of the things that I would
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simply say is you know I'm such an evangelist for a lifelong learning so the idea that you know that somehow
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stops in your 40s or 50s I you know I I simply don't buy or buy into so I did I
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do think that people who are trying to figure out how to adopt and adapt to a faster changing world you know I say the
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21st century is a terrible time to be a control freak so one of the key things is to give up on the kind of control
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that you're most comfortable with and you know begin to understand that a lot
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of the ground shifting under your feet is going to shift whether you like it or not and to understand and accept that
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we're we're gonna be living in a world of ever faster pace change a lacrosse thanks so much for being with
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us thanks for having me you