Bold by Peter Diamandis

bold_bookI’ve just started reading Bold by Peter Diamandis and I’m already hooked.  It is a fascinating book.  In the first chapter he mentioned the company Quirky, that helps inventors get their products into the market.

3D Printing

And now, in chapter two I’m reading about the company 3D Systems.

They make 3D printers and I want one of those so bad now!  Only a thousand dollars.  Very cool stuff!  Did you know those Invisalign braces are all 3D printed per person?

Made in Space creates 3D printers that are being used in the International Space Station!  Also, discovered Shapeways, think Etsy for 3D printed stuff!  And yes, there are even 3D printed dolls.  Each one custom made.

Local Motors is a whole 3D printed car; the first one ever.  We can currently print ten single family homes a day.

The book is not due out until February 3, 2015, but I was able to get a review copy from Netgalley.  If you are a big book reader I highly reccomend you check them out.

I looked into getting the book because I was present at a Partners 2014, a technology conference,  where Peter Diamandis was one of the keynote speakers.

Key Points

This being a net galley pre-reader, I’m not allowed to quite the book, but here are some interesting tidbits that I’ve read about so far:

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) will do everything better than humans by 2029.
  • Robotics is the fastest growing industry and will be the largest be 2020.
    • Robots don’t unionize, no lunch, and can work an assembly line for approx. $4 an hour!
    • Within the next 2 decades 45% of American’s will lose their jobs to Robots and AI
  • Flow: the state of optimal human performance, I love this new word!
  • People who retire at 55 are approx. 90% more likely to die ten years after they retire, than those who wait 10 more years to retire.
  • If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it, this and many other sayings in the book remind me of Lean Six Sigma.
    • He has other great rules like this on his website.
  • Another crowdsourced website called Threadless is great to find some awesome shirts.
  • Tongal crowdsources TV ads and other creative projects.
  • Kaggle – crowdsourced data scientist that compete to solve real world problems.
  • Approx. 150 members is the point at which the community itself begins to carry the conversation
  • Almost anyone with a passion has the power to bring real change into this world.
  • abundancehub.com

Make Some Money

  • Fiverr – users submit small tasks that they need done and pay a minimum of $5.
  • 99designs – If you are graphically inclined you can make some money here.
  • Freelancer – Exactly what it sounds like a site to get small, short jobs for various amounts of money.
Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk
Raptor by Rob Shenk from Great Falls, VA, USA

Diamandis’ kind of thinking was behind the creation of super top secret (Skunk Works) projects like the Nighthawke and the Raptor.

He also discussed how companies now release a “minimum viable product”.  Basically, the beta of a device just to get something out there and bet the competition to the market.  Then the make small updates to the product over the years until it is where they had first envisioned the product.  This reminded me of the iDevices from Apple.

Diamandis is involved in 6 companies:

  1. Planetary Resources
  2. Singularity University
  3. X-Prize
  4. Space Adventures
  5. International Space University
  6. Zero G Corporation

I’m a big fan of Elon Musk and his car company Tesla, but I didn’t know that he was also the one responsible for SolarCity.

Further Reading

Books that Diamandis mentions that I want to read now: