By Economic Club of Florida
Since 1977, The Economic Club of Florida has become one of the South’s most important forums for distinguished speakers on major issues of the day. The Club provides a platform for discussion to ed
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“How Autonomous Trucking Will Deliver the Future” - Nationally-recognized expert Lee White reveals how trials of autonomous vehicle trucking on public highways are progressing and the impact driverless trucks are expected to have on the cost of goods, the labor market, and roadway safety before an August 27, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)
Mr. White told the Club that autonomous vehicles (AVs) are already on the road. Out west, Waymo operates driverless taxis with more than 100,000 paid rides a week. The company will be expanding to 20 more states.In Florida, trucking will be a huge user of these driverless vehicles. Currently in the state:
The U.S. trucking industry represents $900-billion worth of transactions in interstate commerce across 140,000 terminals. Plus, we already see autonomous vehicles and machines working in other areas, especially since the COVID pandemic changed the supply chain.
“One of the things that helped these e-commerce companies, the Amazons, the UPS, DHL, Walmart, Target get through that is a lot of automation in their warehouses,” White said. “We have more million square-foot warehouses in our supply chain now than we ever had, and there’s a lot of automation. Amazon has over 14 different robots that are doing things, picking and unloading. We've got automated forklifts that are loading and unloading trucks. There's a lot of automation that's taking place inside the four walls, inside these facilities.”
He also pointed to the ways agriculture uses AVs.
“With John Deere, I believe there's 12 locations that they're testing right now for farming where the tractor has 24-hour capability to be able to farm. All the farmer needs to do is transport their tractor to the field, get it set up, get out of the cab, use their mobile phone and swipe to farm.”
In New York there are autonomous airport shuttles to take you to the terminal and then back to your car. They use autonomous machines as baggage carts and to load and unload cargo.
The military is also interested.
“In the last 10 years, they've had some military vehicles in some of our areas and supply chains that are running without drivers,” White said. “It's going to keep our men and women, our soldiers out of harm's way. You know, if there's a convoy of 20 trucks, there may be truck number 15 that's got a driver in it, and everything else is being autonomously driven.”
The trucking industry is still suffering a recession. There was an additional 4-5% reduction in business last May and June. The industry is also dealing with cost increases.
“If you look at the past three years, the wage cost has gone up from 56 cents per mile for a driver to 78 cents, a 38% increase in wages,” said White, a truck delivery driver earlier in his career... (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast
“Development Trajectory of the Internet and AI – Will History Repeat Itself, or Just Rhyme?” WebMD founding COO Michael Heekin draws comparisons to the early days of the Internet to discuss the rapid dynamics of Artificial Intelligence and how it may impact business operations in the next ten years before a July 23, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)
Michael Heekin first took the Club on a nostalgic trip through the history of the internet featuring names such as America Online, the first internet connection many people had, Alta Vista and Yahoo, early search engines, and Netscape, an early browser.
He discussed how electrical energy demands from Artificial Intelligence (AI), various data centers, electric vehicles, among others will be huge. Previous Club speakers have addressed the energy needs as well.
“AI does not think like the human brain,” Heekin said. “Data is the key. It does not have instincts, emotions or consciousness.”
He said that as far as we know, AI is not capable of innovative thinking. He acknowledged that while AI might replace humans in performing some tasks, it’s power will be helping humans work more efficiently.
“It can take the works of the Beatles, and it can compose a new song and have Paul McCartney sing it,” he said. “It sounds like the Beatles because it’s got the same meter and the same interplay of instruments. But, it’s not capable of, and I’m going to guess never will have original thought. It’s not going to recreate a masterpiece like the complete works of Shakespeare or the City of God by Augustine.”
Heekin, who specializes in the management and development of growth-stage health and technology companies, talked about how we saw internet companies succeed and fail, and through the booms and busts, we’ve seen what they needed to succeed. AI companies will be similar in that there will be successes as well as dashed dreams and lost investment money.
“Access to good data and good data curation is what’s going to be really key,” he said. “Getting good data, curating it, and then stuffing it into the algorithm.”
He said that regulatory good faith is necessary for AI to grow, and he praised President Bill Clinton and U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich for their light regulation of the Internet in the 1990s.
“The government needs to not kill this thing in the crib. It has great potential for good, and great, great potential for threats. But that’s the same with a lot of things, wi-fi, life in general. The genie’s out of the bottle. If it’s not AI, it will be something else.”
He also looked at social media and regulation as a model for AI.
“Social media is like giving kids a pack of cigarettes. It’s clear AI is going to need some regulation, but it should be ex-post, not in advance. People in Washington don’t have a monopoly on good sense.”
He said AI will be a commodity product.
“There will be some wrinkles to it, but it will be a commodity. We will have access to AI, but most AI companies will not own the AI algorithms. Thay may own developments of it. They may have prompt engineers that can tell the AI algorithm what to do, but they will not own the algorithm lock stock and barrel.”
The public domain is... (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast
“Florida’s ‘Booming’ Economy” Clark Mica, President of the Institute of Makers of Explosives highlights the critical role that commercial explosives play in building the Florida and U.S. economies before a June 25, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)
“There are a couple things you need to have in a modern society, or successful society, and that's energy, water, and food,” Mr. Mica told the Club. All of those things require explosives to produce, what he refers to as “the ultimate power tool.”
The Institute of Makers of Explosives was begun in 1913 as an organization to provide safety instruction and guidelines. It’s been so successful in its mission that OSHA told the group it does not need to form a safety and health alliance with the government organization. To handle or possess explosives, a person has to pass an ATF background check and be thoroughly trained. Three universities in the country now offer degrees in mining or explosives.
“If you think about the millions of tons of explosives that are consumed each year, rarely do you hear about anything in the news,” he said.
The group includes manufacturers, distributors, and users of commercial explosives. The group does not deal with defense or fireworks.
Mr. Mica said that there is only one dynamite factory in the United States and no TNT plant. What is needed is imported, and that could be a national security issue. Most of the commercial explosives used today are made from ammonium nitrate emulsions.
The group just completed the first ever economic impact study of the commercial explosives industry in the United States and Florida.
Across the country the industry provides:
The economic impact of the industry is large.
Commercial explosives make other industries possible, including industries that will be very important in the future.
“We talk about all the new technology, the green economy. We don't care if it's fossil fuels or green, you need us for everything,” he said. “If you want to make lithium batteries for electric cars, you’ve got to mine the lithium, and you have to use explosives to do that. You want to build windmills, you use explosives, and not only to get the material out, but to build the windmill. You have to use it to prepare the site because those things go down twenty, thirty, forty, even fifty feet to build the foundations.”
The largest users of explosives are the oil and gas industry and the mining and quarry industry. There explosives provide:
In Florida, the economic impact of commercial explosives is also huge.
Explosives have played a critical... (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast
“The Opportunity Capital in Florida's Rocket Ship Economy” Miami entrepreneur Saif Ishoof of the Miami business development firm Lab22c shares a glimpse of what Florida could become in the future before a May 16, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)
Mr. Ishoof told the Club that technological innovation and economic growth depend on human capital and developing that human capital. He quoted his late father, who said we honor the American Dream by helping others achieve it.
He pointed to the great changes in the state over the past 40-years by using the changing pronunciation of his city as a metaphor – Miam-uh, Meeahmi, and now Miami.
At 24, after graduating from law school, Mr. Ishoof decided to build his first software company in an office building near the University of Miami. Guy Kawasaki, Chief Marketing Officer for Steve Jobs and Apple, told him to move from Florida.
“And I disregarded what was the best worst piece of advice I ever had,” he said. “Because I believed that that Miam-uh, Meeahmi, Miami had something that was going to position us to win the second half of the 21st century. That very special element is human capital.”
Ishoof served as Executive Director for City Year Miami, an AmeriCorps national service program for young adults. As nothing was going on in downtown Miami in 2008, he decided to recruit young people to serve as tutors, mentors, and role models and to focus long-term on human capital. His ideas worked.
“We moved over 1.5 trillion of assets under management capital to Miami and Florida in the last 48 months. There's a global ranking called the GFCI which stands for Global Financial Center Index. It's a ranking of global financial centers. OECD and the World Bank put it out. Miami had never been on the list ever before. This year, we landed on the list for our first time at number 24. Dubai is 21.”
Ishoof said big companies are moving to Florida. “Blackstone, the largest institutional asset manager in the world, now has a massive strategic presence in Miami. Amazon is setting up 50,000 square feet of footprint in Miami, and Citadel, one of the largest hedge funds in the world headquartered in Miami. That's all part of the increase of assets under management in our region. We have to look at those assets as opportunity for human capital.”
He said he wants to work supporting people, institutions, founders, and builders that are trying to solve problems, and that will require developed people.
“We have to develop human capital in our K 12 system,” he said. “We have to make sure that we're supporting early learning, we have to be focusing on creating an actual pathway. So, from when a young person graduates from college, they can see their way to a meaningful career. Are you setting up everybody's child for this form of success? Are you enabling and creating those types of ecosystems in those environments?”
“Driving economic development and driving innovation is not about tech bros at coffee shops. It's about PhDs and postdocs sitting at labs that are actually creating bench science that can actually go to the market.”
His company, Lab22c, works with founders who are creating technologies that are the stuff of... (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast
“Towards Precision Medicine Therapies and Biomarkers for Neurodegenerative Diseases”Dr. Nilüfer Ertekin-Taner, Professor and Enterprise Chair of Mayo Clinic’s Department of Neuroscience, explains the very latest research and treatments for Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases before an April 2, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)
Dr. Ertekin-Taner gave the club some shocking figures on dementia and Alzheimer’s disease:
At Mayo Florida, she has more than 200 investigators working in her lab and supervises more than 250-scientists and trainees at the Florida campus.
“Our collective mission is to find cures and diagnostics for currently incurable and undiagnosable neurologic illnesses, like dementias, like Alzheimer's disease,” she said. “Dementia is the umbrella term, it means a person is having problems in their thinking, and it's interfering with their day-to-day life.”
She pointed out that while Alzheimer’s was first identified more than 100-years ago, it has only recently become recognized clinically. It was thought to be a normal part of aging, but now we know it is not.
Dr. Ertekin-Taner and her lab are looking for cures not only for Alzheimer’s but also Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), a disease that progresses faster and at a younger age than Alzheimer’s.
The investigators use genetics to get information about possible risk factors, but it does not give specific information.
“Basically, think of it like the general address. There is a fire so the firefighters are called, and we say there's a fire in this general region. That's the kind of information that these kinds of studies give us. But they don't tell us exactly which house is on fire. And they don’t tell us what caused the fire.”
While diagnosis has gotten better, there are still few cures.
“The answer again, lies in in the economy. The cost of putting a single drug on the market is on average over a billion dollars. So pharmaceutical companies cannot commit unless those drug targets are de-risked for them. And the groups that are going to really identify those drug targets and de-risk it for big pharmaceutical companies are academic groups. Places like Mayo Clinic and other places.”
Dr. Ertekin-Taner said Alzheimer’s, PSP, and the other forms of dementia differ from person to person. While Alzheimer’s is now treated as a single disease, she says it should be treated similarly to cancer with specific therapies for specific patients. Doctors need to apply precision medicine, which is diagnosing and treating the right patient with the right treatment at the right time.
Genes are not all researchers look to.
“There's also a big emphasis now on environment, the exposed zone. Where you were born, what you eat, what are your other risk factors, and education? What are the things that enrich your brain, and what are those that take away from your brain? Their relationship with genes matters. And this combination either puts you at risk for diseases... (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast
“The Radical Consequences of a Digital Economy” Bob Rice, Managing Partner of New Jersey-based Tangent Capital Partners, shares the revolutionary implications of Artificial Intelligence on global production, wages, competition, investments, and education before a March 21, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)
Bob Rice told the Club that the current digital revolution is making radical changes in the economy which will have radical societal consequences. The changes are occurring at a rate of speed that is hard, even for him, to comprehend.
He pointed out that the first digital camera was invented less than 50-years ago. With the popularity of the Internet and the Personal Computer, anyone can now transmit a photograph to half the world’s population instantly. “The latest iteration is Artificial Intelligence or AI, created by machine, and it’s just getting started. The advances and the consequences are mind-blowing and we have to be ready,” Rice said.
He then showed three brief videos that were created by computers solely with human text commands.
“They literally started with a blank screen with no pixels at all on the screen,” Rice said of the AI process. “Tyler Perry, the big movie guy in Atlanta, was shown this a month ago. He walked out and told The Hollywood Reporter ‘I'm putting my $800 million studio expansion on hold. Jobs are going to be lost.’”
He calls both the advances and the consequences “shocking.” Mr. Rice said we are seeing a “revolutionary revolution,” and he calls it that because it’s not happening in just one domain of human existence. It’s affected things such as the war in Ukraine, entertainment, and also medicine.
“Some of the medical advances that are coming out of this are absolutely mind blowing. The ability to create brand new antibodies that are proteins, specifically for your body, is happening right now.”
It’s a revolution that everyone will have access to.
“You don't need to be a specialist with 20-years of training to use this tool. You need to be able to speak or write something, and it will take care of it and do what you want it to do.”
He said that the Meta (formerly Facebook) open-source AI has been downloaded about 150-million times.
Mr. Rice also discussed human productivity and said the invention that most improved the world was the washing machine.
“Suddenly, electric washing machines freed up essentially half of humanity from six hours of drudgery every single day. And half of humanity was unleashed into things that were more economically productive,” he said, alluding that AI holds the same potential. (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast
“The Challenges of Leadership in Our Times” Former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta discusses the growing challenges and turmoil facing the United States before a February 6, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)
Leon Panetta briefly told the Club about his background including reminiscences of Floridians he had worked with in Congress in the late 1970’s and 80’s, Senator Lawton Chiles and Congressman Claude Pepper. He recounted how his parents were immigrants from Italy in the 1930s and how they believed they could give their children a better life in the United States. His father instilled in him the idea of service.
“I really felt it was important to give something back to the country. And frankly, what I'm trying to do here with the Panetta Institute is trying to develop a new generation of leaders for our country. And man, do we need a new a younger generation of leaders in this country,” he said. “The rewards in public service are not money or power, or having a name on the door. The purpose of public service is to improve the life of people in this country. And I felt that I could help improve the lives of the people.”
The former military Intelligence officer pointed to how recruitment across the military services is down. “The reward in public service is a reward that goes to the heart of what our democracy is all about, which is that all of us owe a duty to country. But one of the things I'm sensing in young people is that they don't have that same drive that same sense of duty to country.”
Mr. Panetta deplores the lack of public service in young people today, and throughout his discussion, he suggested ways to get them more interested and working on improving lives.
“Looking to the future, what we really need to do with young people is establish a national service system that requires young people to serve this country, in some capacity, whether it's in education or conservation, or health care, or the military. It would be a hell of a lot better for them to pay for college, working for this country than simply borrowing the money to go to college like they do now.” That suggestion drew a big round of applause from the audience.
He added, “If we don't build a good future generation of leaders, we will continue to have problems with our democracy.”
(for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)
“Driving Florida’s Sports Economy” Angela Adams Suggs, President and CEO of the Florida Sports Foundation shares the growing $70 billion economic impact of Florida’s sports industry before a November 7, 2023 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)
Angela Adams Suggs told the Club that Florida is where the world comes to play.
“Florida's economic impact is $70 billion dollars plus annually through amateur, recreational, professional and leisure sport,” she said.
While major professional sports teams are important with three NFL teams, two NHL teams, two NBA teams, and two MLS teams, most of that number comes from non-major league activities, such as:
In addition, Orlando will be hosting thousands of volleyball players for a tournament in July 2024.
She added, “More than sixteen-million people come to eleven-hundred golf courses. Twelve percent of the United States golf economy is right here in the state of Florida.”
Plus, the state’s thousand miles of coastline, more than twelve-thousand miles of rivers and streams, and eight-thousand lakes attract fishermen year-round.
Fifteen major league baseball teams hold their spring training in Florida’s Grapefruit League. Suggs said many of them have renewed contracts, and many of the stadiums and facilities have recently undergone renovations. The state hosts the Governor’s Baseball Dinner annually at various spring training sites.
In all, sporting activities provide nearly a million jobs statewide.
“We need traffic control. We need for people to come out and keep these parks clean. We need ticket takers. We need folks that are going to come in and print up all of the great signage that you see. For our road races, you need people that are going to put barricades out. You need people on our softball diamonds that are going to drag the fields,” Suggs said.
While hurricane season means the Summer Olympics probably will not be hosted in the state, there are openings in other areas.
“While we may not host the Games in Florida, we definitely are primed and ready to create opportunities for preparation to have a huge impact through the games,” she said. She pointed out that a lot of nations have their Olympic teams train in various Florida communities.... (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)
“Energy of the Future” Armando Pimentel, President and CEO of Florida Power and Light Company, discusses the challenges of providing customers reliable, affordable power with less emissions before an October 5, 2023 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)
Florida’s economy is growing significantly, and Florida Power and Light President and CEO Armando Pimentel told the Club that whatever happens in the Florida economy affects its largest utility. The company serves more than 12-million people – over half the population of Florida – making it the biggest electric utility in the nation, too.
Mr. Pimentel said the company is working to solve the riddle of how to provide customers reliable power that is affordable. He said generating it with less emissions is hard to do.
“We have one of the lowest bills in the nation, roughly 25% to 30% lower on a national average than everyone else again. And that's because we provide clean, affordable and reliable power,” he said.
One of the ways FPL will accomplish that is by the use of solar power. He said that solar energy is now cheaper than natural gas over a 30-year investment. By early next year the company’s 66 solar projects will expand to more than 100.
“It makes sense for our customers to reduce the amount of natural gas that we're burning at Florida Power and Light and increase the amount of energy that we're getting from solar. Texas and Oklahoma take their gas somewhere else, and we get free energy from the sun here in Florida.“
He says the federal Inflation Reduction Act provided production tax credits that save money for customers.
To back up the solar and wind generation, its affiliated company NextEra Energy Resources also has more battery storage than anyone in the nation. But resources are not limited to renewable energy. The company also drills for oil and natural gas and owns pipelines. Over the past 20-years, they have torn down old, inefficient natural gas plants and replaced them with modern ones that have saved $15-billion in fuel costs. They are also experimenting with using solar power to separate hydrogen gas from water to use as a fuel in what are now natural gas plants.
Mr. Pimentel said battery technology is critical to renewables and that reduction in cost will lead to more electric vehicles.
“Battery technology is going to get very cheap, very, very cheap. And once it does, it's no longer going to be economical to buy gasoline powered cars.”
Mr. Pimentel said the company has increased customer reliability by replacing 94% of old transmission line structures with concrete and steel ones which are much more resistant to hurricanes and other storms. He said that during Hurricane Idalia less than 0.3% of their solar panels were affected.
FP&L also operates an innovation hub called 35 Mules to give entrepreneurs, many of them with energy or power projects, an opportunity to grow their ideas. The program helps build jobs across Florida and makes it an even better to grow and innovate. FP&L receives hundreds of applications a year and chooses only a few for the program.
“We provide them not only senior leadership, we provide them a little bit of money, guide them in the right direction to make sure that they can understand how to raise money for their venture and allow them to think much broader in terms of bringing a product out to the market. It's been very successful.“
He concluded by...
“The Economics of Culture” Bill Yeargin, President and CEO of Correct Craft, shares the lessons he’s learned running a successful Florida business and how corporate culture impacts the bottom line and the lives of employees, before a September 12, 2023 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.
Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)
Since 1925 Correct Craft has operated as the world’s leader in tournament inboard, freshwater fish and utility and recreational boats, as well as marine propulsion and watersports parks. The company is headquartered in Florida but has manufacturing plants across the country, and it operates in more that 70-countries worldwide.
Bill Yeargin has served as CEO since 2006 – he was the fifth CEO in five years. He realized the company needed a culture of service.
“One of the things that we needed was a culture, and a culture of service, a culture of something bigger than us,” said Yeargin. He promoted a culture of making life better. “When you have employees that are engaged, employees that are part of something that's bigger than themselves, they perform really well.”
“You can’t think of culture as an expense. You have to think of culture as an investment,” said the CEO. “There’s no investment you can make, that’s better for your organization, that’s got a higher return than investing in culture.” He said Correct Craft has grown from a $40 million company in 2009 to more than $1 billion last year.
Yeargin said part of the culture is becoming a learner. He said most people conversely are knowers – people who use data only to confirm what they already know.
“If you’re a learner, you get an endorphin rush when somebody changes your mind,” said Yeargin. He said he wants to be the least judgmental guy anyone meets.
He said the way we frame things in our minds make a big difference in how successful we are. We should see obstacles, or challenges, as opportunities and the way to our success.
“And so when we have a big challenge, we say the obstacle is the way. We’re going to figure out a way to turn this to our advantage.”
Yeargin and part of his team recently spent a week in Silicon Valley. Their concentration was on the huge increase in computational power seen in the past few decades, in items such as the smart phone – and its implications for change and transformational growth.
“That technological change is transforming business models and transforming the world. Whatever you’re doing now, if you’re doing the same thing in ten years, you’re likely to be out of business,” he told the Club.
Yeargin emphasized that looking ahead is part of his company’s culture. He points to the need to drive culture and says it is simple if these four steps are followed.
As for the last point, Yeargin said leaders have to follow the cultural steps themselves.
“As CEO of Correct Craft. I talk about this stuff all the time. But if people see me talking one way and acting another, they're always going to make their determination of what your values are based on what they see you do, not what they hear you say. Always. So you have to model it,” he said.....
The podcast currently has 58 episodes available.