The eForum

Augustin Wegscheider, Principal, Boston Consulting Group and manager of the World Economic Forum's Future of Urban & Autonomous Mobility project discusses the future of shared autonomous electric vehicles, or SAEVs.

In advance of our February 6th, 2018 event all about autonomous vehicles, we spoke with one of the speakers, Boston Consulting Group Principal, Augustin Wegscheider, who also manages the World Economic Forum’s Future of Urban & Autonomous Mobility project. In this podcast, he talks about a particular aspect of this trend: shared electric autonomous vehicles, or SAEVs.

Here’s what he said when asked to gauge the impact of this new mode of mobility:

“We actually think that this will probably be a massive change. It’s probably only comparable to the actual introduction of the automobile itself at the turn of the century. It’s really going to change the paradigm from not having to own a vehicle to just having mobility on demand. We think it’s a really big shift. One story that I like is actually from 1894 — there was a story in the Times of London that predicted in 50 years every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure because everything was based on horse carriages and they just couldn’t see another future. And I think we’re at another turning point, where vehicle ownership is going to go down dramatically and we’re going to see a really big change in mobility patterns.”

You can listen to the complete podcast here:

 

Chetan Manikantan, founder of Tengu, discusses how he used an ICO to help launch his startup that puts control of an individual's credit information in the hands of the individual -- via a blockchain -- rather than in the hands of the large credit reporting, and scoring, companies.

Successful computer applications by definition create value -- but usually require some form of human intermediation to turn that value into actual money that the application’s developers, supporters, and even users can spend. That’s the beauty of cryptocurrency. Even if the application’s developers -- and indeed the company behind the application -- go away, the application keeps right on working, creating value (and money) for stakeholders all by itself.

That idea is being put to the test in one of the most sensitive businesses of all — where values like privacy, reliability, non-repudiation, and integrity are all of the utmost importance.

It’s called Tengu, a startup founded by serial entrepreneur Chetan Manikantan who actually spoke at one of our many recent blockchain-themed events. In this podcast, Chet talks about how Tengu will do to the finance industry what blockchain-based clouds will do to data storage, and what another cryptocurrency--based businesses will do to other industry incumbents -- massively disrupt them.

We interview Lex Sokolin, Partner and Global Director of Fintech Strategy at Autonomous Research and founder of its Fintech unit, the London-based Autonomous NEXT. Lex is a well-known thought leader on Bitcoin, initial coin offerings, and cryptocurrency generally.

One thing was obvious from our recent Innovation Series event on initial coin offerings (ICOs): People have a lot of questions about this new form of investing — like what are ICOs, how do they work, and how can startups and investors participate?

It’s pretty clear, for example, that when you buy shares in an IPO why the value of your shares of the company increase as the value of the company increases. But why, or how, does the value of your investment increase if what you are buying are some of the startup’s cryptocurrency?

These are some of the questions we put to Lex Sokolin in this podcast. Lex is the founder of the London-based Fintech practice, Autonomous NEXT, and is a frequently quoted thought leader on Bitcoin, ICOs, and cryptocurrency in general. So if you missed our event, and would like to get a great overview of what ICOs are all about — all in the space of about 30 minutes — then you should listen to this:

Starting a successful new company is impressive enough. But opening a new market is even more so, especially when the founder happens to be a college student. That’s what Emily Levy accomplished as the CEO and co-founder of Mighty Well — a company at the intersection of fashion, lifestyle, and disease management.

But that’s just part of her story. While a student at Babson College Emily won our 2015 Beantown Throwdown and this year she returned as one of the judges of the 2017 Beantown Throwdown. Her selection as a judge made a lot of sense given that she has won 15 pitch-offs altogether — in addition to the $200,000 Mighty Well has received so far in venture capital.

But Emily is not only the CEO and co-founder of her new company. She is also a customer. It turns out that Mighty Well wasn’t just a solution to a problem identified through a market study — although her team has certainly conducted a number of those. It is also a solution to a problem she had to face personally.

Suppose you are a graduate student from Syria living in the United States and you want to help refugees of the Syrian civil war as well as other displaced people around the world. You want to find a solution that is sustainable — in a way that charitable donations can never be — to give these people a path forward in their lives so they’re less likely to turn to conflict or terrorism. And, yes, you also need to make money.

What would you do?

Wafaa Arbash, who is from Syria and who just graduated from Brandeis University with a master’s degree in conflict resolution, found an answer to that question when she founded WorkAround. That is a company that helps U.S. companies engage refugee talent worldwide via the Internet. She is also the winner of several student pitchoff competitions, including our own 2017 Beantown Throwdown.

You can listen to her story here:

 

And if you’re looking for some great refugee talent, look here.

Wafaa Arbash was a Brandeis University grad student from Syria majoring in conflict resolution when she founded WorkAround, a company that helps U.S. firms engage refugee talent worldwide via the Internet. She is also the winner of several student pitchoff competitions, including our own 2017 Beantown Throwdown.

Following up on our sold-out “Emerging Applications of Blockchain for Supply Chains” event held earlier this fall, we invited one of the speakers, Brigid McDermott, back to do a deeper dive into some of the content presented at this very important session. Brigid is Vice President, Blockchain Business Development & Ecosystem at IBM — and some of the early IBM initiatives around blockchain, which she is leading, are focused specifically on the supply chain as it relates to food, and especially food safety. It is an initiative she talks a lot about in this podcast.

Here’s what she said when we asked about IBM’s commitment to blockchain in general:

‘Our CEO has said that blockchain will transform transactions the way the Internet has transformed communication. This is a fundamental shift in what is possible as we think about interacting with other parties. For IBM, as we started looking at blockchain as a new technology, this ability that it has to really fundamentally shift not just technology but business processes was the driver for our really aggressive investment in it.”