Peter H. Diamandis

Peter H. Diamandis

Chairman & CEO, X Prize Foundation

Peter H. Diamandis is the Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, which leads the world in designing and launching large incentive prizes to drive radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. Best known for the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE for private spaceflight, the Foundation is now launching prizes in Exploration, Life Sciences, Energy, and Education. Diamandis is also the co-Founder & Executive Chairman of the Singularity University, a Silicon Valley based institution teaching graduates and executives about exponentially growing technologies and their potential to address humanity's grand challenges.

Along with fellow Big Think expert Steven Kotler, Diamandis is co-author of the New York Times best selling hardcover book Abundance—The Future Is Better Than You Think which was #2 on the NYTimes List and #1 on Amazon. Their latest book is titled Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World.

Diamandis has founded or co-founded many of the leading entrepreneurial companies in this sector including Zero Gravity Corporation, the Rocket Racing League and Space Adventures. He also counsels the world's top enterprises on how to utilize exponential technologies and incentivized innovation to dramatically accelerate their business objectives. Dr. Diamandis attended MIT where he received degrees in molecular genetics and aerospace engineering, as well as Harvard Medical School where he received his M.D. Diamandis' personal motto is: "The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself!"

 

We humans are those simple individual life forms that are beginning to bring technology into our bodies, whether it’s the cell phone or eventually brain/computer interface.
The challenge we have in a democracy is that we can change our minds depending on which party is in power. 
Constrains, willingness to fail, willingness to take big risks and rapid iteration are absolutely fundamental to innovation. 
Peter Diamandis: It's really when you combine AI & Robotics together that you have magic happening.
The issue is learning the best questions to ask and learning how to interact once you have the knowledge to create new knowledge.
Learning facts and figures are going to be best done by technology feeding them to you the way you want to hear them, when you want to hear them. 
We ultimately need to change the global conversation from one of people complaining about problems to a mindset of solving them. 
If you launch with today’s technology by the time you come to market you’re going to be out of business. 
When things change dramatically we resist it at first and then we adapt and then we love the change. 
It’s much safer to be able to be a child and to be a mom.
Ultimately we’re never going to get people used to the rate of exponential change.  Humans will always be somewhat resistant to it.
90% of the news in the newspaper and on television is negative because that’s what we pay attention to.
Energy becomes literally the fuel that allows us to fulfill almost all of our dreams and what I point out to people is we do have a squanderable abundance of energy.  It happens to be sunlight. 
Technology has a scarcity-liberating capability.  It takes that which is scarce and can make it abundant.
We will have abundance in terms of knowledge and equality and we won’t have the bottom billion anymore, but what I call the rising billion.  
And as someone who has a really terrible driving record I can't wait for autonomous cars to come out.
A lot of the great successes in life were overnight successes after 10 years of hard work.
Taking risks doesn’t mean being stupid.  It really involves taking measured risks and really understanding how to mitigate those risks in one way or another. 
If you’re looking for breakthroughs, you need to be willing to take huge risks and to back non-traditional approaches.  
Chris Anderson's community is aimed at demonetizing a number of industries.