Despite the current pain initially caused by government fiddling in the mortgage and credit markets, the last decade was historic in terms of international economic growth. (See recent post from your author at aspenIbiz blog “The World’s Center of Gravity Continues to Tip in Favor of Emerging Markets” for insight into convergence of developed world and emerging markets.)
China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil have all grown at super fast rates with an annual growth rate averaging over 5% per year. This alone has raised the standards of living and purchasing power for 40% of the world’s people.
Columbia, Peru, and Chile have also made remarkable progress. Even Africa saw significant growth, in excess of 5% most years.
This rate of progress will produce a doubling in standards of living every 14 years or so. Hundreds of millions of people switched from being net drains on the world economy to net producers. These changes will yield enormous positive benefits both for markets and investors. Furthermore, these trend lines will accelerate further in the coming decade.
We will see opportunities in technology where better mousetraps are being invented and patents are in place to provide a sort-of barrier to entry, so that these technologies can cost effectively power future technology transformation.
Today were are in a period of unprecedented and increasing transformational opportunities. As scientific knowledge accelerates, so will disruptive technologies and profits. Some key areas at this time are in battery technology, robotics, and diabetes research.
About 45 years ago, Gordon Moore, who was a semiconductor engineer at Fairchild Semiconductor, became a sort-of prophet for the IT industry. Using trends in semiconductor manufacturing, he predicated inexpensive exponential improvements that would place twice the number of transistors on an integrated circuit every two years.
This prediction became known as Moore’s Law and not only can we significantly increase the number of electronic components on a slab of silicon, the price drops significantly as well. Consequently, millions all over the world have access to hand-held computing technology that is more powerful than the astronauts of the Apollo program had when they landed on the moon.
Just think about that for a second, we have more computing power, and with GPS on our cell phones and other mobile devices, navigational capability than astronauts had when they landed on the moon! Just image what we can do with today’s computing and navigational capabilities if we inspire and incite entrepreneurs to pursue opportunities in the growing international economies that are experiencing upside trend line conditions described above!
However, batteries have not kept pace, so the next post on this blog will highlight some of the issues, such as batteries have only had an eightfold improvement over the entire time of Moore’s Law whereas semiconductor technology improves that much every 5 years since Moore formulated his law. And the next post will provide some breakthrough insight about nanotechnologies that will bring considerable improvement in battery technology.
So I invite you to monitor this blog and watch for future articles and updates over the next few weeks.