What’s the difference between an expert and an entrepreneur?
Vinod Khosla, a world renowned entrepreneur, investor, and technologist who has personally been involved in the creation of dozens of billion-dollar companies, is able to answer that question without even pausing to think about it.
An expert, he posits, mostly extrapolates from the past, typically in a linear fashion, interpreting the present or the future based on what’s already happened. In doing so, an expert doesn’t really allow consideration for the improbable. But that is a limiting mindset, argued Khosla, who appeared virtually in a conversation with Ryan McManus, chairman of the board of advisors for the Think Bigger Innovation and Technology Hub, during the second annual Think Bigger Innovation Summit.
Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, do entertain the idea of the improbable. And it's their willingness and ability to do exactly that that ultimately has the power to transform them into innovators — into real changemakers.
Examples of what Khosla is talking about are abundant. In the field of electric vehicles, Elon Musk in 2016 exceeded a Department of Energy forecast for the number of electric cars that would be on US roads by 2035. That forecast was made in 2010 but was largely based on historical data: on what was known about the trajectory of electric vehicle growth to date. Musk, driven by an entrepreneurial spirit, blew up that prediction and wrote his own version of what was probable and what wasn’t.
But Khosla also noted that incumbents — large corporations that are not necessarily thought of as agile disruptors — can play a role in such entrepreneur-driven innovation. The only condition is that they need to be open and willing to embrace a new way of thinking and doing things.
For both incumbents and new ventures, that openness can lead to unexpected and brilliant ideas. Khosla pointed to Netflix, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, companies that revolutionized the media industry perhaps without even realizing they were doing so. The retail sector was completely changed by Amazon, despite the fact that CEO Jeff Bezos knew very little about the retail space when he founded the company.
The Robot Revolution?
Khosla can speak astutely and intelligently about the past and great innovations that have already happened, but it’s when the conversation turns to the future that he really lights up.
He said he’s excited about artificial intelligence and its potential to transform healthcare, whereby every person in the world can get the care and attention they need in an affordable and practical way. He’s also excited about robots. Khosla predicted that by the year 2040 or 2050, bipedal robots will be ubiquitous. Indeed, he said robots by that point may well constitute a field even bigger than the auto industry. But are we positioning ourselves to make the most of this? Not yet, he said.
Khosla noted that autonomous public transit could soon be a reality and that, in the future, we may be able to fly from New York to London in a mere 90 minutes. He added that we may soon be able to nourish ourselves with newly created proteins that replace animal proteins and have access to clean electric power everywhere. In short, he said, resources will be plentiful.
While all of this may sound outlandish today, making such strides is certainly plausible and perhaps even possible. The one thing we need to do to make sure they happen? Believe in new technology. We must trust in the potential of new ideas and be unafraid to think bigger than what we’ve known. Not every bet will pay off, but the world will never benefit from the ones that do if we don’t have the courage to try.