SU makes one see the world in a different, enthusiastic way. It shows the tremendous opportunities that lie ahead of us so that we can make a better world for all. It gives access to a community of incredible individuals with a common interest in improving the lives of billions of people.
Creating abundance is not about creating a life of luxury for everybody on this planet; it’s about creating a life of possibility.
I came to Singularity U because I want to learn how to harness technology to transform the economy of the 4 billions poor living below USD8 a day into an efficient and vibrant marketplace so that they can create their own businesses and own jobs and be connected to the world's economy. Charity has failed to end poverty and the only way to help people is to help them unlock their spirit of enterprise and good work ethics. Technology can help a lot.
The SU Business Model Workshop provided us with insights into the go-to-market strategy in terms of regulation and approval of the product
SU’s program was very valuable because we were able to identify the right customer set and understand what their expectations were as well as how they expect installations to be conducted.
A lot of good came out of the Business Model Workshop we did with SU and Rotoplas, We talked with developers who were off the grid from sewer systems about what they needed and got some great feedback to support our go-to-market plans. Rotoplas is going to manufacture, distribute, sell and service our products. They’ve helped us secure pilots with Stanford University and others to do testing. As a result of the introduction SU helped us make with Rotoplas, we expect to see exponential sales going forward and have met all the right people to help us grow our business.
“We were introduced to a whole new group of high-power customers and partners in the Silicon Valley area. You sometimes forget where you’ve met people in your life. More and more these days, I can say, ’They came from SU!’
You sometimes forget where you’ve met people in your life. More and more these days, I can say, ’They came from SU!
As a result of being a part of the SU community, we've made a lot of headway with running pilots at technology companies, completing design sprints that helped refine our business model, and the like that's been huge for us. Nailing down what your slide deck looks like, how to get in front of a company and explain what you do in a way that they understand and can get behind has been invaluable. It kind of unlocked a door between us and a larger corporate audience—a door we may not have even known was there!“
We realized that we are a technology company that has a platform that can scale to solve a global problem. That's exactly the type of work that SU is organized to support. It’s a really good fit.
At SU, it is invigorating to be in an innovative and supportive environment where other people talk about solving big problems and discussing what real change looks like. By going through this together we all sharpen, challenge, and encourage each other. I look forward to continuing to take advantage of that in the future, and contributing back.
The resources at SU are great. The types of people who come through SU, and the types of people you can get connected to there, it's always valuable to interact and be engaged with them.
It's the best school in the world, even, better than Harvard. Well, that's what I think.
Just a liberating and unbelievable group of brilliant people. Highly recommend to anyone looking to learn the future and your place in it.
A hub for those entrepreneurs who want to solve the world's problems and create a compelling future.
My life has been totally transformed by the resources of SU.
Before the SU Accelerator, when I thought about something being truly disruptive, like our non-invasive method where you simply touch the head and get the same quality of information as you would by drilling a hole, I would have asked myself: How much money could I make with this device? How much can I sell it for? The answer would have been approximately $7,000 per device. Traditional thinking would have been to sell a few sensors to a few high-income people. Now, I’m thinking: What is the impact this technology can have if I make it widely available for a few dollars a piece and build a cloud infrastructure service instead? - The business model is simple. The cost of a single operation to drill into someone’s brain is about 30,000 Reals in Brazil, almost $10,000 U.S. But if a hospital buys a year’s subscription, we’ll charge them only 24,000 Reals, less than the cost of treating one person, and the hospital will be able to help one thousand people or as many as it can. This is what we explored at the SU Accelerator, what exponential social impact truly means.
Now I want to make a real impact. Because of Braincare and SU, I now have a good reason to wake up every day
We believe Singularity University has one of the few well-positioned incubators with solid management to execute the operations and help start-up companies reach their goals.
During the eight weeks of the Accelerator, we exchanged more than 2,500 emails and were involved in more than 100 meetings. These conversations helped us develop a clearer vision about what the company should be and what we needed to do in the next two years to make it happen, including finding the right U.S. partner. Braincare will bring a lot of benefit to healthcare. Imagine the savings if you could avoid strokes or bring down the costs for those living with disabilities.
The SU Startup Accelerator proved to be a real breakthrough from our perspective. It was two months long in February and March. We wanted to let SU know that we weren’t typical of most startups and weren’t looking for SU to supply fundraising help. I have the necessary connections to raise money. What we thought at the time was that we needed help to build a medical device company. But, as a result of what we learned during the Accelerator, what we would become as a company also changed.
The most important thing SU offered us was its network and help to make the connections we will need to be successful.
Bringing the Singularity University (SU) Smart City Accelerator to Columbus is a catalyst for innovation and technology in Columbus, and AEP is proud to be a part of it. In fact we so believe in the benefits of SU’s Smart City Accelerator that we are sending two AEP teams through it. The vision of Smart Columbus is for this community to be a center of innovation and entrepreneurship, and the SU Smart City Accelerator represents a significant step toward the realization of that vision.
We received critical go-to-market insights from the Workshop.
Before our partnership with SU we had a reactive approach towards innovation, now we have a more systematic strategy regarding risk-taking, learning processes, and innovation.
SU helped me to think big. It changed my mindset to become more ambitious, to think exponentially by opening my mind to the possibilities of what is possible. I saw first-hand startups that were growing 10x and were disrupting whole industries and the status quo.
Being a Development Organization partner with SU will expose you to top-notch tech and redefine your mindset on how to address global grand challenges.
Our partnership with SU has transformed the way we approach social problems through the use of technology. We now have a wider perspective on how to pursue impact, scale and program sustainability.
Being a development organization partner with SU has completely changed the way we go about creating impact.
We are excited about our future work in deployments and how we can continue towards a path of impacting a billion survivors around the globe, and beyond.
Being a Development Organization partner with Singularity University has expedited our mission of creating cutting-edge disaster solutions with survivors by leveraging exponential technologies and thinking.
SU helps us understand the digital industry and puts us in touch with the right players in the industry. They help us understand what is coming next in the future— not just in technology, but also how they will affect human trends. That’s where we have the most benefit from the SU ecosystem. You get tons of ideas; can find the right players, and the right startups to work with. For instance, we’ve been introduced to a startup working on a vital sign sensor, another working on an idea to look at crops using drones, and another that is exploring how to use drones to transport drugs into remote areas.
Singularity University's world-class staff, faculty and entrepreneurs enabled us to create cutting-edge disaster solutions that are now being used by survivors. This is an invaluable partnership for all Development Organizations.
Thanks to SU, we were able to gain tangible results that helped to get the organization moving forward. I had so many people telling me afterwards that they wanted to continue to work on these projects, in order to make sure they continued and didn’t drop into a black hole. SU helped to curate the discussion of technology, methodology, and design, as well as conducted the workshop and kept us focused on walking away with a plan of action
The SU Ventures Incubator provided me with the first infrastructure for a startup, including all of the different pieces that you have to take into account all at once. This was completely unknown to me. I followed advice on every component diligently and I think this was the reason we were able to bring Deep Blocks to market.
As a young startup we wanted to use AI in everything, and we’ve learned through the guidance of our Advisor Board member Neil Jacobstein, SU’s AI department chair, how to use and implement machine learning the right way.
I believe Singularity University works so well because it has the experts who can educate people about new technologies, and it attracts large companies that may not have participated in exponential technologies before but now want a conservative way to test the exponential waters
Thanks to SU, we have a 10 year-plan for bringing our advances to patients. SU has helped us make the connections to pharmaceutical companies, researchers, and mentors who are helping to refine and broaden the impact of our work. They have helped us understand the process for protecting our innovations and making them compliant. And, most importantly, our work with SU has meant we are having a positive disruptive influence on how to maximize the impact cancer drugs and therapies have on individual patients.
Prior to our acceptance into the Singularity accelerator, we had about three degrees of separation between our team and the key opinion leaders and visionaries in the MedTech and Venture Capital spaces. I am now on a first name basis with many of these individuals - two of whom recently joined our advisory board and are working closely with Juno Biomedical as it refines its go-to-market strategy and prepares for its upcoming fundraising round. It's up to each company and founding team to make the best of the resources available, but I can say that SU opened more doors for us in two months than our team was able to open in the two previous years, despite countless hours of hard work.
Thanks to SU, we can see how we are going to get there and in what order we need to do things.
The biggest issue that SU helped me plan for was how to secure funding for every stage of our company, so we could continue growing as a company in an industry where the sales cycles and the development times are so long.
Exponential technology, business, and social impact—all three are exemplified by Singularity University. So in 2016 we decided to apply to SU’s Startup Accelerator, where we hoped to learn how to build a successful startup and make important connections to help us grow our business
We've been through the Singularity University Accelerator program and it was a very valuable experience. The pre-seed funding (or unrestricted grant for non-profits) helps a ton in the early days. You'll work out of the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, and during the 8-week program, SU will use its network of Fortune 1000 execs to get you connected and bring in clients.
We were determined to come back to SU, as a GSP company, and SU Labs exceeded our expectations. Having a curated Board of Advisors who understand the problem space and our technology was really valuable, and the funding has been crucial to get us to the next stage - highly recommend this programme!
An inspired group of people who have a shared vision in creating solutions and companies to solve global scale issues.
The SU accelerator was hugely valuable to Field Ready, enabling us to devote a significant period of time to strategic work, in a supportive environment and with great advice on tap. We were able to focus on our long term goals and how to achieve them, and created specific ideas and concrete plans for communications, fundraising and impact growth which we could not have come up without the accelerator. Our mentor board, with such diverse expertise, both challenged and inspired us, and freely shared their thoughts and networks with us - and we are delighted to be continuing to work with several of them as advisors. We're definitely advancing more quickly as an organisation now
We were promised a personalized, tailored program and that’s exactly what we received.
We have been building amazing technology for a while. Now, the SU Accelerator has allowed us to scale that to a global reach.
The SU accelerator has been instrumental in helping to further our company more than we ever could have done on our own. Truly accelerating us in an exponential way.
Other accelerators, the focus is how to exit as quickly as possible. SU is fundamentally different because they see the bigger picture. They see the impact you’re going to have on the world and they truly believe in your business.
What’s great about Singularity is that it exposes you to new things that cause you to think and react in a different way. It is a melting pot of faculty, alumni, and other corporations who are all fighting the same fights you are—all swirling together and offering you new opportunities that could dramatically change your business in the short-, medium-, and long-term.
A big part of working with SU and its global community is being able to share your own experiences, as well as understand others’ learnings and frameworks. When I’m at SU, I know I’m with people that are part of my tribe, and know that we are learning and growing and challenging each other for better results.
SU brings together an amazing community of tech experts, entrepreneurs and other corporate innovators.
What I needed was a network, a community, a team. I found it at SU. I needed help to refine and scale my vision and to be surrounded by people who could impact me and help me feel like I was either on the right track or not, and could explain why.
I really enjoy the community that Singularity University has built, providing a place where a diverse group of forward thinkers can get together in a free environment for collaboration. SU is spending their considerable expertise and experience in networking on the building of community, in a time when that is exactly what is needed. Thank you SU!
Eye-opening. It really helped us elevate to a superior level of strategic thinking. Having access to SU's top-notch talent will benefit your strategy thanks to their vision on how industries are disrupted one after another.
SU took us on a rollercoaster ride - these exponential technologies bring endless opportunity. We were on a totally different trajectory.
SU is all about ensuring that you can grow exponentially. The next 10-20 years may bring more changes to the world than the last 100 – technology, business and society will change.
Before our partnership with SU we had a reactive approach towards innovation, now we have a more systematic strategy regarding risk-taking, learning processes, and innovation.
It’s sort of like the Disneyland of science and technology meets real world thinking
There are some things that are not even on our radar that could disrupt us.
Its [Singularity University’s] vision and expertise has been without a doubt a great contribution to Chile, generating exponential growth through technology and creative, entrepreneurial and social projects.
This is the transition point,” he said. "Singularity University is sitting right in the middle of it, helping to make that transition possible.
Why did we invest? We believe that as the need to learn about new technologies continues to grow, Singularity University will continue on its amazing growth path teaching what disruption is about and how to cope with it. Today’s leaders have to keep up, entrepreneurs have to jump on the opportunities disruption presents, the world has to be ready.
We’re here [at Singularity University] because we do understand the dynamic forces of the exponential change that’s happening and the ways in which that’s going to transform all industries and certainly our industry as well.
Singularity University—where the world’s brightest minds convene to attack the world’s toughest challenges.
Singularity University...is an opportunity to bring people from every conceivable walk of life with people that share a common aspiration to do better, to be better and to make a positive impact on people’s lives.
Singularity University provides a unique and valuable window into the future, and together we can identify and scale up solutions that will have great impact for the world’s most vulnerable women and children.
What we learned and discussed truly needs to be understood all over the world, especially by global leaders of government and business, but also by individual entrepreneurs.
SU taught me how to open my mind to the future. The conversations, the education, the network have all been invaluable and changed my life and mission…The best part about SU is that the network keeps growing stronger, and constantly evolves. It’s like a living breathing algorithm of incredible people, which keeps learning. Being part of this awesome network means I feel like I’m a part of the future and am fully connected to the best minds in the world.
Getting involved as a country partner is a unique opportunity. This is something that our companies need to know, learn and act upon. We have no doubt that we can grow Singularity University tremendously in Scandinavia, which is why we have decided to commit ourselves 100% to this endeavor through the country partnership.
Our team looks into the future and provides options for UNICEF. We think that Singularity University provides a unique and valuable window into that future, and together we can identify and scale up solutions that will have great impact for the world’s most vulnerable women and children.
SU was created to enable everyone to create exponential impact together… someone, somewhere is hoping for the positive impact you can bring to the world!
The focus on huge impact coupled with brilliant and self-motivated people make this an incredible work environment! You’d be hard pressed to find a place more inspiring.
Prosperity and growth are no longer measured only by wealth and revenue generated, but also by the rate at which new solutions to humanity’s challenges are created and become widely available.
It's mind-opening and extrapolates possibilities. It ceases the status-quo showing how wonderful is the time we are living in - full of possibilities.
Technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense ‘intuitive linear’ view. So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century—it will be more like 20,000 years of progress.
This is a course that pushes you to think differently and gives you the tools to think exponentially.
Attending SU was one of the best decisions I made! It has completely changed my life and today they are motivated to change the world.
I really enjoyed the gamifaction of the LMS used for this course.
I just completed the course: Foundations of Exponential Thinking and thoroughly enjoyed the program. I would (and have) recommend this course to anyone interested in preparing themselves or their companies for what's to come in our future.
My biggest learning: I feel like I have a much better handle on technology trends, the timing of innovation and the impact exponential thinkers can have on the world.
My biggest learning: Abundance of resources is very clear to me now. Also, things that I've never dreamed of are already being developed and, in some cases, a ready-to-buy product or solution.
My biggest learning: The paradigms, exponential growth with each paradigm - understanding that Moore's Law is only one part of the current paradigm.
I found the discussions with classmates scattered around the world to be enlightening, engaging, and truly inspirational.
If you are not already into Singularity University concepts, ideas, etc, this is a good eye opener to the need to get involved and understand what the impact of the exponential increase in technology means to ourselves and our future generations.
This is the best course on foresight I have ever taken.
The content itself is amazing - with great videos and provocative questions to generate productive discussions. The external links to videos and additional reading material caught my attention for hours. And I loved the time flexibility to complete the content in one week.
I take away a greater eagerness to try out some of the technologies that are already relevant now. I understand even better that we need to be fast and we need to focus on abundance topics that go beyond automating a process.
A great side effect of our shared SU experience is that now I have a mentor at Lufthansa who is willing and able to help me navigate the company in this early stage of my career.
In large German companies, we often think a 10 percent gain is fantastic. But what I learned at SU was that exponential thinking is in a different league and able to create 10x results.
I work differently now in the sense that I feel very aware of my responsibility to spread my new knowledge within Lufthansa Group. It changes even the way I talk to people at the coffee corner, telling them about what I learned and asking them how they think this might impact Lufthansa and their own jobs. There were several projects the teams have introduced from their time at SU, so I’d say that there has already been a quick, tangible result of our stay there, apart from the less directly attributable effects on company culture in the long run.
I learned at SU that virtual reality, driverless cars, and connecting your brain to the cloud are not sci-fi, but right around the corner.
Mainstream thinking approaches the future in doomsday scenarios, but SU is able to convince people that all those new, sometimes scary technologies, are actually able to solve and prevent many of the world’s problems.
The ProTeamers started to think in a different way and to be more interested in this technology, to read anything they could get. This new mindset is the most important thing for us. They are looking at the world differently now because they know the future is not in the distance but here today.
After two days at SU, everything changed for us. We learned to reframe issues in unconventional ways.
One of the best things about our time at SU was seeing exponential technology in a positive way, as well as the better future it can provide for us. After all, the future is going to come. If we don’t accept change and the technology that can help us with change, if we deny both, it will be terrible for all of us. We now understand how we can reframe the fear of the future that seems prevalent today. That’s what I learned at SU that we all brought back.
I believed SU could help us learn what the future would look like in 10 years and help the ProTeamers and Tandems think about what it would take to be prepared for that future and how to avoid being disrupted.
We wanted to find a way to awaken our managers to a vision for the future that is vastly different from what we see today. It’s critical to impress upon them that the passenger and cargo business we have today is changing and may not be our business in the future if we are to survive and thrive. . . . SU was the beginning of the change, the beginning of making a stronger combined workforce.
SU truly aligned my understandings of our existing challenges, exponential change, power of technology linked to the future of learning which is my core area of focus. I am now speaking about the future of learning regularly at conferences, consulting more and inspiring many others. Feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to share about the future. Japan is behind in almost every area of technology and needs a wake-up call so have decided to host SingularityU Summit Japan in June 2017. So excited to have the honor of hosting this Summit and confident it will have major impact in Japan.
We loved the SU design department and had a eureka moment when we spent time with them designing a component of our product. It was great, fantastic really, because we were able to put it on the CAD machine and then 3D print the part. It was really inspiring for us to see that we could move forward quickly on developing the product. We learned so much from them.
I have a great appreciation for what SU is doing and understood that by competing in the Water Challenge, we would be among a global, like-minded community striving to solve the water problem—people who could appreciate our revolutionary approach and who could help us make the connections we would need to continue development and help bring our solution to market.
SU solidified my passion for making an impact in people's lives by supporting programs that are scalable by technologies such as mobile, Ai, or robotics. Being part of the SU community allows me stay on top of all the latest innovations in health, education, food, which are the areas i care the most about. I feel empowered by the SU Community, which provides a constant learning for the taking. It enables me to carry out the mission of m-spark.org, "impacting the impacter" in tech-powered social entrepreneurship. Thanks SU!
Through the experience, knowledge and network acquired at GSP, I expect to push the project much further.
Becoming a part of the SU faculty was really a combination of wanting to keep my passion and intent alive with the latest developments, and my desire to continue the conversations I’d had at the GSP. I love the conversations. Honestly there is no bigger rush than being able to have a conversation with 80 people who have vastly different experiences than you and can inform you and being able to learn from them as much as people can learn from you. That thrill of GSP is stuck in every conversation and every program we do.
We have this great company that is already making money from a product we developed 3x faster than other biotech firms because, thanks to SU and what we learned there, our R&D process is really, really fast. More than that impressive fact, we also have a vision for how this technology will change the way that drugs are created for people, as well as for pets.
I had just spent five years creating things that didn’t do much for the world. SU was looking for two types of people, those with core technology skills and founders that they could put together to come up with unique new ideas for companies. So I applied to the Global Solutions Program (now known as the Global Startup Program) in 2016 and was accepted. At this point, I knew I wanted to do something in health that would be impactful. It ended up that I was at SU for the next five and a half months because I met my co-founder, refined our health idea around the cat genome, and was invited to attend the SU Incubator to turn it into a business.
We grew out of SU organically because they have been with us from the beginning. We’re very ingrained at SU. They advised us, were there to help troubleshoot problems, and gave us the offices and lab space we needed to develop our company. I come back to campus from our headquarters in L.A. often and consider SU our home base in the Bay Area.
Here’s a place where you take smart people and have them create companies for impact, not for profit.
We were able to go from idea to in-store prototype in 4 months. No small feat. The network of startups and experts and ultimately the support in ‘getting stuff done’ is pretty incredible.
If I were a student, this [Singularity University] is where I’d want to be
My time at SU was an extraordinarily valuable ten weeks. Understanding the scope of what can be possible, and having the opportunity to learn such a huge amount of information over a short period of time was a privilege. But SU is about so much more than that. The most beneficial part was the opportunity to meet people with a similar drive but from such a diversity of background and skillset, and to be in an environment with phenomenally talented, like-minded people who are constantly pushing the boundaries of what is possible, which is endlessly inspiring.
SU gave me the opportunity to build a company that will make an impact, and that is something I will always be grateful for. A true testament to the uniqueness of SU, and it’s programmes, is how someone with my background could go on to build a technical start up providing a service for food companies to use in their supply chains. This company is a direct outcome of attending the GSP, and being equipped with the mindset, tools, and knowledge to address a global challenge
Thanks to SU’s future forecasting, ImpactVision is on the forefront of making this technology accessible and available to consumers, communities, and corporations. In the near future, we definitely see this technology being in the hands of consumers, like on a smartphone, helping everyone to reduce food waste and bringing us closer to a world of abundance.
The program offers a short route to meet the right contacts, and the network is incredibly valuable
Thanks to SU and ImpactVision, I feel like I’m on a mission. It excites me to wake up each day and think about how we’re going to solve this problem. It’s incredibly challenging, but it also inspires me and gives me energy to continue doing what I’m doing.
Once we had the idea to use hyperspectral technology to analyze food quality, we thought perhaps the technology was still too new. But our experience at SU taught us to have an exponential mindset. We now realized we were riding a wave of innovation and we needed to move fast to keep up with the accelerating pace of this technology.
We were able to go from idea to in-store prototype in 4 months. No small feat. The network of startups and experts and ultimately the support in ‘getting stuff done’ is pretty incredible.
The GSP at Singularity University was the most beneficial educational experience of my life. The program’s intensity pushed me to strive for greater impact in everything I do and, since graduating, the SU community has been pivotal in providing connections to advice and funders that have enabled my projects to flourish as never would have been possible before.
GSP challenged my assumption about how to build a huge scalable company. Don’t limit yourself.
Singularity University profoundly changed the way I thought about building my company. The knowledge I gained gave us a four-year head start in developing systems that today are becoming essential to the industry. Most importantly, SU gave me a unique privilege to be around people I admire and deeply respect—amazing visionaries who are not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom and make a commitment to changing lives of billions of people.
[Going] through SU changes the way you view the world and, for me, it says that you’re someone who is playing a much bigger game.
Singularity University provides a unique and valuable window into the future, and together we can identify and scale up solutions that will have great impact for the world’s most vulnerable women and children.
At SU, everyone has different views of the future and I think it would be detrimental to SU if everybody agreed on the exact same picture. We agree on different versions of a similar picture. I know that I have a different view of the world today than when I started. I’m certainly more of a techno-optimist than I was before. But I’m also pragmatic. I mean, I know there are solutions, but I also know it is really hard to make these things happen. It requires incredibly devoted people who have a lot of grit to make a market. I know I probably wouldn’t have taken the risk if I hadn’t been surrounded by people who also believed in big ideas and could talk in practical terms about what the right risks were and how and when to take them—people who were encouraging. And that’s what Singularity gave me. SU leaves a mark on the people it touches.
SU has been invaluable to us. First they put our initial team together. They gave us the inspiration to work in this field and were there to counsel us in business and technology. They gave us the contacts we needed, including Lowe’s, to help us create some initial revenue and introduced us to our biggest investor, an Italian family. They continue today to surround and support us with dreams of what is possible, so we never lost hope in our ongoing, sometimes difficult, startup journey. And now, SU is providing us with the platform from which to develop our technology and our leadership—which is a big reason why people want to work with us or talk with us initially.
When I went to the Global Solutions Program at SU, I wasn’t really thinking about starting a company. I didn’t really think about the commercial implications of starting in such a small industry with a product no one knew they needed. I had so many ideas. What I did know anecdotally was that there was a problem with our manufacturing supply chain. I knew what needed to exist and my experiences told me that it would be inevitable that it would exist and therefore I should help to build it. At the time, I wasn’t sure if I should do a commercial framework of a company, or an NGO, or a movement, or something political to make it happen. But SU gave me the structure to explore all avenues, which is what led me ultimately to form my startup, Authentise. I’m pretty sure that what I learned at SU about exponential technologies and thinking, and how to construct a startup, impacts 100 percent of everything I think today.
You bring your collective set of experiences that drive your interests forward. At the GSP there are 80 people from around the world who bring their experiences and perspectives, all focused on how to solve challenges in the world. Something magical happens when those interests are combined with the new things you learn.
Singularity University profoundly changed the way I thought about building my company. The knowledge I gained gave us a four-year head start in developing systems that today are becoming essential to the industry. Most importantly, SU gave me a unique privilege to be around people I admire and deeply respect—amazing visionaries who are not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom and make commitment to changing lives of billions of people.
The knowledge I obtained from SU’s Global Startup Program inspired me to develop and implement my vision for creating a regional community of doers in Hungary.
Singularity University showed me that I was not crazy to want to solve large-scale humanitarian problems in record time using technologies. SU gave me the freedom to think and to change the world.
The Graduate Studies Program at Singularity University was the most beneficial educational experience of my life. The program’s intensity pushed me to strive for greater impact in everything I do and, since graduating, the SU community has been pivotal in providing connections to advice and funders that have enabled my projects to flourish as never would have been possible before.
Perhaps one of the key mindset changes to result from my experience at SU was to understand the positive impact that AI can have. There is a common misperception that when you use these technologies you cause negative disruption. At Deep Blocks, we don’t like the word “disruption” because it is often misunderstood to mean somehow replacing or cutting people out of an opportunity. Rather, what we’ve built is a way for all of the existing industry players to be 1,000 times faster at what they do. We’ve created a tool that allows them to be very efficient, to optimize buildings with far less cost. We’re reducing the cost by 10x and the time by 1,000x. We’re making these industry players exponentially better at what they already do.
SU helped us with our presentation. We must have iterated it 30 times and presented to 75 different fund managers. But it was worth the hard work. Within 6 months after the Accelerator, we were able to raise $1 million from 10 funds.
The Incubator focuses on how to get your idea into a 6-month plan to have a product that is relevant in the market at that time. At the Incubator I was joined by Udi Wolfowitz, who had also attended the same GSP as mine and who became the co-founder of Deep Blocks. He brought with him a background in machine learning and was the perfect fit as we began to scope and develop our concept into a minimum viable product (MVP). Once we had the MVP, which essentially means the product has been derisked and is ready to present to investors, we were invited to take part in the Accelerator and received our first seed investment of $100,000 from SU Ventures. When I think back about the impact of the Incubator on me, I believe I was almost blind in the world before it.
The GSP was about validating our moonshot idea and refining it for feasibility and for its ability to cause positive change against one of humanity’s 12 global grand challenges (such as water, food, shelter, health, and environment). We also got to test our assumptions against trends that are coming. We learned which technologies would help elevate our startup idea to the exponential level.
Updated me on a number of topics and trends that are of utmost importance for the future.
Today I’m applying everything I learned at SU. The most important thing I got out of SU was a continuous opening of my mind, in terms of the opportunities that technologies are offering to every industry today, and to some industries that have yet to become mature. It was one epiphany after another for the first month of the GSP.
Global Summit was valuable because of the sheer global diversity of participants, the chance to make new connections, and the breadth of ideas that were presented throughout the conference.
I found my "tribe" -- I have never felt more at home as an innovator, a thought leader, and a transformer as I did in that group.
One of the best conferences I have ever been to.
As an executive formerly leading a $1B business and now charged with leading transformation and innovation, I was inspired.
These Summits are your opportunity to join the SU community while staying ahead of the transformational change happening throughout the world as a result of exponential technologies.
Covers the critical issues in an engaging, thought provoking and inspiring way that challenges people to act. Brilliantly done!
I found the content and the presenters first class, like early TED talks but with more depth and content.
An exquisitely curated experience that brings about thought-provoking and soul-searching discussions on innovative, impactful, and exponential solutions.
The conference was an exceptional experience. It was highly curated and balanced the possible future with the actionable present.
This was the only place where the impact of converging exponential technologies are being explored so thoroughly.
As an alum of TEDs, TEDMEDs, Stanford Medx, Davos, etc. This, by far, blew me away in both quality and quantity.
An amazing place to learn about and meet people doing tech medical activities from all over the world. Everyone is approachable and loves to share and learn.
I always say "Illness starts with 'I' and wellness starts with "we". That sentiment began at Exponential Medicine 2012 and it's become my life mission and the foundation of the Dr. Steven Show. We're now the leading digital health program online. Our guests have included Arianna Huffington, Alex Jadad, and Mark Hyman.
There is no other conference that exposes you to so much brain power in such a short time frame.
Exponential Manufacturing was an avalanche of great speakers and avant-garde content.
Great presenters and outstanding content. It opened my eyes to the great possibilities coming and the challenges that we may face.
The world needs impact accelerators, and what I saw in Singularity University was an opportunity to take that leap frog into the future. I was looking for something that would refresh my appetite to keep learning, make a difference, and lead teams in a different way. What I found in Singularity University was not only a great cohort of amazing experience from all over the world, but also an inspiring change of mindset.
The content presented makes you question your business and our future…mind-blowing!
Exponential Manufacturing was an avalanche of great speakers and avant-garde content.
By far the best conference I have ever attended.
Packed with inspiring insights, interactive sessions and an extraordinary crowd of experienced professionals.
Informative, optimistic, forward looking, engaging, relevant, and thought provoking.
Mind blowing experience giving me a tremendous sense of urgency!
The real skill of solving problems in the corporate world for innovation is actually the skill of being able to quickly interrogate, do experiments on, and make sense of the things that are question marks and make them not question marks.
Packed with inspiring insights, interactive sessions and an extraordinary crowd of experienced professionals.
The question: why am I not getting more involved? I needed someone to ask me that question and somebody did. From that standpoint, I'm pretty inspired to start thinking in that way.
I came to the Singularity University EP program because I followed Peter Diamandis and Singularity University for at least 10 years. I was bent on coming here someday. It's always very inspirational to see, and he has so much energy and I like his vision. It feels like coming home.
My biggest takeway from today was always ask myself: Am I thinking big enough? What I think of Singularity is that there's not enough people in the world thinking this way. I just wonder how can I help people all around the world, and personally in Colombia and Latin America, to grab these thoughts and really amplify them.
One thing that really stuck with me was that 30 steps of linear progress brings you 30 meters far, but if you have 30 steps of exponential progress that's 26 times around the world. That made me really realize, that's a lot more change than I initially thought. All these things... they're not in 10 years time, it's actually today.
The spirit of optimism, the spirit of innovation is alive and well. It was refreshing to see, and quite honestly gives you quite a bit of motivation to go back. This course really brought in the experts, had good discussions, real world examples... so I really appreciated that.
If you are an executive, somebody running a small charity, someone in business... and you want to get a better understanding of how you can impact the world alongside your idea, Singularity is the place for you to come. For 3 reasons: You meet likeminded people, your brain gets stretched, and you get the ability to see the future demonstrated to you for 5 days. Don't miss that opporutinity.
What brought me to the Executive Program is two things: One is to understand: what are the latest innovative trends and how can I apply them to the businesses I work with? The second is: what is the next technology that can disrupt our business model? Singularity is different thinking for me. It's beyond innovation. Really, network is very important and I hope I continue staying in touch with these people after the course.
I recently decided to become non-executive because I would like to be an individual entrepreneur and come home with good business ideas either through the expansion of my own thinking or by leveraging the network I hope to get from this program.
They should definitely do it, becuase they will broaden their general interest, general vision, general knowledge... and they will see a little bit of the future.
It's been amazing. There are people here from 34 countries. I've engaged with more international executives in 5 days than I've done in 30 years in my career. The experience has been truly transformational for me. I now have contacts accross the globe that can help me to understand the realities of the future.
The speakers have been phenomenal. Even being able to interact with the speakers during dinner and get more insights beyond what they presented has been so valuable. But, the other piece I've found incredibly valuable is making all the connections.
The EP, I think it would be like getting some energy drink which fuels you with a lot of information and helps you connect the dots to where the future is going and how you can do something with it to actually change the world.
Singularity is exponential, but it's exponential for so many different reasons. I have found it to be exponential not only for the learning that I have done in terms of different mindsets, I've actually thought it's exponential in terms of what I can take back to my organization and start to frame up how other people will actually start to change their mindset into this thinking as well.
From the day they come home, the number one subject on the agenda for board meetings is innovation.
I'm here at the Executive Program because I wanted to be inspired. You know a V6 engine? My brain couldn't stop for a couple of days. Put away your phone. Put away your laptop. Check into this event because it is absolutely worth it: every single second.
My bigggest takeaway from the program is that the future has infinite possibilities. Find one to create an impact in this world aligned with your purpose and work towards it. It's really possible.
This program is a wonderful opportunity for me to expand my mindset and get exposed to the latest trends and technology that my company can leverage and extract value from. I feel inspired. I feel like I now have a better set of tools to engage my company and the broader industry.
This experience has shown me how technology can help us be abundant. It makes me feel like there's so much that I had no idea that there was ever in existence in this world, and now to be exposed to that: to learn that everything is possible... is really a lifechanging experience.
I learned a lot of things this week, my mind is blown away to see how I'm going to implement all those things.
The SU-trained executives are now much more open to younger people, much more open to creative people; All these companies created new functions after going through the program. Titles like chief digital officer or chief innovation officer. These functions are good for us in extending our search parameters to new audiences and we have a ready-made network of global experts since we are part of the SU community, a 170,000-strong group of likeminded individuals and technology experts. As a result of our programs with SU, we’re single-handedly changing the search industry in the Netherlands and differentiating ourselves in the process.
What are your thoughts on #lifelong #learning? I am passionate about it! And if we can combine traveling with new knowledge, the experience is even better. When was the last time you had a great exponential learning opportunity? How was it? What happened next? I’d love to learn about the diversity of sources of wisdom or experiences on learning and unlearning and use this post as a source of inspiration for others as well. I have to share the amazing Executive Program that Singularity University organized in Silicon Valley, California. Before I decided to attend, I tried to understand different opinions and hence my expectations were “well balanced”. The outcome was beyond my expectations! Fueled with energy and inspiration! ✅ Amazing cohort with people from the 5 continents and almost 50 countries, huge diversity of backgrounds and ambitions - I am so happy to have been able to learn from so many of them! ✅ Tremendous forward looking content, deployed by inspiring Experts on #technology, #culture and #leadership as enablers of positive #impact in the world. So, for me, this was the place to #unlearn and dismantle beliefs and to get the inspiration to reimagine a journey of impact with a strong purpose, and an #exponential #mindset. I hope we can really leverage the upcoming breakthrough technology for a better world and that more and more people are willing and open to #think&act exponentially for a positive exponential impact that drives more sustainable societies.
The Executive Program was a truly mind-expanding experience which should help prepare me for the extraordinary changes to come.
What a great and unique experience to learn so much about exponential technologies and also what it means to leadership in changing environments! Great speakers, insights on disruptive transformation, metaverse, Web3, blockchain, AI bias, longevity and most of all what it means for an exponential mindset to lead and drive change. Fascinating talk on unlearning, a great tour at the Stanford Research Institute in the Silicon Valley. One of the biggest take aways for me: move away from "guessathons" to rapid prototyping, experiment, try things out. I was so lucky to have met so many great leaders from 24 countries. Amazing group! Thanks #Singularity University for making this happen! The journey continues to drive exponential impact...
Be prepared to learn how the growth of exponential and disruptive technologies will impact your company, your career, and your life.
This is not just business. It’s a world thing. It’s a people thing. And that is one of the things that I have enjoyed a lot about this program, that it’s about our world, it’s about our children, it’s about our families, it’s about more than just business.
It’s like somebody takes the blinders off your eyes and all of a sudden you’re able to see what’s going on.
There are frameworks, actual tools, that people who are very successful are sharing in a very open format.
It inspires you to think differently, to think out of the box, to totally re-evaluate everything that you are doing and think about ‘Am I really doing the right thing to serve the future?'
Moves your thinking completely and shows what’s possible for the future.
Really helped me think about the long term.
These are like-minded people who have been grappling with the same kinds of questions that I’ve been grappling with.
Singularity University's Executive Program is an opportunity to bring people from every conceivable walk of life with people that share a common aspiration that is to do better, to be better, and to make a positive impact on people’s lives.
I'm an explorer, I always was. However, being part of the SU Executive Program was enlightening to me and showed such a variety of fields of future learning and exploring, that I took away an inspiration which since then enriches my life by sharing it with others! This is why I applied to become ambassador for Vienna, Austria and I am very happy to build - together with our team - the Austrian community!
[Singularity's] Executive Program was an inspiring moment for my life. One of the best decisions I took in my career. They gave me a new dimension of thinking about what I do and why I do it. The best learning piece I took away, for me, was the commitment towards the major problems we experience as humans and the will to act and do something for them.
With Singularity, I was able to see the technologies that are likely to impact our business much earlier, and develop a plan for turning those insights into opportunities before they became disruptors.
Exponential technologies and innovation are in our DNA at Airbus. What was radical about SU and its approach to innovation was teaming across domains at Airbus and being challenged and inspired to project farther into the future to define the system we needed to develop today. Singularity brought uncertainty to our process, which initially was very uncomfortable for us, but really added value in pushing us to improve our solution. Once we accepted it, we were able to better plan with more positive propositions and better, more flexible outcomes for the short and long term. The Singulartity process adapted very well to the technology.
The Executive Program I attended in October 2015 really rewired my brain. I got to know what Exponential Technologies are able to contribute to the big challenges of this world, experienced how close we are in making huge steps in these Technologies and that all of us are able to access them. Now, as Ambassador of the Vienna Chapter, I am trying to bring this mind set to my hometown.
The best way to describe what happened to me after a week of hearing some of the brightest people in tech talk about the future is that they dramatically changed my perspective. Come to find out, I had a very narrow lens through which I viewed the world; they replaced it with a wide angle lens that goes beyond our planet and looks far into the future.
SU is a fantastic way of implementing our strategy and a good investment for us. As a result of the SU program, we’ve developed strong, personal, trusted relationships with Dutch business leaders and our network is huge.
The SU course in 2016 was the most inspiring educational experience I have had in my life. The key players themselves in the field of AI, robotics, 3D printing, cybersecurity, self-driving cars, energy, and healthcare presented their vision and recent developments. After this week I realized that the future was much closer than I thought. We actually implemented some innovations in our organization shortly after attending SU. Without this experience, we most likely would have waited to do so.
Those 3 days at Singularity University offered a fantastic look into the (nearer than expected) future. For me personally it confirmed that we are definitely on the right track in transforming our company! But it also made it absolutely clear that we should move much, much faster...
My visit to Singularity was inspiring as well as confronting. The future is today! I took home lots of ideas to develop our company to the next stage. Artificial intelligence, robotics and healthcare developments will change the role of mankind and the nature of our business. Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow came to life.
It is a major issue for a global company if you cannot innovate at the pace of smaller, more agile competitors. It can be overwhelming. SU helps us stay on an advanced and relevant innovation track.
We use SU to give them insight into the technological possibilities of the next decade and the fast interchange of those possibilities in relation to the ethical questions they present. There are several takeaways they all mention after the program. First, they are shocked about everything that is technologically possible that they were not aware of and begin thinking about how that is going to impact their business models and their businesses within the next 1-2 years. They suddenly see what is possible, what is new for them, what impact it might have for their business and what they can learn from developments and innovations in other industries. This is one of the great insights and takeaways from SU.
The SU course was the most inspiring educational experience I have had in my life. The key players themselves in the fields of AI, robotics, 3D printing, cybersecurity, self-driving cars, energy, and healthcare presented their vision and recent developments. After this week, I realized the future was much closer than I thought.
A custom program with SU will help you unveil the essential information nuggets and tools you need to adjust for success in a dramatically different environment. We left the session with a powerful mindset shift, moving from a constraint-based thinking model, to thinking in a world of abundance. The sentence that stuck most with everyone is, If you can’t imagine a future without X, then just do it.
SU’s custom executive program changed us, creating a breakthrough moment and revolutionized the way we think about the massive challenges and opportunities we are embracing.
Having access to SU's top-notch talent can benefit your strategy, thanks to their vision on how industries are disrupted one after another.
We're looking at how we can leverage technology in all aspects of our business because of the experience we had at SU.
I loved the selection of speakers and the whole team. All the speakers at the program were amazing not only because WHAT they were saying, but HOW. They just seem all very true people.
The Custom Program was the kick-start we needed to create a mindset shift in the company. It brought 10x thinking to the way we think about the technology we develop, business models and processes.
Innovating ahead of emerging technologies is the new imperative for any organization hoping to be around in the next 10-15 years. But not a lot of enterprise organizations know how to do disruptive innovation. If you’re ready to take action and start innovating on the exponential curve, you need to come to Singularity University. At Lowe’s, we’ve been working with SU for years, and as a result, we’ve got an epic plan for the future of our company.
Singularity has been a game changer for Blue Warriors. I have learned a lot from so many amazing people are around the world. I have realized that we have the tools and brain power to can get to Net Zero if we all collaborate to save our planet.
My biggest learning is that we live in a world of abundance, not scarcity. We just need to be able to leverage exponential technologies to deliver on that promise of abundance. I recommend the EIP because It is an eye opener in terms of understanding how fast the future is manifesting itself.
I recommend the EIP because it gives you the tools to be an agent of change in this world that is changing exponentially every day. Thank you very much for this life changing experience. My favorite part of the EIP: How in three days I shifted my mental model and refueled to exponentially change my company, my life and the world.