There is a nice series in the Financial Times where business book authors then pick others they enjoyed.
Most recently, Amy Webb, author of The Big Nine, recommended to the FT Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World (1932): “Covid resulted in the acceptance and rapid deployment of mRNA, a groundbreaking advancement in an emerging field called synthetic biology, which aims to rewire living organisms and program them with improved or new functions.
“If you re-read this as a business book about the future of biotech, you will inevitably find yourself asking new questions: what assumptions must hold true for our current strategy to succeed? What parts of our business make us a target for disruption? What happens to our business model if life expectancy is extended 30 years? How could the future of the workforce look very different than it does today?”
This touches on whether we are reportedly on the brink of a new era of innovation, with digital technology as an enabling factor but no longer centre stage. “The future will not be written in the digital language of ones and zeroes, but in that of atoms, molecules, genes and proteins,” according to Greg Satell.
The Covid-19 disease has certainly made most businesses look again at their assumptions, which is part of the reason why there was a record number of new corporate venturing units launched last year, according to GCV Analytics.
This surge has helped lead to GCV tracking 133 CVC deals in total over $100m in size in the first three months of the year (Q1). Of those 118 between $100m and $500 and 15 over $500m.
This CVC activity in turn helped drive Q1 to about $125bn in overall venture deals, according to Crunchbase, and a broader set of questions.
But a year on from covid-19’s global spread and impact, how does the venture world now think of strategic risks in its dealmaking and portfolio construction more broadly?
The US National Intelligence Council report identifies five scenarios for 2040: renaissance of democracies, a world adrift, competitive coexistence between the US and China, separate silos, and a global coalition. This is the year when AI scientists, such as Jürgen Schmidhuber, in his Nvidia GTC 2021 talk, expect convergence or the singularity to happen.
How does scenario planning help identify the potential investments but also portfolio concentration and other risks?
What limits are there to the innovation capital market and how does liquidity reshape the power players and how entrepreneurs access them given the excitement around SPACs, blockchain and larger round sizes?To help the community understand the state of the markets and the questions worth asking, I am delighted to have Alex McCracken, SVB’s managing director for corporate partnerships in the UK, join the next GCV webinar on 21 April. Register here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_L04g98gqREyARZgXB_sG7A
This webinar will kick off a week of discussions across some of the main sectors and regions, with the Global Energy Group meeting on carbon capture, utilization and hydrogen on 22 April, chips and AI discussed in partnership with SEMI Taiwan on 27th, ag- and food-tech on 28th and 3D printing and advanced materials on 29th. All public events are here:
