Trends Identified
Leisure time is expanding, allowing people to spend more time on recreational activities.
Leisure time is expanding, allowing people to spend more time on recreational activities. One reason for the growth: People are multitasking leisure activities like social media, gaming and watching TV. This creates potential for earnings gains in sectors like entertainment, travel and media.
2018
Eight long-term trends for growth investors
Morgan Stanley
Demographics and low cost labor, long a driver of economic growth in emerging markets, may play a smaller role in an automated world.
Demographics and low cost labor, long a driver of economic growth in emerging markets, may play a smaller role in an automated world. Countries that have high population growth in an industrial landscape dominated by technologies like AI and robotics could be at a disadvantage. Consider emphasizing countries making investments in the future competiveness of their workforces.
2018
Eight long-term trends for growth investors
Morgan Stanley
Transportation could be very different in the future than it is today.
Transportation could be very different in the future than it is today. Autonomous vehicles, electric cars, high-speed trains, drones and even space travel have the potential to revolutionize the movement of people and products. Understanding these shifts is critical to choosing investments tied to the transportation sector.
2018
Eight long-term trends for growth investors
Morgan Stanley
Genetic research and related medical advances could change health care as we know it.
Genetic research and related medical advances could change health care as we know it. The combination of biotechnology, nanotechnology and data analytics could usher in a new era of preventative and personalized medicine. Quality of life could improve and help drive economic growth.
2018
Eight long-term trends for growth investors
Morgan Stanley
Learning to live and invest in an insecure world is difficult.
Learning to live and invest in an insecure world is difficult. Technology and globalization can drive economic growth, but can also have a destabilizing impact on society. Geopolitical risks are proliferating quickly. Investments in technology, people and support systems that can maintain security will be important.
2018
Eight long-term trends for growth investors
Morgan Stanley
Improvements to energy, communications and transportation infrastructure are long overdue.
Improvements to energy, communications and transportation infrastructure are long overdue. New roads, rails, pipelines and networks are needed as millions of people around the world move from rural to urban areas. Strong global growth and low interest rates can help power the investments needed for the cities of tomorrow.
2018
Eight long-term trends for growth investors
Morgan Stanley
Few companies can maintain pricing power these days.
Few companies can maintain pricing power these days. Technology has allowed for easy comparison shopping, increasingly efficient production and shifts in certain business models that can erode pricing power. However, companies that can maintain pricing power through technological barriers, unique products and brand recognition should be able to maintain an advantage.
2018
Eight long-term trends for growth investors
Morgan Stanley
Robot dexterity
Robots are teaching themselves to handle the physical world.For all the talk about machines taking jobs, industrial robots are still clumsy and inflexible. A robot can repeatedly pick up a component on an assembly line with amazing precision and without ever getting bored—but move the object half an inch, or replace it with something slightly different, and the machine will fumble ineptly or paw at thin air. But while a robot can’t yet be programmed to figure out how to grasp any object just by looking at it, as people do, it can now learn to manipulate the object on its own through virtual trial and error. One such project is Dactyl, a robot that taught itself to flip a toy building block in its fingers. Dactyl, which comes from the San Francisco nonprofit OpenAI, consists of an off-the-shelf robot hand surrounded by an array of lights and cameras. Using what’s known as reinforcement learning, neural-network software learns how to grasp and turn the block within a simulated environment before the hand tries it out for real. The software experiments, randomly at first, strengthening connections within the network over time as it gets closer to its goal. It usually isn’t possible to transfer that type of virtual practice to the real world, because things like friction or the varied properties of different materials are so difficult to simulate. The OpenAI team got around this by adding randomness to the virtual training, giving the robot a proxy for the messiness of reality. We’ll need further breakthroughs for robots to master the advanced dexterity needed in a real warehouse or factory. But if researchers can reliably employ this kind of learning, robots might eventually assemble our gadgets, load our dishwashers, and even help Grandma out of bed. —Will Knight
2019
10 Breakthrough Technologies 2019 - How we’ll invent the future, by Bill Gates
MIT Technology Review
New-wave nuclear power
Advanced fusion and fission reactors are edging closer to reality. New nuclear designs that have gained momentum in the past year are promising to make this power source safer and cheaper. Among them are generation IV fission reactors, an evolution of traditional designs; small modular reactors; and fusion reactors, a technology that has seemed eternally just out of reach. Developers of generation IV fission designs, such as Canada’s Terrestrial Energy and Washington-based TerraPower, have entered into R&D partnerships with utilities, aiming for grid supply (somewhat optimistically, maybe) by the 2020s. Small modular reactors typically produce in the tens of megawatts of power (for comparison, a traditional nuclear reactor produces around 1,000 MW). Companies like Oregon’s NuScale say the miniaturized reactors can save money and reduce environmental and financial risks. There has even been progress on fusion. Though no one expects delivery before 2030, companies like General Fusion and Commonwealth Fusion Systems, an MIT spinout, are making some headway. Many consider fusion a pipe dream, but because the reactors can’t melt down and don’t create long-lived, high-level waste, it should face much less public resistance than conventional nuclear. (Bill Gates is an investor in TerraPower and Commonwealth Fusion Systems.) —Leigh Phillips
2019
10 Breakthrough Technologies 2019 - How we’ll invent the future, by Bill Gates
MIT Technology Review
Predicting preemies
A simple blood test can predict if a pregnant woman is at risk of giving birth prematurely. Our genetic material lives mostly inside our cells. But small amounts of “cell-free” DNA and RNA also float in our blood, often released by dying cells. In pregnant women, that cell-free material is an alphabet soup of nucleic acids from the fetus, the placenta, and the mother. Stephen Quake, a bioengineer at Stanford, has found a way to use that to tackle one of medicine’s most intractable problems: the roughly one in 10 babies born prematurely. Free-floating DNA and RNA can yield information that previously required invasive ways of grabbing cells, such as taking a biopsy of a tumor or puncturing a pregnant woman’s belly to perform an amniocentesis. What’s changed is that it’s now easier to detect and sequence the small amounts of cell-free genetic material in the blood. In the last few years researchers have begun developing blood tests for cancer (by spotting the telltale DNA from tumor cells) and for prenatal screening of conditions like Down syndrome. The tests for these conditions rely on looking for genetic mutations in the DNA. RNA, on the other hand, is the molecule that regulates gene expression—how much of a protein is produced from a gene. By sequencing the free-floating RNA in the mother’s blood, Quake can spot fluctuations in the expression of seven genes that he singles out as associated with preterm birth. That lets him identify women likely to deliver too early. Once alerted, doctors can take measures to stave off an early birth and give the child a better chance of survival. The technology behind the blood test, Quake says, is quick, easy, and less than $10 a measurement. He and his collaborators have launched a startup, Akna Dx, to commercialize it. —Bonnie Rochman
2019
10 Breakthrough Technologies 2019 - How we’ll invent the future, by Bill Gates
MIT Technology Review