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Lessons - The Struggles of Being an Entrepreneur | Dr. Mark van Rijmenam - Strategic Futurist Speaker · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  So walk me through that transition in your career, did you jump into entrepreneurship,
• 0:15
  did you study and start doing consulting, did you build an organization and then after
• 0:20
  that was successful, move into speaking, what was that like for you?
• 0:25
  So after I did my degree in hospitality management, as I said, I moved to Dubai to live there for
• 0:31
  some time. After that I did a master degree in marketing management and I ended up at the
• 0:37
  ING headquarters, a large Dutch bank, where I moved more and more into the marketing space,
• 0:44
  but I gave it up after a couple of years because I went on a big adventure with a friend of mine,
• 0:48
  so we certainly navigated Australia on a push bike in 100 days, which was an absolutely
• 0:53
  fantastic experience and I can recommend anyone to do, just 100 days of just eat, drink, sleep,
• 1:01
  and cycle and nothing else, which was fantastic. But the thing is, after a such an adventure, you
• 1:06
  don't really want to work for a buzz anymore. So I tried starting my own company, I failed miserably
• 1:13
  unfortunately, so I had to get a job, ended up as a consultant, focused on strategy from an
• 1:21
  analytics perspective. I didn't really like it, so I got myself fired and then I decided to
• 1:27
  start it, to give it another shot and literally over the weekend I thought, you know, what shall I do,
• 1:32
  what can I do? I thought, you know, big data is going to be a hot topic, let's do something in
• 1:37
  big data. So I didn't have any understanding or any knowledge about big data, so I set up a
• 1:43
  website next day, taught myself about big data, started writing about it and a month and a half
• 1:49
  later I was invited as a keynote speaker as the expert on big data, which to me was absolutely
• 1:55
  crazy. It was even a paid gig and it was, they are totally crazy for me, but it also showed to me
• 2:02
  apparently there's something in this space and as I'm saying, we have, you know, in the land of
• 2:06
  the blind, it's the one I is king, so I decided to really go down the rabbit hole and explored
• 2:13
  this fascinating industry. And from there on, it sort of moved really fast because I started
• 2:19
  writing articles, from the first articles came my first book thing bigger. Then in 2015 I got the
• 2:25
  opportunity to do a PhD at the University of Technology in Sydney, they gave me a few scholarships,
• 2:30
  Australia is not the most logical place to do a PhD on technology, but I just wanted to live
• 2:36
  there a bit more longer, a long term. So I moved to Australia and after about six months in,
• 2:42
  I came into contact with blockchain and I saw that this technology is such a fundamental
• 2:49
  technology that is going to have a drastic impact on society that I basically, completely
• 2:55
  restarted my PhD, changed direction and included a blockchain at the same time also AI in my PhD.
• 3:03
  During my PhD I co-wrote a book on blockchain and how we can use it for social good,
• 3:10
  because I think that's how we can use technology from a positive perspective is very important
• 3:15
  to me. And at the end of my PhD I turned my dissertation into a management book because
• 3:21
  dissertations are boring to read and a management book is a bit easier to read. So I turned my
• 3:27
  book my dissertation into the management book, the organization tomorrow. At the same time I had
• 3:32
  found a data flock, a content platform and I think I've really found my sweet spot because I
• 3:39
  really, really enjoy being in this bleeding edge technology and at the same time helping organizations
• 3:46
  understand what's happening. So since that first keynote I gave in 2012 I've been doing key
• 3:53
  notes until last year, obviously until Corona hit. I used to fly all around the world and that
• 3:59
  stopped. I haven't been in the plane for about a year and a half. It's absolutely crazy. I
• 4:02
  don't know what's happening, but it's totally crazy. But I decided to reinvent myself and since I
• 4:09
  talk about digitalization I decided to digitalize myself and that's where the digital speaker
• 4:16
  concept comes from, which is basically yeah I'm now available as an avatar, I'm available as a
• 4:21
  hologram or a combination of both and I have recently started my own podcast or what I call
• 4:27
  the tech journal where the digital speaker covers the digital world literally from inside the
• 4:33
  digital world because it's recorded in virtual reality. At the moment just like a proof of concept
• 4:39
  not yet available in VR but that's just a matter of time when I move to that because I think it's
• 4:44
  a fascinating area to explore and it really brings everything together of what I do and what I like.
• 4:51
  Digitalism will mark the end of liberalism and be the first truly global political doctrine,
• 4:56
  a story where governments, companies, and citizens battle for data. What does that mean exactly?
• 5:02
  Sure. So first for those who are going to my Twitter feed now, I changed my pen today so
• 5:09
  I can show you the link for the speaker notes. But digitalism is a new theory that I've
• 5:16
  been developing for about a year now and it's a way where I think everything is being digitized
• 5:25
  at the moment. The entire planet, everything that we do, but data comes with tremendous power
• 5:32
  as we know from the large tech companies, the Google's, the Facebook of these worlds. But they also
• 5:38
  should come, and that's what I always say, with great responsibility of how to deal with that.
• 5:43
  And what I envision, what I foresee happening, is liberalism is nearing its end. And I'm not the only
• 5:49
  one who says that, you know, you Val Noir Harari also states that because of big data, because of AI,
• 5:55
  liberalism is nearing its ending. And we see this happening all over the place. You know,
• 6:00
  free competition doesn't really still exist. You know, Facebook, the Google's of this world,
• 6:04
  they buy every company, every startup that's out there. It doesn't really still exist, you know.
• 6:10
  Free will, does that still exist? And we have recommendation algorithms that determine everything
• 6:15
  for us. So liberalism is running into a few problems at the moment. But at the same time,
• 6:23
  I see that a lot of organizations and governments understand the power that data brings.
• 6:29
  So what I see is that, you know, in the next 10, 20, 30 years, the struggle within society
• 6:37
  is the struggle of the fight around data, who owns this data, and who can do something with this
• 6:42
  data. And on the one hand, we have the governments and the corporations. And on the other hand,
• 6:46
  we have the citizens, us, you and me. And both parties have different perspectives, have different
• 6:53
  objectives, and have different, you know, what they require. And so digitalism is this fight around,
• 7:01
  you know, this most important resource ever found or created by humans. And it can basically go
• 7:08
  in three directions. So digitalism has three streams. The first one is state digitalism, which
• 7:15
  basically means that, you know, the government uses data to enslave its citizens. And this is
• 7:21
  something we see happening in China. You know, it's massive aliens, you know, in Xinjiang, you know,
• 7:26
  they have developed an AI panopticon where everyone, the state knows everything about its
• 7:33
  citizens, that's been that they do. And especially with COVID-19, they have QR codes to leave the
• 7:40
  house to enter a building, they scan everything, your temperature, they have a social credit score,
• 7:45
  so they really use data to enslave their citizens. That's not a society I would like to live in.
• 7:54
  Then you have a second stream, which is near digitalism, which is basically corporate surveillance.
• 7:59
  And you know, where, you know, we have these large corporate organizations that have become so
• 8:03
  incredibly powerful that the governments, they can't really do anything anymore. You know,
• 8:08
  we see this happening with 2018 in the US Senate, where the senators asked Mark Zuckerberg
• 8:14
  basically how the internet worked. And those are the people who are, you know, who are making
• 8:19
  the legislation for the citizens. Well, good luck with that, you know, that's not going to happen.
• 8:23
  That's not only in the US, or it's also happening in the Netherlands, where, you know,
• 8:27
  the legislators have a very limited understanding of what technology means and how technology is
• 8:31
  impacting organizations. But the result is that, you know, these tech companies are becoming
• 8:36
  bigger and bigger and bigger. They are so incredibly powerful, and they basically use the data
• 8:40
  to enslave the customers for the shareholders. Again, that's not a society I would like to live in.
• 8:46
  And then the final phase is what I call modern digitalism, which I think is the most positive
• 8:51
  approach to data. And we use, here we use data to empower the citizens. So we have, you know,
• 8:57
  ethical use of AI. We have, you know, self-suffering identities. We have full control over your data,
• 9:03
  full secure data, privacy, a concept called anonymous accountability. So you can be anonymous,
• 9:11
  but you're still being accountable for whatever you do. And that's sort of what I see happening
• 9:16
  in Europe. You know, Europe has developed, came up with a GDPR. They have AI regulations. They
• 9:21
  came up with this risk based approach to AI, where they said, you know, we don't want facial
• 9:26
  recognition in Europe. We don't want social credit scores in Europe. And all other AI needs to
• 9:32
  be regulated very, very well. And so that's sort of the theory of digitalism. It's still under
• 9:37
  development. I'm still, you know, trying to figure out how this works. But I think it's these
• 9:43
  three streams that will, you know, take over the entire world. And depending on in which
• 9:49
  society you live, this is either something to look forward to, or something to be really, really
• 9:54
  afraid of.