Peter Diamandis is a Greek–American engineer, physician, and entrepreneur best known for being the founder and chairman of the X Prize Foundation, the co-founder and executive chairman of Singularity University and the co-author of the New York Times bestsellers Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think and BOLD: How to Go Big, Create Wealth, and Impact the World. In this interview I ask Peter about his early years as an entrepreneur, and how we can all work toward a brighter future and a better world.

Interview with Peter Diamandis. Founder: XPrize, Singularity. Author: Abundance, Bold.

Game Time

Do you want to change the world? Was it an idea you had, but then realized how big a job it was? Or is running your own business enough for you in this lifetime?  There are many reasons why people do ‘just enough to get by’, or do their best to live a great life, but what does it take to achieve something that will make an actual difference in this big wide world anyway?

When most people think about changing the world they think about donating to charity or volunteering at an orphanage in Africa.  But what may not occur to you as leverage for change is technology, and advances in computing, medical/genetic innovation, and space exploration.

The truth is, if we really start to look at the world, and I mean really look at it.  It is a scary place.  I don’t know about you, but after watching stuff like An Inconvenient Truth, or even the daily evening news, I don’t see much hope for us in the future.

But, what if there was a guy who believes that the future is better than we think it could be?  What if some of the solutions he suggests are actually out-of-this-world like:  asteroid mining, alkalinizing the world’s oceans, or infinite computing?

The Mission Possible Man

Dr Peter Diamandis appears to be this guy.  Dr. Diamandis is a once-in-a-generation evolutionary who, in his own words “…[believes] that anything is possible, and that any problem can be fixed”.  This comes from a guy who runs four companies, has two young kids, and is tackling some of humanity’s biggest challenges head-on in two major ways. 

His first approach is through the XPrize Foundation.  This foundation is matching investors with inventors and opening a new world of possibility in science, medicine, and research.  The XPrize operates as an incentive competition for inventors and entrepreneurs.  You could think of it as The Amazing Race for new ideas.  Donors, with their heart (and their money) in the right place are putting up cash as a prize for any individual or team best able to answer the challenges of our time.

For example, the most recent winner created something right out of Star Trek: A device that analyzes a drop of blood, saliva or other bodily fluid placed on a nanochip and inserted into a mobile device, which then detects the presence or absence of a pathogen in less than an hour.

In the past, this sort of thing was reserved for a big city diagnostic lab (something not available in, say, war torn Syria) so no need for electricity or running water, which means you can do this kind of diagnoses anywhere; refugee camps, natural disaster zones, desert tribes.

His other lightening bolt of awesomeness is as Co-Founder and CEO of the Singularity University.  This is an institution offering cutting-edge futuristic programs for graduates and executives who want to be part of sculpting the future.  Based in Silicon Valley Diamandis, and Co-Founder Ray Kurzweil who is best known for advancing the science of human longetivity, have created a program – actually, wait! Let me re-write that, it’s a full blown gob smacking in your face view of the future that showcases the kind of world I used to dream about as a kid staring up at the stars on a balmy summer’s night.

These programs introduce executives, philanthropists, celebrities, and entrepreneurs to a world Diamandis describes as “heading toward extraordinary abundance, (a world where) the challenges we’ve had are falling, (a world where) the number of people on the planet that are empowered to solve problems are growing exponentially and therefore the problems themselves are falling rapidly”.

The faculty at Singularity reads like a who’s who of leaders in fields such as robotics, genomics, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology.  Folks like Craig Venter, the guy who beat the U.S. government at mapping the human genome, and Vint Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the internet, run retreats that bring together people who understand the problems we face in the future and people who understand the possible solutions.  Or as one graduate, Ashton Kutchner put it: “It’s science chasing creativity”.

Yep, even Hollywood in catching on; at a recent Fox Studios Singularity University program Will.I.Am was giddy with excitement as he described one field trip “They combine robotics to the nerve endings and whatever they think they can make the arm do, it does it – that is pretty much what Robo-Cop is about.”

I caught up with Dr Diamandis for an interview while he was driving between an investor meeting in Los Angeles and an XPrize board event in the Hollywood hills.  We only had 20 minutes and I really wanted to find out what made this guy tick.

Peter Diamandis has degrees in molecular biology and aerospace engineering from MIT and a medical degree from Harvard.  And guess what? Like most little boys he’s been setting rockets off in his backyard and dreaming of space since he was twelve.  He is human. Like, you and me human: a regular guy.  This was both surprising and comforting to me.  It was surprising because secretly I wanted him to be superhuman so I could have an excuse not to make a difference like he does.  And, it was comforting to know that if he can do it, anyone can.  Let me explain.

What makes a Superhuman just like you and me

I asked how he stays on top of all this amazing work he’s doing.  Without hesitation he replied,  “I think it’s dreaming big bold dreams, and asking yourself ‘how do you make this stuff happen’.”

Now, it’s not like he was advising me to go study robotics or nanotechnology at some Ivy League college, as I would expect from a man with multiple degrees.  Nope.  He was basically telling me to pursue my passion.

Diamandis sees it like this, “The way we organise ourselves as a society is changing.  It used to be about where you live, your national flag, and who you worked for. These were the organising principles of what you did.  Today, it’s what your passionate about”.

This is radical.

While the idea ‘pursuing your passion’ might be all the rage among personal growth junkies and free spirits, It is a relatively new concept. In the past, society lived through the industrial age, and then it was about ‘working for the man’.  Lately, the trend is working for yourself and making as much money as you can, or living the four-hour-work-week-lifestyle.

In the past, innovation has been regulated and controlled financially from something like stodgy government committees.  Nowadays financial, intellectual, and innovative leaders are telling us that following our passions is going to help us create the type of answers that will solve humanity’s problems.

Where I come from, following your dreams all the way out to the stars, takes a lot of gumption, determination, and will power – more than the average man.  So, I had to know what Diamandis’ secret was to following his passions and achieving so many great feats.  “It’s just a matter of chipping away at a problem and setting some near term goal that I want to achieve in the day – then kicking ass till I get it done.” he said. 

So even the seemingly super-human take it one step at a time.

The Secret Sauce

Diamandis writes about the people who are challenging civilization to step up in a book he co-authored called ‘Abundance – the future is better than you think’.

I must admit that in less than 20 minutes, Diamandis had already opened my semi-jaded eyes to the possibility that the future, could indeed, be brighter than my local news forecast.

The entrepreneurs and business’ built in the last 20 years or so have done big things to advance business models for the social good with computing and the Internet playing a large part in this change.  But now these entrepreneurs, Technophilnathropists as Diamandis calls them, are turning their attention and cash to solving humanity’s big juicy problems and they are looking for new products and services designed to do that.  Or as Dr Diamandis puts it, “The worlds biggest challenges are the worlds biggest market opportunities as well”.

This is where you and I and our passions come in.  The Do-It-Yourself Innovators are the second group of people rising up to meet the challenges of our time.  They are using groovy new technology like artificial intelligence, robotics, infinite computing, nanomaterials, synthetic biology (and other stuff I used to read about in science fiction books when I was a kid) to change the possibilities for us, our children, and our children’s children.

Perhaps the biggest tipping point is the shift in power from the public to the private sector, “The power that entrepreneurs have today is something governments and large organisations had only 20 years ago”.  Businesses are making innovation, and new technology, more accessible than large government organisations ever did.

So where do we start? Well, you could have a crack at one of the XPrizes on offer.  But what I learned from Dr Diamandis is this, “You could be really lucky, really hard working, really smart, you could be really well connected, all of those things can help you move forward, but unless you’re super lucky you’re still going to have stuff go wrong along the way.  So, it’s how you pick yourself up after those disasters, [and] how …you think about it when it all goes wrong.”

And this is where you come in.  Well, your brain anyway.  The main reason we haven’t been on the magic bus Diamandis is talking about is because of the way our brain works.  Our brain is inherently attuned to threatening stimuli, which goes some of the way to explain why the media focuses on bad news or why people are so self critical. 

But it is how we deal with seeming bad things that makes the biggest difference Diamandis explains. “The most valuable thing that I have is the level of passion and excitement I have for the things that I do. I feel they are my energy source for when things go wrong, which they constantly do.”

Now there is a large and growing body of research that indicates that people experiencing positive emotions perceive more options when trying to solve problems.  They solve more non-linear problems that require insight, they collaborate better and are generally more creative because those little neurons aren’t so preoccupied by bad karma.

Peter Diamandis is living proof that making a difference is totally doable, “Seeing and feeling and experiencing all these technologies that are jointly converging and growing gives me a sense of inevitability that we’re heading that way.”

He went on to tell me that this is what gives him the greatest optimism, and what ultimately led to writing Abundance.  He said, “It seemed obvious me and I had to share this information to other people so it becomes more obvious to them.”

“Ultimately for me, my guiding star [is] the things I am passionate about, that reenergizes me, that I wake up with, and say O.K. that’s what I am going to do today. That’s where I am going, I am going that way, and that helps me a lot”.

Now it’s your turn, make a living or leave a legacy. Mission Possible, go.