Peter Diamandis

Biography

Peter is focused on driving breakthroughs in products, companies and industries. He is passionate about solving some of the world`s grand challenges. If you`re interested in driving and incentivizing breakthrough thinking within your company or industry; or if you`re interested getting experts around the world motivated to solve your insolvable problems, you need to create the proper incentives and establish clear, measurable and objective goals.

Peter is the world`s foremost expert in incentivized innovation. The art of incentivize smart and talented people within your company or those experts around the world to focus on solving your grand challenges. He has worked with Fortune 100 companies, government leaders and captains of industry over the past 15 years. In 2010 Diamandis is the winner of the Economist "No Boundaries" award for "meta-innovation -- driving innovation in the way people innovate." He is also the winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Innovation, the Heinlein Award, the Lindbergh Award, the Wired RAVE Award, the Neil Armstrong Award, and the World Technology Award.

DYNAMIC SPEAKER
Diamandis inspires and moves audiences to action. His message is clear: there is no challenge that cannot be overcome. It is a matter of having a clear objective goal, clarity of what you are measuring and incentivizing the right community to solve your challenge. Using personal, in-depth and inspirational stories, Diamandis has been called "one of the best speakers ever" by numerous CEO-level audiences. He has received accolades from an impressively diverse list of listeners: Google, Microsoft, the United Nations, Facebook, TED, PhRMAs CEO Conference, Autodesk and Activision-Blizzard to name a few. Diamandis is a frequent contributor to CNN, CNBC and MSNBC.

X PRIZE LEADER
Dr. Diamandis is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, a non-profit focused on designing and launching large incentive prizes to drive radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. Best known for the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE (www.xprize.org) for private spaceflight, the Foundation is now launching prizes in four groups: Exploration, Life Sciences, Energy & Environment, and Education/Global Development. Today the X PRIZE has three active prizes: The $10M Archon X PRIZE for Genomics, the $30M Google Lunar X PRIZE and the $1.4M Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE. Diamandis and the X PRIZE have been hired by the following groups to create incentivized innovation: Google, Cisco, Shell, Progressive Insurance, NASA, US Department of Energy, and the US Department of Transportation to name a few.

AN EXPERT ON THE GROWTH OF EXPONENTIAL TECHNOLOGIES
In 2008, Diamandis co-Founded the Singularity University along with Dr. Ray Kurzweil, serving as the Chairman & Vice-Chancellor of SU. Diamandis speaks dynamically and passionately explaining how the rapid growth of key exponential technologies are empowering individuals and companies to do what only governments were able to achieve in past decades. The key exponential technologies include artificial intelligence, robotics, biotechnology, synthetic biology, embedded networks, nanotechnology/materials and human machine interfaces have the potential to transform industries and society over the next twenty years. Such technologies will drive a period of significant disruption or opportunity depending on the company`s mind-set. Diamandis` ultimate message is that companies cannot remain stagnant. They must evolve or they will die.

A GLOBAL LEADER IN COMMERCIAL SPACE
Diamandis is the leading international figure in the commercial space arena, having founded and run many of the leading entrepreneurial companies in this sector, including: Space Adventures, the only company to have brokered the launches of private citizens to the Int`l Space Station; Zero Gravity Corporation is the only commercial provider of weightless, zero-gravity flights to the public and to NASA; and the Rocket Racing League is a cross between NASCAR and pod-racing from Star Wars.

A SCIENTIST, ENGINEER & MEDICAL DOCTOR
Dr. Diamandis attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he received his undergraduate degree in molecular genetics and graduate degree in aerospace engineering. After MIT he attended Harvard Medical School where he received his M.D. In 2005 he has was also awarded an honorary Doctorate from the International Space University.

A PASSIONATE ACTIVIST & ENTREPRENEUR
Diamandis has founded over 15 companies since his first year at MIT. Many of these are non-profits dedicated to creating change in the world. Peter`s mission is to guide and inspire the transformation of humanity both on and off the Earth. His personal motto is: "The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself!" In 8th grade, while living in New York, Dr. Diamandis won first place in the Estes rocket design contest.

Publications

Abundance

We will soon be able to meet and exceed the basic needs of every man, woman and child on the planet. Abundance for all is within our grasp. This bold, contrarian view, backed up by exhaustive research, introduces our near-term future, where exponentially growing technologies and three other powerful forces are conspiring to better the lives of billions. An antidote to pessimism by tech entrepreneur turned philanthropist, Peter H. Diamandis and award-winning science writer Steven Kotler. Since the dawn of humanity, a privileged few have lived in stark contrast to the hardscrabble majority. Conventional wisdom says this gap cannot be closed. But it is closing -- fast. The authors document how four forces -- exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion -- are conspiring to solve our biggest problems. Abundance establishes hard targets for change and lays out a strategic roadmap for governments, industry and entrepreneurs, giving us plenty of reason for optimism.

Examining human need by category -- water, food, energy, healthcare, education, freedom -- Diamandis and Kotler introduce dozens of innovators making great strides in each area: Larry Page, Steven Hawking, Dean Kamen, Daniel Kahneman, Elon Musk, Bill Joy, Stewart Brand, Jeff Skoll, Ray Kurzweil, Ratan Tata, Eric Schmidt, Matt Ridley, Craig Venter, among many, many others.

Providing abundance is humanity`s grandest challenge -- this is a book about how we rise to meet it.

Abundance will be scheduled for publication in February 2012.

Titles

Achieving Innovation & Breakthroughs

Diamandis is a dynamic inspirational speaker who provides real value to his audience by showing them how to drive and incentivize breakthrough thinking within their company in order to achieve clear, measurable and objective results.

Based on the success of the Ansari X PRIZE (which stimulated the creation of billion-dollar private spaceflight industry) and the success of the $10M Progressive Automotive X PRIZE, Diamandis explains how to incentivize breakthroughs. Diamandis explains how traditional thinking, risk-aversion and incrementalism will cause the demise of companies unable to cope with the coming decades of disruptive innovation.

Through concrete examples and lessons, Diamandis addresses two options
Internal -- How to create a culture of innovation within your company;
External -- How to incentivize the outside world to help you solve your biggest problems

Diamandis explains how the rapid growth of key exponential technologies (Nano, Info, Bio) are empowering individuals and small companies to do what only governments were able to achieve only a few decades ago. Such technologies will drive a period of significant disruption and/or opportunity depending on the company`s mind-set. Diamandis` ultimate message is that companies cannot remain stagnant. They must evolve or they will die.

Creating an Age of Abundance

Diamandis has co-authored Abundance (Simon & Schuster, Feb 2012) in which he lays out how we will soon be able to meet and exceed the basic needs of every man, woman and child on the planet. Abundance for all is within our grasp. This bold, contrarian view, backed up by exhaustive research, introduces our near-term future, where exponentially growing technologies and three other powerful forces are conspiring to better the lives of billions. An antidote to pessimism by tech entrepreneur turned philanthropist, Peter H. Diamandis.

Since the dawn of humanity, a privileged few have lived in stark contrast to the hardscrabble majority. Conventional wisdom says this gap cannot be closed. But it is closing -- fast. The authors document how four forces -- exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion -- are conspiring to solve our biggest problems. Abundance establishes hard targets for change and lays out a strategic roadmap for governments, industry and entrepreneurs, giving us plenty of reason for optimism.

In his keynote address, Diamandis examining human need by category -- water, food, energy, healthcare, education, communication and freedom -- Diamandis addresses how a range of powerful technologies such as synthetic biology, embedded networks and cloud computer, AI and robotics, biotechnology and medicine are transforming what was once scarce into something abundant.

Providing abundance is humanity`s grandest challenge. This is a Keynote about how we rise to meet it.

Exponential Technologies Causing Disruptive Innovation

Diamandis provides an overview of the key exponentially growing technologies and discusses how breakthroughs in these areas will transform products, companies, industries and even society over the next twenty years. He provides key insights on how human society has transformed from "Local & Linear" to "Global & Exponential." This change is causing the creation of new billion dollar start-ups out of nowhere, and the demise of 50-year-old billion dollar companies overnight.

Through Diamandis` work as Chairman and Co-Founder of Singularity University and Chairman/CEO of X PRIZE, he addresses the impact that exponentially growing technology has on companies, governments, and humanity. He speaks to the potential of creating a world of abundance, and the empowerment of small groups of "do-it-yourself" technologists to do what only governments or large corporations could do before.

Opening the Space Frontier

Diamandis is the leading figure in the Space Commercialization industry, having founded and run many of the leading companies such as Zero Gravity Corporation, Space Adventures, the Rocket Racing League, and International Space University to name a few. He is the recipient of the Economist No Boundaries Award, the Heinlein Award, Armstrong, Lindbergh, Von Braun, and Arthur C. Clarke Awards for his work. In this engaging, fun and visionary presentation Diamandis outlines Humanity`s future in space -- how we will travel there, build industries and launch future civilizations.