From academic institutions to Hollywood blockbusters, so much has been written about technology’s constant evolution and its changing role in society, that the maxim seems almost cliché; it’s not just technology that evolves, but our wants, desires, and interactions with it.
Technology is a tool that we use to improve our health and happiness – it always has been, and despite the peaks and valleys, in the long run, it always will be. So if technology is designed to solve some problem in mind, why then have we never come to a crossroads where technology is intentionally made to be more mindful of how this solution impacts our needs and whether the impact was positive or not?
In its early stages, technology has always been mainly functional; the 1950s semiconductor chips weren’t necessarily delightful, but they solved problems for us. Then technology served as entertainment with the likes of space invaders, phones, and the first apple computer. Then we desired that technology be easier to use, welcoming the public introduction of the world wide web and shortly thereafter catalyzing thousands of internet companies not to mention a sudden $1.9T that disappeared into thin air.
More recently, as anyone who has unwittingly lost time scrolling through Instagram or binge-watched Netflix knows, technology can persuade us to behave differently. Technology’s evolution is marked by inflection points, and we’ve entered a new stage that brings its effects on our behaviors and the resulting interactions to the forefront. This new stage is Mindful, and it so strongly affects the potential success of tools, platforms, and applications that it must be considered when analyzing investment opportunities in the technology space.
What Is Mindful Analysis?
Mindful Analysis is a breakthrough approach to measuring an early-stage startup’s intrinsic value and potential wealth creation. The analysis leverages thesis-driven, analytical, and experimental practices from Behavior Design, Data Science, and Capital Markets to understand how the startup is performing in current markets and evaluate the future risk/reward from various present-day interventions. This is accomplished through the use of proprietary Behavior Design and Mindful Technology maxims, models, methods, metrics, and mechanisms. The process considers five critical factors:
- Platform
How well does the design of the computing technology influence and change human behavior at scale? I.e., accelerate better business building at the early-stage. - Process
How well does the founding team leverage feedback to test and create actionable solutions for positive behavior change without loss of data? - Price
How well does the Proof-Of-Concept apply Behavior Design to maximize business model fit and dynamic pricing for the evolving target market? - Provenance
How well does the company perform when cross-referencing metrics with the Mindful Data Sharing Ecosystem? - Perennialism
How well does the company perform when cross-referencing traditional behavioral, economic, investment, market, and financial analysis factors?
Who is “Mindful”?
To identify who is embracing the principles of this new stage and positioning themselves for astronomic growth we look for tools, platforms, and applications that analyze, augment, and amplify human ability – and specifically in that sequence. The companies that are leveraging behavior design to help their users – with consent – to meet their goals and become better versions of themselves, before layering on AI, ML, NLP, and the like – are the most well-positioned to expand their full market potential beyond the imaginable. These are companies that have managed to carefully align the following:
- Behavior design to business models
- Markets to multi-sided data value streams
- Purpose to profits
Markets are shifting
This is not some far-flung abstract prediction that you can shelf right next to the Prophecies of Nostradamus. This is already happening. Big names like Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook are quietly shifting their ways to compete with the trend. On a macro scale, we’re already seeing it in key industries like infrastructure, healthcare, and financial services. Its value has already been quantified and projected in key markets like:
- Intelligent Automation – Including artificial intelligence, augmented intelligence, and intelligence analytics the expected growth is 86x
- Digital Transformation – Encompassing robotic process automation and global cognitive process automation, in areas like digital health, telehealth, RetailTech, PropTech, etc. the expected growth is 65x
- FinTech – Consisting of financial services, blockchain, consumer lending, and cybersecurity, the expected growth is 10x
By 2028, the value of these areas will exceed $2.6 trillion.
Everyone wishes they could go back in time and invest in Google or Apple before they blew up. Sadly, time travel isn’t on the horizon for new technology, I know, I’m disappointed too. But the time to capitalize on this growth is now. You can wait to see how it all pans out, but in a few years, you’ll just be hoping for that time machine all over again.
