I agree that there will be a long period of paying back debts in USA.
The growth in technology is, that there are so many discoveries, that it is almost impossible to find out where to start exploiting them. Most discoveries are not exploited only because people spend their time on even more promising discoveries. I can mention:
- Hospitals worldwide are still using IT on an extremely low level, which means that it takes many years for knowledge to flow from one department to other departments in the same hospital or in other hospitals. This delays deployment of treatment 10-30 years, even though simple IT systems could improve that (that's the business I'm in)
- We're just seeing the start of how to exploit typed data across IT systems. I work in a business where we almost stopped using e-mail, because the alternatives boost productivity a lot. The alternatives are about structuring data from the beginning, and the trick is to make it work between IT systems. This has a lot of names, but there is no doubt, that the productivity increase from not having to deal manually with most information, is huge.
- Many IT, telecommunications and internet breakthroughs have not yet made their full impact, yet. I still get my local church calendar on paper, I have to make a phone call to make an appointment with my doctor, and people are still not using teleconferences because of previous bad experience with bad solutions. I live in a country where all city administrations must be able to receive emails with digital signatures that are legally binding, and where all government, regional and city administrations must be able to communicate safely and legally binding with each other, electronically. Much of this is still happening via e-mail, so that it is only the speed of transmission that is improved, but more and more handling is being automated. Digitalization of information is not there yet, it is still work in progress. Many countries still allow the use of paper, which slows down things a lot.
- Biological science is nowhere where it will be in the future. Did you know that you can detect landmines by setting out flowers, and if they change colors, you found a landmine? Also, I see a big future in having microbiology as the engine of production. Imagine a laptop that degrades biologically when lost in nature. I see no reason why this should not be possible.
- Energy science has focused a lot on low hanging fruit, but there is so much to gain from more advanced technology. Global warming triggered some very basic research in reducing energy consumption in houses, and the results are amazing. With very little research, you can find ways to cut half of the energy to warm a house, make the interior more healthy, without adding total costs. Even hydrogen can be easily stored in environmentally friendly and recyclable tablets, and the only reason not to use that, is that there are even better options available. The only question is, which technology makes most sense to put into mass production.
- The obesity problem in USA costs a lot, and it's not that difficult to solve (eat more healthy food and eat less calories). I lost 30kg myself (66 pounds) in less than a year using IT technology (a homepage that counts calories), and it's surely damn easy to lose weight, if the right technology is present. The necessary technology itself doesn't present a significant economic value by itself, but removing more than half of the health care demand will surely improve productivity.
I also see other big potentials:
- Globalization as a mindset: It surely doesn't make sense, that the Kyoto agreement moves production from Denmark, where we exploit 70-80% of the energy in coal, to China, where they use 30% of the energy in coal, and then send it to Europe. And when I look at how bad Europeans are at buying services from other European countries, it really hurts. Even having an inner market in EU, people still haven't get used to buying from other countries, which means that many businesses and consumers pay too much. My local shop sells Coca Cola at $3.00 per liter, which is a normal price in our country. In Germany, the same bottles sell for $1.60 per liter, and no, it's not about taxes or any other policies, it's pure stupidity and lack of language skills. I think the main problem is, that people don't have globalization as part of their thinking. If they had that, I don't think the Kyoto agreement would ever have been made like that. As globalization comes into the mindset of the young people, their decisions will be much better than the decisions made by the previous generation. It is only 10 years ago, that many countries in EU would want their own trading standards for fruit sizes, now they accept a unified market, what will be next? Using the same power plug everywhere in Europe or maybe even pan-European homepages on the internet. I don't expect pan-European comedy in the near future, however, that would require much more change of mindsets.
- Languages: If more people in Europe learned to communicate with neighboring countries, it would improve a lot. Fortunately, the young generation is much better at that, than the older generation, and even in France, it is now becoming ok to know other languages. I believe that the big languages in Europe in the future will be Russian, German and English, and that most people will know one of these. So if you learn three languages, you will be able to communicate with most people, and that will surely improve a lot. Then you don't have to be a language specialist in order to buy a product from a shop more than 300km away, which will improve Europe's economy, and the economy of other places in the world, where there are many small languages.
However, I really don't know where to invest to exploit this. Investing is not about being able to improve productivity, but about owning something, but I own these shares, that I consider to be related to my points above:
- The company I work for, and which I co-started, which focuses on how to use the latest ideas in IT and health care to improve productivity in hospitals
- Novozymes
Other stocks that could be interesting, would be:
- VKR-Holding/Velux (energy, materials, buildings), if they ever go public, that is...
- Google (typed data, a big non-$ turnover and one of those that need to be boosted to turn around the trade deficit) |
