Fast Company SA - February 2016

E L O N M U S KI N S I D E H I S N E W P L A N

T O S A V E T H E P L A N E T

T O U R O F T O M O R R O WA G L I M P S E O F F U T U R E T E C H A L R E A D Y I N U S E

M A R KZ U C K E R B E R G

F A C E B O O K C E O L O O K S T O A I , V R A N D D R O N E S

How Ravi Naidoo has turned the event into a movement

B u i l d i n g a b e t t e r w o r l d t h r o u g h C R E A T I V I T Y

INSIDE the 21stDESIGNINDABA9 772313 330006

16015

R35.00 FASTCOMPANY.CO.ZAFEBRUARY 2016

Design is such a vital tool; its relevant to all sectors

of the economy

R A V I N A I D O OFounder, Design Indaba

4 FA STCOMPANY.CO.Z A FEBRUARY 2016

February 2016

S P E C I A L F EAT U RE

A BETTER WORLD THROUGH CREATIVITYFast Company takes a look at how the Design Indaba has been driving its belief that local creativity can overcome societal challenges in Africa and, indeed, the world. Since its inception in 1995, the event has been nurturing and showcasing the countrys talented creatives and bringing top designers from around the globe to inspire great concepts that make a real difference.

Art comes aliveDesign Indaba founder Ravi Naidoo wants to make the event a kind of a Cirque du Soleil for the intellect. (page 32)

Contents

M o r e i s m o r e

3 2 Design Indaba founder Ravi Naidoo on why the event is a movement for creative talentBY CHRIS WALDBURGER

T h e O r i g i n a l s

3 8 Meet the 2016 Emerging Creatives who are designing for the future

C o n f e r e n c e , f e s t i v a l , p u b l i c a t i o n a n d b e y o n d

4 4 How the Design Indaba has grown into the largest creative platform in South Africa

FEBRUARY 2016 FA STCOMPANY.CO.Z A 5

Contents

Food of the futureMicroalgae is emerging as a viable, sustainable

substitute for some fats in foods such as ice cream

and salad dressing.(page 66)

F EAT U RE S

T h e N e w N e w R u l e s o f B u s i n e s s

1 6 Todays constant change is only a warm-up for whats still to come. Twenty predictions for the next 20 yearsBY ROBERT SAFIAN

M a r k Z u c k e r b e r g I s A U n i c o r n

2 0 Facebooks CEO has built a R4.8-trillion businessand hes just getting started. A look at his plans for the next decadeBY HARRY MCCRACKEN

E l o n M u s k T h i n k s B i g g e r

4 8 How the strategies behind Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCityplus an enormous new Gigafactory in the desertcome together in an audacious bid to save the planetBY MAX CHAFKIN

W e A r e A P a r t o f T h e S t a r t u p N a t i o n

5 8 Inside UCTs pop-up social innovation curriculum for aspiring social entrepreneurs who are solving real-world problemsfrom campusBY EVANS MANYONGA, ANDREA WEISS

T o u r o f T o m o r r o w

6 6 A photo essay showing futuristic technologies applied all over the world today

Contents

RE G U L A R S

1 0 F r o m t h e E d i t o r

1 2 T h e R e c o m m e n d e r

8 2 S u r f a n d T u r fEnvironmentally responsible production brand, Sealand, aims to rid our shores of rubbish by turning waste into wares

8 4 A r c h i t e c t o f A N e w C r e a t i v e F u t u r eThomas Chapman is the founder of a design studio that is leading urban transformation in Joburgs inner city

8 6 T h e G r e a t I n n o v a t i o n F r o n t i e rFour innovation habits to cultivate in 2016 to find better ways of doing thingsBY WALTER BAETS

8 8 F a s t B y t e s & E v e n t s

9 2 T r e n d F o r e c a s tWhy it wont necessarily be the formally trained at the forefront of future groundbreaking design and innovationBY DAVE NEMETH


Aiming highElon Musk says the goal of

his company, Tesla, has not been to make cars. The goal has been: We need

to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy.

(page 48)


PUBLISHER AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEFRobbie Stammers

[email protected]

EDITOREvans Manyonga

[email protected]

No article or any part of any article in Fast Company South Africa may be reproduced without the prior written consent of the publisher. The information provided and opinions expressed in this publication are provided in good faith, but do not necessarily represent the opinions of Mansueto Ventures in the USA, Insights Publishing or the editor. Neither this magazine, the publisher or Mansueto Ventures in the USA can be held legally liable in any way for damages of any kind whatsoever arising directly or indirectly from any facts or information provided or omitted in these pages, or from any statements made or withheld by this publication. Fast Company is a registered title under Mansueto Ventures and is licensed to Insights Publishing for use in southern Africa only.

ART DIRECTORStacey [email protected]

CHIEF SUB-EDITORTania Griffin

ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTORKeith [email protected]

ADVERTISING MANAGERS Kyle Villet, Zaid Haffejee

ADVERTISING SALES EXECUTIVEMandla Mangena

OFFICE MANAGERTaryn [email protected]

SOUTH AFRICAN EDITORIAL BOARDLouise Marsland, Anneleigh Jacobsen, Prof. Walter Baets, Pepe Marais, Alistair King, Koo Govender, Abey Mokgwatsane, Kheepe Moremi, Herman Manson, Ellis Mnyandu, Thabang Skwambane

EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORSRobert Safian, Harry McCracken, Chris Waldburger, Max Chafkin, Andrea Weiss, JJ McCorvey, Neal Ungerleider, Adam Bluestein, Ben Schiller, Adele Peters, Elizabeth Segran, Walter Baets, Dave Nemeth, Evans Manyonga

ARTISTSCover: Supplied by Design IndabaGallo Images/Getty Images (Justin Sullivan, Josh Edelson, Scott Olson), Antoine Antoniol/Bloomberg via Getty Images, Saumya Khandelwal/Hindustan Times via Getty Images, Thoban Jappie, relajaelcoco, McNair Evans, Christopher Noelle, Vivek Singh,

FAST COMPANY INTERNATIONAL TEAM

CHAIRMANJoe Mansueto, Mansueto Ventures

EDITORRobert Safian

DEPUTY EDITORDavid Lidsky

EXECUTIVE EDITORNoah Robischon EDITORS-AT-LARGEJon Gertner, Rick Tetzeli

SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITORJJ McCorvey

EDITORIAL DIRECTORJill Bernstein DIRECTOR, EDITORIAL STRATEGYLori Hoffman

DIRECTOR, EDITORIAL & NEW BUSINESS ENTERPRISESBill Shapiro

CREATIVE DIRECTORFlorian Bachleda

PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTORSarah Filippi

ART DIRECTORAlice Alves

PRODUCTION DIRECTORCarly Migliori

CHIEF DEVELOPMENT OFFICERQuentin Walz

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICERMark Rosenberg

Melissa Golden, Andrew Tingle, Luca Locatelli, Noel Spirandelli, Elyor Nematov, Alessandra Sanguinetti

DIGITAL PLATFORMSBy Digital PublishingCharles Burman, Catherine Crook

FINANCIAL MANAGERSarah Buluma

PRINTERRSA Litho

DISTRIBUTIONOn The Dot

[email protected]

PUBLISHED BY

Managing Director: Robbie Stammers

Physical address: 176 Main Road, Claremont, 7700, Cape Town Postal address: PO Box 23692, Claremont, 7735 Telephone: +27 (0) 21 683 0005Websites: www.fastcompany.comwww.fastcompany.co.za www.insightspublishing.co.za

REGISTER ONLINE TODAY

We Process

www.payfast.co.za

PayFast is a payments processing service for South Africans and South African websites. We enable easy, secure and instant transfer of money from online buyers to sellers.

There are no setup or monthly fees and we allow sellers individuals, businesses and charities to accept secure payments from online buyers in a variety of ways.

@payfast

facebook.com/payfast


From the Editor

Design has steadily become a major element in our world today. Groundbreaking innovations seem to be coming from various spheres, no longer confined to the traditional spaces that have strong capital backing. Instead, it has become so embedded in our modern culture, with designers working on literally everything and anything, and collaborating on an unprecedented scale.

Though design has never been in a state of stasis, a major boom is happening as we speak. The influence of individuals like Steve Jobs cannot be understated. Their efforts have nudged creative thinking in the right direction through their design-driven mindset. From smart-corner urban warehouses, to makeshift shacks in the sprawling townships, and an increase in maker and hacker communities, a new era of design is truly upon us. Its clear that collaboration, innovation and creative thinking are having a major influence on the world.

Thomas Chapman, an urban architect (and one of the main speakers at this years Design Indaba) featured in this edition, argues that the architectural profession has

Designing for tomorrow,today

Creative collaborationFast Company SA is the

proud official media partner of the 2016 Design

Indaba Conference.

a far more significant role to play in Africa than in more developed contexts, as the continent has many real spatial problems to solve. In essence, design thinking can challenge some of these issues we face.

In an effort to draw greater attention to this approach of driving a better world through creativity, Fast Company SA is the proud official media partner of the 2016 Design Indaba Conference. We are excited to be associated with this cutting-edge event that has gained worldwide acclaim for its relevance in nurturing future creative talent while fostering a strong element of traditional design thinking. A sterling example of this is Indabas Emerging Creatives Programme, a developmental platform for young creatives. We feature the 2016 group of architects, fashion designers, illustrators, furniture crafters, jewellers and others who are thinking out of the box to come up with world-changing designs for the future.

And the man who started it all is our cover personality Ravi Naidoo, creator and MD of the Design Indaba and its founding company, Interactive Africa. We wanted to create a platform that would really put South Africa and Africa up on the global creativity grid, he said of his motivation to start the event way back in 1995. Since then, he has ensured the Indaba offers our fledgling designers a strong foundation, and that the creative landscape continues evolving.

As we kick off the new year, this first edition of 2016 is dedicated to South African design and creative thinking. We hope to see many of you at the Design Indaba, getting a glimpse at what the future holds.

Evans [email protected] @Nyasha1e

0800 474 [email protected] www.seartec.co.za

SeartecSA @SeartecSA Seartec South Africa

SCIENTIFIC CALCULATORS

335 REASONS WHY WE ARE #1With 335 functions and a WriteView display, the Sharp EL-W535HT scientifi c calculator is Top of the Class. The EL-W535HT has been awarded the FAIRLADY Consumer Best Buy Award for 2016. Seartec is the worlds largest distributor of Sharp Calculators.

Sign up for the Maths at Sharp Newsletter to keep up to date with the latest trends in maths education & technology. Sign up at www.mathsatsharp.co.za and stay connected.

Seartec - Fast Company 4 FL CALCULATOR.indd 1 2016/01/20 11:04 AM


W h a t a re yo u l ov i n g t h i s m o n t h?

Philip FaureGlobal head: Wealth Planning and Philanthropy, Standard Bank

B a t e l e u r C l u b : M y w i fe a n d I s h a re a p a s s i o n fo r trav e l to w i l d e r n e s s a re a s i n Afr i c a . F o r o u r 2 0 t h w e d d i n g a n n i v e r s a r y, w e b o u g h t m e m b e r s h i p to t h e B a te l e u r C l u b by l u x u r y trav e l c o m p a ny, & B ey o n d g i v i n g u s a c c e s s to s o m e o f t h e to p l u x u r y w i l d e r n e s s l o d g e s , b u t a t l o c a l p r i c e s . I t s a g re a t w ay to tre a t y o u r s e l f to a fe w n i g h t s o f l u x u r y o n c e a y e a r (w i t h o u t t h e k i d s) , a s l o n g a s y o u re p re p a re d to trav e l d u r i n g o u t- o f- p e a k p e r i o d s .

T h e P u r p o s e D r i ve n L i f e : W h a t o n E a r t h A m I H e r e F o r ? by R i c k Wa r r e n: In my hectic investment- banking world, I often have to stop and wonder what on Earth Im really here for. This books grounds me and guides my spiritual journey, allowing me to continuously question and discover my true purpose. It gives perspective on how all the various pieces (family, work, community) of my life fit together.

The recommender

Favourite travel club

Dr Terence SibiyaManaging executive: Client Coverage,Nedbank Corporate & Investment Banking

F AV O U R I T E B O O K S

Rashiq FataarFounder, Future Cape Town website

Green Is Not A Colour by Devan Valenti and Simon Atlas: Beautifully designed and intellectually engaging, the book packs a powerful punch by exploring a wide range of environmental issues that face our planet, as well as the various technologies and processes that provide solutions to these seemingly overwhelming challenges. The book is a must-read for students, educators, entrepreneurs and anyone else concerned about the future of the Earth.


F AV O U R I T E R U N N I N G S H O E S Claire McFarlaneAdventurer & founder, ProjectBRA.org

V i bra m F i veF ing er s: So how do I train for a 3 000-kilometre barefoot beach run, living in Joburg? My pair of FiveFingers gives me the sensation of being barefoot, but keeps my soles protected even when running the harshest trails. Theyre perfect for every adventureand, being so compact, make light travelling a breeze.

F AV O U R I T E B U S I N E S S T O O L S

Dagan James RegoAssociate, Biccari Bollo Mariano Inc.

Mole sk ine jou r nal: With the way tech is going nowadays, were all trying to make our lives paperless. However, theres just one tool that every lawyer and businessperson should never convertthe Moleskine journal. Theres something appealing and authentic about it. I make sure I capture everything important that goes on in my busy dayall of it is contained in a professional-looking, leather-bound journal. My favourite Moleskine edition is the Evernote Business Notebook (which also offers technological capabilities for those who really desire making everything paperless).

Simon AtlasCo-founder, The Lightning Lab

F u t u r eC a pe Tow n.c om: Very few people have such a passion and genuine understanding for the potential and importance of the value of cities and how they should function. The Future Cape Town website has done a magnificent job educating and inspiring both industry professionals and general enthusiasts.

Devan ValentiCo-founder, The Lightning Lab

B e t t l w a t c h : P ro d u c e d w i t h h a n d - m a d e p re c i s i o n , t h e s e w o o d e n t i m e p i e c e s a re n ot o n l y b e a u t i f u l l y c raf te d b u t a l s o e m u l a te a n h o n e st y i n t h e i r u s e o f n a t u ra l m a te r i a l s . F o u n d e d by e n tre p re n e u r i a l c o u p l e S t u a r t a n d M a ke e d a S w a n , t h e i r v i s i o n i s to u s e t h e i r c re a t i v i t y to d e s i g n p ro d u ct s t h a t c a n b e m a n u fa ct u re d a n d s o l d i n S o u t h Afr i c a , s u p p o r t i n g l o c a l b u s i n e s s .

The recommender

Favourite fashion accessory


Ale

ssio

La

Ruf

fa p

rofi

le im

age:

Tho

ban

Jap

pie

C o u c h t o 5 K : T h i s tra i n i n g a p p te a c h e s c o u c h p ot a to e s h o w to r u n 5 k m (o r fo r 3 0 m i n u te s n o n - sto p) i n o n l y n i n e w e e ks . Yo u s w i tc h i t o n a l o n g s i d e y o u r m u s i c a p p w h e n y o u g o r u n n i n g , a n d i t te l l s y o u w h e n to w a l k a n d w h e n to r u n . T h e t i m i n g i s u n c a n ny, s i n c e i tke e p s p u s h i n g y o u j u st p a st y o u r I m g o i n g to d i e p o i n t a n d t h e n l et s y o u w a l k a g a i n . B e fo re y o u k n o w i t, y o u v e g o n e fro m w a l k i n g m o st o f t h e w ay to r u n n i n g l o n g e r d i st a n c e s .

Alessio La Ruffa Photographer, alessiolr.com

Tweetbot: I love the slick third-party Twitter client for iOS; it has a clean user interface and doesnt display Twitter ads, which is a great help when you want to stay updated and cut through the noise. If I need to know how my tweets are doing at a glance, Tweetbot offers stats showing their performance.

Stacey Vee Head: Content Strategy, Content Candy

Slack: I like to describe Slack as Skype on steroids. Its hands down the most useful productivity tool we introduced in our agency last year. Internal emails have decreased by at least 70%. You can allocate a channel to each client or project, share ideas, upload files, and schedule meetings and reminders. Slack also plugs into Google Drive and project management tools such as Trello.

App Alley

Francis GersbachPhotographer, GreatGrampops

Sky Guide: When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut so Id spend hours looking at the sky, searching for stars and satellites. Now Ive found a little cheat. The Sky Guide app not only notifies you five minutes before a satellite passes or when theres an astro event, but it also uses your phones gyroscope to follow where youre lookinggiving you a virtual sky in your hand, all labelled with constellations, the suns path, and much more.

The recommender

Elma Smit SuperSport rugby

presenter & marketing manager, MyPlayers


T W E N T Y P R E D I C T I O N SF O R T H E N E X T 2 0 Y E A R SBy Robert Safian

The doctor handed me the scissors. As I pressed down the blades, snipping the umbilical cord, I looked up at my wife. She was smiling, holding our newborn son.

That was 20 years ago. Our baby is now 1.8m tall and a junior at varsity. When I look at him, I see all the stages of his life in one continuum, the toddling and the tantrums, the laughs and the arguments, the late nights coaxing a crying infant to sleep, and waiting for a teenager to come home.

Fast Company US turned 20 in December 2015, and the world has changed dramatically since the cover of issue No. 1 declared: Work Is Personal. Computing Is Social. Knowledge Is Power. Break the Rules. Yet, that manifesto is more relevant than ever. How we interpret those words has evolvedwe did not predict an App Store or an Oculus Riftbut their spirit has

well as hundreds of governments around the globe, Vestberg has inside knowledge of everybodys plansinformation he cannot specifically reveal, but that informs his thinking about where our world is trending.

Today, there are 7.2 billion mobile subscriptions, he says, and only 2.9 billion people have broadband, by which he means high-speed Internet access. But as technology advances, prices will fall. By 2020, 90% of the worlds population will be covered by mobile broadband networks. Another five to 10 years further, broadband will

have universal reach.This, Vestberg

argues, will have a transformative impact. He points to a historical precedent that is now hundreds of years old: the steam engine. When first invented, its function was to remove water from mines. Only later was the technology applied to other arenas, spawning steamships and railroads and turbocharging industry. The advent of connected mobile technology is just as powerful and equally underestimated, Vestberg says. We are still in the early stages, with implications for healthcare, education, banking, energy, manu-facturing and more. Our imagination is our limitation, he says.

Vestbergs predictions of transformation are echoed by those on the frontier in other disciplines: genetics, alternative energy, artificial intelligence and so on. If you travel down the likeliest development paths in each of these areas and then wrap all the advances into one future, you see that we are at a dramatic inflection point.

I have used the phrase Generation Flux to describe this era of transition. Because the changes are coming so fast, there is a rising premium on our ability to adjust, to be adaptable in new ways. This can be scary for some, but it is also undeniably excitingand for those prepared to embrace this emerging reality, the possibilities are tantalising.

What follows are 20 observations that we

become central to our culture.

We celebrate birthdays to remember all that has gone before, and also what is to come. With the December/January 2015 issue, No. 201, we recognise Fast Company USs 20th anniversary by looking toward the future. The dynamic change of the past two decades is just a warm-up for what is still to come.

I talked recently about this with CEO Hans Vestberg of the Swedish communications company, Erics son. Because Ericsson builds products for the major telecoms providers and cellphone makers, as


believe will hold fast in the years ahead. They are predictionsand, as such, are fraught with limitation and supposition. None of them, on their own, is shocking. That is by design. In combination, though, they outline a world of tomorrow where work is still personal, computing is still social, and knowledge is still power. And where the rules for success will be ever changing.

1

Speed Will Triumph. The best soccer teams in the world emphasise pace of play over perfection. They recognise that keeping the ball moving quickly is

better than waiting and trying to make the ideal pass. Speed emerged as a business imperative in 1995 with the meteoric rise of Netscape, and it has become even more central in the years since. Constant iteration and redefinition are central features at businesses from Amazon to Google to Netflix, and every industry is now required to embrace that pace. (The unanswered question: Which governments will learn to operate with this speed imperative?) Facebook may be the ultimate expression of iterative change, expecting new initiatives to be imperfectand relentlessly improving them over time.

2

Mark Zuckerberg Will Lead. When we called Zuckerberg The Kid Who Turned Down $1 Billion on the cover of our May 2007 issue, he was a baby-faced 22-year-old with just 19 million users. Today he still has that baby face, but he has grown into an unparalleled leader. Now 31 years old, with nearly 1.5 billion customers across the globe, Zuckerberg is wildly successful yet still underestimated. He has relentlessly improved himself as a businessperson and continues to be focused on learning. This psycho-logical feature, along with the fact that he has a net worth north of $30 billion (around R480 billion) and a controlling stake in a

world-spanning enterprise, virtually guarantees he will be a bedrock figure in our economic and cultural evolution for decades to come.

3

Malala Will Build. After youve won a Nobel Peace Prize as a teenager, whats next? Malala Yousafzai is answering that question by leveraging her global public imagenot simply to raise awareness of the educational needs of girls in the developing world but also to orchestrate on-the-ground programmes that will have tangible impact. What her nascent Malala Fund represents, she explains, is an ongoing effort to change societal expectations. Malala herself represents the leading edge of a cohort that is only just being unleashed: young talent growing up in obscure corners of the globe. This generation will increasingly have the tools and opportunity to redefine our world. Malala is just the beginning.

4

Elon Musk Will Inspire. Whether Musk is the real-life incarnation of Tony Stark is not the point. Nor is the ultimate success of his enterprises: Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity (though we wouldnt advise betting against them). What matters is that Musks ideas, and his example, are a catalysing force for progress on one of the most devilishly complicated issues of our time: climate change. As the worlds population grows and the standard of living improves, we will produce more

greenhouse gases, more pollution. Concerted, high-impact government action will not materialise unless there is a crisis. What remains, then, is a market-based solutionwhich is precisely what Musk is dedicated to instigating. In outlining his most audacious plans yet, Musk tells contributing writer Max Chafkin, The Issue With Existing Batteries Is That They Suck (page 48). By exploiting that seemingly modest deficiency, Musk not only wants to build a bigger business but also inspire us to address our biggest challenges.

5

Technology Will Improve the Human Condition. Science fiction often depicts a dystopian tomorrow. But if you consider the long lens of history, technological advances have consistently improved peoples lives. We cannot forget the often cruel and rapacious things that have been perpetrated in the name of progress. Nor do we expect an end to the tragedies of natural disaster or disease outbreak, of war or terrorism. Whether by accident or overt design, nuclear, chemical and bio logical threats remain constant. But it is also worthwhile to remind ourselves that fears of tomorrow have often been overblown. Perhaps the most telling statistic: Global life expectancy has climbed consistently over the centuries, and in the past decade has improved for all regions of the world. That advance will continue unabated.


6

Digital Tools Will Unlock Opportunity. Inequality remains rampant across the United States and around the world. The digital divide has often served to heighten the gap between the haves and have-nots. But rising mobile penetration offers the potential to shift that dynamic. When broadband smartphones achieve global ubiquity (as Ericssons Vestberg predicts), digital learning tools offered by Khan Academy, Duo lingo and others will transform opportunity in the developing world. The teachers and students of tomorrow will not be confined to classrooms, nor to the countries and cities that can afford them.

7

Democracy Will Be Digital. Naysayers have given many explanations for why voting in the US does not take place via the Internet: identity authentication, security, reliability. These concerns have all been overcome by businesses such as banks and retailersand before long, government will solve them as well. As a new generation of voters comes to the pollsa group raised on one-click purchases and instant access via appsthe traditional voting process will become untenable. New candidates will establish their credibilityby extolling their technological sophistication, and e-voting will be everywhere.

8

Diversity Will Deepen. Those controlling the halls of power in business and government in the US remain predominantly male and white. This will not persist as our population becomes more heterogeneous. An increasingly diverse leadership will be more successful too: As the pace of change accelerates, we will face knottily complex problemsand the greater the variety of approaches and experiences available to tackle them, the better the likelihood of success.

9

Mission Will Trump Money. Economists have long stressed the power of financial incentives. Whats measured is what matters; competition breeds excellence; you get what you pay for. It is all logical, yet in many circumstances it is coming up short. Recent real-world studies have shown that having a purpose associated with work produces better performance than pure financial reward. The next generation of workers will expect to be engaged in their jobs through more than just financial means.

10

DNA Will Be Unstop-pable. The decoding of the human genome has launched a wave of new treatments and approaches. Inspiring as these examples are, though, the impact of genetic data is in its infancy.

11 Medical Training Will Be Rewritten. Modern doctoring begins with a boot-camp experience: endless days of unending shifts as young interns are forced to ingestand deliverdiagnoses with reflex-like expertise. As our library of medical knowledge expands beyond any doctors ability to retain all that information, the doctors of the future will have to become data interpreters, tapping into Watson-like technical tools to both diagnose conditions and optimise treatments. This transition promises to make healthcare more effective and, ideally, will allow doctors to focus even more on the important task of patient service.

12

Human Empathy Will Be Central. Its not

just doctors who can improve their bedside manner. We can all stand to listen and respond with more sensitivity. In fact, as machine learning and artificial intelligence insinuate themselves more deeply into manufacturing and the workplace, the one arena that will never be usurped by technology is human-to-human communication.

13

Entrepreneurship Will Not Be for Everyone. The ubiquity of ABCs Shark Tank underscores just how appealing the entrepreneur has become in global culture. Everyone wants to start their own business, to launch their own Zuckerbergian success. Government leaders extol the virtue of the startup world, and more and more young people hope

for a future where they can be their own bosses. Theres only one problem: Entrepreneurship is hard work that requires both high-intensity risk taking and a steel-stomach capacity for absorbing disappointment. Some people are psychologically suited for this roller coaster; many of us are not.

14

Bubbles Will Burst. Is there a tech bubble? Can all those billion-dollar unicorn startups really be worth so much? Will investors who believe the hype ultimately end up getting burnt? The answer to all three of those questions is yes. Yes, there is a tech bubble in some places. Truth is, there is always a bubble somewhere. Some of those unicorns are really worth billions


and some are not. Some investors will get burnt; others will get rich. Which is which? Well know once it happens. Talk of bubble versus no bubble is a distraction for most of us, a parlour game. When major bubbles burst, almost everyone is taken by surpriseand even those who arent are generally upended nearly as much as the rest of us. Whats most important, once again, is remaining adaptable: If the arena youre involved in turns out to be a bubble, it will be time to change arenas.

15 Simple Will Be More Difficult. New technologies often rise on the promise of making everything simpler,

better and cheaper. Over time, we learn that they often do make things betterand even cheaperbut rarely do things remain simple for long. Consider the advertising marketplace, which once seemed pretty straightforward (network TV ads for all!), but marketers had limited knowledge of who saw their ads and how those prospects responded. Marketers can now target specific pools of customers and track their activity. Yet, nothing about the modern ad world is simple: There are more avenues for reaching customers than ever, and managing a variety of social, web and mobile programmes makes the old days of TVs hegemony seem quaintly appealing. Companies like Google

contend that things will get easier, thanks to new analytics and programmatic marketplaces. More likely: The industry will become more effective at targeting the right message to the right person in the right waybut it will also be more complex.

16 Cybersecurity Will Be Costly. Every company is a tech company today, because we all use technology to operate (in the same way that we are all electric companies, because we tap into that grid). The necessary corollary to this fact: We are all vulnerable to cyber-disruption, whether from hackers or our own or others incompetence.

That doesnt mean we will all be disrupted, but it does mean that every enterprise will need cyber protection in ways that havent historically been budgeted for. Costs will rise. Count on it.

17 China and India Will Dominate. Pundits have long predicted that the sleeping giants China and India would awake to challenge US and European economic dominance. In the past 20 years, the progression down this path has not been a straight linebut it has been un deniable. The manifestations have been counterintuitive too: Apple is effectively a China-centred manufacturing giant with an American design and marketing arm; its Chinese rival, Xiaomi, is expanding into India following an analogous strategy. The impact of these rising economies will continue to deepen.

18 Food Will Be Healthier. No high-fructose corn syrup. No trans fats. Less salt, sugar and fat. The supermarket aisles burst with assertions of healthier foods; it is undoubtedly true that, more than ever, we are increasingly aware of what we are putting into our bodies. The success of Chipotles and Whole Foods in the USand Wellness Warehouse, Kauai and Woolworths in South Africaillustrates that consumers are willing to pay for higher quality products and, even more,

to demand them. What once was luxury will, over time, become table stakes.

19 Cash Will Disappear. Carrying a little emergency money around with you has always made sense, even if you ended up tapping that resource for something less than essential. But that need is rapidly dissipating. First there were ATMs (why carry cash around when you can grab it when you need it?), but electronic payments via phones and chips are the wave that will wash away the need for cash entirely. Penny for your thoughts? Whats a penny?

20

We Will All Be Family. Phones, planes and televisions have all served to make the world smaller, and the ongoing wave of technological change will only draw us into closer proximity. We will have less licence to ignore the troubles (and challenges) in other parts of the globe, and well have a vested interest in maintaining familial peace. Nobody knows how to criticise you quite like your kinthey know your vulnerabilities wellbut no one is better at coming to your aid, either. Of these 20 items, this is the one with the largest measure of hope: that our increasing knowledge of and intimacy with one another leads to greater understanding and opportunity for [email protected]

T H E S E T H I N G S C A N T F A I L


By Harry McCracken

As Facebook has grown, so too have CEO Mark Zuckerbergs ambitions. An inside look at how his vision for virtual reality, artificial intelligence and drones will cement his dominance for the next decade

2 2 FA STCOMPANY.CO.Z A FEBRUARY 2016

ark is fixing stuff.

Im killing time in the

Frank Gehrydesigned Building 20, the signature feature of which is its soaring 40 300 square metres of open space, the latest addition to Facebooks campus in Menlo Park, California. A PR handler is explaining why CEO Mark Zuckerberg is running slightly behind schedule for our chat. I express surprise. Mark still fixes stuff?

To say hes actively involved, she confides, is an understatement. He notices things that are broken before anybody.

As recently as 2012, the year Zuckerberg set a personal goal to code every day, that might have meant he had detected something glitchy on Facebooks site and was reprogramming it himself. When he emerges a few minutes later, unspecified stuff presumably fixed, we sit down on adjacent couches in a fishbowl conference room near his desk in Building 20, and Zuckerberg makes it clear that those days are gone. If were trying to build a world-class News Feed, and a world-class messaging product, and a world-class search product, and a world-class ad system, and invent virtual reality, and build drones, I cant write every line of code, he tells me. I cant write any lines of code.

The Facebook of todayand tomorrowis far more expansive than it was just a few years ago. Its easy to forget that when the company filed to go public on February 1, 2012, it was just a single website and an app that the experts werent sure could ever be profitable. Now, almost a billion and a half people use the main, core Facebook service, and thats growing. But 900 million people use WhatsApp, and thats an important part

Mof the whole ecosystem now, Zuckerberg says. Four hundred million people use Instagram, 700 million people use Messen-ger, and 700 million people use Groups. Increasingly, were just going to go more and more in this direction.

To further grow these services and any others that Facebook develops or acquires, Zuckerberg is betting his companys future on three major technology initiatives. One is developing advanced artificial intelligence that can help Facebook understand what matters to users. The second is virtual reality, in the form of Oculus VR, the ground-breaking company that Facebook acquired in March 2014 for $2 billion (more than R30 billion), which Zuckerberg believes will be the next major technology we use to interact with each other. And the third is bringing the Internet, including Facebook, to the 4 billionplus humans who arent yet connected, even if it requires flying a drone over a village and beaming data down via laser. Given the robust health of Facebooks business, Zuckerberg is comfortable lavishing attention and resources on these visions. Facebook gave Fast Company US wide-ranging access to Zuckerberg, his senior leadership team and others to delve into the companys audacious plans to shape the next decade.

In the tech industry, theres nothing weird about setting goals so lofty that they sound unachievable. Google CEO Larry Page, for instance, is so invested in the virtue of gambling on disparate, wildly ambitious projectsfrom self-driving cars to smart contact lensesthat he restructured his company around the concept in August last year, making Googles core businesses a division of a new idea factory called Alphabet. Zuckerberg, by contrast, isnt interested in doing everythingjust the things he views as deeply related to his companys central vision, and crucial to it. There are different ways to do innovation, he says, drawing a stark contrast without ever mentioning Page, Google or Alphabet. You can plant a lot of seeds, not be committed to any particular one of them, but just see what grows. And this really isnt how weve approached this. We go mission-first, then focus on the pieces we need and go deep on them, and be committed to them. Facebooks mission is to give everyone in the world the power to share and make the world more open and connected, as Zuckerberg says, explaining he is now spending a third of his time overseeing these

future initiatives. These things cant fail. We need to get them to work in order to achieve the mission.

When Facebook was morphing from Ivy League college project to Silicon Valley startup, Zuckerberg had not only never run a companyhed never been in a company, marvels Marc Andreessen, the browser pioneer, venture capitalist, Facebook board member and long-time Zuckerberg confidant. Hes learnt everything he knows about business in the last 10 years. And now hes one of the best CEOs in the world.

Whether because Zuckerberg, 31, started so young, or because he retains his youthful demeanour and grey-T-shirt work uniform, he has been underestimated for almost as long as his company has existed. Facebook wouldnt work outside Harvard. It wouldnt work outside elite colleges. It wouldnt work among the general populace. It couldnt topple MySpace. It couldnt make enough money to justify its valuation. It couldnt hold on to teenagers once their parents signed up. It wouldnt matter as much on smartphones as it had on PCs. It couldnt make enough money on mobile to satisfy Wall Street.

Zuckerberg and his team have overcome every doubt. Almost 90% of the nearly 1.5 billion people a month who use Facebook access it on a mobile device at least part of the time, and more than three-quarters of its $3.8 billion (R63.2 billion) in advertising revenue in the second quarter of 2015 came from mobile users. The company runs four of the six largest social platforms in the world (all but Googles YouTube and Tencents WeChat) and is wildly profitable. Four years ago, when the company revealed that 1 billion people logged in to the service in one month, the news was astounding. In August 2015, 1 billion people used Facebook on a single Monday, and it felt inevitable.

When I ask people close to Zuckerberg how, exactly, he has pulled off these achievements, I dont hear a lot of anecdotes about him swooping in and personally making genius-level decisions that suddenly changed everything. Instead, they praise his inquisitiveness, persistence, ability to deploy resources, and devotion to improving Facebook and himself. He has a knack for carving up grand plans into small, doable victories. Most of our conversation was about long-term strategy, and then wed backtrack from there to what we should do over the next month, says Bret Taylor, who worked

FEBRUARY 2016 FA STCOMPANY.CO.Z A 23Illustrations by relajaelcoco

Facebook is taken more seriously by advertisers and becomes cash-flow positive

a year ahead of schedule, transforming it from startup

to long-term comer.

Launches Internet.org, in partnership with other tech

companies, with the goal of making Internet access

available to the entire world population.

Facebooks IPO values the company at $104 billion (R1.7

trillion), a record for a new listing though a software

glitch slightly marred the debut. Purchases Instagram.

Although Facebook isnt available in China, the service exceeds 500 million monthly

active users, becoming the worlds largest social

network.

Among the cards Zuckerberg might have sent: to Jan Koum, for selling him Whats App for

R369 billion; and to Palmer Luckey, for selling him Oculus

VR for R33.5 billion.

Acquired more than 10 startups. Moved company

headquarters to the former home of Sun Microsystems

in Menlo Park, on a large, centralised campus.

Facebook expands its platform as a publisher,

introducing Instant Articles and accelerating its video initiatives. It also begins to seed Oculus with content.

P E R S O N A L C H A L L E N G E

C O M P A N Y M I L E S T O N E

Wear a tie every day.

Meet a new person every day who doesnt

work at Facebook.

Code every day.

Learn Mandarin.

Write at least one thank-you note every day.

Only eat animals he kills himself.

Read a new book every two weeks.

2 0 1 2 2 0 1 3

2 0 0 9

2 0 1 4

2 0 1 0

2 0 1 5

2 0 1 1

M A R K Z U C K E R B E R G ' S G R O W T H C H A R TFacebooks CEO has worked hard at improving himselfand its paid off for the business


An

toin

e A

nto

nio

l/B

loo

mb

erg

via

Get

ty Im

ages

HES STATESMAN-LIKE 1 4 0 1 4 0 l i k e s

If you see a photo of Zuckerberg in a suit and tie, the odds are high that hes meeting with an international dignitary. In September, he hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a town-hall forum on Facebooks campus. Modi endorsed the power of social media to keep government accountable.

HES HUMAN 1 7 6 7 6 3 2 l i k e s

On July 31, Zuckerberg posted that his wife, Priscilla Chan, was expecting a baby girl after three miscarriages: You feel so hopeful when you learn youre going to have a child. You start imagining who theyll become and dreaming of hopes for their future. You start making plans, and then theyre gone.

HE TAKES STANCES 2 9 1 7 3 1 l i k e s

When the US Supreme Court legalised same-sex marriage, Zuckerberg posted a graphic showing the growth in Facebook LGBT groups since 2008. Our country was founded on the promise that all people are created equal, and today we took another step toward achieving that promise.

HE CELEBRATES SUCCESS 6 0 9 9 7 l i k e s

Our community reached a nice milestone today, Zuckerberg wrote in February last year. More than 2 million small businesses were buying ads on Facebookwhich he said was good for those companies, their customers and the economy. Left unstated: Its also very good for Facebook.

HES PLAYFUL 9 9 1 3 3 3 l i k e s

In April, Zuckerberg donned sunglasses to pose with action star Vin Diesel, who dropped by Facebook to talk about what its like to have 87 million followers. He was stokedIm looking forward to seeing Fast & Furious 7 tonight!and noted that Diesel writes all his own Facebook posts.

H O W Z U C K U S E S F A C E B O O KMark has been using his own creation longer than anyone.

Today, his posts give insight into his interests and activitiesand no matter the subject, Facebooks mission of making the world more open and connected always

seems to be top of mind.

as Facebooks CTO from 2009 to 2012 and who was at the company when it corrected course after a famously bumpy first attempt at putting the service on smartphones. Its one of the main reasons Facebook is where it is today.

Zuckerberg is a total inspiration in how much he cares about his work and in how hard he works, says Chris Cox, who dropped out of a Stanford graduate programme in 2005 to join the company as a software engineer and is now chief product officerand is so integral to its culture that he still speaks with every new employee as part of his or her orientation. For all of us who work with him, its like, Man, he is so good at improving.

Sue Desmond-Hellmann is a Facebook board member and CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which puts her in close proximity to two prodigies who quit Harvard to seek fortunes out west. Both Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, she says, have this sense of relentlessness. Why cant that happen? Why cant we accomplish this? It can be fun to be around that. It can also be like, Oh. My. God.

When I meet with COO Sheryl Sandberg, she shares a personal story of a family gathering and making smores, which captures several of Zuckerbergs preternatural gifts. Mark said, Im going to make a marshmallow, she tells me in her conference room, which is adorned with a framed drawing of her as Spider-Woman. I looked at my friend and said, Hes going to make the perfect marshmallow. Because hes going to be the one out of all of us who is going to have the patience. In order to make the right marshmallow, you cant do it right in the fire, because then it gets burnt. You cant walk away. You actually have to sit there for five to 10 minutes with the marshmallow above the flame, but not too close, so that it gets completely heated but doesnt burn. And the only person whos actually willing to do that is Mark. Because he is that focused and that determined. Ive never met anyone with more perseverance than Mark Zuckerberg.

In hindsight, there were two particular moments that have put Facebook in the enviable position of being able to pursue its most audacious dreams. The first was a recruiting spree back in 20072008, when the company concluded it needed more players with serious Silicon Valley experience. A significant percentage of the current leadership joined during this time, including Sandberg, who came from Google to be the principal architect of the business. From Mozilla, the Firefox browser purveyor, Zuckerberg hired Mike Schroepferknown universally as Schrepwho ultimately replaced Taylor as CTO.

FEBRUARY 2016 FA STCOMPANY.CO.Z A 2 5

Sau

mya

Kh

and

elw

al/H

ind

ust

an T

imes

via

Get

ty Im

ages

Chris CoxChief Product Officer, Facebook

Cox poses for a profile shoot during an interview on January 12, 2016 in New Delhi. Of the billion Facebook users the world over, less than a sixth are in India. But of its next billion users, Facebook expects a third to come from India. To get its target, Facebook is trying new things like Facebook Lite: the thinner, easier-to-load version that consumes less data and is built specifically for India.

The amount of trust and bandwidth that you build up working with someone for five, seven, 10 years? Its just awesome, says Zuckerberg. I care about openness and connectedness in a global sense. [Sandberg] has the emotional warmth and ability to connect with people that allows us to live that mission inside the company. Shes even better than people think she is. As for Schrep, hes just extraordinary at the patience and composure you need for managing long-term projects.

Zuckerberg, unlike many of his rivals, has been able to keep his leadership team stable. Their cohesiveness led to the second key moment: the Instagram acquisition and its subsequent success.

When Facebook announced it was buying the photo-sharing juggernaut in April 2012, less than six weeks before its IPO, a flurry of articles followed with titles such as Five Ways Facebook Will Ruin In-stagram. Instead, the deal became a model for how businesses in Facebooks portfolio get managed. Zuckerberg left co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in charge,

encouraged them to preserve their own culture, and gave them access to tools from Facebooks recruiting team to its spam-fighting technologiesthat helped them get where they were planning to go anyway, only faster.

Schrep and I work day-to-day, operationally, on how we build our team, where we hire from, organisational stuff, says Systrom, Instagrams lanky, bearded CEO. Mark and I work most closely on product. And Sheryl and I work most closely on advertising and strategic issues around policy. Imagine getting to have Mark, Sheryl and Schrep on your board. Many companies in the Valley would kill to have that. And we get it by default, which is pretty sweet. Instagrams user base tripled in the 10 months after the acquisition announcement, to 100 million monthly users, then doubled in the next 13 months. (It now boasts more than 400 million users.)

The lessons Facebook learnt from the deal might have been as valuable as Instagrams revenue potential. It began pursuing major acquisitions more aggressivelyit acquired

WhatsApp and Oculus in early 2014and then found itself looking at its own services with fresh eyes. Zuckerberg hired PayPal president David Marcus to run its chat product, Messenger, and decided to remove it from Facebooks smartphone version, forcing users to download a stand-alone app. We were all incredibly uncomfortable with that, says a former Facebook employee who was present when Zuckerberg explained his rationale. But he had thought it through carefully, the core use cases and the competitive situation. A little over a year later, Messengers active user base more than tripled.

Splitting Messenger off from Facebook let Marcus begin to build his own business model, one akin to Chinas messaging behemoth, WeChat. Messenger has its own app store, with partners such as ESPN offering animated GIFs, and a feature that allows companies (including e-commerce retailers Everlane and Zulily) to conduct customer servicefrom delivery tracking to returnswithin Messenger. Were not in a rush, says Marcus. But over time, we


can build a really good business out of these interactions.

Three thousand miles away from Facebooks Menlo Park headquar ters, in an office building in New Yorks Noho neighbourhood that was once a Wanamaker department store, a researcher named Rob Fergus is showing me software designed to identify objects in a video stream. Computers have long struggled to learn whats happening in video, which contains so much more data than text or a still photo. He points a webcam thats attached to a laptop running his program at a remote control. The software, which is so computationally intensive that it causes the cooling fans inside his laptop to kick in at a full, ear-piercing blast, thinks the remote is a turtle. He focuses the camera on a computer mouse. Once again, it thinks its spotted a turtle. Only occasionally does it correctly identify an item.

Fergus looks sheepish. But the point of the demonstration isnt to prove that Facebook is ready to roll out this AI feature,

just that theyre working on it.If youve ever felt like your Facebook

News Feed is filled with people you dont care about sharing thoughts you didnt particularly want to hear, youll appreciate why Facebook is pushing to further the art of AI. In its current form, the social network is still far better at collecting vast amounts of data than understanding what that data means. Advanced AI could help emphasise the stuff thats truly relevant to you, keeping you on the service longer and boosting your attractiveness as a subject for targeted advertising. Facebook is working to be at the centre of the world of AI, because it will affect Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, says Systrom. Its broadly applicable to all social products.

Facebook has dabbled in AI for years. In 2010, for example, it introduced facial-recognition technology to identify people in photos. In late 2013, though, Zuckerberg came to believe that AIwhich he calls one of the hardest engineering challenges of our timewas central to the companys future and decided to establish a lab devoted to it.

He began courting Yann LeCun, a New York University faculty member and world-class expert in deep learning, to run it. Unlike the archetypal young turk Facebook employee, the 55-year-old, Paris-born LeCun is an minence grise of his craft, with decades of experience studying machine vision, pattern recognition and other technologies with the potential to make the social network smarter.

LeCun, however, was disinclined to leave academia or New York. When Zuckerberg thinks Facebook needs something, though, he refuses to treat obstacles as obstacles. He offered to let LeCun set up Facebook AI Researchs headquarters in Manhattan and retain his professorship on the side. LeCun came aboard. Problem solved.

Because Zuckerberg would not be able to interact with LeCun in person on a daily basis, he had the AI researchers who did work at Facebooks main campus sit near him so he could learn from them. When we moved to the new building, we ended up being separated from Zuck by about 10 [metres], LeCun chuckles. He said, No,

Sheryl SandbergCOO, Facebook

Sandberg speaks on a panel at the Fortune Global Forum on November 3, 2015 in San Francisco. Virtual reality is becoming reality, she said.

Just

in S

ulli

van

/Get

ty Im

ages


Sour

ces:

Fac

ebo

ok

2015

Q3

Ear

ning

s Re

po

rt; W

orl

d W

ide

Wo

rx a

nd F

usew

are

s So

uth

Afr

ican

So

cial

Med

ia L

and

scap

e 20

16

311m out of 738m

E u r o p e213m out of

365m

U S a n d C a n a d a

471m out of 1.7bn

R e s t of t he wor ld496m out of

4.3bn

A s i a - P a c i f i c

FACEBOOK MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS/POPULATION

U P A N D T O T H E R I G H TFacebooks growth machine is what gives the company

its currency to pursue AI, VR and connectivity.

U S a nd C a n ad aR35.5bn

E u r op eR17.4bn

A si a- P ac i f icR11.6bn R e s t of

t he wor ldR7.4bn

REVENUE IN 20 15 Q3

16.4mW h a t s A p p

7.4mT w i t t e r

13mF a c e b o o k

8.6mYo u T u b e

2.6mI n s t a g r a m

SOCIAL MEDIA USE BY SOUTH AFRICANS 20 15

this is too far, move closer. And so they did. (This is a signature move that Zuckerberg uses to absorb new material; when the team prepared Facebooks Timeline feature in 2011, he placed key design talent near his desk, and he seated Systrom near him after the Instagram acquisition.)

The mandate for the 50-person AI team is also vintage Zuckerberg: Aim ridiculously high, and focus on where you want to go over the long term. One of our goals for the next five to 10 years, Zuckerberg tells me, is to basically get better than human level at all the primary human senses: vision, hearing, language, general cognition. Taste and smell, were not that worried about, he deadpans. For now.

Fergus and his fellow researchers have the freedom to start small rather than think immediately of the massive data problems posed by services with several hundred million users or more. Antoine Bordes, who relocated from a French university to join the New York team (though theres now a Paris branch, because the city is also a hotbed of AI talent), is teaching a computer concepts such as John is in the playground and John picked up the football in order to help it learn to answer queries such as Where is the football? Everything draws on a vocabulary of just 50 words, a purposefully dinky number chosen so that researchers can tell exactly whats going on. This is not big data, says Bordes, who is wearing a T-shirt depicting a robot boxing a dinosaur. This is supersmall data.

LeCun has given Facebook a lab with a strong university-like feel. Rather than having to make sure their work lines up with Facebooks product plans, researchersmany of them fellow academicscan pursue their passions while a separate group, Applied Machine Learning, is responsible for figuring out how to turn the labs breakthroughs into features. The senior research scientists, you dont tell them what to work on, LeCun says. They tell you whats interesting.

Technologies incubated by LeCun and his team are already popping up in Facebook products such as Moments, a new app that scours your phones camera roll for snapshots of friends, then lets you share those photos with those people. Most researchers do care about their stuff having practical relevance, says Fergus, who is technically still on leave from NYU, where he worked alongside LeCun. In academia, a great outcome is you publish a paper that people seem to like at a conference.

LeCuns work is directly affecting Facebooks bottom line, in the form of better spam-prevention tools and software to verify that ads are up to company standardsa task that was once a labour-intensive manual process. I joke that the lab has paid for itself over the next five years with work theyve already done, says Schroepfer.

Palmer Luckey and I are flapping our arms in adjoining isolation-booth-like rooms in Oculuss quarters in Building 18 on Facebooks campus. In the virtual-reality world were sharing, though, Luckey, the endearing 23-year-old wunderkind who founded Oculus VR in his parents garage in 2011, has transmogrified himself into a hovering, cartoony head and hands, and were playing antigravity Ping-Pong. Next, we set off fireworks together and he shoots me with a zap gun, which instantly shrinks me to the size of a gnat as he towers above me.

A few days later, when I meet with Zuckerberg for our first conversation, hes eager to talk about Oculus Ping-Pong even before I begin asking him questions. As he delineates the pleasures that user-adjustable physics bring to table tennis, his expression takes on some of the same goofy glee Id experienced. (Zuckerberg, a gamer himself, is a devotee of Civilization, a venerable game series that Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe worked on in a previous life. The goal of the original 1991 version of Civbuild an empire to stand the test of timeneatly encapsulates its appeal to the Zuckerbergian brain.)

Anyone whos had his or her mind blown by a few minutes of Oculus time in a 3D, 360-degree world can appreciate why Zuckerberg is grinning. But if Oculus were only about games, it wouldnt be an obvious fit for his mission-first vision of Facebooks future. His interest in VR dates back to his experience with, of all things, phones. When the modern smartphone was being bornApples iPhone debuted in 2007 and Googles Android in 2008Facebook was a red-hot startup, but there was no way it could have written its own mobile platform from scratch, let alone persuaded the rest of the industry to adopt it. By 2013, when it had a bit more clout, Facebook created Home, which slathered a Facebook-based veneer on top of Android. The notable flop reinforced the limitations of building on someone elses operating system. One of my big regrets, Zuckerberg says wistfully, is that Facebook hasnt had a major chance to shape the mobile operating system ecosystem.


AF

P P

ho

to/J

osh

Ed

elso

n

(The company has done okay on smartphones: Multiple studies show that Facebook captures more of users mobile time than any other service.)

Oculus, then, represents two big bets in one: that VR will be the next major computing platform, supplanting phones the same way that handheld devices usurped desktopsand that human nature wont change. If you look at how people spend time on all computing platforms, whether its phones or desktops before that, about 40% is spent on some kind of communications and media, Zuckerberg says. Over the long term, when [Oculus] becomes a more mature platform, I would bet its going to be that same 40% of the time spent doing social interactions and things like that. And thats what we know. Thats what we can do. Already, Oculus helped out with Facebooks new 360-degree video feature that debuted last September.

Before Zuckerbergs vision can be realised, Oculus needs to start shipping its Rift headsets. The Facebook acquisition didnt change the companys near-term

goal, which is to offer a version of Rift aimed at hard-core gamers. The closest Iribe has got to disclosing how much the headset will cost is saying that the all-in investment, including a PC, will be about $1 500 (R25 000). That includes an Xbox One gamepad, provided through a surprise deal with Microsoft. The Oculus Touch hand controllers, which are as much of a revelation as the headset and necessary for tasks such as wielding a Ping-Pong paddle, will cost extra and arrive later.

Oculus might have prospered as an independent company; among other accomplishments, it had already scored the most spectacular hiring coup imaginable by signing on legendary game programmer John Carmack (who helped create the landmark first-person shooter Doom) as its CTO. But like Instagram, it has benefited from Facebook ownership. We have supercharged recruiting, says Iribe when I chat with him moments after the June 2015 media event in San Francisco, where he showed off the Oculus Touch controllers for the first time. We were 60 or 70 people

when we got acquired. And were 360-plus today. Its just incredible how fast weve been able to grow.

Oculus has taken full advantage of Zuckerbergs penchant for strategic acquisitions. We come to him and say, Hey, theres this brilliant group of computer-vision scientists, and if they were here and working on this feature, it may be able to land in the next product or a product in two generations, says Iribe, who has quietly snapped up five small companies since Oculus officially became part of Facebook in 2014. And hes like, Okay, lets go do this.

As usual with a new venture, Zuckerberg is taking an uncommonly patient approach to making money from Oculus. Over the long term, we need to make sure its sustainable, he says. But sustainable could mean selling it at break-even and having a business around software or some other part of the platform, which is actually something that were much better attuned to.

For Facebook, judging Oculus based on its potential is second nature. Weve got a five- to 10-year R&D road map for Oculus

Zuckerberg at the F8 summit, Facebooks annual global developer conference, in San Francisco on March 25, 2015, where the biggest news was the new Facebook Messenger platform.


thats very clear about what problems we need to go take down and how were going to do it, Schroepfer tells me. And so were just going to build better and better sensors and hardware and software thats going to allow you to do more and more, and thats going to create these amazing experiences.

Not everyone is as convinced of Zuckerbergs VR dreams. Wall Street, for one, is having trouble peering quite so far ahead. I worry a bit about expectations, says Colin Sebastian, senior analyst at Robert W. Baird. Consumers have dreams of seamlessly entering these interactive environments and interacting with friends. The tech is early and the virtual environments are very basic. And the competition is intense. Sony and HTC also have VR headsets coming out this year. Then theres Google, with its Cardboard viewer that offers VR using just a smartphone and a paper case for as little as $15 (around R200 in SA). Cardboard is nowhere near as compelling as Oculus, but its cheap, approachable and available right now.

Zuckerberg has bigger ideas in mind for what Oculus could become. When he discusses the company, he consistently refers to VR and AR, the latter being augmented realitythe technology that layers virtual objects into the real world. (Imagine a fictional character appearing in front of you to interact with you in your home.) AR underpins Microsofts forthcoming HoloLens product as well as the stealthy, much-buzzed-about Magic Leap. In October, both Zuckerberg and Iribe confirmed publicly that Oculus is indeed working on AR. If Oculus can squeeze its technology into something that looks more like a pair of glasses and lets you see the real world as well as the virtual one, it could be the last electronics device that a lot of people need to buy, Zuckerberg muses. And this time around, Facebook would be the company selling it.

Facebook has succeeded because it has consistently found a way to scaleits service, its business and its ambitions. The Facebook of today is in so many ways exactly like the Facebook of 2008, says VP of human resources and recruiting, Lori Goler, who joined the company that year, when it had a mere 80 million users and less than one-twentieth its current headcount. The culture is the same. The values are the same. Marks tremendous vision, intellect, learning mindsetall of that is the same.

Whats changed is we have a lot more resources now in terms of the business growing and the number of people we have to help us move the world forward.

With the company now reaching almost 1.5 billion people, Zuckerberg can raise that last partmoving the world forwardto a new level. In August 2014, he appointed product VP Naomi Gleit, one of the companys longest serving employees (she joined in 2005), to manage dozens of staffers dedicated exclusively to implementing functionality that helps Facebook members do good. A donation tool, launched in 2014, allows users to respond to disasters by giving money, a task thatFacebook being Facebookit sees as an engineering problem that should be attacked through continuous iteration. I geek out on this, but with the Ebola campaign we asked users to select a donation amount, explains Gleit. We also asked them to pick a specific charity that they wanted to donate to. This proved confusing to users and didnt produce as much giving as Facebook had

hoped. With the Nepal campaign, we reduced it from five steps to two, Gleit says. We had a preselected donation amount, and we chose multiple charities and then distributed among them equally.

Tools like this maybe only can happen on Facebook, or can happen uniquely well on Facebook, says Zuckerberg (who, along with his wife Priscilla Chan, a paediatrician, has given $1.6 billion/R26.8 billion to various causes). I think about the organ-donation listing work that we did. The Safety

Check stuff that weve done, where 150 million people were notified of their friends being safe in the [Nepal] earthquake. You can only do that if youve mapped out what peoples relationships are, and you have a sense of where people are in the world, and you have a tool that theyre checking every day. Hes right: Facebook can indeed do things no other company can.

But it cant do anything for people who remain disconnected from the digital world. If we really want to connect everyone in the world and give everyone the ability to have a voice and share what they want with the people around them, then you cant just build the biggest Internet service, Zuckerberg says. You also have to help grow the Internet. In 2013, Facebook enlisted Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung and other tech giants to help it found Internet.org: the global-connectivity initiative dedicated to bringing the Internet to the 60% of people worldwide who arent yet online.

The effort is a hybrid of short-term altruism and long-term capitalism. The fundamental connectivity problem is a financial one, Sandberg explains. For 90% of the people, its cost. The World Bank puts absolute poverty at about $1.25 [about R20] a day. One in six people lives under that. If youre the average connected Facebook user in the US, you spend a dollar a day implicitly on data. So the business models have to change, and the cost needs to go down. And thats what were trying to do.

Adds Matt Grob, CTO of Qualcomm, Its not lost on our businesses that as economic standings improve, there will be opportunitiesbut thats not the initial goal. Weve seen throughout the world that when you provide improved connectivity, people are more able to educate their children and participate in political and government activities, and sell their wares or find jobs.

Internet.orgs first effortan app offering free access to Facebook, news, search, job listings and other servicesis live in India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Africa and 17 other countries. Facebook has deployed it in collaboration with local wireless carriers, and almost 10 million people use it. But the app has received pushback on multiple grounds, particularly for offering only certain curated services rather than the full, unbridled Interneta violation, critics say, of net neutrality principles.

The debate has been particularly heated in India: Investor Mahesh Murthy charged that giving poor people free access to a sliver

O N E O F O U RG O A L S , Z U C K E R B E R GS A Y S , I S T O G E TB E T T E R T H A N H U M A NL E V E L A T A L L O F T H EP R I M A R Y S E N S E S .


of the web amounted to economic racism, and several major media companies that had joined the effort pulled out.

For Facebook, releasing something, gauging reaction, and then tweaking as necessary is not only normal but also a badge of honourafter all, one of the companys guiding principles is Done is better than perfect. When I ask Zuckerberg about the controversy, he says, Internet.org is working. Weve learnt a lot from our efforts already. Weve listened to a lot of feedback from people in the communities were connecting, and have responded by making significant changes to the program. Among other adjustments, its made the app more secure and private, and now lets any third-party service submit itself for inclusion, subject to technical restrictions. Given time, the company may get the Internet.org app to a place thats relatively uncontroversial. Even now, it has its allies. I firmly believe that at this point, some Internet is better than no Internet, says Helani Galpaya, CEO of LIRNEasia, a communications think tank based in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

For the places on Earth where theres currently no Internet, Facebook and Internet.org are tackling that issue too. In terms of land area, explains Yael Maguire, director of Facebooks Connectivity Lab, theres only 10% of the world that is not able to connect if they pulled out a phone. The focus for this lab, going back to the mission of the company, is to figure out how we can connect the last 10%.

Talking with Maguire, you quickly see why Zuckerberg entrusted him with this challenge: The way he rattles off stats and facts and calmly deconstructs goals that sound nearly impossible is reminiscent of his bosss own manner. Facebook opened the Connectivity Lab in March 2014, and Maguire and his team have concluded that the answer to their challenge is a dronealthough Maguire prefers the less-politicised (though not exactly catchy) term, HAPI Link, which is short for high-altitude platform Internet link. By charging an unmanned aerial vehicles battery via solar power and flying it at about 20 to 25 kilometres, above weather and conventional aircraft, the company believes it could efficiently send high-speed Internet access down to where it is needed via laser.

Facebook began the project with more hardware engineering experience than one may imagine. It started accumulating this more than a half-decade ago, when execs

decided the best way to deliver Facebook reliably and efficiently to hundreds of millions of people was to construct its own data centres and fill them with its own servers. That path led to the Open Compute Project, Maguires purview at Facebook prior to the Connectivity Lab, which created power-efficient, easy-to-repair servers that the company could instal by the thousands in data centres located everywhere from Prine ville, Oregon to Lule, Sweden. Rather than treat its designs as proprietary, Facebook shared them with the rest of the industry via a non-profit that grew to include support from Apple, Dell, HP, Intel and Microsoft, among others.

When I joined, we didnt have mechanical engineers, says Open Compute Project Foundation board member Frank Frankovsky, who headed hardware design for Facebooks servers before leaving in 2014 to co-found a storage startup. We hired some of the best in the world. And guess what? Drones need mechanical engineers too.

The company acquired instant expertise in unmanned aeronautics in March 2014 by plunking down $20 million (R335 million) for Ascenta, a UKbased startup founded by Andrew Cox, whose previous efforts included a military drone that set a world record by staying aloft for almost two weeks.

Hearing Zuckerberg explain his vision proved a powerful recruiting tool. I personally called up the guy whos leading our laser-communications effort, who was working at [NASAs] Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he recalls. And he said, What? Why are you calling me? I said, Because were connecting the world, and I want you to come in and meet the team, and this is something thats really important to me, and I think we can make a big difference. Even in the retelling, Mark makes it sound urgent.

Fourteen months after the Ascenta acquisition, Facebook announced it had a full-scale prototype, dubbed Aquila and crafted from ultralightweight carbon fibre. An empty next-generation Boeing 737-600 airliner weighs upward of 36 tonnes and has a 34m wingspan; Aquila has a 42m wingspan, yet weighs only 400kg. The company plans to begin test flights by the end of 2015. Once the planes are manufactured, Facebook plans to partner with local telcoms to deploy them.

For all the quick progress the Connectivity Lab has made, much remains to be done. Its still developing the battery technology necessary to keep the drone in

the air for three monthsthe companys goal. And though its figured out how to use lasers to transmit data at blistering speeds in the tens of gigabits per second, thanks to technology borrowed from Facebooks data centres, its still ironing out the details of drone-to-drone phone communication.

Then there are the FAA regulations, which require that each drone has a dedicated pilot on the ground controlling ita restriction that Maguire says would make Aquila economically unworkable (the same is true of Googles Project Loon Internet balloons; the two fierce competitors are collaborating to work through some of the policy implications). The solution? Computer science. We need good machine-learning algorithms and control algorithms, Maguire says, to make it so that you have 1 000 planes per pilot or . . . I dont know what the number is, but somewhere between 25 and 1 000.

Zuckerberg, who researched and wrote a meaty, unsigned Facebook white paper on the state of connectivity, is unfazed. And with 54% of the voting power of Facebook stock in his control, bouncing ideas off his board of directors is as close as he gets to seeking permission for his plans. The myth is that Mark makes decisions and informs the board, says director Andreessen. The reality is that we have very detailed discussions.

As Zuckerberg recalls, the board asked him: Youre going to spend how many billions of dollars on this? And how is this going to make money? And I said, Well, I dont have a direct plan now, but I just believe that if we connect these folks, it will be good. And it will help those economies grow. And those people have better lives. And I think some portion of that will come back to us over some period of time.

Zuckerberg has earned the right to trust his gut. At the beginning of Facebook, I didnt have an idea of how this was going to be a good business, he tells me. I just thought it was a good thing to do. He pauses. Very few people thought it was going to be a good business early on, which is why almost no one else tried to do it.

Today, everyone understands: Not worrying about whether Facebook was a good business turned out to be a great way to do business. Zuckerberg has recalibrated his ambitions accordingly. As Andreessen tells me, This is a guy whos 31. He has a 40- or 50-year runway. I dont even know if theres a precedent. [email protected]


Ravi Naidoo has been the creative brain behind some of South Africas most visible, post-apartheid creative endeavoursincluding the annual Design Indaba

By Chris Waldburger

M O R E I S M O R E


Naidoos company, Interactive Africa, was the creative agency behind the countrys winning bid for the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup. Over and above this, he directed or founded the following projects: the African Connection Rally (a continent-wide road show to promote telecommunications investment); the First African in Space Project (with Mark Shuttleworths foundation); the Cape IT Initiative (CiTi); and, perhaps most enduringly, the Design Indaba.

ntriguingly, he is a scientist by training, having studied physiology at the University of Cape Town. As a global guru in design, Naidoo suggests that such eclecticism is an asset. I have always been an advocate for people being hybrids. I really think that knowledge is like energy: It can never be destroyed; it just transforms from one form to another. And really, I would have to tell anybody that you should have no remorse for anything that you study,

because it will all be relevant at some stage or another.

It is this spirit that has marked the Design Indaba as Africas premier festival of creativity. Design Indaba is about more is more. We want to give you more inspiration; we want to give you more immersive experiences; we want to give you more examples. And I think thats particularly important, he says.

Since 1995, the Indaba has become an important fixture on the global creative landscape. At the heart of it is the sense of optimism and spirit of pioneering engendered by the dawn of democracy in 1994. The slogan of the festival underpins this ethos: A better world through creativity. This ambience of mission gives the event its educational sense.

The design entrepreneurialism that fuels the festival has led to its constant evolution. As Ravi explains: We do believe that business models are perishable, and we do believe that we must constantly seek relevance and that we must constantly morph and change. So I believe in the kind of plasticity of what we do at Design Indaba. We feel more like sculptors with a piece of clay than we do as builders building a fat edifice.

I

FEBRUARY 2016 FA STCOMPANY.CO.Z A 3 5

A bigger canvasNaidoo wants people to think of the Design Indaba not simply as a conference or festival but a collegial, broad-based movement for creatives.

programme since 2005, says Naidoo. We are giving it more attention than ever, and our attitude toward Emerging Creatives is not just about the exhibitionits about a through-the-year kind of commitment through seminars and workshops and facilitating scholarships. So the idea of the Emerging Creatives is way more than an exhibition; its really an institutional commitment from Design Indaba to be able to utilise all our limits to create a launch pad for young creatives.

He is also intent on marketing African creativity to the world via the Africa.Now. Project. Africa.Now. is going to be an absolute focal point of our work. We really want to be the pre-eminent platform in Africa for the African creative, and were working extremely hard on that. And were talking with a massive international publisher right now to produce the definitive coffee-table book on where African design is right now; were doing a flagship

Africa.Now. exhibition right now in Amsterdam, and planning an even

bigger one in 18 months time at another location. So, essentially,

Africa.Now. has morphed into way beyond the three-day spectacle that was the Expo, to actually be a through-

the-year commitment.One of Naidoos passions is

taking the aesthetics of design to the streets. Two initiatives that

do this well are the Most Beautiful Object in South Africa (MBOISA) and the Your Street Challenge.

I think MBOISA is such an interesting thing, because its such a populous thing we do We want to talk to the creative class, and we want to talk to all [economic] classes with a more egalitarian attitude, to infect as many people with the virus of creativity and what good design can do. And we ask a simple question of people in the public eye: Simply, what to them is the most beautiful object in the country? Its a provocative question; its one we ask with a glimmer in the eye and a little bit of a wink, because part of the

So its a completely different mechanism to how we approach Design Indaba.

This means the event has never sunk into a kind of PowerPoint malaise. In fact, last year, world-renowned South African artist William Kentridge made a presentation that changed into an opera. These kinds of presentations have seen the festival move to the Artscape Theatre in Cape Town for 2016, in order to allow for a broader canvas for the myriad design showcases. And so we want to make this a kind of a Cirque du Soleil for the intellect; we really want to make it a beautiful, goose-bumpy experience, and weve asked all of our speakers to really push the stall out. Some of them are interacting around kinetic sculptures, some of their presentations morph into a concert, and yet others are doing the presentation in the form of a play, says Naidoo, excitedly.

This constant widening of the concept means Design Indaba is no longer simply a conference or festival; it is a kind of collegial, broad-based movement for creatives. There is a film festival, the Emerging Creatives Programme, the Your Street Challenge, Africa.Now., as well as the Most Beautiful Object in South Africa endeavour.

I think Emerging Creatives is one of our projects that were most proud of. Any designer of any consequence under the age of 35 in this country has been debuted in this


test is to see what people consider to be beautiful. Meanwhile, the Your Street Challenge allows contestants to submit plans to design improvements to their neighbourhood and win funding to implement these designs.

Many of these programmes form part of the Do Tank stable of creative programmes for the common good. All in all, the more is more ethic is almost blindingly dazzling as it posits a way of creating that is seemingly limitless in its possibility.

Naidoo explains that his strategy for the holding company, Interactive Africa, is a document that consists of one word. The word is stretch, and the stretch is to say to South Africa, to Africa: Have big, hairy, audacious goals; go for things that are really going to happen and have a multiplier effect. From a standing start, we now host the worlds biggest design conferencewhich is quite amazing, to think it takes place in Africa.

This concept of stretching and reaching beyond the status quo is the chief ingredient of Design Indabas success, according to Naidoo. I think the most important aspect of Design Indaba is that it broke the mould of most of the creative events that tend to be very self-serving, only talking to the creative community. I think what Design Indaba has done quite well is to grow bridges between academia, the design practitioner, the creative commissioner, the commissioners, and business and corporates, and even governmentso when you come to any one of our events, its very well represented with a kind of cross section who can take advantage of design. And I think that is very important, because we believe design is such a vital tool: Its relevant to all sectors of the economy and its not just something for the hipsters, its not something that resides in Woodstock. Its something as relevant to Gugulethu and Khayelitsha as it is

to Fresnaye. Its a force in the economy, and we should really utilise it as part of the toolkit to face down the challenges of the 21st century.

What he is proposing is almost a new kind of Marshall Plan for post-apartheid South Africa, with an unleashing

of creativity and collaborative design as a vital weapon in reasserting a shared public commitment to the common good.

The continuous spinning out of new ideas; the evolution of a conference into a kind of communal movement; and the pursuit of a better world through creativity all combine to make Ravi Naidoo and Design Indaba true players in the quiet pioneering of an excitingly new postmodern South African economy.

[ D e s i g n ] i s a f o r c e i n t h e

e c o n o m y , a n d w e s h o u l d r e a l l y u t i l i s e i t a s p a r t o f t h e t o o l k i t t o f a c e d o w n t h e c h a l l e n g e s o f t h e 2 1 s t c e n t u r y .

Another ventureIn 2014, Naidoo launched Win The Right Way with Chivas Regal, a competition for startups that are solving global challenges. On the left is one of the judges, Xolisa Dyeshana from Joe Public.

1500992M/E

3 8 FA STCOMPANY.CO.Z A FEBRUARY 2016

Meet the 2016 Emerging Creatives, some of South Africas most vibrant young design talent

T H E O R I G I N A L SNEXT

T H E O R I G I N A L S

Emerging creatives


A B O N G I L E G W E L ES E C T O R : J E W E L L E R Y

ProductI would like to exhibit my jewellery range, which is what I started off with. This will include elaborate necklace designs made of African wax cloth and copper wire, as well as bracelets and earrings. The items are all handmade, each unique so that the client has a one-of-a-kind piece.

Product I love drawing (especially in ink) and making things by hand, which usually forms the basis of my workswhich I then often digitise and apply colour to. I like to p

Fast Company SA - February 2016

Documents

Transcript of Fast Company SA - February 2016