Serendipity – The Exponential Entrepreneur

Giulia Bowinkel & Friedemann Banz
Serendipity_The Exponential Entrepreneur
Video, 2015, 13:17 Min.

Text by Inke Arns

Serendipity_The Exponential Entrepreneur is a video about exponential growth as a figure of thought. For this video, Giulia Bowinkel & Friedemann Banz have compiled video clips from lectures on exponential growth a.o. from the Singularity University. Singularity University is a think tank in the Silicon Valley that was founded in 2009 by Google, Nokia and Autodesk. It is based on Ray Kurzweil’s idea of the “technological singularity”. This is the hypothesis that the invention of artificial superintelligence will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, causing an intelligence explosion and resulting in a powerful superintelligence that would, qualitatively, far surpass all human intelligence thus resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization.

An “exponential entrepreneur” – as described in the video by one of the professors – is “an entrepreneur who is leaning on exponentially accelerating technology – networked sensors, AI, robotics, synthetic biology, 3D printing – these technologies that are all on exponential growth curves.” However, the goal of this entrepreneurship equipped with serendipity is not simply the improvement of the world, but, one suspects, the exponential growth of the markets: “Three billion new minds online – what happens? … a brand new generation of consumers.” The 15,000 new strategic ideas born out of these three billion new minds will also serve this goal