Ramez Naam is a computer scientist, Climate tech investor, and the award-winning author of five books.
Ramez focuses his time on climate and energy, as a frequent public speaker on the inevitability and increasing price advantage of clean energy; and as an investor in and advisor to clean energy, mobility, and climate-related startups around the world in fields of energy, sustainability, and AI; a member of the Advisory Board of Shell’s New Energies division; a board member of the cleantech investing group E8 Angels and the founder and leader of the first AngelList syndicate devoted to clean technology. He is also launching a new venture capital firm focused primarily on climate and clean energy.
Educated as a computer scientist. Ramez first worked at Microsoft, working early versions of Microsoft Outlook, Internet Explorer, and the Bing search engine. He also founded and ran Apex NanoTechnologies, the world’s first company devoted entirely to software tools to accelerate molecular design.
Ramez’s work has appeared in or been quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Atlantic, Slate, Business Week, Discover, Wired, and Scientific American. He’s appeared on MSNBC, on Yahoo Finance, and has spoken to corporate CEOs and boards on six continents, from Istanbul to Shanghai; from Buenos Aires to Washington DC.
Ramez is is also the award-winning author of five books. Nexus, Crux, and Apex (near future science fiction), The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet (non-fiction book on how to innovate to solve climate change, food, water, and other resource and environmental challenges), and More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement (first book, a non-fiction summary of the potential of upgrading human capabilities).
In his personal life, he has climbed mountains, descended into icy crevasses, chased sharks through their native domain, backpacked through remote corners of China, and ridden his bicycle down hundreds of miles of the Vietnam coast. He live in Seattle.
Sample Topics
Energy and Environment
The world is bumping up against multiple environmental and natural resource hurdles – climate change, peak oil, fresh water shortages, rising prices for food, minerals, and commodities of all sorts. At the same time, a growing population and a surge in the wealth of the developing world is increasing consumption. Can innovation keep pace? What are the true limits to growth? How do we overcome the challenges that face us? The session will provide an overview of the key natural resource and environmental challenges that face us, the on-the-horizon innovations that hold the promise to overcome them, and the policies that would best encourage innovation in those critical fields. The true limits to economic and natural resource growth on Planet Earth will be presented and discussed.
Exponential Organizations & Disruption
We’re living in the age of exponential technologies: Computing, AI, machine learning, robotics, self-driving cars, 3D printing, drones, virtual reality, augmented reality, the internet of a trillion things, and more. The sudden surge of their performance empowers individuals and new players, but threatens to disrupt incumbent businesses. The only way to respond is to re-organize for the exponential age, embracing experimentation, autonomy, bottoms-up innovation, networked business models, and an empowered, inspired workforce. Here’s what leaders can do to change their organization and to become disruptors rather than be the disrupted.
Energy, Disrupted
The world is bumping up against multiple environmental and natural resource hurdles: climate change, peak oil, fresh water shortages, and rising prices for food, minerals, and commodities of all sorts. At the same time, a growing population and a surge in the wealth of the developing world is increasing consumption. Can innovation keep pace? What are the true limits to growth? How do we overcome the challenges that face us? This session will provide an overview of the key natural resource and environmental challenges that face us, the on-the-horizon innovations that hold the promise to overcome them, and the policies that would best encourage innovation in those critical fields. The true limits to economic and natural resource growth on Planet Earth will be presented and discussed.
Global Planetary Optimism
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. The world faces incredible challenges: Climate change, forests, food, oceans, water. Its people face challenges just as large: Poverty, inequality, violence, and hate. Yet our ability to innovate in technology, in policy, and in new ways to run our businesses gives us the opportunity to overcome all of these challenges. From solar power to desalination; from VR to decentralized democracy. The choice is up to each of us to step up, take action, and do well by doing good.
How Clean Energy is Disrupting the $6 Trillion Energy Industry – and How to Profit
Energy is the world’s largest industry, with $6 Trillion spent per year around the world. It’s being disrupted by exponential technologies, as the price of solar power, wind power, battery storage, and electric vehicles all rapidly plunge in pace. The way we generate and consume energy, and move ourselves and our goods from place to place, is on the brink of radical change. Every consumer, business, investor, and nation will be affected. Those that embrace this change will profit. Those slow to move will be disrupted.
