image

In the interest of open and honest disclosure, I am investor in Intel. One of the reasons I am a long-term investor is because I like how the company constantly and relentlessly engages the future—as this recent article entitled A glimpse at Intel’s futuristic gadgets suggests.

For anyone interested in where the future may be headed, I encourage you to read the article.

A few things caught my attention in the article. First, I was attracted by this quote from the company’s chief technology officer Justin Rattner, “We believe our mission is to take risks.” It is common for executives at many large companies to say such things but Intel puts its money where its mouth is. Consider, for example, the fact that the company is working on something called a “Dispute Finder.” It is essentially a smart software program that will call “bullshit” on an article or blog posting you may be reading if it contains erroneous (or even contradictory) information. Or, last year, the company announced it was working on a shape-shifting human-computer interface. The article also suggests it is aggressively investigating emerging opportunities in the field of robotics which, as I have written about numerous times, is a very promising field.

The second thing that caught my attention was mention of a poster displayed at the conference. It read, “Your kid’s kid’s kid won’t think what we’re doing is crazy at all.” Personally, I’d love to get my hands on a copy of that poster but, regardless, it is a perfect example of developing a future bias. Intel is not simply content to focus on incrementally improving its existing products, it is actively engaging the future in an attempt to “jump the curve.”

As an investor and a fan of the future, I wish them all the best.

Interested in reading about other corporations and organizations who are jumping the curve? Check out these past articles:

Google Jumps the Curve

The CIA Jumps the Curve

BMW Jumps the Curve

Mars Jumps the Curve

IBM Thinks Small

Lockheed Martin Jumps the Curve