Scott Amyx

Scott Amyx

• Out-of-the-box thinker, innovator, and serial entrepreneur
• Venture capitalist
• Bestselling author of Strive: How Doing the Things Most Uncomfortable Leads to Success
• Teaches people how to create profound innovation and break through traditional thinking

Scott Amyx is the Managing Partner at Astor Perkins. He is also a Singularity University Smart City Accelerator, SXSW Pitch/Accelerator, IBM Futurist, Tribeca Disruptor Foundation Fellow, National Sloan Fellow, Wiley Author, Forbes New York Business Council Member, and the winner of various innovation awards.

Astor Perkins is a deep tech and sustainability VC that backs innovators in solving some of the most difficult issues facing humanity both on earth and in space. The company looks at such issues as climate change mitigation and adaptation, longevity, human survival on earth and deep space, as well as the space economy. In a nutshell, it tackles some of the most difficult scientific, engineering, and technical issues faced across the globe.

A global thought leader on breakthrough innovation, smart cities, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution,  Scott Amyx is the recipient of the Cloud and DevOps World Award for Most Innovative. He was also voted Top Global Exponential Technologies Expert by Inc. Magazine, HP Enterprise, and Postscapes. He was nominated as a committee member for the World Economic Forum’s Future of the Internet and nominated by the Republic of Korea to present at the ITU Telecom World, United Nations.

Various governments, multinationals, and international consulting firms rely on Scott Amyx to provide insights on the globally changing innovation landscape.

The bestselling author of Strive: How Doing the Things Most Uncomfortable Leads to Success, Scott Amyx regularly features in various media. These include radio programs, television, and the likes of TIMES, The Washington Post, New York Times, WIRED, TechCrunch, Inc., Chicago Tribune, IBM Big Data & Analytics, and many more.

Scott Amyx – Speaker

A deep tech venture capitalist, Scott Amyx invests in some of the most cutting-edge technologies around. These include quantum computers, space, climate tech, longevity, and autonomy. An innovation expert, he understands the benefits of exponential technologies while recognising the need for human change management within organisations. His keynotes address people’s greatest fears about these technologies and how both they and their organisations can go about harnessing the potential while addressing concerns about human displacement. His areas of expertise include the following:

• Human displacement from automation
• Human-machine co-innovation
• Organizational development to embrace new technologies
• Change management from disruptive technologies
• Doing the things most uncomfortable
• The space economy
• Quantum computing
• Longevity
• Autonomy & automation

Scott Amyx lives in the USA and presents in English.

Speaking Topics

• Strive: How Doing the Things Most Uncomfortable Leads to Success: Scott’s feature Wiley book Strive is available for order. Find out how doing the things most uncomfortable leads to success. Pioneering thought leader Scott Amyx shows anyone striving to succeed, regardless of who or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young or old we are, that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but doing the things uncomfortable he calls “strive”. Drawing on his own powerful story of an impoverished immigrant frequently told that he would amount to nothing, Amyx, now a celebrated venture capitalist and futurist, describes his meteoric rise from obscurity to prominence, which led to the hypothesis that what really drives success is not intellect, opportunities or even network but pursuing personal change that’s uncomfortable. In this book, Scott takes readers into his defining life moments and stories from some of the most unlikely individuals who persevered through change to become outrageously successful. He also mines fascinating insights from history and shows what can be gleaned from modern experiments in high performance. Finally, he shares what he’s learned from interviewing dozens of high achievers—from corporate CEOs, unicorn startup entrepreneurs to global policy leaders. Strive shows how you can shape your life and your career, a life of fulfillment and joy, constantly creative and productive, one that always holds the possibility of delightful surprise.
• The Human Race: How Humans Can Survive in the Robotic Age: Scott’s second feature book The Human Race: How Humans Can Survive in the Robotic Age is scheduled to come out next year. Scott explores the imminent net job loss from artificial intelligence, robotics and the Fourth Industrial Revolution and its impact on income inequality and rise in populism and nationalism that are sweeping across the globe. AI-driven cyber-physical automation is expected to displace 50% to 80% of the human workforce by 2030. As the pace of convergence of exponential technologies reach near vertical slope, the trend of human displacement is unstoppable. What will be the role of humans? For the structurally unemployed and underemployed, it will be bleak future with limited options. Only those with highly specialized PhDs in fields that create, train and maintain AI, robotic and advanced scientific and technical systems may have a place in the world of hyper-automation. Contrary to popular belief that only predictable physical work is automatable, as narrow AI continues to master new niches, it will amass a superset of capabilities that will not only replace tasks but holistic job functions. There is no senior executive, policymaker or subject matter expert that will be safe. Scott explores the limitations of universal basic income and taxing robots. Instead, he proposes a vastly different, out-of-the-box solution called the Human Currency. It’s a global economy and a cryptocurrency based on human-to-human empathy services. Moreover, it has the resiliency and sustainability built into the system to ensure the viability of the human race for centuries to come. Scott emphasizes the need to pursue job training and labor force development in human-to-human services that leverage our ability to empathize with the human condition. The empathy business models and services will become the bedrock of post Fourth Industrial Revolution.

• Are You Ready for Disruption? How do you turn disruption Into innovation? In PwC’s Annual Global CEO Survey, 62% expressed concern about the impact of disruption in their industry. Disruption is coming from all directions — from the Internet of Things, blockchain cryptography, AI/ machine learning, data analytics, decentralized computing to changes in consumer behavior. According to an Accenture study of 1,000 large enterprises, big companies struggle with innovation. The biggest barrier is not a lack of vision but because, by definition, big companies are mature. Organizational structures and processes are in place to guide the company towards efficiency. Seasoned managers steer their employees from pursuing the art of discovery and towards engaging in the science of delivery. Employees are taught to seek efficiencies, leverage existing assets, and listen to their best customers. Such practices and policies ensure that executives can consistently deliver positive earnings to Wall Street, but they also minimize the types and scale of innovation that can be pursued successfully within an organization. No company ever created transformational growth by doing what they do a tiny bit better and a tiny bit cheaper. The biggest barrier is not a lack of vision but because, by definition, big companies are mature. Organizational structures and processes are in place to guide the company towards efficiency. Seasoned managers steer their employees from pursuing the art of discovery and towards engaging in the science of delivery. Employees are taught to seek efficiencies, leverage existing assets, and listen to their best customers. Such practices and policies ensure that executives can consistently deliver positive earnings to Wall Street, but they also minimize the types and scale of innovation that can be pursued successfully within an organization. No company ever created transformational growth by doing what they do a tiny bit better and a tiny bit cheaper.

• Exponential Disruption: Is Your Organization Ready for the Era of Human-Machine Innovation? Disruption is a great term, as long as it’s being applied to your competitors and not your firm. Exponential technologies are creating disruption. The convergence of exponential technologies is expected to disrupt almost every sector and business. Changing trends are forcing leaders to take a hard look at their business models and core competencies. New entrants are threatening to displace “cash cows” and prominent brands. How is your company positioned to take advantage of the multi-billion dollar opportunity that beckons? Or is your business at risk from the advances in technology? If your company is not embracing technological and business model changes, it may be in danger of becoming obsolete.
• The Future of Innovation & Jobs: The new marketplace for industries like manufacturing, energy, gas and oil, and construction is a far cry from that in decades past. The perfect storm of problems has been brewing, as novel challenges cut into revenue and force corporations to scramble to find fresh opportunities. Obstacles to growth come in many forms. For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics noted that there has been a gradual slide in worker productivity, not over just the last few quarters, but over the last decade. However, just as some industries are struggling, there is little doubt that the tech sector is going strong—and that it is shaking up other verticals to create value and opportunities for expansion and growth. While it is not likely that a single solution can bring about significant change in the industrial sector, the appropriate application of advanced technologies, data analytics, machine learning and robotics can result in a greater optimization of business workflows and processes, enhanced safety, improved research and development, and the creation of new revenue streams. The silver lining is that innovation also ushers in new types of jobs that did not exist before. Innovation coupled with continuous lifetime learning and retraining creates a flexible and adaptable labor force.