Nobel Prizes, The Future of Tech and Murder

Hard to model exactly but statistically, a Nobel Prize in Science is as rare as someone winning the World Series and then the Indy 500.

Niels Bohr got one.

He famously said, "Prediction is really hard, especially about the future."

The future of tech is hard to see beyond, say Halloween or the distant future, Guy Fawkes Day (yes, that's real, at least in Yorkshire)

Having said that there are three things that I am sure will be keys to the future of 'tech':

1. Competition and Murder

Competition will continue to accelerate and incumbents across sectors will be leapfrogged, replaced, and slowly murdered by new entrants more than we imagine. There will be more corporate birth and churn in the next 5 years than the past 20. This will be tech infused but it really will be about new companies with intelligent, better customer outcomes, cost structures and superior agility.

The tech will be submerged. The impacts will be clear.

Many companies won't know they have been mortally wounded and will take a decade to die.

2. The Economics Shift

The economics of tech driven change will become the economics of production, P&L economics not the economics of speculation, off balance sheet 'magic' or Schacht like circular funding (Germany 1930's) . Ironically, post the speculative bubble implosion of some size, growth accelerates and we hit new scale.

3. National Competitiveness

Talent supply and force multiplying ecosystems will matter more than it ever has. Looking back a decade from now, what we build that out will have been key to national competitiveness and maybe economic well-being.

This will not be managed by the Invisible Hand of the markets, even if we had perfect competiton-esque free markets, which we really don't.

Some of the key ecosystem domains are: Finance, Energy, Talent Supply, and Infrastructure.

If you aren't reading the People's Daily (yes, the Chinese one), you may have missed this ecosystem move, published today:

https://en.people.cn/n3/2026/0228/c90000-20429337.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email