Steve Case is a huge name in the tech world, having been a founder of AOL, so I was really excited to read his take on where technology is leading us next and what the future of the industry could look like. Overall I was really impressed and riveted by the book, he covers some very interesting topics and touches on the areas that could be next in line to be transformed by technology, namely education and healthcare.

This isn’t just a book for entrepreneurs, I would suggest it for anyone who is interested in technology, business and the future. I really enjoyed the fact its a part auto-biography, part lessons learned and part his view of the future. However, I felt towards the end he became a bit too much like a politician, pushing the work he has been doing with the US government too hard and making out that the picture could only be rosy.

Below are my main notes and takeaways from it, as always these are just the key points I took away, by reading it yourself I’m sure you’ll find your own.

Steve helped create the First Wave of the Internet, being the founder of AOL, has been an active investor in the Second Wave, Amazon and eBay making the Internet a one-stop shop and social networking, and now the Third Wave, providing a framework for envisioning how the Internet will be fully integrated into every aspect of our lives. Steve is currently chairman and CEO for revolution, a venture capitalist company.

The Third Wave moves past ‘Internet of Things’ to ‘The Internet of Everything’. This is the moment where the Internet transforms from something we interact with to something that interacts with everything around us. ‘Internet-enabled’ will seem as stupid as ‘electricity enabled’ in the future.

Lessons from the First Wave, rather than the Second, will be integral to the Third Wave.

In the late 1990s AOL was the way most people did everything online. It was Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Spotify and YouTube combined.

Key lesson from AOL – While content is very important, AOL needed the context and the community as well to really progress and stay ahead of the rest.

Examples of the Third Wave, which shares the common themes of being more personal, more individualised and more data-driven:

1. Healthcare – daily checks of vitals will be captured in the cloud and available to doctors, significantly improving quality of diagnosis and accuracy of tracking when symptoms start. There is a need for innovative technology and genomics start-ups to focus on personal wellness, improved outcomes, reduced costs and increased convenience. This is strongly linked to the insurance industry.
2. Education – the aim is to replace the culture of standardisation with a culture of personalisation. E.g. instead of textbooks there will be virtual tutors – as well as a teacher – that can track students’ progress individually and flag to the teacher areas the child is struggling with. Edtech start-ups have the potential to make highly effective learning available to everyone, offering more teaching at a lower cost and with increased convenience.
3. Food – imagine a refrigerator that can determine whether your produce has been mishandled, or an oven that refuses to cook questionable meat… this is a real possibility in the Third Wave.
4. Financial Services, Transportation and Manufacturing – these sectors will also see similar disruption in the Third Wave.

What do I need to do differently if I’m going to start a Third Wave company? The 3 Ps;

1. Partnership – the Second Wave was all about creating a niche app, getting traction and driving viral adoption, but not in the Third Wave. In the Third Wave you need to win over the ‘Gate Keepers’ – Government, NHS trusts etc. – and you won’t be able to get a foot in the door without credibility. Credibility can be built through partnerships, the aim is to start small and keep getting bigger, creating a virtuous cycle of credibility. Currently though we have catch 22 situation; where a company needs partnership before it can get funded, but can’t secure partnership without evidence their idea works. The answer: persistence and patience.
2. Policy – Third Wave industries are some of the heaviest regulated around. In the First Wave technology was the risk, can you build it? In the Second Wave market size was the risk, will the masses adopt it? In the Third Wave policy risk will be significant, will you be able to navigate the rules and regulation to successfully bring a product to market?
3. Perseverance – is quite self explanatory, if at first you don’t succeed try and try again.

Big companies are starting to act on the fact that ‘it isn’t that entrepreneurs are smarter than companies, it’s that they are trying more crazy ideas, taking more shots on goal’ (Peter Diamonds) so don’t expect the death of the corporation and that start-ups will rule the world in the Third Wave.
Incumbents often fail because they underestimate the speed at which the future is approaching… sometimes waiting for all the facts to be risk assessed and not taking a leap of faith.

Embrace self-disruption… if you don’t disrupt yourself someone else will disrupt you, and that is much more painful! For example: Amazon, the biggest book retailer, recognised the future was e-books so built the hardware and software themselves (Kindle), thus owning the future and the past.

Big companies are, in fact, better suited to Third Wave than the Second Wave. They already have the scale, the partnerships, policy understanding and global reach, they just need to learn to leverage these.

Will the Third Wave move money and talent out of NY and Silicon Valley and help bring prosperity to other others? Yes, but there remains challenges. The Second Wave was focused on technology, therefore everyone flocked to these places. The Third Wave will be tech-enabled product focussed, therefore the companies will want to go where the industries are, that they’re trying to partner with or disrupt. Example: if you’re building within the agricultural industry there is no point being in NY, you’ll want to be in the Midwest. This will be ‘The Rise of the Rest’.

Impact Investing

• Impact investing is the bridge between traditional business (profit focused returns) and philanthropy, between financial return and social good…. profit and purpose.
• The Wharton School released a report in 2016 that evaluated 53 private equity funds and found that impact funds are able to achieve targeted returns and successful, mission-aligned exits.
• The Case Foundation believes the only way to attack social challenges is to do it together, business, government, philanthropy, and non-profits working in tandem.

Views on Time Warner and AOL Merger:

• Time Warner was already too fractured, with HBO, CNN, Time Inc.  etc. operating as separate entities and infighting.
• The bubble burst only 2 months after merger, ther was not enough time to get things started.
• Time Warner executives were too long in the tooth and couldn’t see where the internet, and their revenue streams, were in the future.
• The biggest problem was culture, they failed to create a positive one post merger and ultimate culture trumps strategy.
• Steve Case ended up stepping down.

Government is going to be central in the Third Wave, as are customer and regulators. Government has historically been an excellent innovator, funding R&D. DARPA which is responsible for stealth plane technology, the Internet and GPS.

Internet is shorthand for ‘internetworking system’.

Key ways government can help ensure entrepreneurs choose their country to start include:

1. Don’t confuse Start-Ups and Small Businesses: they are looking to do fundamentally different things, don’t group them together on policy
2. Importance of Start-Ups on Job Creation: 1% of start-ups in the USA are responsible for 40% of US jobs created each year
3. Get in front of 3rd Wave: Government needs to pivot and reorganise to better deal with the 3rd wave.
4. More money in R&D: budget cuts may have been enacted out of concerns over deficits, but decreasing investment in R&D guarantees future deficits.
5. Make it easier for Start-ups to raise money
6. Make it easier to hire top talent: re-think immigration reform. Immigration is not just a problem to solve; it’s an opportunity to seize.
7. Write some new rules for a new era: the economy changes far faster than the rules governing it. The big problem is the ‘freelance economy’, 20th century laws can’t work in the uberisation of more industries. We need to establish how they can earn sick leave, vacation days, unemployment insurance etc.?

Cross industry competition is much more likely in the Third Wave.