The Industries of the Future

December 7, 2015
Ross, who served as an advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, predicts the coming decade’s breakthrough industrial developments in this intriguing survey. While working for Clinton, Ross had the opportunity to travel to numerous countries and learn about recent and upcoming innovations. Based on his findings, he describes how Indonesia, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Mexico are positioning themselves in the global economy. He predicts that the near future will provide amazing inventions, including suits that enable paraplegics to walk and drugs that cure some kinds of cancer. Identifying certain industries as key drivers of changes, Ross devotes individual chapters to robotics, advanced life sciences, and cyberwarfare. He also shows that the empowerment of women, both economically and politically, is a key indicator of impending success. Acknowledging the perils as well as the promise of what he calls the next economy, Ross discusses the threat to the middle class posed by increased income inequality. Lastly, he covers how best to prepare children to enter the vastly changed workplace ahead. This astute and enlightening book is generous with insight about what the future holds and how best to prepare for it.

February 1, 2016
In his travels as senior advisor for innovation under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Ross got an up-close view of the technological trends emerging around the world, and he parlayed his experiences into this wide-ranging and smoothly written prospectus on the near future of innovation. It's a whirlwind tour, incisively covering economics, politics, cyberwarfare, genomics, and the complexities of Big Dataamong many other thingsin language for the layperson interested in what tomorrow could bring. A native of West Virginia's once-vibrant coal country, Ross bets big on robotics and the code-ification of nearly everything, spotlighting the entrepreneurs who are already making them happen in money, medicine, farming, and elsewhere around the global economy. Ross drops lots of informed predictions about which advances will win the coming decade. Yet even with plenty of data and anecdotal evidence to draw from, this is a sunny-side-up, crystal ball of a book, with bold proclamations and sometimes only passing nods to their potentially negative consequences. Primarily business focused, this will still intrigue forward-looking techies and entrepreneurs.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)