Bonus: The Future According to M4Edge Guests

12/08/21 • 18 min

Macro Micro Michael Marco & Startups at the Edge (M4Edge)

In the 3+ years that M4Edge has been around, we've aired over 50 episodes and, as listeners know, we usually ask our guests to give us their view of the future 20 years hence. Sometimes the answers are somewhat expected, sometimes they're a little humorous, and sometimes they're deeply thought provoking. As a holiday present, this episode offers a compilation of some of our favorites. We won't go so far as to say that this is a "best of" set, since we left out some great ones. But we've reached across the catalog, from our very first to our most recent episode, and offer you here some of our guests' views on the future of manufacturing, material design, food and agriculture, artificial intelligence, human resources, business analytics, robotics, clean energy, autonomous driving ... you know, M4Edge stuff.
Stay tuned and stay curious as we retool our show in 2022!

Previous Episode

Alex Rodrigues of Embark Trucks on his driven journey and our driverless future

This is the final M4Edge episode of 2021 an we are finishing this year with a bang, Our guest is Alex Rodrigues, founder and CEO of Embark Trucks; he is a Forbes 30 under 30, and more importantly, at the tender age of 26 he has just brought Embark public through a SPAC deal valuing the company at over 5 billion dollars.

Embark is right up the M4Edge alley, where we look at technologies that change the way the economy works: Embark develops software for self-driving trucks. Alex Rodrigues has a long-standing interest in automation: his passion for robots started when he was 11, so even though he’s only 26, he is already kind of a veteran in robotics. In our interview he revealed a number of interesting insights on the present and the future of automation, and some of them are quite surprising. How is this for a nugget: here we have the founder of a self-driving trucks company predicting a bright future for truck drivers!

We had a great conversation on where and why self-driving trucks could create – or at least preserve – jobs; but also on where they will be deployed first, and what they could imply for the future of logistics and distribution, quite an important topic given the recent dramatic supply chain disruptions.

Alex also explained why the development of self-driving trucks might be very different from that of self-driving passenger cars; we talk about road safety and cyber-security, and about Embark’s business model: they don’t actually produce trucks, they are a SaaS company.

And we close with Alex’s reflections on the future of robotics and automation. This episode has everything we – and you – like best: an enthusiastic and deeply knowledgeable guest, cutting edge technology, business model innovation and important implications for the way we live and work.
Thanks for listening, Thanks for Being Curious, and as always, please share the episode and if you have a few minutes, leave us a review. We’ll be back in 2022 with a brand new series we’re planning, so...enjoy the holidays and STAY curious!