Before we close the book on the first quarter of 2019, I wanted to share and reflect on some key recent developments at SU that are setting the stage for the rest of the year. It’s been a busy year already, both here at home and around the world.First, we recently completed our acquisitions of Uncommon Partners and Futurism, greatly expanding our ability to deliver exponential results to our community and create global impact. I hope you’re as excited as we are to bring these enhanced capabilities to the SUniverse!
Uncommon Partners was founded by fan-favorite SU Faculty member Kyle Nel and Amanda Manna to train leaders to apply lessons from behavioral science to the human challenges of transformation, using tools like applied neuroscience and experimental design. As you may know, Kyle and Amanda began working with SU while leading Lowe’s Innovation Lab. Under their amazing leadership, Lowe’s Innovation Labs launched several projects in partnership with SU Portfolio Companies, including Fellow Robots, Made In Space, and Authentise. We’ve enjoyed a long relationship with Kyle and Amanda, which is allowing us to move quickly into offering new solutions for exponential business transformation.Here’s what this acquisition means for the SU global community:
We’ll be rolling out more new offerings in the coming months that leverage these exciting new capabilities. If you want to be the first to know about them, sign up to receive updates.
Futurism.com reaches an audience of 10M with news and content about the future of science and technology. We have also acquired Futurism Creative, an advertising studio, and Futurism Studios, a digital production studio. There is strong alignment between SU and Futurism, as we both seek to drive applications of science and exponential technologies to positively impact humanity. There is also a nice history between our organizations, as Futurism founder and CEO Alex Klokus attended the SU Executive Program in July 2015 and Exponential Finance in 2017, and has also been involved with the SingularityU New York City Chapter.Here’s what this acquisition means for the SU global community:
To hear about other offerings from Futurism as they happen, sign up to receive updates.
The SU community is continuing to grow by leaps and bounds through the addition of new SingularityU Chapters each month. In the past quarter, we announced the launch of 15 new Chapters, and 13 Chapter renewals, which brought the total of SingularityU Chapters worldwide to 142 in 66 countries by the quarter’s end.I invite you to learn more about the new Chapters and hear from the leadership teams directly. Chapters host events that engage communities around the ideas of exponential technology, social impact, and abundance and give attendees access to a valuable network of impact-driven peers, mentors, and potential partners. I’m deeply impressed by and grateful for the efforts of the talented volunteers who run these Chapters for the benefit of their communities.
Our growing global ecosystem has been busy! This past quarter, SU’s global partners delivered three International Executive Programs (Canada, Denmark, and the Netherlands) and one SingularityU International Summit (Spain), with many more on the way throughout the year. We are thrilled to see how well these programs and events are being received globally and are delighted to welcome so many new SU-certified Faculty members to our ecosystem.In other news, Adtalem Brazil recently became our digital licensing partner and will distribute SU’s online courses to Brazil consumers through its business school Ibmec, a prestigious business school in Brazil. These types of partnerships are crucial to empowering a more global and diverse audience of learners with the knowledge of exponential technologies and mindsets they need to create a better world.
I want to leave you with some parting thoughts as I end this quarterly update. I’ve been encouraging the SU team to heed the advice we typically give our clients when they come to us for guidance on their innovation programs.Simply put, we tell clients to adopt the mindset that favors innovation and to embrace the organizational changes needed to support a culture of experimentation. That boils down to a few key things:
It takes courage to lead amid uncertainty, but the rewards far outweigh the costs. Empowering your teams to find new ways to deliver value to your stakeholders is the best way to ensure you remain relevant in this time of rapidly accelerating change. Regardless of your organization type, size, and industry, exponential tech is changing every landscape. What matters is that you rise up to meet the challenge.