From HIPPOs to geeks, core to crowd, Go to Quant and Apple to Airbnb to algorithms, Andrew McAfee captivated the audience with an upbeat look at how and where we are headed with technology – and how it is rewriting the business playbook.  The co-founder and co-director of the Initiative on the Digital Economy and a principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management, McAfee probably has more intellect and brainpower than most of us. So, it was interesting to hear the reasons why he thought an "alternative" to humans might be a better route for businesses. 

McAfee didn’t attempt to powertalk the attendees into believing his outlook, though. Rather, he did it by sharing examples and helping everyone see the possibilities from a different perspective, kind of like his unexpected twist when responding to his introduction by Brent Wood, CEO of Toyota Material Handling and president of MHI. "Of all the introductions that I’ve receive, that one is the most <pause> recent." The examples also reflected his experiences with a variety of industries and his humor, such as when he suggested the title of his session should have been changed to "Business Advice We shouldn’t Believe Anymore" instead of "Harnessing Our Digital Future."

But before you can understand how McAfee was trying to enlighten everyone, you have to know what a HIPPO is versus a geek. A HIPPO is the highest paid person’s opinion. "It is how most of the work gets done in most companies, most time," said McAfee. The alternative is the geek. "The mortal enemy of the HIPPO is the word geek." The geek engages in a very different decision-making style than the HIPPO, he explained. The geek will follow the evidence when making a decision, even if it doesn’t line up with how things have been done in the past or are normally done. The geek will "go where the evidence takes you." To take this a step further, a study was done based on a geek vs. HIPPO scenario, and the results showed that 46 percent of the time HIPPOs were destroying value when making decisions. McAfee’s response? "The conclusion is super clear. We need to make HIPPOs an endangered species when it comes to getting our work done!"

McAfee said one comment he hears a lot is: "I wasn’t expecting that." This was especially true after the unimaginable happened in 2016:  The world’s best Go player was beat by a machine.  The machine, AlphaGO AI by Google, made a move that was completely outside the Go-playing book – and ended up winning that round. "(The computer) is not beating us by playing the same way we do, but better," said McAfee. Even though humans have been playing this game for over 3,000 years, the machine saw a different possible route to victory. 

His next examples, about the core vs. crowds and quant hedge funds, both illustrated that bringing in "outsiders" to the problem may bring in a bunch of new skills to the table. Instead of looking inward and identifying and strengthening the core, try out the competition: the crowd. If you can figure out how to tap into the crowd, you can get a pretty strong innovation boost, he said. "The crowd is surprising wise."

As far as the quant funds, they are interesting as humans do not make the investment decisions; instead, they program computers with algorithms to make the decisions, he explained. And they are doing remarkably well.

"If you get economics and technology right, man, a lot of other good things can happen to you," said McAfee. He illustrated that point with the app conundrum experienced by Apple when they first released the iPhone. Also, he brought up the initial resistance that Airbnb ran into with its business plan. 

"Increasingly these days, it is platform structure that is going to determine successful business models," explained McAfee. "The optimal division of labor between minds and machines is shifting rapidly." Also, the crowd is (oftentimes) more capable than the core, and value creation and capture are moving from products to platforms.

"You get a compelling story from a human being," said McAfee. But, that doesn’t make it the right story. And, while "a lot of my colleagues are worried about the terminator... summoning the demon. I find that ludicrous. I think they read too much science fiction and took too many drugs at some point in their life....  It is like worrying about overpopulation – on Mars." It is theoretically possible, he added, but it is so far off and so unlikely.

Instead, try visiting www.ourworldindata.com. "Whenever I want to feel good, I go there... That website will make you walk away whistling a happy tune," said McAfee. The trends that are going on are heartening trends, he added. "The path we are on will leave you really, really happy."