The first wave of the Internet (1985–1999) was all about building the infrastructure and foundation for an online world.
The Second Wave (2000 -2015) was about building on top of the Internet. Search engines like Google made it easier to explore the sheer volume of information available on the web. It was during the Second Wave that social networking came of age, too.
The Third Wave (2016-…) is the era when the Internet steps belonging to internet companies. It is the era in which products will require internet, even if the Internet doesn’t define them. It is the era when the term “Internet-enabled” will start to sound as ludicrous as the term “electricity-enabled” as if either were notable differentiators. It is the Era when the concept of the Internet of Things will be viewed as too limiting, because we’ll realize that what’s emerging is the much broader Internet of Everything.
In general, “startup” is a term reserved for companies that can scale quickly and that can disrupt an existing category. Startups are generally backed by venture investor who sees the potential for ten or even one hundred times the return on investment. Small business, on the other hand, are generally founded with debt financing-a small business loan from a local bank, for example — and their aim is to grow steadily over time. They aspire to have a steady number of employees, customers, and revenues over a long period
The Second Wave had many inspiring stories of twenty-something computers coders creating multi-billion dollar companies. The Third Wave will have similar stories, but the founders are less likely to be twenty-something coders and more likely to be thirty-something farmers and factory-workers and chefs and artists — people who saw a problem in their own spheres of expertise, then leveraged the skills of others to build great companies.
During the Third Wave, though products will be tech-enabled, they won’t be tech-centric. They’ll use apps, but the product won’t be an app. And so the benefit derived from being surrounded by the tech world won’t be as high. Instead, being surrounded by experts in the industry you’re trying to disrupt may reap the biggest dividends.
The Third Wave will fundamentally change how we grow and raise our food, how we store it and transport it safely, and how we deliver it to customers. Third Wave entrepreneurs are poised to revolutionize this process. There are companies. for example, working on ways to use beams of light to kill the pathogens without heating up meat, making it possible to guarantee safe processing rather than just spot-checking it. Millenials are generally more food-centric and more experience-centric. They tend to eat out far more than other generations, and they tend to be much more health-conscious.
The winners of the Third Wave will be those who chase big-impact- ideas with a sense of urgency — but also methodically and diplomatically. Third Wave companies will have to find a perfect balance between two competing ideas. On the one hand, disruptive, disruptive success depends in some ways of ignorance. It requires a fresh perspective and the ability to look at paradigms without being burdened by legacy dogma.
More personal. More individualized. More data-driven. This is not just mantra of healthcare system’s future. It is the mantra of the Entire Third Wave.
The startups of the Third Wave will collectively shape what could be one of the most thrilling chapters in the history of entrepreneurship. They will be propelled by bold, ambitious thinkers, people who know to navigate a set of complicated challenges strategically and confidently — and who relish to do so.
Even with the most modern technology, the entrepreneurs of the Third Wave will spend a great deal of time focused on things other than tech. They will need a strategy to build an internet infrastructure in skeptical industries with powerful gatekeepers. They will work on connecting the Internet to everything else. And in critical ways, their experience is going to be more analogous to the First Wave than to the second.
The winners in the Third Wave will leverage technology and focus on great content, but also understand the importance of context and community. The challenges in the third wave will be vexing, and as Thomas Edison reminds us, “Visions without execution is hallucination.” but if we rally together, and execute with precision, we can be the world’s most innovative and entrepreneurial nation.
Much Third Wave innovation will come from impact entrepreneurs focused on building “profit plus purpose” companies that have a measurable impact in the world. And this innovation will be geographically dispersed, as the rest of the Country (and the World) rises up to complement the innovation now occurring largely in a few places, such as Silicon Valley.
Impact investing is still in its infancy. In 2013, an estimated $50 billion went toward impact investing, while global wealth sat at over $150 trillion. But a change is afoot. One Projection suggests that impact investing will rise twenty-fold by 2020, to more than $1 trillion. It’s also become the focus of some major institutional players.
The three P’s to success in The Third Wave: 1. Partnership 2. Policy 3. Perseverance.
Government’s role in the third wave will be critical in two key ways. as a regulator and as a customer. The regulatory aspect will be especially complicated as government officials weigh all kinds of new and novel challenges. Internet of things sensor and tracking technology will give companies unprecedented access to an extraordinary detail about everyday live.
We must reduce the regulatory burdens on entrepreneurs while forging a new path forward for new industries. We must support the rise of the rest regions, So Indonesia’s Innovation economy will be more broadly dispersed. We must make the playing field level, so every entrepreneur with a good idea has a shot at raising capital. We must reimagine — and restructure — government to be responsive in the Third Wave. And we must reform our immigration system so we can win the global battle for talent. We know we need to do — now we just need to come together, in multipartisan fashion, to position Indonesia as an entrepreneurial nation.
We need engineers who understand Congress and Congress to understand entrepreneurs. And both need to be better, not just at listening to one other, but taking action to support each other, too
