Happy New Year 2022 - Exponential Change

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had a restful, healthy and safe holiday and have had time to reflect as we power into 2022. I didn't write as much as I wanted to in 2021 due to it being a time of transition professionally into my new role at Johnson Controls, but my hope is that I spend more time, sharing interesting thoughts with this community.

Over the holidays, I read several books as I often like to, but one that was particularly profound was "The Exponential Age" by Azeem Azhar which basically talks about the accelerating exponential change that technology is driving across society. His chapter where he articulates the impact of this during the COVID-19 pandemic was amazing. He described the rapid development of a new vaccine using mRNA compared to previous generations of vaccine development, the transition to fully remote work leveraging the combinatorics of internet, video, and software, and the acceleration of e-tailing fully across all industries. All these things would not have been possible if the pandemic had hit 20 years ago and shows the exponential impact of technology.

My belief is that these trends are only accelerating and is the only way to solve macro societal problems. When we think about sustainability and decarbonization, technology is the only way that we are going to solve the upcoming challenges of climate change and resource conservation. While I would love to see us drive more human behavioral change to tackle some of these issues, without the hand-in-hand technological innovations, progress will be hard to come by.

A small story to exemplify this was just yesterday as we were leaving Florida. Our boys play tennis competitively and we had consumed lots of water bottles due to the heat and humidity! The house rental that we had, did not have recycling on site and we could not bear seeing all those water bottles disposed in the landfill. So, we looked up the nearest materials recovery facility which was 40 minutes away and drove there prior to heading to our flight. We were excited that one was open on a Sunday and that we could properly recycle our bottles. When we got there, the attendant at the gate broke our enthusiasm and told us that there was no plastic bottle recycling and everything else that was labeled recycling at the facility ultimately got sent to the landfill. I wonder how many of the bins marked recycling in the greater Orlando area end up in the landfill too! So being the "green" family we are, we trekked bags full of plastic bottles on the plane with us to recycle in our bins in Ann Arbor where we disposed of them in our reliable recycling processes here locally. So that was what was required!

I doubt many of us are ready to do that every time (I certainly am not!) to sustain our planet and reduce carbon emissions so exponential technology is the only way, leveraging software, sustainable compostable plant-based materials, and the power of the sun. The more we innovate and reduce the cost of "being green", the more our planet will thrive for generations to come. Personally, I am excited in the New Year about innovating with our team for our customers on Johnson Controls' Open Blue Sustainability and Energy management software platform where we help our customers measure their energy consumption, baseline carbon output, and help optimize their usage through new efficient technologies, artificial intelligence, and pattern adjustment. I hope we can contribute to building a more sustainable world leveraging exponential technologies.