A Perfect Storm: Creating Real Change Through Technology

We sat down with tech innovator and social impact visionary David Folk, of NEXT Systems, in advance of his presentation at Knowledge Keiretsu’s “Alternative Investment Opportunities in an Uncertain World” October 24 in Toronto at the Drake Hotel, to discuss his latest venture and his views on creating real change.   

KK : Can you please explain NEXT’s purpose/business plan in layman’s terms?

David: The NEXT System is a cloud-based, non-medical, personal performance improvement system that you access via your smartphone, tablet, or PC. No other apparatus is required.

It is based on our proprietary enabling technology for Applied Neuroplasticity?.

The NEXT System provides users with a new way to address the challenges and opportunities of our complex modern world – a new way to learn, grow, interact, and change. It is designed to work like a “personal GPS”, slipping into the fabric of your everyday life like email, web search, texting, and social networking. It complements any tool or method for improving human performance, including any evidence-based behaviour change technique and anything else people use, from education and training programs, electronics, software, and the Internet to the most basic home-grown methods – lists, reminders, ways of thinking, etc.

KK:  That sounds exciting. How will the NEXT platform be leveraged in the next decade?

David: The NEXT System is designed to provide a development platform that inspires a new development ecosystem to transform existing products and services and create a new generation of products and services that help people change their behaviour and improve their performance in particular areas of life.

KK: How big is that market?

David:  There are two ways to look at this. Annual global expenditures on current generation non-medical performance and wellness products and services is in excess of $4 trillion. Annual public expenditures on social services (health care, education, welfare and other services) are approximately $16 trillion. NEXT is designed to improve substantially all of that.

KK: How will you be funding that vision?

David: We are in the process of a $20 million private placement led by Mint Partners / BGC out of London. With that, we will launch our ecosystem publishing platform and create our version of the Apple App Store with a major twist – our products and programs are valuable and command prices that will translate into profits for our ecosystem developers and NEXT that we can use to grow the business.

KK: What impact do you see for that platform in the future?

David: We envision a paradigm shift where people everywhere use Applied Neuroplasticity via the NEXT System to thrive and realize their full potential, regardless of their circumstances; and where organizations responsible for educating, training, supporting and caring for people use the NEXT System to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their products and services.   

KK: What’s different about NEXT and other companies entering the market ?

David: We designed our technology platform to engineer the paradigm shift. The platform provides a basis for standardization on models, implementations, and outcome analysis for behaviour change techniques, and an engineering discipline for the measurement of results data while users are attempting to change behaviour and improve performance using the System. This will enable the optimization of System content to provide more deterministic outcomes for users as the System matures. 

Prior to the NEXT System, there has been no way to systematically observe large numbers of people seeking to solve life’s many problems, let alone a method using Applied Neuroplasticity and a cloud-based technology platform to do so. This is an extraordinary opportunity to advance the science and proactive use of behaviour change techniques, including home-grown methods developed by people from all walks of life.

KK: How did you do that?David: We had the help of some truly extraordinary innovators who mentored and helped us systematically turn our vision and early successes with our method for self-directed neuroplasticity (which eventually came to be Applied Neuroplasticity?) into a technology-enabled reality. Bill was one of several Internet pioneers that shaped how we went about it:

 “After working with David and his team for nearly five years as an advisor, I am now satisfied that the complexity has-been systematically documented and automated to make this revolutionary solution a transformational success in all parts of the world. NEXT is as important to humankind’s future satisfaction and peace, on an individual and organizational basis, as the commercial Internet was for global communications.”              Bill Schrader, Founder of the Commercial Internet

For tickets to this unique event or more information, please contact me directly or at [email protected]. The full agenda can be seen at: https://knowledgekeiretsu.com/events/toronto-october-24-2017/toronto-2017-agenda/