Do you really want to be a billionaire? Billionaires are known to be astute problem solvers. If you want to become a billionaire, here are 10 of the many problems which you can solve one. The real challenge, and the greater value and more lucrative pursuit, would be to come up with the solutions to problems that have befuddled people for decades or more.
1. Wireless Power/Electricity
Digital devices have become so small that it can be cumbersome to plug them into a power source. Longer-lasting batteries? Nope!
2. Rural, Remote Internet
Everyone agrees this is a priority. But there appear to be a hard way and an easier way to achieve it. The former involves lots of expensive regulatory clearance and installations. The latter, currently spearheaded by Google, is called Project Loon.
3. Cheap, Scalable Solar
There are two ways to reduce the cost of raw solar power. One is to have a super-cheap photovoltaic cell, with the tradeoff off that it’s inefficient. Of course, more efficient cells cost more to make. So everyone is racing to find a material or process that eliminates the tradeoffs.
4. Clean Coal
The technology was recently the subject of a cover story in Wired, which said carbon capture and storage “may be more important — though much less publicized — than any renewable-energy technology for decades to come,” since it would allow the world to keep burning its most abundant fuel source. But it goes on to note that “developing reliable, large-scale CCS facilities will be time-consuming, unglamorous, and breathtakingly costly.”
5. Super-Low-Cost International Payments
While this isn’t a problem that touches the average consumer directly, the fees paid by financial institutions to wire funds overseas can eventually filter down.
6. A Pill That Really Makes You Lose Weight
7. Cheap Desalination
Water shortages continue to make the list of the world’s most pressing issues. This year’s crippling drought in California further drove the point home. But desalination plants have proved way too expensive and inefficient to build.
8. Detecting Or Predicting Major Weather Or Natural Events
9. Unhackable Passwords
Wired has said 2012 was the year passwords broke. Hackers have, through brute force, so far been able to break through practically every firewall ever invented. There must be a better way. And engineers are working on them.
10. Death
It’s happening. Google — yes, it has appeared several times on this list, but that’s because it’s interested, and it can — just hired biophysicist Cynthia Kenyon from UCSF to join its Project Calico antiaging team. Her experiments have produced roundworm as old as the equivalent of 80 human years but looks and acts the equivalent of 40. Google admits it’s a moonshot, but it’s proved pretty decent at those.
This was written by ROB WILE for Business Insider. You should read Billion Bollar Problems for more information
