You can’t predict the future. You can build the fitness to respond to it. #MindCandy is fuel for strategic conversation about what’s next. Forward this to your leadership team and DM me for a conversation.
What are we still designing around because it used to be unavoidable?
Orbital Matter printed a half-metre plastic beam. The interesting bit is where they put the printer. It was on a satellite. If you can build the frame for a solar array in orbit, why design the whole thing around what fits inside a rocket?
In Zagreb, you can already pay for a taxi ride with nobody behind the wheel. For a fleet operator buying cars it expects to run for five years, that belongs in today’s investment decision.
In medicine, Microsoft’s AI diagnosed difficult simulated cases more than twice as accurately as doctors who could consult reference materials, at a lower estimated cost for tests. And one woman’s observation that her husband smelled different years before his Parkinson’s diagnosis is helping researchers develop a skin-swab test.
Other signals are earlier. Researchers have tested a tiny injectable glucose sensor in the lab that uses light to track blood sugar. Another team has developed biodegradable, star-shaped particles that help medicines in a cream get through the skin.
Then there’s water. In an outdoor test, a portable solar purifier produced 1.64 litres of drinking water in eight hours. A modest output for a town. A different proposition for someone cut off after a flood.
The leadership question
Which investment are you about to approve on the assumption that something will still be expensive, scarce or impossible in five years?
The sources:
From science fiction to reality: The next phase of shared autonomous mobility
This article examines the market potential of robotaxis and roboshuttles, the factors that could shape their adoption, and the potential opportunities for companies across the shared AV value chain.
Microsoft’s Medical AI Is Over Twice as Good Diagnosing Diseases as Doctors
The system, MAI-DxO, was not only more accurate, but it also spent much less on tests to make its diagnoses.
Portable solar-powered system produces 1.64 liters of drinking water in 8 hours
Researchers have developed a portable solar-powered system that converts saline, turbid and contaminated water into drinking water using an electrothermal evaporator and concentrated sunligh
Tiny biodegradable particles poke openings in skin to boost topical drug delivery
Prausnitz calls them STAR particles because tiny microneedles project from each particle like the points of a star. Mix them into a cream or gel, rub them across the skin, and they create microscopic openings that give medicine a way through.
https://phys.org/news/2026-11-tiny-biodegradable-particles-skin-boost.html
Tiny injectable glucose sensor could make blood sugar monitoring 10 times cheaper
Researchers describe a sensor small enough to inject under your skin.
Tiny injectable glucose sensor could make blood sugar monitoring 10 times cheaper
Orbital Matter 3D-printed the first rigid beam in the vacuum of space
A satellite built by the German startup Orbital Matter 3D-printed a half-meter long beam out of a custom plastic material, in what executives called a first for a free-flying spacecraft in orbit, and a step toward constructing large structures in space.
Sniffing out the link between odor and disease
Molecules that waft from breath, skin and urine can hold clues to Parkinson’s, cancer and other ills. Scientists hope to harness these signatures for non-invasive medical tests.
https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/health-disease/2026/disease-sniffing-tests-get-closer-to-reality
