Hugh Martin is chairman and chief executive officer of Sensity Systems. He has a 35-year track record leading technology companies, ventures and businesses. In 2011, he was named CEO for Fortune magazine's "Executive Dream Team: The startup edition." Martin created the vision for the light sensory network and for Sensity Systems, which capitalizes on conversions to LED lighting to create high-speed, sensor-base, multiservice, open networking platforms.  This Op-Ed is part of a series provided by the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers, class of 2015. Martin contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. 

The next time you drive past a street light or walk under a light pole as you cross a parking lot to your car, take a moment to ponder this: that same lighting fixture illuminating your path might someday also keep you safer, guide you to where you're headed, lead you to an open parking space, and even make your business more profitable and your customers more loyal.

Worldwide, owners of outdoor lighting are replacing high-pressure sodium or fluorescent lamps with light-emitting diode (LED) luminaires , primarily to save on energy costs and usage. What many people don't realize is that when you upgrade to LED lighting, you're essentially putting a solid-state digital device — i.e., the same technology powering every computing and communications device in the world — into every light fixture.

Talking lights

Outdoor lighting fixtures are already connected 24/7 to power lines, and they have enclosures that are rated to withstand rain, snow, hail, wind and blazing sun. Plus, nearly anywhere there are people doing any activities of importance, there will be lighting.

This all adds up to a nearly perfect foundation for a revolution in the delivery of sensor-based networked applications and services as diverse as parking management and public safety.

Such a "light sensory network" is different from a traditional adaptive lighting control network. Adaptive lighting control, sometimes referred to as "smart lighting," means automatically adjusting light output based on environmental conditions, such as daylight levels, or on triggers such as motion detectors. Adaptive lighting is used for scheduling, dimming and otherwise controlling LED lighting. Light sensory networks, however, can do much more than adaptive lighting:

• Sensors. For a small incremental cost, sensors can be added to luminaires at the same time as an LED upgrade. Various sensors can detect environmental conditions, vibration, location coordinates, the presence of smoke or specific gases, physiological metrics, motion and more .
• Networking nodes. Because LEDs are solid-state digital devices, and because lighting systems already are connected to reliable power sources, each luminaire has the important prerequisites to become a node in a powerful network. All that's needed is a wireless connection for the light to become a critical on-ramp to the Internet of Things (IoT). 
• Applications and services. Software services can run on this lighting-based network, providing critical business intelligence using data from the sensors to deliver new, actionable insights into the operation of their business in real-time. The data these services have access to is unlike anything before — the environment is now digital and software services can read, measure, analyze to understand, and take action like never before. 

These new light sensory networks can still perform all the adaptive lighting control you'd expect from any sophisticated LED lighting control network, including advanced scheduling sequences, proximity occupancy dimming, brightening in response to motion detector input, daylight harvesting and accurate metering.

Networks of light

But in addition, a sensor-enabled light sensory network could do much more. Some examples:

• Smart city applications running on light sensory networks could enhance public safety by monitoring the flow of movement of people, vehicles, deliveries and other outdoor activities.
• Applications for retail stores, shopping malls and central business districts could use location analytics to count pedestrian visits, determine how often shoppers visit and how long they stay in a particular store, or compare shopper traffic over time. The applications could be written to generate visitor counts by area, by time of day, and by visit frequency and duration and provide insights on how to optimize marketing dollars and increase revenue.
• College and corporate campuses could enhance their security, asset protection and perimeter detection through applications that use sensors, video cameras and analytics technology creating a safer environment for students and employees.
• In warehouses and distribution facilities, light sensory network applications could provide real-time asset management services by scanning radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to track goods received, shipped, sitting at loading docks and in storage dramatically increasing the accuracy and efficiency of logistics.
• Video sensors can also be used to provide granular data about activity in the environment. Security applications written to take advantage of the video sensor data could allow managers of warehouses, hangars and similar structures to be alerted to unusual activity like the unauthorized people and vehicles activity both within and outside structures mitigating inventory loss or property vandalism.
• Operators of parking areas — whether cities, municipalities, universities, sports and entertainment facilities, retail centers or private parking providers — could use light sensory network applications to guide drivers to open parking spots, control permit and paid parking spaces, ease traffic flow, reduce driver frustration and optimize parking operator revenues.

And these examples are just the start. Fully powered lighting systems already exist everywhere. As these lighting systems are upgraded to LED technology, they could also be integrated with powerful and increasingly affordable sensor and networking technologies to create light sensory networks.

Read more from the Technology Pioneers on their Live Science landing page. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

Rob Leslie is chief executive officer of Sedicii, which provides technology for eliminating transmission and storage of private identity data during authentication or identity verification, and reducing identity theft, impersonation and fraud. Leslie is an electronics engineer with more 25 years of experience in information technology and business. This Op-Ed is part of a series provided by the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers, class of 2015. Leslie contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

You may have heard the phrase, "If the product is free, then you are the product." It was coined at a time in the not-too-distant past when social networks were in their infancy and we were all mesmerized by the fantastic services we could consume to keep in touch and interact with each other — all for free!

Little did we realize at the time what that bargain actually meant. The vast majority of us had no idea social networks would be monitoring and recording all our interactions  as they learn everything possible about us as people, our habits, our likes and dislikes, and in some cases, our innermost, private secrets. This information, containing the essence of who each of us is, has been used to target us with advertising and other services, making the companies collecting this information global giants that earn billions of dollars in revenue every year. Personal information is extremely valuable.

So how much are you really worth?

The problem we have as consumers is that most of us have been unwitting pawns in a giant information game. We want the services for free, but have little concept of the value of the information we give back in return. In fact, the European Commission estimates that the value of personal data in the European Union will hit more than $1 trillion by 2020. [Dutch Student Sells His Data for €350 but at What Price Privacy? (Op-Ed )]

Looking at the profits of the giant Internet companies begs the question: "Is there a case to be made that the trade is not fair and that we are being taken advantage of because we don't know what the value of our identity and other information really is?"

It is hard to put a value on a single person's data — but some have already started to try. The U.S. based company, Datacoup, promises to pay users $8 a month to part with their data on everything from credit cards to social media usage. 

On one level, such an approach gives consumers a degree of return on data many of us are handing over for free anyway, but on another level consumers are sharing important data with a third party to use for commercial purposes knowing that it will almost certainly be sold to other parties in some form. 

Logic dictates that in the world of personal data, all men, or women, are not created equal; any retailer will want to target those with the greatest spending power. In the same way in the business world, if a vendor or service provider can reach the person within an organization with purchasing responsibility they are more likely to achieve a sale. The greatest testament to the value of data is the effort that some will go to in order to acquire it. 

The situation as it existed would likely have continued for a long time, as the global public either didn't care or was unaware of what was happening — or were powerless to do anything about it — had it not been for a principled young man by the name of Edward Snowden . Almost singlehandedly, Snowden has managed to shine a light on the practices of some governments and big business, and has explained what it means for all of us as it relates to our privacy  and our personal data. 

This has opened a lot of people's eyes to what has been happening, such as the U.S. government accessing citizens' Google and Yahoo accounts. As a result of this changing environment, in a survey by the Pew Research Center in 2014, 91 percent of American adults said that consumers have lost control over how personal information is collected and used by companies.

A right to digital privacy

In 2016, it is expected that the European Union will enact a new Data Privacy Directive, encompassing the so-called "Right to be Forgotten." For the first time, a law will explicitly state that identity and other personal data belong to the individual. This will give all European citizens the right to control how their identity — and maybe more important, their personal data — is consumed. It is the beginning of a radical change in the balance of power in the relationship that consumers have with the companies that provide us services over the Internet. For the first time the consumer will have a voice.

In addition to the consumer being given a voice, this new directive will be backed by stiff penalties for those companies who fail to comply with it. If an organization fails to comply, they may have to pay a price as high as 2 to 5 percent of their global revenue. Because of this, I expect that the nature of the relationship will change and it will put each consumer at the center of his or her personal data universe. It will empower the consumer to make choices as to who, how, when and where identity is consumed, and critically, how a company rewards consent when information is used. In the U.S., Google and other industry players along with data-privacy campaigners have recently been lobbying Congress over data privacy laws, which, at nearly 30 years old, are woefully out of date — and this pressure is only set to increase. 

Judging by how much money is made today from people's identity and personal data, this will be a big opportunity for consumers.

Read more from the Technology Pioneers on their Live Science landing page. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

Nicole Eagan is the CEO of Darktrace, a cyber threat defense company that uses technology to detect previously unidentified threats in real time, powered by machine learning and mathematics developed at the University of Cambridge. This op-ed is part of a series provided by the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers, class of 2015. Eagan contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

People work best when they talk to each other. So do information systems and modern infrastructures. Today, companies, organizations and governments are hyper connected: They rely on, and thrive on, a web of information that has been made mobile and flexible by the power of the Internet. We depend on the mobility of the data almost as much as on the information itself, together with the ability to share it across geographies and time zones. 

Computer networks have evolved with those needs, becoming more complex and porous. There are multiple ways in and out of networks, enabling users to connect remotely from anywhere in the world and share information quickly with thousands of people at a time. All of this is critical to an efficient business environment. The security that defends those networks, however, has not evolved at the same speed. A new approach is required; one that has adapted to the interconnected world — where security cannot be guaranteed. The landscape is constantly shifting, and threats must be dealt with as they occur. 

A wall doesn't work

As developers progressively build these high-tech systems, we have tended to view the computer network as a fortress that must guard against malicious intruders — if we build a high enough wall and buy a strong enough lock, we will be safe. This traditional approach is no longer sufficient to defend against today's fast-moving and intelligent attackers. Businesses and their information networks are not like medieval castles; they exist within a complex ecosystem of other networks and users, internal and external, and have multiple gateways to them. That is their brilliance and their strength. [The Truth Behind the 'Biggest Cyberattack in History' ]

If networks are compared to the human body, then cyberattacks can be compared to viruses. Our skin does a pretty good job as a protective, outer layer, but it cannot keep everything out. Viral DNA is clever; it knows how to mutate and evolve to ensure its own survival. But once inside the body, viruses encounter an equally clever immune system, which is constantly learning and can detect threats. Living in a sterile glass box is not an option for a functioning, social human being, and it is not an option for modern businesses, either. The body's self-defense mechanism is one of the great marvels of biology — and it's also incredibly pragmatic. We should use the human body as an example of how modern systems must adapt to defeat the threat. We know viruses are going to get in. The question is: How do we defeat them when they do?

"Secure" is no longer possible

The goal of trying to "secure" all information is unrealistic. In order to have a fighting chance, networks, just like bodies, must be defended through an understanding of and focus on the parts of the information infrastructure that are in jeopardy at any one time. To avoid recurring problems and combat new ones, we need to start implementing a cyber "immune system" that learns from its environment. 

As we continue to embrace all the benefits of the Internet, we need to move to a more uncertain world that focuses on behaviors within a network that allow us to distinguish normal behavior from abnormal behavior, both at the individual and group level. New technologies, such as our Darktrace Enterprise Immune System, work on probabilities and experience, rather than hard-and-fast rules and certainties. This model, which provides instant insight into unusual activity within a network, goes beyond just building higher and higher walls around data, and helps users understand all the unknowable, yet strange, things that are happening beneath the surface of busy organizations. 

Adapting to the threat landscape

Companies must consider security not as a state of perfection to be achieved and maintained, but rather as an ongoing process of self-evaluation and informed actions, adapting to the threat landscape as it evolves. 

The threats that exist today to a company's reputation, financials and operations must be kept in constant check so that they can be stopped from spiraling out of control and into the headlines. To do this, it is critical to separate out the threats that we can live with from the ones that have the potential to inflict existential harm. So a real challenge at the heart of our imperative for good cybersecurity is one of discovery — of knowing, ahead of time, about the threats that you really care about. 

If Edward Snowden has shown us one thing, it's that there is no way you can stay safe from attack. A continuous approach to cybersecurity accepts that ongoing cyber threats are an inevitable part of doing business. The attackers are out there and more often than not, they are also "in there" — in your networks, in your laptops and even in your office buildings. Cybersecurity has become the primary priority for governments and corporations across the globe as this faceless threat intensifies. [Summer Camp Trades Campfires for Cybersecurity (Op-Ed)]

However, by embracing new technologies that internalize defensive mechanisms, we can develop an immune system that will fight off the next major virus just as the body does, while interacting fully in modern life. 

Read more from the Technology Pioneers on their Live Science landing page. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

Kunal Ghosh is CEO of Inscopix, Inc., a neuroscience startup based in Palo Alto, California, developing end-to-end solutions for understanding the brain in action. This op-ed is part of a series provided by the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers, class of 2015.  Ghosh contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

The human brain is the force behind civilization and culture. From the great works of literature and art, to spaceships that visit distant planets, to complex economic theories, all are embodiments of the extraordinary capacity of the human brain. The quest to understand how the brain works has fascinated and perplexed humankind for centuries. After all, the brain, with its 86 billion neurons and 100 trillion connections, is the most complex entity in the known universe. 

This quest also has a purpose beyond curiosity: to alleviate the human suffering inflicted by brain disorders. While the global economic cost of brain disorders stands at $2.5 trillion and is projected to rapidly escalate in the coming decades, the development of therapeutics has been at a virtual standstill for the past 20 years. 

To develop therapies for the brain, scientists must understand it

Almost 66 percent of all molecules that hold potential as a neurological treatment fail after entering phase III clinical trials, the phase that entails drug testing on patients to assess efficacy and safety. This is simply because the compounds are not effective. 

Despite intense efforts, not a single drug can reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease , much less cure the disorder. This is especially worrisome as the world's population ages. 

Similarly, for the millions of people across the world who suffer from neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and PTSD: Causes, Treatment & Symptoms (PTSD), treatments are only partially effective. The root cause for lack of robust therapeutic advances boils down to one factor: ignorance about how the brain works. 

Governments across the world have recognized this problem, and launched efforts to better understand the brain in both health and in disease. Most notable among these efforts are the United States' BRAIN Initiative, the European Union's Human Brain Project and Japan's Brain/MINDS Project. The central focus of such efforts is to decode the language of the brain; this is a language embedded in patterns of electrical and chemical signals that neuronal ensembles use for information processing. 

Decoding these patterns in the healthy brain, and understanding how they go awry in brain disorders, will have profound implications for the development of next-generation brain therapeutics, be they small molecules, biologics or tiny, implantable devices that send electrical signals to correct (re-tune) aberrant brain-circuit activity. 

Brain science needs a strong neuro industry

Like the Apollo Missions or the Human Genome Project, decoding the language of the brain will require new technologies. Specifically, it will require technologies to measure, manipulate and interpret electrical and chemical signals in the brain with exquisite precision, and on a broad scale. 

This calls for not only collaboration amongst neuroscientists, engineers and data scientists, but also unprecedented cooperation among three major stakeholders: governments, research universities and the neurotechnology industry. 

Today, governments organize and finance these "big neuroscience" initiatives, while research universities innovate new disruptive technologies and use them to conduct groundbreaking brain research. Unfortunately, the role of the neuroscience/neurotechnology industry, and of business in general, in this 21st-century grand challenge has remained ambiguous and poorly defined. 

Nitin Nohria, the dean of Harvard Business School, once remarked, "There is no problem facing society and humanity today that can be solved unless business plays a vital role." 

I strongly agree. Both small, entrepreneurial ventures and large, established companies interested in commercializing innovative neurotechnologies and advancing brain science can play the unique role of integrating and accelerating the efforts of governments and research universities. 

Disruptive technological innovation, while absolutely necessary, is completely insufficient to break new ground in brain research. Technological innovation must be accompanied by robust and rapid dissemination to significantly advance fundamental brain research and catalyze new approaches for developing new treatments. This is the unique and crucial role that only business can play. Companies such as SpaceX for space travel and Illumina for genomics serve as excellent analogues of what the companies that inhabit the 21st century neuroscience/neurotechnology space could do to revolutionize brain science and mental health.

What stands in the way?

There are two major barriers that preclude widespread dissemination of new disruptive technologies: iterative refinement and cost. The 21st century neurotechnology industry can help overcome both barriers. 

Iterative technology refinement can involve taking a prototype developed in a university lab and commercializing it, and/or repeatedly improving a product for usability and enhanced capability (such as imaging at higher resolution, or at higher speed). Today, many disruptive neurotechnologies languish in the laboratories in which they were invented. Even if they are ready for "prime time," they are not designed for manufacturability and scalability, are not optimized for usability, and are certainly not integrated as part of ready-to-use solutions for solving specific research questions. Technology innovators at universities are not incentivized to conduct iterative refinement or integration. And they should not be. 

Translating disruptive neurotechnologies from a university lab into scalable, end-to-end solutions for brain-science researchers, and progressively improving those solutions, is what industry is best positioned and incentivized to do. The neurotechnology industry can apply industrial engineering principles, and play a pivotal and valuable role in migration of technology from the innovators' laboratories into the broader field. 

To reduce the costs associated with new, revolutionary technologies, the neurotechnology sector has a lot to learn from the cellphone industry. New state-of-the art neurotechnologies, especially instrumentation, are often expensive, and are limited to a few elite and wealthy laboratories and research institutions. There is thus an urgent need to level the playing field by democratizing access to new neurotechnologies to a wider spectrum of researchers. 

The neurotechnology industry must seriously consider the "technology as service" concept and the subscription-based revenue-generation mechanisms that have been central to the near universalization of cellphones in fewer than two decades. Supplanting the traditional "purchase and ownership" with creative subscription-based mechanisms makes additional sense in this era of rapid and iterative neurotechnology development. Imagine a world where every brain researcher or neuroscience lab has access to not just one or two sophisticated brain-imaging systems, but dozens. Further imagine that the researchers could periodically swap their systems for the latest-generation versions. And imagine if all this were possible for a reasonable monthly subscription fee. 

These are but two concrete ideas of how entrepreneurial ventures and industry can transform fields even as esoteric as brain research. Fortunately, there are excellent precedents to follow in other complex fields such as space travel and genomics. The quest to understand the human brain will be a defining feature of the 21st century. Now is the time for the neuroscience and neurotechnology industries to rise to the occasion. 

Hear more from Inscopix in this video. Read more from the Technology Pioneers on their Live Science landing page. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

Marc Shillum is chief experience officer of Matternet, an integrated system of smart transportation drones, secure landing stations and cloud­-based routing software for bringing medication and diagnostics samples to otherwise inaccessible locations. This op-ed is part of a series provided by the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers, class of 2015. Shillum contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

In Silicon Valley, it's all too easy to get pre­occupied with the massive wealth that can be generated from a smart insight into emerging technology. But when you begin to look closer at the idea of wealth, it begins to reveal something more profound. The word wealth isn't derived from financial acumen, smart investment or economic prowess. Wealth is derived from well-­being. And when you begin to think about wealth in these terms, focus shifts from fundraising, the next massive IPO or market capitalization, toward the net effect that technology can have on those who need it most. 

A new kind of optimism is breeding companies that truly understand that kind of wealth. They sit at the intersection of technology, purpose and creativity. These companies are taking on some of the world's largest problems, problems so large that they've been largely invisible to society. The most inspiring part: it seems that the financial success of these companies is just one outcome of smart problem-solving rather than the sole intent. 

When health care is driven by both heart and finance

True wealth, well-being, is expanding in the field of medicine, one of the few industries where much of the innovation has driven costs up rather than reduced them. We all know too well the demands that rising health care costs place on governments and patients. When medical innovation cuts cost significantly, it is truly astounding. 

Theranos is a biotech company with a radical approach to blood testing. Anyone who's received continuous medical care knows that regularly giving blood can be painful, debilitating, even traumatic — which is especially counterproductive when the body should be in a time of healing. Theranos' new method of blood testing uses just 1/100th to 1/1,000th of the amount of blood currently required for diagnostic testing. Not only does this reduce trauma and stress experienced by the patient, it also vastly reduces cost, with prices that are often one-half to one-quarter compared with independent labs, and up to one- tenth the cost at a hospital lab. Such pricing represents a godsend for the uninsured, insurers and taxpayers. The company sets its prices to never exceed half the U.S. Medicare reimbursement rate for each procedure, an approach that, with widespread adoption, could save the nation billions. [Why Healthcare Will Always Cost a Fortune ]

In an adjacent medical field, each year more than 2.5 million people die from diseases that could be prevented by vaccines. This occurs because almost all vaccines require cold storage between 2 degrees and 8 degrees Celsius (35 and 46 degrees Fahrenheit). A lack of "cold chain" transportation limits access to vaccines so Vaxess Technologies developed a soluble, silk-­stabilized vaccine which can be shipped without refrigeration. By extracting a protein found in silk called fibroin and combining it with the vaccine, Vaxess is able to produce a freeze-dried solidified form of the vaccine that does not require refrigeration — an invention that reduces waste, simplifies logistics and increases access. 

"We thought about how to use silk for tackling the most unmet challenges in global health," Livio Valenti, co-­founder of Vaxxess, told the Harvard Gazette. "We saw the opportunity to build a sustainable, profitable business while creating an important public good: increasing access to health for those who are most in need."

Another chilling statistic, more than 120,000 people are on the waiting list for an organ donation in the United States, many waiting for kidneys. According to Organize, a company aiming to dramatically increase the number of organ donors in the United States, this contributes to $42 billion in annual dialysis cost, which could quadruple by 2030. 

Americans die each day while waiting for organs. Ninety-five percent of Americans support organ donation yet only 40 percent are registered. Organize seeks to modernize the antiquated donation system, increasing points of entry and centralizing data. 

"There was a moment of real epiphany when we looked at the variables and said, 'We can make a real change and solve this problem in our lifetime,'" founder Jenna Arnold told Fast Company. A streamlined organ donation system combined with effective marketing could eliminate the organ shortage entirely: "We want to put ourselves out of business in five years." 

True wealth beyond medicine

Companies across all fields are finding ways to create sustainable businesses that benefit customers, the company and their investors. 

For example, about 3 billion people depend on open fires or traditional stoves for cooking and heating. Unfortunately, exposure to the particulates in the resulting smoke is responsible for an estimated 4.3 million premature deaths a year. BioLite's stove technology uses air injection to make fuel burn hotter and cleaner — of course, BioLite isn't the first company to create a stove for the developing world, but their business model is different. The developing world isn't BioLite's sole focus, they have been selling their stove for recreation since inception. By doing this, and selling to developed and developing economies at same time, BioLite has created a stable business capable of having a global effect. [Cheap, Sustainable Water Filter Made from Seeds and Sand ]

Finally, 1.2 billion people across the world are without access to reliable energy. Of those, 85 percent live in rural areas without the necessary electricity grid infrastructure to provide reliable power. The company d.light has created a model for a mobile­-enabled distribution grid, which could provide energy to those in need. By creating a modular system of weatherproof and water-resistant switches, lights, outlets and solar panels which can be leased, more people can get access to affordable power. This leap­frogs the need for a traditional grid infrastructure and converts the high costs of distributed solar energy into affordable monthly payments.

D.light measures its impact against a universal "theory of change." They do this across four areas of well-­being: financial freedom, productivity gains, human health and environmental health. The entire business is aligned against this theory and it guides d.light's assessment of everything from the customer experience to the first purchase of a solar lantern.

The future of true wealth

Invention in its truest sense has always been the amplification of human intent. Our tools should always enable more of us to do things better, with less effort and to a greater effect. A hammer allowed us to build. A wheel allowed us to move. Compressed steam, to locomote. 

But today, as a society, when we judge wealth or the success of an organization or product, let us consider the whole meaning of the word wealth. 

We create wealth not only by building companies that become more valuable, or technology that becomes more widely adopted — we build wealth by creating the tools that enable others to occupy a better state of well­-being. 

10 steps toward building true wealth

1. Look for problems that have massive human scale. 
2. Meet an asymmetry of supply and demand by clearly identifying the need and a scalable solution. 
3. Look for adjacent technologies that are pushing down the price of components and raw materials that may be at the core of your product. 
4. Try to serve both developed and developing markets with the same basic technology. 
5. Integrate with people or organizations who understand the problem firsthand. Fitting in is far more helpful than standing out. 
6. Design tools that can be built upon by others. 
7. Go meet your end user. To create a holistic experience, everything you do or make should not only be informed by your purpose but also should be intentionally designed to benefit the well-­being of your end user. 
8. Always design something that people need, and want. Obsess about product-to-market fit. 
9. No matter how tempting it is to follow money over your founding cause, don't. 
10. Remember, true wealth means well-­being for you, too. 

Read more from the Technology Pioneers on their Live Science landing page. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

Nina Tandon is CEO and co-founder of EpiBone.com, a New York City based startup focus on engineering living bones made from patients' own cells. Tandon is a scientist, biomedical engineer, TED Senior Fellow and co-author of Super Cells: Building with Biology (TED Conferences, 2014). This op-ed is part of a series provided by the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers, class of 2015. Tandon contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Many people don't realize that, after blood, bone is the most widely transplanted human tissue worldwide, resulting in more than 2 million procedures per year at a cost of more than $5 billion. 

If you've lost a healthy bone to an accident or illness, or if you were born with bones that aren't the right shape, what do you do? Historical solutions have included using animal bones or pieces of bone from human donors. Unfortunately, the body is quite picky. Complications abound when the body rejects what it sees as a foreign object, leading to infections or defective transplants after these operations.

Grafting bone: a less than perfect answer

So, even now, the gold standard treatment for a person like Roger Ebert, the late American film critic who lost his jawbone to cancer, is autograft. This is basically a euphemism for cutting a piece of bone out of one part of the body and putting it in another. 

Autograft is the sort of procedure that needs a euphemism. Though it is surgeons' current best option, it still isn't that great. The surgery is invasive and destructive. It can leave patients with a whole host of new issues, including the need for multiple surgeries. 

Roger Ebert, because doctors cut bone out of his hip and shoulder, suffered a limp for the rest of his life. And with children who need the procedure, autografts are an even worse option; there's often quite simply not enough bone to go around. 

And so, millions of patients need a better solution for bone replacement, and as the population ages and the world globalizes, such musculoskeletal solutions must last a lifetime. 

Building bone from your fat cells

Inventors are working to meet this need. One emerging technology for skeletal reconstruction is 3D-printed synthetic implants made to match the anatomical shape of a patient's defects, such as those from Mobelife, Oxford Performance Materials and ConforMIS. Others are developing stem-cell therapies, such as those from Stempeutics, Novadip or Bonus Biogroup. In this method, either cells stored in banks or those harvested from adult stem cells are used to aid in bone regeneration. 

At our startup, EpiBone, we propose a more radical — and dare we say, natural — approach that combines both of the above trends: growing your own bone. Why not use the stem cells that grow bones every day in people's bodies to engineer bones in a lab? 

In order to do this, we take two things from the patient: A CT scan, which is essentially a high-resolution 3D X-ray, so that we can calculate and fabricate a personalized scaffold in the precise 3D shape of the bone we want to engineer; and a fat sample from which we extract stem cells to infuse into the 3D scaffold.

The scaffold and stem cells together go into a special growth chamber, called a bioreactor, which simulates conditions found inside the body. Temperature, humidity, acidity and nutrient composition all need to be just right for the stem cells to transform into bone-growing cells called osteoblasts, colonize the scaffold and remodel it with living tissue. Three weeks later, out would come a piece of living human bone that's sized and shaped precisely for the patient. This is an implant that the patient's body hopefully won't reject, because it's made from his or her own cells. 

Next step: human testing

Lots of research remains to be done before we place the first personalized, lab-grown bone into a patient. Such artificial bones have already been successfully implanted in pigs and other animals, but we still need to demonstrate that this method will work for humans. 

EpiBone's work builds on the discovery from developmental biology that stem cells can transform into any part of the body. Our innovations, in turn, will be the foundation for still more new inventions, many yet to be imagined. 

If we can work in concert with living cells to grow bone, we might also adapt cells to groundbreaking new uses in other realms of medicine, or even entirely different fields, such as architecture, art and fashion.

What's most inspiring to me about the evolving science of regenerative medicine is how it recasts the role and potential of the body's own cells. No longer seen simply as the passive subjects of treatments, cells are now active agents. They are collaborators. And they are the kind of naturally powerful actors that you really want on your team.

There's still a long road ahead, but I would love to look back someday and say that painful, problem-prone bone transplants are statistics from the past. Countless patients, present and future, hope so too.

Read more from the Technology Pioneers on their Live Science landing page. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

Katrine Bosley is CEO, and Sandra Glucksmann COO, of Editas Medicine, a genome editing company targeting treatment of genetic diseases. The company was founded by pioneers in the field who have specific expertise in CRISPR/Cas9 and TALE technologies. World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers, class of 2015. The authors contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Science is about asking questions. Sixty years ago, the key question in biology was, "What does the human genetic code look like?" That was followed by, "How many genes make up human DNA?" which itself led to, "Which genes cause diseases ?" Now the question is, "What if doctors could repair broken genes?"

For decades, doctors and scientists have wanted to correct disease-causing mistakes in patients' DNA. A new technology called genome editing brings the world closer to making that goal a reality. 

Repairing DNA

Today, medicine recognizes more than 5,000 genetic diseases caused by mistakes in DNA, and the majority of these illnesses have no cure or treatments. These are the diseases that stand to benefit most from genomic medicine, and specifically, the newest and most powerful genome-editing technology, called CRISPR. (Pronounced "crisper," it stands for "clustered, regularly-interspaced, short palindromic repeats.") 

CRISPR uses an enzyme called Cas9, a programmable molecular machine that binds to a small, guide RNA-molecule in cells. Together, these components hone in on target genes and carry out precise molecular "surgery" to create a genetic change. This can be used to correct a defect that causes a genetic disease. [Designer Superbabies Could Rewrite Human Reproduction (Op-Ed)]

Significant potential

CRISPR has taken the research community by storm, because it can make DNA changes in many different settings and many different kinds of cells. Scientists can now much more rapidly and comprehensively investigate what different genes do and how they work together.

The technology is young, and it will take time to fully realize its promise and develop medicines using the technique. Some diseases are more challenging than others, and there is a lot of work to be done to extend CRISPR's capabilities.

Technologies like CRISPR may ultimately treat many severe and life-threatening diseases, such as cystic fibrosis, which attacks the lungs and digestive system; Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a disease affecting the muscles; and sickle cell disease, a debilitating blood disorder. 

For patients who have these diseases, this could mean physicians and scientists could restore the normal function of the gene by correcting genetic defects. This could significantly improve quality of life. For patients with DMD, this could mean being able to walk and breathe better; for patients with cystic fibrosis, it could mean breathing more easily. And for patients with sickle cell disease, it could mean reducing the painful crises caused by the disease.

A new era in medicine

Scientists have arrived at a watershed moment in their understanding of genomic science. Not only have researchers identified many of the mutations that cause a variety of diseases, but now there is also a technology that could create new medicines that directly target and correct those mutations. [Genetically Modified Humans? How Genome Editing Works ]

To realize the potential of treating genetically driven diseases with medicines based on CRISPR, the challenge today is to safely and systematically advance the technology to the next phases of testing and ultimately into studies in people. That is what we're working on at Editas Medicine.

We believe we have the opportunity unlock a broad class of new transformative genomic medicines that will enable precise, corrective modifications to DNA to treat the underlying causes of genetic diseases. More importantly, we're getting closer to making once untreatable conditions treatable by repairing broken genes.

Read more from the Technology Pioneers on their Live Science landing page. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

Anmol Madan is co-founder and CEO of Ginger.io, which provides digital mental health support for people with depression and anxiety. Madan has published extensively on modeling large-scale human behaviour using statistical models and pattern recognition, and is a frequent speaker on behavioral analytics, machine learning, data privacy and health care entrepreneurship. This op-ed is part of a series provided by the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers, class of 2015. Madan contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Possibly the most complex system that health-technology developers face today has nothing to do with hardware, software or even human behavior — rather, it's the U.S. health care system. 

I'm a data scientist by training and by trade, and we're very pragmatic people. We identify problems, peel back the layers of complexity to look for a root cause, and develop a systematic way of addressing the problem to build a better solution for the future.

In health care, however, those layers are much more intricate, and surprisingly few people can agree on what the "problem" actually is, much less the solution.

From my experience developing Ginger.io and building mental health innovation into health care delivery, I have learned that adoption of these three reforms are critical for the global health care community to scale its impact and provide the right care for those who need it. 

1. Embrace technology

We are fortunate enough to live in a time of great technological advancement. This has come in the form of machine learning, 3D printing, predictive analytics, advanced optics, impossibly small sensors and all-around computational power. But when it comes to health care, technology has clearly surpassed the ability of research to keep pace. 

Hospitals and doctors are adopting new technologies as they become clinically and commercially viable, but convoluted and burdensome systemic pressures — such as competing incentives, byzantine payment models and legal hurdles — have stymied the pace of innovation. This not only increases the time it takes for these new technologies to enter the market, but also can be a major deterrent to new entrepreneurs — a barrier to entry in an industry that is arguably the most worthy of innovation and human ingenuity: saving lives. [Surgeon's Helper: 3D Printing Is Revolutionizing Health Care (Op-Ed)]

Nations have the tools to create a much healthier global population, but they're missing clear opportunities to leverage technological solutions in response to global health threats such as malaria, heart disease and depression. The global community must invest in helping entrepreneurs tackle these difficult problems and navigate the complicated bureaucratic structures currently in place.

2. Give patients the tools to self-manage

We're now living in an era defined by self-service. People prefer ATMs and smartphones to banks, online shopping to brick-and-mortar stores, and Wikipedia to libraries. When younger generations get sick today, they are more likely to visit WebMD.com or perform a quick Google search to understand their symptoms long before they reach the doors of a doctor's office. This represents a huge shift and a serious opportunity for both patients and providers of health care. [9 DIY Ways to Improve Your Mental Health]

Research from Accenture shows that more than 90 percent of patients want to self-manage their health care through technology. This includes managing their data and health care records, of course, but it also extends to managing chronic and acute health conditions. In fact, mobile applications analysts at research2guidance estimate that 1.7 billion people will have downloaded health apps by 2017, adding up to an impressive $26 billion global industry.

For patients, the value is clear: Credible information can empower those who hold it to feel more confident in managing their condition and offer some guidance as to when and how to engage with the health care system, improving outcomes and access to health care services in the process. 

These activated and engaged patients also benefit health care providers. When patients are empowered to self-manage their condition, there are many beneficial ripple effects: Strain on the system is decreased; emergency departments no longer act as triage units for people in stable condition; and doctors can focus on being doctors, instead of hospital administrators or reimbursement accountants. 

3. Address mental health, head on

At some point in modern history, the health care community decided to separate the treatment of mental health from the treatment of physical health. Fortunately, the pendulum is starting to swing back the other way, and we're coming to realize what people knew long ago: The mind-body connection is very real and very symbiotic. [For Mental Health, Social Media Removes the Silence (Op-Ed) ]

Addressing mental health is crucial to helping patients manage their physical health, especially when it comes to chronic conditions such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease, the latter of which can have depression rates of up to 60 percent. The existence of depression in combination with chronic diseases is shown to dramatically reduce the quality of health outcomes while also driving up costs by an average of $505 per patient per month, according to actuarial consulting firm Milliman.

But the impacts are not only for chronic diseases. Robert Gatchel of the University of Texas has estimated that more than 70 percent of all primary care visits stem from a psychological issue. Primary care is often referred to as "the front lines of health care," where the average primary care provider will see the full spectrum of mental health conditions (ranging from depression and anxiety to substance abuse and psychiatric disorders) in just one week. 

Ask anyone to think about a time when he or she was sad or angry or anxious. Ask them how those feelings manifested physically. You'll get an immediate response about heart rate, body temperature, posture or pain in a very real sense. Any perceived separation between mental and physical health by health care providers is negligent at best, and downright dangerous at its worst.

As a global society, we have enough tools to "fix" many aspects of health care today. The practice of medicine will always be an evolving science, as the human body is an infinitely complicated and beautiful system. But we can take real steps to improve the standard of care today.

To do so, we must act with a higher degree of urgency in bringing new products and solutions to market, and we must dedicate real resources to applying advanced technologies to the life sciences. 

It's just a matter of having the will to stand up to an entrenched system and shout: "There is a better way!"

Read more from the Technology Pioneers on their Live Science landing page. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

Dmitri Alperovitch is a computer security researcher and co-founder & CTO of CrowdStrike Inc., which provides cloud-based endpoint protection. With expertise incybersecurity technology, policies and state tradecraft, Alperovitch also holds eighteen technology patents. This Op-Ed is part of a series provided by the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers, class of 2015. Alperovitch contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Today, economic reliance on the internet is all-encompassing. With 40 percent of the world population now online, there is hardly an industry that has not been dramatically transformed and empowered by the communication and business opportunities created. But the very thing that has been such a powerful engine of global economic growth is now threatening to undermine it.

Cyberthreats from hacktivists and terrorist groups, cybercriminals and nation states have had an impact on millions of companies, government agencies, nonprofit organizations and individuals over the past several decades.

The risks have grown

Only in the past few months, an attack on the U. S. Office of Personal Management (OPM) by a sophisticated nation-state actor resulted in the theft of the highly personal and detailed records of more than 21 million people. Hacktivist and terrorist groups have successfully defaced websites and launched denial-of-service attacks, which disabled access to numerous networks and systems, and leaked sensitive and private information collected from targeted organizations. 

The financial impact can also be direct: Transnational organized cybercriminal groups have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from financial institutions and ordinary citizens. In 2014 alone, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received hundreds of thousands of reports with a total aggregate loss of more than $800 million in 2014. 

But perhaps the greatest economic threat of all comes from the persistent campaigns by major countries to hack into the networks of innovative and successful companies to steal their most valuable trade secrets and intellectual property.

A rapidly growing number of nation states have determined that cyberespionage is a highly valuable tool not only to steal national and military secrets but also to pillage the most valuable business information from international competitors and pass it on to domestic industries to help them out-innovate and out-negotiate their rivals. This cuts through the heart of the modern economic system, which assumes and relies on fair competition in the global free market. What's worse is that it destroys the incentive for businesses to invest in innovation and research and development if they can rely instead on the intelligence instruments of their country's national power to steal and reuse the innovation of others.

And while cyberespionage is having a tremendous negative affect on the global economy from the theft-caused drain of intellectual property and the resulting adverse incentives for continued investments in innovative growth, the threat from destructive and disruptive attacks is amplifying risks even further. In the past three years, entertainment companies such as Sony Pictures and Las Vegas Sands Casino, and Middle Eastern oil and gas corporations, have come under devastating nation-state orchestrated cyberattacks that have demolished their networks and halted their business operations for weeks. [DARPA Kicks Off Two-Year Cybersecurity Hack-A-Thon  ]

But what is even more insidious is the prospect of covert modifications of critical data, such as financial records or stock market settlement statements, which could cause lasting and enormously costly damage to the global financial system, and as a result, the world economy.

Laying down the law

What can be done to address these enormous global challenges? 

One of the most important is the urgent establishment of global norms among the major industrial and developing countries on issues of national security and economic cyberespionage conducted by their intelligence agencies and military services. As daily news accounts of discovered hacking incidents from around the world reveal, this problem is reaching epidemic proportions, with more and more countries involved. Unless an enforceable accord can be established to regulate the impact of these activities on private sector companies and regular citizens, this issue will poison global business relationships and further Balkanize the Internet. 

Second, we need to promote broader cooperation among countries on the investigation and prosecution of cybercriminals, terrorists and hacktivist groups. We have witnessed encouraging signs, with law-enforcement cooperation between the United States and China, two of the greatest archrivals in cyberspace. 

Finally, we need to encourage and promote further adoption of defensive technologies that can rapidly crowdsource threat data and enable companies to hunt for, detect, attribute and stop cyberattacks. 

The Internet is a global resource that does not belong to any one nation or alliance. It has contributed to amazing economic growth, collaboration, civil education and awe-inspiring lifestyle improvements for billions of people. We need to focus our efforts to keep it safe, interconnected and open for future generations.

Read more from the Technology Pioneers on their Live Science landing page. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

Dror Sharon is co-founder and CEO of Consumer Physics, developer of the SCiO palm-size molecular sensor. An electrical engineer, Sharon has previously served in leadership positions at two VC-backed hardware and optics startups and was an early stage technology investor. This Op-Ed is part of a series provided by the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers, class of 2015. Sharon contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

The 19th century brought the camera, changing the way people see the world. The 20th century brought radio and television, forever changing communication and breaking down geographic barriers. Near the end of that century, the Internet arrived and changed, well, everything, opening up almost the entire globe to humankind's accumulated knowledge and experience. In the past decade the Internet's impact accelerated with the proliferation of always-on, cloud-connected, and multi-sensory computers, such as smartphones and wearable devices.

It has come to a point where today, barely a few years into the 21st century, most of us will never be lost again thanks to miniaturized GPS technology. If we want to grab a meal, we can instantly figure out which restaurant is best, browsing user-generated reviews. Instant translation of more than 100 languages is instantly available. And all of this is accessible through devices that fit in our pockets, devices more powerful than the supercomputers from just three decades ago. So what's next? What will be the next tech leap to compel the world forward, to open up new and previously unattainable possibilities? I believe the answer is a wave of new, miniaturized, smart sensors. 

Molecular sensing

Currently, there are a number of industries using highly advanced molecular scanners to do amazing things. Drug companies are ensuring the quality and consistency of massive amounts of pharmaceutical products, such as pills, with sensor technology. Energy companies are using sensors to ensure oil and gas meet certain purity standards. Agricultural industries are using sensors to measure the quality of plants, fruits, soils and fresh produce. [Robots 'See' Objects with High-Tech Fingertip Sensor ]

But those are all industrial applications, and the industrial sensors are large and expensive. For instance, a lab-grade molecular sensor can range anywhere from the size of a refrigerator to the size of a briefcase — and cost thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of dollars. 

To bring such sensors to consumers they must be reduced to a size and a price that anyone can use. This would make for an incredible range of consumer uses: 

• Home gardeners in California, under an extreme drought now and facing water usage regulations, could one day use a handheld sensor to quickly determine plant and soil hydration. Such technology would eliminate overwatering and the strain that places on the local community water supply. 
• A coffee lover obsessed with finding the perfect roast for his or her favorite arabica and robusta beans could eventually use a handheld sensor to achieve a level of quality and consistency previously afforded only to high-end industrial enterprises. 
• A small, independent vineyard and winery on a tight budget could, with one sensor, measure the alcohol content of his or her latest production of pinot noir in seconds. 
• Or, think of the careful eater you know, the calorie-counter who tracks every ounce of sugar, fat and protein he puts into his body. In the United States, food labels are not required to be terribly accurate: a far-ranging plus or minus 20 percent. A handheld molecular scanner could tell your friend the amount of fat, protein and carbohydrates in an apple or piece of cheese with pinpoint accuracy. 

These are just examples of many simple micro-decisions (guesses, really) that we all do every day — specific moments that everyone has had to work around, but could arise from novel sensor technologies that are on the verge of commercialization.

With the capability to scan the molecular makeup of any object nearby, especially with a device that fits in the palm of the hand and can be taken anywhere, people will have a window into what exactly makes up their surroundings to an unprecedented level of specificity. [Will Wearable Tech Bring Humanity a 'Sixth Sense?']

The proliferation of smartphones has heralded the age of affordable micro-optics. A typical smartphone has several micro-optical elements: back-facing high-end camera with flash, front-facing low-end camera (for selfies and video calls), and an optical proximity sensor to shut off the touch screen when a user is speaking so no keys are pressed inadvertently. Some high-end phones and wearables even have a pulse-oxymeter for monitoring health (such as the sensors in the Samsung S6 , Apple Watch  and others). 

With so many devices manufactured and sold every year, we are getting to a point were multiple billions of micro-optical sensors are made annually. This explosion in engineering and manufacturing capabilities is giving rise to ever more sophisticated sensors.

It's very early days for this technology, with the first advanced sensors just starting to hit the consumer market. But with a vibrant ecosystem of enthusiasts, futurists and developers springing up around this technology, this movement will succeed. 

Read more from the Technology Pioneers on their Live Science landing page. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

Gurjeet Singh is the co-founder and CEO of data analytics company Ayasdi. He earned his Ph.D. from Stanford in computational mathematics, and prior to founding Ayasdi, he worked at Texas Instruments and Google. This Op-Ed is part of a series provided by the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers, class of 2015. Singh contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

We live in an extraordinary time. The capacity to generate and store data has reached dizzying proportions. What lies within that data represents the chance for this generation to solve its most pressing problems — from disease and climate change to healthcare and customer understanding. The magnitude of the opportunity is defined by the magnitude of the data created — and it is astonishing. 

The world's Internet population grew by more than 750 percent in the past 15 years to more than 3 billion and will pass the 50 percent penetration mark in the near future. This population shares more than 2.5 million pieces of content on Facebook, tweets more than 300,000 times and sends more than 204 million text messages — every minute. 

Furthermore, the acceleration in data growth will increase dramatically in the coming years as the Internet of Things takes hold, connecting 20 to 30 billion "things" by 2020. These devices will transmit data on everything from the status of your baby's diaper, to the head trauma experienced by NFL players, to the health of your cattle herd. [Money Drives Weather Data, But What About Climate? (Op-Ed )]

Underpinning this explosion are extraordinary advances in data storage technology and architecture. Quality-adjusted prices for data-storage equipment fell at an average annual rate of nearly 30 percent from 2002 to 2014. With an incremental cost to store data effectively at zero, institutions have responded by capturing everything possible, accepting the premise that what lies within will produce meaningful value for the enterprise. 

Seeing beyond the numbers

Despite the technical advances in collection and storage, knowledge generation lags. This is a function of how organizations approach their data, how they conduct analyses and how they automate learning through machine intelligence.  

At its heart, it is a mathematical problem. For any data set, the total number of possible hypotheses/queries is an exponential one, relative to the size of the data. Exponential functions are difficult enough for humans to comprehend; however, to further complicate matters, the size of the data itself is growing exponentially, and is about to hit another inflection point as the Internet of Things kicks in. 

What that means is that we are facing double exponential growth in the number of questions that we can ask of our data. If we choose the same approaches that have served us over time — iteratively asking questions of the data until we get the right answer — we will have lost out on an opportunity to grasp our generational opportunity. [Your Life, and Your Future, Predicted by Data ]

There are not, and will not ever be, enough data scientists in the world to be successful in that approach, nor can researchers arm enough citizen data-scientists with new software to meet that need. Software that makes question asking or hypothesis development more accessible or more efficient fails to address a critical concern: They will only fall further behind as new data becomes available every millisecond. 

Teasing out the shape of data

For society to truly unlock the value that lies within our data, we need to turn our attention to the data, setting aside the questions for later. 

This too, turns out to be a mathematical problem. Data, it turns out, has shape. That shape has meaning. The shape of data tells you everything you need to know about your data, from its obvious features to its best-kept secrets: 

• Regression produces lines 
• Customer segmentation produces groups 
• Economic growth and interest rates have a cyclical nature (diseases like malaria have this shape, too) 

By knowing the shape and where an analysis is within that shape, we vastly improve our understanding of where we are, where we have been — and perhaps more importantly — what might happen next. In understanding the shape of data, we understand every feature of the data set, immediately grasping what is important, thus dramatically reducing the number of questions to ask and accelerating the discovery process.

By changing our thinking — and starting with the shape of the data, not a series of questions (which often come with significant biases) — we can extract knowledge from these rapidly growing, massive and complex data sets.

The knowledge that lies hidden within electronic medical records, billing records and clinical records is enough to transform how we deliver healthcare and how we treat diseases.

The knowledge that lies within the massive data stores of governments, universities and other institutions will illuminate the conversation on climate change and point the way to answers on what we need to do to protect the planet for future generations. 

The knowledge that is obscured by Web, transaction, CRM, social and other data will inform a clearer, more meaningful picture of the customer and will, in turn define the optimal way to interact.

This is the opportunity for our generation to turn data into knowledge. To get there will require a different approach, but one with the ability to impact the entirety of humankind.

Read more from the Technology Pioneers on their Live Science landing page. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

Satyen Sangani is an economist and CEO of Alation, which helps businesses better find, understand and use internal data. Sangani spent nearly a decade at Oracle following positions with the Texas Pacific Group and Morgan Stanley & Co. This Op-Ed is part of a series provided by the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers, class of 2015. Sangani contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

For those of us who champion the power of data, the past five years have been an incredible ride thanks to the rise of big data. Consider just these three examples: By 2020, humanity will have created as many digital bits as there are stars in the universe; data drove U.S. President Barack Obama's wins in the 2008 and 2012 elections; and data is powering the incredible rise of new companies like Uber and Airbnb, allowing people to monetize their most illiquid, fixed assets like cars and houses. 

Of course, data hasn't accomplished any of this. Data isn't the protagonist in any of the stories above. Humans are. People use data. Data can show correlations and trends, but people have insights that suggest cause and effect. Insights are what enable better decisions and drive innovation. Here's the catch: In spite of our recent data-driven achievements, the evidence suggests that humans may well be in the dark ages of data.

Consumption requires context

McKinsey, in their broadly read Big Data report, estimates that there will be only 2.5 million data-literate professionals in the United States in 2018 — fewer than 1 percent ofthe projected population. Surveys show that professionals today still take action the old-fashioned way — based on gut instinct personal experience and what they think they know. 

So, with all this data, technology and promise, how do we build a more data-literate world? 

If we think of data as food for our minds, the nutrition movement might offer some clues. Today the state of labeling data for appropriate use is akin to the opaque labeling of food products more than 40 years ago. Until relatively recently, we had no idea whether the food we ate contained inorganic products, genetically modified ingredients, lead or even arsenic. Today we have raised nutritional awareness by listing critical ingredients and encouraging nutritional literacy that can assist in making healthy eating a conscious behaviour. 

Consuming data appropriately requires the same type of conscious evaluation of ingredients. One relatively common and simple example from our company experience involved a large, multinational corporation — it turned out that the Date of Birth field on one of their forms was generally not populated. Rather, it defaulted to Jan. 1, 1980. As a consequence, if a company employee tried to find the average age of customers, the conclusion showed customers as younger than they really were. The mistake happened so often that it had created a myth within the institution that they serviced young customers when their actual customers are typically middle-aged.

Drawing incorrect conclusions from data often does more damage than not using data at all. Consider the spurious relationship between vaccinations and autism or that six of the 53 landmark cancer studies were not reproducible by Amgen expert cancer researchers. An Economist survey from 2014 revealed 52 percent of surveyed executives discounted data they didn't understand, and rightfully so. The Economist reminds us that a key premise of science is "Trust, but Verify." The corollary also holds true — if we can't verify, we won't trust. 

Packaging data

No one wants to consume something that they're not expecting. If someone expects a red velvet cupcake and you feed them pizza, they might live with it, but the initial experience is going to be jarring. It takes time to adjust. So, what does this have to do with data?

Data doesn't really speak your language. It speaks the language of the software program that produced the information. You say sales, and the dataset says rev_avg_eur. You say France, and the dataset says CTY_CD: 4. 

Can these labels be learned? Sure, but even in a relatively small organization, there might be 20 software programs in use every day, each of which has hundreds of different codes, attributes and tables. Good luck if you are in a multinational organization with tens of thousands of such programs.

This translation has a larger unseen cost. A recent industry study highlighted that 39 percent of organizations preparing data for analysis spend time "waiting for analysts to assemble information for use." And another 33 percent spend time "interpreting the information for use by others." If, every time we need an answer, it takes us hours or days to assemble and interpret the information, we'll just ask fewer questions — there are only so many hours in a day. Making data easy to consume means ensuring that others can easily discover and comprehend it.

A data-literate world

We have an incredible opportunity in front of us. What if just 5 percent of the world's population were data literate? What if that number reached 30 percent? How many assumptions could we challenge? And what innovations could we develop?

According to the Accenture Institute for High Performance, in an article from Harvard Business Review, the skills required to be data literate include understanding what data means, drawing correct conclusions from data and recognizing when data is used in misleading or inappropriate ways. These are the decoding skills that enable an individual to apply data analysis accurately to decision-making. Rather than focusing on making data consumers do more work, maybe we can boost literacy by surrounding the data with context and reducing the burden of understanding the information.

Metrics and statistics are wonderful, but we need to surround data with more context and lower the costs of using them. More fundamentally, we have to reward those people and systems that provide this transparency and usability. Data is just made from pieces of information — we need to evolve in how we use them to unlock data's potential.

Read more from the Technology Pioneers on their Live Science landing page. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

Aniruddha Sharma is CEO of Carbon Clean Solutions. The company provides carbon capture technologies to chemical, power and natural-gas plants. This Op-Ed is part of a series provided by the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers, class of 2015. Sharma contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

As a statistician, I have a habit of looking rationally at problems in terms of equations. This approach can be powerful, as it allows me to focus on variables that can change an outcome and quickly help me find out what matters most. In the fight against climate change, the world needs a global accord to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions. But how do we get to that common goal when all the parties have different priorities? 

Across the planet, more than 1.3 billion people have no access to electricity, and some 2.6 billion have no access to modern cooking facilities. More than 95 percent of those people are in sub-Saharan Africa or developing Asia, and 84 percent live in rural areas.

Bringing energy to everyone

Developing countries like India have an obligation to bring their people out of poverty and reduce the nation's income gap (part of a broader international income crisis) by providing basic services and ensuring access to electricity and clean water. But providing services and access to electricity and water comes at a price. 

As India modernizes and the population moves to urban areas, the use of traditional biomass and agro-waste — cow-dung cakes, wood and crop residue — has shifted to other energy sources, including fossil fuels. Add in climate change and rising pollution in the developing world, and most nations face a dilemma. 

Equations can provide some of the answers. As global leaders try to tweak variables to get to zero emissions, an analysis of equations can give a better understanding of where governments like India's should focus their efforts. 

Balancing the equation

Electricity is the primary source of energy for accelerated growth. Coal-based electricity generation is the largest source of man-made CO2 emissions, and India is no exception, as 60 percent of its electricity demand is met by coal.

In 2010, the independent energy data company Enerdata reported that electricity consumption in India would have to increase threefold by 2030 to bring 300 million people out of poverty. Electricity use is going to increase. [Images: The World's Most Beautiful Equations  ]

But how nations use electricity is important. According to consulting firm McKinsey & Co., 40 percent of global CO2 emissions can be reduced by focusing on energy-efficient technologies. Hence, the switch to the best available technologies must coincide with nations' actions to make electricity available to more people. Such technologies, such as LED lighting, could reduce the growth in consumption from 300 percent to less than 200 percent. 

To predict electricity-related CO2 emissions for nations like India, a good starting point is an equation that considers growth in electricity use, efficient use of electricity, and electricity production. Then, you would need to incorporate the fossil fuels still in use, though on a "clean" path forward based on increasing generation efficiency and the removal of carbon from sources of electricity generation. 

Looking at production, the Indian Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation has shown that India has an immediate renewable energy potential of approximately 166 gigawatts (GW) — 102 GW from wind power, 19.7 GW from hydroelectric power, 22.5 GW from biopower and 22 GW from solar energy based on a target from India's Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (though it is safe to assume that about 12 percent of all of the new capacity will be unfulfilled due to transmission losses). 

Let's look at the math. Projected energy growth in India is 450 GW — from 200 GW in 2010 to 650 GW in 2030. Of this 450 GW, 40 percent (180 GW) can be reduced through the use of energy-efficient technologies, and 166 GW in demand can be met by renewables. 

The Indian government can also achieve 20 GW of nuclear power generation by 2025, though let's assume this is delayed until 2030 given current concerns. 

So, the total projected increase in fossil-fuel-based generation comes to 84 GW. Hence, all the electricity demand growth through 2030, the tripling of demand, can be achieved with only 84 GW of fossil-fuel-based energy — representing an 81.33 percent rate of decarbonization. 

To check my hypothesis, I went back to the latest Energy Technology Perspectives 2015 published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and looked at the projected 2030 scenario. Adding the IEA scenario's decarbonization potential from renewables (32 percent); end-use energy, such as increased efficiency (42 percent); and nuclear power (9 percent), we arrive at a total of 83 percent, which is fairly close to what I estimated.

Capturing carbon, and using it

So what would a nation like India do with existing power plants? According to the IEA, a 6 percent contribution toward decarbonization will come from carbon capture and storage, or carbon capture and reuse — an option I prefer because it leads to the economic reuse of captured carbon into commercially valuable products. 

Carbon capture and reuse is a collective term for technologies that involve capturing carbon dioxide emissions from existing large CO2 emitters and using them back in an industrial process. The use of captured CO2 for producing chemical-industry products like urea is already known, and can create a carbon-negative scenario; India's fertilizer industry imports a third of its urea requirement from international markets. 

In order for carbon capture and reuse to be a viable solution, however, drastic cost reductions must be achieved. Innovative technology companies around the world are looking to reuse cheaply captured CO2 with hydrogen to produce chemicals (from companies like Liquid Light and NewCO2Fuels), polymers (from companies like Novomer) and recently, diesel (in research by Audi). (Part of our research at Carbon Clean Solutions is to work on capturing cheap CO2 for conversion to chemicals that have market value.) [The Cheapest, Cleanest Way to Meet Electricity Demand (Op-Ed )]

India could trim 6 percent of its carbon emissions through carbon capture and reuse, resulting in 126 million tons of CO2 reduction (equal to 17 GW of coal-fired power-plant energy) by 2030.

Implementing carbon capture is the last step, but an important one, in decarbonizing existing and future coal capacity. This could lead to a 14 percent decarbonization of coal by 2050, according to IEA, representing roughly an 80 percent decarbonization of the Indian economy.

The benefits of implementing these technologies extend beyond energy. According to the World Bank, the Indian government spends $61 per person per year on public health. Burning coal puts pressure on the government budget because fine particles emitted from the process cause respiratory disorders. Delhi now ranks among the most polluted cities in the world, and a recent survey by Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute (CNCI) revealed that nearly half of the city's 4.4 million schoolchildren have irreversible lung damage. That is not only a loss of future economic output, but a loss of life.

When you look at the numbers, it is clear that, for India and other developing nations, energy efficiency and renewable energy will ensure that the expansion of electricity to those who lack it will not require increases in carbon emissions. Moreover, carbon capture and reuse will ensure existing power plants and industries do not contribute further to climate change. Whether nations choose to follow this path, however, remains to be seen.

Read more from the Technology Pioneers on their Live Science landing page. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.

Nico Sell is co-founder and co-chairman of Wickr Inc. This Op-Ed is part of a series provided by the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneers, class of 2015. Sell contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

George Washington could have become a king, but instead devoted his life to giving power back to the people. This is why his political heritage remains so strong today, inspiring millions around the world to continue striving for liberty and democracy. One of my favorite U.S. presidents, Washington proved that great leaders rule by empowering the people, not by usurping power. 

In the next decade, billions of online citizens will join the Web, making national borders less relevant and the world more connected. Technology, as well as the hopes it fuels, has empowered millions of people across the globe to demand social and political change from some of its most oppressive governments. Yet, the same technology is being used to suppress and surveil more than half of the world's population: those still living under undemocratic regimes and lacking basic rights.

The right to private communication

The establishment of the U.S. Postal Service was one of the most visionary civil liberties events of its time, deeply rooted in Washington's belief that a strong state and society can only exist if every citizen has access to uncensored information and can freely communicate, away from the government's prying eyes. The Postal Act of 1792 that led to the founding of the modern post office established free speech and a right to private communications, going as far as imposing the death penalty for robbing mail service personnel. The newly established post office was envisioned to be the antipode of the crown post operated by the British government, which frequently opened and censored correspondence.

The same commitment to privacy and access to free, uncensored information is the reason we started Wickr. We currently serve millions of private, encrypted Wickr messages each day for users in more than 190 countries. Our vision is to bring this service to billions by making strong, trusted encryption incredibly easy and intuitive for personal or business use. This is only the beginning. [Right to Privacy: Constitutional Rights & Privacy Laws ]

Today, society needs to breathe new life into Washington's idea of an uncensored post office service by providing these basic rights to all 3 billion people already connected to the Web, and to those who will be coming online in the next decade. We need to collectively balance our global Web to ensure the Internet remains a platform for free speech and uncensored information, where privacy and real human connection enable strong social discourse and economic prosperity. 

I call that space the private Web. 

Away from prying eyes

The public Web has brought us incredible innovations that have improved lives and celebrated human creativity. But as we all move online, it becomes increasingly clear that, just as with any complex and ever-evolving system, the Internet requires a long-overdue fine-tuning. 

We, as Web users, are generating millions of pieces of information about the most personal aspects of our lives on a daily basis, creating dangerous treasure troves of detailed and calibrated information. Once that information is in the open, we lose ownership of it, to the point that we do not even know who is collecting it.

Businesses increasingly depend on technology, becoming more and more vulnerable to critical data security breaches. Global financial, transport and security systems are being compromised almost weekly — either through targeted attacks or as a result of poor and outdated safeguards. 

To expand the benefits of the Internet, we need to continue building the private Web — through applications, technology, policies and norms — to power innovation, develop ideas, protect our assets and strengthen human rights for all. Although achieving privacy and universal access to free, uncensored information will always be a moving target as technology evolves, our ability to intentionally choose a right mode of communication, private or public, is a critical step toward bringing George Washington's vision closer. 

Encryption "back doors" are a risk

Today, it is essential to set the ground rules that will govern our networks and infrastructure systems in the future. Strong encryption is a key component of the private Web. Having trusted encryption without a back door — for either governments or criminals — will enable us to keep out not only the prying eyes of totalitarian regimes but also cyber criminals. 

A recent debate around technology backdoors has raised a critical point. Is it possible to weaken encryption in a way that would only allow access to the "good" government and never to criminals or authoritarian regimes? The answer from many prominent technologists has been a loud, resounding "no." [Privacy, Pfft! Why NSA Surveillance Only Bothers Some People ]

Considering that most American Internet companies are operating as global entities that must comply with local laws, we should never adopt a policy that we would not want another government to adopt and exploit. If the U.S. government passes a law that requires a backdoor to operate in America, then what would stop the Chinese and Russian governments from doing the same, requiring U.S. companies to give backdoor access to them as well?

The encrypted future

Many questions remain regarding exactly how to achieve that vision in the hyperconnected, digital world.

• How will the private and public Web coexist? 
• What should the standards of data collection be? 
• How can companies that profit today from leveraging our personal and business information innovate around new business models? 
• How do we establish trust with companies we let host our most sensitive and valuable information? 
• How do we verify public promises that companies and governments make about their data retention and usage practices? 
• Who has the duty of care to our children's data, or our health and financial information? 
• How do we promote encryption by default? 

There are many more questions we all need to consider if, as a society, we value the progress we've made and the rights we continue to fight so hard for, both offline and online. 

The U.S. Post Office served as a catalyst for building strong political and social discourse. For the first time, citizens were able to engage in political conversations without fear of being persecuted. Speech is only free when we have direct control of our communications — whether public or private — without the need to self-censor or fear that a piece of communication can be used out of context many years after it has been sent. 

It is time to invest our energy, creativity and resources into building the Web's private hemisphere to carry on the tradition of private communications, uncensored information and ownership of our assets.

Read more from the Technology Pioneers on their Live Science landing page. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates — and become part of the discussion — on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.