LOBBYING FOR EMERGING AND RAPID GROWTH INDUSTRIES

Future jobs are being created every hour of every day in the minds of visionary thinkers. But only the true catalytic innovators are creating entire new industries.

Here are a number of both emerging and rapid growth industries that will be employing millions of people in the coming years.

1.  Atmospheric Water Harvesting – The earth’s atmosphere is a far more elegant water distribution system than rivers, reservoirs, and underground waterways. Our current ground-based systems involve pipes and pumping stations that are expensive to operate and maintain, and easily contaminated. Since we all depend on the rains to provide the water we need, what if we could extract this rain at the very time and place we need it?
2. Commercial Drone Industry – The U.S. Congress has mandated the FAA develop a plan to incorporate drones into national airspace by Sept. 30, 2015. Many in this new industry are chomping at the bit to get started. According to the Association for Unmanned Vehicles International, once drones get okayed for the national air space, the first 3 years will produce $13.6 billion in economic activity along with 34,000 new manufacturing jobs. But more than just manufacturing, there will be a need for drone pilots, drone farming specialists, drone security, drone data analysts, drone mosquito killers, and much more.
3. Software Developers – With a programming universe comprised of over 8,000 different languages, dated languages like Fortran, Jovial, and Cobol that lie buried inside corporate IT departments are coming back to haunt their host companies. The ticking time bomb behind this problem is that the people familiar with this code are nearing retirement age. There is now a massive push to teach coding as a fundamental skill. Developers will be the chief innovators of the future.
4. Mobile Apps – In just a few short years the number of apps has mushroomed into a force of nature, radically shifting how products are created, and more importantly, how people in the physical world interface with information in the digital world. With over 2 million apps currently available for download on smartphones, next generation apps will be for smart shoes, smart homes, smart guitars, and much more.
5. Our Trillion-Sensor Future – In the last six years, we’ve gone from 10 million sensors—in things like the Nintendo Wii and iPhones—to 3.5 billion. 1 trillion sensors are projected by 2020 and 100 trillion sensors in the mid 2030s along with literally millions of new primary and secondary jobs to manage this emerging sector.
6. 3D Printing – Currently making inroads into everything from pharmaceutical drugs, to food, to antibodies and new life forms, to clothing and shoes, 3D Printing is projected to reach $3.1 billion worldwide by 2016 and $5.2 billion by 2020. As an industry making inroads in thousands of different businesses simultaneously, 3D printing will be bigger than the Internet.
7. Cancer Immunotherapy – Immunotherapy will train your immune system to attack cancer cells, giving it an advantage over traditional cancer therapies like chemo, which can kill healthy cells, and “targeted” therapy, against which cancer cells often develop resistance. Tumor response rates are usually in the mid-20% range but can get up to 50% with immunotherapy. The market potential is projected to be $10-15 billion by 2025, with lung cancer being the primary focus.
8. LEDs – Industrial-scale light emitting diodes (LEDs) enjoy three main advantages over regular light sources: energy savings of up to 85%, a longer lifetime, and being more easily programmable. LED sales will reach $ 11 billion by 2015, and will see a compound annual growth rate of about 40% over the next five years in the industrial and commercial market. From a lighting perspective it is expected to represent 36 percent of lumen-hour sales on the general illumination market by 2020, and 74 percent by 2030.
9. Big Data – Social media, blogs, web browsing, and firms’ security measures are generating enormous quantities of data, and it needs to be stored somewhere. The overall market currently stands at $11 billion, with a projected 32% compound annual growth rate over the next five years. According to McKinsey and Company, the United States alone will face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with analytical expertise and 1.5 million managers and analysts with the skills to understand and make decisions based on the analysis of big data.
10. Internet of Things – Seventy-five billion devices will be connected to the Internet of Things by 2020. That’s 9.4 devices for every one of the 8 billion people that will be on earth in only seven years.
11. Natural Gas – Compressed and liquefied natural gas is increasingly being used in industrial and commercial fleets. So far penetration remains relatively confined to about 3% of all vehicles. However, by 2020 natural gas engines will comprise 10-15% of total truck sales, for a penetration rate of 20-30% of the  over-the-road hauling fleets.
12. Wind Power – Wind energy today still only accounts for a small percentage of global electricity production even though we have seen many more wind farms popping up over the last few years. Wind power currently generates 2.6 percent of the world’s electricity, but according to a new report from the International Energy Agency, that number will grow significantly over the next few decades.
13. Solar Power – Solar PV was invented nearly 60 years ago and has been growing ever since. As an industry it now employs nearly 120,000 people in the U.S.. Driven by both state and national incentives, dropping prices, and a constant stream of new innovations, solar is hot, and it will become even hotter in the future.
14. Mass Energy Storage – We are now entering the early growth stages of what will surely become a huge global industry- energy storage. It will both support and compete with conventional generation, transmission and distribution systems. Over the coming decade as the industry evolves, it will lead to new business models and the creation of new companies that make, apply and operate storage assets to help the grid work more reliably and cost-effectively, while decreasing unwanted environmental impacts.
15. Micro Grid Conversion – Along with massive new power storage systems, the electric utilities world is about to begin the transition from national grids to micro grids This will open up a huge number of opportunities along the way. First, micro grids will need to be planned, set up, and prove they’re self-sufficient and sustainable. Second, micro grids will begin disconnecting from the national grid. And third, we will begin dismantling the national grid, a multi-decade process creating tens of thousands of jobs along the way.
16. Hyperspeed Transportation Systems – With its ability to travel upwards of 4,000 mph, Hyperspeed Transportation has the potential to be the world’s largest infrastructure project. Vacuum tube transport is not just a great idea; it’s becoming a moral imperative. Ships and planes are polluting our oceans and skies faster than nature can clean it up. This is a solution that will not only solve all those problems; it will create over 100 million jobs along the way. And, most importantly, it will pay for itself.
17. Contour Crafted Houses – Many people think of contour crafting as 3D printing for houses. But, in addition to it’s ability to print an entire house in less than a day, it can be used to eliminate slums, help rebuild areas after a natural disasters, and even build large buildings and luxury homes with custom architectural features that can be changed with only a few clicks of a mouse.
18. Driverless Everything – Our dependence on cars has been growing. The average time spent driving each day, roughly one hour, is rarely productive since we’re closely focused on driving and little else. Four companies — Audi, Mercedes, BMW and Volvo — will have automated cars in the market in the next 12 months. Over time this will expand far beyond cars to trucks, buses, taxis, limos, and every conceivable form of delivery vehicle. Driverless cars will be every bit as disruptive as the invention of the automobile itself.
19. Bio-Factories – Based on using living systems, “bio-factories” represent a new process for creating substances that are either too tricky or too expensive to grow in nature or to make with petrochemicals. The rush to develop bio-factories as a means for production not only promises to revolutionize the chemical industry but also transform the economy. Hundreds of products are already in the pipeline.
20. Micro-Colleges – The systems used to create colleges centuries ago seems justifiably primitive by today’s standards. Learning formulas for nearly every degree are based on hours, one of the least important considerations when it comes to assessing talent. Colleges today cost far too much, and they take far too long. Micro-Colleges are any form of concentrated post-secondary education oriented around the minimum entry point into a particular profession. With literally millions of people needing to shift careers every year, and the long drawn out cycles of traditional colleges being a poor solution for time-crunched rank-and-file displaced workers, we are seeing a massive new opportunity arising for short-term, pre-apprenticeship training.
21. Smart Homes – The programmable home is still in its early stages but it’s gathering strength, driven by three complementary trends: first and foremost, the smartphone revolution; second, improved standards for low-power, inexpensive and highly reliable wireless communications; and finally, ever-decreasing barriers to invention due to increased automation of manufacturing technologies. These three forces are converging to create a tipping point that will lead to mass penetration of connected devices in homes during the next ten years.
22. Senior Living – The number of seniors who need specialized housing will only increase the need for more options and better solutions. Most affordable senior apartments have long waiting lists and new inventory in this category is not being created nearly fast enough to keep pace with demand.
23. Home Delivery – The same day delivery space is getting pretty crowded. Amazon, Google, and eBay offer local, same-day deliver services (in limited markets), as do startups like PostMates, Deliv, TaskRabbit and WunWun. As same-day delivery shifts from a premium price to the same price as standard, demand will increase, volume will increase and costs will come down even further. Retailers who have retained their national chain of stores and built a web/mobile presence are actually in the box seats. Stores like Sears and Wal-Mart that already have locations within five miles of 95% of the buying public with their brick and mortar stores will have a huge advantage.
24. 24-Hour Cities – As we continue down the path of automation, virtually every city will have 24-hour convenience stores, 24-hour libraries, 24-hour banks, 24-hour churches, 24-hour schools, 24-hour movie theaters, 24-hour bars and restaurants, and even 24-hour shopping centers. The same machines that will be replacing retail workers will also be creating new jobs for 24-hour business operations.