Mr. Khosla’s speech is lengthily titled “The Innovation Ecosystem and Its Role in Shaping Our Renewable Future” (or, elegantly titled “Punditry / Invention” on the presentation deck, made by Mr. Khosla’s daughter who was also present). The presentation material had a distinct marketing flavor to it (think Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth slides, or Steve Jobs’ keynote slides, as opposed to conservative consulting / banking slides), with most slides containing only a few words or phrases in massively-sized fonts.

And Mr. Khosla’s argument was as concise as the material he was using. His core argument is that the advancement / adoption rate of technology will always be substantially underestimated – there is simply no accuracy in any forecasts of what will happen 10-20 years in future (examples presented: computer and mobile penetration rates, compared to expert forecasts in the past). He therefore implies that while clean-tech appears cost-prohibitive and unfeasible for massive adoption, there will almost certainly be technological breakthroughs (“black swans”) that completely transform the industry outlook. The conclusion – instead of trying to predict the future through extrapolation of the past (which is a futile exercise), we should simply invent our own future. In Mr. Khosla’s case, he is very optimistic in clean-tech will continue to invest in this area.

I think the takeaways for me from this one-hour presentation are three-fold. One is the concept that Mr. Khosla was selling, the mindset of optimism about change, which in other words is a call for action. Second is perhaps some observations on soft-skills, through his style of delivery and general on-stage presence. Probably the third takeaway is a reminder to myself to be always open to new ideas – personally, I’ve been somewhat of a skeptic on the clean-tech trends, and if Mr. Khosla is such a firm believer in it (he is certainly putting his money where his mouth is), I should probably re-examine my own thoughts and beliefs.