What if the future of business, healthcare, and even space travel could be predicted by a single idea-proximity? In this episode, you’ll hear how digital technologies are collapsing distance, reshaping supply chains, and moving healthcare from crisis response to true prevention.
In this episode, Philip and Rob Wolcott discuss:
- Origin story of proximity and general-purpose technologies
- How digital changes production, supply chains, and “P = 0”
- Electric vehicles, charging infrastructure, and flawed paradigms
- Proximity’s impact on healthcare and preventive medicine
- Edge scaling, micro-factories, and rebuilding manufacturing
- Twin (The World Innovation Network) and relationship capital
- Venture investing through a proximity lens (water, pharma, food, space)
Lightbulb Moments:
- Digital technologies fundamentally differ from industrial-age tools because they allow capabilities to be compressed into smaller packages and pushed closer to the exact moment and location of demand.
- Many massive infrastructure bets—like widespread public EV chargers-reflect old paradigms, and are likely to underperform because they ignore how proximity changes behavior and economics.
- Proximity in healthcare will increasingly compel the system away from late-stage diagnosis and toward continuous monitoring and prevention, dramatically improving outcomes and costs.
- Manufacturing’s future lies in “edge scaling”: smaller, distributed, digitally enabled micro-factories located near demand, not single gigantic plants half a world away.
- A diverse portfolio of trusted, ethically grounded relationships is becoming one of the most critical forms of capital for navigating disruption and building the future.
“A Portfolio of Trusted Relationships is Not Only Important; It’s Becoming Essential.” – Rob Wolcott
Rob Wolcott is an Adjunct Professor of Innovation at Booth, University of Chicago, and Kellogg, Northwestern University. From 2007 to 2019, he was a Clinical Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Kellogg, as well as a four-time Teacher of the Year in Kellogg’s EMBA program and a Visiting Fellow at Imperial College London. He is a venture investor in nearly 50 companies and venture funds, the Founder & Chair of TWIN Global (www.twinglobal.org), a global community of innovation leaders, and a board member at Abroad.io and global non-profit CureBlindness Project. He is the author of PROXIMITY (Columbia University Press, 2024), shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea of 2025 award, and a Contributor for Forbes on the impact of technology on business and humanity, with his work appearing in MIT Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications worldwide. He holds a BA in History and a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University.
Connect with Rob Wolcott:
Website: www.proximitybook.net, www.twinglobal.org
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-c-wolcott-4a624a/
Connect with Philip:
Website: https://www.fornarolaw.com/
Podcast Website: https://lbmpodcast.com/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/philipfornaro/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@fornarolaw3002
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fornarolaw
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fornarolaw/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FornaroLaw
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