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Another area ripe for reinvention is managing our money. Jon Stein doesn't look like a Wall Street Master of the Universe – just the opposite, in fact. In his mid-30s, dressed in blue jeans and a mildly tattered shirt, he works not in a financial citadel but in a relaxed loft-like space. His language is not full of bravado and bombast but is casual, considered, and humble.

Figure 1.1 Jon Stein, CEO and founder of Betterment

Yet Stein is turning his corner of the banking world, personal wealth management, on its head. His company, Betterment, has rapidly become one of the world's leading “robo-advisors,” leveraging AI platforms to rewrite the rules of the financial advisory business. Betterment provides highly personalized, curated wealth management services 24x7. His system of intelligence is doing the work of hundreds of people and is doing it better, at a fraction of the cost.

Millions of investors – millennials, Gen-Xers, and baby boomers alike – are flocking to the platform. From the beginning of 2015 to mid-2016, Betterment's assets under management grew from $1.1 billion to $5.0 billion13,14 and for good reason. Betterment has created a bigger pie for wealth management services because it can attract new customers that traditional banks wouldn't touch. Traditional “bulge-bracket” investment banks (e.g., Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, etc.) often do not offer personalized wealth management services to anyone with less than $1 million in assets; the margin isn't there, given their one-to-one advisory business model. So where does that leave the other 99.9 % of the population that is interested in having their money professionally managed?

Betterment started by focusing on HENRY (high earners, not rich yet). These are young professionals in their 20s and early 30s: lawyers, doctors, and managers starting their careers armed with great educations…and the associated student debt.

Traditional wealth managers won't touch HENRY, but Betterment welcomes anyone with money to invest. And as each new customer comes on the platform, the system gets smarter, providing better value to each individual participant: on the spot, empirically based, unspun counsel on investment strategy, portfolio allocation, and tax management.

Robo-advisers, collectively, have more than $50 billion in assets under management today (and are estimated to have over $250 billion under management by 2020) and are taking aim at the $20 trillion worldwide that is currently being managed by 46,000 human financial advisors at traditional banks.15

Now, we don't know whether Betterment will ultimately emerge as the long-term winner in this new form of financial advisory services, but the company does demonstrate how new machines are disrupting traditional ways of work. Such widespread adoption is creating shock waves in both the financial services and technology industries.

Stein, and others who have figured out the new game, are nothing short of the Henry Fords of our time. They understand today's new raw materials (big data). They have built and now operate the new machines. And, most important, they have surrounded these new machines with business models that generate remarkable growth and profitability engines while expanding the overall market.

The story of robo-advisors in wealth management is about to be replayed a thousand-fold across all sectors of our economy. So the question becomes: Will you play, or stand on the sidelines?