An online, international 3-week course built by RethinkX and the Kyiv School of Economics. Learn to model disruption as a system — structure, timing, consequences — and read a sector’s flip before the market prices it in.
The shift
You predict the future by extending the past. You patch what already exists, and you are surprised every time a sector flips.
You see when a sector is about to flip — the structure, the timing, the consequences — and you act before the market prices it in.
ActualWhy listen to RethinkX
Don’t take the model on credentials. Check the forecasts against what the mainstream institutions said — and what actually happened.
In 2014, when solar electricity cost 15¢ a kilowatt-hour, RethinkX said it would be 3–5¢ by 2020. The IEA said 7¢, and not before 2030. By 2020 it was 3.1–4.2¢ — RethinkX was right, and the IEA was ten years late.
In 2014 RethinkX named the price of a 2023 200-mile electric car: $15,616. Bloomberg wouldn’t even name a year for EVs simply matching petrol cars until 2026. The cheapest EV of 2023 came in at $15,741 (in 2014 dollars) — a nine-year forecast that missed by $125.
In 2019 RethinkX said new proteins would be 5× cheaper than animal protein by 2030 and take US dairy and beef down with them. The industry expected a small niche. So far the price has fallen 70% in three years — not cheap enough yet. This one is still running.
None of this was a guess. Each call came out of the same framework — the one you spend six modules learning to run yourself.
RethinkX is an independent think tank that studies how fast technology replaces whole sectors — and puts a date on it. Instead of asking how much better a technology will get, it asks what cost level makes the old system stop making sense, and when that level arrives. That question is what produced the calls above, and it is what the six modules teach you to ask about your own sector.
Co-founder
Called the solar, battery and EV cost curves a decade before the market, at a time when the energy establishment was still calling them niche. Built the framework this course teaches, and has spent fifteen years testing it in public against the institutional forecasts.
Co-founder
Analysed utilities from the inside as an investment analyst, then co-wrote the forecast for their collapse. Co-author of Rethinking Transportation and Rethinking Humanity.
Research fellow
Runs the numbers behind the models — energy, materials, cost curves — and stress-tests them against the critics. The reason the forecasts survive scrutiny is that someone inside the room is paid to attack them first.
Why Kyiv
When patching stops being an option, you replace the system instead of defending it. Kyiv is where that already happened - across sectors at once.
Power moved off a single centralized grid toward distributed generation; the centralized model stopped being the default. Ukraine has added over 3 gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity.
Diia made digital ID and passports legally equal to paper first in the world and put 140+ state services in one app. Paper still exists; it stopped being the default.
Hardware iteration compressed from years to weeks; a domestic industry built from near zero. Ukraine’s FPV drone production skyrocketed from a few thousands in 2022 to more than two million units in 2024.
This is the course thesis running live: incumbents patch, Kyiv replaced. You learn these flips from the people who ran the rebuild, not from a case study.
Kyiv School of Economics — Ukraine’s leading university, and the think tank. KSE is the reason this course exists in the form it does: it brought the RethinkX framework to Kyiv and built the programme around a country that is running the disruption live, so the theory is taught next to the evidence rather than at a safe distance from it.
President
Works in mechanism and institutional design — how to redesign systems rather than patch them. Minister of Economy and Agriculture, 2019–20. Shaped what this course argues about policy under disruption — the part most frameworks leave out.
Rector
Grew KSE from a small economics school into the university it is now, through the years the country was rebuilding. Studies trust and social change; runs Ukraine’s European Social Survey. His research measured what decentralisation did to trust in communities.
What you’ll actually do
The belief it breaks: “Change is linear and predictable.”
The belief it breaks: “Energy will always be scarce.”
The belief it breaks: “Robots just replace workers.”
The belief it breaks: “Energy will always be scarce.”
The belief it breaks: “Experts will adapt in time.”
The belief it breaks: “Growth requires extraction; scarcity is permanent.”
In teams, design a “Stellar Nursery” plan for a real city, assuming energy costs fall ~90%. You leave with an artifact you built — not a certificate.
Who it’s for
What every member shares isn’t a title or a budget — it’s agency. You act on your read of where a sector is going, and a wrong model is expensive. The cohort is international and deliberately mixed — students, founders, investors, and policymakers doing the same work, side by side.
Already building a company, product, or bet — and want a model that holds.
Betting a company on which way a sector flips, and when.
Pricing disruption before the consensus does.
Writing rules for systems about to change shape.
Same modules, same capstone, one mixed cohort. The range of sectors and vantage points in the room is part of the work.
Change that before it changes your strategy for you.