Why innovation thrives in the building of sandcastles
I'm off to keynote an event in Sydney, Australia; and after that, two weeks of family time in the tropics of Australia.
Years ago, inspired by similar times, I wrote about how innovation thrives in the building of sandcastles. It was a great post -- it made it into BusinessWeek. I thought it a fitting post to leave here while I'm away.
I will still be answering email and checking calls, but could just be a touch slow.
With that line of thinking,. here's my list of "10 Reasons Why Innovation Thrives in the Building of Sandcastles: and What We Can Learn From Such Creativity."
- Hierarchy has disappeared: In most cases, there isn't a boss, a reporting structure, or anything else that can cause organizational sclerosis. People just pitch in and do what needs to be done. The lack of a hierarchy is implicit to most successful teams.
- Creativity is implicit: Anyone can build a sandcastle. There are no rules or preconceived notions, other than some sand and water. The same thinking should drive corporate innovation efforts. Make do with what you've got and what you can find, and use creativity as your main asset.
- If it doesn't work the first time, do it again: It's inevitable that a rogue wave will destroy your work. This only encourages you to fix the design, or rebuild it altogether. Setbacks are meaningless, and indeed, are part of the plan.
- Experience doesn't cloud insight: Parents listen to kids, kids get bored and move on to another rampart and do something awesome. The key to sandcastle building is the combined insight of several different generations: likely one of the most important foundations for success in corporate innovation today. (See my 10 Ideas post for more on this theme.)
- Everyone picks up on the passion: People just join in and help to build. Eventually beach-neighbors join in, and the growing castle becomes a big collaborative effort. Organizations that can build similar levels of interest in the concept of innovation don't simply succeed: they exceed!
- Feedback is instant: You know right away how well your design works, particularly if it is at the waters edge, since everyone will make a comment on it as they walk by. That parallels' the instantaneity of today's markets: things are changing so fast, that you must have a constant ear tuned in to understand what your customers are telling you.
- Competition is easily scoped: Need new ideas? Want to learn from the competition? Spend a few minutes walking up and down the beach and check out the other sandcastles. Study their design, their assumptions, and see how you can improve upon them. Do the same in the corporate world: develop a finely tuned radar that signals to you how and where your world is changing.
- No idea is too dumb: There's not a lot of criticism and bias in the building of sandcastles. Any idea is welcomed. People can contribute the skills they have. Everyone is a designer, a builder and an owner. Somehow the combination just works.
- The reward is clear: At the end of the day, a great sandcastle provides a sense of accomplishment. Photos are taken, and the team talks about the experience. That's why every innovation effort needs to be celebrated, highlighted, and championed into the corporate record.
- It's fun: Enough said. If an organization approaches a problem the same way, innovation and creativity can thrive.
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Faster is the new fast -- also in auto
One of the key tenets of my book, Ready, Set, Done -- How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast,is that organizational "agility" is a fundamental cornerstone for future success.
It doesn't matter who you are or what you do -- fast defines success.
A few years ago, I spent time with management of a big car company. I don't think they got the concept.
Then there's Honda. Read this story about one of their Canadian plants -- and ponder on this sentence:
"Honda's assembly lines can switch models in as little as 10 days, spokesman Sakae Uruma said. By contrast, it could take months for most rivals to make the same change."
While certain sectors of the auto economy are in turmoil, others are in growth mode. One of the defining reasons being, they've structured themselves to act and change quickly. As big truck sales plummet, fast movers like these pick up the slack.
There's some very important food for thought here. Faster is the new fast.
More information
- Read As others slow, Honda ramps up
- The new face of manufacturing : agility, insight and execution...
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Advice for a flat world - taking your skills to a global audience
One of my July columns takes a look at the idea of taking your skills to a global audience.
Years ago, I wrote about the concept of "nomadic workers," individuals who rejected the traditional concept of a job, and instead, carve out their own unique career path, mostly contingent, contract, short-term and invariably fascinating.
These are the modern day knowledge-Bedouins -- they roam the digital planet, offering their works and unique knowledge up to a global client base. I've been doing it for eighteen years.
One statistic I use in a number of keynotes observes that some 60% of engineers and architects are expected to be working on a contingent basis by 2012. That's a huge number -- and is indicative of our onward march to a massively nomadic workforce.
Read the article here
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Soccer moms, text messaging, and the inevitability of virtuality
A few weeks ago, I arrived in my hotel room, and connected back to my home office via Skype. I found my sons using my Mac (long story!), and proceeded to have a one-hour video conference with them.
Jim Carroll, a futurist, trends and innovations expert, said moms between 25 and 32 grew up right along with the technology that enables them to communicate via text. Edmonton, who lives in Ford City, is 31. "It's technology that's been around for between 10 and 12 years, so they probably started texting when they were kids in nightclubs, and now they're the parents with little ones," he said. For those who didn't grow up with it, texting might not ever catch on, Carroll said, and e-mail will remain the way to communicate electronically. Already, text messaging, which is known in the wireless world as SMS, or short message service, has been adapted for weather and safety alerts on college campuses in the U.S. as well as a violence prevention tool in Kenya, Africa. So much of this, Carroll contends, is a result of people such as his 12- and 14-year-old sons growing up using the technology and finding ways to apply it in the real world. "We're seeing this come into the work force and influence the way we think, act and communicate, and you'll see that these younger users won't think a thing about sending a text to a peer in the business community or even a young doctor preferring to send a text to a patient," he said.The key point is, anything is on the table, and were in for massive changes in the workplace because of simple demographic change.
More information:
- The reality of future trends: grab the What Comes Next trends overview
- Times Daily artilce Submit it in writing: Popularity of text messaging on rise
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Starbuck's Icarus moment .....
I'm quoted in a Reuters article that has run in the Washington Post, Globe and Mail, and the Sydney MX among a few, that comments on the recent woes of Starbuck's.
Titled "Not everyone's crying in their lattes for Starbucks; There's a schadenfreude among some coffee drinkers who think the java giant got too big too fast," the article looks at how some people seem to be enjoying Starbucks in its Icarus moment.
My comments?The schadenfreude of coffee drinkers drawing satisfaction from another's misfortune is part of the popular culture that enjoys the downfall of companies or celebrities, said Jim Carroll, a Mississauga-based trends and innovation expert. "There are a lot of people out there who take delight in seeing an icon torn down by the masses," he said. Starbucks fell victim to a rapid change in attitude, fuelled by Internet bloggers complaining endlessly about everything from layoffs to its breakfast sandwiches, he said. "Starbucks was a cool brand, and then all of a sudden it's not a cool brand," he said. "There's this new global consciousness that is out there that can suddenly shift."This is exactly what I write about in my book Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast. Indeed, one chapter talks about how in this era of very fast change, a brand can go from "hero to zero" in a matter of months, or even less. That's partially what we are witnessing here. The key thing today is velocity: business is impacted by rapid consumer change, product change, business model change, cost challenges, market change. The phrase I've been using for years is "volatility is the new normal." Realize that, and build your innovation strategy around that, and you'll be set for the types of challenges that will come your way.
This is particularly true with issues of branding : brand perceptions can change very quickly today, and I don't think many organizations are prepared for that. Just look at how quickly any brand equity left attached to the US auto industry has evaporated!
More Information:
- Buy Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast
- Blog post: Your Customers Are High Velocity: Are You?
- Is your brand from the olden days?
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Get Fest-ed! Adding some life to your annual conference or event....
I've had a new article published for Association Executives for the CSAE, about how you can innovate and jazz-up your annual meeting or conference.
Here's an extract:
Does your conference marketing suck? Maybe it does, and you don't know it. People today don't want to go to an "annual conference" and attend "plenary sessions." Kids (and today's 30-40 somethings -- the demographic you increasingly want to get to attend!) go to FESTIVALS. I think they're expecting the same brand image velocity for the conferences or events that they might attend. Would you rather go to the "121st Annual Tree Farmers Association Annual Meeting and Trade Show?"Me, I'm all for idea of TreeFest!Or would you rather go to "TreeFest 2009 - The Place Where Tree People Rock!
- Read the article Get Fest-ed!
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Extreme skills: what happens when knowledge runs out?
I'm in Vancouver, about to deliver a keynote to a global professional services firm, with the working title, "Extreme Skills Specialization: What Comes Next with Global Talent, Global Organizations?"
The working description goes like this: "The future of every career is either extremely specialized, or massively general. Most professions are fragmenting into dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of specialities. Someone needs to understand all this, and help organizations tap into narrow bands of knowledge."
This is a major trend, and perhaps one of the defining trends of the next 10 years. Here's how I'm presenting the challenges to my audience today:
- the ability to assist your clients with high-velocity change will be a key success factor
- because of this, the ability to find, attract utilize and retain ever more narrow niche skills will be critical, for both your clients, and yourself.
- the ability to scale up and scale down your resource base will define your clients success, and your own.
- our ability to access and deploy unique skills at high velocity, globally, forming project oriented teams that last but a short time, will be key.
Think about these challenges in the context of your own organization. Ask your this questions: "what's the depth of your bench strength?"
Then ask this question: "what do you need to do, from a unique structural perspective, to increase and improve your bench strength, particularly as skills become more specialized, scarce and hard to access." There's probable room for lots of innovative thinking there!
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Is there hope for manufacturing? You bet!
I'm in Milwaukee today, speaking at a private group of manufacturers from across the country, who work within a particular industry.
- manufacturing is alive and well for those who have or who are transitioning out of competing with low cost off-shore competitors. Instead, those who are focused on higher-value products that carry important and intrinsic value for the consumer are, by and large, doing ok
- accomplishing this involves innovation: with business models, skills and capabilities of staff in the manufacturing facility, branding, marketing -- with a whole series of things.
In other words, it might be renaissance time in manufacturing, if you do the right things, and make the big bets. Spend some time reading the manufacturing posts on this blog, and maybe you'll find some of the insight and encouragement that you need.
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Computational analytics is another new plastic!
At my keynote to the US Association of Actuaries this week, and for a keynote to LOMA last week (an insurance association conference), I played a series of maps that showed the rapid emergence of obesity in the US population from 1995 to the present day, The maps were provided by the Insurance Information Institute.
I challenged the audience to think about what will happen through the next five years: we will see the emergence of "location intelligence dashboards" that will allow such professionals, to examine in real time, the emergence of new risk factors in their industry.
Location intelligence is coming about as organizations learn to link massive stores of information and research to spatial -- or map oriented (i.e. Google Maps) information. An entire new profession is emerging at the same time -- location intelligence professionals.
This is part of an overall sweeping trend, in which computational analytics play a massive role in the emergence of new careers, businesses and industries. We are entering a time that involves the rapid processing of massive stores of information and unique new ways of analyzing information.I talk about this extensively in my future oriented keynotes and is a topic that is covered in several trends documents on my site.
More information
- Read about "location intelligence" in Five More Trends To Define Your Future
- Analytics is hot : "What comes next?"
- Insurance Information Institute report 0- Obesity, Liability, and Insurance
- Directions Magazine - The Worldwide Source for Geospatial Technology
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Transitioning the global economy
There are a zillion fast, zippy cool trends out there. And then, there are the big, sweeping, massive transformative trends that change entire economies.
- Global Economic Trends: An Interview with Jim Carroll
- "Where's the growth: Global innovation strategies for the long term"
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Who's hot? Actuaries are hot!
I just came back from delivering the opening keynote for the annual meeting of the US Association of Actuaries. This crowd is the risk assessment side of the US life insurance industry, and given the rapid pace of change, their job has become much more difficult through the last several years.
- Read about "location intelligence" in Five More Trends To Define Your Future
- Analytics is hot : "What comes next?"
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Text message polling - on stage with instant interactivity and feedback
Over the last several months, I've been incorporating some live text message polling into my onstage presentations.
- Quickmobile Web site
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After flat? Rethink strategies and go post-flat!
As some economies continue to experience rounds of volatility, there are still plenty trying to figure out what to do next. And there are a many who are focused on the theme of "what do we do after the world has gone flat?"
In the "post-flat" world, you need to change your focus. In an upcoming keynote, I'll be concentrating on several core themes:
- focus on growth - shift your focus to opportunity rather than cost based competition
- think "market transformation" - don't tinker with strategy; you've got to be willing to shift assumptions, habits, routine
- refuse to compete on price - change the rules by recreating value in your product or service
- make big bets - whether its' infrastructure, sales force, distribution network: you've got to be willing to spend to transition
- think international - local markets are small markets; the global economy is well within reach for any organization today.
- think velocityOne of my most often used quotes when on stage comes from Rupert Murdoch: ""The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.""
More information:
- What do you do after the world gets flat? Put a ripple in it!
- Innovating in a flat world
- The new face of manufacturing : agility, insight and execution......
- Innovating in a flat world
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Financial industry innovation - change the game!
Here's something to think about: we are going to see $12 to $18 trillion in intergenerational wealth transfer in the next 12 years in North America. (US GDP is $12 trillion). By 2053, $130 trillion will have moved from one generation to the next, in rolling waves of wealth transfer. All this will involve monies moving to new customers who are far more independent, financially savvy, and technically sophisticated.
In other words, tomorrow's customer is going to be completely unlike the customer of today. That's why innovating -- keeping up with the future - is critical!
Tomorrow I keynote a group of professionals in the life insurance industry. Next Monday, I keynote a national Association of Actuaries; the following week, an international accounting and professional services powerhouse. Last week, a major bank and a number of wealth management firms. The heavy duty theme this month is the world of finance!
Here's the thing about anyone doing business in financial services: you can drown in all the noise and short term hype and hysteria that involve markets and economies in rapid change.
Or, on the other hand, you can manage through that, and think about the innovations that are set to occur through the next five years. Focus on those, and there's your future strategy.
Here's what's certain in the insurance industry: someone will do one or more of these things, in a big way, that will cause significant and long lasting market disruption and transformation.
- they will redefine the business model (particularly in insurance): for example, health care costs worldwide are set to explode, and the system will implode. Someone will ride this obvious trend and do something transformative that forever changes the industry. It's not about managing health costs; it's about redefining the concept of health care. Think bio-connectivity, and health care rearchitecture.
- they will transform how business is done in the industry.Today, it's still an industry that is still about brokers and distribution. Insurance is sold, not bought, based on fear of the future. That's set to change. Tomorrow, smart widgets on top of a legacy insurance platform? The concept of "disintermediation" has been around for a long time, but here's a certainty: tomorrow's 50 year old is a very different animal from today's 50 year old! Gen-Connect expects much more!
- they will redefine the product
. Today, we buy life insurance and health care insurance and other "products." Someone will figure out that people don't want products: they want their own unique, self-defined, self-managed solutions, that likely include multiple solutions from multiple sources. Think "iPhone meets the life policy!" - they'll change the brand perception: fast movers will transform the product and services that are offered, by offering faster-paced, more relevant brands to consumers who aggressively self-manage every aspect of their daily life. Think Geico.
- they'll constantly change the target customer. Today, insurance is sold to groups of employees, directly to individuals, and to affinity groups. Tomorrow, it will be sold to rapidly evolving, temporary fast-moving customer targets. Think portability: if the typical person will have 30 different careers and 50 different jobs in their lifetime, they're no longer a captive customer!
Is that a bunch of babble? Not really. Five, ten, twenty years out, the insurance industry will look unlike anything that we know if it today. Market transformation is everywhere, and its' going to sweep this industry faster than fast.
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Branding, marketing, and manufacturing 2.0
From a variety of keynotes through the last few weeks, here's what we've got to deal with.
The consumer of today is:
- time challenged
- attention starved
- jumpy & fast with product perceptions
- edgy and vocal when operational excellence is not provided or perceived
- influenced differently in terms of brand / product / service choice
- more vocal when they've been "wronged"
- faster in adopting new trends and ideas
- faster to market
- more collaborative in design
- solutions oriented, responding to the fast consumer
- rapidly redefined by the customer
- having to maintain a brand image that is energized and up-to-date
- more transformational
- revived and rejuvenated on a more regular basis
- lifestyle oriented
- experimental
- shifting it's focus online
- changing faster in terms of message
- going premium and upscale, to avoid commoditization
- focus on the opportunity that comes from such rapid change, not the threat
- don't panic at the pace
- focus on the value of your product or service
- collaborate with your partners (i.e. packaging companies, retailers, consumer goods companies)
- invest in experiential capital by trying out lots of new ideas
- understand that the pace of change is only going to increase
- transition your team to think differently -- innovate!
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There were two pretty heavy-duty keynotes I did for companies in the financial sector last week. The second one involved a group of several hundred executives responsible for managing and overseeing the strategic infrastructure within their wealth management organizations.
I presented an overview of the trends occuring in the financial sector -- see the post immediately before this one which takes a look at the growth of sovereign wealth funds. I also outlined what I think were the key strategic concepts they should be relentlessly focused upon to ensure that they remain competitive in a very fast paced industry. These 7 points were:
- respect the competition
- prepare for the new analytics
- move faster
- stay ahead
- maintain brand relevance
- structure for skill set challenges
- think transformation, not just innovation
These are all themes that I've written on throughout this blog and in my book Ready, Set, Done, How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast.
The key issue is that as business rapidity continues to pick up, organizations need to stay relentlessly focused on trying to stay one step ahead of the fast trends which will impact them.
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A new era of "social wealth management?" Innovating banking at high speed!
I'm about to head out the door to keynote a leadership team, business analysts and IT staff for a leading multinational bank. The theme of my luncheon talk is, of course, innovation in the high velocity financial sector.
There's been a tremendous amount of new research undertaken in the last day, so that I can add to the insight that I've already accumulated through the years as to the innovations occuring in this sector.
There are a couple of key observations that I'll share with the crowd. I start out with a list of pretty scary headlines. American banks face financial meltdown if their reforms fail. Mortage Meltdown! Bloody and Bowed --- Money Managers Remain Badly Shaken by the Meltdown. Market Cap Meltdown --- Billions in Blue Chip Stock Values Have Been Blown Away.Congress caught in a bind over bank crisis. Crisis Looming As Realty Slump Becomes Global
Most of these headlines are from 1989-1990.
Key point being, we've been here before. Whenever there is market turmoil, there is also opportunity for growth through innovation.
And that's what I'll concentrate on the talk. How banks are transitioning staff from tactical to strategic roles so that they can provide the consultative services customers are demanding. How bank branches are becoming the "new Internet" as financial institutions rediscover the power of rejuvenated bricks-and-mortar networks. How the new era of Web 2.0 is going to have to drive a new form of "social wealth management," particularly as we witness a massive intergenerational transfer of wealth from baby-boomers to the Twitter generation. And how maintaining brand relevance is critical when products and customer service expectations continue to increase at a furious pace.
Several months ago, I wrote a Memo to the CEO of banks worldwide, imploring that they don't kill innovation it's tracks as they scramble to deal with the subprime mess. It drew quite a bit of attention: and the comments and sentiment are still critical today. It's worth a read.
More information
- Read the Memo to the CEO
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Innovating in the era of the celebrity baby blog!
I just returned from a keynote for the Direct Seller Association; the industry dedicated to selling products to individuals in their homes. One might think in the Internet era that such an industry is on the skids; yet organizations like Avon, Mary Kay, and new direct selling companies continue on a growth trajectory; through innovation in traditional markets, and through fascinating growth in the Asia Pacific region.
My keynote focused on two primary trends: how the customer of today is changing; and how marketing and advertising are changing. I then spoke about how these organizations need to continue to keep up with the rate of change that is occurring around them.
So what's with the picture? One of trends I covered was that today's consumer is influenced differently when it comes to their purchasing activities. It used to be all word of mouth; it still is, but WOM has changed to a significant degree: it's widened to include the world of social networking.
For example, a recent New York Times article commented on the role of Celebrity Baby Blog when it comes to the clothes that parents are choosing for their children. US Weekly also comented on this trend, noting that when it comes to selling, "In the 1990s, everyone wanted to know about handbags.....now it's all about, 'What stroller is Naomi Watts's child in?'" (Apparently it's a Strider 3 Steelcraft in slate at $449US).
That's but one trend of about 20 key consumer, advertising and marketing trends I took a look at. House parties have been social-networked too, through Houseparty.com! As noted in the Times, "Jarden Consumer Solutions, which sells appliances under names like Mr. Coffee and Sunbeam, hired House Party to put on 1,000 parties over the Memorial Day weekend to promote the Margaritaville Frozen Concoction line of drink-making machines, which cost $199 to $379." To a degree, the more things change, the more things stay the same. Direct selling still happens; the mechanism and methodology is changing furiously.
The key issue is this: no matter who you are, what you sell, and who you sell to, your markets, products, customers, touch points and brand issues are changing at a furious pace, and you need to as well. That's why innovation in the consumer goods sector is critical.
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Recent keynote titles Jim has been on stage for 15 years, and has spoken to hundreds of thousands of people. There's a certain degree of insight that comes from such experience. It's not just the deep industry insight that Jim has into countless industries -- it's the way he manages to get across the message. These are a few of the recent and upcoming keynote titles used by various clients:
- 7 Things You Should Do Right Now If Your Strategy for Tomorrow is Already Today's Yesterday
- Where's the Growth? What's Hot and Not When Volatility Rocks!
- 7 Things You Need to Do Right Now: Aligning The Fast Future to Your Current Strategy
- Game Changers: The 8 Big Trends That Will Rock Your World
- What Do Innovative Companies Do? How to Unlock Your Potential in the High Velocity Economy
- OMG! What to Do If Your Strategy for Tomorrow is So Yesterday
- Where's the Growth? What's Hot When Volatility Rocks!
- What's Happening with Your Workforce: Making Generations Work!
- What Comes Next? Leadership Insight for the High-Velocity Economy
- Agility, Insight & Execution: Establishing High Performance Teams in the Multi-Second Economy
- Leading the Future: Leadership in an Era of Innovation and Change
- The New 2.0: Staying Ahead When Everything Today is Already So "Yesterday!"
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Can we talk -- upside down innovation?
The media is all abuzz with the concept of "user oriented innovation," and that is certainly an important innovation trend. But it's not the only trend. Innovators would do well to recognize that there are many, many other concepts that can help to focus and refocus their innovation efforts.
While everyone focuses on having "customers" modify and design their next product, there is an even more powerful and important trend underway. I call it "upside down innovation," and it involves new levels of innovation partnership between organizations.
It's when packaging companies, retailers, and food producers get together to examine new markets and branding opportunities through powerful new ideas. Or when a retailer works with its suppliers to come up with "pre-packaged lifestyle solutions" that offer time starved consumers a neat-solution or new idea. It's when organizations in a supply chain or industry learn to innovate together -- and that can be more powerful than when customers innovate.
I keynoted the American Nursery and Landscape Association in Vail, Colorado, and offered up this example: traditionally, your local garden store features the same, endless rows of plants, in the same old order, often according to their Latin names. There's no inspiration; there's no excitement; there's no solution to the fact that you are a busy consumer and just want to "buy a backyard."
"Upside-down innovators" take it one step further; they offer a retail environment that provides you with outdoor living solutions. They've combined the insight of leading edge retail ideas, with innovative, packaged solutions, and with unique products that "fit" together.
Today, you want to look at a complete "outdoor living room solution," that happens to include all the elements you need: plants, patio furniture, outdoor entertainment solutions, decor, candles, some wine glasses -- and everything else. And that solution has been put together by the retailer with the assistance of their suppliers and packaging companies,
into one unique, outdoor lifestyle vignette.
Here's what upside-down innovators do:
- partnership is a key focus: they recognize that great ideas might come from others in their supply/production chain
- collaboration is critical: they know they have challenges in keeping up with all innovation opportunities in this hyper-economy, and are eager to learn how others can help them
- they focus on providing solutions: innovative companies no longer sell products: they sell entire solutions to customers
- they refuse to "lay flat" : it might be a flat world, but upside down innovators go to the next step by putting a ripple into the flatness, by approaching innovation in a new way
More information
- Creativity, trends and innovation in retail, packaging and consumer goods
- Read What do you do after the world gets flat? Put a ripple in it!
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Zorbing -- and why it's in to be out!
Seems USA Today ran an article about zorbing, and my web site is being flooded with traffic because it features a picture of zorbing in action.
Here's the thing: Zorbing is part of a trend that I frequently speak about at conferences -- the rapid emergence of new sports, which is part of the overall trend of the more rapid emergence of new trends!
My coverage of Zorbing goes back to 2004, when I keynoted a New York City publicity event, where, I met with the editors of O (Oprah Magazine), Elle, Family Circle, Parenting, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Working Mother, American Baby, Soap Opera Weekly, Woman's Day, Glamor, Teen Vogue, Seventeen, Good Housekeeing, Family Circle and about 40 other national trade magazines.
My focus, on behalf of a consumer products company, was the presentation of my "10 Trends that Will Rock the Outdoor World." In preparing, I undertook detailed research and analysis of leading lifestyle, demographic, social and cultural trends, to put into perspective what we can expect in terms of active, outdoor living in the future.
And one of the trends I talked about? The rapid emergence of new sports -- such as zorbing!
Read 10 Trends that Will Rock the Outdoor World. .
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The Secret for Association Executive Success: Study Air Guitar!
My blog post of a few weeks ago caught the attention of the folks at the Canadian Society of Association Executives -- and so I quickly rewrote it to challenge their members to think about the role of "associations in the future."
Is your association brand becoming a bit "tired" instead of energized? Do you have a consultant studying the role of your association and how you might need to change it in the future?
Probably so, and here's the thing.
You've got to do all that, except you've got to do it faster. That's why you need to keep innovating, and make that a key part of your leadership role.
The challenge with association leadership today is ensuring that you stay on top of, and ahead of, fast paced trends. That's why I focus on innovation in the broadest sense. Innovation isn't just coming up with the next great iPod -- it's asking yourself the hard questions, and always challenging yourself to do something different to deal with the realities those hard questions pose.
If you aren't attracting 25 year olds as members, why not? And how do you fix that? By innovating -- by trying to do something differently!
- Read The Secret for Association Executives: Study Air Guitar!
- Read Led Zeppelin Leadership: How to Innovate When You're Dazed & Confused
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"65% of the kids in preschool today will work in jobs or careers that don't yet exist"
Whether I've got an audience of 3,000 people in Vegas, or a small CEO-level meeting of 20 people, I always open with the same observation. It's from an Australian study which concluded that 65% of the kids in pre-school today will work in jobs or careers that do not yet exist.
I then challenge people to think through the global trends at work which are making such a bold statement into a reality. And I often walk through the types of new careers that are emerging in every industry to emphasize the point.
So what are a few of these new professions? There are dozens: here's five to start your day thinking about:
- knowledge farmers: exponential knowledge growth, in part driven by social networking, is leading to information overload everywhere. KF's are the uber-editors who immerse themselves in global data-feeds, extracting relevant knowledge and insight from data-torrents. They're the new editors, and its their ability to apply their insight to knowledge-rivers that will place them in high demand.
- location intelligence professionals: see my earlier post on this. I've been talking about this for years. These are the folks who are linking GoogleMap type data to existing business process and services, and who are building entire new global infrastructure on spatial information. This one is going to be huge!
- mash managers: as innovation moves from the core to the masses, creative insight is emerging from those who learn how to take multiple new ideas, and input them into the innovation process. These people synthesize ideas from multiple sources, study markets, interpret insight, and decide how to re-evolve a product, service, brand, marketing campaign, or just about anything else. Their focus in "constant innovation," and it's their idea-immersive environment that drives them forward.
- tactical controllers : in this wildly information-chaotic world, some people are busy searching for the next big thing. A new and very real profession emerges with those who step beyond the "minutiae-of-the-moment" and instead focus on providing tactical, strategic guidance on what-to-do-in-the-next-moments ... they are the PR expert who knows how to steer the company through a global viral idea meltdown; the brand expert who knows how to re-energize a brand next week; the individual who studies what the global knowledge farmers are revealing, and who understands what to do next as a result.
- analytical architects: the world's big problems are being solved by those who are learning to throw sophisticated solutions at complex problems. These are the folks who will architect the smart-highway infrastructure; load-balanced two-way energy grids; just-next-week manufacturing processes for the era of the customization of one. They've combined an education in combinatory theory with big server farms to generate the new smart-infrastructure that is set to envelop us.
That's a starting point. See your own new careers emerging? Let me know!
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Innovation on the "fast" track - what do you do when its faster still?
My June is shaping up to be a tremendously busy month. Based on the bookings that are in, it's clear that innovation continues to be at the top of the CEO agenda, despite some economic challenges.
In most of my upcoming keynotes, I'll be spending time putting into perspective how executives should be thinking about future trends within their industry, and will take a look at the innovative strategies they might pursue.
Each of these talks is pretty tightly focused; I'll be zipping from the insurance industry to optometry; from the future of global wealth management to high-velocity innovation in the banking sector; from opportunities in dealing with the new consumer 2.0 mindset, to how massive skills specialization will affect the world economy in the future. There's been a tremendous amount of research underway as I prepare for each session; most of these talks get pretty darned specific in terms of industry issues.
Some of the unique topics that are unfolding include:
- "the new risk" : a keynote for the US Association of Actuaries that will take a look at how the insurance industry will the rapid emergence of new risk, and the impact of the "new analytics" on the global economy.
- "the new market" : how can a leading manufacturer transition to a market where it is not competing on price, but on brand, quality, image and value : in other words, "what do they do after the world is flat?"
- "the new customer" -- how do we sell to the new 2.0 consumer, in this era of the wired-up-no-attention-span Gen-Connect demographic? The average consumer scans 12 feet of shelf space per second. What innovations do we need to think about when it comes to selling today?
- "the new investor": Dubai and Singapore have "money-velocity." Where is the investment world going, and how does a wealth management firm innovate to stay at the leading edge?
- "the new workforce" : how does a major global professional services firm transition into a new world of micro-skills and knowledge niches?
- "the new agent" : what comes next for the insurance industry? This one is a a keynote and a workshop for about 200 senior executives from the insurance industry, on behalf of LOMA, a major global insurance group.
- "the new collaborative team": how can a leading bank outpace, outlast and outperform the competition?
I'll be posting observations from the road, as there are powerful innovation lessons to be learned and shared from each situation.
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Jim Carroll keynoting Toshiba Global Exchange 2008 in Sydney, Australia
It's been confirmed that I'll be the opening keynote speaker for this large scale annual conference in mid-July.
It will be a pleasure to share my insight in Sydney. I'm a big believer that many organizations have barely scratched the innovation-surface when it comes to IT deployment; many organizations are still in basic implementation mode, and haven't learned how to really leverage their investment to provide for significant transformation of their overall organizational capabilities.
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Five more trends to define your future
My "infrastructure is the new plastic" post drew attention; at a keynote last week, I was asked, "what other areas are seeing the emergence of the 'next plastic?'" (It's a play on the theme in the sixties movie, The Graduate, when the kids dads friend mentioned "plastics" as being the industry of the future.)
- Analytics. The future is owned by the math geeks. We're entering an era in which extremely intelligent people who know a lot about how to throw a bunch of computers at a complex problem in order to come up with interesting solutions. Here's an example: backyard energy. Lots of people would like to do their part in helping the environment by having their own back yard solar or wind power station. The problem is that most of the North American electric grid wasn't designed for two way transmission -- meaning that you can't pump your excess energy back into the grid. Yet, some smart math dude will come along and come up with a fascinating new load-balancing technology, based on sophisticated mathematics and massive amounts of computer processing power, to solve the problem. There are going to a be a lot of unique solutions, and hence, unique industries that are set to unfold.
- Location-intelligence. Think about the transformative change that can occur when you link the type of information found in GoogleMaps to existing corporate data. In the insurance industry, individuals are looking at how they can link existing insurance policy information to spatial (i.e. geographic) oriented information, in order to come up new forms of assessing, understanding and underwriting insurance risk.
- Pervasive connectivity. Everything around you is about to become "plugged-in", and life is about to get really strange. One day you'll get up, and your weigh scale will send an e-mail to your fridge. Just kidding, but consider this reality: many of the things that we use in an industrial, commercial or residential setting are about to undergo three distinct transitions. They are gaining intelligence; and at the same time, we are seeing the emergence of information that advises us as to their location, and their status. Think about what happens when you bring home a box of popcorn, and it interacts with your microwave, linking into a centralized database to determine the best cooking duration for your particular microwave brand.
- Hyper-innovation. China is rapidly transitioning from the "made" phase to the "created" stage. Think "Designed in China" as the next big wave that will lead to rapid product innovation. Half the population in China is under the age of 25. They're collaborative, highly educated, and eager to continue the transition into the wealth that comes with being a member of the Chinese middle class. They're about to innovate like crazy, and will soon be flooding our stores with all kinds of innovative consumer products, not to mention stuff for the industrial, health care, packaging and just about every other industry out there. Someone is going to import, support, sell and install this stuff.
- Skills specialization. The future of every career is either extremely specialized, or massively general. Most professions are fragmenting into dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of specialities. Someone needs to understand all this, and help organizations tap into narrow bands of knowledge. In the health care industry, we are seeing the emergence of "hospitalists" : medical professionals who now fulfill the role of steering a patient through the ever increasing complexity that is the world of medical care today. The field is expected to swell from about 15,000 today, to 120,000 within a decade. The rise of similar "uber-generalists" is expected in most other industries as well.
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Bio-connectivity and the rapid emergence of new markets
In a keynote to a health care industry conference last week, I emphasized that in the high velocity economy, new business models, products, markets, and careers are appearing at a fast and furious pace. And it's by watching for, observing, and understanding these trends that you'll discover opportunity for innovation.
Consider the rapid emergence of new markets. As new scientific discoveries occur at an ever more rapid pace -- due to the massive global collaboration with Web 2.0 as well as new information research sharing paradigms within established peer review based research methodologies -- there are countless new products and markets that are being brought to life.
Take that reality, and apply it to any industry. Say, health care. Then parse that industry down into dozens or hundreds of sub-markets, and you'll discover forthcoming new, billion dollar markets.
Consider, for example, the concept of bioconnectivity, which will be one of the most significant trends -- and new markets -- to play out in the next twenty years in the health care industry. What is it? Quite simply, the marriage of the computer chip and connectivity technology to medical devices, and ultimately, to people.
One small submarket that will come with bio-connectivity is the emergence of smart, intelligent, home-based medical devices. Have you ever seen a Sharper Image catalogue, or its online Web site? It's the ultimate source for unique gadgets and toys of every type. Think about what the catalog might look like in 10 years, when its full of home-based bioconnectivity devices aimed at the baby boomer set.
Digital Connect Magazine, which monitors development with home and business connectivity devices, suggests that U.S. revenue from digital-home health services will quadruple to exceed $2.1 billion by 2010.
The two fastest growing areas? "Wellness monitoring services" and "e-health services" will each achieve a compound annual growth rate of more than 50 per cent. The former allows doctors to remotely monitor a patient's condition (such as their insulin levels), while the latter provides active medical care (such as an intelligent sub-dermal medicine patch, which not only provides a patient automatic ingestion of a particular pharmaceutical, but allows the doctor to monitor its effect.)
It might sound like science fiction, but it is a very real development. Sit back and think about the business models and opportunities that flow from such a transformative trend. Link it to another trend: a whole bunch of baby boomers are getting older, sicker, and the health care system is breaking down. Hospitals will go virtual, extending their services through bio-connectivity, so that non-critical care boomers can be treated and monitored at home. This is slam-dunk obvious!
It's BIG TREND. Its' but one of many.
Simply put, our new reality is that science, and hence markets, industries, products and services, are evolving and changing at a rate never seen before.
And that's where your own opportunity for innovation comes from!
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Infrastructure is the new plastic
In my "Where's the growth?" trends overview written a few months back, I noted that one of the key drivers for growth into the future will come from the massive spending to occur on infrastructure -- globally. One estimate suggests global spending will go from $750 billion to $1 trillion in a few years. I think we'll see more.
This morning, I caught wind of a blog entry that commented on the general crankiness of American's towards their "crumbling infrastructure." For example, Thomas Friedman commented in a New York Times article this week: "A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York’s Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.’s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore’s ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children’s play zones throughout. We felt, as we have before, like we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons.
It's the rapid ramp-up in sentiments like this that drive the reality that infrastructure is the new plastic. It's one aspect of the global economy where spending is going to increase at a furious pace.
Consider the trends that are coming together that provide for this simple reality:
- spending on infrastructure through what has been fondly known as the "first world" will increase, by virtue of the simple reality that much of what is there is crumbling and creaky. After 50 or 75 or 100 or 150 years or so, stuff simply breaks down, and needs to be replaced.
- spending on infrastructure throughout Asia and the Pacific region will continue to ramp up as society moves up the rung of personal wealth
- sophisticated solutions to challenging problems -- think energy, and spending on solar / wind / tidal solutions -- will drive ever more complex infrastructure projects, and hence, more infrastructure spending. Simply put, there will be lots more options of where to spend money as new ideas come to market.
- global competition simply means that economic regions will have to boost their infrastructure -- simply to stay as a global competitor. It's a matter of economic pride -- and necessity.
One really interesting aspect of all this is that anything that goes with infrastructure spending is set for a rocket ride. Think intelligent project management, global collaboration capabilities, and resource/skills scalability: these will be the defining success factors for anyone working in this global marketplace.
Who wins? Construction companies, specialized skills, economic regions that decide to invest -- and most important, firms that have a deep, scalable global talent pool.
And perhaps one of the biggest, yet unforeseen markets, will have to do with "intelligent infrastructure." Think thermostats!
More information:
- Read Where's the growth : global innovation opportunities for the long termThe reality of future trends: grab the What Comes Next trends overview
- Intelligent infrastructure: When thermostats get connected
- Read my Credit Suisse interview for my thoughts on "growth"
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If I ran your company, here's what I would do!
Supertramp -- a band from the 80's -- had a minor hit with the song "On the Long Way Home," which featured the memorable line, the line, "when you're up on the stage, it's so unbelievable."
It is, quite. And when you're up there, you realize how lucky you are to be able to share with the audience the wisdom you've picked up by observing some of the world's top innovators.
Recently, after a presentation to an audience of 3,000 people, I was approached by a CEO who was quite inspired by my remarks. He then asked me a fascinating question: “what would you do if you took over the leadership of my company right now?” We chatted for a while and I believe I provided some pretty succinct insight; but since then, I’ve been thinking about that question. Here’s a part of my answer.
- maximize your best revenue opportunities. I’d make sure that any existing revenue relationships remain intact, and then some. I’d work on having my team obsess on growing existing high value customer relationships through service excellence. Let’s make sure that we meet their needs. It will likely be easier to keep existing revenue grows flowing rather than finding new ones, particularly through a time of economic challenge.
- obsess over time to market. I'd work hard to accelerate product innovation; market life-cycles are collapsing, and I'd make sure every member of the team reoriented themselves to that reality. I'd focus on getting R&D to think in terms of faster cycles; I'd ramp up sales force education so that they were better aware of what's coming next. I'd have the team thinking in terms of 3-6-9-12 : here's what will be doing in the marketplace 3, 6, 9 and 12 months from now. I'd layer on top of that some insight into 1-2-5-10: what we might be doing 1, 2, 5 and 10 years from now.
- reduce product costs through process improvement and better project execution: there is no shortage of innovative ideas, structures and concepts involving process and production methodologies. I’d make sure we were looking at finding those who are doing leading edge work in this area, inside or outside our industry, and learn from them.
- reduce structural costs through collaboration: at this point in time, in a global world that allows for instant, smart collaboration among teams, there is no reason for massive duplication of skills and talent throughout an organization. I’d start a rethink those silos, and restructure for a new skills deployment approach. Right off the bat, I’d encourage a few cross-organizational collaboration efforts, to get people used to the idea of tackling fast new problems rather than arguing about structure and hierarchy.
- focus on the pipeline of talent innovation: I've said it before and I'll say it again. The depth the bench strength is critical to future success. I’d have everyone take a good look at our pipeline, to see if it will meet upcoming needs. If not, I’d get a program in place to fix that fast.
- relentlessly and aggressively chase costs: I'm not talking about spontaneous slash and burn spending cuts: I’d refocus on transitioning the role of staff from tactical efforts to a strategic role. I’ve spent time with the CIO's and CFO's of some pretty major organizations: Hunt Oil, Adobe, J Crew, Under Armor. All of them have provided in-depth insight onstage during customer panels that have focused on the role of IT in the business to run the business better, grow the business and transform the business. There remain countless opportunities for IT oriented innovation to rip unnecessary costs out of the business, and it involves this tactical to strategic transition.
- enhance quality and reliability of product: Last year, I spoke to 2,500 global quality professionals on the challenges that the high velocity economy presents to the concept of quality. The fact is, new issues hit us in the marketplace faster than ever before. And the global idea loop means that quality challenges can become a sudden, massive worldwide PR nightmare faster than we've ever been prepared for. That's why avoiding quality problems remains a critical focus. I’d take a look at how well we’re dealing with quality issues, and whether we’ve got the agility to respond in this new world of heightened PR challenges. I’d also have a group prepare an immediate outline of challenges and problems with customer service and satisfaction.
- capture new emerging growth markets faster: I’d begin to orient the team so that we knew about which market opportunities might come next, and then spend time aligning ourselves to innovate faster in such markets. I recently spent some time with one client, and the focus of our discussion was how a new market was set to unfold in the next three months. Expectations were that the market -- for a unique consumer product, with potential sales in the billions of dollars -- might last for a period of eighteen months, before being eclipsed by the next stage of development. Essentially, the CEO was looking at a situation where they had to figure out how to jump into this new fast market, and make the most of it in an extremely short period of time. That's a new skill structure to wrap an organization around, and one that every organization must learn to master.
Oh, and one of the first things I'd do? I would immediately convene a senior management/leadership meeting, and bring in a futurist and innovation expert to wake my people up to the potential that can come from energizing ourselves towards future opportunities.
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Led Zeppelin Leadership: How do you innovate when you're dazed and confused ....
At a particular keynote last week, I met a number of senior executives who certainly agreed with my message - we need to constantly realign our company to the reality of change that surrounds it. That's where innovation comes from. But they also also indicated that they found it increasingly difficult to keep up with the rapid change occurring all around them.
There's been an increasing number of these individuals, and I've come to call them the Led Zeppelin refugees: they're simply dazed by the changes occuring in the high velocty economy, and are confused about what to do next.
That's why there's such a good question that flows from this: just how do you become an organization that is focused on innovation?
One of the easiest methods is simply by identifying the obvious and the not-so-obvious trends that will impact your business or organization -- and then taking the time to figure out what actions you must undertake to deal with those trends.
Ask yourself this question: are you prepared for what comes next in terms of your business? The likely answer is no: my experience is that many organizations still have a very short-term minded outlook. They're caught in an innovation rut, simply doing day by day the same old things they've always been doing, day in day out. And they don't really think about how their world is going to change.
That's why you should undertake a "trend-and-innovation" audit of your organization: quite simply, figuring out what comes next, and what you need to do about it.
How can you do this? By asking yourself a series of questions:
- How quickly is our marketplace changing? How quickly might it change in the future? What's the impact on what I sell, and how I sell it?
- How are our products changing? Willl they change faster in terms of features? Will support become easier, or more complex? Can we manage to operate in a faster market?
- Are our products moving upscale, or are they becoming commodities,such that you'll be forced to compete on price? Can we do something so that there is more of a service element to our product?
- What new competitors are appearing, or might emerge in the future? Is the basic business model threatened? Is there more likelihood of direct outreach to the consumer rather than through an existing distributor/wholesaler network?
- What moves could we make to make sure we can remain competitive? You really must ask yourself some probing questions as you go through this process. You need to challenge yourself and think what might really be different in five years, in terms of what you sell, who you sell to, how you sell it, and who you are selling against.
What you need to do is ask yourself these tough questions, so that that you're thinking about where there might be new problems and new opportunities that will impact your business in the future, not just in terms of what you sell, but in terms of the structure that you use to get things done.
And therein lies the rub: I think a lot of organizations fail to do this type of simple analysis. There are too many who sit back and react to change instead of thinking: "ok we know some big change is coming what the heck are we going to do about it?" Think of it is a forward-oriented innovation: it's a simple concept, and one of the most important things you should be doing.
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