Jump The Curve Archives: 02/2010

The Value of a Futurist

It is a fact that 100% of the information we have—in terms of the data we collect or the patterns we spot—comes from the past. But is also true that 100% of the value of any decision we make will come the future. It therefore makes sense to deeply consider the future before making any decision.

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A Shorter Road to Our Energy Future

Michael Totty of The Wall Street Journal has a thoughtful piece in today’s paper entitled The Long Road to an Alternative-Energy Future. For the most part, the article does a good job of explaining the many obstacles that will confront this country’s transition to biofuels, nuclear, wind, and solar power. There is one key point which Totty mentions but completely overlooks and that is the fact that solar power is doubling every couple of years.

From Totty’s perspective just because solar only generates 0.1% of our electricity today it will never be more than a small, niche player in America’s energy equation. As I have done on numerous occasions, let me show you how fast solar energy could grow if it is doubling every two years:

2010—0.1%
2012—0.2%
2014—0.4%
2016—0.8%
2018—1.6%
2020—3.2%
2022—6.4%
2024—12.8%
2026—25.6%
2028—51.2%
2030—100%

Now, I don’t expect solar to meet 100% of America’s electricity needs by 2030 but it is entirely feasible that solar could meet well more than 25 percent—you just have to understand how to “jump the curve.”

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The Future of Science Accelerates

”Researchers don’t publish negative results, they only publish positive results. But the negative results can lead to positive results.”

The following quote might not appear revolutionary but I’d argue that is, in fact, quite extraordinary. According to this VentureBeat article researchers have now created a new website, www.researchgate.net, which has been dubbed a “FaceBook for Scientists.” As a professional futurist, I’m excited because the advance will facilitate and accelerate the discovery of new scientific advances by helping scientists understand and see what isn’t there.

As a self-described unlearning fanatic, I’m even more excited by the power of the tool because I think it is the type of thing that will allow new and younger scientists to challenge conventional wisdom; help people see new patterns; and maybe even break down old scientific paradigms by “getting more eyes” and new brains on an old topic.

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Why Hire a Futurist?

Why hire a futurist? In two words, creativity and innovation. The purpose of a futurist is not simply to help companies, corporations and organizations understand where the future is headed (although this is part of the job), the more important role of a futurist to help create the future. The emphasis is on the word create.

There are a number of ways to do but it all begins with using our understanding of future trends to spark creativity in order to drive innovation. Let me provide three quick examples. First, your organization can embrace intellectual diversity as a means to spot new opportunities—or dangerous threats—before others.

Another simple trick is to view the future from a different perspective. (This can also be viewed as unlearning your old perspective). If you and your organization do this not only can problems be turned into opportunities but powerful new connections between seemingly unrelated ideas can be created. The resulting new ideas can then drive new innovations.

Finally, I personally engage in the power of story-telling and use metaphors (such as this one on nanotechnology) to help open vistas from which creativity and innovative can spring.

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Play Off Your Neighbors Strengths

Life on the African savanna can be a dangerous place, especially if you’re an animal. Predators that possess astonishing strength, razor-sharp teeth and claws, and cunning camouflage lurk everywhere and are often just waiting to make some poor, less unfortunate creature on the food chain their next meal without the slightest compunction.

One strategy for surviving in this perilous environment is to be at least one step speedier than your slowest colleague. It is a fitting analogy for today’s business environment and Juan Enriquez, in his book As the Future Catches You, summarized this line of thinking thusly: “Every morning a gazelle wakes and thinks, ‘To stay alive, I have to run faster than the fastest lion.’”

It’s a marvelous strategy provided you are fleet of foot. If not, the strategy is nothing more than a temporary salve for a day or two because as Enriquez adds, “Just over the hill, a lion has realized, ‘I have to run faster than the slowest gazelle, or I’ll go hungry.’”

Fortunately there is a better way of surviving on the African plains, and it offers two distinct advantages over this survival-of-the-fittest strategy. Moreover, it is instructive for businesses and organizations looking to remain competitive in tomorrow’s exponential economy.

What is the strategy? Playing off your neighbors’ strength. Many animals survive on the savanna by working in partnership with other animals. One of the better-known examples is the unusual affiliation among wildebeests, zebras, and ostriches.

Alone each species is vulnerable. Together, though, this unlikely triumvirate forms an impressive survival team. Wildebeests have very good hearing but poor eyesight and a distressingly poor sense of smell. Zebras, on the other hand, only have modest hearing but are blessed with very keen sniffers, while ostriches possess excellent eyesight. By relying on the relative strengths of the other animals, the trio can often detect predators well in advance and take the necessary precautions to keep the threat at bay.

The same tactic can be employed in today’s business environment. The convergence of sensors and information technology within the health-care arena is causing leading medical providers to look to semiconductor companies as new partners.

On a different scale, some companies are even trying to form in-house teams that can do a better job of spotting potential dangers. For instance, Eli Lilly, the large drug manufacturer, now relies on groups of “semi-experts” to help it determine which drug candidates should be allowed to proceed to Phase III clinical trials. (The decision is not inconsequential because of the time, money, and resources at stake.)

To use the animal analogy, imagine marketing executives as having good hearing for helping determine which drugs will do best in the commercial marketplace, molecular biologists as having the best eyesight for determining which drug molecules might be most effective, and regulatory and legal specialists as having the better sense of smell in selecting the drugs FDA regulators might be willing to accept.

Of course, diversity isn’t only useful in warning of lurking dangers; it is also helpful in avoiding traps in the first place. The classic example, which was so adroitly profiled in the classic book Groupthink by Irving Janis, is the Bay of Pigs fiasco--the Kennedy administration’s ill-advised plan to send a group of Cuban exiles into a swampy bay in Cuba in the hopes of sparking a popular uprising against Fidel Castro’s communist regime.

After the humiliating defeat, President Kennedy demanded his administration study the failure of the invasion. What he learned is that he and his staff--many of whom had been schooled at the country’s top universities--were a cohesive group but they all tended to think too much alike. In short, his staff was not diverse enough.

Had Kennedy and his advisors sought the advice of other military experts, Cuban exiles, and other interested and knowledgeable parties outside of their immediate circle, the problem might have been avoided. (Luckily Kennedy learned his lesson and successfully applied many of the findings toward the peaceful resolution of the Cuban missile crisis just a year later.)

The business world is chock full of examples of businesses tapping into the power of diversity. Stephanie Capparell, in her book The Real Pepsi Challenge, documents how as early as the mid-1940s Pepsi had hired African-Americans to figure out how to market Pepsi to “the Negro market,” and the company determined that its continued commitment to diversity was responsible for attributing one full percentage point of its 7.4 percent revenue growth--or $250 million--to new products inspired by diversity.

Similarly Ford Motor Company credits one of its more notable successes of the past few decades to diversity. Many of the unique features of the minivan were not the work of clever and empathetic engineers but rather were the product of multiple minds working together to devise a product that would serve different peoples needs. For instance, disabled workers recommended sliding doors, mothers looking for some help with storing their children’s drinks asked for cup holders, and the elderly needed some assistance in discerning when obstacles might be behind them and requested a sensor that beeped.

Scores of other companies have also moved in a big way to embrace diversity. IBM, Google, and Microsoft among others are moving abroad and are doing so not only to be closer to their markets and have access to inexpensive and talented labor but also because Indians, Chinese, Europeans, and Africans all have different sets of “senses,” and they can see, hear, or smell both threats and opportunities that are not always obvious to others.

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Diversity: The Spice of Life

There is very little difference between one man and another; but what little there is, is very important. This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter. --William James, The Will to Believe

It has been said that diversity is the spice of life. But diversity is more than just a spice, it is actually a necessary and vital ingredient of life. Consider a very close and intimate example: you.

Have you ever wondered how it is that you got to where you are? I am not speaking here of the mystery of life (although in keeping with the theme of this website I feel compelled to mention that the cell division that occurs almost from the moment you are conceived is but another example of exponential growth); rather, I am referring to your place in society.

That we even have a society to be members of is an enthralling proposition, and while I am sure a few people have pondered such a question in a moment of quiet reflection or perhaps in some long forgotten freshmen philosophy course, it is safe to say that most people have chosen not to make answering this question the central theme of their lives. Fewer still have decided to write a book about it.

To our good fortune, Jared Diamond did explore this very question in his Pulitzer Prize--winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel. The work seeks to answer the question of why different societies developed in different ways and progressed at different rates. Or as Diamond so eloquently phrases the question: Why is it that Africa, where protohumans evolved for the longest period of time, didn’t come to develop the tools that would have permitted it to conquer Europe rather than vice versa?

As the book’s title implies, the answer is not altogether simple. One of the principal and necessary ingredients behind Western civilizations’ explosive growth from a small band of nomadic hunter and gatherers 10,000 years ago to today’s hyperconnected, supersized international economy where billions of dollars pulsate electronically in the blink of an eye and hundreds of ships three times the size of a football field roam the high seas at any given moment is diversity.

More specifically, a diversity of weather, terrain, climate, plants, and animals lie at the heart of modern society’s exponential advancement. As Diamond explains, it is not just a quirk of fate that civilization began in the Fertile Crescent. A confluence of diversity conspired to spark modern civilization. To begin, the region was blessed with a wealth of altitudes and topographies. This gave rise to rivers, deserts, and flood plains, which, when combined with differing weather patterns in the region, produced a bewildering array of plants. In fact, ten millennia ago thirty-two of the world’s fifty-six different wild grasses could be found in the Fertile Crescent.

These plants then cross-pollinated with one another and gave rise to an even wider assortment of plants. This potpourri of plants attracted an amazing collection of animals, including four species of big mammals--the goat, sheep, pig, and cow--that could be easily domesticated.

Ingenious hunter-gatherers who had already begun cultivating some of the perennial plants to supplement their hunting diet discerned a variety of uses for these animals. Not only did they use them for food and clothing, they also recognized that these beasts of burden could be put to work to provide traction and transportation for more difficult jobs, and they could be used to further exploit the land by providing fertilizer.

And it was this use of both plants and animals that gave humans their first big break because the abundance of calories and proteins that these crops and animals provided allowed even more hunter-gatherers to put down their weapons and forego their nomadic ways and instead, in confidence, pick up a hoe and begin farming.

Over time, increasing numbers of hunter-gatherers did the same, and soon there were enough people to require some organization. I am skipping a few steps here, but among the first things that needed to be done was that leaders had to emerge to delegate the tasks. Next bureaucrats were appointed to oversee operations, and soon after armies were created to protect the society’s existing land as well as advance its search for more.

This combination of leaders, bureaucrats, soldiers, and farmers allowed for the creation of an even greater diversity of professions--civil engineers, builders, educators, scientists, financiers, medical specialists, and philosophers--to flourish over time. And these specialists begat more advances as each group contributed to the growing strength of the collective. The moral of the story is that while diversity does beget more diversity, the real advances--and the best way to jump the curve--is to figure out how to exploit that diversity.

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The Future is Gold

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the World Gold Council, in partnership with the fine folks at Cientifica, have released a new report entitled ”Gold for Gold: Gold and nanotechnology in the age of innovation” suggesting that gold may soon replace diamonds as “a girl’s best friend.”

OK. That’s not really what the report said but here are a few of the highlights about how gold nanoparticles may impact your future:

1. Gold’s inherent bio-compatibility properties make it an ideal candidate for targeting tumors;
2. Gold nanoparticles are being developed to enter inside other diseased cells (The nanoparticles are then heated with infrared light and this “cooks” the cell from the inside out);
3. Soon, gold nanoparticles may create needleless vaccines;
4. Gold-based nanoarrays might also help detect everything from whether a woman is pregnant to dangerous food borne pathogens;
5. Gold-based nanocatalysts are being created to prevent the release of mercury into the atmosphere as well as neutralize other deadly compounds such as carbon monoxide; and
6. Such nanocatalysts might also help purify water by removing arsenic or other common pollutants.

The report also covers other opportunities in fuel cells, coatings, dyes and pigment, solar cells, conductive inks, electronics and high density data storage. All told, its a solid report and offers further evidence that nanotechnology is moving into the commercial mainstream.

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Google Wants to Bring You the Future

Google is reportedly building ultra high-speed broadband networks that are 100-times faster than those in use today. And what, might you ask, will require you to transmit one gigabit of information per second?

That’s a good question. In fact, it may take either a real-time voice translator or a quantum computer to answer it. Luckily, Google is also working on both items. 

The future is racing at us at an ever faster pace (as this story about a new robotic actor in South Korea demonstrates). Soon, even “jumping the curve,” won’t be enough—we’ll all need to be capable of quantum leaps. Are you ready?

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There’s a Flip-side to Everything

As long time readers of this blog know, I am fond of the map to the right and have used it on previous occasions to emphasize the idea that in order to unlearn we must often view the world from a different perspective.

I was pleased to see that Derek Sivers incorporated it into the end of his two-minute TED talk entitled “There’s a Flip-side to Everything.” (The entire video is posted below).

I especially liked Siver’s example of how in certain Chinese communities citizens pay doctors for each month they stay healthy!

And, although Sivers didn’t this example, as a professional futurist who frequently uses history to illuminate the future, I have always liked the story of the Peruvian Indian tribe whose members gesture with their hands in a forward motion when describing the past. (From their perspective, because you can “see” the past, the past is in front of them. The future, on the other hand, can’t be seen so it is behind them.

It may sound weird but, as Sivers say in his talk, “The opposite may also be true.”

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The Future of Relationships

My favorite commercial during yesterday’s Super Bowl was Google’s (which I have posted below). The reason I liked it is because it is a powerful reminder that technology doesn’t just light our future, it can also fundamentally change how—and with whom—we interact in personal relationships.

For a little historical perspective, consider this: Before the invention of the automobile your future spouse/partner was likely to come from within a 5-mile radius of where you lived; after the automobile was popularized the radius increased to roughly 100 miles. The invention of the airplane further increased the average distance; and the Internet, as Google’s commercial demonstrates, is, yet again, extending the distance.

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How Swede It Is. Recyclable Lights & Restful Nights

Researchers in Sweden, together with the help of some American scientists, are reporting a big breakthrough in new nanotechnology-enabled recyclable OLEDs. The development is significant for a couple of reasons. First, OLEDs (Organic Light Emitting Diodes)—which have the potential to create super cool, super-thin, wallpaper-like lights—are very expensive. Second, the material they currently use is difficult to recycle. Before OLED can take-off—like this lighting example from history—both issues will need to be addressed and this, it appears, is what the Swedish researchers have pulled off.

From a broader perspective, I’d ask you to consider how this new lighting paradigm might change how architects design the houses, buildings and hospitals of the future> More interesting still, such an advance could drive changes in human behavior. For example, what might happen if instead of being awakened by the rude sound of an alarm clock you could instead be gently awakened by your OLED wallpaper which mimics a rising sun? Alternatively, what if your difficult-to-put-to-bed child could be coaxed into falling asleep 30 minutes earlier because the walls in her bedroom dim like the setting sun?

The possibilities are virtually limitless. I’d love to hear your ideas.

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The Future Doesn’t Alway Require the “Big Fix”

Big problems such as health care, feeding the world and addressing climate change don’t necessarily require big solutions. In the 19th century, Ignaz Semmelweis helped save the lives of hundreds of thousands of women by getting doctors to wash their hands prior to assisting in the delivery of a new-born child. (Unfortunately, however, it still required the medical community nearly two decades to unlearn their stubborn and unhealthy habits.)

Alas, in the 21st century, the number of infections in hospitals remains unacceptably high. Why? Many healthcare professionals still aren’t employing good hygiene. If they were better at the simple act of washing their hands, the results would be impressive—on the order of saving thousands of lives annually and preventing billions of dollars in unnecessary costs.

In the field of agriculture, it was the addition of ammonium nitrate—a cheap but effective crop fertilizer—which allowed the world’s farmers to feed billions more people with the same land.

Continued advances in the field of genomics may also continue to increase the yield of corn, wheat and rice by making these crops more efficient in terms of how they utilize water and fertilizer. The result: More people can be fed using the same amount of land but with less impact on the environment.

In the automotive industry, it was the installation of the seat belt that saved the lives of thousands of motorists—even though the device was at first ridiculed as “inconvenient, costly, and just a bunch of damn nonsense” by auto executives. The next life-saving advance could be the introduction of super-strong, super-light nanomaterials.

As strange as it may sound, the problem of hurricanes may also just need a simple fix. As Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner outline in their delightful new book, Super Freakonomics, in may be possible to prevent costly hurricanes (which, since 2005, have inflicted an estimated $153 billion in damage to the United States alone) by deploying a few thousand “hydraulic heads” in those areas where hurricanes start. The devices work by bringing cooler water from the bottom of the ocean to the top thus cooling the surface temperature of the ocean water and preventing hurricanes from forming in the first place. The estimated cost: $1 billion.

On the bigger problem of climate change, Levitt and Dubner also outline the logic behind “Budyko’s Blanket”—a super high hose which would spew sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere—which could theoretically cool the planet for a mere $250 million.

Now, to be fair, both the “hydraulic heads” and “Budyko Blanket” may not work and serious questions remain on both ideas. But the broader point is that when faced with big problems there is absolutely no reason why we must first look to “big answers” as the solution. Often, big problems can be solved with small solutions. After all, as a child, how many of your cuts and bruises were solved with a tender kiss from your mother?

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Nanotechnology in 250 Words or Less

I was recently asked by a leading nanotechnology consultant, Rocky Rawstern, if I could say anything on nanotechnology to a wider audience but had to keep it under 250 words, what would I say. Here was my response:

To those who don’t believe nanotechnology will change the world in the near future just because it hasn’t accomplished much in the last 20 years, consider this little quiz: If a single lily pad began doubling on a pond on the first day of June and doubled each day thereafter until the entire pond was covered by the end of the month, on Day 20 what percentage of the pond would be covered with lily pads?

The answer is one-tenth of one percent. That’s right, .1%! What happens over the next 10 days is a little short of amazing--the entire pond gets covered. Such is the nature of exponential growth.

Now, advances in nanotechnology aren’t quite experiencing exponential growth but they are close and over the course of the next decade nanotechnology’s impact on material sciences, medicine, and energy are going to be--like the lily pads’ spread over pond in the last few days-- extraordinary.

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Technology Lights the Future

Today is the 130th anniversary of the installation of the first electric streetlight in Wabash, Indiana. At the time, it cost $100 to install the light. More interestingly, just a month later the city paid to have four more lights installed. The rest, as they say, is history as the electric light then proceeded to grow exponentially—like lily pads on a pond.

Today, a view of America at night looks like this picture to the right. I ask you to keep in mind this analogy of how “technology can light the future” when considering how rapidly advances such as robotics and smart dust may unfold once the technology reaches a commercially scalable level.

On a different level, you might also want to consider how the electric light changed people’s behavior. For one thing, the light allowed merchants and others to stay open later. Ultimately, it lead to such things as sporting events being played in the evening.

My point is this: When considering how technology expands you also need to consider how widespread adoption of technology might change people’s behavior. For example, continued advances in robotics might allow senior citizens to stay in their homes longer and have an adverse impact on the aging services industry. Similarly, the rapid proliferation of “smart dust” could make once unsafe neighborhoods suddenly safe and lead to more people living in certain urban environments.

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America’s Future: In One Word

This past weekend I read a fascinating interview with Peter Thiel—the co-founder of PayPal and the first investor in FaceBook—in Wired. The article was entitled The Utopian Pessimist.

What I liked about the article is that Thiel questions the assumption—trumpeted by many investors and fund managers—that the stock market will continue to post long-term increases in the range of 6-8%.

It is easy to fall into this trap because for the past 100 years an investment in equities has, in fact, yielded such a healthy return. There is no reason why, however, that this must continue to be the case moving forward into the future. As Nassim Taleb explains in his excellent book, The Black Swan, the future has a way of surprising everyone—and those surprises can be both pleasant and unpleasant.

For instance, what if the past 100 years were just a pleasant surprise? That is what if the 20th century was an anomaly and we were just lucky to have gone from horses and buggies to automobiles, rockets, computers and the Internet in a very short time? As Thiel says, “It’s not automatic that that progress continues.”

It isnt’! But if America wishes to maintain and, possibly even grow, its global position what must it do?

In a word: Innovate.

Earlier today, I explained how the rate of paradigm shifts is accelerating. This implies that an unprecedented amount of economic disruption is headed our way; but rather than be a source of only worry and consternation; farsighted entrepreneurs; investors and, hopefully, policy-makers will also recognize that it also represents a wonderful opportunity.

Advances in information technology promise to revolutionize media, publishing and education. Progress in biotechnology, stem cell research and regenerative medicine portend a glorious new age in preventative health care; and advances in nanotechnology and synthetic biology point the way toward a new, cleaner and, ultimately, more sustainable energy paradigm. (For an idea of the decade ahead, I invite you to review my predictions for 2010-2019).

Many of these developments, in turn, will either converge or spin-off in new and unexpected ways. To capture this promise, though, it is essential to develop an educational; entrepreneurial and political culture which encourages and rewards risk and innovation.

The future of tomorrow will move so fast that innovation is less a characteristic to aspire to and, instead, a trait that must be constantly used; honed and improved upon. In my book, Jump the Curve, I lay out 50 strategies for doing this but I’d like to share three here: 1) Think Like a Child; 2) Develop a Future Bias; and 3) Learn to Unlearn.

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The Future of Paradigm Shifts

In his book, The Singularity is Near, Ray Kurzweil states that “the rate of paradigm shifts is accelerating” and, at the current rate, “doubling about every decade.” This is an extraordinary development.

To help put some perspective on the matter, consider the opening paragraph from L. Gordon Crovitz’s article (From the Roman Codex to the iPad) in today’s Wall Street Journal:

How’s this for human progress? It took about 4,000 years from the invention of writing to the Roman-era codex of bound pages replacing scrolls, 1,000 years from the codex to movable type creating printed books, 500 years from the printing press to the Internet--and only 25 years to the launch of the iPad.

What’s next? My personal opinion is that continue advances in flexible electronics will further change both how information is conveyed and how it is consumed.

But the broader point is that almost every other industry, including health care, energy, and manufacturing, will also experience faster changes in the rate of paradigm shifts. The really important question is this: Are you and your industry prepared?

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