Industries: Computer Semiconductor

The Future is in Your Head—Really.

The future is in your head—really. According to this informative article, researchers at Intel are working on a “brain sensing” chip that could allow an individual to control a TV, computer or robot simply by thinking about it.

Now, the article does say that the technology is 10-15 years away, but I’d encourage people to think long and hard about the prospects for this technology. To advocates, I would caution that legal, regulatory and political considerations may slow the adoption of the technology. But opponents of the technology should not, however, take comfort.

From my perspective, brain-computer interface (BCI) technology is inevitable and I think it could arrive—albeit in a limited form—in sooner than 10 years. As the world grows older, many seniors will be faced with the prospect of losing their independence and moving into assisted-living facilities. If BCI allows them the ability to maintain their independence, I believe that seniors—and not young, techno-enthusiasts—will lead the “brain chip” revolution.

As an analogy, recall that 50 years ago pace-makers seemed unnatural and were dismissed by most people. Today, two million people have the medical devices installed every year. And 30 years ago, in-vitro fertilization—or “test tube” babies—was similarly dismissed as “fringe” science. Today, millions of people have been born using the technology.

My point: What sounds odd today often has a way of becoming quite natural tomorrow. To this end, this is why I believe the future really is in your head.

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The Future is Cloudy

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Supercomputers Super Future

Marshall McCluhan once famously said, “First, we shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” As a professional futurist, I have been trying to explain how some of our tools are getting exponentially more powerful. In turn, these tools are accelerating the advances that will soon shape our future. Nowhere is this more true than in the field of supercomputers.

According to this ComputerWorld article, supercomputers with 100 million cores and capable of one quintillion calculations per second—or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 for those of you counting at home—will arrive around 2018. This growing processing power is important because it will help innovative researchers, scientists and entrepreneurs design next-generation materials, drugs, bio-fuels, batteries and much, much more.

To better understand supercomputers amazing power, I invite you to watch this two-minute video I put together last year. Although be forewarned, one quadrillion is already rather quaint:

Interested in other supercomputer-related madness by America’s leading futurist, Jack Uldrich? Check out these past posts:

Supercomputers; Solving Problems Big and Small
Future Flash with Jack Uldrich: SuperComputers

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Around the World in 80 Minutes

A new company is claiming that by 2012 it will be taking guests up to outer space for a three-day excursion. The cost is a mere $4.4 million. From my perspective, the timeline seems overly aggressive but space tourism is definitely on the horizon—and, like so many other things, the price will drop.

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The Future Requires Engaging in Situational Unawareness Training

”Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out.”—Thomas Cardinal Wolsey

Question: What two colors are the yield sign?

Did you say yellow and black? That answer would have been correct if Marcus Welby, M.D. was still the top-rated TV show; Richard Nixon occupied the White House or NASDAQ had yet to become a leading stock market index. The yield sign, though, has been red and white since 1971. Interestingly, a large number of people—including many born after 1971 - still erroneously believe the yield sign is yellow and black.

This phenomenon demonstrates that once a thing has been learned—even something as common as the color of a sign—it can be very difficult to unlearn.

Compare this situation with the actions of computer industry executives in the 1980s who had learned about computers in the era of mammoth mainframes and were accustomed to producing their own proprietary hardware and software and then having internal sales teams market and sell the expensive products they created.

With the advent of the personal computer the rules suddenly changed and companies began relying on microprocessors and packaged software and using third parties to distribute and sell the product. A handful of computer companies adjusted but many others such as Digital Equipment, Wang and Burroughs did not because either they didn’t unlearn the old rules or were late in adjusting to the new signs.

The same situation occurred more recently in the telecommunications industry. Prior to the creation of the iPhone, providers dominated the telecom industry and dictated to phone manufacturers the terms of agreement. The creation of Apple’s multi-touch, gesture interface and “apps"--laden device flipped the industry on its head. In a matter of months, millions of people switched providers and began using mobile devices to access the Internet (with a user--friendly browser), watch videos, read books and, together with the growing universe of software applications, do everything from locate their parked car at an airport and identifying obscure birds and songs to keeping their child mildly amused with an easy-to-download “fart app.”

In each case, the signs of change were not immediately obvious but they could have been picked up on if industry leaders had engaged in some situational “unawareness” training by stepping outside their industry’s existing paradigm and scanning the environment for subtle changes in technology, consumer behavior or the competitive landscape. For example, in the automotive industry, new advances in nano-materials and battery power could lead to radical new designs; the continued growth of social networking may demand the cars of the future to maintain constant connectivity and improve the driving experience; and advances in robotics and rapid prototyping could transform both the manufacturing process and the supply chain. In each case, automotive professionals will have to unlearn what a car looks like; how it is made; what it is expected to do; and who they will have to partner with in order to build the car of the future.

Homework Assignment: Using Starbucks as a case study, indentify three emerging trends in technology, consumer behavior or the beverage/food industry that may necessitate company officials to unlearn some aspects of its current business model.

Extra Credit: Identify at least two things which have contributed to Starbucks past success but that it should consider stop doing? (Hint: In 2009, the company dropped its name from a store in Seattle and replaced it with a name that more closely resembles a neighborhood corner coffee shop.)

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The Future is on the Back Pages of the Newspaper

In my 2008 book, Jump the Curve: 50 Essential Strategies to Help Your Company Stay Ahead of Emerging Technologies, one strategy I encourage people to employ from time to time is that of reading the newspaper backwards. Why? Because it can help you more clearly see where the future is headed.

Yesterday, for example, as I was returning from Dallas where I delivered a keynote presentation on the future of travel and tourism to the Texas Travel Industry Association, I began by reading the marketing section of the Wall Street Journal from back-to-front. Here’s what I noticed. On Page 8, it was revealed that Sarah Palin’s new book won’t be released in an E-book until after Christmas. This is noteworthy for the simple fact that it wouldn’t have been noteworthy as recently as last year. In other words, E-books have now become so popular that when a new book isn’t released in electronic format at the same time as the print version it qualifies as news. It’s clear from this news that e-book sales will only continue to rise at the expense of traditional hardcover books and that the publishing industry must adapt.

On Page B7 there was a similar story, only this one related to the advertising industry: Web Ad Sales in Britain Overtake TV. On Page B6, it was announced that Lemmis Lighting is releasing a 20-year lightbulb. (Imagine this: In the future your kid or grandchild might not be able to change a lightbulb because it is something they only have to do once every two decades!)

And then on Page B5 there were two articles of note. First, there was a small article announcing that Princeton University was testing Amazon Kindle’s DX e-book as part of a national pilot program; and, second, there was a larger article explaining that the airline industry is finally getting serious about employing RFID tags to track baggage. Both news stories reinforce the growing prevalence of e-books and RFID technology.

My friends, the future is here. To learn more about it all you need to do is read the back of the newspaper!

P.S. If you keep reading the 9/30/09 edition of the WSJ, on Page 3, there is article explaining why biobutanol might soon replace ethanol as America’s biofuel of choice.

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Future Headline: Worldwide Solar Farm Construction Forces Older Coal Plants to Shutter

Blockbuster recently announced that it intends to close 40% of its stores over the next two years. As professional futurist and someone who has been warning of this inevitability for the past few years, the news came as no great surprise. (I suspect it didn’t to a number of other forward-looking individuals as well.) All a person needed to do was track the trends in data storage, manufacturing, Internet Bandwidth and consumer behavior to understand Blockbuster’s future plight.

The first and second factors (data storage and manufacturing advances) helped drop the cost of DVD production and made it more feasible for companies such as Redbox to offer DVD’s for $1 at any number of retail outlets. The third trend (increasing bandwidth) is driving NetFlix’s ability to offer more movies over the Internet, and the fourth trend (consumer behavior) continues to show that younger people are more interested in gaming—and less so in videos.

My point here is not to gloat or engage in “hindcasting,” rather I want to use the Blockbuster story as a warning to another industry—the utility industry. For years, industry experts have held fast in their belief that coal will remain the leading source of electricity production for the next 20 to 30 years.

I disagree. Coal will undoubtedly remain the predominant source for electricity for some time (perhaps 10 years) but a number of trends are pointing to a much different future. For example, just today, Technology Review has an informative article on Nanosolar—the company claims it is now capable of producing electricity for 5-6 cents per kilowatt hour. This is already price competitive with coal!

Second and third, the efficiency of solar cells is increasing and manufacturing cost is decreasing. These trends suggest solar will eventually be cheaper than coal.

Finally, consumer and political behavior toward coal is changing quickly. Concerns over climate change are legitimate and these concerns will likely manifest themselves in some sort of carbon pricing scheme on coal. Moreover, consumers, if given the choice of choosing between solar or coal, will likely demand solar from their local utility providers.

All of these trends point to a fate similar to that of Blockbuster. In the year 2019, I predict a headline will read: “Worldwide Construction of New Solar Farms Outpaces Coal.” The subtitle will be: “Older Coal Plants are Shuttering at an Accelerating Rate.”

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IBM Thinks 10X

A while back, I wrote an article suggesting that to prosper in the future executives should ”think 10X, not 10%.” In other words, people need to think exponentially, not incrementally, about emerging technologies. Today, the New York Times is reporting that executives at IBM are seeking to manufacture a new lithium-air battery which will be a 10X improvement over existing battery technology.

The technology is still years off but if the company—or some other company—is successful, it will represent a major paradigm-shift in everything from how we power our automobiles to how we might store the excess electricity generated by wind turbines during the evening hours.

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Jump the Curve Strategy #15: Mandatory Recess

A mandatory recess might not sound like a sure-fire path to prosperity, but providing employees a period of unstructured free time to pursue activities of their choosing can be very beneficial. A handful of companies have already instituted such policies. Among some of the better known companies are Google, Genentech, and 3M.

All three companies have policies that allow some of their employees to spend anywhere between 15 percent and 20 percent of their time pursuing independent projects of their own choosing. In essence the companies are giving their employees permission to play.

3M has been a proponent of this practice for the longest period of time. According to company officials, the practice dates back to the 1920s when an employee reportedly disobeyed an order to abandon a project and ended up creating Scotch masking tape--one of the most successful products of all time.
One of 3M’s better known and more recent success stories is that of the Post--t Note, which was developed by an employee who, because of 3M’s policy, was free to pursue the project.

The benefits, though, go beyond these isolated successes. 3M has an incredible history of developing new products. For years the company has publicized the fact that 50 percent of its annual revenues can be traced back to products that were developed within the past five years.

One of the reasons it has been able to regularly achieve this goal is because employees have been encouraged to innovate and have then been given the freedom to pursue new ideas. The mandatory recess policy has not only reinforced the idea that continued innovation was critical to the company’s success, it has given management the confidence to stay focused on ideas that at first might have seemed either like dead ends or were too off the wall to pursue.

Another company that has embraced a discretionary time policy is Genentech. For the past few years the biotechnology company has consistently been ranked as one of the best places to work in America. There are many reasons for this, but one is because it allows its scientists discretionary time to pursue independent projects--in some cases up to 100 percent of their time. Genentech officials credit the creation of the anticancer drug Avastin--a product with over a $1 billion in annual sales--to its “discretionary time” policy.

As I explained before, the cost of the price of sequencing genes will continue to plummet due to the creation of ever faster computers and more sophisticated gene sequencing techniques and tools. As these things occur, not only will new drug treatments become available, but scientists and researchers are more likely to find innovative solutions to create drugs that are increasingly tailored to individual users.

Finally there is Google. In many ways, it has the boldest recess policy because it applies to all of the company’s employees (3M’s and Genentech’s programs are limited to its scientific and R&D staffs). Among the programs company officials attribute to its policy are the creation of Google News Service, Orkut (its social networking site), and Gmail.

In addition to generating new innovative products, mandatory recess offers one additional benefit that is hard to quantify, but is nonetheless extremely important: It is a powerful recruiting and retention tool. There is a fierce battle to attract and retain talented workers. One of the reasons Google, Genentech, and 3M are doing as well as they are is their policies send a clear message to prospective employees: The company trusts them to pursue interesting and important projects that they believe are in the company’s best long-term interests.

By giving workers this freedom, companies accrue one additional benefit. Employees now have a way of not simply meeting expectations--they have a way of surpassing them.

Exponential Insight

If you want employees to jump the curve, you have to give them the time and space to jump. As I will continue to demonstrate throughout this website, there will be no shortage of wild ideas and strange possibilities arising due to exponential advances in technology. Consider just a few of the possibilities that the emerging science of nanotechnology might enable materials scientists to play around with. For instance, plastic, glass, and steel are already being made stronger, lighter, more flexible and, in some cases, self-cleaning. Soon self-healing materials, flexible electronics, and solar fabrics will be on the market. Some of these advances will lead to innovative new products and applications. Thinking up new ideas will require people to follow their hunches and, sometimes, make counterintuitive jumps in logic. Running such off-the-wall ideas by management could, at best, be difficult. Better those employees just be given some mandatory recess time to pursue their ideas.

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The Future is in Your Pocket

Later this month I will be speaking to the Texas Travel Industry Association about the future. As I have said before—and will say again—the future is already here; it just isn’t evenly distributed. To this end, I invite you to watch this short video from CNET explaining how augmented reality is coming to a phone near you very soon. Among other things, it will help tourists navigate new environments. Those businesses which depend on tourism dollars would be wise to figure out how they can exploit this new technology—now.

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Hospitals Offer a Glimpse of Future Computers

Often, when we think of technology, we like to imagine how it will transform different industries. It is less easy to imagine how certain industries will transform technology. Luckily, this fine articlefrom The New Scientist -- which is based on a new report from IT Analysts Gartner—takes a look at how voice recognition, eye tracking, virtual reality and brain-neural technology are being transformed by their early adoption in hospitals.

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The Future of Social Media is Now

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A Future of Black Swans … or Unlearning the Future

”Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.” Lao Tzu

This famous quote was uttered over 2500 years ago and may strike some people as odd that, as a professional futurist, I have chosen to highlight it.

My rationale is two-fold. First, as I have said many times before, the chief responsibility of a futurist is not to “predict” the future but rather outline a range of future possibilities. Second, and more important, I have highlighted the quote because it is true.

If you have not already read Nassim Taleb’s outstanding book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, do so as soon as possible. On Page 177 of the book, Taleb has an illustration of the scattering effect which artfully explains why predicting the future—especially for longer time frames—is virtually impossible.

Because I can’t reprint the figure here, I am left with Taleb’s analogy for understanding the scattering effect: the prediction of a billiard ball.

Assuming one has knowledge of the location of every ball and the speed and accuracy of the cue ball, it is relatively easy to predict the expected movement of the ball after the first shot. A person might even expect that second, third and fourth degree movements can be estimated with great accuracy due to the growing computational power of computers. The problem, however, grows increasingly complex with each subsequent movement. This is because after the ninth movement the gravitational pull of a person standing at the next pool table exerts enough of an effect to alter the trajectory of the ball. And after 56 movements even the smallest particle on the outer edge of the universe will effect the trajectory!

The bottom line is this: There are simply too many factors to consider when contemplating the future 20, 30, 50 or 100 years out. (Even a small effect today can have outsized implications 50 years hence). The situation, of course, becomes even more complicated because of Taleb’s main thesis which is that “Black Swans”—described as “high impact, low probability” events—tend to shape the future more than “expected” trends.

Therefore, whether a future “Black Swan” takes the shape of a pandemic, an asteroid, an E-bomb, a rogue terrorist attack, a North Korean or Iranian nuclear attack, an unexpected breakthrough in quantum computing or synthetic biology, or, more likely, some “unknown unknown;” the future will be difficult too predict because we don’t have—and won’t ever have—enough knowledge about the future.

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To Succeed in the Future: Unlearn Information

Unlearning information. It’s sounds paradoxical, right? After all, who in their right mind, would want less information? Well, you might if you want to succeed in the future.

Consider this quote which I came across in Jonah Lerner’s informative new book, “How We Decide”:

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

It is counter-intuitive but often having access to too much information can lead people to make worse decisions.

For example, in a classic study, one group of MIT graduate students were given access to a steady stream of financial information—CNBC, Barron’s, The Wall Street Journal, etc—while a second group was only given information on the changing price of a stock.

Given this disparity which group do you think did a better job in selecting stocks? Most people would assume the first group. After all isn’t this why people read the Wall Street Journal and watch the analysts on CNBC? Well, you would be wrong. The second group—the group with less information—performed better.

Various versions of this experiment have been conducted with other groups, including college counselors who were asked to predict the future success of different students. One group was provided high school transcripts, SAT/ACT test scores, application essays and were even allowed personal interviews with the students. The second group was only given access to transcripts and SAT scores.

Again, the group with less information performed better. One big reason why this occurs is because when people are inundated with too much information they tend to think of all information as being equal. In the process, they lose track of what information is really important. More problematic is the finding that with more information people increasingly confident of their bad decisions!

The bottom line is not just as Jonah Lerner says that “Knowledge has diminishing returns,” but rather as Nassim Taleb wrote in the Black Swan that “Additional knowledge of the minutiae of daily business can be useless, even toxic.”

So there you go. De-toxify your system. Unlearn. Put down the newspapers and blogs; stop watching TV news programs; and quit following everyone on Twitter—you’ll make better decisions because of it.

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To Prepare for the Future Take a Course on Unlearning

At the end of yesterday’s post on learning to unlearning (on my other website, Unlearning101.com), I posed the following question: How does one learn a new gestalt? To begin a person must start by unlearning some things. But what things do we unlearn? For our purposes, a good place to start might be to imagine what a course on unlearning what might look like.

One place to start is to imagine where the course would take place. Initially it will be--and already is--online. In 2007 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that it was putting all of its courses online for free--for anyone in the world to access.

And let’s remember, the online, virtual classroom of the future is only going to get better. The Internet of the future will be streaming incredible amounts of data-rich information anywhere in the world, students will be capable of wirelessly downloading the latest information from flexible electronic books that display both the written word and video files, and new software programs will be capable of translating text from Mandarin Chinese, French, or Farsi into English--and vice versa. (See ”The Future of Reading.")

Another place a course on unlearning might gravitate toward is 3-D virtual-reality environments such as Linden Labs’ Second Life--a site where anyone can create a personal avatar of himself, meet other virtual avatars, and engage in online training sessions. As of this writing IBM, Dell, Intel, Circuit City, and Sears have all created a virtual presence in Second Life.

Interestingly, one of the initial motives of this move was not to create a stronger presence on the Internet (although that is certainly a factor), it was to achieve cost savings on employee education.

What is more interesting from the perspective of unlearning is how Second Life and other virtual-reality sites can be exploited to provide people with different perspectives. In a virtual environment, people can take on any appearance they want. While some people will undoubtedly use it for escapist fantasies, it could also be a powerful tool to help people unlearn certain habits. Imagine, for example, customer service representatives or managers being required to act as customers in one of their own online stores. The experience could provide a unique and refreshing perspective. (And, as I recently wrote, we could all benefit on occasion from unlearning everything from your perspective of color to your view of a stranger standing across the street.)

Longer term, the classroom of unlearning will likely become even more immersive. Perhaps Second Life will morph into Third Life. Among the technologies this environment are likely to incorporate will be enhanced visual, auditory, voice and speech recognition, and haptic technologies. Doctors and service technicians could use these tools to practice operations and repairs in silico before being allowed to ply their trade in the real world.

These tools will also be a boon for learning, unlearning, and relearning. People are often classified into one of three broad categories of learning: visual, auditory, or kinesthetic. Visual people learn by seeing or reading something, auditory learners by hearing it, and kinesthetic learners learn by doing it with their hands and muscles. (It is not quite this simple. Many people use a combination of different techniques for different things, but in general, most people tend to favor one of the three methods over the other two.)

A course on unlearning could exploit these natural tendencies and help people absorb new ways of doing things. For instance, instead of just reading about how a new drug works on a cancer patient, doctors could watch how it interacts with and disables a cancer cell. Other businesses could use such immersive technology to gain a deeper appreciation of what an elderly person experiences and create products that better address their needs. (See ”Unlearning Your Age.")

Many courses on unlearning won’t have a teacher. They will rather be open source in nature, and the content will not be provided by a single “expert” but rather it will be continually added to and improved upon by a vast collection of people. To this end, a relatively new wiki called Curriki has recently been created. Its goal is to support the development and free distribution of world-class educational material to anyone who needs it--anywhere in the world.

But far from being a shoddy collection of disjointed or inferior ideas, the result of these wikis will be vastly superior to anything a single expert could pull together. In the case of business wikis, they will contain advice and insights from employees, suppliers, and customers.

Among the adjustments this will require is that managers will need to unlearn their own reliance on experts. People will need to unlearn the idea that money and quality are synonymous. In the future, many of the best products will be the creation of open-source methods and wikis.

Another thing people will have to unlearn is that there isn’t always an answer. This is because so many fields are constantly evolving. An admission of one’s own ignorance may well be the first step most people will need to take upon entering the unlearning classroom of the future. Exponential executives may even have to go a step farther and accept that ignorance will be the largest element in their future educational needs.

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Jump the Curve at Half the Price with the Latest Supercomputer

Last fall, in this article (Businesses Latest Tool: The Supercomputer) I explained how a variety of businesses were using Cray’s lsupercomputer to not only fundamentally transform their business processes but also save millions of dollars. Well, in yet another example of exponential growth, Cray has now cut the price of its latest supercomputer in half to $12,000. This is still expense but ask yourself the alternative: If the device can help you save big, big money can you afford not to use it? The answer is obvious.

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Your Future Personal Assistant Is In Your Pocket

Have trouble remembering peoples names? Or perhaps you just want to learn a little more about that attractive person standing across the room. Well, soon, the smartphone in your pocket will make you a little smarter. (Whether the person across the room will find you any more attractive, well, that depends on you. Hint: Just don’t create a fake online personality much longer, you’re gonna get busted.)

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Intel Jumps the Curve

In the interest of open and honest disclosure, I am investor in Intel. One of the reasons I am a long-term investor is because I like how the company constantly and relentlessly engages the future—as this recent article entitled A glimpse at Intel’s futuristic gadgets suggests.

For anyone interested in where the future may be headed, I encourage you to read the article.

A few things caught my attention in the article. First, I was attracted by this quote from the company’s chief technology officer Justin Rattner, “We believe our mission is to take risks.” It is common for executives at many large companies to say such things but Intel puts its money where its mouth is. Consider, for example, the fact that the company is working on something called a “Dispute Finder.” It is essentially a smart software program that will call “bullshit” on an article or blog posting you may be reading if it contains erroneous (or even contradictory) information. Or, last year, the company announced it was working on a shape-shifting human-computer interface. The article also suggests it is aggressively investigating emerging opportunities in the field of robotics which, as I have written about numerous times, is a very promising field.

The second thing that caught my attention was mention of a poster displayed at the conference. It read, “Your kid’s kid’s kid won’t think what we’re doing is crazy at all.” Personally, I’d love to get my hands on a copy of that poster but, regardless, it is a perfect example of developing a future bias. Intel is not simply content to focus on incrementally improving its existing products, it is actively engaging the future in an attempt to “jump the curve.”

As an investor and a fan of the future, I wish them all the best.

Interested in reading about other corporations and organizations who are jumping the curve? Check out these past articles:

Google Jumps the Curve
The CIA Jumps the Curve
BMW Jumps the Curve
Mars Jumps the Curve
IBM Thinks Small
Lockheed Martin Jumps the Curve

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The Future of Association Meetings

In my business as a futurist and a public speaker, I have addressed hundreds of business association meetings. They are great networking opportunities, but it is not uncommon at these events to see a great many people stick to the safety of their pre-existing social circles. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but most people would probably agree that in so doing these people are missing out on a great opportunity to form new connections as well as gain insight from other people whom they haven’t—and might never—meet.

Well, there is a new technology brewing on the horizon which could radically alter the dynamics of future meetings and enhance the productivity of these meetings. The technology I am speaking of is known as ’smart badges” and while they have been around in a limited form for the past few years, the technology is now getting better and they are poised to have a big impact on how future meetings are conducted—especially association meetings.

For instance, if you look at the picture above it is easy to see who is talking to who. Armed with this information, it might be easier for people to make common connections. For example, if you don’t know Bob but you see that your friend Sarah does, it might be easier for you to introduce yourself to Bob. Similarly, the technology can be used to bring together people who share common interests, hobbies or who might have even read the same book. It is even feasible to draw in people who would otherwise prefer to stay on the fringe—and this could be important because these people might have something really valuable to add to the conversation.

MIT’s Media Lab and such spin-off companies as nTag are producing a variety of innovative new technologies that could revolution the field of sociometrics. When one couples this progress with advances being made in the fields of mobile communication, RFID technology and software programs and algorithms, it boggles the mind to think how much more enjoyable, informative and entertaining future business and trade association meetings might be.

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Unlearn by Learning to Ask New Questions

We have all been there at some time—standing in line at the airport waiting to board a plane and thinking to ourselves that “there has to be a better way.” Well, apparently, there is now. According to this informative article a researcher at Fermilab has figured out the optimal way to board an airplane.

His findings are counter-intuitive to say the least. Contrary to what one might expect, boarding from the back of the plane first isn’t the optimal method. Rather, the optimal method is to board passangers 10 at a time in every other row. Apparently, this allows passengers to store their baggage overhead at a faster rate.

As I say in my book, Jump the Curve, accelerating advances in computer processing power and algorithms often result in findings that challenge conventional wisdom. The big question now is whether executives in the airline industry will have the courage to listen to an outsider (the researcher, Jason Steffen is a physicist) and whether the industry itself can “unlearn” its current behavior of loading passengers from the the back of the plane.

Interested in other posts on the topic of unlearning? Check out these articles:

Does the Pharmaceutical INdustry Need to Unlearn?
Is the Health Care Industry prepared to Unlearn?
Learning to Unlearn: Case Study #1
Examples of Unexponential Thinking

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Think About the Future, Today

Effective today, June 8, 2009, General Motors and Citigroup are no longer components of the Dow 30. In and of itself this news has no great relevance, but it does highlight how fast today’s economy continues to change. As I mentioned the other day, many people think that ”tomorrow will be pretty much like yesterday.” This simply isn’t true.

One strategy I have advocated for thinking about the future is to ”develop a future bias.” As a thought exercise and to help you “jump the curve,” I’d like to suggest a second exercise: review the members of the current Dow 30 and imagine which company will be the next to be removed from the list and explain why it might go. (For extra credit, I invite you to imagine which company might replace it.) The purpose of this exercise is to force you what of your comfort zone and come face-to-face with the reality that “the only constant is change.”

To help you get started, here are some possibilities. Advances in nanotechnology could cause many of the materials Alcoa makes to become either irrelevant or obsolete, and the company will be replaced by a nanomaterial company. Or perhaps Caterpillar will not remain competitive due to advances in robotics and it will be replaced by iRobot. A third alternative is that intense competition from Nokia will wreak havoc on both AT&T and Verizon and they will be replaced on the Dow 30 by Google, which may continue to make strides in the communication field with its new Android platform. A fourth possibility is that new advances in biotechnology will render many existing drugs obsolete and Pfizer will be replaced on the Dow 30 with a biotech company such as Genentech.

Really, there is no shortage of possibilities but one of the best ways to prepare for the future is to simply acknowledge that it is going to change. And, as Darwin said: “It is not the strongest of a species that survives, nor is it the fittest; it is those that can adapt the fastest.” Are you and your organization prepared to adapt? Quickly?

If not, you could go the way of General Motors.

Related Posts

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Never Let Your Ego Stop You From Unlearning
Find Some Zero-Gravity Thinkers
Don‘t Incrementalize Yourself into the Future
Think 10X, Not 10%
A Useful Anology for Thinking About the Future

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Into the Unknown: A Historical Lesson from Lewis & Clark

In 2004, I wrote the book Into the Unknown: Leadership Lessons from Lewis & Clark’s Daring Westward Expedition. One of my favorite stories—because it has so much relevance for today’s business leaders who are looking to jump the curve—occurred during the early part of June 1805.

On June 2, 1805, Lewis and Clark approached a fork in the Missouri River. During their consultations with the Indians the previous winter nothing had been mentioned of this second river. It was, however, critical that the Corps of Discovery follow the true Missouri River. If they didn’t, they were unlikely to reach and successfully pass over the Rocky Mountains before winter. This setback would have jeopardized the entire mission.

Lewis and Clark split their team up and sent one group up the north river and a second group down the south river. After three days, both teams returned and were still unsure as to which river was the true Missouri.

Lewis and Clark being the good leaders that they were then split up. Meriwether Lewis traveled north and William Clark went south. After a few days the two men returned and they still weren’t sure.

While they were away something very interesting occurred. All 30 members of the team determined that the north river was the true Missouri. They reached this decision the following way: For the past year, the Corps of Discovery had been traveling up the Missouri River and the water was “warm, slow, muddy and brown.” The water of the north river was also “warm, slow, muddy and brown,” therefore they reasoned it was the true Missouri. It is the equivalent of saying that “Tomorrow is going to be pretty much like yesterday.”

Lewis and Clark conferred among themselves and reached a far different conclusion. In the face of complete opposition, they announced the south river was the true Missouri. They reasoned as follows: At some point the snow from the mountains needed to melt and when it did it would create a river that was cold, fast and clear.” Those characteristics matched the south river and, as history demonstrated, the two captains made the correct decision.

My point is this: Many, if not most, people think that “tomorrow will be pretty much like yesterday.” From my perch as a professional futurist, I see the trends in biotechnology, nanotechnology, information technology, RFID, social networking and robotics (to name but a few) are accelerating and I know that tomorrow is going to be radically different then either yesterday or today—and we need more leaders with the courage to head out into the unknown.

Related Post

Exponential Executive Extraordinare: General George C. Marshall

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An Unlearning Tutorial

Yesterday, I wrote this post entitled Why Businesses Must Unlearn on my other blog, www.unlearning101.com.

Shortly thereafter a thoughtful reader posed this question:

I like this idea of an organization doing some top-down “unlearning” of bad habits. But what new habits do they develop and put in place—how do you get a seasoned exec that’s devoted to a way of thinking to accept another view?”

It is an excellent question. In short, the questioner is asking: How does a person unlearn?

The first step—and I’ll admit this the most difficult—is to get the person to admit their ignorance. (Remember, “we don’t know what we don’t know.") One way of doing this is encourage the person to take the quiz prescribed in this post entitled Have Some Intellectual Humility. A second strategy is to invite them to start what Nassim Taleb calls an anti-library.

The second step is to get the person to at least acknowledge that there is a different way to do things. For a potential exercise, I would invite a person to Study Carneades and learn to debate both (or all) sides of an issue.

Three, as an adjunct to this exercise, ask the person to envision a future scenario that might require the person or the organization they are leading to change either their position or the direction of the organization. It has been proven that merely contemplating a different scenario (other than the one the person thinks most likely to occur) can help people and organizations adapt faster in the face of a fundamental change to underlying conditions. Two strategies I recommend in this arena are encouraging people to ask new questions and training them to see different points of view.

Four, tell stories. Personally, I am a big fan of telling stories and frequently, when addressing corporations, associations or government and non-profit organizations on unlearning and change management, I’ll pepper my keynote speeches and consulting sessions with the antidotes. I recently had this post which served as a warning to the scientific community and, last month, I put together this short four-minute video telling the story of executives at Bethlehem Steel. (If you really want to scare the person into unlearning try this post entitled Unlearn or Die. If, however, your selected audience is attune to sports try these sports-related unlearning stories: Unlearn Barriers; Why Not Granny Style; Unlearn Your Putting Game; and Practice Your Unlearning Game.

The latter four strategies work well for most people, but if the person can’t submit his or her ego to the unlearning concept; I would suggest this post entitled Beware of Growing Icebergs. It outlines why everyone should be open to unlearning.

I hope this post helps and for organizations that are interested in unlearning I now offer full and half-days seminars on the topic. Interested parties can contact me at jack@nanoveritas.com or 612-267-1212.)

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Did You Know … You Have to Jump the Curve

This 5-minute video entitled “Did You Know” has been around in various forms for a few years, but it still serves as an excellent reminders to why organizations must learn to “jump the curve:”

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The Future Will Blow You Away

Dear Readers:

I am off to enjoy this Memorial Day weekend. Here is a short video that I produced last year. If you haven’t seen it, it is worth five minutes of your time.

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May 15, 2009 Jump the Curve: Beware of Emerging Technologies

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Will Wolfram Alpha Jump the Curve?

At 7pm (Central Standard Time) tonight, a new type of search engine—called Wolfram Alpha -- will go live. There is still much that can go wrong with the program but, personally, I am very excited about the project and believe it heralds yet another step down the inevitable path toward artificial intelligence. All I can say is stay tuned. (Below is a 5-minute video explaining tonight’s venture.)

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Flexible Electronics Will Necessitate Unlearning

Technology Review has a good article on the extraordinary advances now being made in the field of flexible (and stretchable) electronics. It can sometimes be difficult to imagine both how these advances might lead to new products in the near future and why some product designers and engineers will need to unlearn many of their ideas of what they think a cellphone, for example, should do and look like. But rather than lecture you about the possibilities, the fine folks at Nokia have produced a video which conceptualizes some of the possibilities. Enjoy and keep your mind open to unlearning:

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The Future Requires Unlearning

Recently, I participated in the first-ever Ignite Minneapolis event. The format stipulates that you can discuss any topic you want but you must use 20 slides and you have exactly 5 minutes to make your case. Below is my presentation on why I believe unlearning will be just as—if not more important—than learning in the 21st century. (I apologize in advance for my swearing but when you have to capture the attention of 500 (often intoxicated) 20-30 year-olds who are Twittering during your presentation, sometimes drastic action is required.)

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Unlearning 101: Lesson #1
Train Your Mind to See Two Different Points of View
Unlearn Your World View

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Can Google & Twitter Help Predict the Future?

The current recession has been particularly hard on two industries: travel and real estate. Professionals in these industries might be interested to know that the Internet’s latest exponential sensation, Twitter, might not only help them predict their future, it—along with Google real-time web search—might help those industries recover sooner by helping them better target their existing resources.

According to this fascinating article in New Scientist, Google researchers and economic forecasters have used information gleaned from Google and Twitter to discern what people were thinking or doing at any particular moment and used that data to more accurately assess their intentions.

For example, real-time searches of Twitter or specific websites could help real estate agents know what features, price points or locations are on the top of people’s minds right now. In the same way, tourism officials could use real-time search to better target their ads to lure customers to their destinations.

None of this targeting is new. What is new is that the information taken from Twitter and Google offers faster and more accurate predictions—up to 15% more accurate.

My prediction: Those businesses that learn how to employ real-time search will be the ones most likely to still be in business in a few years. And, to help predict this outcome, I intend to Tweet this post.

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A Glimpse into the Future

The future is difficult—if not impossible—to predict. One reason is because technologies converge into another and often spin out in different directions. Below are a series of short videos covering advances in haptic technologies, facial amination, robotics, nanotechnology, rapid prototype manufacturing and voiceless communication (i.e. brain-computer interfaces). Now, start “mixing and matching” these technologies in your mind. If you do, I think you’ll get at least a small glimpse of how different the future is going to look.

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

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The Future is Our New Reality

John Seely Brown, John Hagel and Lang Davidson recently wrote an article entitled ”The New Reality: Constant Disruption.” The basic premise isn’t new to anyone who has read Jump the Curve or The Singularity is Near, and that is that society is now headed into a new era whereby change is a constant and accelerating reality. This is replacing an era where disruption was followed by periods of stabilization. In other words, in the past, people, businesses and society often had an opportunity to catch their breath and develop and orchestrate plans before the next new paradigm-shifting technological change arrived.

If you doubt this radical transformation is real, lets just use today, March 31, 2009, as an example. Today, Intel released its next generation computer chip, the Nehalem. According to this article it is a “major game changer” because of its powerful new capabilities and the fact that it uses significantly less energy than previous chips.

This announcement was followed by news that a new company, Tendril, is now using existing off-the-shelf technology to make “dumb” electrical meters “smart.” The new “smart meter” industry, which is itself only a few years old, thus finds its once promising business model already under attack.

There was then this article suggesting that Skype is about to enter the mobile cellular market. As it does, wireless carriers, which should have seen the writing on the wall for years, are about to come face-to-face with a technology that views phone calls as nothing but data and should therefore be priced no different than the information flowing over the Internet—which is to say nothing!

Elsewhere, in the field of farming and agriculture, there was this announcement that a researcher has figured out how to grow a number of different crops using only one-fifth the water and no soil. (If not using soil to grow crops isn’t disruptive, I don’t know what is.) And, in the field of robotics, there was this report announcing that Honda is now using human thoughts (via brain-computer interfaces) to control the action of robots.

Each of the aforementioned technologies is only going to get significantly better. As they do, old ways of doing business will fall by the way-side and new business opportunities will emerge. This scenario is both frightening and exhilarating. The challenge for the Exponential Executive is to quickly and safely navigate his or her organization through these turbulent waters.

The first step is to act. As one of my favorite leaders of all-time, General George C. Marshall, once told his subordinates “get action where action is needed.” In other words, the primary responsibly of any leader is to act. In this era of accelerating change, it is easy to postpone action for want of perfect information or because “tomorrow things will be different.” It is true, things will be different tomorrow, but people will still need products and services and problems must still need to be addressed today. The bottom-line is that a less-than-perfect solution now is often better than a perfect solution later.

Secondly, the Exponential Executive needs to learn to embrace ambiguity, and perhaps the greatest such ambiguity is that failure can be a positive characteristic. To succeed in this new era, organizations must be willing to not only risk failure but actually reward it.

There is no possible way every organization is going to do everything right. To succeed boldly, organizations must be willing to fail boldly; and when those risks don’t work it is important to learn from the mistakes and not punish them.

The edge is a dangerous place and few people like to venture out there but that is where the future will take place. In order to encourage and cultivate employees who will venture out to the edge, the Exponential Executive must encourage action and recognize that “failure is an option.” Why? Because if you don’t act and instead attempt to avoid failure, you are likely to fail anyways because the future is here—now! That’s the new reality.

Related Posts

Dangerous Curves Ahead
Think 10X, Not 10%
Develop a Future Bias

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Beware of Icebergs! Innovation is Accelerating!

This past weekend I read this brief article about Tim Berners-Lee on the 20th anniversary of the World Wide Web. Here’s the operative quote, “The rate of development and innovation on the web is actually getting faster and faster all the time. The web is not all done. It’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Berners-Lee is absolutely right, and this is why we need to focus on unlearning. As I say in this piece describing the implications of accelerating innovation, this is why we need to beware of growing icebergs.

P.S. To better appreciate the accelerating nature of the Internet consider this: The World Wide Web is 20 years old, Google is 10 years old; Wikipedia is 8, FaceBook is 5 and Twitter is only 2.

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