Industries: Life Science Pharmeceutical

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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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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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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The Next Innovation: AI, Nanotechnology, Robotics

The following 4-minute CNBC interview with Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize, lends further credence to the idea that the private sector and good old American ingenuity will lead to the next breakthrough innovation in artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology and genomics. (I have also posted a few related articles on the topic of innovation below the video.) For people who fear that innovation in America is either a “laggard” (as BusinessWeek recently suggested) or dead, I would only offer the immortal words of Mark Twain who, when he was asked to comment on his death, replied “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” The same is true of innovation in America. If anything the best is still yet to come.

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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.

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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.

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

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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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A New Pharmaceutical Future

Here’s novel idea. Rather than treating disease, health care professionals should treat patients. Thanks to advances in nanotechnology this might soon be possible.

It is a fact that different drugs work differently on different people. New imaging probes now portend the day when doctors will be able to predict the effectiveness of a particular drug—before it is prescribed!

In other words, instead of giving the same chemo drug to every breast cancer patient, we will soon be able prescribe the drug which works best for a specific individual.

If one combines this technological advance with advances in genomics, it points a new different future for the pharmaceutical industry as well as the millions of people who now rely on their products.

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Amazon Jumps the Curve
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Pharmaceutical Industry Needs to Jump the Curve to Nanotechnology
A Thousand Reasons the Pharmaceutical Industry Needs to Unlearn

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To See the Future Look in the Mir:ror

To understand where the future is headed, I invite you to check out this 3-minute YouTube video which shows how the “internet of things” is becoming a reality:

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Jump the Curve: January 23, 2009

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Jump the Curve: January 16, 2009
Jump the Curve: January 9, 2009

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The Future Has Arrived: Notable Technological Achievements in 2008 and What They Mean for the Future

"The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet.” The quote, attributed to William Gibson, was brought to mind as I reviewed the technological accomplishments of the past year. The quote is apropos of my job as a professional futurist because, as I often remind my audiences, I don’t predict the future—I merely outline plausible possibilities based on existing trends.

With this caveat in mind, I want to share with you a list of ten notable technological achievements which will significantly influence our near-term future:

#10: Metamaterials: The creation of a Harry Potter-like ”Invisibility cloaks” received a great deal of attention this past year and the breakthrough portends the day when the Defense Department might be able to hide a person or a tank in broad daylight, but a more plausible near-term application of a metamaterial resides in the prosaic application of a noise-abating material which will make life more pleasant for citizens who must deal with annoying sounds such as airplane noise.

#9: Digestable Pills: In December, Phillips announced the creation of the iPill—a digestable pill that can be taken orally by a patient and which will dispense medication at a specific location and a rate pre-determined by the patient’s physician. In addition to being an impressive technology which will soon become mainstream, it is a wonderful example of “convergence”—in that the pill combines a tiny computer, a wireless transmitter and a series of sensors.

#8: The Personal Supercomputer: In September, Cray announced the creation of a $25,000 supercomputer. The machine is obviously beyond the reach of most consumers but a growing number of small to medium-sized businesses are now using the tool to create new materials and products as well as redesign their packaging and determine the most optimum route to deliver packages. The end result is that companies using the machines are innovating at an accelerating rate and saving big money in the process. In the near future look for these supercomputers to become increasingly powerful, less expensive and more pervasive.

#7: Voiceless Communication: In one of the year’s more impressive videos, Michael Callahan from Ambient demonstrated how his company has figured out how to decipher brain neural signals and translate those signals into the corresponding words. The technology is years away from prime time but its day is coming and it will lead to a series of unpredictable applications, including augmenting human intelligence.

#6: Brain Neural Technology: To better understand just what some of these applications might be, I’d refer you to this video which shows a monkey in North Carolina controlling a robot in Japan by thought alone, as well as this 60-Minutes segment on brain neural technology that demonstrates how the technology is being used on real patients today.

#5: Voice Recognition Technology: This is hardly a new technology but in November Google brought voice recognition one step closer to the masses when it introduced its new voice recognition application on the iPhone. The day when consumers navigate on their computers using only their voice is one closer than ever. (The technology is also an excellent—albeit early—example of how technology can augment human intelligence. See # 7.)

#4: The Memristor: This fall Hewlett-Packard announced the creation of the ”Memristor”—or memory transistor—and it is expected to allow for the creation of computers that will remember what is stored in its memory when the device is turned off. In other words, within the next 3-5 years we will have computers that won’t need to be booted up. Granted, it’s not the biggest development in the world, but it will remove yet another one of those nagging, little issues that sometimes have a way of getting our day off on a sour note.

#3: Rapid Prototype Manufacturing: With little fanfare, Stratasys announced in December that it had created a new rapid prototype manufacturing machine capable of competing with injection-molding. Now, the creation of new plastic parts sans injection-molding might not seem like a big deal but as advances in RPM continue to progress look for a major-shift in the manufacturing paradigm as many products will soon be produced on location. To this end, it is worth noting that some RPM machines have dropped from a price point of $100,000 to below $5,000. (To get a better idea of the type of products which can now be manufactured via RPM, I refer you to this informative article.)

#2: The UMan Robot: Progress in the field of robotics over the past few years has been nothing short of amazing. Robots are now driving cars, conducting surgery, roaming oil pipelines, and flying into craves disguised as insects. As impressive as this progress has been, it was the UMass Mobile Manipulator --UMan for short-- that most caught my attention this year because it demonstrated that robots could learn how to use new objects. Obviously, a robot that can learn and adapt to changing conditions is a huge step in making robots more practical for a wide range of applications—including becoming helpful assistants to America’s aging Baby Boomers.

#1: Genomes for the Masses: It was only three years ago that Craig Venter sequenced his genome for an estimated $70 million. Today there is a company that claims it can do it for $5000 and, soon, the cost will plummet to under $1000. It will take some time for healthcare professionals and citizens alike to understand the implications of how all of this genomic data will manifest itself in healthcare and lifestyle decisions (e.g. changing our diet based on genetic factors, etc.), but it is evident that this day will arrive sooner than many people—including medical professionals—realize.

And that, my friends, is an appropriate note to end on. The future, as I said at the beginning of this post, is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed. It is also fair to say that based on the progress made in 2008 the future is also arriving sooner than most of us realize.

If you don’t believe me, just watch the news this month. It is quite likely that Craig Venter will announce something should shock the world: The creation of the first form of artificial life.

Interested in reading related posts from America’s most respected futurist? Check out these past articles:

The Most Significant Breakthroughs fof 2007
The Future of Education is Now
The Power of Zenzizenzizenzic
The Future is About to Get Personal

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Amazon Jumps the Curve

Earlier this week, I discussed how healthcare and life science companies need to jump the curve to the idea of a $1000 genome. I have also written about how advances in genomics will transform business (here, here and here), but in the latest development Amazon recently announced it would begin allowing businesses (and individuals) to access its massive genome database. It is yet another reason why the era of personalized medicine is accelerating.

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IBM’s Five Future Predictions for the Next Five Years

IBM has put together a nice, short two-minute video outlining five technologies that will become more pervasive over the next five years:

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Change is in the Air

After almost two years of campaigning, it is finally here: Election Day! Change is in the air, but not for the reasons one might expect.

Regardless of a person’s preference for Obama, McCain, Nader or one of the other candidates, I don’t actually believe they (or any politician for that matter) will be the primary instrument of change in the near future. That mantle will instead belong to technology.

Let me just provide a quick glimpse from the world of technology through the lens of a single day—today.

I began my morning by reading this article on a “solar power game changer.” The piece describes how a new antireflective coating now allows for the “near perfect” absorption of sunlight. In other words, society is one step closer to solar technology replacing a number of conventional energy sources. Politicians can clamor all they want about “clean coal” and “more drilling” but my hunch is that technological advances will render their opinions and policy suggestions moot.

Next, I stumbled across this article discussing a new ”heart-patching” technology. Combined with yesterday’s announcement by a Medtronic official that the “medical device industry is done,” it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that health care is quickly moving in the direction of preventative care.

Finally, over the weekend 60 Minutes ran a fascinating story describing the advances in brain-computer interface technology. If you didn’t see it, I strongly encourage you to watch it below. After you have done so, ask yourself this: How much do you think society will change by the time we vote again for president in 2012 and 2016?

Now, I believe in democracy and I believe it matters which individuals (and which political parties) control the White House and Congress, but our elected officials should spend less time promising that they will “deliver” change and more time helping society prepare for the change that is coming because it is going to be massive.

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Future Flash with Jack Uldrich

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Your Main Job

Recently, I came across this informative article, ”Intel Reboots for the 21st Century.” It’s an interview with Intel’s CEO, Paul Otellini. Two quotes jumped out at me. The first one was: “A CEO’s main job is to see the need to change before anyone else does.” It’s a wonderful quote because it is so true. The second quote, though, is no less valuable. Otellini paraphrases Intel’s old CEO, Andy Grove, who once said, “You won’t believe how long it takes for the change you’ve started to work its way all of the way through the rank and file.”

The reason both quotes are important is because it is not enough “to see the need for change” first. It is vital that executives “work” the need to change. And to achieve this I am of the opinion that the CEO must not only be a part-time futurist (and see what is coming next), he or she must also become their organization’s “chief unlearning officer.”

One of the big reasons that change takes as long as it does is because employees, customers, institutions and, yes, even leaders must often first unlearn what they think they know before they can change and incorporate a new idea or adjust their practices to a new way of doing things.

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Businesses Newest Tool: A Personal Supercomputer

Yesterday, Cray, the self-described “supercomputer company” officially moved into the personal computing realm when it announced it’s new personal supercomputer, the CX1.

For years, supercomputers have been considered indispensable for large corporations. For example, using supercomputers, Boeing was able to reduce by seven-fold (from 77 to 11) the number of aircraft wings it needed to physically construct for its new “787” Dreamliner before finding the right one. In much the same way, the automotive industry has used supercomputing to help it reduce from 5 years to 18 months the time it takes to move a new automobile design from the drawing board to the showroom floor.

The relevance of Cray’s news is that now a number small and medium-sized businesses will be able to similarly avail themselves of the power of supercomputers. And what might these supercomputers help businesses do? Excellent question.

The best way to answer that is by providing some recent examples of companies using supercomputing:

1. Pringle’s has used supercomputers to help redesign the shape of its iconic potato chip so that it flies off the assembly line and into the can in a faster and more efficient manner.

2. Proctor & Gamble used a supercomputer to redesign its Pamper’s diaper brand.

3. Ping used supercomputers to redesign its latest golf clubs; and

4. Whirlpool has used a supercomputer to both redesign its packaging as well as revise its forklifts so that they no longer scratch and dent the equipment.

Of course, these are but a few examples. Oil and gas companies are using supercomputers to improve their search for hidden deposits and reserves; and financial services are using the tool for more comprehensive asset planning and wealth management.

But even these applications are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Supercomputing technology is rapidly moving downstream. If you want to “jump the curve,” you need to consider today how a supercomputer can help you remain competitive tomorrow.

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Unlearning Disease

With all of the information now pulsing around us, it is easy to forget that “we don’t know what we don’t know.” I constantly try to remind my clients in the health care sector of this simple fact. A case-in-point is the extraordinary strides being made in the field of genomics—which, due to accelerating gene sequencing technologies, are occurring on a daily basis.

One the bigger implications of these cascading discoveries is that they will likely fundamentally alter how we classify disease in the future. As a little historical reference, it is useful to consider that in 1850 there were only 140 categories of disease. In 1993, the last time the World Health Organization undertook the classification of all diseases, there were some 12,000. The next classification isn’t expected to occur until 2015, but it is not hard to imagine that the number of diseases—and how they will be classified—will increase even more.

For a great primer on this possibility, I’d encourage you to read this article, Redefining Disease, Genes and All. I especially liked this quote at the end of the article. One doctor, responding to the fact that as late as 1909 one of the leading causes of death was listed as “visitation of God,” he went on to offer this warning: “Imagine how they are going to to be laughing at us,” he said, “not 100 years from now, but even 50 or 20 years now.”

As a result of accelerating technological change, it is certain that “we don’t know what we don’t know” about a wide variety of diseases. To stay open to the possibility that these diseases might soon be both classified and treated differently , it is helpful to keep in mind the possibility that if you don’t change your views you will likely be widely mocked at some point in the future—and it might even be sooner than you expect.

Interested in viewing related articles on unlearning? Check out these past 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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Pharmaceutical Industry Needs to Jump the Curve to Nanotech

In 2003, I wrote the book, ”The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business.” In it, I outlined the many ways in which nanotechnology will impact the pharmaceutical industry in the near future. Recently, researchers at Children’s Hospital in Boston have uncovered a method of reviving a once-promising cancer drug, TNP-470—which was cancelled in the mid-1990’s due to concerns over toxicity.

The problem of toxicity is not a new one to the pharmaceutical industry. In fact, it is a big reason why so many early stage drugs fail to make it to market.

This vexing problem may soon be partially alleviated due to advances in nanotechnology. One advantage of reformulating drugs at the nanoscale is that they are water soluble and, as such, don’t require the solvents which so often cause nasty side-effects in patients.

Another application being employed from the nanotechnology bag of tricks is to use nanoscale platforms such as micelles and dendrimers to prevent drugs from crossing the blood-brain barrier. In this fashion, older drugs may be reformulated so as to prevent certain drugs from wreaking havoc on the human brain. (This was one of the problems with TNP-470).

The pharmaceutical industry has invested billions of dollars developing promising drugs. Unfortunately, most developmental drugs end being shelved when it is found they cause some unintended consequence. Nanotechnology holds the promise that a handful of older drugs may now be revisited. Some may even find their way to the commercial marketplace.

With a single drug’s ability to add billions of dollars to a pharmaceutical company’s bottom-line, it is time many of them begin turning their attention to nanotechnology. It’s a small technology, but it could pay big dividends.

Related Posts by Jack Uldrich

A Thousand Reasons for the Pharmaceutical Industry to Rethink Its Business
The Future is about to Get Personal
Does the Pharmaceutical Industry Also Need to Unlearn
The Coming Health Care Revolution

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A Million, a Billion, and a Trillion Reasons to Care About Genomics

I speak to a great many student groups and I am often struck by how few of them appreciate the difference between one million, one billion and one trillion. (In the name of fairness, the same is true of many adults). Perhaps, it is because the three figures are all large numbers that most people don’t think there is an appreciable difference. Perhaps, it is because the words—million, billion, and trillion—the rhyme; or maybe it’s just because they’re dumb—or have had poor teachers. I really don’t know.

One way I have tried to convey the difference between the numbers is by explaining the figures in a different way. To wit:

One million seconds was 12 days ago;
One billion seconds was roughly 30 years ago;
One trillion seconds was approximately 30,000 years ago—28,000 B.C.!

My point with the analogy is that one trillion of anything is a really BIG number, and it is much, much different than one billion.

This analogy is important because on January 17, 2006 the Wellcome Sanger Institute announced it had archived it’s one billionth DNA sequence. It was an impressive accomplishment.

Well, today, Wired magazine reported that the prominent genetics institute sequenced its trillionth base of DNA. This is a one thousand-fold improvement in just over two years.

In my most recent book, Jump the Curve, I asked my readers to think of the first billion DNA sequences like a book that could shed some light on how genetic information might help deliver better health outcomes for all of society. Today, we have an additional 1000such “books.”

My broader point is that society is still in the early stages of understanding all of this genetic information; but as researchers, scientists and entrepreneurs continues to sequence an ever larger amount of genetic information it is a reasonable to expect that some of this information may just revolutionize how we diagnose, treat and, ultimately, cure a wide range of diseases.

Related Posts

The Future is About to Get Personal
You’ll Look and Feel Good in Genes in the Future
The Coming Health Care Revolution

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Jump the Curve to a New Way of Understanding the World

Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired, has written an excellent article entitled ”The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes Scientific Method Obsolete” in which he convincingly argues that massive amounts of data, in combination with sophisticated algorithms and super powerful computers, offers mankind a whole new way of understanding the world.

Anderson believes that our technological tools have now progressed to the point where the “old way” of doing science—hypothesize, model and test—is becoming obsolete. In its place, a new paradigm is now emerging whereby scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs simply allow statistical algorithms to find patterns where science cannot.

If Anderson is correct—and I believe he very well could be—this will take science in a whole new direction. In short, instead of modeling and waiting to find out if hypotheses are valid the scientific community can instead rely on intelligent algorithms to do the heavy lifting.

Before this vision can be achieved, however, it will require a great many brilliant scientists to unlearn the idea that their “model-based” method of trying to make sense of today’s increasingly complex world is the only way to search for new meaning.

The implication for a field such as biology which, as Anderson points out is actually becoming more difficult to model as learn more about it (due to our limited understanding of how genetics, microbes, personal behavior, the environment, and a host of other factors work in partnership to determine a person’s health), could be profound. More specifically, we will be able to analyze data without allowing hypotheses (which are, perhaps, wrong) to cloud our view of what the data is really showing us.

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Unlearn or Die Even More Unnecessarily

A few weeks back I had a posting entitled ”Change or Die ... Unnecessarily” in which I provided a few examples of how our inability to unlearn could, quite literally, cost some people their lives. Well, the other day, one of my favorite thinkers, Josh Wolfe, sent me a copy his weekly newsletter, The Forbes/Wolfe Weekly Insider. In it, he unveiled some startling research from a forthcoming book: apparently, six times as many people died in their cars from the 9/11 terrorist attack as did the number of people who died in planes.

The authors don’t state their research in quite this bold of a fashion, nevertheless this is one implication of their finding. On the face of it, the idea sounds absurd—everyone knows only a few hundred of the victims of 9/11 were in the airplanes that crashed into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and the rural field in Pennsylvania.

Essentially, it is the author’s contention that because millions of people refused to fly after the 9/11 attacks—and instead chose to drive (which is demonstrably more risky in statistical terms than flying)—an estimated 1,595 additional people have died from the 9/11 attack than is generally recognized.

If these people could have unlearned that their fear of flying was irrational because it caused them to engage in an even riskier activity, it is likely they would be alive today.

On a somewhat related note, I recently received a copy of a powerpoint presentation from one of the world’s leading epidemiologists, Michael Osterholm. In it, he coherently argues that the United States is woefully unprepared to deal with the very real possibility of a major pandemic.

Interestingly, in his slides, Osterholm makes the point that it possible that more people will die from non-influenza-related deaths than from the flu itself.

How so, you ask? Well, much of the pharmaceutical industry utilizes “just-in-time” inventory procedures. In the event of a major pandemic, shipping, trucking and distribution centers will be hampered and maybe even shut down entirely. As a result, hospitals—which already have a dangerously low supply of many critical life-savings drugs—will run out of important drugs in a matter of days.

The effect: people will die unnecessarily. That is, unless, we can unlearn the idea that “just-in-time” inventory for certain critical supplies is not necessarily a good idea.

Related Posts

Air Force Needs to Change

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Get Prepared to Unlearn at Warp Speed

IBM recently announced that it has developed a new supercomputer capable of performing 1,000 trillion calculations per second. It is a little hard to wrap your brain around such mind-boggling numbers, but last year I wrote an article discussing an IBM supercomputer that was capable of performing 70 trillion calculations per second. In the piece, I noted that if you had to perform a similar number of calculations (and assuming you could work 365/7/24) it would take you roughly 60 million years to perform what that supercomputer could do in one second.

Well, with this latest advance, it would now take you—theoretically speaking—about 800 million years. Of course, such a comparison is slightly ridiculous. What is not ridiculous, however, is what these supercomputers are doing and learning. With their immense electronic brains they are now designing new materials and products; creating new drugs; and helping us better understand everything from the human body and brain to how mankind is impacting the environment.

One implication of these new findings is that all of us will need to unlearn at a faster rate.

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Jack Uldrich Speaks on the Future

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Don’t Incrementalize Yourself into the Future

Knowledge, it has been said, is the key to success. It is a statement that is hard to disagree with unless you buy into that old adage that ignorance is bliss. Proceeding on the assumption that if you believed the latter you probably wouldn"t be reading this blog, I will go farther out on a limb and state that for years one of the world’s better recognized fonts of knowledge has been the Encyclopedia Britannica--a reservoir of 30,000-plus pages of information replete with titillating tidbits of data about everything from atoms to zettabytes.

In the late 1990s the revered encyclopedia came under assault from a new form of media distribution--the CD-ROM. Able to store vast amounts of information in a more convenient, colorful, and vivid fashion, Encyclopedia Britannica was forced to deal with this new competitive threat and proceeded in good haste to provide its information in a similarly fresh, snappy, and visually pleasing format.

By 2001 the company was back on its feet and headed down the sweet path of profitability. No sooner, though, had that storm passed when another began forming on the horizon. But just as a hurricane begins with a single molecule and is not immediately discernible, so was this one.

The storm was called Wikipedia, and it started in 2001 with nothing more than 100 encyclopedia-like entries drafted by a few amateurs and posted to a Web site. It seemed innocent enough. After all, how likely was it that a bunch of strangers, working for free, could someday produce an encyclopedia that would rival the esteemed Encyclopedia Britannica in terms of depth, breadth, and accuracy. It sounded about as plausible as a few molecules in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean turning into a Category 5 hurricane.

Yet in late 2005 Wikipedia smashed into the Encyclopedia Britannica. That year the prestigious scientific journal Nature announced after a comprehensive study that the average entry in Wikipedia was nearly as accurate as the typical Encyclopedia Britannica entry.

The advantage is still in Encyclopedia Britannica’s favor, but how much longer will it be able to withstand the gale force winds? The answer: not much. That is because we are now living in a world of exponential advances, and the scales are tipped in Wikipedia’s favor.

To begin, the very subject matter of the encyclopedia, which is to say knowledge itself, is growing exponentially. It has been said that human knowledge is doubling roughly every seven years. This leads to the almost ridiculously sounding (but mathematically verifiable) conclusion that by 2050 everything we know today will represent less than 1 percent of the sum total of the world’s knowledge.

Even if one disagrees with this statement, it is difficult not to acknowledge that radical advances in medicine, physics, chemistry, and biotechnology are changing both the content and value of the material in encyclopedias and that the old print-and-publish method of storing and displaying such information is, if not obsolete, at least impractical.

Neither a printed encyclopedia nor even a CD-ROM can react to this volume of change. Only Wikipedia, by posting information directly to the Internet, can respond in a timely fashion.

Wikipedia also has the advantage in terms of human horsepower. Advances are happening so fast, in so many different fields, that it is virtually impossible for the staff at Encyclopedia Britannica to keep pace. The challenge is not nearly so great for Wikipedia because it doesn’t have a staff. Instead it relies on a self-selected universe of experts and enthusiasts to keep track of all of these developments. (To this end, Wikipedia now has over 7 million entries in 200 different languages.)

Third, Wikipedia has a distinct economic advantage. Not only does it not need to print its material in either book or even CD-ROM format, it doesn’t need to pay an army of researchers and writers or underwrite the cost of housing any physical resources or employees.

The final kicker is this: Even if the Encyclopedia Britannica decides to put all of its content online for free, most people will still go to Wikipedia because its content consistently shows up near the top of most search engines.

What Encyclopedia Britannica is facing is a severe reaction to the exponential economy, but it is not alone. In fact, if history is any guide, a number of other companies, institutions, and organizations will soon be facing a comparable amount of change in the not-too-distant future.

What this means is that in order to survive in the Expoential Economy, we should all heed the words of Kurt Yeager, who once offered this sage advice: ”In periods of profound change, the most dangerous thing is to incrementalize yourself into the future.”

Related Posts

Our Accelerating Future
Dangerous Curves Ahead
Exponential Evolution
A Useful Analogy for Thinking About the Future
Think 10X, Not 10%
Einstein, Intel and All the Rice in China
Do You Believe in the Tooth Fairy
How to Turn 2 Cents into $5.36 Million
Embracing Change

Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.

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