Industries: Retail Marketing

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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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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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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Jump the Curve Strategy #10: Get in Touch with All of Your Sensors
Jump the Curve Strategy #9: Follow Your Hunch
Jump the Curve Strategy #8: Run the Numbers
Jump the Curve Strategy #7: Reorganize Your Data Storage Closet
Jump the Curve Strategy #6: Let the Computer Do It
Jump the Curve Strategy #5: Bet On It
Jump the Curve Strategy #4: Just “Wiki” It
Jump the Curve Strategy #3: Look to the Kindness of Strangers
Jump the Curve Strategy #2: Take a Bird’s Eye View of the World
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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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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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Jump the Curve with a Nice, Cool Corona

It isn’t often that a company can successfully revive a decade old television ad but that is precisely what Corona is doing with its commercial “Lagoon.”

You may recall the original commercial—which I have posted below—showing a relaxing executive sitting on the beach with a nice, cool Corona beer when his beeper begins vibrating. His way of dealing with this unwelcome disruption is to skip the device into the coral blue ocean.

What is funny is that the commercial is only 8 years old—just think of the advances modern communication technology has made in that relatively short amount of time. I have written before about the startling changes we have witnessed in the past decade (here and here) and this is just another example. Still, in 2001, it would have been difficult to imagine iPhones, SmartPhones, Facebook, text-messaging, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.

Now, if you want to jump the curve, try to imagine what communication devices, methods and social networks might look like in the year 2017. At a minimum, I would begin by considering how advances in flexible electronics, computer algorithms and haptic technology will continue to transform our world. (It may be enough to make you want to drink!)

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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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How Tools Are Shaping Our Future

Marshall McLuhan once wrote, “We shape our tools then our tools shape us.” Never has this been more true. Consider first this article from today’s news reporting that a new nanotechnology microscope has been developed to aid in our understanding of the human brain. This, of course, will lead to new discoveries in the field of neuroscience. And, as this article on ”Harnessing science to develop the ultimate warrior” describes, these advances in neuroscience (and genomics) will begin to shape us in new and profound ways.

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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.)

Related Posts

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

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Oh Say Can You See … The Future of Retailing

The Economist recently published its “Technology Quarterly” which, for my money, is one of the best ways for a lay person to stay abreast of the amazing changes under-foot in technology. A case-in-point is this insightful article, ”Machines that can see.” I recommend every retail client read it.

On the more practical side, retailers and food manufacturers are now using technology (in the form of expression-analysis software) to pinpoint how testers really react to new foods—as opposed to simply relying on what the testers say they thought about the new product. Longer-term, the same software will help advertisers target ads to individual customers in the grocery store. For example, beardless men will receive ads for razors.

Why it is even predicted that the technology will soon help prevent “sweethearting” and bar-code switching.

In a business with razor-thin margins, this is just the type of technology that could make or break a retailer.

Related Posts

The Future Face of Retail Advertising
Tesco Jumps the Curve
The Future of the Grocery Store
Retailers are Beginning to Jump the Curve
Pump It Up: Retailers Use Google to Bolster Customer Loyalty

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The Future of Paper

Want to know why future paper might be colored yellow and why we may not have to cut down as many trees or pay obscene prices for ink toner? Check out this informative 3 minute video from ZDNet:

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Paper Industry Needs to Turn a New Page

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Robots: A Major Game Changer

I have written about the growing sophistication of robots on numerous occasions (see related articles below) and I have even blogged about Kiva warehouse robots before, however, if you’re in the retail industry or are interested in the future of supply chain management, I’d encourage you to watch the first 3 minutes of the YouTube video below. If you don’t have the time, here are the key take-a-ways: 1) Kiva robots are increasing productivity by 2X to 4X; 2) shipping errors and defects are non-existent; 3) worker safety is improving; and 4) companies are reducing energy costs (and thus saving money) by not having to heat those areas of the warehouse where only robots are working.

All of this is a reminder that if you want to “jump the curve” you had better start investigating how robots can increase your profitability.

Related robotic posts by America’s leading futurist, Jack Uldrich:

Our Robotic Future
The Future of Hospitals (Robotics)
The Robot Will See You Now

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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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Read the Face of the Future

To understand just how far machine intelligence is advancing I invite you to watch this impressive 2 minute video: http://brightcove.newscientist.com/services/link/bcpid1873822884/bctid8693718001.

In the near future, we can expect better—and more life-like—avatars; more human-like robots; and, quite possibly, the replacement of high priced actors in Hollywood blockbusters.

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Voice Recognition Technology’s Promising Future

Late last year, I discussed Google’s promising new voice recognition technology which is now available on the iPhone. To better understand where voice recognition technology is headed, I refer you to LiveAGI Brain -- an interactive voice recognition system under development by Adaptive AI Inc.

Most of us know that artificial intelligence is getting better and you have likely experienced an AI system when calling your bank or an airline reservation system, but in the near future these systems will be able to: 1) pick up on local slang (i.e yes, yeah, yep, for sure, etc); 2) recognize you as an unique individual (meaning you won’t have to repeat your 11-digit bank account number or Social Security number multiple times during the call); and, perhaps most impressively, 3) it’ll be able to pick up a conversation exactly where it was should you somehow be inadvertently cut-off or disconnected from the call.)

Another way to think of this is that this is bad news for those many call centers in India—American companies are unlikely to need their services in the near future.

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Picture the Future in 3-D

The Wall Street Journal has an article in today’s paper discussing how the NFL is experimenting with 3-D technology to bring football games to movie theaters. I don’t think the idea will take off because of advances in flexible electronics. View the picture to the right—it is a designer’s conception of a pair of next-generation glasses based on flexible electronics. Why would you go to a theater and pay $20 bucks when you still soon be able to watch in 3-D in the comfort of your home?

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Start Thinking About the Future

Last month, I showed you a segment from the popular TV program 60 Minutes demonstrating the impressive progress being made in the field of brain-neural technology and suggested it heralded the beginning of brain-computer interfaces (i.e. implanting computer chips directly into our brains). Well, no sooner had I named this one of the top ten technological achievements of 2008 than 60 Minutes came out with another program documenting the startling advances being made in the field of brain scanning technology.

I highly recommend the 13-minute segment (posted below) and for readers interested in the future of marketing I would draw your attention to the words of the expert at the end of the video who claims that researchers will be able to read people’s complex thoughts within 5 years. (No doubt this will be aided by the amazing progress in supercomputers which I discussed in this video yesterday.)

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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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Holograms: Coming to a Home Near You

On election night, Wolf Blitzer interviewed a reporter, Jessica Yellin, in a 3-D, holographic form. It was a little cheesy and, truth-be-told, it didn’t offer the viewer anything new. I wouldn’t dismiss holographic technology, however. As this article suggests, it could be in our homes by 2018 and, before that, it will likely find applications far more practical than Wolf Blitzer in the form of education, video gaming, medicine and entertainment.

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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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Voice Recognition Technology Takes a Baby Step into the Future

Late yesterday, Google released a very cool new mobile application which employs voice recognition technology. The question is not so much what the technology can do today, the question is what will the technology be able to do in the near future—and how might it change education, health care, and a host of other daily activities?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on how this technology could unfold and how it might alter people’s behavior. Below are my initial thoughts:

Here’s Google’s own YouTube clip on its new technology:

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Retailers: Using Technology to Build Trust

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal ran an article describing how some grocery chain retailers are now using sanitized washing machines to disinfect grocery carts. (Surprisingly, shopping carts are among the dirtiest public places.) From one perspective this an excellent way to establish a high-level of trust with a store’s customers. From another perspective, it could send an unintended signal to customers that its shopping carts are somehow dangerous and thus could end up being counter-productive.

So, what is a well-intentioned grocer to do? One answer could lie in the esoteric field of nanotechnology. A number of new nanomaterials are now being made that have self-cleaning and even anti-microbial properties. Therefore, a more elegant solution to germ-ridden grocery carts, could lie in constructing them out of nanomaterials. (In this way, the carts could simply clean themselves without drawing any unwanted attention to the cleaning process.)

This is just one example of how new emerging technologies can help retailers establish a higher level of trust with customers. Best Buy and other retailers are now deploying kiosks in their stores that allow customers to conduct quick and easy price comparisons with competitors products. Even though many people do extensive research online before they make a purchase or can use their cellphone to do the same thing, the kiosks sends a great signal that Best Buy is using technology to bring a higher level of transparency to its business. Imagine further then that the kiosks can dispense an electronic coupon to match or better the competitors price. How far would that go in developing trust?

In the near future, RFID technology will also be deployed to enhance trust. Many consumers are becoming increasingly interested in the entire life cycle of their meat and agricultural products. With RFID technology consumers can learn everything from the farm that a chicken was raised on; to whether it was fed any antibiotics; to how long it was in transport before it arrived on the retailers shelf.

As wireless technology, RFID and in-store electronic displays all become more prevalent, the opportunity exists for retailers to build an ever deeper level of trust between themselves and their customers. The only question is whether retailers are willing to embrace the immense opportunity sitting before them.

Interested in other grocery-related articles by America’s leading retail futurist, Jack Uldrich? Check out these past articles:

Tesco Jumps the Curve
The Future Face of Retail
Watch What You Eat—Literally
The Future of the Grocery Store
Retailers are Beginning to Jump the Curve
Pump It Up: Retailers Use Google to Bolster Customer Loyalty
RFID Gets Untracked

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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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The Future Face of Retail Advertising

“What we’re essentially doing is creating the retail environment of the future,” says Barry Salzman, CEO of YCD Multimedia, who is working with Dunkin Donuts to employ facial recognition technology to better target customers with tailored advertising.

In the infamous words of Homer Simpson, “D’Oh!”

This is both an impressive and a frightening display of new technology, but if retailers and advertisers want to “jump the curve,” they had better get a hold of how accelerating advances in facial recognition technology will change the retail advertising landscape in the near future.

Why is this? Because, according to this informative article, facial recognition is already 85% accurate and it is only going to get better. Secondly, more traditional methods of advertising—such as television ads—are no longer as effective as they once were. According to the article, it used to take only three ads to reach 85% of all women in 1996; now it takes 100! (I don’t actually know if these numbers are true, but as technology becomes more pervasive and our methods for receiving information continue to proliferate, the overall trend is clear—TV is becoming less effective.)

Interested in reviewing other future-related retail articles by Jack Uldrich? Check out these past musings:

Tesco Jumps the Curve
The Future of the Grocery Store
Retailers are Jumping the Curve

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RFID Takes Another Small Step

I have written before about the growing influence of RFID technology, but in another sign that it is evolving into a mainstream technology; on Tuesday it was reported that Walgreen’s, the largest drug store chain in the United States, has integrated RFID technology into its shipping, warehouse management and material handling operations at its newest facility in South Carolina.

What I found really impressive with the news is that the technology is expected to make the distribution center 20% more efficient. Reportedly, nearly half of the workers at the facility have autism or other developmental or physical disabilities which suggests that the technology might also be helpful in bringing even more of these workers into the workplace.

Interested in seeing related articles? Check out these past posts by Jack Uldrich:

The Future of the Grocery Store
Retailers Begin to Jump the Curve
RFID Gets Untracked

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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