Industries: Robots

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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A Walk into the Future with Robotics

To get a glimpse of where the future of robotics may be headed, I encourage you to watch this one-minute video from Boston Dynamics:

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Future Headline: Teenager Controls Mars Rover from Home

Yesterday, on the front page of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, there was this article: Flying deep into the Middle East, from a cockpit in Fargo. The piece, which documented how Air Force personnel are controlling drones over Iraq and Afghanistan, was likely met with a collective yawn by most of the reading public. However, if you stop and think about it for a moment, the idea would probably have been dismissed as preposterous as recently as a few years ago. I mean think about it: Kids in North Dakota using their computer to control flying robots half a world away.

Alas, such is the nature of technological progress. To get your creative futuristic juices flowing let me offer another possible headline from the future: Teenager Controls Mars Rover from Home. As NASA gets more serious about using robots to explore space, I think the agency may some day have a glut of robotic devices on the “Red Planet” and it won’t know what to do with them all. In an effort to tap into the “open-source” ethos as well as get kids excited about science, technology and space exploration, NASA will then allow students (thorough a secure satellite connection) to conduct their own exploration using older robots.

Impossible? No. Unlikely? Perhaps, but then again how many people would have dismissed the idea of North Dakota teenagers using a video game-like joy stick to control and drop and bombs in Afghanistan as recently as a decade ago?

Interested in other headlines from the future? Check out this old post:

Worldwide Solar Farm Construction Forces Coal Plants to Shutter

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A Walk Into the Future

Last week I had the pleasure of giving a presentation on how emerging technologies will transform the aging services industry. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, I was unable to show the audience a series of videos which demonstrated—in vivid fashion—some of the more promising technologies.

The pace of change is accelerating so quickly in the field of robotics, however, that the video posted below wasn’t even available. (The technology was just unveiled by Honda this week.) I invite you to watch the 50-second video and then imagine how this technology may soon help thousands of seniors maintain their independence for a few additional years by easing the strain on their legs and backs. Or, alternatively, imagine how some nurses and other professional care-providers may be freed up for other work because they won’t be needed to assist elderly patients as much.

As I said at the end of my presentation I sincerely believe that the aging services industry is going to be at the forefront of incorporating many of tomorrow’s emerging technologies into everyday life. Why? Because, in many cases, senior will be the first to walk into this new future because these new emerging technologies will give them a greater degree of control over their lives.

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Jump the Curve Strategy #15: Mandatory Recess

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exponential Insight

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

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The Future of Robotic Surgery is Speeding Up

As readers know, I have been bullish on robotics practical applications in health care for some time (as this old post demonstrates.) Nevertheless, this 3-minute video shows how surgical robots are about to become a whole lot better—very soon. Enjoy!

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A Tale of Two Robots

Robots have always been a fun source of speculation about the future, and soon the speculation will get more interesting. This is because a number of innovative researchers are experimenting with different biological models for the creation of next-generation robots. For example, this article discusses how researchers are already mimicking the bones and muscles of humans to create more life-like robots, while this article reveals how other researchers have created a tiny swimming robot small enough to inspect the clogged drain pipe in your bathroom.

To better understand robots amazing potential, I invite you to watch the two very short videos posted below:

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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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The Future Will Get Under Your Skin

I know I just said the other day that social networking is the future of health care. But another healthcare trend I am equally bullish on is the utilization of robots for the treatment of a growing assortment of ailments. The picture to the right shows you how incredibly small these devices are getting (1 millimeter) and they are only going to get smaller due to continuing advances in nanotechnology. As they do, according to this article, these devices will eventually be able to do everything from deliver drug loads to precise locations to clean out clogged arteries.

The future is about to under your skin and, while the idea might make some people’s skin crawl, it will also make them healthier.

For other robotic-related madness, check out these old posts:

The Future of Health Care: Part 3 (Robotics)
The Robot Will See You Now
Hospitals Robotic Future: Part 2
Hospitals Robotic Future: Part 1
Hospitals Get a Lift

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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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Intel Jumps the Curve

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The 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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Think 10X, Not 10%
A Useful Anology for Thinking About the Future

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Into the Unknown: A Historical Lesson from Lewis & Clark

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Exponential Executive Extraordinare: General George C. Marshall

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An Unlearning Tutorial

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

Shortly thereafter a thoughtful reader posed this question:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Did You Know … You Have to Jump the Curve

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

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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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The Future of War: Ethical Robots?

Having been brought up on a steady diet of sci-fi movies in which robots betray their human masters, it is easy to envision a future in which rogue robots engage in unethical activity.

The opposite—a scenario in which robots are more ethical than human counterparts—is more difficult to imagine. From my perspective as a professional futurist this, however, is the more likely scenario

MSNC.com has published an excellent article entitled ”Robot warriors will get ethics guide.” Here is the operative quote: “Ultimately these (robotic) systems could have more information to make wiser decisions than a human could make.” In essence, because robots don’t get scared or become over-emotional they are unlikely to over-react and act in ways which society would consider unethical.

This is not to say that such ethical hardware and software packages have yet been fully developed but smart human computer and software programmers are working on such systems today and these system are only going to get better. The question we need to ask ourselves is this: In the heat of battle, would you rather have a scared, stressed-out 19 year-old behind the trigger or an unemotional robot which could quickly assess the range of options available to it and arrive at the most ethical conclusion?

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Jump the Curve Strategy #11: Park n’ Save with Robots

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

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Convergence: Brain-Control Interfaces & Robotics

Whenever I give presentations on emerging technologies or the future of technology, I stress to my audiences that one of the big themes they must keep in mind is convergence—the idea that different technologies will “mix and match” in unique and innovative ways.

One clear field of convergence I see on the horizon is “brain-controlled” robots. Although the 40-second video (below) is in Japanese, it offers an early (and admittedly) crude vision of how soldiers, stroke victims and senior citizens will soon be able to control robots by thought alone:

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Jump the Curve, Today!

I have said it before and I will say it again, ”The future is here. It is just not evenly distributed.” For proof of this statement and a glimpse into tomorrow, I suggest that you only peruse today’s news. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Case Western Reserve is experimenting with a new version of Kindle for textbooks. It is only a matter of time before e-books begin replacing old-fashion textbooks on campuses around the world. (Of course, this begs the question of whether colleges will even be relevant in the future.)

Elsewhere, researchers at UCSD have reported that advances in the field of quantum dots have taken society one step closer to ”mainstreaming nanotechnology in medicine.” And, if you don’t think the robotic revolution is real, check out this story reporting that a robot now has its own Facebook page.

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Long-Term Care’s Robotic Future

Later this week, I will be giving a keynote presentation to the Wisconsin Association of Homes and Services for the Aging. In addition to these two trends which I discussed a few weeks ago, another big trend I will be highlighting is the growing popularity of robotic pets. This six-minute video from Japan offers a glimpse into the future.

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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 Glimpse into the Future

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

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

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Robots: The Ultimate Killer App?

P.W. Singer, the author of “Wired for War,” provides an excellent overview of how far robotics have already advanced in this provocative TED presentation:

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The Future is Our New Reality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Jump the Curve Strategy #11: Park and Save with Robots

If you have ever lived, worked in, or visited New York City and had to get around by car, you understand what a hassle parking can be. You might be happy to learn that in 2007 a company opened a new robotic parking garage. What makes the system so special--besides the fact that you no longer have to relinquish the keys to your new sports car to a testosterone-charged teenager--is that the system is so efficient that it can fit sixty-seven cars in a space that previously held only twenty-four. It is able to pull off this feat by packing cars closer to one another (there is no need to leave space to open a car door) and by doing away with ramps and other superfluous maneuvering space. When you consider that it costs roughly $25 a day to park in New York City and multiply that figure by the number of additional cars such a system can handle, it provides some modest idea of how robots can help some businesses “walk the escalator.”

All across the emerging field of robotics, similar opportunities for cost savings are emerging. Robotic vacuum cleaners and floor scrubbers are helping building maintenance companies cut down on janitorial costs; Staples and Walgreens and others are now using robots to transform their warehouses; and the military is now employing robots to disarm roadside bombs and patrol dangerous areas. The video below demonstrates how versatile these robots are becoming:

And, as was mentioned in an earlier post on the future of robotics in health care, robots are now performing more than 50 percent of all prostatectomies. Less understood is that these robotic systems are so good at what they do that patients often have significantly shorter recovery times due to the precision and delicacy with which the robots perform the surgical operation. In more practical terms, this means shorter hospitals stays and fewer nurses to watch over the patients. It also suggests that hospitals can free up more doctors, nurses, and beds to serve other needier patients.

Exponential Insight

Whether you are looking to squeeze a little more efficiency out of an existing operation, fighting a new battle, or are just trying to clean up around the office better, a growing number of robots are available to “walk the escalator” with you.

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Robots: A Major Game Changer
Your Robotic Future?
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The Robot Will See You Now

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Your Robotic Future?

The other day I wrote about how robots were a ”major game changer.” Yesterday, I came across a fascinating article explaining how advances in algorithms are helping robots teach themselves; and today I bring you this short video on how advanced personal robots have become (see below). The robots are still a little bulky, slow and inflexible; but I think you’ll agree that they are dramatic improvement over what was available just last year. As robots continue to improve, I expect nursing homes, hospitals and other aging-related facilities to embrace the technology.

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Robots: A Major Game Changer?Our Robotic Future
The Future of Hospitals (Robotics)
The Robot Will See You Now

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It Only Seems Like Yesterday

Today (February 5, 2009) is the fifth anniversary of Facebook. This past January 19th was the 8th anniversary of Wikipedia and it was only last fall that Google celebrated its 10th anniversary. To put these milestones in perspective, let me share a few numbers with you. If Facebook were a country it would today be the fifth largest country in the world with a population of 150 million. At the end of 2008, Wikipedia—using only free labor—had 75,000 “editors” who had, together, written 10 million entries in 264 different languages. And Google, from its humble origins in a Stanford University dorm room in 1998, now employs 20,000 people; has a market capitalization of $110 billion; performs over 25 billion searches a day; and has transformed everything from the advertising and newspaper industries to health care. In order to become an Exponential Executive and “jump the curve” 5, 8 and 10 years into the future, it will help to keep these impressive numbers in mind because the future has a surprising way of arriving sooner than expected.

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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: