Industries: Telecommunications

The Future is Cloudy

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The Future Requires Engaging in Situational Unawareness Training

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

Question: What two colors are the yield sign?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Future is on the Back Pages of the Newspaper

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related Posts by America’s leading futurist, Jack Uldrich

A Future of Black Swans
The Future Requires Unlearning
Sur-Prize: The Future Can Be 10% Better

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Hey YouTwitFace, The Future Will Require Unlearning Social Media

Earlier today I had the opportunity to give a short presentation on unlearning to the Olson advertising agency in Minneapolis. During the course of my talk I mentioned how fast technology is changing and I reminded my audience that although Facebook is only 5 years old and Twitter barely 3 years of age, it is important to remember that new social media tools are being created everyday—some of which will undoubtedly require us to unlearn some of our current communications habits. Afterwards, someone mentioned that Conan O’Brien addressed this very theme during last evening’s 2009 Emmy Awards. Enjoy this short (and hilarious) look at the Year 3000.

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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
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Jump the Curve Strategy #2: Take a Bird’s Eye View of the World
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Introduction to Chapter Two: The Power of Zenzizenzizenzic
Welcome to the Exponential Economy: Prepare to Jump the Curve
Introduction to Jump the Curve

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The Future is in Your Pocket

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

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The Future of Social Media is Now

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Social Networking: The Future of Health Care

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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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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.)

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A Glimpse into the Future

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

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

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The Future is Our New Reality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Jump the Curve Strategy #13: Catch a Wave

(Note to my readers: As promised, I am slowly putting all of my 2008 book, Jump the Curve: 50 Essential Strategies to Help Your Company Stay Ahead of Emerging Technologies, online. Today’s installment is “Catch a Wave.” The previous 12 strategies are posted below.”

On January 26, 2006, a NASA satellite flying in geosynchronous orbit detected hurricane-force winds developing in the North Pacific. Using supercomputers to digest and process the data, officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted that massive waves would reach Half Moon Bay, California, on February 7. Organizers at Mavericks, the world famous surfing location, immediately sprang into action and sponsored a surfing contest, and officials at NBC agreed to cover the event live.

The humongous waves arrived as predicted. Using a proprietary wireless mesh network and cameras with 70x zoom lenses, NBC then sent those signals over a fiber-optic cable to the parking lot in Mavericks where thousands of fans watched the surfers ply their trade on a gigantic plasma screen. Hundreds of thousands more watched the action live on the Web via video stream that was transmitted with a directional antenna. As if that weren’t enough, NBC later aired the footage on the 7,000-square-foot screen in Times Square so that the citizens of the Big Apple could gain an appreciation of the actual size of the waves that confronted the surfers that day.

The story is a wonderful example of using existing technology to walk the escalator. But just as the waves of Half Moon Bay grew exponentially larger prior to breaking, so too are all of the aforementioned technologies. To survive in tomorrow’s exponential economy will require more than just walking the escalator. It will require running very fast and jumping extraordinarily high to survive.

With that in mind then, let us return to a time when running and jumping were part of our daily routine--our childhood. As you will see, many of the skills we left behind from that era will have to be relearned in order to effectively jump the curve.

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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
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Welcome to the Exponential Economy: Prepare to Jump the Curve
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The Shape-Shifting Phone of the Future

I recently came across this article discussing Intel’s plans for a phone that may within 3-5 years change shapes according to the users needs. It comes with an accompanying video (which is posted below) but rather than watch that video first (it is a little technical), I encourage you to watch this from Nokia first. It is more creative and will give you a better understanding of the potential of shape-shifting phones of the future:

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Jump the Curve: Save Big Money

I have written before about how the mobile phone will soon become a powerful healthcare diagnostic tool (here and here), and I have also written about Google’s impressive foray’s into making the mobile phone a powerful platform which will augment human intelligence. Today’s news brings to light both of these points in spades.

There is now a new $1 iPhone application that will allow healthcare professionals to diagnose more than 1000 diseases from their cellphone. As impressive as the technology is, if you “jump the curve,” I think you can easily imagine a day in the near future when you will be able to do the exact same thing—but without the assistance of a professional. The potential for healthcare savings is enormous.

The second item that caught my attention was this video from Google which shows how a new application they are developing will help users monitor their home energy use from the comfort of their phone. If you watch the video, you’ll hear one Google employee explain how the application has saved him $3000 in reduced energy costs.

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Wrap Your Brain Around This Future iPhone

A Canadian movie firm has put together a short 50-second movie clip spoofing the future of “iPhone Everything” by suggesting it will have a neural interface and be able to control things by thought. It is a clever piece, but I recommend that you also watch the video directly below the first YouTube clip—making phone calls by thought alone is no joke. Seriously. My advice: People often have a way of under-anticipating the future, don’t be one of those people.

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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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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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The Future of Telecommunications in Six Videos

On Tuesday, I traveled to Nashville to give a speech on the future of the telecommunications industry. One of the bigger (and, to be honest, not terribly new) trends in the field is the continued growth of video. In the spirit of this trend, I’d like to offer you six different videos which, each in its own unique way, offers a glimpse into the future of the telecommunications industry. The first three are very cool, and the next three are more technical but still provide some very good information.

The first video reviews how advances in algorithms and nerotechnology could lead to “voiceless” communication:

The second clip from Nokia offers an idea of what future mobile devices might look like:

The third provides an idea of how holographic information might become more pervasive:

The next three clips review how terahertz transmissions, sensors and RFID technology could lead to some cool new applications for future mobile devices:

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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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Another Day, Another Big Step Into the 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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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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