Future Files: A History of the Next 50 Years

3d_futurefileslr.jpgOK, my new book hits the shops on Monday (3 September) so I thought I’d share with you the fact that the book website is now live. If you go to www.futuretrendsbook.com and click on the ‘download’ button you can read the whole of chapter one.

If you click on ‘sources’ and go down towards the bottom of the page there are also some quite good web links, timelines and maps relating to the future as well as a very comprehensive book list. Enjoy!

Slow Work

My friend Oliver just stuck this up on homepagedaily.com. I think it hits a nerve….apologies about the cut and paste Ollie.
David, a financial services manager for Deloittes, spent 8 hours in a car park above a beach when on holiday in Italy as it was the only spot in which he could make mobile contact with his office. They were on a big deal and his virtual presence mandatory.”Where would I be without my Blackberry?” he reflects. Well, actually, you’d be on holiday with your family and be able to have a break from work – with the slight possibilty of then returning with the benefit that reflection and distance provides for balancing the here and now.

After slow food, let’s welcome slow work.

InnoFuture 2007

My book launch is getting close…next Monday.

Meanwhile, I’ve been in Melbourne talking at Innofuture (www.innofuture.com.au). If by any chance you’re in Melbourne tomorrow get down there for the second and final day and hear Tom Kelley from Ideo speak about how the legendary design firm works.

I was speaking on future trends and caused a few sharp intakes of breath by suggesting that Climate Change was a fad. Actually I didn’t say that (although that’s how I’ll be quoted). What I did say was that the panic reaction to Climate Change was out of all proportion. Basically it’s a problem but we’ll solve it through a mixture of innovation, regulation and attitudinal change. It is also not our biggest long-term problem. Resource and materials scarcity (including people) will prove to be a much bigger challenge if the current rate of development continues.

What really interests me about Climate Change is this. Why do we currently take worst-case scenarios to be most likely outcomes and why do we run from one mad panic to the next all the time? Last year it was global flu pandemics and before that (in no particular order) we had deep vein thrombosis (on long-haul flights), asteroids impacting the earth, Y2K, acid rain etc etc. One theory is that, historically speaking, apocalyptic thinking tends to occur during periods of rapid social and technological change. Is that what’s going on?

Extinction timeline 1900-2050…coming soon

Some time ago I created an innovation timeline for the period 1900-2050, which seemed to get a pretty good reaction in the blogosphre. Anyway, I was having lunch a few weeks ago with Ross, Sally and Jessica from Future Exploration Network and I was talking about doing something similar relating to predicted death dates – kind of the opposite idea to the innovation timeline.
However Sally (I think it was Sally, I’d had a few glasses of wine at this point) came up with a great idea. Why not do an extinction timeline instead? So I’ve been busy. The extinction timeline also runs from 1900-2050 and the early draft is looking pretty good. The only thing I can’t figure out is where to put the end of copyright and the demise of Paris Hilton.

Anyway, it should be out next week…so watch this space.

My book…continued

Sorry, it’s been getting a bit busy with the book launch coming up. Here’s another sneaky peek.

The average US movie now costs close to US $100 million to make and the window of opportunity for marketing and distribution is concentrated on two or three critical holiday periods each year. I was talking to a Vice President of a major film studio last year and he said that even the old idea of an opening weekend as an indication of how successful a film is going to be has now shifted to ten minutes. If an audience doesn’t like the opening they are immediately on their phones sending text messages to their friends saying, “don’t bother”. Add to this the increasingly unrealistic wage demands of movie stars and it’s clear that Hollywood is looking more like a disaster movie every year. However, while things are going to get worse for a while there is ultimately a light at the end of the (digital) movie projector.

Unearth Growth by Digging in the Dirt

Sorry folks, things have got a bit busy with the launch of my book coming up. I’ll post a few more bits from the book in a while, but in the meantime here’s the latest column I’ve written for Fast Company magazine in the US.

Everything you need to know about innovation is growing (and dying) in a garden near you. So forget balanced scorecards, six sigma and SWOT analysis and read this instead.

There is an element of business, which, as far as I know, has never been written about. Business is like gardening. That’s right; growing a business is like growing a tree. I know this sounds flaky, and I’ve probably lost many of you at this point, but for those of you that remain, consider this: most metaphors about business are about sport or war. This is useful, but the fatal floor in these analogies is that both have an end point in the immediate future. Moreover, the objective of both is to defeat a clearly defined enemy. Aims and outcomes are always fairly clear.

But business isn’t like that and neither is gardening.

Gardening has no end. There is no finish line. It is about a journey not a specific destination. Moreover, whilst business and gardening certainly have enemies, focusing on them too much can divert your attention away from the real game. A good example of this is the historical war between Coca-Cola and Pepsi, which, in my view, has all too often shifted attention away from the customer.

The feeling in most organizations like these is that business is a mechanical process. In this context the analogies of war and sport are very apt. It’s all about pre-planned strategies, resources and control within a fairly fixed environment or known set of rules.

But real life doesn’t work quite like that does it? We cannot control everything and it is egotistical to think that we can. So perhaps better metaphors are rooted in plants not machinery, especially as we move away from fixed pyramidal structures to informal (and often temporary) organizational networks.

If you start to think of business ideas as plants, your mindset shifts. In this metaphor you plant a business idea in a patch of soil, which is set within an overall grand scheme or design, water it and watch it grow.

But, as any gardener knows, half your plants won’t grow. There is an early American saying about gardening that you can apply to business: “One for the blackbird, one for the crow, one for the cutworm, and one to grow.” Business, like gardening, is about flexibility and persistence in the face of changing external circumstances.

However, even tenacity doesn’t always work. Sometimes plants don’t grow because they have been put in the wrong place or because pests have destroyed them. Either way you have to nurse them back to health or yank them out and start all over again.

Planting things in the right place is vital. According to Ian Davis, Managing Director of McKinsey & Company: “In sectors such as banking, telecommunications and technology, almost two-thirds of the organic growth of listed Western companies can be attributed to being in the right markets and geographies.” In other words, a good business idea in the wrong place can struggle whereas an average business idea in a perfect spot is likely to do well.

Then there’s the opposite problem. Sometimes things grow so fast that they overshadow what’s next to them and they have to be moved if both plants are to flourish. Perhaps the parallel here is with ‘skunkworks,’ where teams are moved away from the shadow of parent company.

For example, the telecommunications firm Vodafone was created by accident as a tiny division of Racal Electronics. Someone, somewhere, was given the green light to plant something and see whether it would grow. It did and Vodafone is now a GB £80 billion colossus that dwarfs its former parent, although I wonder whether this rapid growth would have been achieved if it had been left in the shadow of Racal.

Of course, sometimes things grow so well that, over many years, the soil becomes exhausted and the only solution is to start again. This is not a bad thing. It is just part of a natural cycle. Fields must be allowed to lay fallow every so often if they are to regain their natural health and vitality. This applies to organizations but it also applies to people. Sometimes there is a tendency to think that you’re useless when in fact all that is wrong is that you are working in the wrong place or you are exhausted. So if you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired take some time off and take a rest.

Does any of this apply to innovation?

Yes and no. Business is like gardening but ultimately the metaphor falls down because innovations are like weeds. They grow where they’re not supposed to and cannot be cultivated like orchids in a greenhouse. You cannot sow weeds in any meaningful sense, you can only provide the conditions necessary for them to grow, which in many instances means leaving them well alone. Weeds thrive on neglect.

Therefore, if you want innovation in your business, all you can really do is recognise what a weed looks like and allow certain of them to carry on growing even when they are in the ‘wrong’ place in your garden.

My Book (Stress)

Typical. You wait ages for your book to come out and then a few weeks beforehand someone in the same country brings out a seemingly identical book with a similar title. So my bedtime reading is now Future Perfect: What Next? And other impossible questions by Robyn Williams. I’ll let you all know how I get on with it.

Meanwhile…some more of my book!!!

In the UK there were 6.5 million workdays lost to stress back in 1995. By 2001 that figure had jumped to 13.4 million and there is no reason to suppose that this trend won’t accelerate into the future. However, taking a very long term view average hours worked have actually been declining for a century. So again, what’s causing the stress? One possible explanation is the increased pace of modern life caused by technology but this doesn’t really stack up either. In the 1870s the term ‘neurasthesia’ was created to describe the nerve-racking effects of modern inventions like the railway and the telegraph. What has changed though is the willingness of people to say that they are suffering from stress — a badge of honour in many work environments. There is also the argument that as societies become richer there is more time for introspection and people begin to feel a sense of entitlement, which fuels anxiety when expectations are not met. Whatever the reason the problem is going to get worse in the future. In the US 40% of workers say they have experienced verbal abuse at work and murder recently emerged as one of the most common causes of death at work.

My Book (Future Files: A History of the Next 50 Years)

bookcoverlr.jpg

My book isn’t out until 3 Sept but I got my first review today. Not bad at all.Here’s another small extract – this time one of the many ‘Postcards from the Future’.

14 November 2030
Dear Ollie,
This will knock you out. I’m sending you something I’ve just found called ‘Leaves.â„¢ It’s a new product from Past Toyz in Shanghai featuring a giant biodegradable plastic bag containing real farm grown leaves that have been hygienically dried and treated with an anti-bacterial agent for ‘safe outdoor fun’ â„¢ Can you believe it? Why didn’t we think of that?  I think the idea is that you empty the bag in your backyard and play with the leaves. Either that or you can drive that hygiene and order fixated neighbor or yours crazy by placing a single leaf on his plastic lawn every night for the next two years.  I suppose the company did some research with Maverns and Connectors that said that people in urban areas aren’t getting as close to nature as they like.  Back in my day leaves grew on trees but the colours weren’t manipulated and the bugs were kept in check by other bugs not chemicals.  Anyway, it certainly made me laugh.  You can always send it back if the joke is lost on you.
All the best,
Leon.
PS- What’s Next? — aerosol dirt?

More predictions…

I’ve just had an idea for another list. Instead of a list of things that are predicted to happen in the future, how about a list of things that are predicted to disappear? Here goes…

Dining tables

Bank managers

Bank notes and coins

Newspapers

Wet film

Bottled water

Discomfort

Stoics

Milkmen

Innocence

Privacy

Liquid paper

Receptionists

Secretaries

Civil liberties

Oil

Gas

Coal

Adulthood

Breakfast

Manners

Wrinkles

Habius corpus

Public intellectuals

Red ink

Secrets

A good night’s sleep

CDs

Thank you

Icebergs

Unions

Time

Jobs for life

Paris Hilton (only kidding)

Anonymity

Dial-up

Hosepipes

Intimacy
Anyone like to add anything?

More Predictions…

I just got an email from someone we’ll call Emma, who is too shy to leave a blog post. Anyway, she wanted some more predictions. OK, Emma, here you go…

There will be a global biometric ID card by 2028.

By 2027, a bioterror event will lead to one hundred thousand+ casualties.

By the year 2020, facial recognition doors will exist.

By 2030, tickets for space travel will be available from travel agents.

By 2040 a ‘dirty bomb’ will have been exploded in a major US or European city.

By 2025 basic surgery will be administered by robots.

By 2040 all surgical anesthesia will be administered by computers.

By 2050 there will be a single global currency and cash will no longer exist.

Evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence will be found by 2050.

By 2025 at least 15% of convicted criminals will have technology embedded in their bodies for the purpose of tracking and identification.

In fifty years Sydney will look pretty much as it does now.

By 2030 more than 60% of books sold worldwide will be printed on
demand at the point of sale.

Sleep hotels and resorts will become popular by 2015.

Video wallpaper will exist by 2030.

Either China or Russia will fall apart by 2025.

By 2038, Scientists will prove that there is a genetic component to intelligence and that this varies by sex and race.This will cause riots and book burning in some cities.

Qantas will offer seat back banking on long-haul flights by 2015.

The NRMA will sell insurance by the kilometer by 2012.

By 2038 the police and military will look more or less the same in most countries.

Lists of predictions will eventually become unpopular.