Posted by Adam Gordon on Sep 7, 2010 in all, economy & finance, failed predictions, forecast filtering, strategic foresight
Here’s a video of Arthur C. Clark in 1964, remarkably predicting that in 50 years we would be able to communicate equally from anywhere on the planet, and so work from Tahiti or Bali equally well as from London. He predicts brain surgeons in Edinburgh operating on patients in New Zealand as technology collapses distance. Fabulous foresight? To a point, yes. This has all become possible, and in the time frame specified.
But, making one of the classic mistakes of technology-driven futures thinking, Clarke lets his technological imagination blur basic insight into human nature and social service/product adoption. Specifically, he goes on to say that because of communications technology advances, “the city of 2000 may not even exist at all. The traditional role of the city as meeting place for a man will cease to make any sense.”
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Note the gender paradigm blinkers. But anyway – the end of cities? Fat chance. One of the defining issues of the early 21st century is urban growth and the emergence of 10+ million-population mega-cities. And across the world, a higher proportion of the human population live in cities than at any point in history (and that proportion has just crossed 50% making humans for the first time a primarily urban species.) Hello? Arthur?
Urban concentrations 2007. Source: The Guardian
Why the miscue? First Clarke makes the classic error of holding key variables still while running technology forward. The key variable here is population growth. The number of people on the planet has doubled, at least, since 1964.
But that population could all be comfortably telecommuting from rural idylls, so there is another problem. Clarke fails to factor in social and economic pressures which sometimes run counter to technology advancement or, as in this case, merely absorb technology shift with no change. No matter how good communications get, nothing in the information-communications revolution has changed the age-old social truth that proximity matters. It matters to community welfare. It matters to social opportunities. It matters to career advancement, and so on. It mattered in the past. It will matter in the future. That’s why people are in jam-packed into into Los Angeles and São Paulo and Johannesburg and Seoul, etc., but not Tahiti.
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Posted by Adam Gordon on Mar 16, 2010 in all, economy & finance, forecast filtering, history, policy, social change
Legislation is the route by which ‘the people’ (or powerful sectarian interests, take your pick,) influence the future. It is often underestimated as a future force, or viewed merely as legislators playing catch-up with technology or societal change. But legislation can be far-sighted, and profoundly shape outcomes.
In a fascinating recent development, John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, introduced the Start-up Visa Act to the US Senate, as reported in Inc. magazine.
The legislation is a forward-looking bid to turbo-charge entrepreneurial venturing in the U.S. by attracting foreign entrepreneurs and connecting them to U.S. capital, therein driving new economic growth and local jobs. What’s really interesting is it goes against past common wisdom that recessions are ‘bad for immigration’ (as citizens demand job protection.)
If passed, the bill gives U.S. visas to foreigners who can raise $100,000 from an angel investor or $250,000 from a qualified VC firm. After two years, if the immigrant entrepreneur can create five or more jobs (excluding family), attract an additional $1 million in investment, or produce $1 million in revenue, he or she gets a green card (permanent residency.)
The only current option, the EB-5 business investment visa, requires immigrants to invest at least $1 million in the U.S. and employ 10 people.
Job creation
The National Venture Capital Association says 25 percent of America’s venture-backed, publicly-traded businesses, incl. Google, Yahoo!, eBay and Intel have been founded or co-founded by immigrants. According to Richard Herman, author of Immigrant, Inc.: Why Immigrant Entrepreneurs Are Driving the New Economy, nearly all U.S. job creation in the past 20 years has come from companies less than five years old.
The history of US immigration policy has been schizophrenic to say the least, with periods of great social openness followed by about-face door slamming. The slamming has always corresponded to economic downturns or anxiety thereto. But here we have the opposite effect. And we have legislators taking a forward view! Both proof that the future is sure to surprise us.
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Nov 12, 2009 in all, innovation, management, managing uncertainty, risk management, strategic foresight, technology change
I’m pleased to have been invited to be one of a dozen or so regular contributors to the blog ‘Risk Matters,’ because, well, risk matters. It’s a key part of the reason why anyone or any group would look to the future… which of course also conditions how we look, what we look for, and what we find or miss.
So this stimulates me to put down a few thoughts about risk assessment and its relationship with industry and strategic foresight as a whole. This is a big topic of course, but seeing as the categories are confused a lot, it’s worth tackling even if just in summary terms.
When I reach the topic of Risk Assessment in my ‘Industry Foresight and Business Future Strategy’ MBA elective, I use the ‘Adidas-Salomon: Incorporating Risk into Corporate Strategy’ mini-case [Ref: ICFAI 304-141-1; sourced via Cranfield’s Case Clearing house.]
The case is a useful baseline in risk assessment because it describes the various risks a multinational company typically faces: marketing risks (market change, brand image); operations risks (quality; reliability of processes and suppliers); social & environmental risks (workforce & natural resources compliance); legal (liability, regulation, patent); information technology (compromise or disruption); and financial risks (currency, interest rate, credit).
Business disruptors
In sum these are the things that could damage or disrupt the business. Isolating such factors, keeping vigilance over them, and having thought through or enacted counter-measures in advance, allows the organization to better control or reduce the impact should risk become reality.
All risks are future events, so a risk assessment is undoubtedly a future study, but assuming a company looks diligently across all these categories for potential and emerging hazards, how prepared is it for a changing world? What kind of industry foresight does this give managers? Is a risk assessment a futures assessment?
The obvious first answer is that a risk assessment is only half the equation. It’s oriented to the downside potential of changes not the upside; looking for threats not opportunities. Obviously that means that opportunities are less likely to be identified.
The second thing is that a standard risk assessment operates in the realm of known risks, in known categories, that may cause disruption and damage in a known way. It doesn’t have the mechanism to expand conceptions of what could go wrong, or how it could go wrong, or what the full knock-on effects will be. The types of mental-model-expanding techniques that fuller foresight offers are not built into a typical risk assessment.
Strategy questions
Third, risk assessments never really broach the question: is the business idea or business model good and will it keep on being good? That is, what products or services will be appropriate going forward, or how will models of supply or manufacture or marketing or fulfillment need to change, due to technology change or shifting consumer preferences.
In other words, risk assessment doesn’t ask strategic questions of managers. It is part of the day-to-day management vigilance necessary with reference to the future – the hygiene factors in running an organization. It is about keeping the business going as is, not about changing it for a changing word.
There’s nothing wrong with this. The point is, it’s just ‘first base’ in building a quality view of the future, and therein a robust point-of-view about what to do next. Although no doubt companies such as Google or Apple or Virgin, etc., assess and mitigate their risks, they didn’t become successful in their future by doing risk assessment and saying ‘That’s it, were done. We’re ready for the future.”
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Sep 18, 2009 in all, innovation, lifestyles & values, strategic foresight, technology change
Picture: londonfashionweek.co.uk
London Fashion Week, the UK’s slice of the $300-billion global fashion industry, starts today with flash of couture, whirring of camera and, no doubt, glug of Veuve-Cliquot. All the sass and celebrity pizzaz, and the actual catwalk schedule, can be found at londonfashionweek.co.uk
So… it’s teen giraffes tottering around in outrageous stuff, the watered down version of which will be pumped through the supply chain until it appears at your local department store in six-to-nine months. Same as it ever was, right?
In fact, not really. One of the gathering trends of the current era, across many industries, is the empowerment of consumers as ‘taste-makers,’ circumventing designers and specialist advisers. This is currently putting fashion executives through the wringer as “who decides” what is good, what is made and marketed, is being wrested from the fashion elite and from fashion intermediaries (glossy magazines like Vogue and Elle) by the “woman-in-the-street.”
The industry’s longstanding top-down orientation — where “we” told “you” what next year’s ‘look’ will be — is cracking as consumers who can easily access, share, and discuss every fashion preference, including their own, now get ‘networked affirmation’ rather than affirmation from the top.
Internet and mobile communications, and social networking technologies are behind this, of course. Access to style and fashion advice now comes anywhere, anytime. The stuffy catwalk shows are not open to the public (ah, the whiff of elitism still breathes for now,) but as a recent story in the LA Times points out: “Images can be seen online minutes after a designer shows them… The Internet makes it possible not only to read about fashion but to participate in it. The use of sites that enable users to create their own fashion-spreads, share photos of themselves in different outfits and elicit wardrobe advice from their peers is skyrocketing.”
The news for elite arbiters of taste in every industry in the 21st Century: it’s game-over. You will have to participate with your customers in their socially-networked formation of perceptions and opinions, a process you will be able to sometimes lead, but more often have to follow.
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Aug 4, 2009 in 2025, all, economy & finance, failed predictions, lifestyles & values, social change, technology change
In all the predictions of the future that I have ever read or heard, and all the scenarios I have been exposed to, it’s almost unheard of to see one that says “the squeezed middle class keeps their eye on a good deal, as they always have.”
I’m thinking about this as I see the Guardian today featuring a story about how “Poundland” has doubled it’s profits. Poundland is a copy-cat of the venerable US institution, the “dollar store,” where everything cost the same price, in this case £1.
Pic: Andrew Fox, The Guardian, August 4, 2009
The merchandising of these stores is not unsubtle. There are definite too-good-to-be-true loss leaders, but these more than offset by the many items that cost pennies wholesale. Fair enough. And recently reported doubling of profits is because more people are buying at these stores (downshifting) due to recessionarly squeeze and/or because of the current “sense of thrift” in the zeitgeist which makes pennywatching more “the done thing.”
But neither merchandising, nor consumer psychology is our primary concern here. From a foresight point of view, the point is that forecasts of 2010 that were around around a decade or two ago didn’t quite get around to saying anything about Poundstretcher leading a healthy economic life. It’s as unsexy as anything, compared to “peak oil” or advancing “singularity,” or nano-babble, and so on into the glorious future – or its polar alternative: crash & burn, soup kitchens, urban warlords rampaging, and so on.
But here we are coming to the end of the decade and a basic retailing gimmick for the squeezed middle-class consumer is well trafficked and very much part of the future. Yes, it’s success correlates with tougher times, but economic cycles will be with us repeatedly through the rest of the century and beyond.
This doesn’t mean there won’t be breakthroughs in technology or in consumer behavior. In fact, looking at the picture, one surely would not have got a pound for any amount of plain bottled water in a retail environment 20 years ago. Things do change. They just change slowly, or unevenly, against the gritty reality of savvy agregate choices made by a wary (global and growing) middle class.
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Jun 3, 2009 in all, economy & finance, failed predictions, forecast filtering, Future Savvy, leadership, management, Perils of Prediction
Normally I make a point of not reposting anything put up elsewhere, but this small list of foresight lessons deserves broader attention than just Electronics Weekly. According to EW blogger David Manners, Tsuyoshi Kawanishi, former CEO of Toshiba Semiconductors in his book Chip Management quotes 10 wisdoms of forecasting, see below.
They have a bit of the fashionable “SunTzu Art of War” feel to them, and some of the quotes may be apocryphal. But no matter. What’s really interesting in this very savvy list is how customer-focused the lessons are. As said in Future Savvy, and one can’t say it too many times, what customers (users, the public) want and the cost-benefit tradeoffs they will make is a MUCH more reliable guide to the future than any techno-fantasy.
The wisdoms also reflect a foresight industry insider truism and paradox: you seldom get to the future by asking the customer directly (e.g. in a focus group) what they would like to have. You have to leap for the customer (and use focus groups only to refine new offerings.)
The list:
“1. St Augustine said that it is a blessing from God that we can’t predict the future. If we predict prosperity, we will become complacent. If we predict evil, we will lose the ability to discriminate.
2 Sharp President Haruo Tsuji: ‘You cannot find out what the consumer wants only by doing market research. You need to pull the ideas out of your brain. Manufacturers of the future should not simply respond to market demands, they must create market demands.’
3. Konosuke Matsushita said: ‘Don’t try to fit your business to a forecast. Fit it to the needs of your customers.’
4. Toshiba President Sugiichio Watari: ‘Money doesn’t come falling into the headquarters of Toshiba. If you want money you need to go to the customers.’
5. President Yoshio Tateishi of Omron: ‘Learn from your customers. If you learn from internal resources you will become self-satisfied. If you learn from your competitors you will fall far behind.’
6. Professor Yoshiya Teramoto of Meiji Gakuin University: ‘When companies start a big market research project, it is one sign of the ‘big company’ disease.’
7. Tsuyoshi Kawanishi: ‘The way to predict the weather is to look at the sky. And, every once in a while, you can make your prediction by simply thinking.’
8. President Haruo Tsuji of Sharp says: ‘Don’t be a spider, be a honey bee.’
9. Takeshi Kaneda, a management critic, says: ‘After elaborate research to find out what the consumer wants, Ford produced the Edsel. It was a complete failure. Ford mistook what the customer wanted for what they would really buy. They ignored their insight and relied on consensus. Japanese tend to emphasize harmony and consensus. But insight and decisiveness can be more important.’
10. Someone says: ‘Figures do not lie. But liars often use figures.’”
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on May 28, 2009 in 2025, all, emerging technologies, innovation, policy, strategic foresight, technology change
College graduation is a fabulous time and place to think big, and therefore a good place to have a futurist do the thinking. Peter Schwartz recently gave the valedictory address to the 2009 graduating class of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (he graduated there in 1968) and offered a grand 10-point challenge list for techies of the future:
Allowing for the usual pep-talk style of these things, it’s possible to boil the list down to five key things, which will indeed be essential to technology enabled industry and social change in the lifetime of today’s college graduates:
1. Non-pulluting, inexhaustible energy. Schwartz mentioned potential sources including fusion and gasoline-excreting molecules. “We need something new for the long run, and it will require new physics, new chemistry, new materials, new biology, or likely some combination.”
2. A “bio-industrial revolution” to make production of goods more energy efficient and environmentally sustainable.
3. Advancing understanding of the human brain, and developing new means to combat aging effects.
4. Improving agriculture to raise yields while reducing environmental costs.
5. Better urban planning, civil engineering, and smart architecture for more sustainable cities.
A fairly well known list – yet these are the key issues. But the most interesting thing of all that Schwartz said was this:”graduates should not assume they can do it alone. Collaboration is a key ingredient of progress.”
“At some point in the next few years, probably by the time you are 30 … you will have to make a life trajectory decision that no one tells you about: Are you mainly going to work on your own or work through others?” Schwartz said. “Many engineers, scientists, artists, poets, writers have great lives working mostly by themselves. But there are many things you cannot do on your own. If you want to lead research teams in larger organizations, or design and construct new buildings, or make movies or start new businesses, the skills of human collaboration are essential to success.”
In other words, collaboration – the means to and willingness to and resources to collaborate (globally) – is a key enabler of important breakthroughs. In theory everyone knows this and everyone agrees. But how much of competitive and legal process is all about protecting individual or national work, that is disrupting collaboration?
So in addition to the grand technology challenges for coming lifetimes, I offer a similar grand policy challenge (perhaps for Kennedy School grads of 2009): create the policies that genuinely promote and encourage collaboration. Do not encourage people, or companies, or countries to see benefit in working on their own. Facilitate and reward information sharing at every level… and then the Rensselaer grads and their equivalent around the country and the world will really be able to create the future that Schwartz envisions.
For event report see Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=2585
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Apr 22, 2009 in 2015, 2025, all, emerging technologies, failed predictions, forecast filtering, Future Savvy, horizon scanning, innovation, lifestyles & values, Perils of Prediction, social change, technology change
A basic tool of foresight work is horizon scanning, that is, scanning for signals of change, early portent of trends, straws in the wind of change. Futurists do it habitually, and if not habitually then – the wisdom is – do it routinely by consciously scanning sources of information you don’t normally. Buying an agricultural weekly or teen idol rag at the airport, rather than your standard dose of the Economist.
It was in this spirit that I picked up the UK launch issue (aka May 2009) of Wired. Actually it’s not the first launch. Wired was in the UK ten years ago, but Condé Nast withdrew it in the dot.com crash. In the US at the time, I remember when Wired, the poster child of the Silicon Valley / Nasdaq bonanza, was almost as thick as a phone book each month. But those days were soon over.
Anyway, who could resist an offering that was about to tell me about my “Life in the future. “Fake Meat, Robots and Electro-Sex: the World is About to Change.” On the cover are, I kid you not, flying cars!
Now, I wouldn’t take this stuff seriously for a moment, if everyone else promised not to. But they don’t. So here we go. In the “What’s Next?” cover story 46 experts make 99 predictions about the next 40 years, and none of them will happen, or not in the time frame expressed.
Oh, moon settlement?
I shrink from sharing the list. Meal replacement patches, check. Moon settlement, check. The male pill, check. Every techno-fantasy of the jockish sci-fi world, check. Well, let’s stop on the male pill for a moment. Can we not do it? Sure we can do it – today. What’s stopping it is not technology. It is attitudes (machismo, essentially). So Wired experts are telling us that this will go away in a decade. Puh-leez.
I hardly need mention there’s no method given behind any of these expert forecasts.
Don’t you think Wired should be asking themselves why, in 2009, they are producing 186 pages of dead tree and carting it around the country in carbon-emitting trucks? Technology-vision may lead you to a view of the future. But it’s unreliable. The future is determined by what consumers are ready for. Well, that’s one of the 20-or-so key forecast filtering principles of Future Savvy.
Perhaps we should look at the cover story for what it is really about – which is selling magazines. Because, there’s no doubt that tech is changing, and many new capabilities are coming on stream, and this is very, very fascinating to imagine uses for. And this fascination is what Wired packages and sells. Don’t bet any money on the predictions though, certainly not their timeline.
But sturdy in some areas
Aside from the predicting lark, it’s a good magazine of its kind. The features are well-conceived, well-written, for example, one about how the BBC iPlayer business was built; a feature on sea salvage; a profile of PayPal founder Elon Musk; the David X Li formula and how it mis-calculated risk, and so on. Great stuff. Actually quite a sturdy business-oriented-view of techno-change, if you can get past the boys-with-toys riff of the magazine as a whole.
So, actually, much to like. Just, please, don’t think a lad’s mag is going to tell you anything coherent about the future.
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Mar 16, 2009 in 2025, all, economy & finance, emerging technologies, forecast filtering, lifestyles & values, Perils of Prediction, policy, social change, technology change, trend tracking
It’s all in a day’s irony when Guinness releases its 250-year view of the future on the day that the UK Chief Medical Officer pleads for a minimum price for alcohol (and Gordon Brown, for now, says no, but don’t bet on that holding for long.)
Guinness' view of the pub of 2259. Image credit: Chris Bainbridge
The Guinness Pub-of-the-Future is a St. Patrick’s day (March 17) promotion. Nothing wrong with a little bit of fantasy foresight. But what they come up is so “20th-century-futurism” it’s hilarious. Among various reports on the project – for example in the Telegraph – the following features are foreseen:
- robotic doorman, greets you by name
- cash obsolete; orders via RFID; payments deducted automatically
- your product tailored to you on the spot
- touch-sensitive tables, send your order straight to the bar
- socializing via virtual / hologram technology
- a running tally of the number of units consumed.
Yawn. Even on it’s own terms (minimal constraints of realism) this is a totally derivative piece of foresight. These “innovations” are the staples of an infotech view of the future, and they have all been thought and spoken of countless times. Also many of the elements and services cited are already here, or not more than a decade away. What we have is the current pub assumptions + digital steriods, while the year 2259 will be, truly, another world.
The limits to growth
But all this leads us to more interesting industry foresight problem. Will there be pubs in even a generation, never mind 250 years? What the Telegraph dryly observes at the bottom of its report is that 39 pubs are closing every week Why? A number of driving forces are coming together:
First is strict drink-driving limits, which makes “the local” literally local or nothing. Second, pubs in the UK have traditionally been a refuge from housing that was poor and/or underheated. Unprecedented waves of affluence (credit-crunch notwithstanding) have led to widespread housing “do-ups.” It’s now a valid option for most people to spend their leisure time at home and entertain at home.
Then there’s the where’s-my-friend trend. You’re likely to go down the pub if your friends are there, but not if they are where most people’s friends are: on Facebook.
The social-legislative clock
Fourth, no matter how you dress it up, pubs are retail outlets. So, like all retail they are under the cosh in a Wal-mart / Tesco world. The price gap between store and pub has become too great for most consumers to cross with good conscience.
Which brings us to the current price-floor legislation bid. Alcohol is a huge social cost in terms of health care and violence. Drink costs the NHS £3bn a year, and the total price of alcohol to the taxpayer is estimated at five times that. Eventually these costs will become unjustifiable so, like smoking before it, the social-legislative clock is ticking for booze. As the 2-martini lunch has become the 2-seltzer lunch, the trend to social stigmatization is clear, and legislators will follow (not with Prohibition, but with a much more subtle community-endorsed squeeze).
Like the good politician he is, Gordon Brown won’t let his party get ahead of the trend. But the trend is clear and it bodes ill for pubs.
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Feb 4, 2009 in 2015, 2025, all, emerging technologies, forecast filtering, horizon scanning, innovation, social change, strategic foresight, technology change
A fascinating 1981 two-minute KRON news story about home computers and the future of newspapers appeared on BoingBoing a few days ago. The clip is here:
The story covers the pilot project of two San Francisco newspapers seeking to create an online edition. The presenter starts: “Imagine if you will sitting down with your morning coffee and turning to your computer to read the day’s newspaper. Well it’s not as far fetched as it seems…”
28 years later it’s exactly what we do. But it seemed far-fetched then, and this was not a misjudgment: it has taken us until now, the full 28 years in most developed countries, to get to the point where mass online newspapers rival mass print editions in the market. What might that tell us about what seems far-fetched now, whether it will happen or not, and how long it will take? How does it improve our foresight?
$10 plays 20c, but not for long
The news clip features early 1980s computers – the text-only green screens – and achingly slow phone-set modems. A newspaper takes two hours to download (with no picture, ads, or comics). So there are technology limitations.
Then there are economic barriers: the local-call hourly charge is $5 (=$10 for the paper) while the print copy costs 20c.
And there are system-wide market-adoption issues: there are only “two to three thousand” home computers in the Bay Area at the time. Home computer penetration is obviously related to utility (usefulness/cost) of the machine.
But in 1981 home computers were about to get a whole lot better for a whole lot less – and with this programmers would be drawn into turning the technology into something we actually need, and ultimately can’t do without – all driving towards the utility jump that signals mainstream adoption. But at the time home computers were an unimaginably small niche of the total media market.
Fast forward to 2037 and what might we be able to say about it? First, that the pilot projects of important new mainstream markets already exist today (along with great business opportunities). The technologies involved are, now, incredibly clunky and expensive, meaning consumer utility is laughably low. But this will steadily unravel to the point where the technology is fantastic and affordable, and voila! We will have fundamental transition and entirely new mainstream markets.
But the most important lesson of all is this: it will take a generation. The future never cuts corners. All fundamental changes in social and market patterns take at least a generation, if not more. There’s a well-known truism in foresight work, which is this: we tend to overestimate the pace of change, but underestimate how all-encompassing it will be, once it comes.
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Jan 13, 2009 in 2015, 2025, all, emerging technologies, failed predictions, forecast filtering, innovation, Perils of Prediction, scenario planning, strategic foresight, technology change
Microsoft - Computer Electronics Show 2009
Product prototype communication is a close cousin of scenario building. Typically the company creates their product or service in action, in the future, being used by happy customers, their “preferred future” scenario. Prototype communication doesn’t typically build in alternative scenarios, the litmus test of strategy-based scenario work. It’s more a kite-flying exercise, designed to put out a future-oriented message to stakeholders and the public, garner broad feedback, and (if you’re powerful like Microsoft) put up “this-is-the-future-of-the-industry” markers.
Nevertheless, with the caveat that they are one among many plausible outcomes, product showcase scenarios can be an eye-opening guide to what’s actually possible and what the future will be like.
A newly released Microsoft “Future of Computing” video, showcased at CES 2009 in Las Vegas in the past few days, is an example. The 10-minute piece, presented by Janet Galore, Program Manger: Strategic Prototyping, takes us through a scenario of interactive education in the future (when, exactly, is not said but the implication is it’s not too far off) showing how participants would find, use, and share information across devices and across platforms.
What we see is a tablet PC that can communicate seamlessly with other electronics and interact with Web info on the fly. Okay nothing new there. What’s interesting is how it’s all held together by surface computing, a smart desk with a screen, which allows information to be viewed in the process of collaboration, sharing, and filing. In some futurist fantasies it is thought that communication is ideally invisible (my phone e-handshakes your phone without me doing anything, etc.) But actually humans mostly seem to prefer to see what’s happening, and to have the choice to interact with what is happening while it’s happening – not least so they know what machines have done and don’t have to pull their hair out before they find their precious work buried four subdirectories into the Temp folder… sheesh. But I digress.
The scenario focuses on organizing and sharing multiple inputs, therein making a pretty clear statement about the future: what will be really valuable is not access to information anywhere, anytime (an assumed, table-stakes factor), but a way to share and collaborate with the information in an productive way. It refreshingly assumes that whiz-bang graphics – they are there too – are the easy stuff, but that collaboration and teamwork are the hard things to get right, and the truly valuable service given the chaos of billions of voices and trillions of data objects that pertain in any human-work future.
The other real strength of the prototype and related scenario is its close attention to natural (or, at least, strongly socialized, conventional, classic) human ways of doing things, which are slow to change, and therefore will change slowly. The smart desk is something one can really see oneself sitting around, because this is what we already do. Also this future of computing envisages no stylus, no mouse, no magic wand to master. Rather, we move digital stuff around the desk with our hands. We point to it and we shift it. That is, digital capability accommodates and interlaces with Stone Age human and organizational patterns. That’s why this view of the future is persuasive.
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Dec 3, 2008 in 2015, all, emerging technologies, failed predictions, forecast filtering, innovation, technology change, trend tracking
I finally got to look at Kevin Kelly’s TED presentation on “the next 5,000 days of the Web,” and bring it up here because it’s really worthy of comment from a foresight quality – Future Savvy – point of view.
Kelly needs no introduction. He’s the executive editor of Wired and a core who’s-who in the new media technology world. The first lesson he has to share is a key one: the Web is only about 5,000 days old – that’s about 13 years (the Internet, DARPA, etc., is older) – and all the stuff we have and now take for granted, from online investing to social networking to Wikipedia has happened in this short time.
The video is available here:
As Kelly says, and he’s undoubtedly right: “if I had predicted all this would be there (and free) nobody would have believed it. It’s impossible. The lesson is that very big changes do occur in fast-moving industries when considered over a decent-length (e.g. 10-15 year) timeframe. So let’s not kid ourselves: mere extrapolation of current trends doesn’t take us to the future. A leap – a paradigm shift – a willingness to anticipate fundamental shifts in technologies, institutions, and business models, is required.
So, against this, it is interesting that much of what Kelly predicts for the next 5,000 days of the Web is fairly conservative… but he does build in the idea of a new, fundamental shift.
The Web in 2020
What does he see coming in the next 5,000 days?
1. First thing is what Kelly calls “Embodiment” of the Web, by which he means that every device, every screen (laptop, phone, iPod, sat-nav, etc) becomes a “window into the machine” rather than a stand-alone device. There will be one Web, one machine, and everything will go through it. Part of this is that the Web will be embedded into the physical world – inanimate objects from cars to shoes to will have connectivity. Whether through RFID or other technologies, “there will be an Internet of things.”
Hello? We’ve heard this all before. Many times. In fact we were hearing it in the 90s. This doesn’t mean it’s wrong. In fact if we’ve been hearing it for so long, and the trend is still clearly in this direction, the forecast is probably right. What’s interesting is how non-radical it is.
2. Next he talks about “Restructuring” which is his term for the “Semantic Web” or what some call “Web 3.0” The idea is: first we linked computers (the Net), then we linked pages (the Web), and next we will link all the data or information or ideas anywhere on the Web to all relevant data /information/ ideas elsewhere on the Web. (This made possible by technologies such as XML, RSS, OWL, API, RDF)
One of the payoffs of this, says Kelly in an illuminating example, is that we won’t have to “re-friend” in each social networking platform. The technology will know we’re “friends” with Warren Buffet and Tom Peters and Malcolm Gladwell (…lol) as we move from Linked-In to Facebook to Technorati, and so on.
3. Kelly’s final point is that humans will be co-dependent with the Web. It will be always on, always there, ubiquitous, and the single fundamental tool we depend on to do everything.
Again, there’s nothing new in these points. It’s all been said before. In fact, as is often the case in good futures thinking, the value in Kelly’s forecast is that it is a carefully considered “cut” from what is usually forecast, leaving behind the wilder things that are said. Kelly on Web 2020 doesn’t say “expect digital human implants; ‘conscious’ devices; retina-as-screen,” and so on – the beam-me-up-Scotty kind of foresight that unfortunately often gets the headlines.
The next stage
Nevertheless, he is equally not saying the next 5,000 days will be “like the Web, only better.” The capabilities, the embodiment, the dependency, imply a new stage, he says. What that new stage will look like at the business and institutional level – what products/services/delivery will be possible via Web 3.0 – what the Yahoo or Google or Facebook or similar iconic institutions will there be, Kelly does not get into.
Fully thinking through the next 5,000 days of the Web involves going from the capabilities to what is built on them. But all in all this is a classy, integrated piece of future thinking (that easily fulfills the Questions to Ask of any Forecast checklist in Chapter 11 of “Future Savvy”) and is a solid foundation on which to consider future business and organizational implications.
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Oct 8, 2008 in 2025, all, emerging technologies, forecast filtering, foresight tools & methods, Future Savvy, horizon scanning, innovation, lifestyles & values, Perils of Prediction, social change, strategic foresight, systems dynamics, technology change
My attention was struck by an advertisement in The Times on October 1, 2008 (on a plane to NY – for better or worse this paper not a routine part of my daily diet) that offered a “LP2CD” machine that transfers vinyl records to CD directly.
This is the item:
There’s nothing new about this of course – the product has been around for a while, and ways to take vinyl and digitize it have been offered since the CD became the music industry standard in the mid-1980s. What’s interesting is that it is still being offered in 2008, more than 20 years after the technology transition. And still being bought, despite a sticker price of gpb 299 (nearly $600. In fact, this is the special newspaper-tie-in deal price.) The producers and marketers have, no doubt, done their homework: there are still enough people out there with vinyl records to justify a product and a campaign, including big newspaper spots that don’t come cheap.
What does this tell us about the future, and about predictions? It illustrates a key principle in thinking circumspectly and more accurately about the future. Legacy investments and legacy situations are a reality. They often represent a significant slice of daily practice or market share, well beyond the time when things have, officially, moved on. For all practical purposes, in any future the past continues to exist for a long time.
A slow and measured exit
This is common sense. But often missed by breathless techo-forecasters whose eyes are fixed on the next new thing. The implication of many forecasts is, when a new technology emerges into the market (which often takes longer than expected) that is also when previous solutions fall away. Not so. Yes, sometimes a new product is clearly advantageous, and adoption is rapid and pervasive. But when there are real investments in prior systems and technologies, these typically work their way out of people’s lives slowly, often over generations. The transition takes longer than we think it will.
While they are still part of the picture, legacy systems work against change (“This is working fine for me, why should I shift?” or “I’ve invested heavily in this, I can’t afford to shift”). On the other hand, as evidenced by the LP2CD in 2008, opportunities in the legacy system, or in facilitating a transition to the new system, may exist and be significatn long after everyone’s attention has moved on.
There are legacies in all kinds of products and services. A case that is currently pertinent, as discussed in Future Savvy, is the existence of deep legacies in the automobile industry and gasoline-petroleum supply chain. Both petroleum supply constraints and carbon emissions worries are driving hybrid engines, new fuels, and renewable forms of energy (technology is not the obstacle here) but the reality is that we are all deeply invested in a legacy petroleum-automobile system, from the well to the refinery to the factory to the forecourt. Even when new / alternative energies are proven, reliable, and equal in price and performance, the legacy will continue to exist, and it will erode gradually, as companies or consumers slowly renew their investment over time. Of course regulatory or social pressure can accelerate the incremental process, but nothing can make it vanish.
This means, in this example, there’s no possibility of a sudden change in individual land-based transport solutions. Whatever comes along will have to emerge into and live side-by-side with past systems and infrastructure for a very long time.
Legacy as luxury
Here’s another principle of legacy systems surviving into the future. There are many examples where a surpassed technology remains in existence, but moves into a niche or luxury market. The car replaced the bicycle and the horse, but both continue to enjoy massive popularity. In the developed world, more bicycles are sold than ever in history, but these are primarily for exercise or leisure. Horses, once widely distributed through society as instruments of work, are still part of a very active industry, but this industry is about leisure and/or gambling. Similarly, electricity replaced candles as our primary means of illumination, but candles are everywhere – associated with mood and romance rather than functionality. Ball-point pens squeezed the fountain pen off the table, but that merely freed the fountain pen to become an icon of status and refinement.
Posted by Adam Gordon on Jul 17, 2008 in 2015, all, emerging technologies, failed predictions, forecast filtering, innovation, systems dynamics, technology change
I was at the recent Media Futures Conference 2008 in London where a lively cross-section of delegates spent their time – as to be expected, this is the topic-du-jour – pondering the impact of social networking-based “citizen journalism” on the traditional media. In the era where everyone can “publish” all the time, what is the role and purpose of, for example, the BBC? As major news sites are scrambling to allow reader’s views, or eyewitness pictures and so forth, do they become dissolved in a sea of chat, blog, and tweet?
I don’t think so. There are many new communication modes to explore as established media outlets get to grips with the micro-publishing and social networking technological possibilities and consumer preferences, but the fear that traditional journalism or traditional media is “under threat” is, to me, overblown. Yes, anyone can publish news and views anytime, but most strive to put their 2c worth on the media sites associated with the major newspaper and electronic media brands. Why? To benefit from (a) the visibility, that is, presence of many readers, and (b) the editorial quality – the brand promise – of the established media outlet. A submitted picture that is seen, for example, on The Guardian site, is worth a thousand pictures on mynonameblog.com. This is all-the-more true if the publication editors flag readers attention to the citizen journo contribution: giving it an editorial stamp of approval.
The power of hubbing has been talked about a lot, not least by management guru Michael Porter, and there can be no doubting the reinforcing feedback loop at work in hubs. In this case, where more readers are that’s where more writer-contributors want to be, which makes the hub more valuable to readers, etc. What’s most valuable to readers in a world of a billion potential journalists? Little doubt it is what has always been valuable to readers, that is, the activities of editors providing oversight and quality control: filtering, choosing, framing and balancing information and viewpoints. Any content that is not subject to oversight is, well, just someone yapping.
From origination to “hubbing”
What will surely happen to the main media outlets is that the percentage of own-originated content will go down as the percentage of publicly contributed content goes up. They will have to adjust their game to include wider information quality management. In addition to providing what they always have (quality and timely and relevant content) they will need to be able to function less as own-content originators and more as hubs – providing editorial-quality oversight and therefore attracting many readers in the virtuous-cycle spoken of above. But they will still be in business, and still in essentially the same business of information collection, editorial processing and oversight.
The citizen journalist may effect what the media outlets says and does – for example by providing evidence that must be included in a story – but this does not change the balance of power. The value of the editorial oversight and synthesis is higher than ever. This is what branded media providers offer and the citizen journalist cannot. The principle of anticipating the future here is this: where a service provides a value, the service-provider will continue to exist into the future. Nothing has changed in the value of editorial oversight, in fact, it is more valuable than ever. That’s why major media outlets will be part of the future.
This is not to say the current major media brands will survive – they may well miss or mismanage the transition to information quality hub function – and fold, as brands or as companies, as new ones emerge. The general news brands may also, over time give way to narrower topic niche brands. But the concept of a centralized quality-enforcing media hub is not dissolving into citizen yapping any time soon.
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Jul 15, 2008 in 2015, 2025, all, emerging technologies, failed predictions, forecast filtering, horizon scanning, lifestyles & values, managing uncertainty, Perils of Prediction, politics of the future, social change, strategic foresight, technology change, trend tracking
In planning seminars and discussions about the future, a key topic is inevitably “technology change.” Participants will turn to each other, or perhaps to industry research or techno-tracking Web sites or “technology roadmaps” to consider technology changes in their industry and in the world at large, and how this may change the future.
So far so good. Tracking technology change is an important stage in scanning the external environment and anticipating sources or change and/or disruption. But no technology ever changed itself. History is littered with fabulous mind-bending, world-changing technologies that didn’t make it out of the lab. In fact, technologies only change because humans or human institutions want them to change AND (two separate hurdles here) they allow them to change.
Most people, most of the time, want technologies to change because they change for the better, improving products and services and/or making them cheaper. Companies want new technologies because improvements offer new sales options and (sometimes) industry competitive advantage, among other things. Societies express the desire for technology to go forward by stimulating and facilitating change in many ways (for example through government or industry funding of R&D or protecting intellectual property or making capital markets more transparent.)
Technology filtered by human choice
Once a technology breakthrough emerges, that’s hardly the end of the story. In fact it is still very much the beginning. New technologies of any importance are subject to public scrutiny and choices. Individually, or as a society, we ask ourselves, is this technology good for us? Debates happen, and power and politics and regulation takes its course, but one way or another technologies that most people like – mobile phone’s for example – will go forward while technologies such as GMOs will stall. Also, in a market economy, technologies are inescapably subject to consumer economics: those that raise user benefit (pass a buyer;s cost-benefit analysis) will be adopted. Those that don’t sit in the lab.
In other words, technology possibility is a matter of science and engineering, and the possibility frontier is expanding all the time, but the road from possibility to actuality is the rocky road of human ideas, preferences, and choices. Technology change means technology adoption, that is, it is a form of social change.
Why is this distinction important? Because one of the main reasons forecast fail is they see the technology possibility frontier as the future, underestimating the forces of social triage. There are two sites that I love that illustrate this wonderfully. Check out Paleo-Future (A Look into the Future that Never Was) and Modern Mechanics (Yesterday’s Tomorrow Today). Both are crammed with failed forecasts of this type. This is not to say that we cannot forecast usefully – much more to come on this in this journal – but it does give us pause in viewing many of today’s techno-inspired forecasts which make the same type of error. (Pics credit to the sites mentioned.)
