"Opportunities 2009" - the workforce of 2020! I was the opening keynote speaker yesterday for Opportunities 2009, a conference in Ontario, Canada, that was focused on workplace trends to 2015.
The keynote description went like this:
What Comes Next: And What Should We Do About It?Is there a future out there? Definitely yes, but a constant drumbeat of negative news can cause people and organizations to lose sight of what will happen with careers and jobs in the future. That's where Jim Carroll comes in -- this noted international futurist, trends & innovation expert spends his time with globally innovative leaders. He's gained keen insight into some of the key trends which will impact industries, organizations and careers in the next few years to come, in a wide variety of industries from health care, to technology and manufacturing, to the skilled trades. Jim is a passionate believer in the reality that every career and profession is in the midst of a transition, and that additional, new careers are being born before our very eyes.
Jim Carroll will challenge you to focus on the opportunities of today and tomorrow, rather than the challenges of the past. Jim will provide an outline of how the economy will evolve from this point out -- and how we should be planning and acting in order to innovate in career development ahead of fast-paced events. He'll provide us a look at "what comes next, and what we should do about it.
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In the coming weeks and days, I've got a lot to blog about this keynote: I took a good hard look at emerging careers, transitioning careers, and how existing careers are changing as a result of ever-increasing velocity.
The talk was extremely well received -- probably because I focused the 700+ people in the room on the opportunities of the future rather than the current economic muck of today.
What was interesting was that for the first time, one of my keynotes was tweeted from the room - you can read the thread here.
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Good jobs in Bad Times - I'm interviewed on PBS on future career trends
WKSU, the PBS affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio, has been running a series this week titled "Good Jobs in Bad Times." It's a serious look at current and future job and career trends. Topics include "high-paying tech jobs, careers that don't need a four-year degree, the re-growth of agriculture as industry, working part-time full-time, career makeovers, the truth about healthcare, bridge jobs after graduation and the future of the NE Ohio employment outlook."
I'm interviewed in the final segment, "What's next:Jobs of the future will likely refine the jobs of today."
Here's an extract: you can visit the site and listen to the series at the links below. I'm on at 2:58 on the timeline.
Jim Carroll of Toronto is a futurist who studies trends and tries to predict what lies ahead. He believes the growing interest in alternative energy and "green" products will generate new jobs in coming years, but not just in obvious ways such as building wind turbines and solar panels.
For example, "there's a lot of very unique research and development occurring out there having to do with packaging," Carroll said. "And what that leads to is new products coming to market. It involves new companies, it involves new growth industries. ...So, what you're going to have is the emergence of new companies with a new mind set developing these new products to meet new societal demands. And when you look at that, that's where some of the job growth is going to occur."
Carroll said companies must closely watch for trends that can be turned into new jobs. But, not everyone has the resources of a big company to find and capitalize on the next big thing. For individuals planning to train for new careers, Carroll advises they pursue jobs that are evolving in areas like health care. "Patient navigators," for example, are increasing in demand.
"It's a doctor or a nurse or a medical professional or someone with specific training who simply steers the patient through the complexity of the increasingly complex health care system," Carroll said. "It's estimated there's about 18,000 of these people in the US health care system today. It's estimated that number will grow to about 180,000 by the year 2015. That's the emergence of a new career.
"And if you're thinking, 'Where are the jobs going to be in the future?' It's in things like that."
It's a time series and interview, because on Monday I do a keynote for a group of HR professionals, community leaders, social innovators, career development and employment preparation practitioners, labour market experts and employers, on the theme of "Careers 2015." It will be a real, practical look at what we can expect in terms of career transitions, new careers and job opportunities a half decade out.
Think growth!
More information:
- Go to the Good Jobs in Bad Times site
- Go to the What's next:Jobs of the future will likely refine the jobs of today section
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Innovation, the auto industry and the new reality I've been talking to my clients for years about the problems with the auto industry manufacturing model, comparing the slow, ponderous mass-manufacturing techniques of Detroit to the faster, more nimble overseas competitors.
I dug this clip out from my July 2008 keynote in Sydney, Australia -- it's a good, quick hit on the different approaches to innovation in manufacturing.
Way back in 2003, I started talking about the "car company of the future," in the context of a "Google car." The clip seems timely now, as does a posting in July related to the video clip.
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Faster is the new fast -- also in auto
One of the key tenets of my book, Ready, Set, Done -- How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast,is that organizational "agility" is a fundamental cornerstone for future success.
It doesn't matter who you are or what you do -- fast defines success.
A few years ago, I spent time with management of a big car company. I don't think they got the concept.
Then there's Honda. Read this story about one of their Canadian plants -- and ponder on this sentence:
"Honda's assembly lines can switch models in as little as 10 days, spokesman Sakae Uruma said. By contrast, it could take months for most rivals to make the same change."
While certain sectors of the auto economy are in turmoil, others are in growth mode. One of the defining reasons being, they've structured themselves to act and change quickly. As big truck sales plummet, fast movers like these pick up the slack.
There's some very important food for thought here. Faster is the new fast.
More information
- Read As others slow, Honda ramps up
- The new face of manufacturing : agility, insight and execution...
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Is there hope for manufacturing? You bet!
I'm in Milwaukee today, speaking at a private group of manufacturers from across the country, who work within a particular industry.
- manufacturing is alive and well for those who have or who are transitioning out of competing with low cost off-shore competitors. Instead, those who are focused on higher-value products that carry important and intrinsic value for the consumer are, by and large, doing ok
- accomplishing this involves innovation: with business models, skills and capabilities of staff in the manufacturing facility, branding, marketing -- with a whole series of things.
In other words, it might be renaissance time in manufacturing, if you do the right things, and make the big bets. Spend some time reading the manufacturing posts on this blog, and maybe you'll find some of the insight and encouragement that you need.
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After flat? Rethink strategies and go post-flat!
As some economies continue to experience rounds of volatility, there are still plenty trying to figure out what to do next. And there are a many who are focused on the theme of "what do we do after the world has gone flat?"
In the "post-flat" world, you need to change your focus. In an upcoming keynote, I'll be concentrating on several core themes:
- focus on growth - shift your focus to opportunity rather than cost based competition
- think "market transformation" - don't tinker with strategy; you've got to be willing to shift assumptions, habits, routine
- refuse to compete on price - change the rules by recreating value in your product or service
- make big bets - whether its' infrastructure, sales force, distribution network: you've got to be willing to spend to transition
- think international - local markets are small markets; the global economy is well within reach for any organization today.
- think velocityOne of my most often used quotes when on stage comes from Rupert Murdoch: ""The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.""
More information:
- What do you do after the world gets flat? Put a ripple in it!
- Innovating in a flat world
- The new face of manufacturing : agility, insight and execution......
- Innovating in a flat world
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Branding, marketing, and manufacturing 2.0
From a variety of keynotes through the last few weeks, here's what we've got to deal with.
The consumer of today is:
- time challenged
- attention starved
- jumpy & fast with product perceptions
- edgy and vocal when operational excellence is not provided or perceived
- influenced differently in terms of brand / product / service choice
- more vocal when they've been "wronged"
- faster in adopting new trends and ideas
- faster to market
- more collaborative in design
- solutions oriented, responding to the fast consumer
- rapidly redefined by the customer
- having to maintain a brand image that is energized and up-to-date
- more transformational
- revived and rejuvenated on a more regular basis
- lifestyle oriented
- experimental
- shifting it's focus online
- changing faster in terms of message
- going premium and upscale, to avoid commoditization
- focus on the opportunity that comes from such rapid change, not the threat
- don't panic at the pace
- focus on the value of your product or service
- collaborate with your partners (i.e. packaging companies, retailers, consumer goods companies)
- invest in experiential capital by trying out lots of new ideas
- understand that the pace of change is only going to increase
- transition your team to think differently -- innovate!
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Innovating in a flat world - the jewelry industry
I keynoted the 2008 Manufacturing Jewelers and Suppliers of America Expo New York yesterday, on the theme of ""How to Unlock Your Potential in the High Velocity Economy." Just about a week from now, Dubai will hold a similar event. The challenge for the AJMA members is that they now find themselves in a world that has gone massively global and is far more competitive; and as the world has flattened, so too have their challenges. They're competing not only against the City of Gold, but countless other highly innovative jewelry centers.
The focus of my keynote: what to do after the world gets flat! How can they innovate to deal with the unique challenges of today? Most certainly, the challenges go far beyond just globalization: rapidly changing consumer attitudes are also playing a key role. I used some recent insight from research firm Mintel UK, which provided a few fascinating nuggets:
- only 5% of all the customers surveyed buy jewelry frequently - compare that to the trends with consumer electronics spending - a lot of discretionary spending now goes to the latter, and not the former.
- 22% compare prices before they buy
- 15% buy online
- 17% of women are finding jewelry sold in supermarkets an "increasingly attractive" option
These are all the classic signs of commoditization of an industry -- wherein existing competitors find themselves in a never-ending black hole of being forced to compete on price.
How do you innovate your way out of this? The advice I included in my 75-minute talk covered a vast number of issues; here's a few of the things they should focus on:
- faster time to market : fashion happens faster; they need to deal with this. If P-Diddy appears with a new ear-stud and it gets noticed, kids will want it. Agile jewelers align themselves to such instant production, by revamping their process and cost structure.
- innovate upside-down. Adopt new design philosophies: rather than innovating, focus on upside down innovation. Work with their retail partners to restart the design process. Innovative organizations recognize they can't do it all. They seek partners with everything they do, recognizing that there are of lot of really wonderful innovative ideas that transcend their organization and their culture. This allows them to discover new innovative ideas they hadn't thought of before; a process I call upside down innovation.
- revamp manufacturing capabilities: a lot of these folks manufacture to inventory, and with the high and fluctuating cost of gold and other metals, that's an expensive business model to maintain, particularly in the context of increased global competition. Leading edge manufacturers are using CAD/CAM tech to change their design process and are learning to shift their business model as a result.
These were just a few of the issues I covered ; the key is accepting the fast-change that envelopes the industry, and challenging your assumptions and habits to move forward!
More information
- Read the MJSA article Change Your Mind: Staying One Step Ahead
- Read What do you do after the world gets flat? Put a ripple in it!
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Innovation and insight in manufacturing
"Do you want to be focusing on the problems of the past, or do you want to outfit your organization so that everyone has the insight they need to deal with all the challenges that are being thrown at you in the future?"
That's my opening comment in an article I wrote --- the IndustryWeek Manufacturing Challenge -- that has appeared online.
The article presents a ficticious company struggling with multiple disparate information networks; they're wondering if they should bite the bullet and invest in a more sophisticated system, or whether they should struggle to make things work.
I opt for the former; from my perspective, innovative manufacturing companies should focus on these key traits, to deal with the unique challenges of the high velocity economy:
- Concentrate on rapid replenishment
- Go maximum on flexibility
- Transition single-source labor to multisource skills
- Implement flexible, just-in-time processes
- Develop better bid or service costing
- Have deep insight into rapidity
- Work to become the supplier of choice
- Be relentless on operational excellence
As I note in the article, "I’ve long been convinced that spending time on trying to rationalize disparate, uncoordinated, inflexible and unconnected systems is quite simply a waste of time, and I’ve seen dozens of organizations who have realized this and have moved on.
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The new face of manufacturing : agility, insight and execution...
Yesterday I gave the opening keynote for the annual manufacturers meeting of the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association. Most of the folks in attendance were CEO's and senior management with a wide variety of companies, and they were keen for insight into what they should be doing beyond knowing that the world is flat.
There was quite a bit of information to share with them. In the last few years, I have hosted a dozen or more sessions on behalf of the global computer giant SAP. I've interviewed the CFOs and CIO's of a wide range of major manufacturing companies such as Purdue Pharma, Hunt Oil, J Crew, Fossil Watches, Lennox Furnaces, Endo Pharmaceuticals, Adaptec and more. I've studied and analyzed what it is that these companies are doing to ensure that they can thrive in a world of rapidly changing markets.
Several key themes have emerged.
- Concentrate on rapid replenishment: smart supply chains are the bare minimum for today's manufacturers. What you really need to do is build an information-partnership with your suppliers and customers, ensuring that you stay lean and mean at the same time that you meet very tight delivery expectations. It's not about building-to-inventory -- it's about building to demand and build-to-order.
- Meet the raised bar of expectations : The new math is easy: that purchasing manager you are dealing with is often dealing with the best and the brightest companies on the planet. They will expect and demand the same level of service from you. The bar of expectations is pretty high, and it gets higher every day. At the very least, you've got to be able to provide instant, 110% service with everything you do -- support, order status, bid prices, dispute resolution. If you don't, you are increasingly out of the game. Today's customer has options, and they won't hang around waiting for you to fix your problems.
- Focus on planning agility: Gone are the days of sitting back and figuring out how to crank out a production run of 700,000 items. Markets and demand are changing so rapidly that you might need to retool, rework and redo your production capabilities, so that you can respond to something new that is going to happen next week. That's why you've got to ensure that you make agility -- the ability to change your own goalposts -- the cornerstone of your manufacturing capability.
- Go maximum on flexibility: Here's your new production mantra: volatility is the new normal. The last five years have taught us that unpredictability now comes at us in regular waves. If you are a food manufacturer and can't instantly respond to sudden, new food traceability requirements, you'll be faced with whopping, new, unmanageable excess costs. If you can't provide detailed new logistics information to respond to some sudden new security concern, you don't have the right flexibility. Today's manufacturers live with the new unknown, and plan for it.
- Transition single source labor to multi-source skills: Old line manufacturers have different workers that do different stuff. The new guys have transitioned themselves with an investment in training and attitude so that their production team members can take on multiple different projects and assignments. It's not about single-sourced skills -- it's about ingrained capabilities to instantly shift skills and resources to meet sudden new demands.
- Have deep insight into rapidity: With the collapse of product lifecycles and wildly fluctuating consumer / customer attitudes, you've got to stay on top of how quickly demand might change. All of the manufacturers I've studied with have ensured that they have the systems and technology that provide them deep, deep insight into how quickly their markets are changing. This includes CEO's and executive management who can access real time, high-level snapshots of all kinds of key operating metrics. Sales force and marketing and production teams who know exactly what is going on in the marketplace, minute by minute by minute, and plan accordingly.
- Concentrate on commonality of business / manufacturing processes: Most manufacturing companies of any scope and scale have had multiple, independently operated plants and facilities, with countless numbers of different production control, manufacturing, planning, logistics and supply chain systems. Anyone with any degree of smarts today has ripped out the junk, and has gone to one, single, comprehensive system to do it all. Time should not be spent on trying to make different bits of code work -- time needs to be spent in focusing on the competitive challenges in the marketplace!
- Implement flexible, just in time processes: What will your customers be buying six months from now? What new products might come out that will blow away your market position? If you don't know, you should -- and you should have the capability to quickly revamp, refocus and redo your business and manufacturing processes on an on-demand basis. The companies I've studied have pursued two key goals: ensuring that they can quickly redirect their manufacturing process, and in addition, having an IT staff that can quickly roll out sophisticated new business applications at the drop of a hat. Hand in hand, these two factors allow the organization to respond to the rapidity of market change that is a reality today.
- Develop better bid or service costing: Forget flying by the seat of your pants when you are putting out a bid on a contract. With margins so tight and with everyone becoming religious on cost management, that's a surefire way of ensuring that you'll lose money. Smart manufacturers have put in place the intelligent information backbones that let them bid and cost with a precision that matches the quality of their manufacturing process.
- Work to become the “supplier of choice: Your key goal today? You want to make it as easy as possible for your customers -- whether they are wholesalers, retailers, distributors, end users or other manufacturers -- to do business with you. Think of instilling "electronic glue" in your relationship -- it's all about partnering with them and putting in place business processes that makes it so easy for them to do business with you, that they will be unlikely to take their business elsewhere.
- Be relentless on operational excellence: Globalization means that being great is no longer enough -- you have to be even greater. That's why pursuing and achieving absolutely pure excellence within every aspect of the manufacturing operation is critical -- you've got to go beyond greatness, to excellence, in order to compete in the massively global, increasingly flat, ever more rapid, customer-empowered marketplace that is today. It's only by aiming for the highest that you can begin to hope to do what needs to be done.
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What do you do after the world gets flat? Put a ripple in it!
"When we have this global competition where everyone is competing on price, the only way out of that hell is to up the value of your brand" -- Jim Carroll, Snowboard Trade Magazine, November 2006
"Entities are engaged in survival tactics because they don't know what to do next" -- Jim Carroll
When I started skiing 7 years ago, I marveled at the different attitudes between skiers and snowboarders.
I think a lot of it is generational; many fellow boomers -- skiers, mostly, with the odd exception -- will ask me, when we're going up a ski lift, what I do for a living. If I'm on a lift with a boarder, though, they tend to ask a different question: "What do you like to do?"
That's a great mindset to have, and I think displays an enthusiasm for opportunity. When it comes to innovation, I think a lot of people don't know how to innovate because they don't know what to do next. Why? They've spent all their time thinking about cost, and have forgotten about all the other stuff they could be doing!
In the next few weeks, I'll be keynoting several events with folks who have been hammered pretty hard by the China/offshoring trend. They know they have to operate differently, and that they need to focus on becoming a low cost operator.
What they don't know is what to do next -- what do you do after the world is flat?
And what does this have to do with snowboarding and skiing?
Snowboard Trade News has just run an article, "Globalization: Snowboard Nation", looking at the question, "Does it matter where in the world a brand makes its products?"
I'm quoted in the article, as seen to the right. The magazine also ran my "10 Big Trends That Will Rock Your World" list, which is as relevant today as the day I wrote it a few years ago. When I was interviewed, I stressed the point that it can't be all about cost.
After reading the article this week, and while preparing for the groups that I'm keynoting in the weeks to come, I've realized that once people get the 'flat' part of this new economy, they are quite mystified as to 'what comes next?' And that is where they are missing the point on what innovation is all about. If your world has become flat, and you don't know what to do next, then put a ripple in it! Change it! Do something different. It's not just cost that is important -- there's lots more.....
That's what innovation is all about -- taking inertia and turning it into velocity. Given that, this list seems to make sense:
How to put a ripple in your flat world
- Focus on the brand . I emphasized this point in an interview on Danish national TV earlier this summer, where I was talking about the issue of "brand image in a low-cost economy." The fact is, brand names still matter, if you do the right things at the right time at the right velocity, so that your customers understand that your brand is innovative.
- Go big on quality : I'm on my 3rd DVD recorder. The first two were cheap, Chinese junk, and each lasted only a few months. I went with a brand name, bought the extended warranty, and am quite pleased that I've made it to ten months so far. I think quality is suffering in the flat-world, and I think it return to be a defining attribute in the years to come. It's not all about cost!
- Get religious on "time-to-market" : Hyper-innovation is real -- market velocity in every sector is huge as new products are invented and existing products are reinvented. To stay alive, you can't just pump out low cost junk -- you have to get the right stuff to the right market at the right time!
- Go deep with market knowledge. Every market is being devoured by furious innovation. Ask yourself this: can your sales, marketing and other staff keep up? Maybe not : a fascinating survey in the Birmingham Post, in an article about car dealerships, noted that "....35% of sales staff had little confidence in their own ability to demonstrate hi-tech in-car equipment such as BlueTooth devices and voice control systems." In other words, companies are selling into rapidly changing markets, and yet their sales staff doesn't have the insight of understanding what it is they are selling. That's not good.
- Increase value: When I keynoted the Sporting Goods Manufacturing Association last week, I challenged them to look at a baseball bat differently. While they might see a milled piece of wood, I challenged them to think of the baseball bat of 2015. It's likely to be highly interactive, enabled with intelligence, and will offer the kid of tomorrow some interactive information on their swing training. The company that does that -- and links itself to the heightened expectations of the consumer of tomorrow -- will have established some type of new value into a traditional, low value, low cost commodity item. Now that's cool -- and that's innovation.
- Focus on agility: Forget planning -- just do. I wrote about agility in my post What makes for corporate agility?, noting that we should "plan for short term longevity: No one can presume that markets, products, customers and assumptions will remain static: everything is changing instantly. Business strategies and activities must increasingly become short term oriented while fulfilling a long term mission."
- Seek partners: In my book What I Learned From Frogs in Texas, I wrote about the fact that we are entering a world that increasingly involves complexity partnerships. Simply put, in the high-velocity economy, you can't do everything at the pace demanded of you: you can only do it if you seek out those individuals and companies who possess a unique skill, suitable at this moment for a specific purpose.
- Go upside down : Turn product and service innovation upside down. Look to your customers, suppliers, and just about everyone else for ideas on how to reinvent your products. You just might find that they've already redefined your product, and you weren't even aware of it. Take a look at my other post of last week, about how to turn customers into partners.
- Stay motivated. Folks who have "gone flat" or who "get flat" seem quite dispirited: they have been relentlessly focused on cost, yet there is so much more to the future than becoming a low cost operator. Yet that's what innovation is all about: doing much more than simply "surviving" into a world that has gone flat, into a world in which you are thriving through innovation.
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The Google Car and massive market disruption
There are a few news stories today about Tesla Motors, which includes some of the founders of Google, involved in an effort to build a new electric car.
Let's just call it the Google Car.
I've been predicting this type of massive market shift since sometime in 2004; there's a video clip from January 2006 in which I talked at the Society of Cable Telecom Engineers annual conference about the concept of a Google Car (which in my view, will be delivered via FedEx and will come with a party in a box!). I even included the suggestion that you'd be able to pre-order online.
Hmm, look at that -- you can!
I don't think the scenario posted by Tesla is far-fetched at all -- given rapid science, hyperinnovation, low cost offshore production, and the slow response of other traditional business models .... every industry today is ripe for massive disruption and the rapid emergence of new competitors. A big part of the equation is avoiding 'legacy costs' both in manufacturing as well as sales and support. Think FedEx, not car dealerships. Think smart engine modules that pop in and out, not auto mechanics. Think WalMart, not ReadyLube.
It's all there, and someone just has to pull it together.
Watch the video clip here.
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