Thinking innovation: The Challenge for Education in the High Velocity World
I'm thrilled to learn that I've been selected as the opening day speaker for the College Board -- and specifically, a chance to speak with some of the leading minds in the university and college scene in the US on the issue of the future of education.
The audience for this invitation only event, to be held in January 2009, includes the Chancellors, Presidents, and senior admission officers for the largest colleges and universities in the US, including Duke, Cambridge, Harvard, Vanderbilt and the University of Texas, among others.
The group gets together annually to examine the challenges and opportunities facing higher education. This year, they determined that it was a good time to take a good, hard look at the education trends that will impact them in the future.
That's where I come in. My session description, recently written, addresses these issues:
The "velocity" of knowledge is leading us to a world of "just-in-time knowledge"; the result being the reality that the relationship between educational institutions and students is set to change; primarily, from a period of short term, concentrated knowledge delivery, to one more related to the lifelong, ongoing replenishment and rejuvenation of knowledge.In the last fifteen years, I've spoken to numerous groups on global education trends. Given that what we do in this area makes or breaks the future success of a nation, it's a critically important issue -- and I am honored that I will be able to share my thoughts with such a senior group of leaders.The challenge for institutions of higher learning is how to change their ingrained thinking, behavior, structure --and outcomes -- to adapt to this reality.
What's driving the future of education? At a fundamental level, ever more rapid scientific discovery; knowledge fragmentation due to rapid knowledge growth; massive skills specialization and ever more narrow career niches. Knowledge and careers are also being impacted by rapidly changing business models; increased volatility in industry; shortened careers (imagine 18-month micro careers); rapid emergence of new industries; more rapid knowledge obsolescence; and the rapid emergence of new careers.
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Freeze, innovate or panic? Innovation strategies for RIGHT NOW
Given the rapid pace of global economic developments, organizations are faced with a pretty stark choice.
The CEO of a company that is having me speak to an upcoming leadership meeting stated it this way: their choice going forward is to :
- Freeze: do nothing
- Innovate: respond to rapid market change through innovation, particularly with respect to strategies, struture, capabilities, markets, products, activities
- Panic: make rash decisions on structure, markets, investments.
But for others, panic will truly get you nowhere. And inaction - option 1 -- is not a good choice, because markets, customers behavior, cost inputs and just about everything else will change even faster now, and so you need to change faster.
Option 2 -- continuous innovation -- remains the only thing to focus on. Maybe that's why my phone has been quite busy in the last two weeks. There have already been several confirmed new events in October and November, where I will be coming into a corporate leadership meeting as part of an overall objective of keeping a company ahead in the game.
CEO's and executive staff are working hard to align their current strategies with fast paced economic events. I'm providing grist for the grill, with specific insight on how they might innovate within their particularly industry.
It's interesting that a lot of senior executives are all of a sudden looking for someone to bring their team this type of unique motivational innovation message. Two weeks ago, I helped to clarify for a commercial real estate / building management company leadership group where they could continue to find market opportunity right now, and how they needed to ensure they focus on enhancing existing customer/client relationships as a key strategy for going forward. We defined some strategies that they had not thought of; their team was inspired on focusing on opportunity rather than market upheaval, by thinking differently about what they do.
So what should you be doing from an innovation perspective?
I'll starting putting up quite a few new blog posts starting next week, summarizing the many methods to innovate, particularly through any economic correction or downturn. I'm going to call the series "100 Days of Innovation," and while I won't post each and every day, I do aim to have one hundred concise, succinct posts full of unique innovation insight.
In the meantime, if you need a high level, energetic message to get your leadership in the right frame of mind to deal with high-velocity economic change, call me. The details are on my contact page.
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High velocity change in the food/consumer products sector
I'm in Manhattan tomorrow, speaking at an event for food, advertising and packaging companies on behalf of Readers Digest Food & Entertaining Division. 
I'll be offering a late morning wrap up of observations about the high-velocity change that continues to envelop the sector, particularly the following trends. Dig through the blog -- particularly, the retail or consumer product categories -- and you'll find a little bit more insight about each of them.
- the new consumer is faster -- and innovation isn't just about new product design -- it's about reaching and interacting with the consumer in new and different ways
- the new consumer is connected -- and interactivity is the new brand foundation
- the new consumer is no longer nuclear -- and hyper-nicheing is the new brand reality
- the new consumer is influenced differently -- and social-networks are the new brand influencers
- the new consumer is shifting their focus faster -- and faster paced preference change is the new reality
- the new product is rapidly re-defined -- and time to market and corporate agility are the new corporate capabilities
- the new product is up-side down as innovation changes -- and partnership is the key method to speed things up
Here's one of the statistics in my deck -- 71% of consumers are choosing to prepare meals at home rather than eating out; restaurant trips have declined from 1.5 times a week in 2006 to 1.2 times today.
These statistics, from the Food Marketing 2008 US Grocery Shopper Trends report, came out before the economic challenges of mid-September and the problems on Wall Street.
One of my key messages is that we live in a time when "volatility is the new normal" -- a mantra I've been using for years -- and food companies must learn to innovate faster to capitalize on such fast moving trends.
We'll probably see this particular trend pick up steam -- and there's opportunity for new advertising messages, branding campaigns, not to mention new product offerings!
Faster is the new fast!
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Reaching the new travel consumer
I'm off to keynote Tourism Alberta -- and will speak to some 200+ tourism marketing professionals on trends within the sector.
Alberta, located in Canada, has an extremely hot economy -- globally, it stands as the home of the 2nd largest provable oil reserves in the world, just after Saudi Arabia. Most of this is tied up in the 'tar sands,' which costs quite a bit more than traditional oil reserves to bring to market. Hence,there is a flood of infrastructure investment and other spending going on.
Needless to say, even thought it's a hot economy, the economic 'correction' (and certainly volatility in the price of oil), as well as other issues, is providing for a bit of a challenge in the tourism sector.
What am I doing at the conference? Notes the brochure: " Jim will speak to the fact that travel product innovations occur today at such a pace that simply keeping up can be a challenge. A furious pace of technological innovation continues unabated, with the rapid emergence of new technologies that change the way the travel consumer plans theirtravels. The Web continues to make massive inroads into tourism planning and business model change. It's a fast paced world -- and that's whyleading edge organizations are focused on staying ahead of the trends that are impacting the high-velocity economy of today. Join international futurist, trends and innovation expert Jim Carroll as he puts into perspective how the world of tourism is changing -- and how organizations are innovating in order to keep up with it!"
What I am talking about? Quite a few trends:
- the new tourist is faster: 1/3 of all leisure travel is now last minute, and the average time for planning a trip is down to 15 days
- the new tourist is connected: 86% of all North American's now travel with a cell phone. They have expectations of finding data-heavy local tourism portals when they walk off a cruise ship looking for something to do.
- the new tourist is influenced differently: 79% of travelers trust reviews by other tourists over advertisements. Social network tourism sites and stalwarts like TripAdvisor continue to have the biggest impact on tourism decisions.
- the new tourism family is no longer nuclear: A grab bag of observations ... only 1 in 4 of the population live in heterosexual, two-parent families .... .one in three people now live alone ......urban Americans remain single for more than half of their adult lives, a radical shift...
- the new tourism product is faster to market: WhereI'veBeen started as a Facebook application that allowed people to post where they've travelled to. It exploded to 2 million users in a matter of weeks.
- the new tourism product is being rapidly redefined: Online tourist mashups that allow people to combine online maps with travel schedules, destination information, and social networks are redefining the concept of trip planning.
- the new tourism marketing is viral: Budget Rent A Car, Southwest Airlines and Sheraton Hotels are examples of 3 companies that are using blogs and Internet video to establish leading edge marketing campaigns.
- the new tourist is, well, different a grab bag of trends: we're seeing a lot more shorter term "pressure relievers," themed holidays, adventure, health or well-being vacations, "authenticity" as a new trend, and the "unplugged" vacation. Not to mention an "old" trend from 2007 which involves "debaucherism" as the new travel trend.
Bottom line -- innovate!
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Keynote: Financial management and high velocity healthcare
I provided the opening keynote yesterday for over 275 CFO's of the Ontario Hospital Association. Collectively, they manage over $15 billion in spending.
My topic was Innovating for Our Future Health: The Strategic Role of Financial Leadership in our Hospitals. The subtext: "A look at the new strategic role that financial professionals must play as health care comes to dominate overall GDP spending. Innovation is no longer just a fashionable phrase -- it's the new leadership focus for executives in the health care sector".
Every keynote carries one core theme, and the message of the day was: "as high velocity change envelopes the health care sector, you must transition from a tactical to a strategic role, to provide the analysis, insight, reporting, decision support tools and financial infrastructure that can help hospital leadership make ever more complex decisions."A few of the key themes that we explored:
- rapid scientific advance is resulting in a flood of new treatments, diagnostic tools, methodologies, pharmaceuticals, and bio-materials. There is an increased need for careful, diligent cost benefit analysis to stay at the leading, but practical, edge
- simple demographics suggest that the elusive EHR (electronic health record), which has not yet been quite successful, will emerge as Gen-Connnect comes to increasingly dominate the medical workforce
- business model change is coming -- and fast -- as retail environments come to dominate the medical space. A recent Healthcare Financial Management magazine article, in a reader survey, of the "most important people in healthcare", ranked Steve Case first, and Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, second. Steve is involved in several initiatives which involve the opening of retail "health care stores". The survey shows that transformative, IT driven change will continue to have profound impacts in the health care sector.
- patient empowerment is leading to faster demand for cutting edge medical services, which increases the complexity of the careful balancing game underway in most hospitals
- there continues to be huge opportunity with tech in the sector; it's estimated that one medication mistake can cost a hospital upwards of $2,000 -- and Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital reduced error rates by 55% over an eight month period using computerized order entry
- read Future Medicine: Prescriptions for 21st Century Health Care
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A truly staggering, transformative trend yet to unfold
It's been announced that I will be a keynote speaker at the World HealthCare Innovation & Technology Conference, to be held in Washington, DC in December. In particular, I'll be taking a look at the importance of one of the most significant trends that is just starting to unfold.
Twenty years from now, most people will look back and realize that right about now, we had three huge, transformative trends underway: device connectivity, geo-connectivity, and bio-connectivity
Essentially, everything around is about to become linked in -- every device that surrounds your life. My home thermostat is linked to the Internet, and that has changed the scope of how I interact with energy.
Layered on top of device connectivity is spatial intelligence for each device -- vis-a-vis Google Maps types of applications. Think about new forms of energy management built upon sophisticated geographic mapping applications.
Add to this the fact that this type of technology will migrate to devices that will help us better manage complex health circumstances.
I've been writing and speaking about the idea of bio-connectivity and the concept of "hyper-connectivity" for over a decade (before Nortel lamely built a lame marketing campaign around the latter phrase a year ago.) It remains one of the most significant trends that will yet unfold in the health care sector. Our concept of health care delivery will be forever transformed.
Simply put, link the scope of the looming health care crisis to the momentum that will come from Silicon Valley for medical device connectivity, and there are some pretty powerful things happening. Think about what happens as spatial device connectivity comes to everyday things around you -- such as a baseball bat! Read more below. There's a lot going on in this space, and you'd do well to understand it.
Opportunity through the next decade is going to be found by those who will adjust and adapt buisness models, attitudues, structures, methodologies and capabilities to this new reality.
More information:
- HealthCare Innovation & Technology Conference
- Read about what happens When Thermostats get connected
- Read the article about bio-connectivity, The Doctor is in around the clock
- Read the article Minds of their own
- Read "Bioconnectivity and the rapid emergence of new markets"
- Read the article Command and Control - Opportunity Awaits Companies that Master Hyperconnectivity
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Text message polling - on stage with instant interactivity and feedback
Over the last several months, I've been incorporating some live text message polling into my onstage presentations.
- Quickmobile Web site
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A new era of "social wealth management?" Innovating banking at high speed!
I'm about to head out the door to keynote a leadership team, business analysts and IT staff for a leading multinational bank. The theme of my luncheon talk is, of course, innovation in the high velocity financial sector.
There's been a tremendous amount of new research undertaken in the last day, so that I can add to the insight that I've already accumulated through the years as to the innovations occuring in this sector.
There are a couple of key observations that I'll share with the crowd. I start out with a list of pretty scary headlines. American banks face financial meltdown if their reforms fail. Mortage Meltdown! Bloody and Bowed --- Money Managers Remain Badly Shaken by the Meltdown. Market Cap Meltdown --- Billions in Blue Chip Stock Values Have Been Blown Away.Congress caught in a bind over bank crisis. Crisis Looming As Realty Slump Becomes Global
Most of these headlines are from 1989-1990.
Key point being, we've been here before. Whenever there is market turmoil, there is also opportunity for growth through innovation.
And that's what I'll concentrate on the talk. How banks are transitioning staff from tactical to strategic roles so that they can provide the consultative services customers are demanding. How bank branches are becoming the "new Internet" as financial institutions rediscover the power of rejuvenated bricks-and-mortar networks. How the new era of Web 2.0 is going to have to drive a new form of "social wealth management," particularly as we witness a massive intergenerational transfer of wealth from baby-boomers to the Twitter generation. And how maintaining brand relevance is critical when products and customer service expectations continue to increase at a furious pace.
Several months ago, I wrote a Memo to the CEO of banks worldwide, imploring that they don't kill innovation it's tracks as they scramble to deal with the subprime mess. It drew quite a bit of attention: and the comments and sentiment are still critical today. It's worth a read.
More information
- Read the Memo to the CEO
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Zorbing -- and why it's in to be out!
Seems USA Today ran an article about zorbing, and my web site is being flooded with traffic because it features a picture of zorbing in action.
Here's the thing: Zorbing is part of a trend that I frequently speak about at conferences -- the rapid emergence of new sports, which is part of the overall trend of the more rapid emergence of new trends!
My coverage of Zorbing goes back to 2004, when I keynoted a New York City publicity event, where, I met with the editors of O (Oprah Magazine), Elle, Family Circle, Parenting, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Working Mother, American Baby, Soap Opera Weekly, Woman's Day, Glamor, Teen Vogue, Seventeen, Good Housekeeing, Family Circle and about 40 other national trade magazines.
My focus, on behalf of a consumer products company, was the presentation of my "10 Trends that Will Rock the Outdoor World." In preparing, I undertook detailed research and analysis of leading lifestyle, demographic, social and cultural trends, to put into perspective what we can expect in terms of active, outdoor living in the future.
And one of the trends I talked about? The rapid emergence of new sports -- such as zorbing!
Read 10 Trends that Will Rock the Outdoor World.
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Innovation on the "fast" track - what do you do when its faster still?
My June is shaping up to be a tremendously busy month. Based on the bookings that are in, it's clear that innovation continues to be at the top of the CEO agenda, despite some economic challenges.
In most of my upcoming keynotes, I'll be spending time putting into perspective how executives should be thinking about future trends within their industry, and will take a look at the innovative strategies they might pursue.
Each of these talks is pretty tightly focused; I'll be zipping from the insurance industry to optometry; from the future of global wealth management to high-velocity innovation in the banking sector; from opportunities in dealing with the new consumer 2.0 mindset, to how massive skills specialization will affect the world economy in the future. There's been a tremendous amount of research underway as I prepare for each session; most of these talks get pretty darned specific in terms of industry issues.
Some of the unique topics that are unfolding include:
- "the new risk" : a keynote for the US Association of Actuaries that will take a look at how the insurance industry will the rapid emergence of new risk, and the impact of the "new analytics" on the global economy.
- "the new market" : how can a leading manufacturer transition to a market where it is not competing on price, but on brand, quality, image and value : in other words, "what do they do after the world is flat?"
- "the new customer" -- how do we sell to the new 2.0 consumer, in this era of the wired-up-no-attention-span Gen-Connect demographic? The average consumer scans 12 feet of shelf space per second. What innovations do we need to think about when it comes to selling today?
- "the new investor": Dubai and Singapore have "money-velocity." Where is the investment world going, and how does a wealth management firm innovate to stay at the leading edge?
- "the new workforce" : how does a major global professional services firm transition into a new world of micro-skills and knowledge niches?
- "the new agent" : what comes next for the insurance industry? This one is a a keynote and a workshop for about 200 senior executives from the insurance industry, on behalf of LOMA, a major global insurance group.
- "the new collaborative team": how can a leading bank outpace, outlast and outperform the competition?
I'll be posting observations from the road, as there are powerful innovation lessons to be learned and shared from each situation.
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Jim Carroll keynoting Toshiba Global Exchange 2008 in Sydney, Australia
It's been confirmed that I'll be the opening keynote speaker for this large scale annual conference in mid-July.
It will be a pleasure to share my insight in Sydney. I'm a big believer that many organizations have barely scratched the innovation-surface when it comes to IT deployment; many organizations are still in basic implementation mode, and haven't learned how to really leverage their investment to provide for significant transformation of their overall organizational capabilities.
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If I ran your company, here's what I would do!
Supertramp -- a band from the 80's -- had a minor hit with the song "On the Long Way Home," which featured the memorable line, the line, "when you're up on the stage, it's so unbelievable."
It is, quite. And when you're up there, you realize how lucky you are to be able to share with the audience the wisdom you've picked up by observing some of the world's top innovators.
Recently, after a presentation to an audience of 3,000 people, I was approached by a CEO who was quite inspired by my remarks. He then asked me a fascinating question: "what would you do if you took over the leadership of my company right now?" We chatted for a while and I believe I provided some pretty succinct insight; but since then, I've been thinking about that question. Here's a part of my answer.
- maximize your best revenue opportunities. I'd make sure that any existing revenue relationships remain intact, and then some. I'd work on having my team obsess on growing existing high value customer relationships through service excellence. Let's make sure that we meet their needs. It will likely be easier to keep existing revenue grows flowing rather than finding new ones, particularly through a time of economic challenge.
- obsess over time to market. I'd work hard to accelerate product innovation; market life-cycles are collapsing, and I'd make sure every member of the team reoriented themselves to that reality. I'd focus on getting R&D to think in terms of faster cycles; I'd ramp up sales force education so that they were better aware of what's coming next. I'd have the team thinking in terms of 3-6-9-12 : here's what will be doing in the marketplace 3, 6, 9 and 12 months from now. I'd layer on top of that some insight into 1-2-5-10: what we might be doing 1, 2, 5 and 10 years from now.
- reduce product costs through process improvement and better project execution: there is no shortage of innovative ideas, structures and concepts involving process and production methodologies. I'd make sure we were looking at finding those who are doing leading edge work in this area, inside or outside our industry, and learn from them.
- reduce structural costs through collaboration: at this point in time, in a global world that allows for instant, smart collaboration among teams, there is no reason for massive duplication of skills and talent throughout an organization. I'd start a rethink those silos, and restructure for a new skills deployment approach. Right off the bat, I'd encourage a few cross-organizational collaboration efforts, to get people used to the idea of tackling fast new problems rather than arguing about structure and hierarchy.
- focus on the pipeline of talent innovation: I've said it before and I'll say it again. The depth the bench strength is critical to future success. I'd have everyone take a good look at our pipeline, to see if it will meet upcoming needs. If not, I'd get a program in place to fix that fast.
- relentlessly and aggressively chase costs: I'm not talking about spontaneous slash and burn spending cuts: I'd refocus on transitioning the role of staff from tactical efforts to a strategic role. I've spent time with the CIO's and CFO's of some pretty major organizations: Hunt Oil, Adobe, J Crew, Under Armor. All of them have provided in-depth insight onstage during customer panels that have focused on the role of IT in the business to run the business better, grow the business and transform the business. There remain countless opportunities for IT oriented innovation to rip unnecessary costs out of the business, and it involves this tactical to strategic transition.
- enhance quality and reliability of product: Last year, I spoke to 2,500 global quality professionals on the challenges that the high velocity economy presents to the concept of quality. The fact is, new issues hit us in the marketplace faster than ever before. And the global idea loop means that quality challenges can become a sudden, massive worldwide PR nightmare faster than we've ever been prepared for. That's why avoiding quality problems remains a critical focus. I'd take a look at how well we're dealing with quality issues, and whether we've got the agility to respond in this new world of heightened PR challenges. I'd also have a group prepare an immediate outline of challenges and problems with customer service and satisfaction.
- capture new emerging growth markets faster: I'd begin to orient the team so that we knew about which market opportunities might come next, and then spend time aligning ourselves to innovate faster in such markets. I recently spent some time with one client, and the focus of our discussion was how a new market was set to unfold in the next three months. Expectations were that the market -- for a unique consumer product, with potential sales in the billions of dollars -- might last for a period of eighteen months, before being eclipsed by the next stage of development. Essentially, the CEO was looking at a situation where they had to figure out how to jump into this new fast market, and make the most of it in an extremely short period of time. That's a new skill structure to wrap an organization around, and one that every organization must learn to master.
Oh, and one of the first things I'd do? I would immediately convene a senior management/leadership meeting, and bring in a futurist and innovation expert to wake my people up to the potential that can come from energizing ourselves towards future opportunities.
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Branding in the high velocity economy
Last week, I gave the opening keynote for a leading global auto collision repair group, Fix Auto, which has locations throughout the US, Canada, the UK and France.
I opened with one of my favorite quotes from Rupert Murdoch: "The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow."
What precisely does that imply? In this case, those who can spot the opportunity for rebranding of an industry sector, and who can pull off such a rebranding quickly. If you think about auto collision repair shops, there are a number of areas where we are seeing "high velocity change": customer expectations in terms of service quality are going up; there is a focus on cost reduction as insurance companies become more sensitive to increasing accident claims; rapid change in the very technology that makes up an "automobile" today. Each one of these areas of change can be spun into an opportunity through some unique business strategies.
My focus for the audience was to realize that we we live in a time in which we are seeing the:
- rapid emergence of new markets
- fast opportunities for arrival of new brand images
- new ways of achieving customer awareness around those brands, and
- significant opportunity to transform old, stale market and business structures to vibrant, new brands
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Thinking ahead: knowledge delivery in the high velocity economy
I'm one of the keynote speakers today for the grand opening of Virtualis, which bills itself as "the largest and most meticulously designed convention center in the computer-generated world of Second Life."
Virtualis features ballrooms, breakout rooms, and an extensive trade show floor. I'll be speaking in the Grand Ballroom at 4pm EST; my own "trade show booth" (pictured here) features links to my blog, books, and to streaming video from strategically placed video screens on the wall.
Will such "virtual worlds" come to play a role in the meeting and convention industry? The media seems to have been quite down on Second Life as of late; at one recent digital marketing conference, it was dismissed as a waste of advertisers time, and the biggest project sinkhole in the last year. (See The Client Side blog link below).
Maybe so. Maybe not. I don't know whether that is true or not.
But I do know this. Ten years ago, we didn't have a Google; five years ago, there was no FaceBook. New methods of interacting are emerging at a furious pace. Ten years from now, we'll be in an economy in which organizations will have to figure out how to "deliver knowledge quickly." I think we will see a wide variety of platforms and methods of accomplishing this -- and that's why I'm spending some of my time exploring the opportunity within Virtualis.
I'm a big believer that meetings and events will continue to be a "key strategic component of an organization's success" in the future, because they involve the delivery of knowledge.
And there's going to have to be a lot more of that in the future. Organizations must deal with the fact that their world is becoming faster: they must deal with innovation time compression, the rapid emergence of new markets, fast opportunities for emergence of new product or service branding, increased skills specialization, rapid business model transformation and the emergence of new competitive challengers.
The impact is quite simple: rapid market, business, industry, and skills change leads to a need for faster “knowledge delivery.” We might need to upgrade the knowledge of a sales force for a new emerging market; help a leadership team focus on a new business competitor, or steer a project team towards dealing with a new industry challenge. Whatever the case may be, knowledge delivery is key to success in the future.
I think we'd be fools to think that we won't do a lot more of this online. Hence, the importance of new explorations such as Virtualis : it helps to solve a fundamental purpose, and plays a key strategic role, just as real-world conferences and events do. And so this is a critical and important first step.
It's all about innovation and trying things out. And as Larry Ellison of Oracle stated, “when you innovate, you've got to be prepared for everyone telling you you're nuts.”
More information
- Read Meetings.Net report on Virtualis launch
- Virtualis advertisement
- The Client Side Blog: The Hype Wagon Loses a Virtual Wheel
- Jim Carroll digital content solutions
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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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High velocity e-commerce: a keynote for VISA
I'm about off to keynote a conference for Visa. With executives in the room from Apple, Sony, Ticketmaster, HomeDepot and other organizations that are e-commerce heavy hitters, I'll be focusing on the message, "what do high velocity companies do to stay innovative?"
Much of the conference so far will have focused on the high velocity change that swirls around the issue of e-commerce: the rapid emergence of new payment technology (i.e. cell phone payment infrastructure), continued market growth as e-commerce becomes a routine part of daily life, and internationalization of market and opportunity (China now has the largest Internet population, with 250 million users.) There's also a significant platform shift as mobility takes on an increasing role: Investors Business Daily just reported that already, 16% of US cell phone users do online banking with their device, and 25% shop online. Such numbers pale in comparison to even more rapid change in Asia and Europe.
How do you stay innovative in a world of fast change?? I have several messages:
- prepare for market / product / infrastructure rapidity: fast innovators make sure they have a collaborative team structure that can assemble into fast-teams, ready to tackle new projects, demands, market shifts and other changes. It's all about corporate agility.
- structure for intensity: prepare for the rapid emergence of new technologies, and organize yourself with partners to help you nail implementation. Mobile payment technology is going to have a sweeping impact, and it's rollout will occur in but a few short months. That's the new intensity of business cycles.
- empower for quality: if you shop online, you expect operational excellence, no questions asked. You can only do that by empowering staff to act on the ground, making quick decisions so that quality of experience is not compromised. Read my When FedEx Fails post of a few days for an important lesson on today's empowered consumer.
- enhance capability from generational diversity: Older generations are still struggling with fast pace change: that's one of the key trends I identified in my most recent Future Trends report. Savvy organizations are learning to implement fast by combining the different talents of different generations; by providing for cross generational collaboration, they are drawing upon a set of unique skills to act even faster, thus managing to stay ahead of the pack.
You stay innovative by structuring yourself to stay just one step ahead of the future.
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High velocity leadership: how to stay focused on growth
Organizations today are looking for deep insight into the trends that will affect their markets and industries. CEO's are focused on the need for innovation, knowing that a world of high velocity change requires that they respond to opportunity and challenge in an instant. They are looking for guidance on establishing high-performance, innovation oriented teams that are focused on achievement.
I've been doing quite a bit in this area; the other day, I spent time with a global organization, for a full day, with a keynote and workshop focused on the issue of "growth." It's easy -- in a challenged economy -- to lose sight of opportunities for growth. That's what I talk about in the recent interview by Credit Suisse.
With this particular client -- and many others -- I went beyond a keynote, and participated for the balance of the day through a series of workshops. This new document outlines what I do: I'm often called upon to deliver unique, half day or full day executive retreat, leadership oriented programs.
More information:
- Read High Velocity Leadership
- Read my Credit Suisse interview for my thoughts on "growth"
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Future careers: Knowledge explosion is key
Career issues are hot! And one of my favorite ways to open a keynote or executive session is by quoting from an Australian study, which indicated that sixty-five percent of the kids who are in preschool today will work in jobs or careers that don't yet exist.
I passionately believe this to be true: and I've seen the trend occurring in countless professions and industries.
This week, I keynoted a Career Day event at Capitol One in Richmond, Virginia ; the focus was upon the rapid emergence of new careers, and the rapid evolution of existing skills. My message, in looking at the future career opportunities, was that there's nothing but upside, as long as people keep reinventing their skill set.
The topic of the future of careers is a big one these days; I'm being called into many organizations and events to talk about the issue, particularly in the context of recent economic trends. Some of these events have been local economic development conferences. In one talk in January, I spoke to an audience of executives and educators in an auto-sector city ; a group of people caught up in the throes of economic restructuring and turmoil.
Talk about an audience in the midst of challenge! Yet when you are in that type of economic bubble, it can be hard to see the future career opportunities that do exist. That's why I didn't focus on the short term economic turmoil, but instead, on the real, practical trends that are defining the careers of tomorrow.
Many sectors of the global economy: and in particular, the manufacturing and financial sectors, are being hit hardest by the US recession, the sub-prime meltdown, and global competition.
The auto-town event got covered in the local paper: and the story ended up being reprinted throughout the Canadian press, including in Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa and Montreal. One of the key observations I made in the article: "We have to figure out how we can continue to move up the knowledge ladder because there's going to be a massive shortfall in specialized skills because of the rapid growth of knowledge."
That's an important issue to think about, and the article is well worth a read.
More information:
- Read Knowledge Explosion Key to the Future
- Read Global Economic Trends: An Interview with Jim Carroll
- The reality of future trends: grab the What Comes Next trends overview
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Innovating locally in a global economy
I spent the day yesterday with management executives and store owners of DoItBest, one of the largest US hardware retailers. It's a fascinating organization, because in the midst of the current economic challenges in the US, it's managed to grow its profit at the same time that it saw a dramatic revenue decline.
As with all the keynotes that I do, I undertook an extensive amount of research into the company and industry before I took to the stage; this is combined with the fact that I have keynoted dozens of retail oriented conferences through the years.
What I found was a really cool, and extremely innovative organization. Their online Web site has seen a sales increase of 60%; they've included an option where shoppers can have orders sent to their local DoItBest store (of which there are 4,000+). The site is price competitive with Target and Amazon. They are doing a lot in terms of supply-chain, online store portals and rebates. They've rolled out three different store designs, and are discovering new micro-markets. All this, while they've seen sales fall to $2.81 billion from $3 billion from the year before -- and yet, they also achieved record profitability.
In my mind, there are a number of innovative strategies that the organization has pursued that any organization can learn from:
- rapidly transition challenged product lines: lumber saw price declines of 25%, and panel prices dropped 60% according to an article in Home Channel News. Do It Best stores responded by focusing on all kinds of other lines in hardware and new market opportunities such as home-decord
- be relentless on customer service: a search of news articles shows any number of articles in which customers rave about the knowledge that a staff member in a Do It Best store has when it comes to hardware, tools, home renovation and just about everything else. They've maintained a relentless focus on customer service, even as the big-box chains have lost site of its importance. If you need a power tool: these folks know power tools.
- recognize that micro-branding works: the new store format design has three components: one for those fully within the DoItBest brand, one that is sort of halfway, and one for those stores that want to maintain a distinct, local, "general store" type of image. The fact is, in this era of homogenized big-box brands, some folks like the feeling they get from a small, local hardware store brand. "Do It Best owners understand the micro-economy" -- that's what Jeff Prupis, of Pomona Paint & Hardware, a Do It Best store in Pomona, NY, stated in another Home Channel News article.
- when markets commoditize, specialize: at their trade show yesterday, they were featuring a "Christmas in January" theme; with various vendors showing the unique Christmas offerings they might be thinking about. Everywhere you look, you can see some of their stores learning about and experimenting with new premium markets and service opportunities.
- make life easy for customers: We're time compressed. We're in a hurry. We need solutions. We want "fast." That's why the comment from Joe Talor, CEO, Taylor's Do It Center, Virginia Beach, is so appropriate. "We're like the 7-11 of the hardware industry. You can get in, get out, and get back home to enjoy your weekend."
All in all, a tremendous amount of fun, and a wonderful organization to spend some time with!
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Making generations work - Cardboard people and plasma people
Can you innovate across the generations? If you can't -- then you've got a big problem to fix!
I do a tremendous number of keynotes that focus on the issue of "managing millenials," and the complexities of change occurring in the workplace. See, for example, my blog post, "Don't Mess with my Powder, Dude." (below)
Yet organizations need to move beyond the staffing issues that come with new generations: they must also ensure that they can innovate at the rapid rates demanded in our new world, and they need to do that by keeping up with the new ideas and innovations occuring with younger staff.
In this video clip, I take a look at the story of the "plasma people" and the "carboard people." Innovation occurs when different generations -- with different attitudes to change -- can cooperate and see eye to eye, and take advantage of different strengths. In this clip, I tell tjhe story where this clearly wasn't the case!
This is a video clip from a recent keynote that I gave for hundreds of executives from the grocery and consumer products industries, titled Faster is the New Fast: Innovating for the New. High Velocity Customer . This story also became the opening chapter in my book, Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast.
Watch the video clip
Related postings:
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Health care trends and innovation
I was the opening keynote speaker yesterday in Dallas for a get-together of the Strategic Marketplace Initiative. This is a group that represents a variety of health care providers and hospitals, as well as pharmaceutical companies and other health care suppliers. There were some heavy hitters in the room -- even WalMart was there, which is indicative of the role it is seeking to carve out in the pharmaceutical side of things.
The group is devoted to trying to continue to improve the efficiency and quality of the supply-chain within the health care industry. My talk examined the future of health care; I've done such talks recently for the Blue Cross Blue Shield National Office, the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Providence Health Care and the American Society for Health Care Risk Management.
There are certainly some big challenges. Consider these realities:
- total health-care spending - by individuals, companies, the government - reached $2.3 trillion in 2005
- health care spending is set to double to 20% of GDP within the next 10 years
- 400,000 nurses are set to retire by 2010
- 76 million baby boomers will be flooding the system for care
- lifestyle diseases wlll continue to drive stress into the system
At the same time, the health care system must innovate at a furious pace to keep up with the trends that are set to impact it in a significant way, such as:
- the rapid emergence of new technologies
- massive skills challenges (both demographic and scientific!)
- new business models and “competition," particularly as retail concepts come to the industry, and "customer" expectations continue to increase
- combined with the rapid emergence of new knowledge, methodologies, treatments, pharma, driven by rapid science
The sad thing is that little of the political debate occurring in the US on how to fix the system has to do with the real trends which are occuring; it tends to focus only on the difficult and challenging issue of insurance and coverage.
My talk stirred a lot of debate, and was very well received. There's an overview of some of the trends that I covered in my FUTURE MEDICINE Prescriptions for 21st Century Healthcare trends summary.
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Future trend - The Future of Governance
I was in Colorado Springs yesterday, as the opening keynote of the Leadership Institute for Directors for FCCServices -- they're the business services arm of the US federal Farm Credit System.
In attendance were members of the Boards of Directors for a wide variety of state and community farm credit co-ops; these folks are the backbone of the US farm lending infrastructure. The Directors are local farmers, community leaders and business executives, and hence, need to be aware of the trends impacting the local and global agricultural industries, so that they can plan accordingly, assess risk, and make sound business decisions with respect to their co-ops.
My keynote took a look at "what comes next in the agricultural sector" - it's one of many talks I do within the industry. And agriculture is certainly subject to high velocity change: there's rapid evolution in science (bio-crops); new markets (bio-fuel) ; rapidly changing skills; new direct to consumer market opportunities; globalization (current food production must double in the next 30 years to keep up with global population growth.) All of which could spell opportunity if approached correctly -- or turmoil and challenge if ignored.
The intent of the talk -- and the overall theme of the leadership conference -- was to ensure that these folks have the insight to direct their organizations into the future. That's an important and critical role for Boards; and FCC Services is an example of an organization that has made sure that the "future" is closely linked to the issue of "governance."
I think there are too many organizations that don't do this. Sadly, with all the current focus on "compliance," I've come to believe that there is a critical lack of future planning on many other corporate boards around the world. The result is that potential risks are often ignored; then things go wrong; then the company gets sued for significant sums of money. Is this Board negligence? That's an interesting question, isn't it!
Here's an example: years ago, I wrote an article indicating that one of the critical CEO/Board level issues that must be addressed had to do with network security; certainly, everyone knows that organizations should properly secure their information assets. Yet in the article, I suggested that I believe that many Boards aren't dealing with the issue, and that it was an area ripe for future exposure, noting that:
"If I were a tort lawyer, I'd be licking my lips in anticipation of the opportunities to come in the next few years."
Boards and CEO's should ensure -- as they are required to do with financial controls -- that the information assets of the organization are properly locked down. They must understand obvious future trends, and ensure that management has planned accordingly. I strongly believe this to be the next wave in Board responsibility.
Do many Boards of Directors ensure that the organization is properly preparing for the rapidity of trends? Not many. Witness the shenanigans with the TJX Group, which had its corporate network hacked and millions of credit card numbers stolen. (The company runs HomeGoods, Marshalls, A.J. Wright, Bob's Stores and The Maxx stores; in Canada the chain consists of Winners and HomeSense.) Now comes news that a group of banks want to sue the company with respect to the issue.
I can only imagine the questions that the Board of TJX is now asking!
Currently, much of the focus of board governance has to do with "compliance" -- how well are boards, and the companies they are responsible for, dealing with the new realities of the post-Enron era.
I believe that within the next decade, we will see Board responsbility quickly evolve into a new and much more complex era than simply making sure that "i's are dotted and the t's are crossed.' All we need are a few savvy lawyers to launch a few negligence suits against a few public companies, alleging that a Board failed to develop a plan for and respond to obvious future trends.
It's a trend worth watching.
More information
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High velocity trends in the pharmaceutical industry
I'm here in Las Vegas today, about to provide the opening keynote for Pharmalink 2007.
This is an annual meeting of senior executives -- mostly C-Level, Sr. VP's -- from major pharmaceutical companies. It's a forum where they can examine the challenges, issues and opportunities that come from a greater integration of the supply chain within the world of health care.
It's a tough issue to crack -- there are a lot of vested interests, long-standing business models, inertia towards change, and built-in routines. There's a lot of sophisticated technology that is and can be used ; and yet, there still remains a tremendous amount of inefficiency in the U.S. health care system.
My keynote will focus on the theme, "what do innovative organizations do", and will play into several trends:
- concentrate on adaptability: in the longer term, change resistance retires out of the economy. The current generation of 35 and under staff in the health care system will rapidly adopt EHR (electronic health records) and all other forms of technology. Initiatives to date have been held back because of slow-to-act, change resistant boomers; however, as they leave the system, the rate of adoption of new ways of working will soar.
- prepare for intensity: business cycles are getting faster, and R&D is too. It's the ability to adapt to the sudden emergence of new markets and products that is critical
- attitude with agility: business models are set to change; any industry that has a lot of wholesalers and distributors will find massive, fundamental, structural change to be a given on a 10 year horizon. Understand that, accept it, and work with it.
- massive connectivity changes everything: pharma will be impacted in a huge way as everything, including drugs themselves, has sensor, location and intelligence awareness built in. Innovative around that -- and the concept of bioconnectivity, and big opportunities can be found
- structure with flexibility: volatility is the new normal. Think how quickly China and quality became linked; build a team and structure that can act fast, think fast, and react fast.
There's an entire theme on these issues in my Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast book -- so it ties in nicely!
More information
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A recent client asked for some background on some of the events I've been doing through the last year.
I put together an Acrobat file that features some of the brochures for a few of the major conferences I've headlined: the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations; the World Congress on Quality; the National Home Furnishings Association; the National Association of College Stores; and a few others.
The theme of linking innovation to the high-velocity change that surrounds you is a common one in all of these keynotes; people are realizing that as everything around them changes -- business models, competition, customers, markets -- they need to continuously innovate simply in order to keep up, if not to get ahead.
It's a big file -- 4mb -- but grab it if you want it.
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Major trend - the future of the organization
Take a look at this kid.
He's your next employee. How are you going to recruit, retain, manage, interest and amuse this fellow? What's your workforce going to look like in 2012, 2020, or beyond?
There's quite a bit of focus on trends relating to the future of the organization -- and organizations are seeing innovative strategies to cope with the world of high velocity change that we find ourselves in.
Last week I was the opening keynote speaker, and a panelist later in the day, for an offsite of one of the world's largest professional services firms. Tomorrow, I keynote a get-together of key clients of a multi-billion insurance/financial services company. A few months ago, I ran a Board of Directors/CEO level meeting on the issue for a major industrial company.
If you don't have this issue figured out yet, you'd better start thinking about it in a hurry.
There are certain things we know for a fact that relate to the future of the organization.
- there is a huge amount of expertise walking out of the economy. In 2010, 3 people will leave the economy for every person that enters it; by 2012, 4. By 2016, 6 people will leave for every new worker that joins. Those are staggering realities.
- the current generation entering the workforce is completely rejecting the concept of a traditional career. More than 50% of young people in a US survey indicated they believe self-employment to be more secure than a full time job. They don't want to work for big organizations. They'll be nomadic, contingent workers, entrepreneurial and global.
- skills are fragmenting and specializing at a furious pace. Knowledge half-lives in most industries are compressing to a matter of just a few years. Knowledge extinction is real, and massive skills fragmentation is occurring at an extreme velocity. The result is that most organizations will find future failure will come from an inability to get specialized skills. A strategy that is focused on global access to extremely specialized skills will be a transformative factor for winning.
More information
- What's Happening with Our Workforce: Achieving Competitive Advantage Through Skills
- Critical Trends: 10 Unique Characteristics of 21st Century Skills
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"He prowled the stage like a preacher"
An interesting article in InformationWeek, covering my Sunday night keynote for the Society for Information Managementa annual conference in Memphis.
First time I ever had to follow Elvis on stage : and maybe that's what had me fired up!
Noted InformationWeek: "Carroll, the author of "What I Learned from Frogs in Texas: Saving Your Skin with Forward Thinking Innovation," seemed to embrace the atmosphere of secular spiritualism. He prowled the stage like a preacher, exhorting the assembled crowd to take the message of hyper cultural and economic change fueled by information technology back to their companies and use it to force a closer examination of the role of their own technology efforts in new business models, management structure, and collaboration."
You can read the full article, In the High Velocity Economy, IT is the Engine, here.
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The disappearance of change management?
I'm off today to Montreal, to keynote the 2007 International Financial Leaders Forum. This is a gathering of several hundred senior financial leaders from throughout the private and government sector.
One of my key messages in my opening keynote today is that as CFO's and CEO's, they must ensure that they are putting in place a culture of agility and flexibility, such that their staff are able to deal with rapid change that comes with the high-velocity economy.
Enter the new boarding pass bar code, as seen on the right: I'm using this Blackberry enabled boarding pass on my flight to Montreal. This is an initiative set-up by Air Canada -- you check in online with your mobile device. You are then sent a text message/SMS that contains a 2-dimensional barcode. At the airport, ostensibly, it will be wanded at security, at the gate, and I'll be on the plane. (The bar code shown will have expired by the time you read this.)
The reaction of my 14 year old when he saw it? "It will never work dad! I don't have good feelings about this."
His reaction, he explained, comes from his belief that the security people won't know what to do with it; that I will get some cranky gate agent who wasn't aware of the new technology; that simply, from what he has learned while travelling with us, is that this simply represents too much change, too fast.
I promised to text him along the way with any updates!
He does have a valid point though : today, we live in a world in which change management is a big issue. I've run (and continue to do) workshops or keynotes where I am addressing issues of how to cope with change. It's a big issue that I cover off in my new Ready, Set, Done: How to Innnovate When Faster is the New Fast book.
Yet a big question looming on my mind these days is this: what happens when the need for change management goes away? Twenty years out, we will have a generation in charge which has embraced technological change from their birth. They are attracted to new ideas, innovation, and new ways of thinking, like bugs drawn to a light. Their world will continue to involve a flood of new technologies, new ways of working, constantly shifting work structures, rapid micro-careers, and all kinds of other things that involve what we would consider to be rapid change.
What happens when change management disappears, and change occurs even faster than it happens today?
The airline involved in today's flight is quite focused on innovation. The big issue to watch is whether they are keeping the change-process up-to-date with their innovation process. Or whether the issue of change-management is starting to disappear and go away....
Nov 5 update
- the security people knew about it, but
- the first gate agent freaked out, muttered about management and new technology, and printed me a paper boarding pass
- the flight attendant didn't like it, and wanted the paper pass
- returning, it took 3 minutes for them to get the security line guy who had the bar code wand
- the gate agent flatly refused to accept it. She complained, complained...
Just about what I expected!
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Quality, skills and the high-velocity economy
Back in May, I keynoted the World Congress on Quality / American Society for Quality, a fairly massive conference with about 3,000 attendees.
I focused, as I often do, on the need for rapid action in the high-velocity economy. At that time, just a few months ago, we had just seen the recall of various pet food products as a result of production quality issues at the Chinese manufacturer.
I noted -- and these words are verbatim from the tape - "What do we do with quality in terms of velocity?" I went on to note that with we might soon see the issue of quality and China merge together ... to such a degree that companies might have to scramble to deal with quality issues that were completely unexpected just a few months ago.
Fast forward, and we've got toy manufacturers testifying to Congress about quality concerns as a result of offshore production.
It used to be that when it came to quality, you'd plan --> execute -- > evaluate ---> innovate. But now, with high-velocity change, sudden new issues can appear, and you've simply got to execute before you plan.
What's the point? In my new book, Ready, Set, Done, I argue that talent and project agility -- that is, the ability to rapidly refocus your organization and team to deal with the rapid emergence of new issues -- will be a key cornerstone for future success.
This week, I'll be doing a keynote for Tenrox, a company that specializes in software that helps an organization with resource management and optimization: in other words, deploying the right skills at the right time for the right purpose. Exactly what I talk about in the new book.
The CEO, Rudolf Melik, has written a book, The Rise of the Project Workforce: Managing People and Projects in a Flat World. I contributed the foreword for the book, focusing on the theme of skills agility. It's an important issue that you need to be thinking about, particularly given the new urgency for planning on the fly.
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Faster is the new fast: innovating for the new. high velocity customer
In the fast paced world of instant obsolsolescence and rapid innovation, time-to-market is becoming a key factor for success.
This is a video clip from a recent keynote that I gave for hundreds of executives from the grocery and consumer products industries, titled Faster is the New Fast: Innovating for the New. High Velocity Customer . I take a look at what innovative retail, packaging and consumer goods companies do differently.
This is the third retail presentation that I've done for a major retail conference this year; earlier, I spoke to several hundred convenience store owners and their franchisees; as well as to a group of executives involved in health care retail.
There are a few key themes that I wove through this keynote that retailers, consumer goods and packaging companies need to be thinking about, as well as their advertising agencies:
- velocity: i.e. collapsing product lifecycles
- instantaneity: faster trends; I have a wonderful story about dive-in movies, that I use to describe how the new global idea sharing machine results in faster product to market!
- spontaneity: social networking, rapid emergence of new "hits"; there's a new suddenness with consumer choice!
- intensity: business operational excellence is critical; I have a story of a video game distributor -- 45% to 60% of profit of a new video game occurs in the first FOUR TO FIVE days. I explained similar short, sharp shocks of revenue are coming to consumer goods
- unpredictability: sudden, rapid shift of consumer choice, with nicheing, impact of new packaging, etc.
- simplicity: the new consumer wants nice, simple solutions that fit into their life; there's a great story here from the work I did with the American Nursery Landscape Assn, that spins directly into consumer products, beverages etc, in that simplicity is the new branding.
- volatility: great unknowns; water on planes, melamine/pet food; we have to be prepared for unforeseen risks!
- attractability: there's another video that I'll post soon that involves a story of the plasma people and the cardboard people. suffice it to say, the new consumer will be more highly interactive, sooner than we think
- unfocusability: short attention spans, consumers scan 50 feet of shelf space per second; we're seeing collapsing newspaper/magazine spend, rapid growth of online spend, etc.
- virtuality: Screen Digest, a media consultancy firm, predicts that 80% of active Internet users will become involved in a virtual world by 2012.
Watch the video clip
Related postings:
- Next big home entertainment trend? Dive-in movies!
- Can you run your business at video game intensity?
- High velocity retail innovation
- Creativity, trends and innovation in retail, packaging & consumer goods
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The future of the legal profession
Some weeks back, I spent a full day with about 40 senior lawyers with a major government agency, with the main focus both on the rapidity of change of legal skills, as well as rapid change with legal issues.
We took a look at the future of the profession, and had a workshop that examined issues of agility, rapid response and complexity of skills.
I put together a summary, based on a previous post here, that outlines both the challenges and opportunities faced by the profession.
The highlights of the document, available as a PDF, takes a look at such issues as generational warfare, evidentiary challenges, rapid change and specialization, and risk minimization, to name but a few.
Of the latter, I write that "One side impact of generational warfare is that “going underground” will become more acceptable. In the last few years we saw a fascinating battle between music companies and Kazaa, the music sharing organization, which used extra-territorial jurisdictional issues to provide itself some shelter against legal action. That type of activity is going to become the norm, not the exception, in the future. Indeed, going legal-underground is about to go mainstream."
- read 10 Big Trends for the Legal Profession: High-Velocity Change Providing Challenges and Opportunities
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Innovation and the new workforce
I'm keynoting the annual IHRIM (International Human Resource Information Management) professional association in about an hour here in Houston, TX; I'll have an audience of about 1,000 or so.
My talk today broadly revolves around the issue of "what's happening with our workforce." I'm taking the audience on a tour of the key drivers which impact organizations today, whether business or government,
- velocity: business is just plain fast, and our workforce must cope with that
- change capacity: there's a big disconnect in how quickly some people can deal with rapid change compared to others
- idea instantaneity: we're in a new world in which ideas or issues can quickly speed out of control, or work to our advantage
- knowledgeability: in which global insight is increasing at a furious pace, leading to ever larger pools of knowledge
- innovation opportunity: such rates of discovery lead to massive new opportunities with bringing new products and services to market
- idea discovery: our interconnected world now allows unique ideas to gain a global audience in a flash
- consumer spontaneity: the low attention span consumer is fleeting when it comes to loyalty to brand
- business intensity: operational excellence is the name of the game, given an economy which simply runs "fast"
- skills availability: all these trends that it is going to be more difficult to access skills
- Attracting the right skills ...... at the right time ... for the right purpose
- Providing for business flexibility in a time of rapid change
- Establishing a constantly shifting, evolving "workforce on demand"
- Enabling this with sophisticated tools, infrastructure and skills access capabilities - managed by folks such as the IHRIM
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Rethinking quality in the high-velocity economy
It's been a whirldwind two weeks, with keynotes in Orlando x 2, Boca Raton, Vancouver, and a few other places.....
My 2nd Orlando event was the Day 2 Keynote for about 2,000 people at the 7th Annual World Congress on Quality and Improvement. I focused on the issue, "how do we ensure we can maintain quality, and the very concept of quality, in the high-velocity world we now find ourselves within?"
One of my opening slides led with this observation: "Velocity drives rapid (consumer / customer / business) change, increases their expectations, which requires faster innovation and a faster more complex economy - which perhaps requires a rethink of quality methodology."
Some of my major observations through the talk:
- The entire China / pet food /melamine issue is showing the impact that a vast, complex, global economy can have on the issue of quality; I think we are in for a complete rethink and refocus on the issue of quality as a result of events like this.
- In the era of idea instantaneity, quality challenges can go supernova just like that...
- accelerated innovation drives faster time to market, more rapid development time, and less available time to assess potential quality challenges
- the high velocity economy requires more rapid implementation of business processes ...with ever increasing complexity and scope ... wh