Jim Carroll- Futurist, Trends & Innovation Keynote Speaker

Expectation gaps create tremendous opportunity

Chronicle Herald, November 2009

By Kelly Hennessey, ABC

There are two ways your community can look at the rapid-fire pace of change we are experiencing: Bury your collective heads in the sand and hope it goes away, or embrace the opportunity change presents for transformative growth.

Jim Carroll would strongly encourage you to seize transformative growth and the opportunities it presents.

Mr. Carroll, a Halifax native, is a world-leading global futurist, trends and innovation expert speaking today at the Greater Halifax Partnership’s Building Our Future event, the last in a series for 2009.

“There are two trends communities need to face now to stay strong for tomorrow,” says Mr. Carroll. “One trend is the expectation gap.”

Take any segment – health care, pensions, post-secondary education – and boomers expect there is enough money to fund these costs for themselves and their children in the future. The gap?

“We can’t fund our current levels in many sectors into the future,” says Mr. Carroll, “but that’s okay. This quickly changing environment creates the opportunity to innovate – and innovation opens the door to all kinds of new possibilities, new jobs, and new growth.”

Take the health care and life sciences sectors in Halifax. These groups are critical to the economic stability of our region and Mr. Carroll believes as they solve the expectation gap in their sector, it will open up big potential here – and on a worldwide basis.

Which brings us to Mr. Carroll’s second trend: That overseas markets present the next big opportunity for this region.

“Canada has always thought it important to look overseas to reduce reliance on one economic partner. What is happening now is there are more, and more frequent, border irritants to the south. This makes the overseas markets even more attractive and more important.

“Given the global knowledge economy, there is no better time for Nova Scotia to turn aggressively outward and do more of the Bermuda-type ‘in-shoring’ deals.” In January 2009, the provincial government signed a memorandum of understanding between Nova Scotia and Bermuda to encourage new business growth in the areas of knowledge, finance, education and tourism.

Amid the trends, Mr. Carroll makes one other key point: Complacency is not an option for organizations seeking future growth.

“There’s so much going on in terms of disruptive innovation, the rapid emergence of new opportunities and fascinating new technologies for marketing and promoting your business. I think the best thing to do is simply to adopt an attitude that it’s fast, it’s scary, but you’re fully prepared to experiment, try out new ideas, and always stay focused on potential new opportunities.”

“The timing of Jim Carroll’s insight couldn’t be better,” says Paul Kent, President and CEO of the Greater Halifax Partnership. “We’re pleased to bring him back home to invigorate our thinking and open our eyes to the trends we can capitalize on for economic growth.”

The Greater Halifax Partnership is the catalyst for economic growth and confidence in Greater Halifax, the economic hub of Atlantic Canada.

When you’ve got 4,000 people from large cities and small towns across America, thinking about how to solve some of the big problems faced by society, you can suggest small ideas, or whacky ideas. Here I am on stage, with a suggestion involving the latter.

More information:

• PacManHatten

When you open up a conference for 4,000 people, you really need to get them inspired and ready to take on the challenges that they face in the future!

Here’s the first few opening seconds from my keynote earlier this year for the National Recreation and Parks Association annual congress. An insprirational clip!

Earlier this week, I spoke to a group of executives for a financial institution in Sydney, Australia, live via a fibre optic link — a distance of almost 10,000 miles (or 15,000 kilometres)

The client had wanted to bring me directly to Sydney, but the timing conflicted with a number of other events. Hence, the alternative method of “getting me there.”

Utilizing the services of Toronto based TV2GO, we had a direct fiber optic video and audio link into the conference at the Hotel Intercontinental in downtown Sydney. In addition, I had a live feed of the audience; not only that, but a number of “runners” had microphones available which provided for a direct, instant 2-way Q&A session at the end of my talk. In addition, I had a full Powerpoint deck running on separate screens in Sydney, transitioning to my cue from Toronto.

I’ve worked with TV2Go before, including on a live feed into CNBC for the Business of Innovation show.

If you are looking to me into your next event, you might consider this type of fiber optic or satellite link. With TV2Go, I can get myself via satellite and fiber connectivity to major conference centers or hotels in North America and South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, if they are properly equipped. In the case of Sydney, the financial institution set out to find the facility with the greatest technical experience with this type of thing: hence, the Hotel Intercontinental.

The folks at TV2Go are experts in such international link-ups : their staff speaks, in addition to English, “Italian, French, Spanish, Romanian, Hungarian, German, Egyptian Arabic, Russian, Turkish, and even a little Japanese.” The organization routinely sends feeds into Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, the UK, Spain, France, Germany, Poland, Romania, Russia, Israel, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, India, South Africa, Tanzania, and even the Sudan.

What we need at your end is a facility that is capable of receiving a fibre optic feed via one of their global partners; or that can ‘see’ one of the dozens of satellites to which they can uplink. These include Telesat, Intelsat, PanAmSat, SES Americom, New Skies, Hispasat, LORAL and Eutelsat satellites.

The key to making this work is having a fibre/satellite friendly AV team at the other end. In the case of my Sydney, Australia event, Stuart Haynes was a real pro. He’s with the Intercontinental Sydney, and has managed dozens of such events through the years. On short notice, he pulled together an AV team that managed the feed, provided for several cameras in the room to feed back to Toronto, and an AV team that transitioned through my slide deck on cue.

Overall, a tremendous experience, and one that you might consider for your next corporate event.

More information:

• TV2Go

Over the next several weeks, I will be speaking at a series of events sponsored by Microsoft related to their Windows 7 launch. The audience includes key executives (CIO’s, CFO’s, CTO’s and IT managers) from a wide variety of industries.

While much of the news coverage of Microsoft focuses around the “consumer” side of the Windows 7 launch, of equal significance is the release of several new server infrastructure upgrades that permit large and small business to take their business into the next level of operational innovation.

In Toronto the other day, Steve Ballmer was speaking to this aspect of innovation. I find that some media gave the message short shift, because their planned story spin didn’t fit his message.

That’s too bad, because the reality is that having an infrastructure that provides for a lot of business flexibility is going to be critical as we transition into the “next economy.” Clearly, there’s a lot of business turmoil out there, and organizations need to be able to change quickly to deal with new circumstances.

Given that, part of my message at these events will focus on what I’ve come to call the “new rules for the next economy.” What are those rules?

• structure for growth: In many industries, the painful process of contraction is either over, or coming to an end. Once you’ve done the cost cutting, you only grow the profit line through new revenue. New revenue means new products and services; that comes from insight, collaboration, and thinking. Smart companies are ensuring they have a razor-sharp growth oriented culture, and technology enablers that help them get there.
• focus on “chameleon revenue”: in many industries, the revenue stream five years from now won’t come from the products or services offered today. You have to keep a product/service innovation pipeline full in order to generate these new revenue sources — and do it faster and better than before. Crayola has two supply chains: one for existing revenue, and one for innovation-based revenue. Interesting concept!
• speed up: I spoke at a global travel conference a few weeks ago, and noted that 1/3 of all leisure travel is now last-minute; the average time frame for planning now down to just 15 days; 36% of last minute vacations are 3-4 nights; and 30% are 1-2 nights. Smart travel companies have in place an infrastructure that allows them to rapidly change their product lineup, marketing message, brand image, and the flexibility to communicate a new message to a massive client base quickly.
• ingest new technology faster. There’s going to be a huge amount of business model change as the tsunami of technology continues unabated. Anyone in retail will be hammered by the rapid transition to cellphone based payment technology. Winners will be able to transition at the speed of Silicon Valley — with the result that leaders are those who will continue to find operational innovation in ways they hadn’t thought of before
• shake up methodology: think Manufacturing 2.0, and a blog post I wrote here some time ago. The future is all about Honda’s thinking: “how quickly can I change” is the defining question in terms of market flexibility. Manufacturing models are undergoing a huge shakeup, and those who transition them for maximum agility and flexibility will dominate the next marketplace.
• be offensively defensive: no matter what industry you are in, there is someone out there who wants to mess up your business model. Before that happens, you should mess it up yourself, so that you better control the end game. Technology has and will play a huge role in business model transformation, and your infrastructure has to be up to the task.

Bottom line: business will continue to get faster, more complicated, and far more challenging.

Will you be able to ahead with a creaky, finger-in-the-dyke infrastructure?

When you walk off stage, you always wonder how you did!

Last week, I was the opening keynote speaker for an audience of up to 4,000 parks and recreation professionals, at the National Recreation and Parks Association annual conference in Salt Lake City.

Expectations were running high; many tweets were going out under the #nrpacongress tag, indicating enthusiasm for my upcoming talk.

I came off stage feeling like I did a real barnburner of a motivational talk, encouraging the crowd to adapt to the high rate of change that surrounds them.

It must have hit home with some: I received this wonderful email today.

Dear Jim,

I just wanted to let you know that in my 20 years of attending the NRPA Congress, no one has captivated me more than your keynote address. And, all during the week, when we talked about the Keynote, everyone agreed!

In fact, I presented a seminar “Creating the Wow—New Marketing Trends for Everyone”, and mentioned a few of your insightful comments. It was amazing to see how everyone was captivated with your session. In fact, it is the only time I can remember, that people were upset that we were running late and you had to wrap up your talk rather quickly.

In addition, Vendors raved about you pressing attendees to visit the trade show, talk to peers, and see how technology is changing our profession. It was quite a Home Run!

We have a saying in our department, the 2008 NRPA Gold Medal Winner (Class II—100,001 to 250,000), which is, “Engage. Inspire. Change a Life Today!” I wanted to leave you with this… YOU Engaged. YOU Inspired. YOU changed lives that day! Thanks again for sharing your keen insight and talents with all of us!

Respectfully,

Rick Herold

Director of Parks and Recreation

City of Grand Prairie, Texas

www.GrandFunGP.com

Nice!

Shaping Tomorrow is one of the world’s leading trend watching services, observing on its home page that:

“We help 13,284 people and organisations anticipate, and respond to, how we will live”. Find opportunities for growth, discover new solutions, conduct risk and intelligence assessments, make strategic choices, plan and act on decisions, construct scenarios and join our global innovation and foresight network.

A tremendous number of global organizations use Shaping Tomorrow to track future trends. In line with that, the group has just launched a speakers bureau to provide its clients with the additional insight they need to deal with a high velocity economy.

I was asked to write an article for the launch of the site, and it is featured on the home page for Shaping Tomorrow Future Voices.

In “Our Brightest Minds — and the Strategic Value of Thought Leadership Speakers”, I make several observations that outline the role I play in increasing numbers of organizations today:

Steering an organization into the future is often akin to navigating a ship. You can only get so much momentum, and when it is necessary to take a change in direction, it takes a lot of time for the turn to take effect.

That’s where the role of a high profile futurist with a track record comes in. We help you to steer the ship.

I spend my time with a large number of global Fortune 1000 organizations, associations and government bodies. I’m often called in by a CEO or other member of senior management to achieve one particular goal: to help to place emphasis on the issues, challenges and opportunities that the organization faces in the future. In many cases, senior management knows what needs to be done; but being aware of the art of leadership, they also know that they must carefully lead their team through what are often, significant mindset changes.

The leadership team — including you — knows that they need to wake their people up, shake them out of their complacency, and give them a clear understanding that they had better start thinking about the future — and fast — in order to keep up with high velocity change. And perhaps, if they are lucky, stay one step ahead of everyone else.

That’s what we do. We’ve chosen a career path that has us assisting organizations in making the transition into the future. I’ve been doing this for well over fifteen years.

You can read the full article online.

More information:

• Read Our Brightest Minds — and the Strategic Value of Thought Leadership Speakers

I head to Salt Lake City next week; I’ll be the opening keynote speaker for the annual conference of the National Recreation and Parks Association.

GovPro News recently ran a press release on my keynote, commenting:

The recession has created an atmosphere of anxiety and uncertainty for many, and those who work in the parks and recreation field are not immune. With so many forces – the economy, politics, and social and leisure trends, for example – out of the control of parks and recreation professionals, thinking about the future could cause a few sleepless nights.

Futurist Jim Carroll has helped hundreds of organizations minimize their sleepless nights when preparing for the future, and he will discuss some of the upcoming challenges and opportunities in the field of parks and recreation when he delivers the keynote address at the National Recreation and Parks Association’s (NRPA) annual Congress and Exposition in Salt Lake City.

So what will I be talking about? The NRPA ran an interview with me in their September issue which is worth a read; I discuss some of the challenges and trends that we face in terms of the future of parks and recreation, and the innovative mindsets that will help folks cope with a future which is faster, more complex, and certainly full of opportunity.

As NRPA Chief Executive Officer Barbara Tulipane commented in the GovPro release: “In these difficult economic times, it will be refreshing and instructive to learn from one of the truly great minds in strategic planning…. Attendees will leave the conference well-armed with a variety of tools and strategies to help them successfully confront the challenges of the coming year.”

More information:

• Read NRPA article: What the Future Holds
• visit 2009 NRPA Congress and Exposition Web site
• Read 2009 NRPA conference casts an eye to the future

Next week, I’ll be in Jacksonville, as the lunch time keynote speaker for the annual meeting of the Materials Handling Association of America. We’ll have about 300 executives in the room, from a broad cross section of North American industry.

My topic? “Moving Beyond the Meltdown: Aligning Yourself for Growth Through Innovation“.

In the last twelve months, I’ve had a unique first hand opportunity to witness what’s happening on the ground throughout corporate North America as companies have grappled with the recession. Throughout this time, I’ve been fortunate enough to speak at a wide variety of leadership meetings, management get-togethers and other corporate events for a fascinating list of Fortune 500 organizations, as well as many prestigious national associations.

And in my own small way, I’ve been busy helping people to understand what they need to do to innovate their way into the “next economy.” That’s because there are an increasing number of CEO’s or other members of senior management who are bringing me in, in order to help place emphasis on their message of the urgency of change.

What’s clear is that we are in the midst of a pretty significant economic transformation. As Mick Fleming at the American Chamber of Commerce put it recently: “It’s going to be this move from a bad economy, to the next economy.”

What is the shape of that next economy? The scope of the change can be seen in the types of deep, transformational change that is underway in many an industry. Consider manufacturing – clearly, we’re moving from a world of mass production, to mass customization and agility-based manufacturing. I often use the example of Honda, as noted in a Bloomberg news article back in 2008:

“Honda’s assembly lines can switch models in as little as 10 days ….. by contrast, it could take months for most rivals to make the same change.”

Clearly, the Detroit based old manufacturing business model was seriously and deeply flawed. The newer model, based on agility and flexibility is the model that will take may manufacturers into the future.

There’s a similar fundamental transformation underway in many other industries — and to understand the link between future trends and innovation, you must get into that mindset. Take health care — 20 years from now, it will look nothing like it does today, as we move to a world of preventative medicine.

And what’s really happening with the global economy are a number of trends that point to growth:

• There are a tremendous number of new companies and new industries being built around the high velocity of ideas that surround us – which is increasing the pace of business startups;
• New ideas continue to be explored, markets grow, and industries emerge as rapid innovation occurs in health care, agriculture and countless other fields. It’s all about rapid science today — and exponential knowledge growth leading to faster discovery of the “next thing”
• Business model innovation continues unabated : I’m seeing revolutionary trends with mobile text message based banking systems, for example
• Small organizations continue to have the advantage of capitalizing on opportunity quicker; today, it’s all about speed, and these are the innovators who often win in big markets. Just look at what’s going on in pharmaceutical research, where the majority of new discoveries are happening in small labs

It’s easy during a time of economic volatility to lose sight of where the global economy is really headed. Yet while stock markets might rock, innovation thrives.

What’s my role? In each and every case, the individuals who have engaged me know that their industry and the world they live in is set for deep, systemic, transformational change. They have a compelling sense of urgency. They know that maybe the rest of their team does not share the sentiment; they’re suffering from organizational sclerosis; their ability to understand the future is clogged up by todays’ short term focus.

Leaders today know that they need to wake their people up, shake them out of their complacency, and give them a clear understanding that they had better start thinking about the future — and fast — in order to keep up with high velocity change.

And perhaps, if they are lucky, stay one step ahead of everyone else.

More information:

• Material Handling Association of America – 2009 annual conference
• Blog post: Are you watching the major transformations, or just the piddly stuff?

Two weeks ago, I was featured as the closing speaker at the 2009 Governor’s Conference on Economic Development, the 51st annual event of this type. Governor Jay Nixon addressed the crowd on Thursday, Sept 10th, noting in his keynote that:

To compete – and win — in the 21st century, we must encourage entrepreneurship and small-business growth; enhance our workforce; and embrace emerging science and technology as critical industries of tomorrow.

I followed up with a closing keynote on Friday that took a look at the trends occurring with small business, workforce trends, and the rapid pace of innovation in various markets : particularly, energy, the environment, and what I’ve come to call “manufacturing 2.0.” Here’s the session description:

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 to lose sight of what will happen as we return to a period of economic growth.

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 that we live in transformative times — and in five or ten years, will look back at this time with awe at the new industries, products, careers, and opportunities that were developed.

Jim Carroll will challenge you to focus on the opportunities of today and tomorrow, rather than the challenges of the past.

There have been quite a few economic development related talks as of late ; it’s my belief that with the downturn, a lot of people have lost sight of the transformational change that is occurring in many industries, particularly with leading edge innovation and future trends, and what local economic development officers might be doing to capitalize on those trends.

Area Development Magazine, a publication that focuses on this area, noted recently that “it’s impossible to succeed at economic development and be a pessimist.”

What I’ve been doing is to help to bring a sense of optimism to those in the room.

I’m thrilled that Microsoft has asked me to be the opening speaker for a number of events this fall, related to the Windows 7 launch. We will be talking to CIO’s, CFO’s and CTO’s for a wide variety of organizations from multiple different industries.

My talk with focus on the theme: “Achieving Growth! Why Innovators Will Rule in the Post-Recession Economy–And How You Can Join Them!“; and specifically:

“Jim will share his insight into the key trends facing every organization, and the methods by which organizations are positioning themselves for the rapidly changing economy of the 21st century, where time-to-market is the new metric, and fast-innovation rules.”

This has been an area of heavy focus for me through the last year, as the economic downturn took hold. I’ve had the opportunity to watch and study what a wide variety of organizations have been doing to keep a growth orientation.

There are many, many clients who are booking me because the CEO or senior management realizes they need to quickly re-align the thinking of their team towards growth; and through discussion with me, have discovered that I can play an extremely useful role in helping them accomplish this.

Who’s working with me? I’ve had recent and upcoming engagements with General Dynamics / Northrop Grumman ; the 2009 Missouri Governor Economic Development Congress; Signature Travel global owners meeting; Microsoft; the US National Recreation and Parks Association; Yum! Brands; Burger King; US Department of Defence – Commissary Agency ; Rockwell Collins; Oracle ….. all of these organizations have engaged me for a keynote or leadership meeting focused on future trends, innovation and growth!

Think growth!

Summer’s over, and things are happening fast!

I’m off tomorrow, to deliver the closing keynote for the 2009 Missouri Governor’s Economic Development Conference in St. Louis.

After that, I’ll be spending time with executives at such organizations as Microsoft, General Dynamics, Oracle, the National Recreation and Parks Association, and many others, all around the theme of “innovating into the recovery.”

One group has used this description for an upcoming keynote:

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 to lose sight of what will happen as we return to a period of economic growth. 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 that we live in transformative times — and in five or ten years, will look back at this time with awe at the new industries, products, careers, and opportunities that were developed.

Jim Carroll will challenge you to focus on the opportunities of today and tomorrow, rather than the challenges of the past.

He will cover the trends that will provide for major growth markets through the next five years; where we will see the emergence of new careers, industries, business models and opportunities; and how a relentless focus on opportunity and growth is directly linked to future success. He will help you to make sense of what happened ; where we are now; and what do we do next!

That pretty well sums up my perspective on things.

Stay tuned as we launch into the fall of 2009!

One year ago today, I was on stage in Sydney, Australia, opening the 2008 Toshiba Mobility Exchange Conference.

Part of my talk focused on the issue of “innovation in the high velocity economy.”

Looking back at a clip from the talk, one year after the global economic meltdown, some key points continue to remain extremely valid going forward as the economic recovery begins.

In a summary, my point then, and my point now, is that innovative organizations concentrate on:

• an accelerated innovation cycle
• rapid ingestion of new technologies / methodologies
• faster time to market
• rapid re-focusing of resources for opportunity or threat
• rabid focus on operational excellence
• innovating for rapid customer change
• nomadic workforce
• rapid response to volatility

If you can nail those things, you are well positioned to deal with what the global economy tosses your way.

Looking back at my slide deck, I concluded with the observation that high-velocity innovators concentrate on “global scalability, rapid assembly of teams, and hierarchy destroyed, because of a relentless focus on fast, emerging opportunity.”

I don’t think any of that has changed despite everything that has gone in the last year, and it still provides a good framework for innovative thinking.

ENTREPENEURS: Recessions provide ‘tremendous opportunities,’ trends expert says

London Free Press, May 28, 2009

Recession or not, the future belongs to companies willing to adapt to rapid change, Jim Carroll, a trends and innovation expert, said in London yesterday.

Jim Carroll, speaking at the TechAlliance annual meeting yesterday, says smart businesses must look past the recession.

“Recessions provide tremendous opportunities for growth because everyone else is scared to do anything,” Carroll said at the annual meeting of TechAlliance.

Carroll, who grew up in London, is an author, columnist and speaker specializing in new trends and technologies affecting the business world.

He said even when the economy is being “pummelled by negativity,” smart businesses are looking past the recession for growth opportunities.

“Recessions are cyclical. I’ve seen this movie before. I know how it ends,” he said.

He said at least one billion people in Asia are entering the middle class, providing new markets for agriculture, technology and other sectors.

Carroll said global food production will have to double in the next few decades, boosting opportunities for agricultural areas around London.

He said health care, another major sector in London, would soon undergo a major shift toward preventative care, aided by genetic testing and diagnostics.

“We will know what you are likely to develop in your lifetime and we will treat you before you develop those conditions.”

He said medical care will enter an era of “bioconnectivity” in which expensive hospital beds will be replaced by remote technology allowing for care in the community or home.

Carroll said businesses have to adapt to a “high-velocity economy” driven by technological change. He said the shelf life of a digital camera model has shrunk to a few months while most of the sales on a video game are made within the days of release.

Carroll said business is entering an era of “pervasive connectivity” in which all industries will be transformed by smart communications technology.”Everything in our lives is plugging into everything else.”

I’m at the airport in Austin, Texas, having just delivered the opening keynote for Facilities ’09: National Association of Children’s Hospitals Design conference.

The room was full of CEO’s, board members, architects, and managers responsible for transitioning the physical infrastructure of these facilities into the modern hospital infrastructure of the 21st century.

I’ve just discovered that someone from NACHRI is live-blogging the event, and they covered my talk. I’ll have more to write about this later, but there’s a quick summary of the challenges I raised to the crowd here.

Jim Carroll’s keynote at NACHRI: So the question becomes: what mindset should we have going forward, and what are we doing for the future?

• We need a relentless focus on market growth. There is an unprecedented opportunity for growth through increased efficiencies, cost savings and greening of facilities.

• The scope of the problem will drive a lot of innovative thinking, because only innovating thinking can keep pace, or get ahead of, change.
• We are reinventing the concept of a hospital. Whe hospital will increasingly become virtual as it extends its reach into everyday life. “The hospital as we know it is coming to an end.”
• Build up your experiential capital as well as your financial capital. If the world is changing so fast, experience is invaluable in navigating the complicated and ever changing landscape. Be afirmed to try new things.
• One of the increasing changes is digital technology moving off the plug and into everyday, everywhere life

“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the changes that will occur in the next ten years. Don’t let yourself be dulled into inaction.” — Bill Gates

You can access the full live blog below.

You can also read where I think we’ll be with health care in the future. The key for organizations struggling to get through this economic mess right now is to focus on the huge variety of future trends that will impact you, understand them, and innovate from them!

Think growth!

More information

• It’s January 15, 2020: Do you know where your health care system is?
• Facilities ’09: Rethinking the hospital
• Live blog updates from Facilities’09:

Some very nice feedback from my keynote for the BC American Marketing Association Big Ideas conference last week; my theme was “Moving Beyond the Meltdown: Aligning Yourself for Growth Through Innovation.”

Susan Kirk blogged about it in her summary, noting:

Futurist Jim Carroll started his presentation with a cool text/sms poll (poll everwhere) asking the audience when they think the economic recovery will happen. No surprise the majority said 1-2 years. He’s a great speaker and talked about innovation and the necessity for a relentless focus on growth and continuous improvement. Here’s a quote from his website:

“Forget about the concept of innovation as simply involving the design of cool new products. In the high-velocity economy, where faster is the new fast, it’s your ability to adapt, change, and evolve, through a constant flood of new ideas, that will define your potential for success.” (From the opening chapter of Jim’s newest book, Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast) /keynotes.htm

There’s a very interesting blog post by Michelle Evans over at her blog, “im.seeking.balance” — she summarizes the key points of every speaker at the conference in a very comprehensive summary.

Her summary comment from that page on my presentation:

I loved this session. Even thought the key take-aways seem quite simple, it was a very inspiring presentation. It made me feel like I’m on the right track with my goals and philosophies. So here’s what I got from this: Now is the time to innovate. Evolve your brand. Move towards mobile. Connect. Engage. Try new things. Keep learning and changing.

It’s always tremendously refreshing to see feedback like this; I went out on stage with a tremendous amount of enthusiasm, determined to build a positive message for people who are looking for inspiration in these difficult economic times. With feedback like this — and with comments made in the #bcama Twitter stream, it proved to be a great success!

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.“

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.

I just came off stage in Las Vegas from an opening keynote for a group of about 500 representatives for Trane / Ingersoll Rand, and their key contractor partners. My keynote was to focus on “7 Things They Should Do Right Now to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast.”

Certainly it can be tough in the construction industry right now, and particularly so for contractors. They’re witnessing a laundry list of challenges, including:

• Project deferment, postponement and cancellation
• Prevalence of below-cost bidding
• Financing is vanishing
• New demands for cost-cutting and project management
• A capital spending freeze at many organizations
• A looming funding crisis (e.g. university endowment collapse means less college and university construction in the future)

Of course, that’s what most people might see if they look at the sector. I look further than the 3 minutes, 3 months or 3 years — that’s what a futurist does. And I see a TREMENDOUS amount of momentum.

First off, there’s a lot of fiscal momentum, with the stimulus spending including some:

• $6.4 billion for water projects
• $50 billion for energy programs (efficiency & renewable energy)
• $11 billion on a “smart electrical grid”
• $4.5 billion on federal building energy efficiency
• $47 billion in state fiscal relief, with permission to use funds for school modernization/repair

All of this will have a direct impact on growth in the industry.

Beyond that though, the future looks tremedously bright for the HVAC industry because of what we might call HVAC 2.0. In a nutshell, the industry is going to play a huge role as we work to fix the big societal problems of energy and the environment.

And that is going to happen with the rapid emergence of highly intelligent building infrastructure; ten years out, most buildings will be smart buildings; the Internet and IP will be the backbone to a system that provides for intelligent energy management, monitoring and usage. Silicon Valley and HVAC are getting married, and the result is going to be remarkable.

The National Institute of Building Sciences comments on the impact of this trend, noting that “…an economic expansion based on emerging green markets would create an estimated 3 million jobs … and help establish communities with high-performance buildings that are both economically advantageous and environmentally conscious.”

The trend is driven by two things that have undeniable monentum: the need for energy savings, and the green building movement. Consider the health care sector. Green specs in health care / hospital building projects has gone from 13.3 percent in 2006, to 37.6 percent in 2007, to an even higher percentage in 2008. There’s a bit of pullback in 2009 as projects are deferred, but the increase will continue to come at us with a vengeance.

So as a contractor, how do you innovate? By keeping on top of fast pace trends in your industry in terms of methodology, ideas, technology, new design thinking — high velocity change!!!!

So what I suggested to them was that, for example, they could get out in front of tenant / building manager needs, with this line of thinking:

• when times get tough, quality, service and relationships rule
• success is found not by competing on price, but through partnership: ie. ‘we’ve got the latest strategies to help achieve cost savings’ (i.e. remote energy management)
• key attitude? “we’re on top of fast paced developments with building management, so you don’t need to!”

I do a tremendous amount of research when I go in to keynote a group. That’s why I’ve got such a solid, blue chip, global client list. Real innovation takes real thinking, with an alignment of existing and forthcoming trends to innovation opportunities.

I’m off to Austin, Texas today, where I’ll be the closing keynote speaker tomorrow for the annual meeting of the Texas Credit Union League.

My role is to motivate and challenge the audience to continue to focus on applying innovative and creative ideas to their businesses, given that there is constant change within the financial sector. Not just due to the financial crisis, but also due to rapidly shifting consumer behavior, the rapid emergence of new technologies, and the extremely fast development of new business models.

Particularly with the idea of mobile banking!

Take the story of Wizzit (which boasts the slogan, “With Wizzit, you have your bank in your pocket“), based in South Africa. 200,000 South African’s have signed up for the service, in which they pay bills, store cash like a debit card, transfer funds, and send remittances. Wizzit is completely text messaging based.
Accounts can be opened in 30 seconds via a call center, and are sold via Wizzkids (It’s based upon the JetBlue model – with these representatives working at home). Plans are to expand the business model into Eastern Europe, according to Bank Technology News.

Then there is the story of Guaranty Bank in Turkey, which boasts $61 billion in assets. They set up a mobile banking portal — and in the first two months, saw 1 million page views, 50,000 customers, 30,000 transactions and $24 million in transaction volume.

Today, they’ve got 1.3 million mobile banking customers, and believe that the service is accessible on 5,100 cellphone models.

Quite clearly, mobile is going to play a huge role in financial services, and it’s happening NOW!

On stage, I’ll be challenging this group to realize that their future success will come from their ability to respond to rapidly changing products, markets, business models, rapid economic trends, and competitive. In that way, innovation isn’t just about new products — it’s about responding to the reality that in every industry, faster is the new fast.

More information

• Wizzit Web site
• Innovation in the financial sector – related post

There are two types of organizations in the world today: those that have retrenched, shut down their idea machines, and are trying to coast through the recession. Then there are those who are making sure that they keep their team focused on the future, opportunities, and the need for innovative thinking.

I’ve been confirmed to be the opening keynote speaker for the next global leadership/franchise conference for Burger King, one of the largest QSR chains in the world.

This is really quite an honor, and I think is indicative that my theme that “organizations need to stay on the innovative edge despite the recession” resonates strongly.

Every industry is changing at a furious pace, and the quick service food industry is no exception. We’re seeing rapid change in terms of branding and marketing, particularly in terms of outreach and interaction with the new mobile consumer. There’s a lot of fast paced change in terms of consumer preferences. If we think about issues of restaurant design and construction, there are fast and furious developments in terms of energy usage and environmental footprint. The list goes on and on – there is no shortage of opportunity for new and innovative thinking.

I’ll set the stage by challenging the audience to focus on growth, focus on opportunities, and think about how innovation can become a core component of how they progress into the future.

I wrote about these trends in a previous blog post, High velocity change in the food/consumer products sector.

(p.s. I found the photo on iStockPhoto, and dreamed up the “hunting innovation” title. It seemed kind of fun!)

More information

• Read about High velocity change in the food/consumer products sector