Jim Carroll- Futurist, Trends & Innovation Keynote Speaker

What do innovative organizations do? They re-orient themselves for an economy in which their ability to react to fast paced change will increasingly define their success.

In this clip, Jim Carroll outlines for an audience of several thousand the key attributes of today’s innovation heroes:

In essence, these organizations concentrate upon:

• an accelerated innovation cycle
• the rapid ingestion of new technologies / methodologies
• faster time to market
• rapid re-focusing of resources to deal with new opportunity or threat
• a rabid focus on operational excellence
• a  rapid response to volatility
• and a re-orientation to fast paced consumer and brand perception

Jim has studied the innovation attitudes of hundreds of global organizations, and has carefully come to define what it is that allows some organizations to achieve stunning levels of innovation success, while others become innovation laggards. These attributes are a good part of the defining characteristics for success.

What do you think?

I’ve been quite priviliged through the years to be able to observe, within my global blue chip client base (which includes clients such as the National Australian Bank; Diners Club; HJ Heinz, General Dynamics / Northrop Grumman Nestle), some of the fascinating innovation strategies that market leaders have pursued.

What is it they do? Many of them make big, bold decisions that help to frame their innovative thinking and hence, their active strategies. For example, they:

• make big bets. In many industries, there are big market and industry transformations that are underway. For example, there’s no doubt that mobile banking is going to be huge, and its going to happen fast with a lot of business model disruption. Innovative financial organizations are willing to make a big bet as to its scope and size, and are innovating at a furious pace to keep up with fast changing technology and even faster evolving customer expectations
• make big transformations: I’m dealing with several organizations who realize that structured operational activities that are based on a centuries old style of thinking no longer can take them into a future that will demand more agility, flexibility and ability to react in real time to shifting demand. They’re pursuing such strategies as building to demand, rather than building to inventory; or pursuing mass customization projects so that they don’t have to compete in markets based on price.
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A key innovation message that I spend time with my clients focusing upon involves the concept of “thinking big, starting small, and scaling fast.”

(With all due respect, the thought process comes from a customer-service oriented strategy at McDonald’s many years ago, but it is easily extended to encompass innovation in general.)

What does the message imply:

• think big: identify the long term transformative trends that will impact you. These could include significant industry change, business model disruption, the emergence of new competitors, product or service transformation; anything. Essentially, you need to get a good grounding in the “big changes” that will impact your future over a five or ten year period
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My mantra about innovation is that it is always about three questions: how do you run the business better, grow the business, and transform the business. Address those three issues, and you’ve nailed the essence of innovation.

Since the economic downturn, most of my global clients have been focused on the first issue: how can we run the business better? They’ve been razor-arrow sharp on achieving operational excellence, managing costs, downsizing, and other critical steps necessary to survival.

Now that’s changed.

In the last few months, I’ve had a significant number of bookings — often by senior VP or CEO level execs within  Fortune 1000 organizations — for keynotes at leadership meetings that have the purpose of examining how to grow the business and transform the business.

In other words, folks, GROWTH IS BACK. I think the mindset of the global Fortune 1000 is shifting quickly to strategies that are aimed at transitioning products and markets; generating revenue where revenue hasn’t existed before; growth through acquisition; and countless other innovation strategies aimed at growth. And they’re thinking as to what they need to do this; how do they realign their skills base to deal with rapid change ; how do they more rapidly share ideas on fast emerging opportunities; how do they partner up in order to move faster?

This is the fifth recession I’ve gone through in my professional career. I’ve seen these signs before.

Growth is definitely back in business.

More information

• Read: Success Comes to Those Who Evolve

Here’s a blog post that ran over at the Chicago Hospitality Insider blog with a report on my keynote last week.”

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Moving Beyond The Meltdown” with Jim Carroll
Posted on February 18th, 2010 by Jody Robbins

How is the tourism business impacted by a world where information is passed feverishly around the globe? Immediately and directly; that’s how, says Jim Carroll (Futurist and Trends & Innovation Expert!), today’s lunch-time speaker at the 2010 Illinois Governor’s Conference on Tourism.

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I was in Chicago earlier this week; I had a keynote for the leadership team of a company that’s involved in a sector of the construction industry.

They’ve had some challenges with the economic downturn; they’re also likely to see a resurgence as infrastructure spending kicks in.

But they’re thinking beyond what happens after that — they’re positioning themselves for long term growth — and so they brought me in to stir up some creative thinking as to what they need to do.

The focus of my keynote was the theme: “What is it that world class innovators do that other organizations don’t do?” Here’s some of the insight that I covered.

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The chance that your company, markets, competitors will be the same in ten years is virtually zero – so what do you do about that?

Here’s 10 phrases I often use to challenge my clients — often CEO’s of large, multinational organizations — to think differently about our fast paced future:

• experiential capital: it’s the cumulative experience you gain by trying to do new things. Do you have enough of it?
• momentum management: is this a core capability that your organization possesses – can you steer your team through ever more fast paced change?
• chameleon revenue: is your revenue stream capable of it? Can you keep generating new streams of revenue as old streams disappear?

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My January / February CA Magazine article is out; entitled “Stranger than Science Fiction,” it examines a major theme that has been part of many of my keynotes throughout 2009: what happens to your industry when the pace of innovation is no longer set within the industry itself, but rather, is set by the blistering rate of change as set by Silicon Valley?

Stranger than Science Fiction

by Jim Carroll, CAMagazine, January 2010

Is your industry in the midst of a transition at Silicon Valley speed? If it isn’t, it could be very soon, because I’m seeing it happen wherever I go. Take the global credit card industry. For a long time, the pace of innovation has been relatively slow and deliberate; aside from the chip found in your new credit card, it’s still been about the same old piece of plastic.

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Here’s a brochure extract from another upcoming conference. The theme : “Moving Beyond the Meltdown: Focusing on Growth Through Innovation.”

It’s been a busy six months since the meltdown.

Throughout this time, I’ve been keynoting events all over North America, for organizations and events large and small, focused on the theme of innovation and working our way through challenging economic times.

What has been fascinating is that in sharing the stage with a variety of CEO’s, for both massive, global organizations and smaller associations and businesses, there are many who share a relentless focus on opportunity.

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There’s a lot of research that goes into every keynote and workshop I undertake. Recently, one key theme has been looking at how innovators break through the recessionary blues, and create new markets and revenue through disruptive innovation. This was the theme of a recent column that I wrote, “Keep Those Ideas Coming.”

While preparing for a recent keynote for a Fortune 500 leadership event, I came across an an article from The Hindu newspaper from January 2009, which featured an interview with Vijay Govindarajan, Chief Innovation Consultant at General Electric in Chennai; he’s also a professor at the Tuck School of International Business.

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Here’s something to think about: we are going to see $12 to $18 trillion in intergenerational wealth transfer in the next 12 years in North America. (US GDP is $12 trillion). By 2053, $130 trillion will have moved from one generation to the next, in rolling waves of wealth transfer. All this will involve monies moving to new customers who are far more independent, financially savvy, and technically sophisticated.

In other words, tomorrow’s customer is going to be completely unlike the customer of today. That’s why innovating — keeping up with the future – is critical!

Tomorrow I keynote a group of professionals in the life insurance industry. Next Monday, I keynote a national Association of Actuaries; the following week, an international accounting and professional services powerhouse. Last week, a major bank and a number of wealth management firms. The heavy duty theme this month is the world of finance!

Here’s the thing about anyone doing business in financial services: you can drown in all the noise and short term hype and hysteria that involve markets and economies in rapid change.

Or, on the other hand, you can manage through that, and think about the innovations that are set to occur through the next five years. Focus on those, and there’s your future strategy.

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At a particular keynote last week, I met a number of senior executives who certainly agreed with my message – we need to constantly realign our company to the reality of change that surrounds it. That’s where innovation comes from. But they also also indicated that they found it increasingly difficult to keep up with the rapid change occurring all around them.

There’s been an increasing number of these individuals, and I’ve come to call them the Led Zeppelin refugees: they’re simply dazed by the changes occuring in the high velocty economy, and are confused about what to do next.

That’s why there’s such a good question that flows from this: just how do you become an organization that is focused on innovation?

One of the easiest methods is simply by identifying the obvious and the not-so-obvious trends that will impact your business or organization — and then taking the time to figure out what actions you must undertake to deal with those trends.

Ask yourself this question: are you prepared for what comes next in terms of your business? The likely answer is no: my experience is that many organizations still have a very short-term minded outlook. They’re caught in an innovation rut, simply doing day by day the same old things they’ve always been doing, day in day out. And they don’t really think about how their world is going to change.

That’s why you should undertake a “trend-and-innovation” audit of your organization: quite simply, figuring out what comes next, and what you need to do about it.

How can you do this? By asking yourself a series of questions:

• How quickly is our marketplace changing? How quickly might it change in the future? What’s the impact on what I sell, and how I sell it?
• How are our products changing? Willl they change faster in terms of features? Will support become easier, or more complex? Can we manage to operate in a faster market?
• Are our products moving upscale, or are they becoming commodities,such that you’ll be forced to compete on price? Can we do something so that there is more of a service element to our product?
• What new competitors are appearing, or might emerge in the future? Is the basic business model threatened? Is there more likelihood of direct outreach to the consumer rather than through an existing distributor/wholesaler network?
• What moves could we make to make sure we can remain competitive? You really must ask yourself some probing questions as you go through this process. You need to challenge yourself and think what might really be different in five years, in terms of what you sell, who you sell to, how you sell it, and who you are selling against.

What you need to do is ask yourself these tough questions, so that you’re thinking about where there might be new problems and new opportunities that will impact your business in the future, not just in terms of what you sell, but in terms of the structure that you use to get things done.

And therein lies the rub: I think a lot of organizations fail to do this type of simple analysis. There are too many who sit back and react to change instead of thinking: “ok we know some big change is coming what the heck are we going to do about it?” Think of it as forward-oriented innovation: it’s a simple concept, and one of the most important things you should be doing.

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”

Even as news and financial pundits endlessly debate the question, let’s face reality: the US economy is in a recession.

Given this reality, the key question going forward is: what do you do now to ensure that you remain innovative, competitive, and forward-oriented?

Innovate for the upturn! That’s the key message I focused on with my clients in 2002-3, and the same message holds true today. And that was the focus of a keynote last week when I spoke to one of the largest US commercial / industrial real estate brokerage groups. There were several bits of insight I shared with them:

Put sub-prime into perspective
One of my first comments for this audience of senior executives? We need to think about the sub-prime mess in the context of a longer term view. In the last ten years, we’ve been through many economic challenges:

• the 1998 Asian currency collapse
• the 2000 dot.com meltdown
• the 2001 global telecom restructuring
• from 2001 to 2003, the impact of 9-11 and economic uncertainty
• 2007 to 2008, the march to $100 oil
• and now sub-prime….

Sub-prime is a big issue, but it’s just another blip in the grand scheme of the churning engine that is the global economy. Through the next ten years, we’ll see a few other economic challenges along the way; various regional economies and sectors will be impacted; yet innovation will abound. That’s why I’ve also indicated that a key leadership mantra for the high velocity economy is this: “volatility is the new normal.” That’s a topic I covered in a recent economic interview.

Keep focused on the longer term view
I tend to be an optimist: that’s because I think in a longer term perspective. Think about it: over the next 10 years, there are several certainties:

• scientific discovery will continue to advance at an ever increasing pace, opening new markets, evolving existing markets, and establishing countless new opportunities
• global collaborative knowledge communities will continue to lead to faster innovation in every industry and market
• new products, methodologies, skills, ideas, organizational structures will continue to evolve at a fast pace; agile organizations will continue to come out on top
• the transition of economies in the Mid-East and Asia will continue despite regional economic challenges
• rapidly aging economies in North America and Europe will drive rapid spending, innovation and knowledge discovery in the world of health care
• global energy conciousness will continue to lead to ever more rapid evolution of “green” solutions
• 1/2 of the global population is under the age of 25. They’re change aggressive, and will continue to lead to the rapid adoption of new ideas.
• growth in markets is a simple reality: in agriculture, global food production still has to double in the next 25 years to keep up with population trends. Sub-prime has no impact on this reality.

Don’t let aggressive indecision take over your thinking

To innovate in the upturn, don’t let a short-term vs long-term trend disconnect take over your strategic thinking. Already, I can see the signs of some companies heading into an innovation rut, their staff and executives encumbered by a dangerous state of complacency, while other companies innovate, change, and adapt to the “new normal” that is now our reality.

In the last recession, “aggressive indecision” became a driving cultural and leadership trait. Organizations that fell into this funk fell behind. Innovative companies didn’t permit that to happen then, and you shouldn’t let this happen now.

More information:

• Read Global Economic Trends: An Interview with Jim Carroll
• The reality of future trends: grab the What Comes Next trends overview
• Read my 2003 article about “aggressive indecision”
• Read my Credit Suisse interview for my thoughts on “growth”

One of my recent keynotes for a global organization focused on the issue of high-velocity change. No matter who you are and what you do, there are certain realities: your markets, customer expectations, competitors, cost structure and business model continues to change really, really fast, and will continue to do so. This little video clip captures that message.

Innovative organizations recognize this reality, and orient themselves to a state of constant, forward-oriented innovation, not only to keep up with but to exceed the constantly rising bar of innovation that surrounds them. They do this by subscribing to several key ideas. Innovative companies: Continue Reading

Credit Suisse, headquartered in Zurich, is global financial powerhouse operating in 50 countries; 48,000+ employees, assets of $75 billion US, and net assets under management of $1.345 trillion.

They’ve just released their 2008 Bulletin magazine, a publication provided to key investment banking, private banking and asset management clients worldwide.

They’ve include a fairly lengthy Q&A with me, in an article titled Success Comes to Those Who Evolve, in which they wanted wide-ranging views on the word “growth.” It came out well: my key message has always been that we must always link the concept of innovation to rapidly emerging trends in order to constantly change what we do — often simply to keep up, or attain competitive advantage.

Here’s the key point: So what’s the recipe to kick-start innovative thinking? I think it’s about having your entire organization understand everybody is responsible for constantly figuring out how they need to change to keep up with the rapidly changing world. They need leadership that supports and encourages them to be open and share ideas, and that leadership needs to hammer home that message on a regular basis.“

More information

• Read: Success Comes to Those Who Evolve

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.”

I was there to help take them to the next level, with a keynote theme, “Creating the Future: Leadership in An Era of Innovation and Change.” In the talk, I looked at additional ideas that they might pursue to stay on the leading edge.

All in all, a tremendous amount of fun, and a wonderful organization to spend some time with!

One of my latest columns focuses on what will likely be the corporate issue of 2008 – managing generational challenges in the workplace.

In the column, “Here we are now, entertain us,” I take a look at the unique attitudes that Gen-Connect is now starting to bring in to the workplace. There are several key observations from the article that are critical to understanding the future of the workforce:

• What is clear is that we are witnessing the death of the long-term career and corporate loyalty, which will soon be but a quaint memory from the previous century.
• I often tell the story of a young engineering graduate who turned down a job with an architectural firm because its 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. work hours conflicted with the time he expected to be carving arcs into deep powder in the mountains. It’s a real attitude, and it’s already happening around us. The challenge, when such trends are so patently obvious, is trying to figure out what to do about it. And a good part of the solution will come through the transformation of rewards and remuneration.
• Gen-connect has very little patience, particularly when it comes to being rewarded for good work or significant effort. These youngsters are used to instant rewards: their Xbox/Wii video-game-oriented world has them accomplishing a goal, moving up a level, and earning some points or other valuable form of currency that helps them accumulate additional armour, weapons or whatever else is needed to accomplish the game’s next challenge.
• That’s why, at a recent conference, I framed the issue of rewards transformation to an audience of financial professionals this way: “Organizations that can attract, engage, retain and amuse an increasingly complex workforce will be the ones who find success in the rapidly evolving global economy.”
• Put the emphasis on the word amuse. Today’s Gen Y doesn’t, and tomorrow’s Gen-connect certainly won’t, have any patience whatsoever for slow and steady career paths.

Related postings:

Article: Here We are Now, Entertain Us

Related article: Don’t Mess with My Powder, Dude!

Keynote topic: What’s Happening with Our Workforce: Achieving Competitive Advantage Through Skills Agility

Critical Trends Analysis: 10 Unique Characteristics of 21st Century Skills

As we end the year and start a new one, it’s a good time to be thinking about some of the trends and issues which will impact us in the future.

Take a look at my newly released quick-report, What Comes Next: A Trends Perspective for 2008 and Beyond.

My message for my clients throughout the year – whether it was 2,000 executives at the World Congress for Quality, or the senior management team of one of the largest commercial construction companies in the US — was consistent. The high-velocity economy demands that we think, react, plan and manage differently.

Some of the guidance I shared with global clients concerning future trends is found in the report; I highlight what I think are some of the most important ones that we need to be thinking about, broadly defined as:

• revenge of the math geeks
• small is the new R&D
• attitude and amusement is the new motivation
• time disappears
• resistance to change retires
• careers end
• knowledge & skills banks dominate
• interactivity redefines markets

It’s an Adobe Acrobat document; feel free to grab it, share it, and distribute it!

I prepared the document on a MacBook Pro — I made the switch from Windows this year! — using the TokyoRPG Style Template for iWork 2007 Pages from KeynotePro. They have awesome styles for Pages and Keynote; if you’re an OS/X and iWork user, take a look.

• Grab the What Comes Next PDF now
• Learn more about iWork Themes from KeynotePro

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.

Related postings:

read Don’t Mess with My Powder, Dude!

Can you run your business at video game intensity?

High velocity retail innovation

Creativity, trends and innovation in retail, packaging & consumer goods