Jim Carroll- Futurist, Trends & Innovation Keynote Speaker

Over the last several months, I’ve been incorporating some live text message polling into my onstage presentations.

Yesterday, at an insurance industry conference, I put up a quick poll, and gave the audience three minutes to text message their answers in. It’s quite a bit of fun, because the results begin to appear automatically on screen — and are constantly, dynamically updated.

Here’s what’s fascinating: out of a crowd of about 300 people, only about 25 managed to get an answer in! There were a few reasons for this; first, since the A/V screen wasn’t great, it was hard to see the text message number, and I actually called out the wrong number for the first minute and a half – until someone pointed out my mistake! But at the same time, it was obvious that a good chunk of the crowd — baby boomers and up — had no clue how to send a text message.

I used that observation to point out to the crowd that they’re in a pretty dangerous spot if they don’t understand some of the tools that are fundamental to the life of their Gen-Y and Gen- Connect customers. Key message: if you are going to innovate, you better make sure you understand your customers. The next generation is going to demand a completely different, highly interactive “insurance experience,” and text messaging, Web 2.0 and other tools are going to be a part of that mix.

To do these online polls, I’m using the Polleverywhere service, which offers a number of innovative mobile solutions, including a “text from your Web site” capability. Services like this are at the leading edge of innovation when it comes to linking the Web together with the vast world of text messaging. Recent estimates suggest that every day, there are more text messages sent than their are people on the planet.

The quick polls, incorporated into a keynote on stage, whether with a group of 300 or 3,000 people, provide for a huge degree of interactivity with the audience, and provide for some really exciting dynamics on stage.

More information

• Polleverywhere Web site

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.

Here’s what’s certain in the insurance industry: someone will do one or more of these things, in a big way, that will cause significant and long lasting market disruption and transformation.

• they will redefine the business model (particularly in insurance): for example, health care costs worldwide are set to explode, and the system will implode. Someone will ride this obvious trend and do something transformative that forever changes the industry. It’s not about managing health costs; it’s about redefining the concept of health care. Think bio-connectivity, and health care rearchitecture.
• they will transform how business is done in the industry.Today, it’s still an industry that is still about brokers and distribution. Insurance is sold, not bought, based on fear of the future. That’s set to change. Tomorrow, smart widgets on top of a legacy insurance platform? The concept of “disintermediation” has been around for a long time, but here’s a certainty: tomorrow’s 50 year old is a very different animal from today’s 50 year old! Gen-Connect expects much more!
  
• they will redefine the product. Today, we buy life insurance and health care insurance and other “products.” Someone will figure out that people don’t want products: they want their own unique, self-defined, self-managed solutions, that likely include multiple solutions from multiple sources. Think “iPhone meets the life policy!”
• they’ll change the brand perception: fast movers will transform the product and services that are offered, by offering faster-paced, more relevant brands to consumers who aggressively self-manage every aspect of their daily life. Think Geico.
• they’ll constantly change the target customer. Today, insurance is sold to groups of employees, directly to individuals, and to affinity groups. Tomorrow, it will be sold to rapidly evolving, temporary fast-moving customer targets. Think portability: if the typical person will have 30 different careers and 50 different jobs in their lifetime, they’re no longer a captive customer!

Is that a bunch of babble? Not really. Five, ten, twenty years out, the insurance industry will look unlike anything that we know if it today. Market transformation is everywhere, and its’ going to sweep this industry faster than fast.

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

Memo

To: CEO’s worldwide,
       (particularly in the financial sector)

From: Jim Carroll

————————-
I know things are extremely busy, particularly given our economic climate, but I think there’s a key issue that you need to make sure is on your agenda.

The most important thing that you can do *right now*, as you work to navigate your way through the challenging economic shoals that surround you, is to make sure that you don’t kill innovation in its tracks.

In the last few years, you’ve nurtured and created a core group of people in your organization who have become relentlessly focused on innovation. They’ve been obsessively focused on process, service and product innovation. They’re matching the needs of customers, are taking you in to new markets, and are figuring out what to do in an economy that changes at a furious pace.

In the months and years to come, these executives are going to be some of the most important and critical individuals on your team.

Leaders set the tone. The tone you need to set for your leading innovators is that innovation matters now more than ever.

I know it’s a tough sector to be in right now; there’s a lot of bloodletting underway, and there’s likely more to come as hundreds of billions of dollars of losses are absorbed. Yet you’ll likely get through it, and you are going to have to be relentlessly focused on meeting customer needs, open new markets, and continually re-orient your business models to continue to focus on growth.

In January 2008. I was honored to be one of the judges for the annual Monarch Innovation Awards. We examined various innovative service and product offerings from such major financial institutions as Wachovia, SunTrust, USBank, Bank of America, WellsFargo and others. The key goal of the awards, sponsored by Barlow Research, was to “recognize financial institutions that provide the most innovative products to business customers” and to “recognize risk takers in the financial services industry who create/promote innovation within their organizations.”

Throughout the financial sector, there are innovation heroes like those who won the Monarch Innovation Awards. These are the folks who are willing to stick their heads up, take a risk, and do something new and dramatic.

It’s your innovation heroes who will help you open the future.

You must ensure that they still have the courage to take risks. To open new markets. To do innovative things that will solve customer problems. To realign the business for the future.

Celebrate them. Elevate them. Make their contributions known.

As the CEO, you set the tone for your organization. You have a momentary chance to ensure that you stay focused on the opportunities that come from your innovation heroes.

If you want to chat about this, give me a call. I’m at 905.855.2950. Or just send me an email: innovationmatters@jimcarroll.com

Sincerely,

Jim Carroll

——–

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.

10 years ago this market didn’t exist. Today, it is valued in the hundreds of billions, and growth continues to compound. Anyone in this space is faced with a lot of real, significant change: with technology, customers, expectations, competitors, business models and just about everything.

You stay innovative by structuring yourself to stay just one step ahead of the future.

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’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!

My latest CAMagazine column is out ; in it, I focus on the role that financial executives should be thinking about in the context of the massive rates of change occuring in the global financial economy.

My observations come from a talk and research I undertook for a global financial conference in Grand Cayman back in January.

In the article, I note that “….there is a subtle and distinct shift in the location of “global money,” due to oil wealth and the industrialization of Asia. A recent article in Barron’s suggested that there is now about $1 trillion in excess reserves in these two regions. The likely result is that while more of the world’s wealth moves away from North America and Europe and into these new economic centers, the skills will follow.”

I also go on to note that “a recent comment in Asian Banker in December 2006 is instructive of the impact of this trend, noting that in the future, “…outsourcing will become less about cost containment and more about accessing the best skills and expertise….”"

The issues are important, because it is all part of the increasingly complex war for talent occuring in every industry sector.

You can read the article

It’s been a busy week, with keynotes for the American Community Bankers Association and the National Home Furnishings Association. This gave me an audience of several hundred CEO’s and senior marketing/sales VP’s of some pretty big organizations.

And I can tell you this: the undercurrent of the mood within both conferences was one of being “overwhelmed” by high velocity change! New methods of marketing, a constantly higher bar of expectations from customers, a need for relentless customer oriented innovation to meet those expectations, an accelerated product innovation cycle with a need for a faster time to market. Web 2.0, collaborative networks, social networking, new media spending, YouTube, Google! What the heck does one do!?

The mindset of many senior executives today is “where do we start? My keynotes approached this by indicating the three organizational capabilities they must adjust for:

• velocity: they must evolve their organizations so that they can operate at the very fast pace that today’s market demands
• instantaneity: they must be prepared for rapid shifts in market, style, demand, fashion, product, service, and just about everything else!
• short term spontaneity: the consumer has no attention span left; they must learn to market, support and sell to the “continuous partial attention customer.”

My advice to them for the short term? I suggested to both audiences:

• focus on upside down innovation: turn existing innovation models around, by learning customer focused innovation. I’ve written about that on this blog before; it is a trend that is sweeping the world of retail, and is coming to impact financial services
• use the “new influencers” : some people are overwhelmed with product/service decision making : what should I get? What should I buy? They are increasingly turning to someone to help; in the case of furniture, parents seeking a home theater are turning to their kids for help! Re-steer your markeitng campaign to get the kids to get the parents in the door!
• develop knowledge agility: sales staff are overwhelmed too. Help them cope, by focusing on just-in-time knowledge on new products, services, campaigns and other customer focused efforts.
• focus on location-intelligence capabilities: online search increasingly drives customer decisions. It’s become extremely narrow and specific in the last year: you need to boost your ability to make sure you show up with very specific location information.
• build your experiential capital: take risks. Make mistakes! Do things! Learn from it — that’s your experiential capital, and it is the most important asset in the high velocity economy! You can’t just sit around and hope this rapid change will go away. It won’t — and it’s going to get faster.

I think the feeling of being overwhelmed is a common one. Based on the comments post-keynote last night, I think I hit the right mark with the observations, and the guidance.

I spoke last week at a senior level banking conference; in attendance were C and VP level executives from such major banks as JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Harris NA, Wells Fargo, RBC, HSBC Bank USA, MasterCard Worldwide, Bank of America, Citibank, and SunTrust Bank. The conference, sponsored by global banking research firm Barlow Associates, was built around the broad theme of “Just in time business banking,” and focused on trends and innovation within the corporate banking sector.

My keynote took a look at the major trends that will impact corporate banking relationships in the years to come. I also hosted a panel discussion featuring senior executives from Merrill Lynch, Zurich North America and US Bank, examining the broad theme of “how do we innovate in a world of high velocity change?”

What’s going on in this sector of the economy mirrors so many others, as we are seeing:

• Demographic driven velocity. Huge change is coming about in the ‘corner office’ as a generation of change-adverse boomers’ is set to retire…Gen-connect as bankers embrace velocity, are born innovative, and are fundamentally impatient with the “rest of us!”
• Gen-connect as business bankers? The YouTube / IM generation will demand a different type of “customer interaction” in corporate banking. Rapid adoption of new business models, structure, methods, markets, products, ideas……. and constant new forms of service delivery / interaction will emerge!
  Will they even “do” banks, or is their banking future around PayPal?
• Rapid idea cycle = rapid market shift. The bar of expectations is constantly rising. The skin to stay in the game is volatile, increasing, and instant. Customer expectations are evolving at high velocity.
• Rapid product / service development. Time to market is the key operational focus; the ability to respond to massive, sudden market / product shifts is now key the success factor. Awareness of emerging challenges / opportunities is critical.
• Externally focused innovation. Partnership oriented collaborative efforts goes critical (“what can we do to run your business better?”). Rethinking the real strategic role of IT from a different perspective — tactical to strategic transitions are the magic!
• War for talent goes supernova. Skills access becomes the next corporate battle ground – those can get it and lock it up are the winners. Complexity partnerships, infrastructure offloading, next wave outsourcing (“core competencies, not cost”) provide opportunity. Innovative retention, attraction and engagement strategies becomes critical.
• Rapid emergence of fundamental change. Complacency is a dangerous thing…Constant, relentless external innovation from unexpected competitors – “as goes Ford and GM, so too go I….” There are *no* barriers to entry and no loyalty beyond this generation to the concept of a bank?

This event comes on the heels of my recent talk in the Cayman Islands, on the broad theme of globalization of the financial services industry. You can read more about that event here.

I’m now in Grand Cayman, one of the top five financial centers in the world, where I’ll be speaking to the Cayman Business Outlook this morning.

I’ll be taking a look at the rapid rate of change in the global financial industry — which is really going from fast to furious, given the confluence of a number of factors:

• New business models in the financial services sector are emerging faster than ever before. There is an increasing volatility with global money. Witness the rush to private equity: those organizations who were able to quickly respond and come up with innovative new financial products were the ones who benefited most from the private equity boom.
• Unique challenges are emerging in the world of global finance from a skills perspective. As the financial services world becomes faster and more complex, the skill set of those involved in high end banking services is becoming ever more precious and scarce.
• The unique attitudes and perspectives of Gen-Connect will further challenge the industry. Those aged 25 and under now becoming actively engaged in the workforce, albeit in an entirely different way: in that they work really hard to not have to get a career. Instead, they focus on a multiple set of skills and careers over a short period of time.
• Offshoring is going strategic: It’s not just about saving money any more. Outsourcing activities will increase, because it will become one of the key ways to establish a competitive advantage: if you can get the right skills at the right time for the right purpose in a financial marketplace, you might survive the challenges of the future.
• Existing financial centers will be impacted by the rapid emergence of new competitors: Asia is afloat on buckets of cash. Continued political uncertainty means that volatility remains with oil, with the resulting massive excess oil wealth in the Middle East. Barron’s indicates that Asian and OPEC countries accumulated about $1 trillion in reserves in ’06. That’s a huge amount of surplus monies that will be put to active use, and we can expect to see both Dubai and Singapore taking on an aggressive role, working to establish themselves as the global financial powerhouses of 2010.

Suffice it to say, there’s a lot of high velocity out there: and the trick to thriving is riding these trends to success, by being open change, by innovating as a country, and by innovating as a financial community.

Some background on the work I’ve done in this area

Partial Client List – Banking and Finance Clients

International Financial Executies Conference • American Community Banker Association • US Farm Credit Cooperative • Fidelity Bank (Cayman) Ltd. • DataCard • AICPA • Credit Union Management Association • Electronic Transaction Association . Insurance Institute of Canada • IREV (Swedish Accounting Association) • Investment Funds Institute of Canada • KPMG • Deloitte’s • E*Trade • Financial Management Institute • Great West Life • Price Waterhouse • RBC Financial Group • Society of Management Accountants • Treasury Management Association • US Committee on State Taxation • VISA . American Express • CIBC World Markets • BMO Financial Group • Credit Union Directors Association • Financial Management Institute • GBC Asset Management • TDBank

Focus areas

. business case issues, particularly with distribution channels – broker/agents/sales agents/staff . kickoff / keynote for staff/broker/agent events . sales force training and motivation . innovation — new business models, exploiting new opportunities in the financial industry . Top 500 sales conferences — encouraging your top producers to adapt to the future . a industry specific look to the future . spurring broker/agent/staff distribution channels to adopt new business systems put in place by a financial organization . a look to the future — a futurists view of the financial service industry

Financial Industry Highlights

• provided the keynote for the global Electronic Transaction Association conference held in San Diego
• ran a workshop for senior executives of CIBC World Markets focussing on customer management /retention issues, competitive challenges, industry change, and how they can spark innovation in order to meet a variety of emerging opportunities and threats
• KPMG booked Jim Carroll to keynote their annual partners conference. They liked him so much, they rebooked him to keynote four client, industry specicific conferences (including one on the hotel industry, insurance industry and IT), as well as booking him for a six-city client breakfast tour
• provided four workshops for CEO and senior management team of Blue Cross / Blue Shield Florida , focusing on business strategy issues, and dealing with issues related to the culture of change. The event was so successful, Jim was immediately rebooked for three subsequent sessions, and ended up providing workshops for 500+ senior mangers
• provided the opening keynote for countless financial association conferences. In each situation, I undertook detailed research to hone in on specific industry issues. This has included . mortgage broker and lending . credit unions . medical insurance . accounting and professional services . insurance . taxation . mutual funds . financial products . online trading . financial management . treasury management and more

I’ve had a very busy few weeks — keynote presentations for SAP in New York City, the International Asset Management Council in Tuscon, the Health Care Industry Distributors Association in Jacksonville, Urban Systems in Sun Peaks, SAP in Calgary — and a few more things! These organizations have sought my insight on trends, the future, innovation and change, either for their management meetings, client events or for corporate strategy sessions.

Are the presentations effective? Read this recent letter from a credit union client, after I provided a full day workshop that looked at future trends, and how financial services might be impacted by a wide variety of issues (PDF)