Jim Carroll- Futurist, Trends & Innovation Keynote Speaker

My blog back engine pointed out to me this morning that a few articles that I posted to the blog some years back had disappeared. So with that in mind, I’ll repost a few of them in the next few days.

Read Jim's other post - "What do you do after the world get's flat? Put a ripple in it!' Click on the image!

This one is from my June / July 2008 CAMagazine column. It’s still and even more relevant today. Have a good read!

Advice for a flat world

by Jim Carroll, CAMagazine, July 2008

A few years back, I posted an entry to my weblog titled, “What do you do after the world gets flat? Put a ripple in it!”My post came in response to the buzz surrounding the bestselling book The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman.

Executives everywhere were scrambling to understand the impact of a massive global economy; the impact of offshoring and outsourcing; and how business models would be forever changed with increased global competition.

To me, the answer was obvious — innovative organizations should avoid the product commoditization that comes with the flat world. CEOs have two choices: move forward into a world where you are competing on price, or innovate, change and adapt so you are playing in a different, higher-value market.

Of course, not only products have to innovate in a flat world, so do professional skills. There’s no doubt we will continue to see a number of organizations outsource their financial, legal and other backroom functions. Just witness the growth in business process outsourcing or recruitment process outsourcing. Accountants, human resource professionals, legal experts — almost anyone with a professional skill is impacted, unless they move into a higher-tier marketplace.

Given this reality, it might be a good time to assess your career, skills and future options and determine if you want to continue going forward in a commodity market or if you want to up the value of your brand. The obvious answer is to take the latter route. We’re seeing this trend within the profession to a massive degree today: those who develop unique knowledge niches and concentrate on the delivery of very specialized services find themselves in great demand, while those with commodity skills are likely worried about the potential impact of a recession upon their career prospects.

If you focus on career specialization, the flat world is not a threat but an opportunity. It’s become a cliché, but in the much-hyped knowledge economy, those who have special capabilities often truly do have a global marketplace. Today, it is easier than ever to market your skills to that worldwide audience.

With that perspective in mind, I have three pieces of advice. First, it pays to have a blog. I’ve been posting to mine for more than 6 years and discovered that by regularly placing relevant, useful observations online, my position in Google for various topics and phrases has consistently increased. I seem to be in a sellers’ market: I just turned down a request to go to Shanghai to speak on the topic of global trends after a global CFO found my flat-world article online.

Second, invest in online search engine advertising. I’m a big fan of Google AdWords, despite the fact that the media seems to have soured on Google lately. Third, relentlessly track how people are finding your unique skills. I regularly use Google Analytics to examine how other people manage to find me online. By drilling down and seeing what people are searching for, I can adapt and change my areas of focus and expertise.

The same experience could hold true for anyone with unique professional skills. If your focus has been the de- sign and implementation of sophisticated ERP systems, why not reach out to a global audience? If you have mastered certain forensic investigation skills, realize that your market isn’t restricted to a small, local geographic world. In the flat world, the opportunities are wide open.

I’m hitting the ground running this week, with an opening keynote presentation for a global legal firm, who are holding their annual shareholders / partners conference in Las Vegas.

I’ve got about 800 commercial lawyers in the room; many of whom are experts in very specific niches involving real estate, financial deals, intellectual property, commercial legal issues and other areas of commercial law. All of which are segments of the economy that are being impacted by high velocity change.

My talk is focused on one key trend: in order to keep at the edge of the curve, the firm will have to position itself where its clients are going. And increasingly, those clients are getting onto the globalization bandwagon — they’re focusing on the emergence of new markets, new opportunities and new economies.
And it isn’t just BRIC (Brazil, India and China) that they the are looking at, from the key trends within my keynote:

• Goldman Sachs has identified that the next growth sector will come from the “Next 11″ economies — those that are going to see a rapid transition and growth. These are Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, South Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Turkey, and Vietnam
• Almost a billion new consumers will enter the global marketplace in the next decade …. with an income level that allows spending on discretionary goods – McKinsey
• By 2013, consumer spending power in emerging economies could match the spending power of Western Europe – McKinsey
• The ranks of the middle class will swell by 1.8 billion to become 52% of total population, up from 30% today – McKinsey

The law firm, which has a heavy presence in the US and Europe, will increasingly find that their clients are moving into these hot new growth markets. I’ll use as an example Molex, a US manufacturer of “electrical connectors,” who has seen results from their own globalization strategy:

• 80% of sales are now from abroad
• they just had record sales of $3.59 billion
• 6-7% of sales is committed to R&D
• 30% of current sales comes from new products developed in last 3 years
• sales are up 8.5% year over year
• 59% of it sales are in Asia, and 2/3 of its 59 manufacturing facilities are abroad

In other words, if your clients are aggressively globalizing, as a legal firm you need to do so as well — and do it fast.

My June is shaping up to be a tremendously busy month. Based on the bookings that are in, it’s clear that innovation continues to be at the top of the CEO agenda, despite some economic challenges.

In most of my upcoming keynotes, I’ll be spending time putting into perspective how executives should be thinking about future trends within their industry, and will take a look at the innovative strategies they might pursue.

Each of these talks is pretty tightly focused; I’ll be zipping from the insurance industry to optometry; from the future of global wealth management to high-velocity innovation in the banking sector; from opportunities in dealing with the new consumer 2.0 mindset, to how massive skills specialization will affect the world economy in the future. There’s been a tremendous amount of research underway as I prepare for each session; most of these talks get pretty darned specific in terms of industry issues.

Some of the unique topics that are unfolding include:

• “the new risk” : a keynote for the US Association of Actuaries that will take a look at how the insurance industry will the rapid emergence of new risk, and the impact of the “new analytics” on the global economy.
• “the new market” : how can a leading manufacturer transition to a market where it is not competing on price, but on brand, quality, image and value : in other words, “what do they do after the world is flat?”
• “the new customer” — how do we sell to the new 2.0 consumer, in this era of the wired-up-no-attention-span Gen-Connect demographic? The average consumer scans 12 feet of shelf space per second. What innovations do we need to think about when it comes to selling today?
• “the new investor“: Dubai and Singapore have “money-velocity.” Where is the investment world going, and how does a wealth management firm innovate to stay at the leading edge?
• “the new workforce” : how does a major global professional services firm transition into a new world of micro-skills and knowledge niches?
• “the new agent” : what comes next for the insurance industry? This one is a a keynote and a workshop for about 200 senior executives from the insurance industry, on behalf of LOMA, a major global insurance group.
• “the new collaborative team“: how can a leading bank outpace, outlast and outperform the competition?

I’ll be posting observations from the road, as there are powerful innovation lessons to be learned and shared from each situation.

Take a look at this kid.

He’s your next employee. How are you going to recruit, retain, manage, interest and amuse this fellow? What’s your workforce going to look like in 2012, 2020, or beyond?

There’s quite a bit of focus on trends relating to the future of the organization — and organizations are seeing innovative strategies to cope with the world of high velocity change that we find ourselves in.

Last week I was the opening keynote speaker, and a panelist later in the day, for an offsite of one of the world’s largest professional services firms. Tomorrow, I keynote a get-together of key clients of a multi-billion insurance/financial services company. A few months ago, I ran a Board of Directors/CEO level meeting on the issue for a major industrial company.

If you don’t have this issue figured out yet, you’d better start thinking about it in a hurry.

There are certain things we know for a fact that relate to the future of the organization.

• there is a huge amount of expertise walking out of the economy. In 2010, 3 people will leave the economy for every person that enters it; by 2012, 4. By 2016, 6 people will leave for every new worker that joins. Those are staggering realities.
• the current generation entering the workforce is completely rejecting the concept of a traditional career. More than 50% of young people in a US survey indicated they believe self-employment to be more secure than a full time job. They don’t want to work for big organizations. They’ll be nomadic, contingent workers, entrepreneurial and global.
• skills are fragmenting and specializing at a furious pace. Knowledge half-lives in most industries are compressing to a matter of just a few years. Knowledge extinction is real, and massive skills fragmentation is occurring at an extreme velocity. The result is that most organizations will find future failure will come from an inability to get specialized skills. A strategy that is focused on global access to extremely specialized skills will be a transformative factor for winning.

The whole issue is massive, and is one of the areas in which innovative thinking is needed now. It’s a CEO / Board level issue. It’s transformative. It’s urgent.

More information

• What’s Happening with Our Workforce: Achieving Competitive Advantage Through Skills
• Critical Trends: 10 Unique Characteristics of 21st Century Skills

Some weeks back, I spent a full day with about 40 senior lawyers with a major government agency, with the main focus both on the rapidity of change of legal skills, as well as rapid change with legal issues.

We took a look at the future of the profession, and had a workshop that examined issues of agility, rapid response and complexity of skills.

I put together a summary, based on a previous post here, that outlines both the challenges and opportunities faced by the profession.

The highlights of the document, available as a PDF, takes a look at such issues as generational warfare, evidentiary challenges, rapid change and specialization, and risk minimization, to name but a few.

Of the latter, I write that “One side impact of generational warfare is that “going underground” will become more acceptable. In the last few years we saw a fascinating battle between music companies and Kazaa, the music sharing organization, which used extra-territorial jurisdictional issues to provide itself some shelter against legal action. That type of activity is going to become the norm, not the exception, in the future. Indeed, going legal-underground is about to go mainstream.”

• read 10 Big Trends for the Legal Profession: High-Velocity Change Providing Challenges and Opportunities

There are quite a few people out there who talk about innovation, all of whom have a very different background: some with design experience, others who are from the product marketing world; yet others from the university research sector.

I’m unique, in that my innovation insight, gained through the last 15 years of private consulting and speaking, also comes from the reality that prior to that, I spent 15 years with the world’s largest accounting firm, with a client base in industry, health care, government, retail, consumer goods, financial service and insurance, and many more.

I’m still a professional Chartered Accountant ; though I don’t practice accounting on a daily basis, I still provide deep insight into the financial issues that are increasingly important in the high velocity economy. That reality has boosted my credibility in the minds of many of the Fortune 1000 clients who book me.

Why is this so? I often talk about innovation in the context of the ability of an organization possessing the agility necessary to respond to a world of rapid change. Innovation is not just a design issue; it is an operational, structural and analysis-capability issue.

In one of my regular columns for CAMagazine, which goes to about 110,000 Chartered Accountants, I wrote of the criticality of instant insight and what an organization needs to survive today’s fast paced markets: ” immediate customized detailed insight into what is working in the field and what is not; where the product introduction is succeeding and where it is failing; data on regional breakouts of market success and factors that could help replicate that success. They needed financial numbers, real numbers — important numbers.”

There are tremendous opportunities for innovation in the way an organization deals with market and operational rapidity. As I note in the column: “Call it financial insight for market rapidity. Shouldn’t that be the goal of the financial systems we are putting in place?”

The article goes on to tell a great story of how a US manufacturing organization used the concept of deep-insight to deal with a very unique market challenge. I still think it is one of the greatest innovation success stories I have ever seen.

Innovation = insight. It’s an important concept, and one well worth pondering.

Read the article

I’m off to Halifax, Nova Scotia today; tomorrow, I’ll be the luncheon keynote speaker for an annual get together of Certified Management Accountants.

The overall conference theme is “accountability” : the profession is immersed in the throes of the Enron fallout, as companies wrestle with the new focus on corporate ethics and responsibility. Kurt Eichenwald, author of Conspiracy of Fools, a fabulous saga of the Enron story, is the opening speaker.

The entire conference is focused around the “accountability” theme. I take them in a different direction — what do we do after we deal with the accountability issue? Accountability is critical, but I think what is even more important is that accounting professionals need to a new set of responsibilities in the high velocity economy.

I captured some of those requirements in my post on “The New Face of Manufacturing: Agility, Insight and Execution.” If you extend the thinking there, you can see that the real strategic opportunity for accounting professionals is to provide, manage and actively be involved in the critical insight needed to take an organization forward.

The key message: accountability is important, but I think everyone understands that. We need to start preparing for the next step.

(Did I say “we”? I did. My secret, as a fellow who focuses on innovation and creativity, is that I’m actually a professional accountant (and still am) … going back some 20+ years……)

In the last few years, I’ve spoken to a variety of professional service firms, including legal organizations. In addition, I’ve become an expert witness in a number of court cases, include a successful leave-to-appeal to the Supreme Court. During this time, I’ve come to understand the big trends that the legal profession is faced with in the years to come, and have put together a list of these 10 trends:

1. Generational warfare: the predominant legal battles of tomorrow are already emerging today as small skirmishes, particularly in the world of entertainment. The younger generation, weaned on a massively interconnected global world, has rejected many of the accepted norms of legal principle when it comes to such legal principles as intellectual property, the role of government, censorship, and environmental matters. As they come to take over positions of authority in government and business, they will completely redefine our legal landscape — with the result that they will go to legal-war with their older, more conservative legal peers.
   
2. The underground goes mainstream: One side impact of this generational warfare is that we will see “going underground” becoming more acceptable. in the last few years, we saw a fascinating battle between music companies and Kazaa, the music sharing organization, which used extra-terratorial jurisdictional issues to provide itself some shelter against legal action. That type of activity is going to become the norm, not the exception, in the future. Indeed, going legal-underground is about to go mainstream: we can expect to see a lot more of it in the future.
3. Risk minimization takes on priority

: events of the last several years have made it clear that volatility is the new normal. Much of the focus of the legal profession — whether it involves corporate, M&A, tax, consumer law or other issues — will be aimed at risk minimization. In a world in which we truly don’t know “what comes next” in terms of new and complex risks, organizations, government and consumers will increasingly seek to protect themselves in advance, through the law.


4. Legal hyper-change becomes the rule, not the exception: as the pace of innovation and change continues to evolve at a furious pace in every industry, as product lifecycles disappear, as new knowledge is generated, and as industries disappear and appear, there will be a flood of new legal issues, challenges and concerns. The essence of the challenge faced by the legal profession today is found in the infinite idea loop which now envelopes every aspect of our world.
   
5. Just-in-time legal knowledge becomes the focus: The typical lawyer will find that their biggest day to day problem is simply trying to keep up with the ever more rapid evolution of law. The most critical and important new legal skill will be developing the ability to quickly immerse oneself in new legal issues, matters and knowledge, at the right time, for the right purpose, in the nick of the moment.
   
6. Rapid change and specialization

: The result of this rapid change in the legal space is that we will see an even greater degree of legal specialization than we see today. Already highly stratified, we’ll see sub-specialties within specialties, and specialties within those specialties. The law will become so stratified that a hundred thousand professions will emerge in the profession of law.


7. A global battle for legal talent: This hyper-nicheing leads to a curious effect: a supply-demand shock, in which it will become the norm for only a very small number of lawyers who have any real knowledge of a very specialized area of the law. This will further increas the cost of basic legal services, and makes a battleground for access to talent the new competitive edge in the provision of global legal services.
   
8. Evidentiary challenges

: whether they like it or not, the Internet is increasingly going to be accepted as evidence in the courtroom, and the issues of information validity and integrity are going to become huge, complex challenges. The next generation of lawyers knows that the evidentiary rules of the last 200 years no longer have any effect, and will use this reality in many high profile cases, to devestating effect.


9. Alternative empowerment

: the legal consumer today is already dabbling with self-empowerment, seeking alternatives to traditional legal guidance. What we see today is miniscule to what we see tomorrow, when the generation of kids, weaned on global information, sets out to empower themselves with legal services in the same way they’ve empowered themselves with technology in so many other ways.


10. Quick response and agility become success factors: the legal profession, not known for moving at a fast pace, will find that glacial response to emerging issues no longer cuts it. The profession will seek a transformation in attitude, capability and adaptability, knowing that its future success will come from its’ ability to respond to the rapid rate of change that surrounds us.