Jim Carroll- Futurist, Trends & Innovation Keynote Speaker

Welcome to my new Web site. We went live about 330PM EST today.

There are still a few kinks to work out, but overall, this promises to be a wonderful experience. I’ll be able to draw comments into my blog posts; have more flexibility with blogging and sharing of my insight, and many other capabilities. It was a long overdue move; my last new design rolled out around 2004 or so! (This will be the 6 or 7th major redesign over a 17 year period!)

Kudos to my friends at Echo Factory, a California based agency that has laboured to bring the new site together. They are really cool folks, and I would highly recommend them. In particular, a fellow named Andrew Hoehn for hanging in with tenacity to get the project to its launch.

That intro banner from their Web site just about says it all. I think they’ve done a tremendous job in launching a new Jim Carroll brand.

Let me know what you think! Comments are open.

My news tracker picked up this small interview that appeared in Food Processing Magazine a few months ago.

In a tough economy like this, it’s time to hold the line on spending and to be especially cautious of leading-edge technology. Right?

History’s full of companies that leapt ahead of competitors by increasing spending, especially on innovation, during down times. Jim Carroll, author and innovation consultant, recalled a speaking engagement in which he followed the CEO of a global restaurant chain, who spoke for a brief but powerful 20 minutes.

“For the first minute, he spoke about the global economy and the meltdown. He then spent the next 19 minutes identifying eight growth opportunities and how this organization could do great things if they relentlessly obsessed over them.

“How cool is that?” asks Carroll. “All these other companies are retrenching, pulling back, and here’s a guy who’s saying to his team, ‘Let’s focus on growth.’ ”

He says growth plans and strategic if judicious spending is mandatory for managing during a downturn. Companies that aren’t paralyzed by total spending freezes can get the jump on those competitors who are. And when the economy is back on track a year or whatever from now, Carroll says only then will we be able to point to companies and say which ones lagged and failed and which ones “took risks and did great things.”

More information:

• Read the original article

Almost fifteen years ago, when I first got onto the speaking circuit, I registered the JimCarroll.com domain name. Often, that drew me many visitors looking for the “other” Jim Carroll.

Sadly, that other Jim Carroll is no longer with us.

Jim Carroll, poet, punk rocker, Pulitzer Prize winner, and best known as author of the Basketball Diaries, died of a heart attack in New York at the age of 60.

When I was in my 20′s, I bought all his albums, and several of his books. I was a fan. I am sad to see him go. I did meet him in person once.

For more information on Jim Carroll, visit the CatholicBoy.Com Web site, which has been meticulously maintained by a fan through the years.

Jim Carroll, futurist, trends & innovation expert

I’m off till the end of the month, but with a bit of an update: we’ve been through a tornado.

This is a photo just about 1/2 mile from our place ; we saw it from a window as it passed by. If you look at the 2nd, lower funnel, we were just about below that to the east.

Quite the experience!

The great news is: everyone in the area is ok, the damage was significant but restricted; the swathe was just about 100 feet wide!

There are more photos at my twitter feed, http://twitter.com/jimcarroll

I’ve been busy over the last several months, digitizing family video.

In doing so, I’ve come across a clip from 2003 of a wedding. Right after it ends (about 10 minutes) there is regular video of my family.

We have absllutely know idea who the wedding party is. We don’t remember lending our video camera out; it is possible that someone loaned us a tape that had already been used.

We do know this from watching the video:

• they were married by a Reverend Terry Hope
• their names are Nancy and John Prince
• they were going to Honeymoon in Niagara Falls

We presume they live in the Toronto area, or at least, in Ontario.

If you have any insight, please email jcarroll@jimcarroll.com

Yup, we were in!

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a variety of conference calls with CEO’s or senior executives for a variety of clients in the retail, food, industrial manufacturing and consumer product industries.

All of these calls have been related to upcoming keynotes. For example, in May, I’ll be the opening keynote speaker for 3,500 people for a massive global food company in Las Vegas.

The sentiment that comes through from many of these calls is that “the organization needs to move faster” in adapting to rapid market, consumer, brand and competitive change. They realize that in order to do that, they need to change how their organization can scale, collaborate, and share insight on trends, opportunities, challenges and threats.

There’s a critical innovation tip there. Innovative organizations EXCEL at forming fast teams. They’ve realized that their future success comes from scaling — scaling means pulling together key skills at an instant to tackle a new issue. Executing scale is critical — indeed, this is likely a critical success factor for all organizations in the future.

There are still many organizations out there who don’t have this capability. They’re based on decades of hierarchical structure; they’ve been slow and ponderous in their ability to deal with a world in which faster is the new fast. Yet they now know, given the speed of change within the last six months, that the concept of corporate agility is critical, and that increasing, agility is defined by the ability to form fast teams.

When thinking about new product or service development, don’t do it in isolation. Seek advice and guidance from your business partners — or, even let them drive the innovation agenda.

This is the lesson I learned from a large company in the consumer goods/entertainment space. They had traditionally been responsible for an innovation plan that went like this:

• Get the assortment right, i.e. in terms of new product
• Figure out the merchandising plan
• Then do the marketing

They then realized that trends and consumer choice was evolving so fast, that they no longer had a truly good grasp on the innovation agenda that they should be pursuing. They also came to realize they were taking product to retailers — but the depth of insight from retailers meant that they saw entirely different product and market opportunities.

So what did they do? They went outside — and learned how to work with the retailers, by having the retailers do much of the product innovation. Soon, the innovation pipeline worked like this:

• Figure out the marketing plan, what unique ideas could be pursued in terms of consumer choice, attitude, brands
• From that, determine what merchandise, packaging and products to produce
• And then get the assortment right

Going upside-down is a powerful innovation concept — it challenges you to do things differently. More important, it pushes you into a mindset where you are pursuing partnership oriented innovation, with the result that have better, fresh, unique, external insight.

All too often an organization loses its ability to innovate because it becomes very internally focused — it can’t see beyond its own walls. People become narrow in their focus, and fail to see big opportunities.

Going upside-down changes this, in so many ways, and it’s one of the most important innovation ideas that you can pursue.

More information:

• Can we talk – upside-down innovation?

Jim has been on stage for 15 years, and has spoken to hundreds of thousands of people. There’s a certain degree of insight that comes from such experience. It’s not just the deep industry insight that Jim has into countless industries — it’s the way he manages to get across the message.

These are a few of the recent and upcoming keynote titles used by various clients:

• 7 Things You Should Do Right Now If Your Strategy for Tomorrow is Already Today’s Yesterday
• Where’s the Growth? What’s Hot and Not When Volatility Rocks!
• 7 Things You Need to Do Right Now: Aligning The Fast Future to Your Current Strategy
• Game Changers: The 8 Big Trends That Will Rock Your World

• What Do Innovative Companies Do? How to Unlock Your Potential in the High Velocity Economy
• OMG! What to Do If Your Strategy for Tomorrow is So Yesterday
• Where’s the Growth? What’s Hot When Volatility Rocks!
• What’s Happening with Your Workforce: Making Generations Work!
• What Comes Next? Leadership Insight for the High-Velocity Economy
• Agility, Insight & Execution: Establishing High Performance Teams in the Multi-Second Economy
• Leading the Future: Leadership in an Era of Innovation and Change
• The New 2.0: Staying Ahead When Everything Today is Already So “Yesterday!”

Jim Carroll covers dozens of concise issues in a huge number of different industries, including

• life sciences
• health care
• insurance
• automotive
• manufacturing
• agriculture
• technology
• education
• consumer goods
• marketing and advertising
• government
• retail
• banking ….

Some of the recent topics covered include

• hyper-innovation and rapid time to market
• Gen-Connect
• career obsolescence
• competing in a post-flat world
• just-in-time knowledge
• global economic trends
• de-commoditization strategies
• high-velocity marketing
• global health care issues
• the global innovation idea loop
• corporate agility
• the rapid emergence of big-markets
• the science-driven skills crisis
• bio-connectivity
• marketing to Gen-Y / Gen-Connect
• nomadic workers
• experiential knowledge

It’s Veteran’s Day in the US, and Remembrance Day in Canada.

Every year as November 11 approaches and we remember wars past, I put up a TV clip featuring my dad. Al Carroll was a World War II veteran, and was proud of the service he gave to his country.

He never really talked about the war too much — but certainly made sure that young people understood what it was about.

He was involved in a junior high school program just before he died 9 years ago ….. doing just that. It’s worth a watch.

Watch the video clip

Just about thirty seconds ago, I finished off the final chapter of my next book. We’ll fire up the editing process next week. It should be out mid-fall.

I’ve even finalized on a title, after coming up with about a half a dozen: Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast.

It was certainly a project — there’s so much going on, that it’s been hard to get the exact idea down on paper. But this was a huge milestone. And now it’s summertime, with only a few upcoming keynotes …. and lots of time in the pool!

Gosh, I just wish Nortel would wake up one day. They haven’t yet. Their much hyped new “hyperconnectivity” strategy, announced to much fanfare by CEO Mike Zafirovski over the last few weeks, really isn’t anything new. Neither the concept, nor the phrase, which they now claim to have invented.

Their “bold” new strategy is curious, considering I’ve been using the phrase hyperconnectivity for over a decade, such as found within one of my Profit Magazine columns in 2002. [ read the article ] and have used it as a key trend on stage in front of tens of thousands of people … including with people at Nortel, as well as their competitors and industry partners. My observations on hyperconnectivity have also been covered in the media, such as this story which ran in 2003.

For Nortel to claim is has found a bold new strategy in a bold new phrase “hyperconnectivity” is simply untrue, and makes the current management team look rather sillly.

Gosh, over the last decade, I’ve provided my insight through internal and external keynotes and workshops with some of the senior business, R&D, marketing and sales executives at some of the world’s leading companies in the “convergence” space, including Motorola (including a meeting with all of their senior global R&D staff — 225+ people — in 2005), Verizon, the Society of Cable Telecom Engineers, Microsoft, Disney, the BBC. I’ve seen some remarkable thinking, particularly around architectures with respect to the new world around us in which everything is plugged into everything else.

I’ve also done my share of stirring up some futuristic thinking on this trend; it’s captured in a video clip from my site, circa 2002 or so, in which I talk about the “hyperconnectivity” trend. I’ve got dozens of clips from some pretty heavy duty events (Society of Cable Telecom Engineers, Tampa, 2000+) in which I banter around the phrase.

Which brings me to Nortel:

• can this company do nothing right?
• how can it claim in a big new marketing strategy that it is doing something “new” when it is doing nothing of the sort?
• if it is trying to come back to the marketplace after living in scandal-land, can it’s senior management team not do it with at least a bit of intelligence?

To much fanfare, CEO Mike Zafirovski announced to shareholders in early May that it was back in the game, and it’s game was — hyperconnectivity! Their brand new strategy? They were set to be a major player in this exciting new marketplace in which everything is plugging into everything else.

They were onto something revolutionary!

Yesterday, John Roese, the new CTO, in an interview in the Globe & Mail, claimed he “coined” the phrase.

OK, that ticked me off. As soon as I heard Nortel use the word “hyperconnectivity” my ears popped up. Heck, I even think I even had the phrase in my my slide deck when I presented to Nortel customers at the 1995 Nortel PGA Open in Tucson, which included most of the senior management of Nortel (at the time.)

And actually, it ended up being one of the major trends discussed at length in my What I Learned From Frogs in Texas book. It’s a phrase that I’ve used on stage, with tens of thousands of people listening, ranging from the US Army Corps of Engineers to Disney, Motorola, SAP, and hundreds of other organizations.

And it’s not even like I made the phrase up; it existed in various telephony magazines as far back as 1995.

What’s interesting is this: at the end of March, there was a flurry of activity on my web site, as people from Nortel.com googled the phrase “hyperconnectivity.” Many found my video clip; many watched it. At the end of March, they registered the domain name. Then their CEO announces a bold, exciting new strategy!

Except — well, it’s not bold. It’s not terribly exciting. Everyone else is already doing it. Cisco, Motorola, and just about every other organization out there knows we are headed rapidly into a world in which countless devices plug into countless other devices. They might use other phrases, but everyone else seems to be already well ahead in the game.

It’s almost as if this is a bad joke. In the Globe article, the CTO claims “it’s kind of like we went to sleep, woke up, and found the world had kind of circled around where we were.”

Actually, I think most of the rest of the tech world has alread moved well beyond Nortel, and Nortel is obviously still in some soft of semi-awake state.

I’m not into domain name speculation, though it would have been fun if I owned hyperconnectivity.com.

What’s galling — perhaps more so, indicative of yet another fumbling of strategy at Nortel — is how they now claim to have “invented something new” that lots of people have been talking about and thinking about for a long time.

What can we learn from such a series of CEO mis-steps? Several things:

• innovation isn’t about dreaming up some cool new catch phrase, and building a cool new marketing campaign around the phrase (particularly when the phrase isn’t, well, new….)
• innovation isn’t about suddenly claiming to the world that you have something unique, when everyone is already talking about it and doing it
• innovation is about walking into your customer base with a credible architecture, a credible sales team, and a credible vision that will help a company get involved faster in the high-velocity world of telecom, rather than a simplistic marketing phrase

I’m saddened most of all by this Nortel thing because, well, once they seemed to be a cool company. Now, they just seem to be tired, in a marketplace in which everyone is charging ahead at light speed.

I just feel like scolding Nortel, but sadly, this latest bit of silliness just seems to be yet another step in a lot series of fumbling missteps.

Update: for those who are asking about “prior art,” another posting details a bit of that. Find it here.

I’m working doing some research, out in the yard, next to this little fellow –now known as

Captain Gnome.

One of my sons just painted him up. It’s a great time to be creative, and innovation rocks!

I’ve had this blog for a few years now, and have done most of the recoding of the MovableType templates to support the look and feel of my website. Yet I’ve always had a challenge with the way individual items posted. I poked around the ‘Net, and found a guy named Phil Gyford who seemed to have a good reputation in this area. I sent him an e-mail, pointed out the problem, and he took the time to figure out the problem, and sent me some code to set it straight.

I don’t even really know the fellow, but this more than anything demonstrates why the infinite idea loop is expanding at a furious pace.

And I’d be pleased to give him a recommendation at any time if you ever need some special web integration/coding work!

Click for a larger picture.

I do extensive travel throughout North America, and I find that finding a Wi-Fi / WLAN signal can still be hit and miss.

And yet everytime I come to Europe, it continues to astound me how the coverage is everywhere; there has not been a moment that I havent’ found a signal, whether it be with my hotel in Grindelwald or at the conference site.

And it’s industrial strength too — I’ve been able to use Skype on a regular basis to phone back home to my family without charge.

From what I’ve seen on several trips, European WLAN / Wi-FI providers continue to put their North American cousins to shame.

Stare at this for a while:

http://blueballfixed.ytmnd.com/

Plan your week accordingly.

Every year as November 11 approaches and we remember wars past, I put up a TV clip featuring my dad.

Al Carroll was a World War II veteran, and was proud of the service he gave to his country.

He never really talked about the war too much — but certainly made sure that young people understood what it was about.

He was involved in a junior high school program just before he died 7 years ago ….. doing just that. It’s worth a watch.

Watch the video clip