Jim Carroll- Futurist, Trends & Innovation Keynote Speaker

A report from T. Rowe Price on my recent keynote for the 2011 Investment Symposium follows, where I was one of three keynote speakers (the other two being Colin Powell and Charlie Cook). You can find some blog links to each of the three key themes in the article at the end of the article below.

""We thought Jim was amazing - just the positive message we wanted to leave folks with"

It was a fabulous event, and a great opportunity to get a pretty impressive audience — investment managers for a broad range of investment managers for a broad range of Fortune 1000 organizations, pension funds and government agencies.

Summary:

Futurist Jim Carroll, one of the world’s leading experts in global trends and innovation, described how advances in technology and human innovation will combine to create positive change in the future. He explained how businesses can be held back by what he calls “aggressive indecision”— postponing action because they are constantly waiting for economic conditions to improve. Carroll noted that as the pace of change accelerates, the companies that prosper will be those that can adapt and innovate most quickly.

Key Points

• Long-term trends that will lead us into the future. Silicon Valley is redefining everything—industries that get involved with Silicon Valley will be brought up to their speed. One powerful trend is pervasive interconnectivity—the fact that electronic devices are connected and can communicate with each other—as a driving force. For example, a staid industry such as air conditioning and heating benefits when people can control their entire home environment remotely through a cell phone. On the health care front, sensors can monitor the activities of seniors and report any changes in behavior, allowing people to live independently longer. On a more dramatic note, he believes advances in exploring the human genome will change medicine’s focus from reactively treating disease to proactively searching for potential health problems before they occur.
• The paradox of pessimism and reality. While many business people are pessimistic about the future and believe economic recovery is at least two years away, technological advances are creating the potential for greater productivity and efficiency. For example, the auto industry now has the flexibility to produce in response to demand instead of building huge inventories that may go unsold. Products can also be brought to market much faster to take advantage of changes in consumer tastes.
• The next generation. The next generation has grown up with rapid advances in technology, so they are at home with change. This familiarity means young people will greatly increase the rate of innovation as they enter the workforce. This group is not afraid to take independent action—50% believe self employment offers more job security than working for a company. The next generation will receive $12 billion to $18 billion in intergenerational wealth transfers in the next 12 years alone, which could help fund their ambition.

More information:

• Major 10 year trend: The future of every industry to be controlled by Silicon Valley Innovation  
• The new face of manufacturing: agility, insight and execution 
• Creativity and the new workforce 

A few weeks ago, I was the opening keynote speaker for the 2011 Multi-Unit Franchising Conference held at The Venetian in Las Vegas.

The audience were owners and operators of multiple franchise operations, primarily from the restaurant / food sector, but also from other franchise operations in auto, pet care, home supplies and other retail product lines.

An audience of close to 1,000 listens to Jim Carroll's keynote on fast paced consumer, retail and restaurant industry trends in Las Vegas

My keynote topic was built on the theme “”Where Do We Go From Here? Why Innovators Will Rule in the Post-Recession Economy – And How You Can Join Them!”

What did I take a look at? A wide variety of the fast-paced trends impacting the retail / restaurant sector today. I broke my talk down into 3 key trends, what I might call:

• Consumer velocity
• Mobile madness
• Intelligent infrastructure

1. What We Know: Consumer behaviour shifts faster today than ever before

“The average consumer scans 12 feet of shelf space per second.” That’s a stat I’ve long used to emphasize that the attention span of the typical shopper of today is shorter than ever before — and retailers need to innovate to ensure they can keep the attention of today’s consumer.

It’s not just keeping up with fleeting attention spans — it’s about adapting to the fast pace of how quickly consumer choice changes. Consider what is happening with the rapid emergence of revenue in the late night business segment – it was up 12% in 4th quarter 2010, compared to 2-3% for other parts of the day. That’s why major chains have been focusing on new “happy hour” offerings — and so their success increasingly comes from how quickly they can scale and adapt to fast moving trends.

We’ve seen plenty of fast innovation from various organizations in the sector to respond to quick consumer change. Morton’s capitalized on the new consumer sensitivity towards value when it jumped on the trend that involves the “casualization of fine dining” with its’ $6 mini-cheeseburger.

Other fast trends drive the industry. The Sydney Morning Herald ran a great article in April of 2011, noting that “… the world of cooking and restaurants is becoming more like an arm of show business …..” with the result that “everyone wants to see the chef.” That’s why we are seeing many restaurants from fine-dining to fast casual moving the kitchen to the “front of the house,” or in other cases, a lot of TV display technology that provide for video links from tables to the kitchen. The evolution that is occurring is that the chef is becoming the star, and more and more of the staff are becoming ‘performers.’ Innovators in appropriate sectors would see the opportunities and jump on this trend.

Whatever the case may be, the consumer of today changes quickly, and innovators check their speed and agility in being able to respond to this reality.

2. What We Know: Technology – especially mobile – has become the key influencer of today’s consumer decision making.

Simply put, the velocity of mobile adoption, local search and product promotion is evolving at a pace that is beyond furious.

Consider the growth rates underlying today’s technology. It took two years for Apple to sell two million iPhones. It took 2 months for them to sell 2 million iPads! It took 1 month to sell 1 million iPhone 4’s!

The impact of such trends is an explosive rate of growth of wireless Internet usage. Mobile represented but 0.2% of all Web traffic in 2009. That grew to 8% by 2010, and is expected to hit 16% of all traffic this year.

Some suggest that mobile searches now exceed the number of computer based searches. What is also well known is that most mobile searches are for “local content.” Not only that, but Google has found that when someone gets a smartphone, the number of searches they make increases 50 times!

What is clear is that people are using their mobile devices to find nearby – stores, retailers, restaurants and just about everything else. Combine this with the emergence of new promotion opportunities (through apps and other tools) and you’ve got a revolution in the making in terms of local product promotion. That’s why the success of many retailers / restaurants will come from their success with location-sensitive coupon technology.

Bottom line? Innovation is: rethinking in-store uplift in terms of new methods of interaction!

3. What We Know: We will have far more opportunity for operational innovation through the rapid emergence of new technology, infrastructure and other trends

Consider how quickly near-field payment technology is going to steamroller the retail / restaurant sector. Simply put, over the next few years, the credit cards in our wallet will disappear as our iPhones, Blackberries and Android phones become the credit card infrastructure of the future. This is a HUGE trend — it provides countless opportunities for innovation, disruptive business model change, new competitors, and all kinds of other fun opportunities.

The trend has enormous velocity – we can expect $113 billion in transactions by 2016,  with 3.5 billion transactions – and with this comes new opportunities for loyalty and contact followup. From an innovation perspective, the sector will have to ensure they can ingest the new infrastructure quickly enough, and keep on top of the industry change that it will cause to ensure that challenges are turned into opportunity.

There are all kinds of other areas of fast change that present opportunity. Consider the issue fo ‘green buildings’ and sustainability. The West Australian newspaper recently noted that “with the rapid increase in knowledge, skills and availability of materials, costs have fallen. The industry now understands how to build green and building a 5-star Green Star building is now generally cost neutral.”

Some franchisees are taking this to heart, with aggressive plans involving eco-friendly buildings. Chick-fil-A has a  LEED initiative in building a test model restaurant that has water usage down by 40% through rainwater collection; an electricity reduction of 14% through the use of skylights & energy efficient appliances; 20% of the building content is from recycled material; and 30% more fresh air than regular buildings. While the structure is 15% more expensive to build, they expect a fairly quick payback — and will manage to get a branding image to their customer base that they don’t just talk sustainability – they do it!

From this perspective, innovation is keeping ahead of and planning for hyper-innovation with IT, energy, environmental and other infrastructure trends that impact facilities or the nature of the customer interaction.

Innovators get ahead by focusing on bold ideas, and exploring the concept of 'experiential capital' - Jim Carroll

I also emphasized that innovators aren’t afraid to make bold moves. Every franchise and retail organization today is looking for opportunities for cross-promotion, cross-selling and product placement. So consider this observation from the Dallas Morning News in March 2011 in an article titled: Funeral home adds little sip of heaven: Starbucks Coffee.

“At McKinney’s Turrentine Jackson Morrow Funeral Home, it’s now possible to pay your respects to the dead or plan your own funeral with a venti Caramel Macchiato in hand”

Craziness, or smart niche-marketing? I think it’s innovation!

So what do you do? My message to the folks in Las Vegas was to get involved and explore these fascinating new worlds that surround you!

Many of them might hold themselves back from Facebook advertising, because the concept might simply seem overwhelming for a small to medium sized mulit-unit franchise operation. Yet, today Facebook now accounts for 1 of 3 every online ads. And we are seeing the rapid emergence of new online ‘aggregators’ that are focused on helping small business take advantage of that fact. These organizations — such as Blinq — manage the buying of thousands of individualized ads, based on age, location, interests.

They should simply try the world of mobile promotion. Buffalo Wild Wings gave it a shot for one recent NFL based initiative, and indicated that they tripled the return on their investment.

Think differently in terms of new ways of reaching the consumer. Pizza Pizza, a Canadian chain, recently released a new iPhone App that allows online ordering. Nothing new or special about that – such apps are becoming a dime a dozen, and are quickly becoming de rigueur. What is cool is that the chain has revealed that it is working to link the  app payment system to university meal card plan, in recognition of the fact that many students in the target market might not have credit cards (or “credit worthy” cards.)

Bottom line? One of my key closing messages was that innovators focus on the concept of “experiential capital” -there’s a lot going on, and to figure out, we should just get out and do it! Try new ideas, explore new initiatives, undertake new projects. One of the only ways to get ahead is to work quickly to build up your experience in all the new opportunities that surround you.

My recent post about using a live text message poll while speaking to a group of high school students drew a fair bit of attention as an example of the novel use of a social networking tool.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been using this type of tool on stage — I’ve been doing this for close to four years, and it always provides for an amazing amount of interaction with the audience.

Here I am opening the 94th Annual General Meeting of the Professional Golfers Association of America, immediately diving into a poll with the audience in order to gauge their thoughts on when we would see an economic recovery. While running the poll, I challenge the PGA to think about the impact of mobile technology out on the golf course!

Pretty darned effective, isn’t it!

I’ve got a new Web traffic monitoring tool – Re-Energize — which is quite wonderful! And every day, when I look at how people are finding my site, it’s become quite obvious that a lot of traffic comes in for people looking for information on the sport of ‘zorbing.’

Why do they find my site? Because back in 2008, I wrote a blog post, “Zorbing – And Why It’s In To Be Out.” I guess the search engines have ranked it highly, particularly for the picture! It gets a LOT of traffic.

What is also interesting is that for years, I’ve been using the story of zorbing on stage for years, often in the context of what I’ve come to call “the big global idea machine.” Here I am on stage with that theme — and a story on zorbing – from an event in Salt Lake City for a few thousand people:

What is another way to think about the big global idea machine? In my overview of “What Do World Class Innovators Do That Others Don’t Do?”, I made the observation that “world class innovators focus on ingesting fast ideas: there are new technologies, business models, customer trends, product developments, scientific advances and countless other things that are increasing the pace of change. Innovators know that if they plug into the global idea machine, they can constantly discover a tremendous number of insights that help them to move forward.”

It was a busy September, with keynotes and leadership events for the likes of PPG, the Utah League of Cities and Towns, St. Joseph’s Health Center, Transcontinental Media, the Ohio League of Bankers, the Illinois League of Financial Institutions, the Minnesota Hospital Association CEO Summit, Allied Solutions and many other events.

A common theme for many of the keynotes I’ve given for senior executive events at these groups has been the focus on ‘what do world class innovators do that others don’t do?” In that context, there are several key themes I’ve been relentless on:

• fast beats big: we have never lived in a period of time that has involved such rapid change with business models, competitive landscapes, product and service innovation, challenging consumers, a new political dynamic, and countless other new realities. World class innovators are those who move fast, get things done, and keep getting things done.
• bold beats old: all around you right now, there are countless numbers of people and organizations who are out to mess up your business model. They’re making bold steps, aggressive moves, and big decisions. This is not a time for timidity; it’s a time for BIG ideas and the pursuit of the offbeat
• velocity trumps strategy: careful strategic planning can be a critical step in adapting to the future, but in some areas, things are happening so fast that you can’t take the time to strategize: you just need to jump in and go. That’s experiential capital it’s one of the most important investments that you need to be making now. Understand what it is, and why you need to be investing in it NOW.
• flexibility beats structure: successful innovators have mastered the ability to form fast teams: they know their that their ability to quickly scale resources to tackle fast emerging opportunities or challenges are the only way that they can win in the future. They avoid the organizational sclerosis that bogs too many organizations down
• disruptors destroy laggards: step into any industry, and there are people who are busy messing about the fundamental business models which have long existed. Start your own disruption before you find yourself disrupted
• connectivity is the new loyalty: with the forthcoming dominance of mobile technology in everyday lives, everything you know about customer relationships is dead. Right now, it’s all about exploring and building new relationships throughout the mobile data cloud in which the customer lives. If you don’t get that, your brand is dead.
• location is the new intelligence: with connectivity comes location, which results in new applications, business models, methods of customer interaction, and just about everything. If you don’t have a location strategy for your business, you really don’t understand how quickly your world is changing around you

For more on this thinking, check out the ‘innovation’ tag on my blog.

I just came from giving a keynote for the annual conference of a major customer loyalty organization, with the talk focused on some of key trends impacting the world of retail today.

There’s certainly a lot going on and a lot to think about. Extremely rapid business model change, the emergence of new competitors, ongoing consumer confidence volatility, rapid product turnover and faster product life-cycles.

So what are they really, really worried about? Let’s put in context the people I had in the room — senior VP’s and managers in major retailers representing several billions in revenue in a wide variety of markets, including pharmaceutical, grocery, consumer goods and electronics. Not to mention quite a few bankers, responsible for credit card portfolio’s, loyalty programs and other customer oriented programs and infrastructure.

Given all that, the top of mind issue is — new methods of customer interaction.

Look at the poll results below. The issue stands out far and away as the most important concern of the day!

Hence, my keynote was bang-on. I didn’t touch too much on the social networking phenomena, as this type of crowd has been drowning in social-networking Powerpoints.

My focus was on interactivity, location, and intelligence,, and the extremely rapid emergence of new forms of in-store interaction and product sales uplift. Things like digital signage, in-store electronic promotional displays, iPod based coups. A flood of new stuff and new ideas that promote new ways of

Listen folks, I know I’ve said it here before, but I’ll say it again.

2010 is the year of location, combined with mobility, and it’s happening faster than you think.

I’m pumped about this topic and the reaction, so I’ve rolled this into a new keynote description:

Location is the New Intelligence: Customer Interaction in the Era of Pervasive Mobile

We’re at the leading edge of the merger of three perfect trends: the rapid and massive emergence of a massive mobile infrastructure with increasingly intelligent devices. Pervasive location awareness as a results of GPS and location intelligence/mapping trends in those very same tools. And a consumer mindset that is increasingly open to new forms of interaction. The result is massive business model disruption, absolutely transformative market change, and complete obliteration of old assumptions as to the nature of the customer relationship. Smart, innovative super-heroes know that this is an unprecedented time to jump on the emergence of location as the new intelligence, in order to provide for new ways of product uplift in the retail space, changing the very nature of customer loyalty through new forms of interaction, and enhancing existing one-to-0ne conversations through a more direct, distinct and fascinating new form of location based relationships. Futurist, Trends & Innovation Expert Jim Carroll is setting the retail, marketing and advertising world on fire with his fast paced insight into one of the most important trends to shape the customer-business relationship in the last few decades. Move over social networking — location is the new intelligence!

Read more: Location is the new intelligence

Here’s a summary of my observations from a keynote I did in New York City for retailers, agencies, marketing organizations, food and CPG companies, on some of the trends that are sweeping their industries today.

The summary is courtesy of the event sponsor, the Readers Digest Food & Entertainment Group.

1. The New Consumer Is Shifting Their Attention Faster than Ever

Consumers suffer from “continuous partial attention” with more stimuli around them than ever before:

• The number of text messages sent each day exceeds the population of the earth
• There are 62.6 million videogame households (up 11.4%) and the average age of a video game consumer is 41
• consumers spend about 10 hours per day and $1,000 per year with various media – primarily wireless devices, iPods, in store displays, in-auto media content and the Internet
• 93% of American teens are online, proving that the Internet will become ubiquitous

Consumers across demographic segments are immersed in this new interactive world forcing brands to engage them across all mediums to stay connected.

This new shopper is not only more scattered and more connected, but also faster – scanning 12 feet of shelf space on average per second. In-store influencers will now evolve at the pace of the iPhone and the Blackberry, challenging marketers to keep up with the pace. Faster is the new innovation and innovation isn’t just about new product design – it’s about responding to fast-paced consumer change.

Marketing Implication: Marketers must work harder than ever to capture the attention of the consumer and make a connection. Brands must keep up with the pace of consumer change in order to stay relevant.

2. The New Consumer Is No Longer Nuclear

The nuclear family is no longer the norm as Americans find new definitions for ‘family’ in today’s world. The following headlines touch on the variety of different ways families are structured today:

• “….only 1 in 4 of the population live in heterosexual, two-parent families… one in three people now live alone….” – ABC
• “….urban Americans remain single for more than half of their adult lives, a radical shift…..” – NBC
• “Between the ages of 18 and 59…. Chicagoans spend… 18 years married.. 4 years co-habitating….19 years alone or casually dating” – Associated Press
• “LAT tourism …. living apart together ….two out of five marriages end in divorce” – Reuters

Brands must acknowledge these new trends as they develop products and create marketing messages to resonate with today’s consumer.

Marketing Implication: Hyper-nicheing is the new brand reality as the market becomes more specialized and fragmented. Marketers can no longer rely on preconceived segmentation strategies, but rather need to think differently about who they are trying to reach and how to reach them.

3. The New Consumer Is Influenced Differently

We’re in the era of the “Celebrity Baby Blog” where purchases are influenced heavily by what others are doing. And it is not just celebrities that consumers are watching – they are also looking to their peers for advice and brand recommendations. For example, in travel, 79% of travellers trust peer reviews more than ads.

The same thing is happening with consumer products – peer reviews are the new influencers, with 83% trusting the opinion of a friend or acquaintance who has used the product or service.

Marketing Implication: Social networks are the new brand influencers and marketers must find ways to connect with consumers who are highly influential in their peer groups.

4. The New Consumer Is Shifting Their Focus

Socio-economic shifts are affecting consumer behavior at an increasingly fast pace.

For example, the downturn in the economy has quickly had a significant impact on consumers’ eating habits. 71% of consumers are choosing to prepare meals at home instead of eating out and restaurant trips have decreased from 1.5 times a week in 2006, to 1.2 times today. (Food Marketing Institute US Grocery Shopper Trends)

Another prime example of trends reaching mainstream quickly is the health trend. Even the most active consumers shopping at delis are health-conscious. 80% of deli-buyers are making changes to their diets and 90% are now reading deli labels (International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Association)

New markets are constantly emerging, whether it’s fresh-cut snack food, growing from a $6.8 billion industry to $10.5 billion (International Fresh-Cut Produce Association) or rapidly changing tastes – flavors are now moving from upscale kitchens to chain restaurants in 12 months, compared to 36 months 5 years ago.

Marketing Implication: Faster-paced preference change is the new reality and brands must be nimble to keep up with consumer demand.

5. The New Product Is Rapidly Redefined

New products are brought to market faster, redefining the industry quickly and forcing products to keep up.

As scientific knowledge is being shared in real time, ethical packaging innovations are emerging and driving product design.

For example, wax paper infused with cinnamon oil (antibacterial) inhibits 96% of mold for up to 10 days (Investor’s Business Daily). This new discovery allows CPG companies to produce new products with a naturally longer shelf life. Major manufacturers and retailers must respond to these new trends, especially as consumers jump onboard and demand these innovations. Most notably, Walmart has vowed to have zero private label packaging waste by 2010, and to eliminate all packaging waste by 2025 (Modern Plastics Worldwide)

Another example of a new product being redefined at a rapid pace is the “nutri-cosmetic” market – already at $1.5 billion worldwide (only 3% of that is in the U.S.) and predicted to grow at 4.7% a year in the U.S. to $10.6 billion by 2012 (Household & Personal Products Industry). Consumers are embracing new products that can offer positive effects on their appearance, while easily being integrated into their lifestyle.

Marketing Implication: Time to market and corporate agility are the new capabilities to focus on.

6. The New Product Is Upside Down

The way companies are innovating is also changing. The process used to be to get the assortment right, figure out the merchandising, go to stores and create a marketing campaign around it all.

The new innovation model turns that upside down: as large companies are more connected to consumer demand, they can use that insight to come up with the marketing, then determine the merchandising and get the assortment right.

Partnership with retailers and packaging companies in the design of the product is the key trend because these partners are closer to consumer demands and can often guide development of new products through their unique insight. Smart manufacturers are turning to packaging designers to ask for help lowering expenses as oil and raw material prices rise. (Bangkok Post). 73% of packaging machine builders collaborate with customer-packaging engineers. (Control Engineering).

Marketing Implication: Partnership with retailers and packaging companies is the key method to speed up product innovation and efficiently introduce new products to the marketplace.

7. The New Marketing Is Shifting

Consumers are being increasingly influenced by their time spent online. Therefore, online advertising spending is increasing and is predicted to rise to $51 billion in 2012 – up from $21 billion in 2007.

Consumers are looking across all media and being influenced by different sources of inspiration. Different media serves different purposes for consumers and reaches them in different mindsets. For example, certain magazines are set aside for leisure comfort reading, while online media can quickly provide relevant information at the touch of a button.

Marketing Implication: A “healthy mix” is the new advertising recipe for success reaching consumers at different touch-points.

Here’s a short video clip of Jim’s keynote, in which he speaks about the increasing velocity of change in retail.

What happens when Silicon Valley takes over the innovation agenda within an industry? In this video clip from a recent keynote, Jim challenges his audience to think about what happens in the world of banking, particularly with the likely fast paced emergence of contact-less payment technology based on mobile devices.

Innovative organizations need to make sure that they understand the external factors that will influence their future, and need to react appropriately. And as we enter the era of hyper-connected intelligent devices, with the impact of location-intelligence technology and the rapid adoption of mobile technologies, we’re likely to see every industry — even beyond financial services — impacted.

New business models, disruptive competition, a shift in control, customer churn — everything is up for grabs once Silicon Valley seizes control and defines your future!

Here’s an article that I wrote for the spring issue of Marketline, for the BCAMA. Some good food for thought on the future of branding, and how all this social networking might really evolve.

Key point: “The concept of branding is being re-energized. People care again”

Pat Boone Has an App
by Jim Carroll, Marketline, Spring 2010

Does that blow your mind? It should. After all, for some people, Pat Boone could be the most uncool guy around, and yet he has an App with a pretty good rating in the Apple App Store. I think that’s pretty cool.

If it doesn’t blow your mind because you don’t know who he is, then here’s the deal: he’s a singer who sold some 50 million albums during the 50s and 60s. Think Justin Bieber if he was around in 1956.

I learned about Pat Boone’s App when I set out to get my own. Given the nature of my business, I’m a brand, and I’m a big believer that we are rapidly entering the era of the personal brand App. And in fact, the same folks who developed Pat’s App pulled mine together and had it available in the App store within just eight weeks.

What does this have to do with the future of marketing? Probably everything and anything, in that we are in the very early stages of what is likely to be a very significant transformation in the energy that people have towards the concept of a brand.

Bill Gates once observed that “most people overestimate the amount of change that will occur in two years, and underestimate the change that will occur over 10 years”.

Think about that statement in the context of the current impact of social networking on brands and marketing.

Certainly, everyone knows that carefully orchestrated Twitter, Facebook and YouTube-centric marketing campaigns can provide a substantial uplift in sales and that, to a large degree, successful brands are focused on building relationships by having conversations with their customers. It’s all too obvious to everyone that if a brand doesn’t respect the fascinating power possessed by the new collective consciousness, things can go to hell in a handbasket in a hurry. And we all know that, increasingly, a brand is no longer what you say it is it’s what ‘they’ say it is.

Yet, these are early days. Where will we be 10 years out? How will the art of marketing have changed? What will a brand be in 10 years’ time? Will we even find it necessary to market a brand? Or will brands become such a part of our lives that we won’t even think it necessary to market them, because each of us will essentially own those brands? How do you market a product to someone who already owns the brand for that product?

Certainly there has been a tsunami of change in the marketing and creative world over the last few years with the explosion of social networking. But do we know where this change is going to take us? I’m not certain we do know. When the Internet first appeared on the scene, who could have imagined Twitter, or YouTube or cyber-battles between China and a company that didn’t exist less than a decade ago?

Much can happen in a two-year time span. Much more can happen in 10 years. The difficulty is in figuring out how to steer to wherever we might be in a decade. These are the early days and the pace of change is still accelerating. Brands are learning to adapt to fascinating new realities, and marketing skills are transitioning at lightning speed.

Customers are toying with their vast new powers, learning to use them in new and fascinating and sometimes scary and dangerous ways. Brands can go from hero to zero in a matter of moments. Marketing campaigns that one day seemed edgy and leading-edge can suddenly fall off a cliff, looking dull and out of date as a new brand comes along to displace them. And it all occurs at blinding speed.

Maybe in a decade some brands will have transitioned further into our lives through even more connectivity than we can currently imagine. Perhaps one day the packaging for a medication that I will be using will “talk” via a subterranean Twitter-like stream to a sensor embedded in my mobile device, updating my medical profile and adjusting my dosage based on up-to-the-second medical tests. When a brand becomes a part of my being, does that mean that the new brand relationship of today looks ancient?

I don’t think anyone has figured everything out yet with social media. There are certainly a lot of people talking about it, and I spend a fair amount speaking to the trend myself. But I think we are in the midst of something unique, special and awe-inspiring. I am convinced that in 10 years’ time, we will look back and think, “wow, that was an amazing time to take part in something big”.

What is that “something big”? Perhaps a period of time in which everyone customers and brand owners alike are becoming re-energized about the concept of a brand, as a brand truly become part of one’s existence.

Yes, Pat Boone has an App. He’s proud of his brand he put out good work, even if it is niche-oriented. And yes, maybe his market is declining. But here he is, an icon of the birth of the boomer era, and he’s got enough passion and enthusiasm for his brand to reach out to his brand participants using these fascinating new and powerful tools.

Pat Boone has had his passion for his brand restored. And maybe that is the most important thing that is happening right now. The concept of branding is being re-energized. People care again. We’re out of the era of robots building TV commercials that didn’t resonate, and brand images that didn’t create a sense of awe, and brand images that were simply stuck because of creative failure.

Perhaps that’s the real magic everyone is acquiring a new enthusiasm to do something with brands. If they own a brand, they can be inspired to do something great with it. If they are a customer of a brand, they can be inspired to help to shape the future of the brand more to their own liking through the collective consciousness that is social networking.

The energy and creativity around us is staggering. Continue to jump in, explore, try, do, fail and retry and remember that there is lots yet to learn, since these are early days.

Grab the original article at Scribd!

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
• start small: from those trends, identify where you might weaknesses in skills, products, structure, capabilities, or depth of team. Pick a number of small, experiential orientated projects to begin to fill in your weak points, and learn about what it is you don’t know. This will give you better depth of insight into what you need to do in order to deal with the transformative trends identified above
• scale fast: from those small scale projects, determine which areas need to be tackled first in terms of moving forward more aggressively with the future. Develop the ability to take your ‘prototyping’ of skills enhancement from the small scale projects into full fledged operations

It sounds simple, but its’ extraordinarily complex. Having said that, it does give you and your team a good conceptual framework for innovation, and orienting yourself to the trends which will provide you with the greatest opportunities and challenges in the years to come.

How might a company use such thinking? Let’s say you are in the banking industry. You know that mobile, text message, and location-sensitive banking trends are going to have a big impact on you. You know little about what is going. Think about how you might have redefined your customer service out on a ten year basis; where you might see new competitors emerge; and what you need to do to ensure that you stay on top of changing consumer demands. Then start small — take on a number of projects that build up the experience of your team with specific mobile technologies: how quickly can we get financial apps developed? From those ongoing efforts, build up the capability to scale — that is, separating the successes from the failures with these smaller projects, and learning how to quickly roll them out on a national or international basis.

Leave a comment : let me know what you think, suggest or ideas where you’ve seen the concept work!

It’s big, and its’ getting bigger!

That’s the location intelligence industry, which is resulting from the rapid dominance of location-aware mobile devices, the rapid emergence of massive sources of spatial (geographic oriented information, i.e. Google Maps), the rapid user adoption of location-based applications (i.e. iPhone Apps), and a significant amount of innovative thinking as to how to capitalize on these very fast paced trends.

There’s a lot of people building a lot of new businesses around these trends. And it’s happening extremely quickly:

• in a just-announced test of location based advertising in Finland, MacDonalds’ has reported that location-relevant mobile ads resulted in a 7.0% click-through rate. Of those who clicked through, 39% then used the click-to-navigate option to find the closest restaurant. These are significant numbers
• one if 4 American’s uses location based mobile services, and half of those who noticed an ad while using such services too some action
• there has been a 68% increase in the use of mobile mapping and direction services in Europe in ONE YEAR according to comScore
• MarketResearch.com predicts increases of 37% compound annual growth for mobile advertising and 65% for mobile commerce, influenced by the speed of adoption of location-based services
• Juniper Research suggests that location based service revenues will top $12.7 billion by 2014, up from $3 billion last year
• another survey by RCNOS suggested that the mobile locations technologies market will grow at annual compound rates of 20%, reaching $70 billion by 2013, which includes both consumer and business intelligence/application (survey, mapping etc) applications
• it’s estimated that 1 billion people will access social networks by 2014. Most of them will use some form of location based application as they do so.
• GPS-enabled mobile phone devices will dominate the technology space, comprising 66% of all GPS devices by 2013

This is pretty significant stuff. Actually, its more than significant – it’s huge. Location is set to lead to significant industry transformation; some pretty dramatic business model disruption (think real estate); changes in consumer behaviour (product promotion and uplift); new business models (mobile, text message based banking which starts out via a proximity relationship.). There’s a huge amount of velocity out there!

There are two angles to the emerging market: consumer (i.e. iPhone) driven applications which will involve marketing, branding, product promotion, customer loyalty, point-of-purchase and a huge variety of other opportunities. The second involves corporate applications such as risk-minimization (i.e. mortgage risk analysis based on spatial data).

Regardless of how you look at, the overall impact of location intelligence is going to be dramatic.

It’s even going to come to impact sports. Here’s a clip from a keynote I gave for 4,000 individuals as the recent National Recreation & Parks Association: “Location intelligence and the future of recreation,” and spoke about the concept of a location intelligence professional.

Last week, I did a keynote for DMTI Spatial, a leader in this emerging space, particularly in the corporate application world. He has an interesting blog post that summarizes some of the unique issues that go with this fast emerging trend.

Location is the new intelligence. And its’ happening faster than you think!

And an increasing number of my keynotes and clients are asking me to focus upon the business opportunities that are emerging in this world. Stay tuned.

Related posts:

• Location intelligence, financial industries and business model change 
• Location intelligence and the conference industry
• Extract from Jim’s book, Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast 

Futurist Jim Carroll, at CRIM 2010, outlines how global CEO’s are positioning their organizations for growth, through a focus on long term transformative trends. As the path to an economic recovery becomes clearer, I’m spending a lot of time speaking at leadership events for strategies for the upturn.

Last fall, Microsoft invited me to speak at a series of events related to its Windows 7 launch; I’d be addressing C-level executives on the key business strategies organizations are adopting as we come out of the recession.

For the first stop on the tour, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke to the audience, so I went to hear what he had to say. He certainly stoked enthusiasm for the new Windows 7 product in the manner for which he is known, but he also spoke to the broader plans for Microsoft in the future. One comment about mobile devices stood out: that the reason why Apple is selling so many apps for the iPhone is because generally the browser on the phone isn’t very user friendly.

That’s quite true. I find when I access the Internet on my iPhone the screen resolution seems particularly challenging for these middle-aged eyes. My own website features fonts and a layout that look great on a big monitor but when accessed on an iPhone don’t work very well.

So I decided I should have my own app that features a variety of information found on my regular site. Hence, my voyage into the world of iPhone app development. Apparently it’s a voyage many people are pursuing, with some 80,000 apps already available on the iTunes store.

As I began looking around, I found quite a few artists and entertainers (which I think my career is increasingly evolving into) were releasing iPhone apps. Heck, I even found an app for Pat Boone. That blew my mind.

It was a timely decision: I had already started down the path toward promoting compatibility with the new world of wireless devices by creating a special version of my website uniquely formatted for small screens. I did this in a matter of hours by setting up a WordPress blog; I added to it the iPhone/PDA “theme” that reformats pages to fit within the narrow screen size found on a BlackBerry or iPhone. I then added code to my website that figures out if someone is coming in via such a device: when someone does, it redirects him or her to the mobile version.

It was a bit challenging to get the blog section of my website into the iPhone version – until I found Mippin, that is. This nifty free service automatically formats a blog feed for wireless devices in a matter of seconds. If you have a blog and a PDA, try it out; it is quite a magical service.

Voila. I now had a version of my website that worked well for PDAs. But I thought I still should have an app that is available to people in the iTunes App store. Where to start? A friend put me in touch with iEveryware, an app developer based in California. From there, a phone call led to a cost estimate and within hours, I was on the way to having my own app. It was that fast. Until then, I had thought the process of app development would be some deep secret known to a chosen few. The reality is that there are already thousands of developers out there.

One key step in the process was setting myself up as an Apple iPhone Developer, for a fee of US$99. Once that was done, I was able to register the name Futurist for my app. I registered a few other app names for future use; right now, it seems a little bit like the early days of domain name registration. (Hint, hint.)

As I write this column, I’m actively involved in testing daily updates from the development team as they put together the application; it features a variety of videos within the app itself; access to video feeds from YouTube; direct access to my blog and Twitter feeds and some information resources about innovation and trends. We’re hoping to submit it to Apple shortly; by the time you read this, it should be out there. The cost to develop my app? Just US$995.

All this from hearing Ballmer suggest the experience of browsing the web on an iPhone sucked.

(This article was written in December 2009. The app was submitted December 21, and was approved for release 10 days later!)

More information:

• iEveryware
• Mippin
• Jim Carroll’s iPhone app
• Pat Boone’s app

I spend a lot of time speaking to global financial organizations — some of the world’s largest institutions — helping them understand what they need to do from an innovation perspective to stay ahead of fast paced change.

These talks are often aimed at the idea of “how do we need to transition our advisory services — financial planners, investment advisors, insurance agents and brokers — to keep up with fast paced change?”

Here’s a laundry list of some of the strategies that I’ve been talking about:

1. Focus on growth:With so much volatility in the financial sector, it’s all too easy to take your eye off of the opportunity ball. As I noted in my remarks for a recent keynote to a group of senior bankers:
   

   “Never before has the need for financial advice for Australians been greater; only 20% of Australians are currently getting professional advice.”

   That means there are tremendous opportunities for growth! For many, access to financial advice is still too hard and complicated – that’s why it’s a great time to innovate, in order to build market share!!!!

2. Structure for fast paced change: There are several certainties in the financial sector:
   

   • more business model change
   • more sophisticated competition
   • continuous business model disruption with new, young upstarts
   • continual shifts in consumer behaviour
   • technology-driven fast change, such as with the impact of mobile technologies

   Quite simply, an innovative financial organization concentrates on aligning its structure and capabilities so that it can change quickly

3. Reshape brand messages faster:
   Clearly there’s a lot of fast-paced change in financial services with the rapid economic pullback, and it’s critical that financial institutions continue to reshape their brand at the pace of rapidly changing consumer perception.

   Noted Jim Buchanan, Senior VP of Consumer Marketing at the Bank of America in an article in Advertising Age, October 2009:

   “Six months ago, we were trying to re-assure the market and consumers that we are safe and secure….now consumers are telling us they’re not worried about those things anymore…..What they are interested in is ‘How can you help me manage my finances?‘”

   Innovative organizations ensure that the brand message evolves at the pace of a world in which volatility is the new normal.

4. Adapt to momentum of financial consumer change: Quite simply, the new financial client is online in a big way, and smart financial organizations will evolve their service and support message to these platforms. The numbers are staggering; in the case of my Australian keynote, I emphasized that:
   

   • 147 million people interact globally on social networks via their mobile phones – we can expect 1 billion within five years!
   • there are 1.6 million Twitter users in Australia – up 1,000% from last year
   • Australian’s now spend 16.1 hours a week on the Internet, compared to 12.9 hours watching TV
   • 25% of that time is spent on Facebook

   The impact is clear: as noted by Mondaq Business Briefing in November 2009: “Australians visit social networking sites more often than financial services sites.”

   The bottom line for financial and investment advisors is that social networks are an extremely effective tool to keep core clients in the loop; as an outreach tool, they’re fast, effective, unique, quirky, and certainly the story of the day. The bottom line is that financial advisors have to go where the client is going, and should be thinking about how to become socially-networked oriented advisors.

5. Adjust platforms to this changing behaviour: I continue to emphasize with my global financial clients that the impact of mobile technologies on financial services is absolutely massive. Think about Wizzit, a South African service that is essentially a text message based banking system.The reality is that the new financial consumer expects to be served on new platforms: as noted by Thomas Kunz, Senior VP at PNC Financial:
   

   “Gen-Y doesn’t reconcile checkbooks, and they don’t believe in float. For them, their balance is their balance.”

   That’s why PNC has released a “virtual wallet app” available for iPhones. They’re reaching out to this new financial consumer in a big way.
   

   Aggressive change with business platforms provides big opportunity for business model disruption. A key factor here has to do with new client acquisition: what’s happening is the point of origination of the relationship might change as people transition their banking to mobile devices. Opportunity can come from continuing to build the advisor and distribution channel into these new platforms.

   And that’s not a threat – that’s a huge opportunity!

6. Leverage off of new peer-to-peer behaviour trends:
   The new financial consumer relies more than ever before for advice from their social networks.Peer-to-peer social driven advice through sites such as TradeKing is coming to the forefront: it’s a service that allows people to share stock tips and research through extended social networks.

   Does this diminish the role of advisory services — not at all, if you dive in and become a part of the peer-to-peer conversation!

7. Re-orient distribution channels : Here’s another key point: I’ve emphasized to my insurance and other financial clients that the next-generation advisor/broker/agent expects ever more sophisticated technology platforms to help support their role.You’ve got to make sure you are keeping up with their needs. In one survey in the insurance sector, 80% of brokers indicated that the sophistication of the technology platform of the provider would influence who they would choose to do business with.

   According to Kevin Murray, EVP and CIO at New York-based AXA Equitable:

   “The younger generation of financial professional will almost demand online self-service….they will want to text any questions they have in to the service centre or self-service from their mobile device. We’re going to have to be able to provide that capability. It’s how they will operate.”

8. Build your own peer-to-peer collaborative knowledge networks: The new financial advisor is also thinking socially, and is actively looking for peer-to-peer collaborative knowledge.Imagine building a financial advisory team that is collaborative for ideas, shares insight on market wins, constantly leverages insight from new branding campaigns that work in unique ways, and constantly shares great ideas on new methods of converting leads into clients — that’s how this next generation works!

   Back to Kevin Murray:

   “They will also want an online collaboration tool to …find answers concerning product or questions from their customers. The X and Y generations are going to demand a different way of selling and servicing their customers.”

   What’s it really all about? Freeing up their time to build opportunity, make sales, close deals.

9. Reduce churn through electronic relationships: Here’s something else to think about according to Chief Marketer (October 2009),
   

   “The average brand saw one third of highly loyal consumers in 2007 completely defect to another brand in 2008“.

   People are far less loyal, and far more likely to jump ship at the drop of a hat. That’s why continuous innovation in terms of the relationship is critical — and that’s maybe why continually transitioning to new technology platforms such as an iPhone app might
   reduce that churn

10. Better, more focused niche marketing: We’re in the new era of analytics and analysis, which provides new opportunities for advisors to reach out to markets previously unattainable. As noted by Money Management Executive in October 2009:
    

    “Financial advisers generally prefer to manage a small number of high-net-worth clients rather than a large number of small accounts, but recent advances in automation technology could change this dynamic.”

11. Innovate hard with the next generation: one of the biggest trends going forward is that right now, we are witnessing the early stages of a massive transition of wealth from one generation to another. The numbers are staggering: we’ll see $12 to $18 trillion in intergenerational wealth transfer In the next 12 years (US GDP is $12 trillion); and by 2053, some $130 trillion will have moved from one generation to another. That’s a lot of money sloshing around — and much of it is going to this new, tech-savvy financial consumer.
12. At the same time, rethink importance of boomer market: It’s easy with all of these points to think that new markets will come from new, uber-hip young people and hot new technologies. But don’t stop with innovating with that market — also realize that there continues to be huge growth potential with the boomer market. In Australia, baby boomers will control 51% of the nations wealth. Put that in the context of the reality that there is a huge adoption by Boomers of Facebook. They continue to more aggressively integrate technology into their lives; they’re busy researching health care, insurance, retirement planning and investment advice. Online makes more sense than ever before — get your advisors there!
13. Evolve the approach: Insurance and financial services are products that are always sold based on fear — they aren’t bought. This reality doesn’t go away because of new technologies. What does change is that technology is a powerful enabler that frees advisors from having to focus on the mundane, routine, time wasting stuff, in order to focus on providing the advice & guidance that advisors can provide. Focus on the core role!
14. Enact change: Many advisors will be in comfortable, established routines. Change is not easy. That’s why organizations in the financial sector that are trying to be innovative need to help existing advisors focus on the opportunity and the benefits that come with rapid change, rather than being fearful of the change that technology is bringing to the industry.

Bottom line? As I summed up in my talk — “Innovative organizations make bold leaps, in order to keep up — and stay ahead — of a faster future.”

I had quite a few financial oriented keynotes through the last year, for banks, mortgage groups, credit unions and others. If there was a key theme as to the insight my clients were seeking, it was this: what are the BIG trends that are going to impact us (I’m a futurist), and what do we need to do about it (I specialize in insight on what global leaders are doing in the area of innovation.)

The scope of some of these engagements is pretty significant; Diners’ Club featured me as the opening speaker for their global franchise conference; my focus was on the big trends that would impact the organization into the future.

I guess I had generated enough buzz on my theme within the financial services industry such that I was booked for a keynote down into a major bank in Sydney, Australia, via a fibre optic link. (I couldn’t make a flight connection work!)

What should financial executives be thinking about? There are dozens of significant trends. Perhaps the most important has to do with the fact that 2010 is the year that location intelligence is coming to the industry as a significant business model disruptor.

Here’s a snippet from an article that captures a bit of what I’ve been talking about. The world of banking is going to witness massive change as mobile and location intelligence technology becomes married together. Consider:

Jim pointed to an Australian study that found 65 per cent of children in preschool today will work at jobs that don’t exist today.

“Think about the concept of a location intelligence professional.”

He discussed the possibilities presented by marrying smartphones equipped with global positioning systems to spatial-oriented information websites such as Google Maps.

“In the not-too-distant future, it’s quite likely some real estate organization is going to roll out an iPhone app that you will go through and you will pre-identify the types of properties that you’re interested in. It’s going to use the location capabilities built into the iPhone to build you an interactive tour of those properties. And you’re going to use your (iPhone) to drive around the neighbourhood and look at these homes through your phone.”

The same application might refer users on to a mortgage broker, he said.

“What do you do when the essence of your business model and the nature of the referrals that you get into your business begin to change?”

Halifax Chronicle Heradld, “Expert: Essence of life is change”, November 25, 2009

Give me any financial organization, and I can give you an organization that likely isn’t prepared for the fact that their innovative agenda is going to be subject to some pretty significant change.

What I’ve been doing is outlining for my clients the trends that are going to impact them, and the innovative thinking they need to pursue to capitalize upon those trends.

Here’s a quick quote from a year end article that ran in Computer Dealer News:

CDN: How is the recession changing the way we do business?

Jim Carroll: “There’s a realization that we need to get to market faster, because consumer trends are happening faster, and IT plays a big role. If we don’t have a solid infrastructure, if we can’t collaborate, then we can’t push ideas through the organization faster.

And if you think about the rollout of IT, it’s becoming more critical than ever before – it’s the lifeblood by which we develop this ability to act fast.

I talk [to clients] about business model disruption. In the next few years it’s likely that our iPhones, BlackBerrys and mobile devices are going to become credit cards, and the entire financial industry will find that innovation will occur not at the previous speed of banking innovation, but at the speed of Silicon Valley innovation.

So going forward into this next economy they need to ingest new technology faster and respond to faster business model disruption.”

That’s a key trend that impacts every single industry today : into 2010 and going forward, many industries are going to find that the pace of innovation is no longer dictated by the traditional suspects, but by the pace of innovation as set by Silicon Valley. More on that theme to come!

At 2pm yesterday, the new Jim Carroll iPhone App became available on the iTunes App store.

The app runs on any iPhone or 2nd generation iPod. It does require Wi-fi or cell connectivity for most content.

With the app, you’ll have a direct link to my Twitter feed, blog posts, Youtube videos, a group of videos embedded in the app itself, and other information pertaining to the future and trends.

It’s a 1.0 release: clearly, I’m looking for feedback and insight into what you’d like to see in the app. Future releases are likely to include a daily trends overview, weekly newsletter, and other regular updates on trends and innovation issues.

The project was pulled together by iEveryWare (http://www.ieveryware.com/), and was based on some earlier work they did for the entertainer Sonny Rollins. They’ve actually now rolled the architecture into a system that would let have your own app for $995US.

Grab the app, give it a try, put your ratings into iTunes, and send me feedback!

Jim Carroll iPhone App:

• Launch iTunes and grab the app

I still believe the defining trend of the next decade — from 2010 to 2020 — will involve “pervasive connectivity,” as everything around us “plugs into the cloud.” Here’s a brief video clip from a recent keynote.

I am not alone in thinking we’re in the midst of a significant economic transformation. As Mick Fleming, president of the American Chamber of Commerce Executives, said recently, “It’s going to be a move from a bad economy to the next economy.”

What is the shape of the next economy? In many cases, it will involve structural change based on an acceleration of business cycles. Consider manufacturing, for example. We’re moving from a world of mass production to mass customization, or what I call agility-based manufacturing. I often cite the case of Honda, as noted in a 2008 article on the financial website Bloomberg: “Honda’s assembly lines can switch models in as little as 10 days.” By contrast, the article suggests, it could take months for most rivals to make the same change.

Companies such as Honda can see what’s selling strongly and quickly reorient their production to fit that demand. In the meantime, its competitors are busy cranking out 700,000 versions of the same old car, hoping to sell it to consumers who have already moved on to something different. It’s no wonder Detroit is being killed off by its long-term reliance on gas-guzzlers.

Everyone now understands that the old Detroit-based manufacturing business model was deeply flawed. The newer model, based on agility and flexibility, is the model of the future. If an organization can rapidly change its production to accommodate what consumers are willing to buy, it has a good chance of future success.

This ability to respond quickly to change is a corner-stone of opportunity. Competitors will emerge, particularly as the new connected generation rejects existing business models and innovative people continue to shake up the fundamentals. Take the business model of Wizzit, a South African cellphone-based banking system, which could cause upheaval throughout the banking sector as mobile technology garners more of our attention.

Furthermore, the nano-cannibalization of markets is becoming a business trend rather than an aberration. For example, Apple broke new ground years ago by tossing out an entire iPod Nano product line worth billions of dollars of revenue, replacing it with a newer, up-to-date product. Imagine even considering that. How could it cannibalize its own product revenue?

I recently spoke at a leadership meeting for a global organization, where the CEO spoke of a future in which the company’s success would come from what he called “chameleon revenue” – the sales derived from entirely new product lines. The chart he presented said it all: the organization’s future consisted of a steady decrease in baseline revenue and accelerating revenue streams from markets it currently does not participate in.

I think this will become the norm for most organizations. The ability to rapidly enter and exit markets will define future success. The ability to sustain multiple, short-term product life cycles, each perhaps no more than 36 to 48 months long, will be a critical success factor. Agility at discovering, producing and capitalizing on new revenue sources will be a fundamental necessity. In other words, your ability to change your spots and your colour on a dime will be the key driver for your potential.

Which begs the question: does your financial system have the capability to provide information on your chameleon revenue streams? Does it provide the insight and analytical tools to tackle product life-cycle revenue so the organization can assess how quickly its chameleon revenue streams are evolving? If it doesn’t, what do you need to do to adapt?

From Jim Carroll’s CAMagazine December column

There’s no doubt that one of the biggest issues facing the planet and its inhabitants in the coming decades is how we treat the dual challenges of energy and the environment. For years, I’ve been advising my clients about one of the biggest trends related to these two issues: the rapid emergence of an intelligent energy infrastructure. It’s happening now – all around you – and the implications are pretty huge in terms of economic growth. The big question is, what role can accountants play as this infrastructure builds?

From a high level, the trend unfolding is that we will be able to more directly and individually control how we use energy resources, giving each of us ways to reduce our own environmental footprint.

We’re seeing small steps already today: for example, I just bought the new IP Thermostat app for my iPhone; it provides instant access to the two Internet-enabled Proliphix thermostats in my home and ski chalet/cottage. (I could link to my thermostats before via a web page, but IP Thermostat makes it seamless and fast.) The technology allows me to actively manage my energy consumption and better manage my environmental footprint. A world in which hundreds of millions of people are doing the same thing would put a serious dent into heating and air-conditioning usage.

Such devices are just a small example of a number of major trends that will lead to more of this type of connectivity becoming mainstream. For example, major industrial players are adding intelligence to the next generation of commercial, industrial and residential heating, ventilation and air-conditioning equipment, to allow for remote monitoring, management and rapid response to out-of-norm operations.

The advent of the “smart grid” – an electrical system that operates on a more efficient, cost-effective basis through the use of information technology – is another example. It’s not all hype; Cisco recently suggested that the connectivity component of energy infrastructure will be worth more than US$100 billion over five years. That’s some serious spending.

And if we consider the new role of analytics, in that such connectivity will allow consumers and users to better understand their usage, and allow more intelligent demand.

The Positive Energy initiative, for example, encourages hydro utilities to send out electrical bills that compare your usage to that of your neighbours. If you’re efficient, you get some smiley faces on your bill. If not, you get some images that would encourage you to do better. It’s a unique, simple idea, and yet it provides a glimpse into where we can go in the future if we allow people to take a more analytical, deeper view of how they use energy, and hence, impact the environment.

Imagine that as we build this intelligent, connected energy system we can provide tools allowing consumers to further manage their household energy use. For example, software tools could allow them to query an energy provider for details on how well their fridge was operating compared to neighbourhood norms, how much they could save by purchasing a more efficient microwave, or how much money they are losing by postponing that oil change on their 10-year-old hyper-connected car.

We know that everything around us is beginning to plug into the cloud.

There might be unique opportunities to consider how we can maximize the potential for insight as this occurs.