Jim Carroll- Futurist, Trends & Innovation Keynote Speaker

Here’s the text for a keynote I’m doing in Calgary tomorrow at noon for a group of IT executives.

Lots to think about here – the future belongs to those who are fast!

———–

"The new business model for everyone will increasingly use speed as a metric, and fast-innovation is a core capability"

Certainly the last forty years have seen technology play a huge impact on business.

Name any industry – auto, health care, manufacturing, energy, banking — and it’s clear that we are witnessing a fundamental and distinct shift of the innovation agenda to one which is driven by the speed of Silicon Valley, and by a generation of people in the computing world who think fundamentally differently about the source of innovation in an industry.

As this occurs, we will see massive business model disruption as new, faster, more nimble competitors who understand technology based disruption, cast aside their slower, ingrained counterparts who are stuck with old, ingrained ideas.

The future belongs, in other words, to those who are fast. Tech companies and tech based innovators certainly understand that logic. Their entire DNA is bound up in the ability to move fast.

That’s why financial organizations are finding themselves plunged into a whirlwind of change as our mobile devices become our credit cards. As slow-to-change insurance companies find that driver-performance oriented insurance policies, linked to in-dash GPS monitoring technologies, wreak havoc on old-line insurance assumptions. As the world of health care adjusts to the reality of a less than $1,000 genomic sequence machine — something that would have cost over $1 million just ten years ago, leading us much quicker to a world of personalized medicine. And an oil and gas industry which is witnessing hyper-innovation in terms of extraction techniques, driven by deep data analysis and other capabilities, which are leading to year over year yield increases which were unmanageable years ago.

The new business model for everyone will increasingly use speed as a metric, and fast-innovation is a core capability.

That’s why you should join iON Secured Networks and Check Point Security Technologies, as we bring you the unique insight of Jim Carroll, who has emerged as one of the world’s leading international futurists, trends and innovation experts, with a client list that ranges from Northrop Grumman to Rockwell Collins; the SouthWest Gas Association to RGA Reinsurance; the Walt Disney Organization to NASA. Jim has had the opportunity to study what world-class innovators have been doing to keep up with a world in which the future belongs to the fast. He will share with us the new role of leading edge technologies involving cloud networks, agile computing, just-in-time development and other key strategies that will help organizations to deploy the right technologies at the right time for the right purpose — a strategy that will be increasingly important as all industries come to innovate at the speed of Silicon Valley.

I recently discovered that I was quoted in one of the Phillipines major business journals, BusinessWorld, n an article, “Biggest Business Innovations Engines of Innovation” published back in February.

I’ve often suggested that companies try to deepen their creative pool, either by studying innovation in completely dissimilar industries, and event o the point of hiring people you don’t like. Otherwise, you can simply get stifled with the sameness that comes with unoriginal thinking. I’ve even suggested to people that rather than going to the same old conferences every year, they should pick one or two events from entirely different industries in order to site their creative juices.

• 10 great innovation ideas – “hire people you don’t like” 
• Article – Re-energize your association – Listen beyond the grassroots 

I also find that too many organizations get caught up in fads when trying to innovate. Certainly that is true right now with social networking; while it is certainly important, I think too many are jumping in without a clear idea of what they are trying to do. This was referred to in the article:

“On the other hand, Mr. Carroll has warned against blindly pursuing the latest innovation trend, a common trap he has called “bandwagon innovation.” If taking the hip approach ends in failure, it can derail any creative progress the company has made so far.

By then, employees may become too disillusioned and burned out to try out the next “in” strategy. A company’s real free-thinking workers are not compelled by the “slogan-based management” that comes with bandwagon innovation, and will hardly be enthused when they see their execs following the crowd.”

 I’m also referring to situations in which I’ve seen a company or organization form a special innovation team. They start up their project, go into a special room — and everyone wonders, ‘what’s up?” This fails because it makes innovation special; it makes it seem like it is something you do once as a project; it is just wrong on so many different levels. Innovation is a corporate culture — an attitude driven from the leadership that continually challenges everyone to ask themselves, “what can I do to run this better, grow the business, and transform the business.”

• 10 surefire ways to destroy innovation – Form a secret committee 

The International Dairy, Deli and Bakery Association has invited me to be the closing keynote speaker for the 2012 international conference in New Orleans. I’ll appear before an audience of 8,000 key players in this massive global industry.

I’m honoured to join a list of previous keynote speakers that includes Mike Ditka, General Colin Powell, Emeril Lagasse, John Cleese (!), and even Sinbad.

This is another sign that innovation, and keeping up with high velocity change — my main themes — continues to rise to the top in many corporations and associations. Consider what I’m talking about : here’s the brochure copy which announces my participation:

The New Normal: Innovation, Hyper-niching, and Transformative Change

The “new normal” says nothing will ever be normal again. Instead, deep substantial change is transforming nations, markets, industries, jobs, and knowledge. We’re at the leading edge of the merger of three perfect trends: the rapid and massive mobile infrastructure with increasingly intelligent devices; pervasive location awareness as a result of GPS and location intelligence-mapping trends, and a consumer mindset that is increasingly open to new forms of interaction. The result is massive business model disruption, market change, and obliteration of old assumptions aobut the nature of customer relationships. Futurist, Trends & Innovation Expert Jim Carroll will show new ways to uplift product in retail space, how to change customer loyalty through new forms of interaction, and how to enhance one-to-one conversations through hyperniching. He’ll walk us through the impact of increasing business intensity, innovation, and creativity as it relates to the world of food.

The key phrase to think about is “deep substantial change.” And the key thing to think about, is are you ready for it? Is your leadership team, innovation strategy, partners, infrastructure, culture and mindset aligned for transformative change?

Folks, we’re going to look back at 2012 as a year in which the world began to change even faster than any other year prior.

My key phrase has always been, “the future belongs to those who are fast.”

Are you?

Here’s some of the key trends that I see unfolding through 2012 and beyond.

My unique job allows me the opportunity to see and hear what a lot of CEO’s and senior executives in a lot of organizations are thinking about. The  nature of my keynotes and small board / leadership meetings allows me to understand what folks are focused on. The research I do, whether for a major manufacturing conference in Las Vegas or a small corporate meeting with an ice cream company allows me to see the key trends that are unfolding right now.

And so given this unique perch, here’s some of the most important trends which will play out in the year to come.

•  Biz competes again. North American and Western European companies have lived with constant fear, with the rapid rise of China, the BRIC countries and the N11 on the world  stage. And yet, we’re now witnessing a scene from the movie 2010: “HAL-9000 – ‘What’s going to happen?’ DAVE – ‘Something wonderful.‘ My sense is that a wide variety of industries, from agriculture to manufacturing to industrial design have been going through a renaissance of thinking in the last few years, and have learned what they need to do to re-innovate, grow again, and aggressively return to local and global markets. Read my “Build-America” blog post for some of what I’m thinking here — and stayed tuned!
• The rise of the tinkering economy. The future is once again being built in the garage next door. But this time, it’s the hyper-connected, innovation oriented tinkering economy which is driving things forward. Get used to phrases like “micro factories,” “hobby designers” and”personal factories.”  The future of design, business and manufacturing is being reinvented at collaborative idea factories such as Ponoko, Etsy and  eMachineShop.com. There’s a revolution underway which is being driven by a globally connected, creatively driven new generation of hobbyists, and the impact is going to be massive!
• Relationships change. Everywhere around us, the relationship that we have in our lives with the things that surround is, well, changing. Our relationship with food is changing as mobile technologies come to influence what we buy, how we shop,  and how we track our food intake. Our relationship with our body is undergoing a change as we come to use those same mobile technologies to monitor our diet, track our blood pressure another vital signs. Our relationship with clothing is changing as embedded technology becomes a part of what we wear — think about GPS enabled shoes for Alzheimers patients and Zephyr’s smart-clothing — which can be used by athletes to track their performance. When relationships change, everything changes, and opportunities for growth and innovative thinking abound!
• Generational re-generation: everywhere we look, there’s a massive generational turnover underway, with a change in ownership of organizations from slow moving change adverse baby-boomers to a younger generation that inhales change as a form of innovation oxygen. As family farms and ranches are passed on from father to son and daughter, the rate of adoption of new farming and herd management ideas takes on a greater degree of speed.  As older doctors and nurses who were weaned on the paper-heavy patient file head into retirement, they being replaced by new medical residents who are arriving in the clinic, operating room and by the hospital bed with their iPads, ready to plug in! A shift from change-aversion to change-is-the-greatest-drug is a trend that speeds up our world even more!
• Revenue reinvention. Every company is coming to face the reality that they have to become just like Apple in order to survive. The fact that Apple generates over 60% of its revenue from products that didn’t exist 4 years ago might today be an aberration, but given the increasing velocity of business cycles, product innovation, the arrival of new business models, changing customer expectations, the impact of social networks and a series of other trends, and soon every organization will find itself in a reality in which constant, relentless reinvention of its product or service line will the crucial to future success.
• The Dominance of Design. We’re on the edge of a massive new era of creativity, with a trend that we might even call the ‘IPad-ization of Life.’ All one has to do is look at the new Nest thermostat to realize that a new generation of brilliant creativity is about to remake our world. We’re not doomed to a future in which everything around us in the future is going to look just like it did in the past – Apple’s design influence is quickly going to impact everything around us – from the cars we drive to the lamps we use to the fridges we open, to the buses we catch. Clean, simple, easy interfaces and crisp, cool lines, But it’s not just the looks — its the fact that with this new era of design comes intelligence. Our future is going to look great , intelligent and interactive!
• Chip-velocity! Moore’s law used to apply only to the computer industry. Yet the rule that the processing power of a computer chip doubles every year while its cost cuts in half is taking on new meaning, as your phone becomes a credit card, your car watches how well you drive on behalf of your insurance company, and your clothing talks to your doctor! All of a sudden, in the era of relentless, pervasive connectivity, innovation in every single industry speeds up when Silicon Valley takes over the innovation agenda!
• Life beyond politics. While the US Presidential election and political turmoil will dominate the headlines for 2012, a new generation of leaders are focused on BIG THINKING, BIG IDEAS, and BOLD MOVES. There’s a realization that political gridlock is the new normal, whether its the Democrats and Republications staring each other down, or France and Germany looking at Italy and Greece with a mystified sense of stunned confusion. So while politicians fail to get things done, innovative organizations are casting their mind to the future trends which will really provide opportunity in the future. It’s fascinating — the future is back in vogue again! And the thinking that is driving it is that we aren’t going to fix the problems of the future by doing what we’ve done in the past. And if we do things differently with those problems – that’s how we’ll discover the next big opportunity. This is the new mindset driving activities in the world of energy, the environment and healthcare!
• Leading locally. There’s something odd going on — as the world gets global, we’re all going local.  We’re seeing it with sustainability  and local foods; angst and anger at banks and moves to credit unions; and a new volunteerism – as unemployment grew to 7.6%, volunteer service grew by 16%! We’re seeing it with local business – a University of Pennsylvania study found that areas with small, locally owned business (<100 employees) had greater per capita income growth than those with the presence of larger, nonlocal firms! There’s a new focus on local co-ops — with more than 100 million people employed worldwide in some type of local co-op. Thats’ why its fitting that 2012 is the International Year of the Cooperatives, a business model that has stood the test of time for over 150 years. Where-ever you look, while we are thinking global, we’re acting local!
• Strategy re-dos. The impact of all these trends? Executives quickly coming to realize that what they’ve been doing in the past isn’t to hold them forward into the future. It’s time to throw out all the old assumptions and try things that are new!

Here’s to 2012!

This article was released in my CAMagazine column in March 2009. shortly after the great economic collapse of 2008.

Inertia — real or implied — establishes a culture of inaction, and that can lead to another slippery slope

Given the new economic volatility, shrieking stock market headlines, and the reappearance of a sense of dread in the corporate world in September 2010, it’s probably a good time to re-read the article.

There are countless examples where history has shown us that it is those organizations who focused on ensuring that they were still actively pursuing innovation — whether through product development, the exploration of new business models, external partnerships, the pursuit of new markets and customer groups — were those who managed to achieve the greatest success in the long run.

Catch the key line at the end: “The greatest mistake any organization can make right now is to do nothing.”

Keep Those Ideas Coming
Jim Carroll, March 2009

I have started to think about the events of the past few months in the context of economic grief — an emotional process closely related to the stages of bereavement. The economy unraveled so quickly that many organizations still find themselves in the early phases of economic grief, marked by shock and denial. Corporate idea factories have come to a standstill and innovation paralysis is settling in.

The result is that we’re not just in an economic recession; we’re entering an idea recession, similar to that of the last downturn starting in 2001. Yet, in allowing innovation to dry up, businesses are missing out on great opportunities for success. After all, companies such as Burger King, Microsoft, CNN and FedEx were all started up during recessions.

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania released a provocative article in November 2008 suggesting a recession is the perfect time for disruptive innovation — that is, rewriting an industry’s business model to achieve significant growth. Think of Steve Jobs and the iPod, which he first released during a less-than-rosy economy in 2001.

So what do companies need to do to make the most of this recession? First, accept the economic reality. Those unable to move past shock, denial and anger through to acceptance will be innovation laggards and will only be ready to innovate once the market and industry recovery is underway. Unfortunately, that may be too late.

Innovation leaders, however, are prepared to keep their idea factories running (perhaps not at full tilt, but running nevertheless) in the face of uncertainty. They know there is still a place for innovative thinking despite the vast sections of the economy under stress. They know there are growth markets and opportunities for marketplace, distribution-channel and operational innovation. These leaders are aware ongoing change in consumer behaviour means there are still new ways to brand, grab customer mind share and forge unique and distinct relationships.

It is critical that organizations begin to undertake a series of bold actions that reorients them to face future challenges. These actions should include several integrated elements.

• Boost the experiential capital of the organization. Get your teams working on projects and ideas that build up their experience. For example, they might explore new methods of branding and marketing (particularly to the next generation); investigate technologies that can stream-line business processes; or work with distribution models that expand market potential.
• Identify weaknesses or areas for improvement. Consider what elements of the organization’s product line, skills or structure could benefit from specific innovation efforts. For example, are competitive threats emerging that you haven’t really thought about? What should you be doing to innovate your way around those challenges?
• Explore key opportunities through a variety of risk-oriented initiatives. If, for example, you focus on a customer-retention strategy (such as visiting every customer in the next three months to see if you are meeting their needs) can you put a stop to future revenue leakage?

The greatest mistake any organization can make right now is to do nothing. Inertia — real or implied — establishes a culture of inaction, and that can lead to another slippery slope. Today, innovation isn’t simply an option — it’s critical because it is the best way to gain traction.

One of the biggest challenges in being an innovator is keeping faith in your belief as to where trends are going to take you.

You’ll find no shortage of people who will detract you from your goals, using one of the most effective innovation killer phrases: “that’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

Certainly history has taught us this lesson! Consider how some have reacted in the past to what proved to be very significant, transformative developments:

• “There will never be a bigger plane built.” A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that carried ten people.
• “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” – Albert Einstein, 1932
• “Computers may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.” – Popular Mechanics, 1949
• “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” – Ken Olson, president of Digital Equipment Corp. 1977
• “This telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.” – Western Union memo, 1876
• “No imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?“- David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urging investment in the radio in the 1920′s.
• “The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.” – Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project.
• “Airplanes are interesting toys, but they are of no military value whatsoever.” – Marechal Ferdinand Fock, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre
• “While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility.”- Lee DeForest, inventor
• “Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” – William Thomson, Lord Kelvin English scientist, 1899
• “Nuclear powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within 10 years.” - Alex Lewyt, quoted in the New York Times, 1955
• “Video won’t be able to hold onto any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” — Darryl F. Zanuck, Head of 20th Century-Fox Studios, 1946

When in a period of transformative change — as many industries now find themselves – it is all too easy to use disbelief to cling to the past. In order to be innovative, you’ve got to be willing to ignore the naysayers!

"We really don't understand it all, and so we aren't going to do anything!"

A few years ago, when I was the closing speaker for the Swiss Innovation Forum in Zurich, I made the observation that many  ”organizations fail, because their have failure engrained in their corporate culture!”

Do you?

It can be difficult to try to be innovative in many organizations. Many people with an innovation-oriented mindset often find their enthusiasm stymied when they approach senior management with an initiative. And when their effort is turned back, it can extremely frustrating!

One of the most typical situations today in which we are seeing innovation-dead-in-its-tracks involves the many initiatives that people are pursuing with social networks and/or mobile applications. They know that we live in transformative times in which major changes are occurring with branding, production promotion, customer relationships and just about everything else!

So they set off to build a sophisticated customer-oriented Facebook initiative; they roll out a prototype mobile iPhone app; or they simply get a very basic Twitter feed happening that includes a stream of useful news updates that customers might actually appreciate.

Enthusiastic as heck, they take their project to the senior management team — and its’ rejected, with a litany of reasons as to why the organization just isn’t ready to deal with their new ideas right now.

Any number of reasons can be given; each and every one of them is indicative of the fact that a sort of organizational sclerosis has set in, that clogs up the ability of the organization to deal with anything new. Consider the attitudes that you might encounter if you are trying to get something happening:

• we don’t understand it, so we don’t think we need to do it
• it’s too easy to not confront the tough issues
• we are too busy fighting fires right now!
• we don’t have the skill sets to deal with this. That’s a weak excuse
• we haven’t thought about this in our strategic planning process
• we have really spent a lot of time thinking about what comes next
• we don’t have a budget for that!
• what we’ve been doing all along is perfectly ok, isn’t it?
• there’s so much going on, and we don’t know where it might fit in terms of priorities!
• it’s too far ahead of its time!

Of course, it’s easy to take this wall of negativity and step back from the project and curb your enthusiasm — and give up! Here’s a clip from my keynote in Zurich in which I talk about the challenges you might face.

But real innovators don’t give up! They work to address the organizational sclerosis that might be in place. What you should do  is confront these excuses head on: there are a variety of different reactions depending on the different excuses that are used:

• if they don’t understand it, educate them! This might involve building a better business case for the initiative; bringing them up to date on the key business drviers and trends that require some bold steps and dramatic change.
• help them that those who tackle the tough issues usually win. This is a good time to put into perspective the concept of accelerating change. You need to make sure that the leadership team understands that everything around us today is changing faster than ever before, and will continue to do so: business models, methods of customer interaction, new forms of competition. Business today is all about continually confronting a flood of tough issues; we should be bulking up our capabilities to deal with a world of incessant change.
• if the organization is always in fire-fighting mode, change the agenda. Maybe they won’t be fighting as as many fires over the long term if they have a clear view of the future, and have a strategy that aligns to that future. So rather than asking, “whoah, where’d that come from,” they’re asking “ok, what comes next, and what do we need to do about it?“
• skill sets don’t give us the capability: That’s a weak excuse: if there are shortfalls in certain key skills to deal with current business realities, deal with it and fix it fast. Ensure that you work with HR to undertake a skills inventory with respect to the area you are trying to innovate within, and work to plug the holes.
• if it’s not part of the strategic planning process, make it part of it. Every organizations has multiple processes in which issues and activities rise to the top because they’ve been idenitified as fitting within the overall strategic plan. If yours isn’t part of the plan, work to get it there; and again, this comes through education, a clear business case, as well as internal discussions with those who are involved with and shape the strategic planning process.
• get people thinking about what comes next: Does the organization have a regular series of forward looking leadership meetings? Does it take the time to assess the trends which might impact it on a 1, 2, 5 and 10 year basis? Is it busy looking at we have really spent a lot of time thinking about what comes next
• we don’t have a budget for that! Following the process of getting the initiative into the strategic plan will help to lead to the next step: getting the project properly approved and funded within the overall budget process for the organization. There’s a process for budgeting — and you have to be intimately involved in and respect the process.
• make it clear that it isn’t ok to keep doing the same thing that has been done in the past. You’ve got to clearly articulate the new threats the organizations faces and the opportunities that it can pursue as a result of ongoing change.
• there’s so much going on, and we don’t know where it might fit in terms of priorities! This is a tricky one, because in this type of situation, its pretty well certain that there is some weak management in place who doesn’t know how to set a clear action plan that the team must follow. Best bet is to address the other issues on the list, and work to put in place a clear business and strategic plan for your initiative, with sound business reasoning as to why it needs to be done.
• it’s too far ahead of its time! Frame the future to the organization this way: do we want to always be fast followers, or do we truly want to be market leaders?

In Zurich,I noted on stage that “we develop corporate cultures that stifle — that kill our ability to try to do anything new…..” That’s what you’ve got to work to avoid — it’s not easy to do — but absolutely necessary!

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.

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

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

In essence, these organizations concentrate upon:

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

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

What do you think?

Ask yourself this question: do you work in an organization that just simply doesn’t get it? Who is oblivious, blind, completely unaware of just how much business model change is occurring out there?

Here’s the thing — there are three types of people in the world:

• those who make things happen
• those who watch things happen
• and those who say, “what happened?”

I’ve often pointed this out on stage, and have emphasized the point, by suggesting that  the folks who find themselves last on the list sit back and say, “whoah, dude, what happened? Where’d that come from?”

In other words, they’ve been completely blind to the trend which would cause massive upheaval within their industry, or refuse to accept the significant business model disruptions which are already occurring.

Guess what — it’s happening right now as a lot of financial institutions don’t realize just how quickly mobile technology is going to change everything in the consumer financial services industry! Or in countless other industries where the blindness of current market leaders is leading them to their own “whoah, dude” moment.

So let’s make it simple: when it comes to innovation, make sure that you are in the first camp!

What should you do if you make that conscious decision, and are trying to steer your organization into the future?

• turn forward! establish an overall organizational culture in which everyone is firmly focused on the future while managing the present.
• change the focus: make sure that you link the corporate mission of today to the major trends and developments that will influence the organization through the coming years;
• pursue speed: use a leadership style that encourages a culture of agility and allows for a rapid response to sudden change in products, markets, competitive challenges and other business, technological and workplace trends;
• watch more stuff: establish and encourage an organization-wide “trends radar” in which all staff keep a keen eye on the developments that will affect the organization in the future;
• share more: make sure that you’ve got a culture of collaboration in which everyone is prepared to share their insight, observations and recommendations with respect to future trends, threats and opportunities;
• change responsibilities: ensure that staff are regularly encouraged to not only deal with the unique and ongoing challenges of today, but are open and responsive to the new challenges yet to come;
• take risks: you won’t get anywhere if you don’t make sure that are encouraged to turn future challenges into opportunities, rather than viewing change as a threat to be feared.

I continue to be stunned by how many organizations today continue to be caught flat-footed by the pace of rapid trends that impact them. It seems like it should be so simple to avoid this. Yet there likely still lots of “whoah, dude” dudes out there.

I’ll often be lined up for a conversation with the CEO of a client organization when I’m preparing for a private client CEO leadership/innovation keynote.

It’s part of a careful diplomatic dance. They want to ensure that the framework of my keynote addresses the key issues and challenges that they need to address to ensure that they can become a high velocity innovation hero. I often work with them to help them understand the unique innovation perspective I am bringing into the room.

During the conversation, I often prepare a summary list of the issues that they put on the table that I’ll use in preparing my talk.

I’ve got dozens of scribbled notes from such conversations. Here’s one that I just came across for an event over a year ago; the CEO of this Fortune 1000 organization (obviously, not named) outlined some of the key themes that I needed to address. As he put it, “we need to:”

• increase our bench strength. We don’t seem to have the right skills and the right capabilities at the right time for the right purpose. We need to get better at our skills mix and agility if we are to max out our creative capabilities.
• institutionalize learning. We tend to fall behind and miss opportunities because our people don’t know enough about what is going on “out there”
• grow high value customer relationships. We could get much better in solving customers problems before they know they have a problem. If we could do that, we could extend existing revenue faster.
• accelerate product innovation. We’re slow. By the time we get to market, our competitor has already been there. We need to speed things up.
• have a better talent pipeline. We’ve got a lot of “dead wood” lying around, performing a lot of tactical, non-strategic work. We need to ensure that we are developing/ingesting new talent faster, for the faster emergence of new issues.
• reduce our structural costs through collaboration. Simply put, there is simply too much duplication of effort. It’s the era of social networks; why can’t we be “social” internally?
• suck less. There’s still huge opportunity to reduce product costs through process innovation and better project execution. (Yes, he did use this phrase)
• scale faster. We really, really need to get better at identifying and capturing growth markets.
• plug knowledge gaps. There’s lots to learn about things we don’t know about. We need to invest more in risk oriented projects. We have to fail faster.

What’s fascinating about these conversations is that the CEO knows the challenges that need to be addressed, and is confiding in me those concerns; my role is helping to build a message for the team as to what they really need to do to become high velocity innovation hero’s.

The simple list above — and this is but one of dozens of such summaries — gives a bit of insight into how you can take innovation beyond simple product oriented innovation.

Remember – innovation is all about answering the questions: “What can I do to run this business better? What can I do to grow this business? And what can I do to transform the business!”

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

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

• make big bets. In many industries, there are big market and industry transformations that are underway. For example, there’s no doubt that mobile banking is going to be huge, and its going to happen fast with a lot of business model disruption. Innovative financial organizations are willing to make a big bet as to its scope and size, and are innovating at a furious pace to keep up with fast changing technology and even faster evolving customer expectations
• make big transformations: I’m dealing with several organizations who realize that structured operational activities that are based on a centuries old style of thinking no longer can take them into a future that will demand more agility, flexibility and ability to react in real time to shifting demand. They’re pursuing such strategies as building to demand, rather than building to inventory; or pursuing mass customization projects so that they don’t have to compete in markets based on price.
• undertake big brand reinforcement: one client, realizing the vast scope and impact of social networking on their brand image, made an across the board decision to boost their overall advertising and marketing spend by 20%, with much of the increase going to online advertising. In addition, a good chunk of existing spending is being diverted as well. Clearly, the organization believes that they need to make bi broad, sweeping moves to keep up to date with the big branding and marketing change that is now underway worldwide.
• anticipate big changes: there’s a lot of innovative thinking going on with energy, the environment and health care. Most of the organizations that have had me in for a keynote on the trends that are providing for growth opportunities have a razor sharp focus on these three areas, anticipating the rapid emergence of big opportunities at a very rapid pace.
• pursue big math: quite a few financial clients are looking at the opportunities for innovation that come from “competing with analytics,” which offers new ways of examining risk, understanding markets, and drilling down into customer opportunity in new and different ways.
• focus on big loyalty: one client stated their key strategic goal during the downturn this way: “we’re going to nail the issue of customer retention, by visiting every single one in the next three months to make sure that they are happy and that their needs are being met.” Being big on loyalty means working hard to ensure that existing revenue streams stay intact, and are continually enhanced.
• focus on big innovation: one client stated their innovation plan in a simple yet highly motivating phrase: “think big, start small, scale fast.” Their key goal is to build up their experiential capital in new areas by working on more innovation projects than ever before. They want to identify big business opportunities, test their potential, and then learn how to roll out new solutions on a tighter, more compact schedule than ever before.
• thinking big change in scope. One client became obsessed with the innovation strategy of going “upside down” when it came to product development. Rather than pursuing all ideas in house, they opened up their innovation engine to outsiders, looking for more partnership oriented innovation (with suppliers and retailers, for example); open innovation opportunities, and customer-sourced innovation. This lit a fuse under both their speed for innovation as well as their creativity engine
• innovate in a big way locally: we’re in a big, global world, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t innovate locally. One client in the retail space pursues an innovation strategy that allows for national, coordinated efforts in terms of logistics, merchandising and operations, yet also allows a big degree of freedom when it comes to local advertising, marketing and branding.
• share big ideas. One association client pursued an innovation that was relentless on community knowledge sharing. They knew if they could build an association culture in which people shared and swapped insight on a regular basis on how to deal with fast changing markets and customers, that they could ensure their members had a leg up and could stay ahead of trends. Collaborative knowledge is a key asset going forward into the future, and there’s a lot of opportunity for creative, innovative thinking here.
• be big on solving customers problems. Several clients have adopted an innovation strategy that is based on the theme, “we’re busy solving customers problems before they know they have a problem,” or conversely, “we’re providing the customer with a key solution, before the customer knows that they need such a solution.” That’s anticipatory innovation, and it’s a great strategy to pursue.
• align strategies to the big bets. There’s a lot of organizations out there who are making “big bets” and link innovation strategies to those bets. WalMart has bold goals for the elimination of all packaging by a certain date; this is forcing a stunning amount of innovation within the packaging sector. Some restaurants aim to reduce food and packaging waste by a factor of dozens; this is requiring stunning levels of creativity in the kitchen.

These are but a few examples and the list could go on; the essence of the thinking is that we are in a period of big change, and big opportunity comes from bold thinking and big creativity!

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!

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!

In a whirlwind of activity over the last ten days, I’ve been the keynote speaker for conferences that probably represents the vast majority of global Fortune 1000 organizations, speaking to the trends that will impact the future of ‘corporate facilities.’

These have included keynotes for the  Professional Retail Store Maintenance Association annual conference in Orlando; the CoreNet Global Summit in New Orleans, and the International Asset Management Council Spring Summit in Colorado Springs. With these groups, we’ve got the folks who manage facilities for a good chunk of the world’s biggest retailers (including Apple, the Gap, Costco and others); commercial real estate executives for Fortune 1000 and government; and the senior executives who manage the same for large industrial and manufacturing organizations (Alcoa, Caterpillar, Whirlpool).

What are they thinking about? Adjusting to an economy that is more and more turning to growth. And to do that, I covered a wide variety of trends:

• they need to actively shift their role from tactical (managing costs in a downtown) to strategic (‘how do I help my organization to scale and support growth strategies?’
• ensure that the organization has the flexibility in terms of facilities and workforce to adjust to more rapid market and product innovation, faster competition, and more rapid change in consumer demand and choice
• take advantage of emerging opportunities with intelligent building management infrastructure
• be willing to challenge process and assumptions as to operations. I consistently used my story of broken business models, vs. business models built on rapid change – my Honda vs. Chrysler story
• adapt to a reality in which skills flexibility and innovation will be a key success factor. These folks need to access a lot of unique skills that are in short supply (i.e. green engineers), and so increasingly their success will come from their ability to access the right skills at the right time for the right purpose

Are people really thinking about growth? Here are the live results from a text message poll that I ran from the stage at the IAMC conference in Colorado Springs yesterday:

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• Innovation and the concept of ‘chameleon revenue’
• Riding fast paced trends in the consumer / retail sector 
• Finding growth with knowledge exponentiation (construction trends)  

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.

My mantra about innovation is that it is always about three questions: how do you run the business better, grow the business, and transform the business. Address those three issues, and you’ve nailed the essence of innovation.

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

Now that’s changed.

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

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

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

Growth is definitely back in business.

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• Read: Success Comes to Those Who Evolve

I’ve been doing a tremendous number of small, intimate CEO level leadership meetings; I’ll work with the CEO or other senior management team member to pull together a talk that will highlight the key opportunities for growth through innovation within an industry.

I often point out that there are significant innovation and revenue growth opportunities when an organization concentrates on mastering the rapid emergence of new knowledge within a specific sector.

Take the world of construction; I’ve recently spoken at quite a few building management, construction and real estate conferences, and have focused on the fact that we are now witnessing very fast knowledge exponentiation with “green” design concepts.

What’s happening is that we are seeing:

• the rapid emergence of new building methodologies, design concepts, materials, eco-design principles, all of which have the goal of reducing the overall energy footprint of the building, or reducing its environmental impact
• the result is that green building methodology is continuing to evolve at a furious pace
• there is so much new knowledge emerging that a new profession of “energy engineers” is beginning to emerge
• their skill and role is simply to keep on top of furious rates of change in terms of new energy management solutions within the building and construction sector
• developments are occurring so quickly that these individuals possess three key skills: how to rapidly ingest new knowledge and new ideas; awareness of where this new knowledge is emerging; and the ability to tap into other specialized skill sets and form rapid skills partnerships in order to tackle growth opportunities

The result is the emergence of a new career of “green engineers” who simply know where to find all the new knowledge and expertise that is appearing out there!

This is pretty significant stuff: after all, some 40% of total US energy consumption can be attributed to operating buildings: the heat, light, cooling, hot water and other systems. Another 8% of energy use is related to the materials used. All the SUV’s in North America? Three percent!

Clearly, there are BIG opportunities for growth through innovation, through the mastery of fast knowledge.

That’s why I always challenge a CEO and senior management team to challenge themselves with workforce innovation.

That involves innovation with different workplace policies, career paths, workforce structure, experiential oriented job descriptions, skills banks for specialized skills, and a rapid focus on growth through the rapid emergence of new knowledge within that workforce.

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 ten years.”

In this video, I challenge an audience to think longer term, and utilize a 10 to 20 year trend perspective to really understand how a particular industry might change. In this case, the health care transformation, as we move from a world of reactive to preventative health care.

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.”