Why the world is becoming faster!

I've put up a new video clip from my keynote for the Society of Cable Telecom Engineers ; this short clip focuses on the issue of why the rate of change around us is going to accelerate, because of simple demographic realities.

I find that a lot of people think about the future in terms of what they see around them today. In this clip, I try to help people realize just how quickly business models and everything else are set to change as the next generation takes over.

Watch the clip

Article - "Are You Prepared for the New Role Associations Will Play?"

An "association of association executives" has just printed my article that takes a look at how the role of associations will change in the future -- with the major focus being on the need for "just in time knowledge," a phrase I've been using for over a decade.

From the intro: "If you want to understand the future role of your association, you might want to spend some time staring at an iPod Nano.

And it will be by helping your members cope with, adjust to, and prepare for this rate of change that you will find the evolution of your new role."

Read the full article

"Agility key to survival"

More coverage, from Communications Engineering magazine, on my SCTE keynote last month.

"If you think your customers are a challenge now, wait until 2010, said futurist and ET keynoter Jim Carroll at Wednesday's opening session.

Tomorrow's customers will be "far more demanding, will expect more from you, will be constantly pushing you, and will have far less loyalty to you as a brand," Carroll predicted.

That's because the customers of 2010 are today's youth - many of whom don't remember film cameras, and who view "television" as video that comes to them in the car, on the laptop, or on the back of the airplane seat.

"By 2020, we'll be witnessing the retirement of the change-averse," Carroll said, referring to baby-boomer and older generations. "What will emerge into purchasing power, and into your customer base, is this generation that thinks differently, is wired differently."

As for products and services, Carroll frequently referenced last week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as an example of "furiously rapid rates of change." Product lifecycles, such as those traditionally taught in marketing courses," are fundamentally disappearing," he said.

To compete, cable needs to focus on being agile. "Re-skilling the folks who are instrumental in your architecture is just critical," he said.

The end of 9-5?

I don't think the current corporate structure will last 20 years; it might be difficult to see it lasting even 10 years. In the meantime, companies are trying all kinds of band-aid solutions to try to attract and retain the first Internet-generation. Over at The Repository of Canton, Ohio, in an article about unique workplaces, I'm quoted as saying: “Companies are struggling to figure out: OK, what do we need to do to attract and retain and create a work environment for this generation who is just so totally unique and different and rejects 9-to-5 and rejects the concept of a cubicle office and completely rejects all the traditional corporate structure that we’ve had in place for so long.”

Read the full article Is Your Work Like This?

Farmers, producers, ranchers and innovation...

It's agriculture week! At least, it seems that way -- on Friday, I keynoted the Alberta Beef Industry Conference; for three days this week, I'm speaking to a select group of growers who are customers of Syngenta, one of the world's leading agribusinesses; on Friday, I keynote the Ontarion Farm Equipment Association, and two weeks hence, an association of soybean farmers!

I'm focusing on my trends for agriculture. What is fascinating with this group of people is that they tend to be some of the most innovative individuals on the planet. They've been regularly buffetted by the ups and downs of the agricultural cycle, the vagaries of weather, the unrelability of commodity markets, and a flood of new science, methodologies, treatments and seed varieties.

The typical city-dweller has an image of someone who complains and runs to the government for subsidies; the reality is that the typical farmer is an astute business person with a fine ear for innovation, someone who thrives by the exhiliaration and challenge of an extremely complex business; someone who it optimistic about the future and the potential profitability of their industry. The groups I have been dealing with relish learning about the new science surrounding the industry, and are eager to learn what needs to be done to continue going forward with a focus on opportunity.

Key fact: global food consumption is going to double in the next 20 years due to population growth. There is little new arable land coming on stream. This means existing producers will play a key role. Good thing, since their attitudes are certainly there!

Understanding 21st century capital .... and why Sony doesn't have it....

In light of some recent criticism of criticism I've made of media companies, I thought it best to roll this posting from last December forward.

In the 20th century, financial resources were the primary capital of choice, allowing organizations to enter, dominate and evolve in their marketplace over time.

Today, financial depth doesn't cut it -- it's the abiliy to respond to rapid change that is the primary asset. And sadly, there are many organizations who don't have a good balance sheet.

Simply look at Sony with the recent "root-kit" debacle, and you realize that while a company can have all the money it needs, it won't survive if it doesn't evolve at the fast pace the world demands today. If Sony is guilty of anything, it is the fact that it has seized up with an organizatlonal sclerosis that has clogged it's ability to respond to change. The customers have moved on to a different world -- and Sony just doesn't seem to understand that.

Sony has been spending money trying to protect old markets, rather than inventing new ones. It's been busy trying to build on past glories rather than fighting new battles. It has spent its energy in fighting a war with its customers, rather than building them great things. It has sought to grow by buying, rather than expanding through creativity. It has done just about anything wrong that you could ever do.

It is dying.

Will it recover? Can other organizations suffering from similar degrees of corporate clotting survive?

Perhaps -- if they refocus their energy by using the only form of capital that is important. Capital that isn't monetary by nature, but which provides an organization with the resources to focus on change as the key success factor.

What are those attributes? There are ten of them:

• experiential capital: In a world in which Apple can toss out a $1/2 billion market overnight in order to enter a new one (with the move from the iPod Mini to the iPod Nano) -- it's critically important that an organization constantly enhance the skill, capabilities and insight of their people. They do this by constantly working on projects that might have an uncertain return and payback -- but which will provide in-depth experience and insight into change. It's by understanding change that opportunity is defined, and that's what experiential capital happens to be. In the future, it is one of the most important assets that you can possess.
  
• a strong agility index: Slow paced organizations simply won't survive. Those organizations that have a high-agility index -- that is, the ability to suddenly and dramatically shift course -- will be those who will thrive in the years to come.
  
• strong skills accessibility capability: Talent, not money, will be the new corporate battlefront. Simply put, there is so much happening that no one person or organization can know everything there is to know. With ongoing rapid knowledge growth, instant market change, fast-paced scientific discovery and constant skills evolution, getting the right people at the right time for the right purpose will be the key to succesful change.
  
• massive creativity capability: in my Masters of Business Imagination Manifesto, I suggest that it is the ability to see the world differently, and the skill to imagine how to do things differently, that will be more important than any other career skill. When product lifecycles are disappearing, and market longevity is mattered in weeks, not years, the ability to think, adapt, and imagine will be the foundation to provide for necessary change.
  
• generational insight: We are set to see the emergence of the most unique workforce in history, with the longest age-span to have ever occurred. Boomers won't retire, and kids won't want to get hired. The result will be a workforce that is transient, temporary, shifting and flexible. And it will be those organizations who can match up the experience and wisdom of the aging baby boomers with the insight, enthusiasm and change-adept younger generation who will find the most powerful force to be found in business -- an organization that is fuelled by the pure energy of change-oxygen.
  
• collaborative intelligence: Forget the idea of having a strategic planning department, and think collaborative culture instead. Take a look around you, and ask yourself, who is succeeding today? It is those organizations who are plugged in to the global mind that surrounds us. They've dropped any pretense that they can create the future, and instead realize that it the future is being developed by everyone all around them. They have come to learn that their role isn't to plan for that future, but simply to listen to it, plug into it, and plug their growth-engine into it.
  
• complexity partnerships: in the 20th century, organizations focused on hiring the skills that they needed to get the job done. You simply can't do that today -- skills are too fragmented and too specialized. That's why successful organizations have mastered the art of complexity supply and demand. They provide their own unique complex skills to those of their partners who need such skills. And when they are short other skills, they tap into the skills bank of their partners. By selling and buying skills with a broad partnership base, they've managed to become complexity partners -- organizations that spend most of their time focusing on their core mission, and spend less time worrying about how they are going to do what they need to do.
  
• global innovation traps: a recent blog post featured a clip from a keynote where I spoke about the "infinite idea loop." Companies that understand that all future innovation comes from the ability to tap into the loop will thrive; those that follow traditional innovation models, self-centered and insular, will find that their creativity and uniqueness has been smothered
• forward oriented intelligence: The key premise of my book, What I Learned from Frogs in Texas, is that too many organizatons have lost their orientation to the future. They are too busy complying, restructuring, administering and reorganizing to realize that their world is dropping out from underneath them. The frogs learned out the hard way that if you don't have good insight into what comes next, there is going to be a big problem and it's going to be ugly.
  
• depth of mission: We've all known for years what has been wrong with Sony -- too much inter-company squabbling, turf-wars, and inward focused turmoil. Along the way, Sony lost sight of its mission to build great stuff for people who wanted great stuff. If you can have a company that has a simple mission, a clearly stated goal, and a passion and purpose to achieve it, you'll be able to put in place the most critically needed asset -- a team that is oriented towards success.

It's clear that Sony does not possess many of these assets. It doesn't realize that it no longer controls its future -- its'customers do. It isn't plugged into the global innovation loop -- instead, its' efforts are spent on trying to define the future that it would like to have. It's got a bunch of middle-aged baby boomers in charge who don't have a clue as to how the world is unfolding. (And I'm a middle-aged baby boomer). And I can only imagine that the recent experience has destroyed any sense of mission among its staff -- its people are dispirited, disenthused, angry and full of recrimination for a future that they think has gone wrong. (Well, it has, because it has done all the wrong things.)

I find it really depressing that a company as big and creative as Sony could have lost its way. On the other hand, I continue to encounter too many people and companies who are busy sleepwalking into the future, just like Sony.

Remember -- it ain't the money, it's the ability to change that is most imporatnt asset for the future.

Litigate, or create?

One thing has become clear in the past few years : there is a huge amount of wasted creative energy in the "creative" industries today -- broadcast, entertainment, publishing.

Take a look around, and many are now focused on their efforts to protect the business models of the past through litigation, instead of chanelling their energy into exploring, innovating and doing things with the potential of the future.

I think part of it is due to anger and loss of control - traditional media executives just can't seem to understand that they no longer control their destiny. And by lashing out with lawsuits, they are really wasting a tremendous amount of human capital -- energy that could go into discovering the opportunites that are emerging in this strange, new converged universe.

One thing is clear -- litigation really won't solve their problem. Five years ago, I wrote an article titled "Business Battles the Mighty Geek." It still rings true today. One of my comments is particularly relevant: "Any attempts to prevent the distribution of information by legal means in this digital world -- whether it be music, movies or television signals -- will ultimately be doomed to failure."

Read the full article in Acrobat format

Business battles the mighty geek
by Jim Carroll
31 January 2000
The Globe and Mail

Decades from now, people will characterize the early years of the 21st century as a period dominated by a battle between the corporate entertainment world and the computer geeks.

With all the recent merger frenzy, it's become obvious that the corporate types have finally clued in to the Internet, e-biz and e-commerce. Yet to their horror, they realize that while fabulous opportunities exist on-line, a Pandora's box of challenges has also emerged. In particular, it seems that they can no longer control the distribution of their products.

I'd hazard a guess that given the flurry of recent lawsuits, some media moguls have decided that the only way to deal with the Internet is to sue anyone and everyone who is challenging their business models.

The music industry has been busy suing various groups involved with MP3, the music format that makes it easy to distribute digital forms of music. The movie, television and entertainment industries are busy suing Toronto-based on-line broadcaster iCraveTV.com, charging it with "brazen theft."

There are new lawsuits against computer geeks who have managed to figure out how to get around the copy protection scheme found on DVD-ROMs, which is arguably the hottest new entertainment technology on the planet.

Things are getting nasty: Just the other day, a 16-year-old Norwegian kid who figured out the mathematical equations behind the DVD code found the police banging at his door.

A battle royal is under way, and it's fascinating entertainment. On one side, we have the entertainment companies, finally ready to take advantage of the opportunities of the wired world, and ready to use lawyers to defend their turf.

On the other side, there's a ragtag army of computer geeks, bound by the global reach of the Internet, and impassioned by their collective distaste for anything that puts constraints on how they might use their computers.

I don't know about you, but my money is on the geeks.

Regardless of the deep, troubling and complex issues at work here, the reality is that the folks who control the computer code will be the ones who will control the future. Any attempts to prevent the distribution of information by legal means in this digital world -- whether it be music, movies or television signals -- will ultimately be doomed to failure.

To understand why, you need to immerse yourself in the mindset of the technical community, instead of simply pondering the press releases from the other side.

One of the best starting points is to visit Slashdot (http://slashdot.org) -- it uses the tag line "News For Nerds. Stuff that Matters." It's a geek perspective on the issues of the day, including the many legal battles. (Investors take note: It is probably also the best place to understand new technologies before they come out. The entire Slashdot community knew what Transmeta was up to before any public announcement was made.)

Often weird, slightly adolescent, extremely irreverent and often not understandable, it is still a goldmine of information as to how the Internet of the future will shape up.

There are countless other sites similar to SlashDot. Techdirt (http://techdirt.com) is but another example of these on-line communities.

You come to realize that all these lawsuits are viewed as nothing more than an amusing challenge to the geek community. The on-line mindset, when confronted by a legal letter or restrictive computer code, is to play a version of a popular quiz TV show. "I can crack that secret code in three steps, Alex," goes the response to the challenge.

Instant communities, such as OpenDVD (http://www.opendvd.org/), are emerging in which the geeks passionately defend their right to open up technology or share information -- and where they counter the PR spin from the corporate or entertainment world. This community often acts in bad taste, poking fun at the futility of lawsuits in the digital age.

I just visited a Web site and bought a T-shirt that contains the entire secret DVD code printed on the back.

What chance does Hollywood have in this battle, when its crown jewels are protected by a mathematical equations that can be printed on the back of a T-shirt once the geek community has figured it out?

Don't repeat the mistakes of the music industry....

Yet more coverage of my keynote for the Society of Cable Telecom Engineers in Tampa last month:

"In his breathless keynote address kicking off the conference, Carroll warned cable officials against making the same kinds of mistakes that the music industry made when it fought tooth-and-nail against unauthorized MP3 downloads from the Internet. Instead, Carroll called on cable executives to embrace such new products and services as portable media players, peer-to-peer file-sharing and Internet-delivered telephony. Contending that "the geeks will always win because they can always rewrite the code," he urged cable officials to view the new technologies as market opportunities to be exploited rather than competitive threats to be squashed.

Read the full article over at the Cable Digital News site

Phil Gyford is one cool guy!

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

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

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

Stopping light in its tracks

An interesting article here.

Optical Futures: Another ET Look at Light
24 January 2006
CT's Pipeline

Among the many intriguing observations and reports shared by the SCTE Conference on Emerging Technologies keynoter Jim Carroll in Tampa two weeks ago was the progress that optical researchers were making on the question of how to slow down light.

In our ET report in last week's Pipeline, we'd written on how it might have been interesting to have one of the industry's many optical experts comment on "when, where and how this could happen." Since then, we've heard back from the futurist Carroll and checked in with one of those experts.

"The slowing of light is nothing new," Carroll wrote, referring to New York Times article from last November that cited Harvard researchers who in 1999 who were able to slow light drastically and two years later were able to bring light to a stop.

Of most interest to Carroll about this science project, which already was well under way six years ago, is its new scale. Whereas the Harvard researchers required a roomful of equipment, according to the Times, IBM scientists now have created a tiny silicon device to slow down light from its usual 186,000 miles per second to 600 miles per second--or to about 0.3 percent of ordinary light speed.

"Heck, I could have a little light-stop-chip in my laptop some time in the future, plug into my optical-wall-plug, and access the yottabit universe," Carroll wrote.

There's no quibbling with ability of a wide-ranging, connect-the-dots futurist such as Carroll in getting those (trade journalists included) who may be stuck in a particular niche to drop the blinders and look around, and ahead. His talk certainly was an effective way to jolt ET attendees into a forward- leaning frame of mind.

New optical thinking

For input from one of the industry's optical experts, we turned to OpVista CTO Dr. Winston Way, who noted up front how thinking about optical networking already is undergoing a shift.

"Before, people only thought that you could manage packets, frames or bytes, but I think right now people have just started to think about the fact that light, or colors, can be managed also," Way said. One of OpVista's calling cards is its novel approach to reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers (ROADMs).

As for not simply managing, but arresting lightwaves, Way said: "I think that is really out-of-the-box thinking. It's interesting. Slow it down so you can see what's inside, then let it go again."

Way said this project reminded him of work done at AT&T Bell Labs in the late 1980s and early 1990s on optical signal processing, which sidestepped the physical limitations of the electronics domain. "I'm not sure it's practical today," he said.

What Carroll was talking about, of course, was not today but tomorrow, or rather the day or year (or decade?) after. "I don't make my stuff up," Carroll wrote. "The future surrounds us, is being developed all around us and all the (technologies) that people work on eventually come into our lives. I just think...that it is going to come into our lives quicker than we might think."

-Jonathan Tombes