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Bio-connectivity and the rapid emergence of new markets

In a keynote to a health care industry conference last week, I emphasized that in the high velocity economy, new business models, products, markets, and careers are appearing at a fast and furious pace. And it's by watching for, observing, and understanding these trends that you'll discover opportunity for innovation.

Consider the rapid emergence of new markets. As new scientific discoveries occur at an ever more rapid pace -- due to the massive global collaboration with Web 2.0 as well as new information research sharing paradigms within established peer review based research methodologies -- there are countless new products and markets that are being brought to life.

Take that reality, and apply it to any industry. Say, health care. Then parse that industry down into dozens or hundreds of sub-markets, and you'll discover forthcoming new, billion dollar markets.

Consider, for example, the concept of bioconnectivity, which will be one of the most significant trends -- and new markets -- to play out in the next twenty years in the health care industry. What is it? Quite simply, the marriage of the computer chip and connectivity technology to medical devices, and ultimately, to people.

One small submarket that will come with bio-connectivity is the emergence of smart, intelligent, home-based medical devices. Have you ever seen a Sharper Image catalogue, or its online Web site? It's the ultimate source for unique gadgets and toys of every type. Think about what the catalog might look like in 10 years, when its full of home-based bioconnectivity devices aimed at the baby boomer set.

Digital Connect Magazine, which monitors development with home and business connectivity devices, suggests that U.S. revenue from digital-home health services will quadruple to exceed $2.1 billion by 2010.

The two fastest growing areas? "Wellness monitoring services" and "e-health services" will each achieve a compound annual growth rate of more than 50 per cent. The former allows doctors to remotely monitor a patient�s condition (such as their insulin levels), while the latter provides active medical care (such as an intelligent sub-dermal medicine patch, which not only provides a patient automatic ingestion of a particular pharmaceutical, but allows the doctor to monitor its effect.)

It might sound like science fiction, but it is a very real development. Sit back and think about the business models and opportunities that flow from such a transformative trend. Link it to another trend: a whole bunch of baby boomers are getting older, sicker, and the health care system is breaking down. Hospitals will go virtual, extending their services through bio-connectivity, so that non-critical care boomers can be treated and monitored at home. This is slam-dunk obvious!

It's BIG TREND. Its' but one of many.

Simply put, our new reality is that science, and hence markets, industries, products and services, are evolving and changing at a rate never seen before.

And that's where your own opportunity for innovation comes from!

Infrastructure is the new plastic

In my "Where's the growth?" trends overview written a few months back, I noted that one of the key drivers for growth into the future will come from the massive spending to occur on infrastructure -- globally. One estimate suggests global spending will go from $750 billion to $1 trillion in a few years. I think we'll see more.

This morning, I caught wind of a blog entry that commented on the general crankiness of American's towards their "crumbling infrastructure." For example, Thomas Friedman commented in a New York Times article this week: "A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York�s Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.�s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore�s ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children�s play zones throughout. We felt, as we have before, like we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons.

It's the rapid ramp-up in sentiments like this that drive the reality that infrastructure is the new plastic. It's one aspect of the global economy where spending is going to increase at a furious pace.

Consider the trends that are coming together that provide for this simple reality:

spending on infrastructure through what has been fondly known as the "first world" will increase, by virtue of the simple reality that much of what is there is crumbling and creaky. After 50 or 75 or 100 or 150 years or so, stuff simply breaks down, and needs to be replaced.
spending on infrastructure throughout Asia and the Pacific region will continue to ramp up as society moves up the rung of personal wealth
sophisticated solutions to challenging problems -- think energy, and spending on solar / wind / tidal solutions -- will drive ever more complex infrastructure projects, and hence, more infrastructure spending. Simply put, there will be lots more options of where to spend money as new ideas come to market.
global competition simply means that economic regions will have to boost their infrastructure -- simply to stay as a global competitor. It's a matter of economic pride -- and necessity.

One really interesting aspect of all this is that anything that goes with infrastructure spending is set for a rocket ride. Think intelligent project management, global collaboration capabilities, and resource/skills scalability: these will be the defining success factors for anyone working in this global marketplace.
Who wins? Construction companies, specialized skills, economic regions that decide to invest -- and most important, firms that have a deep, scalable global talent pool.

And perhaps one of the biggest, yet unforeseen markets, will have to do with "intelligent infrastructure." Think thermostats!

More information:

Read Where's the growth : global innovation opportunities for the long termThe reality of future trends: grab the What Comes Next trends overview
Intelligent infrastructure: When thermostats get connected
Read my Credit Suisse interview for my thoughts on "growth"

If I ran your company, here's what I would do!

Supertramp -- a band from the 80's -- had a minor hit with the song "On the Long Way Home," which featured the memorable line, the line, "when you're up on the stage, it's so unbelievable."

It is, quite. And when you're up there, you realize how lucky you are to be able to share with the audience the wisdom you've picked up by observing some of the world's top innovators.

Recently, after a presentation to an audience of 3,000 people, I was approached by a CEO who was quite inspired by my remarks. He then asked me a fascinating question: �what would you do if you took over the leadership of my company right now?� We chatted for a while and I believe I provided some pretty succinct insight; but since then, I�ve been thinking about that question. Here�s a part of my answer.

maximize your best revenue opportunities. I�d make sure that any existing revenue relationships remain intact, and then some. I�d work on having my team obsess on growing existing high value customer relationships through service excellence. Let�s make sure that we meet their needs. It will likely be easier to keep existing revenue grows flowing rather than finding new ones, particularly through a time of economic challenge.
obsess over time to market. I'd work hard to accelerate product innovation; market life-cycles are collapsing, and I'd make sure every member of the team reoriented themselves to that reality. I'd focus on getting R&D to think in terms of faster cycles; I'd ramp up sales force education so that they were better aware of what's coming next. I'd have the team thinking in terms of 3-6-9-12 : here's what will be doing in the marketplace 3, 6, 9 and 12 months from now. I'd layer on top of that some insight into 1-2-5-10: what we might be doing 1, 2, 5 and 10 years from now.
reduce product costs through process improvement and better project execution: there is no shortage of innovative ideas, structures and concepts involving process and production methodologies. I�d make sure we were looking at finding those who are doing leading edge work in this area, inside or outside our industry, and learn from them.
reduce structural costs through collaboration: at this point in time, in a global world that allows for instant, smart collaboration among teams, there is no reason for massive duplication of skills and talent throughout an organization. I�d start a rethink those silos, and restructure for a new skills deployment approach. Right off the bat, I�d encourage a few cross-organizational collaboration efforts, to get people used to the idea of tackling fast new problems rather than arguing about structure and hierarchy.
focus on the pipeline of talent innovation: I've said it before and I'll say it again. The depth the bench strength is critical to future success. I�d have everyone take a good look at our pipeline, to see if it will meet upcoming needs. If not, I�d get a program in place to fix that fast.
relentlessly and aggressively chase costs: I'm not talking about spontaneous slash and burn spending cuts: I�d refocus on transitioning the role of staff from tactical efforts to a strategic role. I�ve spent time with the CIO's and CFO's of some pretty major organizations: Hunt Oil, Adobe, J Crew, Under Armor. All of them have provided in-depth insight onstage during customer panels that have focused on the role of IT in the business to run the business better, grow the business and transform the business. There remain countless opportunities for IT oriented innovation to rip unnecessary costs out of the business, and it involves this tactical to strategic transition.
enhance quality and reliability of product: Last year, I spoke to 2,500 global quality professionals on the challenges that the high velocity economy presents to the concept of quality. The fact is, new issues hit us in the marketplace faster than ever before. And the global idea loop means that quality challenges can become a sudden, massive worldwide PR nightmare faster than we've ever been prepared for. That's why avoiding quality problems remains a critical focus. I�d take a look at how well we�re dealing with quality issues, and whether we�ve got the agility to respond in this new world of heightened PR challenges. I�d also have a group prepare an immediate outline of challenges and problems with customer service and satisfaction.
capture new emerging growth markets faster: I�d begin to orient the team so that we knew about which market opportunities might come next, and then spend time aligning ourselves to innovate faster in such markets. I recently spent some time with one client, and the focus of our discussion was how a new market was set to unfold in the next three months. Expectations were that the market -- for a unique consumer product, with potential sales in the billions of dollars -- might last for a period of eighteen months, before being eclipsed by the next stage of development. Essentially, the CEO was looking at a situation where they had to figure out how to jump into this new fast market, and make the most of it in an extremely short period of time. That's a new skill structure to wrap an organization around, and one that every organization must learn to master.

That�s a good starting point. The key issue: I�d begin by aligning the organization to the concept of �thriving in the high velocity economy.�

Oh, and one of the first things I'd do? I would immediately convene a senior management/leadership meeting, and bring in a futurist and innovation expert to wake my people up to the potential that can come from energizing ourselves towards future opportunities.

Led Zeppelin Leadership: How do you innovate when you're dazed and confused ....

At a particular keynote last week, I met a number of senior executives who certainly agreed with my message - we need to constantly realign our company to the reality of change that surrounds it. That's where innovation comes from. But they also also indicated that they found it increasingly difficult to keep up with the rapid change occurring all around them.

There's been an increasing number of these individuals, and I've come to call them the Led Zeppelin refugees: they're simply dazed by the changes occuring in the high velocty economy, and are confused about what to do next.

That's why there's such a good question that flows from this: just how do you become an organization that is focused on innovation?

One of the easiest methods is simply by identifying the obvious and the not-so-obvious trends that will impact your business or organization -- and then taking the time to figure out what actions you must undertake to deal with those trends.

Ask yourself this question: are you prepared for what comes next in terms of your business? The likely answer is no: my experience is that many organizations still have a very short-term minded outlook. They're caught in an innovation rut, simply doing day by day the same old things they've always been doing, day in day out. And they don't really think about how their world is going to change.

That's why you should undertake a "trend-and-innovation" audit of your organization: quite simply, figuring out what comes next, and what you need to do about it.

How can you do this? By asking yourself a series of questions:

How quickly is our marketplace changing? How quickly might it change in the future? What's the impact on what I sell, and how I sell it?
How are our products changing? Willl they change faster in terms of features? Will support become easier, or more complex? Can we manage to operate in a faster market?
Are our products moving upscale, or are they becoming commodities,such that you'll be forced to compete on price? Can we do something so that there is more of a service element to our product?
What new competitors are appearing, or might emerge in the future? Is the basic business model threatened? Is there more likelihood of direct outreach to the consumer rather than through an existing distributor/wholesaler network?
What moves could we make to make sure we can remain competitive? You really must ask yourself some probing questions as you go through this process. You need to challenge yourself and think what might really be different in five years, in terms of what you sell, who you sell to, how you sell it, and who you are selling against.

What you need to do is ask yourself these tough questions, so that that you're thinking about where there might be new problems and new opportunities that will impact your business in the future, not just in terms of what you sell, but in terms of the structure that you use to get things done.

And therein lies the rub: I think a lot of organizations fail to do this type of simple analysis. There are too many who sit back and react to change instead of thinking: "ok we know some big change is coming what the heck are we going to do about it?" Think of it is a forward-oriented innovation: it's a simple concept, and one of the most important things you should be doing.

A Mac made in heaven

My latest CAMagazine article, "A Mac made in Heaven," published May 1, took a look at my recent move to a Mac notebook and desktop. I switched to a MacBook Pro last summer, and then purchased a Mac Pro desktop in March. Most of my work is now done in OS/X Leopard. Like many people, I just didn't feel right with the stories floating around about Microsoft Vista.

Seems that more people are feeling the same way, as outlined in a fascinating cover story on Business Week this week. ("The Mac in the Gray Flannel Suit")

It's not like I didn't know what I was doing in making the switch. I've been using computers since 1982 -- and Windows since it first came out. I have a number of Linux servers in my basement, and a fascinatingly complex home network. (A magazine covered this topic in 2002, with the headline: "Is this guy crazy, or just way ahead of his time?")

I believe that Microsoft, with Vista, has created a real disaster on the desktop, and that they have truly lost their way. Which begs the question: what innovation lessons can we learn from the Vista debacle?

I suspect that this question will be the focus of many a business book in the years to come, but probably the most important one is this: market leaders can never be complacent about their business.

We are in the era of rapid market and industry transformation. People still think my story of the Google Car to be a ridiculous one, but it need not be. Organizations that can tackle existing markets with innovative new ideas that work well have the opportunity to displace entrenched leaders. That's always been the case in the past, and will continue to be in the future.

More information

Read A Mac made in heaven by Jim Carroll
The concept of the Google Car
Article:Is this guy crazy or just way ahead of his time?

Leadership insight: study air guitar!

My blog posting ten days ago (a "Memo to the CEO") stirred up quite a bit of interest and response. In the item, I noted that the most important thing CEO's "can do *right now*, as you work to navigate your way through the challenging economic shoals that surround you, is to make sure that you don't kill innovation in its tracks.

A few readers asked, "ok, so what do we do to ensure we keep innovating?" I had an teleconference with a client today, planning for an upcoming leadership event. Here's what I came away from the call with -- my ideas on bringing some focus to their innovation mindset -- based upon the rapid market change they are encountering:

Study air guitar: there's innovation, and then there's market transformation. While Sony and Microsoft spent their time developing a faster video game machine, Nintendo transformed the video game marketplace with the Wii by introducing wireless 3-d spatial action to video gaming. That helped to refresh enthusiasm for the already-popular GuitarHero game -- since people could now do wireless GuitarHero. An entire generation of baby-boomers who mastered air guitar in the 70's who could never figure out an X-Box controller -- are now video game customers! Search YouTube for grannies playing Guitar Hero, and you'll see the results organization that has taken innovation to the next step! Not just innovation, but transformation.
Energize your brand. If your brand looks tired, your customers will see it as tired. Once that happens, you'll start to lose all the equity you've built up. Brands today need to be full of energy; I spent time with a company6 last week that is re-approaching the world of brand-image with enthusiasm and passion. There was a lot of energy, and I suspect we will see that continue over time.
Fail faster. Imagine that you are a company that has some stuff that will help to make the next market of LED TV's happen fast. Imagine that you can't decide whether to get involved or not. Imagine that your competitor has already worked on three prototype projects with the new platform. Who is going to win?
Check your bench strength. Really smart people with the ability to get into self-assembling project teams are your best hope for the future. And the fact is, their skills are continuing to be in extremely short supply as everybody becomes more of a specialist. If you don't have an organization that can expand, contract and collaborate at will, drawing the capabilities of your A-team, you've got a big problem.
Scare yourself. Do you know who your new competition will be five years from now? Think Google Car, iPlane, WalMart Hip Replacements. I know I've used this example before, but markets and industries are seeing big transformations with the rapid emergence of new competitors, and you need to be thinking about that.
Check your speed. How fast can you innovate? Perform? Undertake miracles? Tackle a problem? I'm still on a mailing list for the Sporiting Goods Manufacturing Association; I keynoted their conference last year. This week, members are scrambling to deal with a fast new environmental challenge. Surviving todays' economy is all about how quickly you can assemble and reassemble your team to fix fast problems; that the SGMA is doing this is indicative of an industry that is learning to think and act fast.
Invest in experience. Get a bit crazy. Try things out. Study my "Where's the Growth" document, and find out where your own market growth potential is. Rush a few new products or services to markets, and find out what you learn from the process. The insight your team gains in learning how to innovate will be extremely valuable. It's called experiential capital, and it's the new currency of the 21st century. The more you have, the better you'll be positioned. Innovation isn't something you just do: it's a culture, and a mindset that you invest in. By doing things.
Set the tone. If you let the current economic headlines drive your corporate spirit, you're sunk. You have to keep people focused on the future -- otherwise, your team will smell your fear. Leadership is all about keeping your team focused on opportunity and goals, not on ongoing and regular ("new normal" volatility.

I'm seeing innovative leaders do innovative things, and there's a certain core theme that is out there.

Branding in the high velocity economy

Last week, I gave the opening keynote for a leading global auto collision repair group, Fix Auto, which has locations throughout the US, Canada, the UK and France.

I opened with one of my favorite quotes from Rupert Murdoch: "The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.�

What precisely does that imply? In this case, those who can spot the opportunity for rebranding of an industry sector, and who can pull off such a rebranding quickly. If you think about auto collision repair shops, there are a number of areas where we are seeing "high velocity change": customer expectations in terms of service quality are going up; there is a focus on cost reduction as insurance companies become more sensitive to increasing accident claims; rapid change in the very technology that makes up an "automobile" today. Each one of these areas of change can be spun into an opportunity through some unique business strategies.

My focus for the audience was to realize that we we live in a time in which we are seeing the:

rapid emergence of new markets
fast opportunities for arrival of new brand images
new ways of achieving customer awareness around those brands, and
significant opportunity to transform old, stale market and business structures to vibrant, new brands

Maybe the catch phrase is "branding in the high velocity economy." Folks who figure out how to do this will cause significant transformation in their industry, and from that, new and growing business opportunity.

Thinking ahead: knowledge delivery in the high velocity economy

I'm one of the keynote speakers today for the grand opening of Virtualis, which bills itself as "the largest and most meticulously designed convention center in the computer-generated world of Second Life."

Virtualis features ballrooms, breakout rooms, and an extensive trade show floor. I'll be speaking in the Grand Ballroom at 4pm EST; my own "trade show booth" (pictured here) features links to my blog, books, and to streaming video from strategically placed video screens on the wall.

Will such "virtual worlds" come to play a role in the meeting and convention industry? The media seems to have been quite down on Second Life as of late; at one recent digital marketing conference, it was dismissed as a waste of advertisers time, and the biggest project sinkhole in the last year. (See The Client Side blog link below).

Maybe so. Maybe not. I don't know whether that is true or not.

But I do know this. Ten years ago, we didn't have a Google; five years ago, there was no FaceBook. New methods of interacting are emerging at a furious pace. Ten years from now, we'll be in an economy in which organizations will have to figure out how to "deliver knowledge quickly." I think we will see a wide variety of platforms and methods of accomplishing this -- and that's why I'm spending some of my time exploring the opportunity within Virtualis.

I'm a big believer that meetings and events will continue to be a "key strategic component of an organization's success" in the future, because they involve the delivery of knowledge.

And there's going to have to be a lot more of that in the future. Organizations must deal with the fact that their world is becoming faster: they must deal with innovation time compression, the rapid emergence of new markets, fast opportunities for emergence of new product or service branding, increased skills specialization, rapid business model transformation and the emergence of new competitive challengers.

The impact is quite simple: rapid market, business, industry, and skills change leads to a need for faster �knowledge delivery.� We might need to upgrade the knowledge of a sales force for a new emerging market; help a leadership team focus on a new business competitor, or steer a project team towards dealing with a new industry challenge. Whatever the case may be, knowledge delivery is key to success in the future.

I think we'd be fools to think that we won't do a lot more of this online. Hence, the importance of new explorations such as Virtualis : it helps to solve a fundamental purpose, and plays a key strategic role, just as real-world conferences and events do. And so this is a critical and important first step.

It's all about innovation and trying things out. And as Larry Ellison of Oracle stated, �when you innovate, you've got to be prepared for everyone telling you you're nuts.�

More information

Read Meetings.Net report on Virtualis launch
Virtualis advertisement
The Client Side Blog: The Hype Wagon Loses a Virtual Wheel
Jim Carroll digital content solutions

Five secrets for creating a culture of innovation

The April issue of the Advertiser magazine ("The Voice of the Marketing Community") from the Association of National Advertisers features an article, "Five Secrets for Creating a Culture of Innovation."

I'm quoted in the article with two key observations, on the issue of "taking risks and learning from them." My concerns?

"...he sees too much 'bandwagon innovation" in marketing these days. Consider the rush by brands to launch viral videos on YouTube. 'That's not what innovation is ... it's admitting that everything we do -- how we are marketing to the customer, what the brand means to the customer, and what we do to update uniqueness and freshness of brand -- has to constantly change because everything around us is constantly changing."
I also talk to the importance of taking risks: "CMO's who aren't afraid to focus on 'experiential capital', as Carroll calls it, or encourage innovative thinking by taking calculated risks, regardless of the outcome, stand a better chance of being successful over the long run.

It's a good article: there's no doubt that the high velocity economy results in rapid change of consumer brand perceptions. Leading edge marketers work hard to beef up their innovation capabilities simply in order to keep up with consumers who are charging forward at a furious pace!

More information

Read What a great idea!
Why bandwagon innovation doesn't work
Is your brand from the olden days?

A memo to the CEO: Innovation matters more than ever

Memo

To: CEO's worldwide,
(particularly in the financial sector)

From: Jim Carroll

-------------------------
I know things are extremely busy, particularly given our economic climate, but I think there's a key issue that you need to make sure is on your agenda.

The most important thing that you can do *right now*, as you work to navigate your way through the challenging economic shoals that surround you, is to make sure that you don't kill innovation in its tracks.

In the last few years, you've nurtured and created a core group of people in your organization who have become relentlessly focused on innovation. They've been obsessively focused on process, service and product innovation. They're matching the needs of customers, are taking you in to new markets, and are figuring out what to do in an economy that changes at a furious pace.

In the months and years to come, these executives are going to be some of the most important and critical individuals on your team.

Leaders set the tone. The tone you need to set for your leading innovators is that innovation matters now more than ever.

I know it's a tough sector to be in right now; there's a lot of bloodletting underway, and there's likely more to come as hundreds of billions of dollars of losses are absorbed. Yet you'll likely get through it, and you are going to have to be relentlessly focused on meeting customer needs, open new markets, and continually re-orient your business models to continue to focus on growth.

In January 2008. I was honored to be one of the judges for the annual Monarch Innovation Awards. We examined various innovative service and product offerings from such major financial institutions as Wachovia, SunTrust, USBank, Bank of America, WellsFargo and others. The key goal of the awards, sponsored by Barlow Research, was to "recognize financial institutions that provide the most innovative products to business customers" and to "recognize risk takers in the financial services industry who create/promote innovation within their organizations."

Throughout the financial sector, there are innovation heroes like those who won the Monarch Innovation Awards. These are the folks who are willing to stick their heads up, take a risk, and do something new and dramatic.

It's your innovation heroes who will help you open the future.

You must ensure that they still have the courage to take risks. To open new markets. To do innovative things that will solve customer problems. To realign the business for the future.

Celebrate them. Elevate them. Make their contributions known.

As the CEO, you set the tone for your organization. You have a momentary chance to ensure that you stay focused on the opportunities that come from your innovation heroes.

If you want to chat about this, give me a call. I'm at 905.855.2950. Or just send me an email: innovationmatters@jimcarroll.com

Sincerely,

Jim Carroll

--------

More information

Print A memo to the CEO: Innovation Matters More Than Ever
Marketwatch press release: Barlow Research Monarch Innovation Awards

Innovating in a flat world - the jewelry industry

I keynoted the 2008 Manufacturing Jewelers and Suppliers of America Expo New York yesterday, on the theme of ""How to Unlock Your Potential in the High Velocity Economy." Just about a week from now, Dubai will hold a similar event. The challenge for the AJMA members is that they now find themselves in a world that has gone massively global and is far more competitive; and as the world has flattened, so too have their challenges. They're competing not only against the City of Gold, but countless other highly innovative jewelry centers.

The focus of my keynote: what to do after the world gets flat! How can they innovate to deal with the unique challenges of today? Most certainly, the challenges go far beyond just globalization: rapidly changing consumer attitudes are also playing a key role. I used some recent insight from research firm Mintel UK, which provided a few fascinating nuggets:

only 5% of all the customers surveyed buy jewelry frequently - compare that to the trends with consumer electronics spending - a lot of discretionary spending now goes to the latter, and not the former.
22% compare prices before they buy
15% buy online
17% of women are finding jewelry sold in supermarkets an "increasingly attractive" option

These are all the classic signs of commoditization of an industry -- wherein existing competitors find themselves in a never-ending black hole of being forced to compete on price.

How do you innovate your way out of this? The advice I included in my 75-minute talk covered a vast number of issues; here's a few of the things they should focus on:

faster time to market : fashion happens faster; they need to deal with this. If P-Diddy appears with a new ear-stud and it gets noticed, kids will want it. Agile jewelers align themselves to such instant production, by revamping their process and cost structure.
innovate upside-down. Adopt new design philosophies: rather than innovating, focus on upside down innovation. Work with their retail partners to restart the design process. Innovative organizations recognize they can't do it all. They seek partners with everything they do, recognizing that there are of lot of really wonderful innovative ideas that transcend their organization and their culture. This allows them to discover new innovative ideas they hadn't thought of before; a process I call upside down innovation.
revamp manufacturing capabilities: a lot of these folks manufacture to inventory, and with the high and fluctuating cost of gold and other metals, that's an expensive business model to maintain, particularly in the context of increased global competition. Leading edge manufacturers are using CAD/CAM tech to change their design process and are learning to shift their business model as a result.

These were just a few of the issues I covered ; the key is accepting the fast-change that envelopes the industry, and challenging your assumptions and habits to move forward!

More information

Read the MJSA article Change Your Mind: Staying One Step Ahead
Read What do you do after the world gets flat? Put a ripple in it!

Where's the growth?

Gloom has set in on global markets. Volatility rages. Some organizations have gone into a mode of �aggressive indecision,� deferring action while they try to ﬁgure out �what comes next.� A pretty lousy strategy that is doomed to fail in the longer term.

Future oriented leaders understand the reality of growth. They know that we live in a time in which opportunities for growth abound. They�ve aligned the mission of the organization so that they are capitalizing on real opportunity, not short term economic challenges.

Growth is everywhere.

It�s easy during a time of economic volatility to lose sight of where the global economy is really headed. Yet while stock markets might rock, innovation thrives.

New ideas continue to be explored, markets grow, and industries emerge. A variety of trends indicate that opportunities for growth continue to surround us.

Read this document to get in the right frame of mind for the future.....and think growth. Think opportunity. Innovate for future, don�t stagnate with the past.

Download Where's the Growth? Global Innovation Opportunities for the Long Term

10 Great Words: inspirational innovation insight

Years ago, I wrote a little article, "10 Great Words," as a way of summarizing how to instill an innovative mindset.

It remains one of the most heavily viewed pages on my site. I use the words within my keynotes, providing motivational guidance to people on how they can challenge assumptions and eliminate habits.

I often notice people in the audience quickly writing the words down; I've heard of others who have printed off the list of 10 words and have posted them to their cubicle. Simply as a way to stay focused on creativity and innovation.

The list also made it into my Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast book.

I've just wrapped it up in a new PDF ; feel free to share the document with your staff, team, and leadership; it's proven to be a wonderful summary of how to stay motivated and focused on opportunity!

Download the 10 Great Words document

High velocity e-commerce: a keynote for VISA

I'm about off to keynote a conference for Visa. With executives in the room from Apple, Sony, Ticketmaster, HomeDepot and other organizations that are e-commerce heavy hitters, I'll be focusing on the message, "what do high velocity companies do to stay innovative?"

Much of the conference so far will have focused on the high velocity change that swirls around the issue of e-commerce: the rapid emergence of new payment technology (i.e. cell phone payment infrastructure), continued market growth as e-commerce becomes a routine part of daily life, and internationalization of market and opportunity (China now has the largest Internet population, with 250 million users.) There's also a significant platform shift as mobility takes on an increasing role: Investors Business Daily just reported that already, 16% of US cell phone users do online banking with their device, and 25% shop online. Such numbers pale in comparison to even more rapid change in Asia and Europe.

How do you stay innovative in a world of fast change?? I have several messages:

prepare for market / product / infrastructure rapidity: fast innovators make sure they have a collaborative team structure that can assemble into fast-teams, ready to tackle new projects, demands, market shifts and other changes. It's all about corporate agility.
structure for intensity: prepare for the rapid emergence of new technologies, and organize yourself with partners to help you nail implementation. Mobile payment technology is going to have a sweeping impact, and it's rollout will occur in but a few short months. That's the new intensity of business cycles.
empower for quality: if you shop online, you expect operational excellence, no questions asked. You can only do that by empowering staff to act on the ground, making quick decisions so that quality of experience is not compromised. Read my When FedEx Fails post of a few days for an important lesson on today's empowered consumer.
enhance capability from generational diversity: Older generations are still struggling with fast pace change: that's one of the key trends I identified in my most recent Future Trends report. Savvy organizations are learning to implement fast by combining the different talents of different generations; by providing for cross generational collaboration, they are drawing upon a set of unique skills to act even faster, thus managing to stay ahead of the pack.

10 years ago this market didn't exist. Today, it is valued in the hundreds of billions, and growth continues to compound. Anyone in this space is faced with a lot of real, significant change: with technology, customers, expectations, competitors, business models and just about everything.

You stay innovative by structuring yourself to stay just one step ahead of the future.