Futurist Keynote Speaker Jim Carroll: Disruptive Trend & Innovation Expert

Futurist Keynote Speaker,  Author, Innovation Expert. 

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Archives for December 2005

10 Great Words for 2006

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top_10.jpgFive years ago, I didn’t know how to ski. Well, I had skiied a bit as a kid, but never really picked it up. Then my wife and I decided after 9/11 that skiing would be a wonderful way to deal with all the new uncertainty in the world.

So we took it up, and it has become a huge part of my life ever since. We’ve actually become quite good at it, skiing most weekends throughout the winter at the private club to which we belong. And this January 2006, when I head off to keynote the Swiss Innovation Forum outside of Zurich, I’m likely to spend some time on the hills.

Which just goes to show that you truly can accomplish something wonderful at any stage in your life! And if there is a word to describe what I’ve done, it’s persevere; at times, I thought I might barely make it down the hill, but I kept on trying until I mastered it!

Words which provide simple insight and motivation are great. Which brings me to the 10 Great Words for 2006. Last year, I ran my list of “10 Great Words for 2005“, and these became a huge hit, reprinted in dozens of articles and conference handouts. I use those words on stage in my keynotes all the time — they’ve become an integral part of what I do.

To continue on my theme, here’s my 10 Great Words and Trends for 2006

  • Adapt: Change is happening faster than ever before. Accept that, adapt to it, and go with the flow. It makes everything a lot easier.
  • Flex : In times of rapid change, agility is a critical skill. Develop flexibility in attitude, skills and capability in order to thrive.
  • Experience: There’s a lot you don’t know. Enhance your knowledge and experience by doing all the things you’ve never done before.
  • Create: Stop managing things, and create things instead. Focus on doing things that make a difference, rather than trying to make a difference with what you’ve done before.
  • Focus: You can’t master all the knowledge there is to know, nor can you do everything you want to do. Do what you do well, and figure out new ways of doing the rest.
  • Partner: Deal with rapid change and complexity by seeking partners who can help you accomplish what needs to be done.
  • Shift: Far too many people view the future with fear rather than thinking about opportunity. Shift your focus to fridges, and you’ll find that opportunity becomes clearer.
  • Imagine: Innovators don’t make a difference by redoing the status quo — they accomplish great things by being different. And they don’t constrain their difference with traditional thinking: they simply think differently.
  • Start: You’ve probably been holding off on doing the one thing you always wanted to try to do. Drop the stop now, and begin doing it. Innovators succeed through momentum, and momentum comes from doing.
  • Enjoy: People who approach things with passion and purpose live a compelling life. Find your spark, and light it!

My own top 10 blog posts

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top_10.jpgHere’s a quick list of what I think were some of the best posts to this often sporadic blog through the year.

  1. Change: Deal with it: this little fellow still cracks me up.
  2. The infinite idea loop: the future is faster. Even Fortune covered this posting. A compelling 3-minute watch, if you really want to understand how the future is evolving.
  3. The Masters of Business Imagination Manifesto: FastCompany picked up on my MBI Manifesto found in this post. It got so much attention, it has become the focus of my next book, due out in 2006.
  4. It’s in to be out!”: Too much fun earlier this year when I met with the editors of O (Oprah Magazine), Elle, Family Circle, Parenting, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Working Mother, American Baby, Soap Opera Weekly, Woman’s Day, Glamor, Teen Vogue, Seventeen, Good Housekeeping, Family Circle and about 40 other national trade magazines, in New York City! Covering off my list of outdoor trends…..on behalf of a major client.
  5. Frogs in Texas reviews: After all that work in bringing out a new book, it gets some great reviews and momentum throughout 2005.
  6. The Tiniest Warrior of All: My wife and I published, throughout publishing company Oblio Press, a very important, powerful, and emotional book.
  7. 10 Signs You’ve Got an Innovation Dysfunction: How can you tell if you’ve got problems? Read the list …. Fortune covered this one.
  8. Creativity, trends, and innovation in retail, packaging, and consumer goods …: I’ve done a huge number of talks in almost every industry and profession in the last decade, talking as a futurist about future trends. I’ve got a huge number of trends floating around in my head and in my materials, and I’m trying to use the blog to capture alot of them after a major keynote. This post is a good example.
  9. “The concept of going to school for knowledge is kind of quaint…”: A quick article that stirred up a fair bit of controversy. I don’t believe anything I said here to be untrue.
  10. 10 More Ways to Instill Innovation: A follow-up to the innovation dysfunction post above.

10 Big Trends for Agriculture

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Jim Carroll is widely recognized as one of the leading experts in the world on agricultural trends.

His client list in extensive, including both agricultural associations and global agricultural companies. It includes Purina • Land O’ Lakes • Eli Lilly/Elanco • DTN The Progressive Farmer • Nutrien •  Farm Media Journal • FMC Agriculture • Texas Cattle Feeders Association • FCC Services US (Farm Credit Cooperative) • MicroBeef Technologies • Mid-America Crop Protection Association • FarmTech • AgProgress Conference • Agricorp • Colorado CattleFeeders Association  • CropLife Canada • US Department of Agriculture • American Agriwoman Society • American Landscape and Nursery Association • Monsanto!

His insight resonates with the agricultural crowd, whether farmers, ranchers, or agricultural support and bio-science companies. He recently spoke to the top 100 cattle, stockyard and feedlot operators in the US at a private event in Sonoma County, California. The US Farm Credit Cooperative has brought him in twice. Want to think about opportunity? Read the post, Agriculture 2020! Innovation, Growth & Opportunity — and also read on below.

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What’s up with ag? Some major trends:

  1. Massive growth in food demand: The UK Food and Agriculture Association estimates that the world population will increase 47%, to 8.9 billion, by 2050. That’s a potentially huge food marketplace. That fact, more than anything, spells the reality that the agricultural industry is full of potential opportunity!
  2. A continuing rampup in efficiency: Simple fact: global agriculture must double in the next 30 years to sustain this type of population growth. Add this reality check: there is little new arable land in the world. The result is that existing producers will have to continue to focus on smarter, better, more efficient growing in order to meeting demand.
  3. Hyper-science: One of the realities of the infinite idea loop in which we now find ourselves is this: while there are 19 million known chemical substances today, the number is constantly doubling every 13 years… with some 80 million by 2025, and 5 billion by 2100. Science is evolving at a furious pace, and with science at the root of agriculture, we will continue to see constant, relentless new methods of improving crop and livestock yield.
  4. Innovation defines success: Growers that focus on innovation as a core value will find success; their innovation will focus on the triple-feature need for growth, efficiency and ingestion of new science. It will be by adopting new methodologies, products, partnerships and ideas that they will learn to thrive.
  5. Retail and packaging innovation drive agricultural decisions: Do this: stare at a banana. Did you know that Chiquita banana has come up with a special membrane that doubles the shelf-life of the product, doing this regulating the flow of gases through the packaging? Take a look at Naturepops: each lollipop is wrapped in fully bio-degradable film made from plant matter, and the bags they come in are made from recycled paper, water-based ink and poly lactic acid made from cornstarch. There’s a huge amount of innovation happening with packaging companies and on the store shelf, and all of these trends have a big impact on agriculture.
  6. Intelligent packaging moves front and center: Innovation with packaging will take an even bigger leap in years to come, and will involve hyperconnectivity, a trend that will be driven by food safety, tracability, country of origin and nutrition labelling needs. Our lives are soon to be transformed by packaging that can “connect” to the global data grid that surrounds us; and its’ role will have been transformed from being that of a “container of product” to an intelligent technology that will help us with use of the product, or which will help us address safety and tracability issues.
  7. The energy opportunity: Agriculture is set to play a huge role as we wean ourselves away from our dependence on oil and natural gas. The US Department of Energy plans to see alternative fuels provide 5% of the nations energy by 2020, up from 1% today. And it is expected that there will be $1.2 billion in new income for farmers and rural landowners by getting involved with new energy sources such as windpower. Europe plans to have a market that involves at least 20% usage of bio-fuels by 2020, and Feed & Grain estimates that liquid fuels from agricultural feed could replace 25% to 30% of US petroleum imports by that time.
  8. Convenience and health take center stage: We will continue to see rapid change in consumer taste and expectations as people comes to place more emphasis or doing their best with the little time that they have. For example, it is expected that fresh-cut snacks grew from an $8.8 billion market in 2003 to $10.5 billion by 2004, according to the International Fresh-Cut Produce Association, as part of a trend in which produce and fruit continue to compete with traditional snacks. Expect such unique trends to growth both in terms of number and rapidity.
  9. Direct consumer-producer relationships blossom: As this technology evolves and as people become more concerned about the safety of what they eat, a natural result is a frenetic rate of growth in direct relationships between growers and consumers.
  10. Generational transformation: perhaps the biggest trend is that we are about to witness a sea-change in the rate by which new ideas in the world of agriculture are accepted, as a new generation of technology-weaned, innovative younger people take over the family farm.
  11. Partnership defines success: If there is one trend I emphasize in every industry I’m involved with, it is that no one individual or organization can know everything there is to know. As I indicated in my I found the future in manure article, this trend is also becoming prevalent in agriculture. We will continue to see an increasing number of partnerships between growers and advisers, suppliers, buyers, retailers and just about everyone else, so that they learn to deal with the massive complexities that emerge from rapid change and innovation.

Wait — that’s 11 trends! And that’s indicative of just how rapidly this industry is set to be transformed……

Time for an innovation audit?

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From an article I wrote for The Boardroom, a publication for associaton executives: “Take the time to do this simple to test to determine if your association and its members are in the right frame of mind for remarkably new and innovative things, or whether they and you are stuck in a rut, unable to respond and deal with the change that is swirling around you.” It’s based on some previous postings I did here.

Read the full article adobe.gif .

“…what lies ahead three-to-five years from now?”

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scte.gifSCTE SLATES FUTURIST JIM CARROLL AS ET 2006 KEYNOTE SPEAKER

DEC. 13, 2005 (Exton, PA)—The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) is pleased to announce that the keynote speaker for the SCTE Conference on Emerging Technologies® (ET) 2006 will be Jim Carroll, international futurist, trends and innovation expert.

ET 2006 is set for Tuesday through Thursday, Jan. 10-12 in Tampa, Fla. The keynote address, set for Wednesday, Jan. 11 at 9 a.m., is sponsored by BelAir Networks.

SCTE’s ET, which offers the cable telecommunications industry’s leading engineers and technologists a look at what lies ahead three-to-five years from now, includes four hard-hitting technical sessions and an array of networking opportunities, including the Thursday, Jan. 12 second-day keynote luncheon, sponsored by Scientific-Atlanta and featuring speaker Gary Traver, senior vice president and COO, Comcast Media Center.

Carroll’s Wednesday morning keynote address early in the conference’s first full day promises to help get ET attendees focused on future possibilities for the industry. Based on highly original research, Carroll provides a unique blend of demographic, lifestyle, and technological insight into global economic trends. He sets the stage for organizations to become more competitive, innovative, and adaptable—and more open to the opportunities of the future. His past client list includes the likes of DaimlerChrysler, the U.S Army Corps of Engineers, and Motorola.

For more about Carroll, visit . For more about ET 2006, including registration details, visit .

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“Volatility is the new normal”

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I recently keynoted the Furniture Today 2005 Leadership conference in Miami. This article reports on my talk.

Futurist: Changes will present new opportunities
Furniture Today, 12/14/2005 .furniture.gif

MIAMI — If you aren’t comfortable with change, you probably won’t like Jim Carroll’s vision of the future.

“Everything is changing so fast, you don’t know what is going to happen next,” he told the Furniture/Today Leadership Conference here. “Volatility is the new normal.”

Carroll should know. The “futurist” has observed trends for nearly 20 years. He can’t predict exactly what will happen, but understands how quickly things are changing and how that could affect business.

Technology and ease of communication are among the key factors influencing the spread of new ideas and products. For instance, there are now 19 million known chemical substances, he said. Thanks to online capabilities that allow scientists to share information quickly, this number is expected to grow to 80 million by 2025 and 5 billion by 2100.

Carroll cited a study that said 65% of today’s preschool children will work in jobs that don’t exist now. And half of what students learn in their freshman year about science and technology is obsolete by their senior year.

Such rapid change, he said, will have broad impact on the furniture industry. “The way ideas are generated has changed in a fundamental way,” he said. “All ideas are shared faster than ever before, and that is what is impacting your industry.”

Carroll wants people to embrace change, the future and the opportunities they present. “Most people approach the future as something to be feared,” he said. “To me, the future is full of opportunity.”

Aging baby boomers are one opportunity as they seek home health care service, a factor that will influence the type of furniture in peoples’ homes, he said.

“Dealing with the future with the right mindset is critical,” Carroll said. “When we are bemoaning the challenges, we need to think of the next waves of opportunity.”

He urged his audience to better understand customers in the context of a rapidly changing world. Customer expectations and needs are changing rapidly, and many are more demanding, he said, and brand or product loyalty “tends to go out the window with customer empowerment.” Also, customers view more and more products as commodities, which influences buying decisions.

He advised furniture companies to remain focused on core areas such as style, selection and service to best serve a demanding customer, and suggested they partner with industries such as electronics and health care to deliver in all three areas.

Most importantly, Carroll urged his listeners to keep an open mind to what is happening around them and the possibilities that presents for their businesses.

“You can become your own futurists,” he said. “You can discover your own trends simply by looking at what’s happening in the world.”

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THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ARE FAST features the best of the insight from Jim Carroll’s blog, in which he
covers issues related to creativity, innovation and future trends.

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