Futurist Keynote Speaker Jim Carroll: Disruptive Trend & Innovation Expert

Futurist Keynote Speaker,  Author, Innovation Expert. 

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Archives for April 2009

Time for a little innovation oxygen? Why wasting time is a GOOD thing…..

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south-kress-summit-22006-09-29-226x300.jpg.jpegWhen my friend Scott Kress summited Mount Everest last year, he used a little bit of oxygen for the final push. Many climbers do — sometimes you need the extra energy to accomplish something massive!

So it is with innovation — sometimes you need some help to accomplish great things. I’ve written an article this morning, “Time for a little oxygen?” that offers some thoughts on how you can kick up your innovation efforts a bit more.
Here’s an extract:

To get into a frame of mind of acting fast, everyone needs to be able to learn a lot, very quickly. One way of doing that is by encouraging people to “waste” time. That’s right – I really recommend that as a business strategy.

How can people understand the high velocity change in markets, business models, competitive challenges, the emergence of new means of marketing and branding, and all kinds of other issues, if they are restricted to formal education programs? How can they learn about the new products that they need to sell when those products are coming to market so quickly? How can they learn new methods of dealing with a customer by taking an in-house course that was developed over a year ago, when the market was completely different from today?

That’s where frivolous education comes in, as a complement to traditional, formal corporate education programs.

Why not establish some “playtime” with your sales force, with the purpose being to try out a multitude of new technologies: encourage browsing through industry magazines, surfing the Web for market research, etc… Such activities may help bring understanding to how the customer is changing. So in fact, what may appear to be “wasting time,” really is not so

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As for Scott, his time spent summiting Everest certainly wasn’t a waste of time. He’s an Executive MBA teacher, consultant and speaker, and the experience has given him a unique message on leadership, teams, and effective strategic planning!

  • Read the article Time for a little innovation oxygen?
  • Learn more about Scott Kress

10 Things You Need to Do to Innovate in a Recession

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RDA008.jpgBusiness Week ran an article in January, “10 Worst Innovation Mistakes in a Recession.”

It’s easy to point out mistakes. It can be harder to indicate what you should be doing.

I’ve been out speaking to organizations about trends, the future, innovation and creativity for fifteen years. Since last year, when the meltdown began, I’ve been keynoting events worldwide, rapidly adjusting my theme to one of “how you can innovate during a recession.” I’ve had the opportunity of seeing first hand quite a few very innovative strategies from CEO’s and others in a wide variety of events, and I keep modifying my message at rapid speed to incorporate a vast variety of ideas.

So I just took a few minutes to post a comment to the Business Week site, and I’ll post my quick thoughts here too. Here’s a list of 10 off the top of my head:

1. Focus your team — relentlessly — on growth. I keynoted a global organization in Las Vegas in February. The CEO got on stage before me — and spoke about the recession for one minute. He then spent 19 minutes speaking to the growth opportunities that the organization could pursue. That’s what everyone needs to do right now. There are growth opportunities in every industry. Focus on them!

2. Respond faster. When I keynoted a food industry summit in New York, we spoke of the need to respond faster to the fact that consumer preferences were changing more rapidly than ever before. More people eating at home, sensitive to dollars, looking for food-comfort. Reformulate new brand and product options faster. Just do it. Don’t study — do.

3. Invest in the brand. Brands can become weaker in a recession, particularly as consumers scramble for value. Decide where you want to reposition your product/brand, and act fast to do it rather than studying it to death.

4. Mix it up. Don’t assume that worked before the recession will work now. Try out a lot of ideas, particularly around value. “I’m experimenting rapidly with price points and product mix.”

5. Invest in experience. Lots of your staff will be down in the dumps, and are spinning their wheels. Get a message out that NOW is the time to invest in experience. Try things out, to build up the collective experience of your team.

6. Kill off the innovation killers. Reframe your team, so that they are thinking “what a great idea,” rather than viewing with suspicion any new ideas. Remember — everyone is worried about being laid off, and paranoia sucks the life out of innovation faster than anything else.

7. Collaborate within the industry. When I keynoted the American Nursery and Landscape Association recently, I stood in awe of the blog they were running that was offering practical, on the ground, easy to implement ideas that retailers could put into their stores NOW.

8. Seek ideas. Go knowledge farming once a day, looking for ideas on customer service, operations, IT strategies, and just about anything else. There’s a flood of ideas out there — now’s a great time to chase them down and do things.

9. Partner up. Sure, resources are scarcer during a recession. That’s why you can speed up innovation with anything — from advertising, to customer service, business model implementation, IT strategy, opportunities for operational excellence or just about anything else — by seeking partners to help you out. That will help you achieve key goals faster.

10. Get over it. Lots of organizations are still stuck in the anger and denial phase of the Seven Steps of Economic Grief. Make a decision to get into the acceptance stage, and move on. This will recession will pass, just like every other one.

There are dozens more…..

“Opportunities 2009” – the workforce of 2020!

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I was the opening keynote speaker yesterday for Opportunities 2009, a conference in Ontario, Canada, that was focused on workplace trends to 2015.

Opportunities2009.png

The keynote description went like this:

What Comes Next: And What Should We Do About It?

Is there a future out there? Definitely yes, but a constant drumbeat of negative news can cause people and organizations to lose sight of what will happen with careers and jobs in the future. That’s where Jim Carroll comes in — this noted international futurist, trends & innovation expert spends his time with globally innovative leaders. He’s gained keen insight into some of the key trends which will impact industries, organizations and careers in the next few years to come, in a wide variety of industries from health care, to technology and manufacturing, to the skilled trades. Jim is a passionate believer in the reality that every career and profession is in the midst of a transition, and that additional, new careers are being born before our very eyes.

Jim Carroll will challenge you to focus on the opportunities of today and tomorrow, rather than the challenges of the past. Jim will provide an outline of how the economy will evolve from this point out — and how we should be planning and acting in order to innovate in career development ahead of fast-paced events. He’ll provide us a look at “what comes next, and what we should do about it.“

In the coming weeks and days, I’ve got a lot to blog about this keynote: I took a good hard look at emerging careers, transitioning careers, and how existing careers are changing as a result of ever-increasing velocity.

The talk was extremely well received — probably because I focused the 700+ people in the room on the opportunities of the future rather than the current economic muck of today.

 

It’s January 15, 2020 : Do you know where your healthcare system is?

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HealthCare2020.jpg

Grab the PDF by clicking on the image on the right!

The world of healthcare and medicine is on the edge of a period of massive transformation.

Do you have any idea as to how sweeping the forthcoming changes are?

Maybe not — the future of healthcare is often lost in a raging debate that focuses on the current challenges faced by the system.

But if you step back and think about where we’ll be in 2020, then you can appreciate the scope of the trends which are now underway.

Rapid technological development and relentless innovation are the two key trends that will provide for a forthcoming massive
transformation of our health care system.

I’ve learned that sometimes, it is easier to open up the minds of people to big trends by taking a look *back* rather than by taking a look forward. When I was the closing keynote speaker for the 4th Annual World Healthcare Innovation & Technology Congress in Washington DC last December — one of the world’s premier health innovation events at the cusp of innovative healthcare thinking — I took the approach of looking back from 2020, to see what happened in the last 10 years.

It was a great talk — with lots of wonderful feedback. So I wrote it into a research report in a PDF, that you can share around. Maybe this can help you to stir up some creative and innovative thinking!

After all, when it comes to future trends, you’ve got to work to open up the minds of people!

So let’s say it’s the year 2020.

Let’s say you’ve looked at the big changes that occurred in healthcare from 2010 to 2020.

What do you see? Take a look.

The Shed Project – How to Move a Shed 20 feet – Intact?

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So let’s really try out the power of social networking, and see if it can apply to practical, everyday problems.

Our backyard shed needs to move about 20 feet, in order to expand the basketball area. Preferably, we’d like to do it intact, rather than disassembling it and rebuilding it.

ShedProject.jpg

One suggestion was to dig under the corners, shore it up, put some rollers underneath, lay down pipes and “roll it across” — just like the Egyptians did. And as seen here.

But maybe there is a better way. If you are a really smart engineer, or have a great idea, or have done this yourself, please follow me on Twitter and tweet me a suggestion. Or send me an e-mail at [email protected]. (My blog isn’t set up yet for comments, but I’ll post the solutions offered here later…)

(Suggestions to just buy a new shed are welcome, but not terribly innovative.)

Must get back to work now.

Update: We managed to get the shed moved. We essentially jacked it up, put some heavy pipe under it, and rolled it to the new location. The actual heavy-lifting work was coordinated by a friend of mine, who brought in some really big burly guys to do the deed. It worked like a charm!

Good jobs in Bad Times – I’m interviewed on PBS on future career trends

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GoodJobsBadTimes.pngWKSU, the PBS affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio, has been running a series this week titled “Good Jobs in Bad Times.” It’s a serious look at current and future job and career trends. Topics include “high-paying tech jobs, careers that don’t need a four-year degree, the re-growth of agriculture as industry, working part-time full-time, career makeovers, the truth about healthcare, bridge jobs after graduation and the future of the NE Ohio employment outlook.”

I’m interviewed in the final segment, “What’s next:Jobs of the future will likely refine the jobs of today.”

Here’s an extract: you can visit the site and listen to the series at the links below. I’m on at 2:58 on the timeline.

Jim Carroll of Toronto is a futurist who studies trends and tries to predict what lies ahead. He believes the growing interest in alternative energy and “green” products will generate new jobs in coming years, but not just in obvious ways such as building wind turbines and solar panels.

For example, “there’s a lot of very unique research and development occurring out there having to do with packaging,” Carroll said. “And what that leads to is new products coming to market. It involves new companies, it involves new growth industries. …So, what you’re going to have is the emergence of new companies with a new mind set developing these new products to meet new societal demands. And when you look at that, that’s where some of the job growth is going to occur.”

Carroll said companies must closely watch for trends that can be turned into new jobs. But, not everyone has the resources of a big company to find and capitalize on the next big thing. For individuals planning to train for new careers, Carroll advises they pursue jobs that are evolving in areas like health care. “Patient navigators,” for example, are increasing in demand.

“It’s a doctor or a nurse or a medical professional or someone with specific training who simply steers the patient through the complexity of the increasingly complex health care system,” Carroll said. “It’s estimated there’s about 18,000 of these people in the US health care system today. It’s estimated that number will grow to about 180,000 by the year 2015. That’s the emergence of a new career.

“And if you’re thinking, ‘Where are the jobs going to be in the future?’ It’s in things like that.”

It’s a timely series and interview, because on Monday I do a keynote for a group of HR professionals, community leaders, social innovators, career development and employment preparation practitioners, labour market experts and employers, on the theme of “Careers 2015.” It will be a real, practical look at what we can expect in terms of career transitions, new careers and job opportunities a half decade out.

Think growth!

  • Go to the Good Jobs in Bad Times site
  • Go to the What’s next:Jobs of the future will likely refine the jobs of today section

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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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