Futurist Keynote Speaker Jim Carroll: Disruptive Trend & Innovation Expert

Futurist Keynote Speaker,  Author, Innovation Expert. 

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Archives for May 2019

Daily Inspiration: “Never underestimate the ability of those around you to try to destroy your optimism!”

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“Never underestimate the ability of those around you to try to destroy your optimism!” – #Futurist Jim Carroll

Imagine going to an event, and there Is a de-motivational speaker on stage:

“You suck! You are pathetic losers! You have no hope! Why do you even try! You have got nothing! Your chance of success is less than zero!”

I haven’t seen many of those folks appear on stage.

In a way, my strange job as a futurist who prowls stages around the world pays me to be an optimist. After all, I wouldn’t have much of a business if I walked on stage and said, “guess what – your future sucks! You’re doomed! It’s all bad! All the trends are negative! There is no hope!”

It wouldn’t be much of a business model!

Why this focus on optimism? Many people want a hopeful view of the future, and seek insight from others that that provides them with a sense of hope that things will turn out ok. Something that validates their desire for positive change.

So while some people see a trend and see a dark cloud, I see sunshine! While they look around them and see a lot of negativity, I look further for positivity.

When they go low, I go high.

So is all this relentless optimism of mine a fault?

Maybe, but I’ve been conditioned to think in this way ever since I had my epiphany on the potential impact of technology back in 1982, when I first signed into the online world on a Radio Shack Model 3 computer. It is being sorely tested these days with social media and elections; hacking and scams; lousy IOT implementations and more.

But that said, I en-energize my optimism every day – I return to the well of hope.

“Relentlessly optimistic” – that’s what some people call me. As a futurist, that means I’ll speak to a trend and 90% of the time, cover its potential for positive change.

Do I acknowledge the potential downside, the risk, the negative? Most definitely – but its not the core message I bring to the stage, to my writing and to my observations.

Because without optimism, you lack the oxygen of opportunity!

 

Daily Inspiration: “The problem with an assumption is that it usually becomes an excuse for inaction!”

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“The problem with an assumption is that it usually becomes an excuse for inaction!” –#Futurist Jim Carroll

People assume things. Such as the idea that what they sell now will always be what they sell in the future. They’ll sell it to same old customers with the same old value proposition, never changing what they do because they assume that no one else will ever come along to change things up.

Blockbuster and Kodak had a great business model for a time, built on a foundation of assumptions.

Oops!

Assumptions can ruin you since they reinforce your inability to make decisions – because you assume you don’t need to make any. They help to build walls of belief systems that hide you from the stark realities that you are faced with. They stop you for peering around your blind spots to see what might be around the corner.

And so you go forward based on the idea that nothing will ever change – until it does! And then you are wondering, “whoah, where did that come from?”

It comes from your overall belief system built upon a platform of incorrect and invalid assumptions.

Often on stage, I’ll run with one of my go-to phrases: “Challenge assumptions! Eliminate habit! Banish routine!”

That’s why every day it’s a good idea to run through a list of some of the assumptions that guide you in your day to day activities. Be prepared to examine them through a lens of honesty. Deconstruct them, challenge them, put them to the test.

Because at the end of the day, the assumptions you make are often the platform on which you will fail.

Daily Inspiration: “A figment of your imagination? It’s already someone else’s disruptive reality!”

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“A figment of your imagination? It’s already someone else’s disruptive reality!” Futurist Jim Carroll

Imagine you’ve got about 5 minutes to go on stage. You are scrolling through your Twitter feed while some other speaker begins to wrap up. You’re about to do a keynote for several hundred executives & doctors who work in the orthopaedic industry. You’re keynote will talk about the disruptive ideas that are occurring with the 3D printing of hip & knee replacements.

And then you see a particular Tweet that has a picture of a young kid receiving a 3D printed prosthetic arm!

Suddenly, the future you were going to talk about isn’t quite futuristic enough, because the future is happening at a pace even faster than that you’ve prepared your slide deck for!

That’s the situation I found myself in recently with a recent keynote for the American Association of Orthopaedic Executives.

The tweet I saw mentioned a small initiative called Team Unlimbited – http://www.teamunlimbited.org. They provide free 3D prosthetic hands and arms for children who are born without.

The key fact? It’s basically two guys in a garage, driven by their passion, but who are developing an aspect of the global medical future that will provide profound opportunity for people, & massive disruption for an entire industry.

The plans for the prosthetic arms are ‘open-sourced’, meaning anyone can get involved, simply because the founders believe that the value of the enhancement to the lives of children is more important than the opportunities of a traditional startup.

(Read up on this fascinating initiative on the BBC at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38290486)

Learn more about the acceleration of ‘human body part science” – its trend #1 of my ’19 Trends for 2019.‘

With that, you have the perfect example of how entire industries are being shaped and changed in dramatic and unforeseen ways.

The research that occurs in this garage, like many other small initiatives, will accelerate the R&D of human body part replacement. It will inspire others to pursue radical concepts in the industry. It will encourage those who think their own ideas are crazy to realize they are not.

It will accelerate the world around us.

That’s our future!

The Future of Transit: “It’s Not Your Grandad’s City Bus System Anymore!”

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In 1964, at the age of 5, I started going to kindergarten in Byron, a subdivision of London, Ontario. It was back in the day – and at that small age, I actually took a city bus to and from school!

Well, those days are long gone, aren’t they!

But gone soon is the idea that buses will run on gas, be driven by ‘drivers’, and that you’ll go to a ‘stop’ to get on one. They’ll run on electric batteries, drive themselves, and come and get you.

Here’s a short clip I filmed on the future of transit! Watch and learn!

“We Used To ….” – A Look Back at How Primitive Our World Was in 2019

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Part of the art of figuring out the future comes not from looking forward, but by looking back.

What that idea in mind, here’s a list of things we used to do back in 2019 that we don’t do anymore. This list will be a completely valid list at some time in the future. When? It doesn’t matter – when it comes to thinking about the future, sometimes it is just grasping the obvious that matters.

  • agriculture: we used to go out and farm when the sun was up. Now, we have our robotic tractors undertaking farming 24 hours a day
  • automotive and trucking: back in 2019, we had cars that were based on carbon sources such as gasoline, and which were driven by humans. Now, they’re electric, with batteries, and drive themselves
  • education: we used to teach kids based on the idea that we should provide them with skills they might need in the future. Now, we teach them to get the right knowledge at the right time for the right purpose – what we call ‘just-in-time knowledge
  • energy and utilities: in the early part of the 21st century, we had one big energy grid and relied on carbon sources such as oil, coal, and natural gas. Now, we have many little inter-connected micro-grids based on wind and solar renewable energy sources
  • healthcare : we used to fix patients after they were sick. Now, we know what they will likely become sick with, based on genomic and other scientific advances, and act accordingly
  • manufacturing: we used to design a version of a product and build it the same way a million times. Now, we design a product a million different ways and produce it differently each time using 3D printing and mass customization
  • retail and food: we used to drive to stores to get the products that we need. Now, the products generally come to us, if they aren’t already grown in our in-home vertical farm.
  • Insurance: we used to get insurance coverage based on our historical behavior or past actions. Now, insurance policies are written and adjusted in real-time based on real-time data and activities
  • financial services: we used to take out mortgages and loans to acquire the things we wanted. Now, we simply get the things that we want for but a short time, and then move on to the next thing, as we generally just share the stuff that we need
  • construction: we used to send people and materials to a site in order for a building to be assembled.d Now, we generally assemble the building offsite with robotic technology and 3D printing technologies and send it to the site for quick, fast assembly.
  • hi-tech. We used to have things called computers, which were physically separate devices that we carried around or plopped on our desks. Now, intelligence is embedded everywhere; in our clothing, eyeglasses, car, home and factories. It’s just there.
  • food: we used to eat the same food that everyone else ate. Now, we eat food that is grown specifically for our particular DNA, and matched to our particular metabolic profile
  • jobs: we used to train for a career that would take us through most of our life. Now, we live our life to take us through multiple careers by constantly reinventing ourselves
  • material science: we used to have 19 million known chemical substances, but now we have some 5 billion. We witnessed the birth of countless new industries and opportunities through the rapid acceleration of pure science

Thinking this way will give you an idea of the scope the BIG transformative changes that are sweeping our world today.

 

 

Daily Inspiration: ““Most people who criticize those who invent the future, usually don’t understand the future that is being invented!”

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“Most people who criticize those who invent the future, usually don’t understand the future that is being invented!” – #Futurist Jim Carroll

Let’s talk about Tesla. And #TeslaHaters

Basically, people who simply can’t accept the idea that a company might have the audacity to challenge and lead the way in forever changing one of the world’s largest industries. Someone who dares to take on the legacy behemoths that are in Detroit, Tokyo and Stutgaart.

Here’s the thing :  we’ve been here before. Back in the day, people criticized Steve Jobs and his ragged band of ‘short sighted fools’ at Apple for daring to go up against the behemoth that was IBM computer technology.

Steve Jobs had a way of dealing with the haters – focus on the product, not the whiners. Delight the customer, not the stock market. Be relentless on building an ecosystem for the future, not just a device.

Watch this – and learn!

It’s a pretty basic lesson in how to deal with the haters.

When it comes to massive innovation and industry transformation, there are countless examples through history where ‘haters gonna hate the innovators’.

It comes with the territory.

What is it that the haters don’t understand? I’m not quite sure!

I have a friend – a very intelligent fellow who owns a hi-tech company – who thinks that Audi, Mercedes & other legacy companies will soon own the EV and self-driving car space, and that Tesla is doomed. I think he’s nuts.

I really don’t think he understands, at a fundamental level, what is happening here. when we look back from the future, we’ll realize we once lived in a time in which we had cars that were based on carbon sources such as gasoline & which were driven by humans. Then, they were electric, with batteries, & drove themselves, and had big technology ecosystems behind them.

It’s the first real product of a massive shift.

That’s the future that is being invented, and right now, pretty much the only company in the race to that future is Tesla.

Legacy companies? They don’t have the skills, the insight, the track record. Most important, they don’t know how to make the shift into being a technology company – which Tesla clearly is. They don’t understand IT ecosystems. Worse – they are blinded by their arrogance, infallibility, and believe that they own the future. It’s their right!

They are the Sony Walkman of the music industry to Apple’s iTunes.

As I explain on stage, a Tesla isn’t a car. It’s a “an upgradeable, hyperconnected, data gathering technology platform (with wheels & a battery.”

Just like Apple, they’ve built the ecosystem for the future of transportation.

What is it? Read this: IOT Early Days

So what do you do if you have your own haters? People who abhor your progress, success and view of the future?

Do what Steve Jobs did. Ignore them.

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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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