Futurist Keynote Speaker Jim Carroll: Disruptive Trend & Innovation Expert

Futurist Keynote Speaker,  Author, Innovation Expert. 

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Archives for April 2021

Daily Inspiration: “It’s no longer just survival of the fittest – it’s now the absolute dominance of the fastest!”

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“It’s no longer just survival of the fittest – it’s now the absolute dominance of the fastest!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Time travel!

This photo is from a manufacturing conference, and I’m captured on stage just moments into my keynote for over 2,000 senior executives. My message was that the future of manufacturing was all about agility, flexibility, moving fast, responding to furious rates of change.

Little did we know!

But here’s the thing – while manufacturing is now dealing with new issues, the old challenges have yet to be mastered. Many are stuck in a world in which they’ve had to spend tremendous energy getting through the pandemic, but still need to conquer the disruptive challenges that were already swirling around them. All this happening in the context of an ever-widening ‘acceleration gap’ – the difference between the speed of change and the ability of an organization to keep up.

Old issues pre-pandemic that haven’t gone away? The rapid emergence of new material science,e the potential disruptive impact of additive manufacturing (3d printing), a move from mass production to mass customization, the impact of embedded intelligence into products, the emergence of smart manufacturing (aka IIoT), the acceleration of the complexity of basic manufacturing skills, and the impact of disruptive market thinking. (To name but a few!)

New issues that suddenly emerged with the crisis? The new challenges with globalization and the fast rise of localization, broken supply chains and the need for resilience, the rise of raw material volatility with availability being a continuous supply problem, the challenges with scaling skills in an era in which predictability of demand is a precarious proposition.

The future was fast pre-pandemic in this particular sector. Today? Whoah! If you don’t have speed in your core, you might be out of the race. There’s little time left to get yourself back into fighting mode. But there is still ….. a ….. very ….. small ….. window.

Need to challenge yourself? Here’s your reality

and here’s a bit more to get you thinking!

 

 

Checklist: Many organizations are structured for failure. Are you?

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“Failure? It’s an attitude that is often preceded by its actual occurrence” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Have you ever noticed that you are surrounded by people who seem determined to set you on a path to failure? Or who somehow seem to find joy in some weird passion to bring you down than to build things up? That’s a sad and complex reality of our world today.

It’s not just that – beyond those who pursue failure as a goal, we are surrounded by organizations and people who regularly do the things that guarantee their failure.  In that context, remember this likely reality – 50% of the companies that you see around you today likely won’t be around you in but 10 short years. Much of it has to do with their attitude and actions (or lack thereof.)

Why do organizations fail? Because inaction is in their soul They are guilty of the sin of inertia. Here’s why:

  • actions are based on lifelong lessons that no longer apply
  • variation in routine is abhorred
  • the strategies they have in place are often outdated by faster trends
  • they are structured by command and control structures that don’t allow for agility
  • outdated HR practices reward mediocrity
  • individualism is punished
  • risk is something to be feared, not embraced
  • collaboration is absent
  • corporate culture breeds change-resistance anti-bodies
  • they discount the big thinkers who are changing their industry – they think they know better!
  • they have allowed a leadership style of deferring decisions to overtake all activities
  • a belief that their company and product are invincible, and that their continued success is inevitable

The future belongs to those who are fast, and yet many are structured for slow.

Are you?

On This Day, 4/29/13 -> “Surviving the Information Age” – And Why Boomers Struggle with Tech!

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On this day in 2013, in Orlando, Florida – at the Lender Decades of Distinction event – my audience of several thousand had a huge amount of fun as I took them on a voyage into the future by looking at the past. Here’s a brief moment!

The story? It’s based upon a book my wife and I worked on together, and one which to this day I am most proud of — Surviving the Information Age.

survivingtheinformationage

Although it’s a bit dated, I still think it’s a great read! That’s because of the unique stories it shares of a generation that was often terrorized — by COBOL, punch cards, and computer mainframes.

We brought it back into print a few years ago, and it’s available as an eBook or in print on Amazon, and as an iBook for your iPhone or iPad on iTunes.

Christa and I spent *a lot* of time on research for the book, digging out articles from libraries with articles featured in Readers Digest, Time Magazine and other publications from 1960 to 1975. Unique stories on a period of time that no other generation in the history of mankind will ever have to go through..

Here’s the back jacket copy:

Whether it’s HAL the murderous computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey or billing systems demanding payment for $0.00, baby boomers have grown up with a simple message — computers are not to be trusted! We are skeptics, but let’s face it, we know our discomfort with technology is leaving us behind as the world of work and leisure changes. It’s no longer something we can afford to ignore — quite simply, we must adapt to survive the dramatic economic change arising from an increasingly wired planet.

Originally published in 1997, Jim Carroll’s Surviving the Information Age is an engaging, humorous and non-technical account of the challenges that baby- boomers faced in the early days of the computer revolution. With today’s hyper-connected world of Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, it’s all too easy to forget just how strange the early days of the computer revolution happened to be. The book takes a fascinating look back at what happened when the technology first began to invade our lives – and the challenges and opportunities that it presented along the way!

The next time you laugh at a boomer and tech, you might want to consider what they/we went through. It was pretty ugly!

Daily Inspiration: “Every time you make a mistake, you’ve actually made a direct deposit into your ‘creativity & innovation savings bank!’” – Futurist Jim Carroll

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“Every time you make a mistake, you’ve actually made a direct deposit into your ‘creativity & innovation savings bank!’” – Futurist Jim Carroll

You really shouldn’t live in fear of failure – you should be terrified of lacking in a sufficient number of mistakes to give you the wisdom of skills, the benefit of risk, the opportunity to experience. Failure is the root of most innovation, the mother of much creativity.

And yet, we’ve been taught from day one that it’s a mistake to make a mistake – that it is a sign of weakness, an embarrassment, something to be avoided. But if you look at successful people, it’s the mistakes they make that are the real sign of their progress.

And besides – failure is in the eye of the beholder! Walt Disney was actually fired from his first job at the Kansas Kansas City Star: his editor made the judgment that he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”

JK Rowling? She was broke, penniless, homeless, divorced, a lone parent – a world in which she existed while writing Harry Potter.

Fred Astaire? One Hollywood producer commented: “Can’t act. Can’t sing. Slightly bald. Not handsome. Can dance a little.”

Even Colonel Sanders, the founder of KFC, received over 1,000 rejection letters for his chicken recipe before finding success at the age of 62.

Failures? Not quite – they just never gave up.

Maybe your failure isn’t really a failure, but just an awesome stepping stone to your eventual success.

Here’s what’s good about failure:

  • you develop new knowledge
  • you learn a new skill
  • you get in-depth expertise on what works – and what doesn’t
  • you increase your ability to take on risk, which is often the root of much success
  • you simply learn by doing
  • you might ride the opportunity of serendipity, the magic of randomness
  • it gives you better insight into where you could go, rather than where you’ve been
  • many failures give you an opportunity to try again, albeit with much better insight

So keep on trying, keep on failing, and you’ll see your investment grow!

 

 

Daily Inspiration: “You need to bridge the ‘acceleration gap’ – the disconnect between the velocity of change and your ability to keep up!”

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“You need to bridge the ‘acceleration gap’ – the disconnect between the velocity of change and your ability to keep up!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

It’s big, and it’s growing bigger. And as it expands, the significance of your inability to bridge the gap is even bigger than it was before.

Do you have a strategy to keep up?

Pre-pandemic, CEOs and organizations were dealing with a world of business model disruption, the acceleration of technology, the faster evolution of key skills, and other critical issues. That was the focus of many of the keynotes that they brought me in for. Heck, just before the pandemic hit, Pfizer brought me into a senior leadership meeting in Paris for an overview of the impact of fast change, and how to align to it. They certainly get it!

Now, in the harsh light of our emerging post-pandemic world, one thing is clear – the future is even more complex than it was before. And a simple fact has emerged – there is a massive and growing gap between the speed of change and the ability of organizations to keep up. Bridging this gap is critical to future success.

The expansion of the gap exists in pretty stark terms. Medical knowledge is now doubling every 78 days, compared to 8 years pre-pandemic, rendering irrelevant previous healthcare industry strategies. We’ve gone from a world of just-in-time to just-in-case supply chain concepts because of a world of broken globalization. 68% percent of organizations have said that global pandemic has forced them to adapt and change their business models – what was disruptive before is even more so today.

The gap is growing, and the challenge is that society and organizations are not prepared to deal with the massive disconnect this presents – they are structured for slow in an era of fast That’s the ‘ACCELERATION GAP’ – it’s real, and it’s’ growing. And it’s going to hurt you going forward unless you work to minimize it. Because otherwise, leadership strategies that worked yesterday are exposed as being irrelevant tomorrow even while they are actively considered today.

What worked yesterday will not work tomorrow, and you are on a guaranteed path to failure if you don’t align with our new reality- by mastering the disconnect between speed and structure. The pandemic has changed everything, and future-oriented leadership is more important than ever before.

History tells us that every global crisis shifts the axis of the future of our universe and every crisis offers an opportunity to improve.

Bridge the gap!

 

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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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