JimCarroll

Keynote Case Study: National Association of Landscape Professionals — An Era of Fast Ideas

January 21, 2025 by JimCarroll

Jim spoke at the NALP Leaders Forum in Costa Rica to several hundred landscape industry leaders about the accelerating pace of change in design, technology, science, sustainability and customer expectations — and what it means for the future.

The Challenge: An industry facing rapid change across design, technology, science, sustainability and evolving customer expectations.

The Keynote: Jim delivered a high-energy, future-focused keynote to several hundred NALP leaders at the Leaders Forum in Costa Rica.

The Message: Faster change brings bigger opportunities. Organizations that embrace new ideas, new technologies and new ways of thinking will lead what’s next.

Six Trends Shaping the Future of Landscape Services

AI-Driven Design — AI is accelerating creativity, helping firms design faster, visualize possibilities and deliver more personalized outdoor spaces.
Digital Twins — Virtual models are transforming how landscapes are planned, built and maintained, reducing risk and improving long-term outcomes.
Smart Machines — Autonomous equipment and connected tools are increasing productivity, improving safety and helping teams do more with less.
Horticultural Science — New plant science, resilient species and data-driven insights are creating healthier, more beautiful and climate-adapted landscapes.
Sustainable Design — Climate-resilient, water-wise landscapes are becoming the standard, creating long-term value for clients and communities.
Customer Expectations — Clients want more personalized, technology-enabled experiences, greater sustainability and outdoor spaces that enhance how they live, work and play.

The future favors landscape firms that learn, experiment and move fast.

Daily Inspiration: Leadership – “It’s easy to overpromise, but even easier to underdeliver”

January 21, 2025 by JimCarroll

“It’s easy to overpromise, but even easier to underdeliver” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Nothing great is ever achieved when the gap between expectations and reality is never closed!

Leaders can become trapped by their rhetoric – the more ambitious their promises, the more pressure they face to maintain the illusion of progress, often leading to cover-ups, denial, or doubling down on failed approaches rather than acknowledging reality. The lesson isn’t to avoid ambitious goals, but rather to maintain a clear-eyed view of actual capabilities and progress, and to prioritize honest communication over maintaining appearances.

Yet too many leaders do that,.

The situation becomes worse when the gap between promise and delivery is vast simply because of fraud, dishonesty, or plain incompetence. The fact is, leadership failures that are based on this of overpromised under-delivery aren’t just setbacks – they can be extinction-level events for organizations. Just ask Elisabeth Holmes of Theranos or Adam Neumann of WeWork.

In the next few years, we are likely to see some pretty significant expectation mismatches. It’s easy to make a promise – it’s tough to deliver on it. Particularly so when people have high expectations that will be almost impossible to deliver!

Why does this come about? In some cases, it can be due to what I call the “velocity gap” – leaders make vast promises but underdeliver because they can’t align the organization to the speed of change. In other cases, it underestimates the effort to achieve the stated goals – call that the “delivery gap.” Elsewhere, it’s an innovation mismatch – and the lack of a “perpetual innovation engine,” such that the organization is not rethinking fast enough.

The sad fact is that this mismatch can occur all too often. In the last few years, we’ve seen a fascinating example of this type of mismatch with what has happened with Sonos, the company that brought to the world one of the most sophisticated home speaker systems. They had a quality product unmatched in the industry, and a rabid fan base as a result. And yet, an entirely botched software upgrade – one that was said to be a vast improvement for the product – led to angry customers, leadership turmoil, and failed delivery. The CEO just left; the company is in shambles; and the existing customers are vastly disillusioned. The brand damage that occurred is almost immeasurable and may not be recoverable.

That type of thing can be the ultimate impact of the delivery gap – people finally see through a false promise and realize they’ve been duped.

Remember, in 2025 and beyond, the gap between promise and delivery isn’t just a credibility issue – it’s a survival metric in the age of exponential expectations!

Daily Inspiration: “On some days, focused distraction is the best action!”

January 20, 2025 by JimCarroll

“On some days, focused distraction is the best action!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Sometimes, you just don’t need to pay attention.

You can choose not to tune in but you can drop out.

Timothy Leary said that.

This can be particularly important when you don’t feel like you have any control over events.

In that case, do what you can to control the things you can. Let the rest of it go!

Here’s what I’m doing today in the home office. I’ve got a project that has me building an AI tool that will read a variety of newsletters and news articles that are sent to me regularly, and which will summarize the information. I’ve got some projects involving some cleanup of various technical aspects of my Web servers and stuff. There’s some additional research to do for a keynote that involves the landscaping industry. My wife will be working on the edits and preparation of my forthcoming Embracing Mediocrity book, and I will probably spend some time building out the Website for that.

I’ve got lots of distractions in my future today that can keep me wonderfully and blissfully distracted. What a plan!

Here’s the thing you need to think about – being distracted might be a good thing! Not only that, but planned distraction might be a great strategic idea! The very idea of “focused distraction” might not just be helpful for complicated times – it might very well be a key survival skill for the 21st-century innovation economy! After all, when things become volatile, unpredictable, uncertain and make no sense, taking time away from worry and concern, and devoting it to personal growth, might be one of the best things you can do!

Think about it: When the world throws curveballs at you (and in this era of exponential change, it WILL), you’ve got two choices. You can either let the uncertainty paralyze you, OR you can embrace what I call “productive time wasting,” investing in all the little activities that might seem inconsequential but which move you forward. And it might even be necessary to chase distraction – after all, when there is so much going on, it might be the case that sometimes your brain isn’t designed for constant, single-track focus. By strategically switching between many different activities, maybe you are training yourself for the kind of agile thinking that our world demands.

The fact is, when you feel overwhelmed by massive, seemingly unsolvable challenges, strategic task-switching isn’t procrastination – it’s an investment in yourself! You’re allowing your mindset to reconfigure, creating new pathways for breakthrough thinking and creative ideas.

As they say, you need to find the strength to accept that there are just some things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Staying wonderfully focused on distractions is sometimes a way to accomplish that!

Daily Inspiration: An Innovation Action Plan Framework – “Maybe you should do more than have a plan to create a plan!”

January 17, 2025 by JimCarroll

“Maybe you should do more than have a plan to create a plan!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

My news clipping service recently picked up this gem of insight from a Conference Board leadership survey:

“Outside of Japan, few CEOs are looking to raise prices in 2025. Instead, the focus is on innovation, tech, and product development.

Innovation leads: Worldwide, 37% of CEOs say innovation is a top priority for growing profits, followed by introducing new products/services (29%) and investing in technology, including AI (26%).”

This was a bit of music to my ears since it’s always good to see an indication that one of the most important actions for future growth comes to the forefront.

On the other hand, this took me back to my post the other day where someone commented that ‘we decided to do innovation this year,’ implying it was a one-time thing. (It’s not!). I thought it might be a good idea to look back at a lot of my guidance on innovative thinking to provide a detailed structure for organizations to pursue so that they are doing much more than talking about innovation – they are embracing it as a core value and key strategy.

Why is that? Because I have learned that many organizations when they come to decide that innovation is a priority, start to plan on what to do, but are never quite sure exactly where to start. In doing so, they often spend more time planning to have an innovation plan than actually pursuing any type of innovation activity!

With that in mind, I went back to GoogleNotebook LLM, which has now become one of my go-to AI tools, to ask it what it could find in my more than 4,000 posts that I’ve written about the future, trends, and innovation, as to what organizations should do to align to the innovation opportunity.

Given this, provide a list of 50 things that organizations should do at a strategic, planning, investment, and execution level to provide for successful innovation.

It came back to me with quite the list! I took that and had it generate a little podcast – it’s a good, quick summary of what you should be thinking about. Simply hit play!

I’m often reluctant to share a lot of AI-generated material, but this was such a good result that I thought it would be worthwhile to include it in its entirety. I also summarized this into a 4-item strategic framework.

Innovation 2025 – A Strategic Framework

GoogleNotebook LLM: Okay, here are 60 actions organizations should take to foster successful innovation, categorized into strategic, planning, investment, and execution levels, with the most important aspects in bold and a descriptive sentence explaining the importance of each:

Strategy Level

Focus on growth. Prioritize growth-oriented initiatives to ensure the organization is continually moving forward and not stagnating.
Embrace change. Actively seek and accept change, as it is a constant factor in today’s business environment, and those who adapt thrive.
Increase agility and flexibility. Develop the ability to quickly respond and adapt to market changes and new opportunities.
Establish a forward-oriented mindset. Cultivate a culture that looks to the future, anticipates trends, and prepares for what’s coming next, rather than dwelling on the past.
Re-evaluate the mission. Regularly assess and adjust the organization’s purpose and goals in light of changing market conditions, customer expectations, and emerging opportunities.
Banish complacency and skepticism. Eliminate any attitudes of resistance to new ideas and change, fostering an environment where innovation is welcome.
Shift from threat to opportunity. Reframe challenges and potential obstacles as chances for growth and innovation.
Harness external creativity. Look beyond the organization’s walls for new ideas and insights, partnering with other entities to accelerate innovation.
Build a collaborative culture. Create an environment that encourages communication and teamwork to harness the collective knowledge and creativity of the organization.
Develop a strong agility index. Measure and improve the organization’s capacity to adapt and respond to rapid change by focusing on metrics that matter.
Recognize limits. Acknowledge that no one organization or person can be good at everything and focus on areas of core expertise.
Align strategies to big bets. Prioritize and commit to strategic initiatives that have the greatest potential for significant impact and growth.
Redefine goals, establish priorities, and set targets. Create a clear direction and purpose for the organization, and set a path toward success.
Enact change. Move beyond discussing innovation and actively implement new strategies and ideas to achieve transformation.
Be relentless in customer service. Understand that customer satisfaction is paramount, and use innovation to enhance the customer experience.

Planning Level

Establish a “trends radar“. Develop systems for observing and tracking emerging trends that might affect the organization.
Re-examine business strategy. Continuously analyze and refine the overall approach to the market, ensuring it aligns with innovation objectives.
Plan for short-term longevity. Create flexible plans that can adapt to immediate challenges and ensure that the organization remains competitive for the foreseeable future.
Presume a lack of rigidity. Ensure that planning processes are flexible and can adapt to change.
Prepare for business intensity. Recognize the need for fast-paced operations and be ready to meet increased demands with quick decision-making.
Monitor global idea cycles. Stay informed about the latest developments by tapping into the global network of ideas and innovation.
Anticipate big changes. Look ahead to potential future disruptions and prepare for possible effects on the organization.
Realign innovation pipeline. Ensure that the entire innovation process from idea generation through to implementation is optimized for speed and efficiency.
Pinpoint weaknesses. Identify areas of the organization that may be hindering innovation, or that may benefit from process improvement.
Find routines and break them. Actively challenge established practices and norms to foster a culture of innovation and creativity.
Adjust to rapidly evolving markets. Develop the ability to react quickly to changes in customer demands and market conditions.
Streamline processes. Improve and simplify operations and workflows to create efficiencies that support the innovation pipeline.
Focus on the brand. Ensure the brand image remains relevant, innovative, and aligned with the needs of the customer.
Ensure supportability. Confirm that innovation efforts have adequate resources and support to succeed in the long term.
Promote more idea sharing. Encourage managers to adopt new ways of leading their teams, breaking down hierarchies, and promoting new ideas and collaboration.

Investment Level

Invest in experiential capital. Prioritize gaining knowledge through hands-on experiences, experimentation, and risk-taking.
Increase skills accessibility capability. Focus on developing a workforce with the necessary skills and access to knowledge for innovation.
Develop creativity capital. Make investments in the culture and tools that allow for creative thinking and innovation.
Pursue big math. Make use of data and analytics to identify opportunities for innovation and to drive decisions.
Forge innovative partnerships. Collaborate with outside entities to generate new ideas and extend the organization’s reach.
Leverage technology. Invest in and utilize advanced technology to improve innovation capabilities and drive efficiency
Invest in process improvement. Dedicate resources to refining existing procedures, creating an environment that fosters efficiency and supports innovation.
Actively work with complexity partners. Seek out and engage with organizations that can help with complex innovation projects.
Acquire innovative companies. Integrate smaller, innovative companies into the organization to bring in new ideas and capabilities.
Seek small heroes. Identify and support individuals within the organization who are passionate about innovation and who are making a difference.
Provide for innovation in job descriptions and compensation. Make innovation a core responsibility of all employees and reward them for achieving innovation goals.
Support risk-oriented projects. Allow for experimentation and risk-taking to foster new ideas and creativity.
Celebrate innovation efforts. Publicly acknowledge and reward innovative achievements to build a culture that values new ideas.
Prioritize learning from experience. Actively seek out and learn from past successes and failures to improve innovation processes.
Enact a “tactical to strategic transition”. Move IT and other departments away from simply tactical execution to become more strategic drivers of innovation.

Execution Level

Create a compelling sense of urgency. Make sure everyone in the organization understands the need for immediate action and innovation.
Simply do things; act now. Encourage the team to start implementing ideas immediately rather than waiting for the perfect time, with analysis after the fact.
Form fast teams. Assemble and empower quick-response teams to tackle specific challenges and opportunities.
Rapidly transition-challenged product lines. Quickly adjust and reinvent underperforming product areas to meet changing market conditions.
Ignite each spark. Empower employees by identifying and nurturing each individual’s unique talents.
Share big ideas. Create a culture of open communication where new concepts can be readily exchanged and explored.
Be big on solving customer problems. Center all innovation efforts on meeting the needs of the customers.
Focus on rapid time to market. Prioritize speed in bringing new products and services to market to remain competitive.
Ensure internal collaboration. Foster a team-oriented environment that connects different parts of the organization for innovation.
Provide for instant scalability. Design systems and operations that can be quickly adapted and expanded to accommodate rapid growth.
Ingest fast ideas. Adopt a mindset focused on rapidly identifying, evaluating, and applying new concepts.
Check speed for corporate agility. Monitor the speed and quality of innovation projects, ensuring that they are both fast and effective.
Embrace the opportunities for innovation. Have an attitude that seeks out and welcomes all avenues for innovation and new ideas.
Pursue relentless customer-oriented innovation. Constantly look for new ways to improve products and services to meet the expectations of customers.
Spread R&D out. Make R&D responsibilities not just the domain of R&D departments, but rather something that is embraced by the whole organization.

Daily Inspiration: “Admitting stupidity is a sign of strength – because it shows that you are brave enough to learn!”

January 16, 2025 by JimCarroll

“Admitting stupidity is a sign of strength – because it shows that you are brave enough to learn!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

So I came across this scientific paper which suggested that there is power to be found in stupidity.

This article seemed to fit within the vibe of what someone suggested on social media – “This weekend might very well be the last normal weekend for the next 100 years.” Though your opinion might vary, some believe we are truly entering an era of stupidity.

Eager to find some sort of upside to the downside, I eagerly read the article – and I discovered much more than I expected. Here’s what the paper suggests:

the feeling of stupidity in scientific research isn’t a weakness – it’s a necessary and valuable state that indicates you’re pushing into genuinely unknown territory. As the author says, “If we don’t feel stupid it means we’re not trying.”
research is fundamentally different from coursework because it requires confronting “absolute stupidity” – the vast realm of things we don’t yet know. Recognizing this infinite scope of unknowns is liberating because it permits us to “muddle through as best we can,” figuring things out as we go.
being “productively stupid” means intentionally choosing to be ignorant by pursuing important questions that push us beyond current knowledge. This is different from relative stupidity (just being less prepared than peers) or working in areas that don’t match your talents.
The scientific process thrives on this kind of stupidity – it allows researchers to “bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time.” This iterative process of learning through failure is essential for discovery.
Embracing productive stupidity is crucial for making the transition from being a student (learning what others have discovered) to being a researcher (making your discoveries). Key point: “The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries.”

The core message is that feeling stupid isn’t a bug in scientific research – it’s a bonus feature! It’s the necessary state of mind for pushing beyond current knowledge boundaries and making genuine discoveries! It’s the ultimate aphrodisiac for chasing new knowledge!

Believing that I’m on to something and to fit with the modern times, I dare believe that there is innovation power to be found in stupidity!

Hear me out!

In the next decade, your organization’s strategic advantage might just come from embracing stupidity!

Yes, you heard that right. After 25 years of advising global organizations on future trends, I’m here to tell you that being “stupid” – in the right way –might become a critical competitive advantage.

Why is that? Think about it – the corporate world is obsessed with being smart. But maybe that is too big a goal – maybe we should spend more time focused on our collective stupidity to become smarter. Maybe by 2030, the organizations that thrive won’t be the ones with the highest collective IQ – they’ll be the ones that know how to harness the power of “strategic stupidity.”

Why is that? Because admitting stupidity permits us to do the things we need to do to move forward. It gives us:

the courage to ask “dumb” questions
the wisdom to approach complex problems with childlike simplicity
the ability to temporarily “forget” industry constraints because ‘we just don’t know‘
the freedom to propose “stupid” solutions that just might work

This makes me wonder – might we see the rise of the Professional Idiot?

This isn’t necessarily a dumb question. It might not be a stupid idea! It might be a matter of brilliance wrapped up in the cloak of stupidity!

Think about it – maybe we will see new C-suite positions like “Chief Ignorance Officer” and “Director of Stupid Questions.” Far fetched? Maybe not – because their role would be challenging existing institutional knowledge, identifying where the organization is stupid, and as a result, helping the organization to fill in important knowledge gaps. In that way, they would be promoting the idea of “productive stupidity” as a key cornerstone to chasing smart ideas.

Here’s another stupid idea -why not actively create a “Stupidity Lab” – dedicated spaces where teams are encouraged to be deliberately “dumb!”

Why? What we can learn from the science of stupidity is that playing dumb often leads to breakthrough innovations that their “smart” competitors often miss. Science suggests that we activate different neural pathways when we are stupid compared to when we’re trying to be smart.

So that might imply we should run some “Stupid Hours” – designated times when teams are required to think like beginners, ignorant of all industry “rules.” This is the game plan – we would:

create “Designated Dummy Sessions” – Weekly meetings where only “stupid” ideas are allowed
implement “Ignorance Incentives” – Reward systems for questions that challenge basic assumptions
develop “Professional Idiot Protocols” – Frameworks for approaching problems with deliberate naiveté
build “Stupidity Metrics” – Ways to measure and reward valuable “dumb” thinking

I might be on to something, and so here is a bold prediction – by 2030, the ability to be strategically stupid will be more valuable than traditional intelligence – particularly as we get the emergence of a lot of artificial intelligence that might help us to become even more stupid that we are already! Organizations that can’t embrace their inner idiot will find themselves disrupted by competitors who can!

What does all of this mean? My tagline has long been that the “future belongs to those who are fast?”

Maybe I should rephrase it – “the future belongs to those brave enough to be stupid!”

After all, in a world where AI handles the “smart” stuff, human stupidity – with its beautiful capacity for naive questioning, simple thinking, and rule-breaking innovation – becomes our greatest asset!

Remember: In the age of artificial intelligence, natural stupidity might be your greatest competitive advantage!

Daily Inspiration: Innovation Leadership – “The difference between good & great companies isn’t when they innovate, but that they never stop!”

January 15, 2025 by JimCarroll

“The difference between good & great companies isn’t when they innovate, but that they never stop!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Over the years, I’ve had several companies come to me, seeking a speaker for a leadership or annual conference, stating that their ‘theme this year is innovation.’

I tried hard not to crack up.

As in, you only do this once?

You are going to ‘do‘ innovation and then move on to the next thing?

Shouldn’t you be innovative all the time?

I’ve always been sure that their intentions are good, and in most cases, it has been – they are in an innovative mind space and are always prepared to explore their opportunities through creativity.

But there have been many others for whom innovation seems to have been a ‘one-time thing,’ an afterthought, an item to address on a checklist before moving on to the next leadership buzz thing.

Um, OK.

The reality is this: innovation isn’t an annual event – it’s the daily heartbeat of progress that keeps organizations alive. When you schedule innovation for a conference as a one-time topic, you’ve already missed the point. True innovation lives in every moment of every day. And in fact, the most dangerous words in business aren’t ‘We’re failing,’ but ‘We’ll innovate next quarter.’ Innovation isn’t a theme – it’s the very air successful organizations breathe. The fact is, if you have to declare an innovation season, you’re already living in the depths of a pretty brutal leadership winter.

The difference between average companies and great companies is that tomorrow’s leaders don’t schedule creativity or innovation – they cultivate it in every conversation, decision, and moment. It becomes the oxygen that flows through the arteries of the organization, the very essence of the lifeblood that keeps the organization alive, beating with ideas, and bursting with the engine of possibilities.

The companies that survive don’t ask when to innovate – they ask why they ever stopped! Organizations that aren’t obsessed with relentless reinvention are programming themselves for obsolescence. They recognize that innovation is not a one-time thing, but a mindset that you live.

In that context, they continually reinvent their organizational structures to align with the pace of change, upskill their teams for jobs that don’t yet exist, and cultivate a culture where disruption isn’t just welcomed – it’s baked into every single strategic moment. Their product or service pipeline is being continuously reimagined to deal with fast-paced trends and disruptive ideas.

Here’s what you need to bake into your mind – innovation is not something that you simply drop in or do once, and then move on to the next topic.

It’s something that you become, by aligning yourself with the trends that define your tomorrow.

Makes sense?

JimCarroll

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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.

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.