All interaction, all the time!
Keynote: Northwest Farm Credit Coop, Spokane, Washington: Agriculture 2025
A room full of farmers and agricultural producers – and a focus on the future of the industry! My opening keynote examined genomic science, intelligent packaging, the acceleration of drone and location intelligence technology, and so much more. The agricultural industry is one of the most innovative in the world today, and yet the pace of change is relentless, and my focus was to challenge them to stay ahead of the future by focusing on opportunity!
Pre-Keynote Video: A Sneak Peak of My Topic strong>
Daily Inspiration: “Autonomy, robotics, virtualization, digitization: these are the accelerating complexifiers of your industry today!”
“Autonomy, robotics, virtualization, digitization: these are the accelerating complexifiers of your industry today!” – Futurist Jim Carroll
It seems Jeff Bezos of Amazon invented a word yesterday, and the world is scratching its head in terms of its meaning!
It’s actually a great word! It will soon increasingly be used to describe the situation of another powerful guy who will continue to see the walls come crumbling down around him & the walls closing in.
The thing is – if you become obsessive about walls, the walls will win.!LOL.
So, back to ‘complexifiers’. What a great word!
I’ve been using it on stage for years with the phrase ‘complexity partners.’ Way back in a post in 2006, I introduced a stage clip with the thought: “With the lifespan of knowledge collapsing, furious rates of scientific advance, and rapid new discoveries, no one company can do everything.” At about that time, I wrote a trends piece, “21st century skills”, and wrote about complexity partnerships: –
Complexity partnerships: in the 20th century, organizations focused on hiring the skills that they needed to get the job done. You simply can’t do that today — skills are too fragmented and too specialized. That’s why successful organizations have mastered the art of complexity supply and demand. They provide their own unique complex skills to those of their partners who need such skills. And when they are short other skills, they tap into the skills bank of their partners. By selling and buying skills with a broad partnership base, they’ve managed to become complexity partners — organizations that spend most of their time focusing on their core mission, and spend less time worrying about how they are going to do what they need to do. –
In other words, #complexifiers
The photo? It’s from a keynote in Oman for a global transportation conference. Quite simply, car and truck companies don’t have the skills they need to get to the future. They need a lot of partners.
Because, simply, the fast trends which surround them are big complexifiers!
I love karma. It’s going to be bitch for another guy soon!
Daily Inspiration: “Here’s your challenge: you need to sell a widget, but it’s not a widget anymore!”
“Here’s your challenge: you need to sell a widget, but it’s not a widget anymore!” – Futurist Jim Carroll
I’m in Nashville this morning, and in a few hours will speak to the annual sales conference of a company in the medical device industry. They sell medical devices.
At least, the sales people thought they did. They don’t anymore.
They now sell this weird, new, hyperconnected, data-driven, AI intelligent, predictive solutions oriented solutions thing.
It’s certainly not a widget.
It’s a bit of a problem, really, if you try to sell stuff but you don’t really know what it is you are selling.
That’s where I come in. I’ve got 45 minutes to take their world apart and put it back together for them.
It should be fun!
This situation is a pretty common problem. In many industries, the widget problem is driven by ‘Amazonification’ – companies need to sell something different when Amazon sells essentially the same thing but at a lower price.
Amazon is the elephant in every industry room. They are challenging and disrupting business models in every single industry.
Why not change that before it changes you? Don’t wait for Amazon to disrupt you – disrupt yourself and disrupt Amazon first!
As we witness the Amazonification of industries, deep insight into this massive-but-cheetah-like-elephant is critical, a fast strategy is required.
My key message: Don’t compete — transform!
When Amazonian scale disruption occurs, you can’t hope to complete on price, the sophistication of the online interaction, or the other areas in which Amazon (and similar disruptors) clearly excel.
You need a different proposition, different ideas and a different strategy. In many cases, this will come about through an implicit decision to compete based on the unique value you can bring to the relationship – service, support, personal interaction and other factors.
In doing so, you specifically choose to not compete based on a race to the bottom and price.
And so, you aren’t selling a widget anymore!
Daily Inspiration: “There’s still time to turn your life from monochrome to Technicolor !”
“There’s still time to turn your life from monochrome to Technicolor!” -= Futurist Jim Carroll
A shoutout to my son @wcfotography for helping me with the picture – I’m still mastering the skill of photomasks! Never stop learning, but always have a good backstop partner!
It’s an interesting stage picture. The Jetson’s TV show featured an Apple Watch, but in weird fashion, it was running an episode of the Flintstones TV show. With that, perhaps they also predicted the emergence of TV reruns, even though TV was barely in use in 1962!
With that observation out of the way – how are things? Is your life dull, routine, boring, mundane? Are your days filled with the same old, same old? Do you find yourself caught in a trap and don’t know how to get out?
Is every day the same?
It’s difficult to get stuck in a rut – and it can be excruciating, painful and exhausting as you try to get out.
But you never give up. The mark of success comes from perseverance, effort, goals, relearning and motivation.
The first step is to make a firm commitment to escape.
Once you’ve done that, you’ve made a great first step!
The rest is up to you!
Then commit to learning and relearning. “Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century” – that’s a phrase that neatly captures the reality of the fast pace of change that envelopes us.
Why not try to upgrade your skills and knowledge on a regular basis?
I don’t know how to turn a colour picture into black and white and yet keep a small part still in colour – but I’ll learn!
Why not establish some “playtime” where you try out a multitude of new technologies and ideas? Why not pursue some frivolous activities with a goal in mind – to learn something new that you’ve always wanted to know.
Maybe you’ll get some unique insight that doesn’t come from traditional, boring, staid educational programs!
And maybe, it will help you in your transition from black and white to Technicolor!
Daily Inspiration: “Defy the naysayers!”
“Defy the naysayers!” – Futurist Jim Carroll
You will live your life surrounded by people who will tell you it can’t be done. That it won’t work. It’s a dumb idea. It’s doomed to fail. You should be doing something better with your time.
Ignore them. Pursue your belief, and live your life.
We are all surrounded by those who want to kill our innovative ideas, crush our dreams, or hold us back from pursuing our potential. They live a life of negativity, viewing everything through a lens of impossible challenges, while you see the world through a filter of opportunity.
37 years ago, I signed into the online world for the very first time. I had a career path and trajectory in the world of finance, but I was intrigued, overwhelmed, and stunned by the potential world that might be found at the end of a 300-baud online connection. (Hint: look up 300-baud). I found myself becoming immersed in the world of technology and the opportunities of technology. I explored the boundaries of possibility and helped to launch some initiatives that were way ahead of their time I came up with a business-networking idea that I called LinkAge, 20 years before LinkedIn appears on the scene.
I was told I was throwing away a ‘perfectly good career’ in finance, and that I should be more cautious with my reckless ambitions.
I don’t think I listened to them. I kept on my path of discovery and my voyage of curiosity.
When the Internet finally exploded into public consciousness around 1993, I had already been ‘online’ for 11 years. During the next seven years, a friend and I wrote 34 books about the Internet and sold over 1 million copies. I found myself in the news on a regular basis, hosted my own radio shows, and carved out a career on the global stage.
Don’t listen to the naysayers. Don’t think it can’t be done. Don’t hold yourself back. Don’t limit your dreams. Don’t be negative. Don’t be small. Don’t be boxed in.
Don’t.
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