Futurist Keynote Speaker Jim Carroll: Disruptive Trend & Innovation Expert

Futurist Keynote Speaker,  Author, Innovation Expert. 

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“When You’re Up on the Stage is So Unbelievable…. Unforgettable…”

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Jim lives on stages around the world. Here’s a sneak peak at his daily life!

Reload the page to reload the images – there’s a few thousand!

Daily Inspiration: “You are probably suffering from a high degree of shared, mutual confusion about your future!”

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“You are probably suffering from a high degree of shared, mutual confusion about your future!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

And indeed, many strategy failures come about as the result of this collaborative, self-reinforcing mutual confusion that comes about as an organization seeks to find that elusive goal: “consensus”.

Consensus! What a dangerous and dirty word, since it is often at the root of the downfall of many a great strategy opportunity!

Here’s your current reality within your organization.

There are those around you who think that the trends in front of you are not terribly significant. There is no cause for concern. Action can and must be avoided.

Others around you – including you – see these trends in more dramatic, stark terms. You understand that critical steps are needed now, and that complacency is a death sentence!

And yet, you keep this debate about these trends going on a continuous basis. Confusion settles in – are the trends real, or not? Will they happen sooner, or later? Will their impact be dramatic, or insignificant?

Overall, the collective view of the future becomes cloudy. Clarity is absent, and confusion about what comes next settles in.

The result? An overall sense of purpose that results in continual inaction.

Isn’t this is the ongoing tension that is found in many organizations?

Resolving this debate faster will do much to determine your future success, because a funny thing about the future is this – it won’t wait for you to develop an agreement. The future has no respect for concurrence. It doesn’t understand the concept of endless argument in pursuit of eventual agreement.

Sadly, I’ve learned that far too many organizations waste too much time in chasing that elusive goal of consensus. They run long, interminable meetings trying to find ‘middle ground.’ They expend significant effort in trying to find a common direction.

Meanwhile, the trend in play picks up steam, accelerates, explodes – and suddenly, all that effort towards consensus-building has been in vain. The future happens. With impact!

 

Rethinking Your Future: Linking Disruptive Transformation To Fast Trends

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For years, I’ve been describing the concept of innovation on stage with a simple structure

It’s by being focused on three questions: what can I do to run the business better, grow the business, and most important, transform the business. It’s the final issue that is so critical in today’s disruptive era.

Here I am on stage for the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs, framing this issue of disruptive transformation for them.

Youtube video

 

Daily Inspiration: “Imitation is ultimately a failure when it’s compared to the originality that lies embedded within your imagination!”

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“Imitation is ultimately a failure when it’s compared to the originality that lies embedded within your imagination!” – #Futurist Jim Carroll

Over the last 25 years,I’ve seen many cases where companies have jumped onto a trend simply because everyone else has! They’ve suddenly decided that a major disruptive is so important that they need to get onboard – without really understanding the implications of the trend.
 
Strategy that is based on “jumping on the bandwagon” is doomed to fail, for many, many reasons:
 
  • it’s lazy: true disruptive strategies takes hard work. It involves massive cultural, organizational, structural change
  • it involves an organization and leadership team with an idea that involves all kinds of radical and new ideas to deal with rapid change but is probably unwilling to do that
  • it’s a weak fix: it’s just trying to find an easy solution to deep, complex problems
  • it involves little new creativity: by linking a new approach to doing things with a “hot topic” or trend means that people end up shutting their brains down. Creativity is immediately doomed through commonality
  • it’s just a bandaid: bandwagon based actions causes people to look for instant solutions and a quick fix, rather than trying to really figure out how to do something differently
  • it’s backward: it involves putting in a solution without identifying a problem
  • it encourages mediocrity: it reduces critical strategy to an “idea of the week,” and does nothing to encourage people to really look at their world in a different way
  • it reduces action to sloganeering: truly creative people within organizations are tried of slogan-based management
  • it destroys the future: after the bandwagon effect ultimately fails (as they always do for the reasons above), people end up feeling burned out, cynical, demotivated — and they’ll be prepared to do little when the “next big thing” comes along.
Ultimately, this bandwagon thinking is destructive, because people have seen far too many ‘radical right turns’ and ‘new beginnings’ — and when they realize that their management team has jumped onto the latest hot trend, their faith and motivation goes out the window.

Transformational Leadership: From an “Innovation Expert” to a “Trends & Transformation Expert”

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Hey, notice anything new on my home page?

It went to this:

From this:

Why the change?

It’s really explained in these two videos: because my clients have been asking me to help them understand the bigger issues of transformation, rather than the small issue of innovation.

Youtube video
Youtube video

I also came to realize that much of my work over the last many years has really focused on transformation, not just innovation – such as a dinner keynote I did for NASA years ago. Read about it here.

So – get ready for transformation!

GET IN TOUCH

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.

VIEW OTHER BOOKS
Definitions: Core • Deep Dive I • Deep Dive II
Series: 2026 • Megatrends • Forward • Tomorrow