“The jet lag experienced by a futurist doesn’t involve just a few hours of time differences – but rather several decades!” – Futurist Jim Carroll
Keynote: Genentech, San Francisco : The Acceleration of Personalized Medicine in the Era of Exponential Genomics
This event was for 550 executives from this pharma-tech company — it’s owned by French pharmaceutical giant Roche. It’s also one of the global leaders in the business of pharmacogenetics : that is, the development of highly targeted drug therapies based on particular genetic profiles.
My keynote took a look at the future of healthcare and the big transformative opportunities that exist in a world of accelerated science. The topic strikes close to home for me : I’ve had my own genetic profile done (the news is all good!)
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Lessons from My Youngest Son: Taking Initiative!
My youngest son Tom turns 22 today. Time flies!
Both of my sons have been a huge inspiration to me on my approach to life, innovation, the future and trends — I know they live in a world that is completely different than my own, as they’ve grown up in a world of fast, relentless technology. This is caught, for example, in a stage story I often tell about Things from the Olden Days.
For many years, I told the story on stage of Tom and his hockey blocker. You see, when he was 3, he wanted one (a goalie blocker glove). We explained to him that we wouldn’t just go and buy one at the spur of a moment…
So he made his own. Out of a cereal box. What an inspiration! He kept and used it for two years, until it was absolutely falling apart.
Around that time, I often used Tom and the story of his hockey blocker as part of my “What I Learned from Frogs in Texas” story — which eventually became a book of the same title. His part in the story was the power of initiative, determination and action. It remains for me a powerful lesson.
Happy birthday Tom! Always make sure that you construct the hockey blockers in your life – and always take the initiative!
Daily Inspiration: “Don’t fall into the trap of thinking it can’t be done – figure out a way to do it!”
“Don’t fall into the trap of thinking it can’t be done – figure out a way to do it!”– Futurist Jim Carroll
Daily Inspiration: “Imagination is exercise for the mind”
“Imagination is exercise for the mind” – Futurist Jim Carroll
Daily Inspiration: “Those Who Succeed Possess a Daring Need for Speed!”
“Those who succeed possess a daring need for speed!” – Jim Carroll
One of my key themes through the years has been that “faster is the new fast” — that the biggest challenge that organizations must face is how to keep up with the high-velocity economy.
I’m now observing that in many markets and industries, the pace of change is so fast that we need to put in place a senior executive whose sole area of responsibility is ensuring that the organization can keep up with ever-increasing rates of change. Let’s say — a Chief Momentum Officer.
Organizations need to adapt to all kinds of different issues when it comes to the velocity of change: rapidly changing business models, the emergence of new competitors, ever-shrinking product life-cycles, a faster pace of new product development, furious rates of technological innovation, furiously fast new trends in terms of customer interaction, the decreasing shelf-life of knowledge and the more rapid emergence of specialized skills: the list could go on!
Hence, a need for someone who aligns all of the moving parts of the organization to high-velocity change! This individual will carry a number of responsibilities, such as:
- managing the product innovation pipeline, so that the organization has a constant supply of new, innovative products, as existing products become obsolete, marginalized, or unprofitable
- managing the talent pipeline, so that the organization has the ability to quickly ingest all kinds of specialized new skills
- managing the technology pipeline, so that the organization can adapt itself to constantly improving and ever-more sophisticated IT tools that will help to better manage, run, grow and transform the business
- maintain and continually enhance brand and corporate image; as I’ve written here many times before, brands can become “tired” and irrelevant if they aren’t continually freshened and refreshed
- ensuring that the organization is continuing to explore new areas for opportunity and that it has the right degrees of innovation momentum
- that the business processes and structure of the organization are fine-tuned on a continuous basis so that it can keep up with all the fast-change swirling around it
- ensuring that a sufficient number of “experiential” programs are underway with respect to the product, branding, markets, and other areas so that the overall expertise level of the organization is continually enhanced
In other words, the CMO has two key responsibilities:
- keeping a fine-tuned eye on the trends which will impact the organization in the future, and which will serve to increase the velocity that the organization is subjected to and;
- keeping their hands on the appropriate levers throughout the organization such that it can keep evolving at the pace that these future trends will demand.
I don’t know if that makes perfect sense, but I think it’s a good issue to think about.
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