JimCarroll

Setting the table: rapid consumer trends in the food industry

September 9, 2008 by JimCarroll

We’re witnessing hyper-innovation with packaging, design, in-store promotion, new product introductions, rapid change with branding, and perhaps most important, a massive and permanent shift of advertising and influence dollars from traditional media to the online world.

These are all themes that I will be exploring later in the month, when I provide my insight for the Food & Entertaining Division of Readers Digest, the group behind AllRecipes.com, and the magazine Every Day with Rachel Ray, among other properties, at an invitation only event in New York City.

Also sharing their insight during the Symposium will be Phil Lempert, who specializes in providing deep insight into supermarket trends, and Katie-Lee Joel, Top Chef judge and author of the book The Comfort Table.

A few years ago, I dug out the statistic that the typical shopper is so attention challenged that they are scanning some twelve feet of shelf space per second. That was a few years ago : today, their decisions on what to buy and what to eat are influenced by social networks, mobile messages, cutting-edge in-store display technology, and many other trends.

Food companies and packaging companies need to understand the rapidity and depth of the trends that are occurring — and that’s why Readers Digest chose to bring my “high-velocity change” message to the table.

It should be a fun day!

view the invite for Setting thee Table : Consumer Trends, insights and opportunities for food and packaged goods marketers

Keynote: Financial management and high velocity healthcare

September 9, 2008 by JimCarroll

I provided the opening keynote yesterday for over 275 CFO’s of the Ontario Hospital Association. Collectively, they manage over $15 billion in spending.

My topic was Innovating for Our Future Health: The Strategic Role of Financial Leadership in our Hospitals. The subtext: “A look at the new strategic role that financial professionals must play as health care comes to dominate overall GDP spending. Innovation is no longer just a fashionable phrase — it’s the new leadership focus for executives in the health care sector“.

Every keynote carries one core theme, and the message of the day was: “as high velocity change envelopes the health care sector, you must transition from a tactical to a strategic role, to provide the analysis, insight, reporting, decision support tools and financial infrastructure that can help hospital leadership make ever more complex decisions.”

A few of the key themes that we explored:

rapid scientific advance is resulting in a flood of new treatments, diagnostic tools, methodologies, pharmaceuticals, and bio-materials. There is an increased need for careful, diligent cost benefit analysis to stay at the leading, but practical, edge
simple demographics suggest that the elusive EHR (electronic health record), which has not yet been quite successful, will emerge as Gen-Connnect comes to increasingly dominate the medical workforce
business model change is coming — and fast — as retail environments come to dominate the medical space. A recent Healthcare Financial Management magazine article, in a reader survey, of the “most important people in healthcare”, ranked Steve Case first, and Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, second. Steve is involved in several initiatives which involve the opening of retail “health care stores”. The survey shows that transformative, IT driven change will continue to have profound impacts in the health care sector.
patient empowerment is leading to faster demand for cutting edge medical services, which increases the complexity of the careful balancing game underway in most hospitals
there continues to be huge opportunity with tech in the sector; it’s estimated that one medication mistake can cost a hospital upwards of $2,000 — and Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital reduced error rates by 55% over an eight month period using computerized order entry

There were a lot of other issues that were explored: but bottom line, in the high velocity economy, the role of the CFO in the hospital is set to undergo a significant tactical-to-strategic transition : one that involves in helping to balance and manage high velocity change!

read Future Medicine: Prescriptions for 21st Century Health Care

A truly staggering, transformative trend yet to unfold

September 4, 2008 by JimCarroll

It’s been announced that I will be a keynote speaker at the World HealthCare Innovation & Technology Conference, to be held in Washington, DC in December. In particular, I’ll be taking a look at the importance of one of the most significant trends that is just starting to unfold.

Twenty years from now, most people will look back and realize that right about now, we had three huge, transformative trends underway: device connectivity, geo-connectivity, and bio-connectivity

Essentially, everything around is about to become linked in — every device that surrounds your life. My home thermostat is linked to the Internet, and that has changed the scope of how I interact with energy.

Layered on top of device connectivity is spatial intelligence for each device — vis-a-vis Google Maps types of applications. Think about new forms of energy management built upon sophisticated geographic mapping applications.

Add to this the fact that this type of technology will migrate to devices that will help us better manage complex health circumstances.

I’ve been writing and speaking about the idea of bio-connectivity and the concept of “hyper-connectivity” for over a decade (before Nortel lamely built a lame marketing campaign around the latter phrase a year ago.) It remains one of the most significant trends that will yet unfold in the health care sector. Our concept of health care delivery will be forever transformed.

Simply put, link the scope of the looming health care crisis to the momentum that will come from Silicon Valley for medical device connectivity, and there are some pretty powerful things happening. Think about what happens as spatial device connectivity comes to everyday things around you — such as a baseball bat! Read more below. There’s a lot going on in this space, and you’d do well to understand it.

Opportunity through the next decade is going to be found by those who will adjust and adapt buisness models, attitudues, structures, methodologies and capabilities to this new reality.

HealthCare Innovation & Technology Conference
Read about what happens When Thermostats get connected
Read the article about bio-connectivity, The Doctor is in around the clock
Read the article Minds of their own
Read “Bioconnectivity and the rapid emergence of new markets”
Read the article Command and Control – Opportunity Awaits Companies that Master Hyperconnectivity

High velocity globalization – massive markets, major trends

September 2, 2008 by JimCarroll

I’m hitting the ground running this week, with an opening keynote presentation for a global legal firm, who are holding their annual shareholders / partners conference in Las Vegas.

I’ve got about 800 commercial lawyers in the room; many of whom are experts in very specific niches involving real estate, financial deals, intellectual property, commercial legal issues and other areas of commercial law. All of which are segments of the economy that are being impacted by high velocity change.

My talk is focused on one key trend: in order to keep at the edge of the curve, the firm will have to position itself where its clients are going. And increasingly, those clients are getting onto the globalization bandwagon — they’re focusing on the emergence of new markets, new opportunities and new economies.
And it isn’t just BRIC (Brazil, India and China) that they the are looking at, from the key trends within my keynote:

Goldman Sachs has identified that the next growth sector will come from the “Next 11” economies — those that are going to see a rapid transition and growth. These are Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, South Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Turkey, and Vietnam
Almost a billion new consumers will enter the global marketplace in the next decade …. with an income level that allows spending on discretionary goods – McKinsey
By 2013, consumer spending power in emerging economies could match the spending power of Western Europe – McKinsey
The ranks of the middle class will swell by 1.8 billion to become 52% of total population, up from 30% today – McKinsey

The law firm, which has a heavy presence in the US and Europe, will increasingly find that their clients are moving into these hot new growth markets. I’ll use as an example Molex, a US manufacturer of “electrical connectors,” who has seen results from their own globalization strategy:

80% of sales are now from abroad
they just had record sales of $3.59 billion
6-7% of sales is committed to R&D
30% of current sales comes from new products developed in last 3 years
sales are up 8.5% year over year
59% of it sales are in Asia, and 2/3 of its 59 manufacturing facilities are abroad

In other words, if your clients are aggressively globalizing, as a legal firm you need to do so as well — and do it fast.

Is there a future for associations?

August 29, 2008 by JimCarroll

Association Magazine has published my article, Metamorphosis: A Defining Success Factor for Associations.

A huge number of my keynote presentations are for professional, industry, trade or other associations. All of them are faced with some serious challenges — a decline in membership, an inability to maintain their relevance, or a lack of capability to innovate in terms of program delivery.

The article takes a look at the obvious trends which are to impact associations in the years to come. I don’t hold back any punches, opening with these words:

We know we live in a world in which new trends change everything we know at a furious pace. Rapid change envelopes us, consumes us, and pounds us with its reminders of its urgency every single day. There are many obvious trends that impact us; we often refuse or are incapable of assessing their impact.

And so the future marches on, and many associations remain stuck in a rut of complacency. They deliver the same old program. They focus on the same old issues, generate the same old knowledge, plan the same old conference, and have their agenda managed by the same old membership has-beens.

Meanwhile, they bemoan the fact that membership is declining; that the Millenials seem to have little time or inclination to join them; and that the world is just becoming, well, too complex to deal with.

So they form a committee, hire a consultant, study the issue, and lull themselves into a false sense of future-security.

By doing so, they are almost guaranteeing themselves a march into oblivion.

This article is a must read for any association executive today. Quite often, the trends that will impact us are right in front of us. This article puts those trends into perspective. In doing so, it provides a good framework as to how to start some innovative thinking in order to deal with those trends.

Read the articles

Metamorphosis: A Defining Success Factor for Associations
Are you prepared for the new role associations will play

Innovation — in the most wonderful places

August 27, 2008 by JimCarroll

Well, I’m back from summer holidays, and the keynote in Australia was a particular bit of fun. Sydney is a dazzling modern and efficient city — some of its infrastructure put other global cities to shame.

After Sydney, my family and I went up the east coast of Australia, to several locations. It was at Mission Beach — sugar cane and banana tree country — where we found local sugar cane farmers visiting the beach on Sunday, their day off.

I thought their approach and methodology to be particularly innovative! After all, you might as well use the same vehicle for leisure activities as you do for the work week.

I’m back in action, and have a heavy month of high profile keynotes coming up, on which I will post later.

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.