Futurist Keynote Speaker Jim Carroll: Disruptive Trend & Innovation Expert

Futurist Keynote Speaker,  Author, Innovation Expert. 

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What Comes Next? An Outlook into 2008 and Beyond

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FutureTrends.pngAs we end the year and start a new one, it’s a good time to be thinking about some of the trends and issues which will impact us in the future.

Take a look at my newly released quick-report, What Comes Next: A Trends Perspective for 2008 and Beyond .

My message for my clients throughout the year – whether it was 2,000 executives at the World Congress for Quality, or the senior management team of one of the largest commercial construction companies in the US — was consistent. The high-velocity economy demands that we think, react, plan and manage differently.

Some of the guidance I shared with global clients concerning future trends is found in the report; I highlight what I think are some of the most important ones that we need to be thinking about, broadly defined as:

  • revenge of the math geeks
  • small is the new R&D
  • attitude and amusement is the new motivation
  • time disappears
  • resistance to change retires
  • careers end
  • knowledge & skills banks dominate
  • interactivity redefines markets

It’s an Adobe Acrobat document; feel free to grab it, share it, and distribute it!

I prepared the document on a MacBook Pro — I made the switch from Windows this year! — using the TokyoRPG Style Template for iWork 2007 Pages from KeynotePro. They have awesome styles for Pages and Keynote; if you’re an OS/X and iWork user, take a look.

  • Grab the What Comes Next PDF now
  • Learn more about iWork Themes from KeynotePro

Why Santa Rocks at Innovation!

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SantaRocks.jpgGrab the SantaRocks! PDF now
It’s likely a good time to put into perspective the critical lessons we can learn from someone who is a true master of leadership, insight, creativity and innovation.

None other than the jolly old fellow himself!

Santa is an innovation master. Analyze his leadership style, and his operational insight, motivational style, approach to creativity, forward thinking orientation, or any other management trait, and he has it nailed.

Grab this PDF file, and feel free to share it around the office or with your friends. It’s a fun little piece I wrote last year; it turned out to be a surprise hit in the blogosphere, so this year I’ve gussied it up a bit so that everyone can share.

There’s a lot of innovation stories to learn from the jolly old fellow!

Grab the SantaRocks! PDF now arrows

When thermostats get connected …..

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MSN-Connectivity.jpgMSN Sympatico, in partnership with Cisco, has launched a new business portal in which I’m featured.

I’ll be offering up my thoughts, in the form of articles and video clips, issues related to innovation, trends and the future.

In this first video clip, I talk about the unique world of massive connectivity — a world where I can actually link from my cell phone into a cottage thermostat. One of my latest columns also focused on the continued trend to a digitized home — in Home, Smart Home, I take a look at some of the emerging technologies.

That future exists today : simply look to Proliphix. Plain old furnace thermostats — except with a LAN connection built in. You can access your furnace thermostat from anywhere via your Web browser, and so you can control the heat in a cottage or other remote location. And since Proliphix has also released an API, you can write a little bit of code to access and control it through your cell phone.

This is game changing stuff — in that a simple connected device will change careers, industries, design, construction. There’s also a huge impact on energy efficiency with this type of stuff; remote control and management at the residential level will will a lot of innovative, green solutions towards energy consumption.

I will be keynoting the Plumbing-Heating-Contracting-Cooling Association’s annual Construction Contractors’ Alliance Meeting in Dallas, Texas in February 2008, taking a look at some key trends occurring in the construction industry. This type of connected device, set to become a part of our digital lives, will certainly be part of the discussion.

Related postings:

  • Article – Home, smart home
  • Proliphix web enabled thermostats

Making generations work – Cardboard people and plasma people

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Can you innovate across the generations? If you can’t — then you’ve got a big problem to fix!

I do a tremendous number of keynotes that focus on the issue of “managing Millenials,” and the complexities of change occurring in the workplace. See, for example, my blog post, “Don’t Mess with my Powder, Dude.” (below)

Yet organizations need to move beyond the staffing issues that come with new generations: they must also ensure that they can innovate at the rapid rates demanded in our new world, and they need to do that by keeping up with the new ideas and innovations occurring with younger staff.

In this video clip, I take a look at the story of the “plasma people” and the “carboard people.” Innovation occurs when different generations — with different attitudes to change — can cooperate and see eye to eye, and take advantage of different strengths. In this clip, I tell the story where this clearly wasn’t the case!

This is a video clip from a recent keynote that I gave for hundreds of executives from the grocery and consumer products industries, titled Faster is the New Fast: Innovating for the New. High-Velocity Customer. This story also became the opening chapter in my book, Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast.

 

How can you be innovative?

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innovation-insight.jpgYou become innovative by identifying obvious and not-so-obvious trends that will impact your business or organization — and then undertake change and actions to deal with those trends.

Earlier this summer, I taped a podast for Applix; they’re a business intelligence company, that was bought up by Cognos, which was then bought up by IBM for $5 billion just over a week ago.

The podcast focuses on my ideas of the need for corporate agility in the high velocity economy. I cover a lot of ground here in terms of concepts of innovation. In particular, I stress that I think a lot of organizations that I deal with aren’t really thinking about “what comes next?” – which means they are missing the very essence of how to start thinking about innovation:”

I think we’re still very short-term minded out there. I think a lot of organizations are just going from quarter to quarter.

What should forward oriented organizations be thinking about? Several things:

How quickly is our marketplace changing? How quickly are our products changing? What do we need to do from a cultural perspective and an organizational perspective, to be able to deal with a world in which our product life cycles are collapsing? A lot of organizations who don’t appreciate the new forms of competition that can walk into their marketplaces’ business models continue to evolve.

How do they do that? By making innovation core to their “soul.”

The word ‘innovation’ has to be a part of the responsibility of everybody in the organization and that’s what I find goes wrong in a lot of companies. I think what has happened is people have made innovation out to be one of these special things that it’s the people in the back room who design new products – that that’s innovation. To me, innovation is so much more than that.
(right click to download)

Health care trends and innovation

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futuremedicine.jpgI was the opening keynote speaker yesterday in Dallas for a get-together of the Strategic Marketplace Initiative. This is a group that represents a variety of health care providers and hospitals, as well as pharmaceutical companies and other health care suppliers. There were some heavy hitters in the room — even WalMart was there, which is indicative of the role it is seeking to carve out in the pharmaceutical side of things.

The group is devoted to trying to continue to improve the efficiency and quality of the supply-chain within the health care industry. My talk examined the future of health care; I’ve done such talks recently for the Blue Cross Blue Shield National Office, the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Providence Health Care and the American Society for Health Care Risk Management.

There are certainly some big challenges. Consider these realities:

  • total health-care spending – by individuals, companies, the government – reached $2.3 trillion in 2005
  • health care spending is set to double to 20% of GDP within the next 10 years
  • 400,000 nurses are set to retire by 2010
  • 76 million baby boomers will be flooding the system for care
  • lifestyle diseases wlll continue to drive stress into the system

At the same time, the health care system must innovate at a furious pace to keep up with the trends that are set to impact it in a significant way, such as:

  • the rapid emergence of new technologies
  • massive skills challenges (both demographic and scientific!)
  • new business models and “competition,” particularly as retail concepts come to the industry, and “customer” expectations continue to increase
  • combined with the rapid emergence of new knowledge, methodologies, treatments, pharma, driven by rapid science

The sad thing is that little of the political debate occurring in the US on how to fix the system has to do with the real trends which are occuring; it tends to focus only on the difficult and challenging issue of insurance and coverage.

My talk stirred a lot of debate, and was very well received. There’s an overview of some of the trends that I covered in my FUTURE MEDICINE Prescriptions for 21st Century Healthcare trends summary.

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