Futurist, Trends & Innovation Expert Speaker Jim Carroll

Futurist. Trends & Innovation Expert

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You’ll Always Have the Opportunity to Reinvent! What I Really Learned from Frogs in Texas!

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It’s 2002. The dot.com collapse has happened. Business is in a funk. Nobody is making decisions about anything. Aggressive indecision is settling in. It was a pretty dismal time.

Up to that point, I’d been online since 1982. In the 90’s, I’d built a remarkable career riding the wave of the emerging Internet, providing audiences worldwide insight into the disruptive impact it would have on business, and the remarkable business opportunities it was presenting. I’d been in the media all the time; had several successful radio shows; was co-writing 34 books; I had media crews coming to my house to interview me for the national news.

And then it all came crashing down.  The dot.com collapse had the potential to kill my career.

Around this time, I had been booked to go on stage and headline a national SAP event in Toronto, Canada, my home town. I was kind of pissed off, to be honest. At my circumstances. At the disbelief in how people had lost initiative and their belief in the future.

I took the fire in my belly onto the stage.

I told a story about frogs I had seen on a road in Texas the previous week while speaking at an event at the Woodlands Resort. I made the story up on stage on the fly. I spun into the story of the frogs the problem in the world of business today. I spoke about my son and the power of initiative that I saw in him he was 3 years old. I told the audience they had to get out of their self-imposed funk.

I was probably talking to myself. I had to get out of my own funk. I was yelling at myself on stage. This is how it unfolded.

That little performance – captured above – was one of those moments that truly change my life. A fellow named Lloyd Adams – now a senior executive with SAP – saw me catch fire on stage, and immediately booked me to headline a similar event for SAP in Chicago the next week. That led to another event. Another booking. A career reinvention based on a new message. A massive change in my circumstances.

It all goes back to those 3 minutes (cut down to 2:20 for Twitter). From there, I never looked back. I turned the story of the Frogs into a book; the book into a keynote; the keynote into a reinvented career.

And listen to my closing line. “There’s lots more yet to come!” After that came Youtube, Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, #IOT, self driving cars, 3d printing and so much more. We’d barely scratched of the future in 2002.

Lesson learned: It’s never too late to reinvent. You just need the right spark! And never believe those who tell you the future has no more surprises. It always does!

Daily Inspiration: “Failure? It’s often a self-fulfilling prophecy!”

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“Failure? It’s often a self-fulfilling prophecy!”

If you are on the tee box, looking at river, pond or hazard to cross, and you think about the trouble you are in, guess what. You’ll go in!

My son would watch me at #11 on my home course, Credit Valley, where we cross a river. My entire swing pattern would change; I would tense up, wind up, try to kill the ball. I’d slice left, and donate another ball to the river-god.

I’d even start to worry about the river long before I got to the river.

And after I went in a 2nd time, I’d have to go sit on the “Bench of Shame” on #12. Kudos to @bonesstabone for naming the bench.

It took a few years, but I like to think I’ve learned to approach the hole in a very different way. Our season doesn’t start for a few more weeks yet so I’ll discover that soon.

But today, I’m playing at Doral, which is full of water. It’s mindset over H2O today.

The same type of thinking can you hold back in business and in your personal life. If you set out with the idea of failure in mind, it’s pretty likely that you’ll fail.

And yet, failure is not necessarily a bad thing, if you view it as an opportunity for learning. I’ve studied what I call ‘world class innovators’, and here are some traits that they share:

  • world class innovators fail fast
  • world class innovators who fail fast learn faster as a result
  • world class innovators who learn faster from faster failure master faster markets!
  • lesson? World class innovators master faster markets because they master fast failure!

So there are really two types of failure that you might encounter in your life: predictive obsessive failure, and experiential failure.

My golf shot over water? Predictive obsessive failure!

The hours I will invest in my short game to master bunker shots and chip shots? Experiential failure!

Daily Inspiration: Are You Fred, or George?

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“Are you Fred or George? Wilma or Jane?” – #Futurist Jim Carroll


Your answer probably matters. Are you stuck in the past when the future is hurtling at us with staggering speed?

If you follow me, you’ll know I often tell the story of the time that the Jetsons met the Flintstones. That cartoon scene defines much of the world today. On stage, its’ a significant challenge!

Today I’m speaking at a dealer meeting for a comply in the transportation space. I know I’ve got a lot of folks in the room who won’t like the inevitable trends I will talk about – #selfdrivingcars, #autonomousvehicles, #electricvehicles and more.

They won’t like it because the future represents a threat to what they sell; it involves change; it takes them out of their comfort zone. That’s a natural human reaction to change.

Some of the folks in the room will have an open mind, and will be of a mindset that they need to start aligning themselves to future opportunities.

Yet others won’t – they’ll view my message with hostility, anger, negativity. The interesting thing is that the future is going to happen to them, regardless.

I spoke about this challenge when interviewed by the Las Vegas Business Press after speaking at an economic development conference:

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“We’re going to get to the 22nd century,” Carroll said. “We’re not going back to the 1950s. There are those who say, let’s focus on coal and wave a magic wand and bring back these manufacturing jobs, which are dead gone and not going to happen. If we look at the world of manufacturing, it’s all about robotics and 3-D printing. It’s all about mass customization and about the ability to design products faster and get them to market faster and highly intelligent connected products.”

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What is your choice?

Will you hang out with Fred Flintstone while he toils away in a future based upon coal, or are you George Jetson, firmly aligned to a future that involves wind, solar, renewables, microgrid, electric vehicles?

Your answer matters!

Architect a Better Future!

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“You’ll always have the opportunity to architect yourself a better design for your future!”

Architect as a verb? Why not!

It implies an action plan on designing or imaging something – and in this case from my keynote for the Microsoft Future Now event in Toronto, Canada, a part of my opening keynote for over 1,000 IT processionals, senior executives and business strategists.

You can never run out of time nor ideas to build yourself a better future! Doesn’t that involve concepts of architecture and design?
You need a solid foundation – a grounding in the concepts that will provide you with a solid platform to deal with the rockiness of the good and bad things that might come your way.

You need a flexible structure – to deal with volatility, unforeseen circumstances, and to deal with the winds of change.

You need a good roof overhead to keep the rain out – or to keep thoughts of depression, worry and concern away!

Hokey for sure, but why not!
The thing is, when it comes to the future, you need to have a realistic perspective of where you are going and what might happen when you get there – but you also need a good structure or vehicle to get you there.

And so why can’t you architect that as a design – and use that very word as a verb?

Why Innovation Thrives in the Building of Sandcastles!

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I’ll be busy studying some key innovation issues for the next week. I have assembled a crack project team with detailed skills to assist me with my research!

Way back in 2006, inspired by similar times, I wrote about how innovation thrives in the building of sandcastles!

It was a great post — and it made it into BusinessWeek. I thought it a fitting post to leave here while I’m busy immersed in my studies. With that, here’s my list of “10 Reasons Why Innovation Thrives in the Building of Sandcastles: and What We Can Learn From Such Creativity.”

  • Hierarchy has disappeared: In most cases, there isn’t a boss, a reporting structure, or anything else that can cause organizational sclerosis. People just pitch in and do what needs to be done. The lack of a hierarchy is implicit to most successful teams.
  • Creativity is implicit: Anyone can build a sandcastle. There are no rules or preconceived notions, other than some sand and water. The same thinking should drive corporate innovation efforts. Make do with what you’ve got and what you can find, and use creativity as your main asset.
  • If it doesn’t work the first time, do it again: It’s inevitable that a rogue wave will destroy your work. This only encourages you to fix the design, or rebuild it altogether. Setbacks are meaningless, and indeed, are part of the plan.
  • Experience doesn’t cloud insight: Parents listen to kids, kids get bored and move on to another rampart and do something awesome. The key to sandcastle building is the combined insight of several different generations: likely one of the most important foundations for success in corporate innovation today. (See my 10 Ideas post for more on this theme.)
  • Everyone picks up on the passion: People just join in and help to build. Eventually beach-neighbors join in, and the growing castle becomes a big collaborative effort. Organizations that can build similar levels of interest in the concept of innovation don’t simply succeed: they exceed!
  • Feedback is instant: You know right away how well your design works, particularly if it is at the waters edge, since everyone will make a comment on it as they walk by. That parallels’ the instantaneity of today’s markets: things are changing so fast, that you must have a constant ear tuned in to understand what your customers are telling you.
  • Competition is easily scoped: Need new ideas? Want to learn from the competition? Spend a few minutes walking up and down the beach and check out the other sandcastles. Study their design, their assumptions, and see how you can improve upon them. Do the same in the corporate world: develop a finely tuned radar that signals to you how and where your world is changing.
  • No idea is too dumb: There’s not a lot of criticism and bias in the building of sandcastles. Any idea is welcomed. People can contribute the skills they have. Everyone is a designer, a builder and an owner. Somehow the combination just works.
  • The reward is clear: At the end of the day, a great sandcastle provides a sense of accomplishment. Photos are taken, and the team talks about the experience. That’s why every innovation effort needs to be celebrated, highlighted, and championed into the corporate record.
  • It’s fun: Enough said. If an organization approaches a problem the same way, innovation and creativity can thrive.

Article: Artificial Intelligence In Construction: ‘Massively Transformative’

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When I spoke in Oman last November, I spent a little bit of my time on stage talking about artificial intelligence. It caught the attention of the folks from Gulf Construction, the most prestigious publication in the Middle East when it comes to the construction industry. They asked if I might put down my thoughts on the role, impact and timing of A.I. and robotics within the industry.

AI in construction? It’s simply the next step in the digitisation of the industry. As we go down the technology path, we follow its inevitable result.

 

AI In Construction – Massively Transformative
In an exclusive article for Gulf Construction, JIM CARROLL, futurist, trends and innovation expert, highlights the far-reaching impact of artificial intelligence on the construction industry.
Gulf Construction News, January 2019 (link)

Artificial intelligence (AI), the very phrase conjures up images of futuristic mechanical brains doing all kinds of intelligent work. Scare stories abound – AI and robots are going to take away all of our jobs! Science fiction scenarios paint a picture of enslaved humans being subjected to the evil whims of smart computer technology.

[Read more…] about Article: Artificial Intelligence In Construction: ‘Massively Transformative’

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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.

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