Jim Carroll- Futurist, Trends & Innovation Keynote Speaker

I’m delighted to be the opening keynote speaker for EdNet 2016 in Dallas — what is arguably the most important conference for education content providers.

My keynote will take a look at the future of education, and what these folks — textbook publishers and others — must do to align themselves to an era of acceleration!

Here’s my keynote description — I’ll be sure to tweet and blog more about the event.

Jim’s client list is a veritable who’s who of global leaders from various Fortune 1000 companies and organizations. Jim has shared the stage at events with President George W. Bush, Carrie Fisher, Terry Bradshaw, Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11, and Newt Gingrich, among many others. 

Sixty-five percent of the children who are in pre-school today will work in a job or career that doesn’t yet exist. Half of what students learn in their first year at college is obsolete or revised—by the time they graduate. Fifty percent of the U.S. gross domestic product will be taken up by training and knowledge activities within the decade.

With all of these changes at hand, futurist, trends, and innovation expert Jim Carroll succinctly puts into perspective both the challenges and opportunities that exist in the future for education. He will provide concise insight that links a wide variety of global social, demographic, scientific, technological, business, and other trends to the impact on education. He provides a an understanding on the velocity of change impacting the industry and why we need to rethink the context of “how we educate” in light of the realities that has knowledge growing exponentially, the foundation of knowledge generation forever changed, and global social networks challenging traditional education delivery models.

Carroll challenges audiences to think about innovation in the education sector that takes on bold goals to deal with a reality that has rapid knowledge obsolescence and emergence, the disappearance of existing careers and the emergence of new careers, an ongoing need for continuous knowledge replenishment, and the migration of knowledge generation further away from academia. There’s a massively increased challenge from overseas knowledge generation, the fast emergence of new micro-careers, an economy that succeeds through knowledge deployment, and a fundamental transformation in the role of educational institutions-and an increasing focus on “just-in-time” knowledge.

Sixty five percent of the children who are in pre-school today will work in a job or career that doesn’t yet exist. Half of what students learn in their first year at college is obsolete or revised—by the time they graduate. Fifty percent of the U.S. gross domestic product will be taken up by training and knowledge activities within the decade.

With all of these changes at hand, futurist, trends & innovation expert Jim Carroll helps some of the world’s leading educational organizations and institutions make sense of this rapidly evolving future. His clients include the American Society of Private Colleges and Universities, the Institute for Credentialing Excellence Conference, the American Society of Testing Professionals, the Pearson CITE National Education Conference, Cengage Learning Corporation, the College Board Colloquium and the National Association of College Stores.

In his keynote presentations, Carroll provides concise insight that links a wide variety of global social, demographic, scientific, technological, business and other trends to the impact on education. He provides a an understanding on the velocity of change impacting the industry, and why we need to rethink the context of “how we teach” in light of the realities that has knowledge growing exponentially, the foundation of knowledge generation forever changed and global social networks challenging traditional education delivery models. The reality is that the exponential growth of knowledge leads to massive career specialization—we are in the midst of a fundamental structural organizational and career change, and by 2020 or sooner, it will be all about “just-in-time knowledge.”

Carroll challenges audiences to think about innovation in the education sector that takes on bold goals to deal with a reality that has rapid knowledge obsolescence and emergence, the disappearance of existing careers and the emergence of new careers, an ongoing need for continuous knowledge replenishment and the migration of knowledge generation further away from academia. There’s a massively increased challenge from overseas knowledge generation, the fast emergence of new micro-careers, an economy that succeeds through knowledge deployment and a fundamental transformation in the role of educational institutions

In other words: much of the education structure that we have in place today doesn’t match the reality of what we really need to do, given the rapid change occurring in the fundamentals of knowledge—which is why innovative thinking in the field of education today is more important than ever before.

“Who is going to fix the education system so that it works for me in the future?” Think about this kid – he’s going into a world of rapid knowledge obsolescence, the rapid emergence of new careers, and an era of hyper-knowledge. I’ll cover that and more when I keynote the Association of Private Colleges and Universities annual conference in June, 2015.

University Business Magazine has run an article, “Higher ed thought leaders forecast 2015 trends: Presidents and other thought leaders look ahead on cost, technology and learning.”

They called me for my thoughts which I offered up in a concise way:

Trend: When it comes to the future of education, it’s all about “just-in-time knowledge.” Increasingly specialized careers and skills, and accelerating technological change, mean more organizations will need people who can deliver the right skills, at the right time, for the right purpose. Knowledge development and deployment will accelerate to keep up with trend.

The article offers up a good variety of opinions on the future of education; it’s an industry that is ripe for and in the middle of some pretty significant disruption. I’ve done a lot of keynotes in this space, as seen on my Education Trends page.

As I noted in one of the posts there, “In essence, we’re living in a period of time that is witnessing these trends unfold at blinding speed, all related to the evolution of knowledge.

1. Rapid knowledge obsolescence
2. Rapid knowledge emergence
3. Disappearance of existing careers due to 1)
4. Rapid emergence of new careers due to 2)
5. An ongoing need for continuous knowledge replenishment because of 1-4
6. The migration of knowledge generation further away from academia (i.e. community colleges, high end manufacturing skills) because of the need for faster new knowledge deployment
7. A massively increased challenge from overseas knowledge generation
8. The fast emergence of new micro-careers because of specialized knowledge
9. An economy that succeeds through knowledge deployment
10. A fundamental transformation in knowledge delivery

I’m thrilled to announce that my efforts to help people understand the massive transformation that is occurring in what is known as “education” continues; I’ve been confirmed as the opening keynote speaker for the 2015 Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities annual conference in Denver in June.

There are more thoughts that can be found in my PDF, “21st Century Skills”, below. Read it here or by clicking on the image.

“Skills are Experiential. Skills are Generational. One of the most important assets that a company can invest in is “experiential capital”—that is, the cumulative knowledge the company has generated through innovation, risk, failure and success. Boost that skills capability and you’ve done something that flows onto the bottom line.”

Microsoft runs one of the largest training and certification communities in the world, related to its Microsoft Developer program. And they certainly “get knowledge” ; indeed, I often use a quote from the organization that outlines their belief that in the future, half of GDP will be generated from knowledge acquisition and education.

One of the observations from Jim Carroll during his keynote: “How do we test and certify people for jobs and skills that don’t exist yet?”

That’s why I was thrilled to see that they had some representatives in attendance for my opening keynote in March for the Association of Test Publishers ; folks who manage such things as SAT and LSAT tests, and scores of technical and professional testing programs. I had about 1,000 folks in the room.

Microsoft just ran a blog post over their at their “Born to Learn Training and Certification Community” blog with their thoughts on the conference ; near the end, you’ll find their observations on my talk, which I think offer up a pretty good summary of what I spoke about on stage.

At the end of this post, you’ll find a lot of links on how I view the future of knowledge. Click on the running dude on the right for my thoughts on ‘The Future of Knowledge!”

The Changing Face of Certification, by Liberty Munson – Microsoft

The key note speaker was Jim Carroll, a futurist and author, who spoke at length about the need for our industry to look at the accelerating rate of change around us and embrace it so that our businesses are well positioned for the future.

He repeatedly said “The future belongs to those who move fast.”

Here are some of the challenges we face in the testing industry given that knowledge is being refreshed at an increasing pace and is quickly outdated:

• How might the acquisition of knowledge be measured in a way that’s both timely and relevant?
• How do we stay ahead of change? How can we be proactive rather than reactive? How do we keep our assessment content in line with those frequent changes?
• How do we test and certify people for jobs and skills that don’t exist yet?
• Today, learners want real-time knowledge ingestion based on video offerings, such as YouTube, Khan Academy, etc. because they have a desire for continuous knowledge replenishment; how do we continually update our offerings to meet this demand?

This session underscored our industry’s (training and certification) need to adapt to the lightning speed at which technology changes and how those changes are affecting our students’ and test takers’ expectations about training and exam content. As I mentioned, this theme/conversation/concern re-asserted itself through many of the sessions as testing organizations struggle with how to manage

1. the rapid speed with which knowledge and skills become obsolete, and;

1. the impact that instant availability of information has on candidate expectations (known as “finger tip” knowledge–we don’t have to know the answer…we just need to know where to find it online; in fact, research shows that if someone knows they can find the answer later, they have more difficulty remembering it but have a good memory for how to find it!).

Along these lines, more organizations are looking to gamification (game-based exams) as the next big thing in testing because it can be very engaging and new entrants (in most cases, these are those young whippersnappers just starting out in a field) are largely engrained in the gaming universe in one form or another. I find this concept intriguing and am trying to figure out how Microsoft might apply it to our certification exams. Clearly, there are many hurdles in the implementation of something like this, but the notion of gamification in terms of certification may be one way to start thinking differently about what certification means and what exams might look like.

To me, the conversations around the future of certification are the most intriguing as we explore how to meet the demands of the future and embrace the speed at which technology changes things. After all, “the future belongs to those who move fast.” What do you think the future holds for certification? Where do we go from here? What do you think changes? What stays the same?

If knowledge is doubling every eight years, no single person can keep up with it. That fosters greater fragmentation of skills, and thus greater competition in the marketplace for niche-oriented skills.

I’m working away at preparing for a keynote for an ice-cream and dairy company today. Not that this has anything to do with the topic of the “future of knowledge.”

But going through some old slide decks while preparing, I came across a list I used a year ago for a keynote that summarized my thoughts about the “future of knowledge.”

I’ve written extensively about all of these topics online or speak to them at various keynotes, particularly in the education sector. In essence, we’re living in a period of time that is witnessing these trends unfold at blinding speed, all related to the evolution of knowledge.

1. Rapid knowledge obsolescence
2. Rapid knowledge emergence
3. Disappearance of existing careers due to 1)
4. Rapid emergence of new careers due to 2)
5. An ongoing need for continuous knowledge replenishment because of 1-4
6. The migration of knowledge generation further away from academia (i.e. community colleges, high end manufacturing skills) because of the need for faster new knowledge deployment
7. A massively increased challenge from overseas knowledge generation
8. The fast emergence of new micro-careers because of specialized knowledge
9. An economy that succeeds through knowledge deployment
10. A fundamental transformation in knowledge delivery