Fifty years ago, Milton Friedman announced that the social responsibility of a business was to increase profits. So was born the shareholder value era. Friedman was pushing back on dominant movements of the day: the new deal and European models of social democracy. Global inequality issues trace back to this rise of shareholder value. A recent Article explores the topic and the resulting power of the stock market. The authors suggest that while the market and the wealthy soared, consideration of the interests of workers, the environment, and consumers declined.
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The Next Generation Of Artificial Intelligence
Two recent articles caught my eye this week. One article focused on the Fourth Generation of artificial intelligence, calling it artificial intuition. The other article explores the shift from artificial narrow intelligence to Artificial General Intelligence. In the case of artificial intuition, author Mark Gazit describes how helpful AI has become, and its ongoing limitations. Machine learning is still fully dependent on historic data. New and unknown scenarios leave data scientists helpless. Mr. Gazit suggests that in order to have true artificial intelligence, we need machines that can think on their own.
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Advancing Human Development: The Catalysts Of Change
More votes have come in since I last reported on my poll. The question based on history is this: what catalysts drive human action in the future? It took two world wars and a great depression to drive humans to act in ways that prevented reoccurrence and advanced human development. In a world that looks eerily similar to that era, we once again wonder about catalysts. Here are the current results.
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Military AI Vanquishes Human Fighter Pilot
Slowly then quickly, that’s the story of exponential progression. When you reach an inflection point on the exponential curve, you reach an Acceleration of Acceleration. We have reached a point where Change has never been this Fast – yet it will never be this slow again. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a great example of this phenomenon.
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Virtual and Augmented Reality Likely To Accelerate
In early 2019, I described the Three Focus Themes for the year. They were Acceleration, Convergence, and Possibilities. Little did I know that one of those themes would factor so prominently in 2020. In a recent Presentation, Mehlman, Castagnetti, Rosen & Thomas – a full-service, bipartisan government relations firm – describes 2020 as the year where forces already in play experience a great acceleration. One of those forces is mixed reality.
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Travel In A Post-Pandemic World
There was a lot going on in the world of travel prior to the pandemic. The emerging Mobility Ecosystem built on a foundation of innovation promises to disrupt this space as the decade progresses. The visual describes some of what lies ahead (click to view in a separate window).
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Zooming Out, Then In
A recent Article builds upon my Strategy post from yesterday. Written by Colin Iles, the article focuses on the need for leaders to set their short term priorities based on expectations about what the world might look like in ten years. Often, leaders feel that ten years is too long a time horizon – but the future is approaching faster than people think. This speed dynamic forces us to embrace a New Way of Thinking, one that enables us to see the future, rehearse it, and adapt to its inevitable shifts.
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Strategy Looks Very Different In A Fast, Complex, And Uncertain World
In a recent Article, author Greg Satell describes strategy in a post-Digital world. Michael Porter positioned Competitive Advantage and dominating value chains as the foundation of strategy. Like many of our institutions and ideas, multiple forces are pushing that view into the dustbin of history. Two key forces are the shift to horizontal ecosystems versus vertical value chains, and technology cycles outpacing planning cycles. I have written extensively about Ecosystems and their impact on the value equation. Maximizing bargaining power among suppliers, customers, and new market entrants gives way to value-sharing scenarios where all participants in an ecosystem win.
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The Pandemic Is Impacting Multiple Domains
As we have seen over the last several months. COVID-19 is impacting multiple domains. I had explored the Possible Implications across these domains in a post earlier this year. The visual below reflects some of that work (click to enlarge). Now months later, we see indications of potential paths or responses.
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A Glimpse Into Your Views On Catalysts For Change
As I mentioned in a recent Post, the global pandemic has altered how we think about our world. However, one thing is constant if not amplified by it: society needs to act if we hope to shape a future that advances human development. The rapid pace of innovation – riding on antiquated institutions – required our attention pre-pandemic. In a post-pandemic world, both of those factors are amplified. The inadequacies of our institutions are more visible now than ever; and innovation that may have unfolded over years is realized in months.
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The World
When we look into the future and try to understand its path, we must consider the geopolitical sphere as a key area of influence. To that end, I just added another book to my Book Library. The World: A Brief Introduction was written by Richard Haass, an American Diplomat. Per the book abstract, The World is designed to provide readers of any age and experience with the essential background and building blocks they need to make sense of this complicated and interconnected world.
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Human Development Index
Human development has advanced considerably since the start of the industrial revolution.
Economist Robert J. Gordon describes this Human Development Journey and concludes that, as far as standard of living is concerned, we have journeyed as far as we can. While thinking about that assessment, I set out to consider this new age of great invention and its impact on human development. The result was the development of this innovation wheel (click to enlarge). -
Revisiting The Catalysts Of Change
Seems like an eternity has past since I first launched this Poll on the catalysts that drive human action. As I mentioned back then, one of our Lessons from History was the presence of catalysts that drove actions that ultimately shaped our future. The major catalysts of the second revolution were astounding levels of innovation, World War One, The Great Depression, World War Two, and the eventual democratization of innovation. The question I asked in the poll was: What catalysts force stakeholder actions that ultimately shape our emerging future?
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Is Wireless Electricity Part Of The New Energy Paradigm?
Yesterday, I wrote about the potential Acceleration towards a New Energy Paradigm.
When we consider the building blocks on the innovation wheel that shape this emerging paradigm, the change is likely significant. One such building block is the wireless transmission of electricity.This recent Article describes new innovation that enables this transmission. It was Nikola Tesla that first worked on Wireless Energy and Power Transfer. He almost succeeded when his experiment led him to the creation of the Tesla coil. It was the first system that could wirelessly transmit electricity. From 1891 to 1898 he experimented with the transmission of electrical energy using a radio frequency resonant transformer of the Tesla coil, which produces high voltage, high frequency alternating currents.
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Accelerating Towards A New Energy Paradigm
My Post yesterday revisited the intersections that shape our future. Convergence across multiple domains sets these intersections in motion. In this context, convergence refers to a virtuous cycle where events in one domain spur action in another. The great inventions (electricity, telephone, and internal combustion engine) were clustered together at the end of the 19th century, forming a virtuous cycle that drove a period of astounding innovation. Several Catalysts drove an enabling convergence across the economy, science, technology, business, geopolitics, and a broader set of societal issues.
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Revisiting the Intersections That Shape Our Future
The building blocks of our future are numerous, and they are intersecting in ways that drive rapid shifts. I Visualized this phenomenon a while back, trying to depict the complexity of our world and the challenges it represents. It was Futurist Gerd Leonhard that gave me the idea. As someone who used my Anchor Visual in keynotes, he reflected on how impactful it might be to demonstrate the convergence that was occurring across the visual.
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Why We’re Polarized
I have added a new book by Ezra Klein to my Library. The book titled “Why We’re Polarized” takes us on a fascinating journey to the past, helping us see that for all our problems, we have been a worse and uglier country at almost every other point in our history. Having said that, our current polarization has made it impossible to govern. I found his historical perspectives on the framing of our current political system very timely, and the notion that what works in one era fails in the next. The institutions, frameworks, and beliefs born in a vastly different era, struggle to keep pace in an era that looks very different.
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Considering The lessons Of History
In exploring a Post Pandemic Society, I first took a look at what we could learn from history. A recent article took a similar view. Written by Kevin Sneader and Shubham Singhal, Their Look Back at History explores the experience of Japan, the United States, and Western Europe, post-World War Two. The article explores the inclusive growth that was sustained for two decades following the war. As technologies developed for war were adapted for peace-time use, poverty, government debt, and inequality fell, while living standards improved and prosperity spread broadly.
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The Ecosystem Edge
I just finished another book and added it to my Book Library. Ecosystem Edge was written by Peter J. Williamson and Arnoud De Meyer. The move towards ecosystems as an organizing principle for market activity has been a foundational piece of my research on the future of business. You can find that research here. The book goes into depth on the what, why, and how of ecosystems. Anyone looking for detailed guidance on how to execute in this ecosystem world, this is the book for you. Supported by several real-world examples, the authors explore the different aspects of succeeding in the ecosystem world. I highly recommend the book. The abstract is included below.
Inside the Next Transition 