Our Emerging Future

All aspects of our emerging future

The Driverless Car: Fast Lanes or Speed Bumps?

Frank Diana Business , , , , ,

The driverless car is one of many emerging future scenarios that drive multiple paradigm shifts. As these shifts converge, they intensify the critical need for leaders to think differently about a world where the future arrives faster than people think. This speed is unappreciated, undermining the levels of urgency required to survive in this exponential age. I sat with Chunka Mui recently to discuss these shifts, using the driverless car to explore the challenges of our emerging future.

Chunka Mui is the managing director of the Devil’s Advocate Group, a consulting group that helps organizations design and stress test their innovation strategies. As a consultant on strategy and innovation, Mr. Mui has spent considerable time analyzing the driverless car scenario. He asked a question in his book The New Killer Apps about autonomous vehicles and what happens if traffic accidents are reduced by 90% as Google predicts. This simple question makes visible the broad and deep implications of these future scenarios. As society responds to their implications, new ecosystems emerge that alter our world. In this case, the driverless car is one of numerous components of an emerging mobility ecosystem that is defined by the responses that are playing out right now.

I will share insights from our interview in a series of posts, starting with this one. In this segment of the interview, Mr. Mui and I discussed the growing need to rehearse the future.

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Women Leadership in an Exponential World

Frank Diana Business , , , , ,

I was honored to deliver the opening keynote at the SIM Women Executive Leadership Forum on Thursday May 5th. SIM Women Founder Kristen Lamoreaux did a wonderful job organizing the program. I met some fascinating leaders that selflessly give their time to their communities and society in general. As we look at the challenges that face our world, these are the type of leaders I want to stand with. In a room full of outstanding women, I saw the leaders of our future. As our exponential pace accelerates, a gap widens between exponential progression and our linear and incremental progress. This gap represents disruptive stress or opportunity – and increasingly, it is our right brain characteristics that help determine which.

Linear to Exponential Shift

Creativity, imagination, big picture vision, emotional and social intelligence, empathy, and other human characteristics are critical to navigating in an exponential world. As automation accelerates, these human traits become even more critical. In a recent report by Citi on Technology at Work, the authors point to our propensity for social interaction, communication, and empathy being something machines can never replace. Women excel in these areas, positioning them as leaders of our emerging future. In a different Citi report on Women in the Economy, they highlight the importance of women in the labor market, where a 50% reduction in the gender gap can lead to a 5% increase in global GDP. Women are uniquely positioned to play a critical role in the digital economy.

At this SIM event, I focused on our emerging future and the unlearning that it requires. The last time we faced a similar scenario was a century ago, as a shift occurred from the steam engine era to the electricity era. That transition did not go well – something I’ll explore in future posts. We find ourselves approaching another transitory point in history. Will we learn from history? My focus remains on this transition and the mindset shift so crucial to navigating the change. This time, I believe women leadership could be the difference. You can view the presentation Here.

Our Emerging Future

Frank Diana Business , , , , , ,

In my last post, I added more future scenarios to this visual describing the complexity and impact of our emerging future. The one piece left unfinished was the expansion of innovation accelerators to include emerging and future accelerators. With input from TCS CTO Ananth Krishnan, I have added a number of accelerators to the visual.

emerging-and-future-accelerators

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Cyberwar, De-Extinction, and Precision Agriculture

Frank Diana Business , , , , , , ,
Click to Enlarge

I’m wrapping up another book titled The Industries of the Future. Author Alec Ross explains the advances and stumbling blocks that emerge in the next ten years, and describes a way to navigate them. He is one of America’s leading experts on innovation, serving four years as Senior Advisor for Innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Mr. Ross is currently a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Johns Hopkins University. His book identified three future scenarios that I have added to the visual below. These scenarios are Cyberwar, Precision Agriculture, and De-Extinction.

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The Modern Workforce: Four Crucial Shifts

Frank Diana Work , , , , , ,

Here is the summary of a recent article I wrote for the Insurance Innovation Reporter. Please visit their site to see the full Article.

Accelerating advancements in science and technology have set the foundation for massive shifts in the decades ahead, yet we continue to operate on a platform meant for a different time. This platform has hit a productivity wall, and a new emerging platform has changed the expectations of those we engage with. As they advance, these shifts will challenge our long held beliefs and intuition, while changing long standing business models across industries. In the face of this, organizations must unlearn what they know and embrace new ways of thinking. This is especially important in our approach to the workforce and the evolution of our management paradigm. How we lead the modern workforce will require change, and it starts with four crucial shifts: embrace a new way of working, move towards a collaborative management paradigm, value human characteristics, and plug into the emerging platform.

Technology, Social Change, and Future Scenarios

Frank Diana Business , , , , , ,

If we are to Think about the Future in a way that helps us thrive in that future, we must excel at connecting dots. I developed the Future Scenarios visual in an attempt to help visualize the dots, as well as the various intersections that amplify the impact of those dots. In parallel with this scenario view, I have looked at various aspects of social change that both influence and impact these scenarios – and vice versa – but until now, those views were separate. Convergence is occurring not just across the technology and future scenario curves, but also the various aspects of social change. So in the interest of maximizing future thinking impact, I have combined the two views and will describe a connecting the dots scenario. First, the new future scenario visual:

emerging-future

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The Future of the Professions: Institution 2.0

Frank Diana Our Emerging Future, Professions , , , , , , ,

In a recent book titled The Future of the Professions, the authors describe an emerging paradigm shift in what I view as The Year of Shifts. They see significant change in the way expertise is made available to society, and envision a time when professionals will no longer be the dominant interface between lay people and the expertise required to address their own particular circumstances. The main hypothesis explored centers on a technology-based Internet society, and increasingly capable machines. These machines operating on their own or with non-specialist users, will take on many of the tasks that have been the realm of the professions. They predict an incremental transformation in the short term, with an eventual dismantling of these traditional professions.

This line of thinking fits with the Structural Change enabler as viewed through the lens of transformation in the digital age. It has prompted me to add another future scenario to my scenario visual, this one labeled “Institution 2.0”.

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IoT: Unleashing the Mother of all Infrastructures

Frank Diana Humanity , , , , , , , ,

On a January 26th Game Changers Radio show, a panel of Futurists will focus on the Internet of Things (IoT) and its world changing implications. Here are some of my thoughts in advance of that discussion. I’ll start with a quote from Carl Bildt, Chair of the Global Commission on Internet Governance and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Europe:

“Very soon the Internet of Things will become the Infrastructure on which all other infrastructures are based.”

That bold statement supports thinking in some circles that a General Purpose Technology Platform (GPT)  is emerging, the foundation of which is The Internet of Things. This emerging GPT likely alters our world more dramatically than the GPTs of the first and second Industrial Revolutions:

general-purpose-technology-platform

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2016 Predictions

Frank Diana Business , , , , , , , ,

On Wednesday December 16th, I will participate in another Game Changers radio program with host Bonnie D. Graham. She will be joined by 16 guests that will share their predictions for 2016. To prepare for the show, I pulled together my predictions across six broad categories. These predictions are a mixture of leading indicators and hope. Here it goes…

Emerging Platform

Digital today has a bolt-on feel to it. Dominated by Marketing, the initial focus was channel oriented, isolated in nature, and layered on top of that which existed. It expanded to support a narrow customer experience and efficiency agenda. I say narrow, because digital is primarily applied to existing process, as opposed to leveraged to re-imagine process. As the main digital forces converge (Social, Mobil, Big Data, Analytics, and Cloud), a platform emerges to enable re-imagination. Yet Digital to date remains isolated on two levels: within company silos and across the main forces.

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Future Structures

Frank Diana Business , , , , , ,

Some time ago, I did a series on the enablers required to propel organizations into tViabilityhe future. With the passage of time, and after considerable dialog, the time has come to update that point of view. In continuing with this future of business series, the next several posts will provide an updated list and perspective on these enablers. Leaders must effectively manage the exponential forces that drive them on a path to viability. In the absence of a burning platform, the growing gap between these exponential forces and the linear constructs of our day should spur leadership action. Continue reading →

Competing in the Age of Disruption

Frank Diana Business , , , ,

This future series continues with a look at a new book by Geoffrey Moore titled Zone to Win: Organizing to Compete in an Age of Disruption. In my last post on Emerging Models, I looked at a model based on business type. The model explored by Mr. Moore is based on zones, and came to life in his work with Salesforce.com and Microsoft. With Salesforce, the model supported a focus on disruption (offense), and with Microsoft, it supported a posture against disruption (defense). The four zones as identified by the author are depicted in the visual below:

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Emerging Models for the Future

Frank Diana Business , , , ,

This future series continues with a look at a Deloitte report titled “The hero’s journey through the landscape of the future”. The report focuses on the organizational journey required to re-position for viability in the future landscape. As the landscape simultaneously fragments and consolidates, the authors see these forces and others changing the nature of relationships among businesses. A very good framework for this re-positioning is presented, along with great descriptions of the big shifts that are driving the need. The report sets the stage by identifying the main drivers of this future business landscape:

  • Pressures on companies
  • Pressures on individuals
  • Eroding barriers: Lowered barriers to entry, commercialization, and learning
  • Fragmentation: Staying niche, nimble, and small is the new goal for many
  • Concentration: Emerging scale-and-scope operators will fuel and benefit fragmentation
  • The need for mobilizers to connect and mobilize the ecosystem

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A Report on Creative Disruption

Frank Diana Business , , ,

A recent report by Bank of America Merrill Lynch sheds more light on our future focus. The authors see cyclical and secular trends transforming the world at a rapid and meaningful pace. They find a common denominator in the form of three Ecosystems of Creative Disruption, and see them reducing barriers to entry for new businesses. These ecosystems allow companies to improve productivity and time-to-market while allowing broader customer reach. In a big shift, the ecosystems redefine competitive advantage by leveling the playing field between large and small companies.  Success is therefore dictated by imagination and ability to maximize the ecosystem. The three ecosystems are:

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World Economic Forum – Deep Shift

Frank Diana Humanity , , , , , , , , , , ,

A must read on six mega-trends, their tipping points and societal impacts. I recommend this for anyone with interest in where the world is heading, and/or tasked with future thinking in the context of strategy. I commend the World Economic Forum for their efforts here, as education is likely to spur action. The six mega-trends are:

  1. People and the internet
  2. Computing, communications and storage everywhere
  3. The Internet of Things
  4. Artificial intelligence (AI) and big data
  5. The sharing economy and distributed trust
  6. The digitization of matter

Here is a tipping point timeline from the report:

Many leaders are struggling with the sheer number of future scenarios and some indication of when the tipping point may arrive. This material provides critical input into the scenario and response analysis process. Enjoy the read.

IDC Predicts a DX Economy

Frank Diana Humanity , , , , , , , ,

IDC today announced its worldwide information technology (IT) industry predictions for 2016 and beyond. The predictions were published in a new IDC FutureScape report. As we embrace the notion of Future Thinking

This forward looking guidance is critical. Here is a snippet from the report:

“The disruptive impact of digital transformation is about to be felt in every industry as enterprises ‘flip the switch’ and massively scale up their DX initiatives to secure a leadership role in the DX economy,” said Frank Gens, Senior Vice President and Chief Analyst at IDC. “In the next two years, two-thirds of Global 2000 CEOs will put DX at the center of their growth and profitability strategies. By the end of this decade, IDC predicts that the percentage of enterprises with advanced DX strategies and implementations will more than double.”

IDC predicts that the scale-up of digital business strategies will drive more than half of enterprise IT spending within the next 24 months, rising to 60% by 2020. Mastery of 3rd Platform technologies will be table stakes for successfully executing DX business initiatives and “Cloud First” will become the new mantra for enterprise IT. Virtually none of the other 3rd Platform technologies or major DX initiatives is possible in scaled-up implementations without the Cloud as the foundation. By 2020, IDC predicts that enterprise spending on cloud services, the hardware and software to support cloud services, and the services for implementing and managing cloud services will exceed $500 billion, more than three times what it is today.

Source: FutureScape

Additional predictions were provided:

  1. By the End of 2017, Two-Thirds of the CEOs of the G2000 Will Have Digital Transformation at the Center of Their Corporate Strategy
  2. By 2017, 60% Companies with a DX Strategy Will Deem It Too Critical for Any One Functional Area and Create an Independent Corporate Executive Position to Oversee the Implementation
  3. By 2018, 80% of B2C Companies Will Have Created Immersive, Authentic Omni-Experiences for Customers, Partners, and Employees; 60% of B2B-Centric Companies Will Have Done the Same
  4. The Top New Investment Areas Through 2017 Will Be Contextual Understanding and Automated Next Best Action Capabilities
  5. In 2016, 65% of Large Enterprises Will Have Committed to Become Information-Based Companies, Shifting the Organizational Focus to Relationships, People, and Intangible Capital
  6. By 2018, 75% of the G2000 Will Have Deployed Full, Information-Based, and Economic Models or “Digital Twins” of Their Products/Services, Supply Network, Sales Channels, and Operations
  7. By 2020, 60% of the G2000 Will Have Doubled Their Productivity by Digitally Transforming Many Processes from Human-Based to Software-Based Delivery
  8. In 2016, the Level of Connectivity Related to Products, Assets, and Processes Will Increase 50% for All Industry Value Chains
  9. The Sharing Economy Will Give Rise to the Networked Free Agent and Skill-Based Marketplaces, Resulting in More than 10% of Work Being Sourced in this Fashion in Mature Economies by 2019
  10. By 2018, at Least 20% of All Workers Will Use Automated Assistance Technologies to Make Decisions and Get Work Done

No Ordinary Disruption

Frank Diana Humanity , , , , , ,

In my last future of business series post, I focused on a recent book titled No Ordinary disruption. That post explored the author’s belief that our intuitions must be reset. In that same book, the authors explore what they call “trend breaks”, or shifts away from the trends of the recent past. This post will look at these breaks and their impact on 21st century organizations – and it starts with value. In the rapidly growing world of ecosystems, the way value is created and captured is changing. But, more fundamentally, even our traditional views of value are being challenged. The authors use GDP as a way to underscore this point. They estimate that digital capital is now the source of roughly one-third of total global GDP growth, with value delivered via intangible assets like Google’s search algorithm or Amazon’s recommendation engine. Even our long standing view of capital itself is shifting, as human creative capital becomes a critical source of value.

Additionally, future value increasingly accrues to consumers. In a recent article titled Why Every Aspect of Your Business is about to Change, the author talks about the destruction of value for incumbents and the creation of value for consumers in the form of consumer surplus. They use a powerful example to make their point: Skype brought in $2 billion in 2013, but McKinsey calculates that at the same time, they transferred $37 billion away from telecom firms to consumers via free or low-cost calls. Even the innovative new company only gets a fraction of the value created (Skype: $2 Billion, Consumers $37 Billion). So back to value and GDP: consumer surplus is not accounted for in the way we measure GDP. This creates two challenges: First, do we need to change the way we measure value? Second, how do companies monetize the newly created consumer surplus?

So what does this mean for the future of business? Let’s start with something right from the aforementioned book: On the first day of classes at Ivy League colleges, it was common for the dean to warn students: “Look to the left, look to the right. One of you won’t be here next year.” That seems very appropriate when looking through the lens of company viability. This real phenomenon unfolds over the next decade, driven in part by several trend breaks as identified by the authors:

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Your business is about to change – Fortune

Frank Diana Humanity

Source: Why every aspect of your business is about to change – Fortune

Great piece. This is very timely given the future of business series that I am currently focused on. The major themes:

  1. Asset heavy to asset-light
  2. Employees are the business – but you likely need less of them
  3. Winners win big, the rest fight very hard
  4. Corporate life expectancy shrinks
  5. The continued move towards a frictionless economy
  6. Speed equals survival
  7. Low capital companies out performing heavy capital competitors
  8. Growth before profits
  9. The 21st Century Corporation
  10. Competition gets tougher

Enjoy the read!

A version of this Fortune article appears in the November 1, 2015 issue of Fortune with the headline “Every aspect of your business is about to change.”

Intuition Resets

Frank Diana Humanity , , , , ,

Will our fundamental beliefs be challenged in the coming decade? In a recent book titled No Ordinary Disruption, the authors talk about the need for an intuition reset, where everything we thought we knew about the world seems to be wrong. They see our world changing radically from the one in which those intuitions that drive our decision making were formed. Skeptics abound, but I for one see the writing on the wall. In the future-of-business series kick-off, I focused on Future Scenarios as a major force in altering the future of business. Let’s continue the series by focusing on other forces.

In the book referenced above, the authors compare the coming transformative period with the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries – where one new force changed everything. As I have tried to depict in my future scenario Visual, we are dealing with multiple forces or shifts that are converging. In their analysis, the authors conclude that our world is undergoing an even more dramatic transition due to this convergence. They focus on four forces (urbanization, technological change, aging, and connectivity) and deem that any of them would rank among the greatest changes the global economy has ever seen. Compared with the Industrial Revolution, they estimate that this change is happening ten times faster and at 300 times the scale, or roughly 3,000 times the impact – digest that as you consider whether our fundamental beliefs will change in the coming decade. Here is a quote from the book: “Although we all know that these disruptions are happening, most of us fail to comprehend their full magnitude and the second and third-order effects that will result. Much as waves can amplify one another, these trends are gaining strength, magnitude, and influence as they interact with, coincide with, and feed upon one another. Together, these four fundamental disruptive trends are producing monumental change”

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Future Scenarios

Frank Diana Humanity , , , , , ,

In my recent post on the Future Business Landscape, I shared predictions pulled together by SAP. The sources for this type of information are multiplying, which for me signals the start of a growing focus on the future of business. With this post, I am launching a series that delves into what that future might look like, starting in a logical place with future scenarios. This visual representing a series of paradigm shifts has anchored my thinking for some time, and sits at the heart of this future.

 emerging-future

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The Future Business Landscape

Frank Diana Humanity , , , , , , , , ,

I expect the conversation regarding the Future of Business to intensify over the coming months. Evidence is mounting that business as usual is a thing of the past. In a recent post by SAP, they present ninety nine ways that digital will change business. As you look at the information presented, and see the number of shifts occurring at the same time, it’s hard to imagine a business landscape that weathers this storm unscathed. Here are examples of these shifts from the SAP post:

  • At the current turnover rate, 75% of the companies in the S&P 500 in 2027, will be new (companies not currently in index today)
  • By 2019, approximately one quarter of the entire U.S. workforce will be independent workers (self-employed, independent contractor, freelancer, temp contractor, etc.)
  • By 2030, 10% of the largest companies in the U.S. will be virtual corporations (less than 10% of their workers will be in an office at any point in time)
  • 50% of the U.S. Jobs lost in the 2008 recession were middle-skilled jobs, but only 2% of the jobs gained since then have been middle-skilled
  • By 2025, there will be 10 global virtual currencies that will be considered mainstream. Their combined market value will exceed $5 Trillion, and Bitcoin will still be the largest.
  • Private and commercial robot use will grow 2,000% from 2015 to 2030, creating a $190 billion market
  • By 2030, 2 billion jobs will disappear – roughly 50% of all the jobs on the planet – as a result of technology advances
  • 3D Printing usage will grow 2000% between 2015 and 2030
  • Purpose-driven and value-oriented organizations outperform their competition 15 to 1
  • By 2030, sensor use will grow 700,000%, solving nearly every human need such as cancer-killing chips
  • By 2020, information will reinvent, digitize, or eliminate 80% of business processes and products
  • Although 90% of companies view advanced and predictive analytics as important, less than 30% have currently deployed them, and only 30% have plans to do so
  • There will be more words written on Twitter in the next two years than contained in all books ever printed
  • By 2025, the total worth of IoT-enabled technology is expected to reach $6.2 trillion – most of that in healthcare (2.5 Trillion) and Manufacturing (2.3 Trillion)
  • Within the next five years, more than 90% of all data from IoT will be hosted in the Cloud, reducing the complexity of supporting IoT “Data Blending

Just a small sample (more via the link above) supporting the notion that the future of business could look considerably different than its past. I’ll pursue the future business landscape in up-coming posts.