Our Digital Future
THE FUTURE STARTS TODAY By Martin Leuw
D
o you ever walk down the road, not fully observing what’s around you? If so, there is a high probability that
at some point you will trip up or just miss something important.
It’s the same in business. When you are focused on the present, you fail to observe the changes occurring around you that determine the future.
In the early 1990’s I was a Director of a business which cleaned 50,000 telephone kiosks per week for BT. We owned the little vans that removed all the naughty adverts in the middle of the night and it was a great business with amazing profit margins. The only thing we didn’t see coming was the mobile phone. After all, they were as big as bricks at the time, hardly likely to take off? Within a few years, the business no longer existed due to the explosive growth of the palm held mobile phone. It taught me a vital lesson in assessing P.E.S.T.
Technology)
(Political, Economic, Social, risks.
The changes
around us are accelerating faster than ever before, particularly those driven by technology, as Raymond Kurzweil eloquently explains in his book The Singularity is Near.
Bill Gates explains this in a different way in Business at the Speed of Thought. Bill says “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten”. Sounds familiar, based upon most business plans I’ve seen.
So what can we do about it? At IRIS, I tried an experiment after I was introduced to Michael Jackson, a futurologist who runs www.
shapingtomorrow.com , a research business which analyses emerging trends. We held a company meeting with all 100 employees one evening and Michael did a short presentation on some future trends. Then we put people into mixed teams to think about
12 entrepreneurcountry
“Discussing new technology without
including the views of a 20-year-old is in my view, very short-sighted”
key changes they expected to see over the next 5-10 years and what they felt we should do about it. These ideas were then collated and presented back and included on-line accounting and the shift towards mobile electronic payment systems. The most enjoyable aspect of this exercise was that some of the best ideas emerged from the most unlikely people and the benefit of wide collaboration was obvious to all.
Another way I’ve had insight into the future has been at home with my two daughters, who since they were kids have embraced low cost new technology (e.g. web cam over the internet) long before me and certainly well before it emerged in the workplace. Yet, their generation are already driving the changes and expectations of both consumers and employee workplace expectations that those of us not born in the ‘digital age’ are still playing catch up with. Nowadays, anyone discussing
new technology without including the views of a 20-year-old is in my view, very short-sighted.
Is it better to be an innovator and make the ‘land grab’ or a ‘fast follower’ and grab the initiative, avoiding the innovator’s mistakes? There are many examples to prove both cases. The most important thing is to be aware of both the threats to your business and not to miss the opportunities for new growth streams or extending the life of your products and services.
Over the next 5-10 years we will see significant advances in: Alternative energy; Edible Packaging; Intelligent Clothing; 3D Printing; Mobile everything; Driverless cars; New uses of Big Data; Predictive Healthcare and many more areas. The key is to proactively spot the ones which will have the biggest impact on you and your business. Happy hunting.
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