Are you a fireplace or fireworks innovator? FREE May webinar invitation

Reserve your webinar spot now for Monday 13th May @ 1.00 p.m. (AEST)

Fireplace or fireworks – which describes your business and innovation thinking?

Fireplaces are comforting, once lit mostly self-sufficient; provide light, warmth and the possibility for cooking as well as offering a central mesmerizing place to stare down at and poke into.

Is this really what you want from your business? To constantly tend and feed a fireplace that absorbs you, entices you, continues to demand you stand vigilant over it at all times and forces you to rebuild it back to its former glory, every time it starts to wane or diminish.

Today’s businesses, and those that will succeed into the future, are more like fireworks, agile; scanning the sky and looking ahead; constantly predicting, changing and adapting to the environment; exponentially growing and collaboratively building towards a strategized crescendo always knowing that there is another fireworks display just over the horizon.

In the last 3 months I have worked with and surveyed thousands of CEO’s in Australia and New Zealand and found that 84% of them admit that their business, products and practices are fireplaces that haven’t substantially changed in the last 3 years with a further 89% conceding that they would like to be firework businesses, but don’t know how and where to begin.

So for all my fellow firework business owners I’ve dedicated the next three months of FREE webinars to guiding you through the how, why, where, when and who of firework business innovation.

Next Monday 13th May at 1.00 p.m. AEST we’ll start our hands-on journey together through the first of three phases of innovation and I’ll show you, give you examples of and share my tools with you as we explore how to:

1. grow a self-sustaining innovation culture and forward thinking business

2. know and harness your own unique innovation DNA

3. exploit the innovation that already exists around you

4. ask for and get innovation happening around you

5. get others to do your innovating for you, and

6. learn the only question you’ll ever need to ask to profitably kick start your innovation

RESERVE your spot NOW

I’ve developed, tried and perfected my unique secret-sauce blended innovation and foresight process over the last 32 years with solopreneuers, entrepreneurs, business owners, corporations, governments and fellow innovators around the globe and it continues to evolve and to always achieve incredible and profitable innovation and foresight results.

One of these extraordinary projects happened late last year where I embedded the foundations and seeds of an innovation culture across a client’s 900 plus employees; empowered and educated them into the purpose, imperative and methods of innovation; built transparent innovation capture processes and then set the employees free to evolve the company into what they believed it should become.

Within four months they had added $10.4 million of new thinking, products, services and changed work practices and we have only begun to stare into the sky and watch the fireworks go off.

Stop getting lukewarm by the dwindling fire and start getting exhilarated by the infinite possibilities of the fireworks, join me next Monday and let’s start innovating your sky.

RESERVE your spot NOW

Last month we had a record crowd online, so please join our ever growing tribe of Webinar Wisdom Warriors.

All you need is an inquisitive mind, a passionate desire to know what’s over the horizon and a computer screen.

click here to reserve your FREE place on Monday 13th May 2013 at 1.00 p.m. (AEST)

The third industrial revolution has begun

When we sit on the cusp of a new method of production, one that moves us beyond the production line and returns us to a bygone era of artisans, bespoke, custom-made innovation and production, then it becomes necessary to re-frame the way we think about the way we create, own, distribute and have.

In this weeks’ on-air chat with David Dowsett of ABC radio we turned our attention to the recent announcement by St Vincent’s hospital in Melbourne that within 5 years they would begin trialling 3D printing of human body organs and that within 10 years printing of human spare parts may become “normal”.

This technology has been on the rise for a number of decades but technology, culture and medical advancements are all conspiring to make this the time that science fiction starts to turn into science fact.

3D printers will, over the next decade, evolve to print cars, homes and buildings, food, clothes, furniture and so much more as we begin to “manufacture” items in situ in real-time at our shops, factory’s, hospitals, homes and wherever we need to produce or have an “object”.

The world of innovation, manufacturing, global citizen equity and the ability to “have” will all be challenged as we see industry’s emerge, industry’s disappear and billionaires created in this brave new world.

Have a listen to the live recording and then let me know your thoughts on the new world of 3D printing:

The hypnosis and neurosis of Education

There is a well-intentioned neurosis around education that seeks to justify the educational outcomes of the previous generation by imposing the educational standards, rigours and methodologies onto the next generation.

In a past world secondary education most often led to a singular qualification or vocation. This employment choice required pre-employment education and ongoing workplace informal and ad hoc education.

The norm of employment was a single linear career where the employer offered tacit certainty of life long employment and forty years of career progression at the end of which you received a golden watch for a job well done and a pension that took you into retirement and your new life.

In this world culture and society required conformity in its future citizens. It was practical in a more routine world and society to underpin education with the foundational teaching of the three R’s (writing, arithmetic and reading).

The education system of the past suited the needs of the past, but in a future where there is less certainty and rigour, where we may live to 120 years of age, work into their 80’s, have 6 distinct careers and 14 jobs in professions that we do not yet know of doing tasks we yet can’t imagine the underpinnings of education, employment and society will require innovation and invention.

The hypnosis of the future is that the workplace and the 9-5 will disappear. That the need for physical exertion and work will diminish as mechanical devices take over humanity’s chores and that instead people will spend long hours in idleness and recreation is not on tomorrow’s radar.

These are falsehoods.

The core of work and society’s need of it will still remain, but what we need to do to equip tomorrow’s workforce will have to evolve.

The workplace of tomorrow will be global, physical, virtual and digital.

Language and physical location will cease to be barriers to work.

Global qualifications and accreditations will become increasingly important as will the ability to acculturate and collaboratively work in both physical and digital work tribes.

Work will increasingly be done in project and task mode rather than in 9-5 mode and the notion of where we work will be less important than how we work.

All of this will play itself out against a backdrop where the world will add 2 billion to its population in the next four decades; see huge increases in the numbers of well-educated middle class citizens and ironically face the duality of a global skill shortage in an environment of overabundance of available workers.

In this new world of work education’s preparatory role is not just foundational, but transformational.

We must equip tomorrow’s learner s who have already outsourced the 3R’s and other routine memory tasks to external technologies and who are adapt at online research and inquiry with the fundamental skills that will extend these innate skills into vocational purpose, this new educational focus and paradigm should include a liberal dose of the 3C’s – Communication, Collaboration and Creative Problem Solving.

Education’s physical premises will also become less important as we move to multi-modality, multi-site offerings where the viewing of prerecorded lectures, deep and immersive virtual and physical learning resources are common and student-teacher engagement is a blend of physical and virtual.

These core learning instruments will be continuously added to by adaptive learning environments and technologies that constantly search out and learn the students’ preferences, abilities, needs, content being taught, required outcomes to assemble a bespoke set of hyperpersonalised education experiences with best practice learning aids and examples each flexed to the learners preferred learning styles and delivery mode.

This amorphous educational future scaffolding will include an orchestra of educators, academics, educational institutions, industry, professionals, non-academics and knowledge providers, all either physically or virtually coming in and out of the learning environment when and where required to provide real-time learning and insights in varying taxonomies, most appropriate to the learner, the task and the learners preferred style for that specific learning episode.

In this new education frontier students will use a blend of traditional learning tools as well as newer teaching tools including gamification through which they can attend digitally at physical art galleries; attend virtual foreign classrooms to learn language and culture, as well as trial complex scientific and mathematical problem solving methodologies using virtual modeling and prototyping.

The reality is that for digital and mobile natives of today and tomorrow this world already exists. It is the world that they already see and function in.

We must not take them back to a world that enshrines past skills and behaviors, that does not challenge and stimulate them and that does not adequately prepare them for the uncertainty and opportunities of tomorrow’s world. To do this is to condemn us to relive our past when the purpose of each new generation and the education system that nurtures them should be to invent our future.

Noodle making robots

Robots have long been the stuff of science fiction and many of us have grown up waiting for the day when our dreams might turn into technological reality.

In this morning’s regular look ahead David Dowsett of radio ABC and I took a look at robots and discovered that they are already here.

Telemedicine robots allows Doctors to virtually jump inside a moving mechanical device and transport themselves around hospitals and clinics engaging and treating patients along the way. Robotic surgeons use their robotic arms to accurately guide and oversee complex operations often in tandem with skilled physical physician hands. Nano robots are routinely swallowed into our body and then guided around to take internal x-rays and photographs. Robotic limbs replace lost, degenerated and non-existent limbs, as well as provide heart pumps and other life-giving robotically controlled devices.

In our offices and factory’s we see the increased use of teleworkers using robotic Segway like devices that allow executives to be in two places at once by jumping on-board a telerobot and riding it virtually around far away offices to attend board meeting in one country without ever having to leave the comforts of their own offices. Many of these devices cost no more than $250 and use PC tablets mounted on robotic shoulders and free software to see and connect you.

On our roads we can expect to see a fleet of driverless cars who know where you need to be and when, have real-time updates of the road conditions ahead and will chauffeur you to your destination in comfort and safety.

Robots are also entering the hospitality industry as noodle makers, hamburger flippers and sous chefs and in retail as clerks and sales assistants.

Robots as anthropomorphic, high functioning, independently thinking, self replicating humanoid machines are still a long way off. In theory they appear to be easy to create, but in reality are still beyond the ready boundaries of our capabilities and technologies.

There is much work being done in robotics and the most recent catalyst of this is the growth and convergence of big data, mobile technologies, changing culture and a growing appetite for robot like devices together with a practical and pragmatic future need to overcome a growing chronic shortage of workers in some industry’s.

For now, and the immediate future, we will have to contend ourselves with robots and mechanical devices that provide assistance with life and works more mundane and repetitive tasks.

Robots when they do arrive will bring with them many challenges. They will start and stop careers, industry’s and jobs. They will require us to grapple with the ethics and rights of robots and humans and make decisions that we have never had to make before as we learn to co-exist with machines.

The time to start these debates is now, for we are truly on the precipice of when not if as science fiction turns daily to robotic science fact.

Have a listen to the segment now…

3D Printing and Robots – the April Webinar

Science fiction becomes science fact in my BreadCrumb Innovation webinar this month as I finish off my series of three webinars on my 13 trends for 2013.

This month we took a look at robots in our offices, aged care facilities, warehouses, on the road and pretty much everywhere we look, and the heralding of the 3rd Industrial Revolution, the thing that will for ever change the way we see design, prototyping, manufacturing, retailing and every other thing we do and buy – 3D printing.

These horizon game changers need to be on every decision makers radar strategy screen and we must start thinking now how and when they may start disrupting and changing our world and business.

We also stopped off along the way to celebrate the 40th birthday of mobile phones and explore what this little invention has meant to the world and also chat about a couple of great teenagers with incredible innovation skills and what they’ve invented.

Have a look at this month’s webinar (47 minutes) and be sure to join me on Monday 13th May 2013 @ 1.00 p.m. AEST when I begin a series of webinars sharing the how, what, where, who and why of innovation, taking you behind the scenes of my BreadCrumb Innovation program and show you the step by step proven formula of how I bring Innovation and Foresight to an orgnaisation. click here to reserve your spot.

April 2013 Webinar – 3D printing & robots

►

Co-creation, collaboration and peer to peer – March BreadCrumb Innovation Webinar

In the 60′s we got together held hands, physically touched each other, shared and sung kumbuya. Now we digitally gather, virtually hold hands, poke each other and audition online for youtube stardom.

In this month’s Futurevation webinar we went exploring down the road of collaboration, peer-to-peer and co creation to find out we’re not alone, that there are others out there and that collectively we are more purposeful than we may be on our own.

We stopped along the way to peer into the digital store-front of a myriad of websites and apps that are beginning to show and sell these new business paradigms and thinking; one in which control is banished in favour of management, where ownership is unnecessary as long as we can share resources and where we can outsource innovation to a group of virtual strangers.

Take a look and listen at this month’s webinar and as always please share your thoughts on what you see ahead.

BreadCrumb Innovation – The March Webinar

At next months FREE webinar on Monday 8th April @ 1.00 p.m. AEST we will take a look at printing hearts, homes, cars, clothes, records and food and the rise and rise of robots and what we can expect of them over the next decade or two.

Click here to reserve your free front row digital seat now.

Can we live to 100? Do we want too?

Before we know it, living to 120 years of age and beyond will be ordinary and expected. This life extension, lived in relatively good health and independence will require us to evolve society, culture, work, family, humanity and religion.

Many of our past societal norms, rituals, work patterns, family structures and behaviors were built on a life expectancy of less than 50 years, in a world where we traveled less that 20 kilometers our entire life from where we born. Where family, village and country where all we knew and we knew that because we were told it and not because we had the opportunity to discover and question it for ourselves.

As we move into a world where living longer is the norm, where self discovery and constant questioning become the norm, where we no longer seek out the world but demand it seeks us out, everything becomes negotiable and transactional.

The notion of living with the same person for 80 years and more will be in question; families with 4 and 5 generations alive will become the norm; working to 80 years of age will become expected, but what will work be and offer, what will family mean to us, how strongly will we cling to religion as our guiding example?

The questions are endless, but have to include asking ourselves how do we feed, clothe, house, water and offer quality of life and care to a growing world population that is set to exceed 9.1 billion people in 2050?

Added to this is also the rising middle classes across the developing world who are also living 50 – 60 years longer than their ancestors, with developed nations citizens living to 120 and a generally a whole lot more people standing on the planet than we have ever had before, the choices we make today, are very different from the one’s we had to make yesterday.

In this segment on Channel 7′s Today Tonight Clare Brady and I explore what living to 100 years of age might mean for us, what sort of world may we be growing older in and what opportunities and issues may be waiting for us?

Take a look now and let me know your thoughts on the world ahead and living to 100 years and beyond.

How to live to 100

►

So, what’s new?

I love this question, it’s so open-ended and can lead to such a great discussion and that’s exactly what my friend Jason Jordan and I did last night on one of our regular catchup’s on radio 6PR’s Weeknight’s program.

We took a look at smart televisions, what they are, why they are and is it worth buying one. We then moved on to second screening which is the growing phenomenon of watching one screen (usually your television) and having a second screen (usually your phone or tablet) in your hand.

Google glasses and the rumored Apple iWatch also got some discussion as did the role and impact of technology in culture and society.

A great chat and well worth a listen and after you have, let me know what you think are the big trends, gadgets and technologies ahead.

What do Ned Kelly, Al Capone and digital wallets all have in common?

Up to this morning’s interview with Celine Foenander on ABC Local I would have said nothing, but one of the recurring questions I get asked around digital wallets is how secure they are?

The answer is very secure, because it’s in the interest of the banks and credit card providers to make it as secure as possible, but of course as secure as they make it, there will always be someone who will try to outsmart them, just like Ned Kelly and Al Capone.

We soon turned our attention to the digital wallet future; migrating our physical cards, licences, passports, airline tickets and other stuff on to our mobile phones;what and how we will use this new technology for in the very near future and whether physical cash is becoming extinct.

Another plus with this interview is that Celine thinks I’m funny, not strange funny, but ha ha funny – go figure!

Anyway, have a listen and let me know your thoughts on digital wallets, less cash society’s and whether you think you think you’ll use it or not.

Listen now:

Technology is taking over our lives

I got a call this morning from Steve Mills host of Perth’s 6PR breakfast show about a recent study that concluded that people fear that in 80 years we will have lost all human interaction and instead will be tethered hypnotically and blindly to a computer, or whatever technology becomes or is called by then.

OK, my first reaction, is step slowly away from the ledge and hide all the sharp instruments.

Do we really have so little faith in the human race that we buy all this sci fi doom and gloom scare mongering?

We have survived for millenniums and have never melded with machines before and it’s fairly safe that we won’t in the next 80 years.

The line between human and machine blurred many years ago, with every medical and scientific advancement we ever made including hearing aids, pacemakers, bionic ears and human implants, but we survive and are clearly still human.

People let’s give us some credit!

We are social, gregarious community oriented animals, who rely on each other to survive and thrive and even in our countless attempts to change and reshape human lives and society we keep reverting back to type.

Social media is a prime example of how we have been told that society as we know it has ended and with the advent of Facebook, Twitter, SMS, mobile phones, Skype and so many other on line rabble rouses we no longer have the need to physically meet one another.

This has never been more untrue, we statistically connect with each other more than we ever have before. Is it the same communication? NO. Is it better or worse? That’s the debate.

Let’s temper this debate though with the memory that nearly every form of technology that we have ever invented or innovated including Gutenberg press, radio and TV were all seen as the devils child in their formative years.

The good old days were rarely that good.

Time tends to diminish the emotion and angst we felt and instead leaves us with two dimensional memories safely preserved and packaged for all time as truths.

The future has not been written, these prophetic insights are not mandated.

The future can only be created in our hearts, souls and minds, so instead of invoking the worst outcomes let’s plan instead for a far more harmonious future, one in which we use our advancements to eradicate social injustices, we learn to tame and cure diseases and continue to remain vigilant about the the boundary’s between man and machine.

Now I’ll get off my soap box, let you have a listen to my far shorter on-air response and look out for your thoughts on how you see the next 80 years and beyond.