Let there be Fireworks

Innovation is no longer a destination it’s a journey – it’s such an overused and over-hyped cliché, but it’s one that gets many people to understand that we can no longer innovate solely at annual or semi annual business retreats, strategy meetings, when things have gone wrong or when the whim takes you, but rather that innovation is a constant, minute by minute, living breathing thing that must be integral to every business person and owner.

So having got that off my chest, one of the questions I get asked most often is: “How do you innovate?”.

In this month’s webinar I started a three-part journey taking the audience through my innovation program, a tried and tested program I’ve rolled out to 1,000’s of clients and audiences around the globe.

Part 1 is the non romantic and ever so important phase of getting to know yourself and what you stand for because the one thing I’ve learned over and over again is that there is absolutely no use going out and getting shiny new toys and innovations, if you haven’t got your internals working properly.

We start off with a look at what innovation is; what has caused it to speed up; the illusion that time and space are disappearing and why the best place to find innovation is where digital and physical meet.

We then traveled on to look at the roadblocks to innovation and how you overcome them including silos, fears and boxes (you’ll just have to listen to work it out), before going down the road of how to ensure innovation is always up for discussion, top of mind and drives everyone’s thinking.

My final tip in Part 1 was the question I always ask of my new clients staff and why asking that question late last year, to one client’s workforce of 900 people, brought $10.4 million worth of bottom line improvements, product extensions and fresh new thinking.

Head on to this month’s webinar (47 minutes)and as always let me know your thoughts and questions:

and be sure to reserve your spot for next month’s FREE webinar – Monday 17th June @ 1.00 p.m. AEST Part 2 – where we’ll take a look at the tools, tricks and the “meat and bones” of looking for and capturing innovation – see you then.

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…

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.

Not better or worse. Just different.

This is great summary of a keynote I gave this morning in Perth to LASA (Leading Age Services Australia) Congress on the Future of Aged Care.

Written by Yasmin Noone of Australian Aging Agenda

Aged care organisations still equivocal about embracing new technology are basically committing business “suicide”, falling out of touch with the stakeholders they wish to engage and falling way behind their competitors.

This is the view of founder and head futurist at Futurevation, Morris Miselowski, who attempted to convince a 700-strong audience of the revolutionary power of present-day technology, at the Leading Age Services Australia (LASA) Congress in Perth this morning.

Mr Miselowski said that although individuals are free to choose to adopt or reject social media networks and technological developments, businesses that want to exist beyond 2012 are not.

“We are living through the equivalent of an industrial revolution,” Mr Miselowski said.

“We don’t know it yet as we are going through it step-by-step. But one day your grandkids will ask, ‘were you around when they developed the internet?’

“So step aside and look, not just at the ordinary and the mundane, but to the extraordinary,” said Mr Miselowski.

“Social media is not just a fad. It’s a fundamental change in the way we communicate.…The conversation about whether to be in it or not doesn’t exist any more. To not be ‘in it’ now is basically committing [business] suicide.”

Mr Miselowski drew on personal and professional experience to further demonstrate his argument that the world is on the path of massive technological change.

He said he has worked in 148 different industries in more than 30 years and in that time, “not one of those industries has stayed the same”.

“The future of aged care will drastically change, not because of machines but because of the way that people will interact with machines. It will have a positive impact on care, staff and stakeholders…

“This online reality is where the evolution and revolution is.

“The next 10 years are going to be significantly different to now. It won’t be better or worse, just different.”

Historical perspective

Urging the audience to consider what life was like 10, 60 and 200 years ago, Mr Miselowski also demonstrated how technological innovations have previously evolved society.

Methods of communication have developed over time since time actually began: from drawings on cave walls, to the invention of the first-ever newspaper, to Morse code, the radiogram and the black and white television set.

Social media and technological innovations are now pushing the world forward with what are simply “new methods of communication”. And so, this social and industrial change the world currently finds itself caught within, is not really anything different to what has happened in the past.

Mr Miselowski showed a series of videos to demonstrate technological innovations over the years and how each generation had always thought that its social change experiences were original.

Two clips resonated particularly strongly with the audience. One, dating back to 1947, was an advertisement of sorts for the nursing profession. The tone, colour and style of the advertisement was extremely ‘old fashioned’.

“We saw the nursing profession in that way, back then. But I doubt we would see it that way now…With the times, we have evolved.”

The older film was set in contrast to a more recent clip with nurses singing and dancing to a promotional hip hop/rap song.

“Who are we?” the nurse rappers sung. “We will be the future of nursing.”

Mr Miselowski commented on the two eras of nursing and how sometimes, history repeats itself in the way that it evolves: “They are not better or worse than the other. They are just different.”

“Your future has not yet been written. It only exists when you create it but hopefully this will give you some breadcrumbs along that journey.”

Facing realities

Mr Miselowski stressed that the reality today is technologically advanced: it is social media. It is mobile phones. It is a series of nursing care apps, which form part of the everyday work practices of community care staff. It is telehealth, telecare and mobile technology. And it is Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram and a heap of other social media communication channels.

He said the future is aged care facilities built with virtual environments that change according to how a person wants them to change: a virtual lobby wall might turn into a virtual meeting room wall, and what seems like a pot plant on the side of the table could turn into a virtual bookshelf.

“There’s 23 million people in Australia. And there’s 30 million connected SIM cards.

“Around 60 per cent of the world’s population already has a mobile phone. In the next five years, it’ll increase to 80 per cent.

“Mobile phone [adoption] will allow developed countries to play catch up with us…So don’t take it for granted.

“Devices will drive, audit, inform and allow us to have conversations and do the care that we need to do. In our profession it will be a ‘game changer’.

“Again, it’s not better or worse. It’s just different,” said Mr Miselowski..

“When we decided to go to the moon in the 60s, there was no idea [at that stage about how specifically] to make it happen…

“The future is yet to be made.”

We know what you’re doing online

Web based email usage is down 31% amongst 12-17 year olds and up 15% amongst 45-54 year olds.

Our thirst for health related information made it the fastest rising search category in 2011 up 134%, followed closely by online retail up 87%.

The average person online spends 7.05 hours per month in FaceBook, 2.51 hours in tumblr, 1.3 hours in Pinterest and 25 minutes in Twitter.

These insights, as well as why we’re using homeless people as portable Mi-Fi hot spots and the decline of the printed encyclopedia and what that means for future knowledge quests were all part of this weeks FutureTech segment with Jason Jordan and Morris Miselowski on Perth radio 6PR.

Listen now:

and listen each Sunday at 5.05 p.m. (WST)

2012’s rising industries

This week Jason Jordan of 6PR Perth and I take a look as IBIS World’s annual predictions of the top industries which this year include diamond and gemstone mining, motor vehicle manufacturing, online education, biotechnology and online shopping.

Have a listen now:

and join us each Sunday at 5.05 p.m. (WST)

Your brain’s new world

Back in the 1950s a cinema in the US tried to push its merchandising efforts by flashing up ‘Eat Popcorn’ and ‘Drink CocaCola’ subliminally through a movie. This sort of advertising is not permitted these days — it probably didn’t work anyway — but advertisers are doing a lot more to influence behaviour using neuroscience.

This could just be the beginning of how marketers and product manufacturers start using our brain. In this edition of BTalk business futurist Morris Miselowski talks about how researchers at the Tel Aviv University have stored some of a brain’s activity on a memory chip. Imagine that, being able to dump part of your brain onto a removable drive. Or plug in the past from someone who has had a more interesting life.

It’s the stuff of science fiction novels, of course, but as we understand more about our brain the more the opportunity arises for products that interface with our brain — like driving your car just by thinking your way through. Morris calls this a brain-machine interface? Where will it all end?

(taken from BTalk)

Listen now (18 mins 58 secs):

One person has made a difference

The online virtual world most of us take for granted is only 20 years old.

In the very short space of two decades we have eagerly and voraciously moved our lives and businesses into it and become dependent on it.

Look around you and see people everywhere staring longingly at their mobile screens, checking status, checking in and checking up.

Each seems intent on their interaction, to the point where it appears to the innocent passer-by as if they are greedily sucking air from their virtual breathing apparatus.

This new online and PC world required a pioneer, a visionary.

Someone to stare far into tomorrow and beyond and see what can be done. Someone to bravely say “what if” and then see about getting it done.

In our generation that forward looker was Steve Jobs, pioneering products, brands and people.

He started Apple Computers at a time when the PC was unknown and unwanted. He built software platforms far in advance of their marketplace needs. He innovated digital films when he purchased and breathed new life in to Pixar films. He returned to Apple after his forced departure, to take an ailing almost irrelevant company to corporate world dominance, with a suite of new horizon products that include iTunes, iPhone and iPads.

Steve Job’s gift seems to be his unwavering consumer focused vision of technology and what they could become as he uncannily built category definers that would be purposeful, useful and intuitive.

He thought nothing of relentlessly driving his handpicked tribe to seemingly reach far into the future and drag back to today unseen of and unheard of technology.

His ability to make the world see the future is also clear as he regularly ignited the passion of the everyday consumer, geek and non tech ahead alike, to stand for hours outside one of his global retail stores to be the first to buy and use one of his latest who would have known I needed gadgets.

From a corporate viewpoint he rebuilt Apple over the last decade and a half to tack into the wind. To seek and desire difference in order to find market opportunity. To work for Apple requires checking in the obvious at the door and joining the Don Quixote search for virtual and technological windmills.

This and where to from here for Apple was the on air discussion between myself and Jason Jordan of Perth radio’s 6PR in this weeks FutureTech segment as we paid tribute to the life and times of a gone to soon true innovator.

Listen now:

and listen live each Sunday at 4.40 p.m. (WST)

Grow a brain!

There must be something in the water lately, because I haven’t seen so many “human brain” related stories, innovations and breakthroughs for a long time.

This week Jason Jordan of radio Perth 6PR and I chat our way through some of the new horizon research including:

1. a group of researchers at Tel Aviv University have taken the first and very very early steps towards replacing our damaged or faulty brain synaptic micro-circuitry, the stuff that stores our memories and helps pass our thoughts backwards and forwards, with a computer chip.

2. Scientists from the University of California Berkley have been able to peer inside our brain using a fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) and with a lot of calculation and effort extract moving pictures that show what we are thinking, take a look:

We also took a quick look at wheelchairs that are activated by your thoughts, Nissan working on brain assisted cars that will know what you want to do and instantaneously correlate that with the car’s activity, what’s happening around the car and up ahead and check whether that’s the safest / best thing to do; and the perennial story of the death of the keyboard and mouse as we tap into our thoughts to type and navigate our way around our computers and devices.

Brain assisted devices, synthetic brains, downloading and storing our memories are tomorrow’s frontier.

The human fascination to understand and tinker with our brains has been there for millenniums. Our understanding of the brain is developing exponentially. Technology and medicine are rising to the challenge and slowly evolving research into purposeful reality. The question is, as always, what will we do if we can ultimately alter and control our brains.

My reality is that we will not automatically all become cyborgs, fused with artificial intelligence, but rather that we will harness this new knowledge (and what is yet to be discovered) to progress our well being, health and longevity.

Doctors already routinely map our brain before during and after operations and treatments. We are already replacing worn out and defective body parts with machines – cochlear implants, pacemakers, bionic eye, stints, artificial hearts, hips and limbs.

That’s not to say we can’t, and haven’t, abused what we discover, but as always these are humans using technology for evil, not technology itself (which is benign in its dormant state) doing the abusing.

Anyway have a listen and let me know your thoughts on this “brave new world”:

and listen live each Sunday at 4.40 p.m. (WST).

Everything new is old again – CBS BTalk

In today’s podcast Phil Dobbie of CBS’s BTalk and I looks at ten things that will change our lives and businesses this year:

Hyper-personalisation
More social media
More working together
Mobile devices as personal assistants
Our mobile device will tell us more about what’s going on
More apps
Social business
Everything on the go
Pictures, worth a thousand words
More innovation than ever before

Listen now