Why high performance organizations will thrive on uncertainty and lack of control

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I recently gave a presentation at an offsite meeting of the leadership team of a global professional services firm. I was asked to speak about the future of business, and to be provocative, which is usually my objective in that kind of situation – it’s not very valuable if you can’t get people to think differently.

I discussed the driving forces of global business, and then gave them three ‘propositions’ of how I saw the future of business. One of the three propositions, which was really the underlying theme of my presentation, was ‘High performance organizations will thrive on uncertainty and lack of control.’

When you look at what has really changed in the best performing organizations of today compared to say those of a couple of decades ago, this is at the heart of the matter. Executives used to be in control, know what was happening, and to direct the company’s activities in detail to achieve success. That doesn’t work any more.
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Future of Retail: 10 powerful trends and 1 meta-trend

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I have just come across this – an excellent resource from PSFK on the Future of Retail.

PSFK presents Future of Retail report

View more presentations from PSFK

The report covers 10 major trends:
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Crowdfunding in film takes off: the case of the attack of the space Nazis

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Crowdfunding is the topic of the moment, or maybe it only seems that way from the response to my recent posts on possible changes in regulation on crowdfunding and how the scene is developing.

Movies are probably the endeavor which has attracted the most crowdfunding initiatives, including:
– A Swarm of Angels (which I first wrote about in 2006)
– IndieGoGo (which started with films and has broadened into other creative spaces)
– The Age of Stupid
– Artemis Eternal (click on ‘Begin’ for details)
– BuyaCredit.com
– CinemaShares
and others.

Now a grand new experiment in movie crowdfunding is under way, with the Iron Sky project. The premise of this “dark science-fiction comedy” is that in 1945 Nazis went to the moon, and in 2018 they are coming back… It has all the makings of a cult classic, which is exactly the kind of movie that does well in crowdfunding. Budgets are small (compared to Hollywood), a limited pool of dedicated fans can make the venture profitable, and the crowdfunding process is integrated with building a community that will want to see the movie and spread word to their friends.

Check out the awesome trailer:

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Launch of Future of Sex: why we’re doing it

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My company Advanced Human Technologies has recently launched the website Future of Sex (futureofsex.net), which explores the intersection of technology and human sexuality.

A few people have been surprised to see us launch this site, as it is a little different from the topics we usually cover. Here is the background and reasons why we’ve launched the site.
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Video and notes on the future of the 21st century

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I spoke last night at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, to speak at the last of their GoMA Talks on the 21st century which accompany their current exhibit of 21st century art. The topic was the future of the 21st century, with panellists:

– Antony Funnell, presenter of ABC Radio National’s Future Tense
– Tony Albert, artist
– Ross Dawson, futurist
– Dr Melissa Gregg, Senior Lecturer in Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at Sydney University and author of Work’s Intimacy
– Tim Longhurst, futurist

Here is the video of the full session:

Watch live streaming video from queenslandartgallery at livestream.com

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Ketchum Webinar Series: Tapping the Power of Mobile

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Mobile is shifting to the very heart of media and content. As such, in delving into the future of media over the last few years I have had an increasing focus on the mobile landscape, how to tap its potential, and where it is going.

Starting today, I am co-presenting a three part webinar series on Tapping the Power of Mobile run by leading PR firm Ketchum. Here is an overview of the three sessions, which slices the hefty amount of content, case studies, and insights we will be covering into segments that are each self-contained, but together provide a great foundation for creating value from mobile marketing.

Below is the full description of the webinars, which are for clients and friends of Ketchum, primarily in the Americas and Europe given the session timing. Contact Maegen Noble (see the bottom of the post) for further details.

I’ll share a couple of the insights we cover in the webinar series on this blog along the way.
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Insights into the next phase of crowdfunding: tearing down legal constraints and building reputation systems

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The post I wrote on the weekend, SEC opens the gates to crowdfunding and a new structure of capitalism, was on Techmeme for over 24 hours and was ranked by Topsy as one of the 100 most tweeted links , so this seems to be a topic of general interest.

One of the best things about doing blog posts is that you uncover interesting perspectives, especially through comments and reactions to the post, and thoughts provoked by those. Here are a few follow-on thoughts and references:
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SEC opens the gates to crowdfunding and a new structure of capitalism

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This is significant. While talk doesn’t necessarily lead to action, a significant shift in capitalism could be coming.

On Wednesday US SEC Chairman Mary Shapiro sent a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa, chair of the House Oversight Committee. The letter is embedded at the bottom of this post.

Many have focused on the potential from the current SEC review to relax limits on shareholders for private companies, notably the rule that if a private company has 500 investors or more it has to disclose its finances. Changes to this and related rules could have a significant impact on capital raising for private companies.

Few seem to have focused on what I think is potentially a bigger issue from the SEC moves: opening up crowdfunding as a mechanism for equity investment. The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece called SEC Boots Up for the Internet Age. The article begins:
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Is this overload? 9.57 zettabytes of information flows in the world’s enterprises

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A recent report titled How Much Information? 2010 Enterprise Server Information written by several UC – San Diego academics says that in 2008 the world’s servers processed 9.57 zettabytes (zettabyte = 10 to the power of 21), or 9,570,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.

A couple of analogies from Physorg illustrate these amounts:

* 9.57 zettabytes is equivalent of a 5.6-billion-mile-high stack of books from Earth to Neptune and back to Earth, repeated about 20 times a year.

* By 2024 the world’s enterprise servers will annually process the digital equivalent of a stack of books extending more than 4.37 light-years to Alpha Centauri, our closest neighboring star system.

This is 12GB of information daily per worker, or 3TB per year. Another study showed that American households consumed 3.6 zettabytes of information in 2008, or around 10TB per individual. (Note that not all of the 3.18 billion workers covered in this study work in information-intensive industries or countries.)


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Risks to Gartner’s smartphone forecasts: will Microsoft beat Apple, Nokia execute, and Samsung fail?

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Gartner has just released some very interesting forecasts for smartphone operating system sales until 2015, as below.

In an nutshell, they predict that in 2015 Android will take almost half the market, at 48.8%, and that Microsoft will overtake Apple, with 19.5% share compared to 17.2% for iOS. Nokia’s Symbian platform will fade to virtually nothing, while Research in Motion’s Blackberry will decline somewhat in market share to

The most interesting commentary I’ve seen so far on these predictions comes from Horace Dediu at Asymco, Kevin Tofel at GigaOM, and Larry Dignan at ZDNet.

To take just a few of the many things that could be said about these forecasts:
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