New visual framework: Creating the Future of PR in a rapidly changing world

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In 2006 I wrote a popular article Six Facets of the Future of PR, which concluded:

We are entering a world in which the flow of information and perceptions will drive much of the value creation in a highly networked global economy. The PR industry should be looking forward to a time of massive prosperity, in which it extends itself to play in entirely new fields of media and communication. Yet many of the existing participants will need to adopt a new stance and actively develop new skills to do this effectively. Those that re-conceive their role and potential impact, could well be masters of the universe.

As I anticipated, as the marketing and PR landscape has evolved over the last dozen years, some firms that were traditionally in the PR space have been very successful in transitioning to a new positioning, while others have been left far behind in a rapidly changing world.
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Be your own futurist: imagine a new landscape and reinvent yourself

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The latest issue of Business View magazine, themed The Future of Business, includes a concluding article that distills key points from an interview with me.

Click on the article image left to expand or read below.

We all need to be futurists

Change is all around and it’s getting faster. The chairman of think-tank Future Exploration Network says the most successful businesses of the future will be those that embrace change and are genuinely excited about innovation.

Futurist, keynote speaker and business strategist Ross Dawson has consulted for global organisations including Ernst & Young and Procter & Gamble. He outlines how today’s business leaders can set themselves up to thrive on what could be a disruptive road ahead.
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The power of the supplier diversity movement and its compelling future

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By now we have extensive evidence that supporting diversity in society and business is not just the right thing to do, it significantly improves outcomes.

In organizations a primary focus of diversity and inclusion initiatives is of course on employees, senior management, and board members. However for many sound reasons it is also critical to focus on diversity of suppliers.

As such I was deeply honored to give the closing keynote at the annual Supply Nation Connect Conference last week in Sydney.
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How virtual assistants will build knowledge-based relationships based on trust

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I was recently interviewed for an article in CMO.com on major trends for marketers in the mobile space.

In the interview I discussed the role and scope of digital assistants, though just a few of my more prosaic comments that relate to marketing were quoted.
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Exploring the Future Ep8: Platform strategy as enabling ecosystems

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My latest vlog was made at the EU Cloud Stakeholder Summit in Vienna, where I gave a keynote on Platform Strategy.

In the vlog I discuss the idea of platforms as trust-enabled ecosystems, which I believe is an important frame for how we think strategically about the power of platforms. See here for more on platform strategy and the framework I released at the summit.

Transcript below.

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Why a future of efficient capital markets matters and how we’ll get there

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I recently gave a keynote in Dubai at The World in the Future conference, organised by the Ministry of Finance as part of the Dubai government’s Innovation Month. The event timeframe was 30 years in the future, showing an appetite for foresight very unusual from governments.

The event kickoff brought together three featured speakers – physicist and futurist Michio Kaku, trend watcher Daniel Levine, and myself – who each delivered a keynote and then joined a panel discussion.
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The end-game of AI-based assistants is becoming everyone’s assistant for everything

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I was recently interviewed for an interesting article in CEO Magazine titled Virtual PAs: Are they the ideal helpers for today’s business elite?

The article delves into the emerging range of AI-based virtual assistants such as x.ai and Evie as well as related offerings such as personalized chatbots.
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Directing Innovation: Course for company directors to keep ahead of disruption

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For many years I have been working with company directors on framing and driving innovation in their organizations.

From this March I will be applying this experience as Course Director for a new program run by the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD), titled Directing Innovation. The one-day course is intended for experienced directors and graduates of the AICD’s foundation Company Director Course. Full details on the program are here.
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Exploring the Future Ep7: My favorite airport lounge in the world

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As a frequent traveller I spend a lot of time not only in airplanes but also in airport lounges. These are of greatly varying quality, some of them extremely basic and some of them luxurious and beautiful.

Of all of them my very favorite is the Qantas First Class International lounge in Sydney. I’ve shared a little of the lounge in this episode of my vlog. :-)


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Overview and analysis of futurist and foresight software and tools

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Despite being associated with technology, futurists have rarely used digital technology as a central tool of their work until recent years. Most methods developed or used for futures studies and strategic foresight (e.g. horizon scanning, system mapping) can be performed without digital technology. However, when futurists have integrated their methods into software, they have saved themselves countless hours of work and stress. Many organizations use their own proprietary software, but rarely is such software made available to the general public.

To assist futures professionals, we compiled a list of all the publicly available software that has been developed to perform futurist methods. We had two primary conditions for this list. First, it must be software that is specifically developed to perform the functions of futurists. As such we did not include any general purpose digital technology often used by futurists such as Google Alerts. Second, the software had to be publicly accessible, free or paid. This meant we did not include any software used to help administer RAND’s Delphi technique except for The Millennium Project’s Real Time Delphi which is freely available.
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