By Ross Dawson
This year I am very frequently speaking to top executive teams about the future of business. These presentations are often scheduled during strategy offsites or as part of leadership development programs. Sometimes these are full-day workshops; more often I have 45-90 minutes to work with.
My objective is to stimulate executives to think beyond the everyday, get new ideas, and develop an optimistic mindset about the challenges and opportunities afforded by the extraordinary pace of change today. Many clients want their executives to take the attitude of Embracing the Future, one of my most popular speaking topics.
Given the brief time I often have to create lasting energy and initiatives, these are some of the approaches I find most effective.
Use industry and in-house examples. During my briefing I uncover situations and stories that are currently most discussed in the organization. I always use industry examples but it is also valuable to identify issues that executives can recognize as their own.
Create participation. I often structure my time into two or three brief presentations, each followed by custom-prepared discussion topics or case studies. Engaging with key questions during the session makes it far more likely that those conversations will continue.
Balance awe and inspiration. These days it is easy to blow people away describing the extraordinary things that are happening in domains such as online sharing, genomics, robotics, and augmented reality. It is good to help people understand quite how fast things are changing, however that can easily become daunting. The emphasis must be on the actions that can create opportunities and build success.
Demonstrate that new thinking is necessary. Talk is cheap. Giving clear case studies of the how companies are successfully embracing new approaches helps to shift attitudes. In a recent session on the future of business I did for a corporate leadership group, real-life examples led to genuine discussion on how to change the organization.
Create an appetite for thinking about the future. There is massive value for organizations to think in a clear way about the future and how they can build their success. However for most companies their interest extends as far as hearing from a business futurist. It is important to help companies understand how they can build broader initiatives to drive long-term thinking and strategy.
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Energize your event with leading futurist and keynote speaker Ross Dawson’s compelling and inspirational presentations that leave audiences stimulated. Contact Ross Dawson’s office today to discuss the precise keynote topic and title that will best meet your requirements. |
New frameworks of 2011: Connected Success, Transformation of Business and Government, Crowdsourcing
By Ross DawsonI believe strongly in visual frameworks as a way of communicating and engaging with complex ideas. I share these on the web, sometimes use them as central frames for my keynotes, apply them in strategy workshops, use them to shape my own thinking on the topics they cover, and sometimes create private custom visual frameworks for clients to define and articulate their strategy.
I will be shortly launching a more complete review of all the public visual frameworks I’ve created. For now, here is a review of the public frameworks I’ve created this year.
Success in a Connected World
I have used this in many keynotes and workshops this year to help individuals and small to mid-sized businesses to work out what they need to do succeed in a connected world, usually going into detail on the specific tools they can use in each area.
Click on the image for full size
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12 most popular posts of the year on the future
By Ross DawsonIt’s almost the end of the year, so I’ll try to do a few compilations of my most popular posts of the year. Today, on the general theme of the future, here are 12 (+1 for next year) that have attracted the most interest…
1. Zeitgeist 2011: anxiety, mobility, blending, indulgence, immersion, wrath, nudity and more
The spirit of the times for 2011
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The most contagious marketing memes of 2011
By Ross DawsonContagious Magazine has just launched its annual Most Contagious 2011, “reviewing the most innovative exercises in branding, technology, and popular culture,” taking a marketer’s perspective on what has succeeded this year.
The slides are below (you really need to view in full screen as it’s very detailed), or you can also see the Most Contagious website or the pdf version.
As a brief highlight of the report, here are four of Contagious’ favorite promotional YouTube videos of the year. Great viewing! I particularly like Nissan’s Damned Ponies…
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5 fundamentals for presenting to executive teams about the future
By Ross DawsonBy Ross Dawson
This year I am very frequently speaking to top executive teams about the future of business. These presentations are often scheduled during strategy offsites or as part of leadership development programs. Sometimes these are full-day workshops; more often I have 45-90 minutes to work with.
My objective is to stimulate executives to think beyond the everyday, get new ideas, and develop an optimistic mindset about the challenges and opportunities afforded by the extraordinary pace of change today. Many clients want their executives to take the attitude of Embracing the Future, one of my most popular speaking topics.
Given the brief time I often have to create lasting energy and initiatives, these are some of the approaches I find most effective.
Use industry and in-house examples. During my briefing I uncover situations and stories that are currently most discussed in the organization. I always use industry examples but it is also valuable to identify issues that executives can recognize as their own.
Create participation. I often structure my time into two or three brief presentations, each followed by custom-prepared discussion topics or case studies. Engaging with key questions during the session makes it far more likely that those conversations will continue.
Balance awe and inspiration. These days it is easy to blow people away describing the extraordinary things that are happening in domains such as online sharing, genomics, robotics, and augmented reality. It is good to help people understand quite how fast things are changing, however that can easily become daunting. The emphasis must be on the actions that can create opportunities and build success.
Demonstrate that new thinking is necessary. Talk is cheap. Giving clear case studies of the how companies are successfully embracing new approaches helps to shift attitudes. In a recent session on the future of business I did for a corporate leadership group, real-life examples led to genuine discussion on how to change the organization.
Create an appetite for thinking about the future. There is massive value for organizations to think in a clear way about the future and how they can build their success. However for most companies their interest extends as far as hearing from a business futurist. It is important to help companies understand how they can build broader initiatives to drive long-term thinking and strategy.
Energize your event with leading futurist and keynote speaker Ross Dawson’s compelling and inspirational presentations that leave audiences stimulated. Contact Ross Dawson’s office today to discuss the precise keynote topic and title that will best meet your requirements.
PushStart launches new startup accelerator program in Australia
By Ross DawsonThe Australian startup scene continues to heat up. Arguably Sydney is already in the top 10 tech startup cities in the world, with activity rapidly growing through this year.
The latest news is that the mentor program PushStart (which I participate in as a mentor) is today launching its planned PushStart Accelerator program. I wrote about PushStart and the earlier startup accelerator Startmate at the launch of PushStart. Startmate’s first round of 5 companies has already had significant success, with shopping app Grabble already being acquired by Walmart and Bugherd quickly moving on to participate in the Silicon Valley-based 500 Startups accelerator program.
PushStart uses a very similar model, using the same legal structures as Startmate. There is unquestionably a deep enough pool of rising talent in Australia to fill both the Startmate and PushStart accelerator programs with high quality ventures, with plenty more left over. It will be great to see what comes out of this.
Here is the PushStart announcement:
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Fantastic international comparative data on media, social media, and mobile
By Ross DawsonFor those who love rich data on the world of media and telecoms, the release of a report by UK telecommunications regulator Ofcom is always a cause for celebration.
Last year I covered some of Ofcom’s report on key trends on communication and media usage. Here I will excerpt a few of the highlights from today’s Ofcom International Communications Market Report 2011, which focuses on country comparative data. There is an absolute wealth of information in the report. The data below is a small selection that I found particularly noteworthy, with some brief comments.
Global telecoms sector revenue has flattened considerably, with just 2.2% growth last year, brought down by performance in major markets. Interestingly television revenue continues to increase at a healthy pace beyond GDP growth.
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Why luxury defines our society and what to expect in 2012
By Ross DawsonThere are many themes and ideas threaded through our rich and complex times, so when I choose concepts to represent the heart of the year ahead, there is a lot to sort through and select. There were many dozens of ideas competing for the 12 themes I chose to represent what awaits us in 2012 (see slides below).
One of the most important themes of today that made the cut is ‘The New Luxury’ (Theme 8). I thought it would be worth expanding a little on what I wrote in the 2012 Themes on why this is important and what is unfolding in this space, following up on my post earlier this year on How is the culture of luxury changing?
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How to make money from crowdsourcing: A framework for Crowd Business Models
By Ross DawsonI think one of the most valuable aspects of our newly-launched book Getting Results From Crowds is the analysis of Crowd Business Models. While crowdsourcing is clearly a fantastic way for organizations large and small to get access to unparalleled resources and scale their operations, it is also increasingly central to many companies’ business models.
We have created a framework that identifies 7 fundamental crowd business models (plus non-profits), and done an analysis of the monetization mechanisms and success factors behind each one. These provide a broader framework for the 22 categories in version 2 of our Crowdsourcing Landscape.
The Crowd Business Models framework below aggregates these categories. Further details are provided in Chapter 22 of the book on Crowd Business Models. We have chosen to make all of these resources freely available, as we hope they will be useful for those building businesses that are relevant today. Go to the Getting Results From Crowds website for more free chapters and other resources.
Click on the image to download the complete framework as pdf
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Making social media happen in government: case study of NSW Department of Education
By Ross DawsonI’m at the launch meeting of the social media community of practice set up by Institute of Public Administration NSW (IPAA).
Earlier this year I gave the opening keynote on The Transformation of Government at IPAA’s annual conference, where I was encouraged to see the interest and appetite for new and more open approaches to government here.
At the conference I wrote about the case study of Queensland Police, which is a great example of government bodies creating value through social media.
At today’s event Tracey Sen of the NSW Department of Education & Training (DET), which has 110,000 employees, presented on the Department’s social media initiatives. Here are a few live notes from the event.
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Sunrise: What to expect in 2012: transformation, social media divide, crowd work
By Ross DawsonThis morning I appeared on the Australian national breakfast TV program Sunrise in their ‘Ask an Expert’ segment, talking about the year ahead. Here is the 4 minute clip.
In the brief segment I draw on a number of the 12 Themes for 2012 I recently released. The key topics we discussed were:
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