Scoop: Corporate directors understand change and embrace governance for transformation

By

I gave my keynote on How Technology is Transforming Business for Australian Institute of Company Directors this morning here in Beijing.

Based on the responses of the 500+ company directors in the audience, they absolutely understand the need for change. Here are their answers on audience response units to questions I posed during my presentation.


One of my key messages was that social and technological change are inextricable – they drive each other and cannot be understood separately. What is interesting is that directors felt that social drivers are more important than technology drivers. Certainly I believe that social change is moving at least as fast as technological change, and responding to this is fundamental to the success of organizations.
Read more →

Notes from the Australian Institute of Company Directors in Beijing

By

I am at the annual conference of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, held this year in Beijing. It is fantastic that Australian company directors are choosing to meet here rather than at home, broadening vistas and opportunities. The Grand Ballroom at China World Hotel is full, with around 500 people here.

While I don’t have access to Twitter from my iPad (I haven’t had time to try to set up a VPN on my laptop yet) I can at least blog, so I might be doing more of that while I am in Beijing this week.

For now, here are my presentation slides for my keynote on How Technology is Transforming Business this morning. These are just a slightly different version of the presentation I shared last week. You can also find a pdf version of the Transformation of Business framework on which the presentation is based.

Transformation of Business – AICD on Prezi

New Prezi: The Transformation of Business

By

I am always trying to get better at using visuals to support my keynotes and presentations. I use many videos, and we have created quite a few Flash animations that I embed into Powerpoint to make them more dynamic. I have been aware of Prezi as a dynamic presentation tool for some time now, though have never yet taken the leap to move my entire presentation into this format.

The launch of our Transformation of Business framework has provided a great opportunity to use Prezi. The entire story is laid out on a page, and Prezi enables me to zoom in, pan across, and illustrate they key points in the framework. I first used this on Tuesday for an executive team strategy session, and will be using it in a number of other presentations and keynotes over the next week.

As usual my disclaimer is that the slides are designed to accompany my presentation and not to stand alone, however they might be of interest and value even if you haven’t attended one of my keynotes.

Transformation of Business 1 on Prezi

New Framework: The Transformation of Business

By

Our latest visual framework is The Transformation of Business.

Many of my keynotes and client workshops at the moment are to high-level business audiences such as boards of directors and top executive teams who need to understand the essence of how the business landscape is changing and the implications. While you can never capture the rich diversity of change on a single page, this framework seeks to distill the issues in a meaningful way.


Click on the image for full-size pdf

[NOTE:] Also see the presentation in Prezi format for more detail.

I’ll soon provide some more detailed commentary on the framework, particularly on the vital point that this framework leads to: Governance for Transformation.

Here is the content in text format:
Read more →

What would you do if you could solve a major world problem with technology and innovation?

By

The Imagine Cup is an initiative by Microsoft in which students from around the world to come up with technology solutions to solve the world’s biggest problems.

This morning at an event at the Powerhouse Museum it was announced that Sydney will host the global 2012 Imagine Cup. They showed a video, as below, of a number of people saying what world problem they would solve.

In the video I said that I would apply technology to learning, to ensure that all children around the world could learn to their fullest capability and fulfil their potential.

It is a great question to ask, because from questions, answers often come. What world problem would you solve with technology and innovation?

Charismatic robots can now do stand up comedy and respond to the audience

By

Heather Knight, also known as Marilyn Monrobot, studies human machine symbiosis and charismatic robots. In addition to her doctoral studies at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute she runs a stack of interesting projects.

Here is a video of Heather speaking at TED, demonstrating her robot which does stand up comedy. The audience provided live feedback to the robot during its performance, which it used to develop its routine.


Read more →

Tablet computers as seen from 1994

By

The rise of news on tablets such as the iPad is one of the defining themes of our times. This was foreseen by some, even down to the language that we use. The following video, created by Knight-Ridder in 1994, describes their vision of the future of tablet newspapers.


Read more →

Global mobile market shares: who’s winning

By

In preparing for the Ketchum Webinar Series on Tapping the Power of Mobile I wanted some data on international differences in mobile operating system shares. I was just about to begin compiling some data from StatCounter when my co-presenter One2One CEO Simon Noel pointed me to a visual created by iCrossing who have done a very nice job of it already.


Click on the image for full size

A few things stand out from this data:
Read more →

Keynote speech in Beijing on How Technology is Transforming Business

By

In a few weeks I will be in Beijing to give a keynote to the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) annual Company Directors conference. AICD has usually held its annual conference in Australian cities, but when in 2007 it held it in Shanghai they actually had far more attendees than usual. This is now the second time the conference has been held outside Australia, and it promises to be an outstanding event. Of course one of the great things about holding the conference in Beijing is that it exposes the directors of Australia’s leading companies to new horizons if they have not previously been actively engaged in China.

Here is a brief description of my keynote:

How Technology is Transforming Business
The rise of our connected world is transforming business, from how consumers buy and build relationships with companies, to the structure of the supply chain and the nature of global competition. Directors need to understand the emerging technologies that are changing business today, including the dramatic rise of mobile, the power of cloud computing, new elements of the media and marketing landscape, and user-driven computing. Establishing a framework for innovation-led governance enables companies to best take advantage of these shifts.

I will share some of the content I will be covering closer to the time.

Future of Retail: 10 powerful trends and 1 meta-trend

By

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:
Read more →