Agile legislation must be at the heart of the future of government

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Last week I di a keynote on behalf of a major professional services firm to a group of senior public sector executives.

The topic was The Future of Government, so I provided a high-level frame on the forces dramatically shifting the role of government, and the opportunities to reshape government to transcend the government-citizen divide and catalyze resources to generate the sociel outcomes we desire far more efficiently and effectively.

My slides and an overview of my presentation can be found on my Future of Government keynote page.

One of the topics I touched on was the importance of agile legislation.
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The future of retirement: blurring boundaries, helpful houses, robot pets, hypersonic travel

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An article on the future of retirement in the most recent Good Weekend magazine, Rethinking the future, drew extensively on an interview with me. Below are some excerpts from the article.
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Creating business value and making a business case for using crowds and crowdsourcing

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Below is Chapter 3 from my book Getting Results From Crowds 2nd Edition, provided as a resource for those looking at using crowdsourcing in their organization or tasked with building an internal business case.

The business value of using crowds

Through history, companies have been limited in what they can achieve through the scope of their internal resources and how well they can draw on external resources. Crowdsourcing has the potential to create enormous value for businesses by giving easy access to an essentially unlimited pool of talent and capabilities. Those organizations that have the skills and competences to draw on external crowds, as well as in tapping the best ideas from their ‘internal crowds’, have an immense advantage over those companies that rely solely on their internal resources and traditional service firms.
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Three vital ethical issues highlighted by the vast potential of neural interfaces

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Last week I participated in a TV panel discussion on the implications and ethics of neural interfaces, together with the fascinating cyborg artist Neil Harbisson and Oxford University neuroethicist Stephen Rainey. A video of the full program is below.


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The future of project management and leading organizations to become agile

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This morning I gave the opening keynote at the Project Management Institute NZ Annual Conference on The Future of Project Management.

My keynote covered the fundamental trends shaping business, government, and projects, the changing nature of work and organizations, the new capabilities required by project leaders, and the nature of leadership for the future.

You can see the slides to my presentation here. Below is a summary of one of the core ideas I shared.
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Launch of Governance for Transformation Framework

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In a rapidly changing world, it is a truism that every organization must be transforming itself for the future.

Yet that is deeply challenging, not least because every organization, especially any with external investors, is framed by governance, oversight structures to ensure value to stakeholders.

Governance is essential, yet governance must not block transformation or it will destroy the organization. Governance must be an enabler of transformation.
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Seven Ways Boards Can Support and Drive Innovation

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I wrote an article for the most recent issue of Company Director magazine on seven ways boards can support and drive innovation.

The slightly edited final version is on the Company Director website. The full original text is below.

How Boards Can Support and Drive Innovation

One sixth of Australian businesses with a turnover of over $10 million in 2014 did not exist four years later. In some cases that was due to classic reasons such as cashflow management challenges, over-extension or project mis-management. However an increasing proportion of corporate failures is due to insufficient response to changes in the operating environment, including rapid technological progress, shifts in social attitudes and consumer behaviour and disruption from new business models.
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The potential beyond the threshold of space tourism: hypersonic travel, solar system colonization and more

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I was just interviewed on ABC TV about the news that Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is going public through a merger with Social Capital Hedosophia, to be the first publicly listed space tourism company. A video of the interview is below.

In the billionaire space race, featuring most prominently Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, and Richard Branson with Virgin Galactic, these visionaries are seeking to tap the potential of the space business.
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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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