The power of the supplier diversity movement and its compelling future

By

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.
Read more →

How virtual assistants will build knowledge-based relationships based on trust

By

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.
Read more →

Exploring the Future Ep8: Platform strategy as enabling ecosystems

By

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.

Read more →

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

By

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.
Read more →

The end-game of AI-based assistants is becoming everyone’s assistant for everything

By

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.
Read more →

Directing Innovation: Course for company directors to keep ahead of disruption

By

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.
Read more →

Exploring the Future Ep7: My favorite airport lounge in the world

By

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. :-)


Read more →

Overview and analysis of futurist and foresight software and tools

By

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.
Read more →

Exploring the Future Ep6: Food will be at the center of our future

By

When I was in Lisbon, Portugal recently to do the keynote at the Food of the Future conference, I recorded a vlog reflecting about how food is central to our future as humans, and what that means today….

TRANSCRIPT
I am here in Lisbon, Portugal where yesterday I gave the opening keynote at the Food of the Future Conference and Food and Nutrition Awards.
Read more →

Focus on creating ‘Sufficient Positive Momentum’ on your journey

By

In the week before Christmas I was invited onto the Entrepreneurs TV show, in a wrap-up program looking back at the world of entrepreneurship in 2018 and forward to what to expect in 2019. The full program can be seen online (note the content has been geo-restricted and cannot be viewed in all countries).

Don’t set New Year’s resolutions

Among the topics for discussion we were asked to share our New Year’s resolutions.

I had to answer that philosophically I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. If you want to do something or change your behavior, you should just do it! There is no need to wait until the end of the year to start.
Read more →