How company directors can integrate innovation and governance to drive performance

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Last week I ran a half-day program on Integrating an Innovation Mindset with Effective Governance for Bursa Malaysia (the Malaysian stock exchange) attended by 160 company directors.

Over the last years I have annually run two-day innovation programs for the Malaysian Director’s Academy (MINDA), designed to develop company directors’ capabilities and mindset to engage with and promote effective innovation in the organizations they lead. I was pleased to have the opportunity to take these ideas to a broader audience of senior company directors in this dynamic economy.

The key issue for company directors is balancing their fiduciary responsibilities to manage the risk of organizations with the imperative of innovation. Organizations that do not change in a rapidly shifting world will inevitably be left behind.

I would argue that it is not just a question of “balance”, but one of actively integrating innovation and governance, in that understanding that NOT innovating effectively – which requires actively moving into uncertainty – is often the greatest risk.
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The future landscape of financial services will be driven by modularization

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Last week I gave a keynote to the senior leadership team of a major financial services organization at their annual strategy offsite. My brief was to provoke and stimulate, taking them out of their current frame of reference on strategy.

My session dug into key themes such as rapidly declining trust in institutions, the rise of platforms, and decentralization driven by blockchain among other factors.

The reality is that financial services is an exceptionally broad space, and our long-established financial institutions bring together a wide and diverse set of services to their customers.

Newer players including fintech startups tend to address specific offers, attracting customers by doing them better than incumbents. This is illustrated by the well-known ‘unbundling’ diagrams, as shown below. Read more →

The emerging jobs of the future and how reputation will trump credentials

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An article in today’s Daily Telegraph on Future of Work: the revolution to 2030 brings some interesting perspectives to bear on how the world of work is changing.

The article quotes me on the jobs of the future:
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Keynote slides: The Future of Work and Education

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I had the great pleasure today of doing the opening keynote at CEE2017 Enterprising Minds Conference in Melbourne, organised by the Centre for Educational Enterprise, run by Melbourne Girls Grammar School.

My session pulled out to a very big picture view, starting with the key drivers of Acceleration, Society and Structure, delving into the disruption of Work and the resulting human Capabilities we need, and finally on to the fundamental shifts in Learning, Education and the resulting Leadership that is required.

The slides to my keynote are below. As always, my slides were designed to support my presentation and not to stand alone, but may be somewhat useful to those who weren’t present for my keynote. Many of the slides were in fact videos, in this deck only shown as images.

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Everyone needs to understand the potential impact of AI and automation

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On Tuesday ABC ran a prime-time special program The AI Race, supplemented by other content including analysis and an interactive tool on the impact of AI on jobs.

The program was excellent, looking at people working in a variety of jobs from truck driver to lawyer and how AI might impact them.

I appeared on the program as part of an ‘expert’ panel discussing the implications of automation on the future of work with a group of young people. The segments where I appeared are in the video below.


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Phase transition: I am launching a new group of companies

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I am delighted to announce a massive transition in my work and life: launching a new group of companies with other amazing founders that expands and accelerates my vision.

It is now over 20 years since I left employment and started building the Advanced Human Technologies group of companies, which spanned professional services, publishing, events, apps and software development. We had many landmarks and successes along the way.

The reason to bring these ventures into a new group is simply to enact the same vision I have long had on a larger stage and scale. Read more →

Domain names for thought leadership content – showing clients the future

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Over many years I have registered domain names for interesting topics, almost all of them about the future.

Using these, I have launched a number of online publications over the years, including FutureofSex.net and Creating the Future of PR, among others. One of the possible paths for my business was to launch many future-oriented publications in parallel. I accumulated close to 400 domains to support possible projects.

While I intend to be doing a lot more in publishing in years to come, my core business model is fundamentally shifting (more on that another time). As such, apart from a smaller collection of domains I will keep for my own projects, I am offering these domain names for sale.

These domain names are perfect for thought leadership content projects. For example, one of the few domains I have sold was TheFutureofStrategy.com, which AT Kearney bought for a web publication featuring the firm’s thought leadership.
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The power of humans: how companies will compete with humanity against AI

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I was recently interviewed for an interesting article in The Guardian Brand human: why efficient automation will not always be best for business.

The main thrust of the article was about whether companies would choose to hire humans rather than use machines to win customers and improve perception of their brand. It is an interesting point, though I view it as fairly unlikely that consumers will actively shift their buying to companies that hire humans in roles that machines could do.
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Designing effective co-creation of knowledge using knowledge development loops

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Last week I gave the opening keynote at the Chartered Accountants Australia New Zealand’s Thought Leadership Forum, the fifth consecutive year I have done the keynote for this excellent event series. My keynote was on The Potential of Business-Academic Collaboration, offering a big-picture view of the possibilities for value creation between university business faculties and the business sector.

As I was preparing my keynote it struck me that the themes of my first book Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships are extremely relevant here. Universities are implicitly knowledge-creating organizations, and the value they have to offer to the business sector must be in developing their knowledge capabilities.
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The Global Economic Policy Uncertainty index is at an all-time high: the implications

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A group of top economists has created an Economic Policy Uncertainty Index for 17 countries, using media reporting and economic forecasts to show how much uncertainty there is economic policy.

The Global Economic Policy Uncertainty Index is currently the highest it has been since the beginning of the period analyzed starting at the end of 1996.
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