Yesterday I gave the opening keynote at the Arab Media Forum in Dubai, on Creating the Future of Arab Media.
My speech and a series of interviews I did afterwards have received broad coverage, including articles in Al Arabiya, Gulf Today, Huffington Post, Emirates 24/7, Zawya, and Gulf News, as well as interviews on Dubai Eye and Dubai One. I thought it was worth reviewing a few of the major points made.
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Today’s issue of AFR Boss magazine includes highlights of the discussion at the recent first BOSS True Leaders’ Legacy Dinner, where 14 of us had an excellent dinner and debated “how Australia could seize the opportunities of the knowledge economy”.
It was a fantastic and sometimes heated discussion, most enjoyable. The highlights of the conversation are published in the online magazine.
At the outset I said (quotes were severely edited for length):
Ross Dawson: We have over a million Australians who live around the world. This Australian diaspora is a way of linking the extraordinary talent we have in this country to the rest of the planet. Far more than any other country, we must look at digital productivity and what that affords us. Australia in the last six years or so has become a truly networked economy with a network mentality.
As I’ve noted before, entrepreneurial migration is highly valuable in forming global networks.
Australia has come a long, long way in the last 6-8 years in becoming a nation with a true network mentality. This is essential given our geographical isolation. However I am becoming concerned that our progress is not keeping pace with the rest of the world.
Later in the conversation I was quoted:
Ross Dawson: How do we get new levels, layers and structures of capital markets where money gets allocated to the ventures that have the greatest potential financial and social impact? We still have explicit and implicit industrial policy in Australia which is in favour of legacy industries, not the industries of Australia’s future or potential future.
Crowdfunding is just one of range of new capital market structures that are allocating funds to where they can have the most value. National regulation is critical in enabling or disabling these innovative approaches.
The nature of politics is that legacy industries have the funds, clout, and connections to make governments pay attention, while newer industries don’t have the impact or access. Yet they are where our future lie. It is critical that attention – and in some cases resources – are spent on the networked, knowledge-based economy that will bring our future prosperity.
Today I was interviewed on the Channel 7 Daily Edition about the future of travel. Click on the image below to see a video of the segment.
One of the topics we discussed was a proposed concept of a Hyper-Speed Vertical Train Hub, an interesting idea which allows high speed trains to shift to a vertical configuration as they arrive at a station.
Instead of long carriages the train consists of smaller pods that can stay in upright position as the train shifts to be aligned with the walls of a building, where the passengers can alight.
The primary advantage is that the train station can have a very small footprint, which will be increasingly important when space is at a premium in densely populated urban centers.
High-speed trains are proving to be a vital foundation to China’s infrastructure, providing an example that other countries are increasingly interested in following.
The vertical train hubs concept is not that likely to be implemented, but it is a novel and intriguing approach that just might facilitate the adoption of high-speed trains in major centers.
Image source: Evolo
Will the next big technology company come out of the fashion world?
I’ve had a very interesting evening at the latest Sydney event of Decoded Fashion, a global network of events on the future of fashion.
Here are a few of the many interesting insights and ideas that came up during the evening, either directly from the speakers or evoked by what they said.
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I have recently returned from a 10-day round-world trip, including 85 hours in airplanes and airports, with a number of speaking engagements and fortunately a little fun fitted in-between the travel.
This brings me to 56 hours of timezone changes within the last two months. I already have another 25 hours of timezone changes scheduled for the next month.
Dealing with jetlag is a required competence for my job, and fortunately I am pretty good at it. I thought I’d share how I approach it in case it is useful for others.
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Yesterday I gave two keynotes at the Congreso Internacional de Retail in Lima Peru.
The first keynote provided a big picture view of the changing world of business, while the second keynote focused on the future of retail.
Here are the slides to my first keynote. The slides to the second keynote are here. As always, my slides are designed to support my presentations, not to stand alone, but may be useful to others.
I am in South America this week, giving keynotes at the sCRM-CEM y Redes Sociales conference in Bogota and the Congreso Internacional de Retail in Lima.
Latin America is a fascinating and exciting region, both culturally and economically. However the region, while highly visible in North America, does not tend to get much attention from the rest of the world.
The dramatic economic rise of China is a dominant theme of this century, with India likely to gain ground on China in coming decades due to demographic shifts. This is drawing pointed attention from business executives around the world to Asia as a growth region. However to a certain degree the rise of China and India, and that of the rest of Asia, are distinct stories.
This first chart shows GDP of the major developing countries in Asia and Latin America (excluding Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea as established economies that are growing more slowly or not at all). China completely dominates in the extent and consistency of its growth. Considerably behind is Brazil, the second of the BRICs, followed by India.
Source: World Bank
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My wonderful wife, the talented jewellery designer Victoria Buckley, has had her boutique in Sydney’s historical Strand Arcade for 21 years.
The Strand is the best possible location for her in Sydney, with its classic Victorian architecture and rosta of leading Australian designers such as Akira, Alex Perry, Scanlan Theodore and sass & bide.
The Strand is producing a series of videos titled We Are The Makers, featuring the stores in the arcade. Below is the video of Victoria, which in less than 2 minutes successfully captures some of the vitality and creativity that is expressed in her jewellery. A very nice write-up of the interview is also available.
Today I was interviewed on the Daily Edition about virtual reality, in the wake of Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus Rift.
You can click on the image below to watch a video of the segment.
It is staggering that the very old idea of ‘virtual reality’ is finally about to reach its fruition with new technologies such as Oculus Rift, which have low enough latency to fool the brain into believing it is in a new world.
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PewResearch Internet Project has just released a report on Digital Life in 2025 based on expert interviews.
One of the interesting aspects of the report is the ‘theses‘ that they have distilled from the interviews, which they have divided into ‘more-hopeful and ‘less-hopeful’, concluding with one very important piece advice. These are:
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