On the importance of energizing holidays for entrepreneurs

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I have just returned from holidays in Jervis Bay, a stunning region set in a marine national park a few hours drive south of Sydney. It is one of those places scattered around the world that feels magical in some inexpressible way.

Summer is Here | Jervis Bay
Image credit: Hadi Zaher

It was just a one week holiday, my first proper break in the last year, which has been perhaps the most intense year in my life. Victoria and I did take a little time off between this last Christmas and New Year but I ended having to do a some urgent client work and many interviews including Sunrise, Today, and Morning Show over New Year so it wasn’t a real holiday.

Switching off

During the holiday I was almost completely switched off from digital world, with limited connectivity where we were staying helping me avoid more than very briefly glancing at email or Twitter every day or so, though I did need to respond to a couple of enquiries.
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Launch of 2014 Crunch Time report: 14 domains hitting the crunch and responses

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At the end of each year we share some thoughts about current trends and what to expect next year and beyond.

Some of our past frameworks include Trend Blend 2007+, Trend Blend 2008+, Map of the Decade: 2010s, Zeitgeist 2011, 12 Themes for 2012, and 2013 – Life Next Year and Beyond: Appearing and Disappearing.

Today Future Exploration Network launches our 2014: Crunch Time mini-report. It explains why we are reaching Crunch Time, the implications, descriptions of 14 domains in which we are hitting the crunch, and how we need to respond.

The graphic slideshow of Crunch Time is embedded below. You can also read the full text in one page at 2014: Crunch Time on the original posting on the Future Exploration Network website.

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Timeframes for the future of work: trends and uncertainties in this decade and beyond

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I recently ran an internal workshop on the future of work for a large company. In the next couple of years it will shift its headquarters into a new building and adopt Activity Based Working across the organization.

The key executives understand that in their planning they need to engage with the broader issues of how the world of work is changing, and not just the immediate issues of office space and workforce structure.

In the first phase of the workshop, before delving into the specific issues for their business, I used my Future of Work Framework to provide a big-picture view of the forces of change and the major shifts in play.


Click on the image to download the full framework.
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Why predictions are dangerous and organizations must be well networked

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AFR_Boss_Dec13_300wToday’s BOSS magazine in the Australian Financial Review includes a feature on my work.

The article focuses on my thoughts on the value of predictions. I’ve written before about why predictions usually have negative value, as an important way of framing how we think about the future.

I am quoted in the article:
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Not just Bitcoin: How will multiple digital currencies compete, succeed, and fail?

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Bitcoin surpassing a valuation of $1,000 yesterday is a real landmark, giving the currency a market capitalization of almost $12 billion and 75-fold growth in value this year.

However Bitcoin is not the only digital currency, simply the most prominent. As Bitcoin’s value has soared, partly driven by a positive response from Senate committees last week, participants have looked further afield to see whether there may be other alternatives that have not risen by so much already.

The second most prominent currency is Litecoin, with a market capitalization of over $1 billion. After that Peercoin and Namecoin currently have capitalizations of close to $80 million, followed by a number of others from $20 million and down in a long tail, with the 23rd ranked currency, Goldcoin, still valued at over $1 million.

Litecoin is over 10 times its value from just 10 days ago, with Peercoin growing 4-fold and Namecoin 12-fold in value over the same period.

The following chart is a snapshot from Coinmarketcap, which provides real-time information on digital currencies. The table shows the largest currencies by market cap, with the chart on the right hand side showing growth over the last 90 days.

Digitalcurrencies_Nov13
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The future of human endeavor: humans and computers together far exceed the capabilities of either apart

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In my keynotes I often reference 1997 as the year that a chess grandmaster was first beaten by a computer, with Deep Blue outplaying Garry Kasparov.

Before that happened many believed that chess was the domain of ingenuity, imagination, and human insight that computers could never match. Yet brute processing power plus some improved algorithms did the job.

The power of computers has soared by around 1000-fold since then, and computers are moving deeper and deeper into the domain of what we consider to be fundamental human capabilities.

However, as I wrote in Chapter 11 of Living Networks:
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Could online lobbying be the future of government?

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Last week I spoke on the potential of crowdsourcing at the EngageTech conference, an event focusing on how government can best use technology to engage with community and citizens.

One of the very interesting conversations that emerged at the event was on how interested and informed citizens are on government decisions.

It’s a truism that representative democracy is not very democratic.

One of the primary reasons that we elect representatives is that the vast majority of people do not have the interest or time to have informed opinions on the many things on which government must decide and act.

However the rise of a hyper-connected world has fundamentally changed the relationship between citizens and government.
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The case for the death of cash by the hand of digital currencies

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This morning I gave the opening keynote at the ATM and Branch Automation Seminar run by Payments Consulting Network.

In my keynote I spoke about the broader trends in technology, society, and business, and then looked at some of the uncertainties impacting ATMs and branches. Clearly one of the most important is the future of cash.

I noted that while I’m happy to predict the timing of the death of newspapers, I’m not prepared to make firm forecasts on the death of cash. The uncertainties are simply too big.

There are many payment mechanisms that are replacing cash, notably mobile wallets and contactless cards, and in many developed countries there is clear evidence that these are beginning to reduce demand for cash.

However this does not mean cash will die.
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“Shoezam” app mimics Shazam to image, identify, and replicate shoes on the street

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This morning I attended the Innovation Bay breakfast on Where to for retail now?.

It was a fascinating discussion, which was definitely useful as I develop my forthcoming Future of Retail framework. (Still working on it, I don’t know when it will be ready for the public, more later.)
Shoesofprey
Michael Fox, founder of the highly innovative and successful Shoes of Prey, spoke about some of what they envisage for the future of retail.

One of their internal initiatives is an app they dub “Shoezam”, which acts like Shazam in that people can take an image of a shoe they like in the street, which the app analyzes so that users can immediately order that shoe for themselves.
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The (in)accuracy of long-tail Wikipedia articles – can you help improve mine?

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The quality of Wikipedia has been well established. A well-known study was carried out in 2005 by scientific journal Nature showing that the accuracy of Wikipedia articles on science was comparable to that of Encyclopedia Brittanica. A more recent study by Epic and University of Oxford again showed comparable quality of articles across many domains of study and languages.

These well-publicized studies have led people to believe that Wikipedia is always a reliable source of information. However the problem is that both of these studies compared articles of substance on academic topics. There are more than 23 million articles on Wikipedia, and around 130,000 on Encyclopedia Brittanica. There is no way to assess on a comparative basis the accuracy of the close to 23 million Wikipedia articles on topics that aren’t substantively covered elsewhere.
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