Carving out the middle: how we must respond to the dangers of the polarization of work

By

One of the consistent themes in my Future of Work framework is the polarization of work and value.

In a number of the keynotes and workshops I’ve run recently, including at the Richmond Financial Services Forum in Interlaken, the Institute of Chartered Accountants conference in Melbourne, and for the executive teams of various corporate clients, I’ve pointed to research from noted labor economist David Autor that brings into focus what is happening.

Autor_laborpolarization
Source: The Polarization of Job Opportunities in the U.S. Labor Market, David Autor
Read more →

The rise of crowdsourcing in Malaysia

By

I was recently in Kuala Lumpur to do twin keynotes at the National Crowdsourcing Conference organized by Digital Malaysia, and meet with government officials to discuss how Malaysia can best tap the potential of crowdsourcing.

The Star of Malaysia, the largest English-language newspaper in the country, interviewed me while I was there for a feature section on crowdsourcing. Here are excerpts from some of the articles:

The main article Captivate the crowd looks at the big picture of crowdsourcing and its potential:
Read more →

Personalization and the future of retail: Knowing your taste better than you know yourself

By

One of my recent series of interviews on the future on the Morning Show was on the future of retail and shopping.

Click on the image to see a video of the segment:

MorningShow2May13

One of the examples I gave is of Trunk Club, which regularly sends a trunk of clothes to its male customers. They can pick anything they like in the trunk, and ship the rest back free of charge.
Read more →

The immense role of national and ethnic diaspora in driving global innovation

By

For over a decade I have been working with various facets of the idea of Global Innovation Networks: connections around the world that facilitate new endeavors.

Innovation always stems from diverse connections between ideas and people. Bringing in different viewpoints from around the world necessarily provides more opportunities for the new. Moreover, in the many stages of the innovation process there are almost certainly points where resources or capabilities from other countries can create better outcomes.

In my travels I have often seen how national and ethnic diaspora have been at the heart of the connections between nations. The TiE network began in Silicon Valley as The Indus Entrepreneurs, with innovators from the Indian subcontinent creating an organization that is now well and truly global, facilitating connections not just between Indians but also people of any nationality.

Diaspora_Economist
Source: The Economist
Read more →

Keynote slides: Crowds and the future of creativity and innovation

By

Earlier this month I gave the opening keynote at Crowdsourcing Week on Connecting the Crowd: The Future of Creativity and Innovation.

Here are the slides for my keynote. As always, be aware that my slides are intended as visual support to my presentation, and are not designed to be meaningful on their own. However they may still be useful or of interest to those who did not attend the keynote.

Here are a few quick notes on what I covered:
Read more →

Passion and the future of work

By

Earlier today I spoke in the keynote session of the Richmond Financial Industry Forum in Interlaken, Switzerland.

Three of us – Jean Claude Biver, Chairman of watchmaker Hublot, Zeno Staub, CEO of Bank Vontobel, and myself – gave 10 minute presentations, followed by a panel discussion between us.

I spoke on Passion and the Future of Work. Below are some distilled thoughts from my keynote presentation.
Read more →

Crowdsourcing and building models for sharing value from intellectual property creation

By

I’m currently at Crowdsourcing Week where I gave the opening keynote and have been participating in and moderating a number of panel discussions.

One of the panels was written up in ZDNet as Crowdsourcing faces ethical, legal risks

The article is well worth a read, capturing part of what was a very rich discussion on the challenges and opportunities from crowdsourcing.

One of the questions from the audience was on addressing intellectual property issues in crowdsourcing. The article quoted me:
Read more →

The evolution of parallel entrepreneurship exemplifies today’s experimental economy

By

In today’s world planning is close to obsolete. Companies small and large must experiment to find what works and what doesn’t work. The lean startup movement has provided a clear model of how to iterate through trial, error, and finally success.

There have been many discussions around parallel entrepreneurship and whether it diffuses resources and energy rather than focusing entrepreneurial capabilities on a single endeavor, its rise is a sign of the times.

Entrepreneurs do not want to try a single venture, however many times they can pivot or iterate within that model. They want to try multiple ventures in which they can learn, cross-pollinate, and find what will succeed across the broadest possible domain.

An article in today’s New York Times titled Entrepreneurs Help Build Start-Ups by the Batch provides a good summary of the movement.
Read more →

We are on track for 518% global economic growth this half-century

By

Yesterday I gave an executive briefing to a senior team tasked with generating major new revenue opportunities for their organization.

My presentation delved into the drivers of change in economic structure, individual and societal behaviours, the shape of cities, the role of government, and the implications for the elderly of demographic change.

However to kick off I wanted to put the group into a bigger mental frame than they would usually think in, so I ran through the following chart:

Growth1550-2050
Read more →

Economic structural change is NOT industry compositional change

By

I am currently preparing a number of keynotes for senior business audiences over coming weeks. In preliminary conversations with one group I encountered a very common and deeply misleading view of how business is changing today.

We engaged in discussions on “economic structural change”, that were in fact only about changes in industry composition. The mindset was to consider the changes in relative sizes of industries in the economy, such as manufacturing getting smaller and tourism becoming larger. This perspective is prevalent with economists, who like to predicts shifts in industries over time.

However this is a deeply fallacious perspective in thinking about change in the economy.
Read more →