Our trend map for 2009: The vital Trends, Risks, and Red Herrings you must know

Following our extremely popular Trend Blend 2007 and Trend Blend 2008 trend maps comes…. Trend Blend 2009!
Created by Future Exploration Network’s Chief Futurist Richard Watson, also of NowandNext.com, the 2009 trend map moves on from the subway map theme of the last years to show the multi-tentacled hydra that is the year ahead.

Click on the map to download the pdf (810KB)
To pick out just a few noteworthy elements of the trend map:
CORE THEMES include:
Uncertainy
Ageing
Global Connectivity
Anxiety
Power Shift Eastwards
SUBJECT THEMES include:
SOCIETY: Search for control, enoughism
TECHNOLOGY: Simplicity, Telepresence, Gesture based computing
ECONOMY: De-leveraging, 2-speed economies, Shorter product lifecycles
ENVIRONMENT: Bio fuel backlash, Negawatts, Nuclear power
POLITICS: Virtual protests, Globalisation in retreat, Immigration backlash
BUSINESS: Networked risk, Transparency, Asset price uncertainty
FAMILY: Debt stress, Allowable luxuries, Middle class unrest
MEDIA: Flight to quality, Facebook fatigue, Skimming, Micro boredom
POSSIBLE RED HERRINGS include:
Climate change crisis
Fall of US Empire
Nuclear power
Device convergence
GLOBAL RISKS include:
Major Internet failure
Influenza pandemic
Major earthquake in economic centre
Obesity
Electricity shortages
People taking trend maps too seriously
As usual, this is released on a Creative Commons license, so feel free to play with it, adapt it, and improve it!
Wishing everyone a fabulous 2009 – be sure to take advantage of these upcoming trends!

Keynote at Direct Selling Association conference in March

I’m giving the keynote at the Defining our Future conference in the Gold Coast 22-24 March, run by the Direct Selling Association. Below is an introductory video on the event, briefly reviewing the event and main speakers.

DSAA 2009 from Tom Walter on Vimeo.
I’ve never spoken to the direct selling industry before, but certainly the themes I often cover of the evolving network economy and media landscape is highly relevant to the audience. I’ll go into more detail later on what I’ll be covering in my keynote.

Interviews: Six important forces that will shape 2009

I’ve done two radio interviews this morning, asking me for forecasts for the year ahead.
The broader issue I am emphasizing in my current interviews and speaking is that 2009 will bring more change than any other year this decade.
Perversely, a slowing economy will accelerate the pace of change. Many companies will take advantage of the downturn to use technology in innovative ways. Technology ranging from mobile applications to online gaming will become an everyday part of our work lives.
Social change tends to be faster in a downturn. Our attitudes to what is acceptable behavior by the government and companies will rapidly evolve. Technology is shaping society, but society is also shaping technology, particularly in how it allows us to express forcible opinions.
In these interviews for non-professional audiences I briefly covered six important forces that will shape business and society in 2009:
1. Constant partial attention. 2009 will see more people consuming 20 hours or more of media a day. And no, it’s not just the insomniacs. It is due to a phenomenon called Constant Partial Attention, or CPA, in which our attention is constantly divided between a massive array of channels now including mobile Internet, video screens on buses, and more. Over two-thirds of people watch TV while reading. To be successful, we need to thrive on constant interruption.

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Upcoming Keynote at MegaTrends in Abu Dhabi: Four trends transforming society

In early February I am delivering a keynote at the MegaTrends conference in Abu Dhabi, one of three international keynote speakers together with John Naisbitt, who sold over 9 million copies of MegaTrends and created an industry, and Dr Lynda Grattan, author of Living Strategy and Professor at London Business School.
I recently did a press briefing by video for journalists in the UAE, touching on some of the themes I’ll cover in my keynote at the conference. I chose to speak briefly about four massive trends that will impact business globally and in the Gulf region in years to come. I’ll give more details on the speech content before and after the event.
1. The Rise of the Global Talent Economy
Talent – long recognized as the key driver of companies and economies – is becoming a highly dynamic global market. Top professionals are increasingly choosing to work independently, retired executives are making their skills available, and connectivity means we can access expertise from anywhere on the planet. Companies will as a matter of course engage and work with staff, professionals, and suppliers all over the planet. And those that do this better, beating their competitors to get the most from a world of available talent, will win.
For more, see writing about the global talent economy.

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9 practical steps to getting great outsourced design on 99designs

As I wrote last week, I decided to use the design exchange 99designs for our new logo for Future Exploration Network’s sister organization, Advanced Human Technologies. We received over 140 logo submissions, including many very high quality designs, going through a highly iterative process to get an excellent outcome.
Click here to see the submissions and winner (however quite a few designers have withdrawn their designs so they are no longer visible – the full field was a lot more impressive). The winner of the competition is below, created by designer kn. Note that this is not yet our official logo (that will be when our website is relaunched early next year) and may be tweaked further before it becomes our final logo.

Here are nine lessons we learned on how to get great results on 99designs:
1. Know what you are looking for
The questions asked when you post your contest, in terms of what you do and don’t want, are important to think through. To a certain extent that becomes clearer when you can respond to specific ideas, however the more you know beforehand, the easier it is. In particular for logo designs, you need to be clear on what identity and connotations are associated with your company.

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Future Files by Richard Watson hits global markets

A little while ago I announced that Future Exploration Network’s extraordinary Chief Futurist, Richard Watson, had released his book Future Files: A History of the Next 50 Years, including a few excerpts.
Since then it has sold at a giddying pace, selling out in Australia, and has now been launched in 10 editions worldwide, including two Chinese versions. The book has now been launched in the US and UK to great fanfare. The London book launch broke RSA’s record for most books sold, exceeding that for Clay Shirky’s event (see the event video).
Publisher’s Week in the US made Future Files its Web Pick of Week, saying…

Great to see Richard’s thinking getting out there! His talents and provocative insights are highly valued by Future Exploration Network’s consulting clients.

Keynote for Optus Business: Five Driving Forces of Connected Business

I have just completed delivering keynotes in six cities as part of a national roadshow for Optus Business. Optus’ annual client event, this year titled Beyond 08, was a morning event for its clients and prospects in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Canberra. The sessions began with my keynote on Surviving and Thriving in a Connected World, followed by Optus executives presenting insight and client case studies on mobility and IP convergence. Each event included an exhibition featuring Alphawest, the ITC services firm Optus acquired three years ago, and a broad array of Optus Business delivery partner organizations.
Rather than try to run through my entire keynote presentation here, I thought it would be useful to include the key content from just one of the five sections, on the Driving Forces that are transforming a connected world. The rest of the keynote describes in detail what connected business looks like, winning strategies for organizations in a connected economy, and finally the action that needs to be taken to succeed.
The five driving forces of Connected Business are:
1. Connectivity

Increasing connectivity is an overwhelming force, shaping society and business. We have come a long way since the first mobile phones that weighed less than a brick in the early 1990s and the birth of the graphic web browser in 1993. As we shift to pervasive connectivity, giving us access to all the people and information resources of humanity wherever we go, entirely new possibilities are emerging on who we are and how we live our lives. As messages flow rapidly between us, the people on the planet are becoming connected as tightly as the neurons in our brains, giving rise to an extraordinary global brain in which we are all participating.

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Conversation with Napier Collyns on scenario planning, networks, oil, geopolitics, and noticing what matters

I caught up with Napier Collyns in Sydney the other week, after having seen him in both New York and London earlier this year. His highly peripatetic lifestyle means that we’re often not in the same place at the same time, but we’ve managed to cross paths more regularly recently. Napier had just spoken at the Australian Leadership Retreat organized by the Australian Davos Connection on a number of topics including peak oil.
I thought it would be a great opportunity to record a video conversation with Napier. We sat down for an hour after a pleasant lunch and spoke on a wide range of topics, including many aspects of scenario planning and its history and future, Global Business Network, social networks, geopolitics, oil, and how we notice what’s important from an excess of information. The video is below, and a timeline of conversation topics at the bottom of this post.

Conversation: Napier Collyns and Ross Dawson from Ross Dawson on Vimeo.
I’d originally thought we’d create three 10-15 minute self-contained segments on different topics, but that’s not how conversations work. It ended up as a free-flowing discussion over an hour moving far beyond the intended starting points. There were some extremely interesting insights in the conversation, I thought, particularly for anyone interested in scenario planning, so I’ve posted the entire conversation, together with a chronology of conversation topics so you can go to the points of greatest interest to you.

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Thomas Stewart leaves Harvard Business Review

I just got an email from Tom Stewart saying he is leaving Harvard Business Review – this was announced today with the press release below. He has been editor-in-chief for six years, during which time he maintained a strong consistency in HBR’s established editorial approach, but also injected his own highly innovative perspectives. I find HBR an essential read, not least through the pronounced focus on forward-thinking perspectives. I sincerely hope HBR doesn’t move away from this style with Tom’s departure.
I first met Tom in 1998, when I was organizing an Intellectual Capital seminar in Sydney, primarily intended for the funds management community. Tom had published his landmark book Intellectual Capital in 1997, after writing cover stories for Fortune magazine, where he was a writer for many years, on Brain Power in 1991 and on Intellectual Capital in 1994. At the time, drawing on my background in capital markets, I saw an immense opportunity in applying the nascent ideas of intellectual capital to financial markets and investor relations. (Some of these ideas are described in a 2002 speech I gave at KMWorld titled “A Financial Markets Perspective on Intellectual Capital”). I took Tom to visit many of the top fund management teams in Australia. At the time it was great to see the very positive reaction to his ideas, but the reality is fund managers globally have been rather slow to take up the ideas. The response from the broader investment community is improving, but it’s slow going.

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Strategy in a networked world for professional service firms

The UK magazine Legal Week has just published an article co-authored by myself and Josh Bottomley, the Managing Director of LexisNexis UK, titled Managing a Law Firm: A networked world.

The genesis of the article is that I will be delivering the keynote to a group of Managing Partners of major law firms in London in late February 2008 for an event organized by LexisNexis. As a prelude to the event, I wrote this article in collaboration with Josh.

The article is available on the Legal Week website, and also below.

Managing a Law Firm: A networked world

Five key factors are driving today’s economy:

• client sophistication;
• connection; 
• transparency; 
• governance; and 
• modularisation.

These forces are steering the professional services sector towards commoditisation, where clients perceive minimal differences between most offerings and often squeeze their suppliers on fees. Only legal services suppliers that actively engage their clients in deep, collaborative relationships are able to differentiate themselves.

We suggest four approaches to improve management, customer service and ultimately profitability.

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