In the mind of young social entrepreneurs -how do they shape the future?

There's a number of debates and speeches from the WEF meeting of Davos worth following on Youtube. To me, however, this one with 4 young social entrepreneurs (the 'shapers') is undoubtedly the most interesting one. They're representing GenerationY now entering the labor market, so the views of these people on professional life and social structure is a good indicator of how the world will morph in the next decades.

The debate lasts 50 minutes, well worth watching but if you lack the time you might be helped with some of my observations:

• when asked about the priorities society should set for itself, they come up with quite a diverse set of issues, from climate change to education;
• they have a way of finding sound solutions to societal issues in surprising places -nonlinear thinking-, like favoring the availability of bandwidth (internet) over food and 'classical' aid programs in developing regions;
• in their eyes, democracy and human evolution comes through collaboration, bottom-up decision taking and shared values (a term that is often mentioned);
• leadership to them is defined by culture, values and a spirit of 'collectiveness'.

The 'global shapers' program of the World Economic Forum is a continuous effort bytheway, you can find regular updates and debates on its website (look for 'global shapers' in the 'community' tab).

Watch live streaming video from worldeconomicforum at livestream.com

Future Readiness score and competitive benchmark (template)

I've reported on the Future Readiness Benchmark in a previous post, showing how this type of benchmark can help companies to:

• assess their preparedness to long-term challenges;
• assess their competitive positioning on the long-term;
• obtain ideas for improvements of their mid-range strategy;
• get ideas for innovation.

Some people have asked me for the underlying Excell template to input the data and obtain the Future Readiness score and benchmarks. I've re-worked it a little bit in order to make sure it can be used by people with basic Excell skills. It is now available for purchase -see at the bottom of this post.

The template basically consists of 2 parts: an input file and a report file.

The input file is where you assess yourself and 5 competitors on 26 long-term metrics:

The report file is provides the Future Readiness score, a benchmark against the average and best performers as well as two charts showing your strengths and weaknesses:

As said the file should be relatively easy to use if you have basic Excell skills, but in case of doubt you can always contact me at frederic@i4fi.com.

Purchase of the Excell template 'Future Readiness Benchmark' to be sent by e-mail. 
(secured by Paypal)

Shipping options

Send by e-mail $99,95 USD

Don't forget to mention your e-mail address when paying!
The template will be sent to your mail within 3 business days.
The document is for internal use of the acquiring company. It can be freely shared within the company, but not sent outside of it.

The future of work: hyperspecialization?

My previous post about the future of professional organizations was looking at new organization models from within the companies. What it didn't take into account is that for an increasing number of tasks, companies open their organizations to the outer world. Marketing tasks can be crowdsourced, R&D can benefit from open innovation, and administrative tasks can be performed through microtasking, to name just a few.

This sheds a completely different light on how 'work' in general will get organized in the future. In an extreme form we'd let go of the notion of employees, and just have freelance activities. This is the view of Tom Malone at least.

In my eyes there's some discrepancy between the theory and the reality here. Sure, creative types can earn (little) money through crowdsourcing platforms, but what about the thousands of other skills that cannot be crowdsourced? Furthermore, some specific skills are requires to offer your services successfully on the globalized market -the fact that the market is globalized is in itself not sufficient- and these skills need to be taught at school, which isn't yet the case. So it might take another generation before this 'vision' becomes reality.

What's the best way of organizing work? Some revolutionary insights

When I worked at Cisco the company went through some experiments to (re)organize its operations around 'boards' and 'councils', with people from different backgrounds working together on very specific opportunities or challenges. It was a test for a distributed organization model. It dramatically failed -officially due to the complexity this system created; in my eyes because the attempt was too shy: it operated alongside the classical model of hierarchy and middle management (of which I was part). You can't have both...

Distributed organization models do have many advantages nevertheless, as stated by Heiko Fischer in the video beneath. It's the best way to stimulate evolutionary and revolutionary innovation, for one. But it's so darn hard to let go of preconceived thoughts about organizational efficiency... For instance, in a distributed model you could have bonuses (or even salaries) depend on peer-to-peer networks, or you could crowdsource the performance reviews.

Brilliant ideas here, just waiting to be applied -if they ever will.

Would you eat artificial meat? (part II)

I already asked this question in a previous post, where I summed up the multiple advantages cultivated meat. This presentation provides a little more information about the challenges of growing meat -this can not be done efficiently at this point of time... meat is basically muscle, and muscles need some exercise in order to grow, which in turn requires energy.

But despite the challenges (and, potentially, your disgust at the thought of eating synthetic meat), the idea still has some appeal... like Mark states at the start of his presentation: 'a vegetarian in a hummer is much less damaging to the environment than a meat-eater on a bicycle'...

How the next stage of the Internet will impact how we learn and teach

How is the future development of the Internet going to affect how we learn and teach?

The question might seem trivial to those of you who never heard about the 'semantic web', which is going to drive us from Web 2.0 (building interactiveness on the web, which is basically what social media is currently doing) into Web 3.0 (where the Internet will 'know' what your are and what you want, and pro-actively serve it to you). In a way, Web 3.0 will act much more like a human brain, putting things in relation with each other without human having to tell it to build these relations... This might sound like science fiction, but if you're interested in the subject you should spend 15 minutes on the video beneath, it is quite revealing.

But how would this affect education? According to a recent blog post on onlineuniversities.com, it would enable the curriculum to be built on each person's specific knowledge and needs -a customized learning experience:

(from onlineuniversities.com:)

• Customizing presentation of information to accommodate different learning styles – Past experience of learner’s success rate in understanding and applying information from various styles of presentation will influence the ways in which current information is presented.
• Easy facilitation of homogeneous or heterogeneous groupings – Background knowledge, intellectual capacity and current understanding can be leveraged to group learners so that they can help each other learn best depending on their own prior success.
• Providing information about student background knowledge and how to activate it – Instructors often struggle with understanding the prior knowledge of all of their students. This technology makes it possible to adjust course materials to accommodate for specific previous learning experiences.
• Customizable assessments based on current and past educational experiences – If students have demonstrated previous proficiency in an area, assessments can account for that and change themselves to match a student’s current level of knowledge. With smart tests, there would be no possibility of testing students on information that they have not previously been exposed to.

...quite appealing...

For a good introduction to the 'semantic web', it's well worth spending 15 minutes with the video beneath:

The future of capitalism: state capitalism?

When thinking about the future of the capitalist system, one quickly bounces against a puzzling paradox:

On one hand, there will be an inevitable push for private companies to take over certain responsibilities from governments (the 'market state'), a trend that is reinforced by the high levels of debt which will drag on countries' finances for decades to come.

On the other hand, we might see a push from the wider public for governments to take a more active part in parts of the economy that used to be private. This has happened recently with the banking sectors (states taking control over failing banks), but we might see this happening in other sectors as well, to avoid BP-like disasters for instance (caused by an ever increasing hunger for profit, which is would not necessarily be the case for public companies).

You might argue that government-run companies lack the drive to innovate, and hence this trend would stand in the way of human evolution. This should not necessarily be the case though: given the right stimuli to employees of state-owned companies could still stimulate innovation. A bigger hurdle is the fact that governments cannot be both the regulator and the regulated. However, in the case of financial institutions, this might turn out to be an advantage (at least governments would understand what they need to regulate).

It's going to be difficult to find a balance between both trends, but either way it will have a profound impact on our economies...

Are we ready for sustainable consumption? apparently not yet...

It is stating the obvious: if we want to tackle major challenges with regards of environmental changes and resource depletion, we'll need to change our consumption patterns dramatically. The World Economic Forum just released its annual report about sustainable consumption -based on an extensive survey and discussions with plenty of CEO's- and the results are not so positive...
More with Less: Scaling Sustainable Consumption and Resource Efficiency

Some highlights:

• The adoption of sustainable consumption is higher in emerging markets, lagging in mature markets (45% of Chinese respondents are willing to pay a 5-10% premium for green products... in Europe 72% of respondents said to be willing to buy green products, but only 17% actually did so in past month);
• There's some discrepancy between good intentions and actual behavior... the US spent 409$Billion in subsidies to assist fossil fuel consumption in 2010;
• Limited growth in environmental innovation... between 1999 and 2009, only 2.7% of patent submissions were for environmental innovation;

Obviously much more needs to be done... in the first place: 'decoupling' economic growth from environmental degradation, which actually comes in 2 forms:

• Resource decoupling: reducing the resources needed to generate a unit of GDP;
• Impact decoupling: reducing the negative environmental impact of producing a unit of GDP.

We're seriously lagging in both, according to the report...

The report also shows that consumption is still mainly driven by cost factors rather than sustainability arguments... maybe this is due to the economic crisis, but chances are that people still lack the awareness of some global issues.

The full report can be downloaded here.
For a brief intro to the report, see this video:

Changing the educational paradigm: flipping the classroom

I've been reporting on educational trends before (see under 'global issues' in my blog post overview). There's an obvious reason for this: if we want to tackle the many challenges of the future we need to educate our kids in such a way that they can find creative solutions to it (obviously, my generation will need to do our part as well ;-).

The world has changed dramatically in the last 10 years, but in many countries the educational system hasn't -at least not it the part of Europe where I come from. Of course, my kids have internet access in the classroom, and they even have a digital board (!wow). The the paradigm remains the same: the teacher teaches (mostly hard facts) and the students, well, they study.

The must be a better way. 'Flipping the classroom' is an interesting thought: why not learn at home, and practice what you learn at school? It certainly stimulates interaction, collaboration, autonomous learning and other skills that will prove handy to make it in the 'real world'?

What do you think?

Would you eat synthetic meat ?

The question is somewhat misleading, since the meat in question is not really synthetic, but rather 'artificially grown'... it would be made out of the same cells as 'real meet', and hence would have the same flavor and the same nutritive qualities... Beside this, it would have plenty of benefits:

• no need to kill animals; 
• no animals in danger if extinction (since we wouldn't need to kill them massively);
• reduced pollution (cows are massive methane producers, but synthetic meat would reduce the amount of cows needed);
• meat could be produced within (mega)cities, reducing the cost -and pollution- of transport;
• sufficient amount of meat to satisfy the growing demand of the rising middle class in emerging markets.

So, if you consider these benefits (and assuming the production of meat could be done efficiently in the future), would you be in favor or against eating synthetic meat?

Fighting future water scarcity: the fascinating story of an Indian village

...not all of the problems linked to global warming can only be resolved by high-tech... a little common sense and co-operation can do miracles, as this little Indian village shows. Something to reflect on further...

"As the world reels under the threat of unrelenting climate change, erratic monsoons and fast depleting groundwater reserves, The Miracle Water Village narrates the inspirational story of impoverished farming community in India that reversed its fortunes through its visionary model of water management.

Lying in one of the worst drought-prone regions of India, the village of Hiware Bazar battled many decades of sparse rain and failed crops. However, 20 years ago, the entire village came together to script a silent revolution by designing a rainwater-harvesting model that saved every drop of the scanty rain they received.

Today, the village is literally an oasis in the middle of the desert, boasting of bumper harvests, dairy co-operatives, millionaire families and visionary farmers. Hiware Bazar still receives the scanty amount of rainfall it used to in the heart of its most trying years, but what has changed is the way it has managed its water and created a miracle with this most precious liquid resource!"

The biggest corporate challenges and industry shifts of the next decade

Some great interviews from the World Economic Forum, where they were asked corporate leaders about the biggest shifts in their industries in the next decade.

The CEO of Health Care provider Aetna sees the digitization of information as a major shift, but candidly admits that Health Care has some tremendous catching up to do. He also sees a great challenge in adapting the way societies pay for health care in order to get more efficient -especially in the US.  



The CEO of CA Technologies stresses the role of technology in corporate innovation and change management, but quite interestingly also mentions the different way with which governments and private companies will need to co-operate in the future (the 'market state', for those who follow my blog regularly).



The CEO of executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles sees major disruptions coming from demographic shifts - the rising power of the East, the rising middle classes and the coming of GenY on the labor market. The biggest challenge will be to attract and retain the next generation of leaders. I couldn't agree more with the latter statement, the real question is whether GenY will even bother to become a 'business leader' in this sense...

The future of health care: Bioprinting and organ printing

Well, just when I thought I saw it all ;-)

Apparently it's getting very possible to just print organs to replace dysfunctional ones. The building blocks -well, the cells- of the new organs are just the same as the original ones, so there's no risk of repulsion from the body, and this resolves many ethical questions (and excesses) about organ transplantation.

The idea is certainly appealing, thought the big question is whether this will be accessible and affordable to anyone in the future, or whether this will further exacerbate the divide between the 'have's' and the 'have not's'...

The (near) future of Manufacturing

We can expect a whole bunch of interesting reports from the World Economic Forum in the next couple of weeks -in preparation of the meeting in Davos. One interesting think tank that was created at the previous session is about global advanced Manufacturing:

"In January 2011, the Forum created the Future of Manufacturing project to serve as a high-level cross-industry platform for executives and policy-makers to build strategic insights into the key challenges and future outlook for the global manufacturing ecosystem. The project developed a data-driven narrative to articulate how advanced manufacturing drives economic growth, to identify the macroeconomic trends that are shaping global value chains, and to explore the role of government in different countries, building on workshops in Brazil, China, and India."

The video beneath is a rather condensed summary of this think tank, with plenty of valuable thoughts on the future of manufacturing -among other why manufacturing is important for a nation's economy. It's probably something I have given too few thoughts so far, but manufacturing is unleashing a whole set of services, competencies and innovative forces that are crucial to any country's economy.

Also, given the specific short-term challenges that global manufacturers are facing -volatile currencies, the incremental use of technology in the production process, etc- we might see a 're-aggregation' of the value chain in the coming years (which is a difficult term to say that companies will be doing more of their manufacturing themselves instead of outsourcing big chunks of it).

Megatrends vs. anti-trends... a sneak preview of the extreme future

As humans we are naturally inclined to think that the big shifts we currently see around us will evolve exponentially in the future. However, for many of these trends we could easily imagine a counter-movement going into the opposite direction. What if these would become predominant?

The presentation hereunder is a thought -experiment, in which these 'extreme futures' are given shape. Obviously, the ultimate future will lie somewhere inbetween both visions, but by doing this exercise we can prepare for other, less obvious scenarios to develop, and perhaps find concrete innovation opportunities within these counter-movements.

Megatrends vs antitrends

View more presentations from Frederic De Meyer

From the author of The impact of megatrends on your business: How to assess the impact of long-term trends on your company and adapt your strategy to ensure future success available on Amazon.com

What every business can learn from start-ups

Can ‘entrepreneurship’ be prone to scientific rigor? It sounds counter-intuitive, for sure. In my eyes, entrepreneurship is much more associated with intuition, guts and inspiration, rather than processes and rules.

Eric Ries’ ‘The lean startup’ is a brave attempt at bringing entrepreneurship to a scientific level. Did he succeed? Hell, no. The ‘methodology’ proposed in his book is nothing close to scientific, it is more an abstraction  of the things he learned as (a consultant of) entrepreneur. Nevertheless, he learned a great deal of valuable insights, and shares it without restriction in this incredibly rich book.

Concepts like ‘validated learning’, ‘minimal viable product (MVP)’, ‘pivot moments’ and the ‘5 why’s’ will definitely linger on in my thoughts about business strategy. But perhaps the strongest learning for me was the concept of ‘long batch’ versus ‘short batch’.

I’ve had a traditional economic education, where I was taught that splitting workflows in small pieces, each performed by specialized people (the long batch), is the most efficient way to produce a product. According to Ries’ experience, it is not. At least not for everyone.

I’ve made a quick attempt to put his arguments in a chart:

Thing is, if you obtain experience from selling a product (or service) early on in the process, even with an imperfect product (MVP), you quickly obtain insights (validated learning) on what the market exactly want, and can adapt your product instantly to it. It’s easier said than done, since this requires many specialized teams to collaborate –each with their own agenda- but it is definitely more efficient since you can take corrective measures earlier on compared to the long-batch.

Furthermore, your resources –especially human resources- will be working on these products all of their time (instead of waiting for measurement feedback or bottlenecks to be resolved). In that way, the short-batch concept would potentially unleash the innovation capabilities in each of these resources, since ‘if we stop wasting people’s time, what would they do with it?’ (E. Ries).

A capital question…

The impact of megatrends on your business

Are you prepared to take the maximum out of long-term trends?

In this original work, Frederic De Meyer gives multiple examples of how major societal shifts are impacting on all types of businesses, often indirectly and subtly. This book provides concrete, practical advice on how to use megatrends to generate innovative ideas and understand the challenges of your customers and how to best benefit from this knowledge.

Some preliminary reactions to the book:

“Frederic offers a unique insight of how global changes translate into new business opportunities. This book is an essential tool for any future-oriented manager or entrepreneur and anyone involved in innovation strategies” Philippe De Ridder, co-founder, Board of Innovation

“Designing and implementing a good strategy is quite a challenge. In an increasingly complex world, it is becoming increasingly difficult to recognise the core from the noise. This book on megatrends will help you do this. It will give you the necessary insights to focus on the themes that are crucial to the future of your company. A must read!” Jeroen De Flander, co-founder, The Performance Factory and author of Strategy Execution Heroes

“This excellent book is a comprehensive  overview of the major trends and also offers a methodology to better assess the future reality and master its consequences. The author provides an essential guide for any strategy exercise” Peter Corijn, Vice-President, Procter & Gamble

Frederic De Meyer is the founder of the Institute for Future Insights, a company focused on understanding the impact of long-term trends on companies and helping companies to adapt to these shifts. For the last 10 years, Frederic De Meyer has lead the European market intelligence team of technology company Cisco. 

The future of China

It's no doubt an important question, since so much of the world's economic growth depend on it still: how will China evolve in the coming years?

One thing that I was made aware of by George Magnus' excellent book The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World is that China -which will have 23% of its population older than 65 by 2020- will be confronted by the same aging population challenge as most of the Western countries:




But for the next couple of years there's another challenge that emerges and that will likely have its repercussions on the global economy: the build-up of risks in China's banks, as a result of the stimulation of credit grants through the banks, amounting to a considerable portion of GDP -in other words, another bubble... Though it's not necessarily going to end dramatically, it increases the risk factor tremendously...

something I'll need to dig a bit deeper into...