In my 2008 book on the future, Jump the Curve: 50 Essential Strategies to Help Your Company Stay Ahead of Emerging Technologies, I recommended that people should add “a healthy dose of science fiction” to their regular reading diet. Why? Because such writings can provide insight–and guidance–about future technologies as well as the future demands [...]
Recently, Cisco announced that mobile web video communications are expected to grow “250-fold by 2015.” This has a number of implications but have you ever thought about how this change will impact office design? Cisco and Microsoft have. The former has discovered that 35 percent of it’s office cubicles now stand empty because its employees [...]
One of the more valuable tools when attempting to anticipate future changes is to look for “weak signals.” As a professional futurist, I have developed a number of methods over the length of my career to help clients and audiences do this. First, I begin by framing the future. This “frame,” however, is usually much [...]
Take a look at the image to the right. It is a visual display of Everett Roger’s famous model of diffusion. I, however, want you to look at it differently. Consider it, instead, “an unlearning curve.” Conventional wisdom tells us that it is safe in the middle. Advertising and marketers frequently target their message toward [...]
As regular readers know, I am a big fan of ”the power of play”—the idea that we need to reengage our inner-child if we truly want to innovate our way into the future. To this end, I’d invite you to read this article by Allison Arieff entitled ”Searching for Value in Ludicrous Ideas.” Related Posts [...]
Over the past year, the image of the “dancing lady” (to the right) has floated across the Internet in a viral fashion. Its popularity is due to the fact that some people see the image turning counter-clockwise, while others see it moving it a clockwise direction. (The general theory is that those people who see [...]