The shift from reactive to proactive to preemptive customer service

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In healthcare the biggest – and very long overdue – shift is from reactive to proactive healthcare: instead of fixing people when they get sick, helping to keep them healthy.

This idea of shifting from reactive to proactive is also being applied to customer service by the very interesting enterprise technology vendor Pega , which pushes it further to frame “preemptive” customer service, avoiding any need for customers to seek assistance.
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Designing future organizations based on ethical foundations for AI

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I recently spoke at Tech: The New Era conference, which was part of London Tech Week, in a conversation with Kriti Sharma on the ethics of AI.

I had previously interviewed Kriti as part of the OFX/BBC Storyworks Where the world is moving podcast series I hosted in a very interesting episode on AI ethics, so I was delighted to have the chance for another fascinating conversation with her.

My core message was that we have critical decisions to make in how we use and implement AI. We must start by thinking through the ethical issues and potential implications of AI, and from that designing the future organizations that will in turn shape all of society and the role of humans in creating value.
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In COVID times: the value of keeping journals and leadership for organisational reinvention

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I was delighted to be a guest on Zanele Njapha‘s Future-fit Fridays podcast, with her dynamic style helping bring out some of my strongest-held beliefs.

You can listen to the interview on Apple or Spotify, or the full transcript is below.

Zanele opened by asking me about my practice of keeping a journal, following up by asking me if this was particularly relevant today. I agreed.

These are very challenging times for almost all of us and so this is a time when we can get value in reflecting, by writing and capturing our own thoughts

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The shift to contactless physical retail and promise of haptics for online retail

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Yesterday the Sunrise national breakfast TV program featured brief excerpts from an interview with me highlighting two related key trends: Physical retail is going contactless, avoiding touch where possible, and online retail is using haptics to enable touch and feel at a distance.


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Choosing our lives from infinite possibility

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In Jose Luis Borges’ exquisite story The Garden of Forking Paths he beautifully evokes the many different paths that our lives could take.

Every day we make choices small and large that lead our lives down a particular path, collapsing the infinite possible directions into the one reality we actually live.
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Will coronavirus reverse the Megatrend of Urbanization?

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I often say that a trend-watcher and a futurist are very different things.

Trend-watchers see what has happened and implicitly assume that it will continue into the future.

Futurists uncover trends and consider the impacts of and responses to those trends, that could sustain, accelerarate, slow, or potentially reverse them.

In fact one of the most pertinent questions when observing a powerful trend is what could stop or reverse it.
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Conversation with Mark Pesce on the future of virtual events, organizations, and society

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Fellow futurist Mark Pesce is an old friend. We first actually connected when he spoke at my Future of Media Summit 2008, but I had long before being inspired by his work, writing about Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML), which Mark co-developed, in my first book.

We happened to live 100 meters from each other in Sydney’s Surry Hills for a few years, and for many years now our work and positioning as futurists and keynote speakers has been highly aligned.

I obviously had to interview Mark for The Virtual Excellence Show, and it was indeed a highly stimulating conversation. Watch the video, and see below for some summary points.
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In times of uncertainty showing vulnerability is the mark of a true leader

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The world has always been uncertain.

Now perhaps it is more uncertain than ever before, not least in that new uses of technology are shifting the structure of society, business, and government, amplifying the manifold unknowns of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it might play out.

In the past many leaders sought a sense of control, and in relatively steady-state environments they were sometimes able to achieve that.

However for many years already, leaders who have not been comfortable with the reality of a lack of control in a highly complex world have been sidelined or found themselves presiding over rapidly shrinking organizations.
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How virtual audiences for sports, music, and conferences create a positive feedback loop of engagement

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Since the advent of coronavirus here has been a lot of work put into building virtual events.

However we are now realizing that having virtual audiences is an essential part of creating great events, energizing sportspeople, speakers, and performers and creating a positive feedback loop that is at the heart of a great in-person event.

We have already seen examples of this in soccer, notably of Danish team Aarhus teaming up with Zoom to put massive screens of fans in the audience.

Today the US NBA and Microsoft announced that digital stands comprising fans displayed on 17 foot screens would help bring basketball games to life.
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How to drive change by focusing on exponential opportunity, not threats

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Among the insights that John Hagel shared in our recent conversation on The Virtual Excellence Show was how to frame change for leaders.

From his decades of experience he says that you must focus on opportunity. Emphasizing threats simply increases resistance to change.

What makes this easier today is that fundamental shifts in the economy mean that opportunity can be exponential, generating even more compelling reasons for positive action.

However to seize those opportunities companies need to fundamentally recreate themelves, their old configurations are not adequate, deep change is essential.

See the video for John’s insights on this, or see below for a full transcript of the video.
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