Envisioning the future of government as solution enabler

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When you look at the future, there are few more important topics than the future of government.

Government was designed to be institutional, providing stability to nations. Yet that design and structure means that governmental institutions are generally very poorly prepared to change as required in the face of extraordinary shifts in society and business.

I have been drawn more into the future of government over the last few years, among other activities creating and sharing my Transformation of Government framework with a variety of groups of senior policymakers.

William Eggers and his team at Deloitte have distilled some excellent analysis and insights into the future of government at their Government 2020 site, which includes an overview of drivers and trends shaping government, and views on the implications across domains of government.

The following slides and video provide nice high-level overviews of the work.

The other resources on the website are well worth a look, including the Drivers and Trends sections.


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Flying cars are here! Will they become mainstream?

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I’m at the Marketing Summit 2014 in Istanbul, where I’m giving the closing keynote later today. It is proving a delightful event, drawing on a framework on GameChangers from conference chairman Peter Fisk to invite inspiring speakers from around the world.

Yesterday Stefan Klein of Aeromobil described his journey to create a flying car. The beautiful video below shows the maiden flight of Aeromobil, just one month ago.


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The future of offices: facilitating interaction and making work fun

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Last week I was interviewed on the Daily Edition TV program about the future of offices.

Click on the image below to see a video of the interview.

DailyEdition_080714
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The future of travel: vertical train stations to help the growth of high-speed trains

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Today I was interviewed on the Channel 7 Daily Edition about the future of travel. Click on the image below to see a video of the segment.

DailyEdition_070514

One of the topics we discussed was a proposed concept of a Hyper-Speed Vertical Train Hub, an interesting idea which allows high speed trains to shift to a vertical configuration as they arrive at a station.

Instead of long carriages the train consists of smaller pods that can stay in upright position as the train shifts to be aligned with the walls of a building, where the passengers can alight.

The primary advantage is that the train station can have a very small footprint, which will be increasingly important when space is at a premium in densely populated urban centers.

High-speed trains are proving to be a vital foundation to China’s infrastructure, providing an example that other countries are increasingly interested in following.

The vertical train hubs concept is not that likely to be implemented, but it is a novel and intriguing approach that just might facilitate the adoption of high-speed trains in major centers.

vertical_train_hub

Image source: Evolo

Demographics will shape Asia’s future

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Last week I gave the keynote at the Board Strategy Planning offsite of a major Philippino bank at a beautiful location a few hours outside Manila.

The bank’s board and executive team recognize the need to respond to the challenges and opportunities of the future, so themed their strategy offsite around the future, inviting me to presenting on Creating the Future of Business to kick off the session.

My presentation delved into the essence of technological, societal, and economic structural change today, and the leadership required to succeed in the emerging world.

One of the topics I touched on was demographic change. Demographics in the Philippines is a very different issue than it is in most developed countries, where rapidly ageing populations are at the forefront.

The following chart shows the anticipated demographic profiles of Philippines and Japan in 2050.

Age_profile_Philippines_Japan
Source: Nationmaster
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In the future we will have relationships with our homes

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Today I was interviewed on The Daily Edition about the homes of the future.

Click on the image to watch a video of the segment.

DailyEdition_310114

The future of homes is a very rich topic that goes far beyond the usual chatter about internet-enabled refrigerators and integrated entertainment, and we weren’t able to cover much in a TV panel format.

However the main point that I made is that in the future we will have a very real relationship with our homes. Now homes are somewhere that we reside, and while we can shape them to our personalities, it is not currently a two-way relationship.

As we move forward, our relationship with our homes will comprise many elements.
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GitHub launches service for open government

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Future of government seems to be the topic of the moment.

After my post yesterday on Citizen sourcing and the future of cities and last week on Four fundamental principles for crowdsourcing in government, I have to report about GitHub launching government.github.com.

GitHub_government

As it happens, in my recent keynote on A Future of Crowds: Implications for Government and Society, I discussed the issue of GitHub as a tool for crowdsourced government.
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Citizen sourcing and the future of cities

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As I noted last week in my post on Four fundamental principles for crowdsourcing in government, one of the most powerful applications of crowdsourcing is in government.

PSFK has just launched a nice report and summary presentation on the future of cities, embedded below.

The third section of the report covers Citizen Sourced aspects of the future of cities, including:
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Metropolitan IQ and Urban metabolism: Great case studies of innovative, collaborative cities

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Last week I went to the launch of an excellent issues paper created by The Committee for Sydney, titled #wethecity: Collaborating to Compete in the Digital Era.

Lucy Turnbull, chair of Committee of Sydney, notes in her opening comments that:
Cities are collaborating to compete and the ones that collaborate most compete best.

The paper focuses on the challenges and opportunities for Sydney, with the summary recommendations at the bottom of this post.

However to understand how innovative cities can be designed, the paper notes that [Leading cities] invest in the art and practice of what we could describe as “systematic serendipity”.

It draws on 16 excellent case studies of how to develop “metropolitan IQ” and a healthy “urban metabolism” (analogies I of course love), including both international and Australian examples. These are summarized below and described in detail in the paper:
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The immense role of national and ethnic diaspora in driving global innovation

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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
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