Earlier this year I gave the opening keynote at the annual thought leadership forum of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, with the conference this year titled “Future Proofing the Profession: Preparing Business Leaders and Finance Professionals for 2025”.
An interesting article titled The uncertain future of work reviewed some of the ideas presented by speakers at the event. On my session it reports:
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The OECD has created a wonderful interactive visual map of the world, showing the Better Life Index – what people value most in their lives – in different countries around the world.
Source: OECD
It is fascinating to see what people value the most around the world. When we look at cultural differences between countries, the simple question of what people value show deep differences, and strong insights into national identity.
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Tomorrow I am giving the opening keynote at International News Media Association (INMA) World Congress in New York.
Over 400 senior news executives from 45 countries are gathering to gain insights into the leading edge and path forward for news organizations globally.
My keynote provides a highly positive perspective on the extraordinary opportunities for the news industry. I am currently refocusing on the future of news and media, and will be sharing a lot more on this topic during this year.
For now, here are the slides to my keynote. As always, note that my slides are designed to accompany my keynote and not to stand alone, and also contain many videos that do not show in the slides below. However they may still be of interest to people who are not attending my keynote.
One of our companies, Future Exploration Network, recently created a detailed report for a client delving into the most important shifts shaping the next decade and beyond.
One of the themes was Cities Reconfigured. The section began:
Urbanisation has proved to be a dominant global force, shaping both developed and developing countries. We know cities are both spreading out and become denser at their centres, but radical shifts are now reshaping the structure and shape of cities. The rise of flexible, remote and freelance work and shifts where and how people shop and socialise are significantly changing travel patterns. The widespread deployment of data sensors is providing real-time insights into environmental, traffic and infrastructure conditions, enabling rapid response and a deeply-needed increase in urban efficiency.
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This morning I was interviewed on both of Australia’s national breakfast TV programs, Today and Sunrise, to greet 2015. Many of the media outlets interviewing me at this turn-of-the-year have wanted to know how well the film Back to the Future II, which in 1989 depicted the world in 2015, anticipated today’s world.
Click on the image below to watch the interview on the Today show.
Some of the ideas we covered in the segment:
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At the end of every year since 2006 I have created structured thoughts about the year to come. The last months of 2014 have been so crazy that I have, unfortunately, not had the time to create highly designed content on the year ahead.
However in preparing for some TV interviews at the turn of the year I have pulled together 7 themes that will help define 2015. Here they are, together with illustrative videos.
Robots have so long being part of science fiction that many have come to believe they will never arrive. With recent technological advances, the age of robots is finally beginning, with humanoid robots finally entering the mainstream in work, retail, aged care, the home and even warfare.
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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.
Last week I was delighted to speak alongside Prof. Hiroshi Ishiguro at the SAP APJ Leadership Summit in Singapore, and spend time with him as we did video interviews to support the event.
I have followed Prof. Ishiguro’s work for many years, first writing about him on this blog in 2006 in a post Being in two places at the same time when he launched his first Geminoid robot. Below is a video of more recent versions of his Geminoid robots that duplicate real humans.
A little while ago we released our “Crunch Time” framework, looking at the 14 domains where we are hitting dramatic disruption, including work, money, privacy, government, education, media, climate and more. You can see the full Crunch Time framework on the Future Exploration Network website.
We have created a short video to introduce the concept of Crunch Time, and the four major implications that apply across the board.
I am at Innovation Partnership Program, a three-day executive education program in Silicon Valley for senior executives from Fortune 100 companies, done as a joint venture between Singularity University and XPrize.
It is an exceptional program providing a deep dive into the exponential technologies driving change, including AI, robotics, crowds, 3D manufacturing, medicine, genetics, computing, digital finance and the strategic implications for enterprise.
I presented the session on crowds on the first day, providing a big picture overview of crowds, crowdsourcing and the sharing economy.
My slides are below. As always, they are not intended to be meaningful for those who did not attend the presentation, but may still be useful to others.
