The Both/And Principal

The ability to accurately anticipate the future provides organizations and individuals with a major competitive advantage. In the mid-1980s, I began to notice that top executives, managers, business publications, and the popular press were all making the same false assumptions about the future of technological change. Every time a new product category was introduced, they assumed that the older category would quickly vanish. Notice I said product category. The reason I use that term is because individual products do come and go, based on decisions made by management in each company. For example, in the late-'80s, many futurists made the mistake of predicting that by the late-1990s, our offices would be paperless. As of 2006, we are still waiting! I have developed a series of guiding principles based on my research that have helped me to avoid such mistakes. One of the most powerful I call the Both/And Principle.

Both/And thinking is a powerful corrective to either/or thinking, meaning that the future will be either one way or the other. Both/And recognizes the folly of assuming that the new will totally supplant the old. Both/And recognizes that they can be integrated. The hottest breakthrough technologies tend to coexist and integrate to create new value with their predecessors rather than completely co-opting them. Why? The old tech has its own unique profile of functional strengths.

A key success strategy is to integrate the old and the new based on the strengths of each. The important point here is that in a Both/And world there isn'’t the horrendous pressure to place all or nothing bets on emerging technology. By all means, keep looking into the visible future and acting on what you see. To see the future-– and to profit from it- think Both/And.

Knowledge Era Enterprises

Over the next 15 years, organizations worldwide will create new economic value by converting information into knowledge, sharing that knowledge internally to increase its value, and then selling it in non-competing industries to a global client base. Organizations will want their intellectual property (IP) formalized, captured, and leveraged to produce assets of a higher value. This shift in focus is already spawning a fast growing new industry that helps organizations do just that. Businesses of all sizes and from all industry segments will use Internet-based technology to leverage the talents, knowledge and wisdom of employees in new and exciting ways to create high margin products and services in this decade and beyond.
Three components are necessary to begin the process leveraging and profiting from IP:

1. Everyone in the organization must see the tremendous opportunity and added value in going beyond the current activity of converting data into information, to higher levels of value by creating and delivering knowledge and wisdom, which clients can quickly act upon.
2. Everyone in the organization must see that its technology infrastructure and organization are the keys to unlock the vast wealth the Knowledge Era has to offer, both for the organization and its clients.
3. Everyone in the organization must see the importance of his or her own participation as essential to building a strong foundation for the enhancement, sharing and delivery of knowledge.

Technology is no longer a barrier to creating a Knowledge Era enterprise. The key is to see the tremendous opportunity that exists right now, and take action.

How Motivated are We?

At a recent conference in Singapore, I had the opportunity to listen to several speakers from Asia. A common theme in all of their presentations was the tremendous "hunger" that their people have to shape their future, grow their economy, and enhance their standard of living. This "hunger" for a better future is a major factor driving growth throughout Asia today.

As I listened, I asked myself, "How hard are Americans willing to work to learn new things, change and grow to secure a better tomorrow for themselves and the nation?" The majority of Americans have always enjoyed the amazing opportunities that freedom and democracy bring. As a result, all too often we spend our time defending and protecting the status quo instead of leading change from the inside out. History has shown that it is only after we can clearly see opportunity on a personal level that we develop the "hunger" and drive to shape the future. Often, it takes a tragic event - such as 9/11 or massive layoffs - to mobilize us.

The good news is that we don't have to wait. We can cultivate a "hunger" for something better by giving people a clearer picture of the tremendous personal opportunity the future has to offer. Yes, I said personal. We should strive to create a vision that individuals can relate and aspire to. Then change will be viewed as positive, and the result will be action!

Higher Tech

We have all used the term "high tech" at one time or another. But there is a new term I have coined that is far more powerful: higher tech.

Technology-driven change comes to us and at us very well disguised; as savior, enemy, innovator, disruptor, blessing, and curse. My goal is to unmask high technology and reveal it's real face - yours.

That's right. It's not the tools that are all-important; it's what you do with them. Because for all its momentum, technology-driven change still lacks one thing: a steering wheel. And that's where you come in. It is imperative that high tech remain the servant of humankind's inherent genius for figuring out what our newest tools could do, what they should do, and most importantly, what they must do.

Now that the high tech genie is out of the bottle, can we cram the wily magician back in there? No way! And that's fine by me. Higher tech has such enormous promise that it's worth a little extra effort to get the kinks out. If I may borrow from Intel's famously successful slogan and logo: Higher tech has people in it.

Our World is Changing. Are We Ready?

In recent years, global competition, especially from China and India, has been causing many Americans to wonder whether we are in danger of losing the tremendous lead, and earning power, we have had over other countries for the past 50 years. To see the future of American business, it's a good idea to begin by taking a look at what is happening in our schools. After all, the future workforce is already there for us to see.

In recent tests of general knowledge, U.S. 12th graders performed well below the international average for 21 countries. In addition, an advanced mathematics assessment conducted in 15 countries revealed that eleven of the 15 countries outperformed U.S. students. In 2004, more than 600,000 engineers graduated from institutions of higher education in China. In India, the figure was 350,000. In the U.S., it was 70,000.

Now, I know what many of you are thinking - our graduating chemists and engineers are better. Perhaps, and perhaps not. Regardless, we need to consider that: 1) many of the functions that businesses need chemists or engineers to perform can be done by average engineers and chemists, and 2) the rest of the world is rapidly upgrading their universities to close the quality gap with regard to education standards.

Is the U.S. ready for global competition? In light of these facts, it doesn't look good. But Americans have a long history of doing amazing (and even seemingly impossible) things once we accept the facts and focus our collective minds and efforts on taking action!

Acceleration

Technology-driven change has been a ferocious problem for all of us because it comes at us from so many directions. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded nearly 335,000 patents in 2003 and 2004, and the pace has shown no signs of slowing down.

Is it humanly possible to keep up? You don't need to. Because the fact is, the catalyst for transforming our businesses and futures is generated primarily by three technological forces.

Three of the most powerful digital trend accelerators - computer processing power, storage capacity, and bandwidth - have reached an intense new phase and are already turning business models upside down as they spawn fresh generations of procedures, tools, products, and services. Their newfound power will have a major impact on the future.

By focusing on these three accelerators instead of the dozens of new technologies covered by the press each month, we can get a more accurate sense of where technology-driven change is coming from and, more importantly, where it is likely to lead.

Leveraging Intellectual Capital

Working with executives at the Mayo Clinic in the early '90s, I asked them to do what I ask many of my clients to do today - and that is to look at what I call the Visible Future®. At that time, this was not something they wanted to do. Why? Because to them it was depressing. Indeed, their visible future included decreasing Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements and increasing losses in their emergency rooms. So my suggestion to them was this: "Why don't you sell your knowledge?"

The result was a CD which could be used by people any time, day or night, to determine, for example, whether their child's rash and fever required a trip to the emergency room or could be treated with aspirin. The Mayo Clinic put a $100 price tag on the product, and in the first year it sold 670,000 copies.

A side benefit was that, by expanding their services to offer a knowledge-based product, they began to develop a new and powerful 21st century brand in the marketplace. They not only created new value and new revenue, but with the subsequent advent of the Internet, their name recognition became international.

Are you leveraging the intellectual capital in your organization?