Intel’s Top 5 Tech Trends

I am sitting at a conference in Dubai, listening to one of Intel’s top guys in the Middle East talking about technology disruptors that Intel expects to see in the next few years. He is listing five “technology-led tectonic shifts”:

1. Big data becomes useful (my addition: and integrates cloud computing, the internet of things and massive data processing power – I don’t think these are separate trends, see below). The key is making sense of the data.
2. Cloud computing that is open, federated, automated and client aware
3. The Internet of Things
4. The client continuum – from device centric to user centric computing. The device dies, and the interface becomes more intuitive and pre-emptive, including .
5. Security – 5 million new malicious websites are launched every month, and the malware ‘industry’ is worth double as much as the global drug trade.

By the way, it costs less to build one intel processor than to grow one grain of rice.

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Video: Fujitsu’s 21st Century Leadership series

Recently, I spoke at an evening function hosted by Fujitsu in London. The theme was: “Who’s in charge? Leadership in the 21st century workplace”. Liv Garfield, CEO of BT Openreach, and myself shared the platform and a panel discussion, and were then interviewed by the Financial Times alongside some of Fujitsu’s leading thinkers. It was an excellent evening, and a short 6 minute video was compiled by the FT with some of our key thoughts.  Enjoy.

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I want you in my office. Now. What’s really going on at Yahoo?

The biggest tech news so far this year has been an announcement by Yahoo that they want “all hands on deck” and that all work-from-home is being cancelled as from June. Irked Yahoo employees have leaked the memo that was sent by HR head Jackie Reses. Apparently the move comes from the very top, from CEO Marissa Mayer, and will be applied without exception to all remote workers, both those who do so full-time and any who have flexible work from home arrangements. Read the memo and some initial analysis here.

The key message is that Yahoo wants to become “the very best place to work”, and wants to do this using “communication and collaboration” and “working side-by-side”. But then, the real intent is clear: Yahoo wants to be “more productive, efficient and fun” and says that “speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home”.

The response from a world that is assuming that more remote working is the future has been loud and incredulous. Is this really the way forward? Has Marissa Mayer made a huge misstep here? Or does she know something we don’t?

What’s going on?

We know that Mayer is under pressure to produce profits at Yahoo, and does not have much more time to deliver a fairly radical turnaround. We also know that she has a fairly forceful leadership style. Business Insider resported a few months ago that an unnamed staffer told them of a team of Yahoo’s product designers who pitched a new product to Mayer. She approved the product on the condition that they get it to market months ahead of their own schedule. Then Mayer supposedly told them they had exactly one week to figure out how to get the product out by the end of the year, and that they would all be fired if they couldn’t get it done.

The stated reason behind the move by Mayer is that she had done an analysis of the VPN (virtual private network) data of remote workers, and Yahoo employees working from home were not logging into the system for enough hours during the day. Supporters of the move have largely pointed to two things: the fact that work from home people can slack off, and the need to have everyone in the office if you’re going to effect quick culture change.

The second reason may be right, but the first one seems spurious. Most remote workers are unlikely to be constantly on the VPN, especially if the system itself is not as user friendly or helpful as it could be. And if you’ve employed a bunch of slackers, you can bet that they’ll slack off in your office almost as well as they could slack off at home. The only difference is that you’ll have lost some productive hours due to traffic and commuting time.

Studies on telecommuting are conflicted right now, mainly because it’s a nuanced thing. It works well for some functions, but not others. It works well for some people, but not others. However, it seems that, in general, in increases productivity, wellness and motivation for most people.

So, why did she do it?

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A round up of predictions of future forces shaping our world

There are two types of future predictions: one looks to try and predict specific events and technologies, the other attempts to look beyond specifics at the causes of change and the forces that will shape the future. In a sense, the first looks for the milestones while the second attempts to find the general direction in our journey into the future. Both are important. Both are interesting. But they require different skill sets, and are meaningful in different ways.

Our company, TomorrowToday spends most of our time and effort on the second type of prediction, seeking out the disruptive forces and trends that are shaping the world around us, and especially the future of work in the next few years. Part of our research methodology includes meta-research as we track other researchers, futurists and insight companies.

Here is a selection of some of their recent insights into the forces that are causing change in the world. Read the articles we’ve linked to for much deeper analysis.

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No more ‘Top Gear’? But how else could the driverless car impact you?

Self-driving cars?  Seems like a million miles off, right?  Like flying cars (which already exist, by the way).

When Sebastian Thrun was 18, he lost his best friend in a car accident.  Since then, he has set himself the goal of saving the 1 million people per year who die in car accidents caused by human error.

Thrun became one of the world’s most respected scientists working in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.  As one of the founders of the Google X Lab, he was able, about a year ago, to test Google’s self-driving car with a blind man at the wheel (watch the incredible video here).

More recently, The Oxford Robot Car Project was reported doing similar tests in the UK.  BMW and Audi have been working on prototypes and the technology is already legal in some US States.  Some commentators think that self-driving cars will be commonplace on our roads within 15 years.

That may seem pretty surprising, but you may just be thinking “OK, that’s cool, I’ll just get a self-driving car then” or “No way – I love to drive!  And what will happen to ‘Top Gear’?!”

We think a lot about disruption at TomorrowToday.   And the one thing we usually find is that the disruption is not always the one that would be expected – indeed, this is what makes it so difficult for businesses to prepare for change and keep their competitive edge.  And what’s really interesting about this particular development is how many ripple effects will be felt, over so many industries and sectors, when self-driving cars hit our roads.

On the most positive side, the World Health Organisation estimates that there are currently 1.2 million road traffic accidents worldwide, 90% of which are caused by human error.  So potentially over 1 million lives could be saved by the removal of this error (although I think we’d have to assume that the technology may misfire from time to time).  Also, we’d spend less time in cars because the traffic would move more efficiently, with fewer hold ups and traffic jams.  And whilst we’re actually in the car, we wouldn’t be driving, so we could do other stuff!  In the US alone, it’s been estimated that 4.8 billion hours are wasted in traffic congestion – we’d get all that back plus the time spent travelling congestion-free.

Of course, we wouldn’t really have to own cars, because we could just summon one to our house (or wherever) when we needed it, saving us a fair amount of money plus a lot of bother of learning to drive.

So far, so good, right?  We will be safer, have more time and be financially better off.

Unless of course you work in the car industry (cars won’t be changed much and will cease to be any kind of a status symbol).  Or you’re a mechanic (no accidents).  Or a personal injury lawyer (ditto).  What if you work in local or central Government – you’ll have to replace parking and speeding fines with another form of income.  Energy companies will find their revenues reduced as road lighting is no longer required.  And what will happen to railways?  What will be the point?

If you’re interested to read more on this, Forbes has a great series of articles, which starts here.

One thing is for sure – there will be even more impacts that no-one has even thought of yet.  Unless you have?  In which case we’d love to hear them!

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Weak signals becoming strong: Reshoring, shale gas and jobs in America

For a while now, our team has been tracking the shale gas issue. We flagged it a few years ago as a weak signal for massive disruptive change. It’s no longer weak: in our minds it is the single biggest force peeking over our horizons right now.

The discovery, all around the world, of a new source of energy will change the power politics of the globe in fundamental ways. In particular, American power politics will be turned on its head. It is now becoming increasingly likely that by the end of President Obama’s second term, America could be energy independent, have ridiculously low energy prices, have created significant numbers of jobs in the energy industry and “reshored” hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs as companies relocate their factories to America to be closer to cheap energy sources and their customer markets.

Now THAT would change the world. And it could happen in the next four years.

The Spectator last week picked up on this with a short article on the revival of American manufacturing. Read the original article here, or an extract below:

Reshoring: how jobs came flooding back to America

Cheap fuel is bringing jobs back from China to America’s former economic graveyards
by Simon Nixon, The Spectator, 16 February 2013

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Witness the death of Blackberry

I don’t know if Blackberry 10 (the Z10 phone with the BB10 operating system) is going to be any good. I hope it is, for the sake of all my friends and clients who’s IT departments force them to use Blackberry phones. The problem is, I just don’t think the company has a future.

In this digital age, it seems that hardly a month goes by without a report of another iconic brand that has succumbed to the dreadful march of disruptive technologies. HMV, Borders, Kodak, Jessops, Blockbuster (and Movie Gallery, America’s #2 in this space), Loehmann’s, American Media (publisher of National Enquirer and Star magazines), Oddbins, Comet and many more have declared bankruptcy in the past few years.

We would not be surprised to see Blackberry (or RIM) go the same route, or, more likely, be bought out at a bargain basement price by Microsoft, Google or Nokia.

There are increasing signs of decline at Blackberry, many on display in the past week or so as the Blackberry 10 was launched. Besides the obvious business indicators – very few of which are heading in the right direction – here are a few more serious indicators that all is not well in the internal culture of Blackberry/RIM (follow the links for more details on each story):
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Tomorrow’s Retail – using data to help customers (not scare them)

What if a retailer could anticipate what a customer needs before they even realise it themselves?

US store Target, famously got into hot water when it used analytics to predict when customers were pregnant in order to benefit from their upswing in spending and sent coupons to a teenage girl whose family were not yet aware of her pregnancy. Since then, the store has found subtler ways to target mums-to-be in a less intrusive fashion.

In our “Tomorrow’s Retail” report (download it now for free), we have found examples of retailers using purchasing data from milk to gas barbecue canisters to approach the customer with an offer before they have even considered shopping around.  And although it might sound a bit ‘Big Brother’, what a great service to the customer that could be, if executed with consideration.

Amazon is famous for using its data to powerful effect.  In pure merchandising terms, it reports that 30% of its sales come from its recommendation engine – that is, “Today’s Recommendations For You”, “Frequently Bought Together” and “What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?”  It also uses data to give a seamless feel to customer service calls, meaning that customers are not repeatedly asked to provide details that Amazon already possesses and customer service staff have access to the data they need – and thus removing those familiar frustrations we are all familiar with.

In a serious attempt to catch up with Amazon in the online space, US retailer Walmart is really taking its data seriously. It has made a massive investment in Walmart Labs, building new offices in a Silicon Valley base to give it access to the best tech talent.  It has so far launched its own semantic-based search engine and is developing ways of combining online data with store shopper data to give personalised homepages, and even taking a shopper’s local weather forecast into account when making purchasing suggestions.  Read all about it here.

The increasing pressure on businesses and governments to disclose information back to the public could cause retailers problems in their use of data – read about Smart Disclosure in this new HBR article.  Tesco, always in the forefront in the utilisation of data to help customers and drive sales, has pre-empted Government regulations with its plans to roll out “Clubcard Play” – a service that will give its loyalty card customers access to their own shopping history along with planning and goal-setting functions.  A bold attempt to harness another trend, gamification, to introduce some fun into grocery shopping.

The march of data continues.  Retailers lead, but all other consumer-facing businesses can and will need to follow.  How can you use the information your business has to help your customers? (not scare them!)

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Tomorrow’s Retail – Available Today!

Today we launch our new Tomorrow’s Retail report and we hope you take the chance to download and read it.

And please don’t think that if you don’t work in retail, it’s not for you.  One of the things we focus on at TomorrowToday is how technologies and innovations from one industry can prove disruptive to other, quite unrelated, businesses.  For example, the Nintendo Wii was not an iterative development built upon the blocks of existing video games – it was someone who thought to harness the technology used in airbags that brought revolution to the games industry.

Retail, at the front line in terms of responding to customers, tends to be ahead of the game in utilising technological advances and understanding changes in people’s needs and demands.   We’ve uncovered some really innovative and exciting applications and business models – but which could disrupt your industry?

Despite the enormous upheaval in the retail sector illustrated by the recent loss of three more UK high street names, to all intents and purposes the business of buying hasn’t changed much.   A combination of price, convenience, urgency and emotion will determine where a shopper chooses to spend on any given occasion.  But what has changed, and will continue to do so, is the level of information available to the consumer to make these choices. We’ve moved from ‘traditional’ to ‘multi- channel’ to, now, ‘hyper-channel’ – with customers using an almost endless permutation of routes to discover, research, buy and report on their purchases.

Yes, there have been some high-profile casualties in the retail space within the last couple of weeks, but we don’t think that the high street is going to disappear any time soon. It’s going through a painful patch right now, having to contend with the huge disruption wrought by online retail as well as the depression in consumer spending caused by the ongoing recession.  But it could come out the other side looking far more interesting.  Big chains will become less dominant, taking smaller spaces to ‘showroom’ their products using some amazing new technology such as the cool stuff to be found at Audi City in London, or the virtual fitting room swivel.  This reduction in big-chain spend will force rents down, allowing niche and local businesses to move back in – and expect to see online operators like Amazon joining them with some exciting concept stores…..

In the online environment, new social, collaborative and just plain helpful business models are springing up. One of our favourites is the potentially very disruptive Decide.com – which not only shows a customer where a product is cheapest, but it also predicts if the price is likely to change, a confidence rating in this prediction and an indication of when new models are to be launched.  What would happen in your industry if customers made their buying decisions using such a system?  Maybe it couldn’t happen, you say.  But could it??

Take a look for yourself at all our discoveries and predictions and consider how your industry could be disrupted.  You can download the Tomorrow’s Retail report here.

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Video: Disruptive changes in the travel industry

In October 2012, I spoke at the ACTE (Association of Corporate Travel Executives) Annual European Convention in Rome. The topic of my 45 minute keynote presentation was “Leading in a Changing World”, and I outlined three key reasons the world is changing, and three key responses that we need to make as individual leaders.

The presentation was recorded, and ACTE have uploaded it to their YouTube channel in three parts. You can see them below or follow the links to YouTube.

For more videos of me in action, click here, or go to my own YouTube channel. This year, I am focusing a lot more on producing short video resources (4-5 minutes each), specifically capturing my insights into the disruptive changes I see in the world as I work in different countries and with multiple industries. Subscribe to my YouTube channel to be alerted whenever I upload a new video resource.

You can also watch our TomorrowToday Business TV channel here. We are producing this in partnership with YourBusinessChannel, and it’s a constantly updating resource on the new world of work.

But, now, back to the Rome, and the disruptive changes facing the travel industry:

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In Conference: Thoughts on the future (and how to become a futurist)

Late last year, I was interviewed by Michael Jackson (“the other MJ”) for his radio show on Mix FM in Johannesburg. It has a half hour interview on future trends that included some reflections on the future of Africa (it’s golden), how to be a futurist (hard work), the power of technology to build a better future (it’s mind blowing right now), and three things that businesses need to do to prepare for an uncertain future (you’ll have to listen to find out what these are).

The interview was broadcast on Mix FM on Michael’s drive time show. It’s now available as a podcast.

In Conference with Michael Jackson on Mix93.8FM ~ Graeme Codrington by The Other Michael Jackson on Mixcloud

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Shale Gas – the greatest disruptive technology facing the world of work