Posts filed under ‘future’
From Chaos to Collaboration
Andy Stubbings writes:
Have you ever asked yourself what the travel guidebook of the future might look like, or why when it is arguably easier than ever to visit anywhere you like, it’s also more hassle to actually get there?
Andrew Curry and myself spent Wednesday this week with the global travel distribution company Amadeus, talking to journalists about the report, “From chaos to collaboration” we’d written for the company on the future of travel, and specifically how technology will change travel in the years to 2020.
In a nutshell: the report argues that over the next decade, thanks to a range of technologies as well as changes in social and economic contexts, there is great potential for travel to be enhanced at every stage of the journey by greater and more fluid interaction with other travellers and travel providers. The main benefits for travellers will be making the experience of getting to and from their destination less chaotic and stressful, and once they get somewhere else, they will be able to have a deeper experience of the place by accessing other people’s collective experience. Most of the data that’s needed to do this already exists; the challenge is putting it together.
Sounds intriguing? The full report can be downloaded for free from here (opens pdf), and our friends at Kwittken, Amadeus’s international PR agency who worked with us on the report, have put together this infographic with some stats taken from the quantitative research done for the report.
A shareable version can be found here.
The picture is published here by The Futures Company under a Creative Commons licence: some rights reserved.
Doing Strategic Futures
Andrew Curry writes:
Just before Christmas, The Futures Company re-published a report which it wrote (as The Henley Centre) a decade ago, for the British government’s Cabinet Office, on understanding best practice in strategic futures work. It’s stood up well over the last ten years, because it focusses on organisational context and culture and on principles, rather than on methods. We were able to republish the work, which has been in the public domain, because of the generous copyright provisions of the UK’s Open Government Licence, which makes most Creative Commons licences look positively restrictive.
The report was based on an extensive benchmarking study, together with a literature review and a range of expert interviews. Without trying to summarise the whole thing here, one section has a set of methodological guidelines which are worth capturing:
- Ensure there is clarity about the resource requirements of the work
- Ensure that the process is inclusive
- Ensure that people understand and trust the processes being used
- Understand the limitations as well as the opportunities afforded by strategic futures thinking (there is no magic bullet)
- Understand that the process will take time to deliver benefits to the organisation
The full report, published as part of our Future Perspectives thought leadership series, can be downloaded from the website (free, but registration required).
6 January 2012 at 6:48 pm thenextwavefutures Leave a comment
Customers of the future
Alex Oliver writes: At the Marketforce conference I spoke at last week, I may have unwittingly cast a further cloud over my audience on a gloomy Wimbledon June day. The conference was on Operational Efficiency in Financial Services, and my topic was Customers of the Future. I chose to focus on the behaviours and attitudes of two distinct generation cohorts – the 45-54 younger boomers and their 16-24 year old children. Both groups are facing significant challenges in terms of personal finance and long term financial security. But their responses are very different.
The older cohort is savvy and technologically competent, easily able to navigate their way through a range of online tools to find the best products and deals. But they face an uncertain future with huge financial pressures resulting from changing family structures as well as the economic context. The prospect of higher tuition fees and levels of youth unemployment at 20% mean that their children will struggle to repay debts and start to buy housing, often enforcing a longer term dependency which neither they nor their children want. And with the spending cuts only just starting to bite, they are well aware that they cannot rely on the state to support their own future pension, health and social care needs – nor those of their aging parents.
So, what of the kids? Interestingly, our research shows that the 16-24 cohort is one of the last still to be financially optimistic, even insouciant, which may be more driven by ignorance and naivety than realism. Despite some anxiety about finding a job (half of them say they are worried), a staggering 62% of them believe things are going well or fairly well with their financial situation. And unlike other groups across the population who are actively seeking out ways to save money, this group still wants to spend, with almost half of them saying they like to ‘splash out’. But when it comes to financial management, their interest is very low indeed. They prefer to delegate decision making and reveal a worrying confidence in their friends and family to provide answers.
The conversations I later had with the conference delegates revealed the extent to which these findings rang true from personal experience. Could it be that we are raising a generation of young people which assumes that we can ‘bail them out’? If so, with their parents under financial pressure, we could be staring at an inter-generational flashpoint.
The new normal is still here, and here to stay
Eleanor Cooksey writes:
“I’ve found the cost of living has gone up substantially and it has had a huge impact on my life. I am not buying luxuries as often and I will change the way I deal with my finances.”
This sobering quote comes from a Scottish man we spoke to as part of our fifth in-depth review of how UK consumers are responding to the current economic situation. In our breakfast briefing held in London last week to launch this review, we highlighted four themes which describe the current environment:
- The New Normal is firmly embedded: Reflecting the broader economic uncertainty, individuals feel the outlook is gloomy: 25% feel the UK economy is going very badly these days, an increase of 10% compared to when the survey was last carried out six months ago. People are even less optimistic about their personal financial situation with almost half thinking they will be worse off over the next 12 months. The message is clear: no one expects things to go back to how they were and we are learning how to cope.
- Rising prices are hurting:Though inflation has recently dropped a fraction, our data showed levels of anxiety about rising prices similar to those seen in 2008. Many of the people we spoke to were highly sensitive to these changes, whether this was about an increase in the cost of petrol or bell peppers.
- Savvy shopping matters to consumers: 43% of consumers have had to dip into savings to make ends meet and they are trying hard to make their money going further. Deals and special offers are still very much part of this, but consumers are doing more than that: they are giving serious thought to what they really need and what they really don’t. One lady in Staines realised she didn’t have to spend £70 every six weeks at the hairdresser and could use a £3.50 home dye kit instead. However, she wasn’t going to cut back on her expensive make-up and perfume.
- It’s a constant struggle to stay on top of things: In our last survey, we identified three groups who represent the various responses to the current financial downturn, and this time round, ‘All Hands on Deck’ were the only group which had increased in size. Though people in this group feel the struggle to make ends meet most acutely, making the most of your budget is relevant to everyone, even for the relatively unaffected ‘Plain Sailing’ group. All want to feel they can loosen their belt without losing it.
I’ll finish with a quote from a young woman in Sheffield which sums up the dilemma the New Normal presents for some:
“I could lose my job tomorrow, so I should plan to protect myself against that – but then again, I could lose my job tomorrow…so why not live for the moment?”.
There are limited places available for a repeat of this breakfast briefing on 12th May. To find out more please contact Karen Kidson.
A future made of screens
Alex Steer writes:
There was a lot of discussion in our London and New York offices last week about a short video called A Day Made of Glass. It’s produced by Corning, which makes specialized glass products, including mobile and tablet touchscreens, and the video explores a day in the life of a family in a not-too-distant future in which (surprise) there are screens, especially touchscreens, in just about everything.
The first thing that struck us was Corning’s imaginative approach to the dry task of selling high-tech glass. It’s a great illustration of what can happen when you apply a bit of futures thinking to your brand. It’s also smart as a piece of brand planning, focusing on the consumers at the end of the supply chain, not Corning’s B2B customers. Creatively, it’s well executed.
But it’s the futures aspect which has provoked the debate. The video is cheerfully optimistic about the screenification of the entire world, as you’d expect from a sales tool, and cheery optimism runs through the creative work too, presenting a perfect upper-middle-class family – mum, dad, kids, all so happy and healthy-looking – that feels more like a nod to the heyday of Madison Avenue than a look to the future.
Some of the futures thinking isn’t bad. Consumerism is one of the strongest forces defining technology innovation, and this trend is everywhere in A Day Made of Glass. Glassland is about user experience, good design and straightforward, seamless interaction. All the devices assume a world of rich information and always-on connectivity.
Which is what also makes this an extreme scenario.It assumes there are no limits to our attention, or our wish to interact with everything in the way we currently interact with our phones or tablets. The prevalence of touchscreens led one of our Senior Consultants to compare it to another video, for Microsoft’s Future of Work scenarios. In both, ‘the future looks very much like the waiting room at Heathrow Terminal 5’.
In information-rich markets like the US or the UK, the desire to stay updated is already clashing with the recognition that there’s too much information, and we’re looking for more efficient filters. There’s also an emerging awareness of the importance of continuous partial attention in our interaction with media, and the need for interfaces that are useful even when they don’t have our full attention (such as radio or TV).
The continuous interested multitasking imagined in Corning’s world seems, frankly, exhausting. Said one of our SVPs: ‘The woman emailing from her bathroom? I can pretty much guarantee that if you email me anything before I’ve washed my face and brushed my teeth in the morning you’re not going to get a “yes”.’
So in the end we were a bit sceptical. We also worried about the sheer energy cost of all those screens. But hats off to Corning for producing a thought-provoking piece of work that got us talking about the future of media and technology.
Finding the future in the Oscar nominations
Alex Steer writes:
Did you know there are more people with genius IQs living in China than there are people of any kind living in the United States?
That’s the first line of The Social Network, one of two hotly-tipped films fighting it out for the Best Picture award at tonight’s Oscars, and it’s about change. I am writing this before the show begins, so before the post-match analysis begins (although by the time this is posted you will know the winners), here’s a thought about the two Best Picture frontrunners.
The other is The King’s Speech, and on the surface it couldn’t begin more differently. It starts with a radio announcement:
Good afternoon. This is the BBC National Programme and Empire Services taking you to Wembley Stadium for the Closing Ceremony of the Second and Final Season of the Empire Exhibition.
The Social Network begins with a look forward: a driver of change shaping the balance of power, pointing towards an uncertain future. The King’s Speech seems to offer us a look back to the reassuring institutions, technologies and fashions of the past. It’s been a criticism of the big movies of the last few years (as of contemporary fiction and science fiction) that it is focused on the rear view, and is losing a sense of the future. Is The King’s Speech part of that backward tendency?
I don’t think so. Look again at that opening line. A closing ceremony, a final season, a fading empire. The King’s Speech, like The Social Network, begins with change. The film’s entire premise is based on the struggles of two men (King George VI and his speech therapist, Lionel Logue) to defend an ancient institution – Britain and the crown – against threatening forces of change. As in the most interesting and uncertain futures, the challenges are several: the abdication of Edward VIII, the rise of Hitler, the dawn of the era of mass radio communication, the declaration of war.
The Social Network is a story not of resilience but of disruption. Its creation mythology for Facebook involves a group of outsiders finding a way to beat the conventions of an elite social institution, the Harvard Final Clubs, through sheer ingenuity. In doing so they create a phenomenon that disrupts and reconfigures the social connections between people across the world.
So both this year’s frontrunners are films about finding new ways to communicate in times of disruptive change: one about a leader challenging itself, another about a challenger taking the lead. Whichever takes the statue (and by the time you read this, you’ll probably know), both reflect widespread mixed feelings of uncertainty and opportunity, and both have lessons for organizations, brands or individuals wondering how to take control of their futures.
Government 2020
Rebecca Nash writes:
We’re only a week away from our Government 2020 event – which we’re running jointly with Oxford Economics – so we’ve been putting the final touches to a new set of scenarios about the future of Britain’s political landscape.
The scenarios have been developed by our internal Knowledge Venturing team on the future of the public sector, and we’ve built them up by identifying the drivers of change of government, public finance, and public service, and also by conducting a range of interviews with experts in different parts of the world (New Zealand, Sweden, the UK, China, Latin America, and the US).
I’m not going to give away the scenarios here – they’ll be unveiled on Wednesday – but having gone through a pretty robust development process, they seem to add a dimension to our Feeling The Pinch research (here and here) which suggests that the experience of the financial crisis and economic downturn could lead to deep changes in political and social attitudes.
Oxford Economics, through its thought leadership team, will be offering an assessment of the economic impact of the spending plans in the government’s Comprehensive Spending Review, and also adding an extra economic dimension to our understanding of the scenarios. The panel is looking feisty as well: David Muir, previously an adviser at No. 10; Dominique Lazanski of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, Anne McCrossan of Visceral Business, and Nick Temple, of the School for Social Entrepreneurs. We look forward to seeing you there.
25 November 2010 at 3:56 pm thenextwavefutures Leave a comment
Leaders and futures
Walker Smith writes:
I was privileged to be asked to speak at the Marketing Society’s annual conference, which was held earlier today at the Royal Opera House. On such occasions, you catch your inspiration as it strikes, and as I was starting to write my speech, I saw the news of the death of Ted Sorenson, a close adviser to J. F. Kennedy before and during his Presidency.
That led me to thinking about leaders and leadership, and what followers value in leaders, so we commissioned some research especially for the conference to try to find out, testing around 27 aspects of both leadership and brands with a sample of more than a thousand UK adults.
Perhaps it’s not a surprise to find The Futures Company saying this, but it turns out that people do value leaders who have “a clear vision of what the future will look like” (it’s 9th in the leadership ranking, with the top cluster) and believe that a leading brand “anticipates the future better than its competitors” (6th in the brand ranking). The charts are below.
But to fulfill this objective, that vision needs to be a proper vision, one that is clear, inspirational and helpful. Mere prediction doesn’t help, and predictions by experts are even less helpful. (The psychologist and business professor Philip Tetlock demonstrates in his recent book that expert predictions were not only more likely to be wrong than right, they were worse than chance; in other words, experts would be more accurate rolling the dice.)
The point is to understand the forces that are shaping the future, and to shape from this an aspirational future based on a clear view of the opportunities – and the risks. People want and need purpose, and they look to leaders to help them to find it. Indeed, purpose is one of the great challenges of business today, and the importance of future-focused purpose is clear from our research.
And this one of the leadership lessons from JFK. We remember his aspirational ambition, in 1961, “of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth”, by the end of the decade. It took eight years and another two Presidents, and Kennedy had been dead for six years by the time Armstrong and Aldrin got there. The vision that he articulated through his leadership outlived him.
The image at the top of the post is from the Wikimedia Commons. The two charts are courtesy of The Futures Company, and are published here under a Creative Commons licence.
The future’s here – even in Thanet – it is just unevenly distributed…
Eleanor Cooksey writes:
We often use this quote[1] but, as far as I know, have never applied it to thinking about this part of the country. Thanet (the area of Kent made up of Margate, Broadstairs and Ramsgate) doesn’t tend to crop up in discussions about places that are doing new or interesting things, in the way, that for example, we talk about Totnes with its own currency, or Hay with its literary festival now gone international. Thanet, despite being in the south east, has high unemployment, relatively low income levels and poor health indicators.
However, after having spent a week in Thanet, I am struck by how it does appear to contain elements of what we think will be significant in the future. There are three features in particular which make me think this:
1. Old people make up a significant proportion of the population here. When working on futures projects, we often talk about the ‘ageing population’ with perhaps a reference to the impact this will have on the workplace, but I am not sure we have thought through what it means for general day-to-day living. What I see here is a perhaps a taster. It means that I see many bungalows with neat gardens full of paving stones, gravel and flower pots (meaning no stairs, lawns or flower beds to worry about). I see lots and lots of small cafes offering all-day breakfasts for very good value, where people, who may be living on their own and therefore less inclined to cook for themselves, can get a meal without incurring great expense. On the pavements and in garages, I see mobility vehicles. At the sparkly new Westwood Cross shopping centre built in the area, I couldn’t help noticing that, in addition to M&S, Debenhams, Thorntons and the like, there was also a shop specialising in mobility vehicles.
2. Renewable energy is very visible in the form of the Thanet Offshore Windfarm. On completion this year it is scheduled to have 100 wind turbines, making it, according to the website, the largest operational windfarm anywhere in the world.
3. There are new ways of growing food. Kent has traditionally been regarded as the ‘garden of England’ and the new Thanet Earth greenhouse complex represents a way of achieving this in a resource efficient and technologically enhanced way. Thanet Earth grows salad vegetables hydroponically (meaning the roots of the plants are in a type of rock wool as oppose to soil). Everything in the glasshouses is computer controlled – from the blinds in the ceilings to opening the windows, the liquid feed make-up, the heating, lighting and carbon dioxide levels.
So if you want to experience the future, or at least parts of it, go to Thanet.
[1] The quote is actually ‘The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed’ and is from William Gibson.
The image is of Thanet wind farm and is from Warwick Energy, used with thanks.
The future of payments
Andrew Curry writes:
I was invited earlier this month to speak on the future of payments at the Digital Money Forum in London, now in its thirteenth year and as provocative as ever. Of course, it’s a future that’s increasingly bound up with technology. My version is based on the work that’s been done by the historian of economics and technology, Carlota Perez (which I’ve blogged about elsewhere, at length) on long technology cycles.
We’ve seen five long technology surges, each of around 50-60 years, starting with steam, cotton and canals in 1771. The first half of the cycle, the installation phase, is driven by investment and finance capital. The second half, the deployment phase, is driven by production capital. And in between the two is a financial crash, when investment expectations get ahead of themselves.
In the current information and communications technology surge, we’re a few years into the deployment phase, when people start to do “new things in new ways” with technology. The smart phone and the tablet computer are archetypal deployment products, and digital payments will inevitably get caught up in the rush, as new applications emerge.
One of the likely effects is the fragmentation of devices, rather than convergence (we may use a digitally enabled key to get into our house, or a card or fob s a store of value, but we’re unlikely to leave them lying on a table during a meeting). We should expect fragmentation of currencies as well; local currencies such as the Lewes pound work much better when they don’t have to be printed. There are already viable currencies within every online multi-player game (and one of the things I learnt at the Forum was that Chinese workers employed to dig virtual gold in online games earn more than Chinese gold miners who dig the physical commodity, and in much better conditions). One of the other speakers talked about the emergence of currencies backed by units of energy consumption. This isn’t hypothetical.
This potentially represents that same sort of democratisation of production that we’ve seen in other sectors, ending the monopoly of the banks (mostly the commercial banks) on credit creation. This thought seemed to cause some nervousness in the audience at the Digital Money Forum, and the questions turned quite quickly to fraud and regulation, although potential fraudsters in an energy-backed currency would be doing very well to steal a fraction of the money that Bernie Madoff took from his investors.
What’s standing in the way? The banks, who aren’t trusted, and the mobile operators, who aren’t particularly interested in payments, at least not in the rich world. It seems likely that the market will need its own ‘iTunes’ moment, when an outsider steps in to create a decisive disruptive change.
The image above is courtesy of Flickr user Bohman, and is used under a Creative Commons licence with thanks.
