Paul Schumann is a futurist and an innovation consultant. He is a proponent of collaborative approaches.
He has been a technologist and technology manager in the semiconductor industry (IBM), internal entrepreneur (IBM), cultural change agent (IBM), and consultant (Technology Futures and Glocal Vantage). With 55 years of professional experience, Paul is still excited about learning, and sharing what he is learning.
He is a 35 year resident of Lost Creek in Austin, Texas.
A
fascinating way to look at the transfer of wealth within the US from
1995 to 2010. The map below shows Travis County, Texas (home of Austin)
which has a net gain in wealth $2.72B. It gained that wealth from Harris
County, Dallas County, Los Angeles County, Santa Clara County and Bexar
County. It lost wealth to its neighboring counties of Williamson, Hays,
Bastrop, Burnet and Caldwell.
Paolo Gaudiano, President of Icosystem, explains his role: “Applying scientific principles to real-world problems. Solving complex problems through a variety of scientific approaches, including neural networks, swarm intelligence, agent-based modeling, and evolutionary computing.” In this video, Eric Lundquist, Vice President of Strategic Content for Ziff Davis Enterprise, sits down with Gaudiano at Suffolk University’s Biz Con 2010 conference on business complexity.
Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of The Grameen Bank, explains his "social business" model, a plan for addressing social issues through entrepreneurship. This program was recorded in joint collaboration with the Commonwealth Club of California and Link TV.
Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of The Grameen Bank, speaks about his new book Creating a World Without Poverty.
The root of the current lack of new, high-quality job creation is the massive scaling back of science and engineering research, which has in the past made enormous contributions to science, technology, and the economy, including the creation of millions of high-paying jobs, says management consultant Adrian Slywotzky.
Here's what's needed to get that model back on track, he suggests:
• Clear national goals in two or three key areas, such as carbon-free energy and preventive medicine.
• Government commitment of $10 billion a year above and beyond spending for national agencies to jump-start new industrial research labs.
• Government tax credits for corporations that commit to spending 5% to 10% (or more) of R&D on basic research.
I have some mixed feeling about this article. Most of my life I would have agreed strongly with the sentiments of the author. I am a graduate of 30 years with IBM as a technologist, technology manager, internal entrepreneur and cultural change agent. And, now 20 years as a futurist and consultant. My instinctive reaction would have been "right on". But, now I'm not sure.
For years we have worshiped at the altar of economic value created for the stockholder. In business this means the rationalization of all its operations to achieving that goal. And, with that, and globalization, comes the stockholder's short term perspective. Investment in research with uncertain and long term payback gets reduced or cut off.
Unfortunately we've adopted a parallel belief system in education. So, we can't depend upon our universities to provide the research either. And, as we continue to inflict more measurements on education all the way down through public schools, we emphasize short term payback.
The change described in the article is either cyclical or its structural. If it's cyclical, then all we have to is wait for the economic flowering when big companies are awash in profits, and in their wisdom, they will invest these profits in research for the future.
If the change is structural, then "big research" is gone forever. There are numerous indications in many different industries that the trends of decentralization, disintemediation, openness and fragmentation are real and structural. If that is so, then what would research look like? How would it work? What kind of research could be done in a fragmented, disintermediated, open and decentralized way?
I don't know. And, I've not heard from anyone that does know.
But, isn't time that we begin to look at this issue head on. If not, and someone else does, we'll really suffer economically in the future.
It's like Morgan Freeman's character said in The Shawshank Redemption, "Get busy living, or get busy dying."
I think that the most important question facing the world now is how to create a set of values that transcends, but can be accepted by, the world’s major spiritual traditions, ethical systems and cultures while supporting simultaneously pluralism and integration. Without some shared values, we cannot have a world conversation.
Omar Khayyam had an answer to this question when he wrote in the Rubaiyat:
"The Grape can with logic absolute The two and seventy jarring sects confute…"
By confute the translator probably meant ‘argue away’ or he could have meant confuse.
Of course Khayyam also wrote about wine:
"…I wonder often what the vintners buy One half so precious as the wine they sell."
Khayyam would probably be surprised to find that the answer in today’s world is not the wine that is sold, but the process of selling and buying, or business, that is having the most successful conversation in the world. Is it the values of business that can be shared over most of the world? Are our global conversations going to be business?
When confronted by Marley’s ghost in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Scrooge comments on Marley’s condition – captive, bound and double ironed – not comprehending the reason for his condition, "But you were always a good man of business…"
The ghost responds, "Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"
Science, and technology as well, have established a successful global conversation. Are secular values the only ones that can deal with the two and seventy jarring sects?
Religion and politics seem to have had the most difficulty establishing a global conversation. Violence seems to be the value of this global conversation.
Ecology may be the conversation for today’s environment. It is based on science with strong components of technology and business, and it embraces the values of life, common to most of the world. The realization that we are all affected by the environment, individuals, business and governments, coupled with the fact that anything anyone does, or doesn’t do, affects everyone else, could drive the values of ecology toward the forefront of the world’s conversation.
What business are we in? Thanks to Ted Levitt, that's the question most boardrooms ask to kickstart some insight. Today — fuggedaboutit.
Here's the question every boardroom should be asking instead: is this the beginning of the end of business as we know it?
Yeah, I know. End-ism is over-rated. But perhaps it's worth considering a point for a second.
Perhaps talking about discussing, studying, or even thinking about business is less and less meaningful. Why? The economy is now in a state of total institutional collapse. Obama blew it. The numbers won't show it for a while, but the incentives for anyone to invest — rather than speculate — just died.
Business needs an institutional infrastructure — relatively voluntary exchange, some level of ownership, some measure of expected honesty, some kind of market efficiency, and investment with a horizon greater than nanoseconds.
None of these exist anymore. And they're not, barring a miracle, coming back.
So what we are left with are the institutions not of economic democracy, capitalism, or socialism — but of feudalism. In feudal systems, "business" doesn't exist. Patronage does.
That's exactly what's happening, for example, here.
Can we escape this death-with-a-whimper? Perhaps. Perhaps by innovating who we are — now just what we do, what we offer, or who we serve — we can build a better kind of business. I call that stuff behavioral innovation — you can check it out here.
Maybe it's all a bit less dire than it sounds. But my gut — and my analyses, usually fairly accurate — tell me the opposite.
Feel free to challenge, disagree, criticize — fire away in the comments. But do so thoughtfully (not: "business is gonna be around because it always has been, dude!").
One secret to maintaining a thriving business is recognizing when it needs a fundamental change.
by Mark W. Johnson, Clayton M. Christensen, and Henning Kagermann
♦ VIDEO: Watch a video interview with Clayton Christensen on the link between disruptive innovation and business model reinvention.
In 2003, Apple introduced the iPod with the iTunes store, revolutionizing portable entertainment, creating a new market, and transforming the company. In just three years, the iPod/iTunes combination became a nearly $10 billion product, accounting for almost 50% of Apple’s revenue. Apple’s market capitalization catapulted from around $1 billion in early 2003 to over $150 billion by late 2007.
This success story is well known; what’s less well known is that Apple was not the first to bring digital music players to market. A company called Diamond Multimedia introduced the Rio in 1998. Another firm, Best Data, introduced the Cabo 64 in 2000. Both products worked well and were portable and stylish. So why did the iPod, rather than the Rio or Cabo, succeed?
