Think about it for a minute: Google knows our deepest secrets because we search with INTENTION - and in realtime, and often even in real-place (i.e. when using mobile devices) - for the things that matter to us - whether it is an upcoming trip or a disease that we are suffering from, or vexing problem we may have. Google knows all that stuff, and keeps it in their records (unless we take steps to delete it all... allegedly). Facebook, on the other hand, just knows what we SAY, what we share, what we purport to LIKE. That's also quite deep but... there is a big difference. Your thoughs? Browse my Privacy to Publicy links to read more
The Future of Business & Communications. Social. Local. Mobile. Cloud. And why Data is the New Oil. Futurist and CEO of TheFuturesAgency Gerd Leonhard was the keynote speaker at the Olavstoppen POL conference on May 3rd 2012 in Stavanger, Norway.
I am happy to anounce the release of a special report that my colleague Stowe Boyd has recently written, Social TV and The Second Screen, developed cooperatively by his company 'Work Talk Research' and The Futures Agency, as part of an ongoing series on the future of media. You can download the whole thing (yes, for free) here, via Stowe's site.
I wrote the foreword (excerpt):
The overlap of social media and TV represents a huge opportunity for those that truly understand and internalize, embrace and partake in these changes, and that welcome this dawning networked, interdependent and many-to-many society.
I will be working with Stowe Boyd to produce quite a few more reports and white papers in 2012. In addition, we will be doing a lot more work together offering Media Futures events, workshops and seminars.
This is the complete (approx 80 minutes) video of my keynote at the HBR Poland conference in Warszawa March 16 2012. The slides are sometimes a bit hard to see as the video zooms back and forth so if desired you can download the complete PDF (high-res, 26MB) with my slides via http://db.tt/JmKiJyQh (creative commons non-commercial attribiution licensed, as always).
Topic: "The future of business: how to benefit from the global shift to a networked society" The Internet, or to be more precise, the mobile and social 'Internet 2.0' that has exploded in the past 2 years, is dramatically changing the way we find and are found, how we relate to our customers (and vice versa), and by extension how we buy and sell. In a networked society, the-people-formerly-known-as-consumers are becoming more powerful by the minute; transparency rules and more often than not, interaction comes before transaction and attention is the currency. In this digital world, data is indeed the new oil, brands are publishers, and ecommerce almost entirely becomes mobile and social - and this has significant impact on B2B sectors, as well. Gerd will share his foresights on where things are headed in the next 3 years, provide examples of best practices and illustrate the biggest opportunities and how to prepare for them. The future of business is interdependent, real-time, social, local and mobile - get ready.
I recently was invited to chime in on this snappy collection of 2020-predictions done by Amy-Mae Elliott at Mashable, along with some of my peers and esteemed futurist colleagues such as Ian Pearson, Jim Carroll and Dave Evans. Take a look. Here is my piece:
Connecting the Cloud With the Crowd "By 2020 everything will have moved into the cloud: content, media, health records, education. Connecting the cloud with the crowd will become a huge business. Related to this, access will replace ownership in almost all forms of media. Future media 'consumers' will simply have music, films, TV shows, games, etc. in the cloud, paid 'with attention,' i.e., advertising and data mining (Facebook cloud), subscription (Apple new iTV), and bundles (i.e., with mobile operators). Most importantly, many consumers will not pay for 'content' per se, but for all the added values around the content, such as curation, packaging, design, social connections, interfaces, apps, etc. Finally, all media that is not social and mobile will shrink; all that combines with their current models will prosper."
This is a new video with a short and to-the-point interview produced by marketing magazine The Drum at Digital London, see http://www.thedrum.co.uk/news/2012/03/31/video-futures-agency-ceo-gerd-leonha... about the future of social media and how it will impact us. Most important message: in a digital society, you can't FORCE people to pay, you can only ATTRACT them to pay. Original video is at http://youtu.be/2jT6NcKmoM0 - thanks to everyone at Drum Magazine for making this available.
Absolutely agreed. This is a huge powershift. Get ready to be disrupted. Read more here.
"London, 16 February 2012 - New figures from a study sponsored by Ricoh show that by 2020 the impact of new technology in the workplace will force businesses into a new era of decentralisation. The research , conducted by the Economist Intelligence unit, shows that 63 per cent of business leaders predict a shift towards a more decentralised business model and that responsibility for business decision making will move from centralised management boards towards individual employees. “We believe that businesses will be more process orientated, ensuring that critical information is more centralised and data can be received, stored and retrieved by employees. This will mean decision making can be less hierarchical and allow employees, who are collaborating directly with customers, to make important business decisions, without delay,” says David Mills, Executive Vice President, Operations, Ricoh Europe.
Supporting closer customer collaboration is essential as by 2020, business leaders believe that customers will be the main source of new product or service ideas. Furthermore, 86 per cent of business leaders agree that customers will become an integral part of internal decision-making and that project teams will typically include people from outside the organisation such as customers and business partners... In the future, there will also be a need to consider how experts outside the organisation can input and retrieve information to act on behalf of the business. 85.7 per cent of business leaders agree that project teams will typically include members from outside the organisation (for example, customers, partners, communities)... Mills says, “In the new era of decentralisation it will be essential for businesses to do more to adapt to the digital world, especially as critical information will need to be accessed by employees, many of whom will be working virtually or outside the business..."
This nice video just went up on my Youtube channel: my entire keynote speech (67 minutes) from the Future with High Speed Broadband Conference in Auckland, New Zealand on February 23, 2012. Topics: Transformational Technologies and Creating new demand for ICT services - The Future of Broadband and ICT -, in detail: the coming telemedia convergence, the future of content in a hyper-connected society, social networks are cable TV without the cable, why open standards are crucial, why and how data is the new oil, how Control is being replaced by engagement and involvement, why sustainability becomes even more important, the shift from egosystems versus ecosystems, the new drivers of Innovation. The slides are embedded below, as well.
A few days ago, I did a fairly lengthy and deep skype interview with Toronto-based Marie Germain from Branding 2.0 (see her Twitter channel here), touching on many issues including the future of commerce, selling, marketing and branding, so-called social media (I much prefer the term Social OS), current issues in technology and the Internet (such as SOPA - the deeply disturbing but nevertheless impending U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act), and media / content trends.
There are some quite juicy snippets in this interview, such as:
"In an truly digital society we probably don't need marketing as we know it"
"We are moving from a society, and an economy, based on EGOsystems to a society that is based on ECOsystems (i.e. INTERDEPENDENCE)"
"The old days of commerce were based on handcuffing consumers, now it's all about attraction, engagement and conversations (being a magnet rather than using handcuffs)"
This video uses an interesting format in that it is based on an audio track that was recorded on the phone, and superimposes some related images over it. Interesting. If you just want the audio track, here it is:
From the TribeRadio Youtube post: "World-renown futurist, Gerd Leonhard, in this interview speaks of the very serious challenges businesses and brands face; he offers solutions. On a more sombre note he exposes the ploys of controllers on internet freedom, SOPA to be clear. The Wall Street Journal acknowledges Gerd as one of the leading media futurists in the world. Powerful! Incisive! Gerd is simply delicious to the ears. Keynote Speaker, Founder of The Futures Agency, Advisor to top corporations and governments, author of five books, "The Future of Music", "Music 2.0", "The End of Control", "Friction is Fiction" and "The Future of Content". Gerd's background is in music; however, today he is a top game-changer, inspiring entrepreneurship and guiding us into a prodigious digital world. To reach the Host of Tribe Radio, Marie Germain: at her blog, http://Branding20.wordpress.com or her biz site, http://MarieGermain.com..."
Be sure to check out the other audio / video interviews on here channel as well, including Jeffrey Hayzlett ('Running the Gauntlet' book, former CMO of Kodak).
Attention is the new currency is one of my favorite memes. So: simply tweet about my 2009 book Music 2.0 (even if you already have it, in print or as PDF) and receive the link to the free download. Use this link to PAY WITH A TWEET and spread the word. If you really must get a dead-tree edition, the print version can be ordered via my bookstore at Lulu.com
About Music 2.0 (from the free mobile site): "This book was self-published in 2009 and is an edited collection of my best essays on the future of the music industry, and continues the work I presented in my first book, The Future of Music, co-written with Dave Kusek. It further describes what I think the next generation of music companies will actually look like – hence the term Music 2.0, a description derived from the now increasingly popular “Web 2.0.” I have been writing and blogging about digital music and the next generation of the music industry for almost four years now – in airplanes, taxis, trains, busses, hotel lobbies, conference halls, and at home. In Internet time (and it certainly feels that way to me), this is almost forever! In many ways my message and my opinions may have evolved a bit but the bottom lines and visions have not changed a whole lot.
Looking back at some 1,000 blog posts and over 20 essays it is evident that by far the most often covered subject is indeed what I (and many other people – I make no claim to having invented this moniker!) have come to call Music 2.0, the new principles that define the next iteration of the music business. All of this is also closely connected with a few other terms that I have co-coined and have come to be associated with: Music Like Water (MLW), the Flat Rate for Music, Feels Like Free (FLF), the Usator, Friction is Fiction, and the People Formerly Known As Consumers. In this book, I aim to just fine-tune the best of my writings from the past four years, while not altering the content too much, in order to preserve the timeliness and context of when it was actually written..."
You can also read the book on pretty much any mobile device just by going to MusicFutures.com.
Also, be sure to follow my music-business specific tweets via @music2dot0. To see all my blog posts on the Music 2.0 book (and the topics covered in the book) please go here. For the music-business specific videos, visit my Youtube channel. Slideshows are here.
A very meaty slideshow covering a huge number of key trends (see below... yes, it's a bit of overkill) and a pretty cool video - well worth checking out!
Access Everywhere 9. Electric Fleets 1 0. Leadership Shakeups 4 1. Rooftop Farming 6 3. Tokyo Sky Tree 8 2. Album Evolution 0. Facebook’s IPO 2 1. Lighter Cars 4 2. Roots Revival 6 4. Tom Daley 8 3. All Things Military- 1. Facial Recognition 2 2. Loosecubes 4 3. Scooter Surge 6 5. Toys for Tablets 8 Inspired Fury 3. Lytro 4 4. Screened Dining 6 6. TV Commerce 8 4. Antique Eats 2. Fat Taxes 2 4. Marques Toliver 4 5. Screened Shopping 6 7. “Ultra” 8 5. Anywhere, Any-Way 3. Flipped Classrooms 2 5. Mobile Security 4 6. Senior Cohousing 6 8. Unwrapping the 8 Shopping 4. Floating Yoga 2 Process 6. Motivational Objects 4 7. Silence 6 6. App Overload 5. For-Profit Chains, 2 9. Vdio 8 7. Mushrooms as 4 8. Silicon Valley Siblings 6 7. Apps for an Nonprofit Stores Functional Food 0. Video-grams 9 Aging World 9. Smaller SKUs 6 6. Fuel From Waste 2 8. Mushrooms Go Green 4 1. Virtual Fitting Rooms 9 8. The Attention 0. Smart Clothing 7 7. Garden Camping 2 9. Myanmar 4 2. Voice-Based 9 Economy 1. Smarter Check-ins 7 8. Gen Z 2 0. Nadine Ponce 5 Microblogging 9. Batuka 2. Social Seating 7 9. Gesture Recognition 2 1. Olympics’ New Sport 5 3. Voice Control 9 0. Benefit Corporations1 3. Solar Gets Simpler 7 0. Healthy Vending 3 2. Online Lives, in Print 5 4. Web Chat Everywhere 9 1. Book Club 2.01 Machines 4. Spiking Food Prices 7 3. P-to-P Experiences 5 5. Wii U 9 2. BYOD (Bring Your 1 1. Heirloom Everything 3 5. Split-Personality 7 Own Device) 4. The Personal Retailer 5 Smartphones 6. Women-Only Hotel 9 2. The Hobbit 3 Floors 3. Cloud Security1 5. Play as a Competitive 5 6. Stationery 7 3. Honey 3 Advantage 7. Your Public Story 9 4. Crowdsourced 1 7. Stripped-Down 7 Commutes 4. Hydration Stations 3 6. Pluerry 5 Products/Services 8. YouTube, the New 9 5. Indian E-commerce 3 Boob Tube 5. Crowdsourced 1 7. Public Bookshelves 5 8. Sundance London 7 Learning 6. Inhaling 3 9. Zimbabwe 9 8. Rainwater Harvesting 5 9. Sustainable Palm Oil 7 6. Curbing Food Waste1 7. Internet-Enabled Cars 3 1 00. Zink 9. Remaking “Made in 5 0. Tablets Replace Paper 8 7. Danger Zone Travel1 8. iTV 3 China” 1. Tap-and-Pay Incentives 8 8. Digital-Into-Physical 1 9. LCD Art 3 0. Rolling Stones’ 50th 6 Postcards 2. A Titanic Anniversary
Watch the whole thing and you'll understand what the world - and in particular, America - is up against in 2012. And check out his book "The price of Civilization" - I just got it for my Kindle and will share my public bookmarks soon, here.
If you own a Kindle you can follow my Kindle note-sharing here.
From Youtube: "As he has done in dozens of countries around the world in the midst of economic crises, Sachs turns his unique diagnostic skills to what ails the American economy. He finds that both political parties—and many leading economists—have missed the big picture, offering shortsighted solutions such as stimulus spending or tax cuts to address complex economic problems that require deeper solutions. Sachs argues that we have profoundly underestimated globalization's long-term effects on our country, which create deep and largely unmet challenges with regard to jobs, incomes, poverty, and the environment. America's single biggest economic failure, Sachs argues, is its inability to come to grips with the new global economic realities.
Yet Sachs goes deeper than an economic diagnosis. By taking a broad, holistic approach—looking at domestic politics, geopolitics, social psychology, and the natural environment as well—Sachs reveals the larger fissures underlying our country's current crisis. He shows how Washington has consistently failed to address America's economic needs. He describes a political system that has lost its ethical moorings, in which ever-rising campaign contributions and lobbying outlays overpower the voice of the citizenry. He also looks at the crisis in our culture, in which an overstimulated and consumption-driven populace in a ferocious quest for wealth now suffers shortfalls of social trust, honesty, and compassion. Finally, Sachs offers a plan to turn the crisis around. He argues persuasively that the problem is not America's abiding values, which remain generous and pragmatic, but the ease with which political spin and consumerism run circles around those values. He bids the reader to reclaim the virtues of good citizenship and mindfulness toward the economy and one another. Most important, he bids each of us to accept the price of civilization, so that together we can restore America to its great promise...."
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