Archive for 'Business & Economy'
Five Marketing Technology Tips
I am in Milan for a day-long marketing technology conference where I will be presenting to the event, which is sponsored by Ambrosetti. So I’ve been surveying various material on technology and marketing. According to an online survey, CMOs say tech-savviness is the area of greatest need and opportunity in marketing. It’s becoming more and [...]
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15 Minutes on Future Consumer Trends
Among my favorite companies is REI (Recreational Equipment Inc.). I’ve been invited to work with them now and then, and this video is a 15 minute excerpt of a keynote that I provided to one of their annual leadership conferences. In this video I discuss demographics and future consumer trends, especially as they relate to [...]
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10 Top Technology Trends for 2012
My friend and colleague Mark Anderson publishes the Strategic News Service, for many years the most accurate newsletter on technology trends. Each December he makes his top ten predictions for technology in the coming year. Among his ten predictions below (read them in full here at SNS) the two most interesting are number 1 about [...]
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The Future of Marketing 2012 and Beyond
Recently some clients have asked me to think about marketing, brands, consumers, the new media, technology, and how the new relationships among these elements are changing old enterprise/customer relationships. Fundamentally I think the deepest shift that is going to happen can be captured by asking one important question. Traditionally, one might ask which brands you [...]
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Flying construction robots
The construction industry is among the slowest to change among all business types. When I have worked with them anticipating longer term trends and possible disruptions to traditional ways of doing business, the topic of construction robots always comes up. Autonomous robots that scale walls and build buildings piece by piece, or even nanoscale robots [...]
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Top 10 Reasons to (not) Avoid Social Media
Tongue in cheek, Allegis Group Services recently posted the top 10 reasons that HR and other professionals in companies should avoid social media. Read the whole piece, but here are the 10 reasons… 1. You’re a Global Company That Does Not Want to Maintain a Uniform, Worldwide Corporate Culture. 2. You Want to Ensure That [...]
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Retail and the Long-Term Future
Last week I had the opportunity to make several presentations at the headquarters of a large American retailer. I was tasked with making the case for the value of injecting longer-range thinking into the regular planning cycle and with sharing some thoughts about the future of retail on the five-ten year horizon. My slide show [...]
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Expand Your Horizons with Scenario Planning
Have you ever wanted to learn a bit more about scenario planning as a tool to expand your planning horizon? This past summer I had the opportunity to lead a group from the National Association of Electrical Distributors in a workshop on future trends and preferred future planning. The participants, all part of the Lake [...]
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Will Austerity Create the Future?
This is the kind of thing that government built the last time we had such a deep economic problem and employment needed a boost. Are we building anything for the future, today, to help get out of the jobs crisis? Just wondering. Here are some alternate ideas to austerity as the path to prosperity, offered [...]
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Occupying Wall Street and Economic Futures
I began thinking about the long term impact of the growing gap between rich and poor, and the flat-lining of middle class incomes, several years ago. I began the chapter on The Great Divides in my 2006 book by discussing the growing wealth divide, and in a 2006 keynote for the American Red Cross I [...]
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