It turns out that China is emerging as the preferred global location for doing research and development.
Here are some key facts as summarized at Angry Bear blog.
Sixty-two percent of global companies ranked China first “as the most attractive location for prospective R&D.”
Multinationals have set up 1,160 research institutions by the end of 2007.
Total revenue of […]

I want to alert those of you interested in the future of higher education to a new book, Future Proof Your College, by Michael Heppell. (I see it is currently unavailable at Amazon U.S., a few copies at Amazon.UK - more on the way.)
This book primarily consists of edited interviews with a variety of […]

Last September (2007) I had occasion to keynote the annual Housing Conference in Washington State. In that speech I suggested to a skeptical audience of housing, building, and real estate officials that the debt problem then appearing was deeper and more structural than currently accepted. The economic indicators, stock market performance, and general […]

This episode of Future Talks is on the question of what is about User Generated Content, or the people formerly known as consumers.

In the Future Talks online TV series, international futurists Glen Hiemstra and Gerd Leonhard engage in a conversation with Ralph Simon as he interviews them about the trends shaping the future of media. […]

Here is my outlook for 2008, recorded December 21, 2007.

Overview – 2008 will be a year that feels like a whip-saw. Promising innovations. Economic turmoil. Large events
The Economy 2008 - Paradoxes
2008 will be one of paradox, innovation balanced by turmoil. Because of the tremendous interconnectivity of researchers, the availability […]

The Canadian paper, The Globe and Mail, did a phone interview with me over the Thanksgiving weekend (they interviewed a number of futurists). They asked great questions, and I won’t steal their thunder by repeating them here, except for one. They wanted to know what the “big business trend” will be in 2018. […]

Recently I was in Atlanta to address the annual breakfast gathering called “State of the Region,” which is put on by the Atlanta Regional Commission. This particular year the focus was on introducing a new regional effort called “50 Forward,” which is literally an attempt to imagine the region in the year 2060. […]

A very good blog to be aware of is Management Craft, which is done by Lisa Haneberg. Lisa regularly features podcast interviews with leading authors, like this recent “fireside chat” with Michael Stallard. Good place to go to keep up with who is thinking what about current and future management issues.
Lisa […]

I’m at the National Association of Telecommunications Officers annual meeting in Portland. I’m quite impressed with the people, and with what I see many of the cities and counties here doing to keep some level of local and free press available, and to build community networks for everything from economic development to closing digital […]

Today, the front page of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer read, “U.S. college students buried under debt.”
Are today’s young people just buying iPods and designer flip-flops instead of saving their cash for school? Are they too busy drinking five-dollar microbrews to get part-time jobs to pay for tuition? Let’s look at the numbers . . […]