The world’s largest organizations turn to Jim Carroll when seeking insight into the future. Shouldn’t you?
In his keynotes, workshops and leadership meetings, Jim Carroll provides specific, concrete guidance on the key management and innovation strategies that should be pursued by the client to ensure that their activities are closely aligned with significant future trends.
Jim wakes people up to the trends that will affect them, and challenges them to cope with a world that continues to witness constant, dramatic change.
Jim provides:
Jim builds his presentation according to your specific industry challenges, including:
Jim brings a wealth of experience, insight and deep research to your event, with a talk / workshop that is highly customized to your needs.
Some of the recent keynote titles have been on these themes:
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“An outstanding presentation for an industry and association that falls on its traditions so often. We learned that our tradition should not be something that holds us back, but rather the launching pad for innovation for the future. Thanks Jim for your thought provoking presentation!”
94th PGA of America Annual General Meeting
“Jim’s storytelling approach really helps to get his points across. Humor was used appropriately and at the right time, and the examples used were relevant to the message of the overall presentation. He did a great job!”
The Walt Disney Company
“Jim Carroll recently presented at Lockheed Martin’s Executive HR Leadership conference. His content was very provocative, fascinating, and relevant. I’ve embedded a couple of his nuggets into my operating model”
Lockheed Martin
“Bringing Jim into our MLC Sales Conference in Sydney through a fibre optic line was truly incredible. The key note session Jim delivered was on the money, he exceeded my expectations.”
MLC National Australia Bank
Jim’s client list is a veritable who’s who of global leaders — including the
….all of these organizations have engaged Jim Carroll for a keynote or leadership meeting which focused on future trends, innovation and growth!
The Future Belongs to Those Who are Fast: The Best of the Insight from JimCarroll.com
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Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast
Acknowledged as one of the world’s leading global futurists, trends and innovation experts with a massive global blue chip client list, Jim helps transform growth-oriented organizations into high-velocity innovation heroes!
Even NASA has had him in — twice — to help shape their thought process about the future! And after a presentation by Jim, the Walt Disney Corporation made the comment, ” Jim’s storytelling approach really helps to get his points across!”
When the PGA – Professional Golfers Association of America – chose an external speaker to open their 94th Annual General Meeting, they went with Jim Carroll. They’d never hired an external speaker before in their history, and after the keynote, Allen Wronowski, the President of the PGA at the time, had this to say: “Futurist Jim Carroll helped stimulate the thought process with his keynote address about the incredible rate of change that we as a society find ourselves in, and I was delighted with the lively discussion in the hallways, the passionate positions taken at the microphones ….” They then rebooked Jim to open their annual PGA Merchandise Show, one of the largest trade shows in the world. He was on stage just after Lee Trevino and followed by Bubba Watson,.
Jim Carroll can challenge the PGA to think passionately about linking future trends to innovation – he can do the same for you!
Jim’s insight is sought internationally. He was one of two speakers to address fifty senior CxO level executives in St. Andrews, Scotland, at an invitation-only event – the other speaker being Jimmy Wales, the Founder of Wikipedia. His experience is diverse and international: he was the opening keynote speaker at the World Pharma Innovation Congress in London, and spoke at a conference for a large, global group of investment executives that manage some of the world’s largest family wealth foundations (“family offices”) at an event in Athens, Greece.
He has previously keynoted other events such as the Linde Healthcare Summit in Munich, Germany, the Swiss Innovation Forum, the Toshiba Mobility Exchange in Sydney, Australia, the annual Business Outlook Forum in the Cayman Islands for hundreds of senior financial executives, and the SAP Business Forum in Stockholm, Sweden.
We live in a time of massive challenge, and yet one of massive opportunity. We’re faced with deep and complex issues involving the environment, health care, water and food. At the same time, every industry is faced with upheaval and disruption. At the same time, every business, and every industry is being redefined at blinding speed by technology, globalization, the rapid emergence of new competitors, new forms of collaborative global R&D, and countless other challenge.
The speed with which these changes occur are now being increasingly driven by he arrival of a younger, more entrepreneurial generation; a group that seems determined to change the world to reflect their ideas and concept of opportunity. They’ve grown up networked, wired, and are collaborative in ways that no previous generation seems to be.
And therein lies the challenge.
Most organizations are bound up in traditions, process, certain defined ways of doing things — rules — that have helped them succeed in the past. Over time, they have developed a corporate culture which might have worked at the slower paced world of the past — but now has them on the sick-bed, suffering from an organizational sclerosis that clogs up their ability to try to do anything new.
Those very things which worked for them in the past might be the anchors that could now hold them back as the future rushes at them with ever increasing speed.
They are being challenged in a fundamental way by those who think big, and by some really big, transformative trends.
How to cope with accelerating change? In this keynote, Jim outlines his simple but transformative structure : Think big, start small and scale fast!
In this riveting keynote, Jim Carroll covers the major trends and opportunities that come from “thinking big, starting small, and scaling fast,” by addressing some of the fundamental changes that are underway.
Going back to the observation by Bill Gates, one thing you need to know is this: entire industries are being flipped on their back by some pretty big trends.
Consider the world of health care. Essentially, today, it’s a system in which we fix people after they become sick. You come down with some type of medical condition; your doctor does a diagnosis, and a form of treatment is put in place. That’s overly simplifying things, but essentially that is how it works.
Yet that is going to change in a pretty fundamental way with genomic, or DNA based medicine. It takes us into a world in which we can more easily understand what health conditions are you susceptible or at risk for throughout your life. It moves us from a world in which we fix you after you are sick — to one in which we know what you are likely to become sick with, and come up with a course of action before things go wrong. That’s a pretty BIG and pretty fundamental change. I like to say that the system is going “upside down.”
So it is with the automotive and transport industry. One day, most people drove their own cars. One day in the future, cars will do much of the driving on their own. That’s a pretty change — sort of the reverse, or upside-down, from how it use to be.
Or think about education: at one time, most people went to the place where education is delivered. But with the massive explosion of connectivity and new education delivery methods involving technology, an increasing number of people are in a situation where education is delivered to them. That’s upside down too!
You can go through any industry and see similar signs. That’s a lot of opportunity for big change.
2. Moore’s law – everywhere!
Another big trend that is driving a lot of change comes about as technology takes over the rate of change in the industry.
Going forward, every single industry, from health care to agriculture to insurance and banking, will find out that change will start to come at the speed of Moore’s law — a speed of change that is MUCH faster than they are used too. (Remember, Moore’s law explains that roughly, the processing power of a computer chip doubles every 18 months while its cost cuts in half. It provides for the pretty extreme exponential growth curve we see with a lot of consumer and computer technology today.)
Back to health care. We know that genomic medicine is moving us from a world in which we fix people after they are sick – to one where we know what they will likely become sick with as a result of DNA testing. But now kick in the impact of Moore’s law, as Silicon Valley takes over the pace of development of the genomic sequencing machines. It took $3 billion to sequence the first genome, which by 2009 had dropped to $100,000. It’s said that by mid-summer, the cost had dropped to under $10,000, and by the end of the year, $1,000. In just a few years, you’ll be able to go to a local Source by Circuit City and buy a little $5 genomic sequencer – and one day, such a device will cost just a few pennies.
The collapsing cost and increasing sophistication of these machines portends a revolution in the world of health care. Similar trends are occurring elsewhere – in every single industry, we know one thing: that Moore’s law rules!
3. Loss of the control of the pace of innovation
What happens when Moore’s law appears in every industry? Accelerating change, and massive business model disruption as staid, slow moving organizations struggle to keep up with faster paced technology upstarts.
Consider the world of car insurance — we are witnessing a flood of GPS based driver monitoring technologies that measure your speed, acceleration and whether you are stopping at all the stop signs. Show good driving behaviour, and you’ll get a rebate on your insurance. It’s happening in banking, with the the imminent emergence of the digital wallet and the trend in which your cell phone becomes a credit card.
In both cases, large, stodgy, slow insurance companies and banks that move like molasses will have to struggle to fine tune their ability to innovate and keep up : they’re not used to working at the same fast pace as technology companies.
Not only that, while they work to get their innovation agenda on track, they’ll realize with horror that its really hard to compete with companies like Google, PayPal, Facebook, and Apple — all of whom compete at the speed of light.
It should make for lots of fun!
4. “Follow the leader” business methodologies
We’re also witnessing the more rapid emergence of new ways of doing business, and it’s leading us to a time in which companies have to instantly be able to copy any move by their competition – or risk falling behind.
For example, think about what is going on in retail, with one major trend defining the future: the Apple checkout process. Given what they’ve done, it seems to be all of a sudden, cash registers seemed to become obsolete. And if you take a look around, you’ll notice a trend in which a lot of other retailers are scrambling to duplicate the process, trying to link themselves to the cool Apple cachet.
That’s the new reality in the world of business — pacesetters today can swiftly and suddenly change the pace and structure of an industry, and other competitors have to scramble to keep up. Consider this scenario: Amazon announces a same day delivery in some major centres. Google and Walmart almost immediately jump on board. And in just a short time, retailers in every major city are going to have be able to play the same game!
Fast format change, instant business model implementation, rapid fire strategic moves. That’s the new reality for business, and it’s the innovators who will adapt.
5. All interaction — all the time!
If there is one other major trend that is defining the world of retail and shopping, take a look at all the big television screens scattered all over the store! We’re entering the era of constant video bombardment in the retail space. How fast is the trend towards constant interaction evolving? Consider the comments by
Ron Boire, the new Chief Marketing Officer for Sears in the US (and former chief executive of Brookstone Inc.): “My focus will really be on creating more and better theatre in the stores.”
We are going to see a linking of this ‘in-store theatre’ with our mobile devices and our social networking relationships. Our Facebook app for a store brand (or the fact we’ve ‘liked’ the brand) will know we’re in the store, causing a a customized commercial to run, offering us a personalized product promotion with a hefty discount. This type of scenario will be here faster than you think!
6. Products reinvented
Smart entrepreneurs have long realized something that few others have clued into : the future of products is all about enhancement through intelligence and connectivity. Nail those two aspects, and you suddenly sell an old product at significantly higher new prices.
Consider the NEST Learning Thermostat. It’s design is uber-cutting edge, and was in fact dreamed up by one of the key designers of the iPad. It looks cool, it’s smart, connected, and there’s an App for that! Then there is a Phillips Hue Smart LED Lightbulb, a $69 light bulb that is uber-smart, connected, and can be controlled from your mobile device. Both are sold at the Apple store!
Or take a look at the Whitings Wi-Fi Body Scale. Splash a bit of design onto the concept of a home weigh scale, build it with connectivity, link it to some cool online graphs and you’ve got a device that will take your daily weight, BMI and body-fat-mass tracking into a real motivational tool. Where is it sold? Why, at the Apple store too!
Do you notice a trend here?
7. Careers reinvented
For those who that the post-2008 North American recovery from the recession was slow, here’s an open secret: there was a significant economic recovery underway for quite some time, as companies in every sector ranging from manufacturing to agriculture worked hard to reinvent themselves. It just didn’t involve a lot of new jobs, because the knowledge required to do a new job in today’s economy is pretty complex. We’ve moved quickly from the economy of menial, brute force jobs to new careers that require a lot of high level skill. The trend has been underway for a long, long time.
Consider the North American manufacturing sector, a true renaissance industry if there ever was one! Smart engineers at a wide variety of manufacturing organizations have transformed process to such a degree, and involved the use of such sophisticated robotic technology, that the economic recovery in this sector involves workers who have to master a lot of new knowledge. One client observed of their manufacturing staff: “The education level of our workforce has increased so much….The machinists in this industry do trigonometry in their heads.”
Similar skills transitions are underway in a wide variety of other industries….
8. The Rise of the Small over Incumbents
We are living in the era that involves the end of incumbency. Companies aren’t assured that they will own the marketplace and industry they operate within
because of past success ; they’ll have to continually re-prove themselves through innovation.
You’ve likely seen the commercials for Square, the small little device that lets your iPhone become a credit card. What a fascinating little concept that has such big potential for disruption. And it’s a case where once again, small little upstarts are causing turmoil, disruption and competitive challenge in larger industries — and often times, the incumbents are too slow to react.
Anyone who has ever tried to get a Merchant Account from Visa, MasterCard or American Express in order to accept credit cards knows that it is likely trying to pull teeth from a pen – many folks just give up in exasperation. Square, on the other hand, will send you this little device for free (or you can pick one up at the Apple Store.) Link it to your bank account, and you’re in business.
So while credit card companies have been trying to figure out the complexities of the future of their industry, a small little company comes along and just does something magical! No complexities, no challenges, no problems.
Every industry is set to be transformed as an era of hyper connectivity becomes the new norm. The result? Massive business model disruption; the rapid emergence of new competitors; industries in which customers empowered with mobile devices control a wide variety of devices that are a part of their daily lives; unique opportunities for deep analytical insight into trends and opportunities emerging in industries; a reinvention of manufacturing, logistics, retail, healthcare and other industries because of consumers that are empowered, connected, and enabled with a new form of lifestyle management that we’ve never witnessed before.
The Internet of Things is happening everywhere.
The Internet of Things is real, and it is unfolding at a blistering pace. We’re in the era of connected thermostats that link to an intelligent energy grid; autonomous vehicle technology that is self-aware, and networked into sophisticated, intelligent highway flow control systems. A connected trucking fleet that is self-diagnostic, predictive, and built for zero down-time . Intelligent home appliances that link to packaged food products that automatically upload carb, sodium and other dietary information as part of an overall health and wellness program.
Jim Carroll has been talking on stage about the Internet of things since the late 1990’s, when he began using the phrase “hyper connectivity” to describe a world in which “every device that is a part of our daily lives is about to become plugged in.” Since then, he has delivered his insight on the topic to a wide variety of organizations: several global technology leaders with a keynote talk on the future of home automation; several of the world’s largest HVAC companies about what happens when a global, intelligent home and industrial energy infrastructure emerges through widespread connectivity; consumer, food and packaged goods conferences about the impact of intelligent packaging. He has been booked by many leading global health care organizations for keynotes that have focused on what happens when consumers start aligning their wellness strategies through their own personal healthcare infrastructure.
The Internet of Things is a substantive, transformative trend that will provide more change in every industry in the next ten years than they’ve seen in the last thirty.
Jim Carroll already over a dozen years of on-stage experience with the topic, and can help you understand the strategies, risks and opportunities that you need to be aware of you move into a hyperconnected future. Consider one of the world’s most widely recognized futurists, trends and innovation experts for your next association, CEO leadership meeting or other keynote!
When Jim Carroll began a recent keynote talk for a senior group of hospital CEO’s, he announced that he wouldn’t even mention health care reform — and the audience of 300 senior executives cheered! Instead, he told the audience that he would take them on a voyage to the world of healthcare in the year of 2020, and provide them the insight they really need to deal with the challenges and opportunity of the future.
Everyone in a leadership position in the US health care system knows that even with health care reform, the challenges facing the US health care system are substantial and immense. That’s why innovation has quickly come to be one of the top issues that senior healthcare executives and medical professionals are thinking about. There is a realization that there is an urgent need to challenge the very philosophies upon which the system is built. They’re seeking insight into the major scientific, technological, consumer and social trends that will, by the year 2020, allow for some very dramatic change in the concept of health care delivery. And that’s why organizations such as the Physicians Hospitals of America Association, CIGNA, the American Association of Preferred Provider Organizations, Blue Cross Blue Shield and many more have selected Jim to open their annual conference or event.