David Zach, futurist

Pop Up Businesses have Popped Up before

I was looking at my website traffic and someone in Italy was searching on the term pop up business and thereby found my site. 

So, I clicked on that person's search and found 771 hits (most not connected to our idea, of course) but found this one from Lubicom Marketing in 2006 that had me smiling. The author is comparing today's trends with some rather old notions of PUBs. Pushcarts indeed. 

My father once told me that there are very few new ideas out there, just recombinations of existing ideas along with rediscovery of old ones that we might have forgotten. 

Here's a blog called Boomer Matters exploring some of the questions the PUB idea presents: 

Here's one also from 2006 from Springwise (a trend spotting website) with the clever term: Vanchising.

These sorts of things convince me that good ideas are seldom unique to one individual or another. They "pop-up" everywhere. The curious challenge is to try to discern what does it take for those great ideas to actually get manifested? What sorts of technology breakthroughs cause someone to finally recognize that the roadblock that might have held them back is now gone or can now be bypassed? 

Ron Schott's Geology Home Companion Blog - Gigapan Explored

For some marvelous exploration of the Gigapan technology [see previous post], visit Ron Schott's Geology Home Companion Blog. Zoom in and zoom out to get the full potential of the photography. 

This is great stuff. Applying this technology to scientific exploration, (or architectural, or geographic, etc.) holds amazing potential. Pull it together with the likes of Google Earth, GPS, RFID, tagging and the like and you can start to see how everything can be mapped and easily accessed, either virtually or in person. I'm cautious and yet can't help but marvel at it all. He suggests Google Earth include a Geology layer and like many innovation, such features are often developed by users themselves who lead innovation from its best source, the imagination. 

Business Week: The Future of Innovation

Well, it would seem that this whole futurist thingie is taking off and even Business Week is asking futurists for their opinions. The writer Damian Joseph asked what sorts of innovations and inventions will come about because of the recession. I read somewhere along the line an article suggesting that the USA will get through this economic mess faster and better than other economies because we've got so many people who know how to start over and reinvent themselves. They're not as held back by legacy concepts. I'm certain that people here can reinvent themselves but today with so few connections to the past and any sense of enduring principles, I wonder if they can still reinvent themselves with any endurance. It's one thing not to be bound by history. It's quite another to dismiss it. If someone reinvents themselves are they basing the invention upon something specific or upon whatever has caught their attention most recently? 

Lily Tomlin once said that, When I was growing up I always wanted to be somebody. Now I see that I should have been more specific. 

Pop-up Businesses is one idea (so named by Damian Joseph) that I'm having fun with - as are a few reporters knocking on my email door wanting to know more. The basic idea is that because of improvements with logistics, technology, systems management and a strong sense amongst youth to constantly change what they pay attention to - that we may see in the future businesses that identify a need (or want) in the marketplace, gather together people and resources to fulfill that need and then just as quickly disband and move on to something else. How will that all work? I haven't the faintest idea, but I'm willing to bet that there are people out there who will know how to do it. 

I first started playing with this idea after working with the Self-Storage industry. Temporary space usage for more than just storage may be ideal for this sort of business model. Take a look at storage facilities and you'll now find a lot more than just sheds with garage doors. 

For each objection that someone can identify that would prevent the Pop-up Business notion from being successful, find alternatives around each roadblock. The sort of problem solving that designers are taught is the key here. Don't think of how it can't work, think of what will be necessary so that it can work. What are the upsides? What are the downsides? 

More Proof my Brother Mike Zach was Adopted

Mike Zach, Professor at UW-Stevens Point is doing some amazing things in nanotechnology. What I like to note about his (humble) sense of his work is that he doesn't claim they are inventing anything new, but rather they're figuring out how does nature do things and then emulating that in the lab. Innovation shouldn't always be about inventing something entirely new, more often it's about discovering something entirely old. 

Failure Magazine

As there seems to be some truth to the notion that those who succeed have also failed — and failure can be a marvelous teacher, check out Failure Magazine. 

David Zach interview on Future Innovation

Last Spring I did an interview with Deb Malewicki, a professor at UW-Whitewater in their MBA program. The topic was the future of innovation. I just learned that it's been posted. It's a 30 minute video interview, free for the viewing. Here's the link: http://onlinemba.uww.edu/temp/dzach/

800 CEO READ Blogs, etc.

800 CEO READ is a book distributor here in MKE with an international reach. Jack Covert, the CEO, has an exceptional grasp of the book business. 

Here are four links from blogs they manage. 

http://800ceoread.com/blog/

http://800ceoread.com/podcasts/

http://800ceoread.com/excerpts/

http://www.changethis.com/

The Future of Manufacturing

A regular topic in my talks is how manufacturing could eventually return to not only the United States, but to your neighborhood and drop right into your back bedroom. If you have a printer back there, what are the chances that someday you'll have a 3D printer there, where you print up such things as wrenches, dinnerware, keys, jewelry, or even larger items such as chairs or mattresses. The novel The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson has this sort of "oven" that cooks up things like mattresses. 

Manufacturing on Demand: The Future is Now is an article explaining this emerging technology with a link to the marvelously inventive and mathematical artwork of Bathsheba Grossman. (I bought her Star Map Crystal Cube while in Finland.)

(And, sorry for not posting much - but Typepad changed their interface and I'm finding it rather difficult to post graphics and in particular, find it impossible to post videos. Don't know why, and am in my busy season for talks, so am busy enough right now, so am not taking the extra time to learn what's wrong. Am working on replacing my whole website and plan to integrate the blog right into the website. Time will tell.)

Drew Carey on ReasonTV: Mexicans vs. Machines

Yeah, this is good. Politicians cheaply rail against the drift of jobs to India and China, but not so much to the machines no matter where they are. The question is not so much how do we save our old jobs, but how do we push innovation towards helping to create jobs that draw out of people some sense of intelligence and dignity?

Reason TV has host Drew Carey explain here where the jobs are really going.

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For some reason that is beyond my limited sense of coding, the above link does show up as a video box. Here's the direct link to that page on Reason TV.

A question to ask is not what can be automated, but rather what should never be automated? When it is said that work is good for the soul, I would suspect that's only true if that notion is applied to work by people who actually believe in the existence of the soul. I've seen a lot of work that seems to crush the soul — and I'm not talking about tough, manual labor, but rather the softer, cubicle farm-type jobs where people are measured in every way possible, from how many seconds did the task take to how many seconds were you gone to the restroom? Jobs were they are just a cog, not asked to think, but only required to do what they are told.

A few weeks ago I spoke at the AEO Annual Summit in Anaheim. This is put on by the Association for Enterprise Opportunity. (Locally, we've got the Wisconsin Women's Business Initiative Corporation.) Basically, they're an umbrella organization for efforts to help poor and disadvantaged start and sustain their own businesses. Let me repeat that: START AND SUSTAIN THEIR OWN BUSINESSES. A fairly liberal group with very conservative goals. Helping people take their ideas, run them through the mill of objection so that they can build those dreams and can live out their own dreams, not have them either crushed or minimally replaced by television. 

The best source of jobs in the future is not the government nor is it large corporations. The best source of jobs is the imagination. If we can prevent education and modern culture from stomping on imagination, there's unlimited jobs right here at home or anywhere you find yourself.

The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. Eden Phillpotts

Digital Inspiration

Digital Inspiration is a website that gathers articles and other websites on how to use technology and access the digital world around you. Check out the TimeTube that makes a timeline of your search terms as they have shown up on YouTube. What becomes more and more obvious is that as the flood of innovation continues, and we get the feeling of being more and more overwhelmed, that these innovations will drive other innovations in design of interface and presentation.

Elegance and eloquence should rule the day. The goal of the Age of Information is not more information, it is less information, or perhaps all the information filtered, refined, aged (think of fine wine, not old newspapers) to the point where what actually reaches you has more style than it does bulk. It is beauty that should kill the beast.