David Zach, futurist

Augmented reality demo by Sony

Sony Demonstrates Life-Altering SmartAR (augmented reality) Technology http://bit.ly/kQN3hc

This is the way it will start. Pretty soon reality will look naked without it, and just as rude and socially unacceptable. 

Let the Printing of Robots in Back Bedrooms Commence!

Perhaps I only keep doing this to cause mass confusion, but I keep telling my audiences about the factories of the future won't be in China, but may well be in your back bedroom, or at least in your neighborhood. 

Here's some fun stuff of printing robotic articulating figures - out of stainless steel. The printer in this case is an industrial designer by the name of Mani Zamani.

Here's his website and here's his Youtube channel.

The more we remove people from the manufacturing process, the less reason there is to have the work done in cheap labor locations. It makes far more sense to have the products manufactured closer to the point of consumption. It's far cheaper to ship raw materials than it is finished goods - and if the finished good doesn't have to have much transportation involved, then you might not even need packaging.

This is all about logistics. The movement of people, things and ideas - or selected movement of some and not moving others. For quite some time I've been thinking logistics is one of the center points of how we get the future to work.

Reading list ASHRAE & APCO talks & Rockford IL Chamber event

At my recent talks (and conversations in the hallways) in Orlando to ASHRAE & APCO and to the Rockford IL Chamber, I discussed a number of books - and there were quite a few requests for a repeat of the books recommended. So here they are:

The Pirate's Dilemma by Matt Mason

How youth culture is changing the nature of capitalism. What I like about it is pointing out that a lot of young adults are approaching the marketplace with a new sense of how it works. As I put it in my talks, they understand the three part notion of economics today: Attention, Experience & Attitude.

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman

Change by Design by Tim Brown

Design Thinking by Thomas Lockwood, editor

These three books are a good introduction to the rise of design and how design thinking is a counterpoint to more traditional MBA thinking. Design determines value. As we get better at understanding the potential of design thinking, we dramatically increase our ability to create & organize value.

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

I recall reading an article which said that a survey of high-tech executives believed that Neal Stephenson probably is the science fiction writer who best describes how the future will actually happen. I would tentatively agree because I keep thinking no matter what we imagine, increasingly it appears we'll be wrong.

Distracted by Maggie Jackson

My favorite read of 2009. Subtitled "The erosion of attention and the coming dark age." Yeah, it's that optimistic. I just don't understand how we can fritter away our most valuable resource and expect that the outcome will be what we've been hoping for.

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

I've not finished this book but I do like that it's sort of the opposite of Distracted - a few instructions on how to pay attention to one thing at a time - over time. I would finish it, if I could pay attention to it long enough ...

Last Child Left in the Woods by James Louv

This book begins with the quotation: "I like playing indoors because that's where all the electrical outlets are." The fact that we are denaturing our children has profound implications. I worry over the loss of understanding of natural cycles and a sense of the slowness of nature. We have replaced cycles and seasons with fads and trends. To slightly misquote Peter Pan, "Oh, the cleverness of us!"

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Modern economics and the fact of one damn thing leads to another.

Hip: A History by John Leland

A history of what's been cool, and how it got there. This is essentially a history of fads, but more than that, it's also a sense of the trend of importance of being hip and how that captures our attention in modern times.

The True Believer by Eric Hoffer

How people get caught up in cults of personality and mass movements. A great book for the early years of the 21st century. I find Hoffer and Chesterton to have been essential in the formation of my world view. Go here for more on Hoffer and here to find some of his great quotations.

In case you haven't gone to my website, it's www.davidzach.com

And, in the category, now why didn't I think of this right away, here are my books!

Worth Remembering: the future value of old ideas by David Zach

Before we look forward, we should first look back to see what has been said and thought before. Don't try to invent ALL of the future, borrow the best from the past upon which you can build the hopes and dreams of today.

Zachronyms: funny words for funny times by David Zach

Back in the ancient days of the late 20th century, I worked at Northwestern Mutual as a trend analyst, and did a lot of reports on demographics. To spice up those talks and reports I would often pepper them with some of the funny lifestyle acronyms that had been popular at the time. Not just YUPPIES: Young, urban professionals, but how about PUPPIES: Pregnant urban professions, or better yet, SPORES: Stupid People On Rented Equipment. This book is full of it, acryonomicially speaking.

I also quoted GK Chesterton a fair amount. Go here to visit the American Chesterton Society.

(I'm on the board and will be speaking at their annual convention on August 5th, just outside of Washington, DC.)

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/