Anyone designing new products, strategy or change will need to consider the future world in which their creations will exist. A little more than ten years ago I was asked this question: “What will the world look like in 10 years and how might this affect the organisation?” To answer this I needed to learn how to be a Futurist. It wouldn't be that hard right? I could just make a few wild predictions about a utopian future with robots and sprinkle with buzzwords? No, I'd have to take another route and learn more about the world in the process. In this talk I will break from the future-gazing and do two things rare for a Futurist; I will look back into the past and I will focus on the predictions I got wrong. What can ten years of perspective teach us and how can we use that for looking again towards the future.

1. A futurist looking back
Jay Whittaker

2. “If some prophet could predict the future,
they would sound so absurd and far-fetched
that everyone would laugh”
Arthur C Clarke

3. So, can you make some predictions?
In 2006 I was given a challenge:
What will the world look like in 10 years and how this might
affect the organisation?
The context:
• I had no reference or guide
• There was a team of experts researching the capabilities of emerging technologies
• But was there a part of the picture missing?

4. Becoming a futuristJetpacks and Robot Butlers for everyone!

5. “The difficult job is never to find the right
answer, it is to find the right question”
Peter Drucker
I set out to find better questions...

6. It revealed some key skills
Understanding how the world is changing is key for anyone
creating new value propositions
What we design will live in a future context

7. The world
in 2006

8. Carriers had all the power
Our phones looked like this

9. Netflix looked like this
“Hastings has created an
amazing system shuffling
around plastic discs, but
online rivals such as iTunes
and MovieLink seem to have
momentum as we head into
the future”
- CNN 2006

10. Facebook still limited to US students
“MySpace is now the Web’s
second most popular website…it’s
hard to imagine who would pay
billions for an also-ran”
- CNN 2006
Myspace was king

11. The forecastsA summary

12. What I forecast
from the 2006 report
• Move from hierarchical to networked based markets
• The Globalisation Paradox
• Polarisation of the markets (Vanishing normal distribution)
New economic structures and markets
• Mega-cities – strains and opportunities
• Extreme environments begin to bite
• Tipping point in climate consciousness
• Green bonanza – vast opportunities for businesses
Effect of environmental pressures

13. What I forecast
from the 2006 report
• Multiple dimensions of data
• Physical world becomes aware with connected devices, swarms of sensors
• Human interaction with the new landscape – new norms, behaviours and fears
End of discreet ‘cyberspace’ – Everything is somewhere
• Organisations compelled to innovate and collaborate
• Avalanche of user-made content
• Markets become conversations. A shift is happening from competition to
customisation and co-creation
Creativity, customisation, collaboration and content

14. Let’s look at
what I got wrong?
Risky for a Futurist!

15. 1.Tipping points are
complex places
Climate change?

16. Assumed a global, engineered transition
i.e. “Goal directed” problem solving
Goal
Existing trends Future trends

17. A problem of systems
and system of problems
Change happens within complex systems with problems that interact
with each other
Goal
Climate politics
Climate economics
Almost all of the trends I highlighted are sources of complexity
GFC
Entrenched interests

18. Complicated, but not complex
Plan, Optimise, Replicate results

19. These are complex
Emergence, Non-equilibrium, Non-linear, Networked, Adaptive...
Cities, Economies Society, MarketsClimate, Ecology

20. 2. The iPhone
That’s a glaring miss…?
But what if I had forecast it?

21. Would you have believed me?
In a few years time virtually everyone you know will be walking around
with a supercomputer in their pocket. It will help trigger revolutions
and remake whole every industry
It will make a fringe maker of music players into the most successful
company of all time. They will sell more than a Billion of them
generating a Trillion in revenue...
And the carriers who invested billions in the infrastructure will get
virtually none of the spoils.

22. Would you understand its meaning?
Focussing on the artefacts can lead to a flawed vision that misses a
larger change
We overplay the ‘hardware’ (artefacts) and underplay the ‘software’
(context, structures)
We tend to fit these artefacts into existing conditions

23. Mobile?
Facetime?

24. Operator
Maid
Social changes?
He’s seated
Fixed speaker

25. Send a fax from the beach?
AT&T 1993

26. Pay a toll without stopping?
AT&T 1993

27. Video call home from a phonebox?
AT&T 1993

28. The world doesn’t just
change in one way
The future is a different country, they do things and think differently
there - Adapted from a quote about the past by LP Hartley
“...realise that the future will not only change technologically, but also
in the myths and worldviews we hold” – Roey Tzezana

29. Ask better questions
More interesting what people DO with technology
Timpaul.com
What people talk about
More interesting

30. Patterns of change
Sometimes, history rhymes

31. “…these ages were not initiated by the
genesis of some new activity
but always by the industrialisation of
pre-existing activity that enabled
higher order systems to develop”
Simon Wardley

32. Technology driven change
See: Alex Danco, Ben Evans, Clayton Christiansen.
Scarce resource
Abstraction Abundant, scalable
New scarce resource Higher order ‘job’, orthogonal
Abstraction
Scarce resource
Constraints, friction, profit
Technology
Core process of Tech Industry is replacing the scarce resource of other
industries

33. An example
Scarce resource
Abstraction Wires, Grid
New scarce resource Maintenance, equilibrium, capacity, choice
Abstraction
Scarce resource
Energy used at time, location of generation
Electricity
via Alex Danco
Renewables, batteries, IOT = Energy Network
Information, trust, participation

34. Another example
Scarce resource
Abstraction Ridesharing, smartphone
New scarce resource Network, mapping, driving (utilisation, efficiency)
Abstraction
Scarce resource
Ownership, access, trust
Vehicles / Transport
Autonomous vehicles
Traffic optimisation, experience, ???

35. Tech industry is a machine for
paradigm shifts
‘Zero’ marginal cost of production
‘Zero’ friction of distribution
‘Zero’ latency of updating
= Radically increased access to scarce resources
= Law of accelerating returns
Recent technologies have supercharged this

36. Call to action
Some needed skills and behaviors

37. Sense and adapt
Hone your skills for dealing with ambiguity
Listen to the system
• Look for signals and emergence
• Observe patterns of change, contradiction, intersection and leverage
Understand that the nature of technology favours pragmatists over
purists
• Optimise for uncertainty
• Complexity rejects rigid ideologies
• Have a matrix of mental models

38. Adaptability, resilience
Which means losing some control, and predictability
The most effective forecasters are allergic to certainty
• Limit your reliance on accurate predictions
• Avoid premature optimisation
• Seek diversity in people, ideas, innovations, endeavours...
• Challenge your logic and biases
Diversify your view
Don’t just look for the average behaviour
• E.g. Don’t engineer a building for the average earthquake

39. Final thought
“Instead of being really good at doing some
particular thing, companies must be really
good at learning how to do new things”
Harvard Business Review

40. @ jaywhittaker1

41. Appendix

42. Wicked Problems
Definition
We can see a lot of wicked problems in my forecasts
• Characterised by ambiguity, complex and tangled roots
• The problem and solution depend on perspective. There is no definitive
formulation or established technique to follow.
• Can turn advantages into disadvantages
• Constraints and resources available will change over time
• Problems bleed into other problems. Each problem is a symptom of another
problem – therefore difficult to measure success in traditional ways.
• Problem is never solved definitively. The goal should be to improve your ability to
act.
• They are socially complex and often marked by discord and disagreement among
stakeholders

43. Pace Layers
Changing at different rates
www.grantcraft.org

44. Other concepts
Not covered here specifically
Things I had to leave out…
• Aggregation theory, Attractive profits
• Networked society (Effect of technology on culture)
• Law of accellerating returns
• Identifying Overserved, Underserved customers
• Disruption theory
• Psychological factors
• Why some progress is hard to see
• Other reasons the iPhone was different
• Other reasons Climate Change was different

45. From Oil to Tech

46. “We tend to overestimate the effect of a
technology in the short run while
underestimating it in the long run”
Roy Amara

47. “In times of change
learners inherit the earth,
while the learned find themselves
beautifully equipped to deal with a problem
that no longer exists”
Eric Hoffer