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“There is no point in having a 5-year plan in this industry. With each step forward, the landscape you’re walking on changes. So we have a pretty good idea of where we want to be in six months, and where we want to be in thirty years. And every six months we take another look at where we want to be in thirty years to plan out the next six months.”
— Facebook’s Little Red Book
In our industry, our reference frame is day-by-day, sprint-by-sprint, feature-by-feature. What’s happening today, tomorrow, next month? We’re intimately familiar with the details but unaware of the bigger picture. We can easily become myopic to the pace of technology and to the larger forces that will ultimately have more influence whether our product succeeds or fails more than which feature comes next.
When we read about failed companies such as Blockbuster, Kodak, or RIM, we’re often told that they were “caught by surprise” or “didn’t see it coming.” The truth is much more complicated. In each of these examples, the companies were acutely aware of the threat posed by the new technology. In fact, they were often the first to see it—Kodak invented digital photography, and RIM brought the first smartphones to market. What they were wrong about, however, was just how fast the technology was moving. They had the wrong frame of reference.
We fall into a curious trap when we think about the future—we know too much to be dangerous. Our timeframe is too short. Measured on this scale, changes are difficult to notice. Think about this the next time you read a product review.
But what if I ask you to imagine your product in thirty years? Something appealing happens when you contemplate that time horizon. It’s so far into the future that the little details have to fall away. Zooming out to see the industry at a geological time scale brings things into focus: technology is progressing faster than most of us imagined, and will only continue to do so.
The year 1986—thirty years ago—fell within most of our lifetimes (or close enough). It wasn’t that long ago. But think about how far technology has advanced since 1986. The personal computer on a worker’s 1986 desktop has morphed into the smartphone, a device that fits into our pockets, is more than 300x faster, has 2,000x as much memory, and costs less than 5% as much. (Oh, and it’s always connected to everyone else on Earth and the entire sum of human knowledge.)
If you want to prepare for the future, move the goalposts. Try a thirty-year plan. This exercise aims to answer, “where might the world be?” We want to think about the external forces that will shape the feature, not the features derived from them. This is also about forecasting, not predicting. Predictions concern themselves with future certainties, whereas forecasts map out ranges of possible outcomes, continuously updated as more information becomes available. Think weather forecast, not lottery predictions.
In many ways, this is similar to scenario planning. Peter Schwartz, one of the gurus of scenario planning, describes it as a process where “managers invent and then consider, in depth, several varied stories of equally plausible futures.” Schwartz offers a useful framework for leading the discussion and contemplating the types of forces that will shape your future. He uses the handy acronym steep—Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, and Political.
When you get to the T-forces (Technological), be careful. This is where you can fall into the trap of trying to predict products and technologies rather than imagining trends and forces. To help with this, I recommend consulting Kevin Kelly’s latest book, The Inevitable. Unlike futurists who try to predict, Kevin focuses instead on identifying forces, which he calls “motion verbs”:
I make no attempt to predict which specific products will prevail next year or the next decade, let alone which companies will triumph. These specifics are decided by fads, fashion, and commerce, and are wholly unpredictable. But the general trends of the products and services in 30 years are currently visible.
Their basic forms are rooted in directions generated by emerging technologies now on their way to ubiquity. This wide, fast-moving system of technology bends the culture subtly, but steadily, so it amplifies the following forces: Becoming, Cognifying, Flowing, Screening, Accessing, Sharing, Filtering, Remixing, Interacting, Tracking, Questioning, and then Beginning.
Once you have considered what these possible futures look like, you can form an opinion about where your product should go, which long-term trends you can’t ignore, and against which trends you might need to hedge. Your periodic thirty-year plan feeds into your six-month plan. It should also help you with every product manager’s toughest challenge: deciding which things not to do. Which efforts just aren’t important to the long-term yet distract you from what does matter?
This exercise doesn’t have to happen often—once or twice a year is probably ideal. It is possible to spend too much time with your head in the far future and end up being way too early. Periodically setting aside the ant’s eye view for an alien’s tour of the universe can help you put the future into perspective; plus it’s fun. It’s sooner than you think.
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Ever since an 18th-century biologist called Luigi Galvani made a dead frog twitch we have known that there is a connection between electricity and the operation of the nervous system. We now know that the signals in neurons in the brain are propagated as pulses of electrical potential, whose effects can be detected by electrodes in close proximity. So in principle, we should be able to build an outward neural interface system – that is to say, a device that turns thought into action.
In fact, we already have the first outward neural interface system to be tested in humans. It is called BrainGate and consists of an array of micro-electrodes, implanted into the part of the brain concerned with controlling arm movements. Signals from the micro-electrodes are decoded and used to control the movement of a cursor on a screen, or the motion of a robotic arm.
A crucial feature of these systems is the need for some kind of feedback. A patient must be able to see the effect of their willed patterns of thought on the movement of the cursor. What’s remarkable is the ability of the brain to adapt to these artificial systems, learning to control them better.
Inward neural interfaces – ones that provide inputs to the brain – also depend on the brain’s ability to adapt to them.
- Cochlear implants, which can restore some measure of hearing to the profoundly deaf, have been around for several decades now. These take signals from an external microphone, and after signal processing, transmit a series of pulses to electrodes that excite the auditory nerve. The pulses depend on the brain’s impressive ability to learn to adapt to the new kinds of input.
- The first trials of retinal implants have now taken place, in which signals from a camera are used to stimulate retinal neurons in vision-impaired patients.
The key message of all this is that brain interfaces now are a reality and that the current versions will undoubtedly be improved. Until then, our current neural interface systems are very crude. One problem is size; the micro-electrodes in use now, with diameters of tens of microns, may seem tiny, but they are still coarse compared to the sub-micron dimensions of individual nerve fibres. And there is a problem of scale. The arm movement control system, for example, consists of 100 micro-electrodes in a square array; compare that to the many tens of billions of neurons in the brain. The fact these devices work at all is perhaps more a testament to the adaptability of the human brain than to our technological prowess.
So the challenge is to build neural interfaces on scales that better match the structures of biology. Here, we move into the world of nanotechnology. Perhaps the most promising direction will be to create a 3D “scaffold” incorporating nano-electronics, and then to persuade growing nerve cells to infiltrate it to create what would in effect be cyborg tissue – living cells and inorganic electronics intimately mixed. This prospect might be achievable in our lifetimes, but what does remain very far away is the transhumanist dream of being able to obtain a complete readout of the brain – a transcript of the state of the mind.
As brain interfaces improve, they will bring real benefits to many, and some ethical issues too. We will still be a long way from the seamless integration of humans and machines, but the science fiction vision of the cyborg will become real enough to give us pause for thought.
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Findings from the 2016 digital business global executive study and research report.
Many companies are responding to an increasingly digital market environment by adding roles with a digital focus or changing traditional roles to have a digital orientation. Nearly 90% of respondents to a 2015 global survey of managers and executives conducted by MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte1 anticipate that their industries will be disrupted by digital trends to a great or moderate extent, but only 44% say their organizations are adequately preparing for the disruptions to come.
Preparing for a digital future is no easy task. It means developing digital capabilities in which a company’s activities, people, culture, and structure are in sync and aligned toward a set of organizational goals. Most companies, however, are constrained by a lack of resources, a lack of talent, and the pull of other priorities, leaving executives to manage digital initiatives that either take the form of projects or are limited to activities within a given division, function, or channel.
A key finding in this year’s study is that digitally maturing organizations have organizational cultures that share common features. These features consistently appear in digitally maturing companies across different industries. The main characteristics of digital cultures include: an expanded appetite for risk, rapid experimentation, heavy investment in talent, and recruiting and developing leaders who excel at “soft” skills. Leading a digital company does not require technologists at the helm.
To help companies better prepare for their digital futures, we delved into how digitally maturing organizations strengthen their cultures and develop the talent that drives them. Highlights of our findings include the following:
- Creating an effective digital culture is an intentional effort:
Nearly 80% of respondents from digitally maturing companies say their companies are actively engaged in efforts to bolster risk taking, agility, and collaboration. - Senior-level talent appears more committed to digitally maturing enterprises:
Companies that give their senior vice presidents, vice presidents, and director-level leaders the resources and opportunities to develop themselves in a digital environment are more likely to retain their talent. - Digitally maturing organizations invest in their own talent:
More than 75% of digitally maturing organizations surveyed provide their employees with resources and opportunities to develop their digital acumen, compared to only 14% of early-stage companies. Success appears to breed success — 71% of digitally maturing companies say they are able to attract new talent based on their use of digital. - Soft skills trump technology knowledge in driving digital transformation:
When asked about the most important skill for leaders to succeed in a digital environment, only 18% of respondents listed technological skills as most important. Instead, they highlighted managerial attributes such as having a transformative vision (22%), being a forward thinker (20%), having a change-oriented mindset (18%), or other leadership and collaborative skills (22%). A similar emphasis on organizational skills above technical ones for succeeding in digital environments was also reported for employees. - Digital congruence is the crux:
To navigate the complexity of digital business, companies should consider embracing what we call digital congruence — culture, people, structure, and tasks aligned with each other, company strategy, and the challenges of a constantly changing digital landscape. Similarly, an organization with a flat and nimble structure may still struggle if its culture fears risk. When culture, people, structure, and tasks are firing in sync, however, businesses can move forward successfully and confidently.
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Once you have identified a great idea for a new product or service innovation what do you do? Many firms put together a cross-functional team (XFT) and tell them to bring the product to market. It seems like a good approach. They have budget, people, and empowerment. What could possibly go wrong? Lots of things. Here are six common reasons why XFTs fail to deliver.
1. No High-Level Sponsor
Ideally, the team should report to someone in the C-suite. The dilemma is that they have to be empowered and left alone but they also need access to high-level authority on occasion.
2. Too much Oversight and Control
They should be allowed to bypass many internal approval processes and take control of the project themselves.
3. Wrong or Unclear Objectives
The emphasis should be on fast feedback rather than fast payback. Vague goals are not much help but even worse are targets which are too tight, ambitious and restrictive.
4. Wrong Mix of Skills and Functions
You need a diverse team with the right mix of skills. If all the people on the team are creative types then they have great ideas but nothing much gets done.
5. Insufficient Resources
The team cannot be expected to produce much if they can only meet after work every third Tuesday. They need time, space and money.
6. Opposition from Vested Interests
The biggest problem is often one that is not anticipated – political opposition from internal departments who see them as a nuisance or a threat.
There is nothing wrong with establishing a cross functional team to implement an innovation project. However, you cannot just set it up and forget about it. They need support, direction, and encouragement. They also need freedom and empowerment. Above all, they need help to overcome all the business-as-usual pressures which will oppose an innovation initiative.
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