Month / January 2011

by Roger Dennis

Things That Should Have Happened By 2011

A lovely post examining predictions that were made about what the technology world should look like in 2011:

When I started to look at predictions for a living back in 2006, I remember how 2011 was this big banner year against which most forecasts were made. I guess partly it was because 2011 was at the end of a five-year horizon, and partly because it was conveniently removed into the next decade. Whatever the reason, I’ve been patiently waiting for this year to arrive to check back on some of the more feisty predictions made in the outset of the 2.0 boom. And now this time has come.

Some of the stuff below has worked out remarkably — surprisingly — well, such as the prediction from Hitachi about commercial availability of mind-machine interfaces (check!). Other stuff — not so much: podcast audience was expected to skyrocket from 11.3% in 2006 to 51.1% in 2010 (eMarketer #084888), but it didn’t, lingering instead at 12% by December 2010 (eMarketer #123668).


Above is Gartner’s Hype Cycle chart for 2006; you will love how tablet PCs sit at the bottom of the trough of disillusionment.

via Advertising Lab: Things That Should Have Happened By 2011.

by Roger Dennis

Future Agenda launch (The Guardian coverage)

The launch of Future Agenda as reported by The Guardian:

The crowd of business leaders, media and government officials has gathered for the launch of a report called Future Agenda: The World in 2020. Commissioned by Vodafone, Future Agenda claims to be the world’s largest “open foresight project”: an exercise in future-gazing involving 2,000 global participants, including the British Council, Google, Shell, PepsiCo and academics, with the aim of “analysing the crucial themes of the next 10 years”.

via The population explosion | World news | The Guardian.

by Roger Dennis

The Number One Key to Innovation: Scarcity

From the HBR blog comes this link to a fascinating study on innovation.  I’ve always held that resource constraints help – not hinder – innovation, but this study goes way beyond a mere hunch:

How should an enterprise go about inventing something novel and useful? Is there a structured thinking process that reliably produces results? Believe it or not, at least 162 different answers have been proposed to that question.

So when it happens that these rigorously researched methodologies independently converge on a common factor — something they all find valuable in an innovation process — it’s pretty safe to assume that it really is important. Having done that kind of meta-analysis, we can tell you the one element that comes through loudest and clearest: the value of scarcity as a spur to creative problem-solving.

via The Number One Key to Innovation: Scarcity – Uri Neren – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review.

by Roger Dennis

So you’re in charge of innovation? Read this…

From James Gardner (Chief Technology Officer at the Department for Work and Pensions in the UK, and ex- innovation guru at Lloyds Bank) comes this ode to senior executives who find themselves in the startling – and potentially exciting – position of holding the innovation candle:

You need to build your innovation effort from the bottom up as well as from the top down. The little people at the front line are just as important as the ones in the center who make the decisions. It is the front line and their managers, after all, who will be affected by anything you do. If they love your innovation effort, they will make sure you succeed. If they don’t, you will certainly fail.

via Dear Senior Executive… – BankerVision.