Future Ready: A Changemaker's Guide to the Exponential Revolution

By Nick Davis

Every day, legacy business models and traditional best practices are transforming around us, driven by technologies like AI, blockchain, 5G, and quantum computing that are radically altering our future vision. As a leader and innovator, you're facing an accelerating pace of change that makes it more difficult than ever to navigate the murky future ahead. You need to cut through the noise and hype, but without a playbook to guide you, it's difficult to know where to start.

In Future Ready, Nick Davis shares the actual frameworks Singularity University uses with clients, along with case studies detailing how those enterprises have applied these strategies to leap ahead and stay there. More than half of the Fortune 500 have chosen Singularity University to develop their future vision and strategies. SU has developed a full range of tools, programs, and methodologies to help leaders and decision-makers build future-ready organizations. With this book, you will learn how to create your organization's future exponential vision and strategy, develop the leaders of tomorrow, and build future customer value using cutting-edge technologies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781544507569

Nick Davis

Nick Davis is an Englishman currently living on the East Coast of the USA not too far removed from Charm City (aka Baltimore). He is a former White Dwarf feature writer, now freelance content creator and fully employed Web Designer.He is married to a very patient Irish American lady and has four children. When Nick is not working, running errands, playing with his kids or burrowing through an ever growing list of ongoing house 'projects'. He can be found plodding away on a keyboard exploring the worlds of his imagination that takes our reality and twists it around just a couple of degrees...

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Copyright © 2020 Nick Davis

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5445-0756-9

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Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Part 1: Meet the Future

1. A Shift in History

2. Exponential Mindset

3. The Exponential Enterprise

Part 2: 10x Leadership

4. Think Incrementally & Exponentially

5. Learn & Unlearn

6. Lead & Empower

Part 3: 10x Strategy

7. Imagine & Envision

8. Evaluate & Decide

9. Motivate & Mobilize

10. Structure & Restructure

Part 4: 10x Innovation

11. Understand & Experiment

12. Collaborate & Organize

13. Measure & Incentivize

Part 5: 10x Culture

14. Define & Establish

15. Recruit & Adapt

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

About the Author

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Foreword

The Future Needs a Hero

Are you ready to be future-ready?

I can’t imagine a realistic scenario where someone would say no.

So then, with a resounding yes! you’re ready to lead change toward exponential revolution. You’re in good hands here with Nick. Before we put on our changemaker capes and race toward innovation and transformation, let’s warm up a bit…a little bit of a superhero exercise if you will.

Every superhero faces villains and you have to be prepared. The most common enemy of change is the status quo. But be careful, they don’t wear a villain costume that says, no change! They’re much more cunning. Their sabotage occurs in the shadows of hallways and conference rooms, with their whispers to key stakeholders.

Have you ever looked at something that was broken and shrugged your shoulders and said to yourself, I’ll get to that later?

But there’s another enemy…often missed in our day-to-day work to save the world.

Ourselves.

Sometimes we think that everybody wants to, or should, want to change! After all, we have to change, right? Disruption is coming! Disruption is here!

Exponential change is as much about humans as it is about digital innovation. We have to take a human-centered approach to transformation and becoming future-ready. A superpower we need to unleash is empathy. We have to build bridges for people to cross over the tall walls of fear, to soar over the risk-averse, and to deflect the doubt inherent in all aspects of change.

Remember, there have been times in your life when change didn’t seem like a good idea. And it’s like that for everyone at different points in their lives.

Have you ever followed existing rules or processes and thought, there must be a better way or what if I… but decided to do things the same, familiar way because it was easier?

Have there been times when you thought, things aren’t the best right now, but I’ll get through it…I’m sure it’ll get better, or that maybe, now’s not the time to rock the boat, even though you were frustrated or unhappy?

The thing about innovation is that it challenges one of our core human constructs that’s deeply wired in all of us: we’re rule followers.

We were taught to follow the rules from the earliest days of our formative years. Following rules is the antithesis of innovation in many ways. Instead of following the rules, which dictate the norms for the status quo, innovation asks us to challenge, bend, and even break the rules! Doing so creates a different set of norms, which creates new behaviors that may frighten or threaten everyone else.

As Nick states, the future isn’t what it used to be. One of two outcomes is inevitable, and those outcomes depend on a choice we make today. The future either happens to us or because of us. If we’re to create the future we want to see, then we must save ourselves and our colleagues from inaction, doubt, whataboutism, and fear. We must break from our shackles and take risks to achieve exponential change and attain the future-ready advantage.

A New Mindset for Exponential Change

To do so, we have to think about exponential change in three unique and parallel ways. The balance between them is user-defined.

Iteration: We need to invest in improving mindsets and processes to exponentially improve what we do today. We must continuously adapt and evolve to survive and thrive in what I call digital Darwinism.

Innovation: This is different than iteration. Iteration is continually improving upon what we do today. Innovation challenges us to explore ways to deliver new value internally and externally. This is where the magic lies—but it is incredibly difficult to unlock. Why? Because innovation is very much a human process. Leadership must empower it. Organizational cultures must articulate shared purpose, socialize new norms, and incentivize new behaviors. Leadership and human-centered culture must make change irresistible.

Disruption, a.k.a. Exponential Change: This is the result of enlightenment, vision, purpose, and meaningful transformation. The synthesis of iteration and innovation, powered by human-centered, purpose-driven culture, is exponential change, a.k.a. disruption. If iteration is improving existing processes and outputs, and innovation is creating new value across the board, then disruption is the outcome of making legacy mindsets, operations, and products obsolete.

Remember, your superpower is empathy. It’s a gift to you and those around you. And it’s powerful. It breaks down walls and brings people together around a common purpose and shared goals. It shifts the Golden Rule from treating others how you would want to be treated to treating others how they want to be treated. This makes exponential change inclusive, personal, and inevitable.

Now get your cape and go save the day.

Nick, take it away!

—Brian Solis

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Introduction

Exponential Change

The future, like everything else, is no longer quite what it used to be. By that I mean we can no longer think of it with any confidence in our inductions.

—Paul Valéry

The future isn’t what it used to be.

That bit of wisdom has been attributed to a French intellectual named Paul Valéry, who used it to describe the dramatically changed worldviews and emerging mindsets that arose in the aftermath of the First World War. The phrase also was adopted as the title of a 1983 talk by Steve Jobs, when he predicted that networked computers would replace TV as the world’s dominant medium, and the advent of portable computers, voice recognition, and Wi-Fi—all before the release of the first Macintosh. As we head with cautious optimism into the 2020s, we’re again facing a situation where all of our assumptions are challenged, and the rules of the old game have little bearing on the future to come.

This time, the impetus driving dramatic change comes not from global conflict, but from rapidly emerging and converging technologies and trends. These exponential technologies and trends are the drivers o­f global changes that are no less profound than those caused by wars and the rise and fall of governments. The unknown future is not just a novel combination of existing elements, but one that’s driven by faster, more far-reaching change than we’ve ever experienced. The rate of change you see today, as you begin this book, is the slowest rate of change you will experience from now on.

But just because we can’t predict a far-off future doesn’t mean we can’t prepare for future growth and success. I say that with confidence because I’ve spent the last fifteen years working with more than half of the world’s Fortune 200 companies and helping them through their transformation journeys. This hands-on experience with some of the world’s leading organizations and changemakers has spurred the development of several proven models and frameworks that can help organizations of all sizes become future-ready.

So, what does it mean to be future-ready? I define it as when:

An organization has a sophisticated capability to develop a future vision and align its practices to that vision

Its people and operations are moving quickly to keep pace with, or outpace, the rate of change in their industry

That definition seems simple but building the capabilities to align with a shared future vision is anything but simple. And the ability for organizations to outpace the rate of change in their industry? That’s what enables the world’s most innovative and valuable organizations to leap ahead of their competitors and stay there, year after year.

There’s more to becoming a Future-Ready Enterprise than being innovative. Innovation is key, but as you will see in the framework that follows, there are essential leadership, strategy, and culture components involved in becoming future-ready. Having innovative ideas is just the beginning. The journey before us requires a clear focus, shared vision, and bold action to go from incremental outcomes to exponential impact. In truth, nothing is simple about succeeding in these times of rapidly accelerating exponential change. And yet, nothing is impossible, and there are steps we can all take today to improve our ability to survive and thrive in an uncertain future. Today is a good time to begin.

It Begins with Your Mindset

We’ve been through several historical eras where technological advances dramatically and permanently changed our personal and professional lives. We have models like Moore’s Law that help us understand the rate of technological change and its ramifications. Moore’s Law has become a popular shorthand for explaining the powerful ripple effects that accompany the increasing affordability and availability of technology, in this case, computing power.

Wise individuals have pointed out that though digital transformation is the primary driver of the massive changes we’re seeing, the technology is the predictable part. The human and cultural aspects of change are nearly always more challenging and complex than the technical aspects, in our experience. In a recent study and workshop connected to Global Summit, Singularity University’s flagship annual conference, we found that survey respondents considered mindset to be the most important factor in driving future innovation. In fact, having the right mindset—individual and organizational—is a prerequisite for success in any innovation initiative your organization will tackle. We’ll explore how to create shared mindsets that foster transformation further in chapter 2.

For every industry and every size organization around the world, change is accelerating at an unprecedented rate. It’s ever more exciting, and ever more unknown. The speed of change is breaking all of our old models and paradigms. And if you don’t act, these new technologies, business models, and shifting market dynamics will break your business.

In business schools around the world, we learn to look at data, case studies, and methodologies from the past to predict the cycles of change ahead. But at the same time, new technologies are emerging that enable our capabilities to take exponential leaps ahead—and disrupt entire industries in the process. There will still be upswings and downswings in the market, sure, but they will be faster and larger waves than we’ve seen before. That is the nature of the shapeless and unmoored future ahead.

After all, no one could have predicted huge industry shifts like this:

The world’s largest transportation company owns no cars.

The world’s largest hospitality company owns no hotels.

The world’s highest-valued media company owns no content.

This future staring us in the face promises an accelerated pace of change that we’ve never seen before. These aren’t traditional adjustments to how companies create and distribute value. These are the results of a completely reimagined digital economy fueled by exponential technologies. Digitization allows businesses to reinvent practically all aspects of their organization and value chain, to jump across industries, and to create and distribute value in wholly different ways than ever before.

As Daniel Ammann, president of General Motors’ autonomous vehicle subsidiary Cruise Automation, said: We see more change in the next five years than in the last 50.1

When you see a wave of disruption coming, you know you must surf it or be swallowed by it. What if you could be the force that creates the wave in your industry? This book is subtitled A Changemaker’s Guide to the Exponential Revolution. That’s our not-so-subtle way of saying that my colleagues and I hope you’ll treat this book’s models, frameworks, and examples as guides to help you through every stage of your own transformation journey. I could not consider Future Ready a success if it is read once and then relegated to the bookshelf to collect dust. Our ideal is that this book is read, shared, highlighted, underlined, and dog-eared—and helps you through the many challenges you’ll face as you become future-ready.

Reimagining Business

For years, many traditional businesses achieved growth by managing supply chains and operations. The typical multi-layered bureaucratic organization was built intentionally to de-risk its operations and scale incrementally. Businesses could grow simply by making slightly better versions of existing products. The goals were to increase top-line revenue, gain market share, and max out the efficiency of existing processes. This method helped cut costs and grow companies for many, many years. We’re used to this traditional model of what it means to be an organization.

We no longer live in that incremental world. Technology has shifted the pace of change from incremental to exponential.

The transportation industry provides a clear illustration of exponential change. At the turn of the 20th century, a big leap in transportation technology was from horse and buggy to cars powered by fossil fuels. Today, we’re completely rethinking how to get from point A to point B, and a convergence of technologies—from smartphones and apps to worldwide Wi-Fi—has made it possible for us to move around the world in ways we never expected.

Do you need to own a car? Is a car still necessary to get from one point to another? These questions have led to innovations like the development of Uber Air, an aerial ridesharing service set to debut in 2023 that will enable people to summon a flying taxi through a smartphone app.2 Honda is taking a different tack on the future of transportation: they’re working on IeMobi, a portable room that detaches from your house to become a self-driving car that takes you where you want to go.3 We are completely shifting what it means to move around the world.

Our rapidly changing digital world is enabling us to ask questions and consider solutions that were once limited to sci-fi culture. For example, one solution to the future of business travel may be to reduce or eliminate business travel. Instead of logging thousands of miles on airplanes to attend meetings around the world, imagine turning on an augmented reality (AR) headset to see and hear meeting attendees as if they were in the same room. If holographic images of people could deliver an experience indistinguishable from an in-person meeting, would you need to leave your home office?

Rapidly accelerating technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality (VR) now enable us to have realistic collaborative experiences in a virtual world. More broadly, groundbreaking technologies like AR and VR allow each of us to rethink our entire approach to business challenges. Expand this idea to every individual, organization, industry, and society on the planet, and it gets hard to wrap your head around—let alone predict—the impact of this kind of disruption.

One thing is certain, however. As executive coach Marshall Goldsmith said, What got you here won’t get you there.

A Cautionary Tale

Brands that have held fast to the status quo and maintained an incremental approach to growth are seeing that model crumbling beneath their feet. You’ve watched Macy’s, JC Penney, Blockbuster, Kmart, and Sears shutter hundreds of stores. You may be worried whether your large, slow-moving organization could follow the same fate.

These brands didn’t stay relevant to the marketplace, and their customers were open to looking elsewhere for something new and better. Their demise was only accelerated when talented prospective employees began to look elsewhere as well. Instead of opting for careers with traditional brands, talented individuals sought roles with emerging brands that resonated with their values and offered exciting future career paths.

Remember Kodak? Kodak’s demise is probably the most famous example of an organization that failed to capitalize on innovation. In 1975, thirty years before digital photography swept the market, Kodak engineer Steven Sasson built the first digital camera.

Kodak executives told Sasson that his invention didn’t fit the company’s core business. Rather than welcoming digital photography as an exciting innovation, Kodak regarded the technology as an unwelcome competitor to Kodak’s profitable line of film products.

As Sasson describes it, the execs were convinced that no one would ever want to look at their pictures on a television set. Print had been with us for over one hundred years, no one was complaining about prints, they were very inexpensive, and so why would anyone want to look at their picture on a television set?4 In 1989, Sasson went on to invent the first modern digital single-lens reflex camera with colleague Robert Hills. Kodak de-prioritized that invention, too.

And though Kodak may be the most famous innovation fail, it was not alone in its myopic view of the future. Other famous brands that failed to negotiate the turn include:

Nokia, a Finnish company that created the world’s first cellular network, ruled the world of mobile phones from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. Nokia thought it was in the hardware business, even as the explosive growth of the internet pushed data and software applications to the fore. The 2007 launch of the iPhone ushered in the smartphone era and effectively ended Nokia’s reign.5

Google Glass provides a reminder that even the world’s most innovative companies sometimes strike out. In this case, the much-hyped Google Glass, a business-focused augmented reality headset, may have failed because of price, privacy concerns, and a world that just wasn’t ready for wearables in the workplace in 2015. In the spring of 2019, the company announced an updated version, Glass Enterprise Edition 2. Featuring a new processor and a variety of other updates, the second coming of Google Glass is focused on business users. Google describes Glass Enterprise Edition 2 as a small, lightweight wearable computer with a transparent display for hands-free work and features manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare use cases on the product website.6

RadioShack was founded in 1921 and served as a go-to destination for electronic hobbyists and do-it-yourselfers. The brand thrived for many years selling hardware, including electronic parts and accessories, radio receivers, cassette decks, and CB radios. In the early 2000s, RadioShack shifted away from its focus on electronic gadgets and knowledgeable customer service to promoting mobile device plans and accessories. By 2011, more than half of the company’s revenue came from mobile phones and accessories, and the company had lost its differentiation. In 2015, the company, once known as the world’s largest electronics brand, had applied for bankruptcy. Today, the company survives with a handful of stores and the radioshack.com website.

Reinventing Through Collaboration

"We went from selling sheetrock and hammers to completely transforming the entire company. Everyone now sees what seemed insane at the time and how this sets us up