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There are many views of the future which one can envision. The goal of this section is to present a few ideas about the emerging world.  Admittedly, I'm not attempting to be very unbiased, rather, to present my own views along with new ideas that I find as I travel, meet people, read, research and learn. One of my goals is to be able to present to my clients and other organizations a view of the future that they may not have anticipated or thought about. I hope to expand this section as I go. EBBF Friends, Discussion of Future Trends and Ideas To start, I'll provide a link to an organization called the EBBF which looks to the future of business as a place where new concepts and ideas will begin to emerge as a result of global pressures. This article presents some of their thoughts. Enjoy! http://www.ebbf.org/482.html Internet Technologies My wife is an IT Manager who loves to follow trends in Web Technologies. The latest advance is the Emergence of Web 3.0. Basically, what we appear to be moving towards is a much more context based internet where search engines get more intelligent and rather than doing just word searches, begin to search for appropriate context in articles, blogs, sites, on-line encyclopedias such as Wikipedia, videos, maps, and a variety of other content forms which will evolve. The new virtual world will be much more sophisticated and more seemless. Even the new trend toward mashups (basically the mixing of several sites) will become much more seemless. Here is a fun little sample where someone has combined a phone directory and a map so that you can enter the phone number and it will map the location of the phone (Show-Phone-Location-on-a-Map). No doubt, many new tools will emerge to make the publishing and searching of these various forms of media much simpler. My guess is that within just a few years, creating and posting video and audio content from our home PC will become common place and the new search engines will simply ask what we are looking for and we will just answer in english. The searches will then go looking for relevent information. And my guess is that as a result we will all be much more interconnected.
Infrastructure
For countries with less developed infrastructures, we will continue seeing the evolution of products that will make the internet more accessible and as a result, we will also begin to see the same leapfrog effect that we had when cell networks became available for underdeveloped countries. For example, you may have heard of the wind-up laptops with built in wireless networking for under $100 (See $100 PC). The mass production and distribution will make this possible. We can all see the convergence of devices so I won't cover that topic in this post. What I will also say though is that under developed countries have an opportunity to develop green technologies first time round. They don't have the same infrastructure problems and re-development issues that the western world has developed. They can if they choose, move directly to green technologies. I am currently doing a small amount of work with Vietnamese business contacts to assist them in attracting business development and, for certain, forward thinking ideas are definitely an option for those who wish to assist.
I also suspect many more offices will begin to be home based and virtual rather than having offices as we now know them. This will likely see the emergence of more shared lease offices spaces designed specifically for meetings when people must get together. These will be equipped with the latest technologies. Software Development Approaches (Agile) A new friend and business contact Mishkin Bertieg travels the world helping companies to understand this new approach to project development which is really about breaking projects into small parts which are more self-governed and which rely on the creativity of people and their ability to learn by experience. This brief introduction doesn't in any way do justice to the approach. As a former advocate of much more formal approaches to software development, I'm very interested in this new approach an learning from it's simplicity and it's successes. I'll share more as I learn. Governance and Leadership There are many ideas being presented that have merit for new world development. Let's just say that I'm not convinced that we have developed the best and most advanced form of democracy or world governance, nor have we come up with the most ideal form of market economy. So if you want some real ideas to think about, l'll offer you links to the following: Holocracy - an approach to building democracies which work similar to the Agile approach for managing projects. You can find more information at HolocracyOne.
Baha'i Governance - Worthy of note is probably the only truly world organization where there is total cooperation and globalization based on consultative approaches. The Baha'i Faith has a form of democratic organizational leadership that eliminates all of the challenges of Partisan and Opposition based politics while developing a form of leadership which is based on election from the masses without any form of campaigning or lobbying. Elections are done at the local level and governance is done through cooperation and consultation. The watch word for this type of consultation is frank expression of opinions combined with the overriding principle of unity of purpose. Baha'is offer this approach as a model for the future.
Dotmocracy - A somewhat simplified in-person polling system. Interesting, however, has a few flaws.
Trends in Personal Development What appears to be a clear trend in the future is a move toward personal development, particularly in all things spiritual. It seems that many are searching for new approaches to living which emphasis the need to ensure our own personal well-being and growth. This trend is particularly noticable as many people are growing past the age of young families and are now faced with finding their true purpose in life. Coaching is most certainly becoming one of the most accepted form of individual and group development.
What I would like to predict as the natural evolution of this new level of consciousness is that people will begin to look for not only what is best for their personal growth and evolution but will also be willing to make the sacrifice of personal satisfaction to ensure the well being of the greater population of the world. Some will say that there is no sacrifice necessary because of the concept that the world provides for us with abundance. From the long term perspective, I suspect they are right. From a shorter term perspective, I suspect that it will be a little more challenging. Even working with abundance takes careful and creative thought, fearless action and an ever evolving way of thinking.
Environment and Climate Change There are many specialists and evangelists spreading the message of Climate Change and the issue is becoming much more important, but let's face it, even after we listen to everyone, it finally comes down to each person taking responsibility and action. Here are many news items on Green Technologies. Here are a few other ideas you may want to think about. Waste Disposal through Worm Casting - I recently spoke with a friend and business contact, Brian Usher, who is heavily into promoting ideas for creating compost from waste using worms. That's what his latest company is all about, and he is promoting the idea to Government as an option for free or low cost disposal of waste where the output of the worms becomes a high quality sellable product. Brian is not only a highly repected Pschologist, but also an environmental activist through his latest initiative. He and his wife Debra are also well known business coaches. My suggestion, start visualizing the future and you will be much more likely to begin moving in that direction. My goal here is to seed some ideas. International Investment Admittedly, I'm a novice in the investment world, or at least comparitively, but I do a lot of thinking about what types of trends that international stock markets tend to invoke. What is clear is that the current market system of quarterly reporting does promote the efforts for success of companies over the short term. It also provides a means whereby ideas which are promoted by visionaries can be funded by investors. There are even web-sites where people with investment capital can go to invest in new ideas. These are called Angel Investor sites.
However, what is also clear is that the market systems could do a better job of promoting the thinking around what's best for the world over the long term. I'd be interested in hearing from experts who might have ideas that can be sold to markets as better approaches for trading that will reward those who the consider longer term consequences of corporate behavior. Having said that, from the perspective of looking at individual companies, we can see that companies that are thinking more about the future are also those that are beginning to shine in the stock markets around the world. Examples include Toyota which was ahead of the curve in hybrid development and also in many management approaches (e.g. Lean). Perhaps this is a signal to investors that a long term outlook will ultimately be more successful. International Development Another issue of concern is the whole area of international development. Clearly the key to most of the international development issues is education. What we consider a crisis in our school systems would be an incredible advance in most countries. The challenges of international development are enormous and I won't pretend to know what they are. My purpose in even mentioning it is to keep it in the mind of my readers. It is only when the rest of the world is also developed that we as a human race will reach our highest attainments. Leaving others behind is just not a sustainable option. My latest venture has slowly taken me into the area of international development since I recently started working with Vietnamese contacts in developing investment opportunities in Vietnam. And I must say that in the process, I am learning much more about the challenges of working with a country that has both immense opportunities and significant challenges even to make the interface the western world. If you want to learn more about some of these Vietnamese infrastructure opportunities, please visit my other company site, Vietnam Business Ventures. In addition to coaching, I can assist you with investments you might wish to make in Vietnam. As I learn more, I'll keep you informed.
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