The Good Enough Revolution

Wired examines a trend within the marketplace that they refer to as the “Good Enough Revolution” and/or the “MP3 Effect,” a change in consumer priorities that favors ease of use, availability and price over quality. As in all paradigm shifts, this one is uniquely suited to the times, given our increasingly plugged in lives, where immediacy and output are king, in combination with the collapse of the economy that sees people across the board spending less. Under this thinking products and services are designed to reach the widest audience – ignoring the hardcore users and experts whose needs are different – with bare bones functionality that can accomplish A to B, and at a price that virtually anyone can afford.

Sources:
http://www.psfk.com/2009/09/is-the-good-enough-revolution-really-okay.html

Disorganized Organization

How will organizations of the future look like? New technologies, such as internet, social networks, mobile phones and all those technologies that are still to spring up have brought up to reality the concept of ubiquity. Along with that, some really though question are emerging: do we still need structured organizations to organize our world and lives? For instance: why can´t everybody contract everything all the time in open markets?

Have at look Clay Shirky´s speech at The World Bank.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J80PE1h9OuA

New Rules for Highly Evolved Humans

Revealing your favorite sitcom spoilers, BAD, Google-stalking before a first date ,BAD, knowing what makes a good viral video GOOD... In a world where Twitter, Facebook and MSN are the new daily-lives touch-points, nice behavior is not about holding the fork properly and greeting your girlfriend´s parents nicely, every new realm of life has its rules, are you evolved enough to grasp them?

Wired
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/magazine/17-08/by_index?mbid=wir_newsltr#

Corporate Disappointment = Freedom

One of the first good outcomes of the current finacial crisis is the increase in the entrepreneurship spirit among those who were laid-off. 22% of American workers who were laid off from full-time jobs in the last year found new jobs with small businesses. Another 59% would be interested in working for a small business, and 29% are considering starting one of their own. The potential for job growth isn't the only reason. 56% said that a "family-like" work environment appealed to them, and 48% felt they could make more of a difference in a small company.

http://www.lemonademovie.com/

http://www.careerbuilder.com/share/aboutus/pressreleasesdetail.aspx?id=pr517&sd=8%2f13%2f2009&ed=12%2f31%2f2009&siteid=cbpr&sc_cmp1=cb_pr517&cbRecursionCnt=1&cbsid=857d44717f584a0ead8c4c94dc51319c-303813857-w2-6

The New, Faster Face of Innovation

Call it innovation on steroids. Or innovation at warp speed. Or just the innovation of rapid innovation. But the essential point remains: Technology is transforming innovation at its core, allowing companies to test new ideas at speeds—and prices—that were unimaginable even a decade ago. They can stick features on Web sites and tell within hours how customers respond. They can see results from in-store promotions, or efforts to boost process productivity, almost as quickly. The result? Innovation initiatives that used to take months and megabucks to coordinate and launch can often be started in seconds for cents.

Sloan Management Review
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/business-insight/articles/2009/3/5131/the-new-faster-face-of-innovation/

Freeconomics

The rise of "freeconomics" is being driven by the underlying technologies that power the Web. Just as Moore's law dictates that a unit of processing power halves in price every 18 months, the price of bandwidth and storage is dropping even faster. Which is to say, the trend lines that determine the cost of doing business online all point the same way: to zero.

Chris Anderson - Wired Magazine
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?currentPage=all

The Future of Work

Ten years ago, Facebook didn't exist. Ten years before that, we didn't have the Web. So who knows what jobs will be born a decade from now? Though unemployment is at a 25‑year high, work will eventually return. But it won't look the same. No one is going to pay you just to show up. We will see a more flexible, more freelance, more collaborative and far less secure work world. It will be run by a generation with new values — and women will increasingly be at the controls. Here are 10 ways your job will change. In fact, it already has.

Time Magazine
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1898024_1898023_1898169,00.html

Megacities (or, Citystates)

The numbers speak for themselves. In 1800, only three percent of the world’s population lived in cities. 2007 will mark a unique milestone in human history: For the first time ever, more people on earth will live and work in cities than in rural areas. The UN estimates that this share will climb to 61 percent by 2030, pushing up urban population from three billion today to a total of five billion. And only four of the twenty biggest megacities with populations over 10 million will be in industrial nations; the others will be in threshold and developing countries.

(Paul Saffo – INSEAD)
http://knowledge.insead.edu/contents/Aneweraforinnovations090716.cfm?vid=270

SIEMENS Megatcity Challenge Study
http://w1.siemens.com/en/megacities.htm

The Need for New Education

Education is a terrible way to find out what you’re good at. Sound strange, right? But think about this; how many of you are currently working in the subject you liked most in school. Not the one you excelled in, the one you liked. In our very streamlined public education system, children around the world are taught the maths and sciences, but how many of them are taught art, painting or dance with the same vigour? Riz speaks with world renowned creativity and education expert Ken Robinson who strongly believes the current state of education may begin holistically but progressively focuses “on the head, and then just to one side.”

Innovation Watch
Part 1: http://innovationwatch.com/schools-killing-creativity-part-1-3247/
Part 2: http://innovationwatch.com/schools-killing-creativity-part-2-3249/

Luxyoury

What will define luxury over the next few years? The answer to a large degree is, ‘luxury will be whatever you want it to be’.

Trendwatching
http://trendwatching.com/

Feedback 3.0

FEEDBACK 3.0 (which is building as we speak) will be all about companies joining the conversation, if only to get their side of the story in front of the mass audience that now scans reviews. Expect smart companies to be increasingly able (and to increasingly demand) to post their apologies and solutions, preferably directly alongside reviews from unhappy customers.

Trendwatching
http://trendwatching.com/

The Facebook Generation vs. the Fortune 500

The experience of growing up online will profoundly shape the workplace expectations of “Generation F” – the Facebook Generation. At a minimum, they’ll expect the social environment of work to reflect the social context of the Web, rather than as is currently the case, a mid-20th-century Weberian bureaucracy.

Gary Hamel - Management Innovation LAB
http://www.managementlab.org/blog/2009/facebook-generation-vs-fortune-500

Industries Taking New Shape

People often equate downturn with slowdown, but for many trends, a downturn can be anything but a slowdown. In particular, industry structures change more during recessionary periods than in periods of prosperity and growth. One only need look at that fateful week last September when the entire investment banking industry upended to see an example of just how fast an industry can shift shape. Similarly, the speed with which GM passed through bankruptcy shows just how quickly an old stalwart can fall--and be reborn in entirely new form.

Harvard Business Review (July - August 2009)
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hbr/hbr-now/2009/07/trend-to-watch-industries-taki.html

Asia Rising

One long-term trend that's been thrown for a loop in the past year is the steady rise of Asia as a force in the global economy. Seemingly unstoppable in the past decade, China in particular saw a sharp slowdown in its growth in recent months as investment flows dried up, exports collapsed, and stock markets and consumer confidence plummeted. It would be delusional, however, to think that the trend had been permanently thrown into reverse, or even put on hold for long. This week already, published data suggest the region is on the road to recovery.

Harvard Business Review (July - August 2009)
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hbr/hbr-now/2009/07/trend-to-watch-asia-rising.html

Management as a Science

Data, computing power, and mathematical models have been transforming many realms of management from art to science. But the crisis exposed the limitations of certain tools. In particular, the world saw the folly of the reliance by banks, insurance companies, and others on financial models that assumed economic rationality, linearity, equilibrium, and bell-curve distributions.

Harvard Business Review (July - August 2009)
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hbr/hbr-now/2009/07/trend-to-watch-management-as-a.html

The End of Retirement

Demography means virtually all of us will have to work longer. That need not be a bad thing.

The Economist
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?STORY_ID=13900145

The World is Aging

The World's older population, 65 years or older, is expected to triple by 2050.

RGE Monitor
http://www.rgemonitor.com/globalmacro-monitor/257177/the_world_is_aging/print

Offliners

In the next few years, people will pay to stay "offline", due to information overload and the current level of conectivity. In the nineties, the most expensive hotel in Kyoto, guests paid a premium for The Silent Room, where they paid to NOT have TV, telephone, newspapers…


Paul Saffo´s interview - INSEAD
http://knowledge.insead.edu/contents/Aneweraforinnovations090716.cfm?vid=270