Tom Peters’
Necessary
Revolution:
People & Profits
Circa 2025
The Art of Dialogue/Dedee Shattuck Gallery/10 January 2015
Slides at tompeters.com
(Also see our 23-part Master Compendium at excellencenow.com.)
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“A creative person is good but random.
We’ve taken the randomness out by
building an ontology of language.”
—Lawrence Whittle, head of sales
Source: Wall Street Journal/ 0825.14/
“It’s Finally Time to Take AI Seriously”
SENSOR PILLS: “… Proteus Digital Health is one of
several pioneers in sensor-based health technology. They make a silicon
chip the size of a grain of sand that is embedded into a safely digested pill
that is swallowed. When the chip mixes with stomach acids, the processor
is powered by the body’s electricity and transmits data to a patch worn on
the skin. That patch, in turn, transmits data via Bluetooth to a mobile app,
which then transmits the data to a central database where a health
technician can verify if a patient has taken her or his medications.
“This is a bigger deal than it may seem. In 2012,
it was estimated that people not taking their
prescribed medications cost $258 BILLION in
emergency room visits, hospitalization, and
doctor visits. An average of 130,000 Americans
die each year because they don’t follow their
prescription regimens closely enough.” (The FDA
approved placebo testing in April 2012; sensor pills are ticketed to come
to market in 2015 or 2016.)
Source: Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data, and the Future of Privacy
Betterment/
“Ambitions of a
Robo Adviser”
“could put tens of
thousands of U.S. investment
advisors out of their jobs”
—FT/1217.14/
“Just like other members of
the board, the algorithm gets
to vote on whether the firm
makes an investment in a
specific company or not. The
program will be the sixth
member of DKV's board.”
Source: Business Insider, 13 May 2014: “A Hong Kong VC fund
has just appointed an algorithm to its board.”
“Las Vegas Company Could 3D
Print Your Next Car: Customers
could pick up newly printed car
within 24 hours”
Las Vegas Sun/
—Headline,
1225.14
“This Bio-Drone Grows Itself,
And Then Melts Into A Puddle
Of Sugar When It's Done Flying”
—Headline, Fast Company, 08 December 2014
NOT DEAD YET
“[As of 2010], No. 1 [GNP] and the rest are separated not by percentages but by
factors. The U.S. economy leads China’s and Japan’s, which occupy the No. 2
and No. 3 spots, by multiples, not by percentages.
The
American economy [GNP] is
about as big as the next three
together—two of which, Japan
and Germany, are allies of over
sixty years’ standing.
By way of metaphor,
yesterday’s great powers all lived in similar-sized apartments on the same floor.
In the twenty-first century, the United States occupies the penthouse across
the entire sixteenth floor, while China and Japan dwell in much more modest
places on the seventh and sixth floors; on the third resides Germany; France
and Britain are on the second. India has just moved one flight up from the
basement.
Source: Josef Joffe, publisher-editor of Die Zeit, in The Myth of America’s Decline: Politics,
Economics, and a Half Century of False Prophecies
“Taking the longer view
[espoused by declinists]
, one would
American share of
the global economy had been
expect that the
shrinking as the various upstarts kept rising. Over the
past 40 years, though, the U.S. share has remained
It was 27
percent in 1970 and 25.4
percent in 2012. So somebody else
remarkably constant.
must be contracting faster than the United States to
make room for the expanding rest. The losers in the
great GDP race are the two great risers of the past,
Europe and Japan.”
—Josef Joffe, publisher-editor of Die Zeit, in The Myth of America’s Decline:
Politics, Economics, and a Half Century of False Prophecies
ESP/1909-2005: The advent of mass market cars, commercial
radio, routine long-distance phone calls, portable phones, cell
phones, satellites, satellite phone call transmission, movies with
sound, color movies, TV, TV dinners, microwave ovens,
commercial use of aircraft, jets, extensive electrification, the
Great Depression, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, Bob
Feller, Barry Bonds, Derek Jeter, the West Coast Offense, the
Civil Rights Movement, an African-American POTUS, Gay Pride,
women win the right to vote, Gandhi, Churchill, WWI, WWII, the
birth of the U.S. Navy Seabees, relativity, the A-bomb, the EEC,
the EU, the Euro, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War,
9/11, the Cold War, the disintegration of the USSR, the
resurgence of China, the death and resurrection of Germany and
Japan, Oklahoma & New Mexico & Arizona & Hawaii & Alaska
become states, William Howard Taft* (*just missed Teddy
Roosevelt), FDR, Ronald Reagan, Father Coughlin, Jim and
Tammy Bakker, mainframe computers, PCs, hyperlinks, the iPod,
DARPA-net, the Internet, air conditioning, weed whackers,
Mickey Mouse, Frank Sinatra, Elvis, the Beatles, Madonna, the
Model T, the Cadillac Escalade, Nancy Drew, the first four Harry
Potter books, antibiotics, MRIs, polio vaccine, genetic mapping,
WWII rockets, space flight, man-to-the-moon, more or less
permanent space station.”** (**But, alas, not long enough to see
the Cubs win another World Series or to take a selfie.)
CONTEXT/
1,000,000
“The greatest
shortcoming of the
human race is our
inability to
understand the
exponential
function.”
1/721:
—Albert A. Bartlett
“What’s really interesting is
next five
years
that over the
we’re going to see
every industry exposed to reinvention of
how people put products and services
together, how work is done, what kind of
jobs and skills are needed, what can be
handled by technology.”
—John Sculley, startup investor, former Apple CEO
China/Foxconn:
1,000,000
robots/next 3 years
Source: Race AGAINST the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
“Since 1996, manufacturing
employment in China itself
fallen by an
estimated 25 percent. That’s
over 30,000,000 fewer
has actually
Chinese workers in that sector,
even while output soared by
70 percent. It’s not that American workers
[AND Japanese workers] are being replaced by Chinese
workers. It’s that both American and Chinese workers are being
made more efficient [replaced] by automation.”
—Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age:
Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a time of Brilliant Technologies
“Meet Your
Next Surgeon:
Dr. Robot”
Source: Feature/Fortune/15 JAN 2013/on Intuitive Surgical’s
da Vinci
/multiple bypass heart-surgery robot
(“Almost all health care people get is going to be done by
algorithms within a decade or two.”—Michael Vassar/MetaMed)
“The combination of new
market rules and new
technology was turning the
stock market into, in effect,
a war of
robots.”
—Michael Lewis,
“Goldman’s Geek Tragedy,” Vanity Fair, 09.13
“Automation has become so
sophisticated that on a typical
passenger flight, a human pilot holds
the controls for a grand total of
…
3 minutes
.
[Pilots] have become, it’s not much of
an exaggeration to say, computer
operators.” —Nicholas Carr, the Atlantic, 11.13
“Software is
eating the
world.”
—Marc Andreessen
“Human level capability has not
turned out to be a special
stopping point from an
engineering perspective. …”
—Illah Reza Nourbakhsh, Professor of Robotics, Carnegie Mellon, Robot Futures
“The root of our problem is
not
that we’re in a Great Recession
or a Great Stagnation, but rather
that we are in the early
Great
Restructuring.
throes of a
Our technologies are racing ahead,
but our skills and organizations
are lagging behind.”
Source: Race AGAINST the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
“The median worker is
losing the race against the
machine.”
—Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, Race Against The Machine
Median inflation adjusted
wages, men 30-50 with
jobs, 1969-2009:
$33K,
-27%
Source: “The Slow Disappearance of the American
Working Man,” Bloomberg Businessweek/08.11
“Ten Million Jobs at Risk from
Advancing Technology: Up to 35
percent of Britain's jobs will be
eliminated by new computing and
robotics technology over the next
20 years, say experts [
University].
”
Deloitte/Oxford
—Headline,Telegraph (UK),
11 November 2014
“The machine plays no
favorites between manual and
white collar labor.”
1958
—Norbert Wiener,
IoT
IoE
Internet of Things/Internet of Everything
IoT/The Internet of Things
IoE/The Internet of
Everything
M2M/Machine-to-Machine
Ubiquitous computing
Embedded computing
Pervasive computing
Industrial Internet
Etc.* ** ***
*“More than 50
BILLION connected devices by 2020” —Ericsson
**Estimated 212 BILLION connected devices by 2020—IDC
***“By 2025 IoT could be applicable to $82 TRILLION of output or
approximately one half the global economy”—GE (The WAGs to end all WAGs!)
“Ford is working with the
healthcare industry on a
solution that would notify a
nearby hospital if you were
having a heart attack in your
car, which can send an
ambulance before you even
know you’re having one.”
—Daniel Kellmereit & Daniel Obodovski, The Silent Intelligence: The Internet of Things
G
R
I
N
enetics
obotics
nformatics
anotechnology
Walmart SV =
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“A creative person is good but random.
We’ve taken the randomness out by
building an ontology of language.”
—Lawrence Whittle, head of sales
Source: Wall Street Journal/ 0825.14/
“It’s Finally Time to Take AI Seriously”
SILVER LINING
“We are in no danger of
running out of new
combinations try. Even
if technology froze today, we have more
possible ways of configuring the
different applications, machines, tasks,
and distribution channels to create new
processes and products than we could
ever exhaust.” —Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, Race
Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution Is Accelerating Innovation,
Driving Productivity and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy
human
beings are
entrepreneurs. When we
Muhammad Yunus:
“All
were in the caves we were all self-employed
. . . finding our food, feeding ourselves.
That’s where human history began . . . As
civilization came we suppressed it. We
became labor because they stamped us, ‘You
are labor.’ We forgot that we are
entrepreneurs.” —Muhammad Yunus/
The News Hour/PBS/1122.2006
MORAL
IMPERATIVE/
HUMAN
DEVELOPMENT
Multiple Choice Examination
You will you lose your job to:
choose one …
(1) An offshore contractor?
(2) A computer?
(3) A robot?
Source: Dan Pink
#1
Your principal
moral obligation as a leader [of
anything at any level] is to develop
the skillset, “soft” and “hard,” of
every one of the people in your
charge (temporary as well as semipermanent) to the maximum extent
of your abilities and resources. The
good news: This is also the #1 mid-to
long-term … growth and profit
maximization strategy!
MANDATE
circa 2015:
In Good Business, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi argues
persuasively that business has become the center of
society. As such, an obligation to community is front &
center. Business as societal bedrock, per
Csikszentmihalyi, has the RESPONSIBILITY to increase
“SUM OF HUMAN
WELL-BEING.”
NOT
the …
Business is
“part of the community.” In terms of how
adults collectively spend their waking hours: Business
IS
the community. And should act accordingly. The
(REALLY) good news: Community mindedness is a great
way (the BEST way?) to have
spirited/committed/customer-centric work force—and,
ultimately, increase (maximize?) growth and profitability.
“Business has to
give people
enriching,
rewarding lives …
1/4,096: excellencenow.com
“Business has to give people enriching,
or it's
simply not
worth doing.”
rewarding lives …
—Richard Branson
“It may sound radical, unconventional, and bordering on
being a crazy business idea. However— as ridiculous as it
Joy
sounds—joy is the core belief of our workplace.
is the reason my
company, Menlo Innovations, a customer software design
and development firm in Ann Arbor, exists. It defines what
we do and how we do it. It is the single shared belief of
our entire team.”—Richard Sheridan,
Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love
“Why in the
World did you
go to Siberia?”
An emotional, vital,
innovative, joyful, creative,
entrepreneurial endeavor that elicits
maximum
Enterprise* (*at its best):
concerted human
potential in the
wholehearted pursuit of
EXCELLENCE in
service of others.**
**Employees, Customers, Suppliers, Communities, Owners, Temporary partners
A 15-Point
Human Capital
Asset Development
Manifesto
Tom Peters
World Strategy Forum
The New Rules: Reframing Capitalism
Seoul/13 June 2012
I was intimidated by the title of a conference
I addressed in Seoul, Korea. Namely, “Reframing
capitalism.” And by the fact that a passel of
Nobel laureates in economics would be
addressing the issue. Then it occurred to me
that the mid- to long-term “reframing” was
more about recasting the nature of work/jobs
in, for example, the face of 2020’s artificial
intelligence than about whether the Spanish
bailout is $100 billion or $400 billion—as
nontrivial as the latter is. I.e., what the hell will
the world’s four billion or so workers be doing,
say, 10 years from now? I’m not sure that
sophisticated econometric analyses will be all
that helpful in determining an answer.
A 15-Point Human Capital Development Manifesto
1. “Corporate social responsibility” starts at home—i.e.,
inside the enterprise! MAXIMIZING GDWD/Gross Domestic
Workforce Development is the primary source of mid-term
and beyond growth and profitability—and maximizes
national productivity and wealth. (Re enterprise
profitability: If you want to serve the customer with uniform
Excellence, then you must FIRST effectively and faithfully
serve those who serve the customer—i.e. your employees,
via maximizing tools and professional development.)
2. Regardless of the transient external situation,
development of “human capital” is always the #1 priority.
3. Three-star generals and admirals (and symphony
conductors and sports coaches and police chiefs and fire
chiefs) OBSESS about training. Why is it an almost dead
certainty that in a random 30-minute interview you are
unlikely to hear a CEO touch upon this topic?
4. Proposition/axiom: The CTO/Chief TRAINING Officer is
arguably the #1 staff job in the enterprise, at least on a par
with, say, the CFO or CIO or head of R&D.
A 15-Point Human Capital Development Manifesto
5. The training budget takes precedence over the capital
budget. PERIOD.
6. Human capital development should routinely sit atop
any agenda or document associated with enterprise
strategy.
7. Every individual on the payroll should have a
benchmarked professional growth strategy—her or his
leader should be evaluated on the collective
imaginativeness and execution of said strategies.
8. Given that we ceaselessly lament the “leadership
deficit,” it is imperative, and just plain vanilla common
sense, that we maximize the rate of development of
WOMEN leaders at every level—little if anything has a
higher priority.
9. Maximum utilization of and continued development of
“older workers” (to age 70—or even beyond?) is a source
of immense organizational and national growth and
wealth.
A 15-Point Human Capital Development Manifesto
10. The practical key to all human asset development
activities is the 1st-line manager. “Sergeants run the
Army” is an accurate, commonplace observation
supported by development resources; this stricture
should be applied to all enterprises.
11. The national education infrastructure—from
kindergarten to continuing adult education—may well be
National Priority #1. Moreover, the educational
infrastructure must be altered radically in terms of both
content and delivery (e.g., MOOCs) to underpin support
for the creative jobs that will be more or less the sole
basis of future employment and national growth and
wealth creation.
12. Associated with the accelerated priority of the
national education infrastructure is a dramatically
enhanced and appreciated and compensated role for our
teachers—the “best and brightest” MUST be induced, a la
Teach For America, to pursue at least a short-term
teaching “career.”
A 15-Point Human Capital Development Manifesto
13. The great majority of us work in small enterprises;
hence national growth objectives based upon human
capital development MUST necessarily extend
“downward,” perhaps with governmental incentives,
to even 1-person enterprises.
14. Needless to say, the activities imagined here will
only be possible if aided by a peerless National
Information and Communication Infrastructure.
15. Associated with the above is a RADICAL
reorientation of leadership education and
development—throughout the enterprise/civil service/
education/continuing education infrastructure.
NOT ABOUT
PALO ALTO
“Contrary to conventional
corporate thinking,
treating retail workers
much better may make
everyone (including
their employers) much
richer.”
The Good Jobs Strategy:
—Zeynep Ton/MIT,
How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to
Lower Costs & Boost Profits
**Fortune/Best Companies to Work for in America
Wegmans
(was #1 in USA)
Container Store
(was #1 in USA)
Whole Foods
Costco
(Walmart/Sam’s Club +40%/$20.89)
Publix
Darden Restaurants
Build-A-Bear Workshops
Starbucks
“In a world where customers wake up
every morning asking, ‘What’s new, what’s
success
depends on a company’s
ability to unleash initiative,
imagination and passion of
employees at all levels —and this
different, what’s amazing?’
can only happen if all those folks are
connected heart and soul to their work
[their ‘calling’], their company and their
mission.” —John Mackey and Raj Sisoda, Conscious Capitalism:
Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business
TRAINING/
INVESTMENT
#1
In the Army, 3-star
generals worry about
training. In most
businesses, the top
training post is a
“ho- hum” mid-level
staff slot.
Is your CTO/Chief
Training Officer your top
paid “C-level” job (other
than CEO/COO)?
Are your top trainers
paid/cherished as much as
your top marketers/
engineers?
Is your CTO/Chief Training Officer your top paid “C-level” job (other than CEO/COO)?
If not, why not?
Are your top trainers paid as much as your top marketers and engineers?
If not, why not?
Are your training courses so
good they make you giggle and
tingle?
If not, why not?
Randomly stop an employee in the hall: Can she/he meticulously describe her/his
development plan for the next 12 months?
If not, why not?
Why is your world of business any different than the (competitive) world of rugby,
football, opera, theater,
the military?
If “people/talent first” and hyper-intense continuous training are laughably
obviously for them, why not you?
Is your CTO/Chief Training Officer your top paid “C-level” job (other than CEO/COO)?
If not, why not?
Are your top trainers paid as much as your top marketers and engineers?
If not, why not?
Are your training courses so good they make you giggle and tingle?
If not, why not?
Randomly stop an employee in
the hall: Can she/he
meticulously describe her/his
development plan for the next
12 months?
If not, why not?
Why is your world of business any different than the (competitive) world of rugby,
football, opera, theater, the military?
If “people/talent first” and hyper-intense continuous training are laughably
obviously for them, why not you?
Your (boss) job is
safer if every one of your
team members is
committed to
Boss & RPD:
RPD/Radical
Personal Development.
Actively support one
and all!
Gamblin’ Man
>> 5 of 10 CEOs see
training as expense rather than
investment.
Bet #2: >> 5 of 10 CEOs see
training as defense rather than
offense.
Bet #3: >> 5 of 10 CEOs see
training as “necessary evil”
rather than “strategic
opportunity.”
Bet #1:
>> 8 of 10
CEOs, in 45-min
“tour d’horizon” of
their biz, would
NOT mention
training.
Bet #4:
What is the best reason to go
bananas over training
?
What is the best reason to go bananas over training?
GREED.
(It pays off.)
(Training should be an official part of the
R&D
budget and a capital expense.)
#3: Provide a prideworthy job.*
#2: Help people be
successful at their
current job.
#1: Help people grow/
prepare for an
uncertain future.**
*“Provide a secure job.”—NOT POSSIBLE IN 2014.
**Society—and profitability—demands this. (Or should!)
Training #1: Bottom Line
NOBODY gets off the
hook! “Training & Development
Maniac” applies as much to the
leader of the
4-person
business as to the chief of
the 44,444-person business.
PEOPLE MATTERS:
CRADLE TO GRAVE,
THE EMPHASIS
SHIFTS TO
CREATIVITY
“Right now, labor
markets and jobs are
changing faster than
schools, and that means
graduates are being left
behind.” —Tyler Cowen, author
Average Is Over, in Time (10.25.13)
“All human beings are entrepreneurs.”
—Muhammad Yunus
“Human creativity is the ultimate
economic resource.”
—Richard Florida
“Every child is born an
artist. The trick is to
remain an artist.”
—Picasso
"Creativity can no longer be treated as an
elective.”
—John Maeda
“My wife and I went to a [kindergarten] parent-teacher conference
and were informed that our budding refrigerator artist, Christopher,
would be receiving a grade of Unsatisfactory in art. We were
shocked. How could any child—let alone our child—receive a poor
HIS TEACHER
INFORMED US THAT HE HAD
REFUSED TO COLOR WITHIN
THE LINES, WHICH WAS A STATE
REQUIREMENT FOR
DEMONSTRATING ‘GRADE-LEVEL
MOTOR SKILLS.’ ”
grade in art at such a young age?
—Jordan Ayan, AHA!
“How many artists are there in the room? Would you please raise
your hands. FIRST GRADE: En mass the children leapt from their
seats, arms waving. Every child was an artist. SECOND GRADE:
About half the kids raised their hands, shoulder high, no higher.
The hands were still. THIRD GRADE: At best, 10 kids out of 30
would raise a hand, tentatively, self-consciously. By the time I
reached SIXTH GRADE, no more than one or two kids raised their
hands, and then ever so slightly, betraying a fear of being
identified by the group as a ‘secret artist.’ The point is:
EVERY SCHOOL I VISITED
WAS PARTICIPATING IN
THE SYSTEMATIC
SUPPRESSION
OF CREATIVE GENIUS.”
—Gordon MacKenzie, retired creative director, Hallmark, from Orbiting the Giant Hairball
RADICAL curricular revision
imperative. (STEM/STEAM.)
RADICAL digital strategy.
REVOLUTIONARY new approach to
teacher recruitment/development.
RADICAL re-assessment of tertiary
education (E.g., “MOOC-ization.”)
RADICAL re-assessment business ed.
RADICAL role re-assessment by
corporations.
(Good news: Nobody’s got it right. Kids are doing it without you—if you’ll let them.)
The very best and the very
brightest and the most
energetic and enthusiastic
and entrepreneurial and
tech-savvy of our university
must
graduates must—
,
not should—be lured
into teaching. (Teach for
America on Steroids)
CREATIVITY
SECRET
#1
1/49
WTTMSW
1/49
WHOEVER
TRIES
THE
MOST
STUFF
WINS
READY.
FIRE!
AIM.
H. Ross Perot (vs “Aim! Aim! Aim!” /EDS vs GM/1985)
“MOVE FAST.
BREAK THINGS.”
—Facebook
“FAIL.
FORWARD.
FAST.”
High Tech CEO, Pennsylvania
“Ideas Economy:
CAN YOUR
BUSINESS FAIL
FAST ENOUGH TO
SUCCEED?”
Source: ad for Economist
Conference/0328.13/Berkeley CA (caps are Economist’s)
“THE ESSENCE
OF CAPITALISM IS
ENCOURAGING
FAILURE, NOT
REWARDING
SUCCESS.”
—Nassim Nicholas Taleb/Antifragile
WTTMSASTMSUTFW
WHOEVER
TRIES
THE
MOST
STUFF
AND
SCREWS
THE
MOST
STUFF
UP
THE
FASTEST
WINS
CREATIVITY
SECRET
#1T
!
WOMEN BUY!
WOMEN RULE
“I speak to you with a feminine voice.
It’s the voice of democracy, of equality.
that
this will be
the woman’s
century.
I am certain, ladies and gentlemen,
In the Portuguese language,
words such as life, soul, and hope are of the feminine
gender, as are other words like courage and sincerity.”
—President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, 1st woman to
keynote the United Nations General Assembly (2011)
“Research suggests that
to succeed, start by
promoting women.”
—Nicholas Kristof, “NYTimes, 1024.13
“In my experience,
women make much
better executives than
men.”
—Kip Tindell, CEO, Container Store, from
UNCONTAINABLE
“McKinsey & Company found that the
international companies with more women on
their corporate
boards far outperformed the average
company
in return on equity and other measures.
Operating profit was
56%
higher.”
—Nicholas Kristof, “Twitter, Women, and Power,” NYTimes, 1024.13
“AS
LEADERS,
WOMEN
RULE:
New Studies find that
female managers outshine their male
counterparts in almost every measure”
TITLE/ Special Report/ BusinessWeek
“Women are rated higher in fully 12
of the 16 competencies that go into
outstanding leadership. And two of
the traits where women outscored
men to the highest degree — taking
initiative and driving for results —
have long been thought of as
particularly male strengths.”
—Harvard Business Review (Courtesy: Dan
Rockwell/Leadership Freak)
Bachelor’s degree, age
25-34: 40% F; 30% M
Graduate degree
students: 60% F; 40% M
Source: Sydney Morning Herald /03.26.12
“Headline 2020:
Women Hold
80 Percent of
Management and
Professional Jobs”
Source: The Extreme Future: The Top Trends That Will
Reshape the World in the Next 20 Years, James Canton
“The growth and
success of women-
owned businesses
is one of the most
profound changes taking
place in the business
world today.”
—Margaret Heffernan, How She Does It
“Forget CHINA,
INDIA and the
INTERNET: Economic
Growth Is Driven by
WOMEN.”
Source: Headline, Economist
W>
2X (C + I)*
*“Women now drive the global economy. Globally, they control about $20
trillion in consumer spending, and that figure could climb as high as
$28 trillion
in the next five years. Their
$13 trillion in total yearly earnings could reach $18 trillion in the same
period. In aggregate, women represent a growth market bigger than China and India combined—more than
twice as big in fact. Given those numbers, it would be foolish to ignore or underestimate the female consumer. And
yet many companies do just that—even ones that are confidant that they have a winning strategy when it comes to
women. Consider Dell’s …”
Source: Michael Silverstein and Kate Sayre, “The Female Economy,” HBR, 09.09
“Women are
THE majority
market”
—Fara Warner/The Power of the Purse
ALL HUMAN
BEINGS ARE
ENTREPRENEURS
“This boom, built around systems
which match jobs with independent
contractors on the fly, marks a
striking new stage in a deeper
transformation. Using the now ubiquitous
platform of the smartphone to deliver labour
services in a variety of new ways will challenge
many of the fundamental assumptions of
twentieth-century capitalism, from the nature
of the firm to the structure of careers.” “The
‘on demand economy’ is the result of pairing the
workforce with the smartphone.”
—Economist, “There’s an App For That,” 0103.15
Tongal: 40K video makers, Super
Bowl ad for Colgate-Palmolive for
$17K.
Business Talent Group/LA: Bosses
on the fly
Axiom: 650 lawyers, $100M
Mechanical Turk/Amazon: Anything!
ResearchGate/Ijad Madisch:
5M members, 10K new per day
“The prospect of contracting a gofer on an a
For instance, wouldn’t it
be convenient if I could outsource someone
to write a paragraph here, explaining the
history of outsourcing in America? Good idea! I
la carte basis is enticing.
went ahead and commissioned just such a paragraph from
Get Friday, a ‘virtual personal assistant firm based in
Bangalore. … The paragraph arrived in my inbox ten days
after I ordered it. It was 1,356 words. There is a bibliography
with eleven sources. … At $14 an hour for seven hours of
work, the cost came to $98. …” —Patricia Marx, “Outsource Yourself,” The
New Yorker, 01.14.2013 (Marx describes in detail contracting out everything associated
with hosting her book club —including the provision of “witty” comments on Proust,
since she hadn’t had time to read the book—excellent comments only set her
the writer/contractor turned out to be
a 14-year-old girl from New Jersey.)
back $5;
human
beings are
entrepreneurs. When we
Muhammad Yunus:
“All
were in the caves we were all self-employed
. . . finding our food, feeding ourselves.
That’s where human history began . . . As
civilization came we suppressed it. We
became labor because they stamped us, ‘You
are labor.’ We forgot that we are
entrepreneurs.” —Muhammad Yunus/
The News Hour/PBS/1122.2006
“The ecosystem used to
funnel lots of talented
people into a few clear
winners. Now it’s
funneling lots of
talented people into
lots of experiments.”
“Bay Watched:
How San Francisco’s New Entrepreneurial Culture Is
Changing the Country,” the New Yorker, 1014.13
—Tyler Willis, business developer, to Nathan Heller in
Distinct or extinct!
“The average age of a
startup founder is 40. And
high-growth startups
are nearly twice as
likely to be launched by
people over 55 as by
people 20-34.”
—Vivek Wadhwa, Kauffman foundation (Time/0325.13)
+1/-1
S&P 500
+1/-1*
*Every …
!
2 weeks
Source: Richard Foster (via Rita McGrath/HBR/12.26.13
“I am often asked by
would-be entrepreneurs
seeking escape from life
within huge corporate
structures, ‘How do I build
a small firm for myself?’
The answer seems
obvious …
Source: Paul Ormerod, Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics
“I am often asked by would-be entrepreneurs seeking escape from
life within huge corporate structures, ‘How do I build a small firm for
Buy a
very large
one and just
wait.”
myself?’ The answer seems obvious:
—Paul Ormerod, Why Most Things Fail:
Evolution, Extinction and Economics
“Mr. Foster and his McKinsey colleagues collected
detailed performance data stretching back
years for
1,000
found that
U.S. companies.
40
They
NONE
of
the long-term survivors managed to
outperform the market. Worse, the
longer companies had been in the
database, the worse they did.”
—Financial Times
THE FUTURE
IS SMALL
The Future Is Small:
Why AIM Will Be the
World’s Best Market
Beyond the Credit
Boom —Gervais Williams,
superstar fund manager (FT/1217.14:
“Research shows that new and small
companies create almost all the new
private sector jobs and are
disproportionately innovative.”)
THE RED
CARPET
STORE
(Joel Resnick/Flemington NJ)
*Basement Systems Inc.
(Larry Janesky/Seymour CT)
*Dry Basement Science
(100,000++ copies!)
*1990: $0; 2003: $13M;
2010:
$80,000,000
The Magicians of Motueka (PLUS)
!
W.A. Coppins Ltd.*
(Coppins Sea Anchors/
PSA/para sea anchors)
*Textiles, 1898; thrive on
“wicked problems”
U.S. Navy STLVAST (Small To Large Vehicle At Sea
Transfer); custom fabric from W. Wiggins Ltd./Wellington
(specialty nylon, “Dyneema,” from DSM/Netherlands)
—e.g.,
Aizen Kobo
Indigo
Workshop
JUNGLE JIM’S INTERNATIONAL MARKET, FAIRFIELD, OH:
“An adventure in
‘shoppertainment,’ begins in the parking lot
and goes on to
1,600
cheeses and
1,400
varieties of hot sauce—not to mention 12,000 wines priced from
$8-$8,000
4,000
a bottle; all this is brought to you by
vendors. Customers from every corner of the globe.”
BRONNER’S CHRISTMAS WONDERLAND, FRANKENMUTH, MI
98,000-square-foot “shop” features
ornaments,
50,000
6,000
Christmas
trims, and anything else you can
name pertaining to Christmas. …”
From: Retail Superstars: Inside the 25 Best Independent Stores in America, George Whalin
Middle-sized
NicheMicro-niche
Dominators!
I love …
"Own" a niche through EXCELLENCE
(Writ large: Germany’s MITTELSTAND)
!
Going “Social”: Location and Size Independent
“Today, despite the fact that we’re just a little swimming
pool company in Virginia, we have the most trafficked
swimming pool website in the world. Five years ago, if
you’d asked me and my business partners what we do, the
answer would have been simple, ‘We build in-ground
‘We
are the best teachers
… in the world … on the
fiberglass swimming pools.’ Now we say,
subject of fiberglass swimming pools,
and we also happen to build them.’”
—Jay Baer, Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is About Help, Not Hype
“BE THE BEST.
IT’S THE ONLY
MARKET THAT’S
NOT CROWDED.”
From: Retail Superstars: Inside the 25 Best
Independent Stores in America, George Whalin
“INSANELY GREAT”
STEVE JOBS
“RADICALLY THRILLING”
BMW
“ASTONISH ME”
SERGEI DIAGHLEV, TO A LEAD DANCER
“BUILD SOMETHING GREAT”
HIROSHI YAMAUCHI, NINTENDO, TO A SENIOR GAME DESIGNER
“MAKE IT IMMORTAL”
DAVID OGILVY, TO A COPYWRITER.
LEADERSHIP
MBWA
“The doctor
interrupts
after …*
*Source: Jerome Groopman, How Doctors Think
18 …
18 …
seconds!
Suggested
Core Value
#1: “We are Effective
Listeners—we treat
Listening EXCELLENCE as
the Centerpiece of our
Commitment to Respect
and Engagement and
Community and Growth.”
“If I had to
pick one failing
of CEOs, it’s
that …
—Co-founder of one of the largest investment services firms in the USA/world
“If I had to pick one failing of
they
don’t read
enough.”
CEOs, it’s that …
Thought for 2014 for those not in formal
Every day, on
or off the job, offers
every one of us a
plethora of leadership
opportunities!
Go for it! No excuses!
leadership slots:
Kevin Roberts’ Credo
1. Ready. Fire! Aim.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
If it ain’t broke ... Break it!
Hire crazies.
Ask dumb questions.
Pursue failure.
Lead, follow ... or get out of the way!
Spread confusion.
Ditch your office.
Read odd stuff.
10.
AVOID MODERATION!
EXCELLENCE.
Always.
If not EXCELLENCE,
what?
If not EXCELLENCE
now, when?