Business As Unusual

A Futurist's Unorthodox, Unconventional, and Uncomfortable Guide to Doing Business

Jack Uldrich

• Publisher: River Grove Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781632993090
• eBook ISBN: 9781632993106
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Today is the slowest rate of change we will ever experience. From this provoking premise, global futurist Jack Uldrich succinctly delivers ten Big AHA (awareness, humility, and action) ideas focused on helping business leaders and organizations navigate tomorrow's un charted and un predictable waters. Uldrich's unrivaled, fast-paced manifesto not only explains why "business as unusual" will be the new normal, but also unpacks a series of un common and un orthodox actions designed to help you create and un leash a future of unparalleled success.

To navigate the future, business leaders must

• be AWARE of how technological, economic, social, cultural, and political trends are accelerating, burgeoning, and converging;

• have HUMILITY to the idea that what worked yesterday might not be sufficient tomorrow;

• take ACTION to create a new and better future.

Business as Unusual reveals that the future is the one thing that everyone can change. To find success in business, you must believe the un believable, think about the un thinkable, listen to the un conventional, and question the un questionable.

AHA #1:

WHY BUSINESS AS UN USUAL IS NOW USUAL

IN THE WORLD OF BUSINESS, UNUSUAL WILL BE THE NEW USUAL.

Don’t believe me?

Consider the following:

• Within a month of COVID-19 being declared a national emergency, 51 percent of the workforce began working remotely—demonstrating business can change quickly when needed.

• Twitter told its employees that they could work from home—forever!

• In the first two months of the pandemic, e-commerce sales doubled. Stated another way, in eight weeks, internet sales increased as much as in the past ten years combined.

• Airline traffic had declined to levels not seen since the 1950s and hotel vacancy rates were at historic lows, but jigsaw puzzle sales went through the roof.

• But even prior to COVID-19, the world was changing rapidly.

• In early 2020, more consumers were already having more meals delivered to them than were dining out.

• Growing up, many of us were told by our mothers, “Never get into a car with a stranger.” Today, the advice is routinely ignored billions of times a year thanks to Uber and Lyft.

• Millions of people were swapping hotels for the beds of strangers because of Airbnb.

• A private citizen has launched a rocket into outer space—and returned it safely back to earth. Two other billionaires are pursuing similar plans, and one plans to launch tourists into space by 2021.

• Waymo’s autonomous vehicles have logged over fifteen million miles of road experience, making the company’s software and artificial intelligence “the most experienced driver in the world.” Within the past two years, tens of millions of consumers have put AI—in the form of the Amazon Echo and Google Home—into their homes. Concerned that their children are learning poor social skills because of how they interact with the smart speakers, some parents have programmed their devices to respond only when their kids have prefaced their requests with the word “please.”

• Some chatbots are now so good that many humans can’t tell when they are speaking to a computer. In other words, people are now having natural conversations with artificial intelligence.

• One of the people on Time magazine’s list of the “25 Most Influential People on the Internet,” Lil Miquela, isn’t a person. It’s an avatar with over 1.5 million human followers.

• A Jimmy Buffett–themed “Margaritaville” senior housing complex has opened in Florida. With continued advances in biotechnology, regenerative medicine, and stem cell research, people claim that fifty is the new thirty, seventy is the new fifty, and soon one hundred may be the new seventy. If true, today’s seniors might be “wasting away in Margaritaville” for decades more to come.

• Robots are doing backflips, drones are delivering medical supplies, and hundreds of workers are donning soft robotic exoskeletons to enhance their strength and avoid injuries. Some exoskeletons can even shape-shift into “chairless chairs.”

• Google has developed an affordable voice translation device and is deploying high-altitude balloons in the hopes of delivering high-speed internet access everywhere on the planet by 2024. The combination suggests that people may soon be able to communicate with all eight billion of the world’s inhabitants in their native tongue.

• A student at MIT has created a brain-computer interface device that allows him to access the internet by thought alone, and the Pentagon has figured out how to allow soldiers to control a swarm of drones by employing related technologies.

• Walmart has filed a patent for a virtual shopping experience, while Amazon has filed one for an airborne fulfillment center. If the former works, a person will be able to virtually stroll down a store aisle and select whatever goods they want. If the latter works, those goods could be dropped from a giant blimp and delivered via a drone directly to your doorstep.

• According to the World Economic Forum, 65 percent of kindergartners beginning school today will work in jobs that don’t yet exist.

• A venture capital firm has appointed an algorithm to its board of directors.

• Tesla, which didn’t even exist fifteen years ago, is now twice as valuable as General Motors; and Ford says it is no longer an automobile company but rather “a mobility provider.”

• Major colleges and universities are offering scholarships for “eSports”—electronic sports. The National Basketball Association has started an eSport league, and the Olympic Committee has indicated it expects eSports to be sanctioned as Olympic sports as early as 2024. (If COVID-19 keeps people from physical events, this trend could accelerate even faster.)

• In South Korea, there are more virtual golfers than there are golfers.

• The former president of Yale University is now the president of Coursera, which offers MOOCs—massive open online courses.

• Amazon, which was once putting bookstores out of business, has opened its own physical bookstores. It has also created its first cashierless store and plans to open three thousand more by 2021—yet another trend that could accelerate as a result of the world moving to “contactless commerce” in the wake of the global pandemic.

• Some companies are embedding microchips in their employees (“voluntarily”), others are working on bloodless blood tests and anti-aging pills, and still others have produced prototypes of flying cars and have plans to deploy them as early as 2022.

• Self-healing concrete, man-made diamonds, gluten-free wheat, animal-free milk, and “real” vegan cheese are now all actual products.

• Things are getting so unusual that the world’s largest meat companies are now investing in artificial meat, and McDonald’s and Burger King are serving “plant-based protein.”

Such unusual moments will only become more usual in the future for one simple reason:

TODAY IS THE SLOWEST RATE OF CHANGE YOU WILL EVER EXPERIENCE A...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Preface
• AHA #1: Why Business as Un Usual is Now Usual
• AHA #2: Explore the Un Known
• AHA #3: Un Lock Failure
• AHA #4: Expect the Un Expected
• AHA #5: Un Learning is as Important as Learning
• AHA #6: You Need To Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
• AHA #7: Embrace Uncertainty
• AHA #8: Question the Unquestionable
• AHA #9: Listen To the Unconventional
• AHA #10: Think the Un Thinkable
• The Final AHA: Believe the Unbelievable
• Appendix Job Description of the Future (Hire the Unorthodox)