Ninja Future

Secrets to Success in the New World of Innovation

Gary Shapiro

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780062890535
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Redacción empresarial

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Ninja Future is an essential read for businesses and individuals striving to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving world: Gary Shapiro, the president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association, casts his eye toward the future, charting how the innovative technologies of today will transform not only the way business is done but society itself

During his more than three decades at the head of the Consumer Technology Association, Gary Shapiro has witnessed, and been a part of, one of the most extraordinary periods of technological change in human history. Today's world is almost unrecognizable from that of just a decade or two before: in just a few short years, the internet has already transformed how we access information, purchase goods, get from place to place, and do our jobs. And even greater changes are on the horizon.

In Ninja Future, Shapiro explains the evolving technological landscape, breakthroughs underway now and those we can only envision. New innovations such as self-driving vehicles, blockchain, 5G, the Internet of Things, and countless others will forever change the economy as we know it. Shapiro uses case studies to identify companies and countries addressing today's challenges particularly well—and relates lessons from those that have stumbled. Drawing on the insights he has gleaned as a martial arts black belt, he shows how businesses can move to succeed in today's turbulent environment by adopting the mindset of "ninjas"—adapting to technological change to capitalize on opportunities at lightning speed.

Part I

Past, Present, and Future Ninja Innovation

Chapter 1

The Edge of Tomorrow

TECHNOLOGY IS INESCAPABLE. THROUGHOUT HUMAN history, ninja innovators—people, companies, and institutions that live by the mantra “Innovate or Die!”—have changed the way we live, work, communicate, and travel. They’ve revolutionized our health, education, military, politics, economy, and art. Looking at the history of technology stretching back across centuries and countries, we see long fallow periods of cultivation interspersed with brief seasons of spectacular growth.

The harnessing of fire (one million years ago). The advent of farming (12,000¹ years ago). The invention of the wheel (5,500² years ago). The written word (5,000³ years ago). The invention of the printing press (550 years⁴ ago). The control of electricity and invention of the phonograph and the camera in the 1800s. The Wright brothers’ first flight in 1903 and the development of the Model T⁵ in 1908. The discovery of antibiotics and proliferation of vaccines. The conception, blossoming, and widespread adoption of the radio, television, telephone, and computer.

We are living in such a moment right now. Milestone after technological milestone races by us so fast that it’s hard to keep track of their exponential growth and impact. No sooner do ninja innovations enter the market than they change the market. Sometimes they merge with other ninja innovations, creating something entirely new. Wireless broadband connects us anywhere, anytime, untethering us from our desks. Today’s smartphones are more powerful than the computers that took the Apollo spacecraft to the moon. More than one billion hours⁶ of content are streamed on YouTube every day, and you don’t have to live in Hollywood to be a producer. Using our own DNA, gene therapies can cure some cancers, regrow skin, and restore sight. And the Mars Rover is taking us beyond the confines of planet Earth to chart what’s possible for the future.

This trend won’t slow down anytime soon. Ninja innovators will continue to race toward the next century, thanks to advancements in physics, mathematics, and engineering.

These innovations will bring with them tremendous changes—and tremendous challenges. Some are predictable, so we can prepare ourselves, our businesses, and even our governments for the opportunities and obstacles that rapid change will bring. Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) will make some jobs obsolete—but they will also create new categories of jobs that don’t exist today. Self-driving cars will eliminate car crashes caused by human error, saving hundreds of thousands of lives every year. Faster broadband connections and 5G will open up new job and tourism opportunities for people living in remote places.

Other changes are still up in the air: Will bitcoin upend traditional banking? Will we still have malls? Which companies will lead in social media, search, and online shopping? Will drones replace trucks for daily deliveries? Will governments give the tech industry breathing room to innovate? Or will new technologies be squashed in their infancy? We can guess, but we won’t know for a while. Fifty years ago, we could not have foreseen how the internet would transform the global economy. Fifty years hence, we will again be adjusting to things we don’t yet know—changes that will eventually seem inevitable, but right now are unimaginable.

Stability seems sensible in the midst of so many unknowns—but sameness is not a winning strategy. In our fast-moving economy, businesses that stick with what’s worked in the past will eventually be left in the past. And consumers who consciously avoid the opportunities available via connected devices risk missing out on the wealth of jobs, products, and experiences we can now create and share with each other.

Change has always cast doubt on forward progress. And some among us work overtime to preserve the status quo. It’s an age-old tension. The Luddites in England destroyed weaving machines in the early 1800s, as they feared losing work as hand weavers. Bank tellers in the 1970s dreaded the introduction of the automatic teller machine (ATM)—yet their ranks have nearly doubled⁷ between 1970 and 2010, since banks could afford to open more branches. And now the number of branches is falling again, thanks to new technological innovations such as mobile banking and artificial intelligence.

It is human nature to fear and even resist the uncertainty of the future. Yet our very humanness is defined by the certainty that we have a limited amount of time. Winning in the digital world means making the most of that time. Winning in the digital world means making a conscious effort to embrace innovation.

Tomorrow’s Luddites will struggle to preserve driving, brick-and-mortar retail, and even certain white-collar jobs: travel agents, postal clerks, insurance underwriters.⁸ Tomorrow’s ninjas will strive to leverage the building blocks we have to construct a strong and secure future.

The question is: How do we prepare for the technological progress of the next century, when so much is uncertain and unpredictable?

Known and Unknown

A few years ago, I found myself sitting across from former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld on a flight to Washington, D.C. Rumsfeld had recently published Known and Unknown, in which he reflected on his life and the challenges he navigated as secretary of defense under Presidents Gerald Ford and George W. Bush. The book’s title was taken from his comments at a 2002 news briefing,⁹ when he said: “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”

This concept captivated me. I don’t follow defense issues closely, and am not making a case for or against Rumsfeld as secretary of defense. But his analysis, using this two-by-two matrix, struck me as precisely the kind of thinking I encouraged in Ninja Innovation. Ninjas must anticipate myriad situations. They can plan, prepare, and practice. But Secretary Rumsfeld knew from history and experience that the plan rarely survives the first encounter on the battlefield.

In the tech industry, the marketplace is the battlefield. Businesses fight for survival, and it’s not necessarily the strongest that survive. It’s those that break the mold entirely and those that can adapt the quickest.

Ninja business leaders must be flexible in response to changing market conditions. You can anticipate trends. You can assemble a great team with complementary strengths. You can do everything right ahead of time. But whether or not you actually survive in the long run depends entirely on how cunning and nimble you are when the unexpected occurs—and it will occur. Can you shift your strategy? Can you redirect your resources? Can you ask the right questions—and really listen to the answers? Can you rely on your judgment and the people on your team?

Surprise Hits

As I sketched out Ninja Future, I thought back to an introduction I made in Las Vegas in the mid-1990s between Bill Gates, who was then the CEO of Microsoft, and Norio Ohga, who was then the CEO of Sony. I had the privilege of introducing these two behemoths of global technology companies and listening in as they discussed with concern an upstart company from Korea—Samsung, an anticipated competitor. What they did not discuss (at least not that morning) was a little company called Apple.

Neither anticipated the major impact Apple would soon have in key hardware and software markets they were used to dominating. Nor did Gates foresee the shift from desktops to mobile devices. Apple soon replaced Sony in the Walkman-handheld device market. Apple’s operating system never replaced Microsoft’s for business, but it certainly became a persistent competitor. And while both Sony and Microsoft recovered from Apple’s market entry and are still thriving today, they missed a massive opportunity. Apple sits in an enviable position as the first publicly traded U.S. company ever to reach a market value of $1 trillion.

For Sony and Microsoft, Samsung was an up-and-coming, known competitor. Apple was not a total “unknown unknown,” but it was close. Hindsight is twenty-twenty; it’s easy to look back and determine what Microsoft and Sony could have done differently. They have wised up and adapted some key strategies from Apple’s playbook: an emphasis on aesthetics and a willingness to defy established industry wisdom to put consumer needs first. Ninjas learn from mistakes and quickly adapt, which is why Microsoft and Sony are prospering today.

Sometimes it just takes one product—one new idea—to upend an entire industry. Sony shocked the world with the Betamax and the Walkman, but it was Apple—a noncompetitor—that seemingly came out of nowhere to redefine the way we experience music with the iPod.

IBM used to own the personal computer market and then shared it with RadioShack. But it was two 1980s startups, Dell and Gateway, that lured customers away with their lower-cost alternatives. In 2010, the iPad arrived on the market, putting a noticeable dent in the PC and notebook markets. If you took a road trip twenty years ago, you probably used an atlas, local road map, or a customized TripTik travel planner from AAA. Fast-forward to the twenty-first century and handheld GPS units made those bulky paper maps a thing of the past. Everyone wanted a Garmin—until one day, Google enabled millions of phones to use a digital mapping app that was higher quality and completely free. Apple soon followed. Virtually overnight, handheld GPS units for cars were no longer in demand. Garmin’s business model was gravely threatened—but they adapted and thrived by shifting to aviation, wearable tech, and other specialized products.

Rumsfeld’s two-by-two matrix applies to businesses, governments, and even people when analyzing a given situation. For businesses, “known known” is the easy box to complete: It’s pure metrics. Your present competitors, your market position, the size of the market, your revenue, product mix or profitability—all of that is measurable.

The “known unknowns” are trickier: variables like the future health of the economy, interest rates, employment, adoption curves, and pricing of competitive technology.

Then come the “unknown knowns,” which are the competitors, technologies, services, and trends that are out there today, but not yet on your radar (or not high enough on your radar). Careful market research and analysis can mitigate the dangers that might spring any moment from this Pandora’s box.

The “unknown unknowns” vexed Rumsfeld most. These are the events and risks that are nearly impossible to imagine, but which end up disrupting everything—the “black swans” described by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. These are outliers with an extreme impact that we struggle to rationalize. Terrorist attacks. The unexpected or irrational behavior of a market, leader, or government. A nuclear reactor explosion. A tsunami. An unexpected market entrant.

A few decades ago, few could have predicted the massive growth of the internet, let alone a wireless environment and an explosion of apps. The death of classified advertising, the shuttering of newspapers, the demise of video rental stores, the reduced demand for travel agents, and the decline of malls at the expense of online shopping were “unknown unknowns.”

Knowing there are unknowns often sparks anxiety. That’s natural, but it’s much more productive to view rapid change due to innovation as a series of opportunities. It allows us to grow, develop our potential, and try new things. It allows for the creation of new businesses and services. It stretches us, tries us, and improves us. We can’t know the future—but we can still shape it. If we understand and embrace the change we are already witnessing, we can harness the excitement, potential, and beauty of a world where everyone has access to more opportunities and better experiences.

Ninja innovators possess the qualities and strategies that set them up for success today. Future ninjas are already planning for those “unknown unknowns” right now. If they don’t, not only will their businesses not thrive—they won’t survive.

The key to the ninja future? Access to information. Thanks to innovation, that’s never been easier.

Spend Less, Know More

When I was growing up, access to knowledge meant a straight, shining row of encyclopedias. If you had told me my own kids would be able to “look up” vitally important childhood questions such as “How do dolphins breathe?” “What is a black hole?” and “How were pyramids built?” by addressing the question aloud to a small black cylinder on the kitchen counter, I’d have assumed you were a serious sci-fi fan, or you’d lost your mind. Yet many of us now consider Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home part of the family.

This is a far cry from my childhood. My mother, Milly, was a part-time Hebrew teacher, a part-time market researcher, and a part-time door-to-door salesperson for World Book Encyclopedia. My father, Jerry, was a sixth-grade teacher who tutored to make extra money. My Jewish family grew up in a Levitt house, in a lower-middle-class neighborhood of mostly Italians and Irish Catholics. (It took me years to understand that pedestrians and Protestants were different—I used to think the “No Pedestrian” signs signaled religious segregation.)

Built on top of the rural potato fields of Long Island, Levittown was a large community of mass-produced single-family homes designed for servicemen—like my dad—returning from World ...