Sydney marketing agency, Step Change, invited me to listen to futurist, Craig Rispin, address a group of business movers and shakers recently.

A Business Futurist & Innovation Expert is a kind of sexy title for a super intelligent soul who can see what’s coming based on trends, data analysis, peer-to-peer feedback, and foresight.

Craig talked about being part of the fourth industrial revolution. Building on what Klaus Schwab, the Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, has been speaking about. A time of great unprecedented opportunity, as well as a time of great peril and risk.  

And he talked about why 88% of business strategy formulation goes wrong?

Do you know why?

Because of a lack of understanding of future trends. 

Ok nice sales pitch.

I had an open mind.

He showed what the world of 2028 will look like:

He talked about 8 technologies that are impacting business:

  1. Infinite Computing
  2. Sensors and Networks
  3. Robotics
  4. 3D Printing
  5. Synthetic Biology
  6. Digital Medicine
  7. Nanomaterials
  8. Artificial Intelligence

I wonder which ones you’re being affected by?

He talked about the fact that there are 169 start-ups that have joined the $1b valuation club. You can play with the sexy infographic below here

futurst, billion dollar club

The top 5 being:

  1. Uber
  2. Didi Chuxing (formerly Didi Kuaidi, is a major ride-sharing company, providing transportation services for more than 450 million users across over 400 cities in China)
  3. Xiaomi (a privately owned Chinese electronics and software company – the world’s 5th largest smartphone maker in 2017)
  4. AirBnB
  5. SpaceX

He talked about Microsoft buying 10 million molecules of custom DNA from a San Francisco startup, Twist Bioscience. To explore the idea of using DNA molecules as a way to store massive amounts of data. You can read more here. 

He talked about using a futurist panel of peers and meat market experts to assess trends for Australian Pork. To help them focus product development strategically for a more successful future.

And many many more thought provoking concepts and influences on today’s business community and society, as well as other futurist to listen to including:

  • Ray Kurzweil, Google’s Futurist – who is also involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. 
  • Thomas Frey – ex IBM engineer and designer, and now well renowned predictor and celebrity speaker

If you’d like to explore Craig’s presentation and concepts further, then please click here

It’s well worth a chat with him too. If you would like to understand the future and nuances that are coming at us at a rate of knots, then contact at The Future Trends Group here