The operating environment continues to grow more volatile, ambiguous, complex, and uncertain (VACU). As it does, organizations realize the extent to which rapidly changing external factors have the power to influence their future success. Building resilience means developing forward-looking strategies and practices that prepare and equip them to grasp the opportunities inherent in those external impacts, and to protect the organization from the challenges within as well.

Toffler Associates keeps an ever-present eye toward the future. An important step in the process of identifying and contextualizing predictions is taking the time to consider the current environment, past trends and events, and the ways that expectations proved out in reality.

Summarizing 2017, we see seven disruptions and impacts that we believe will shape business, infrastructure, economy, and societies in 2018. Some are inherently optimistic; others are risks to mitigate. In every case, these are big ideas and important considerations as you take a breath over the holidays and plan for the year to come.

Go back with me for a moment to the 15^th Century. It’s the Age of Enlightenment, a time marked by unprecedented progress and disruption. Information reached the masses through Gutenberg’s breakthrough printing press. Philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau pondered the relationship between people and government. Leaders emerged from across society, asking questions of the religious, wealthy, and aristocratic ruling classes. Citizens questioned the idea of monarchies. Scientists debated the principles of the universe.

The Future of Work is a buzz phrase. If you want proof, Google search it – you’ll get approximately 468 million hits. It’s also a prevalent topic for consulting and advisory firms (natch), employment agencies, leadership programs, and business magazines. But it’s a misnomer. It’s no longer the “future” of work. It’s the current reality. With the ever-increasing pace of change in corporate, government, educational, and social environments, we reach ‘future state’ often before we can adequately prepare.

Desynchronization is caused by variances in the pace of change. It creates friction between individuals, organizations, and societies. A leader’s ability to rapidly interpret and act on the pace of change will determine how opportunities and risks impact their business. Successful leaders must understand and appreciate not just the change, but why the pace of change is varying. 

Over the course of the past few months, we’ve given blog space to an increasingly pervasive question: as innovations in smart technology reshape the organization and competitive marketplace, how is the role of the human worker changing? Secondarily, what new skills do leaders need to hire for and nurture to address immediate challenges and opportunities, and build a resilient, future-focused organization?

Like organizations and the innovations they produce, the workforce has undergone significant change over the last 15 years. It shows every sign of continuing to evolve at this accelerated pace. Emerging developments are shifting stakeholder expectations, leaving industry leaders struggling to steer their organizations. Power is shifting from traditional executive positions to the workforce and customers with a proliferation of new ways to gather and disseminate information and collaborate on strategic tasks. As that shift happens, the gap between operations, workforce desires, customer expectations, and governing policies is widening.

America moved from the Agrarian Age to the Industrial Age in the mid-19th Century. At that point in our history, farmers made up 64% of the population. Today, they comprise only 2% of the U.S. population. As we settle firmly in the Knowledge Age (The Third Wave), will Educators be the next great profession to lose employment to machines?

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

– Ludwig van Beethoven

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Music moves us, recalls memories, and holds a distinct feeling for each one of us. Live or recorded well, it has the power to change people. Over the course of the last century, we have advanced music in many ways like architectural acoustics and new kinds of instruments. Yet one innovation brings up a question about the tradeoff between quality and mobility.

For decades, music was recorded on vinyl or tape. These formats offered a very high level of quality. Albums and cassettes were harder to attain, harder to store, and relatively fragile. So in the late 1990s, recordings moved from tape to digital. This was an innovation that completely altered how we experience music in everyday settings. It democratized music by putting it in an efficient, inexpensive format that could be accessed and shared via countless devices. It also lowered the quality of the music – yet it has continued to gain adoption. Incremental innovations like on-demand streaming music have more than doubled in adoption year over year, while albums and cassettes are embraced primarily by ‘retro’ listeners and aficionados.^[1]

Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication.
~ Leonardo da Vinci

While it may seem counterintuitive in our era of rapid technological advancement, many of our most successful current innovation case studies involve simplification. In these cases, an existing marketplace was disrupted by a group of people who reconsidered what a product or service should do, and then systematically pared it back to its most fundamental value.

This process of stripping away requires the courage to ask questions and consider alternatives to currently accepted ‘norms.’ Armed with that foundation, teams can be strategic with a creative process that is optimistic, human focused, iterative, and broadly impactful.

A Billion Dollar Case for Simplifying