That would be wrong. This podcast explains how the big trends have not changed. On the surface it may appear different, but if you know your customers’ needs you know to continue pursuing them.  What’s happening around you is not “disruption, “ but in fact chaos.  And during chaos opportunities abound. Surely you can see through the chaos to identify customers’ needs and how the cuts being made only create more opportunities to fill those needs. 

Don’t be paralyzed by the loudness and outrageousness.  Don’t let poorly defined terms like “swamp” confuse you.  Instead recognize that chaos has happened before, and you can manage your way through it with good planning.  Lead like a winner during this period and you’ll be a winner as things reach a “new normal.”

Thinking Points:

• Did you do scenario planning back in November, after the election, to prepare for what’s happening now?
• Are you recognizing how the big trends have not changed?  Just how you can react to them in some markets.
• Chaos creates opportunity - by definition.  Do you see it that way, or are you choosing to be paralyzed?
• Do you realize great leaders create. They don’t tear apart. Are you ready to help your customers grow during their feeling of fear?

This podcast also overviews what SMB leaders need to know about DeepSeek and the evolution of AI. AI is getting better and cheaper, and like the internet did previously, is greatly improving business capabilities at lower cost. What’s been called “breakthroughs” are significant advancements that demonstrate all businesses will have no choice about using AI if they are to survive, thus it is imperative SMBs start using the technology now.  This podcast provides jumping off points to get started.

Thinking Points:

• Do you know your Value Proposition? Are your “improvements” enhancing your VP to customers, or detracting from your VP by focusing on how to lower cost?
• Are you encouraging employees to seek out applications of AI to improve operations and enhance your Value Proposition?
• Are you testing applications for both generative and reasoning AI?
• Does your future planning include significant application of AI, or are you expecting AI to happen magically?

This podcast explains how attempts to defend & extend your business ultimately fail – like Sears.  And like the bad decisions McDonald’s made to grow the burger business rather than investing in Chipotles and Boston Market.  And how the CNN CEO killed CNN+ when the market was going digital.  Yet we all over-invest in our old business, and under-invest in doing the new thing.  Because we’re too comfortable thinking we can get away with it, when in fact we can’t.

Thinking Points:

• How much of your time do you spend defending & extending your current business versus looking for new opportunities?
• How many of your best people are working on defending your current business vs identifying new opportunities?
• How willing are you to invest in something new for higher growth, even as returns on your existing business are declining?
• Are you watching trends and figuring out how the world will create opportunites, or are you fixated on solving problems?

This podcast overviews the big trends that will impact all businesses, and offers insights on how to plan for success.  Demographics have nothing to do with administrations, and by understanding those trends you can become a leader in your business – both by retargeting your hiring and better understanding customer needs.  And understanding that promotion is now completely different, yet still accessible if you put your money in the right place. Meanwhile, understanding your Value Proposition can keep you from backsliding into oblivion as you do more of the same, while those who overcome rigidity to their Value Delivery System move forward with new offerings meeting emerging needs.

Thinking Points:

• Do you let your plans be jerked around by headlines and politician statements, or do you have a handle on how long-term trends will impact your customers needs and your suppliers?
• Are you implementing processes that worked 10, 20, or more years ago failing to recognize that you need new processes to reach customers and effectively source?
• When you meet a really tough problem do you become Don Quixote, fighting to continue despite the trends, or do you adapt to the inevitable?
• Are you tracking the results of your existing practices and looking for “a better way?”

A life-changing moment during her divorce, coupled with unwavering support from her partner, gave Molly the courage to leap into entrepreneurship. Today, Radiant Dev is redefining the staffing industry by crafting high-performing engineering teams and fostering meaningful relationships with both W2 and 1099 workers.

Molly’s approach stands out in an industry often marked by transactional interactions—she champions a personal, thoughtful touch that prioritizes people over process. She also speaks passionately about the transformative role of AI in recruitment, the shifting dynamics of the workforce, and the urgent need to eliminate bias in hiring practices.

Molly’s story is a powerful reminder that embracing change, valuing people, and leading with authenticity can spark extraordinary success.

Meanwhile, the core Business Trendsetter Podcast will continue to bring you weekly episodes featuring Adam Hartung and Manny Teran, offering valuable insights into trends, current events, and case studies that reveal what it truly takes to achieve long-term success. Stay tuned and join the conversation with Spark Partners!

We can learn from this lesson not only how to be smart about investing in new markets, but also how to get more focused with our offerings in order to improve our Value Proposition and chances of success – as has happened with the long-haul driverless truck segment.  And, we can learn how tracking investments by the giants create opportunities for SMBs to leverage their investments for gains in smaller businesses.  When we can’t afford to invest like giants we can afford to adapt new developments for the good of our customers and our business.

Thinking Points:

• Are you sure you know your Value Proposition – and the poorly met needs of customers?  Do you know what they need and don’t have a solution for today?
• Do you look for segments where needs are particularly acute, and offer much higher returns for implementing new solutions that add value?
• Are you focused on understanding were companies with big money are investing their money, so you can leverage their investments into solutions for your customers?
• Are you willing to be an early adopter of new technologies so you can lead your customers to better solutions, rather than cautiously waiting and thus letting competitors get the edge?

This podcast explains how doing nothing in the face of uncertainty is usually the worst thing you can do.  Instead we need to recognize that uncertainty doesn’t mean risk, and work to reduce the uncertainty so you can properly assess risk and make good decisions.  Just because you don’t know what to do doesn’t mean you don’t need to take action.  Success requires we understand how to recognize uncertainty, and manage the uncertainty.  Then accumulate information in order to properly assess the risk.  This podcast explains how you can do that, especially as we face a very challenging and uncertain change in administrations in 2025.

Thinking Points:

• Do you often stop, and wait, before making a business decision just because you’re uncertain what to do?
• Have you ever recognized that if you had taken a decision sooner you would have created a better outcome?
• Do you often see the future as risky?  Do you avoid what you perceive as risky?
• Do you try to eliminate uncertainty by avoiding change – even in the face of unavoidable change?

Long-term trends are not affected by this election.  The upside-down demographic pyramid isn’t going to change, nor is climate change and awareness thereof, nor is the rapid movement to automated processes. The new administration will likely react to all 3 differently than the previous administration, but the trends are still there and will impact  your business.  Scenario planning can be well applied to these short-term impacts in order to prepare for threats, and seize opportunities!  This podcast explains how to use scenario planning tools to understand likely impacts, and how to prepare.

SMB leaders are busy folks. They have a business to run, with daily struggles to meet customer needs and manage costs.  It’s easy to skip scenario planning for the future in lieu of managing today.  But we KNOW that the short-term future will be loaded with change. This isn’t a maybe, it’s a certainty.  Never has scenario planning been more important to prepare for the short-term disruptions, while positioning for long-term success.  Listen to how you can identify changes and use scenario planning to act today so you are prepared tomorrow.

Luck is not a strategy!!  Scenario planning can create a viable strategy for future success.  Now is the time.

Thinking points:

• Mass deportations will worsen the labor shortage problem.
• Reduction in law enforcement (FBI, ATF, etc) will increase cybercrime, fraud, white collar crime, drug sales and gun availability.
• Protecting your customers, employees, suppliers and community will increasingly rely on you doing more, relying on government entities less.
• Reduced reliance on vaccines and immunizations, plus lowered budgets for drug and food testing, means that responsibility for health and welfare of customers, employees and family members will be up to business leaders.
• Firings of military leaders and elimination of DEI programs will further damage the ability to recruit and retain soldiers, leading to fewer troops available for fighting offshore threats.  Increasing the risk to supply chains and more foreign conflicts.
• Simultaneously a near-term focus of using the military for domestic issues like rounding up deportees will reduce resources for offshore threats, protecting supply chains and taking advantage of global opportunities.

The DJIA members are supposed to be the 30 most secure, powerful and safe public companies in America.  But they keep changing. In the last years some pretty important companies were kicked off the list – Intel, Walgreens, Exxon-Mobil, Pfizer, GE, AT&T, Alcoa, HP, Bank of America, Kraft, General Motors, Kodak, Sears.  Who replaced them?  Nvidia, Amazon, Salesforce, Amgen, Apple, Nike, Visa, United Health Group, Cisco Systems, Verizon and Home Depot.  Do you see a pattern?

Those kicked off were great companies, but they became great being good at something that became irrelevant.  The replacements are companies that recognized big trends, then built on those trends to rapidly grow sales and become important market leaders.  The new guys – like the Biblical David – used new tools to overwhelm industry giants and come out victorious.  This podcast explains how companies of all sizes can act like David in order to be more successful, and overwhelm other competitors that look like giants but can be beaten by using new, available tools.

Thinking Points:

• Do you ever question your relevancy in your market?  To your customers?
• Do you know your customers biggest unmet needs – even if those ummet needs aren’t aligned with your Value Delivery System?
• Do you invest in new tools to be more competitive, or mostly invest in trying to improve what you’ve always done?
• Do you recognize trends, and change where you invest along with the trends to be more successful?

1) Employees are less productive working from an office.  A lot of time is wasted on unnecessary tasks (documented in this podcast,) which costs a lot of money.  And leaders tend to be really sloppy managing people and the work process, leading to even poorer productivity.

2) Employee engagement is going in the dumpster – which is the opposite from the goal return to office was supposed to create.  This podcasts takes a deeper dive into sources of engagement, and identifies why the trend to working from home creates higher engagement, while forcing folks to the office does the opposite.

3) Demographics do  not favor the employer. With more retirees and fewer young workers, employees have the stronger hand. If you want to succeed you have to manage employees along the trends that make them want to work for you.

Thinking points:

• Did you think productivity was worse in the pandemic, or better?
• Do you really think employees prefer 100% in office to a WFH or hybrid environment?  Want data confirms your thinking?
• Do you focus on creating stronger engagement, or are you trying to brute force higher productivity?
• Do you want an innovative and motivated workforce? If so, are you doing what will motivate them (rather than motivates you?)

This podcast explains why 10%/year revenue growth is crucial to remaining relevant, and why just 2 quarters of declining revenue can be deadly.  A dive into Starbucks revenue troubles demonstrates how easily a company can derail itself by focusing on one thing. And we explain why higher earnings at Tesla is buoying the stock, but revenue problems in the auto part of the company likely portends rough days ahead for the EV pioneer.  Companies that don’t shift with markets will end up like the pharmacy retailers Walgreens, Rite Aid, CVS and independents that have mosly lost relevancy despite fantastic histories.

Thinking points:

• Do you have a plan to grow  your revenues at 10%/year for the next decade?
• Do you think business is fine as long as you have earnings, even if revenues struggle?
• If you see a growth stall ahead do you know how to refocus on growth?
• Is your market shifting in ways that could make you irrelevant in the future?

Despite knowing this is true, too few people build these facts into their future scenarios so they can make better decisions.  This podcast explains how you can make far better decisions for the long-term health of your company if you utilize demographic trends to expand your gig workforce, and to smartly look for suppliers who aren’t in demographically troubled locations.  Likewise, if you use climate trends you can realize that old notions about geographic location are out of date, and you’ll be a lot better off you position your business where you can succeed.

Lastly this podcast overviews how NFL coaches are making better decisions and winning more games by using data, rather than historical practices and gut instincts.  Announcers, fans and even owners are finding it challenging, but the NFL is quickly moving toward statistics for play calling, similar to how major league baseball did 20 years ago.

Thinking points:

• Even though demographic trends are clearly apparent and easy to predict, do you make them part of your decision-making?
• Even though climate change is real, obvious and used for making weather predictions are you still denying that climate has an enormous impact on your business -- and how you make adjustments today can be the difference between success and failure?
• Are you open to changing your ideas about hiring, management and location in order to improve your business success?
• Do you collect data on your products, solutions and customers so you can see how to be more successful, or do you rely on gut instinct and how things always got done?

MOL Group in Hungary thought of itself as an oil & gas developer and retailer.  But today it is doing wildly better, growing revenues and profits and is a leader in AI implementation despite being far from silicon valley operating in eastern Europe.  What went right?

This podcast explains how the former relied on its invention – its Value Delivery System – to launch, but never developed an understanding of its customers and the value they were ready to pay for.  Neat technology, but not developed in a way that offered real value for customers or those in health care.  It never had a clear Value Proposition.  MOL group redefined its business away from its Value Delivery System, developing a very clear Value Proposition, which it used to move quickly into adopting and implementing artificial intelligence for streamlined operations that delivered greater growth.

Your failure or success depends on having that clear Value Proposition to drive strategy and investment into new technologies for optimization and revenue growth.  And this podcast goes further by describing how you can go from Value Proposition to action with a process for applying AI.

Thinking Points:

• Do you know your Value Proposition – and is it clearly stated for the whole organization to use as a guiding light?
• Are you sure your Value Proposition isn’t just a fancy description of you Value Delivery System?
• Are you ready to move forward with new technologies, like AI, because you clearly see how they add value to your customers (as well as  yourself?)
• Are you committed to transitioning and enhancing your Value Delivery System with new tools like AI in order to remain relevant with customers and find new routes to higher revenues?

This podcast explains how important it is to separate trend data from headlines, so that you can smartly follow trends to better growth.  At the same time, by exploring Apple’s floundering in AppleTV and its movie production we dig into how following trends often means finding new ways to deliver value, like Alphabet’s YouTube.  And we explain the process of using teams to develop new approaches that build on trends, avoiding the traps of historical approaches that are outdated and losing relevancy.

Thinking Points:

• Do you scan headlines, and then let these short-term exclamations alter your trend analysis?
• When doing something new do you look for new approaches, or try to implement historical “best practices?”
• Are you investing in trends, or defending and extending your old business?
• Do you have teams dedicated to finding innovative ways to build on trends like AI?

This podcast explains how in business there is one very deadly Mandela Effect.  That is the belief that long-term success comes from focusing on earnings and cash flow.  This belief will inevitably lead to failure – as case reviews of Boeing, Intel and Red Lobster were explained in previous podcasts – and how it is explained in this podcast via case study of Kmart and Sears.  Earnings and cash flow are the RESULT of better managing – meaning increasing – revenues.  A focus on revenues – like previously explained in the Microsoft podcast – is crucial for both short and long term success.  Only by looking at poorly met and unmet customer needs – things outside your “core” – can you keep revenues growing and insure you’ll have the desired earnings and cash flow in the future.

Thinking Points:

• Do you pay more attention to growing revenues, or growing earnings?
• Do you know your customers’ “pain points?”  Their poorly met and unmet needs?
• Do you use “gut instinct” for business decision-making, or do you focus on revenue impact?
• Are you ready to go outside your historical business model (and comfort zone) to increase revenues?

This podcast explains how Nadella immediately de-invested in the “core” Microsoft products of Windows and Office.  Instead he poured company resources into SAAS (Software As A Service) and cloud computing.  He quit investing in 3% growth markets, and put the money (and people) into 30%/yr growth markets. Instead of letting xBox languish he made the enormous investment to buy Activision/Blizzard, and now the Gaming division is growing at 60% year over year every quarter.  And when other companies were reluctant to invest in AI, Nadella led the way.  He demonstrated that even an enormous company with a well defined legacy could nimbly change its investments so that the company could return to growth.  And you can follow his lead by investing in growth opportunities – and getting yourself neck deep into using AI.

Thinking Points:

• Are you letting history guide your investments of money, people and time?  Or are you putting your resources where they can generate growth?
• Are you putting revenue growth first and foremost on your strategy agenda?  Or do you fall into discussions about earnings and cash flow?
• Do you know how AI will change  your customers world in 5 years, and thus change  your world?
• Are you investing in training, tools and processes to implement AI in your business?

This podcast explores how the “best practices” for business from the 1990s and early 2000s are killing companies.  Old ideas of “focus on your core” doom your success.  Even though we think doing more, better, faster and cheaper will inevitably lead to success, the opposite is true.  The more you focus on what you do, the faster you’ll lose relevancy and find your way to big problems and failure.  The more you pay attention to earnings the more likely you’ll lose relevance and fall into a sales decline. 

Listen to how the pattern keeps repeating – and how you can break out of the pattern to be much more successful – like Campbell’s (surprised at that one I bet – go listen!)

Thinking Points:

• Do you spend most of your time keeping the business going?  Improving things for customers?
• Do you use up all (or most) of your resources (time, energy, employees, assets) on your current business?
• Do you find yourself adverse to the risk of doing new things, so delaying starting new things?
• Do you know the biggest trends that will drive revenue growth in your industry over the next decade?
• Do you spend more time fixing problems than researching trends?
• Do you have a formal resource allocation process to help you invest in the right things?

People get stuck doing what they’ve always done, and reluctant to do (or invest in) new things.  Intel’s success in the 1060s as a chip manufacturer and then in the 1980s as a microprocessor manufacturer caused leadership – and the company culture – to believe that they would forever succeed if they just kept making chips and CPU microprocessors.  But the world shifted, and now chip making isn’t profitable – and Intel no longer has an advantage.  And the big growth in chip development isn’t in CPUs (like the x86 series upon which the PC business was built) but in parallel operations with neural processing units that were originally developed for gaming and now the heartbeat of AI.  Key decisions to support the historical company strength and not invest in smaller, newer but high growth markets years ago have led to Intel’s remarkable fall from success today.

Thinking Points:

• Do you know the high growth “on the edge” things happening in your marketplace(s)?
• Do you always resource your old business before even considering investing in new things?
• Do you spend a lot of your time, your people, your money and other assets protecting your current business rather than looking for new growth opportunities?
• Are you growing at 10%+ every year?  Do you have a plan to double your revenue every 5.5 years?

An even better story in this podcast is about the real winners who are the YouTube content creators, many of whom make more than $1M/year.  Even though YouTube doesn’t spend anything on content creation (compared to Netflix’ $17B/yr) it has paid out over $70B to content creators from ad sales over the last 3 years.  And this has implications not only for what you watch, but for you to participate in this “gold rush” where some at the top have net worths approaching a billion dollars.  We explain how diligence, using all social media channels to become an influencer, and making lots of content is now part of the new media marketplace – completely unlike 30 year ago – with a lot of new opportunities being created every week.

Thinking Points:

• Have you ever considered being a content creator on YouTube?
• As markets shift, do you think about whole new business models?
• Do you think about how you can use trends and new technologies to go into new businesses where there is more opportunity than competition?
• Do you have a passion that you always wanted to turn into money?

This podcast delves into what went wrong with the innovation engine at Intel.  How things changed, and Nvidia, AMD and TSMC took the  lead, while Intel’s ability to catch up looks bleak.  Mismanaging the innovation process can have a huge impact on any company, from industry leaders to small players – as we profile the death march at Walgreens and the politics that often gets in the way of innovation.

Thinking points:

• Are you keeping innovation at the forefront of your efforts to grow?
• Are you investing in innovation, rather than just investing in defending & extending what you’ve historically done?
• Are your innovation investments focused on efficiency improvements rather than new products/services and possible disruptive market breakthroughs?

Success requires knowing your customers’ needs, and then understanding the value you can provide by fulfilling your needs.  Yes, there will be a delivery system. But before that you need to know your Value Proposition. And too often we fail at knowing customer needs and the value they really want.

This podcast uses real life case examples of small businesses to explain the difference between a Value Proposition and a Value Delivery System, and then understanding how to keep adapting the latter so you fulfill the former.  Follow your Value Proposition and you’ll be a lot more successful than optimizing your Value Delivery System.

Thinking Points:

• Do you know your customers unmet and poorly met needs?  Do you know the needs they have (besides low price) that you fulfill?
• Do you recognize that your Value Delivery System could be obsolete overnight if your customers’ needs change?
• Are you talking to customers about their needs and the real value they want from you?

This podcast explains the top skills needed to succeed with AI, and none of them are technical.  Yes, technologists are part of the implementation process, but skills understanding data, setting up problems, fact checking, critical thinking, continuous learning and communication are every bit as important.  And for most business applications more important than technology skills.  Just like all of us learned to use PC’s, Word, Excel and Powerpoint (as well as other applications) in business, we all can learn quickly how to use AI to sell more stuff and operate more efficiently.

Thinking Points:

• Do you fear AI?  Do you let fear of AI keep you from using it?
• Are you experimenting with AI tools so you can identify application opportunities?
• Do you recognize the importance of good business skills to effective AI use?
• Are you ready to overcome your lack of experience with AI to become an early expert?

This podcast uses the Biden crisis to demonstrate how leaders make monumental mistakes.

• By not paying attention early to disgruntled customers.
• By paying insufficient attention to external data – especially data that you’d prefer not to hear.
• By surrounding themselves with people who depend on their success, so defend the leader rather than explore alternatives
• By not investing in teams that explore options
• By paying too much attention to a narrow constituency rather than looking across all constituencies to see if change is needed
• By trying to explain yourself through defending your past rather than demonstrating a willingness to change in the future.

There is a playbook for being a more effective leader.  This podcast explains in detail how leaders can do better by taking actions the Biden campaign failed to take.  Understanding this case study can help you be a better leader to avoid such a crisis, and a better leader at effectively dealing with a crisis.

Thinking Points:

• Do you study external data more than the data you internal system feeds you?
• Do you use data you’d prefer to ignore as part of your decision-making, or rely on the data that supports your viewpoint?
• Do you have an early warning system that alerts you to soft signals for change?
• Do you have teams dedicated to understanding your constituencies’ underserved needs?
• Are you ready and willing to adapt when trends move in a new direction?

The problem is we get too involved in perfecting our Value Delivery System for the customers we had in the early stages.  We offered a Value Proposition those customers wanted, and our initial Value Delivery System made their lives better so they bought.  But as time passed we keep perfecting the Value Delivery System when customer needs change, and we know longer have a viable Value Proposition.

This podcast explores how Starbucks and Dominos failed at international expansion because they assumed their Value Delivery System used in the USA would  be desirable offshore.  But the needs, and the alternatives, in those markets were different enough that there was no Value Proposition to pull customers to them. 

This podcast also delves into how trends drive changes in customer needs, requiring we develop new Value Delivery Systems and new Value Propositions.  In Japan government policies and businesses have tried to cling to historical norms, and now the population is in freefall, real estate is a disaster, there are insufficient workers, too many tourists and the economy is so bad the Yen is at its lowest level in decades.  If you don’t manage for trends your business will eventually become obsolete.

Thinking Points:

• Do you know your Value Proposition, or do you simply rely on having an efficient Value Delivery System in order to succeed?
• Do you customize your Value Delivery System to meet the needs of different markets, appealing to those needs with customized Value Propositions?
• Are you open minded to how trends are changing customer perceptions, or locked into a sense that you are always right – even as customers indicate you’re increasingly not giving them what they want?
• How do you divide your time between improving the business you have, and exploring how the world is changing your customers’ needs?

Geopolitics is about as far away from what we can control as possible; especially as small and mid-size organization leaders. But these global events do make a difference to our businesses.  Understanding various scenarios can really help a small biz guide itself toward greater success, and avoid abrupt problems.  This podcast explains why it isn’t as hard as one thinks, because so many scenarios are published by people who do them for a living.  And this podcast demonstrates how using scenarios from one source (the Boston Consulting Group) can be applied to even small businesses. 

Thinking points:

• Do you make an effort to apply global events to your industry and company?
• Do you subscribe to any geopolitical analytic newsletters or email lists that can provide you with insights to likely events and impacts?
• Do you discuss the impact of geopolitical events with your colleagues, customers or suppliers in an effort to creatively assess potential scenarios?
• Are you ready to accept that what you don’t control has a lot more impact on your business long-term success than what you do control?

This podcast not only explains how we lock into our current situation, but how we can use something as easy as ChatGPT to identify ways to unlock the situation. In real time we explore the impact of demographic changes on homebuilding, or EV use on auto repair shops.  What used to be expensive brainstorming is now available to everyone at the touch of their keypad, instantly.  It may not give you the answer, or forecast your results, but it will give you insight to how things will change in the future, allowing you to prepare.  Or get help.

You’ll never do something new until you stop doing some of what you’re already doing. That’s the unlocking part.  Apple totally stopped autonomous car development, unlocking the resources to implement AI across all their platforms and products.  We all have the ability to stop over-investing in what we’ve done so we can invest in what will create better outcomes.

Thinking Points:

Do you recognize that you let your lock-ins keep you from pursuing new opportunities?

Are you using ChatGPT and similar tools to explore the impact of trends on your business?

Are you doing trend-based scenario planning, or hoping the future will look enough like today that you don’t have to change?

Are you open to having a coach help you plan for the future in order to achieve better outcomes?

This podcast overviews how 3D printing technology has become very cheap, and easy to use.  It overviews some of the thousands of applications, which can be hugely valuable for small and mid-size companies.  This is not just technology for big companies, but rather can be a breakthrough for small companies looking to develop new products, tests new customer segments, explore new solutions to old problems – or just keep you facility running in the face of aging equipment, occasional breakdowns, and slow supply chains.  All you need is a few hundred bucks and the willingness to experiment outside the box!

Thinking points:

Have you experimented with 3D printing for ANY application?

Do you have ideas for new products that you never test out because today you don’t know  how to make the thing affordably?

Would cutting prototyping time down 90% and the cost down 90% allow you to develop more products, enter more markets and grow your sales?

Do you have supply chain risks in your manufacturing, or in the equipment you use for manufacturing, that could be reduced by having the ability to make small runs very fast?  Or make unique parts very fast?

The key to identifying trends is learning how to read weak signals.  If you wait until the trend is dominant you’re already late, and early adopters have advantage over you.  It’s then important to recognize the triggers that will lead to innovation adoption, and identifying where money is de-investing in order to re-invest in the trend.  We cover how anyone can do this today, and build better future scenarios that will lead to more business success.

Thinking points:

• Are you tracking weak signals of change so you will recognize their importance?
• Are you tracking where your industry, supplier industries and customers are increasing their investments in trends?
• Are you gathering the data so you can measure trend investments vs. the one-off stories, analogies and boomerang experiences the press reports but which are not really important to trend adoption?
• Are you watching your industry’s investment in trends and figuring out where you should be putting your money to have an advantage 3 to 5 years in the future?

Good leaders hire good coaches to help them understand the marketplace and how it shifts, in order to plan for a future different from the past.  As coaches we use data and trends to drive better investments with better outcomes.  This podcast overviews, with facts, that the perceptions most people have about today are actually wrong.  Not a little off, but spectacularly wrong.  Most business leaders either don’t have the real data, or don’t access available data, to understand today – so it is impossible to accurately create future scenarios.  This podcast goes into some depth about just how bad “common perception” is.  In fact, most of the time what people think is happening is “common myth” rather than reality.  That’s why good leaders hire good coaches, just like good athletes have good coaches.

Thinking Points:

• Do you have an external data gathering system in order to understand your market and customers and how both will change?
• Do you use emerging trends to drive investments, or your historical “always done it that way”?
• Do you seek external data, and external experts, when making decisions or do you rely on the most common understanding of the crowd?
• Do you recognize your need for external inputs when making decisions, and your need for an external coach, or do you let your bias drive you to make your own decision based on your  history?

In this podcast, we speak with Brandon Wilson, Co-founder and CEO of STEADYNAMIC, a software development firm with deep roots in the early AI space. We also learned that custom software streamlines operations and automates tasks, freeing up your team for higher-value activities. This translates to increased efficiency and the ability to handle growth, making your business more attractive to potential buyers.

We also discussed some of the downsides of building custom software including development costs, technical expertise required to build it, and the necessary maintenance required. Oftentimes, business leaders and the market-at-large confuses TRUE AI with technology advancements. It's important to recognize the difference and even more important to begin to 

Thinking Points:
 

Do you clearly understand what your true value is to your customers?

Do you have a 'secret sauce' in your company that can be amplified using a software app?

What are your plans to further expand your value to capture more market share?

What are other people in your market doing to expand their value with a software app?

Thinking Points:

• Do you have repetitive activities that eat up employee time, and look easy to turn over to a machine?
• Do you have good data on your operations, or customers, or vendors, or other parts of your business that you can use to feed an AI model?
• Are you working hard to acquire good data on important activities of your business so you can apply AI?
• Do you have a vision of the future of AI so you can counsel your family, friends and employees about jobs that will likely remain, and jobs likely to be replaced by AI?

Demand is going up.  But supply is challenged by the technology transition from fossil fuels to sustainables.  Will the industry be able to meet demand with solar and wind alone?  Or will new nuclear plants be needed?  This podcast goes step by step through how analyzing demand and supply leads to identifying roadblocks to growth, then understanding how those roadblocks can be overcome – like battery technology.  How to look at leading edge trends, and use of new technologies to solve imbalances – like using advanced reconductoring to enhance transmission.  And how to predict changes in not only customer behavior but regulations that look like roadblocks but can overnight provide major impetus to change – like the new FERC planning rules that will promote grid development.

Thinking points:

• Are you planning for the future, or planning from the past?
• Do you stop planning when you see obstacles and roadblocks, or do you explore creative solutions to those roadblocks?
• Do you know who the leading edge players are, and do you track what they do – successes and failures?
• Do you rethink how to analyze economics – rethink the business model – to understand what looks uneconomic at first could become very economical in an altered future?

The Southern Arizona real estate market, centered around cities like Tucson, has experienced notable transformations driven by factors such as demographics, economic diversification, and external influences like the COVID-19 pandemic. Expansion in industries like technology, aerospace, and defense has further fueled the need for residential properties, while the work-from-home trend will have a serious effect on commercial real estate needs. We explore how factors like environmental regulations, work dynamics, and artificial intelligence continue to shape supply dynamics, underscoring the importance of informed decision-making and collaboration with seasoned real estate professionals to navigate this ever-evolving market effectively.

But successful innovators do strategic planning very differently. They don’t even think of it as an exercise, but a continual process that guides decisions – and investments – in the right direction.  Strategic planning becomes part of the decision-making process, not a relegated activity. 

This podcast not only explains how good innovators use strategic planning, but profiles Nvidea as a best practice, and electric grid developers who are breaking through the regulatory logjam to bring online sustainable energy.  Also we profile how Walmart and Walgreens made bad decisions leading to failed healthcare businesses, and how Elon Musk is making “off the hip” decisions at great peril for Tesla.

Thinking Points:

• Do you have a good future scenario built on trends acting as your strategic guidelight?
• Are you monitoring environmental changes to adust your future scenario and improve decision-making?
• Are you inculcating your strategy deep enough into your management that you can flatten the organizational structure to improve adaptability to market shifts?
• Are you avoiding the role of “chief decision maker” by making sure your management team knows how to make good decisions that will lead to good outcomes – rather than leaning on your “micro-management?”

Times have changed.  This podcast explains why Tesla’s value has decreased by 65% over the past 3 years, and 50% even in the last 10 months.  Tesla has failed to innovate into pick-ups, and failed to innovate into low-cost autos.  Facing intense competition from far more established companies that have deep experience in manufacturing and design, Tesla has now fallen far behind in both.  The result is declining sales, and pipe-dream promises for how the company will return to its previous glory.

Thinking points:

• When you’re winning are you paranoid about competitors catching you?
• Do you constantly compare your strengths with competitors and measure whether you are growing your strength, or they are catching you?
• Are you aware, when you are growing, of the growth rate of your competition?  Are you projecting when the competition could catch up with your and even surpass you?
• Do you treat declines in sales growth as potential signals of competitors disrupting your business and pushing past you?

For Jeanne, transparency, purpose, and leveraging the right human resources are paramount in fostering a robust business model. Our dialogue shed light on a fascinating concept: the notion of "focus on your core." While I once interpreted this as a rigid adherence to past successes, Jeanne reframes it as staying closely aligned with customer needs. This distinction is crucial; clinging to a static "success formula" - relying on what made your company successful - can spell disaster in a dynamic market landscape.

Thinking points:

1. How are you preparing to grow your business?
2. Are you 'stuck' personally and professionally?
3. Do you have the right perspective in understanding the true state of your company? 
4. How are you doing for your customer? 
5. Why do your customers continue to work with you?

Thinking points:

Market Relevance: Each generation has its unique preferences, values, and behaviors when it comes to purchasing products or services. Companies need to adapt their marketing strategies, product offerings, and customer experiences to remain relevant to the evolving needs and desires of the target audience. Have you segmented your marketing approach to each generation or demographic?

Competitive Advantage: Companies that stay ahead of the curve by anticipating and catering to the buying patterns of new generations gain a competitive edge in the market. Have you spent resources to understand what motivates and influences the purchasing decisions of the emerging generation?

Innovation Opportunities: Studying the buying patterns of a new generation can uncover untapped market opportunities and inspire innovation. Companies can identify gaps in the current market and develop products or services that resonate with the emerging generation, leading to growth and expansion. How much time have you spent studying generational buying patterns?

Brand Loyalty and Long-Term Success: Building strong relationships with customers from a young age can foster brand loyalty that lasts a lifetime. By understanding and aligning with the values and preferences of a new generation, companies can establish themselves as trusted brands early on, securing long-term success and customer loyalty. How successful are you in building brand loyalty?

Adaptation to Technological Advancements: New generations often embrace technological advancements more readily than previous ones. Companies that understand the technology preferences and habits of the emerging generation can leverage this knowledge to innovate their products, services, and marketing strategies to better meet the expectations of tech-savvy consumers. Are you ahead of the Technology curve in your business, including AI?

Social Responsibility and Sustainability: Many new generations place a high value on social responsibility and sustainability. By understanding their buying patterns, companies can adapt their practices to align with these values, demonstrating a commitment to ethical business practices and environmental stewardship, which can enhance their reputation and attract socially conscious consumers. How is your company positioned in social responsibility and sustainability?

Adam Hartung made over 300 predictions during the decade he wrote for Forbes.  100% of those predictions turned out to be accurate – a record for Forbes writers.  That accuracy was based upon understanding the key elements to success of launching innovations (and new products) – elements that are still poorly understood by most business people.

Listen to how one innovator required a huge investment to launch, but because he created a solution to a poorly met need, his Value Delivery System is being rapidly adopted by his target market.  And he has ample opportunities to grow very quickly.  The other innovator created a really neat product, but it is unclear if it has benefits that will drive adoption.  Lacking a clear Value Proposition, based upon solving a poorly meet need, his Value Delivery System is really cool, but doesn’t have much demand.

Thinking Points:

• Do you know your customers poorly met and unmet needs?
• Do you make sure you know the need you’re going to fulfill prior to developing new products or enhancements to your Value Delivery System?
• Are you lured into developing new solutions because you see how cool it would be, rather than targeting a specific need?
• Are you ready to move to solve customer needs, even if it requires using innovations with which you have little or no experience?

Simultaneously, Boston Market has disappeared.  Down to just 1 store left (in Newark, NJ.) Once a glowing winner in fast casual dining, and owned by the behemoth McDonald’s, how could such a famous brand just disappear when it has so much resource behind it?  McDonald’s spun out Chipotle, which has gone up 70-fold since going it alone 18 years ago, while McDonald’ has only gone up 8 fold while killing Boston Market. 

This podcast explains how a focus on earnings, at the expense of revenue generation, doomed both companies.  Trying to defend & extend old businesses, rather than growing new businesses far more on trend, was their demise.  And the same will befall any business, just like these monsters, if you put profit in front of revenue generation.

Thinking Points:

• Do you put earnings performance or cash flow ahead of revenue when making business decisions?
• Do you look to improve your performance more by selling more, or cutting costs?
• Do you think focusing on your core is more important, or bridging into new businesses to find new revenue streams
• Do you know your customers biggest poorly met needs, or are you too busy trying to keep them buying what you’ve long been selling?

This podcast explains how the US became so “overstored.” Something that was clear a decade ago. Those who were paying attention were smart enough to avoid investing in traditional retail – and avoid investing in retail real estate. Others who saw this coming were smart enough to adjust their leases to take advantage of falling prices.  Going forward there are lots of opportunities being created for non-retailers as this empty space goes looking for new uses.

Additionally, this podcast explains how you compete if you are a retailer. And it’s not as simple as “go online.” Using the IKEA case study we explain that it is possible to grow even in bad marketplaces, but you have to be very clear about your Value Proposition and targeted on customers with poorly met or unmet needs.

Thinking points:

• Do you include trends outside your industry in your scenario planning, looking for new ways to grow and lower costs?
• Do you alter your resources (your investments, people, etc)  in order to leverage trends going forward?
• Do you use trends to create new Value Delivery Systems that can boost revenues?
• Are you clear on your Value Proposition and very aware of where customer needs are over-meet, poorly met and unmet?

This podcast reviews how the 3 big precedent changes (New York gun law, reproduction rights and school prayer) all indicate a shift in the high court toward personal rights over the rights of society.  This is a substantial change, and can reflect how businesses will need to possibly re-think their position/plans with customers, employees and suppliers.  What you have been assuming about these relationships might well need to change.

Further, these precedent changes will have an impact on doing business in different states.  This podcast further addresses the need for business leaders to think about where they locate headquarters, facilities and employment centers.  Historically these choices were driven mostly by tax considerations.  But now differing laws in differing states will mean the availability of guns will vary widely, as will the right to pregnancy choice and the openness to incorporating religion into government services.  These wide variations will cause demographic shifts in where people live, and have a major impact on employee satisfaction as well as how business is undertaken – and requires leaders think about policies as well as physical locations.

Thinking points:

• Are your scenario plans up to date?

• Are you prepared to rethink your locations?

• Are you updating your employment policies in line with rapid changes in state laws?

• Do you know how these legal changes will alter your employee, customer and supplier relationships?

This week Boeing was put under criminal investigation.  Its reputation is a disaster as we wonder if its planes are safe.  Founded in July, 1916 Willliam Boeing created the commercial aviation industry.  And Boeing led it for decades.  This podcast explains how leaders that focused on cutting costs, defending and extending old platforms rather than using new technologies to develop new products, led to Boeing selling planes that lose doors in flight – or worse – crash.

These stories remind us that business exists to make solutions that meet customer needs.  Earnings are the RESULT of meeting needs, not and end unto themselves.  Forget that and your business – large or small – can find itself in the situation of GE or Boeing.

Thinking points:

• Do you put revenues first or earnings/cash first in your strategic planning?
• Are you investing in new technologies to make new solutions to better meet customer needs, or are you investing in defending and extending what you already have?
• Do you realize no company ever saved its way to prosperity?
• Do you recognize that business success comes from making new products that people need, want and buy – not by trying to make more money with what you already have?

The 6 Gigatrends act as lighthouse beacons for those sailing the seas of change.  They explain how demographics, artificial intelligence, health care collapses and changes in our identities and how we work will be shaping the next decade and beyond.  Tom sees these trends as uniting people rather than dividing them, and uplifting the more than 4.7B people currently living below the poverty line – in short the ocean of opportunity.

Thinking Points:

• Are you thinking about how gigatrends that cut across the globe will impact your local market?
• Are you ready to move beyond your historical markets to serve the vast underserved markets around the world?
• Are you being foresightful about how demographic shifts will create a declining China (and its history as a supplier to the world) while an emerging Africa will be far more dominant?
• Are you prepared for the health care collapse that will likely emerge if we don’t change health care administration as an aging population needs far greater services?

This podcast sets out to reverse that thinking. Reviewing ample data from the Congressional Budget Office, Department of Labor and regional Federal Reserve offices we overview how immigrants are adding $7trillion to the US economy, and have been responsible for avoiding the expected recession.  Undocumented immigration is actually down 14%, while legal immigration is up 29% - and wages have been rising even as immigration has grown the last few years.  And despite common belief, even the Texas Dept of Public Safety reports that immigrants are less than half as likely to commit a crime as native born Americans.

The data supports a robust level of immigration. Yet policy makers have been failing businesses that have a serious need for workers. Listen to hear the facts, and how they impact your business.

Thinking points:

• Are you trying to hire, but finding it difficult to fill positions?
• Are you biased against people who speak English as a second language, or struggle to speak English?
• Do you let media headlines influence your decision-making when it comes to hiring?
• Do you let a single data point, like a story about an immigrant criminal, influence your opinion about entire group of people?

This podcast also overviews how important it is to use trends to make your company relevant, which can lead to growth.  Big investors may not be looking at your company, but your growth will depend on identifying trends and using them to grow so customers, employees, communities and suppliers find you relevant.  This week Nvidia’s value exploded into the trillion dollar group, adding $277B value in ONE DAY, by accomplishing 300% annual growth with its AI products.  You too can find huge value by investing in AI like Nvidia and Microsoft.

Thinking Points:

• Are your products so important to your customers that you are one of their most important (thus relevant) suppliers?
• Are you letting market changes drive right past you while you try to do more of the same in your business – like Walgreens?
• Are you investing in AI applications to be more relevant to your customers?
• Are you investing your portfolio in opportunities for growth so you can create superior returns?

This podcast explains the risks this is creating for CRE owners and banks with loans on these properties.  And those risks will impact regional banks most, which are the banks that also mostly serve small and mid-size businesses.  If they lose their reserves, they can’t loan to the small guy.  Worse, if those banks fail (like our leaders finally admit is likely) it means real estate prices collapse, bankruptcies – and a lot of empty space on the market at low prices.  It means you can plan for lower real estate costs to help you be more successful, and lots of opportunities for conversions into more valuable space (think residential) for offices.

Further, this podcast delves back into the ways demographics feed this very predictable scenario. And how those demographics are affecting all businesses looking to hire for more growth.  Future scenarios have to include these remarkable trends toward too much space, and simultaneously too little labor!

Thinking Points:

• Have you planned out your real estate needs for the next 5-10 years, including factoring in the big changes in how we work?
• Have you worked through what you’ll do if your current bank is swamped by real estate losses, can no longer loan or even goes bankrupt?
• Have you explored opportunities to grow by taking advantage of cheaper real estate?
• Are you hoping you can hire in the future, or building plans that address the totally predictable long-term labor shortage

This podcast overviews how we verify trends, identify trend reinforcers, and then use those trends to plan. We dig deep into the 4 trends we identified at the pandemic onset(Mobility, Asynchronous Work, Artificial Intelligence and Gig Economy) for verification of their ongoing importance – including new technologies, government programs and environmental changes like real estate, e-commerce use and applications of social media.  Then we explore the importance of the emerging trend around sustainability and environmental awareness – and the overall impact of demographic trends on all business trends. 

Thinking points:

• Have you incorporated the 4 big trends into your planning?
• Are you tracking events for their impact on trends and customer behaviors?
• Are you aware of how trends are changing, adapting and affecting your products and services?
• Are you updating your scenarios for events and their impact on trends?

Thinking points:

• Can you clearly state your Value Proposition without a mention of how you deliver that value?
• Are you focused on adding value, or running the business?
• Do you know your target customer and their needs, or are you trying to sell something which may have little or no value?

Despite the reliability of demographic data, and projections, few business leaders use demographics as part of their future planning.  Because most leaders assume demographics won’t change much, and they need to appeal to today’s marketplace.  But we are facing a global shift in demographics that is changing business conditions in every market – right down to the local level.

This podcast overviews how the aging society, and low birth rates, is contributing to a significant shift in demand and supply.  It affects how businesses perform even at the most local level, because it affects the supply, demand and pricing of almost everything.  Big changes in demographics that are happening now in places like India, China  the US and Africa mean substantial changes are happening quickly in economic growth – and the availability of labor.  Every business, regardless of size, needs to analyze the impact of demographic shifts locally, regionally, nationally and globally on their future revenue prospects.s

Thinking points:

• Are planning for a very different future, or assuming the future will look like the past?
• Do you understand how demographic changes will affect demand for your products/services?
• Do you understand how demographic changes will affect your ability to supply your products/services?
• Do you know how to position your business for growth by appealing to the right demographics?

US businesses are struggling to find workers, a topic this podcast has discussed many times.  And political divisiveness has been making it hard to implement policies to grow the economy.  To grow your business now could well be a good time to consider Mexico, as a final market or as part of your supply chain.

This podcast overviews Manny’s recent trip to Mexico, and discusses the impact of the 3 big trends – Demographics, ESG (environmental awareness), and AI (artificial intelligence) – on Mexico’s business and tourist industries.  With a much younger workforce, effective and affordable health care, workable environmental regulations, and rapid adoption of new technologies the economy is growing,  And it is supported by government investment in growth industries like tourism.  Listen and learn.

Thinking points:

• Have you considered searching for supply chain partners in the adjoining country of Mexico?
• Have you considered growing your business by setting up sales operations in Mexico?
• Are you aware that trade agreements with Mexico make it far less risky to do business than almost anywhere except Canada – and especially China?
• Are exploring ways to grow your business outside your historical business processes? If not, have you considered taking a trip to Mexico to find some personal White Space to develop new ideas?

This podcast explores how Russia’s declining population led to annexing Crimea and invading Ukraine. China’s declining population has led them to build islands and military bases in the South China Sea, preparing for a take over of Taiwan.  Despite massive immigration to Europe, the continent’s population is declining – yet leaders in Italy, Germany and France are screaming to reduce immigration, while 1 in 5 people are retired and needing public services.  England’s economy is in the doldrums, yet the Prime Minister is trying to send immigrants to Africa.  And the American news waves are awash in stories about “the crisis at the border,” while business people are screaming they have too few good candidates for jobs they desperately need to fill.

The trend toward globalization, declining worker protections and consistent economic growth are all being altered by predictable changes in demographics.  And the future will not look like the past.

America is at risk of becoming a failing economy, like Russia and Europe, unless we boost our population.  America desperately needs more immigrants for the jobs we have right now.  Letting politicians bog themselves down in minutia of “immigration reform” should not be tolerated.  We need immigrants now more than ever if we want to keep the American economy growing.  Look beyond the hyperbole to forecast needs, then adapt your business policies to find paths to growth do to this demographic trend transition.

Thinking Points:

• Do you know where you will source candidates for your company if you grow your revenues?
• Do you let a lack of candidates keep you from investing in growth?
• Do you avoid hiring Gen Z workers into your business?
• Have you taken any action, like contacting your member of Congress or your state Governor or state Congressperson, about simple immigration reform NOW?

Using Tesla and the auto industry as a case example, this podcast explains how Tesla became #1 in EVs, while the entire auto industry ignored the opportunity.  Traditional competitors didn’t want to explore new opportunities, while Elon Musk made huge commitments to EV technology. Now he is reaping the rewards, while other automakers have uncertain futures.  And, simultaneously, we explain how BYD has transformed itself in just 5 years into the second biggest powerhouse in autos, growing revenues 6-fold and selling more electric vehicles than Tesla.  You could be Tesla or BYD if you follow our guidelines for investing, and recognize that increasingly success requires using external funding.

Thinking Points:

• Are you so bound up in your old business you don’t even have ideas for how to transform into something with more growth and profits?
• Do your plans for 2024 and beyond revolve around improving what you’ve always done, or are you planning to move into new growth opportunities where trends are more favorable?
• Do you recognize trends, and investigate what opportunities they create?
• Have you put in place skills to raise money if you hit upon an idea with serious growth potential?

Thinking Points:

• Do you tell your organization to put customers first, or profits?
• Do you let cost reduction opportunites hurt your customer service?
• Do you look for growth opportunities through better customer service?
• Would you like your company to have a good reputation, or a bad one?

This podcast also explores why so many economists struggle to predict things like recessions and inflation, largely due to using theories based on conditions unlike today.  And likewise Chairman Powell, et. al., can’t get economic, monetary or fiscal policy right if they work off the wrong assumptions.  So we go back to 2021 and explain what led to our current inflation – and its rapid decline.  This will help you prepare for not only 2024, but the next 5 years as you use the right assumptions to build your growth strategy.

Thinking Points:

• Do you have a growth strategy in place for 2024?
• Are you fearful of a recession or ready to charge ahead?
• Have you discovered the huge importance of the demographic shift on economic conditions and markets and factored that into your future scenarios?
• Are you capturing the profits available in this marketplace, or letting opportunity pass you by?

 Healthcare in America is changing – but oh so slowly.  Only in the last year or two has telemedicine become viable.  And costs for so many procedures are wildly out of line with costs for similar procedures in foreign countries.  Meanwhile, only in America do employers pay for health insurance, something that is a government cost elsewhere, making their costs go up precipitously versus offshore companies. 

 Add on top of those costs the fact that demographics are driving far higher wages.  Strikes have driven up labor costs as much as 40% at the top 3 US auto companies.  And changing regulations mean that fast food workers in California will have a $22/hour minimum wage in 2024.  With fewer workers, higher wages and skyrocketing healthcare costs due to an obsolete funding mechanism the question is – are US businesses going to remain competitive in global markets?

Thinking Points:

• Have you considered alternative employee mechanisms, such as greater use of gig workers, to help control costs?
• Are you aggressively investing in robotics, autonomous systems and AI to remove labor from your business model?
• Are you lobbying for changes to health care delivery and insurance to move the costs off your P&L?
• Are you investing in changes to grow your business, or are you liquidating  your assets like GM?

Economists often use statistics like construction spending and heavy equipment sales to help them predict the state of the economy; as of today, many heavy equipment stocks are rallying, signals opposite to the general economic indicators of an impending recession. How can we look at trends to predict large economic events? Well, if we look at the top trends creating the most momentum in the market: AI, the environment, demographics, mobility, etc. we can see that each of them will require some level of moving earth around. 

For example, AI needs more computing farms, which need buildings erected to hold the computers: needing heavy equipment; "the environment" is driving the growth of electric cars, which need raw materials to create the batteries: needing heavy equipment;  demographics drive where people are living, which need housing: needing heavy equipment. And so forth...

We also explore how those top trends are also driving the direction of the heavy machinery industry as well. For instance, mining was among the first industries to adopt autonomous and electric vehicles for their heavy earth moving machines.

So, by more deeply understanding trends and how they are vastly interconnected to the rest of the economy, we can see that the simplistic economic indicators of heavy machinery or the length of woman's skirt (known as the "hemline index"), may not always hold true to their history. We now need to consider how trends 'work together' to provide a blueprint for your economic success. In the end, we see that trends will always drive the economy and all industries, heavy equipment included, will be driven by them and might even help move them....

Thinking Points:

• How can we look at trends to predict large economic events?
   
• What interrelated trends will drive the growth of your business?
• Are you only focused on cutting cost or are you focused on growing your revenue?

This podcast explains why the bulk of acquisitions are done for the wrong reason.  They are competitors trying to become the “last man standing” in a declining market.  And always – yes always – these do not end well.  It allows the buyer to sustain for a bit longer, but they don’t thrive and eventually they die.

On the other hand Microsoft has made a huge investment to buy Activision Blizzard.  This is being done for the right reason – to grow revenues.  For years Microsoft has lost money in gaming as the weakest competitor vs Sony and Nintendo.  But now Microsoft will launch into the top spot, and be positioned to grow much faster and finally make a return for investors.  Because this is an acquisition focused on growth, it is a very good thing.

Thinking Points:

• Do you make acquisitions for potential “synergies” or to invest for growth?
• Do you understand how markets are shifting, and will this acquisition create a new direction shifting with the market launching new products and services?
• If you own a business, and your market is shifting, are you ready to invest to keep up with the shift – or should you sell to someone who can invest?

This podcast also analyzes the trend to home schooling, and explains how this is becoming a serious opportunity for entrepreneurs and companies in the education business.  Although the market seems small, it is growing at over 50%/year and is getting a lot more money than it used to, with potentially a whole lot more soon.  Even if you haven’t noticed it, this market is very close to reaching the tipping point for mainstream market adoption and a long, explosive run.

Thinking points:

• Do you know how to analyze different suppliers to determine which will get you the most for your spend?
• Are you using trends to make your investment decisions?
• Are you identifying early trends and collecting data on them?
• Are you ready to invest in explosive growth opportunities that can add a billion dollars to your revenue?

This podcast explains how leaders can move beyond headlines to really understand trends, so they can undertake successful scenario development and make smarter investments.  Focusing on how employees are working, we can see that hybrid work from home is going to be a permanent fixture.  Less office space is needed, and employers can move now to save costs, while simultaneously making employees happier.  Investing in work from home will pay off, but investing in facilities will not.  Also, you have to avoid fads that are nearly always a waste of money – like NFTs!!!

But beyond investing money, how leaders invest their time and alter their decision-making practices will play a key determinant in success.  If you have proximity bias you will favor employees in the office vs. those that digitally commute, leading to poorer inputs and poorer decisions.  Leaders have to adjust their styles as trends cause markets to move if they are going to be successful. 

Thinking Points –

• Do you engage people with differing viewpoints in discussions, or do you try to include those who will reach a consensus easily?
• Do you make decisions on your personal preferences, or using trends to connect with where markets are headed?
• Do you “trust your gut” or do you get the data and involve the most people to make good decisions
• Do you leap from headline to headline, or do you dig into the stories and data to understand what’s really happening?

The podcast explains how regardless of size, if your business falls out of line with trends it will end up in trouble.  The first sign is often trouble keeping up your revenue growth. That leads to focusing on earnings instead of sales. Which leads to protecting “sacred cows” and historical operations while cutting costs. And as trends unfold, the company becomes farther and farther off trend, until the margins have eroded and failure is the result.  But failure is usually several years after trends indicated change is needed – leadership simply failed to manage for trends.

Rite-Aid, Walgreens, CVS 40 years ago were retail leaders with some of the highest margins.  Now they are marginalized retailers. Failing to use trends when planning, demographics left them with fewer customers and far lower margins. Electronic commerce and discount chains ate up what margin might have been left. Because these companies never fully understood their customer Value Proposition they Locked-in on their historical products and assets, leading to overcapacity of drug stores with very little reason for customers to keep returning.

Thinking Points:

• Do you have a handle on how demographics is leading to big changes in your business? How about AI or Environmenetal awareness?
• Do you know the “sacred cows” in your business that keep you from doing something new?
• Are you actively using White Space team(s) to develop new growth opportunities, rather than leaving it all up to senior leaders?
• Are you updating future scenarios – 3, 5 and 10 years into the future – every month so that you keep trends at the forefront of your planning?

This podcast explores how conflicts begin due to differing beliefs based on historical experiences.  In business we often “Lock in” behaviorally, structurally and with our costs to a model – or way of doing business.  We create “sacred cows” that cannot be challenged easily within the organization.  And due to commonality of participants frequently we develop “not invented here” defenses against new ideas, processes, products, technologies and even regulations.  As time passes we become ever more firm (locked in) to defending and extending the business as it was created, rather than addressing how external events require change in order to sustain. 

Kodak Locked-in to film.  Xerox Locked-in to click meters.  Hostess Locked-in to sliced white bread and sugary mass-produced pastries.  Toys-R-Us Locked-in to physical stores.  Radio Shack Locked-in to an outdated product line for electronic hobbyists.  IBM Locked-in to data centers and big computers.  Unwilling to address sacred cows and allowing not invented here to drive decisions these companies were devastated by external market shifts.

The best way to deal with conflict is to dig into how organizations, or parts of the organization, are locked in and address when they locked in, why, and compare that previous environment to today’s.  Then we can identify how alternatives have developed (and can be developed) due to changes in the external environment, which are best dealt with by overcoming the Lock-in and evolving toward a future better aligned with trends.  Rather than argue about “who is right” (conflict) it is better to identify the sources of Lock-in and then attack those processes and assumptions in order to gain agreement for new solutions.

The podcast closes with a look at how Disney has suffered horribly due to its Lock-ins.  When a new CEO redirected the company to new markets with new products during the pandemic he launched a new strategy aligned with market trends.  But the old CEO went to the Board and got him fired, playing on Lock-ins to old business models.  Now Disney is mis-aligned with markets, revenues are stumbling, and the stock has cratered.  An unwillingness of the old CEO and Board to overcome Lock-ins has turned a tremendous strategic shift into a strategy-free disaster.

Thinking points:

• Do you know your organization’s “sacred cows?”
• Can you identify ideas that were dropped because they were “not invented here?”
• Do you have people who see it as their role to say “no” to change in order to preserve historical practices?
• Do you allow people to attack old business practices, products, methods, technologies and assumptions – or are people who attempt to attack Lock-ins shunned, even pushed out?

This podcast explains how a 20+ year of company reviews has demonstrated that for big companies, small companies, public and private revenues provide the road to success.  While few seem to know it, your business has to grow at 10%/yr every year, year after year, to sustain itself.  If you aren’t growing at that rate, even if you’re making good profits, you are eating away at your long-term survival.

And if we are going into an economic stall, or recession, revenue growth is more important than ever. This podcast further explains how research into the Great Recession bore out that those who focused on revenues – and revenue growth – faired much, much better than those who tried to preserve cash and earnings while letting revenues stall.

Thinking Points:

• Have you demonstrated a consistent record of 10%/yr revenue growth?
• Will you sacrifice earnings in order to maintain and grow revenue?
• If the economy falters, do you have plans to grow revenues – even if it costs you earnings?

 With many leaders over 60, a trust issue has developed between younger workers and older leaders.  Many younger workers aren’t willing to follow leaders unquestioningly.  They see serious ethical gaffes by people like Justice Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito and question whether leaders are looking out for the good of the organization, the good of the country – heck the good of anyone else other than themselves.  With that trust broken, leaders of big corporations cannot expect to rule by decree any longer.

 And AI is finding its way into the workplace, no matter how much leaders or workers fear it.  AI is a tool that can help productivity and achieve better results, but not without careful decision making, good data selection and effective tool utilization.  Doing that is best accomplished by bringing together those with the process and decision-making skills of age and the insights and tool application skills of youth.

Thinking points:

• Are you carefully assessing the needs of employees and helping them achieve their goals, not just yours?
• Have your decisions impacted employees and co-workers demonstrating that you can be trusted to think about the good of the group, and not just yourself?
• Have you considered replacing older leaders with younger leaders, then re-assigning older workers to important roles supporting the new leaders?
• Are you finding ways to have younger and older people work together, or does bias keep you from making these kinds of demographically diverse teams' part of the workplace?

Most people think a tipping point happens when over half the market switches to something new. This podcast explains that tipping points happen far, far earlier.  A tipping point occurs when it becomes inevitable that the new solution will displace the old solution.  And in most markets, this happens when just 5% to 9% of the market has made the switch.  Much earlier than most businesspeople think, leading to late attempts to transition – and most of the time very poor results.

Listen to how current sales of EVs, the early moves of city planners and the already “upside down” population age groups all indicate tipping points that are already impacting markets and offering opportunities for early adopters to outpace the competition now.

Thinking points:

• When you see a trend, do you track it early for adoption rate confirmation?
• Do you consider yourself an early adopter and “first mover”?
• Are you incorporating these 3 trends, already cemented in place, into your plans for 2024?
• Are you watching competitors (in-kind and fringe) to see who’s promoting new solutions?

All businesses need good scenario plans accounting for impending events – good and bad.  But too few actually prepare to implement these scenarios, leaving them ineffective.  Too many Maui leaders failed to implement their scenario plans when the time came – just as too few business leaders implement at the early signs of danger, leading to eventual poor outcomes.

Additionally, we too often don’t pay attention to how short-term focus can create very dangerous situations. On Maui overdevelopment led to turning former wetlands into tinder traps, and short term thinking caused native precautions to be ignored making the island a “fire waiting to happen.”  If business leaders don’t pay attention to how trends push things in the wrong direction they won’t be prepared when the “snapback” happens, leaving them “holding the bag” when things go terribly wrong.

Thinking points:

• Do you complete scenario plans for technology, regulation, bad actors that could really hurt your business?
• Do you think through alternative business tactics to implement when markets shift?  Do you prepare to implement alternative tactics?
• Do you look long-term at the impacts of your business strategy and tactics to recognize problems that will develop if you keep doing the same thing?
• Are you keeping your organization agile to move quickly when changes – even disasters – erupt?

This podcast teaches us how to analyze trends and make investments with commitment to the trends.  How to overcome media hype by understanding the trends.  By looking at overall demand, year over year demand, and growth in volume we can see that EV sales are still in hyper growth mode.  Additionally, despite obstacles like higher interest rates and dealer hostility to EVs, manufacturers are making enormous strides growing market share nearly 50%.  And that the behavior of manufacturers, lowering price to increase volume, is a long-term smart move to grow the market, which when coupled with new lower-priced models will create the opportunity for customers to buy new EVs for the same price (or less) than a used ICE vehicle.  Add on that range anxiety is fast disappearing in the rear-view mirror, and the trend to EVs can be seen as clearly as road in front of your windshield.

Thinking points:

• Have you identified the trends upon which you will build your revenue growth?
• Have you identified the data points, and sources, you can follow to evaluate how the trend is performing?
• Do you know customer needs, and concerns, in a way you can apply trends to meet their needs?
• Are you investing in trends to grow, or are you still stuck investing in your old business despite its lack of trend value?

  This podcast was recorded with Manny in Panang Malaysia, where he was getting his eyes and ears full of new ideas.  Attending a semiconductor manufacturing conference he was hearing from leaders and entrepreneurs about how they get things done.  And it doesn’t sound much like business in the USA. For example, Malaysia has used immigration as a positive to grow its economy, create jobs and invigorate business.  The opposite view of immigration in America.

 Inflation is widely misunderstood, and this podcast covers how the G7 countries are struggling with inflation, while much of Asia is not. While the US Federal Reserve ratchets up interest rates in the hopes of slowing economic growth to “tame” inflation, trying to use the wrong tool for the wrong problem.  Meanwhile Malaysia is growing like the proverbial weed without inflation by focusing on growth, not creating a recession.  And it’s clear that the G7 countries all have inflation, which belies the notion that America’s is caused by the money supply.  Listeners will hear a lot about how they can ger more done, and grow faster, if they take time to get outside their daily grind and discover alternative ways of running their business.

Thinking Points:

• When was the last time you traveled internationally to explore new ways of doing business?
• Do your long-term plans include new sales, or sourcing, from far flung regions, or are you planning on more of the same?
• Do you actively seek new problem solving methods, or largely rely on attacking your problems with “tried and true” solutions?
• Are you prepared for threats from far flung locations greatly removed from your current business?

ChatGPT, built on the new Large Language Model (LLM) AI technology, on the other hand, did bring to market a disruptive innovation.  This tech isn’t something more added on in order to make things better, faster or easier for customers.  ChatGPT offers whole new ways to solve problems that will be used by everyone – eventually.  Thus it has its own requirements if it is to succeed, very different from Thread.

This podcast explains disruptive innovations vs sustaining implications, and dives deep into the implications for launch – as well as expectations for adoption.  We discuss the clear guidelines for defining innovations, understanding the requirements being placed on customers, and managing launches to increase the odds of success. 

Thinking Points:

• Are you thinking ahead for clever ways to exploit a competitor’s fumble – like Meta did with Twitter?
• Are you thoughtful about how innovations place demands for change on customers?
• Do you have the resources to help customers navigate the path to using your innovation?
• Are you able to distinguish the different kinds of innovation and know the rules for each kind to succeed?

We know that AI (Artificial Intelligence) is creating a Punctuated Equilibrium in business practices.  Just like the pandemic and the emergence of the internet, AI has application to all business practices. Short term it will help companies innovate to improve the existing business model performance and lower cost.  That’s the current state – today (not tomorrow.) But in the future AI will open new innovations for entirely new Value Delivery Systems which will have new ways of competing and new metrics.  Only those who get involved in AI today will survive the long-term market shift.

RTO (Return to Work) is making a lot of news, as noteworthy CEOs are pulling all stops to force people back into offices.  But the pandemic was a punctuated equilibrium, and business will never return to the “old norms.”  It is a waste of resource to invest in RTO, especially when there are far, far higher returns available if you invest in AI to enhance your business and develop future growth opportunities.

Thinking Points:

• Are you watching companies implement AI and learning applications for your business?
• Are you experimenting with AI to improve your operations?
• Are you altering your HR practices to take advantage of pandemic created new workplace trends?
• Are you exploring how AI could fundamentally alter your business model?

This podcast overviews how Spark Partners scenario, planning even before the pandemic, predicted that crypto-currencies would face a difficult reckoning in the future.  That there was enormous risk, with limited upside, for gambling in tokens controlled by unregulated crypto “banks” like FTX, Binance and Coinbase.  Good scenario planning said “stay back.”  Now FTX is gone and both Binance and Coinbase are under investigation for illegal activity with the leadership of all 3 are facing likely jail time.

We were able to predict the ongoing decline of CNN by observing leaderships’ decisions to pull back investment from growth projects, like CNN+, undertake drastic cost cutting and then try to create success with outdated approaches like morning programming.  The backgrounds of those leaders, and early decisions, created most likely scenarios that things would go very bad at CNN.  And now the CEO has been fired.

Looking forward, the PGA is “merging” with LIV Golf.  The details are unclear.  But we explain how looking at the entities, their leaders and previous actions, as well as trends, give us some keen insight as to the future of professional golf.  As we lay out the future scenario, we make some predictions for significant change.

Thinking points:

• Do you use scenario planning in your business?
• Do you look at the backgrounds of your leaders and competitive leaders then use those to help predict their decisions?
• Do you use trends to identify the decisions which will go well, adding growth, and those likely to fail?
• Do you follow the information to make forecasts, and then use those predictions to make decisions?

We often have a great idea.  But then it doesn’t seem to sell.  This podcast explains why.  We overlook what it is we ask of the customer. Often our new big idea asks a lot – a change in business practice, a change in technology, a change in supply chain, a change in pricing, etc.  We often make that ask without very clearly explaining what the customer will get in return.  We don’t focus enough on the VALUE the new idea gives – we don’t explain how the new idea meets an unmet- or poorly-met need.  And, we don’t explain how trends indicate that the customer will be making these changes eventually, so working with our new idea can help them change faster and get to the VALUE quicker.

Ford wins by making the entire Tesla charging network available to its e-customers.  Thus eliminating range anxiety, and other charging concerns.  Ford can focus on the benefits of its vehicles instead of the infrastructure obstacles.  Tesla wins by moving toward a single standard for charging, which benefits all e-customers, and could be a very profitable business for Tesla.  Tesla, Ford, Motorola, Sprint, AT&T – listen in to how smart businesspeople achieve faster adoption by making their customers’ lives easier, solving their unmet or poorly met needs.

Thinking points:

• Do you struggle to get customers to adopt your innovations?
• Do you know your Value Proposition with customers?
• Do you know your customers’ unmet and poorly met needs?
• Do you know how to leverage trends to get customer adoption and early market share wins?

ChatGPT is basically a word calculator.  If we use calculators, why not use a word calculator instead of generating all those words?  This podcast explains that what started out as neural networks 35 years ago, and machine learning algorithms 20 years ago, is now AI.  It’s a bigger, better tool for looking at very large data sets to help you make a better decision.  And those who make better decisions make more money, sell more stuff, and survive longer in the marketplace.  Ignore AI at your peril, because you could end up like farriers, mule skinners and elevator operators if you don’t.

Thinking points:

• Have you tried ChatGPT? Have you experimented with any AI tools?
• Are you actively reading about people in your industry who have applied AI?
• Are you investigating AI tools for operational enhancement, or better understanding customer needs?
• Do you have future scenarios for your business that include the use of AI tools?

This podcast overviews how most management teams during good times focus far too much energy on improving their single Value Delivery System.  They over-invest, and then aren’t prepared when sales slow.  When times are good they should be clearly defining their Value Proposition, and investing in alternative Value Delivery Systems to promote long-term growth.  Peloton had stationary bikes. The pandemic pulled forward demand, and management got stuck trying to enhance its supply chain and get more product out the door.  Instead they should have raised prices, and invested in other avenues for growth.

Google has long had its Moonshots division, which invested in White Space projects to become the next big thing.  Most were misses, but now AI is showing up to be a big deal for Alphabet and its shareholders.  Amazon went from selling books to selling general merchandise – to selling cloud services.  Even Facebook invested in Instagram and WhatsApp in order to keep growing, which supported the initial investment in the Metaverse.  But too few companies follow this best practice, instead over-investing in existing customers and the existing Value Delivery Systems when times are good, and are unprepared when times falter.

Thinking points:

• Do you know your real customer Value Proposition?
• Are you developing new Value Delivery Systems to expand your sales?
• Do you have a list of new projects ready to go, and a method for managing them, so you can move when you have the money?
• Do you have a resource allocation system that challenges investments in the existing Value Delivery System so you don’t over-invest?

Nationally nearly half of all commercial real estate is empty.  Vacancy rates are sky high.  Same is true for retail real estate.  That means there is a significant need to change zoning laws. And to rethink future city plans.  Further, it means that the $1.5trillion of commercial real estate loans coming due in the next 3 years are at high risk.  Which will put stress on an already hurting banking industry.  Listen to how this will likely play out, and the impacts it will have on all businesses.

Thinking points:

• Have you thought through you needs for offices and space over the next 3 years in a meaningful way?
• Are you preparing for a radically different workplace than we’ve had historically?
• Are you considering the problems, and opportunities, that will be created by changing workplace trends?
• Have you considered how banking stresses will impact your business, and your customers?

Millenials and Gen Z (Zoomers) already make up half the workforce.  By 2025 Zoomers will be 25% on their own.  Despite the outsized voices of Baby Boomers (who mostly are out of the workforce) this means the work world will change dramatically.  And it’s not even hard to predict how.  Just look at demographic surveys and you will not only predict how work will change, but prepare yourself to be a leader and obtain the best talent.

When we published “Thrive to the Future” (make title a hot link to the download) 3 years ago our predictions were based on known demographic trends.  Thus we could accurately predict that the pandemic would accelerate the needs for workforce mobility (AKA work from home,) asynchronous work patterns and tools (aka flexible scheduling and 4 day work weeks,) gig economy workers and artificial intelligence (ChatGPT.)  Those trends did accelerate, and are clearly becoming more prominent. 

This podcast reviews what’s most important to the emerging leader Millenial demographic, and the emerging manager Zoomer demographic.  And it’s very obvious that the assumptions and work rule decisions made by Boomers are already bad, and destined to become horrific.  By listening in you can start implementing work and HR policies that can help you build a strong and committed set of workers, whether they be employees or gig economy players.

Thinking points:

• Do you have your company’s mission clearly stated, with specifics about how you will help society?
• Are you prepared for total pay transparency – and pay equality?
• Do you know how to balance the needs of employees, community, suppliers and customers with those of investors/owners?
• Do you know how to demonstrate your commitment to employees, diversity, ethics and the environment in unchallengable ways?

For 40 years America, and most of the developed world, has moved jobs to China – helping build a strong economy with extensive infrastructure, military and global presence.  But China undertook a draconian birthrate decline which now threatens its ability to grow. Meanwhile India’s birthrate exceeds the sustainability rate, which assures its population dominance for decades to come.  A third of all people on the planet are Chinese or Indian; and this will have a big impact on world events in 2023 and for the next 4 decades.

Rest of World - Simultaneously, despite being considered one of the “Big 3” dominant countries, Russia has fallen well out of the top population countries.  As have all the European countries (France, Germany, Spain, Italy – and even non-European England.)  The countries with high birthrates are largely developing countries (Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria) that cannot support their own populations. And investment in the poor countries is now dominated by China, which needs more people, in a not-so-hidden effort at economic annexation.  This is destabilizing on the status quo, and sure to cause changes in immigration and international trade policy, as well as likely military conflicts.

While developed (and wealthy) countries are struggling with worker shortages, poorer countries are desperate for aid and ability to emigrate people.  The “world order” is shifting.  America can be caught in the middle. Unless business leaders are thinking about how to change their plans to encourage immigration and undertake training.  And how to move work to lower cost locations, including work from home, so people can work asynchronously, be mobile and use more AI tools to successfully manage work.  Are you thinking about how you can manage your supply chains, and business models, to succeed in the new demographics of the 2020’s?

Thinking points:

• Do you know how susceptible your supply chain is to threats created by changing world demographics?
• How active are you in planning directly for training of your workforce?
• Are you ready to employ a lot more immigrants to grow your business?
• Do you have an effective plan for expansion that includes lower cost locations using a more remote workforce?

But product alone is not going to provide real trust.  That takes some level of branding.  You have to demonstrate to customers they can trust you by telling them why they should trust you.  Branding is about extending your promise of meeting needs beyond basic product features so people will remain loyal.  And usually pay a premium because they don’t just get the basics, they get the promise you are doing more to meet their needs.

And that leads to the greatest trust, and customer loyalty.  The companies customers really trust are ones that not only meet current needs, but look forward and use trends to develop new products & solutions that help customers meet poorly-meet or unmet needs.  Like Apple, which maintains a very loyal customer base by providing products that meet customer goals of capability and usability with minimal failure.  Or Tesla which has invested not just in an electric car, but in battery technology and a charging network that helps customers feel more confident (trustworthy) in their products.  GM’s Volt and Ford’s Mach-e don’t have the level of customer trust because GM and Ford have not demonstrated they can meet all their customer’s needs beyond just a usable, and possibly stylish, electric vehicle.  To be trusted GM and Ford have to demonstrate their commitment to the e-car marketplace much better.

SparkPartners is in the trendcasting business because we use large models to understand how trends develop.  We know it’s not just the product, nor its reviews.  It’s about how people use the products, and whether the supplying companies are making the investments that inspire behavior.  We are here to be your trusted source for trend analysis and predicting pathways to greater success.

Thinking Points:

• Do you know your promise to the customer?  Are you sure of delivering on that promise 100% of the time?
• Do you know not only your product promise, but your brand promise to the customer?
• Are you investigating how to use new technologies and business models to help solve customers’ poorly met needs?
• Do you have trusted advisors with whom you can discuss trends, adoption rates and applications that can meet future needs and grow your company?

This podcast explains how the path to $1B is available to everyone. But most of us don’t focus on the right things.  First and foremost, it takes a very strong commitment to growing revenues. And to do that requires understanding and investing in trends. You can’t grow revenues fast, a lot and over a long time unless you are in a powerful, long-term trend.  Success is not about trying to force people to buy more of what you’ve always done, but rather investing in trends so your products and services are what people want to buy.

And you must keep investing in trends. Sam Walton was once on this list, but nobody in his family now makes it. Why not?  They quit investing in trends. They got stuck in their old business, which is actually dying.  Today very few business leaders have a plan based on trends that could yield the growth necessary to reach a business.  They use the excuse that managing what they have takes too much resource, so they have not time for investing in something new.  An excuse guaranteed to keep you from succeeding.  Is that your excuse?

Thinking points:

• Do you understand how your business could better use trends to find new growth opportunities?
• Are you investing in teams to explore new paths to faster, bigger revenue growth?
• Do you know the trends that could jump-start a doubling of your revenue?
• Would you rather fail doing what you’ve always done (and loved) or succeed by doing something new?

Surveying Americans you will discover that the importance of patriotism has fallen 32 percentage points in 25 years.  Importance of religion has fallen 24 percentage points.  Meanwhile, the importance of pay has gone up 23 percentage points in just 8 years.  Do you know how to use these changes in American’s opinions to be more successful?  Listen to hear how you can draft future scenarios, then use these changes to update your scenarios in ways that help you identify better targets and craft better Value Delivery Systems, and better marketing messages, to more clearly connect with customers and let them know you can meet their needs.  Those business leaders who use statistics to understand trends grab more new customers, keep those customers and make more money than leaders who rely on outdated world views and irrelevant marketing tropes.

Thinking points:

• Do you have a robust future scenario plan to give context to current statistics?
• When you hear a statistic about today, do you know how to put it into historical context as well as future context?
• Are you aware of massive customer shifts that affect all businesses, and incorporate those into your decision making?
• Can you clearly identify your customer targets, and their needs, or are you relying on old marketing techniques that are out of date?

This podcast looks at how big trends are affecting all businesses.   In chip production we have to be aware of a possible war with China over Taiwan, leading to the $280B the US government has allocated to build microprocessors in the USA.  Worries over a China partnership with Russia creates a very real threat to the US Dollar as the global currency, and in fact global dollar transactions have fallen from 85% of trade to only 60% of trade since 2010.  Because of these global worries Congress interrogated the CEO of Tik Tok, an entertainment app, and is likely to ban the app in the USA.  If Congress bans Tik Tok, what hardware or software will next be banned? What trade war will this spark?  How will it impact your business?

The big demographic trend has led Russia to kidnap over 16,000 Ukrainian children in an effort to bolster its population.  With the ICC issuing a warrant for Putin and his #2 for these kidnappings as war crimes, similar to the Nazis kidnapping Polish and other children in WWII.  

Thinking points:

• Are you looking at these big trends and evaluating how they will impact your future scenarios?
• Do you have a 5 and 10 year scenario plan?
• Do you keep your scenario plan updated as world events roll forward?
• Do you recognize your dependencies on products and services from outside the USA which could be impacted by global events?
• Are you overcoming your bias to the future looking like the past by challenging yourself to recognize and address your biases?

Balderdash.  This podcast explains why this round of fear is overdone. Why layoffs aren’t as bad as they seem. Why the fed is misguided, but the economy is robust.  Why now is the time to invest in your Value Proposition to help your customers overcome their fear. Now is the time to grow your offerings.  Create loyalty in your customers, employees and suppliers by understanding needs and investing in growth.  If you overcome your fear, in the future you will see this is a great time to invest in growth.

Talking points:

• Are you afraid to invest in growth?  
• Do you clearly know why customers value you?  Do you know your customers’ needs, wants, desires and fears?
• Are you stuck in your Value Delivery System, unwilling to invest in new offerings to meet customer needs?
• Do you realize that unless you’re growing, you are dying?  

This podcast overviews how Silicon Valley Bank set out to fulfill its Value Proposition of “financial safety for business” by building a robust Value Delivery System that included large business depositors, and investing the safest assets – Treasury bonds.  But when the Federal Reserve declared war on inflation, it made clear there was no end to the heights it would take interest rates.  This put Treasury bond asset values at much greater risk.  And it made having a narrow base of very large depositors a much greater liability portfolio risk.  The leaders failed to see the problem coming quickly enough, and the bank failed when they had to sell bonds to cover depositor withdrawals – eating up the equity.  They failed to see how unintended consequences of something outside their control -Federal Funds rates – jeopardized their future.

This podcast goes on to overview how demographics, a topic often covered here, has been a driving influence in Russia’s aggressiveness to overtake neighboring countries.  And China’s aggressiveness to practically enslave their Uyghur population.  Demographics are affecting every country, and every business, as we adjust to fewer workers for growing demand from an aging population.  This has unintended consequences for everyone.  Yet, too few businesses are addressing this in their strategic plans.

Thinking points:

• Have you identified the risks of higher inflation – and higher interest rates – on your business?  How long can you grow if interest rates remain this high?
• Have you identified the risks to your business of sanctions on China, Russia, Iran – and other countries? What are the supply chain risks? Demand risks?
• Do you take time to take a wide look at the world, and trends, to understand how changes could have an unintended consequence on your business?  What about demographics, ESG, mobility, Gig economy, generative AI?

Additionally, we overview how easy it is for leaders to project scenarios based upon the past, and the existing situation, rather than looking at how things can change.  Often leaders overlook rapid changes in customer behavior, as well as rapid innovation overcoming obstacles to change.  We dig into how easy it is to use historical statistics on energy and fossil fuels, for example, to predict limited change – amidst a radical adoption rate for renewables and changing auto fleets.

Thinking points:

• Do you have a scenario that describes impact on your business of AI, mobility, asynchronous work streams (like work from home,) and gig workers?
• Have you developed your scenarios to include the impact of regulations, developing innovations, and local adoption factors?
• Are you pulling data from forecasters for scenario planning, or using historical data?
• Do you pre-ordain your scenario then seek to justify it, or let the trends lead you to scenarios you might not have considered?

We explore how technology and tools make global business easier than ever.  But nationalism in several countries is trying to reverse the clock.  Business people have a role to play in understanding foreign countries, and helping citizens have more opportunities by fighting back nationalism and the risks it creates – such as the war in Ukraine.  Business people should keep trying to use global resources to move their businesses forward.

Thinking Points:

• When was the last time you visited a foreign country and attempted to understand some of their unique business practices?
• Are you ready to import new business ideas, or are you stuck trying to export your American business model?
• While nationalism has led to big government domestic investments, do you see global growth opportunities as well?
• What tools do you have to “get outside your box” and think about new ways to succeed?

Today people use AI nearly every day.  They buy recommended products from Amazon, and have Alexa capable speakers in their homes.  They use Siri or Waze to navigate.  They let “smart boxes” analyze their auto problems and recommend fixes.  Yet, most businesses still think AI is a futuristic technology not applicable to their business.  And that approach is as wrong as thinking the web wouldn’t be part of your business.  In 2020 we wrote “Thrive to the Future” explaining that AI would be one of the 4 biggest trends driving growth into 2030 – and that is proving true in spades!

This podcast explains how Generative AI works, and how it can be applied to any business today.  It explains how you can use your own data and customer experience to build tools that will improve customer satisfaction, increase sales and even manage costs.  It shows you how to focus on problems and solve them with off-the-shelf AI problems, while using AI to solve customer problems that positions your business for much greater growth and profits.

Thinking Points:  

• Do you think AI is futuristic and not part of  your everyday life today?
• Have you thought about ways to apply AI to solving customer problems and improving your business?
• Are you familiar with AI tools available from companies like Microsoft, Google and Apple you can apply today?
• Are you building plans to use data and customer behavior to change your business model and create avenues for faster, profitable growth?

Through this podcast we explain how to build a high quality scenario.  For example, an aging population might lead you to think that we have an impending crisis in social security and medicare.  But, if you look at other factors like the growing economy, improving health care productivity and cost controls from policy changes it becomes clearer that these social safety nets are nowhere near as problematic as politicians would make it seem.  If you look at the trends toward work from home (WFH) and a 4 day workweek those trends could lead you to believe there won’t be enough people to care for the elderly.  But if we look at how younger people are very effectively adopting highly productive, pragmatic tools into their lives we can see how assisted with AI this younger, practical generation can get more done than we ever imagined.  You could start to imagine how we can grow faster because our business has far less turnover and more productive employees when embracing the convenience of WFH and shorter work weeks.  And, we can more quickly determine how investments in productivity today, including AI, will help us succeed while likely being very lucrative.

Thinking points:

• Do you have 1 to 3 scenarios for the years 2030 and 2040 that help you make resource allocation decisions?
• Are you investing in productivity tools to replace work done by people today?
• Are you looking for the weaknesses in your current business model that will derail you in a future scenario?
• Are you already adapting your model to WFH, shorter work weeks, greater mobility, using Gig workers, and planning on AI to make decisions?

The EV has kicked off this punctuated equilibrium.  EVs are now 10% of all new cars sold in the USA, and share is growing.  Investment in EV plants have gone from $0 in 2018 to $75B in 2022.  Fifteen new battery plants, investing $40B, were announced in 2022 alone – each able to make up to enough batteries for 20K EVs per year.  While there are fire risks in batteries, they are improving every year and we will see a migration from LFP (lithium ion) batteries to cheaper and safer NMC (nickel, manganese, cobalt) batteries over time.  And this month Tesla made an agreement to make its network available to ALL EV owners by end of 2024 – 3,500 fast chargers and 7,500 charges in all.  Investment in the old has now stalled, and investment in the new is accelerating – driving the punctuated equilibrium.

This podcast explains that the change is here, and the future won’t look like the past.  It took decades to build out the land-line phone system with “long distance” and other high charges.  It was replaced with mobile telephony and near free communications in about a decade. It took decades to build out the postal system and overnight letter carriers, only to have email replace a vast quantity of those communications with its free technology in a few years.  Listen now to understand how this will impact your life and business in 2023 and beyond.

Thinking points:

• Are you ready for all yard appliances to be electric as small 2 and 4 cycle engines are outlawed?
• Are you prepared to use your vehicle as a back-up power source for your home and/or business?
• How will you behave differently if electricity is near-free?
• Are you investing in new technologies based on electrification, or are you stuck investing in technologies headed for obsolescence?

This podcast answers that question by using the 4 Trends we discussed in “Thrive to the Future.”  Mobility, Gig work, Asynchronous work and Artificial Intelligence.  Those 4 major trends are just as powerful in 2023 as they were in 2020.  And they will drive successful employers.  People are now aware they can be as productive, or even more productive, when they are mobile and working asynchronously.  This portends a remote workforce, or a hybrid model.  Forcing people back into an office every day often hurts productivity more than it helps, and will not be acceptable to the vast majority of workers.

Additionally, this podcast overviews how now is the time to often rethink what work you hire to complete, and what work you can gig out.  The labor participation rate fell during the recession, and is not going back up.  Demographics will be a huge problem for at least 2 decades, and many people learned they can be productive and personally happier working for themselves.  Or with a partner.  Independent from a traditional employer.  Never has there been a better time to think about what intellectual capital you really need in your company, and what work you can gig out because it is not critical to learning for growth.  And it is now crucial leaders analyze what work we can replace with AI tools rather than using a person.  

The podcast concludes with a quick review of hiring practices at the FAANG+ companies, including layoffs, and earnings.  Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google and Microsoft have been cutting headcount, but in all of them hiring accelerated at an unsustainable rate.  The real key to understanding the future of these companies is not looking at earnings, but by analyzing revenues – and that lens shows all of these of them are doing OK – except one.  Listen to hear which one is at greatest risk.

Thinking points:

• Have you figured out how to maximize productivity with remote workers?
• Have you analyzed the best use of gig workers to manage costs and improve productivity?
• Are experimenting with new business models that let you maximize flexibility to hire the best workers and keep them happy?
• Are your hiring plans positioning you for maximum growth?

Too many of us wait and react to trends, rather than building on them to grow.  Policies are already pushing the US further into manufacturing, after years of outsourcing.  And policies will continue that direction, including immigration. Efforts to stop trends, like Wyoming attempting to ban EV sales, waste time and resources, because trends always win out.  Listen to the changes you need to start making today due to reliably predictable demographic trends in China, Japan, France, Germany and the USA.

Thinking Points:

• Have you thought about how aging populations in countries like Japan, China, Germany, UK, France, Italy and USA will impact your business?
• Have you thought about the impact of India as the world leader in population growth is gaining influence, jobs and economic power that will affect you?
• Do you wish government entities would try to stop trends as a way to keep you from changing?
• Are you ready for prolonged worker shortages, even as layoffs and trends cause changes in skills requirements?

Amidst the bemoaning of this radical tech capability, this podcast overviews why AI is a good thing.  And why it is just emerging, and will be widely adopted. While there are reasons to worry about its use, its value is very high for those who figure out how to apply it.  Our businesses exist to give value to customers.  But our Value Delivery Systems are always subject to obsolescence by market shifts – including big steps in technical capability.  

Robots allow for greater productivity because they operate quickly and accurately at low cost replacing manual labor.  Machine Learning allows software to replace rows of white collar workers bored to tears by data entry jobs and paper shuffling.  And now AI allows us to teach computers how to do customer service and many other tasks, so that we can use our talents to figure out what customers want and how to deliver it to them effectively and economically.  Just like all other technology, AI can radically improve you Value Delivery System, so it’s time NOW to start figuring out how to apply it.

Thinking points:

• Have you tested any AI platforms to learn how they work?
• Have you considered any applications of AI to improve your Value Delivery System?
• Have you evaluated whether any upstart competitors are adopting AI to give customers more value at lower cost?
• Are you ready to use AI to potentially radically alter, and improve, your Value Delivery System?

This podcast explores how companies like Wells Fargo focused on their Value Delivery System, pushing products and processes onto customers without understanding their real needs, creating horribly regulatory problems and required restructurings.  This podcast also delves into why customer would spend more on luxury items, including Rolls Royce cars, when a recession is imminent.  Understanding the customer is far more complicated than assumptions about “better, faster, cheaper” and the time-outdated economics based “economic man theory,” so that we can understand why customer have unmet needs that we miss when we’re too focused on implementing our Value Delivery System.  

In the end, if you don’t segment your customers by their needs you will offend some, and lose some, as this podcast explains how Disney and CEO Chapek failed to recognize the segmentation of families.  The result was confusion among employees and customers as to what “Mickey Mouse” stood for – even when everyone wanted to love Disney.  The result was Chapek’s downfall because he could not address changing needs as definitions of “family” changed amidst rapid changing sociological trends.

Thinking points:

• How much time do you spend figuring out your customers’ needs?
• Do you know the stresses trends are placing on your customers’ business, and how you might help them?
• Do you clearly segment customers based upon their NEEDS?
• Do you work so solve customers’ unmet needs – or just keep trying to sell them more stuff?

This podcast explores the many myths about fundraising, and the facts around why every business needs to be skillful at raising money.  Because raising money is a skill just like selling, or operations.  And leaders that can raise money create a new set of competitive tools usable for implementing their strategy.  Raising money lets you test your Value Proposition and Value Delivery System with someone ready to “put skin in the game.”  It lets you build a new source of competitive capabilities to fight competitors.  And it makes sure you have a long-term viable business model.  There is no glory in “going it alone” on “organic funding.”  There is success from using financing as a competitive tool, just like having a better product or distribution are competitive tools.

Thinking Points:

• You dedicate resources to sales and operations.  Do you dedicate resources to fundraising?
• If somebody wanted to give you money, do you have a company overview and offering you can give them?
• If somebody gave you a big chunk of money, do you know how you’d use it to grow your business?
• Do you know who is a better financed competitor that could hurt your business just because they have the resources to do so?
• Do you have a plan for winning against a better financed competitor?  Do you have a plan for winning as the best financed competitor?

Talking points:

• Have you really absorbed the impact of all the changes in 2022 and started to identify a more powerful future strategy?

• Do you have a good set of scenarios for 2025 and 2030 to guide your strategic planning?

• Are you making decisions based on your scenarios and trends, or are you relying on headlines to drive big decisions?

• Do you have a strong set of advisors helping you plan, or are you surrounded by those who share your biases to reinforce your gut instincts?

Too often when planning we look at headlines, which are the shortest of short-term indicators.  Especially in the modern world where headlines are hyped aggressively seeking eyeballs.  News is no longer daily – like the old newspapers – but rather minute by minute with social media competing with traditional media for readers & viewers in order to sell ads.  This has led to hyped information, presenting the short-term seem unique and world changing – even when it is not.  This podcast explains how to look past the hype to forecast accurately, and position your business (and life) to grow even if inflation and interest rates are higher than the last decade.

Thinking points:

• Do you use long data series when identifying trends, or are you biased by short-term datapoints?
• Can you recognize when a punctuated equilibrium changes the data series permanently, or not?
• Do you plan based upon long-term trends like economic growth and demographics, or short-term trends like technology and fads?
• Are you able to invest in trends even when those around you are scared to commit?

Simultaneously, the long fad of crypto is under attack due to the failure of FTX, incarceration of Sam Bankman-Fried, and trading halts at exchanges like Binance.  This podcast overviews how the same sort of analysis that spots Gaming as an important trend shows with clarity that crypto – despite the media hype – is a fad.  And a fad quickly losing interest.

Thinking points:

• Are you using trends to guide your investments, or merely relying on history?
• Are you able to tell the difference between trends and fads?
• Did you let hype influence you to invest in crypto?  Or to think soccer is a fast growing sport?
• Are you using high growth in sectors like gaming make an influence or where you invest in growth?

This podcast uses a trio of scenario exercises to point out how we lock into our Value Delivery System, and forget to address our Value Proposition.  We don’t ask folks what they want, instead we try to sell them what we have. We don’t like trying to sell new solutions, because that requires a lot more effort to learn than just doing more of the same old thing.  Universally we over-invest in improving what we know and have to sell, and underinvest in exploring what we don’t know and developing new solutions that meet emerging needs.  

Aging demographics and growing environmental awareness is creating new needs every day.  But are you thinking about those new needs?  Are you trying to develop new applications for the metaverse – or are you laughing at the declining value of Meta and CEO Zuckerberg?  Are you thinking about how to sell more to younger people and people in new markets, or are you trying to milk your existing business and declining customer base for all it’s worth?  This podcast will help you rethink your business problems to be more successful

Thinking points:

• How much time every week do you think about launching entirely new products based on new technologies?
• Do you ask customers what is replacing what you currently sell?
• Do you “over shoot” the requirements by making products better than customers really need?
• Do you constantly ask customers what they need, even more than asking them how well your Value Delivery System is working?  

This podcast overviews how critical sales growth is to successful strategy, rather than looking at earnings.  Simultaneously, it warns leaders that there is no harder time to be a business leader than when you have to pivot.  Everybody loves doing more of the same thing better, faster, cheaper.  Most folks don’t want to have to do something new – especially entirely new.  In the current world we can see how Disney’s CEO was fired for implementing a much needed pivot, and how Ford’s CEO is wholly unloved for committing Ford to an all electric future.  Their pivots have never been more necessary – and yet for undertaking them they are seen as evil.  And the lesson is not effectively talking to all constituents about the importance of revenues over earnings.  Listen to this podcast to understand what you should do to win hearts and minds as well as the marketplace battle during a pivot.

Thinking points:

• Do you have a clear understanding of your Value Delivery System in such a way you can change it significantly to deliver your Value Proposition as markets shift?
• Do you treat sales difficulties as a greater sign of business problems than earnings difficulties?
• Do you hide sales problems by focusing on “managing earnings”?
• Are you willing to commit to a pivot even when lots of people tell you not to?

Sometimes we have to pivot our Value Delivery System, and CEO Chapek has been doing that since appointed as Disney CEO when the pandemic hit.  This podcast overviews how he failed to describe his pivot to investors and the media, and how he failed to alert constituents to the importance of ongoing revenue growth to win the war, while waiting on earnings until that makes more sense.  Because he failed to describe his strategy effectively, even as he was winning the battle to unseat Netflix as largest streamer, he was unceremoniously fired and replaced by previous CEO Bob Iger.  It’s a story about how even when you pivot toward trends, if you don’t tell your story clearly and often your pivot can be truncated.

And lastly this podcast revisits Twitter’s lack of a Value Proposition, leaving Elon Must with a dramatically downsized company that doesn’t have a direction.  Twitter is a media company that must attract users every day, every hour – and that requires a well designed Value Proposition – which still appears lacking at Twitter.

Thinking points:

• Do you know the difference between trends and fads – and are you investing in the former to grow?

• Do you know your Value Proposition, and the difference between your Value Proposition and your Value Delivery System?

• Can you tie your business to growing trends?  Do you have a strong story about how your using trends to grow?

• Are you able to clearly state your Value Proposition so that customers, employees, suppliers, communities and investors can understand?

Last podcast we discussed how assumptions lead to biases which can lead to bad decision making.  We often don’t know what we don’t know, so we plunder forward hoping what used to work will continue to work.  But the world changes, and often we fail to change because nobody pressures us to change.

The US Supreme Court is again looking at whether race and other factors should be used in Ivy League admissions – or should entrance be a pure meritocracy.  This podcast looks into the fact that the admissions process is already highly biased, allowing people in the door through athletics, legacy alumni relationships, dean list preferences and being the children of professors.  Without even looking at applications, it is clear that admissions are biased by past decisions, limiting diversity.

As we look to lead our companies, who do we have challenging our assumptions and biases?  Who can discuss openly with leadership how markets and customers have changed, threatening old approaches and opening doors for new competition?  If you don’t have diversity in employment, and on your leadership team, you won’t have these alternative viewpoints.  This podcast explains why you do need some sort of “affirmative action” for your decision-making processes.  And if it doesn’t fit to have these people in your company, you can hire them as gig workers or consultants to give you the alternative point of view. 

Thinking points:

• How diverse is your leadership team?
• Who has the power to challenge the leaders when making decisions?
• Who from outside can challenge your internal “group thinking?”
• Where do you go to seek out challenges to your assumptions and biases?

In 2023 Meta (Facebook’s owner) stock has dropped from $350 to $90.  That’s a market value loss of 75% in just a few months. INCREDIBLE! Are things really that bad?  Meanwhile, last week (between 10/25 and 10/28 of 2023) Apple, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta lost $420B of value in just 3 days!  It sounds like everything related to tech, or growth has gone bad.

Adam Hartung published “Facebook, The Making of a Great Company” on Amazon.com 9/2018. He has long used Meta as an example of good strategy – including a podcast just 6 months ago. But now, using the Spark Partners analysis, in this podcast he explains what went wrong. We explain how a failure to focus on revenues has caused Meta to (amazingly rapidly) lose its market position and its investors.  Due to a self-inflicted Growth Stall the company’s Value Delivery System has been mismanaged while too many people were lured into wasting time on what should be a White Space project for the Metaverse.  Thus leaving customers, and investors, angry.  This podcast ties the analysis to the results, explaining what it means for your company too.

Further, this podcast updates the analysis for Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Netflix – explaining why three of these companies are the babies being thrown out with the bathwater while one of them is in the position of either turning itself around and increasing its value, or following Meta into the world of mismanaged.  Listen to the podcast to learn which one is most at risk, and understand  how you can keep your company strong.

Thinking points:

•  Do you have a relentless focus on revenue growth (and do you know why you must have that relentless focus)?
• Do you keep your Value Delivery System focused on tactics and goals while making sure your growth projects are managed for the quick road to revenues?
• Do you know what a Growth Stall is, why it is a doom predictor, and how to avoid one?
• Are you aware that revenue analysis is more powerful for predicting success than anything related to earnings or cash flow?

This podcast overviews how “conventional wisdom” and “gut instinct” are the villains of our business story.  We feel comfortable with them, but they are often wrong. Especially in our modern world where innovations and change happens so fast that the conventional is most often wrong, and our guts are out of synch with what customers want. Thus we have to constantly work to move beyond our old assumptions to update them and in order to make better decisions.

Listen as we explore the assumptions that drove outsourcing and the resultant growth of China, and how those assumptions are now wildly out of date with significant repercussions for all businesses – regardless industry or size.  Listen to how assumptions about the workforce are now wildly out of date, with deep implications for all companies.  Listen to how we must challenge our assumptions about our business models, our workforce and even how we educate and train people if we want any chance of success.

Thinking points:

• Do you know the major assumptions underlying your business model?
• Do you know the implications on your business of big global changes, like currently happening in China?
• Are you open to developing new business models based on entirely new economics driven by external change?
• What are you going to do when you simply can’t hire ANYONE to do that old job?

Only, that is a path to ruin. Because the world is constantly changing. You have to know your customers, and know WHY they value  you.  It’s not enough to focus on HOW you deliver products or services, you have to know WHY people want them. You have to know what pain you relieve, what good you provide, so you can keep delivering that value over time.  Your delivery system will become obsolete, but you can be long-lived if you know your value and keep updating- even replacing your value delivery system.

Opportunities develop by better understanding customer needs, and finding new and better ways to meet those needs.  The path of constantly improving what you do without a really keen grasp on customer needs, wants and desires will eventually lead to obsolescence.

Thinking points:

• Do you know why customers buy from you?  Do you know your customer value proposition?
• Do you challenge the value of your delivery system, and whether it could be possible to deliver value in whole different ways?
• Are you prepared to radically change your value delivery system in order to keep giving customers value?
• Do you hire people that look outside your company for new opportunities, or do you hire people primarily to improve what you already have?

This podcast describes very clearly what a trend is, and how to distinguish from a fad.  It also makes clear how you would track a trend so you can use it in your strategic planning. Using examples from steel manufacturing to auto electrification and others this podcast reveals how you can observe behaviors, quantify them, and then measure them to build good scenarios that guide strategic planning and resource allocation.

Thinking points:

• Do you know the difference between a trend and a fad?
• Do you embed trends into your strategic planning?
• Do you measure the speed with which trends affect your customers’ behaviors?
• Do you know the difference between measuring trend effects and sales?

This podcast explains when you don’t study trends and plan for them you end up like millions of Floridians now without power, and homes.  It was entirely predictable that Florida was going to be hit with more hurricanes, and they would be larger and more powerful. The climatologists have been telling us that for 2 decades.  But it was easier to pretend this wasn’t really a trend than to deal with it.  So Florida didn’t deal with it. And the consequences are horrendous.

Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005 – 17 years ago – and New Orleans still hasn’t recovered.  Sandy hit New Jersey in 2012, and not only has the shore not fully recovered but efforts to harden infrastructure for the next hit have been stymied.  Harvey hit Houston in 2017, killing over 60 and $125B in damages.  Do you see a trend?  Ian is just another hurricane in what is a different world, due to climate change.  If you ignore it, you are taking the risks that Floridians took.  They didn’t tax themselves to harden their infrastructure, or even their developments, to prepare for the inevitable.  And it will happen again.  And again.

You MUST avoid falling into denier status.  You MUST look at trends. And you MUST prepare.  From supply chain interruptions to the great recession to quiet quitters to inflation and higher interest rates – these trends are like climate change and demographics.  You can understand them and prepare for them, or you can end up in the eye of the hurricane.

Thinking points:

• Do you evaluate where you live for threats?  Are you stuck in a spot, and always rebuilding, or moving to a better location?
• Do you consider how a trend can lead to eliminating your entire business (like Ian eliminated so many homes)?
• If an ounce of investment is worth a pound of cure, where are you investing  your ounces?
• Do you know the trigger events that will cause a punctuated equilibrium and threaten the existence of  your business – or home – or family?

Wow, with so many punctuated equilibriums happening so fast many, many companies quit doing strategic planning at all.  Leaders became reactive, wanting forecasts only weeks/months in advance, and often not caring as they were immersed in daily responses to current events.  Many felt like they couldn’t do strategic planning, when in fact Adam had been presenting all along the absolute need for MORE strategic planning in a dynamic marketplace.  Planning abandonment was becoming the norm.

This podcast overviews not only the need for strategic planning today, but overviews how current events can be used to understand trends and make good strategic decisions.  To succeed in 2025 and beyond we can understand the Fed, inflation, interest rates and their impact on a strong dollar – which has enormous global impacts on inflation, prices and economies outside the USA.  We can understand immigration, and how demographics are very reliable for predicting future needs.  Bring these together into a plan, with commitment to testing, using White Space, and you can build a plan leading to more growth and greater success – even in a highly dynamic world.

Thinking points:

• Have you abandoned long-term planning as you have reacted to current events?
• Do you have insight to how current events will affect your business in 2025 and beyond?
• Are you investing for a different world in 2025 than existed in 2020?
• If you weren’t prepared for these punctuated equilibriums, are you preparing for future ones?

Simultaneously, the world’s banking king – U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell – seems intent on creating a global recession.  He won’t say that, but this podcast explores why the actions of the Fed are out of step with what’s happening in the economy, and unlikely to slow inflation without creating economic calamity.  So listeners need to include in their scenarios a global recession as a very real possibility.  But simultaneously, unemployment is at the lowest level ever.  This economy is nothing like the 1970s inflation.  What’s needed now is greater investment in plant and equipment to drive higher levels of productivity – not a “jobs program.”  Recent legislative acts have improved fiscal policy for investment, but the tax code is still far out of step.  But with an open eye to recessionary possibilities, this podcast explains while it still appears to be the right time to invest in productivity to grow output for unmet market demands.

Thought points:

• Did you anticipate the outpouring of support for Queen Elizabeth II?  If not, what other customer needs might you not fully understand?
• Are you aware of when you “miss a trend?”  And do you then turn your attention to identifying that trend and the needs supporting it?
• Are you planning for higher interest rates?  Are you prepared for a global recession?
• Do you understand weaknesses in your supply chain and production, and are you making investments to solve those weaknesses?

Meanwhile, as demographics keep making hiring nearly impossible, robotics is growing hand over fist.  If a job doesn’t require a decision, then it should be robotized.  Build on this trend, because labor is hard to find (and expensive) for the next 20 years. Robots never get sick, and don’t demand raises.  If a job is based on binary decisions, then it will be replaced by machine learning – better known as artificial intelligence – or AI.  AI will always outperform humans on binary decision paths because they never make mistakes.  Any task that doesn’t require looking at external data sources and adapting will go the way of robots and AI. Are you prepared for this change?  Are you creating robot and AI solutions that make your customers’ businesses (or lives) better?

Apple just released new products for iPhone, Air Pods and Apple Watch.  We overview how these enhancements all build on mobility and AI trends to help customers be more productive.  While competition markets features and functionality, Apple promotes enhanced productivity.  That’s why the iPhone business alone is bigger than all of Microsoft.  We describe how technical improvements that may seem obtuse are actually mobility and AI driven big productivity enhancers that you can use in your workplace, and use to enhance your customers’ productivity as well.

Thinking points:

• Are you aware of trends that indicate your business might not survive?  They are out there, so you either plan for them or you’re ignoring them.
• Are you looking for ways to add robots to your customers’ work?  Ways to use AI to help customers’ make better decisions?
• Are you looking for ways to build on products from companies like Apple that incorporate mobility and AI to make your solutions better for your customers?

Success requires we all do scenario planning for the future.  This podcast tells us how to move beyond hearing about headlines, to applying those trends to our decisions about our future.  It is darn near impossible to make good decisions if you don’t have a future scenario plan already, into which you can incorporate predictions for rising ocean levels, water shortages, flooding rains, extraordinary heat, etc.  

This podcast also explains why you can’t grow your business if you don’t think about how trends will impact your daily operations.  For example, the last 20 years has seen a complete change in media. No longer can we tell our business story via newspaper, radio or TV.  Nor can we hope to educate ourselves using those tools.  To be abreast of news we have to hunt for reliable sources. And to tell our story we have to be active communicator using all the direct tools at our disposal.  We can’t grow if we can’t use media trends to communicate with customers, suppliers and our communities.

Thinking points:

• Do you have even 1 well developed scenario plan for 2030?

• Do you have a process for incorporating trends into your decision-making process?

• Are you using trends to identify potentially devastating impacts to  your business?

• Do you actively think about how you can use trends to accelerate your success – say by moving?

This #podcast interviews Dr. Rom Gayoso, who abandoned his career as an economist to launch a new media company.  Rom tells us his journey identifying the opportunity for content in the streaming world, and building a Value Delivery System that could meet the needs of customers who want to read, view or listen.  His entrepreneurial challenges have been great, but he has found ways to push forward – listening to customers discuss their unmet needs and finding new solutions.  He begs the question, if an academic economist can launch a media company based on trends – what’s stopping the rest of us from moving forward?

Thinking Points:

• Do you ever consider entirely different marketplaces where change and opportunity are great, but you have no background?
• Do you accept that trends are creating huge opportunities in old industries?
• Do you let fear of the unknown stop you from pursuing opportunities?
• Do you let funding fears stop you from pursuing opportunities?
• Is your strategy to Thrive in the Future, or Survive Extending the Past? 

Everything from solar panels to charging stations, to components for sustainable electricity generation, storage and more applications is getting money. Opportunities are exploding for better packaging, recycling & reuse, waste clean-up, and emission management.  Fleet management systems for electric cars, trucks, buses are needed.  Clean manufacturing is needed for electric tools, bicycles, lawn equipment and the motors, sensors, and parts used in all of them.  Better agricultural process management, including better water management and production of less water-intensive foods, along with indoor farming and vertical farming are all opportunities that will be funded and implemented. 

The opportunities are there. Money for subsidies of all kinds are there.  What’s stopping you?

Thinking points:

• Have you assessed how electrification will affect your customers’ business?  Your business?
• Have you assessed how environmental awareness is affecting your customers’ view of your business?
• Have you sought opportunities to be more environmentally friendly?  Are you looking for opportunities with your customers?
• Where can you apply environmentally better processes to your business?
• Where can you offer environmentally better products/solutions to your customers?

This #podcast explains why your biggest value may well be not in your product or solution, but rather in how you implement that solution to help your customers meet needs.  Is it the product depth Amazon has that attracts customers, or the site’s ability to help you know what you want?  Having a good solution is just the first step to success in today’s business world, because how you solve other needs while implementing that solution will determine how fast you grow.  And if you’re good enough at implementation you can have an entirely new opportunity to grow, like Amazon has with AWS.

Thinking points:

• Do you put the use of technology really high on your priority list of tactical investments?

• Do you evaluate how you can be an early adopter of new technologies to meet customer needs?

• Do you hunt for unmet customer needs, or focus on how to run your business better, faster, cheaper?

• Do you have people assigned to finding ways to apply new technologies, or create new technologies, to help you meet user needs and grow?

This podcast reviews previous interviews with entrepreneurs to understand how they needed some help with their Value Propositions and Value Delivery Systems.  We review what an insulin supplier, a mushroom grower and a beer distiller were facing as growth obstacles, and how Spark Partners (with our outside eyes) was able to identify recommendations to help them accelerate growth.  And we review their outcomes.

This podcast frequently talks about companies in the media.  The focus is not about investing, but rather how to reframe what’s happening to understand decisions made – and being contemplated – to demonstrate how better decisions can be made using the Spark Partners approach to Overcoming Lock-in and studying external data to Build a Growth Strategy.  These big company cases can be applied to small and mid-size companies in order to help them grow as well - as these cases demonstrate.

Thinking points:

• Wouldn’t it be valuable to have someone outside your world give insight to what you might be missing in your decision-making?

• Don’t you need help to “Get Outside the Box, Then Think”?

• If someone can help you tweek your Value Proposition or Value Delivery System to dramatically improve your growth, isn’t that worth a small investment of your time?

• When you are on the horns of a dilemma, and much is at stake, isn’t it important to involve someone who doesn’t have an emotional or financial connection to the analysis?

(1) focusing on an underserved market [Arizona] 

(2) building on the trend for locally sourced “craft” products 

(3) developing a value proposition that was focused on that underserved market

then building a building a sustainable Value Delivery System  by

(4) implementing a crop that was very high margin 

(5) identifying a location where the climate [including rainfall and water access] was good 

(6) and developing a distribution model that maximized margins 

Mark built a very competitive, growing, high margin, sustainable business amidst all the better financed, larger competition.

Thinking points:

• Where do you see underserved markets?

• Can you identify a trend that is driving that market?

• Do you see a Value Proposition meeting customer needs?

• Are you willing to do the hard work of creating a Value Delivery System that fulfills you Value Proposition for your underserved customers?

This podcast explains how we as individuals let something as simple as habit get in the way of solving crucial problems.  How we misunderstand risk, downplaying crisis after crisis.  And how we let our Lock-In to existing behaviors, and business practices, turn us into deniers of problems, and organizations that seem wholly unable to deal with an existential need to change.  Just like climate change (and even how climate change affects our business) we let our Lock-in to historical behaviors, organizational decision-making practices, bad strategy practices and use of “experts” keep us from doing what needs to be done.  And it offers a path to breaking the chains of Lock-in so you can move forward and grow in new ways.

Thinking points:

• How much does your sales process reward “farming” existing customers versus seeking out new customers?

• How quickly do you adopt ideas from outside your organization? Or are you stalled by “not invented here”?

• Do you accelerate action toward new business practices, or do you strive for consensus before taking action?

• Is your strategic planning based on future scenarios, or existing products and existing customer needs?

Twitter started with a powerful Value Proposition about building communities. But over time leadership got so involved managing the platform – the Value Delivery System – that they lost track of the Value Proposition.  Twitter was allowed to morph over time, letting VDS focus turn it into a platform for celebrities – who by and large don’t need Twitter (at least not as much as Twitter needs them.)  A company with a Value Delivery System but no clear Value Proposition.  Thus Twitter has fallen far behind Facebook, Instagram, Linked-in and Tik-Tok.  And there is no clarity as to how anyone would increase company value.

Thinking points:

• Do you know your Value Proposition?  Or are you too busy managing your Value Delivery System?

• Do you have plans to keep adding Value so you attract more customers and revenue?

• Are you the most relevant competitor in your marketplace?  If not, who is?  Why aren’t you?

This podcast explains how trends are leading companies to seek out growth without a sustainable business model. Like the airlines – which can keep planes in the air but can’t be reliably on-time, and can’t make money.  Robotics and automated processes are good, until they kill customer satisfaction and destroy sustainability.  It is good to grow, but success requires you grow toward a future scenario which is sustainable.  Listen in to understand how you can interpret your customers and headlines to invest in sustainable growth.

Thinking points:

• Are you scenario models up to date?

• If you were given a large sum of money to grow your business, do you know where you would invest it?

• Are you optimizing processes to the point where you create customer dissatisfaction and threaten your sustainability?

This podcast walks through how recent Federal Reserve actions are changing our forecasts to prepare for a likely recession.  Unanticipated events always happen, and we discuss how to integrate those events into our scenarios.  And it dives into the extremely important decisions business leaders must make now and in the immediate future to not only survive the likely recession, but possibly thrive.  It is wrong to abandon a growth strategy in a recession, and this podcast explains how to use a growth strategy for maximum success in 2022 and 2023.

Thinking points:

• Do you have well developed scenario plans to guide your decisions?
• Are you updating your scenarios every week or 2 using current events?
• Do you have plans today for how to behave if we’re in a recession?
• Do you understand how winners behave in a recession to thrive?

Tesla pioneered the EV market, and its leader Elon Musk has become legendary.  But recently he has been way off trend, and tarnished his reputation, by forcing employees back into the office, and diverting his attention to acquiring Twitter.  Yet, in the end nobody cares about this much because Tesla still  has the power of its EV business, plus Solar City, the Powerwall business, Space X and The Boring Company.  High growth overcomes a multitude of sins, including bad acquisitions and loud mouth ego-maniacal CEOs.

Now Ford has made a big commitment to EVs.  And its process was textbook Spark Partners.  This podcast reveals how Ford first de-invested in its low growth, low margin traditional sedan business, much to the chagrin of analysts.  Then it used the money which would have been invested at low returns to create Ford EV.  Now there are 2 companies in Ford, its Ford EV “White Space” business which invested in Rivian and launched the Lightning pick-up – and Ford Blue which is the iconic internal combustion engine Ford F-150 et.al.  This has allowed Ford to invest in “the next big thing,” keeping the Defend & Extend managers at bay, and allowing the company to let the marketplace figure out where to best place its resources.  This podcast describes this approach in detail, offering insights for leaders of small and mid-size businesses

Take-Away

• Growth is a wonderful thing.  When you grow fast enough, you can make mistakes and still overcome them (usually easily)

• Get out of lock-in to your old business by setting up white space where you fund new projects, even competing with your old business, to obtain faster growth

This podcast explains how you can use scenario planning every week to understand the impact of trends – in order to prepare for market shifts.  Prepare so you can avoid negatives, and prepare to take advantage of new opportunities.  This podcast explains how you can use growth in new business licenses to help you prepare for gig economy solutions to the great resignation and the lack of new workers from our skewed demographics.   It explains how a build up in the European Union military will exacerbate labor shortages, while creating opportunities in robotics, automation and AI – including new opportunities to support the build-up.  And this podcast even goes so far as to explain how you can incorporate events like mass shootings into your planning, recognizing how the environment will change due to these social changes impacting tourism, retail trade and immigration.

Take-away – You need robust scenarios.  And you need to keep them updated.  That’s the only way you can control your future, instead of letting your past control your outcomes.  This podcast tells you how by using very current events to update scenarios in real time.

This podcast explains why events unrelated to company performance are driving down growth company valuations. From demographics (aging people who want to lock-in gains,) to untaxed investment companies focused on quarterly performance, to fears of inflation, recession and never-ending wars there look to be ample reasons why investors sell.  

But the long-term trends have not changed.  Listen and be reminded that you still want to be mobile, connected to friends and co-workers, entertained at your leisure, working and shopping from home – all trends that will drive growing demand for the growth companies we have admired and held up as role models.  You should avoid knee-jerk reactions to higher commodity prices and realize that long-term the value always goes to those who deliver on trends.  That’s why Spark Partners is still betting on the growth companies – from Apple to Amazon, Alphabet to Meta and Netflix – while eschewing off-trend current darlings like Exxon and ADM

This podcast explains why this way of thinking probably isn't so, and why Netflix is most likely very undervalued due to the recent sell-off. While net new subscribers is slowing, cancellations are down and revenues per subscriber are up - leading to double digit revenue (and profit) growth.  And although competitors are now obvious, they've done more to expand the market for purchased entertainment than take customers away from Netflix.

And the company that pivoted from DVDs to streaming, then from generic content to being the #1 content creator, has barely begun its efforts in gaming. Which could be bigger than static content has been.  If you're curious about the future of entertainment, and Netflix future performance, don't miss this podcast.

Thinking points:

• Do you overly rely on old market metrics, and pay too little attention to revenue creation?
• Are you prepared to keep revenues growing, even as competitors enter your marketplace?
• Do you have a plan for future revenues from new markets that will be larger than your current business?

But now Russia has invaded Ukraine, and the trust basis on which Globalization was built has been seriously damaged.  At level 1 any business sourcing anything from Russia, Ukraine or Eastern Europe now must implement extra security and alternative sourcing plans.  At level 2, we're seeing the shift of Chinese aggression, including bases being built in the South China Sea and overt threats toward invading Taiwan as examples of killing trust between trading partners.  Certainly China's domineering takeover of Hong Kong is an example of greater nationalism reducing globalization.  Duterte's strong-man government in the Philippines is another example of leaders taking actions that put globalization at risk.  Even the Brexit effort in the UK was anti-Globallization.  Thus, all international supply chain or sales relationships have to be evaluated for a greater level of mistrust and business interruption.

This podcast explains how Trendcasting as the basis for scenario planning prepares companies for disruptions - by understanding the impact of trends.  Learn  how when a trend takes a different speed of adoption - or is highly disrupted - it is faster and easier to modify future scenarios and implement plans based on those scenarios if you've developed them.  Today all businesses are impacted by the long-term Globalization Trend, and the major shift now happening to this trend will thus affect every business.  Whether it creates threats or opportunities to your business depends on how well you've created, and now modify, your future scenarios.

But over the last 6 years a distracted CEO Dorsey failed to keep a focus on the Value Proposition, and failed to further develop the Value Delivery System.  Revenue growth stumbled, and Facebook leapt ahead of Twitter in all metrics.  Now Dorsey has no idea what the Value Proposition should be, nor how to direct enhancements to the Value Delivery System. So he sort of stepped aside, then convinced the Board to walk away from the company entirely.  But at the same time, Musk has given no indication as to what he thinks Twitter’s Value Proposition should be.  He talks about tweaks to the Value Delivery System, but there is no linkage to how that will improve Twitter's value for customers – nor any indication how he plans to increase value enough to grow revenues.  Things thus look pretty dicey for a leveraged buyout that shows no sign of having a clear strategic direction.

If you want to succeed in business you have to know your Value Proposition, and constantly evolve your Value Delivery System in order to constantly grow revenues at 10%+ per year.  Musk did that with Tesla, Solar City, Space X and The Boring Company.  But nobody’s talking about how Musk, or Twitter, will set a strategy, or invest in the platform to grow ad revenues.  

In 2015 Adam Hartung laid out how Costolo did a great job of targeting customers and delivering value when he was fired, raising concerns for investors based on his termination.  

https://adamhartung.com/costolo-should-not-have-been-fired-twitter-investors-worry/

Later in 2015 Adam laid out the task in front of Dorsey if he wanted to succeed. The task Dorsey failed to even understand much less accomplish. Thus putting Twitter in this confusing, undirected, and low-growth situation.

https://adamhartung.com/will-jack-dorsey-get-it-at-twitter/

Had Twitter taken Adam’s advice then, the company wouldn’t have lost its way, becoming a puppet for politicians, extremists and bots.  It’s a lesson in why you should listen to Spark Partners now.

Thinking Points:

• Do you know your Value Proposition?  Do you know your customers and why they buy from you?
• Do you focus your resources on updating your Value Delivery System so your value remains high?
• Do you keep a clear eye on growing revenues as the #1 metric for measuring sustainability and success?

Simultaneously, the stock market analysts and journalistic pundits have decided Netflix is now toast.  This podcast overviews why results aren’t that bad at Netflix, nor is competition.  And anticipated tweaks of the Value Delivery System aren’t the industry “sea change” many forecast.  Rather, while competitors are just now catching up to where Netflix was years ago with technology and programming, Netflix is building on its success with new ideas, and developing the big, new opportunity in Gaming revenues that will fulfill its long term Value Proposition.  Netflix had the courage to create the media streaming business, and create the largest content studio on the planet – despite lack of faith by investors before.  I wouldn’t bet against their courage to do the “next big thing” once again.

Thinking points:

• Do you invest in revenues to grow your business even though it hurts the P&L?
• Do you starve, or shut down, innovation projects to save money short term?
• Do you constantly, intentionally experiment to build out the right Value Delivery System for meeting your Value Proposition?
• Do you separate tweaking your Value Delivery System for better short term results from investing in your Value Proposition for long-term success?

BUT WE HAVE TO CHANGE IF WE WANT TO THRIVE

This exclusive online event gives you deep insights into WHY we need to change and HOW we need to do it. Sign up TODAY to be part of this discussion between Spark Partners' Adam Hartung and Manny Teran, business growth experts who have created $3BILLON of value to the companies they have supported.  Moderated by Sydney King of Spark on the Street!

Do people buy antacids so they stop pain, or do they buy antacids so they can enjoy eating? Do people buy lawn fertilizer to grow grass, or to have a beautiful lawn which feeds their pride and go?  In both cases, The former has limited growth, the latter has an array of possibilities.

This podcast explains how to identify your Value Proposition and use it to find opportunities for growth.  We overview music sales as a case study.  Music looked like a dying business in 2001, and it shrunk through 2010.  But applying new technologies to help people realize their goal of listening to what they want, when they want, allowed a new value delivery system (streaming) to drive double digit revenue growth, returning music revenues to rates of 20 years before.  

Thinking points:

• Do you really know your Value Proposition, or are you gliding by on simplistic answers?
• Have you plumbed new ways to create new value delivery systems that can better achieve your Value Proposition?
• Do you visualize new technologies and new business models, then experiment in achieving them?
• Do you let trends push you to doing new things you otherwise wouldn’t do, and are uncomfortable doing?

This podcast introduces Sydney King, founder of Syd Shakes.  She describes her journey to understanding unmet needs in health and wellness, and founding her company.  She’s not only an entrepreneur, but she’s the newest member of the Spark Partners team!  Sydney describes her knew program “Spark on the Street” which interviews entrepreneurs and growth champions in 3 to 5 minute interviews that are airing on SparkPartners Facebook and Instagram today, and by next week on our website and YouTube channels.

Takeaways:

• Do you know your OWN under-met and unmet needs?  They could open the door to customer insights
• Do you have a very clear insight to your Customer Value Proposition?
• Do you have a desire to hear from entrepreneurs and growth champions how they built their business?

Entrepreneurs often get product development wrong, because they have a solution in need of a market.  An "answer" looking for a "question."  The entrepreneur has a product/business and they are looking for someone - anyone - to buy from them.

This podcast explains how a better approach, that gets to sales faster and long-term value creation, exists. Listen to how a focus on trends create new, unmet needs.  Then savvy entrepreneurs find new ways to meet those unmet needs.  By filling a "needs gap" these entrepreneurs drive faster sales, and greater value.  And listeners from big companies will learn how to redirect product development toward solutions that really add value, allowing for long-term profitable revenue growth.

No longer.  The long-term mega-trend of globalization is taking a severe turn in reverse.  Trust is broken, and all the indicators say there is a lot of risk in international supply chains.  But this is just the beginning of understanding impacts on our supply chains.  How do we manufacture more in the USA when we don't have the working population (due to aging demographics) to do the work?  And when college grads don't want to work in manufacturing plants.  It's unlikely efforts to revitalize the "rust belt" from Cleveland to Minneapolis will magically draw thousands of young people from Texas and the southwest

This podcast explores the implications of faltering supply chain globalization.  A market shift now driven by the Ukrainian invasions that will drive big changes in immigration and robotics.  And a whole lot more.  And explain not only why you need to update your scenario plans, but how ---- and pressurize listeners to know they MUST do scenario planning if they hope to survive.

America's unionized workforce peaked by percentage in 1954 and by numbers in 1979.  Since then union membership has fallen precipitously.  The Biden administration would like to encourage greater unionization, and spot activities have sprung up in museum employees, some Amazon distribution centers, and some Starbucks.  But these actions are not indicating a trend back to unionization, since the Gig Economy is the bigger trend in workforce dynamics.  The Administration would serve Americans better by making it easier for workers to go Gig than joining a union.

Thinking Points:

• Are you incorporating global trends, like demographics, into your future scenarios, or are you myopically focused on your home market?
• Do you understand how worker shortages are impacting China, Russia and other countries just as bad as the USA - and the impacts?
• Do you understand worker goals today and how you can be a better user of human resources rather than old-fashioned employment?
• Are you encouraging workers to be successfully independent, or do you drift into controlling workers and micro-managing?

We spend too much time looking at headlines and reacting to short-term events, and insufficient time studying long-term trends to guide our decision making.  Due to demographic shifts, the lack of workers will change hiring of older workers.  And it will change immigration policies, and recruiting of immigrants.  Build on that trend and you can gain advantage, bet against it and you'll suffer the consequences.

Mass media can't create enough headlines about the short-term quarterly, and even monthly, rate of inflation vs ONE year ago.  But that does not reflect the long-term trend which will soon have inflation back under 3%.  We can use the trends in monetary policy as well as fiscal policy to build scenarios guiding our long-term planning.

Thinking points:

• What plans do you have to utilize blogs and podcasts to grow your revenue?
• Have you adapted your hiring and retention policies to reflect the aging demographics?
• Are you evaluating your supply chain and pricing programs for a future of low inflation, or high inflation?  Or are you ignoring inflation altogether?

Was this market reaction justified? This podcast delves deeper into what's happening with trends, including the rise of Tik-Tok and Snap, as well as the trend toward MetaVerse interactivity, and the likely impact on Meta's future.  This podcast looks beyond users, at revenues, to see if the company is in a Growth Stall, or not, and whether a Growth Stall is likely. We dissect Meta's future through each of the 3 current platforms - Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp - looking at competition, threats to growth, and opportunities for revenue enhancements.  We also look at recent news announcements pillorying Meta for harming teens, creating a platform for misinformation and insurrection, and threats of government intervention to separate the trends from the "noise" and understand the likely future scenarios.  It's a great overview of the Meta situation and what you need to know as a customer, supplier, user and investor in Facebook/Meta.

Thinking points:

• Do you know what really happened to cause Meta's deep valuation cut? Do you have a fact-based position on whether the value will recover?
• Do you fixate on the headlines, rather than digging deep into the trends when planning?
• Can you separate the trends, and long-term impacts, from the "noise" in your marketplace?
• Do you have an analytical toolset for evaluating situations like what recently happened to Meta?

Peloton mistakenly assumed the punctuation was the new equilibrium and didn't do enough to change its model.  As the punctuation has moved to a new equilibrium we are being forced to rethink how we work, and our approach to immigration during the "Great Resignation" in a high growth economy.  Winners are recognizing how trends in Mobility, Asynchronous Work, AI and Gig Economy have created enormous new opportunities - as demonstrated by Microsoft's shift away from PCs and into big Gaming investments.  This podcast explains how understanding punctuated equilibrium helps you identify new opportunities and make better investment decisions during this time of low interest rates.

Thinking Points:

• Can you recognize how the 4 pandemic accelerated trends have changed, and will continue to change your market?
• Are you tracking external events, including current events, to identify how market shifts are creating new opportunities?
• Are you planning for a post-punctuated (post-pandemic) market? Or are you still stuck in pandemic punctuation without a plan?
• Are you ready to bet big on future scenarios so you can participate in "the next big thing?"

The pandemic similarly unleashed changes in education.  We proved you could learn remotely. You didn't need to have everyone in a classroom at the same time.  And it promoted individualized education, allowing students to learn at their own rates, using the best tools for them.  Of course the University of Phoenix and Southern New Hampshire University have been proving that remote learning is very effective, and very necessary, for vast numbers of students.  Just like the world of work, it is now obvious that the best education does not require all students in a building for a set number of hours sitting in classes with other students - all using the same texts, moving at the same rate, and taking the same standardized tests..  That "industrialized" education is as out of date as the industrialized approach to office work.

Yet, just like CEOs that would like to force all employees into an office every day, teachers are trying to do the same.  Both are refusing to look at the trends.  The old way isn't as good as the new way.  But it takes more skill, and more effort, to lead in the new approach.  You can't be sloppy, treating everyone the same, and just trying to keep everyone busy.  You have to focus on OUTCOMES and work with individuals based on OUTCOMES rather than HOW they get the outcomes.

This podcast takes a very deep dive into how education, like the working world, is forever changed by the trends that accelerated during the pandemic.  Trends that will not reverse.  The future won't look like the past, and those that embrace trends will have faster growth and greater success.

Thinking points:

• Are you focused on how things get done more than the outcomes you desire?
• Are you very clear on the outcomes you want, or do you rely on managing the process and hope for the outcomes?
• Are you ready to change how things get done, perhaps dramatically, to allow trends to drive far greater productivity and success?
• Are you working hard at understanding how new technology tools can improve productivity to be far more successful than old synchronous processes?
• Are you focused on your Value Proposition - outcomes for customers - or are you locked-in to focusing on the Value Delivery System and trying to maintain it?  Is it more important to go to the old process (like in-school teaching) than delivering the highest value outcomes for your customers (like individualized remote learning for students)?

Opportunities exist in our own companies to identify opportunities to make autonomous.  These can often then be extended to our customers, and suppliers - leading to autonomous processes in their operations.   Big opportunities exist by understanding our customers and their needs, then figuring out how to help them by automating the customer interface, and even the customer process.  Applying modern tools like asynchronous connectivity, mobility, gig economy and artificial intelligence to existing operations offers a plethora of new opportunities based on environmentally aware autonomous process development.

In this podcast, hear how autonomous vehicles have been tested since the 1980s and how airplanes are on the verge of complete autonomous flight. Understand the growth of autonomous processes in healthcare, including diagnostics. Learn how to see the opportunities, and apply tools to take advantage of them so you can grow.

Thinking points:

• Are you utilizing all the modern autonomous process tools available in your business?
• Do you analyze your process to see how you can use modern tools to automate the process?
• Do you know your customers goals, and seek ways to automate your interactions and their processes?
• Do you work at automating processes to improve your environmental footprint creating big opportunities in your industry and create new industries.

Today investors are unwilling to invest in companies that are not environmentally safe, secure and socially responsible.   They've dropped out of investments, and directed their money toward investments that are improving the environment and social behavior - and back that up with good governance practices.  And this has bled over toward customers and communities that are paying a lot more attention to a company's ESG behavior before investing - or buying their products.  Increasingly business has to complete an ESG "scorecard" demonstrating they are monitoring their environmental and social impact, and taking actions to improve these metrics.

If you want to encourage customers to buy, communities to support you and/or investors to give you money it is important you demonstrate your environmental and social improvement programs as seller of solutions, employer and community member.  This can harm your business if you ignore this trend. Simultaneously it is creating a tremendous number of new opportunities for leading companies - such as packaging, environmental clean-up, enhanced recycling, use of recycled material, pollution containment, etc.

Thinking points:

• Are you paying attention to your environmental and social impact?
• Are you incorporating ESG in your Value Proposition and your strategic planning process?
• Are you implementing business practices that are more environmentally and socially responsible? Are you informing customers, employees, communities and investors about these practices?
• Are you implementing governance processes to make sure you remain environmentally and socially responsible?

This podcast overviews why electric vehicles are part of this trend, and why the transition from internal combustion to batteries is unstoppable.  And how it will impact everyone - in all industries and all geographies.  It's not just a "car" thing, but rather an impact on everyone that transports themselves, another person, or a product.  Taking action now will give you an advantage, avoid mistakes and lower your costs down the road.  If you haven't incorporated the ICE to electric movement into your planning you need to do so - now!!

This podcast covers why people omit big changes, like environmental awareness and electrifying power sources, in their planning - and how to start planning more effectively.  Looking at other transitions, like mobile to smartphones, it covers how to make predictions when markets are entering transition.  lt explains how to build accurate future scenarios, and put accurate timelines on them.  And how to make the right decisions now, before everyone else sees the trend and its impact.

Thinking points:

• Do you think electrifying cars is a small change that will have limited impact on your business?
• Have you explored how your markets, and costs, will change when we have electric vehicle fleets?
• Have you explored the opportunities electric vehicles will create.
• Are you aware of the subsidies and grants that can improve your application of the trend?

Don't forget - we're discounting our Master Class on Innovation by $500 for all of January.  For under $497 you can have the tool set which will help you identify and plan for trends to make your business more successful,  Just email Manny or Adam to get your discount and make your purchase today!

Instead, understand the big trends and visualize how people will behave in 2030.  Use the big trends to create scenarios around demographic, environmental and technology shifts.  Then start thinking about how you can change your business to take advantage of those trends.  This podcast will explain how all businesses - including small and medium sized - can build trends into your plans for the future, and be actionable on them in 2022. Your planning can be accelerated by listening to how leading companies like Apple, Google, Meta and others are focusing on big trends and applying them to their resource allocation and product/market development.  It is possible to identify far higher growth opportunities by making small changes that align with trends - so listen now how you can do it!

Thinking points:

• Do you have a market scenario for 2030 that you can visualize?
• Are you really recognizing how big trends are impacting your business now, tomorrow and long term?
• Do you know where the high growth segments are in your market - and are you steering into them?
• Do you know your Value Proposition clearly - and how you can expand and improve your Value Delivery System?

All companies today are building their business models on platforms from Google (search and YouTube,) Meta (Facebook and Instagram,) Twitter, Amazon (including AWS,) and others.  Knowing how to program these platforms is directly tied to your success.  But these platforms are constantly updating, changing, creating new opportunities - and problems.  Your success will require new skills, and new approaches.  It's a tough marketplace for these resources, but you can't ignore the need. Remote workers (even in a foreign country) and gig workers are 2 ideas for bringing on resources to help you grow covered in this podcast - where we interview Alex Icehouse, CEO of Genium a leading sourcer of software development resources out of Redwood City, CA.

Thinking points:

• Do you think and manage like a tech company, or are you locked into old approaches to your business model?
• Do you make planning for the use of tech platforms a central part of your strategic plan?
• Do you know how platform changes will impact your business model over the next 5 years? 10 years?
• Do you have plans for acquiring (hiring?) software resources to keep your business growing?
• Do you know how to manage software development for your business so you can be a market leader?

When we're ready to do something different, our organizations have the adaptability of concrete. Locked in place.  And we don't have any other resources to put forward for developing new growth opportunities.

This podcast explains how we "lock-in" our organization to initial conditions. Intentionally. To improve operational excellence, and become "lean."  We think it's good, when in fact it makes us unable to do anything new.  Then this podcast explains how you can attack these historical hurdles in order to open your organization to new opportunities.  It's not enough to see the future, you have to go do it - and this podcast will tell you how.

Thinking points:

• Do you have an ERP or similar system, designed to automate and improve processes - but which is wildly un-adaptable?
• Have you eliminated all resources that aren't working on improving your existing business?
• Does your resource allocation system provide for funding new projects, BEFORE funding existing support projects?
• Do the "nay sayers" have the "swing votes" when it comes to investing in something new?

Reacting to short-term data points can whipsaw you into very bad decisions.  Trends are based on long-term trends that are consistent and demonstrate changes in behavior. Our plans should be based upon long-term trends.  The pandemic created datapoints that will whipsaw your decision making if you don't understand that the pandemic actually accelerated long-term trends that will remain intact.  The big trends toward mobility, asynchronous communications, artificial intelligence and the gig economy -- driven by the much bigger, and even more powerful, long-term trends toward an aging demographic in the USA, China, Japan and Germany, and the heightened attention to environmental awareness.

Be sure you are actually monitoring trend data over long timelines.  Focus on trends that will make a difference in 5+ years. Then overcome your lock-in to your historical business model and plan based on future scenarios.

Thinking points:

• Are you reacting to short-term media datapoints - rather than interpreting those datapoints through a trends filter?
• Are you aware of the biggest trends, and interpreting their impact on how your customers will change their behavior?
• Are you tracking important trend data?

- Are you developing new business opportunities based on trends?

Meta is really 3 extremely important platforms.  Facebook the website, which is the most popular website in the world. Instagram, which challenges YouTube as the most popular video site.  And WhatsApp which is the biggest platform for texting, calling, and meeting in the world.  Together these 3 platforms account for 40% of all internet traffic in the world.  No joke.  All are owned by Facebook, and it was confusing to lots of people when you mentioned Facebook to understand if you were talking about the platform or the company. So this change in company name is indeed clarifying, and valuable.

Secondly, as we've introduced in our "4 Big Trends for this Decade" increasingly communications are asynchronous, and utilize a fair bit of AI.  Meta is now pushing toward a future where you can communicated even if you aren't there - by using AI to understand what's happening and provide responses. By using smart platforms we don't can overcome limitations of email, texting and phone calls and zoom to be intelligently responsive even when it is not convenient.  This is a terrific benefit to productivity, and improves communications at a time when we all need to move quickly.

Further, by communicating through platforms rather than 1-to-1 historical patterns we can project much better who we are. No longer limited by our appearance, background, voice intonallity and other physical characteristics we can portray ourselves however we want.  This allows us to maximize our value, rather than trying to fit some kind of mold.  We can operate in a meta sphere which is not limited by who we physically are, or where we are located.  We can move beyond these limits, much as Stephen Hawking did, to provide our maximum value.  And this, too is a good thing.

Thinking points:

• Are you using these platforms to improve your communications, or do you still rely on historical tools?
• Are you developing the ultimate "you" by adding AI to your personal processes and interacting through meta tools?
• Are you maximizing the value of your organization's people by promoting greater use of meta-tools in how they do their work?

This podcast reveals that this can happen to any company. But it doesn't have to.  There were plenty of signs of trouble, and plenty of opportunities for both companies to turn toward prosperity.  But they ignored the signals, denied the inevitable, and refused to invest in major opportunities for growth.  A story that is far, far, far too common - reflective of how bad assumptions and bad "best practices" are hurting businesses every day.

This podcast also tells you how to use the signals to successfully change and grow.  How to use disruptions and Blank Space (White Space) to grow instead of fail.  It's well worth a listen because all leaders face the risk of losing relevancy and falling into failure mode.

Thinking points:

• When you see new technologies or business models do you move quickly to see how these create threats and new business opportunities?
• Is your planning based on defending your past, or on seeking a new future?
• Are you willing to disrupt your business in order to attack threats and find new opportunities?
• Are you investing in White Space projects to find new growth opportunities?

This podcast explains how to separate demand-based trends from supply-based promotions.  To do this, we must go back before the pandemic to look at trends in hospitality.  The market exploded in the late 1990s as more and more people were enjoying low cost experiences.  There was clearly a trend of demand growth for hospitality services.  But as we moved into the 2010s it became clear this growth was unsustainable, based upon below-market prices as providers were not recovering full cost.  Cracks were developing as customer satisfaction was declining, and demand for better services and better experiences were increasing.  The trend was shifting toward a need for more sustainable business models as customer complaints rose, employees were displaying enormous dissatisfaction, asset rents were rising, and returns to investors were shrinking - even disappearing.

The industry pressure today is from a supply side desire to utilize existing capacity.  But that is not a trend.  That is supply hoping to create demand. And struggling, as customers, employees, landlords and investors are unwilling to live with old, unsustainable products, services and pricing.  Trends are based on demand, and that is driven by customers, not supply.  "Say's Law" that "supply creates its own demand is invalid. Post-pandemic the trend will be toward better experiences, involving automation and AI implementations to improve productivity, changes in the business model to support higher pay and better working conditions, and improved returns.  Only those companies who respond to Trends will survive post-pandemic, because merely promoting supply availability is not a trend.

Key Points:

• If you expect marketplaces to "return to normal" post-pandemic, you will fail
• Trends are based on consumer demand, not availability of supply. Just because you have capacity doesn't mean you'll survive
• Sustainable business models provide adequate returns to employees, communities, suppliers and investors as well as high customer satisfaction
• Cracks in many business models were apparent pre-pandemic.  COVID merely accelerated trends exposing these unsustainable business models.

This podcast goes over how "best practices" causes us to "lock-in" our business model, and our business practices, behaviorally, structurally and with costs.  We create a specific culture, and work hard to maintain that culture, even when the culture needs to change.  We implement IT business practices, and IT packages, that make the business more efficient, but makes it very, very hard to change.  And we make big investments in buildings, technology, intellectual property, people and other assets that we feel compelled to "leverage" thus refusing to develop a new cost model.  By understanding these "lock-ins" we can identify them, and attack them, creating the space for change in our organizations.

Thinking points:

• Do you work hard to create a "common culture" in hiring, promotion and pay, thus limiting other perspectives on your business?
• Do you have assumptions about how business works that limit your ability to see new opportunities?
• Do you have processes designed for efficiency, but which are so complicated that they are impervious to change?
• What investments do you have that you feel compelled to leverage, keeping you from trying new business models?
• Do you suffer from "not invented here?" Do you have an internal expert who can kill new ideas? Do you have "sacred cows" that cannot be challenged?

This podcast overviews the right approach to strategic planning.  Like Amazon and Virgin, you should identify big trends, then develop strategies to leverage those trends - even if it moves you far from your historical "core" technologies, capabilities, markets or customers.  The future is not likely to look like the past, but understanding trends and unmet, or under-served, needs. Figure out how you help customers meet their needs, and you're on the road to growth.  Tesla is planning for 50%/year growth for the next SEVERAL years - do you have a similar high growth plan?  Listen to this podcast to learn how!

Thinking points:

• Do you have a plan to $1B of incremental annual revenue?  If not, why not?
• Do you start planning using current customers and current solutions? If so, how do you ever get to new opportunities?
• Do you have specific big trends you monitor for planning, and apply to your strategic planning?
• Do you have a robust future scenario you use to develop your plans, or are you planning without a target?  Planning without guardrails toward success?

Climate change has already impacted the entire planet, and thus every business. Most businesses have taken steps to mitigate the change - attempting to defend the old business in the face of change.  But the warming planet will continue for at least 20 years, that's a proven trend.  This will impact how, and where, we work and live. Those who plan for new climate impacts will be more successful.  This podcast covers factors every business should consider as it plans for ongoing climate change.

Thinking points:

• Are you incorporating mega-trends into your planning - like climate change, demographic shifts, increased automation, inexpensive/effective AI?
• Are you tracking trends over time so small changes become more visible?
• Have you developed scenarios for how mega-trends could create a catastrophic event to your business?
• Have you identified the opportunities, as well as the threats, that are being created by mega-trends?

Yet, generic AI won't succeed unless it focuses on fulfilling an unmet need.  Offering features, functions and benefits is insufficient as a solution.  Or even a component to a solution.  All successful solutions start by recognizing an unmet need, then applying technology to solve that need.  This podcast dives into technology that has many applications, thus tremendous opportunity.  But..... lacking specificity in how it fulfills unmet need the technology is a solution looking for a problem.  And that conundrum afflicts too many entrepreneurs who develop great technology, but fails at the applications to drive revenue and success.

Thinking points:

• Do you know your customers' unmet needs?  Their poorly met needs?
• Do you think about how you could apply AI to solve these needs?
• Do you apply trends specifically to fulfill unmet needs?  Or are you applying trends generically hoping features and benefits will drive success?
• Are your development efforts focused on unmet needs?  Or technology development without a clear application focus?

The aging population in all 4 top manufacturing countries will lead to greater automation and use of robotics, creating new avenues for productivity and sales. You can't go wrong investing in these, and both will be supported with high payoff investments in artificial intelligence (AI.) As the trend shifts market power, the country with the biggest effort to increase immigration will be a big winner, which gives another huge advantage to the USA.  And any entrepreneur who wants to build on this trend cannot go wrong investing in health care.  Listen in this podcast to how the Big Trend will lead to lots of activity in these 3 subsidiary trends and tremendous business opportunities for leaders willing to build on the trend.

Thinking Points:

• Are you using demographic shifts in your future plans?
• Do you see the opportunities in tight labor markets and retiring boomers - or just problems?
• Are you ready to make big bets in automation, robotics, AI, immigrant workforce training and healthcare solutions?

And this is just silly.  Sales is a great occupation.  Mostly we need to get over our own beliefs about sales, and return to understanding that everyone wants help solving a problem. And sales is just helping people solve a problem. Too often we devolve into pushing our value delivery system, and undermine our ability to connect with customer needs.  If we focus on our Value Proposition sales can uplift the customer to achieving their goals, and thereby helping the company to grow.

Most of the iconic leaders were great salespeople.  Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Lee Iacocca were all GREAT salespeople.  This podcast, with the help of sales coach Catherine Brown, explains what we have to do to get out of our way, overcome our hidden negative voices and succeed at the profession of helping customers solve their own problems.

Thinking points:

• Are you excited about selling?
• Are you selling your value proposition, or are you trying to hammer customers with your value delivery system?
• What are the beliefs hidden in your mind that undermine your ability to sell?

First, if you aren't growing your customer relationship, it is dying.  It is impossible to have a strategy of maintaining the status quo. Impossible to think that if you hold the status quo long enough things will revert to a previous state. Everyone is moving forward, all the time. New needs are emerging, and as leaders we have to search out those needs and fulfill them.  Or your customers will walk away.  And when they move, lesson two is that it happens very fast. Faster than the old guard anticipates.  As business leaders we have to recognize we don't have lengthy planning time to find the next big thing, or even figure out how to keep customers.  Because the fringe competitors are constantly figuring out ways to move quickly to overtake your market.

Listen to this podcast and you'll learn how to avoid costly defend & extend decisions by being much more active to keep customers, grow your business and avoid a rapid failure.

Thinking points:

• Just keeping up with inflation and economic growth requires a continuous 9%/year growth rate. Do your revenue plans meet or exceed that threshold?
• Are you tracking fringe competitors to see where they are building pockets of strength in preparation of attacking your market?
• Do you know your customers unmet needs?  Are you looking for new ways to solve customer problems - even if it means doing something new?

Mobile technology adoption is 15+ years along.  From pagers to mobile phones to smart phones, to FaceTime, Skype and now Zoom the trend to mobile has been growing.  Asynchronous work tools include email, which goes back 20+ years. Now augmented to include texting, Google Docs, Office 365 and a raft of SAAS, cloud and social media tools allowing us to get work done at our best pace, without wasting time on calls, in meetings or otherwise being tied up.

These trends were pronounced prior to the Covid disruption.  Now they are accelerated. Now work from home is rapidly becoming a norm (at least part time.) Even Mark Zuckerberg is working from home.  And workers are seeing greater flexibility to select the work they want to do.  This podcast covers how the disruption has really accelerated trends, and changed the nature of work and work cultures.  Winners will be early adopters of the newly created Covid norms.

Thinking points:

- Are you using trends in technology, capability, and cultural norms to figure out your policies on working away from the office?  Or are you using outdated assumptions about work?

- Are you planning for staffing realizing that demographic trends will require greater levels of automation and less use of manpower?

- Are you actively seeking ways to automate tasks so your suppliers, including employees and gig workers, can use their brains to improve productivity and improve returns for everyone?

Successful sales improvement requires hiring good people. But that is not enough. Success is highly context specific, and the “right” person fits the marketplace, the solution, and the sales support system to close more deals.  Too often C-level execs think only of the people, and not enough of the strategy and sales management process that is required to support sales. Get either of the last 2 wrong and even the best people won’t be able to move the dial.

Very, very few CEOs were trained in sales.  Most have backgrounds in Finance or Operations.  No wonder sales is so misunderstood. Yet good sales management is vital to success.  And the greatest entrepreneurs of our time are all salespeople – Jobs, Branson, Bezos, Musk.  Listen or watch this podcast to obtain a much deeper and better understanding of what you need to do to improve your sales success in support of your strategy.

Thinking points:

- Do you really understand how your customers buy?  Their purchasing processes?

- Do you know what customers value most in your sales process, and what they could care less about?

- Have you thought through your sales process and identified how it supports your growth strategy?

- Do you measure your cost of sales, and your cost of lost sales?

Buy “Sales Management That Works” Harvard Business Review Press, Dr. Frank Cespedes, 2021 at this link {link}

Zoom was one of the biggest winners in the Pandemic.  Sales growing 300%/quarter.  But as Zoom’s market capitalization has climbed Zoom has chosen to invest heavily (20% of its market cap) in Five9 – a provider of cloud based software for contact centers.

The lesson from both companies is that nobody can stand still. We must constantly keep analyzing trends and finding new growth opportunities.  And we have to push our business into Blank Space to experiment.  Those who don’t need a mindset shift, so they can start making bets on their future instead of always trying to protect the past.

Thought points:
- Are you actively looking for business opportunities in major trends?
- Are you investing in parts of your business with low returns, while greater returns can be had elsewhere?
- Are you stuck in your assets, or business model, when bigger, better opportunities exist if you would just break free of old ways of thinking?
- What’s your “next big thing”?

Virgin has long been a company launching Blank Space Teams to create new revenue opportunities, moving the company into a plethora of businesses – including space exploration with Virgin Galactic.  Virgin Galactic is 19 years old, but is now bringing to fruition a new business that Branson sees generating a $1trillion industry.  And Sir Richard Branson is 70 years old, demonstrating that such opportunity development is not just “a young man’s game.”

Sir Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are part of the new “space race,” pioneering a new industry with new revenue streams.  And they all share this ability to launch Blank Space teams, searching out new opportunities and unleash resources untethered by old mores to figure out the value proposition, value delivery system and monetization opportunities.  Thus making them billionaires.

Thinking Points:

- How many growth projects do you have in Blank Space, figuring out ways to grow?

- Do you set aside resources for new business development untethered by the existing business model?

- Do you set aside Blank Space in your personal life to think about trends and the opportunities they create?

Topics include:
- The role of social media in quick success
- Why regulators and politicians cannot stop the global trends
- Why you need to move quickly
- How to remove your blinders to see opportunities right in front of you
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Thinking points:
- How aggressively are you using social media?
- Are you thinking globally for sales this year? If not, why not?
- Can you define how trends shape your business?
- Do you have a plan to become a billion dollar company?  Why not?

This podcast covers how trends in government policies, local regulations, material availability and labor all merge to alter what people want from their office and home, what they can afford and what is available.  We also cover how creative builders and building owners have an opportunity to offer new solutions generating profitable growth, even as the marketplace for commercial and retail real estate declines. Innovation is separating the winners from the losers.

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Thinking Points:

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Are you considering “big picture” trends like interest rates, regulations and workforce patterns in your future plans?
Are you applying innovation to what might seem the most traditional parts of your business?
Are you willing to adapt your infrastructure and offerings to meet changing – and under-met – needs?
Are you preparing for a very different world of work and home for your customers, suppliers and employees?

There’s no doubt these guys are creative and rightly keep their eyes for market trends. 

But, like many small businesses, they might be making a mistake by chasing multiple markets beyond their current value proposition.

Even with a value delivery system and value proposition set for your business, sometimes going against the current might seem like the best way to bring growth and attract new customers. But by trying to meet customer needs in one market, while also those of another, you might risk the strong results and lasting success that comes with dedicating time and energy into one market. 

New opportunities for business are everywhere, but you can’t just go in every direction. Focus on following the strongest current of market trends on the path to business success.

Demographic trends assure us that the USA is aging, family formation is falling, and the number of children born in new families is dropping as well.  Rather than sticking to its old business, Radio Flyer has moved from making little red wagons for children to e-bikes that serve a growing market.  Likewise, Harley Davidson has seen its primary customer base (white, male boomers) declining – guaranteeing its business would decline as its customers die.  Looking at the same trends in demographics, Harley Davidson has launched an e-bike as well in order to find new customers and new markets.  Looking at trends led these 2 old-line companies into new technologies, new products and new markets.

Supersonic flight (returning in 2019), drones that can carry passengers, and manned rocket launches by private companies will all change the face of transportation for people, and freight.  Combined with other trends, it portends a very, very different future for transportation products, how we travel, and how we serve customers.  Are you ready?

Thinking points:
Are you incorporating demographic trends into your scenario planning and product development?
Are you planning on autonomous cars, trucks and planes in your future travel and freight scenarios for customers?
How will the growth in space travel and supersonic planes impact your business?  Because it will!

We can look at current events and see how the 4 Megatrends in “Thrive to the Future” (available on this website) are driving immediate behavior.  (1) Mobile – demonstrated by the acceleration in tablet sales (2) Asynchronous behavior – demonstrated by continuation of on-line k-12 education, and the failure of movie theatre companies as well as traditional retailers (3) Gig Economy growth – demonstrated in the defeat of the union effort at Amazon (4) Artificial Intelligence – demonstrated by Microsoft’s $16B purchase of Nuance to gain more AI solutions in health care and other industries.

This podcasts describes the 4 Megatrends for 2020-2030, how they are impacting us TODAY, and how we can apply them for greater success over the next decade.

Thinking Points:

- Do you know the 4 MegaTrends that will have great impact on your life and business?

- Do you know how these MegaTrends will impact you and your business?

- Are you making decisions to build on the MegaTrends, or are you on “auto pilot”?

- Do you have the tools to analyze MegaTrends, predict their impact and change your business?

Research organizations operate quite separately from commercial thinking. Reaching licensing opportunities is the goal. Thus there may, or may not, be commercial value to the inventions at research organizations like the University of Arizona.  Developing that commercial value is left up to external entities. For entrepreneurs, these can be a great source of invention.  If an entrepreneur is looking for technology to meet trend needs in her market, university organizations like Tech Launch Arizona are potentially good sources.

The degree to which inventions at UA create companies and jobs in AZ is entirely up to the marketplace. The silicon valley ecosystem of money, talent and interactivity does create a significant pull away from Arizona. There is not yet a concerted effort by government and industry leaders in Arizona to build an ecosystem to keep more inventions in Arizona creating small companies, jobs —— and the next Facebook, Google or Zappos. Time will tell if Tucson can develop a commercialization ecosystem like Palo Alto or Austin.

Thinking Points:

• Are you focused on invention or innovation? Can you turn inventions into high value innovations?
• Do you let external data, especially trends, drive your innovation activities?  Or are you enamored with inventing something new irrespective of its commercial value?
• When you are starting, or focused on growing, your business do you have an ecosystem of external resources that can aid your growth?  Or are you trying to grow your business in a desert of external resources?

In this week’s episode of the SparkCom Podcast, Manny guides a conversation on the traits, experiences, and mentality of successful startup entrepreneurs. There’s a level of spirit and drive that not every entrepreneur possesses, but can possess to succeed. Understandably, many are held back by the fear of failure and of losing the security that comes with a day job. So here’s one question to ask yourself before becoming a full-fledged entrepreneur: Can you live without a paycheck to do something that you love?

There’s a few key traits that companies and entrepreneurs must embody to not only be successful, but also to become true game changers. For one, you have to be willing to step outside of your comfort zone. On another note, you must strive to build something bigger than yourself and create something invaluable for the evolving world around you. NOW is the best time in human history to start a business and become successful, with the greatest amount of resources, in the shortest amount of time, ever. 

You have what it takes... but when will you start? And what will it take you to succeed?