How to predict the future - and get it right!

In his book ‘The Crystal Ball,’ Steve Davidson dramatically portrays how uncertain predicting the future can be: "Forecasting future events is often like searching for a black cat in an unlit room, that may not even be there."

And Edgar R. Fiedler indicates it can even be downright dangerous: "He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass." 

Despite this cynicism, Neville Christie, of Innovating Cosmos, shares how over many years, and many trials and errors, he learnt to predict the future in a different and focussed way. And get it right more often than not.   

In between, he drops hints about how you might do the same, in the form of ‘lessons learnt’.

Getting the right numbers

ONCE A WEEK, as a kid, I used to imagine a hand, holding a crystal ball, breaking through the veil of the future. Slowly, and magically, it moved the ball onto my lap, and dropped next week’s newspaper.

In my daydreams, I’d eagerly scan the pages for two things: That next week’s Tattslotto numbers, and all the stock market shares that had tripled in value, so I could rush out and buy them a week early. 

General lessons learnt

• Imagination and reality are different ‘truths’.
• ‘Imagination truths’ and ‘reality truths’ divide the world in two – some individuals believing one, some believing the other.
• I believe both.  And you?
• Science fiction precedes scientific and technological innovation.
• When we stop to reflect, and ‘see’, our imaginative minds create clearer truths, and newer, different, better futures. 
• And they also tell us, quite clearly, what we really want from our future.

More specific lessons learnt

• I am never likely to win Tatts.
• But one day my Tardis will come – maybe.
• Woops, stupid Neville. Of course! My future-travelling Tardis imagination travels with me, always.
• I remain perpetually grateful for what now is, and for what might be!
• And: “Gratitude opens the door to… the power, the wisdom, the creativity of the universe,” claimed Deepak Chopra.  
• Believe it or not, Deepak got it right!

Wanting to know the future

For some strange reason, that newspaper-from-the-future dream never materialised.  But the aspiration to know the future has remained life-long. In my early teens and twenties, I became fascinated by megatrends, and studied them in earnest.

“ Megatrends are global, sustained and macro economic forces of development that impact business, economy, society, cultures and personal lives, thereby defining our future world and its increasing pace of change.”

Another expert report defines them like this:  “Megatrends are already apparent, long-term change processes with a very broad scope and decisive, far-reaching and critical implications. Megatrends are powerful factors that shape future society and fundamental developments in that society. Megatrends manifest themselves in a way that is at once incisive and elusive, both worldwide and in {a specific locality], both today and in the future. They are already well apparent today, change society over a longer period, and are often unpredictable. This is because the various megatrends are surrounded with great uncertainties and mutually influence each other.”

Mmmm, yes, plenty to chew on there.

Kick-started businesses

Starting from the age of 12 when my father’s health, well-being and small business all went belly up, I also started to create a number of micro and small businesses based on these megatrends. Ending up with 44 in all over 40 years. 41 of these did well.  And 3 were big, big failures.

My belief was then, and still is now, that some trends emerging right now, continue into the future and shape it.  "I have seen the future and it is very much like the present, only longer," suggests the pseudonymous Kehlog Albran, in, ‘The Profit’, a parody of Kahlil Gibran’s inspirational book of 26 prose fables, ‘The Prophet’. [A great example, of ‘things’ not always being what they seem].

So… here are a few trends for us to consider:    

• The trends in megatrends, Arthur D Little
• 4 mega-trends that could change the world by 2030
• Megatrends – 5 global shifts reshaping our world, PWC.
• The six global megatrends you must prepare for, Hay Group.
• World’s top global megatrends to 2020 and implications to business, society and cultures, Frost & Sullivan.

Is it a problem or a need?

Very few of us aspire our future to be a billion dollar company… See, however, “Isn’t it time you create your gazelle or unicorn?”

But in an insightful blog, Steve Blank of Stanford University, reckons, “The quickest way to create a billion dollar company is to take basic human social needs and figure out how to mediate them on-line.”

And Albran’s tongue-in-cheek words about the future being like the past ring especially true when the trends are based on basic human needs like: safety, security, sausages that sizzle, success, self-actualisation, silly-ness, s*x.  

Or on demographic life cycles.

Or when the trend, as Steve Blank suggests, “solves a problem and gets a job done for a consumer or a company (accounting software, elevators, air-conditioning, electricity, tablet computers, electric toothbrushes, airplanes, email software, etc.)”

Lessons learnt

1.  Some human needs and problems are universal and eternal – like: the need to progress and grow.  And some are merely fashionable and peripheral – like pet rocks, designed by advertising executive Gary Dahl in 1975. Pet rocks went crazy, sold 1.5 million in 6 months, and then folded.  [Leaving lots of shop owners with much more stock to write off].

2.   Social, political, cultural and business innovators, who draw on basic human needs and problems that make us human, and turn them into opportunities, create most of the future. These ever-lasting basics were here last decade, are here this week, and will be there next decade. Guaranteed!  

Only, given one core basic human need is for variety, and to be entertained, each time round these basic needs get expressed in ever-changing forms. This is the fun bit!  

3.   So we can build a spiral of innovations, and create new futures, as we borrow from Nature, or build on other innovations.  “At Reebok, the cushioning in a best-selling basketball shoe reflects technology borrowed from intravenous fluid bags. Semiconductor firm Qualcomm’s revolutionary colour display technology is rooted in the microstructures of the Morpho butterfly’s wings. And at IDEO, developers designed a leak-proof water bottle using the technology from a shampoo bottle top.”

4.  Well-researched and documented demographic trends and cycles can also point out strongly indicative futures.  Australian Phil Ruthven of Ibis World, and American Harry S Dent of H S Dent Publishing, have both built global-impact businesses on this idea.  

Variously seen as a saviour and snake oil salesman, Dent’s spending wave theory, is that consumer spending, related to the generational formation of families, has a profound effect on business cycles; on which products rise and fall, when; and on the market value of investments in assets such as gold, financial securities and real estate.  He reckons he’s always right about the future. Even when he’s wrong! 

5.  Going right back to Thulis of Egypt, 1700 BCE, Saviours are often crucified, and even snake-oil salesmen and women are right about the future sometimes, and sometimes not.

6.  Thomas Merton and George Bernard Shaw were right about the Pygmalion Effect: Like Eliza Doolittle, our earnest belief that a certain future will occur, leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy, where we make it happen, and bring that future about. 

7.  ‘Realists’ solve problems, and thus ‘fix’ the past. ‘Imaginists’ create opportunities, and thus ‘fix’ the future.

8.  As a creator-of-the-future, get to know your audience or market, sure. But the ‘market’ doesn’t always know what it wants until innovators unveil it.  Henry Ford supposedly said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”  And Steve Jobs said something similar:  "You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new."

9.  When we find something that ‘everyone’ believes, but it’s not true, we have a potential big winner.  “If God intended us to fly She would have given us wings.” “That’s the way we’ve always done things around here.”  “If you don’t want your fingers burnt, don’t tamper with the tried and true, Sonny.” 

Looking back

Looking back, I see Albran was partly right, and partly really wrong about the future being like the past but longer.    The future is both the same, and different from the past, and the present. Or as Alphonse Karr put it, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

So… many trends keep on keeping on, and other major, unexpected disruptions also occur upsetting the trends, and creating new ones.  Both statements are true.  In this sense Winston Churchill got close to the mark, "I always avoid prophesying beforehand because it is much better to prophesy after the event has already taken place."   

Spoiler:  Hint to what’s coming…Churchill also said: “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” And he did.

Finding the disruptors?

So how do we find and account for the tend upsetters, the unexpected, the disrupters of our steady state, present and futures?  Key Question! And I’ll answer it in a moment.

Looking back now with the wisdom of hindsight, I see that 15 of the 44 businesses I created were very much at the forefront of new emerging trends, that gathered force over later years.  But I grew bored with all of them, for taking so long to develop, and I gave them away before they had much impact, or made much money.  The future takes its own time to unfold.

Lessons learnt: 

1. Current trends, and megatrends, can give important insights about the future.

2. But there’s often not much joy in dancing with the megatrends, doing primary research, or being first to market – unless you’re fantastic at marketing, and you garner the resources to go big, big, big, fast, fast, fast. Even then, “the most heavy-hitting names in business — from Pepsi to Netflix, Microsoft to McDonald's — have had some of the biggest belly flops”. 

3.   The so-called first-to-market advantage, widely believed and touted daily during the dotcom boom, is grossly over-rated. And, in fact, is plain wrong. 47% of ‘first to market’ products fail. Where are Nissan Altra, Myspace, Blockbuster and Altavista today? Whereas only 8% of ‘Follow Fast’ products or firms fail.

4.  And late and last movers can win, since they build on the breakthroughs, failures and learning of earlier versions – and they add the distinctive ‘secret herbs and spices’ which create a new future.   Like, for example, a really impactful business model.

Henry Ford came late on the car scene.  He added the assembly line and a total to-market system. Tesla was a ‘late’ electric car. And Elon Musk, a later CEO, added funds and marketing pizzaz.

Before Google arrived on the scene in 1997, there was Archie, Gopher, Wandex, Webcrawler, Excite, Yahoo, Lycos, Infoseek, AltaVista, Inktomi, and Ask Jeeves.

iPOd was the last of a long-line of mp3 players. And Facebook was a Johnny come lately on the social network scene.

Steve Jobs: “Picasso had a saying. He said ' Good artists copy, great artists steal.' And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”

5.  Back then, and even today, it can take 5-10-20 years to gain overnight success.

Snapshot, Apple, AirBnB, Facebook and Google were all ridiculed early on. J K Rowling got multiple rejections for her first Harry Potter manuscript; and her eventual literary agent, Christopher Little, sent it to 12 more publishers before Bloomsbury finally accepted it. The seven Harry Potter books have now sold over 450 million copies, and they, plus the highly successful film franchise, have made Rowling wealthier than Queen Elizabeth 11.

Our future mind

In my thirties I developed my ongoing fascination, which continues still in my seventies, with the human mind.  I learnt many important things. One is that our mind is constructed to dwell on the past, and to continuously reconstruct both our personal and human experiences… And also to always be thinking of the future, in an optimistic or pessimistic way.  

But the hardest thing for our minds, and us, is to truly dwell in the present, with anything approaching full awareness.  In short our mind keeps leading us astray.

More of this in a minute…

Foresighting tools

After completing an MBA in my early thirties, I took one of my few salaried roles ever – as Regional Director of W D Scott & Co, at the time the pre-eminent Australian-owned management consulting company.

While there, I was introduced to many fascinating forecasting or foresighting tools. Here are a few used today by Arthur D Little.  But these are all new bikkies to me:

Lesson learnt

1.  Tools like these are intellectually fascinating, and socially exciting when worked on in teams.

2.  They quickly gain a life and language of their own.

3.  They lead to interesting reports, workshops and power point shows.

4.   But, way back then, at least, it seemed they rarely lead to anyone acting differently in any way. Today?

5.  Yeap analysis, even of possible futures, can lead to paralysis and a false sense we have gained control of the future: “Fore-knowing is power!” – Hah!  Yes, like a hand from the future with next week’s lotto numbers.

6.   Insight, needs other ‘secret, herbs and spices’ plus fries added, before we act to create a different future.

7.   Just like “Universities kill off entrepreneurs by degrees,” sometimes ‘”Ignorance is bliss, and sometimes it’s disaster.”

How you predict the future and be right 

Which last two points lead us to where we have been heading all along: Search the Net, read, research, study, think, reflect, hard and often, by all means. But, to get your future right, stop predicting it, and start creating it.

1.   Unless we’re an academic, or consultant, or trainer, forget about trying to understand and predict the future of everything for everyone.

2.   Instead accept the future that is important is our future, and the future of those we love, those we care about, and those we choose to work with, to serve, and to influence.

3.  Quote Abraham Lincoln’s words as our mantra every day: “The best way to predict your [my/our] future is to create it.

4.   Our minds constantly strive to reconstruct the past and catastrophise the future.   Yet, in reality our future is made up of a progressive series of positive nows.  A simple but profound truth!   Everything else is fantasy. 

5. Make a conscious effort to live in the now. Live every day now well.  And we’ll predict, create and live a full life in the future – along with others. 

6.  Which means, push off the edge, all the disruptions and problems and opportunities and issues that are not presenting now. When they actually present, in the present, we can deal with them, there and then.

7.  Decide if your Life Purpose seriously includes you being disruptor, or someone who assists with the diffusion of disruptions and other innovations.

8.   If a Disruptor, decide what you want to disrupt, and get on with it.  And in the process, you’ll predict your future, create your future, and get it right.

9.    If a Diffusor, look hard at the diffusion of innovation cycle and select 3-5 trends that turn you on.  And get on with it.  You won’t be wrong, for you!

Living my future

To complete the personal story, now as a youngster of 76, the three big megatrends I am currently working on, are:

1.   Building a platform and smart system to integrate the global sharing economy – through Keaz and ShareToken.

2.  Innovating collaboratively – through Innovating Cosmos.

3.   Developing a new blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystem – through ShareToken.

I would love to natter with you one-to-one about you getting your future right.  

Till we meet.  Neville Christie