Australia 2030 – a view from Siemens

I recently attended a session with South East Business Networks where the CEO of Siemens Australasia provided some great ideas as to where Australian Manufacturing was headed and could go, and indeed perhaps needed to go. What I found most useful from Allan Goller’s perspective was the encouragement for businesses to just get on with having a go at things, without waiting for everything to be perfect. To back up his thoughts he indicated that Siemens invested around a Billion dollars in R&D last year and ‘not all of that led to success’.

 

Whilst smaller firms might suggest that Siemens has the size to be able to invest heavily, the same really does apply for them, just on a smaller scale.  He encouraged the audience to collaborate better, accepting that sometimes what is planned for, might need to evolve and adapt as things progress.

One document that Siemens has put together is their ‘Picture the Future- Australia 2030’ which looks at productivity. Their State Sales Manager Steve Kemeridis has been kind enough to send me a soft copy to share with you and it is well worth a look.  Download the copy here

Victorian State Culinary Tourism Conference in Wangaratta

Oct 2, 2008

Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will be kicking off proceedings at the 2008 Regional Produce Summit in Wangaratta on the 20th of October where he’ll detail some of the emerging issues likely to impact upon the tourism and food sector in the foreseeable future and suggest ways that businesses in the sector might be able to…

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Eco Industrial Parks & Community Development

Oct 2, 2008

Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will both key note and act as Master of Ceremonies at the Lockhart Industrial symposium on the 9th of October, in Lockhart NSW. Marcus will discuss the clear business advantages that Eco Industrial parks provide to businesses, the way that symbiotic supply chains work to improve business resilience and the way…

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Marcus Barber discussing the Future on 774 ABC Melbourne

Sep 20, 2008

Marcus Barber joined host Tim Cox and co-host, author and writer Andrew Peglar on the Conversation hour to muse about the types of futures one might expect to see in coming years.   After Tim asked for clarification between a General, Theoretical and Strategic Futurist, Andrew kicked off with a question over the singularity.  The…

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Your Future Requires Planning – and so does ours!

Sep 4, 2008

Members of the Futures Foundation and the AFFA will be congregating in Pearl Beach in the coming weeks to consider the state of play in the Australian Futures community. Given the emerging challenges in Australia and around the world, the futures community requires just as much serious contemplation and forethought as does any one  …

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Robots of the Future

Jul 22, 2008

One of our many Nordic watchers, Are Thorsteinsson, has posted the Future Matters segment looking at the future of robotics, along with marking up full language captions in Danish. Although a couple of years old now, the early signs listed in this segment are only now coming into more mainstream focus Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber…

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Asking the unaskable question – Do we have a right not to die?

Jun 25, 2008

Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber has contributed a chapter to Volume Five of the ‘Death and Anti-Death’ Anthology which has just been published by Ria University. With contributors including Aubrey de Grey and Kevin Kelly and edited by Dr. Charles Tandy, Volume Five in the series is dedicated to the memory of Loren Eiseley, the renowned…

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Biofuels and Global Starvation

Jun 12, 2008

One of the challenges for one aspect of the world is fuel and the price of fuel used for private transportation. I use the word ‘aspect’ quite deliberately because the ‘aspect of the world’ that seems to be making the most noise about rising fuel prices is by and large the ‘westernised’ world – that’s…

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Marcus Barber to Open Supply Chain and Logistics Conference

May 14, 2008

With the theme ‘Moving Forward, Supply Chains of the Future’, Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will open the Australian Supply Chain and Logistics Conference in Brisbane in July on behalf of the Supply Chain and Logistics Association of Australia. Details for the conference can be found below.   The focus on the future of supply chains…

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Book Recommendation – Gang Leader for a Day

Apr 28, 2008

When it comes to quality strategic futures work as part of making the pragmatic decisions that shifts beyond theoretical futures work, I encourage my clients to question the assumptions they make about the information they have available to them. Which is why I am recommending the book ‘Gang Leader for a day – a rougue…

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Marcus Barber on 774 ABC Melbourne Conversation Hour discussing Australia 2020 Futurists Summit

Apr 23, 2008

Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber was well and truly forced to justify the existence of his profession when venturing along to Jon Faine’s Conversation Hour last week. Co-hosted by Cath Pope the discussion looked at the role of Futurists, the Australia 2020 Futurists Summit and Jon’s scepticism around the role of futurists.. Along with Janoel Liddy,…

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