What Victoria can learn from Western Australia’s weather

As co presenter of the ‘Future Matters’ series with the National Geographic Channel back in 2004, I discussed the idea of Rapid Prototyping or 3D Printing. At that stage, 3D printers were like very large office photocopiers and the better ones had starting prices of around $150,000. I stated that in the near future, people…

In tracking shifts across the world and across industries, the rise of Crowdsourcing continues to unleash some amazing innovations in products and services. Importantly it is exposing the capability gaps that even large organisations have. Simply put, the ‘crowd’ is always going to be bigger than your business or organisation. But to tap that latent…

Allow me to flag my bias from the outset – I’m tinged green. My shade of green recognises that my actions can contribute to a cleaner or more polluted world and that overall, I’d prefer the cleaner version. There’s a huge amount of data that shows that as a species we haven’t been looking after…

The burgeoning shift in the manufacturing sector has been coming for a touch over a decade and has, I would suggest, now reached your front gate. A whole confluence of factors that include 3D printing, Crowdsourcing, home engineering and freescale Idea Generation leveraging social funding approaches means that EVERY single aspect of manufacturing as we…

Futurist Jack Uldrich has posted an item to his website looking at Ten Trends shaping Government today. Although each item is arguable and may be context specific depending on ‘which’ Government you’re looking at, it’s a good overall take suggesting things to do with data, the interenet, crowdsourcing and the like. However I think Jack…

Sir Paul Nurse has ‘weight’ when it comes to science. His position is the head of The Royal Society in the United Kingdom and in an address in Melbourne he suggested that we need to keep politicians away from scientists: “It also emphasises the need to keep the science as far as is possible from…

I’ve been thinking long and hard about what to call 2013. After saying 2011 would need to be the International Year of Resilience (much still needed) and 2012 the International Year of Problem Solving I’m thinking now that Crowdsourcing (the idea of seeking assistance beyond your own capabilities from the ‘crowd’ often through social media)…

There’s lots of talk about ‘next big things for 2013’ right now, just as there has been in past years. Rather than join the cadre of prognosticators, trend experts and (not so) disguised salespeople laying claim to knowing about what ‘will’ be for the coming 12 months, I offer an alternative approach – here’s five…

Here it comes, the 21st of December 2012 – the last known recorded date on the Mayan Calendar and for years people have wondered why the Mayans never got around to extending beyond 2012. What did the Mayans know that we didn’t and should we be thinking about opening our Christmas presents early this year?…

As a Strategic Futurist I love a good scenario like the rest of us in the futures community. And where I choose to diverge from many in my field is in the pragmatic applications of futures and foresight thinking. Scenarios left as ‘what ifs…?’ are at best, theoretical. All of my clients and most of…