Futurist Blog

Today, our best and brightest are drawn to elite colleges like Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, and Yale. As they attend these institutions they are surrounded by some of the most talented people in the world. Yet, despite having all the cards aligned in their...

Imagine walking up to a building and having it recognize you. Not only does it recognize you, but it also makes changes in temperature, lighting, and music to make you feel like you’re at home. Maybe it’s not a building, but a car, a bicycle, pair of shoes, or a...

Would you buy a product that was advertised as “Naturally grown, completely organic, printed food?” Anyone who has an apple tree growing in their yard knows how difficult it is to grow one that is worthy of eating straight off the tree. Most have bruises, wormholes,...

Over that past week I’ve had the great honor of working with both the good people at the North Dakota Bankers Association in Bismarck, ND and the good people at Rabobank in Napa, CA on the rapidly evolving topic of the future of agriculture. Growing up on a grain farm...

It was roughly two years ago, October 15, 2009, when I got a call from a desperate lady, panicking, as she asked for my help. Being a futurist, I don’t get many calls from people who urgently need my help. Futurists are rarely first responders. As she described the...

As I’m writing this column, there are currently 466,302 mobile apps available for the iPhone and 512,542 mobile apps available to download on an Android phone. Combined with all of the apps for Blackberries, Windows 7 Phones, and other smartphone platforms, we now...

When we think about Benjamin Franklin, we instantly think of the author, scientist, inventor, diplomat who signed the U.S. Declaration of Independence and has his face on the one-hundred dollar bill. Ben Franklin was a truly remarkable person, yet he had less than two...

Over the past couple years, internet-fueled uprisings in Egypt, Lybia, Syria, and other parts of the world have made Chinese officials very nervous. They have exerted a firm hand in controlling any communications deemed detrimental to the ruling party and have now...

In early 2003 I had a conversation with Dee Hock, founder and former CEO of VISA. At the time we were interested in hiring him to be the keynote speaker at our upcoming Future of Money Summit, an event that would take place in November of that year. Ten years earlier,...

If Steve Jobs had never lived, would we still have the iPhone and iPad today? Similarly, if Walt Disney, George Lucas, and Pete Diamandis had all taken jobs on Wall Street instead of living their lives as true innovators, would we still have Disneyland, Star Wars, and...