Business Futurist. Digital transformation speaker, author, and advisor. Adapt Manifesto co-creator. Web3 and metaverse explorer.
Soothsayers and Naysayers
The world is divided between soothsayers and naysayers. Visionaries and reactionaries. Agents of change and keepers of the peace. Clairvoyants gazing into crystal balls and collectors lovingly rearranging mementos in curio cabinets. While it takes all types to make the world go around, I know which I’d rather have in charge of my organization’s business transformation, innovation initiatives, or even the entire strategic planning process. Which would you? The distinction between the two—and f...
Soothsayers and Naysayers
The world is divided between soothsayers and naysayers. Visionaries and reactionaries. Agents of change and keepers of the peace. Clairvoyants gazing into crystal balls and collectors lovingly rearranging mementos in curio cabinets. While it takes all types to make the world go around, I know which I’d rather have in charge of my organization’s business transformation, innovation initiatives, or even the entire strategic planning process. Which would you? The distinction between the two—and f...
Stories Drive Transformation Success
When Sree Sreenivasan was Chief Digital Officer at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, he told a writer for the Huffington Post that the future of all business is about storytelling. It’s telling (pun intended) that the man charged with bringing his venerable institution into the technology-driven 21st century would point to something as old-fashioned as storytelling when envisioning the future of business. Telling, yes, but hardly surprising. If storytelling isn’t new (it’s not), it has c...
Stories Drive Transformation Success
When Sree Sreenivasan was Chief Digital Officer at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, he told a writer for the Huffington Post that the future of all business is about storytelling. It’s telling (pun intended) that the man charged with bringing his venerable institution into the technology-driven 21st century would point to something as old-fashioned as storytelling when envisioning the future of business. Telling, yes, but hardly surprising. If storytelling isn’t new (it’s not), it has c...
What You'll Learn When You Learn to Code
Despite decades spent in and around digital—including seven or so working inside technology startups—I never learned to code. Sure, there was that one three-day-course my parents enrolled me in during the summer between fifth and sixth grades, but this was way back in the 70s (long before my career began) and the process of programming a simple trivia game by typing arcane language into a machine that didn’t even have a monitor (you had to print the code on paper to debug it) hardly inspired ...
What You'll Learn When You Learn to Code
Despite decades spent in and around digital—including seven or so working inside technology startups—I never learned to code. Sure, there was that one three-day-course my parents enrolled me in during the summer between fifth and sixth grades, but this was way back in the 70s (long before my career began) and the process of programming a simple trivia game by typing arcane language into a machine that didn’t even have a monitor (you had to print the code on paper to debug it) hardly inspired ...
The Discovery of Water
Marshall McLuhan once pointed out that “Fish did not discover water,” going on to explain, “In fact, because they are completely immersed in it, they live unaware of its existence. Similarly, when a conduct is normalized by a dominant cultural environment, it becomes invisible.” We are all immersed so deeply in something that it becomes invisible to us. To those of us who swim in digital transformation, what’s new is what’s normal. We already live and work in a world where the largest media c...
The Discovery of Water
Marshall McLuhan once pointed out that “Fish did not discover water,” going on to explain, “In fact, because they are completely immersed in it, they live unaware of its existence. Similarly, when a conduct is normalized by a dominant cultural environment, it becomes invisible.” We are all immersed so deeply in something that it becomes invisible to us. To those of us who swim in digital transformation, what’s new is what’s normal. We already live and work in a world where the largest media c...
Become a Beginner
Yesterday afternoon, I sat down to talk shop with a fellow consultant—let’s call him Chris (because that’s his actual name). As the business conversation wound down and talk turned to trivial bits of this and that, Chris mentioned that he has recently begun learning how to play the guitar. What he said next gave me one of those insights that sits at the intersection of aha and but of course. Chris told me how valuable it has been for him to be a beginner at something. So much so that next he ...
Become a Beginner
Yesterday afternoon, I sat down to talk shop with a fellow consultant—let’s call him Chris (because that’s his actual name). As the business conversation wound down and talk turned to trivial bits of this and that, Chris mentioned that he has recently begun learning how to play the guitar. What he said next gave me one of those insights that sits at the intersection of aha and but of course. Chris told me how valuable it has been for him to be a beginner at something. So much so that next he ...
