Perreault Magazine - 78 -
What will the coming decade look like?
The honest answer is that no one knows. A glimpse, though, can be found in a promising new start up, Oculus Rift. Eighteen months ago, Palmer Luckey was a teenager with a clever idea for a new business. Foregoing the traditional path of securing a bank loan, Luckey instead went to Kickstarter - a peer-to-peer lending platform — and, within days, raised $1 million from strangers. This success caught the attention of venture capitalists who quickly poured in $25 million to create a working prototype. So successful were the initial reviews of Oculus Rift’s virtual reality technology that Facebook purchased the company for $2 billion in March of 2014.
From an idea in a teenager’s head to a $2 billion company in less than a year-and-a-half, welcome to the future — where business as unusual will become usual.
The Big AHA
The pace and scale of tomorrow’s change begs the obvious question: How does a business leader prepare for a constantly changing future? The answer can be found in a simple acronym: AHA. It stands for: Awareness, Humility and Action.
First, leaders must become aware of the extraordinary changes taking place across today’s global landscape. For example, advances in nanotechnology are leading to the creation of new materials that can out-compete copper in terms of conductivity and steel in terms of strength. And soon, some of these exotic nanomaterials will even compete on price. Additionally, the extraordinary advances in 3D manufacturing show no signs of abating — Chinese manufacturers are already using a 12‐meter 3D printer to create titanium aircraft wings and fuselages. Continued advances in wearable technology, robotics, big data and the Internet of Things also promise to transform global commerce. (In fact, the Internet of Things — also known as the Industrial Internet — has alone been estimated to be a $15 trillion business opportunity in the coming decade!)
BUSINESS AS UNUSUAL
How to Prepare for the Coming
by JACK ULDRICH