March 11, 2024 • 50 mins
Ian and the host, Aidan McCullen, explore how companies past and present have navigated the transition from the 'first curve' - a state of established practices and security - to the 'second curve' of innovation and adaptation in the face of new technologies and markets. They discuss examples of organisations like HR Block, SGI (Silicon Graphics), and Volvo, and how they've managed to pivot or struggled with these shifts.
Ian offers profound insights into the societal move towards a knowledge economy, the importance of venture capital in disruptive innovation, consumer empowerment, and the geographical shift in economic power towards the Asia-Pacific region. Furthermore, they discuss the importance of organisational culture in adapting to change, the challenges of measuring success on the second curve, and the personal and societal impacts of these transitions.
The conversation concludes by emphasising the need for individuals and organisations to embrace uncertainty, leverage existing competencies, and prepare for a future that prioritises hyper-effectiveness and adaptive skills.
00:00 Introduction to the Second Curve
00:31 Understanding the Shift from First to Second Curve
00:56 The Impact of the Second Curve on Organizations
01:44 The Second Curve and the Post-Industrial Economy
02:10 The Role of Knowledge in the Second Curve
02:48 The Power of Disruptive Innovation
03:03 The Shift in Consumer Power
03:34 The Geographic Transformation of the Second Curve
04:36 The Importance of People in the Second Curve
05:31 The Second Curve Mindset
06:25 The Dilemma of the Second Curve
09:02 The Role of Technology in the Second Curve
15:06 The Impact of the Second Curve on Individuals
18:24 The Future of the Second Curve
48:19 Conclusion: Embracing the Second Curve
Find ian here: http://ianmorrison.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Aidan McCullen (00:00):
Welcome back to part two of this brilliant episode on this
(00:04):
book that released in nineteen ninetysix, written as far back as nineteen
ninety one when he wrote an articlethe curve problem this is absolutely
gold going back into the storieslooking at some of the organizations
what organizations made it what didn'tmake it's a brilliant book the second
curve how to command new technologiesnew consumers and new markets.
(00:25):
The author is with us again IanMorrison you're very welcome back
Ian Morrison (00:29):
Thanks, Aidan.
Great to be with you
Aidan McCullen (00:31):
Delighted to have you back to talk about part two and,
we've had time both of us to let someof these ideas marinate for you there
bubbling back to the surface again andsome other stuff has connected so we're
gonna share a couple of things todaywe didn't finish the diagram that i
showed yesterday the changes from firstcurve to second curve we're gonna cover
(00:51):
that and then we're gonna cover a fewdifferent organizations that had emerged.
Who were essentially surfing curvesthey were understanding where the next
curve was going to didn't always getit right but they learned quickly they
pivoted quickly and they managed tosurvive today and thrive in some of the
cases as well so we're gonna cover, someorganizations HR Block, SGI, which is
(01:13):
Silicon Graphics, and then a companythat Ian worked with for a very long
time at the top level, which was Volvo.
We have loads to get through today.
Let's get stuck in Ian.
I'm going to share straight onthe screen again, the diagram
first curve to second curve.
Ian Morrison (01:30):
As we talked about before, this sort of brought it back because I
actually remember vividly, writing thistable sitting in my living room when one
of my colleagues said we need a synthesisof what these changes really mean.
And so in terms of the market It's a bitlike, because remember, a lot of what
we're talking about here is the sweepingchange to a post industrial economy.
(01:55):
My kind of Bible, if you like, in thework I've done over my entire career
has been Daniel Bell's work, thecoming of post industrial society.
He was a sociologist at Harvard.
Who founded the urban studies program,and my PhD is in urban studies.
So it's really this grab bag of socialscience, if you like, and talking about
transformation to a knowledge economy.
(02:17):
And this is, the second curve is verymuch consistent with analyzing that shift.
So moving from a world in which it'sall about capital to a world where it's
all about knowledge and the, the abilityto generate new ideas and new thinking
is really the cornerstone of a lot ofsecond curve enterprises ironically.
(02:40):
With the rise of venture capital over thelast 30 years if you have the knowledge,
if you have that breakthrough, youcan very quickly attract the capital.
And that's been, one of the hallmarks,I think, of disruptive innovation is the
speed, velocity and amount of valuationyou can generate off the strength of
ideas and information and insight.
(03:03):
But I think the second big shift is,a focus on the producer controlling
everything, the brand to the controlbeing in the hands of the consumer.
And I think in retailing, we've seenthat kind of middleman lose power
the brands lose power and the finalconnector to the consumer being
(03:24):
the one who actually has power.
The cost goes in the Amazons of theworld in terms of their ability to
private label in terms of the Yeah.
Geography of transformation.
And I was originallytrained as a geographer.
I think what was evident in the earlynineties was this inevitable shift from
(03:46):
a center of gravity for the planet movingfrom the Atlantic axis to the Pacific.
And within that the dominance or notdominance, but the, as the ascendancy of
China and some other emerging markets overthe traditional kind of Asian stalwart
being Japan in terms of economic power.
(04:07):
And similarly we're seeing this sort oftransformation from focus on international
trade to global electronic commerce thatwe would imagine happen over the next
decade or two, which has come to pass.
And, computers and computing beingstandalone items moving towards a world
of connected Internet infrastructure.
(04:30):
And that certainly has been thedominant theme in technology
over the last 20 years.
And perhaps tied to what we saidabout the rise of venture capital
is this whole notion of it's notjust about money, it's about people.
And I've been struck by the degreeto which having hung out with some
of the venture capital folk that inthe final analysis, what they pick
(04:51):
is not always ideas but people.
And they're really backing entrepreneursthat they believe in and teams that they
believe in regardless of what the ideais, quite honestly, and often that's
why you see these serial entrepreneurskeep turning up over and over again.
Aidan McCullen (05:08):
The book goes into search depth in each of the markets as
well covers at the time which were verymuch emerging markets china india is in
there you also talk about russia, talkabout the power shifting from the U.S.
etcetera so it's fascinating to readback and to see how they have played
out just as you were predictingback then cuz you could see them
(05:29):
coming on to the second curve.
But this is also the case for theindividual and you cover the individual in
depth as well the shift in the workforceto shift in you as an individual and
your mindset shift that needs to happen.
A second curve mindset essentially.
There's a lovely quote here that ijust have to share with our audience
it goes as follows Ian writes:.
(05:50):
"The nice thing about the first curve isthat it feels fairly secure it's where
you get your money it's what keeps youemployed it's where your office is.
It's the place, the peopleand the company you belong to.
It's what you know.
The second curve however is uncertain.
It's not clear that whatyou are doing is right.
(06:11):
The second curve is a littlebit scary because it's not
about an obvious transformation.
It's a very difficult shift.
Why would anyone move?
Why would anyone leave the securityof the first curve for the second?
This is the core of thesecond curve dilemma.
The reason is that the security of thefirst curve is a false security . It's a
(06:35):
sense that just because it's working nowdoes not mean that it will work forever.
And then there's a killerline at the end you say here.
"Build on what you have.
It's nice to reinvent yourself but buildyour new career on existing interests
and competencies connect your strengths."
(06:55):
i love that over to you Ian.
Ian Morrison (06:58):
Yeah, I think it is this tension and you really have to put
yourself back to the early nineties wherethere was still a pervasive kind of social
contract that was starting to unravelbetween corporations and workers, that if
you were loyal and faithful and you hungaround, you got retiree health benefits
and pensions and all the rest of it.
(07:20):
And that was starting tounravel in the eighties.
But, it's really subsequent tothat with the rise of second curve
enterprises that those loyalties, thosetraditional secure environments have
come under assault one way or another.
And it's partly because of the riseof opportunity on the second curve.
(07:42):
And I just want to call out a coupleof, I think it is very difficult
for individuals because you'regiving up that secure environment.
I've been a freelancer basicallyfor 25 years, and, what , that is,
about Aiden, but the second curveenables that kind of independence.
But it is scary to take the jump andI think what I've learned actually,
(08:03):
and again, this is something.
That's really evident in Silicon Valley.
I, in subsequent writingtalked about in Silicon Valley,
we don't have a safety net.
We have a safety networkwhere it's okay to fail.
And people often the entrepreneursgetting funded are people who have tried
other things that didn't work out butventure capitalists see the potential in
(08:28):
them as leaders and as innovators and,they're allowed to come back, even though
an enterprise may have gone sideways.
And I think that's a very importantdimension, certainly of the, I live
in Menlo Park, ground zero of venturecapital, it's part of the essence and
the, DNA of this part of the world thatit is okay to have had failures and falter
(08:54):
but we'll give you another shot at it.
If you believe, there's, athere there in terms of creating
new technology and new wealth.
I want to really focus on this issueof hyper effectiveness though, because
I think this, and we're on the cuspof an exponential increase in this
(09:15):
concept with the next generation ofAI and machine learning and quantum
computing, all of those things thatway above my pay grade, but certainly
if you were to write the second curvetoday would be the cornerstone driving
technologies on the technology front.
And let me just illustrateit with a story.
(09:35):
Shortly after the book came out, I wasinvited , to a retreat for a company.
I'll not name the company, but it was amiddleware, successful middleware company
And it was it was at the Highlands injust south of Carmel, very lovely place.
And the leader the CEO of the companywas basically explaining to me,
(09:56):
this is probably the late nineties.
He said, there are two companies thatare going to come out in the next
few years that are going to be huge.
One is Salesforce and the otheris a little company called Google.
And the thing that was interestingis we got into a discussion about how
software companies are are created andthis entrepreneur was explaining that if
(10:20):
you look underneath any great softwareproduct, there's probably a tiny team,
maybe just one guy, and it's nearlyalways a male who writes the code.
Now that was true, the Institutefor the Future generated the first
commercial email product CC Mail,and basically it was written by one
guy, Hubert Lipinski who's this big,nerdy, PhD in astrophysics who, who
(10:47):
wrote it at the machine code level
literally so it was an actof sort of software genius.
And I have a very close personal friend.
Serial entrepreneur.
I call him big brain arthur isa big Dutch guy who trained at
Strathclyde University in Scotland.
And has, been chief technology officerand founder of multiple companies, but he
(11:09):
was on the team that wrote Java at Sun.
And there was five guys who wrotethat whole programming language.
And many of them have goneon to found other companies.
So one of the hallmarks of softwaredevelopment and I'm no expert
software development, but I thinkit's a perfect example of this
notion of hyper effectiveness.
(11:30):
You don't need Huge plants ormassive amounts of capital.
You need five guys maximumwho can write elegant code.
And then with the advent ofcloud based computing, you can
make that massively scalable.
And I think that Combinationhas been the source of enormous
(11:51):
amounts of disruption successfuldisruption in the last 20 years,
that is so relevant what you'retalking about now Ian about the hyper
effectiveness you were talking aboutleveraging technology then and we're
seeing really the fruits of that todaywhere all these things you talk about
(12:12):
here so you talk about the shift fromfirst to the second curve from the market
to the individual on the organization.
Aidan McCullen (12:19):
And they all affect each other so the market changes the
organization has to change and then theindividual has to be open to be able to.
I'll be open to that change the mindsethas to be open to forget what you've
learned before it's no longer relevantbut that's coupled with some of the
things you talk about in the booklike exponential change or moore's
(12:40):
law, it's like there's a moore's lawhappening not just in technology but that
moore's law is happening almost like a
societal level and therefore wehave to be this stem cell willing
to be able to just readapt and rechange and re engineer how we think.
I'm leverage those tools and it'sthose people that seem to be the
(13:01):
ones that are gonna be there notonly the survivors but the ones that
i should do well in this new world.
, . Ian Morrison (13:08):
And I think it's key, in the quote that you read earlier, that last
line about do make that transformation,however, leveraging other Existing
competencies and interests, right?
It's, you've got to, there's got tobe some logical connection because
sometimes what happened both toindividuals and corporations is
they'd see this emerging opportunity.
(13:30):
There was one example, I've forgottenit now, but it was a company that.
Was in the fish business, like fishprocessing and they tried to get
into e commerce and it was likeit was a bridge too far, right?
It just there was no logical connection.
They didn't bring anything to the partyand you, you can say to yourself all day
long, I'm going to reinvent myself as a,an AI expert, but if you don't have the
(13:53):
competencies or an entry point in that.
It's pretty difficult just throughact of will to suddenly become expert
in a completely different field.
Aidan McCullen (14:02):
In that jump from first to second curve as well you talk
about so we get this now the jump fromsecurity to uncertainty and that's
part of that mindset as well but inthere i thought there is something
that's really interesting cause youmentioned there about building on current
capabilities, i know you're on a partone we talked about the difference
between sony and apple for example.
(14:23):
Or sony and disney where disney builton current capabilities they just went
into or widened their net to go it's theentertainment business but sony tried
to acquire into businesses like you saidthat had nothing to do, where are existing
competencies and that's a nice mentalmodel to go well that goes for us to an
individual level but there's a quote herethat i thought was so important for both.
(14:48):
On a personal level to understand thatit's not gonna always work out and the
way you put it is beautiful here i'llquote this, " definitions and measurements
become incredibly important and incrediblydifficult on the second curve what is the
unit of analysis for the second curve?
You ask.
The difficulty applies totechnology especially but it's
(15:10):
true of all second curve phenomena.
In fact the second curve can be so fuzzythat it becomes a series of multiple
curves a band of false starts, weirdearly signals and true pioneers but
there are times and conditions whenwe as a society are prepared to jump
to the next curve when the case is socompelling, when the infrastructure to
(15:33):
support change reaches a critical mass."
Absolutely love that becauseit has so much in there.
About the difficulty of jumping to thenew curve because you know what this is
like in people will ask you when youare running workshops you're working as
a consultant with organizations, whenis the time to jump to the next curve.
(15:54):
And, you're kinda goin' that'sthe real problem here nobody
can actually tell you that!
Ian Morrison (16:00):
That's so right on.
I was, just as you were, sayingthat I was thinking back to when I
first joined the Institute, we had agroup who were the world experts in
evaluating video conferencing, right?
That part of Bob Johansen's group atthe Institute that, they were running.
I think it was every year for five years.
(16:20):
We did the same study for AT& T to saythat, video conferencing will someday
be a billion dollar market, right?
And this is back in 1985.
So it's not like we didn'tknow how to do this stuff.
But it took 30 years and a pandemicto make it mainstream, right?
And the technology was there.
But the compelling applicationor need wasn't there.
(16:44):
eventually.
Now, if that's what Imean about the metric.
So there's a thing in economicsustains law, if something is
unsustainable in the long run, it'll end.
And my kind of corollary of that is, ifsomething's going to be a big deal in
the future, it's got to start sometime.
So that's why when wetalked before about it.
(17:06):
Metrics.
In a measurement, it's importantto try and get those indicators
and be disciplined about measuringwhether you're seeing a hockey stick
increase or whether it's all hype.
And that's incrediblydifficult to discern sometimes.
And that's why Ironically, if I'dbeen thinking about it when those,
when we put up the two curves, thekey thing is the tipping point, right?
(17:29):
Malcolm Gladwell wrote that bookfive years later, but he really
tried to dissect, what is it thatcauses things to go exponential?
And, I think there's some real insightsfrom his thinking and work on all of that.
But quite frankly, it is verydifficult to see when the, these
shifts, I just was looking.
(17:49):
Back Google was founded in 1998.
It was three or four yearsafter the book came out.
And we were still in that early stageof the Internet sorting out who was
going to be, the browser of choice.
Mosaic had just come out.
Netscape was around.
But it was still, and we were toying withthe Alta Vista's and the, the early search
(18:12):
engines, all that stuff's gone, right?
And Google became, thedefault for the planet.
And, we may be at the cusp of another jumpball in that regard with generative AI.
Who knows?
That I think is why we're seeing,the battle between Microsoft, Apple.
Google in terms of who gets thecredit and who gets to be the
(18:33):
big dog going into the next wave.
Aidan McCullen (18:35):
There was something you talking about there the jump from,
hope to faith which is interestingas well but i come back to that one
cuz why are on this thread there wasa really interesting thing just to,
really hammer home this point about howdifficult it is when you're successful
to be able to be even open to the factthat you might not always be successful.
(18:56):
So this little quote here i'm just gonnasay to our audience those of you who
are CEOs of a successful business listento this because put yourself Ian says
in ibm's position in the late nineteenseventies and early, nineteen eighty
nine when steve jobs and steve Wozniakwe're building the apple computer .Apple
(19:19):
was struggling to produce a product thatwould be scalable beyond the hobbyist
market, ibm was making a ton of moneyfrom existing mainframe businesses.
It would have had been incrediblydifficult for senior IBM executives,
not only to countenance the demise oftheir original source of revenue, but
also to imagine that apple and theapple two computer could ever mature
(19:42):
to a point where they would be aserious threat to the power of big blue
it's reliability and performance inmainframe computers, you can certainly
sympathize, Ian tells us ,with ibmtop managers given such a dilemma.
It is what he calls thetyranny of the installed base,
Ian Morrison (20:02):
Funnily enough, I've served on a board for 20 years and a lot of them
were ex IBM executives, several of them.
And they were around at the time andmaking there was a lot of internal
skunk works around the development ofthe PC, the IBM PC, that was wrenching
to the mainframe guys, on the onehand, and similarly the whole notion
(20:25):
of of trying to respond to the upstartmodel and even though IBM responded,
and the operating system for the workenvironment was pretty much on IBM
platforms through the nineties Apple didphenomenally well in terms Of consumer
products, particularly beyond 2000.
(20:46):
And of course, since with the iPhone,but I think, just to come back to
an example of where the tyrannyof the installed base can get you.
Is even if you see the trajectory oftechnology and this relates to the silicon
graphics example they were, disruptiveto mainframe supercomputing, right?
(21:10):
We, Bob Johansson and I did this thingwith Ed McCracken where we had to go
on an airplane with a monitor and doa "show and tell" to various different
industry groups around what the potentialwas of these high end workstations.
And it was completely disruptiveto the supercomputers, right?
But ironically, what happened is that justas SGI was disruptive to supercomputing
(21:37):
the PC got more and more powerful.
And so you could cobble together acouple of Dell computers and some slick
software and emulate that very highend Workstation that SGI had developed.
And so by 2011 SGI was out of business.
It went bankrupt.
Because it had been undercutby Moore's Law themselves, even
(22:01):
though they were in that business.
That's what's so poignant about it.
That They understood supercomputingbetter than anyone, but yet the
inevitability of the power of the lesseralternative, the almost good enough
but cheaper, as Clay Christensen wouldtalk about, it got them so that there
(22:21):
was really no compelling difference
between something that ran off a Dellcomputer versus an SGI computer in terms
of graphic animations and all the rest.
Aidan McCullen (22:31):
i'd like to come back to Ed mccracken and SGI because of
the culture that they had actuallyworked really hard on the culture.
There was so much investment in thesecond curve by that business which
is why i want to point this out thatthere's a lot of you can call it luck,
but there's so many moving parts there'sthe market there's the consumer demands
(22:54):
there's as you call the shorter momentsin the sun so i was telling you off-air
friend of the show and somebody hopefullywe'll collaborate together with this
paul nunes and he wrote a book called.
" Jumping the S curve" and.
He talked about the whole idea of thediffusion of innovation, Ev rogers
(23:14):
diffusion of innovations becoming shorterand compressed and becoming what he called
a shark fin, i actually put shark finbeside my notes here because you wrote,
leading edge second curve companiesare going to have shorter moments in
the sun as the power of technologyamplifies and is the connectivity
of global wired world increases.
(23:35):
These moments in the sun shortenfor second curve pioneers and the
speed with which new curves haveto be built becomes even greater."
this is difficult enough and ritamcgrath, friend of the shows what
she calls this transient advantagevs competitive advantage of the old
days, and what i loved about the casestudies mentioned the book i hate
(23:58):
your block guys and SGI graphics wasactually that the cultures they had
built for really fast decision making.
Knowing that sometimes they're gonna belate to market but if the culture is good
enough they'll catch up pretty quicklythat's, that was really the essence of
why i wanted to share those so maybe youdo us the honor of sharing those Ian?
ian-morrison_2_12-08-2023_090726: And, McCracken, actually, I think (24:20):
undefined
I wrote about it in the book.
I've followed him once in, givena talk and, he said he didn't
believe in forecasting andfutures or strategic planning.
He just wanted his processesto be fast enough that he
could catch up, and stay ahead.
And they were very diligent about doingthat But as I said in the story in
(24:41):
the final analysis, even though theyhad all of that it didn't pan out
and, in working with some of the otherI'm forgetting even the example, it
was after I wrote the book, I did aretreat with one of the Silicon Valley
company in the semiconductor space.
And they talked about Formula onecompetition, meaning a sort of bumper
to bumper at 200 miles an hour.
(25:02):
You just have to constantly innovatebecause you're going to be, if you
don't keep up with Moore's law,if you don't meet that standard,
you're just going to get sideswiped.
Here's the, this Sharkfin thing I think isreally interesting because it's compounded
in difficulty by, and I don't even knowif I wrote about this in the book or
(25:25):
whether it was afterwards, I in otherwriting, talk about binary competition.
You either get all ofit or none of it, right?
That it's a winner take all Potential.
It relates to this notionof hyper effectiveness.
You think about search, right?
We don't have 20 viable search engines.
Most of us on the planetuse Google, right?
(25:48):
And now that may change withgenerative AI in winners there.
But it's like once there's a winner,they get almost everything on that.
makes these moments in thesun, even more difficult.
At one point SGI was the whole enchiladaon those high end workstations and yet
by 2011 got disintermediated themselves.
Aidan McCullen (26:12):
i'll show you Ian on the screen the shark fin just because
i think you'll find it interesting andyou just see that used to be like a nice
bell curve and like this early point herethe reason i'm showing here for those
people are watching us in the early days.
Paul called the singularityand the number one thing was
to consult your truth sellers.
(26:34):
I'm the truth tellers were people likeinstitute of the future they were like
you're in Morrisons there Bob Johansensof the team and i thought i just share
that to show you because, one of thosethings, And, i'm jumping ahead here
i'm jumping all over the place butbefore we share those case studies
at the end of the book you suggestsome of the things that you can do.
(26:54):
To understand and tomanage the second curve.
For example, you say yougotta have a long term view.
You gotta anticipate differentstage of developments.
You gotta, and I love the language here.
You gotta expect stuttering starts.
You gotta lean into exponential theexponential of everything so maybe
you'll share some of those kind oftriggers that you can look out for to
(27:19):
understand that this change is comingquicker than has been the case before
Ian Morrison (27:24):
And I think it is the, and I love Paul's chart by the way.
I think that really captures the role, thedifferent roles that different advisors
and thinkers have to play on that.
We, at the Institute for the Future,the reason we were a nonprofit and we
were doing all this corporate work.
My board used to ask me.
Why?
You look more like a consulting company.
But what we thought was the socialmission was to get organizations
(27:48):
to look longer term than they wouldotherwise do in the interests of the,
success of the economy and viabilityis trying to push that timeline out.
But often you can be You know,the danger is you compress.
I call it premature extrapolation, right?
You get to carried away with yourself andimagine it's very close and Paul Saffo,
(28:12):
a great line about never can confuse aclear view for a short distance, right?
That it may look close, butit isn't actually that close.
So so there is a value inbeing able to discern a pattern
of what drives the future.
And that's why we focused in thebook on those fundamental drivers
(28:35):
of new consumers, new technology,and new geographic markets.
We haven't talked much aboutthe geography one because I
think a good example is Volvo.
I worked with Volvo while we werewriting the book and then subsequently
was involved in a couple, over,over the late nineties a couple of,
(28:56):
Their strategic planning retreats.
The first one was interesting,probably 95 or 96.
It was in Palm Springsand it was wintertime.
It was right over New Year's.
And of course, the Swedes coming fromGothenburg, Palm Springs was supposed
to be balmy golf weather and actuallywas unseasonably cold, but they still
(29:16):
thought it was brilliant, right?
We're out playing golf and itwas 40 degrees, Fahrenheit.
And it was still a hell of a lotbetter than the weather in Gothenburg.
But anyway, we, so we had thisgreat meeting and lots of data
about driving forces for change.
And I forget how we got toit, but I was trying to push.
(29:36):
At the time, it was therise of the minivan.
And the, the bigger platform SUVs and wewere saying you guys should really you
ought to make one of those, and the peoplewho are expert in the automotive industry.
Experts are saying yeah, that'swhat the market signal is.
Blah, blah, blah.
And, I'm playing facilitator.
(29:58):
You know what it's like.
You're trying to get them to,and the Swedes are lovely people.
Once you got a few aquavits in them, youcan't shut them up, but they're a wee bit,
modest and quiet and nobody spoke, right?
No, I'm going like it's not a great idea.
Nobody spoke.
And then eventually Søren Gill, theCEO turned to me and he said, Ian.
We're not going to build a minivanbecause you can't build a safe one, right?
(30:21):
And the message there is safetyfor Volvo wasn't just a slogan.
It was like in their DNA, right?
So that, that was likea cultural phenomenon.
And I think that's a good example of,shift based on culture and values.
They eventually did buildcrossover vehicles because
(30:42):
they figured out a way to jump.
off a car platform and make itin their mind is safe as cars.
So that's a good exampleof the safety thing.
The second retreat is an example ofThe global change, which was we were
using the second curve principlesto discuss what was their second
curve and Volvo was a relativelysmall player in the car business.
(31:07):
100, 000 cars a year.
Maybe 8 10 percent a Marketposition in the luxury market.
But that's under scale, right?
But they were the second largest producerof heavy trucks and buses globally
behind Daimler Benz and at that meeting,they decided that the logical second
(31:27):
curve was to double down on the truckbusiness rather than the car business.
And so they ended up selling the carcompany and now they subsequently try
to get it back under the Volvo brand.
But it was gut wrenching for thembecause they had a very emotional
attachment, but it was part of this.
They could see the inevitability of thedisproportionate growth that was going
(31:50):
to take place in emerging markets inparticular with heavy trucks and buses.
Aidan McCullen (31:56):
it's interesting i couldn't help but think of
that allegiance to safety.
While it was good in that instanceif you thought about say for
example the psychological attachmentmany organizations have to their.
Original product say that they clingto the first curve or that they feel
(32:18):
defined by that first curve because.
This is where i was so impressed byboth what SGI silicone graphics tried
to do what actually what HR block diddo because it was their persistent
investment in the next curve despite how.
(32:40):
Sometimes immature that second curvewas and they didn't always get it right
but they were willing to actually puttheir literally put their money where
their mouth was or their thinking wason that's why i was so impressed by that
company and was so happy to go and checktheir stock price and see when you are
writing about them where they were nowthat they're riding really high compared
(33:01):
to the stock price of those early daysmaybe you'll tell us about this company
with any comments you have to add to it.
Ian Morrison (33:08):
Yeah, no, a really interesting company.
I first met H and R block.
The H is Henry block.
And I write about thebook when they invited me.
I was on advisory board for Oneof their subsidiary companies,
and they asked me to be on theboard of that subsidiary company.
And when I went to meet theHenry Block in Kansas City at the
(33:29):
headquarters, he came to the lobby.
And it wasn't because it wasme, because he did this with
everybody that came to see him.
It was just the way he was.
He's just incredibly generousand modest man and kind.
Aidan McCullen (33:40):
You say this in the book and i think this is so important and to
keep the frugality of a start up alivebecause i felt that was the case as well
i was trying to you know you mentionedas well in that intro, that the ea or
the receptionist knew your name as welljust by you coming on all you must be
Ian and that was like wow and then sucha large company that's humility and that,
(34:07):
in a way frugality was still there.
Ian Morrison (34:09):
Absolutely.
. And in fact, Jerry Grossman whowas vice chair of H& R Block, who I
sat on a board with for many years,Jerry taught me a lot about business.
And in fact when I went outon my own, he said, keep your
prices high and your costs low.
And it was good counsel.
R Block story.
So when I, was involved with them.
They had three businesses.
(34:31):
They had the tax business, andthis is maybe a peculiar U.
S.
phenomenon.
Australia and Canada, I forget how wedid taxes in Britain, but, we in the U.
S.
have to file taxes every year.
And for the low, rich people have fancyaccountants, but, most of us struggle.
And so you need help in tax preparation.
(34:53):
And so they had built this business,which was essentially helping working
class people fill out their tax returns.
And that ended up beinga once a year business.
So you ended up having to hire abunch of people and they franchised
these accounting offices, andso it was a retail operation.
So they got expertise in, . Managingtemporary help, which led them to
(35:19):
invest in this temporary help companya staffing agency basically for
both health care and commercial.
So that was an interim services.
That was a second business.
And then they bought a fledglingconsumer facing and business facing
software company, CompuServe, whichwas one of the original platform
(35:40):
technologies that subsequently ledto dial up service on the internet.
So they had those three businesses.
And what they, which speaksto your willing to experiment.
But over time, What happened was my firstboard meeting, they said, we're going
to spin off the temporary help company.
They essentially got out of the CompuServebusiness because they could see, I think
(36:04):
the writing on the wall and over thelast 20 odd years have brought second
curve thinking to the core business,which is that tax business, because
at the core of the tax business ispeople using things like debit cards.
And other forms of financial softwareto give people their rebate is
(36:30):
the word I was struggling to get.
They're going to get a rebateso they can provide the rebate
upfront, but charge interest ratesthat are very high on that rebate.
So it's a sort of financial model.
Some people might pejorativelycall low rollers, right?
You know that you actually, there,there's businesses where you focus
(36:54):
on not rich consumers, but relativelylow income consumers, but there's
a high relative stream of financialreward for servicing that group.
But, I think the overall story isa willingness to experiment and a
willingness to bring second curveprinciples to your first curve business.
Aidan McCullen (37:14):
i'm so struck by so many of the ways that you were on the
money with a lot of this stuff and asyou call out you can't you cannot know
when they'll land sometimes they'llland quicker sometimes they take the 30
years that you mentioned in the book todiffuse into society sometimes it takes
a pandemic for these things to happenthat was the way for example with video
(37:38):
technology like this that we're using.
But it was also in a way
the push towards flexible workforces orthe flexible office that now many people
who own commercial property are actuallystruggling from but there was a quote
here that i thought was so interesting andmaybe you'll riff on this one and because.
This was beautifully written butalso came true for so many people
(38:03):
listening to this show right nowbecause they'll be listening to
it in their home office you write
and don't forget.
By the way this is written earlynineties early to mid nineties "the
home environment will change asmuch in the next ten years as the
office has changed in the past ten.
Television will become digitaland interactive, with a panoply of
(38:23):
information services for consumers,customized programming, video on demand,
home banking, information services,interactive games, telephones, cable
television and computers will convergeto create a multipurpose multimedia
information, and entertainmentcapability, smartphone anybody?
One consequence of this developmentwill be an acceleration of telework.
(38:48):
As the home office becomes acompletely functional extension
of the corporate office.
Overwork at home has become one of thekiller applications of the nineteen
nineties beautiful Ian, over to you.
Ian Morrison (39:02):
I read that recently again, and I thought, wow, we did get it right.
And it really speaks to the value,I think, of the methodology.
At the institute that we, I remember, thegenesis of this was a big whiteboarding
exercise where we, we and our colleaguesand some outside experts sat around
with a bunch of our clients includingcutting edge vendors and users, and we
(39:27):
were using a brainstorming tool, whichis, Starting on the home, it's saying
home as hospital, home as office, homeas entertainment center, home as, and
using that to riff on ideas and, manyof these things came out of that kind
of ideal, ideation type exercise that,that, often product development companies
(39:51):
and product development teams get into.
But no, we were convinced of thatconversion of media and technology.
I, there was a lot of talkin the early nineties about
personal digital assistance.
We didn't quite crystallize it thatthe phone would be the platform.
The way the iPhone.
Became because many of uswere using brick phones.
ian-morrison_2_12-08-2023_090726: And I remember one of my colleagues (40:13):
undefined
saying, now I had, I probably gotthem in my, behind me and here in my
offices, every cell phone I've ever had.
I keep thinking I'm going to mountthem one day, and one of them is like,
when it looks like something out ofworld war two, yeah, there you go.
Yeah.
And I've got one of those.
I love those little tiny ones.
Aidan McCullen (40:33):
I'm on the i'm holding up here for those of you listen
to an old ipod cuz i hold the i.
I do the same i gather this stuff i'm likeyou is like on it look great in a frame
one day almost like you know the dawnof mankind you know that type of idea,
Ian Morrison (40:49):
yeah, yeah.
It's stuff like a museum exhibit.
Yeah.
Aidan McCullen (40:52):
you can sell them by the way these days people will pay
good money if they're still working
Ian Morrison (40:57):
Wow.
Maybe that might be my nextjob is clean up my closet,
Aidan McCullen (41:03):
One man's junk is another man's gold.
Ian Morrison (41:06):
yeah, yeah, exactly.
This issue of homework, causeit's really fascinating.
I've been.
So there's a group at Stanfordactually tracks this stuff pretty
closely and we're, I don't knowabout in the UK, but in the U.
S.
the numbers are about half of peoplewant to work about half the time at home.
So it, it nets out thatabout 30 percent of jobs.
(41:28):
Are virtualized to some degree.
And, somewhere between 20 and 30%.
So we've seen, as you said, commercialreal estate occupancy drop dramatically.
And, a lot of talk about conversionto to housing and so forth.
Just because the relative demandfor housing versus office spaces
(41:49):
has shifted, but yeah, no, I thinkthat the platform of homework it was
also consistent with the outsourcingmovement that happened through the 90s.
So it was compounding, I, I always usedto say a lot of people work at Google,
not a lot of people work for Google.
Google and Microsoft, all theseguys have badge colors, the people
(42:11):
are with the program and thepeople are not with the program.
And there's a lot of 1099,as we call them in the U.
S., contractors who nevermake it to the A team.
You're a permanent reserve forthose of us who play sports.
You never got to be on the big team, but
Aidan McCullen (42:26):
Don't mention the war man.
Don't mention the war.
ian-morrison_2_12-08-2023_090726 (42:29):
yeah.
But yeah, no, I, and I think the fluidityof enterprises is such that we are
going to see that, I think, continue.
And the potent, you put this together,if I was going to write it all over again
today, going forward, I would reallypick on this hyper effectiveness issue.
(42:55):
What does it mean?
I have a friend who is an advisorto the defense department who's
a very sophisticated technologyentrepreneurs helping the defense
department incorporate new technologiesand their planning and thinking.
And he basically said to me.
I can do my job withchat GPT is my assistant.
(43:16):
I don't need people anymore.
No, that might be an overstatement.
But I think that directionally iswhere a lot of people are headed with
this notion of hyper effectivenesswith these emerging tools.
And what does that mean?
What does that mean for organizations?
What does that create?
In terms of a challenge fordisruption, and, that's the work
(43:38):
you're on, and I'll look forwardto hearing how it all plays out.
Aidan McCullen (43:43):
Well, it's funny.
You said I think the, I alwayshave this model in my head that you
have, so you have technology on theexponential route where I don't think
everybody understands how powerfuleach jump when it comes to AI.
Is because it's no longer that we haveto wait for coders to make it stronger
(44:08):
it's actually improving itself at anexponential rate so that those jumps
are so dramatically better each timeso you have that on a dramatically
improving rate but then you have.
What a lot of people are finding theirstruggle to be like you call the hyper
effectiveness but even to be focused tobe able to have the attention to even
(44:29):
read, add an article like you're twocurve article back in nineteen ninety
one or HBR article whatever it might be.
People are struggling to sitdown and read one of those.
And i think it's that collision courseof there are these two curves that are
going the opposite ways that's for mea human superpower is to actually be
(44:53):
able to be focused to do the work todo it effectively to also then invest
time in your health and yourself inyour relationships etc and to be able
to not reach for that alcohol beveragefor that substance of choice that's
where this becomes interesting thatyou're seeing this kind of coming
(45:15):
together of both the human physiology,and neurobiology and then actually the
technology world as well i think that'san interesting Venn diagram overlap,
, , Ian Morrison (45:28):
and it's why I think you're seeing particularly
younger generations reappraisingWhat life priorities look like.
It's, I always joke that, peopleoften ask me about how do you deal
with generation Z or X or whatever?
How is it different from the baby boom?
And I'm, I'm the fatherof two millennials.
And I always point out that they'relooking for In terms of their work life,
(45:53):
they're looking for a cross betweenthe Peace Corps and Morgan Stanley,
they're looking to save the world andmake a difference on the one hand,
be well compensated, and they'd liketo live in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
Thank you very much.
And only work three days a week.
But I think you're pointing to, inall seriousness, a very, Important
and difficult dilemma, which will beon the one hand, this potential for
(46:17):
technology enabled hyper effectiveness.
And on the other, how healthy isthat as a human being to be in that
kind of turbo charged, , rat raceif you want to use the negative and
that that's scary going forwards.
And I think we, we all have tofind a balance in all of that in
our own personal and family lives.
(46:39):
You're absolutely right.
Aidan McCullen (46:40):
i have one last quote that i absolutely love and i'm gonna
share that but as i'm doing this.
I'd love you to have your final thoughtfor audience maybe your final kind
of call clarion call for audienceand before i even give that quote
and then throw it over to you iswhere can people find you where's the
best place to reach out and find you
Ian Morrison (47:01):
Well, I'm still active on the web at ianMorrison.
com and most of my writing in thelast 20 years has been around, around
healthcare, as I think you know.
But certainly I'm reachablethrough my website, ianMorrison.
com.
Aidan McCullen (47:15):
and i'll link to that in as well a link to the website this
is my quote . I love this and i wantour audience those of you are still with
us who joined us cause again attentionspans are short these days this is a
lovely quote and it goes for both thecorporation and the individual that's
what i really like about this usethe word corporation interchangeable
(47:35):
you the person the individual this.
As in this whole change their first secondcurve phenomena "means that corporations
have to adjust to a world where newproducts and services will be a reality
even though we cannot conceive of exactlywhat those products and services will be.
We have to prepare for aworld where they will exist.
(47:57):
In other words.
Using current products and servicesas a benchmark is inadequate.
We need to stop benchmarking againsteach other and start benchmarking against
this uncertain but powerful future.
Otherwise, we're allgoing to be left behind."
Absolutely love that IanMorrison, "the second curve".
(48:19):
Ian over you what's your final message.
Ian Morrison (48:21):
Think that's a sort of a restatement of Steve Jobs, a
manifesto, which was, the consumerdoesn't know what they want.
But they'll tell us eventuallywhen they see and are delighted
by something like the iPhone.
And I think that did come to pass.
I would just say having, reallybeen in the forecasting and looking
ahead business for almost 50 years.
(48:44):
You can't predict the future precisely.
I have come to it.
this with some humility over the time.
I think we've done a prettygood job at the Institute and my
colleagues there continue to dothat fine work about looking ahead.
I don't think you can predictprecisely, but I do think you can
think systematically about the future.
And, I am still a great believer indissecting Those big driving forces
(49:08):
of change around consumers, geographyand technology that you can update and
continuously monitor those shifts andthen use creative planning and creative
ideation processes to say, so whatdoes that mean if something happens?
And, dealing with uncertaintyis just part of what.
(49:32):
Looking ahead involves and I stillbelieve that there is value in, exploring
these kind of diffusion models as aplatform for understanding change.
That's a very helpful.
body of work that you've puttogether, Aidan, so I support
you in continuing that work.
And I think it's out of that kindof thinking that people can get
(49:54):
an appreciation of how to tacklewhat is essentially uncertain
and ambiguous going forward.
Aidan McCullen (50:00):
Beautiful and it's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you.
This is not his only book by the wayas well so you'll find his other books
on, Ian Morrison dot com and alsoIan has two versions of this book as
well so i have the nineteen ninetysix version as well so the updated
version, add a business week bestsellerbook back when it came out as well.
(50:21):
Author of "the second curve,how to command new technologies
new consumers and new markets."
Ian Morrison, thank you for joining us,
Ian Morrison (50:30):
Thank you, Aidan.
Aidan McCullen (50:31):
Mic drop.
Well done, man.
ian-morrison_2_12-08-2023_090726: That's great. (50:34):
undefined
That was fun.
That was fun.
Welcome back to part two of this brilliant episode on this
(00:04):
book that released in nineteen ninetysix, written as far back as nineteen
ninety one when he wrote an articlethe curve problem this is absolutely
gold going back into the storieslooking at some of the organizations
what organizations made it what didn'tmake it's a brilliant book the second
curve how to command new technologiesnew consumers and new markets.
(00:25):
The author is with us again IanMorrison you're very welcome back
Ian Morrison (00:29):
Thanks, Aidan.
Great to be with you
Aidan McCullen (00:31):
Delighted to have you back to talk about part two and,
we've had time both of us to let someof these ideas marinate for you there
bubbling back to the surface again andsome other stuff has connected so we're
gonna share a couple of things todaywe didn't finish the diagram that i
showed yesterday the changes from firstcurve to second curve we're gonna cover
(00:51):
that and then we're gonna cover a fewdifferent organizations that had emerged.
Who were essentially surfing curvesthey were understanding where the next
curve was going to didn't always getit right but they learned quickly they
pivoted quickly and they managed tosurvive today and thrive in some of the
cases as well so we're gonna cover, someorganizations HR Block, SGI, which is
(01:13):
Silicon Graphics, and then a companythat Ian worked with for a very long
time at the top level, which was Volvo.
We have loads to get through today.
Let's get stuck in Ian.
I'm going to share straight onthe screen again, the diagram
first curve to second curve.
Ian Morrison (01:30):
As we talked about before, this sort of brought it back because I
actually remember vividly, writing thistable sitting in my living room when one
of my colleagues said we need a synthesisof what these changes really mean.
And so in terms of the market It's a bitlike, because remember, a lot of what
we're talking about here is the sweepingchange to a post industrial economy.
(01:55):
My kind of Bible, if you like, in thework I've done over my entire career
has been Daniel Bell's work, thecoming of post industrial society.
He was a sociologist at Harvard.
Who founded the urban studies program,and my PhD is in urban studies.
So it's really this grab bag of socialscience, if you like, and talking about
transformation to a knowledge economy.
(02:17):
And this is, the second curve is verymuch consistent with analyzing that shift.
So moving from a world in which it'sall about capital to a world where it's
all about knowledge and the, the abilityto generate new ideas and new thinking
is really the cornerstone of a lot ofsecond curve enterprises ironically.
(02:40):
With the rise of venture capital over thelast 30 years if you have the knowledge,
if you have that breakthrough, youcan very quickly attract the capital.
And that's been, one of the hallmarks,I think, of disruptive innovation is the
speed, velocity and amount of valuationyou can generate off the strength of
ideas and information and insight.
(03:03):
But I think the second big shift is,a focus on the producer controlling
everything, the brand to the controlbeing in the hands of the consumer.
And I think in retailing, we've seenthat kind of middleman lose power
the brands lose power and the finalconnector to the consumer being
(03:24):
the one who actually has power.
The cost goes in the Amazons of theworld in terms of their ability to
private label in terms of the Yeah.
Geography of transformation.
And I was originallytrained as a geographer.
I think what was evident in the earlynineties was this inevitable shift from
(03:46):
a center of gravity for the planet movingfrom the Atlantic axis to the Pacific.
And within that the dominance or notdominance, but the, as the ascendancy of
China and some other emerging markets overthe traditional kind of Asian stalwart
being Japan in terms of economic power.
(04:07):
And similarly we're seeing this sort oftransformation from focus on international
trade to global electronic commerce thatwe would imagine happen over the next
decade or two, which has come to pass.
And, computers and computing beingstandalone items moving towards a world
of connected Internet infrastructure.
(04:30):
And that certainly has been thedominant theme in technology
over the last 20 years.
And perhaps tied to what we saidabout the rise of venture capital
is this whole notion of it's notjust about money, it's about people.
And I've been struck by the degreeto which having hung out with some
of the venture capital folk that inthe final analysis, what they pick
(04:51):
is not always ideas but people.
And they're really backing entrepreneursthat they believe in and teams that they
believe in regardless of what the ideais, quite honestly, and often that's
why you see these serial entrepreneurskeep turning up over and over again.
Aidan McCullen (05:08):
The book goes into search depth in each of the markets as
well covers at the time which were verymuch emerging markets china india is in
there you also talk about russia, talkabout the power shifting from the U.S.
etcetera so it's fascinating to readback and to see how they have played
out just as you were predictingback then cuz you could see them
(05:29):
coming on to the second curve.
But this is also the case for theindividual and you cover the individual in
depth as well the shift in the workforceto shift in you as an individual and
your mindset shift that needs to happen.
A second curve mindset essentially.
There's a lovely quote here that ijust have to share with our audience
it goes as follows Ian writes:.
(05:50):
"The nice thing about the first curve isthat it feels fairly secure it's where
you get your money it's what keeps youemployed it's where your office is.
It's the place, the peopleand the company you belong to.
It's what you know.
The second curve however is uncertain.
It's not clear that whatyou are doing is right.
(06:11):
The second curve is a littlebit scary because it's not
about an obvious transformation.
It's a very difficult shift.
Why would anyone move?
Why would anyone leave the securityof the first curve for the second?
This is the core of thesecond curve dilemma.
The reason is that the security of thefirst curve is a false security . It's a
(06:35):
sense that just because it's working nowdoes not mean that it will work forever.
And then there's a killerline at the end you say here.
"Build on what you have.
It's nice to reinvent yourself but buildyour new career on existing interests
and competencies connect your strengths."
(06:55):
i love that over to you Ian.
Ian Morrison (06:58):
Yeah, I think it is this tension and you really have to put
yourself back to the early nineties wherethere was still a pervasive kind of social
contract that was starting to unravelbetween corporations and workers, that if
you were loyal and faithful and you hungaround, you got retiree health benefits
and pensions and all the rest of it.
(07:20):
And that was starting tounravel in the eighties.
But, it's really subsequent tothat with the rise of second curve
enterprises that those loyalties, thosetraditional secure environments have
come under assault one way or another.
And it's partly because of the riseof opportunity on the second curve.
(07:42):
And I just want to call out a coupleof, I think it is very difficult
for individuals because you'regiving up that secure environment.
I've been a freelancer basicallyfor 25 years, and, what , that is,
about Aiden, but the second curveenables that kind of independence.
But it is scary to take the jump andI think what I've learned actually,
(08:03):
and again, this is something.
That's really evident in Silicon Valley.
I, in subsequent writingtalked about in Silicon Valley,
we don't have a safety net.
We have a safety networkwhere it's okay to fail.
And people often the entrepreneursgetting funded are people who have tried
other things that didn't work out butventure capitalists see the potential in
(08:28):
them as leaders and as innovators and,they're allowed to come back, even though
an enterprise may have gone sideways.
And I think that's a very importantdimension, certainly of the, I live
in Menlo Park, ground zero of venturecapital, it's part of the essence and
the, DNA of this part of the world thatit is okay to have had failures and falter
(08:54):
but we'll give you another shot at it.
If you believe, there's, athere there in terms of creating
new technology and new wealth.
I want to really focus on this issueof hyper effectiveness though, because
I think this, and we're on the cuspof an exponential increase in this
(09:15):
concept with the next generation ofAI and machine learning and quantum
computing, all of those things thatway above my pay grade, but certainly
if you were to write the second curvetoday would be the cornerstone driving
technologies on the technology front.
And let me just illustrateit with a story.
(09:35):
Shortly after the book came out, I wasinvited , to a retreat for a company.
I'll not name the company, but it was amiddleware, successful middleware company
And it was it was at the Highlands injust south of Carmel, very lovely place.
And the leader the CEO of the companywas basically explaining to me,
(09:56):
this is probably the late nineties.
He said, there are two companies thatare going to come out in the next
few years that are going to be huge.
One is Salesforce and the otheris a little company called Google.
And the thing that was interestingis we got into a discussion about how
software companies are are created andthis entrepreneur was explaining that if
(10:20):
you look underneath any great softwareproduct, there's probably a tiny team,
maybe just one guy, and it's nearlyalways a male who writes the code.
Now that was true, the Institutefor the Future generated the first
commercial email product CC Mail,and basically it was written by one
guy, Hubert Lipinski who's this big,nerdy, PhD in astrophysics who, who
(10:47):
wrote it at the machine code level
literally so it was an actof sort of software genius.
And I have a very close personal friend.
Serial entrepreneur.
I call him big brain arthur isa big Dutch guy who trained at
Strathclyde University in Scotland.
And has, been chief technology officerand founder of multiple companies, but he
(11:09):
was on the team that wrote Java at Sun.
And there was five guys who wrotethat whole programming language.
And many of them have goneon to found other companies.
So one of the hallmarks of softwaredevelopment and I'm no expert
software development, but I thinkit's a perfect example of this
notion of hyper effectiveness.
(11:30):
You don't need Huge plants ormassive amounts of capital.
You need five guys maximumwho can write elegant code.
And then with the advent ofcloud based computing, you can
make that massively scalable.
And I think that Combinationhas been the source of enormous
(11:51):
amounts of disruption successfuldisruption in the last 20 years,
that is so relevant what you'retalking about now Ian about the hyper
effectiveness you were talking aboutleveraging technology then and we're
seeing really the fruits of that todaywhere all these things you talk about
(12:12):
here so you talk about the shift fromfirst to the second curve from the market
to the individual on the organization.
Aidan McCullen (12:19):
And they all affect each other so the market changes the
organization has to change and then theindividual has to be open to be able to.
I'll be open to that change the mindsethas to be open to forget what you've
learned before it's no longer relevantbut that's coupled with some of the
things you talk about in the booklike exponential change or moore's
(12:40):
law, it's like there's a moore's lawhappening not just in technology but that
moore's law is happening almost like a
societal level and therefore wehave to be this stem cell willing
to be able to just readapt and rechange and re engineer how we think.
I'm leverage those tools and it'sthose people that seem to be the
(13:01):
ones that are gonna be there notonly the survivors but the ones that
i should do well in this new world.
, . Ian Morrison (13:08):
And I think it's key, in the quote that you read earlier, that last
line about do make that transformation,however, leveraging other Existing
competencies and interests, right?
It's, you've got to, there's got tobe some logical connection because
sometimes what happened both toindividuals and corporations is
they'd see this emerging opportunity.
(13:30):
There was one example, I've forgottenit now, but it was a company that.
Was in the fish business, like fishprocessing and they tried to get
into e commerce and it was likeit was a bridge too far, right?
It just there was no logical connection.
They didn't bring anything to the partyand you, you can say to yourself all day
long, I'm going to reinvent myself as a,an AI expert, but if you don't have the
(13:53):
competencies or an entry point in that.
It's pretty difficult just throughact of will to suddenly become expert
in a completely different field.
Aidan McCullen (14:02):
In that jump from first to second curve as well you talk
about so we get this now the jump fromsecurity to uncertainty and that's
part of that mindset as well but inthere i thought there is something
that's really interesting cause youmentioned there about building on current
capabilities, i know you're on a partone we talked about the difference
between sony and apple for example.
(14:23):
Or sony and disney where disney builton current capabilities they just went
into or widened their net to go it's theentertainment business but sony tried
to acquire into businesses like you saidthat had nothing to do, where are existing
competencies and that's a nice mentalmodel to go well that goes for us to an
individual level but there's a quote herethat i thought was so important for both.
(14:48):
On a personal level to understand thatit's not gonna always work out and the
way you put it is beautiful here i'llquote this, " definitions and measurements
become incredibly important and incrediblydifficult on the second curve what is the
unit of analysis for the second curve?
You ask.
The difficulty applies totechnology especially but it's
(15:10):
true of all second curve phenomena.
In fact the second curve can be so fuzzythat it becomes a series of multiple
curves a band of false starts, weirdearly signals and true pioneers but
there are times and conditions whenwe as a society are prepared to jump
to the next curve when the case is socompelling, when the infrastructure to
(15:33):
support change reaches a critical mass."
Absolutely love that becauseit has so much in there.
About the difficulty of jumping to thenew curve because you know what this is
like in people will ask you when youare running workshops you're working as
a consultant with organizations, whenis the time to jump to the next curve.
(15:54):
And, you're kinda goin' that'sthe real problem here nobody
can actually tell you that!
Ian Morrison (16:00):
That's so right on.
I was, just as you were, sayingthat I was thinking back to when I
first joined the Institute, we had agroup who were the world experts in
evaluating video conferencing, right?
That part of Bob Johansen's group atthe Institute that, they were running.
I think it was every year for five years.
(16:20):
We did the same study for AT& T to saythat, video conferencing will someday
be a billion dollar market, right?
And this is back in 1985.
So it's not like we didn'tknow how to do this stuff.
But it took 30 years and a pandemicto make it mainstream, right?
And the technology was there.
But the compelling applicationor need wasn't there.
(16:44):
eventually.
Now, if that's what Imean about the metric.
So there's a thing in economicsustains law, if something is
unsustainable in the long run, it'll end.
And my kind of corollary of that is, ifsomething's going to be a big deal in
the future, it's got to start sometime.
So that's why when wetalked before about it.
(17:06):
Metrics.
In a measurement, it's importantto try and get those indicators
and be disciplined about measuringwhether you're seeing a hockey stick
increase or whether it's all hype.
And that's incrediblydifficult to discern sometimes.
And that's why Ironically, if I'dbeen thinking about it when those,
when we put up the two curves, thekey thing is the tipping point, right?
(17:29):
Malcolm Gladwell wrote that bookfive years later, but he really
tried to dissect, what is it thatcauses things to go exponential?
And, I think there's some real insightsfrom his thinking and work on all of that.
But quite frankly, it is verydifficult to see when the, these
shifts, I just was looking.
(17:49):
Back Google was founded in 1998.
It was three or four yearsafter the book came out.
And we were still in that early stageof the Internet sorting out who was
going to be, the browser of choice.
Mosaic had just come out.
Netscape was around.
But it was still, and we were toying withthe Alta Vista's and the, the early search
(18:12):
engines, all that stuff's gone, right?
And Google became, thedefault for the planet.
And, we may be at the cusp of another jumpball in that regard with generative AI.
Who knows?
That I think is why we're seeing,the battle between Microsoft, Apple.
Google in terms of who gets thecredit and who gets to be the
(18:33):
big dog going into the next wave.
Aidan McCullen (18:35):
There was something you talking about there the jump from,
hope to faith which is interestingas well but i come back to that one
cuz why are on this thread there wasa really interesting thing just to,
really hammer home this point about howdifficult it is when you're successful
to be able to be even open to the factthat you might not always be successful.
(18:56):
So this little quote here i'm just gonnasay to our audience those of you who
are CEOs of a successful business listento this because put yourself Ian says
in ibm's position in the late nineteenseventies and early, nineteen eighty
nine when steve jobs and steve Wozniakwe're building the apple computer .Apple
(19:19):
was struggling to produce a product thatwould be scalable beyond the hobbyist
market, ibm was making a ton of moneyfrom existing mainframe businesses.
It would have had been incrediblydifficult for senior IBM executives,
not only to countenance the demise oftheir original source of revenue, but
also to imagine that apple and theapple two computer could ever mature
(19:42):
to a point where they would be aserious threat to the power of big blue
it's reliability and performance inmainframe computers, you can certainly
sympathize, Ian tells us ,with ibmtop managers given such a dilemma.
It is what he calls thetyranny of the installed base,
Ian Morrison (20:02):
Funnily enough, I've served on a board for 20 years and a lot of them
were ex IBM executives, several of them.
And they were around at the time andmaking there was a lot of internal
skunk works around the development ofthe PC, the IBM PC, that was wrenching
to the mainframe guys, on the onehand, and similarly the whole notion
(20:25):
of of trying to respond to the upstartmodel and even though IBM responded,
and the operating system for the workenvironment was pretty much on IBM
platforms through the nineties Apple didphenomenally well in terms Of consumer
products, particularly beyond 2000.
(20:46):
And of course, since with the iPhone,but I think, just to come back to
an example of where the tyrannyof the installed base can get you.
Is even if you see the trajectory oftechnology and this relates to the silicon
graphics example they were, disruptiveto mainframe supercomputing, right?
(21:10):
We, Bob Johansson and I did this thingwith Ed McCracken where we had to go
on an airplane with a monitor and doa "show and tell" to various different
industry groups around what the potentialwas of these high end workstations.
And it was completely disruptiveto the supercomputers, right?
But ironically, what happened is that justas SGI was disruptive to supercomputing
(21:37):
the PC got more and more powerful.
And so you could cobble together acouple of Dell computers and some slick
software and emulate that very highend Workstation that SGI had developed.
And so by 2011 SGI was out of business.
It went bankrupt.
Because it had been undercutby Moore's Law themselves, even
(22:01):
though they were in that business.
That's what's so poignant about it.
That They understood supercomputingbetter than anyone, but yet the
inevitability of the power of the lesseralternative, the almost good enough
but cheaper, as Clay Christensen wouldtalk about, it got them so that there
(22:21):
was really no compelling difference
between something that ran off a Dellcomputer versus an SGI computer in terms
of graphic animations and all the rest.
Aidan McCullen (22:31):
i'd like to come back to Ed mccracken and SGI because of
the culture that they had actuallyworked really hard on the culture.
There was so much investment in thesecond curve by that business which
is why i want to point this out thatthere's a lot of you can call it luck,
but there's so many moving parts there'sthe market there's the consumer demands
(22:54):
there's as you call the shorter momentsin the sun so i was telling you off-air
friend of the show and somebody hopefullywe'll collaborate together with this
paul nunes and he wrote a book called.
" Jumping the S curve" and.
He talked about the whole idea of thediffusion of innovation, Ev rogers
(23:14):
diffusion of innovations becoming shorterand compressed and becoming what he called
a shark fin, i actually put shark finbeside my notes here because you wrote,
leading edge second curve companiesare going to have shorter moments in
the sun as the power of technologyamplifies and is the connectivity
of global wired world increases.
(23:35):
These moments in the sun shortenfor second curve pioneers and the
speed with which new curves haveto be built becomes even greater."
this is difficult enough and ritamcgrath, friend of the shows what
she calls this transient advantagevs competitive advantage of the old
days, and what i loved about the casestudies mentioned the book i hate
(23:58):
your block guys and SGI graphics wasactually that the cultures they had
built for really fast decision making.
Knowing that sometimes they're gonna belate to market but if the culture is good
enough they'll catch up pretty quicklythat's, that was really the essence of
why i wanted to share those so maybe youdo us the honor of sharing those Ian?
ian-morrison_2_12-08-2023_090726: And, McCracken, actually, I think (24:20):
undefined
I wrote about it in the book.
I've followed him once in, givena talk and, he said he didn't
believe in forecasting andfutures or strategic planning.
He just wanted his processesto be fast enough that he
could catch up, and stay ahead.
And they were very diligent about doingthat But as I said in the story in
(24:41):
the final analysis, even though theyhad all of that it didn't pan out
and, in working with some of the otherI'm forgetting even the example, it
was after I wrote the book, I did aretreat with one of the Silicon Valley
company in the semiconductor space.
And they talked about Formula onecompetition, meaning a sort of bumper
to bumper at 200 miles an hour.
(25:02):
You just have to constantly innovatebecause you're going to be, if you
don't keep up with Moore's law,if you don't meet that standard,
you're just going to get sideswiped.
Here's the, this Sharkfin thing I think isreally interesting because it's compounded
in difficulty by, and I don't even knowif I wrote about this in the book or
(25:25):
whether it was afterwards, I in otherwriting, talk about binary competition.
You either get all ofit or none of it, right?
That it's a winner take all Potential.
It relates to this notionof hyper effectiveness.
You think about search, right?
We don't have 20 viable search engines.
Most of us on the planetuse Google, right?
(25:48):
And now that may change withgenerative AI in winners there.
But it's like once there's a winner,they get almost everything on that.
makes these moments in thesun, even more difficult.
At one point SGI was the whole enchiladaon those high end workstations and yet
by 2011 got disintermediated themselves.
Aidan McCullen (26:12):
i'll show you Ian on the screen the shark fin just because
i think you'll find it interesting andyou just see that used to be like a nice
bell curve and like this early point herethe reason i'm showing here for those
people are watching us in the early days.
Paul called the singularityand the number one thing was
to consult your truth sellers.
(26:34):
I'm the truth tellers were people likeinstitute of the future they were like
you're in Morrisons there Bob Johansensof the team and i thought i just share
that to show you because, one of thosethings, And, i'm jumping ahead here
i'm jumping all over the place butbefore we share those case studies
at the end of the book you suggestsome of the things that you can do.
(26:54):
To understand and tomanage the second curve.
For example, you say yougotta have a long term view.
You gotta anticipate differentstage of developments.
You gotta, and I love the language here.
You gotta expect stuttering starts.
You gotta lean into exponential theexponential of everything so maybe
you'll share some of those kind oftriggers that you can look out for to
(27:19):
understand that this change is comingquicker than has been the case before
Ian Morrison (27:24):
And I think it is the, and I love Paul's chart by the way.
I think that really captures the role, thedifferent roles that different advisors
and thinkers have to play on that.
We, at the Institute for the Future,the reason we were a nonprofit and we
were doing all this corporate work.
My board used to ask me.
Why?
You look more like a consulting company.
But what we thought was the socialmission was to get organizations
(27:48):
to look longer term than they wouldotherwise do in the interests of the,
success of the economy and viabilityis trying to push that timeline out.
But often you can be You know,the danger is you compress.
I call it premature extrapolation, right?
You get to carried away with yourself andimagine it's very close and Paul Saffo,
(28:12):
a great line about never can confuse aclear view for a short distance, right?
That it may look close, butit isn't actually that close.
So so there is a value inbeing able to discern a pattern
of what drives the future.
And that's why we focused in thebook on those fundamental drivers
(28:35):
of new consumers, new technology,and new geographic markets.
We haven't talked much aboutthe geography one because I
think a good example is Volvo.
I worked with Volvo while we werewriting the book and then subsequently
was involved in a couple, over,over the late nineties a couple of,
(28:56):
Their strategic planning retreats.
The first one was interesting,probably 95 or 96.
It was in Palm Springsand it was wintertime.
It was right over New Year's.
And of course, the Swedes coming fromGothenburg, Palm Springs was supposed
to be balmy golf weather and actuallywas unseasonably cold, but they still
(29:16):
thought it was brilliant, right?
We're out playing golf and itwas 40 degrees, Fahrenheit.
And it was still a hell of a lotbetter than the weather in Gothenburg.
But anyway, we, so we had thisgreat meeting and lots of data
about driving forces for change.
And I forget how we got toit, but I was trying to push.
(29:36):
At the time, it was therise of the minivan.
And the, the bigger platform SUVs and wewere saying you guys should really you
ought to make one of those, and the peoplewho are expert in the automotive industry.
Experts are saying yeah, that'swhat the market signal is.
Blah, blah, blah.
And, I'm playing facilitator.
(29:58):
You know what it's like.
You're trying to get them to,and the Swedes are lovely people.
Once you got a few aquavits in them, youcan't shut them up, but they're a wee bit,
modest and quiet and nobody spoke, right?
No, I'm going like it's not a great idea.
Nobody spoke.
And then eventually Søren Gill, theCEO turned to me and he said, Ian.
We're not going to build a minivanbecause you can't build a safe one, right?
(30:21):
And the message there is safetyfor Volvo wasn't just a slogan.
It was like in their DNA, right?
So that, that was likea cultural phenomenon.
And I think that's a good example of,shift based on culture and values.
They eventually did buildcrossover vehicles because
(30:42):
they figured out a way to jump.
off a car platform and make itin their mind is safe as cars.
So that's a good exampleof the safety thing.
The second retreat is an example ofThe global change, which was we were
using the second curve principlesto discuss what was their second
curve and Volvo was a relativelysmall player in the car business.
(31:07):
100, 000 cars a year.
Maybe 8 10 percent a Marketposition in the luxury market.
But that's under scale, right?
But they were the second largest producerof heavy trucks and buses globally
behind Daimler Benz and at that meeting,they decided that the logical second
(31:27):
curve was to double down on the truckbusiness rather than the car business.
And so they ended up selling the carcompany and now they subsequently try
to get it back under the Volvo brand.
But it was gut wrenching for thembecause they had a very emotional
attachment, but it was part of this.
They could see the inevitability of thedisproportionate growth that was going
(31:50):
to take place in emerging markets inparticular with heavy trucks and buses.
Aidan McCullen (31:56):
it's interesting i couldn't help but think of
that allegiance to safety.
While it was good in that instanceif you thought about say for
example the psychological attachmentmany organizations have to their.
Original product say that they clingto the first curve or that they feel
(32:18):
defined by that first curve because.
This is where i was so impressed byboth what SGI silicone graphics tried
to do what actually what HR block diddo because it was their persistent
investment in the next curve despite how.
(32:40):
Sometimes immature that second curvewas and they didn't always get it right
but they were willing to actually puttheir literally put their money where
their mouth was or their thinking wason that's why i was so impressed by that
company and was so happy to go and checktheir stock price and see when you are
writing about them where they were nowthat they're riding really high compared
(33:01):
to the stock price of those early daysmaybe you'll tell us about this company
with any comments you have to add to it.
Ian Morrison (33:08):
Yeah, no, a really interesting company.
I first met H and R block.
The H is Henry block.
And I write about thebook when they invited me.
I was on advisory board for Oneof their subsidiary companies,
and they asked me to be on theboard of that subsidiary company.
And when I went to meet theHenry Block in Kansas City at the
(33:29):
headquarters, he came to the lobby.
And it wasn't because it wasme, because he did this with
everybody that came to see him.
It was just the way he was.
He's just incredibly generousand modest man and kind.
Aidan McCullen (33:40):
You say this in the book and i think this is so important and to
keep the frugality of a start up alivebecause i felt that was the case as well
i was trying to you know you mentionedas well in that intro, that the ea or
the receptionist knew your name as welljust by you coming on all you must be
Ian and that was like wow and then sucha large company that's humility and that,
(34:07):
in a way frugality was still there.
Ian Morrison (34:09):
Absolutely.
. And in fact, Jerry Grossman whowas vice chair of H& R Block, who I
sat on a board with for many years,Jerry taught me a lot about business.
And in fact when I went outon my own, he said, keep your
prices high and your costs low.
And it was good counsel.
R Block story.
So when I, was involved with them.
They had three businesses.
(34:31):
They had the tax business, andthis is maybe a peculiar U.
S.
phenomenon.
Australia and Canada, I forget how wedid taxes in Britain, but, we in the U.
S.
have to file taxes every year.
And for the low, rich people have fancyaccountants, but, most of us struggle.
And so you need help in tax preparation.
(34:53):
And so they had built this business,which was essentially helping working
class people fill out their tax returns.
And that ended up beinga once a year business.
So you ended up having to hire abunch of people and they franchised
these accounting offices, andso it was a retail operation.
So they got expertise in, . Managingtemporary help, which led them to
(35:19):
invest in this temporary help companya staffing agency basically for
both health care and commercial.
So that was an interim services.
That was a second business.
And then they bought a fledglingconsumer facing and business facing
software company, CompuServe, whichwas one of the original platform
(35:40):
technologies that subsequently ledto dial up service on the internet.
So they had those three businesses.
And what they, which speaksto your willing to experiment.
But over time, What happened was my firstboard meeting, they said, we're going
to spin off the temporary help company.
They essentially got out of the CompuServebusiness because they could see, I think
(36:04):
the writing on the wall and over thelast 20 odd years have brought second
curve thinking to the core business,which is that tax business, because
at the core of the tax business ispeople using things like debit cards.
And other forms of financial softwareto give people their rebate is
(36:30):
the word I was struggling to get.
They're going to get a rebateso they can provide the rebate
upfront, but charge interest ratesthat are very high on that rebate.
So it's a sort of financial model.
Some people might pejorativelycall low rollers, right?
You know that you actually, there,there's businesses where you focus
(36:54):
on not rich consumers, but relativelylow income consumers, but there's
a high relative stream of financialreward for servicing that group.
But, I think the overall story isa willingness to experiment and a
willingness to bring second curveprinciples to your first curve business.
Aidan McCullen (37:14):
i'm so struck by so many of the ways that you were on the
money with a lot of this stuff and asyou call out you can't you cannot know
when they'll land sometimes they'llland quicker sometimes they take the 30
years that you mentioned in the book todiffuse into society sometimes it takes
a pandemic for these things to happenthat was the way for example with video
(37:38):
technology like this that we're using.
But it was also in a way
the push towards flexible workforces orthe flexible office that now many people
who own commercial property are actuallystruggling from but there was a quote
here that i thought was so interesting andmaybe you'll riff on this one and because.
This was beautifully written butalso came true for so many people
(38:03):
listening to this show right nowbecause they'll be listening to
it in their home office you write
and don't forget.
By the way this is written earlynineties early to mid nineties "the
home environment will change asmuch in the next ten years as the
office has changed in the past ten.
Television will become digitaland interactive, with a panoply of
(38:23):
information services for consumers,customized programming, video on demand,
home banking, information services,interactive games, telephones, cable
television and computers will convergeto create a multipurpose multimedia
information, and entertainmentcapability, smartphone anybody?
One consequence of this developmentwill be an acceleration of telework.
(38:48):
As the home office becomes acompletely functional extension
of the corporate office.
Overwork at home has become one of thekiller applications of the nineteen
nineties beautiful Ian, over to you.
Ian Morrison (39:02):
I read that recently again, and I thought, wow, we did get it right.
And it really speaks to the value,I think, of the methodology.
At the institute that we, I remember, thegenesis of this was a big whiteboarding
exercise where we, we and our colleaguesand some outside experts sat around
with a bunch of our clients includingcutting edge vendors and users, and we
(39:27):
were using a brainstorming tool, whichis, Starting on the home, it's saying
home as hospital, home as office, homeas entertainment center, home as, and
using that to riff on ideas and, manyof these things came out of that kind
of ideal, ideation type exercise that,that, often product development companies
(39:51):
and product development teams get into.
But no, we were convinced of thatconversion of media and technology.
I, there was a lot of talkin the early nineties about
personal digital assistance.
We didn't quite crystallize it thatthe phone would be the platform.
The way the iPhone.
Became because many of uswere using brick phones.
ian-morrison_2_12-08-2023_090726: And I remember one of my colleagues (40:13):
undefined
saying, now I had, I probably gotthem in my, behind me and here in my
offices, every cell phone I've ever had.
I keep thinking I'm going to mountthem one day, and one of them is like,
when it looks like something out ofworld war two, yeah, there you go.
Yeah.
And I've got one of those.
I love those little tiny ones.
Aidan McCullen (40:33):
I'm on the i'm holding up here for those of you listen
to an old ipod cuz i hold the i.
I do the same i gather this stuff i'm likeyou is like on it look great in a frame
one day almost like you know the dawnof mankind you know that type of idea,
Ian Morrison (40:49):
yeah, yeah.
It's stuff like a museum exhibit.
Yeah.
Aidan McCullen (40:52):
you can sell them by the way these days people will pay
good money if they're still working
Ian Morrison (40:57):
Wow.
Maybe that might be my nextjob is clean up my closet,
Aidan McCullen (41:03):
One man's junk is another man's gold.
Ian Morrison (41:06):
yeah, yeah, exactly.
This issue of homework, causeit's really fascinating.
I've been.
So there's a group at Stanfordactually tracks this stuff pretty
closely and we're, I don't knowabout in the UK, but in the U.
S.
the numbers are about half of peoplewant to work about half the time at home.
So it, it nets out thatabout 30 percent of jobs.
(41:28):
Are virtualized to some degree.
And, somewhere between 20 and 30%.
So we've seen, as you said, commercialreal estate occupancy drop dramatically.
And, a lot of talk about conversionto to housing and so forth.
Just because the relative demandfor housing versus office spaces
(41:49):
has shifted, but yeah, no, I thinkthat the platform of homework it was
also consistent with the outsourcingmovement that happened through the 90s.
So it was compounding, I, I always usedto say a lot of people work at Google,
not a lot of people work for Google.
Google and Microsoft, all theseguys have badge colors, the people
(42:11):
are with the program and thepeople are not with the program.
And there's a lot of 1099,as we call them in the U.
S., contractors who nevermake it to the A team.
You're a permanent reserve forthose of us who play sports.
You never got to be on the big team, but
Aidan McCullen (42:26):
Don't mention the war man.
Don't mention the war.
ian-morrison_2_12-08-2023_090726 (42:29):
yeah.
But yeah, no, I, and I think the fluidityof enterprises is such that we are
going to see that, I think, continue.
And the potent, you put this together,if I was going to write it all over again
today, going forward, I would reallypick on this hyper effectiveness issue.
(42:55):
What does it mean?
I have a friend who is an advisorto the defense department who's
a very sophisticated technologyentrepreneurs helping the defense
department incorporate new technologiesand their planning and thinking.
And he basically said to me.
I can do my job withchat GPT is my assistant.
(43:16):
I don't need people anymore.
No, that might be an overstatement.
But I think that directionally iswhere a lot of people are headed with
this notion of hyper effectivenesswith these emerging tools.
And what does that mean?
What does that mean for organizations?
What does that create?
In terms of a challenge fordisruption, and, that's the work
(43:38):
you're on, and I'll look forwardto hearing how it all plays out.
Aidan McCullen (43:43):
Well, it's funny.
You said I think the, I alwayshave this model in my head that you
have, so you have technology on theexponential route where I don't think
everybody understands how powerfuleach jump when it comes to AI.
Is because it's no longer that we haveto wait for coders to make it stronger
(44:08):
it's actually improving itself at anexponential rate so that those jumps
are so dramatically better each timeso you have that on a dramatically
improving rate but then you have.
What a lot of people are finding theirstruggle to be like you call the hyper
effectiveness but even to be focused tobe able to have the attention to even
(44:29):
read, add an article like you're twocurve article back in nineteen ninety
one or HBR article whatever it might be.
People are struggling to sitdown and read one of those.
And i think it's that collision courseof there are these two curves that are
going the opposite ways that's for mea human superpower is to actually be
(44:53):
able to be focused to do the work todo it effectively to also then invest
time in your health and yourself inyour relationships etc and to be able
to not reach for that alcohol beveragefor that substance of choice that's
where this becomes interesting thatyou're seeing this kind of coming
(45:15):
together of both the human physiology,and neurobiology and then actually the
technology world as well i think that'san interesting Venn diagram overlap,
, , Ian Morrison (45:28):
and it's why I think you're seeing particularly
younger generations reappraisingWhat life priorities look like.
It's, I always joke that, peopleoften ask me about how do you deal
with generation Z or X or whatever?
How is it different from the baby boom?
And I'm, I'm the fatherof two millennials.
And I always point out that they'relooking for In terms of their work life,
(45:53):
they're looking for a cross betweenthe Peace Corps and Morgan Stanley,
they're looking to save the world andmake a difference on the one hand,
be well compensated, and they'd liketo live in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
Thank you very much.
And only work three days a week.
But I think you're pointing to, inall seriousness, a very, Important
and difficult dilemma, which will beon the one hand, this potential for
(46:17):
technology enabled hyper effectiveness.
And on the other, how healthy isthat as a human being to be in that
kind of turbo charged, , rat raceif you want to use the negative and
that that's scary going forwards.
And I think we, we all have tofind a balance in all of that in
our own personal and family lives.
(46:39):
You're absolutely right.
Aidan McCullen (46:40):
i have one last quote that i absolutely love and i'm gonna
share that but as i'm doing this.
I'd love you to have your final thoughtfor audience maybe your final kind
of call clarion call for audienceand before i even give that quote
and then throw it over to you iswhere can people find you where's the
best place to reach out and find you
Ian Morrison (47:01):
Well, I'm still active on the web at ianMorrison.
com and most of my writing in thelast 20 years has been around, around
healthcare, as I think you know.
But certainly I'm reachablethrough my website, ianMorrison.
com.
Aidan McCullen (47:15):
and i'll link to that in as well a link to the website this
is my quote . I love this and i wantour audience those of you are still with
us who joined us cause again attentionspans are short these days this is a
lovely quote and it goes for both thecorporation and the individual that's
what i really like about this usethe word corporation interchangeable
(47:35):
you the person the individual this.
As in this whole change their first secondcurve phenomena "means that corporations
have to adjust to a world where newproducts and services will be a reality
even though we cannot conceive of exactlywhat those products and services will be.
We have to prepare for aworld where they will exist.
(47:57):
In other words.
Using current products and servicesas a benchmark is inadequate.
We need to stop benchmarking againsteach other and start benchmarking against
this uncertain but powerful future.
Otherwise, we're allgoing to be left behind."
Absolutely love that IanMorrison, "the second curve".
(48:19):
Ian over you what's your final message.
Ian Morrison (48:21):
Think that's a sort of a restatement of Steve Jobs, a
manifesto, which was, the consumerdoesn't know what they want.
But they'll tell us eventuallywhen they see and are delighted
by something like the iPhone.
And I think that did come to pass.
I would just say having, reallybeen in the forecasting and looking
ahead business for almost 50 years.
(48:44):
You can't predict the future precisely.
I have come to it.
this with some humility over the time.
I think we've done a prettygood job at the Institute and my
colleagues there continue to dothat fine work about looking ahead.
I don't think you can predictprecisely, but I do think you can
think systematically about the future.
And, I am still a great believer indissecting Those big driving forces
(49:08):
of change around consumers, geographyand technology that you can update and
continuously monitor those shifts andthen use creative planning and creative
ideation processes to say, so whatdoes that mean if something happens?
And, dealing with uncertaintyis just part of what.
(49:32):
Looking ahead involves and I stillbelieve that there is value in, exploring
these kind of diffusion models as aplatform for understanding change.
That's a very helpful.
body of work that you've puttogether, Aidan, so I support
you in continuing that work.
And I think it's out of that kindof thinking that people can get
(49:54):
an appreciation of how to tacklewhat is essentially uncertain
and ambiguous going forward.
Aidan McCullen (50:00):
Beautiful and it's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you.
This is not his only book by the wayas well so you'll find his other books
on, Ian Morrison dot com and alsoIan has two versions of this book as
well so i have the nineteen ninetysix version as well so the updated
version, add a business week bestsellerbook back when it came out as well.
(50:21):
Author of "the second curve,how to command new technologies
new consumers and new markets."
Ian Morrison, thank you for joining us,
Ian Morrison (50:30):
Thank you, Aidan.
Aidan McCullen (50:31):
Mic drop.
Well done, man.
ian-morrison_2_12-08-2023_090726: That's great. (50:34):
undefined
That was fun.
That was fun.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.