Jul 3, 2020 | Anticipation, COVID-19, Strategy, Thinking Tools
The successive health, economic, and social crises of this year underscore the need to be prepared for uncertainty. Follow this Five-Step Playbook to be Future PROOF. 22 years ago, I was staying at a friend’s house in San Diego and I couldn’t sleep. In perusing his...
May 26, 2020 | Anticipation, COVID-19, Mega Trends, Social Commentary
So many aspects of lives operated on autopilot until recently. Not anymore. The second and third-order effects of C-19 are — for good and for ill — breaking centuries-old habits. The Coronavirus just pressed CTL-Alt-Delete. Let’s embrace this fresh start. Almost...
May 13, 2020 | Anticipation, COVID-19, Mega Trends, Perpendicular Thinking, Social Commentary, Strategy, Thinking Tools
Mindset Shift We live in the world C-19 has permanently changed. We need to pivot now from a crisis mindset to a coexistence one. Next, we’ll need to figure out how to capitalize on it. In early March (after SXSW was canceled, before the NBA shut down its season) I...
Apr 22, 2020 | Anticipation, COVID-19, Mega Trends, Modern Life, Social Commentary
I’ve been thinking a lot about how this current phase of the pandemic – and the one that follows – will change us. Unfortunately, I don’t think that we are close to returning to normal. We are instead, to borrow a Churchillian turn of phrase, reaching the...
Mar 31, 2020 | Anticipation, Mega Trends, Modern Life, News, Perpendicular Thinking, Social Commentary, Strategy, Thinking Tools
Are you surprised that the whole US economic system has essentially collapsed in a matter of weeks? I am. This is an enormously disruptive shock, to be fair. But the speed with which the health of the American economy has gone from healthiest in history to gasping on...
Mar 9, 2020 | Anticipation, Mega Trends, Social Commentary, Strategy
Everyone is comparing COVID-19 to 1918 and the Spanish Flu. But I think that the better historical analogy is a century earlier, in 1816. I went to see a theatrical rendition of “Frankenstein” with a friend last night – in part to escape the scary reality that...
