Issue 47: Duree, Power, and Predictions. Lots of Predictions.
Our technology adoption cycles sped up exponentially due to COVID. Two years of adoption happened in two months. Our personal adaptation cycles also had to speed up.
This final issue of Polymathic Monthly for 2020 will be a lot about looking forward. Toward the things we can improve on individually and, as we’ve found is equally important, collectively. So I’ll be sharing a bunch of trend reports, predictions, and aspirations as compiled by companies like Fjord/Accenture, McKinsey, Coefficient Capital, etc.
While the forecasts will be wrong, a lot, the better use of these trends and predictions is to look for the overlaps and areas of agreement by the forecasters. These areas of agreement will be directionally informative. Those intersections and agreements in the predictions are the map.
There are also a few books. ‘The Death of the Artist’, ‘7 Powers’ and ‘The Patient Will See You Now’ (issue) should fill out those mental maps you’ll develop towards navigating the ever-changing future we have ahead of us, whether you are a creative, artist, physician, or observer.
And, with maps in hand, let us take 2021 as an opportunity to take our adapted (and adapting) selves and seek to thrive.
Thanks for enjoying and sharing PM with me over the last few years. Here’s to healing, inspiration, and positivity in 2021.
Articles
Accenture/Fjord trends with the prevailing trend being a sense of ‘collective (space and activity) displacement’ (PDF) and a move towards realignment (hopefully). Paraphrasing one of the interesting questions this report asks, and which we should all ask ourselves, is ‘what other things will change on the back of all these changes we’ve seen in 2020?’ Pair this one with ‘The Patient Will See You Now’ in books below.
What does the new consumer look like? Trends according to Coefficient Capital. Who knew Amazon Go’s touchless interface push would become the next phase of in store commerce? Anyone who was paying attention did…
What is time when we have no markers? Because, if there is anything that 2020 proved, it’s that we don’t truly understand time…
We make chips with silicon and make the printed circuit board, which the silicon sits on top of, with non-conductive substrate material. What if we could make the whole PCB with silicon? The possibilities for smaller hardware innovation is endless But what are the environmental consequences?
Since it looks like 2021 will be the transitionary phase between 2020 and post COVID, what will marketing look like in 2021? Zeta Global share some ideas and, similar to the Fjord report, changes will have to happen at the intersection of design/content/tech because 2020 also taught us that we have been unintentionally trending towards some dull sameness.
I find that shaky fundamentals tend to be where things often go wrong. If only more of us would listen to this (and some other ideas) from Tobi Lutke the founder of Shopify.
Li Jin, in Building the Middle Class of the Creator Economy, offers up ten great strategies for technology companies to ensure that the middle tier of the creative class thrives. But the platforms would be taking more control over the experiences of the creators. For the creators, this direction will make the tech companies just become another version of the ‘boss’ creatives try to avoid by becoming ‘entrepreneurial’. There has to be a better way…Pair this with ‘The Death of the Artist’ book below.
Just before Masayoshi Son, of Uber/Wework, Chewy, Brandless etc fame, there was Yuri Milner (longread). In tech it feels like it’s always the same plot with a different hero/villain.
2020 year in review from McKinsey is a comprehensive look at the articles that narrated and contextualized our experiences over the last year.
Committed, Confident, Connected and Courageous. Hallmarks of great leaders. Or just another framework we are using to define a thing we have not yet fully understood?
Fascinating to be known as the Yoda of Silicon Valley and to actually deserve that title. Being the father of algorithms or, more precisely, the best chronicler of algorithms, Dr Knuth wonders what will happen when we no longer understand what’s in the algorithms we write? We all wonder and worry.
Books
I’ll be using 7 Powers: The foundations of business strategy by (Hamilton Helmer) as a reference book from now on. I shared a review of the 7 powers in the last issue and I went ahead and read the book. Written from the perspective of an operator and a thinker, Helmer provides a new approach to thinking about business strategy. An approach that should replace some of the ones we still rely on but no longer serve for the ‘Internets’.
A short and sharp book, Shikake: The Japanese Art of Shaping Behavior Through Design (by Naohiro Matsumura) is a first attempt to bring the practice of ’Shikakology’ into the mainstream. Matsumara’s framework, developed from studying over one hundred instances of Shikake in the wild, will provide you some thoughts about integration design for physical experiences that can be applied to other media.
‘First we had fast food, then we had fast fashion, now we have fast art; fast writing, fast music, fast video, fast photography, fast writing, fast video, fast design, fast illustration, made cheaply and consumed in haste. We can gorge ourselves to our hearts content. How nourishing these products are and how sustainable the systems that create them are questions that we need to ask ourselves. Whew. Read ‘The Death of The Artist’ by William Deresiewicz (a commentator who’s been at the top of his game for a while now…).
When The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine in your hands (by Eric Topol MD) was released in 2015, many of the ideas shared were already starting to move from seed to early bloom. The pandemic put steroids on those seeds and moved them squarely into the realm of ‘business-as-usual’ for the medical sector. Telemedicine, Peer-to-peer medical recommendations, medical knowledge democratization (for good and bad), medical disinformation, etc. have all brought the phenomena broadly termed patient-centered health delivery into a future it seemed hesitant to grow into in 2015. The genie is not even in the same location as the bottle anymore on this one…
Product
The recommendation has to be Goldbelly.com where you can get food flash-frozen and delivered from almost anywhere in the US. Christmas day in Austin involved us eating apple cake from the Mortgage cake bakery in New Jersey (Thanks PS and LB!). Enough said.
All the very best in 2021!
Seyi