Presentation on Future Trends for Internet Telephony Conference

September 11, 2007

The multi-media presentation can be found at:

 

Throughout my years of business research and analysis, I have found you cannot react to the future, you cannot predict the future of business; you can only direct its future.  IBM uses that strategy, Microsoft also does it and now Google and Apple as well.  Companies direct customers to their strategy because in order to predict the future they alter the future toward their strategy. However, in order to understand the future, a look back at history can give insights about the future. If you examine the predictions of H.G. Welles and Jules Verne you will see that their predicts for air and space travel as well as other innovations often went into the 23^rd century.

Even fifty years ago, we are reminded from the movie Forbidden Planet, "prepare your minds for a new scale of physical scientific values. Predictions don't help you succeed, continuous innovation and non-linear thinking will. Who would have predicted that Apple would have the #1 selling phone and the real innovation is that the iPhone is much more than a phone. The real phone will be the inPhone - inside you reporting on your health and making recommendations for diet and exercise. 

In writing Knowledge Engineering - Business Applications of Artificial Intelligence I found that "the faster you can communicate, the faster you can change, and those that change the fastest will be the most successful." Remember a funeral director invented the first electrical telephone switching system and Heddy Lamar, the actress was one of the original patent holders for CDMA. One more time, you cannot predict anything; you can only innovate more than anyone else.

On the dark side, Newton's Third Law also applies to innovation. That is, for every innovation, there is an equal and opposite reaction by society. This means that "technology always progresses faster than we anticipate, while adoption and society always change much more slowly and unpredictably." (Source: Knowledge Engineering by T. Cross) In the presentation there is that the technology has long existed for "first responder" radio interoperability; however, sadly more than six years since 9/11/2001, it’s doubtful that most cities are prepared for a similar attack or disaster like Katrina. According to one of the major broadcaster networks, only 6% of cities even have a plan and who knows whether it will work.

Bottom-line - Change is happening at an ever-increasing rate. You must know the impact of everything before it happens and you must also deliver that knowledge to sales, support, channel partners and customers. This reduces the length of the sales cycle, lowers customer support costs and increases customer satisfaction.

—Thomas B. Cross – TECHtionary.com

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