Future Map For Consumer Brands

Overview

My goal as a futurist, also called a foresight expert, is twofold: (1) predict where the proverbial hockey puck is going to be; (2) put a plan in place that gets me there so that I can take maximum advantage of it.

My background as a leading-edge technologist, business model innovator, and exponential growth strategist has always kept me focused on the future. However, it wasn’t until 2017 that I began to formalize my work as a futurist. I felt the need to try and make sense of the increasing chaos around us and wanted to be more intentional about where I direct my time, energy, and resources.

My work as a futurist has evolved into my own model for predicting future trends, paired with actionable plans to help people and consumer product industry organizations strategically position themselves. My model has been enhanced through the integration of AI, and as AI continues to evolve at a rapid pace, these advancements will further strengthen and refine my model.

I use my futurist work to not just help me identify business opportunities and future-proof my businesses, but position me, my family, my finances and my skillsets for the future.

This page serves as the central hub for all my content and offerings as a futurist.

Future Map Activities

1. Start future-proofing yourself, your family, your career and skills, and your company immediately with the material that I openly publish below.
2. I manage an exclusive email list for professionals in the consumer product industry, where I share insights on future trends along with predictions and strategic action plans. Contact me if you wish to be added to this list.
3. I run webinars, present at events and speak to C-suite leadership groups. Book me as to help your organization understand the landscape of the future and strategies to thrive in it. For events, this page features a list of topics I speak on for the consumer product industry, along with links to publicly available recordings of my past talks.

Open Content

1. Future Map Summary. Get your bearings on where we are now, why and where we are going.  The future is known!
   • Covering the long secular cycles that have dominated the U.S. and the prior Anglo-American era;
   • The core challenges we face;
   • U.S. strengths that will allow us to prosper in the decades to come.
2. Reckoning & Resurgence Summary.  This document lays out in greater detail what to expect as the U.S. is forced to confront its challenges and emerges into a new economic supercycle that dominates through the rest of the 21st century. I use history to help provide context for our current challenges and how we successfully navigated them before and why I think will do it again.  Key sections:
   • Financial, political, societal/cultural, geopolitical and environmental response in the coming decades;
   • Timing and severity of economic downturns;
   • How to position ourselves to survive and thrive;
   • What keeps me up at night.
3. Future Growth Engines.  I dive into the next growth engine that is right in front of us, what is it and how to maximize it for universal gain, with brief summaries of future growth engines through the 21st century. From this document, I link to a companion document that serves as a road map and resource guide for how our B2C and B2B2C sectors can maximize the success of our next growth engine.
   • I pay special attention to discussion on wealth inequality and how it has created a structural weakness in our economy and why it is so important to correct.
4. Skills and Jobs.  Two documents here on skills and jobs of the future in context of AI.
5. Future of Apparel. A deep dive into apparel and how it is being shaped by consumer shifts and technology and what it will look like in the future.
   • The section on AI as The New UX apply universally to all consumer product and service categories;
   • AI as the amplification-tipping point not just for apparel, but everything;
   • AI, DFT & Quantum-Based Material & Ingredient Design (Material Discovery).
6. Outdoor Industry Challenges.  I dig into the outdoor and active lifestyle industry and its challenges, which are shared across sectors, not just outdoor:
   • Discretionary spending evaporates;
   • Public lands to close/be sold off;
   • Secondary markets to dominate and suffocate brands;
   • Disruption of traditional business models to further suffocate brands;
   • Incumbent backlash.
7. New Normal For Consumer Brands. This includes strategies, tactics, technologies, business models and operational processes that I see emerging that will define the most successful consumer brands of the future.