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.

I use my futurist work to not just help me identify business opportunities, but position me, my family, my finances and my skillsets for the future.  I am a big believer in sharing what I learn to help others and have published much of my work for public use.  But, why not take the extra step to develop it into an actual business that affords me opportunities to speak to groups and events and help companies future-proof?

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

Here’s how I approach my work:

1. I seek to understand the macro-view by researching culture, society, economics/finances, politics/geopolitics, the environment and technology.
2. I don’t do primary research, but curate from other futurists, people far smarter than I and most with significant resources to do their work.  These people tend to be subject matter experts – demographers, political scientists, geopolitical strategists, money managers, cultural forecasters, environmentalists, technologists etc. I read from them and assimilate their predictions and action plans into my framework that I use for myself, my family, my career and skills, and my businesses.
3. Human nature does not change and I have learned from my futurist journey that predicting the future is a function of understanding the past and how we as humans responded in the past to similar challenges that we currently face.  As a result, I find myself spending a lot more time that I originally thought in understanding the past.
4. The future is really about understanding the range of possibilities and assigning probabilities and severities/potential of a future possibility.  Maybe we can get good broad generalizations of what is coming and when, but we really have to position ourselves for a range of possibilities.  This means that we need to identify, understand and manage risk and reward, because risk/reward is just the probability of something happening multiplied by its severity (downside) or its potential (upside).
5. I consider myself a relentless pragmatic optimist, combining boundless positivity for an exponential future, but acknowledging that there are immense challenges, which we can overcome through persistent and tenacious effort.

Summary

Groundbreaking research has emerged from pioneering futurists and other subject-matter experts that has given us unmatched insight into the unfolding tapestry of the future, thereby allowing us to position ourselves and our businesses to survive and thrive.

We are currently in the final gasps of the “Old Normal” that has existed since 1945 along with its antiquated systems and structures.

We face a challenging transition I call “The Reckoning,” a period of profound restructuring and economic readjustment not seen since the 1930s Great Depression and WWII.

Following this is the ‘Resurgence’ and ‘New Normal’ of the 2030s and beyond, a period of tremendous growth and prosperity in the U.S. unlike anything we’ve seen before.

How To Future-Proof

My goal is to primarily help DTC/B2C/B2B2C/consumer brands transition from the Old Normal, through The Reckoning and into the New Normal.  I offer the following.

1. Start future-proofing right now

We’re all experiencing the stresses of an uncertain future that seem to be compounding on each other with no end in sight. How does all this play out? When can we return to a sense of normal where we can rest in greater certainty about our futures with much less fear?

I try to answer these questions through a significant body of work I’ve published that contains a treasure trove of revelations along with a roadmap for how we can navigate the future.

Start future-proofing yourself, your family, your career and skills, and your company immediately with the open source docs published further down this page.

2. I run a closed email list for consumer product industry practitioners.

I send out emails periodically updating subscribers with the latest changes to my futurist predictions, action plans and forward guidance. My list is for DTC/B2C/B2B2C/consumer product industry professionals.

Contact me if you wish to be added to this list.

I maintain a changelog for all my Future Map content here.

3. I run webinars, present at events and speak to C-suite leadership groups

I am an experienced speaker and bring my futurist work to life via in-person presentations and webinars for groups/associations, at DTC/B2C/B2B2C/consumer product industry events and for C-suite teams. I do not charge any fees for my talks.

Book me to help your organization understand the landscape of the future and strategies to thrive in it. My past talks are published here

4. Let me unleash your company’s full potential

I create competitively defensible, disruption-proof strategies that can equip your business to thrive in the years ahead. I help you transition from the Old Normal to the New Normal.

I answer questions, like:

• What products to develop that will be successful and which to avoid;
• The markets, whether domestic and foreign, and distribution channels to focus on and which ones to avoid;
• What sustainable technologies and practices to adopt;
• How business models are changing and which new ones to adopt;
• Where to locate manufacturing in a deglobalizing world, optimized for labor/automation, government regs, access to resources, proximity to customers and risk management;
• What are the Achilles heels, “unknown unknowns” and deep, hidden risks that make a company fragile;
• What are future government policies (regulations and taxation) and how to prepare for them;
• What are major consumer shifts that could upend brands and how to prevent this disruption;
• Which brands are already on the New Normal track that we should model and emulate and why;
• What are risks you have not heard off and which ones that pose a threat to you.

Please contact me to help you future-proof your organization from the seismic changes that are approaching.

Questions and Feedback

Please use any form embedded throughout this website.

Published Documents And Resources

Update – Read First. The slideshares have become really unwieldy and convoluted.  They served a purpose for awhile but no longer.  I am pulling them apart and reorganizing.  I will leave them up but I recommend you avoid them and instead, stick to the summary Google docs.  However, the New Normal slideshare I would still dive into.  I am repurposing that document into a different format so that it becomes easier to use, but it still works reasonably well as is. 

Macro Overview

Future Map Summary. Start with this document. It is a concise overview of what we should expect to happen over the next few decades from a macro-perspective.

Reckoning & Resurgence Summary:  How things will play out. Proceed to this document, an important narrative in document form where I consider all the information in my Business Cycle slideshare and lay out how I think the next 10-20 years plays out for the U.S., considering all of our challenges but also all of our strengths.  This document lays out the future in raw detail.  If you don’t read anything else, at least cover this document so you understand what to expect, why and what to do.

Core Slideshares

I group my futurist content into four areas: upcoming business cycles (which encompasses economics, politics/geopolitics and the environment), exponential technologies, emerging business models and consumer shifts.  Core slideshare include the following:

• Upcoming Business Cycles:  to understand the future and what we can expect,  dive into this slideshare and the supplemental documents.  I dive deep into the The Reckoning and Resurgence periods and how they will play out.
• Exponential Technologies & Emerging Business Models: I grouped these two together because new technologies tend to drive new business models.
• Consumer shifts: they are not the same as trends, which when identified are already here. Consumer shifts are bigger and can run many years, if not decades. I avoid covering trends because they emerge and fade quickly, making it nearly futile to strategically position oneself to capitalize on them.

Action Plans

These slideshares provide action plans in the form of strategies, tactics, technologies, business models and operational processes to help organizations position for the Reckoning period and the Resurgence that follows.

• New Normal For Consumer Brands:  this slideshare provides a roadmap to help brands transition away from the “Old Normal” we have now that is no longer working and dying, through the The Reckoning, and into the New Normal for the 2030’s and beyond. This slideshare is tailored to the outdoor and active lifestyle industry, but much of what is published here can also work for other consumer product categories.
• Skill Sets And Jobs Of The Future For Consumer Product Professionals:  I put this together to help outline key skill sets to successfully navigate the future.

Additional content as follows:

• Outdoor and Active Lifestyle Industry 10-Year Outlook: the document is a summary of the slideshare that reveals what the industry should expect through The Reckoning period.
• Future of Apparel: I adapted my futurist framework to create a tool predicting the future of apparel and footwear.
• Crowdsourced Survey.  These are a great list of questions that I like to ask others and answer for myself.  I have turned them into a survey so that we can tap into the collective wisdom of the consumer product industry.

I have licensed the content on this page under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. which allows anyone to freely share, adapt, and build upon my creative work as long as they credit me, the creator, and share any changes they make under the same license.