MINITRENDS Wins Pinnacle Best Business Book Award

December 22, 2011

Technology Futures, Inc. is pleased to announce that MINITRENDS: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit From Business & Technology Trends by Dr. John H. Vanston with Carrie Vanston has won the Pinnacle Book Acheivement Best Business Book Award. This award is in addition to several earlier book awards received this year.

According to Dr. Vanston, “Many people will be starting the New Year with resolutions to achieve new goals. I am gratified with the attention MINITRENDS is receiving because I believe the book provides a path to make those goals a reality. The best way for individuals and businesses seeking to start new ventures or keep existing business innovative and competitive is to be constantly on the lookout for emerging trends that are not yet widely recognized. MINITRENDS helps people do just that by providing a mindset and process for initial idea generation and techniques to analyze and exploit these ideas.”

Based on Dr. Vanston’s more than 30 years of experience in identifying and applying technical, social, and business trends, MINITRENDS provides practical guidance to individuals and organizations of all sizes for extracting business opportunities from emerging trends that have a realistic chance of becoming profitable in the next 2-5 years. The book assists the reader in launching their own exciting, profitable “Minitrend Adventure” using their creativity, foresight, innovative nature, and basic good sense.

Additional accolades for MINITRENDS include an Eric Hoffer Business Book of the Year Award and finalist nods from ForeWord Reviews’ Business Book of the Year, USA Book News’ Entrepreneurship & Small Business Book of the Year, and Dan Poytner’s Global eBook Awards Business Book of the Year. Excellent endorsements and testimonials have also been received from top futurists Joseph Coates and David Pearce Snyder and many other opinion leaders and publications.

For more information on Minitrends, please visit the Minitrends Website or contact us by e-mail or (512) 258-8898.  (Click here to purchase book.)

For 33 years, TFI has helped organizations plan for the future by offering outstanding technology and telecommunications forecasting services and custom forecasts for key trends to high-technology and telecom organizations.

PRESS, MEDIA, BLOGGERS: Please contact Carrie Vanston at info@tfi.com or (512) 258-8898 if you are interested in doing a Minitrends article, to request an interview with Dr. Vanston, or to request a review copy of MINITRENDS.

Nathan Myhrvold on Uncovering and Investing in Technology Trends

March 9, 2011

The Wall Street Journal recently concluded its fourth annual conference on environmental economics at the Bacara Resort in Santa Barbara, California. Dubbed “ECO:nomics,” the Journal‘s invitation-only event offers a casual program of interviews and audience Q&A with corporate CEOs, venture capitalists, and government leaders.

Some of the technology trends revealed at this year’s conference include:

• Growing interest in nuclear power as a clean alternative to coal-fired power plants. Veteran technology writer, John Letzing, describes on The Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch a dustup between Sierra Club chairman Carl Pope and Breakthrough Technology’s Michael Shellenberger.
• Growing disillusionment with electric cars. Ford Motor Company chairman, Bill Ford, sounded pessimistic about the future of battery-powered cars, according to Ovidiu Sandru at The Green Optimistic.
• Continued divisiveness over issues of global warming and climate change. Brandon Fastman at the Santa Barbara Independent describes the very different stances taken by politicians and corporate executives at the conference.

One of the highlights for those interested in Minitrends was Alan Murray’s interview with venture capitalist and former Microsoft chief technology officer, Nathan Myhrvold. The restless inventor shared the unique way in which his firm, Intellectual Ventures, invests in startups:

We invest in invention. Venture capitalists invest in companies…We try to invest in the actual idea…Someone will have already invented something; they won’t know what to do with it. We’ll take a controlling investment in that idea and maybe we can figure out what to do with it.

This is a different approach than most venture capitalists use: buying the technology rather than the organization. Myhrvold’s method of finding Minitrends is not so unique: “We’ll bring typically six to 10 people…in a room, and we’ll start brainstorming solutions…Usually, we come up with some solution, but often it’s not to the problem we posed. We then go through a process we call triage: Which of the ideas we generated are really worth pursuing?”

The triage process Myhrvold describes is similar to the vetting of Minitrends described in the book, MINITRENDS, by John and Carrie Vanston, a guide to identifying and exploiting business trends that are likely to bear fruit in two-to-five years.

The Wall Street Journal has been stingy making video or transcripts of the ECO:nomics conference available online. Such archives are usually fertile sources for Minitrends research. However, they have made one video segment with Nathan Myhrvold available, along with the newspaper’s “special report” coverage of ECO:nomics 2010 (PDF) and 2011 (website).

One final trend worth noting. Previously on this blog, we’ve mentioned the fashion trend that venture capitalists don’t wear neckties. It appears this year the trend has spread to CEOs. Virtually none of the CEOs speaking at the ECO:nomics conference wore ties, in contrast to just a few years ago, when the majority did. It seems the only holdouts in the necktie department are elected officials and other bureaucrats. Chief executives of the world, untie!

STEVE O’KEEFE
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: “The Next Smart Thing,” The Wall Street Journal, March 7, 2011
Source: “Environmentalists spar over nuclear power,” MarketWatch, March 4, 2011
Source: “Ford Giving Up on EVs? Not Quite,” The Green Optimistic, March 7, 2011
Source: “Making Green Green,” Santa Barbara Independent, March 7, 2011
Image courtesy of The Wall Street Journal, used under fair use: commentary.

Accenture IT Report Encourages Businesses to Lose Control

February 22, 2011

Is your business ready to lose control? That appears to be the direction of enterprise computing, according to a new set of predictions just released by management consulting powerhouse, Accenture.

In the free report, Accenture Technology Vision 2011, Accenture’s information technology (IT) team, led by Kevin Campbell, chief executive of the company’s technology group, reviewed such sources as the subjects of keynote speeches at technology conferences, the types of projects receiving venture capital funding, and the predictions of well known IT experts. These sources are similar to those John and Carrie Vanston recommend consulting when analyzing the viability of trends in their book, MINITRENDS. The Accenture report arrives at a short list of eight trends that are transforming IT.

Accenture sees “a world of IT that barely resembles what enterprise computing looks like today,” according to Gavin Michael, Accenture’s managing director of research and development, as quoted by TMCnet reporter, Rajani Baburajan.  “IT is no longer in a support role. Instead, it is front and center driving business performance and enriching people’s lives like never before,” Michael said.

Accenture sees three major rivers running through its predictions:

1. Greater Distribution of Data: “Data is dispersed across many more locations, and under the control of far more owners.”
2. The Separation of Software and Hardware: “Technology today enables decoupling of entities and layers once deemed inseparable.”
3. The Meteoric Rise of Analytics: “Analytics will become the super-tool with which to drive more agile and effective decision-making.”

You have to be something of a mindreader to parse the jargon of the report and glean the pearls of wisdom it contains, but they are there. Accenture sees decentralization at the core of technology trends, such as cloud computing, which we have frequently covered on this blog.

The report’s insight that IT security needs to move from a “fortress mentality” to a layered and distributed series of security checks is prescient, as is the awareness that greater automation in security and the ability of software to handle “noise” will improve results. Imagine how the technology behind IBM’s Watson (the new Jeopardy champion) will enable computers to understand natural language and anticipate security breaches instead of waiting for an attack.

The Accenture report, like most similar surveys, sees the rise of the social platform in enterprise computing. The website will no longer be the primary connection point between an organization and its constituents. Companies will have to set up shop where the consumer is — on sites such as Facebook and Netflix — rather than waiting for the consumer to come to them.

The report concludes with this powerful insight: The primary role of IT in the past has been to reduce an organization’s costs; in the future, it will be to enhance the user experience. The authors of the report foresee technology that goes beyond Apple Computer’s famously intuitive user experience to something that instantly and seamlessly shapes itself to the unique characteristics of the user.

Accenture’s vision is at once thrilling and unsettling. Organizations will have to move out of their bunkers, distributing their computing resources and allowing users to take control. Like a fast-paced, high-tech amusement ride, it’s going to be scary but enjoyable for those entities able to loosen up and cede control of their IT resources to the audiences they are charged with serving.

STEVE O’KEEFE
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: “Accenture Technology Vision 2011” (PDF), Feb. 7, 2011
Source: “Accenture Maps Eight Trends That Will Drive Future of IT,” infoTech Spotlight, Feb. 9, 2011
Image by Mulad (Michael Hicks), used under its Creative Commons license.

A Longer Lifespan with Science and Work

December 10, 2010

Since I was born, average life expectancy in the U.S. has increased by 10 years, from about 68 years to 78 years. In the next decade, it will increase by another 20 years, according to futurist Ray Kurzweil, who predicts that by the year 2019, the life expectancy of someone born in the U.S. will be over 100 years.

A celebrated M.I.T. scientist, Kurzweil has embarked upon a dietary regimen designed to improve his longevity to the point where “life expectancy is no longer a viable term in relation to intelligent beings.” Until recently, the dominant method of life extension has been calorie restriction. If you can cut your daily calories in half without impacting your vitality, studies show you will live considerably longer.

Last week, another breakthrough offered hope for an engineered end to aging. The forever elusive “fountain of youth” is now pumping out telomerase. Telomerase is an enzyme that keeps telomeres from unravelling. Ewen Calloway, a biotech writer for the journal Nature, which published this new Harvard study, explains the significance of telomeres:

Chromosomes have caps of repetitive DNA called telomeres at their ends. Every time cells divide, their telomeres shorten, which eventually prompts them to stop dividing and die. Telomerase prevents this decline in some kinds of cells, including stem cells, by lengthening telomeres…

In the Harvard study conducted by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, mice were genetically engineered with dormant telomerase, resulting in their rapid and premature aging. Feeding the mice a chemical called 4-OHT reactivated telomerase production, and the mice were remarkably restored to a normal age.

There is hope that telomerase could be used to stimulate the growth of neurons, restoring vitality to the worn-out brains and other organs. However, there’s a catch. Tiffany Kaiser at DailyTech delivers the bad news:

While this therapy is ideal for mice, it will be challenging to translate this type of treatment to humans because slowing the aging process this way could increase the risk of cancer in humans. Mice have the ability to create telomerase throughout the span of their lives, but telomerase eventually discontinues in humans in order to stop cells from overpopulating and possibly turning into cancerous cells.

The promise of the Harvard study is that it shows a reverse in aging, not just a halt to aging. The problem is that it did not extend the lives of the mice one bit; it merely returned them to a normal longevity. Kyle Munkittrick at Discover is also skeptical of the translation of this breakthrough to humans:

It still remains to be seen if telomerase treatments can delay normal aging, reverse normal aging, or extend life in any way in mice. From there scientists have to then figure out what side-effects there are, why those side-effects occur, and then somehow translate the results to human beings. [Emphasis his.]

Perhaps telomerase is not the wonder drug that will keep us alive indefinitely. But something is working to expand our life expectancy, and it might be work. In their new book, MINITRENDS, futurist John H. Vanston and his daughter, Carrie Vanston, note with some surprise that the one trait that links successful entrepreneurs is “exceptionally good health.” Which begs the question, which came first, the health or the work?

Jeannine Stein reports for the Los Angeles Times on a study funded by the National Institute on Aging into the effects of employment on the health of retirees:

The researchers coined the term ‘bridge employment’ to describe the transition period between full-time work and full-time retirement, in which people work part time, are self-employed or temporarily employed. Men and women in that bridge employment category reported fewer major diseases and functional limitations compared with those who were in full retirement.

John and Carrie Vanston devote a significant portion of MINITRENDS to exploring the business opportunities for entrepreneurs resulting from life extension. For some employers, it simply means a larger pool of relatively low-cost, experienced workers. Will other countries be insourcing their busy work to our senior citizens?

The Vanstons also see business opportunities in retooling older workers with modern skills. Already, many retirement homes are locating near universities or on college campuses, to give seniors ready access to both the classes and the culture available from the publicly-funded centers of learning.

As many of us face the prospects of living to be 100 years old, it is comforting to know that those later years can be profitably and pleasurably employed providing valuable services to others. Science will continue to improve our ability to work in our later years, and the exciting work of entrepreneurship will continue to keep us young!

STEVE O’KEEFE
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: The Age of Spiritual Machines, by Ray Kurzweil, pp. 208, 280
Source: “Telomerase reverses ageing process,” Nature, 11/28/10
Source: “Harvard Scientists Reverse Signs of Aging in Mice,” DailyTech, 11/29/10
Source: “Another Tiny, Exciting Step Toward Life-Extension,” Discover, 11/29/10
Source: “Considering retirement? Working might keep you healthier,” Los Angeles Times, 11/14/10
Photo by be_khe (Giang Ho Thi Hoàng), used under its Creative Commons license.

FTC Advocates Do-Not-Track; Advertisers Upset

December 3, 2010

On December 1, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission presented a preliminary report (PDF) outlining a “framework for privacy” that endorses a “Do-Not-Track” option for Web browsers similar to the agency’s popular “Do-Not-Call” service for telephones.

Unlike the Do-Not-Call program, which creates one central place where individuals can easily add their phone numbers to the list, with reprisals for companies that violate their preferences, the Do-Not-Track mechanism (“DNT”) will be built into the Web-browsing software and other applications used to access the Internet from computers, tablets, and smartphones. Each piece of software or app would have to include a DNT feature. Currently, there are no proposed guidelines for consistently implementing that feature, nor any real authority to enforce it.

Forbes‘ new privacy blogger, Kashmir Hill, says, “At the end of the day, this report isn’t going to change anything.” Kevin Fogarty, the highly opinionated blogger for ITworld‘s “CoreIT” blog, is blunt in his assessment, calling the FTC report:

[...] a set of recommendations with roughly the same clarity, credibility and impact of a strongly worded letter from the U.N. to this year’s evil dictator asking him to please not kill and eat so many villagers.

At The Huffington Post, consumer rights activist Jamie Court threatens a privacy initiative in California: “If Congress doesn’t act, we will go to the ballot.”

While Internet giants, including Google and Microsoft, have learned to tame their public pronouncements and pay lip service to the FTC’s recommendations, they let the trade groups they fund do the barking for them. Mike Zaneis, senior vice president and general counsel of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), is quoted by The New York Times media reporters Edward Wyatt and Tanzina Vega as saying that the DNT mechanism will cause “significant economic harm” if it has “a high participation rate similar to that of do not call.”

The IAB is recommending voluntary measures where sites place prominent “opt-out” buttons that disable tracking, rather than a central registry or browser build-ins. The organization touts its AboutAds.info site, where you can opt out of being tracked by a very small group of sites that participate.

John and Carrie Vanston devote a major section of their new book, MINITRENDS, to business opportunities arising from increasing interest in privacy. They predict that the U.S. will strengthen its privacy laws, opening up profitable new business lines for entrepreneurs:

The federal government of the United States has adopted only limited formal legislation to protect privacy compared to Canada and most European countries.

Among the businesses that will profit from strengthening privacy laws are software developers, training firms, and the new field of online reputation management companies.

Certainly, someone needs to come up with a solution better than the IAB’s “opt-out” site. When this reporter visited the site to test the opt-out features, I was advised I would have to enable cookies in order to install the software (see screen capture, above). While enabling cookies would protect me from being tracked by few dozen sites participating in the IAB’s program, it would open me to tracking by the millions of sites that not only don’t participate, but sometimes use methods that are much more intrusive than those of IAB’s supporters — methods which remain, unfortunately, virtually unregulated.

STEVE O’KEEFE
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: “Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change” (PDF), Federal Trade Commission, 12/10
Source: “Brief Takeaways — and a Pretty Diagram — from the FTC’s Online Privacy Recommendations,” Forbes, 12/01/10
Source: “FTC becomes aware there is an Internet,” ITworld CoreIT Blog, 11/17/10
Source: “Will We Get a ‘Do Not Track Me’ List for Our Personal Information Online?” The Huffington Post, 12/01/10
Source: “F.T.C. Backs Plan to Honor Privacy of Online Users,” The New York Times, 12/01/10
Source: MINITRENDS How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit From Business & Technology Trends, p. 97.
Image from AboutAds.info, the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s “opt-out” site, screen capture recorded 12/02/10. Used under Fair Use: Commentary.

New Employment Trend: No Employment

November 19, 2010

A pair of stories in The Wall Street Journal on Friday, November 19, illustrate a growing trend for startup companies: avoiding hiring any employees.

Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, Mark Whitehouse, who recently joined the Journal‘s New York office as a senior economics correspondent after years working in Russia, profiled financial analysis startup, MCAP Research, in Montclair, New Jersey, which epitomizes the lean, new startup environment by eschewing any significant capital investments or hiring employees.

The firm was started two years ago by Efrem Meretab, a native of Eritrea, who gave up his job as a stock analyst to open the ultra-lean company. Whitehouse says,

His experience demonstrates how advances in technology and communications are allowing some small companies to sell products world-wide without creating many jobs in the U.S. or spending much money on things made in the U.S.

Whitehouse cites two main factors driving the company’s lean profile: outsourcing programming to the Ukraine and Pakistan while taking advantage of Amazon’s cloud instead of purchasing servers. We have discussed the trend toward cloud computing in many posts on this blog, but never for the solopreneur.

A related story also written by Mark Whitehouse with Justin Lahart, a former CNN/Money correspondent who covers economics for the Journal, reports that startups are not contributing to the growth in employment usually associated with periods of economic recovery.

The number of companies with at least one employee fell by 100,000, or 2%, in the year that ended March 31, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That was the second worst performance in 18 years, the worst being the 3.4% drop in the previous year.

Startups were first hammered by the recession, with more closing that opening since 2008, then strangled by tight capital markets. Angel investing still has not recovered, according to the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire, which reports that less has been invested in the first half of 2010 than during the recession years of 2008 and 2009.

In their new book, MINITRENDS, John and Carrie Vanston devote a significant portion of the book to new business opportunities serving a growing work-at-home workforce. In a previous post on this blog, we discussed how cloud computing has enabled temp agencies to apply the same just-in-time inventory to the workforce that auto companies have brought to manufacturing.

Without capital to grow their businesses, and with access to a global marketplace of contract workers, companies have learned to prosper by renting rather than buying assets and outsourcing services. If the Vanstons are correct — and their track record (PDF) on such predictions is excellent — the solopreneur will no longer be a trend coming out of this recession but the new standard operating procedure.

We welcome your thoughts about this ultra-lean method of bootstrapping high-tech businesses.

STEVE O’KEEFE
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: “Starting a Global Business, With No U.S. Employees,” The Wall Street Journal, 11/19/10
Source: “Few Businesses Sprout, With Even Fewer Jobs,” The Wall Street Journal, 11/19/10
Photo courtesy of psd (Paul Downey), used under its Creative Commons license.

Information Security Victim to IT Trends

November 9, 2010

Lured by the prospect of reduced costs, more companies are putting their information assets at risk by embracing technology trends such as cloud computing. A new survey finds that companies are failing to assess these risks and take defensive measures.

Consulting giant Ernst & Young released its 13th annual Global Information Security Survey last week, and the privacy picture that emerges is not good. The Vancouver Sun summarizes the findings this way:

Less than a third of global businesses have an IT risk management program capable of addressing the risks related to the use of new technologies… In spite of the rapid emergence of new technology, just one in ten companies consider examining new and emerging IT trends a very important activity for the information security function to perform.

What are the IT trends eroding information security at major corporations?

Mobile Computing, including smartphones, tablets, and laptop computers: “Devices that can contain information are increasingly prevalent; they are used for both work and home purposes, blurring the lines between the two, and results in ceding of control over the devices and the information to employees, service providers and others.”

Cloud Computing, including Software-as-a-Service (SaaS): “While organizations may have chosen in the past to avoid cloud technologies and the possible privacy and security challenges they bring about, in this economic climate, the cost reduction benefits that such solutions offer have brought many organizations to reassess whether these transformational technologies are right for them.”

Social Networking and other “Web 2.0″ technologies: “60% perceive increased risk from the use of social networking.”

In their new book, MINITRENDS, John and Carrie Vanston cite increased interest in privacy as one of the most promising areas for entrepreneurial activity in the coming two-to-five years:

In general, communications and computer technologies designed to gather personal information have progressed more rapidly and dramatically than those designed to protect this information. Serious efforts are being expended, however, to develop protection technologies.

The authors suggest some of the avenues for Minitrend development, including making it easier for employees to use privacy-protection software and teaching employees how to protect sensitive information. This insight is bolstered by the Ernst & Young report, in which a whopping 92% of respondents indicate that employee awareness of security issues is a problem.

Information security was a lot easier when it was a matter of protecting the perimeter around a company’s information assets. But in today’s economy, those information assets are widely distributed and stored in the hands of employees and outside vendors, making it much more difficult for organizations to protect them. Clearly, Ernst & Young’s shocking report shows tremendous opportunity for innovators and entrepreneurs who can develop technological solutions to modern privacy problems.

STEVE O’KEEFE
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: “Ernst & Young Report Reveals Companies Unprepared to Address Risks Created by New Technology,” The Vancouver Sun, 11/04/10
Source: “Top privacy issues for 2010,” Ernst & Young, 02/10
Source: “Emerging Technology Trends Increase Risks of Protecting Corporate Information,” PR Newswire, 11/04/10
Source: MINITRENDS: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit From Business & Technology Trends, Technology Futures, Inc., p. 95.
Photo by D. Sharon Pruitt (Pink Sherbet Photography), used under its Creative Commons license.

Trends Favor Working from Home

November 8, 2010

A Santa Clara company is combining the hottest technology trends with shifting demographic trends to revolutionize the business of customer service representatives. The firm is called LiveOps, and it’s fair to say the owners have their heads in the clouds.

Cloud computing, that is. LiveOps offers several major technology solutions for businesses based on cloud computing. One is called “Workforce in the Cloud,” an on-demand workforce for outsourced call centers. If you operate a call center, you know there are slow times when most of the employees are idle, and peak times where you really could use more staff to handle the volume.

LiveOps solves that problem by allowing you to scale up or down the number of customer service reps available in half-hour increments! The company claims it operates the world’s largest virtual call center, with over 20,000 agents available to handle whatever their clients need.

But don’t think that LiveOps has those agents on a cloud somewhere waiting to be called. LiveOps hires independent contractors on the same basis as it sells its services: in half-hour increments. Work-from-home agents can choose the times they are willing to be available with 30-minute contracts. LiveOps is thus riding the trend of work-from-home contractors that John and Carrie Vanston explore in their new book, MINITRENDS.

“It is estimated that as much as twenty-five percent of all white collar work is now being done in private residences,” say the Vanstons, whose book points out several promising Minitrends in providing services for work-at-home contractors.

LiveOps was profiled in a USA Today article last month by Paul Davidson, who covers economic news for “the nation’s newspaper.” Davidson says that a stunning “68% of the 593,000 jobs added by private employers” since September are temp workers. The trend the Vanston’s explore in their book is accelerating.

Davidson looks at the ups and downs of the issue in a lengthy feature article in a newspaper not known for its depth. The upside is mostly for employers, who find that firing all their workers, losing the company headquarters, and avoiding all those benefits and taxes is liberating. Even if it translates into lower revenues, profits usually improve.

For the employees, the picture is not so rosy. They tend to lose benefits and stability, but enjoy an increase in flexibility and independence. Sometimes they earn more as contract workers than they made as employees.

“It appears likely that the fraction of people working at home will continue to grow,” say the Vanstons. “As a result, the need for support services and facilities — and the market for providing them — will also grow for the foreseeable future.”

STEVE O’KEEFE
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: “Freelance workers reshape companies and jobs,” USA Today, 10/13/10.
Source: MINITRENDS: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit From Business & Technology Trends, Technology Futures, Inc., pp. 78-81.
Image by Dave Dugdale of rentvine, used under its Creative Commons license.

The Death of Television?

November 3, 2010

The Consumer Electronics Association recently released its annual Five Technology Trends to Watch report, and it appears we’ve stopped watching TV.

“TV is, in a way, kind of played out,” says Sean Murphy, a senior account executive at the CEA who writes for the trade association’s Digital Dialogue blog. Murphy is quoted by dealnews editorial director Beth Pinsker, who laments that the CEA’s “core areas of interest are now mostly about mobile technologies and the gizmos that make them work better, and no longer about TVs.”

This year’s five technology trends to watch, according to the CEA, are:

• Technology and privacy
• Video distribution and consumption
• Mobile, 4G devices
• Environmental issues
• The apps business

Privacy, or the lack thereof, has been a compelling news story of late. In chapter five of the new book, MINITRENDS, John and Carrie Vanston identify “increased interest in privacy” as one of the trends most suited to entrepreneurial activity, especially for small and medium-sized businesses. Among the other business opportunities resulting from our loss of privacy, the Vanstons cite reputation management:

There will be considerable demand for processes that can remove information from the myriad of databases in which this information may be recorded. Related to this, those offering reputation management services, i.e., tracking an entity’s actions, other entities’ opinions of those actions, and helping the entity manage the results, will be in great demand.

MINITRENDS is a guide to business opportunities that have the promise of profitability in two-to-five years, written by the two of the leading futurists in America. That may seem like a very short time frame, but it’s amazing how things can change quickly. In the CEA report, Deepak Joseph, director of technology and standards at CEA, reflects back on the past five years in streaming video:

In 2006, a host of companies we now closely associate with new video distribution models were not yet founded. Here is a sampling of the current players, Hulu launched March 2007, Netflix streaming service launched January 2007, Apple-TV launched March 2007, Vudu Box launched August 2007, Amazon On-Demand launched July 2008, Yahoo! Connected-TV launched January 2009, YouTube LeanBack launched July 2010 and Google-TV is launching this fall… In 2006, it would have been farfetched to think that 10 million people would view streaming on-demand movies and TV shows, many in HD over their Internet connection on their TVs on a regular basis, yet that is exactly what consumers are doing today with Netflix streaming service.

The same wave of technological change that is making television sets obsolete can also make trade associations obsolete. In the summary essay of CEA’s report, the authors ask whether we are driving technological change, or technology is driving us. As an answer, one need only look at the Consumer Electronics Association itself. The trade organization has seen where its future lies, and is shifting its coverage to mobile devices and online content.

You can access a PDF of the complete report, Five Technology Trends to Watch, at this link.

STEVE O’KEEFE
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: “Five Technology Trends to Watch,” Consumer Electronics Visions, 10/18/10
Source: “CEA’s Top 5 Technology Trends Dismiss TV,” dealnews, 10/20/10
Source: “MINITRENDS: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit From Business and Technology Trends,” Technology Futures, Inc., p. 99.
Image by schmilblick, used under its Creative Commons license.

Zynga Founder Mark Pincus on Entrepreneurial Success

October 29, 2010

What is the secret ingredient for successful entrepreneurship? There is one, according to John and Carrie Vanston, authors of the new book, MINITRENDS: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit From Business & Technology Trends. And it’s not what you might think.

Is it tenacity? Nope. Drive? No. Training? Not a major ingredient. Neither is education, wealth, creativity or connections. None of these things show a very strong correlation with entrepreneurial prowess.

Surprise: The one trait that ties together more successful entrepreneurs than anything else is “exceptionally good health.” That’s according to the University of Washington’s Dr. Karl Vesper, who reviewed numerous studies of entrepreneurs looking for underlying patterns.

While he might not recognize it as the most important benefit he provides to over 1,000 employees, entrepreneur Mark Pinkus knows his health and their health is important. It’s the reason his company provides not only excellent health care benefits, but also such perks as onsite dentistry and a free company cafeteria.

Pinkus, whose company, Zynga, has created such popular games as FarmVille and Mafia Wars, was interviewed recently by Kermit Pattison for Fast Company. Pattison specializes in interviews with business leaders. The way he covers Silicon Valley, you would think him a fixture in the San Francisco Bay Area. But he plies his trade from a healthy distance — out of St. Paul, Minnesota.

Asked about Zynga’s food court, Pincus explains:

I started to realize that from a productivity standpoint good food has a multiplier effect. You waste time trying to find food everyday. You feel crappy about a lot of the food you eat. There are positives about building community — food brings people together. If have enough good food in one place, it gives people from different parts of the company reason to sit down together.

Pincus is passionate about entrepreneurship. When he hires managers, he looks for people with that entrepreneurial mindset. “You can be an entrepreneur inside any size company. The best companies today value great entrepreneurs and work hard to retain them and motivate them,” Pinkus told Pattison.

MINITRENDS is built on this same premise: that one can be an entrepreneur in any size company. It’s your job to keep alert to new trends and to choose which directions to embrace and which to steer clear from, whether you are a sole proprietor, part of a small business, or a manager for a large business enterprise.

You’re not going to be successful at that job if you don’t take care of yourself. So learn the real secret of successful entrepreneurs and pay attention to your heath, because you won’t last long in this business without it.

STEVE O’KEEFE
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: “Leveling Up Your Staff: Zynga’s Mark Pincus on Entrepreneurial Companies,” Fast Company, 10/27/10
Source: “Stay Healthy,” MINITRENDS, p. 179.
Image by Identity Photogr@phy (Clare Bell), used under Creative Commons license.