Influencing and Predicting the Future with Mike Walsh

Searching Today for Tomorrow

Mike Walsh is a thought leader, global nomad, futurist, keynote speaker, and 21st century business designer. He advises leaders on how to thrive in the current era of disruptive technological change and his clients include an impressive roster of many of the global Fortune 500. As a sought-after keynote speaker, he regularly shares the stage with world leaders and business icons alike.

Mike takes an anthropological approach to predicting and influencing the future – by scanning the near horizon for emerging technologies and disruptive shifts in human behavior, he can translate it into pragmatic plans for digital transformation today. To achieve this he spends an impressive 300 days a year on the road, interviewing innovators and observing emerging technologies in person.

His thoughts on human behavior and its relationship with technology is changing the way we approach and embrace AI. Listen in as we discuss where technology is leading us as a species and how to prepare for tomorrow, today.

In This Episode

• Why influencing the future means getting out of your comfort zone and traveling to emerging markets
• How evolving artificial intelligence leads to technology fading to the background
• Why understanding the next generation means looking at the future of what they expect and what they will create
• How an effective 21st century culture in an organization leads to working out the dynamics of networks that connect people
• Why improving machine learning means teaching a computer to be irrational

Quotes From This Episode

“You have to get out of the echo chamber that is Silicon Valley and spend time in the markets, countries, and cities where the future is being created.” —@mikewalsh

[tweet ““We’re on a journey to try and make technology more human.” —@mikewalsh”]

“Technology tends to disappear into the background and the innovation starts to focus on the human experiential elements, how things feel.” —@mikewalsh

“We perceive that the future has arrived because the experience of doing something has profoundly changed.” —@mikewalsh

“There’s opportunity to take everyday human experiences and not just disrupt them, but improve them for the better.” —@mikewalsh

“We’re looking at the next generation the wrong way.” —@mikewalsh

[tweet ““The issue is how do we upgrade the human software?” —@mikewalsh”]

“It’s very easy getting machines to talk to each other. The hard bit is getting a machine to talk to and understand a human being.” —@mikewalsh

[tweet “”It’s often difficult to imagine a bigger idea.” —@mikewalsh”]

Resources

• Mike Walsh on Twitter: @mikewalsh
• Pocket
• Evernote
• Sapiens