Planning for the coming year is becoming more and more complicated. The scenario is becoming more and more unstable and complex, whether, at a national or international level, everything is interconnected; in the end, we will have to call “Houdini” to solve the riddle.

In personal conversations with friends or professional conversations with clients of all sizes, there is a typical pattern. The feeling of uncertainty paralyzes decisions and keeps us in a state of semi-pivoting and continuous alertness towards a place that we do not quite understand where it is going.

All this is wrapped in a gift of chained crises and skyrocketing inflation, climate crisis, supply chain crisis, microchip crisis, raw material crisis, crisis, crisis, crisis, and crisis, of any color and size, the existential crisis of the concept of abundance, based on the capitalism of infinite growth with resources that have always been finite.

As I mentioned in the article of Corona you’ve stopped the world. We are in that challenging transitional period that came after the pandemic. The old system does not die completely, and the new one has not just been born, in this transition accelerated and forced by a health crisis.

A RESET took place, and when the operating system was lifted again, we realized that the icons on the desktop were moved, we lost the information that was not saved, new applications appeared that we did not know we had installed, and from time to time you get the blue screen.

The world is not the same, but we continue to call everything capitalism; the moment we change to a circular economy, it will not be capitalism, the moment automated production returns to its origin without depending on China it will not be capitalism, the moment an AI does 70% of the work it will not be capitalism, at the moment when energy comes primarily from infinite sources it will not be capitalism, at the moment when we will be based on a profit society between “stakeholders” instead of “shareholders,” nothing will be the same. On the contrary, we will be very close to the longed abundance.

The professorship imposed by Adam Smith in 1776 is absolutely outdated; we have technologies, connections, and ways of generating wealth that turn Smith’s principles into a dead letter.

If Smith were to raise his head, how would you explain what an NFT is? How would you explain to him that you can plant money, and set up a solar-powered cryptocurrency mining farm to speculate on a digital asset called cryptocurrency?

I believe that the decisions and actions you take today will define your survival in the next ten years. So, in the face of paralysis, think that you must act; we are not in times of conservatism because everything around you is changing at breakneck speed.

And it is not because the futurist on duty says so, looking into the crystal ball. Still, because the investment is already approved, and the tremendous climatic and digital transformations are already underway, we are in the first implementation phase. The construction of the game scenario for the next ten years is already underway.

Significant changes are coming in the way we work. For example, it seemed that the professions of truck drivers or partitioners were at risk. Still, we are missing the point. The disruption will come in all occupations connected to the information society. In this group, we are many connected; Artificial Intelligence will radically transform how we work.

If you are a company manager and you are reading this article, pay attention to it and dedicate time to it; its transforming capacity is so powerful that if you do not take it into account today, your business could disappear tomorrow in zero commas.

Understanding Amara’s law, in most cases, humans tend to overestimate the effects of new technology in the short term while underestimating its impact in a long time. Talking about AI, we are already entering the implementation phase; the “hype” happened four years ago. Now we are starting to build that long term, and we are underestimating its effects on the economy in countries where we are not doing our homework.

It will be complicated for a Boston Dynamics robot to change the symphonic tube in your bathroom. In addition, finding a good plumber will be more challenging; new generations do not want to work in traditional professions.

They prefer to charge less and launch their gaming channel on Twitch; preferences are changing, consumption habits are changing too, changes are confirmed when the “prosumer” producer-consumer changes the strategy, and a market is completely redefined.

This change of mentality empowers the individual; in the United States, more than 70% of the population have “side hustles,” hobbies such as teaching classes or selling cakes online to make some extra money.

In the pandemic, a large mass of people focused more on what they do outside of work than what they do inside, and it is becoming less and less attractive to apply for a senior consultant at KPMG; preferences and lifestyles have changed, along with the upward trend of freelancing and coupled with the absolute delocalization of remote work.

People have tried it, and they like the experience; they feel free and more empowered than ever.

On the other hand, we live the “heaviest” period of mega multinationals in history. There is a direct relationship between the rise of freelancers with the size reaching the GAFAs oligopoly (Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple) and the like.

These are based on network effects. The more these effects grow, the more significant these companies become and the more part of the economy they represent. They redefine the role and relationships between states, companies, and citizens.

Then your future will no longer be defined by how well you do your reports and how good your graphics look; your future will be defined by how you compete in CREATIVITY.

Youtubers are beating each other up to see who makes the most creative content and who gets the most attention to capture their market share.

This concept will be transferred to many business areas; differentiation has never been so crucial as in the times to come; not only will you have to differentiate yourself, but you will have to be ethical in your value proposition.

Given the misinformation crisis we live in, the authentic acquires an incalculable value.

Pay attention to the most potent brands on LinkedIn. They are all personal and bring an extraordinary value of authenticity; Being yourself sells.

Consumers do not want canned or corseted products to publish their vulnerabilities in public sales.

We follow people who have awakened an emotion in us by engaging in an honest conversation.

The “Greenwashing” together with “Digitalwashing” will take its toll on those brands that are practicing it; the consumer is increasingly aware and does not tremble in penalizing that which does not follow their values, be authentic whatever you sell.

Innovation, imagination, and creativity to the power of the companies, they are no longer the forgotten scraps in a drawer in the office, think that now they are in the center of the board. Companies always prioritize operations and management as the activity engine; they focus on optimizing stable business models.

In what lies ahead, that engine will be automated, then think that innovation must be the engine of your company, and you must start from now; innovating is a complex and lengthy process.

Established companies can no longer think about optimizing a based business model because the competitive advantage is fading faster than before.

If you reflect, every great company was founded on an extraordinary act of imagination, an idea that went against the conventional wisdom of the time. Remember the one Henry Ford put together with a carriage powered by a combustion engine when everyone else used a horse-driven carriage.

A small representation of his D-Ford team from Palo Alto is Vizologi customers one hundred twenty years later. They are looking for nothing more than to turn their company into a “machine of infinite imagination.”

My best wishes for 2022; I thank you for the support received on the blog during this year; we are few but illustrious, I am happy to see in the analytics that every year you are still there, and I invite you to new blogging adventures for next year 😉

Happy new year!

Pedro,

Maverick at vizologi | Inspiring the business models not written yet!