Read this book – Your Future self: How to make tomorrow better today
To all those gathered here, I give you Hal Hershfield and his new book ’Your Future self: How to make tomorrow better today’.
Read this book
When I started room44 as an agency back in 2014, the ambition was to help anyone in an established business the opportunity to envisage the changes their consumers, customers and markets would likely experience over time.
It’s not a precise science and the very act of anticipating the end of something good is not completely intuitive for any of us.
But, it happens to everyone.
room44 adopted human centred design (design thinking) as our core MO and yet, business has a reluctance to plan beyond where evidence is available.
There is no evidence In the future yet and so, selling the future can be a tough gig.
The result is often that innovators, without the encumbrance of trading history, come along and shake up markets with bright new ideas while established brands plough a proven furrow making adjustments to their VPs to extend the life cycle of products – until they die off.
Both things work and …we know from endless conversation that ideas exist within companies that could have been the innovation if they had been mapped into a realistic and believable vision of what’s to come.
We get frustrated by what can be read as a lack of imagination. This could probably be better described as pragmatism focused on delivering a plan.
‘Your Future Self’ is ground breaking
This book explains and describes everything we come up against. You may too within your company structure – and life.
It illustrates the human traits and the counter strategies necessary to help break through.
I have a quote in my notes (from I can’t remember who) “Thought leadership is a lonely position. Get there first and let the rest catch up”
…alongside another from Larry Page “We’ve long believed that over time companies tend to get comfortable doing the same thing, just making incremental changes …where revolutionary ideas drive the next big growth areas, you need to be a bit uncomfortable to stay relevant.”
Hal Hershfield’s book shines a light on the disconnect between now and what’s to come.
Oh, and it may even help your waistline and bank balance.
Highly recommended.