Fast Talk: What's the Biggest Change Facing Business In the Next 10 Years?

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"Over the next few decades, we think the capabilities of intelligent machines will evolve rapidly."
--Donna Dubinsky, Numenta Inc.

"A lot of my people [who read Dilbert] would prefer not to have any human contact, because they feel they work for and with idiots."
--Scott Adams, Cartoonist and entrepreneur

Esther Dyson

Editor, Release 1.0 (for CNet Networks)
New York/Palo Alto

Dyson, 54, has hosted the influential PC Forum conference and edited the technology newsletter "Release 1.0" since 1983. She has also advised many startups. In all her roles, she has helped mold our modern technology landscape.
First appeared in Fast Company: October/November 1997

"There is an erosion of power going on. Specifically, the online world has eroded business's power. People increasingly will personalize their Web experience and determine how they interact with their environment and the people around them. The Web creates transparency, which will make competition tougher and in turn, business better. When a company messes up, it will be very visible. People will blog about it, review it, and expose a company's flaws and pitfalls. Businesses will have to respond to this increased transparency by hiring and retaining better people. And in any case, we'll see a new wave of smaller companies focused on specific needs, in part because they can outsource or partner for the commodity part of their operations or offerings.

There will be a profound change in psychology as people realize how much power they hold. There has always been a general perception that we shouldn't mess with authority-- when authority is exactly who we should mess with. Empowered people are going to begin to realize this. When they walk into a Wal-Mart, they're going to want to know how a product was made and under what conditions. They will assume they have the right to ask because they can do so on the Web. And over time, people will start to expect that same responsiveness from all institutions, not just from online businesses. What kind of tax breaks on real estate are my elected officials getting--and why? And why isn't my hospital as responsive as a hotel?

What does all this say about individual responsibility? If people control their own lives, then they are responsible for those lives. They can't simply complain about things being bad. In a world of choices, your responsibility does not end with complaining."
--Interview by Jennifer Pollock

Tim Brown

President and CEO, Ideo
Palo Alto, California

Brown, 43, has helped formulate the design strategy of such companies as Motorola and Procter & Gamble. Some of his designs for the furniture manufacturer Steelcase have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
First appeared in Fast Company: July 2001

"Teams in business will be thinking about problems as design problems and tackling them like designers. Good design is the output of good design thinking, and companies will be looking to apply design thinking in many places where it hasn't been applied before. These are the methods and approaches that designers use to solve problems, such as understanding and anticipating user needs, prototyping to evolve ideas, and using storytelling to bring ideas to life. If you look at things like the new d.school at Stanford, those kinds of ideas are moving into business.

The implication for designers is that their responsibilities are broadening. In general, designers have thought of themselves as representing the point of view of the user, the consumer. In the future, they're going to have to be much more sophisticated when they're conceiving new ideas, and think about how they're going to speak to the market and how those ideas are going to contribute to marketing rather than just sending it down the line.

Essentially, any business problem that has an audience and a tangible outcome is a candidate for design thinking. For instance, a brand manager charged with reinvigorating her brand could easily use these methods to get her ideas approved in her organization. Similarly, a CEO who wants to get his company to innovate can use the same processes to understand how his organization works today and design alternatives that are better suited to conceiving and executing new ideas. A supply-chain manager for a manufacturer could work collaboratively with his retail partner to develop new and better ways of getting the right products to the right customer at the right time."
--Interview by Alyssa Danigelis