I understand when academics say dumb things, and I’m even tolerant of futurists who say stupid things, but I get down-right scared when people in the business world say idiotic things. As a case in point, I would refer you to an article in today’s New York Times. In it, in response to the impending threat of a new phone from Google, Mark Siegal, a spokeperson for AT&T, was quoted as saying, ”Google’s announcement is about what is going to happen in the future, and our focus is about delivering the goods today.” This is an abolutely asisine thing to say, and my guess is that Mr. Siegal and thousands of other people at AT&T are going to be out of work within the next few years precisely because Google is focused on the future and AT&T isn’t.
Last week, I wrote a post encouraging executives to focus not on 10% improvements in product development, but rather seek to understand how 10X improvements in data storage, Internet bandwidth, sensor and RFID technology as well as access to copious amounts of new information are going to transform the business landscape in the not-to-distant future.
I continue to believe that the cellphone of the future is going to act more like a Swiss Army knife and perform an amazing array of functions rather than a glorified cellphone/Internet browser. My advice to AT&T: If you continue to focus only on “delivering the goods today,” you are going to find that very soon there will be no one willing to accept your goods because they will have moved on to those companies that were focused on the future. As a collorary, I would add that in the future AT&T’s phones will probably become so useless that you won’t even want to wipe your you-know-what with them.
P.S. I know AT&T didn’t alway think this way, as proof I submit this 1993 commercial discussing the company’s vision of the future. It didn’t get everything right, but it was pretty close:
If AT&T still wants to be in business in 2017, I’d suggest that company executives might want to conduct a thought exercise about the future and then make a similar commercial envisioning the phone of 2017.
Related Posts
Futurists Say the Dumbest Things
Examples of Unexponential Thinking
Think 10X, Not 10%
Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, robotics, RFID, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
