(Note to my readers: As promised, I am slowly putting all of my 2008 book, Jump the Curve: 50 Essential Strategies to Help Your Company Stay Ahead of Emerging Technologies, online. Today’s installment is “Catch a Wave.” The previous 12 strategies are posted below.”
On January 26, 2006, a NASA satellite flying in geosynchronous orbit detected hurricane-force winds developing in the North Pacific. Using supercomputers to digest and process the data, officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted that massive waves would reach Half Moon Bay, California, on February 7. Organizers at Mavericks, the world famous surfing location, immediately sprang into action and sponsored a surfing contest, and officials at NBC agreed to cover the event live.
The humongous waves arrived as predicted. Using a proprietary wireless mesh network and cameras with 70x zoom lenses, NBC then sent those signals over a fiber-optic cable to the parking lot in Mavericks where thousands of fans watched the surfers ply their trade on a gigantic plasma screen. Hundreds of thousands more watched the action live on the Web via video stream that was transmitted with a directional antenna. As if that weren’t enough, NBC later aired the footage on the 7,000-square-foot screen in Times Square so that the citizens of the Big Apple could gain an appreciation of the actual size of the waves that confronted the surfers that day.
The story is a wonderful example of using existing technology to walk the escalator. But just as the waves of Half Moon Bay grew exponentially larger prior to breaking, so too are all of the aforementioned technologies. To survive in tomorrow’s exponential economy will require more than just walking the escalator. It will require running very fast and jumping extraordinarily high to survive.
With that in mind then, let us return to a time when running and jumping were part of our daily routine–our childhood. As you will see, many of the skills we left behind from that era will have to be relearned in order to effectively jump the curve.
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Jump the Curve Strategy #12: Think Small, Very Small
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Jump the Curve Strategy #10: Get in Touch with All of Your Sensors
Jump the Curve Strategy #9: Follow Your Hunch
Jump the Curve Strategy #8: Run the Numbers
Jump the Curve Strategy #7: Reorganize Your Data Storage Closet
Jump the Curve Strategy #6: Let the Computer Do It
Jump the Curve Strategy #5: Bet On It
Jump the Curve Strategy #4: Just “Wiki” It
Jump the Curve Strategy #3: Look to the Kindness of Strangers
Jump the Curve Strategy #2: Take a Bird’s Eye View of the World
Jump the Curve Strategy #1: Learn to Spell Zenzizenzizenzic
Introduction to Chapter Two: The Power of Zenzizenzizenzic
Welcome to the Exponential Economy: Prepare to Jump the Curve
Introduction to Jump the Curve
