TREND 4:           RE-CREATING YOUR IDENTITY

                           WHO DO I WANT TO BE TODAY?

                                         ANDY WARHOL OR THOMAS LEONARD

Emerging Trends:

In more than any other modern culture Americans are fascinated with the idea of recreating themselves through plastic surgery, fashion trends, pop culture, sports, TV, movies, and living vicariously through the celebrities who dare to live on the edge. In recent years, David Bowie, Prince (the artist) and Madonna, three mediocre singers at best, have amassed fortunes, risen to the top of celebrity status and managed to stay there consistently by continually changing their identities and not just their style. You can add Michael Jackson to that list; for a while during the late 80’s he was the best at reinventing himself.

And that’s only in the performing art world. Now there is the revival of the “self help” movement, picking up where it left off in the late 70′s. Except this time it’s a lot less cult-like and its better leaders, Thomas Leonard in Coaching, Tom Peters with his Brand You concept, and Depak Chopra with Quantum Healing, are promoting individual growth and identity. They have strong ideas about personal identity that form the basis of their very different concepts for the next stage of personal and business evolution, each with a lot of room for personalization and individualization.

Combine that trend with the fact that the average 40 year old has already made 5-10+ job changes and possibly 2 to 3 different career switches and you realize that most people don’t have a concept of career any more; life is a series of projects that define who you are as Tom Peters goes on to drum into you. Constant re-invention is the name of the game.

Next Opportunities:

This trend is not directly about next opportunities. Reinventing your identity is almost a given in today’s economy. The faster and more willing you are to change who you are (while holding on to your values, and personal passions) and how you view the world the more next opportunities you will find in the years ahead. The more rigid you are about your identity and unwilling you are to grow and evolve, the more likely you will be stuck as a passive observer. This applies to companies as much as it does to individuals. Microsoft is already looking past the monopoly of the PC.  Whether or not it is “broken up”, Microsoft knows that it must redefine itself to be a major player in the next generation of net based computer applications and search based web access. Sitting on the sidelines might be an option for some, but not if you plan to ride the wave.

Existing professionals stand to gain from this trend if they partner and re-partner with the right someones. The result: new professions will soon emerge; personal transformational managers (career services of the old days), celebrity coaches, futurists and personal trendsetters, personal branders, just to name a few.

Let your imagination run wild.

Create the future and smell the roses, it’s your move!

IS THAT REAL OR IS ART REAL?

 WHOSE ART IS IT ANYWAY?

EMERGING TRENDS:

When Shock Art no longer shocks, what’s next? When work, play, and the creation of new things, and the transfer of information (most art can be transferred as digital information) is free over the Internet thanks to Napster, Wrapster and who knows who else, the question is no longer “what is art?” but “whose art is it anyway?” and “who is an artist?” Anyone can have an audience of millions for every bit of their self-expression thanks to YouTube and MySpace.

Let’s take the trends and pull them apart. First there is the current trend in art to want to shock. This will continue to its logical end and move to the next taboo area. Art will dwell on death in ways as yet unexplored in documentation and performance.  The art forms of human death will be plumbed for all they are worth before interest in that too dies. The Internet created the world-wide audience that Timothy Leary sought while he died.  His was a first tentative step in that direction, now with much better video and real time images, watch for actual gore to be the next topic of net censorship.  And others like Randy Pausch make the transition from life to death more normal with videos like The Last Lecture. It has had an audience of over 2 million hits and is still growing, but is that art?  Why not? In this age of instant polling, who decides?

With web pages so easy to create and every portal offering them for free, it’s only a matter of time before some smart entrepreneurial artist/programmer comes up with an offering to create your own masterpiece programs. Templates in music and fine arts that help you write original classical music and paint in a particular style already exist. Define your style and then it can be varied and refined with the guidance built into the program; for example, it might stop you from using purple with pale green or a high C unless you override it. And there is the Bill Gates mansion version: flat screen displays of art where and when you want, for rent, on loan, or stuff you own.  Soon expect to see versions of shock art king, Damion Hersh’s shark in formaldehyde for rent for your Christmas party. The headset version might just be out in time for Halloween next year.

How about art for any occasion? Performance artists whom you commission to create an art event for your wedding, or your office Christmas bash, or IPO party! (yes IPOs still do happen) Or an aspiring local singer under the auspices of Guru.com makes herself available to serenade as you propose to your beloved and that followed by a romantic dinner for two served at the top of the local historic landmark tower.  (Only if she says “yes”, of course.)

Even “high art” will leave the galleries and museums and find new venues. It already has crossed over into the mundane via web sites, and CDs.  You can tour the Louvre and most major museums and stop and get the scoop on any painting in each gallery, the artist, style, etc.  Museums are becoming more like circuses, and performance entertainment centers and less like the serious centers of “aahrrt” of the past. And they all want the latest IT architect in fashion (Gehry, of course) to design a statement or a spectacle of a building that might become the main attraction. The art inside is now secondary to the entertainment and talk value of the museum itself. Tate in London, Guggenheim in Bilbao, Getty in Santa Barbara, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston have each hired a performer architect to create the circus tent for the art experience inside. Whatever happened to good old blank white walls where paintings could be seen without the noise of architecture and museum gift shops and cafes? Say goodbye to all that for good, and don’t look back because art, like retail is being combined with entertainment and food and even dating. Yes the MFA has first Fridays for singles to commingle with Picasso; masterpieces mere backdrops for foreplay.

When art no longer hold its own as the focus it will soon morph and join a new partnership to become a new retail concept or just another service industry available on demand where and when you want it.

Next Opportunities:

Where do these trends about art as entertainment lead you and me. The obvious ones are; if you are an aspiring singer or performance artist, make yourself available through service providers like Guru.com and become part of an entertainment package. Or if you can market yourself as the “it” architect of the day you can get the next big commission to package art in gold foil (titanium is already done) for the next museum design statement. There is no place for the “starving artist” in the entrepreneurial society of today. Like it or not, artists are going to have to compete with everyone creating their own art and marketing it on YouTube and not on eBay. And if at Christies they can sell art made by some Malaysian elephant, then in the age of the Internet you too can find some angle for making your unique mark on the art world.  Be the creator of the first “green painting” that when planted and watered per instructions becomes a scenic carbon absorbing plant.

If you are too shy to claim to be an artist or designer right away, start your own web site with items for sale from other designers.  Anyway, start with your own web site, every one of you.  It is your calling card to the world; make it your artistic statement to the world. Design is everywhere. BMW, Nike, and now Apple have made design and art part of all consumer products of the coming decade. It’s time we all joined the movement of expressing ourselves as artists. Sell your own book, your next song, your next painting directly over the web! Create the next art form and make the world your audience. Perform live from your bedroom. I take that last one back, that’s already done and it’s really boring.  Anyway, perform. You get the picture.

The bottom line with this trend is that there are opportunities for tie-ins with all kinds of existing service providers (wedding and event organizers, web site programmers, interior designers and as many more as there are services) The masses want personalized, changeable art on the cheap. The immediate next trend, a la Bill Gates’ vision, your flat screen wall mounted panel will let you create and display whatever you want to call art anytime you want by simply downloading the image of your choice onto it. You might pay a fee or you might not.  This will be followed by ubiquitous 3D art when holographic technology comes of age.  And it will come of age.

Any which way you cut it, look for all forms of art, written, sung, painted, performed to be made directly available to the audience. Gear up for that and you will become the leader of the pack. Create a brand name for yourself and you will make money at it. Become the next generation Andy Warhol or David Bowie. Create collaborative music with your fans. Let them in on your creative process and watch an instant community grow. The pioneer is PatroNet launched by rock musician Todd Rundgren in 1998. Rundgren envisions a music industry in which artists interact more directly with fans who become collaborators in creating and marketing music and providing it on a Virtual Private Network (VPN) where one never has to buy music. Simply subscribe to the VPN. Yahoo and Microsoft are experimenting with the idea. Think up the next model, there will be many forms of direct niche marketing.  Wikipedia, for example, spawned a novel written by the collective masses.

Art will sell based on 10% talent, 40% timing and 50% buzz! Leave art school credentials and commissions to old school galleries. Take your talent directly to the market via the web.  Sep 15 2008, good old Damien is creating a buzz in the art world not with his art, but by how he is marketing it. He is cutting out the his gallery, and putting 223 new pieces up for auction directly at Sotheby’s.

Find a way to create a buzz. Art without buzz will be like the tree that fell in the forest.

Let your imagination run wild.

Create the future and smell the roses, it’s your move!

     DOES THAT KID KNOW WHAT HE IS DOING?

25 YEAR OLD MENTORS

Emerging Trends:

When 20 somethings set the norm, even Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sacks take notice. Morgan Stanley went “business casual” not just Fridays but five days a week in 2000. And there is even the  book; “Beyond Business Casual”. What’s next?  Dressing down for success?

Along with the illusive flexible hours that translate into 24 hours a day and 7 days a week; at home, on the road, and at the “office”,  as opposed to conference rooms and three piece suits, “idea sharing spaces”, jeans and chinos, and the ubiquitous basketball hoop seem to rule in more and more companies.

New norms for this creative culture, essential for keeping the brightest minds engaged, has resulted in some funky office environments that are part entertainment complexes, work areas that merge with “play areas”, even in-­house concierge and day care. That’s just  for starters. The next generation of workplaces for the new economy (offices)will depart from the Yahoo and Microsoft format campuses and move into the big city. On the inside they will be comfy environments for creative chaos and interaction, with non-assigned work stations along with a few enclosed spaces for concentrated work, play, or virtual simulation of products and presentations. A mostly open environment with lots of light and ability to interact non-hierarchically, but close to bars, restaurants, and cool places to hang out to take a break from work. Cities that are considered cool and hip, think Seattle, Boston, SF, already are and  will continue to be the hot centers of this economy , as companies migrate to where their employees want to be.

Next Opportunities:

In this new free form work environment, architects and interior designers will have a field day collaborating with entertainment and industrial designers to create the work space for the New Economy. The merging of work and play being the defining concept. Experimentation with new materials, and combining media-­technology with interior design will flourish. Las Vegas meets Pixar meets Urban Outfitters. To keep the 20-30 something parents from leaving, bringing infants to work will become much more common and normal and therefore work environments will change radically to accommodate this truly multi-generational shift in the nature of the workplace. Star, “must keep”, talents will get a lot more latitude than others in how they define their hours, place of work and environment.

Corporate coaches for the old economy, and “Brand You 50″ and Tom Peters for the New Economy. Within 10 years, mentors and personal coaches will be ubiquitous. Anyone over 40 with any real experience and expertise running a company will be highly sought after, like Randy Komisar, author of “Monk and the Riddle”, who at 45 is the CEO of anywhere from 4 or more start-up companies at any given time and goes by the title of “Virtual CEO” because he does not operate out of any one office. Most start ups have passion, a niche, a technical specialty that they believe the market needs, and many have money; what most do not have is the wherewithal to manage the company at the breakneck speed required to grow in order to produce the product and bring it to the market before the competition. Which is why people like Randy Komisar are so much in demand. And like Randy, most of them got paid last year in significant stock options on top of a very high base salary.

Human Resources will need to change its name and nature once again. It will get more personally involved in managing the lives of the people willing to give 24/7 to the company’s vision. Making sure that affirmative action is pursued, sexual harassment is dealt with and that cultural/racial integration is happening will be the bare minimum of their mandate. They will soon function more like a Human Concierge Department. They will be charged with meeting all the human growth needs (as opposed to just career development) and day to day needs of the 24/7 staff, and special personalized needs of the star talent. And among Smart Companies HCD (Human Concierge Departments) will vie with each other to one up the other in how well they cater to the specific needs of their staff, keep them loyal and focused, look for innovative services, offerings and games to be played out in coming years. For sheer ingenuity, the services they will come up with will make the airlines creation of $30 window seats and pricey leg room pale in comparison.

Let your imagination run wild.

Create the future and smell the roses, it’s your move!

      INDIA AND CHINA COME OF AGE

         THE TIGER AND DRAGON BY THE TAIL.

Emerging Trends:

Here are some recent tectonic shifts to ponder.

A major shift in US-Indian foreign relations occurred in the Spring of 2000; President Clinton announced that $4 billion worth of business deals had been signed in 2 days on his 5 day trip to India. For the first time a US President’s South Asia agenda was being shaped by economic ties rather than regional geo-politics.  In addition, Clinton’s commercial business agenda on his India trip was shaped largely by the American-Indian business community. He was accompanied by Gururaj Deshpande one of the leading lights of the Internet revolution and founder of Sycamore Networks Inc. of Chelmsford, Mass.  

In 2000 India received $3 billion in direct annual foreign investment, at the time a fraction of China’s $44 billion, that gap has closed considerably in less than 8 years.  The added incentive for this shift, in the words of Ray Vickery, advisor to US-India Business Council; ” … India is Democratic, English speaking, there’s the rule of law, and they have a great sense of humor … ” On the other hand, thanks to the iron fist in China, if the center thinks it’s a priority some things can get done over night, while India’s infrastructure remains mired in multiple centuries.

As AOL and others are still trying to get a real foothold in China, thanks to Yahoo’s co-founder Jerry Yang’s ability to schmooze Beijing with his Mandarin,  Yahoo has had a successful portal there for years.  One of the less talked about reasons that Yahoo was a take over target for Microsoft in 2008 was Yahoo’s major presence in China..Microsoft coveted them for reasons beyond expanding the search engine market.

In 2008 two of the top Fortune 100 companies were headed by Indian born CEOs. Vikram Pandit of Citigroup and Indira Noori the CEO of Pepsi. Besides being brilliants minds in their own right, they give their companies the ability to create truly global strategies. After the first wave of engineers and doctors, India’s more recent immigrants have been more eclectic and include emerging leaders. Vinod Khosla a Silicon Valley giant formerly of VC firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byersthat who funded the likes of Google, Genentech and Sun Microsystems, is one of the pack of leaders who came to the US from India as part of the second wave 40 years ago.  The third wave has just come in. Bobby Jindal the Governor of Louisiana, a first generation Indian, was among the first round of candidates for VP on the Republican ticket with John McCann.

A winning global strategy has become a must have in today’s highly integrated and interconnected global economy and these Americans of Indian and Chinese origin give the US a secret weapon in the global economic war . Even american political parties are recognizing that x-factor.

Thanks to the key roles they play in the Internet revolution not only in the US, but around the world, today’s Chinese and Indians are well poised to take on much bigger political and economic leadership roles  Britain, Germany, Japan, New Zealand and Scandinavian countries are competing to recruit Indian high tech workers who they believe will improve their competitive edge.

Indians and Chinese outside the homeland have yet to have their true voices heard and they may well be the x-factor in the new economy.   A world leader is bound to emerge from this group within the next 2-5 years.

Next Opportunities:

The breakdown of H-I B visa recipients for 2000 was 43% of India origin, 10% born in China, and 54% working in the computer industry (surprise !), with 50K as the median annual income. Even with the economic downtown of 2008, all of the 60,000 H-1-B visas were snapped up on April 1, the first day they became available and the median annual income has almost doubled.  And this while there is a national recession.  In today’s global economy, even talk of a national recession has to be sector specific and the number of highly skilled workers in many sectors of the economy remains tight.

The opportunities are many; from the obvious immigration lawyers, to the in-house mentoring programs already in place in most companies to help integrate (not assimilate) employees from different cultural backgrounds into the culture of the company while teaching a few essential  Americanisms! Many placement and HR firms are also incorporating a cultural assimilation component in their placement programs. A crash course in the finer nuances of life in the fast lane in America is becoming more the norm than the exception.

US companies such as Griggs Productions of CA are learning to understand and integrate the new cultures entering their previously white male domain and introduce new forms of diversity training that goes way beyond the assimilation, race and gender issues of yesteryear., They  promote cross-cultural differences and better understanding of each other in the workplace.

The next generation of opportunities lies in the new form of cross-cultural integration.  This new wave of truly international immigrants will demand to keep what they want of who they are and adopt or adapt what they want from the American melting pot.  Smart Companies already have table tennis (not ping pong, please) and cricket leagues along with softball. Cafeterias at IBM or Akamai may soon serve yakama soup, chicken vindaloo, Peking duck, and burgers. Personal coaches will be offered to the star immigrant workers to help make the multi-cultural transition as smooth as possible, while nurturing the independent, creative streak that makes them so valuable.  For new immigrants, finding ones identity within this new set of sub-cultures can be a major emotional and physical drain, especially in the first few years. Any personalized resource that can reduce the strain and help him/her become more productive faster, as well as services that allow a company to be truly global in its own corporate culture and outlook will attract the best talent and create a competitive edge in the global marketplace.

Private schools in Silicon Valley and Massachusetts that act more like ex-patriot schools abroad, like those in Singapore where they acknowledge and encourage the retention of the multi­cultural backgrounds of their students, will attract more of these companies and workers to locate there. This will in turn demand greater partnership between these companies and the local private schools. A win-win proposition. Look for a school near you in CA, or MA offering Mandarin or Gujarati as the second language and sponsored by the local software or biotech giant.

Watch for a whole new wave of regional cuisine to find its way into the restaurant scene of major cities and for many of them to be refined, specialized Chinese and Indian restaurants in the 5 star categorys. Think Malabar Fish Head Curry or roast pig next time you think BBQ this summer and be ahead of the crowd. If you think you have been eating Indian and Chinese food since the 60′s, you have only tasted the tip of the iceberg of those two cultures culinary delights. The next Julia Child of cooking may well be Ming Tsai of Blue Ginger in Wellesley Mass or the next Indian star chef on the Food Network. Or maybe it will be someone one who is honing his culinary fusion skills on his way right now from Kerala  via London and headed for the shores of California

Let your imagination run wild.

Create the future and smell the roses, it’s your move!

Forget 1^st and 3^rd world differences. The old habit of dividing 1^st and 3^rd worlds is not  a meaningful way of viewing the world any more. First and third are so intertwined that the distinction is not relevant.

Meantime a few major demographic shifts are occurring whose profound effects will be felt at least in the US for decades. These will color the nature of the next generation workforce and business culture, and will herald a whole new set of cultures that have not been part of the American politician and economic landscape. As a result, in the next 5 years watch for at least one of the following three things to occur; a Latino Governor in one of the three big states Texas, Florida or California, an Asian American Ambassador to EU, and/or a first generation Asian in the Presidential cabinet.

Let’s look at 3 key interrelated trends that will shake up the cultural in the business world. Even with predictions of a depression in 2008, unemployment is still under 4% in parts of California and Massachusetts in the high tech industries. In fields like bio-tech companies can not find enough technically trained staff and so many of them are stealing from each other to stay competitive. Second, a large number of the highly skilled workers needed by the high tech based New Economy are not in the US, they are in India, and to a lesser extent in China and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria & Hungary) and will have to be imported. Third, a majority of this crop of high tech cross-cultural immigrant workers has a few characteristics that run across national borders; they are extremely well educated, independent, very motivated, politically jaded, raised and nurtured on western pop culture, entrepreneurial to the core, techno-savvy, and passionate 20 somethings. Nomads. What will it take to get them to make US their home base even for a short while ?

The Rand Corporation predicts that one third of this country’s population will claim Asian or Hispanic roots by 2050 (Economist): The plain facts are that in less than 20 years in many of the richer suburbs in this country you will hear a lot more Russian, Gujarati, Spanish and Mandarin than you will English.  Additionally,  thanks to their larger numbers in the medical, scientific research fields, and their increasing dominance in the area of computer programming, South Asians are the ethnic group with the highest per capita income in the US,.  

If you want to stay culturally relevant find out what is inside a dosa and how it differs from Konji.