Welcome to the Business Trend Center Podcast where
we talk about trends and how to use them to grow your business. My name is Manny Teran and I'm Adam
Hartung we're spark Partners we're here every week to give insight on all sorts of things related
to business and we have a very special guest today Tom Koulopoulos and I will let Adam give the full
introduction but he's uh coming to us from the east coast and is going to provide some insights
about his book about his his history and really l
ook at um the the world of Trends through his
eyes and obviously we're all here as Trendsetters and Trendcasters so uh welcome to the show Adam
go ahead and give the intro Tom welcome to the business Trend Center podcast and everybody I meet
Tom Koulopoulos I've known Tom for over 20 years uh we I used to work at a company called CSC Index they
had worked with a fellow named Jim Champy and Tom and Jim Champy were together for a while at Delphi
Group and uh then I met them because we were al
l interested in Innovation and Innovation management
uh way back when back in the day uh before became common before Clayton Christensen was out there
prosti sustaining and disruptive innovation we were all uh kind of like-minded thinkers at the
time I've kept up with Tom and he's recently published a new book for those of you that don't
know him a little bit background he is the founder and the chairman of Delphi Group which she's been
around for about 30 years like myself when I wrote for
Forbes he's written for Inc Magazine and a
number of other or companies he was a founding member of the Acrobatic Ventures an early stage
technology company and the past director of the Babson College Center for Business Innovation and
I remember that well lots of great papers came out of that I remember reviewing a lot of stuff from
what you did there at Babson and past director of the Dell Innovation Lab as well as doing
a professorship at Boston University uh he's worked with the Tom Pe
terson and got accolades from
Peter Ducker and a lot of other people but we let him speak for himself the author of 14 books and
right now here today we're talk here to talk about Gigatrends which is your latest book that you just
published right hey so first of all so great to be with with both of you thank you um and so great
to be with your audience I know you've got a lot of hustlers entrepreneurs uh that are very hungry
and doing some great things so wonderful to be to be part of all t
hat thank you yeah so Gigatrends
IO was it really stretched me I wanted to write a book about trends that would influence a billion
people or more and my co-author Nathaniel and I really had to dig deep to figure out what those
Trends were we we can talk about them but look at the end of the day it is fascinating to me how
many challenges we have to face globally not just in the US but globally it's fascinating how much
he's going to change over the course of the next 80 years to wrap up th
is this century and yet what
and you've seen this Adam Manny I know you've seen this we're such pessimists you know we always
look at the Gloom of the Doom the apocalyptic AI scenarios um you know whether we're taking
sledgehammers to the Looms in the 1800s uh or skit to death that factories uh are going to be run
by robots and the streets will be littered with Factory workers it's always the gloom and doom
that we see and yet somehow we persevere we make it through it and we're better for
it and we wrote
Giga Trends with that sort of an optimist view we wanted to look at how these challenges were real
but how we were going to take them on you know Healthcare is a good one right no one knows what
the solution is to healthcare um but there are ways we can begin to chip away at that that aren't
wrapped around the political axle and we wanted to bring that sort of a solution mentality to these
really big challenges Alles that that we're facing so that was that was the effort it
was it was
fun it was painful a lot of research went to that book um but at the end of the day it was a
book about optimism more than anything else so I think you profile six Giga Trends that's right
that's right there we picked six and it was tough because God there's so many Trends uh going on uh
that we could have picked from and we had a list initially of I think you know a few dozen of these
that we tried to to whittle down um so we've left stuff out because we had to leave stuff out y
ou
know we were running a book not on encyclopedia but the six Trends we look at we wanted to talk
about changing demographics population shifts which are huge uh and we'll talk about some of
those if you'd like but some stuff that people don't really fully appreciate that are going to
rought globally um the socioeconomic political uh ecosystem um we wanted to look at healthcare
because Healthcare is a big issue not just in the US we think we're at a crisis Point within 20
years across the
globe when it comes to to health care we want to look at the future of work uh and
how AI is going to change the the future of work the future of Transportation uh we will choke the
planet if we keep on rolling out Vehicles the way that we have been it's not just about uh just
electric vehicles there's more to it than than that the future of identity there are 4.5 billion
people living on less than $7 a day they're taking advantage of they have no debit cards they have
no identity they can
't open a bank account they can't apply for for credit um we looked at that uh
energy uh we looked at very very closely is part of that demographic shift how do we bring energy
those 4.5 billion people and the last thing was the future of things how everything is going to
ultimately become digital and what that means to us socially economically as we move to this fully
digitized world so those were the six trends that we that we looked at it could have been six books
to be quite honest with
you but um but we put it all to one you know 350 page book and uh it
was uh it was quite a journey so yeah sounds fascinating it sounds like uh these are efforts
that have been a culmination of your career uh and the other a co-author but also these are some
of the things that Adam and I talk about quite um you know all the time uh and I think the lens in
which we look at the world has to do with uh with how we are in the world um you know I was never
a professor I've always been an entrep
reneur so I see things very differently than you and Adam's
got his own experiences so I think as a as an entrepreneur or business leader you know we're all
looking for Li houses we're on the ocean we've got you know we've got the the storm that's coming
and we've got to look at how can I change my my mindset so then I can make decisions for my team
right and I think these Trends you mentioned just like the ones we talk about are very much those
lighthouses that can either guide us to the r
ight place or keep us away from the rocks yeah I I I
you know I love that metaphor of the lighthouse I was speaking with a good friend of mine a few days
ago who's working with a variety of companies that are trying to figure out what the next 10 20 30
years will look like it's tough to figure out what the next five years will look like to be quite
honest right and the conversation we had which which is triggered by your your comment about
the lighthouse is so we keep on asking what's going
to change but what if we asked a simpler
question which I think originally you know was one that that Jeff Bezos had popularized what won't
change and what if we use that as a lighthouse what are the things that won't change and one
of the things that I know won't change because on a daily basis we experience it we're doing it
right now we're doing it with your listeners as well is human connection and if we look at how
technology especially from an non entrepreneur standpoint can help you
to better create human
connection I think that's an an a critical lious to use so I'll give you an example when I work
with small companies what as a consumer when I work with small companies one of the things I
love is the Personal Touch they pay attention to me they want to know who I am and I speak to a
human being when I work with large companies I'm Anonymous um that's the problem with Healthcare
I'm Anonymous I walk into an ER they have no idea who I am they don't know my medical his
tory my
records um so creating a high touch environment as an entrepreneur focusing and investing on the
humanness of your organization and how you to your partners and to your customers that won't change
and the more you use technology like Ai and other Technologies to establish that human connection
the more competitive you will be and the better uh you will be at delivering whatever service or
product you're you're delivering I think that ends up being sort of The Crucible of competition
going forward is how can you use technology to create a more human connection do you agree
with people there's a lot of people today that seem resentful around some of the social
media like Facebook Facebook and Snapchat and uh those platforms to say that they're driving
us apart that that younger people don't have human connections and don't know how to make
human connections don't know how to maintain human connections because they're spending too
much time living in a digital platform
world how does that bounce off you so look there's a this
is a perennial conversation it's one we've been having for a long time right uh and anyone who has
kids or grandkids nieces nephews has an opinion on on this I wrote a book years back with another
co-author of mine Dan hson called the Gen Z effect where we look specifically at at this so let me
make get simple about this every technology has a a set of pluses and minuses nuclear weapons
are the most devastating technology we've ever
created one could argue and yet nuclear medicine
has saved countless lives there's always a plus and a minus and socially all at the end of the
day all we really need to do is make sure the pluses outweigh the minuses by a certain profit
margin if that is a socially acceptable profit margin we move forward and that's the same for
every technology ever ever created whether it's the knife or the hammer or the nuclear weapon
or AI or social media to to your question more specifically I think w
hat we lose sight of is
that these generational technologies that we find disturbing they're not just subtractive they are
also additive so when we wrote the Gen Z effect we wrote about uh kids that had certain mental health
conditions or physical conditions that couldn't be the workforce and yet by being virtually able
to be part of the workforce suddenly they had a more productive life and I think we we we don't
pay as much attention to the additive nature of these Technologies so do soci
al media um create
Echo you know miniature Echo chambers of course it does uh does it drive wedges of course it does uh
but you know so did 33 and a half you know and a third RPM records Once Upon a Time uh sort of The
Beatles you know so of The Rolling Stones we fail to realize that um all these disruptive elements
in society um are also additive they create value they don't just subtract value from society so
we look at one side of the balance sheet when you look at one side of the balanc
e sheet you know of
course you're going to be dismissive of them and and be a pessimist I think the key is look at both
sides of that balance sheet here's a question so I ask people when I'm in front of audiences I say so
how many of you actually use chap GPT out of 2,000 people I'll I'll be lucky if 30 or 40 raise their
hand what how's that possible so we're dismissing AI we're talking about how it will become our
Overlord and yet we're not even using it I had to get we had a book launch h
ere I had about 30
friends these are friends and colleagues of mine these aren't folks off the street and um we did a
little presentation and I asked I said how many of you out of 30 people how many of you use chat
GPT on a regular basis six hands went up this is my Circle so how can you talk about technology
and the impact it's going to have if you yourself aren't experiencing it if you're not experiencing
it you'll only see it as subtractive you'll never see it as additive so do these Tec
hnologies
take away absolutely but do they also give back absolutely I had a moment a few months ago where
my uh he's now 16 but he was 15year old boy was uh working on an essay and I was walking in and
out out of the room where he was where he was at and uh I noticed there was some he was fidgeting
around with his phone a little bit and I went and I said what's going on over here and I talked to
him and I basically found out I put my detective hat on found out he was using Chad GPT to do h
is
essay yeah and I had this interesting moment in my head because equally I was proud but at the same
time I knew that his teacher did not allow it and so this goes back to that institutional um you
know of that basically pushes back against change and the teachers in the framework and the school
district is saying no but this is an oncoming wave that we can't hold back and just like the slide
rule and just like the the calculator and just like the internet these things are coming why
not
Embrace I recall when you know calculators first came out and my dad brought the first HP
calculator home and it was so cool I brought it the class and my teachers were mortified by this
I mean of course you couldn't use calculators in school when I began teaching as a Professor um
there were professors that would specifically disallow the use of cell phones or laptops
uh in and the cell phones back then weren't the smartphones that we have today but this allow
any use of technology in the
classroom I took the opposite approach I said look uh if you're going
to use your laptop by all means but I'm going to throw out facts every so often that are wrong and
if you don't catch me I'm going to call you out on it so you know the technology is there you're
not going to it's like stearing down tsunami it doesn't work um learn how to surf it get the hell
out of the way go to Higher Ground do something but don't just stare at it cuz staring at it
isn't going to do a damn thing and an
d curse it tsunami is doesn't stop I remember we're giving
presentations even a decade and more ago uh a lot of times whoever would introduce we would be
starting up a conference you know they'd say well it's time to put away your cell phones and I would
come on stage and I would say listen if you want to have your cell phone now it's fine because I'm
just assuming that you're tweeting out my message you're putting it on Facebook and tell everybody
how much you enjoy listening to my present
ation so I was try to take that positive point of view
that that that that was a tool that would help all of us in the room to grow well remember when
remember when we used to do concerts you couldn't you couldn't bring a camera to a concert um and
now you know what what you want most as an artist is to have your you know beond social media have
pictures taken and videos taken and posted yeah so thinking about these Mega Trends are there any I
identif if iable low hanging fruit that you mig
ht say to a small business person here's something
that I think you got to grab a hold of for example we on we've talked about our podcast people should
use chat GPT in order to exp or quickly get things like first drafts of impress Le first drafts of
first drafts of an HR um policy the chat jpt can really help them get some of that stuff quickly
done for them um in that vein sort of of lwh hanging fruit around these these these Megatron
or G Trends what are a couple of L fre you see so loo
k in the same way that you know if you go back
roll the clock back 20 years as a small business 20 years ago you would spend enormous amounts
of money to launch a new business today you can launch nearly for free um everything that you need
from an accounting standpoint from a marketing standpoint it's all available there's some free
version of all of that and it doesn't take a whole lot on a monthly basis to have an accountant
that you Outsource you know using QuickBooks and all these faci
lities made it possible to start a
business with far fewer barriers to entry that's exactly the way I would present AI look at AI
as your best collaborator it's part of your team you should be using it in every aspect of your
business and if your question is well but how would I use chat GPT then my challenge to you is
you haven't played with it enough if you're asking that question you simply haven't played with it
enough and it's not just chat gbd it's all forms of of AI one of the forms
that I use I actually
have conversations get this I have conversations with my book I use a app called ask your PDF I've
uploaded several of my books to ask your PDF and I can ask questions of my books and it will come
back with things that I said which frankly I guess I'm at that age I forgotten I said these things
wow um so I have convers with myself someone else on staff by the way someone else on staff just for
for kicks uh and Giggles as they say uh decided to take the answer answers t
hat ask your PDF was
giving about my books and play them back through 11 Labs which was trained on my voice so I can
ask myself a question and hear myself provide the answer to that that question how scary is that
um you know I've talked to myself on occasion but now I'm having full now you're answering back
can you IM I have a question regarding uh the the gig trends that you mentioned earlier yeah
do you see and do you see any of these probably all these to some degree being hindered or u
h
put into a box by the geopolitical landscape that we're inevitably in today and will we will
be in in 10 15 80 years right we're always GNA have this Turf War of some sort over resources
over people um do you see that that that's gonna slow things down it's it's going to um create a
lot of uncertainty uh I'm not sure it will slow things down uh it might cyclically slow things
down uh political unrest tends to create cyclical disruptions in Supply chains and things of that
sort but I thin
k those are short-term cyclical aberration I don't think it's going to slow
things down long term however that said a lot of your listeners uh are not just delivering
digital product they're probably working with real physical product they have Supply chains
they work with Asia they've got factories in Taiwan or they're working with suppliers in in
China um there's going to be a world of of hurt uh in that part of the world China right now is
at the Apex of its population and uh it will be
in 2100 it will have the same number of people
a little over 700 million people as it did in 1965 so we're seeing a complete bell curve that is
going to create a world of pain there are enough buildings to house a 100 million people in China
that are vacant buildings half built uh I don't want to be political in our conversation here
because that's not you know I don't I'm not a political expert but I've got suppliers in Taiwan
that I work with with other businesses and there's a lot of con
cern about what China is going to do
they don't have an immigration policy uh they will have to do something they're investing heavily
in Africa uh they've invested Untold billions of dollars in Africa because Africa by the way is
the only geography in the world that will have a population pyramid that's not topheavy as we move
forward um the rest of the world is is going to be suffering with with that this aging demographic
so what does that do for entrepreneurs it creates some uncertainty
certainly if you're dealing with
that part of the world with uh with Asia uh and that's not something that you can discount and
take and take lightly uh so you have to look at at you know where uh the future will take you in
terms of manufacturing in terms of Labor and and labor Supply uh labor Arbitrage I think is going
to change dramatically uh we saw that happen in India by the way you know eventually the the wage
Arbitrage begins to go away it normalizes uh that will create a lot of di
sruption uh labor is very
inexpensive right now in in China and in Taiwan relatively speaking that could change relatively
soon so I think there are certain geopolitical forces like that uh that are going to create a
lot of disruption a lot of uncertainty at the same time I think it's easy to go down the path of
gloom and doom uh and my sense is that there will be other things that will accelerate our ability
to do business we were just talking about Ai and it's an accelerate it's an amplif
ier uh that will
help in that in that process but if you're dealing with physical product there's definitely going to
be a lot that you're going to have to contend with over the course of the next uh five to 10 years
not even 20 to 30 years thinking about the world of work um man and I talk a fair bit about the gig
economy we often really promote the gig economy to our listeners we say being a part of the gig
economy is is also a very good thing we also tell small business people that rathe
r than the
traditional method of hiring someone to do a job using G workers can perhaps you can get the job
done more efficiently more effectively at lower cost and without the bureaucracy and overhead
and the regulations of hiring absolutely when you look out in the world of work do you see this
uh Trend that we've had of the gig economy and people working for themselves is that something
that's of an important Trend do you see it growing uh or why do you think the world a work's going
to
look in 10 15 20 years so here's here's one of the Giga trends that is is really important to
understand of the context of that so there are very few small businesses I've worked with that
don't rely on a gig economy a global gig economy using upwork or or you know fivr those sorts of
platforms uh I see that growing enormously and I see it growing enormously because we do have 4.5
billion people it's half the population of the world right now a little bit more than half the
population of t
he world that live on less than $7 a day if we could educate these folks which we
will be if we can bring them into the economic mainstream then we can create a feeder mechanism
for this gig economy that you're describing uh that will pay off for decades to come so I think
there's an an enormous capacity uh that we have for Gig workers the issue is we have to educate
them we have to train them and we don't have the facilities yet by which to do that effectively and
those folks don't have id
entity I mean they don't they can't you know buy a computer or or in many
cases um you know get credit or a bank account so we've got to get them online economically to make
them part of this of this gig economy the other demographic is that hey you know I'm 65 I should
be retired um I love what I do you know I'm sure you know Manny Adam I'm sure you guys love what
you do I can't imagine retiring I'll keep doing this till they you know till no one's listening
anymore and I'll probably keep
doing it a lot people will stop listening uh my friend Jim champ
who's a bit older than I am right now um you know he'll never retire fully because he adds value and
he gets value he gets satisfaction for the wisdom that that he has that's a whole another class of
gig workers that we're going to see at the top of the population pyramid and there'll be more and
more of those folks who want to contribute part time a few hours a week a day a week whatever the
case might be so I see enormous sh
ift to that gig economy and by the way the remote work phenomenon
is fuel for that as people learn that they can work very effectively at home they don't need
the infrastructure of a large organization um they're GNA start asking themselves the question
what's my side gig look like and as that side gig begins to begins to succeed guess what the
side gig becomes the main gig I see a lot of that going on there's not a single person that
you can that you will talk to between the ages of 20 and
30 who doesn't have some kind of a side
gig oress mhm right I worked for a a a a gentleman about 12 years ago I I had my own company at
the time but uh we actually were in business together on a project and we did a presentation
and and I did my part and then he came out and he was launching a startup he was in his mid 70s I
think he was 76 and he stood up and he said that um people that are in their 70s you know late
607s and higher make the perfect startup CEOs right because number one t
hey probably have some
source of of income right they've got all this wisdom they don't care what people think they have
this massive Network and and really it it was uh very compelling I got a lot of laughs obviously
from a a huge crowd of 20s somethings yeah but it really made people think and and it kind of
in a way made them respect him more because he was being vulnerable but truth be told he had a
lot of value to give and uh I think that there that's a piece of I know what I'm trying
instill
in my children is a certain respect for people of all ages that they have a contribution you know I
know people that are that are late teenagers that have that are brilliant and have a lot to learn
and I have people that I know that are in their late 70s and still have a lot to learn well I
mean you know being able to get rid of these Antiquated Notions of generational divides I mean
we're five generations all working together and again that 2,000 uh person audience if I as that
sa
me audience and I do this regularly so how many of you will fully retire barely a hand goes up I
mean it's it's mind-blowing I mean people do not and that's began surprising me I started asking
the question just my own edification I expected half the hands in the room to go up not a hand
goes up we don't we want because we get value we're knowledge workers you know as drer anointed
us back in the 1950s 1959 I think is when he wrote the book um we're knowledge workers we want to
use our brai
ns we want to keep using them as long as we can and we get value for that we get
satisfaction for it so I think this notion of a gig economy going back to your question Adam that
is the future without without a doubt and that's going to create a lot of look What's happen with
Uber and you know in California especially where you live and the whole notion of are they
employees are they not employees what about benefits there's a lot of turmoil we're going to
go through to redefine what it mea
ns to live in a gig economy um tax code will have to change to be
more accommodating for for atome workers which it never really has been so yeah it'll be disruptive
it'll create some some ripples in the uh and tears in the fabric um but there's no doubt that that's
the direction that we're that we're going in I look at at this younger generation and it is it
is what they want to do it's how they want to live the uh it is true that in California the the
people who work as G workers have bee
n opposed to all of the regulations the state has tried to
put in place right because they they it's a a historical way of thinking about work where
you have to be part of an organization that has benefits and Healthcare and that kind of a
thing and that's way out of date it just doesn't work anymore and back the turning that around
again to Federal policies we tend to see you know the people the current president then to
his 80s uh I mean 70s he doesn't seem to quite understand the gig eco
nomy right and and then
I'll go one step further which is own our pece of Jamie Diamond I believe about 67 68 years
old runs JP Morgan Chase very very vocal saying he wants everybody in the company to come to the
office every day um Manny and I think they're out of they don't know where where the world's headed
do you agree with Manny and I or do you what do you look at Commercial Real Estate I you know one
one of the most amazing trends that I've recently become more aware of is that a lot
of commercial
real estate is now being turned into condos so in Boston for example there's this huge vacancy rate
um that is looming You Don't See Much investment in commercial real estate what you do see is
investment in residential uh units and a lot of this commercial real estate is being converted
into residential units so because that's you know people want to live in the city but they don't
want to work in the city quote unquote um so I think Jamie Diamond is is um I don't want to sa
y
he's uh you know stuck in the past um I think that he's trying to preserve assets look assets that
they have we talk about Kodak and why Kodak went out of business and the popular you know folklore
as well they had the digital camera they were too stupid to under no they were very smart people
they had invested in bricks and water they had invested in machinery and Supply chains and all
this stuff for film photography when you invest in all that stuff it's tough to walk away from it
so I
think what these folks are doing is they're trying to leverage their existing Investments
but those Investments are going to be turning over you know very quickly from what I can tell
and by the way these 30s somethings are going to be the ones who are making the rules in another
10 to 15 years so I think the the work that you do the work that Adam and I do I think is is
uh what it does for entrepreneurs and Business Leaders I believe above all else is it gives
them confidence and courage
yeah because you have to make those moves the the board at
Kodak 40 years ago or whatever 30 years ago um should have had the konas to say you know what
irrespective of what we're gonna actually the the man this manslaughter we're going to commit with
our factories and our and our brick and mortar it has to be done if we want to remain relevant and
you know Adam uh has a has a wonderful uh albeit colorful history with Microsoft and and really
was very um very subjective and you know looking
at what they were doing and certainly they have
turned everything around during the Balmer days and during what they're doing now is a 180 degree
shift right they're now they remained relevant they they jettison this whole idea of we're
gonna make we're gonna focus on the operating system they're still kind of on the fulc with the
you know word and all that but they've really put put the pedal and metal on the the you know all
the web services Azure and um you know I I do a lot of work wit
h the company that I run with Intel
and other companies and you know there's a huge investment that Microsoft's making in some new
technologies working with all these players and you know they're making the Right Moves because
they have that right mindset of uh what's gonna happen not tomorrow or next quarter but 10 years
from now 50 years from now and let me tell you for those and and and to your point in terms of
giving courage and confidence to entrepreneurs it is so difficult when you'r
e in the midst of the
day-to-day trying to build something to see the potential and the long-term value that you might
be creating before we we went on a we were talking about my friend my good friend David friend who
was the CEO and founder of Carbonite is now the the CEO and founder co-founder of wasabi wasabi
began with nothing competing against Amazon and they today a 500 plus person company uh they're a
unicorn they've got a market valuation well over a billion dollars still private Um
this can be
done and and what I see which is consistent in entrepreneurs who make that leap and I don't want
to say there's a formula here because there isn't but what I see which is which is always consistent
is they have a vision for the future which is simple straightforward inexplainable they they
know where they're going they're not quite sure how they're going to get there but they know where
they're going and that confid from a leadership standpoint is so critical to building the te
am
that you need to be inspired to follow that Vision um you know it was drer who said the difference
between managers and leaders that managers do um uh uh do something right and leaders do the right
thing um people are looking to you if you're an entrepreneur to tell them what the right thing
is you know we want that we want that sort of leadership so setting a vision being clear about
it being simple about it but being gr the about it really putting it out there is so is is so
important
I think to that courageous Journey that every entrepreneur is is is embarking on uh it's
it's tough to do when you're Maring the dayto day but that's that's the role of the entrepreneurs to
create that vision and get others to believe in it as well if we go back in time the industrial area
was all around make more stuff make it cheaper more better faster cheaper and that got to where
we talked about economies of scale and end up with the BCG growth sh Matrix and then uh uh po we come
out w
ith competitive strategy and in competitive strategy we talk about creating entry barriers
so that you can you know with economies of scale and Manufacturing um sort of reach that Pinnacle
of operational excellence which got drummed into everyone's head in the 80s ands be operationally
excellent I see you've been writing lately about instead of thinking of economies of scale which
is the Industrial Way think about economies of scope and that entrepreneurs will benefit
from economies of scop
e can you and line this a little bit there yeah so thank you for for
ask asking that question bringing that up and and no one knows better that journey of of the
industrial model than than than you do because we've talked about this you and I have talked
about this and how much of an impediment it is to things like Innovation right that industrial ER
model but you're right it was all about creating more stuff in economies of scale where the way
to create more stuff cheaper faster better and
get it to more people that's how consumerism was
was born and created right from from the Model T and the assembly line to to where we are today
look economies of scope are very simple uh at their at their core economies of scope are built
on partnership frictionless partnership and the beauty of being an entrepreneurs you can focus
on your core competen you what do you do best and then get others to do what they do best and
rather than vertically integrate all that into an economy of scal
e everyone does what they're best
at and that's how you create an economy of scope what stitches all that together and the reason
you couldn't have done that in the past is you need technology uh to share information data
to remove the friction between those Partners whether it be a supply chain and physical Goods
or whether it be ideas floating back and forth it is technology ultimately that gives us
the ability to create these economies of scale and through those economies of scale you
c
an compete very effectively with large uh to those economies of scope you can compete very
effectively with these economies of scale very large economies of scale that is such a simple
premise but it's so Central uh to how you build a business today if you're an entrepreneur you
build it entirely around economies of scope and and what I tell entrepreneurs when when we have
these conversations is every time you say to yourself boy but I could do it better faster are
you really doing what you
should be doing better faster uh or are you just doing it because you can
do it better faster there's a huge difference my core competency is focusing on one thing and
doing it exceptionally well I may be able to do this and that kind of well but is that core
to what I'm doing to how I'm creating value and the answer usually is no you know let someone
else do the marketing let someone else do the the Facebook ads let someone else do the video and
the photography uh as an entrepreneur we're
always tempted to do it all and at some early stage you
kind of have to but as quickly as you can stop doing it all and when you look back on the stuff
you did you will look back and say God that was so awful I mean I didn't realize how bad that was um
an economy of scope is coming to that realization earlier rather than than later and using that as
powerful leverage to compete against the economies of scale the the so yeah my my career stemmed from
so I'm an engineer by education and I di
d uh I was a true engineer for about a year and a half and
realized that it wasn't my thing so I shifted into the sales and marketing world and that's kind of
how I built my the center part of my of my career and then later on I started uh you know starting
in growing companies and I remember as a as a rank and file sales guy there was always this decree
from above of you need to sell more stuff yeah and there was always this gong that was that was you
know played constantly about selling m
ore selling more and uh of course as a sales guy you're just
trying to figure out how to make it all happen you're you know reaching out to your customers
you're playing the game and the realization for me that hit me like a ton of bricks when I I
was closing down one of my businesses number of years ago was that it really has to do with the
market if you have something that no one wants to buy no amount of sales force energy you you know
whatever is going to sell it right and I think the p
roduct Market fit is a maybe a different lens
uh that you're talking about now as far as the economy of scope being able to really zero in on
that what people really are looking for and that of course is the the light of innovation right
being able to to produce products and services that people want to buy in better and better ways
and and that rather than this the the size of the of the pie yeah make that pie narrower but tastier
I I love that narrow and taste toer is is a is a great is a
great metaphor the uh the other thing
too is don't be afraid to Pivot I I've yet to see a successful business go from startup to any
significant scale and not have numerous pivots and the pivot is basically don't be don't be afraid
to change your idea when the market tells you it needs to be changed because entrepreneurs get
so stuck on their view of what the product or the service should be that they begin to ignore
obvious red flags and Market signals uh the pivot is essential none of us
are bright enough uh
smart enough brilliant enough to know from the get-go exactly what that product service will will
look like and if you're listening uh and if you're humble enough to pay attention uh that pivot will
come to you um it but you know I no one does it without a pivot it just doesn't happen uh no one's
that smart to be able to predict the future that well and not have to Pivot people get caught up
like you said running their business and they they don't realize the customer
needs change the thing
the world's Dynamic place as things as the world changes what people do changes and then their
needs change and the product you have fulfill the need but as their needs change then that need
is no longer there it's repared or it's easily met with alternative technology and now you've got
to move on into that next thing what are those next needs and next set of needs and again as we
preach that you're preaching you know it's better pay attention to TRS yeah because you
're not going
to often see that looking internally you're not going see that asking people if they like what you
sell you're going to have to look at the outside world you're have to interpret the outside world
and say what what's happening out there and like you know well what does it mean for me so as you
said earlier you ask are you using chat GPT people say no and like well by goly you should what you
waiting right well I think you know that so the the what are you waiting on is interes
ting when it
comes to AI because I think people don't realize how rich the ecosystem is today how much there is
to choose for in terms of tools and and apps and they also don't realize how fast I nothing has
moved this fast I mean you know you and I have lived through the dotcom stuff and nothing has
moved this fast that's real uh we've seen stuff move fast that was smoking in mirrors but this
stuff is real and when and and when you begin to use it you start to realize the potential of
it
um but you can't think that without actually applying it so my my advice is use it get in there
roll up your sleeves dedicate an hour or two hours a week to doing nothing but exploring AI uh and
by doing that you will most definitely invest in areas of your business that will benefit from it
there's just no doubt in my mind that's a really good uh thing to say now let me let me ask kind
of a random question it's gonna do you have a a favorite company or organization that you see is
really e
mbracing uh your Giga Trends and the other things we talk about is there a company or a a
person is there something you can point to and say they're doing it right yeah yep and and maybe
even on the other side if you have another one that say they're doing it wrong yeah well I'll
tell you who's doing it right Amazon uh Amazon for all the the you know the the hatred that is
thrown at Amazon because they're the gorilla on the Block they understand the demographic shifts
they understand the he
alth care challenges and by were not they're not afraid to fail um and
they've done that with health care right they they tried it once they went back they made an
acquisition realizing that they had to you know be less organic about it and acquire the knowledge
um they get that they understand the future of things and the digitalization of of things they
understand this notion of Behavioral uh data and understanding your customer in ways that you can
predict what they're going to do what w
e call prel litics right being able to predict what's going
to happen next not just analytics but predicting the future analytics that you're going to base
actions on um transportation is probably the one place where they're not playing uh at this point
I have no Insight that they will be playing in that in that that space but they certainly have
done a good job in terms of delivery with taking over that Transportation piece and through
drones and other technology they might you know incorp
orate that into their model um but
they're doing so much right and a lot of it I think comes down to the fact that they're going
for the Long play they've always been I mean the culture of the place is going for the Long play
they're excellent operations they execute really well but talk about not being afraid to Pivot
AWS was a pivot it had nothing to do with with the original Mission of of Amazon pure pivot
and it defines an entire marketing space and the cloud exists in many you know way
s because of
what Amazon what Amazon did are use of the cloud anyway um so I think they are a shining model of
how this is being done done exceptionally well in terms of who's who's not doing it well I didn't
make a list of of the folks that are dropping the ball but when it comes to healthcare when you
look at economies of scale and economies of scope the world worst thing in healthcare are these
Mega mergers where the Community Hospitals are being bought up by these large hospitals I'm no
t
going to point fingers here because it's happening across the across the country uh the problem is
that through economies of scale you actually have greater leverage over the payers the insurance
companies and you actually can now charge more for the same services and get considerably worse
outcomes which doesn't make any sense the economy of scale should be more efficient should be more
cost effective and yet that's not what we've seen healthare at all so I think that that move in
my mi
nd it's vertically integrated it's not an economy of scope uh it costs the consumer more it
costs our economy more it's not the way to go and we're we're losing Community Hospitals literally
you know at the rate of of one a day just we we can't continue this uh trajectory so that that
concerns me a great deal as an industry I think Health Care is very much going in in the wrong
direction and when an aging population and a growing need for healthare services and restraint
on the number of im
migrants that we allow into the country if's fix that problem there's going to be
uh that we can see long lines of people waiting to get in for health care services sometimes people
dying while waiting in line absolutely it's it's happening it's happening already I know when
people say to me what will you know 20 years from what will Healthcare look like if we don't
do something drastic and and deliberate my answer is remember the pandemic that's kind of what it
will look like day in Day Ou
t uh and that's not an exaggeration because this aging demographic
has more comorbidities more complexity of care is required uh after that the immigration issues
and and we have uh I just yeah it's a it's a system built to uh to fail unfortunately like you
said it's not us by the way it's not just us this is a global issue as well it's not just us I just
want to make sure we point that out it's a global issue sorry man interrupt no no for I was gonna
just add some flavor and tieback someth
ing you said earlier about uh there's the sort of the
the lens of it's a gloom and doom situation but I I think that and I would expect you and I know
Adam very well enough that the market will figure it out the market will push hard enough that
eventually things will change that's the way I see government as well I mean we can go in a whole
government conversation for hours and eventually it will happen the only thing is in the meantime
what are what's the suffering going to look like and
what's all Madness going to look like the
the suffering will will continue uh and we will certainly accelerate before it it alleviates but
here's an opportunity for entrepreneurs one of the things we talk about in the book is is the
role of what I call digital Advocates digital Advocates are basically Bots their AI algorithms
that that I own which have access to my medical records and can communicate with clinicians on
my behalf when I can so this one my you know my Advocate would be at thi
s point it could be a
spouse it could be a child it could be a close friend uh The Advocate becomes your digital
Advocate and they know everything about you what an enormous opportunity I think a lot of
change will come from the outside from outside of healthcare um so don't look at Healthcare and
say well this is a highly regulated area I don't stand a chance I don't believe it I think if you
can appeal to the consumer and give them something you know my Apple watch give them something whi
ch
comes from outside of healthcare but has enormous health care benefits how many lives do the Apple
watch save so technology can crucial role here if you appeal to the consumer you can then find
your way into the Health Care System eventually I think there's a lot of opportunity for for that we
talk about that in the book but digital Advocates are one of the ways that I think that Health Care
system can change from the outside in uh give the consumer ownership and some agency uh over thei
r
over their health care and that goes a long way I think to to creating some gravity for a technology
or a product or a service well we probably ought to be wrapping this up so Tom tell us where we can
buy gig Trends iio yeah so the book is available it's on on Amazon uh gigs. is the website we useo
because that is the thing to do for AI nowadays it's all about uh IO a lot of AI in here but it's
not just AI we talk a lot about uh things that are going to change the world and affect the way
we live the way we work the way we play it's at the individual level as well as at the at the at
the organizational level I think it's especially important for entrepreneurs to understand these
Trends and to take advantage of them in ways that large companies can't they're just not Nimble
enough to do it uh as you said Adam and that's one of the things that entrepreneurs are exceptional
at being Nimble uh and making a difference Tom this was a very fascinating discussion and very
excited
to see uh how these things unfold and uh for our listeners and viewers um is there a
way people can can reach you and and communicate with you yeah absolutely so if you go to gigatrends.io there's a form there you can communicate directly with me or with Nathaniel uh we'll look
at the uh the submissions ourselves and we're glad to have a conversation with folks about the book
my personal site is TKspeaks.com you can connect with me through that as well what a pleasure it
was talking with you
guys thank you so much for for doing this absolutely for joining our show
we appreciate it yeah thank you very much and uh we'll be talking to you soon Adam you and I will
be back next week with additional uh thoughts on Trends and how to grow your business how to see
the world in a new way how to eliminate bias and how to really hitch your wagon on these GigaTrends thanks Manny cheers thanks Tom thanks guys.
Comments