Welcome to Forbes Insight’s Futures in Focus podcast, where we explore the world of AI, travel, entertainment, 3D printing, sports experiences in to 2030, healthcare developments, the environment, digital transformation, the nature of good, animal cloning, and many other advancements that have the potential to change what life, business, and society could be like in ten years. We even tap into the mindset of growth hacking to see if major corporations can grab one of the secrets of startups with the CEO of Growth Hacking and best selling author Sean Ellis and the world of precision medicine with Professor Sah-Shen Orr and David Harel of Cyto Reason.
These and our many other guests give us their best ideas, years of thinking, and a sense of the possible futures in store for us all of which is extremely exciting. I ask some tough questions about potential choices into the future that guests like Bruno Sarda, the President of CDP, North America, who is charged with measuring carbon footprints around the world, and he gave us some incredibly enlightened answers. Even the sustainability officer for Campbell’s soup talks about sustainable food design. In just about thirty minutes, whether you are on your commute, eating lunch, or some other down moment, Forbes Futures in Focus is designed to give you a peek through the window into the futures we could be part of.
We have had this podcast series incubating with thinkers, academics, and visionaries for the last four months, and have had great conversations that span topics from how 5G is going to be used with holodecks to what people might be eating for breakfast ten years from now.
Forbes Insights FIF Host
PPTGHOST
When I was a kid in the U.K., I used to watch future casting programs like Tomorrow’s World (BBC) with awe. Stuff looked cool, but not realistic because something was missing. Or many things were missing. Perhaps those missing things are not so much missing anymore! Digital technologies, new materials, new data sets and a willingness to lean into the ideas of the future make all the ideas our guests talk about tangible realities, maybe not today, but in the very near future. Who would have thought that taxis could be ordered with a tap of a button on a cell phone and we could have an autonomous driver turn up? Who would have thought a veggie burger company could be worth billions of dollars, or that your pet can be now be cloned, as we discovered when we talked with Blake Russell, the president of Viagen.
We live in incredibly exciting times, but also very challenging ones for the planet and our species. Armed with these ideas, what can we do to make our lives and the world fundamentally new and better in less than ten years?
How can artificial intelligence work for us, and not replace us?
Each podcast is a journey through to 2030 and beyond about a subject very close to the mind and hearts of our guest. We will dig deep into an area that our guests have devoted their lives to, like Mike Ebeling of Not Impossible Labs. Other guests include Dan Quinn, head coach of the Atlanta Falcons of the NFL, and Giuseppe Scionti, who is leading the way forward with 3D food printing. In 30 plus minutes, we will talk, and try to answer four or five main concerns in their areas that might surprise you. Dan Quinn didn’t talk to us about the X’s and O’s of football, he talks about the driving forces behind the player-coach relationship in ten years’ time, a world cluttered with even more data, and maybe even AI. Mo Katibeh the CMO and GM of AT&T business, talked as much about what the idea of 5G could mean with his kids on a bike, to how we should think differently about latency free use of data and ideas.
Our guests are people you may have heard of, like Michael Schrage from MIT media labs. Others like Safi Bahcall and his brilliant book, Loonshots, we turned into two podcasts that discuss topics ranging from the future of war to the future of biomedicine. Dr. David Bray, an Eisenhower Fellow, talks with immense passion about the future of governance from a community to a national level. We talk to a Michelin three-star restaurant owner (one of less than 150 in the world,) and Anton Andrews who is the head of the office envisioning at Microsoft. Bruce Rogers, former Chief Insights Officer at Forbes and current founder of the Sito Institute; we had a fascinating and maybe scary conversation about the future of the CMO. A conversation that is different to the one we had with Andrew Swindand the US CEO of Leo Burnet.
Nothing is off the table with Trevor Moawab, a mindset coach who has worked with the Alabama college football program, who shares his extraordinarily contrary position about how great athletes do it all. One guest, Afdhel Aziz, even talks about a whole new formula for building deeper value for brands that goes way beyond typical self-interest. Telissa Yancy, the CMO of American Family Insurance, has a great future story about buying a new piano. We have guests from major sports franchises talk about the future of fan experiences in sport, and Sonny Magana talks about a revolutionary approach to teaching our future generations how to handle the wicked challenges that face us all.
Sometimes our guest answers questions about space travel, what they might miss ten years from now, and even how we might vote for government. Guido Jouret, the Chief Digital Officer for ABB, has some great future visions for how buildings are going to be living organisms going forward. Each guest encourages further discussion on their social accounts too, so view this as a launchpad into these subjects.
I’ll make you one promise as the host. In each episode of Forbes Insights Futures in Focus, we might introduce an idea or a thought you might not have had before. In the thirty minutes or so I spend with each guest, we may well change a perspective you have about what could be possible about the world of ten years’ from now.
Only 19% of Americans think about the world of ten years into the future, just once a week.
Yet 95% of us will be here in ten years time.
Given the multiple revolutions, we are going through we hope each week to spark new perspectives.
Each week I will write a post on some of the very coolest parts of that week’s guest interview, and I would love to hear your thoughts and comments here or at my email or on LinkedIn after you have listened. Share these interviews with your friends, colleagues, partners at work and even your kids!
Join the conversation as we post a sneak peek of the forthcoming podcast each week and some cool, relevant facts for that podcast.