Living in More Than One World

Fortune’s January 14, 2013 edition is The Future Issue; with around one-quarter of the pages devoted to the topic. The magazine explores various dimensions of what tomorrow might be like rooted in work and effort taking place in the present. The centerpiece feature (eight pages long) is “Larry Page Looks Ahead,” about the Google CEO/co-founder’s vision for the company and its potential game-changer initiatives like self-driving cars. The article, by Miguel Helft, portrays a company in constant motion, reinventing itself 24/7; appropriate for a service that has to be always available, with no exceptions or downtime.

Other features include “Meet Your Next Surgeon,” on robotics in the operating room, such as the da Vinci, from the Silicon Valley company Intuitive Surgical. Also mentioned is the experimental research platform Raven, by Applied Dexterity, a recently formed company spun off from the University of Washington. “The $50 billion question,” Ryan Bradley writes, “for the future of surgery: Will there be (operating) room for more than one kind of robot?” If you want to know more about the future of the intersection of brands and pop culture, see Daniel Roberts’ “Will.i.am, Hit Machine.” It details the future-focused work the Black Eyed Peas rapper is providing for companies like Intel and Coca-Cola, whose CEO Muhtar Kent calls him a “visionary.” A shorter section, “The Future Dispatches,” briefly tackles a variety of issues with implication for the future. One, “Teaching Watson the Meaning of ‘OMG,’” concerns the work of Eric Brown of IBM to program computers to understand slang. There is also a short Q&A with technology pioneer/inventor/author/futurist Ray Kurzweil about his new book, How to Create a Mind. And to complete the circle of the future, it was announced in December Kurzweil is joining Google as a director of engineering.

The Economist has turned its yearly The World In… publication, now in its 27th year, into a brand, well beyond the print edition. There is an extensive website (which I wrote about last year), and a blog, Cassandra. On December 6th and 8th, there was The World in 2013 Festival in New York. Earlier this year came the book Megachange: The World in 2050, edited by Daniel Franklin, Executive Editor of The Economist and Editor of The World In…

Although there are many predictions for the next 12 months, and what the effects of those events may be, to me the real value comes from well-organized thought and information about that time period by subject experts and high-profile practitioners from business, technology, the arts, politics, health care and other fields; putting into context information about what lies ahead. There is an illuminating 13 page section, The World in Figures, with snapshot-like statistics on 18 industries and 82 countries. The Calendar 2013 reminds us that although the details remain, we already know a lot of what is going to happen next year, simply because it is scheduled to happen, or that it marks a particular anniversary. We thus learn that March 20th will be “the inaugural UN-sponsored International Happiness Day”. And a calendar entry notes the November 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, while a separate article, “They Had a Dream,” discusses Kennedy in relation to the 50th anniversary, in August, of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech.
There are eleven guest articles from prominent people writing about what they see in the next 12 months in their area of expertise, and in some cases, what their own activities will be. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, known for his “black swan” theory, provides suggestions for dealing with financial risk; Harvard’s Michael Porter and Jan Rivkin outline eight policy areas for boosting America’s competitiveness, and Melinda Gates writes about steps needed to keep reducing the worldwide number of childhood deaths. As Franklin points out in his introduction, “contributors to this volume have lots of ideas for how to make things better.”

A major highlight of my just-completed course, The Special Library/Information Center, at the Catholic University of America School of Library and Information Science, was The 17th Special Libraries Symposium, held on August 25th.
Eleven panelists donated their time to meet with my students: Joanne Berger- FDA Biosciences Library; Linda Broussard- SLA/Special Libraries Association; Cameron Gowan- Jones Day; James King- The National Institutes of Health; Rick Kowalski- Consumer Electronics Association; Thomas Mann- Library of Congress; Jennifer McMahan- U.S. Department of Justice; Susan O’Brian- The American Prospect; Angela Titone- Consumer Electronics Association; Joan Weeks- Library of Congress/CUA SLIS and Amanda Wilson- U.S. Department of Transportation. Our special guest on the panel was Derek Attig, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who was this summer’s 2012 Google Policy Fellow at the American Library Association’s Washington, D.C. office.
Among the key takeaways on to how to begin and progress through a career journey in special libraries and related fields:
1. Get involved in SLA or a related professional association, where you can develop leadership skills, take on unfamiliar responsibilities, build friendships and your personal network, and stretch professionally.
2. Learn about contracts and how they are negotiated. Sit in on contract negotiations, and if necessary, learn about these areas away from the library.
3. Sign up for free webinars, including ones in different fields, to learn content and discover how they are produced.
4. Investigate the potential of becoming an electronic resource librarian, and become familiar with how mobile apps can serve organizations.
5. You may have to create your own job, or look for jobs not in libraries, but that call on library-like skills. Don’t limit yourself.
6. Keep developing your writing and presentation skills.
I’m grateful that the panelists made the time on a hot summer evening to help prepare a new generation of information professionals for success in this brave new world.

When Peter Drucker began visiting Japan in the 1950s, I imagine he had to prepare and arrange his schedule by exchanging letters and possibly some expensive phone calls. In preparation for my recent Drucker-related (first) visit to Japan to speak at the Drucker Workshop 7th Annual Conference, I had the benefit of staying in no-cost touch ahead of time with the great people I’d be working with, whom I wrote about in my first post in this series. There were many details to be ironed out, unfolding over several months; mainly via email and Facebook. All were patient about answering my endless questions with targeted information and recommendations.
The same is true for two of my friends at the Drucker-Ito School in California, Jeremy Hunter and Emi Makino, both of whom have deep knowledge about and experience in Japan. Besides many emails, I discussed the upcoming trip in person with Jeremy last November and Emi this January.
Having strong connections with so many talented and generous people was a big reason my visit was so memorable. I finally got to meet in person William Reed, whom I’ve been corresponding with since he wrote a great post about my book in 2011. (He was born and raised in the United States, but has lived for years in Japan.) Will has developed a living in more than one world-type multi-pronged career built around writing, consulting, calligraphy and martial arts.
In the next installment of this series, I’ll write about some of the reading material (in print and online) before and during the visit that helped enrich my experience.

I always look forward to The Economist’s great yearly publication, The World in…In recent years, a web component has been added. The World in 2012 gives us a great head start on the year ahead. The 162-page magazine has a number of thought-provoking articles in such editorial categories as the United States, Asia, Middle East and Africa, Europe, Business, Science and Culture. Unlike in The Economist itself, the articles have bylines; some from Economist writers and editors, but many from high-profile guest contributors. In the latter category, you’ll find Aung San Suu Kyi writing on “A Sense of Balance,” Nandan Nilekani on “India’s identity revolution,” and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, on “Sharing to the power of 2012.”

The site for TWI2012 also has a blog, Cassandra, and links for previous years of The World in, going back to 2004. As cool and convenient as the website is, I still find the glossy print edition to be handy and valuable, especially for the quick, concise references in the 15 page “The world in figures” section. No matter how all the predictions for the coming year pan out, reading this publication will make you feel smarter and more well-informed.

In his February 24 opinion piece for CIO.com, Why New Technology Demands New Business Models, Jack Bergstrand writes that CIOs (Chief Information Officers) are in a perfect spot to identify and lead significant innovation in their organizations. Yet the from-all-corners and at-all-times demands of their jobs make this a difficult proposition.

The solution, Bergstrand believes, is to apply Peter Drucker’s work on innovation to the technology issues that were barely in existence when Drucker was writing, such as social media and cloud computing. “He had brilliant insights about innovation,” Bergstrand writes, “that can help CIOs take the right risks on new technologies and avoid the failures that ultimately sank so many dotcom companies.”

Bergstrand is founder and CEO of the consulting company Brand Velocity. He was a longtime Coca-Cola Company executive, including being its CIO. And he is quite knowledgeable about Drucker, whose ideas on knowledge work and knowledge worker productivity form the backbone of Bergstrand’s book Reinvent Your Enterprise Through Better Knowledge Work. I met Jack last November when we were both panelists for the Drucker Authors Festival on Drucker Centennial Day 2010, in Claremont, Cal. In talking to him and reading his book, I was impressed that he (like Drucker) was able to draw from many different sources to convey information in a serious, yet accessible way. Besides business and technology, Bergstrand also applies such areas as chess, cybernetics, sports and particularly psychology.

Drucker’s major work on innovation is the 1985 book Innovation and Entrepreneurship, a classic that is not as dated as you might think a 26 year old book would be on these topics. The reason is that its principles can still be applied today, which gets back to Bergstrand’s argument. His CIO.com look at innovation and its problems is also applicable beyond the concerns of CIOs. How can we best innovate as people and within organizations, while making sure our daily work is done the best it can be? How can we discriminate among the countless technological tools that will not only enable but improve our life’s work? The people, and organizations, that find the right answers will help define the future in our uncertain world.

A very short post today, as I get ready to take a few days off. I’ll resume blogging on September 1. In the meantime, whether or not you are a CIO (Chief Information Officer), and whether or not you own a Kindle, have a look at CIO INSIGHT for the Books Slideshow: 10 Kindle Books for CIOs. There are thumbnail descriptions and covers for books aimed at busy technology executives. Many of these titles seem like they would have broader applicability for people who want to understand more about how technology is applied in organizations. The #1 book is CIO Best Practices: Enabling Strategic Value with Information Technology, by Joe Stenzel, Gary Cokins, et al; a 2007 title described as “the bible of technology leadership.” #2, CIO Survival Guide: The Roles and Responsibilities of the Chief Information Officer by Karl D. Schubert (2004), is described as “another IT leadership classic.” Some books are broader than just IT: #6  is Alignment: Using the Balanced Scorecard to Create Corporate Synergies, a 2006 title by Robert S. Kaplan, David P. Norton, the creators of the balanced scoreboard concept. Given that IT exists so an organization can do its work most successfully, #10 is The Business-Oriented CIO: A Guide to Market-Driven Management, by George Tillmann (2008), which “gives the straight dope on delivering business value through IT.” See you in September!