Sushi Money

The news and numbers are pretty negative lately. The economy is struggling, real estate is looking for traction, the markets are bouncing around aimlessly, and Clinton and Obama are one-upping each other with promises while talking about how bad everything is. If I didn’t know better, this feels like it’ll go on forever. But it won’t. It’s just a temporary funk. Mostly an economic funk. We’ve been there before, and we’ll emerge with newfound optimism for something seemingly better.

But what is that something that might be better? What is the next big thing that people will really be excited and hopeful about? Do you ever wonder what it might be that’s going to be a huge focus for people or change on a mass scale? Sometimes it’s generated by the media, or a company product, or just some growing trend or mania that people are interested in.

Whatever it is (and I don’t think we’ll find it on eBay), there always seems to be some new “big thing” around the corner. Why do I care? For the same reason that most businesses, entreprenuers and investors care… because if you can put your finger on the pulse of this change and human interest, then you can focus your energy in that direction, potentially growing your life’s work and/or financial fortunes in leaps and bounds over the next 5, 10 or even 20 years.

Looking back a couple decades, we’ve been through several cycles of boom and bust of course. Yet the “Dot Com Bust” still offered many opportunities to do very well even with the carnage of companies that ceased to exist a few years later. We hear the news of the crash and the fortunes lost. We don’t often hear about the fortunes made, but some people tapped into the right companies and trends and have done very well.

Now it’s real estate and credit derivatives that have crashed, and we’re unraveling the lessons of years of financial excess. A long-term view could see this growth, expansion, bust and consolidation as a natural progression and evolution for economic cycles and human interest. Can it be any other way?

Certainly the technological changes coming in the future will surpass anything we know of today, and I wonder where that may lead us. Bill Gates sees enormous technological advances that will revolutionize our lives:

In a speech to the Northern Virginia Technology Council, Gates speculated that some of the most important advances will come in the ways people interact with computers: speech-recognition technology, tablets that will recognize handwriting and touch-screen surfaces that will integrate a wide variety of information.

“I don’t see anything that will stop the rapid advance,” Gates said, noting that technological change driven by academia and corporate researchers continued even after the Internet stock bubble burst in 2000.” “…The coming years will bring rapid changes in media as television increasingly becomes a targeted medium, where viewers can select niche content for news, sports and entertainment. “…TV will be based on the Internet; it will be an utterly different thing,” he said.

My interest and curiosity is for how people become excited and accept or adopt certain products, and then figuring out what those trends or products might be. How do some companies (e.g. Apple) capitalize on what is “trendy” while other companies don’t?

When I try to understand how we become excited about things, it strikes me that these products or “things” must be developed by visionaries and market leaders. These are people with the imagination and the abililty to create something from an idea, and then shepard it through to adoption. Naturally this creation must not only be useful, it must be also be something that sparks the “Aha!” moment within a consumer for the enjoyment or usefulness it brings.

Not everyone accepts change so easily however. Little more than a decade ago as computer use became mainstream, I remember a stalwart, old associate that walked around the office with a big yellow legal pad and refused to use a computer. He waived that legal pad in everyone’s face, proud of how he still did it the old way. And then he finally realized the old way was gone, and he was becoming increasingly irrelevent and clueless. He finally adapted and adopted, painful as it was.

I know a lot of people who still use letters, stamps and paper checks everyday to pay bills. Not a thing wrong with that- and in fact, it brings a sense of solidity and permanence to things. But I know a lot more people that have given up the checkbook and stamps to pay bills online. It is fast becoming the exception to use stamps and checks for many people, myself included. But if you really want to make an impression, or send a caring note to someone, there is no substitute for writing it by hand.

Of course we’re still reeling from the last “big excess” and the after-effects of the “Housing Bust” and out-of-control mortgage lending. But think about it- not everyone has struggled with real estate. For everyone that bought a home, someone sold that home. Lots of folks made a bundle during the real estate boom, and if they were smart, saved enough of that money to keep it working for them over time.

The housing boom and bust is a story of money made and lost. For some families, financial gain (or loss) changed their lives forever. In a free market economy it can be no other way. Some people win big, some people lose big… most of us muddle along in the middle, looking for ways improve our lives as we adapt to changing conditions.

So there’s always excess… and most of the situations that involved speculative excess were caused by investors and even genuine buyers plunging in head-first to “stake their claim” and make money. The dot-com boom and housing boom were both the modern day version of the gold rush. We’re all trying to make life better for our future. For some it was always a “get rich quick” scheme whether they admitted it or not. “Slow and steady wins the race” is the old rabbit versus tortoise axiom. There’s a lot of truth in those words in terms of focus and comittment. But it’s hard to remember that axiom when the pace of technological change outstrips our ability to adapt and grow with it.

And that’s the crux of the problem for many people… how to adapt to change. Technology evolution challenges our ability to learn and adapt, which opens up a whole new focus for business services and education. That is precisely the reason why education is so important, and why job re-training is booming across the nation.  Where do you fit in?  Is it hard to keep pace with that change?   In the next segment I’ll look at 10 themes of change we’ll face in the years ahead.

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