Much of the world’s arable land is being farmed already, so the lion’s share of the increase will need to come through higher yields. In many places, yields can increase—if prices rise high enough to make investment in more-intensive agriculture worthwhile. Still, much of the developed world is approaching the ceiling of what is cheaply possible. Sub-Saharan Africa, despite its long history of food insecurity, is one place where yields could increase dramatically; agricultural basics such as good seed and fertilizer would go far in a region that the green revolution bypassed. Full article on the Atlantic Monthly here.

Everyone should read Ideo’s David Kelley on “Design Thinking”!! It’s not the newest article (and I don’t know how I missed it the first time, considering how religiously I read Fast Company).  Nevertheless, a lot of it resonated with us here at the Futures Group.  I have a million thoughts in my head.  Thoughts around how “creativity can be summoned at will, with a process not unlike the scientific method”, how crisis disrupts the status quo and presents amazing opportunity, how “ideas can attract more powerful acolytes and be disseminated more more widely through business, how we can be confident about giving our stuff away because we know that we can come up with a better idea tomorrow, how being diverse can add a tremendous amount of value to being deep.  You really should just go read the article.

To end off, here’s a plug for an SMU event in 2 weeks:

Creating a Market Place for User Innovation

Associate Professor Lars Bo Jeppeson
Director, Danish User-Centred Innovation Lab

Date: Thursday, 26 November 2009

Time: 10.30 am to 11.45 am

Venue: Executive Media Theatre, Level 5
(SMU Administration Building)
Address: 81 Victoria Street
Singapore 188065

In one of those instances of serendipitous web surfing, I came across Vodafone’s “Future Agenda” programme.  About the programme -

Supported by Vodafone Group, the Future Agenda is a unique cross-discipline programme which  aims tounite the best minds from around the globe to address the greatest challenges of the next decade. In doing so, it is mapping out the major issues, identifying and debating potential solutions and suggesting the best ways forward. We hope, as a consequence, that it will provide a platform for collective innovation at a higher level than has been previously been achieved.

Their Intial Perspectives here:

I like how it is deliberately designed as a conversation starter.   Maybe some of FG’s ongoing work can be crafted like this!  Very interesting!  Looking forward to more stuff out of the programme.

Youth are our literal future.

I just came back from TED India in Mysore, and I saw examples of how Indian youth, using the array of mobile communications, Internet, social networking tools etc available, have been able to build businesses and also fulfill their social responsibilities. In their own way, they are pushing forward their vision of a new India.

How much does the leading edge of youth tell us about the future? In Singapore’s case, what does the leading edge of youth tell us what to expect of Singapore’s future? Futures Group just completed a study that I’ve posted in greater detail which you can download here.

How can Singapore tap on the leading edge of youth of Asia to help them fulfil both their career and social aspirations? What are their commonalities? I may not have articulated so explicitly before, but I believe that the city/nation that is able to tap on the creative energies of Asia’s leading youth stands in good stead to create a vibrant future.

I’m doing some research into the Future of Data at the moment. I think Wired Magazine described it best when they wrote about the Petabyte Age.

“Welcome to the Petabyte Age. Sensors everywhere. Infinite storage. Clouds of processors. Our ability to capture, warehouse, and understand massive amounts of data is changing science, medicine, business, and technology. As our collection of facts and figures grows, so will the opportunity to find answers to fundamental questions. Because in the era of big data, more isn’t just more. More is different.”

When you are researching big-hairy-gorilla-type topics, like the Future of Data, it is always encouraging to see that other people are interesting in the similar things. So imagine my excitement over the weekend when I came across Matt Jones’ (from Dopplr) presentation on slideshare.

I really like the idea of data as seductive material. The idea that data has the ability to entice someone into a desired outcome or state. My phrase for it was behaviour optimisation, which really doesn’t sound as fun.

Late last year, Futures Group did a video presentation – “Rise of the Rest”. So we reckon that if the Future lies here in Asia, wouldn’t it be interesting to learn and understand how Enterprises in Asia, especially those in China, India and even Indonesia, are evolving? How different are these Enterprises today as compared to 10-20 years ago and what they will look like moving forward?

Hence in May this year, we embarked on the first leg of our Future of Enterprise project focusing on Chinese Enterprise, and here’s the slides on some of the trends observed.

Note: This is a synthesis of ideas from more than 100 people (Including business leaders, academia, entrepreneurs, bloggers, etc. in both Singapore and China) interviewed over the past 3 -4 months.

Chinese enterprises have long enjoyed a low-cost structure, and after decades of being labeled “Factory of the World”, the Chinese understood that apart from manufacturing and/ or producing copies/ imitations, they would have to innovate in order to differentiate themselves from the competition. In addition, we also learnt that it is not always about product innovation, but the ability to adapt foreign ideas or create new hybrids to fit local context as well as the ability to monetize it (Example of Facebook Vs QQ). Another key observation is the need to understand State Policies – We learnt how state policies can affect and even create new industries in China (example of One Child Policy and its impact on education, healthcare and internet industry as well as removal of licensing requirement which led to the boom in Shenzhen’s cottage phone industry).

As China prepares herself to be a dominant force in the global economy, what are the opportunities and threats faced by Singapore and our enterprises? Well, something to mull over while we continue phase II of our project – India. Here We Come!

More and more companies are starting to position their products and services with consumer affordability in mind. Innovating with price as the starting point, more companies are stripping out the undesired frills – sacrificing indiscernible differences in quality, features and standards – for portability, ease of use and most importantly, significantly lower price than the next best substitute. Think of $400 netbooks, $2,500 cars, $40 cellphones, etc.

Known as the theory of disruptive innovation by Clayton Christensen, new entrants often enter at the bottom of the market, where they are ignored by established incumbents. These products then grow by taking away significant market share to the point where they eclipse the old product. MP3 music technology, Internet long distance phone calls all entered their respective markets that way. Offering flexibility, convenience over features and sound/voice quality. Consumers want quick and dirty over slow and polished. Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect. “High-quality” or what we think of as a “better product” has a different meaning in today’s world. Suddenly what seemed perfect is anything but, and products that appear mediocre at first glance are often the perfect fit. Here’s an excellent article in last month’s Wired on The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine.

One common thread among the companies that have profited from “going no frills” and selling to the Good Enough market, is in crafting the perfect concoction of price/quality/feature tradeoffs that appeal to their new customers. Can your firm innovate to the extent that it is five times cheaper and trade down on features whose perceived value is less than five times the price? In a way, it’s simply Blue Ocean strategy with the emphasis on affordability.

Here are some ideas I’ve posted on slideshare. Enjoy!

Good report for public sector managers, strategists and so on who are running, or plan to run, futures planning outfits.

We just returned from a fruitful trip to Korea, lots that we’ve learnt there, but up front sticking in my mind are East Asia’s online hermit kingdoms. These are the QQs, Navers, Mixis etc that have shown new ways or organising, socialising and monetising networks that facebook, myspace etc have not. We are thinking of doing some animation to highlight these kingdoms, but for now, there’s a very useful slideshare below from Benjamin Joffe of pluseightstar, who was also at LIFT Asia presenting on a similar topic.

Did You Know 4.0 (designed by XPLANE)
This video above is the latest edition of the popular “Did You Know” presentation from which the ‘Rise of the Rest’ was inspired from.