The Future is Not the Past
This week I was fortunate to attend two programs with impressive speakers and true heroes.
The NJ Chamber of Commerce iGala 2.0 on Tuesday had presentations by Dr. Michio Kaku, Theoretical Physicist, and Professor at my Alma Mater, City College of NY, Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson, Theoretical Physicist and President, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Dr. Buzz Aldrin, Astronaut, Scientist and Futurist. The Vistage Executive Summit on Wednesday had presentations by Alan Mulally, Retired CEO of Ford Motor Co., Gary Vaynerchuk, Entrepreneur Extraordinaire and Futurists Erica Orange and Jared Weiner. I was fortunate because I got a glimpse of the exciting future from different lenses. I cannot do justice here to the eight+ hours of presentations that awed me but can highly recommend these speakers for your programs if you are looking to bring outstanding ideas to your audience.
To share a brief look, here is a short summary of the sense of the programs: The future is not the past and to succeed today we need to live in the present while anticipating the future. What we worked for yesterday is no longer valid. There are too many examples of what has become commonplace today that did not exist just ten years ago – in the way we communicate and social relations and language, how we value our time, the widening generational gaps, the youthening of our seniors, leaping advances in medicine, diagnostics, health care and treatment, nutrition, science and astronautics, energy, geopolitics and sustainability, national and international security, business practices, marketing and how we buy things, fundraising by charities, and really in every endeavor. Most early adapters are falling behind while late adapters and simply being left behind. We need open minds, an awareness of change, the need to encourage innovation, the need to examine what we do and the need to shed the comfortable drapery of settled habits, past actions, procedures and systems.
The future is not the past!
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