Radical Principles to Accelerate Growth and Transform Your Business

In his keynote at CompTIA AMM, Daniel Burrus, futurist and CEO of Burrus Research, engaged the audience with seven radical principals to accelerate growth and transform your business. Rather than continue doing the things that bog us down, taking a fresh approach to overcome issues is one of his suggestions. For example, Burrus proposes that if you have a problem, just skip it. Chances are what you consider to be the problem is often not the real concern, so shifting your focus elsewhere could lead to an eventual solution anyway. Radical idea, right?



Burrus also suggests we learn the most from past experiences. For example, the tsunami in Indonesia more than a year ago killed hundreds of thousands of people, but no one died on one island where the elders paid attention to the signs of a looming catastrophe (receding water). They got their people to higher ground and saved many lives. Are you paying attention to the signs around you, like the receding water? We are on the cusp of a significant mobile technology shift, with tablets and applications already creeping into our everyday routines and personal lives. These are the early signs that virtually everything we know about technology will change, altering the way we work and interact with each other.

We are in a period of technology-driven change. While the iPod is transformational—changing the way we enjoy music and other recorded materials—8-track tapes, cassettes and CDs were just a variation on record album. Things that don’t change our action, just the form, are evolutionary, not revolutionary or transformational. We have to be aware of these subtleties to understand their effects on customers and the markets.

Solution providers have to start planning based on certainty— what you are sure of happening and what WILL happen in the future. Strategy based on certainty has a low risk and high reward. That’s a plan you can bank on.

Burrus also suggests companies watch for soft trends versus hard trends to develop their business plans.

Soft trends are the things that might happen, predictions with a degree of uncertainty, while hard trends are based on solid evidence and developments. Burrus stresses that “demographics don’t lie.” They illustrate patterns and known expectations that allow us to make very educated guesses.

Another hard trend is government regulation; if you know something is controlled through legal parameters, it makes the decision process much easier. Developing solutions around compliance issues lowers the risk for providers who are addressing that particular issue.

Burrus doesn’t expect solution providers and vendors to become futurists themselves, but to identify the signs that reduce the risk of developing new products and markets. These same trends can enable them to become leaders in their line of business.