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The Consumer of Tomorrow Futurist Gerd Leonhard at Google Australia Thinktravel Event

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The Consumer of Tomorrow Futurist Gerd Leonhard at Google Australia Thinktravel Event Futurist Speaker Gerd Leonhard Keynote Transcript: The Consumer of Tomorrow (June 2011, Sydney) www.futuristgerd.com The Consumer of Tomorrow Futurist Gerd Leonhard at Google Australia Think Travel Event http://www.mediafuturist.com/2011/07/video-of-my-talk-at-google-think-travel-event- in-sydney-the-consumer-of-tomorrow.html Video: http://youtu.be/4koEB-9wrlA [0:00:00] Gerd: All right, thank you. Thanks very much. Wow! Nice intro. So I've been to Sydney three times. It's a beautiful place. And now it's winter, which was a surprise me to be actually because it's summer in Switzerland. But thanks very much for having us. It's a real pleasure to be here. So I'm going to try to show you a couple of general things about "the future." That's why I drew up all these different graphs here from the web. First, I want to make a remark. As we were talking yesterday at some other event here about the future, one thing is quite clear. We used to be very much interested in information, which was the first wave of the Internet being able to get stuff that was important. It turns out today, because of the mobile and social and so on, it's not so much about just information. It's about curation because we're essentially being completely blown away with information. We can download 60 million songs for free or for paid. We're no longer interested in plenty. We're interested in relevant and meaning. We're not interested in connecting with unknown people just because they exist. We're interested in actual value of relevance, meaning, timeliness and so on. This is very, very important when you think about the future of travel. It's very important to think about that it's not important just to get information about the place but to filter it, to curate it, to create programs. But first, let me tell you briefly, many of you may be wondering, what in the world is a futurist? I don't predict things. I share foresights. And this is basically what I do -- listening. I listen to things around the world. We have a team of about 20 people in The Futures Agency, and then we sort of look at the larger picture from above the -- this is of course my specialty -- airplanes. 1 Futurist Speaker Gerd Leonhard Keynote Transcript: The Consumer of Tomorrow (June 2011, Sydney) www.futuristgerd.com And clearly, as William Gibson says, "The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed yet." So in many ways, when you go around the world, you can see the future in different places. And, of course, if you have kids, you can just ask them. The Chinese saying goes, "If you want to know the future, ask a five-year-old." And there's probably lots of value on that. So what I wanted to ask you today is to take the top of your head off. Take your brain out. Think of a different way. If Henry Ford had asked people what they want, they would have said "faster horses." But he invented the car. If we wanted to think about the future of travel, we can't say, "How will people make a booking in the future?" And those are important questions, of course. But let's think one step beyond the obvious. Let's think about 2020 and the future of travel outside of the current assumptions. I was a musician and producer for a long time. I made 20 records. I worked in the music business for a long time. And the biggest problem in the music business has been, in the last 10 years, we have a 71% decline of revenues in the music business. And why is this? Because they didn't do this. They didn't actually go inside of other people's heads. They went inside of their own heads. In other words, we all love music. We're willing to pay for content. They didn't give us an offer that we liked until just recently. So the decline of the music business is not due to the fact that we don't want to pay. It's just the conception that's around the world. So I'll talk about that in a little bit of while, but let's have some food for thought first. First, of course, the Web is exploding in a lot of capabilities -- processing power, the amount of data. I mean it's absolutely mindboggling. In fact, of course, as you know, there are people thinking about the interface of machines and people called singularity. How do we get to think quicker and faster by connecting ourselves directly to computers? I mean these discussions are raging on right now, and as I'm sure you've seen in the last couple of months, the Web and mobile and social media is being used to start revolution. And this is not you; it's just more pronounced now. We have around the world the mobile explosion. I mean Indians will go online with mobile phones, not with these boxes, not with computers, not with cables. We have robots teaching kids in Korea. I mean talk about mindboggling. I'm not sure I want to learn English from a robot, but I guess we should try it sometime. And this is a plan that apparently has been discussed for a long time to have a high- speed train here. I mean the future of travel clearly is completely connected with 2 Futurist Speaker Gerd Leonhard Keynote Transcript: The Consumer of Tomorrow (June 2011, Sydney) www.futuristgerd.com technology, with habits, with mobile, with what people do, how they interact and how they live in the future. So I will talk a little bit more about that. But basically, we have this huge shift in the makeup of society. This is not a technical question. This is not because of gadgets. It's basically just because we can. Now, all of a sudden, the world looks more like this. It's like a lot of small fish are chasing the big fish. So every big company, every big industry, every B2B service provider has to put up with this now. [0:05:04] Instead, we are all able to compare, to rate, to interact with each other, to go direct. This is a symptom that we're seeing anywhere from music to travel to media to banking. And on that note, I could say that I think what's happening in the music business and in the media business is going to happen in travel. In other words, many of us may be removed as intermediaries. We have to figure out how do we add value to what is actually happening, not to what we want to see happening. How does the record label add value to the artist? Clearly, there's lots of ways that artists need record labels, but are they providing it? So in travel, if you're in the travel business, how are you going to add value in the future to make up for the shift in society? I mean this is a question of power. As consumers, we're absolutely empowered. If I sit at the gate here, I use my flight tracker app. I will know more about the flight taking off than the woman at the gate. That's called empowerment. I mean it is mindboggling all the stuff that's happening on the global scale. Kleiner Perkins who was an investor, and of course on Facebook, they summed it up, which I'll show you in a second. But basically, what we're facing here is a world of disruption. Google, of course -- I don't work for Google so I can say this neutrally -- but Google is a main driver of a lot of these disruptions clearly. But not just Google; I mean all of technology companies are moving in this direction of disrupting something that previously seemed to work but didn't actually. So disruption is a main factor. So I have listed a few disruptions in travel. First, environment, energy, sustainability. If we all keep flying on cheap flights around the world, if you live in Manchester, you can fly to Málaga, Spain for a party. It will cost you less money to fly there and party in Málaga than to stay in Manchester. And therefore, hundreds and thousands of people are doing it. If we keep on doing this, we're going to be in deep trouble for lots of reasons apart from the cultural reasons in Málaga. 3 Futurist Speaker Gerd Leonhard Keynote Transcript: The Consumer of Tomorrow (June 2011, Sydney) www.futuristgerd.com But then, we also have virtual and augmented reality. I mean this is becoming so good that very soon you can take a deep dive to the bottom of the ocean. It will almost feel like you're actually there. I mean, if you're a fighter pilot, you can already do that. It's very close to reality. Aging population. Most developing countries are getting older. So what do those people do? They do different things. They may have a bit more money. It changes luxury travel. Fragmentation. Mobile and social media. I call this a social media operating system because basically "social media" is a useless term. It's a bit like a fig leaf. For many of us, social media is a need.
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