Kickstarter is the most popular crowdfunding platform and they just broke two industry records. According to the company’s stats page, more than five million backers have successfully funded over 50,000 creative projects on Kickstarter, cementing Kickstarter as the world’s leading crowdfunding platform.
Continue reading… “Kickstarter hits new crowdfunding milestones”
Business is booming.
Gyms aren’t a recent phenomenon. If we thought gyms were tethered to the trend of self-conscious fashionistas and the scourge of obesity, well, you’d be wrong. Gymnasiums, or ‘gymnasia’, go back thousands of years to Ancient Greece where you’d find dedicated exercise auditoriums typically consisting of spacious training grounds for athletic contests.
Continue reading… “The gym of the future”
Futurist Thomas Frey: What has been the hardest problem you’ve had to solve in your life? As I step you through this question, just focus on the ones where you actually found a solution.
Continue reading… “Introducing Synaptical Currency Theory – Assigning Value to Brain Capital”
The first step involves a step-by-step mapping of each event in a patient’s complete care cycle.
By cross-subsidizing margin shortfalls in one activity with the revenues generated from others the health care industry have been able to survive economically. But the very existence of these cross-subsidies is symptomatic of deep flaws in the health care reimbursement system. As we move forward we need to be mindful of two principles that must be at the heart of any fundamental health care reform: “no margin, no mission” and “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” As the era of health care cross-subsidization ends, these principles must guide our actions.
Continue reading… “Redesigning the health-care-delivery model”
Why is sustained innovation so difficult to achieve? For many firms, innovation is viewed as an occasional variation from the status quo. But, that doesn’t mean that innovation isn’t important.
Continue reading… “Overcoming innovation exhaustion”
Airlines are finding new ways to make money from carry-ons.
People have tried to cram all sorts of things into airplane overhead compartments, including a frosted cake, 10-gallon hat, car muffler, and even the kitchen sink.
Continue reading… “Airlines cashing in on the business of the overhead bins”
The motor industry’s fortunes are increasingly divided, but in the right markets and with the right technologies, they look surprisingly bright.
Henry Ford and his engineers perfected the moving assembly line a hundred years ago. They cut the time taken to assemble a Ford Model T from 12 hours and 30 minutes in 1913 to just one hour and 33 minutes the following year. That made the car a lot cheaper to build and opened up a mass market for it. By 1918 its list price was down to $450, or just over 5 months’ pay for the average American worker, against the equivalent of about a year and a half’s pay when the car was launched a decade earlier. Cars became a personal badge of status, and in time carmaking became a badge of national virility.
Continue reading… “Future of the car industry looks surprisingly bright”
Futurist Thomas Frey: Yesterday my wife Deb and I took a tour of the amazing Queensland Library in Brisbane, Australia and were thoroughly impressed with both the size and scope of their facility.
Continue reading… “Libraries That Create Their Own Economy: Opening the Door to Premium Services”
Andrew Chen: In 2007, before YCombinator and AngelList had changed the industry, I worked in a nondescript office park in the heart of the venture capital industry off Sand Hill Road. Amid the leafy sprawl of buildings next to 280 and Stanford University, billions of dollars were and are invested out of the fancy offices of VC/PE firms you’ve never heard of. The whole industry has been shrouded in opaqueness since it was created decades ago, built on relationships from business schools, professional networks, and investor referrals. In 2007, I worked at a big firm as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence, and did my best to make sense of this world.
Continue reading… “The Rise of Fat Venture Capital”
How many times a day do you hear someone use the term “going forward”?
As businesses travel farther into the 21st century, leaders continue to target building better workplaces, retaining staff and reducing overheads – but how often do companies actually get it right?
Continue reading… “Just how far out is Thomas Frey?”
Is your office prepared for millennials?
It’s estimated that 46% of U.S. workers will be made up of millennials, by 2020, and that is projected to grow to 75% by 2025, which means companies of all sizes will be vying for this group of professionals.
Continue reading… “46% of U.S. workers will be made up of millennials by 2020”
Where and how the world does business is changing. For the last thirty days,emerging markets have been a source of low-cost but increasingly skilled labor. Their fast-growing cities are filled with millions of new and increasingly prosperous consumers, who provide a new growth market for global corporations at a time when much of the developed world faces slower growth as a result of aging. But the number of large companies from the emerging world will rise, as well, according to a new report from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). This powerful wave of new companies could profoundly alter long-established competitive dynamics around the world.
Continue reading… “The shifting global business landscape”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
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