To paraphrase Amy Zalman, the President and Chief Executive of the World Future Society, we like our uncertain futures to feature our existing interests, but we don’t like uncertain futures that don’t.
In business, a lack of preparedness for uncertainty, and an assumption that the status quo will go on and on, can be fatal. Think of the once mighty businesses that assumed market dominance, only to drop the ball and become either distant memories, or bit-part players struggling to remain relevant.
How many of the things we now take for granted were ‘existing interests’ 15 years ago? Smartphones, 4G, widely available free (!) Wi-Fi, GPS, the Cloud… We didn’t know what apps were; we’d heard of the Internet, but not the Internet of Things, or of social media, or Big Data.
We like our uncertain futures to feature our existing interests, but we don’t like uncertain futures that don’t
And consider the automotive industry’s existing interests in 2000: alongside the Blue Oval and Lincoln, Ford’s portfolio consisted of Aston Martin, Volvo, Jaguar, Mercury and Land Rover, which it acquired from BMW during 2000. As part of that sale, BMW also sold MG Rover, its “English patient”, for £10 (US$16 at current rates) – and another German premium OEM was two years into its “Merger of Equals” – remember DaimlerChrysler? Fiat, which would later ‘rescue’ Chrysler, was courting GM. And GM’s vast array of brands included Hummer, Pontiac, Saturn and Saab. Tesla Motors, in which Daimler would later invest, was yet to be established, and the race for early dominance of China’s new passenger car market was a two-horse one between GM and VW.
What a difference 15 years can make to ‘existing interests’.
Who would have thought that three highly competitive German vehicle manufacturers would make a joint acquisition of a mapping and location business divested by a Finnish communications company?
Or that German OEMs would dominate the US diesel market?
Does it take a visionary to successfully disrupt corporate culture, overturn ingrained thinking and change a company’s direction, enabling it to prepare for an uncertain future?
Planning for the future requires a target date. Carlos Ghosn is among the OEM executives who have used 2020 as a target for launching new technology – in Ghosn’s case, it’s the date by which (some of) his cars will feature (some) autonomous drive technology.
But 2020, for so long a distant target, is now just four and a half years away. Enter 2030 – the new 2020.
Automotive World’s latest report, “Is the auto industry ready for the world of 2030?”, features interviews with and contributions from industry insiders, consultants and futurists. In terms of traditional automotive industry timescales, 2030 is two full model cycles away. Yet in terms of the consumer electronics industry, which operates on six-monthly cycles, it’s 30 model cycles away, during which time processing speed is likely to increase fivefold.
Does it take a visionary to successfully disrupt corporate culture, overturn ingrained thinking and change a company’s direction, enabling it to prepare for an uncertain future? Or merely a leadership willing to accept that the future won’t necessarily feature our existing interests?
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Martin Kahl is Editor, Automotive World
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