FUTUREPROOF.

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We're really excited to bring you a fun conversation I had with Danielle Hughes of More Than Words Copy. They’re a copywriting and branding consultancy that helps individuals and organizations develop their Personality Brand, as she calls it. As you may know, personal branding is a topic I feel strongly about, given that my second-book, Getting to Like, covers that topic. I’ve previously worked with Danielle on a webinar on how people can survive and even thrive professionally during the coronavirus pandemic by displaying their personality a little more - and frankly, how displaying a bit of uniqueness will become more important as time goes on, and us humans all become a little more commoditized. 

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Dr. Mandeep Rai is a global authority on values, working with companies, institutions, and individuals around the world. She has traveled to over 150 countries and reported as a broadcast journalist for the BBC World Service and Reuters, among others. She began her career in private banking at JPMorgan, and later worked for the United Nations, the European Commission, and grassroots NGOs before setting up the UAE’s first media venture capital fund.  

She launched her book "The Values Compass" at Davos in January and the book has been on the London Sunday Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists, so I think you’re in for a real treat, as we discuss how the responses of various countries to the pandemic can be predicted by their value systems, how studying values systems can make one a better futurist, and much more. 

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We're happy to introduce you to a company you may have heard of it, and if you haven’t, you’ll be glad you’re hearing about them now: Unacast. They’re the US-based leading human mobility data company who empower companies globally to make smarter decisions and build better products by understanding how people move around on our planet.

While Unacast typically serves data-hungry clients in multiple verticals such as retail, martech, research, real estate, and city planning, lately the company has been focused on developing tools that can help us better understand and plan for - and around - COVID-19. One of their first initiatives is a Social Distancing Scoreboard—which gives a score, A-F, to cities and states, based on how well citizens are following social distancing guidelines. The company has also worked on a Retail Impact Scoreboard to show how various types of retail have been impacted by the pandemic.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play.

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Vikram Mansharamani is a lecturer at Harvard University and the author of Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst and the upcoming THINK FOR YOURSELF: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence, which comes out in June. He is a frequent commentator on issues driving disruption in the global business environment, and his ideas and writings have appeared in Fortune, Forbes, the New York Times, and many other publications. LinkedIn has listed him as the #1 Top Voice for Money, Finance, and Economics in consecutive years. In addition to teaching and writing, Mansharamani also advises several Fortune 500 CEOs on how to navigate uncertainty in today's dynamic global business environment. 

Today we do our best to predict the post-COVID economy, what some possible growth sectors might be, the disruptions to our supply chains, and the problem with short-termism. 

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We recorded this show just half a year ago, and we're rerunning it now because it's interesting to run an episode called "Why We Always Get the Future Wrong" when everyone was wrong about what to expect mid-2020. Who could possibly predict the world we're living in now? Maybe Jason Feifer could have.

Jason Feifer is the editor in chief of Entrepreneur Magazine and the host of Pessimists Archive, a podcast on the history of why we resist new things, and often have an inability to see the future. 

Jason's a student of history, and why seem to always get everything wrong with respect to the future. He studies change, the thing that defines us and the thing that we fear the most. We all know that change is necessary, and yet, we fear it because we make it uncomfortable.

If you only listen to one episode of FUTUREPROOF. this month, this is probably the episode for you. And we'll be back next week with all-new episodes.

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This week we have the pleasure of hearing from David Benjamin. Along with David Komlos, he’s the co-author of Cracking Complexity: The Breakthrough Formula For Solving Just About Anything Fast, which came out almost one year ago today. David’s the co-founder of Syntegrity, leaders in digital transformation, go-to-market strategy, and much more, with clients such as Cisco, FedEx, Pfizer, and many more.

We wanted to have him on because he’s been studying complexity and helping leaders navigate it for nearly 20 years, and it seems like navigating through complexity really is key to the survival of today’s companies. 

We talk about what we can learn about leadership in defining moments - like the current pandemic, long-term shifts we can expect as a result of the crisis - such as a more rural workforce and less travel, and how diversity in our businesses will help us tackle the challenges of tomorrow. And of course, much more. 

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play.

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Happy 70th episode to us! Given the fact that it’s May 7th as we record this, and we’re still in the middle of a major pandemic, let's face it: information security is expected to continue to be a major challenge for companies and business professionals for a long time to come. That’s why I wanted to sit down with Josh Hixson, Squarespace’s Enterprise Security Lead, a well-respected information security professional who’s not afraid to speak his mind about all things security. We talk about how well businesses were prepared for the challenges offered up by COVID-19, the societal impact of working from home en masse, how security professionals have to reprioritize projects on the fly when “black swan” events happen, and even what he thinks about personal security and Zoom. We cover all that and much more, so we think you'll enjoy this conversation.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play.

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Before we were kicked out of our NYC studios thanks to COVID-19, Jeremy had the chance to talk with Bradley Tusk, the noted venture capitalist, political strategist and the Founder and CEO of Tusk Holdings, which includes Tusk Ventures, the world’s first venture capital fund to work with and invest solely in high growth startups facing political and regulatory challenges. Bradley also recently wrote a memoir called The Fixer: My Adventures Saving Startups From Death By Politics, and hosts a terrific podcast called Firewall.

On this episode, we discuss:

• How regulation is a critical problem to solve for before you can make any disruptive technology “inevitable.”
• Whether or not regulations need to adapt to disruptive technologies - or the other way around
• How Bradley's old client Travis Kalanick, of Uber fame, was able to see the future before other people were able to
• The traits that make some people able to envision the future, and then take the steps to make it a reality

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play.

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 We're glad we have someone who’s being very impactful in a time that’s upended all of our worlds: Amy Smith, the Chief Giving Officer of TOMS. For those of you who've been living under a rock the last 10+ years, TOMS is the shoes and apparel brand that has giving at its core, and we caught Amy shortly after TOMS announced the launch of their COVID-19 Global Giving Fund.

On this episode, we discuss:

• How can brands futureproof themselves by starting with purpose in mind? 
• Can consumers see through inauthentic brands that try to jump on the corporate social responsibility bandwagon, or not? 
• Can brands get away with having a political disposition? 

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play.

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We're excited to have on the show Stefan Thomke if you’re not already familiar with his work. He’s the acclaimed Harvard Business School professor who recently wrote Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments. He’s studied business experimentation for years, which is why I thought it was so important to speak to him given that COVID-19 has forced companies to embrace disruption like never before. In this book, Stefan argues that an organization’s ability to innovate depends on constantly running business experiments – in some cases, tens of thousands a year. He draws on original research and case studies in his book, so I thought this is really the perfect time to have him on the show. 

On this episode, we discuss:

• What the current COVID-19 crisis has to do with innovation
• How to go about ramping up a culture of experimentation
• The cultural shift organizations need to effect in order to become masters of experimentation
• What is high velocity incrementalism, and how can organizations take advantage of it

As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play.