Predicting the future without a crystal ball  

Being able to read the signs and stay ahead of the curve is an invaluable skill for business professionals. Benn Konsynski, an internationally known expert on the role of information technologies that transform enterprise and market practice, has turned his future forecasting skill into an art. As a professor of decision and information analysis at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, Konsynski imbues his students with the ability to question, think and challenge assumptions. He considers his legacy to be the SoBs (Students of Benn) in businesses worldwide practicing what they have learned from him.

The professor, known for wearing jaunty bow ties, has lectured in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Russia, South Africa and Scandinavia. Recently he spoke to a public forum in Atlanta as part of Emory University’s Great Teachers Lecture Series.

While introducing Konsynski, John Yates, a partner in the information technology group of Atlanta law firm Morris, Manning & Martin, credited the professor with being able to boil down issues of technology to their most practical perspectives in classrooms as well as boardrooms. The lecture, entitled “Technology, Magic and SoBs: Shaping the Art of the Possible,” centered on macro trends in technology and their implications to commerce. Yates ushered the speaker to the podium by quoting Konsynski, “Somewhere between magic and science lies the thing we call technology, and technology changes the art of the possible.” 

According to Konsynski, science is the study of what we can know, while magic is about shaping nature to our will. Figuring out the way magic works and replicating it is the way that technology is conceived. “Thus,” says Konsynski, “technology is magic revealed or understood.”  For example, a visitor from the past would label most of today’s common technology as magic—carriages that transport people at unimaginable speeds, images coming out of a box. To frame the point in more recent context, Konsynski pulls an iPod out and asks the audience to consider that only a decade ago, carrying thousands of songs around in your pocket would have been an alien concept.

Konsynski believes we need a little more magic right now. “All too often we start with how something happens instead of what we want to happen,” he says. Rather than dwelling on different ways to apply the science we have, he urges people to reach for magic and dream of making the impossible possible. “Magic brings the will, aspiration and purpose to conceive technology.”

In Konsynski’s classes they don’t study velocity, or how things are changing. Instead, they look at acceleration, or how the changes change. Velocity just monitors the market, while the information on acceleration can project future possibilities. In the music industry, for instance, formats have changed from vinyl records to magnetic cassettes to CDs. These are the changes. The importance of the change in the change is the movement from analog records, which had to be purchased in stores and listened to on a phonograph, to digital media that can be readily copied and easily distributed. “Sometimes in focusing on the small changes, you miss the big changes happening,” explains Konsynski.

When it comes to information, there are two powerful principles that relate to commerce and commerce practice. The first is that information is the only commodity you can give away and still have, and second, that information is imminently recombinant. “I can rip it apart, elementalize it, unbundled it and recombine it in new ways,” Konsynski says.         

He cautions that there is a natural tension between what we’re able to do and what we should permit to happen. “There needs to be a constant alignment to balance what technology makes possible with our societal and commerce needs,” Konsynski says, warning that the coming decade will present major issues in privacy concerns and individual versus group rights. He calls for more “sober” thought in establishing structures and protocols to govern these areas.

Fallacies of future thinking

It is not easy to get a handle on the future, but there are ways to structure it and create a discipline for knowing it better. Konsynski advises, “The future is best seen from a running start.”

Konsynski explains that CEOs who study history in general, and specifically the history of their company and market, have a head start in tracking what is to come. Those who try to see ahead without looking back have a poor sense of what is possible. Most importantly, they cannot track trajectories drawn from key events that have had an impact on the company.

In order to not over or under shoot the projection of change, Konsynski and other futurists look at three fallacies of future thinking. These are assumptions that need to be challenged. First—the myth of total revolution. “In the 40s and 50s, we thought nuclear technology would impact everything we did. The same hype structure killed the early stages of the Internet,” he suggests. Emerging technologies need to be carefully evaluated as to which changes are viable and which are not.

The second myth is the myth of social continuity, meaning we assume nothing is going to change. No one predicted that electric streetlights in cities at the turn of the century would cause quiet neighborhoods with little evening activity to morph into vibrant nighttime communities. Air travel, at one time seen only as a privilege of the wealthy, has transformed the way we work and play. Perceptions that narrow or limit the expectations of emerging technologies need to be challenged.

The third myth is that of the technological fix. “Focusing on a solution to a societal ill or perceived problem limits the prospects of understanding the strength and opportunity in a particular technology,” warns Konsynski, who relishes the implications of the “boiled frog” story. As the story goes, if you drop a frog in boiling water it will leap out and save its life. However, place it in room temperature water and heat gently and the frog will stay in until it is too late. “When it comes to judging technological impact,” says Konsynski, “most of us are boiled frogs.” Translation: For the majority of people, our exposure to technological change is so gradual that we take it for granted.

Pinpointing the next greatest trend in technology might be a matter of keeping one’s eyes open. Konsynski believes that “generally the future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.” For example, 20 years ago, small groups of scientists, like Konsynski, were already using the Internet, email, chat tools and personal computers that they built themselves. Harnessing technologies for the masses is a matter of identifying these emerging trends and creating systems to make them popularly available.

Konsynski believes that the concept of business as usual is no longer viable. He points out that the power of information technology lies not in simplifying things, but in tolerating complexity. “We should thrive on complexity to allow us to do really cool things,” Konsynski says. “The bottom line: look to magic to inspire and science to deliver.”

Konsynski on the future

“If you’re going to predict, predict often. People tend to remember what you get right and forget the things you don’t,” jokes Konsynski.  In his opinion, it would be “cowardly” to talk about predicting the future and not take a stab at any predictions. Here are some of his thoughts about what lies ahead:

• Goods will be delivered to drop points on the routes you drive, because the house is less safe and work is not convenient. Strip malls may become waypoints for pickups.

• Sensor and identity technologies will be everywhere. Nanotech sensors will testify to the integrity of pharmaceutical packaging and alert us to tampering, transport schedules and mishandling.

• Goods may be tracked from the second they are created until the second they are destroyed. Rules of “ownership” may change.  Networks of “things” form where inanimate objects can communicate. When they disengage the network ceases to exist.

• RFID (radio frequency identification products) is only the tip of the iceberg. Motes, smart dust and mesh net technologies, which are emerging right now, will proliferate and have a profound impact down the road.

• The small and the many will dominate the large and the few. This is already true in building super computers. Once these were monolithic engines, now we cluster many computers and link them together. This will be especially true in nano and micro technologies.

• The passive shall be active. Things will have minds of their own. Documents will want to be processed, packages will “demand” to get to locations or to people, “things” will know their rights and seek enforcement.

• Commerce is based on authentication and attestation – who are you and what decision rights and authorities do you have?

• Things shift from place to person, as has already happened with the cell phone. Where once calls were made to a location, now calls go to a particular person.

• Country club-like commerce nets will emerge. The idea of the open network will diminish as small digital universes become more important. These will be members-only forums where you will play by the stated rules.