Richard Worzel

Innovate, Automate or Evaporate: What’s Ahead For Higher Education

Whenever anyone starts talking about the future, no matter where they start, if they talk long enough, they will wind up talking about education, particularly higher education. But higher education itself is changing in ways that those involved may not recognize, and for which they will not be prepared. Business visionary Richard Worzel is today’s leading futurist.

In this presentation, he discusses the forces that are driving change in education, ending with what private universities should do to thrive and survive, including:

• Why the answer to ‘Should I got to college?’ is no longer an emphatic ‘Yes!’
• What the alternatives are to higher education, and why they are threatening colleges and universities.
• What’s wrong with the past model of higher ed, and how it will change.
• How technology is re-writing all the rules on post-secondary education – and where it’s going next.
• What MOOCs can’t do, and how to fix them.
• The way ahead: A different model of educating.

‘Formal education, the pivot of tomorrow’s world, must perforce change, or it will become irrelevant,’ says Worzel. ‘To keep it relevant implies staying slightly ahead of the forces driving change. Those who do this will profit mightily. Those who do not will be forced out of business.’

The Fifth Principle of Leadership: Embedding Foresight and Change Management into Your Organisation

In addition to presenting his Four Principles of Leadership, futurist and business visionary Richard Worzel reveals a new Fifth Principle: Foresight and Change Management. In a world where change is not only accelerating, but the rate of acceleration is increasing, the ability to anticipate what might happen, and be prepared for it, has become vital to survival and success. Moreover, it’s necessary for a leader to be out in front, and foresight enhances this aspect of leadership.

In this presentation, Richard outlines how an organizational leader can entrench foresight thinking and change management into his or her organization or group. Richard outlines the principles of foresight, and provides tools for its practice, including:

• Environmental scanning – What to look for, where to look for it, and who should do the looking;
• Scenario planning – Considering what might happen, assessing the probabilities involved, and developing contingency plans to prepare for the most likely possible futures;
• Risk and change management – Change is risky – but so is standing still. How do you decide which is better, and how do you manage the changes necessary to optimize the balance between risk and opportunity?
• The Desired Future & Backcasting – Defining the future you want to have happen, and then working backwards to the present to make it happen, developing robust plans that are likely to survive no matter what the future throws at you.

Your people will walk away with a deeper understanding of the future and how to make use of it, with toolsets designed for this purpose.

Your leadership will be enhanced, and your people will be both better followers and better leaders, enhancing the prospects for your entire organization.

Where Humanity Meets – and Creates – the Future

The term ‘innovation’ has become a motherhood term to which everyone pledges allegiance. Yet, ironically, most organizations avoid true innovation even as they pay lip service to it, because it is difficult, dangerous, and you have to be willing to fail. Yet, innovation is how organizations will survive into the future. Indeed, innovation allows organizations to create the future they want.

Business visionary Richard Worzel is a professional futurist, as well as a best-selling author and innovation facilitator. In this presentation, he shows how people and organizations can use innovation to adapt to, and adopt, emerging technologies. Among the topics he will cover are:

• Where is technology headed, and how will it affect us? The broad range of technologies emerging include the biosciences, which will allow us to extend our life spans, perhaps dramatically; 3D printing, which will be as disruptive in the real world as the Internet has been in the virtual world; computers and robots, including computer intelligences, such as IBM’s Watson, and the newly emerging Fog computing. The implications for society, for communities, and for individuals will be wide ranging and profound.
• How is – and should – society adapting to the changes ahead? Technology is changing the way we communicate and interact, and with whom. It is prolonging our lives, which may threaten our ability to cope, financially, with an aging population. And it is challenging us to find more creative, more productive – more innovative – work by automating most forms of routine work.
• How can we overcome the problems and risks of innovation, and entrench it in our organizational culture? Here Richard will introduce the Opportunity Matrix, a tool to help people view their situation and environment afresh, and come up with dozens of incremental improvements that, collectively, can produce remarkable change. He will also leave conferees with a users guide to taking these techniques home to their own organizations, and allow them to create an innovation organization

Innovation Beyond Motherhood: How to Turn Your Company into an Innovation Organization

Everyone talks a good game when it comes to innovation, but the hidden, ugly truth is that organizations actually fear innovation. Why is this so? And what can you do to change the attitude of your colleagues from going through the motions in order to look good, to actively and eagerly engaged in being good?

In this half-day workshop, futurist Richard Worzel, a business visionary and corporate innovation specialist, leads you through the process of engaged innovation, including: Innovation beyond motherhood

• Why is it that people and organizations don’t want to innovate, what stands in their way?
• How to remove the risks associated with innovation in order to change attitudes about it.
• How to focus on aspects of your business that you’ve never considered before so that you can see things with fresh eyes, rather than merely repeating stale opinions and repeating yesterday’s actions.
• How to look at the world through your clients’ eyes, and then what to do about it.

Richard will end the workshop with a handbook that will allow your people to take home what they’ve learned, and make use of it with other colleagues, seeding your organization further with innovation beyond motherhood.