 from Dearborn, Michigan. It's theCUBE on the ground at Ford Headquarters. Now, here's your host, Jeff Frick. Hey, welcome everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We are on the ground in Dearborn, Michigan at the Ford headquarters, the headquarters, the main building. Really for a great kind of a press event talking about the future of mobility and what Ford's doing in it, and really taking a much broader point of view than just autonomous vehicles, but big announcement last week with the chariot acquisition in San Francisco. Bicycles, all kinds of stuff. So really excited to be joined by Cheryl Conley, who's been leading a ton of the sessions. And her title is the Global Consumer Trends and Futuring at Ford. Cheryl, welcome. Thank you, good to be here. Absolutely, so you've been a busy lady. You've been running panels, you've been doing some MC work. So just kind of reflect what have been some of the highlights of your day today? Because I had to show you you've been busy, busy, busy putting this all together. And actually this is my favorite event of the year. I spend most of my day as the corporate futurist researching and looking for people that we think have something to offer in terms of changing the way we see the world. And this event is bringing all those people together in one place to hear them talk. So we started off with Dan Ariely, who is a Duke professor who studies behavioral economics. He's just fascinating. One of the most interesting, provocative, charismatic, charming people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. And so he started to tell us why we do the things we do. Why we break our diet. Why we overspend. Why we text and drive. And it's really this notion about our inability to postpone a reward, even when we know we always assume our future self is going to be better than what we actually turn out to be. So let's back up a step. So why would Ford bring somebody like that to an event like this? Why would they have somebody like you that's really looking at future trends? You provided a bunch of material when we checked into the hotel last night looking at a real wide variety of trends and things that had nothing to do with cars. So clearly there's a strategy there. Why is that important to Ford? There is, I always tell people that I am not a car person and I find that fascinating because I've been with the company for 20 years. But we inside the company have to look outside the automotive industry more so today than ever before. Because you have social, technological, economic, environmental and political forces that are shaping the landscape. And for us, the landscape, we have to look out three, five, sometimes even 10 years at a time. We obviously can't predict the future but we can engage in these kinds of conversations to understand why people do the things they do and how we can better anticipate their needs. Some really big trends and topics that were covered. We just had Dan Lyons was on talking about disruption, his book, Disruption. And he brought up kind of a classic Clayton Christensen innovators dilemma. Ford's a 100 year old company. We do a lot of work actually with General Electric, another 100 year old company that's trying to transform, that's trying to move and take advantage of these opportunities but the real big challenge is not the technology, it's the culture. So how is that happening? We're here in the headquarters, we visited the Palo Alto office. How is Mark Fields and the team executing kind of this new vision, this new culture within a 100 plus year old company? Well, I think you just answered your question. I mean, we have extraordinary vision and leadership of Mark Fields and so much of this starts at the top and he truly believes that Ford is perfectly poised right now to help people make their lives better. And we think we can do that through mobility. So we are breaking out of our comfort zone. We will always make cars, trucks, utility vehicles but much of what we heard Mark talk about and Jim Hackett our new chairman of Ford Smart Mobility which is a subsidiary, a fully owned subsidiary which is gonna explore mobility services. So we don't wanna just make automobiles, we wanna help you figure out how you're gonna get from point A to B and if that means renting a bicycle, using a shuttle, participating in some sort of ride sharing or you know, hailing system, we wanna be part of that conversation. Yeah, Raj Nair in the last session brought up but another interesting point. He talked about over the, everybody's been here 20 plus years, now making these kind of incremental changes in technology in the cars but really that this moment in time with the autonomous vehicle and not having to worry about necessarily what the driver's experience is, is really opening up an opportunity to rethink it at a big level, to take a step back and think about what should be in these little rooms on wheels that take us places. Yes, I love that notion about rooms on wheels. So much of our history has been shaped by this idea about what can we do to make the drive better? You know, so it's performance, it's handling, it's turning ratio, it's speed, those types of things, it's real of the drive but now we're shifting our attention over to this new topic about the thrill of the ride. So if you're not burdened with having to drive a vehicle on a daily basis or navigate through the gridlock of the commute day in and day out, what do you wanna do with your time? What can we do to help you give back that time so that it's more meaningful? Yeah, it's interesting that you talked about the drive because when we were young growing up, you know, when you turned 16, you got the driver's license to take the folks car out, it was all about freedom and really an emotional connection with the car and there's a lot of beautiful cars in the front of the lobby here, the bright orange Mustang and some of the historic vehicles. But emotion plays a big part and Raj even said today with all the technology, it's still a huge part of the buying decision, what people feel about the vehicle. So how is emotion and that historic connection to the car gonna change as we head into, it's not necessarily the car, it's just one of these multimodal things that I used to get from point A to point B. So I think this is an interesting challenge for us and we see it really playing out among the generations, right? So you have the baby boomers who looked at the cars of quintessential status symbol and we like to say that for a baby boomer, the car is the most expensive suit they'd ever own. But now ask that same notion, ask a millennial, someone aged between 22 to 36 years of age, if they look at their cars, they're the most expensive suit and they're, well, what are you talking about? They probably think their most important status symbol is the cell phone and that for that is the equivalent of freedom and independence and they're getting that way before they turn 16, you know, 10, 11, 12, 13 years of age. So for us, when we wanna make that emotional connection, then we have to make sure that those people care about that making that their top priority, that those things are available to them in the vehicle. So we have our sync platform, which pairs their devices through the entertainment system. We have My4Touch, which works with tablet technology and that's a different way of reaching them because for them it's not a car as a status symbol, but it's my car as a toolbox on wheels. It lets me continue to stay true to the priorities that I most cherish. Yeah, and it's interesting, and the other big design difference is now once these autonomous vehicles, because they drive better than people, let's face it, they don't text, they're not distracted, they're not late for a meeting, et cetera. The other real design element now is crashes go down and they will as these things start to roll out, is you don't have to necessarily design quite the same for safety, because the safety mechanisms are gonna be much, much better. Again, there's a beautiful picture at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, the first autonomous car vision from the 50s and guess what the family's doing in the car? They're playing Scrabble, which I just love. I love that. Well, and it's funny, because I have, my husband and I, we have two kids and we think about what we would do with our time. And hopefully, it means more meaningful engagement, but sometimes when we're taking that five hour drive to visit the in-laws, we each are listening to our own set of music, like he's listening to a book on tape, the girls are watching movies, their own movies in the back, I'm usually sleeping. But when you think about it from a family perspective, I think autonomous driving, there's no way to overestimate the impact it's gonna have on society as a whole, because as you said, we might never see any more road fatalities, things like drunk driving, they won't happen anymore. Distracted driving, all that free time comes back to us. But I even think fundamentally as a parent right now, my kids have more options in terms of mobility than I ever saw when I was their age. But I am not comfortable with them getting in a car with a stranger, whether it's a taxi driver, some other hailing service. And I try to say to them, I go, since you were little, I taught you that you never get in a car with a stranger, but suddenly if it has an Uber or a Lyft badge on it, they think it's okay. For me, the future of autonomous vehicles is actually much more appealing. I'd rather them get in a car with no one than get in a car with someone I don't know. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of funny. I mean, the whole Uber thing, especially the first time you do it or something, it's like, wow, as you said, you never would get in a car with a strange V. But again, it just kind of shows how expectations change, you know, how you can kind of redefine things. And I think that came up in the last session where the disruptors want to basically change the game. They want to change the rules of the game to make it a different game. And so again, Ford and GE and other old line companies have to be prepared to really change the game, change the filter in which they really look at the issue. And I think it's really good for us. You know, I think it challenges us. We've heard Bill Ford, Henry Ford's great grandson talk about this. Our industry has been revolution resistant for 100 years. The change is coming and we can try to stop it or we can try to shape it. And I'm so excited to be part of a company that wants to shape it. So a little bit more about kind of what you do, because I think you got a great title on sure. Everybody would like to know the future. Now we know who to call. Ghostbusters know to call Cheryl. What are some of the things you look at in your job, trying to reach out and get a feel for the pulse of what's going on? Obviously you're looking at a ton of different inputs, many that people would probably never guess. So what are some of your, you know, kind of activities that you do to try to get a better feel for a broader scope of inputs than just the next, you know, the next feature set on the 2017 Ford Mustang? So I don't ever look at the auto industry. I don't look at what the competitors are doing. I don't look at what the industry is doing. I make very deliberate, purposeful efforts to stay away from that. Because the company has no shortage of subject matter expertise. They don't need another car expert. But what happens is when you're so keenly focused on whatever task Ford has given to you, sometimes you miss things that may affect the business, that may affect your function or that little part of the company that you touch in ways that might surprise you. And my job is to draw it to your attention. There's this really famous Harvard video. Have you ever seen it where they show college students playing basketball in a hallway and three of them are wearing white t-shirts and three of them are wearing black t-shirts and they have a couple of basketballs among them. And you ask your audience to track the number of times the white t-shirt students pass the ball. And I have no idea. I've watched the video hundreds of times and I still couldn't tell you. But the numbers always vary from 13, 18, 24. I mean, the numbers are all over the place. But the real trick of the video is to say, did you notice it in the middle of the video a seventh student dressed in a gorilla, a full gorilla, head to toe, black fur, walks through the middle of the game, pounds on his chest and then walks out. And what's remarkable is that people, about half the people don't notice it at all because we've given them a task and they're so focused on that task that they are blind to it. My job from identifying global trends is to say to my colleagues, these subject matter experts, a gorilla has walked into the room. I don't know what it means for your part of the business. I just want to make sure you're aware of it. And that's what we do with the trends. We're like, this attitude is shifting. We see values evolving. We think that behaviors will change. I'm not exactly sure what it means for your part of the business, but we want to draw your attention to it. And we do that a couple different ways. We try to show how it's happening in other categories so that we're not stepping on anyone's toes. So for instance, aging population is something that most people who track trends watch. And it's a global phenomenon. The United Nations would tell you it is the biggest challenge mankind will face during our collective lifetime. So when I tried to point that out to a designer, an engineer, someone in strategy, I'll say, well, let me tell you what cell phones are doing. Let me tell you how hospitals are preparing. Let me show you what the government of Japan is doing. And then they can take that information and use it as a springboard for insight and try to develop it into opportunities that are unique for Ford. That's a great example with the gorilla suit person. Just we get so myopic in our focus in our day to day world and things are so busy that it's hard to step back and see things that in that example are literally right in front of your face. You'll have to look at it. It's really kind of fun. And I think it's the nature of all work because we're all doing more than we did 10 years ago. We're taking the jobs that used to be handled by three or four people. Now it's down to one person, people who cover sales, have a territory that's much bigger. We're just trying to jam more into a day and that is going to require more dedicated focus if you're going to be successful. And so those serendipitous moments when you let your brain kind of move back from those key areas and try to see what else is going on are fewer and far between. Yeah, it's so important. It's so important. Well, Cheryl, thanks for taking a few minutes. Congratulations on really a successful day. We're looking forward to day two. We're going to get out to the track tomorrow. So that would be fun. You'll get to hear from Phil Ford. And I think this conversation about why, we'll hopefully let anyone who attends this conference see the company in a whole new light. Great. Well, thank you, Cheryl Connelly. She's a futurist. I'm Jeff Rick from theCUBE. Thanks for watching. We'll catch you next time.