 I'm Ross Dawson, a futurist based in Australia, and I'm here with Gerd Lennand, the famed futurist from Switzerland. Infamous. So, series of conversations, let's kick off the topic of the role of a futurist. What's the role of a futurist, Gerd? Well, I think the definition is up for grabs, of course, but for me, most importantly, what I do is my work is not about predicting the future or finding out where it's going and then telling others, but to essentially share four sides, you know, basically stuff that you have developed over the time that becomes important. So, it's not the Nostradamus, you know, thing, but it's about developing insights into stuff and sharing them. How about you? Well, my usual definition of a futurist is someone who helps people think about the future in order to make better decisions today. And part of that is, I think, to think usefully about the future. We want to look at trends, we look at uncertainties, and there's a lot that we understand about trends, and that's obviously quite a lot that we talk about, but also being able to pick between the trends and uncertainties to be able to work out where a useful positioning and what are things that can take us the right directions. Yeah, I think that a lot of people are confusing the futurist topic with sort of eternal wisdom that just drops down in the US, and I think that it's important to understand what it really means. And I think that the main thing is that for many of my clients, for example, is that they're really interested in developing stuff that they don't usually have time for. So when you're operating a business, you're thinking about next week, next month, maybe next year, but not five years from now. So that's what I'm trying to do, especially say, okay, three to five years from now, who are you going to be? What is your business going to be like? And how do you get from A to B to have a bit more time out of the ordinary? Yeah, absolutely. And I think when organizations engage futurists, it's partly, you know, it is taking the luxury. Well, it's not a luxury. In fact, it's a necessity. But I've been able to say, you know, you people are just drag executives to drag down into the everyday, you know, and all of the problems and the issues. And to actually sit down with a futurist, be it speaking or a workshop, the you're actually saying I am going to step away from the today and look into the future with some with people who spend all their time thinking about that. So so often I get asked, you know, how do you have the time to keep on top of everything? And, well, that's my job. And whilst it is everybody's job in a way, the reality is people do get drawn down into the issues, the management issues of the day. Yeah, I don't know who said this, but they're saying, I think, if Henry Ford had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. And so many times in business, we're in this situation to we're saying one of the things better, make more money, improve things. But really what is beyond the obvious? I mean, for example, Steve Jobs invented the iPad. Nobody was saying that they want to have a touchscreen computer. Yes, yes. But that was his decision to look beyond the obvious. So going beyond the office actually quite hard because you're obviously just busy making things work now. So looking beyond the office is kind of a special skill that I hope we can give that to our client. I think so. But I think it actually it is also about drawing out the obvious. I mean, some of the trends that are in place around social trends to openness and transparency and beliefs in that, for example, or trends to sharing more information. In a way, these are very obvious that you still need to draw people's attention to them and think, say, well, look at this trend. Let's imagine what happens if this trend will continue. What are the implications? And sometimes you need to pay attention to the obvious as well. Yes, the obvious and then there's the sort of explicit and implicit kind of thing. So you can explicitly look at certain things, but there's implications or assumptions that you haven't reviewed. So for example, when the music industry thinks about 10 years ago, it was quite clear that people wanted to make the shift to digital and to a different model. They looked in a whole different direction. So barking up the wrong tree, very common problem. You look in this direction because that's what you would like to see. So stepping outside of your belief system and looking at those what people call the orthodoxies, your beliefs, that's a crucial part. Otherwise, if the belief is wrong or if it was right, but now it's outdated, then you're in deep trouble because you're going to just follow that same direction. And I think that it's interesting that there are futurists that work inside organizations and some big corporations have their futures group or their resident futurists at Intel and BT and so on. But I think there is a far more value in bringing someone from outside who not only has different perspectives from outside of the industry or certainly outside the way of thinking, but also where there is no, it doesn't matter, you can say anything you want and they may not hire again, but you can still say whatever you wanted to challenge the current thinking. There's a disrespect that goes with the job. You have to be able to say something that the CEO would never want to hear from an employee without getting fired. And this is the crucial part is that if there's holy cows that you can't touch, then everything is walking around those and then that basically means sooner or later something is going to happen and that is not good. So being able to put your finger on that, that's crucial. I think that's our job. So stick ahead into the news and say Paul. And I sometimes describe myself as a provocateur and I think you're probably even more a provocateur than maybe there is, that's the value. You're provoking people to think beyond what they currently are. I think that's a mission. I think it's not always easy because basically it's not what people think of sort of people tinkering with stuff and inventing things or looking at the crystal ball. There's actually none of that. It's really about four sides are quite hard to develop because you have to sort of parallelize. You have to think 50,000 feet, 10,000 feet, 50 feet, all at the same time. So those are a few thoughts on the future of what the role of a futurist. So for more you can go to my website at RossDawson.com. I'm at mediafuturist.com and of course we're both on Twitter. I'm G Leonhardt while just Google and you'll find it. And we have a bunch of books out and so you just take a look at that and then you'll know everything about the future you ever want to know.