 and welcome to The Creative Life, a collaborative production of Think Tech Kauaii and the American Creativity Association. Co-host Phyllis Belize joins me today in welcoming our guest, Daniel Burris. Daniel joins us from his office in San Diego. Daniel is one of the world's leading futurists on global trends and disruptive innovation. And The New York Times refers to Daniel as one of the top three business gurus. Welcome, Daniel Burris, to The Creative Life. Hey, thank you. Thank you very much. Great to be here. Daniel, you have started six innovative and six and successful businesses. You've written seven books that continue to be bestsellers in the United States and many other countries, including China. As a noteworthy futurist, you've been predicting future trends for over 38 years with an amazing level of accuracy. So let me start by asking you, are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future and why? Well, I'm amazingly optimistic and a little thought on pessimistic, first of all. Yeah, pessimists, they never do anything. Why? They know it'll fail. So the only people that ever get anything done are optimists. So just a little insight on that. Secondly, I, as I travel around the world and I do a lot of that, I'm a 2 million mile flyer on three airlines. And that's only three of the many airlines that's going on. And I say that because I do like seeing this wonderful planet that we live on. And as I travel around, there are so many young as well as old bright lights out there, shining their light all over, using their creativity to drive innovative solutions to some of the biggest problems that we all face. And when you look at what the power of humans can do when they put their minds to it, it's really quite unlimited. So I'm very optimistic about our future. Well, that's good to hear and it's certainly refreshing, especially since seemingly there's never been more disruption and uncertainty than now, at least in my opinion. With that in mind, how can we solve problems and create a better future with all the chaotic uncertainty that's going on at this time? Well, there's a couple of elements to what you asked me. One is how do we solve problems and just a little thought on problem solving. Think of your biggest problem. I'm talking to all of us that are watching now. Think of your biggest problem right now. Probably didn't take long. It wouldn't surface up pretty quick. Now, here's what I'd like you to do. I'd like you to skip it. You see, whatever problem you've got, the reason you're being blocked by it, the reason you're having so much trouble with it is that's not it. You're working on the wrong problem. You've got to dig down by asking a few of the why questions and you'll get down to what the real one is. For example, my niece called the other day and she said, I can't seem to save any money. I'm trying to save money. Now, see, she has her first job and she knows her older sister can save money like crazy, but she is having trouble. She said, I'm trying, Uncle Dan, to save money, but I can't. What's the problem? I said, you're working on the wrong problem. That's the problem. Instead of working on trying to save money, you should work on how you spend your money. If you work on how you spend it, you'll find yourself saving a lot of money. I know that if you think money and funding is your problem, that's why money and funding is always your problem. That's the wrong problem. You've got to dig down a little deeper to find out what the real one looks like. First of all, whatever problem you've got, that's not it. Find the right one and you can solve it. Secondly, you asked about uncertainty and we surely are in a world with a lot of uncertainty, but uncertainty does not empower me. The strategy, whether it's personal or business strategy based on uncertainty has high risk. In a world of seeming uncertainty other than death and taxes, I have to ask myself, am I certain of nothing else? The answer is I'm certain of thousands of things because certainty gives me the confidence to make bold moves. Certainty gives me the confidence to move forward when I was stuck before. One of the ways of getting certainty is by looking at trends. I know most people don't look at trends very much because they know some happen and some don't, but to find certainty in an uncertain world, try this. This is being used by the Pentagon. I'm on the Futures Group of the DOD as well as many other of the Fortune 100 companies and they're using this methodology. I'd like you to use it as well and that is there's no shortage of trends, the problems, which ones will happen, which ones won't. All trends are either hard trends based on future facts that will happen. In other words, you can't stop them, but you can see disruption and change before it disrupts, giving you the opportunity to become a positive disruptor, creating the transformations that need to happen to make the world better for everyone. The other type of trend is a soft trend. A soft trend is based on an assumption about the future that may or may not happen. The advantage of a soft trend is if you don't like it, you can change it. One insight I'm teaching you, all trends are either hard or soft and secondly, to make a trend burst into actionable life, you have to tie an opportunity to it. Again, the opportunity of a hard trend is to make change your best buddy, your biggest competitive advantage and personal advantage, because if you don't like change, you're not going to like the future. And secondly, soft trends, if you don't like something, you can change it. Those are two powerful ways of finding, so hard trends really gives you the certainty. And for example, technology, amazingly predictable. We went from 4G, we got 5G, is that it? No, I'm certain the next will be 6G followed by 7G. I'm giving you a simple example, but you see what I mean. And we're putting a lot in the cloud. Is the cloud getting full? No, they're going to put more in the cloud. And AI is not going to all of a sudden disappear if you don't like it. It's going to continue to get more powerful. The key is, what do we do with it? You see, a tool is not good or evil. A tool just is benign, really. It's us humans that determine whether a tool can be used for good or bad. And one of the things I've discovered in traveling the world is that most humans on the planet are good. Now, of course, if you got some bad leaders, that could be a problem. But most people are really good people. And they'd like more opportunity for their kids. And they would like to live a good life. And the majority are really good people. Well, that's another reason I'm optimistic. One other thing about creativity since this is the creative life. I would describe innovation. I would define innovation as applied creativity. Innovation is applied creativity. And the creative mind can do so much when you really unleash it and look for solutions to problems. For example, when I hear about old people, a lot of them end up in the hospital because they fell. A lot of broken hips out there. Ammonian broken hips are big, take out a lot of old people. So my creative mind, and I want yours to do this, I look at technology hard trends. For example, I started out with demographics, which is predictable. We're going to get older, a lot more old people that could be falling, right? That's predictable. Unless we solve that. So we could now put a little slipper that fits over a shoe. And on the end of that slipper, you could have a sensor that is wireless and goes to a Bluetooth device in their ear if they don't have a hearing aid or it goes to their hearing aid. And what it could do is it could signal them if there is a step going up or a step going down. And instead of just beeping, it can be voiced and say, step going down, step going up. Julie's toy is in your way. And you know what we could do? We could keep people from falling. We could keep people from falling down those steps or tripping on that toy. By the way, that thing I just described does not exist. Now let me ask you, do you think something like that no way will exist? Or do you think we'll see something like that? And the answer is we will see something like that because if it can be done, it will be done. All you have to do is use your creativity and then think of those hard trends in the three categories. Very quickly, it's not that hard, is you have demographics. Again, maybe we're not going to get younger all of a sudden. A lot of people are going to be retiring. That's not going to end. And you have technology and technology has been amazingly predictable. I've been doing it for 38 years very accurately. And the third is, this will surprise everyone, regulation, government regulation. And you would say, well, how could that be in there? And how could creativity play a role with regulations? But let me give you an exact example. One of the things I teach in my books, the latest one being Anticipatory Organization, is opposites work better. So when you hear regulation, right away you go to a big list of things you don't like. Why don't you try the opposite? Start looking at the things you do like. Elon Musk, every business he started was funded by government regulations. You could do that. Let me give you a real quick example to stir your creativity since this is about the creative life. And that is, there is a 26-year-old teacher in San Diego that heard about a new law in California. There's a real law that was passed just a couple of years ago. And the law said within three years, every kindergarten or first grader, half of their reading has to be nonfiction. That's a real law. Half of their reading has to be nonfiction. By the way, right now it's all fiction. A little engine that could is fiction. So you've got three years to have half of it nonfiction. And when you hear things like that, you start thinking, what are they thinking? Oh, it's California, or all of these kinds of things. But instead, this 26-year-old teacher in San Diego, she did the opposite, looked for opportunities. She made three phone calls. She called the San Diego School District. She called the Los Angeles School District. She called the San Diego School District. She goes wisely. They're big. And she said, look, you got three years to get compliance with that law. Half of the reading material for those little kids is nonfiction. If I supplied those books, would you be interested? To make a long story short, they underwrote her business. They became her key customers. And she didn't have to go on Shark Tank. Why? Well, because she was being creative, but she was looking at what most of us hate, but she started with what she loved. So government regulations, tremendous opportunity, amazing funding there. Have you been looking for that with opportunities? Take a look at technology. Technology allows us to, with our creativity, innovate. And we're just entering the new dawn of a new world of innovation. And things, and because technology is so inexpensive and so powerful, anyone can solve any problem if you address the right problem and skip the one that's the wrong one. And remember, we have demographics. And there are so many opportunities in demographics. Again, just being creative here and giving you a demographic example, a lot of people like to go boating. A lot of people love to go fishing. But as you get older, it gets kind of hard to launch the boat. And in fact, at some point, it gets kind of hard to get in the boat. So what if you and I created the easy launch trailer for senior? Would we have a built-in growing demographic every year more people getting that demographic? Well, yes, predictable, as a matter of fact. Would we know which countries to export that product to and which ones to not export to? Oh, yes. Aging populations like Japan, like the United States, by the way, China's got an aging population. The one white child thing didn't work out all that good. And then we have also young population. A Istanbul average age is 28. Well, I'm not going to take the product there. But I know exactly which countries I will take it to with certainty. You see how I'm combining certainty with hard trends, with the creative mind, innovation, and providing solutions. By the way, there is no easy launch trailer for seniors right now. You think we know way we'll see that? Well, you know, we will see that. Why? Because if it can be done, it will be done. And if you apply your creativity to this, how can you not get excited? It can reinvent everything. The first step to get to that launch is to get the seniors to be able to have a pathway to walk on. And each pathways are generally rough. So we do see a little bit of the first step coming through. Make it a little bit easier to get to the launch. Fascinating. I mean, I just love what we're hearing. And let's see what Phyllis has for you. Yeah, I'm interested to connect the dots on today's show, Dan. And you entitled it Flash Foresight. Really, what I'm wondering is how does the everyday person gain access to this flashing foresight? And is it fair to say that one way to do that is to follow hard trends and then see where they intersect with your abilities or your resources. And then you look where there's going to be crashes in the trends. And you use those as opportunities. Come in with saving graces. We're talking about business now and employment, but also could be applications where we're going to take art. So the flash foresight is more like necessity being the mother of invention. We look for the necessitous problems and trends. That's our flashing. That's our foresight. And then we intersect that with our abilities or in our assets to come up with what we foresee as problems. So you're talking about the power of foresight and certainty is certainly the hard trends. Yeah, hard trends give you certainty. And let me address the idea of flash foresight for just a second. Actually, my book number six was called Flash Foresight. And the subtitle of it was how to see the invisible and do the impossible. Well, how can you see the invisible and do the impossible? And how do you get flash foresight? So let me tie that together so you see why I made that title the way I did. And that is the minute that an invisible solution to a seemingly impossible problem becomes visible. You get a flash of foresight. The minute that you get something that you think you can't do and all of a sudden that becomes visible, whether it's a trend, a hard trend, a soft trend that you could influence, when those things that were invisible to you become visible, you get a flash of foresight, allowing you to move forward in a way that you couldn't have moved before. And basically there are triggers to give you make the invisible visible. One is separating hard trends from soft trends. It helps you to make the invisible visible, giving you a flash of foresight. The other one, another one I shared with you is problem skipping. Actually, learning how to be a good problem skipper will give you a flash of foresight because the reason you aren't moving forward is because you're being blocked by something and when you realize that the thing that's blocking you is actually not the real problem, it's something underneath and you peel the onion back. All of a sudden I've never had a problem that you can't solve. Very quickly, once you define what the real problem is, by the way that makes the invisible visible, allowing giving you a flash of foresight, allowing you to go forward. I mentioned another way to make the invisible visible, giving you a flash of foresight. I very quickly mentioned what I call the law of opposite. And that is, if you look in the exact opposite direction, you then where you're looking now, you can see what was previously an invisible solution. And so they combined, let me give you a combination. Years ago, they were trying to make the first Jaws movie. And they had trouble with the Jaws movie and it almost did not happen because they were trying to make a real scary looking shark and it didn't look scary and it didn't look real. And they had trouble making this thing and they made a different one and another one and another one and they all looked from me and they were having big trouble until somebody applied the skip it principle. And they said, and they applied the law of opposite. They said, well, instead of having the shark, let's have the shark be invisible. Let's not show the shark. Let's show what the shark is seeing when he's swimming underneath all that food, those people. So they skipped trying to make it look cool and dangerous and said, let's not look at the shark at all. Let's skip that. Let's do the opposite. Let's not have them in there at all. By the way, that allowed that to go forward. It wasn't until towards the end of the movie in the middle of the movie, they started showing the shark that didn't look all that great, but by then you were already into a good movie and didn't care. So skip it. The law of opposite, hard trends, soft trends, are ways of making the invisible visible, giving you a flash of foresight, allowing you to move forward where you were stuck before. If I could, I want to share with you when you were talking about that flash of foresight. There is another backdrop to these forces and it's your own emotions. I'm talking for personal experience, your own emotions, your own consciousness. And I had to chill when you said that because I flashed across my mind how many times I have had that instant observation or I've seen that or I saw the solution and then I took myself out of it. I took myself back from it. I got afraid. I thought they're going to think I'm stupid or I must be dreaming or did I really see it or I have come up with more emotionally charged interferences with just like a kid in the street. We'll just see, they're not allowed what they see. There's no, there's no buffer, but those, what do you do or do you talk in your groups about how you create your own safe space to allow that free flow of insight to be said and not just able as soon as you see it? Well, that is a great question. Thank you for asking that because the reason that we get worried about it or we don't have the, we don't want to share it with others because it might be a crazy idea. All of those things that keep us from moving forward and then someday, by the way, that will happen and you'll say, I thought of that 10 years ago. But yeah, right? That's happened to you because I know and it's happened to you too. But here's the thing. That's where hard trends and soft trends actually really help. It sounds academic, but it's not. It deals with the inner you because you did not have the confidence in your idea. You were uncertain of the quality of your idea. You were loaded with uncertainty and that kept you keeping it in. You didn't share it. Uncertainty does not give you the confidence to make a bold move. Certainty gives you the confidence to make bold moves. When you have certainty, then you can speak up and when you're looking at a hard trend that you know will happen and you have the confidence that, yeah, I know that's going to happen. And then you see and you have an idea that ties to that. That's your creative solution. Then what you have is the confidence to tell it to other people because you know, again, what I'm giving you is the power of certainty. It's really the science of certainty and it helps overcome those inner challenges. The other things is, you know, I'm not actually another thing you've pointed on and I'll just bring this to bear and that is whatever is keeping us from doing things, whatever it might be, the real problem can be found by looking in the mirror in the morning. We are the problem. Every. We are the block. It isn't somebody else's. In some thing, it's our mindset. And as I've traveled around the world, you know, both vacationing and helping people, what I've discovered is it's all a game of mindset. You see the world as scarce or abundant. There's not enough good job or there's endless good job. I just want to go find one of them. There's no opportunity. Oh, there's tremendous opportunity. You know, the world is going to hell. The world is fantastic. It's just beginning and blooming. In other words, our mindset really is powerful. And Phyllis, there's a concept that I shared in my very first speech 38 years ago. And I've given over 3000 since then all around the world and huge audiences. The first one was to actually intercity junior high school. I had about 1000 kids in there talking about their future. And I introduced the concept of future view. Let me introduce that now. And because it's real germane, how you view the future to a great extent shapes your actions in the present. For example, right now there's people that are buying Apple computer stock. There's people that are selling it. They have a different view of the future of Apple. Some kids are thinking of going to drugs. Some kids are thinking of going to college. Some people would never start a business. Some people would love to start a business. So it's all based on how you see the future. So here's future view. How you view the future shapes how you act today. By the way, how you act today will shape your future. In other words, your future view will determine the future view. And I think everybody's future view is based on a rear view mirror view, not a windshield view. We're looking at the way it always has been and the way it always was. Instead of looking forward and seeing out the windshield and seeing the amazing opportunity that's there. We have a mountain of opportunity in front of us right now and it takes creative minds. And that mountain is fogged in by, guess what? The news. Why? Because bad news sells and good news doesn't sell. And if there's no bad news, they give you the anniversary of bad news just to make sure you get enough of it. Every good news station has failed. So what I'd like you to do is to blow away all the fog, listen a little less to all of the banter and all that stuff, and start observing the amazing mountain, as solid as granite, or the volcano there on the big island, whatever you're going to do, it's solid. It's there. And hard trends and identifying them can help you with that. Do you think folks that have trouble moving forward in identifying the correct problem or taking risks, do you think sometimes that's a buildup of previous failures even in their youth? Well, I think one of the principles that I like to teach is to fail fast so that you can learn faster. And I mean, when I started out teaching biology and physics, and when I started my first company, which was I had an idea for an airplane design, and I built a test float at 37 national locations in the first year, when I left education and started a business, which I'd never had a business class before, probably helped me, by the way. But I'd never had a business class. Two things were really important. Number one, I knew I'd have to fail fast because I couldn't forward the fail slow. But I needed to learn from those failures. Just failing is no good, learning from those failures. I mean, I aspire to be a wise old person when I get old. I know people that are wise, and I know people that are just old. I'd rather be a wise old person with the difference. Wise old people learn from their mistakes, so they don't keep repeating them. And by the way, they learn from other people's mistakes, so they don't repeat those either. So I think part of it is doing that kind of discipline, not being afraid of failure, but rather see it as a learning experience and allows you to go forward faster. The other thing, by the way, I did is I didn't compete because competition is difficult. So I looked at what the competition was doing, so I knew what not to do. They're already doing it. Why should I bother? Why don't I look at what they're not doing? And when I looked at what they're not doing and created a list, wow, it's gigantic, open country, perfect for a creative life and a creative mind. That is really interesting, that particular concept. One other thing I'd love to figure out, I know we're getting close to our timing, I think, but being creative life, let me fit one other little thing in that I've got to do because of the title of this program. When I turned 28, I made a commitment myself, and it's been an amazing thing as it's unfolded over the decades. I decided to learn one new thing every year and make it a discipline. So one year, I learned how to hang life. One year, I learned how to dance. One year, I learned how to do fancy dives off the diving board. One year, I learned how to make movies. One year, I got into photography. One year, I learned how to cook. One year, there was an open mic at a comedy club and I went and did that for a year. And well, I mean, that was decades and decades and decades ago. I've got a wide palette of experiences that I can draw from. Either way, there were some failures I learned from in there that were really powerful. But also, I discovered some things inside of me that might have stayed inside of me had I not had that discipline to live a creative life and actually have a way to live a creative life. I've been a feature artist at a couple of universities who would have known. I've actually one, I made films one year and all five films that I made, funded myself inexpensively, borrowed a camera. And they all won first place film festivals who would have known. So I would like you to unlock what's inside you. You want to leave this planet and discover what's next without ever even exploring all that's inside of you. And there's a lot. One thing a year is doable. Let's live a creative life. Well, Daniel, the information you've shared with us is fascinating and I think really helpful and really practical. And I know you had to make time to be with us. And we truly appreciate having you. And I'm very sorry to say without that, at this point, we need to conclude. So you Mahalo and you have been watching the creative life with co-host Phyllis Please and Darling Boyd along with our wonderful guest futurist, Daniel Burris. Our takeaways for today are many, a better understanding of disruptive innovation and how to maximize outcomes using creative foresight and certainty. And we certainly hope that you will all join us in two weeks when we return with the creative life. Until then, thanks to our guest, Daniel Burris. Aloha.