Richard Worzel

The innovative organization is nimble, informed, and ready to change directions – and that’s what organizations need to be or become now, because not only is the pace of change accelerating, but the rate of acceleration is increasing  Business visionary and futurist Richard Worzel helps organizations anticipate what’s ahead so they can prepare for it, and move their culture from reactionary to creative. He identifies the roadblocks that slow down an organization’s ability to change, and helps create roadmaps to achieve aspirational goals.

Richard is a Chartered Financial Analyst and a former investment professional, with a broad depth and breadth of knowledge in business, global trade and local economics, and organizational innovation. For more than a quarter of a century, he has helped organizations adapt and prepare for the changes to come, including for clients like Coca-Cola, Lexus, Proctor & Gamble, the TD Bank, the US Navy, the National Research Council, and the Clerk of the Canadian House of Parliament.

Richard has written five bestselling books, and regularly publishes FutureSearch blogs on issues related to, and affecting, the future.

A world-renowned and sought-after visionary, Richard Worzel has spoken to practically every type of organization and industry on how the future will impact them.

VIRTUAL KEYNOTES:

Each and every presentation - whether as a conference keynote or in providing an extended workshop - is meticulously researched and customized specifically for the client and and their respective industry, organization or association.

Keynote & Workshop Topics (Partial listing)

• Accounting, IT, Planning
• Advertising & Marketing
• Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)
• Banking & Credit Unions
• Biotechnology, Genetics, & Nanotechnology
• Communications & Telecommunications
• Construction & Materials
• Crime Prevention & Policing
• Education
• Energy, Oil, and Electricity
• Farming & Food Production, Agriculture
• Financial Services & Wealth Management
• Food & Beverage Industries
• Food Retailing
• The Green Economy
• Health Care
• Hospitality & Tourism
• Human Resources
• Information Technology (I.T.)
• Innovation & Creativity
• Insurance
• Management
• Manufacturing
• Media & Broadcast
  
• Municipalities & Municipal Administration
  
• Pensions & Benefits
• Pharmaceuticals & Pharmacies
• Print Media
• Real Estate & Mortgages
• Retailing
• Sales & Marketing
• Strategic Planning
• Technology
• The Wholesale Wine & Spirit Industry
• Transportation & Logistics

Latest Topics (2024) >>>

The Future Is Now: Putting the Future to Work for Pharmaceutical Companies +

The future will catch everyone by surprise, but those who recover most quickly, and respond most constructively, will be the ones to capitalize on disruption. That’s why accepting that the future is now is important: by planning and preparing for it, you can turn potential disasters into competitive advantages. That’s what putting the future to work means.
Futurist Richard Worzel is a Chartered Financial Analyst and business visionary with a long history of working with the pharmaceutical industry, including sitting on the Board of Directors of a subsidiary of a multinational pharmaceutical company for six years.

In this presentation, Richard will work with [Your company's Pharma name] to show how a futurist’s toolkit can help turn the future into a competitive advantage. Among the topics discussed are:

• What’s in the futures research toolkit, and what can such tools do for you?
• What are the threats to, and opportunities for, the pharmaceutical and health care industries, and how do you harness them to your advantage?
• In what ways will – and can – technology change the industry, and what should you be preparing for in the pharma space, especially in the uses of Artificial Intelligence, Evolutionary Algorithms, and 3D printing?
• How do you turn obstacles into competitive advantages? A lesson from what Richard told Disney Cruise Lines.
• What’s the best way to predict an unpredictable future? --

Fintech & Beyond: What’s Ahead in Wealth Management +

The entire field of investment, finance, insurance, wealth management, and virtually everything else involving money is being disrupted by technology – so what’s next for wealth management advisors? Futurist Richard Worzel is not only a Chartered Financial Advisor, but a business visionary with a long history of working with financial companies and individual representatives and advisors, and his view is that there are real threats on the horizon – as well as great opportunities.

Fintech and robo-advisors are changing the marketplace for advice and money management, as well as the perceptions and expectations of clients, especially high-net-worth clients. Yet, AIs are not good at hand-holding or providing emotionally appropriate advice, especially during times of great market stress. And while computers may be really good at some tasks, they aren’t great at all tasks, which is why the successful advisor of the future will make use of AI, but complement it with old-fashion understanding of a client’s needs as a whole person, and with insights about their specific situation. Moreover, there are futurist techniques that can help advisors prepare their clients for whatever is ahead, either a further boom, or another bust.

The forward-thinking advisor, then, will use AI, fintech, and new techniques in order to provide traditional advice, comfort, and success. After all, investing is a balance between eating well and sleeping well – something that computers don’t understand. --

Retail-Tech & Tomorrow: What’s Ahead for the Retail Industry +

We know that technology is disruptive. But the real surprises in the future of technology in retail will come from the interaction of technology with human beings.

Futurist Richard Worzel, C.F.A. is a business visionary who applies futures thinking to real world situations. In this presentation, he outlines how the future of the retail industry will be transformed by technology, including:

• The three keys to thinking about Artificial Intelligence, and why it is critical not to fall behind your competitors in using this difficult, but vastly powerful, tool.
• How to harness the Internet of Things, especially in combination with AI, to manage inventory, reduce shrinkage, and optimize customer experience.
• Why it’s critical to plan for customized customer experience – making each shopper a friend rather than a vehicle for another sale.Why retailers need to be aware of, and prepared for, the First Global Cyberwar.
• Why technology is helpful, but not enough – and where employees can become more valuable through technology rather than cost-centres to be eliminated.

Attendees will walk out of Richard’s presentation with a much clearer understanding of the landscape of tomorrow’s retail, and the part that technology will play in it. And they will have a clear place to start in preparing for a future that will be very different from the past. --

I.T.:  A Fragile Future, or a Robust Reconnection? The Future of the Global Economy – and CGS’s Place in It +

The trend towards a global economy received an enormous push when the U.S. went off the gold standard in 1971, leading to floating exchange rates. This removed economic barriers between nations, and led directly to the emergence of the global economy, which has vastly expanded global trade, and brought benefits to many people and companies around the world. Yet, today the forces pushing for isolation, and a return to protectionism, are stronger than they’ve been for decades, with policies that foster them creating an emotional appeal that runs contrary the economic advantages of integrated supply chains and global sourcing.

Futurist Richard Worzel is a Chartered Financial Analyst, and a business visionary with 30 years’ experience in helping companies prepare and innovate for an uncertain future. In this presentation, he looks at what’s ahead for the global economy, and how it will affect CGS’s businesses, both in the short-term outlook (Will there be a recession? If so, when?), and in the long-term (Should you prepare islands of excellence for a more isolated world, or create centers of creativity for a global society?).

Starting with the forces that accelerated the move to a global economy, then tracing the forces for, and against, globalization, Richard will identify the key factors that will shape our future, and enable CGS to turn uncertainty into a competitive advantage. He will end by identifying tools from the futurist toolkit that can help the Company prepare for uncertainty, and provide ways of adapting, and profiting from it. --

Additional (Example) Topics >>>

Tomorrow’s Risks and Internal Audit: How the Future Will Shape, and Be Shaped by, Internal Auditors

What Makes a City Smart? The Future of “Smart City” Initiatives
Artificial Intelligence, Health Management, and the Future of Pharmacy

You Say You Want an Evolution? What’s Ahead for CPAs and Audit Committees

Non-Profits in Tomorrow’s World: What’s Ahead for the Not-For-Profit Sector

Delicate Fruit, Delicate Future: What’s Ahead for Blueberry Growers

Innovation in Finance: Great Opportunities, Terrifying Challenges

Artificial Intelligence & Health Management

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the hot topic in technologies these days, but even though there’s a healthy dose of hype involved, there are still very good reasons why those involved in health care, but especially in the pharmaceutical industry, need to pay attention to how it is changing the economy, society, and business. +

Futurist Richard Worzel is a business visionary as well as a Chartered Financial Analyst. In this presentation, custom crafted for Pfizer, he provides an overview of how technology generally, and AI specifically is changing all the rules, including:

• Drug discovery – Evolutionary algorithms have the potential to reduce the costs of drug discovery at every stage of research and clinical trials, and to rescue drugs that have potential, but might not otherwise make it through clinical trials.
• AI excels at multivariate analysis and pattern recognition, both of which are critical to developing new pharmaceuticals, as well as marketing them to the right people.
• AI and automation will be as disruptive to supply chain management and lean operating efficiency as the Internet was, which means that organizations cannot afford to be left behind in adopting it.
• The emergence of personal AIs, today through smartphones, but eventually through virtual assistants, have the potential to revolutionize health assessments, medication management and monitoring, and crisis intervention.
• In combination with Cloud and Fog computing, virtual assistants could lead to the emergence of an integrated, global, health management system that would, among other things, revolutionize drug development, testing, and management.

As well as providing a road map of the future of health care, Richard will also provide insights about tools from the futurist toolkit to help you turn the uncertainty of the future into a competitive advantage. --

Future Tense: What’s Ahead for Broadcast Media
 
Is it game over for traditional broadcasters? Or is there some way for broadcasters to move forward in an era of media proliferation? +

Futurist Richard Worzel is a Chartered Financial Analyst, a former Bay Street communications analyst, and a business visionary. In this presentation, he surveys the future of media, including topics like:

• The persistence of media – Media don’t die, but their business models change. What implications does that have for today’s TV and radio broadcasters?
  
  
• Which technologies will make it? How do you tell the difference between a technological pet rock, and the next Apple? Being able to see what’s likely to work and what won’t makes an enormous difference in preparing for the future – so, how do you tell?
  
  
• The future of entertainment media – Media have mutated dramatically from when cable TV first started to make build subscriber bases, and social media is merely the latest fragmentation of the media markets. But the evolution of media is not over. So, what’s ahead? How will Artificial Intelligence affect media (more)? What new choices will emerge, and how might they be exploited?
  
  
• Can broadcasters fight back? – There is no way to put the genie back in the bottle. The days of broadcast being the primary way of reaching viewers and listeners are over. So, what does a broadcaster need to do to have a future? What is tomorrow’s business model?

There is no one-size-fits-all model for every broadcaster, but knowing what’s coming, and how to prepare for it can be the difference between survival and success, or a dwindling decline. Richard provides a roadmap of the future, and offers some specific tools from the futurist’s toolkit to help broadcasters plan and prepare for the challenges ahead. --

Innovation in Finance: Great Opportunities, Terrifying Challenges

The entire financial industry is undergoing massive changes, with consolidation (to the extent permitted) among the major players, plus the prospects of assaults by fintech and insurtech new entrants. +

Futurist Richard Worzel is both a business visionary, and a Chartered Financial Analyst. In this overview of the future of the financial industries, he discusses the challenges and prospects for new players including:

• How technology is threatening traditional banking and investment players, including crowdsourced disintermediation for loans, mortgages, and deposits; the application of Artificial Intelligence to investment research and portfolio management, as well as to insurance; as well as the prospects for what happens beyond online and mobile banking.
• The Big Five schedule 1 Canadian banks have seen off all comers, from American commercial banks to niche market domestic upstarts to credit unions. Yet, they are widely disliked by the Canadian banking public. Innovation remains the only way for any new player to seriously challenge them.
• Meanwhile, the same technologies that threaten the financial industry also make it possible for new entrants to move towards friction-free finance for clients, and, if done properly, to create a superior client experience.

After exploring these issues, Richard circles back to talk about why organizations that claim to be devoted to innovation actually loathe it and seek to avoid it whenever possible, and what perceptive leaders can do to change that. Creating an innovation organization, where innovation is an every-day thing, rather than a once-in-a-while, when-we-have-time rarity is the crucial task for anyone seeking to overcome the enormous obstacles surrounding finance, and penetrate the lucrative heart of the financial industry. --

Upsetting the Apple Cart: The Future of Food Retailing

The food retailing apple cart has been upset in recent times by the emergence of deflation – something that America hasn’t experienced since the 1930s. Yet, the changes to come will be even more profound, and food retailers that want to defend – or expand – their market share will need to adapt their approach to the trends that are mutating their future. +

Business visionary Richard Worzel is a Chartered Financial Analyst as well as one of today’s leading futurists. In this presentation, he analyzes the future of food and food retailing to map out the changes ahead, including:

• What’s causing deflation in food, and will it persist?
• Amazon is nosing around the food industry. Is this a serious threat, or are they entering a market they don’t understand, and that will mousetrap them?
• How will genetics and the rise of food allergies and sensitivities affect what foods people want to buy? And is that a bad thing or a good thing?
• How will technology change society and the economy in general, and food retailing in particular? And are the changes to come going to be more or less dramatic than those we’ve already experienced?
• Is there a secret formula for success in retailing? If so, what is it, and how do you use it?

“Times of turmoil are times when market share is up for grabs,” Richard says. “And change is like a riding a tiger – it’s most dangerous if you let go.” --

Innovation, Foresight, and Leadership in the Insurance Industry: Preparing Your Organization – and Your Clients – for Tomorrow’s World

Technology is producing dramatic changes in business, society, and interpersonal relationships that both threaten a business’ future success, and offer it opportunities that have never existed before. But to avoid the pitfalls and exploit the opportunities, organizations need to innovate, and innovation is a virtue that requires leadership and foresight. More than that, innovation must become an organization’s culture, not a “sometime, when-we-have-time” thing. +

Futurist Richard Worzel is a business visionary as well as a Chartered Financial Analyst. In this presentation, specifically crafted for insurers, Richard surveys the future, and talks about how to support and encourage innovation. Among the topics he covers are:

• Emerging technologies and their implications – There are so many new technologies emerging in so many fields that it’s hard to keep track of them, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), Evolutionary Algorithms (EA), Fog computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR & VR), Smart Glasses, Virtual Assistants (VAs), 3D printing, and a panoply of developments in the biosciences that are revolutionizing health care. “Understanding the primary effects of so many technologies is hard enough,” says Richard, “but trying to anticipate the downstream effects, and how they will interact with each other is much, much harder.”
• Creating an Innovation Organization – Even though it’s clear that innovation is critical to the future, there are hidden obstacles that produce a natural avoidance of innovation in every organization. Identifying these obstacles, and then finding ways to help professionals around them is critical to creating a culture of innovation. “Successful innovation isn’t something that happens only at the top, but must become embedded in the mindset of all its people,” Richard notes. “Creating an environment that fosters that mindset – that’s where the hard work is done, but there are tools and techniques that can help.”
• Leadership & Foresight – “There’s a poorly understood relationship between leadership and foresight, but they actually support each other. Better foresight produces better leadership, and vice-versa. And helping organizations improve their foresight is central to my mission,” Richard concludes.

Richard will end by highlighting some of the techniques from the futurist’s toolkit that innovative professionals can use to improve results for their clients, their own organization, and the communities in which they live. --

Communities of Tomorrow: Where Will the Future Come to Live?

Municipalities are caught in a strange situation: citizens are intensely interested and concerned about local issues, yet municipal governments have little or no influence over issues like globalization or technology that affect voters. In this environment, how do elected officials and civil servants shape the towns and cities of tomorrow? What will an increasingly mobile population want, and how do you offer it? What kinds of infrastructure should you build, and what should you avoid? +

In this presentation, futurist and strategic planner Richard Worzel offers an overview of the landscape of tomorrow’s world, including:

• Demographics – We are in transition, from Boomers to Millennials, and GenZ now beginning to appear. What are the implications for community planning, for hospitals, schools, sport arenas, and more? Where will the pressure points be, and how can you be proactive about them?
• The gravitational pull of big cities – For more than a century, populations around the world have been migrating to urban centers, leaving smaller communities behind. So, what happens next? And what should smaller centers do about this?
• Technology – Technology is a two-edged sword, offering enticing solutions to apparently unsolvable problems, and introducing brand new threats. Where will the greatest opportunities and threats come from? And how do you prepare?
• Climate change – Municipal infrastructure must change, both to take account of new opportunities, such as the drastic decline in the costs of renewable energy, and to prepare for the rising tide of extreme weather events. But what should you prepare for, and how?

Richard will close with a brief overview of the futurist toolkit, and provide electronic handbooks you can take away and use to help your community transition into the strange, new world that will be our future. --

The Future of Farming: Problems, Possibilities, and Priorities
An Interactive Presentation by Futurist Richard Worzel, C.F.A.

Farming is the hidden, global industry. Everyone who works in the ag sector is directly involved and affected by the global economy, but the vast majority of the population hardly ever think about it, with the result that farmers and farming are often sideswiped or affected by events elsewhere, whether the rise of shale oil production, or the threat of a trade war over steel & aluminum. +

Futurist Richard Worzel, C.F.A., is a business visionary with deep experience in the ag sector. In this interactive presentation, he provides a working overview of the problems ahead for farmers, and therefore for the entire ag industry, as well as the coming possibilities. In turn, this can help senior staff and planners plan and prepare priorities for the future. Among the topics Richard would cover are:

• Rising demand for food – The single most important aspect of ages future is the growing demand for food. The FAO projects human population to grow by more than 30% between now and 2050, and the demand for food to grow by 50-70%. Since virtually all arable land is already under cultivation, this means that the rewards for finding increased productivity and producing higher yields will be great.
• New sources of revenue, new sources of competition – To the traditional Three F’s of farming – Food, Feed, and Fiber – are added three new sources: Fuel, Industrial Feedstocks, and Farm-aceuticals. These can produce new revenue streams for farmers who can adapt to new possibilities. As well, there are new forms of competition emerging, which are not important yet, but are worth watching, including 3D printed food and lab-grown meat, leading to food without farms, and steak without steers.
• The uncertainties – Higher demand for food (as well as all other agricultural produce) is all well and good, but that doesn’t mean the future is automatically rosy. Higher input costs for petroleum, fertilizer, pest control, and better, more expensive seeds will challenge profitability. Climate change is creating ever-greater uncertainties, both because of more frequent extreme weather events which can destroy crops, and shifting weather patterns that can change the kinds of equipment needed for production.
• New potentials – Technology is introducing new tools that offer enormous potential – if producers can figure out how to balance their costs with their potential. Precision farming will be further revolutionized by Artificial Intelligence, Cloud and Fog computing, improved sensing capabilities, and robot equipment.

This presentation isn’t meant so much as to answer all questions as it is to provoke new ones. “A good answer will open a useful door,” notes Richard, “But a good question can open lots of new doors.” As such, it can set the stage for strategic planning and innovation. --

Avoiding Oblivion: The Perils and Potential of Print Media in Tomorrow’s World

Just as it has in many other sectors, technology and the Internet have seriously disrupted media in general, and print media in particular. Classified and space advertising is being leeched away to online and social alternatives. News & feature desks are shrinking with advertising revenues, making it ever more difficult for publications to justify their publication prices. And the result seems to be that print media are dying out.

But if you look more closely, this isn’t the whole story. In particular, there are three counter-trends emerging: print that broadens its base, both by going national or international, as well as going online and offering multi-dimensional media; print that finds new sources of financing that shift the focus from immediate profitability; and print that specializes in serving specifically-targeted market segments, including local markets. +

Futurist Richard Worzel is a Chartered Financial Analyst with broad experience in real world business as well as being a business visionary who has helped organizations develop strategic plans for a better future. In this presentation, he looks at the threats and opportunities ahead for print media, covering such topics as:

• The history of media – Communications media don’t disappear, but their business models change as new media emerge to crowd their space. And there’s an enormous driver behind this: people like to communicate, and shifts in media opportunities present new possibilities, often in ways that organizations don’t foresee.
• Technologies that will (further) transform our future – Artificial Intelligence and both Virtual and Augmented Reality are going to create new, more immersive kinds of media that will not only entertain and inform, but involve and immerse. How people will accept, adapt, and re-shape the resulting new media is still largely unknown, but hints of where they will take us are emerging.
• The possibilities and potentials of print media – In a continually shifting marketplace, each print organization needs to contemplate who they serve, what their strengths are, and what the real potentials of their market position are. For some, this involves stepping onto a broader stage, and taking a different approach. For others, it means tightening the focus, and clarifying the benefits they offer. For all, it means re-thinking their role, and ensuring that the changing future includes what they have to offer rather than merely hoping they won’t be devastated.

“Think of the future of media as a rapidly expanding balloon,” says Richard. “New territories are opening up, while the available revenue in a given segment is thinning out. Defining your role in tomorrow’s world becomes a matter of understanding your market, knowing yourself, and anticipating how your segment will change.”

“The only thing you can’t do is maintain the status quo.” --

Driving Tomorrow: The Future of the Automotive Industry
 
Car manufacturing is arguably the most important manufacturing industry in the world, and may also be the most rapidly changing heavy industry. Futurist Richard Worzel is a business visionary grounded in the real world, a Chartered Financial Analyst, and a best-selling author. In this overview of the future of the automotive industry, he provides a roadmap of what’s ahead, including:  +

• How demand for cars is changing due to demographics, with boomers retiring, Millennials having different tastes, women rising in importance, and populations continuing to migrate into urban centres.
  
  
• How 3D printing technologies are changing all manufacturing industries, but particularly cars, precipitating changes in techniques, designs, weight, distribution & logistics, customization, and much more besides.
  
  
• How and why public attitudes are changing on climate change, GHGs, emissions, and CAFE standards, and what those attitudinal changes mean to the industry.
  
  
• What are the power & fuel systems of the future? What are the roadblocks, and how will the trade-offs be made?
  
  
• What are the prospects for the global and North American economies, and how should the auto industry prepare?

Richard will start with the big picture, then bring it down to the automotive aftermarket, then end with an overview of futurist planning tools that can help organizations become more flexible, and develop their foresight. The result will be both a better understanding of what’s ahead, and better tools to exploit the future.  --

Innovation & Technology:
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.  --

Opportunity Pounds: The Future of IT in Health Care

Opportunity is not knocking in applications of IT to health care; it is pounding down the door. Ever since the Human Genome Project showed the value of using computers in medical research, new research techniques and new IT applications are starting to cause health care management and new breakthroughs to move at in silico speeds instead of in vitro speeds.  +

Richard Worzel, best-selling author and Canada’s leading futurist, surveys the landscape of tomorrow, and highlights:

• How health care will change over the next 25 years, and why it absolutely must;
  
  
• How a global medical warning system will gather instant-by-instant reports on the health status of close to 4 billions people, and what the implications for future research and data mining;
  
  
• The basic building block of such a system will be invisible in 25 years’ time, but is already in evidence today;
  
  
• The new kinds of research tools that must be used to deal with data overload that is rising by orders of magnitude every five years or so;
  
  
• And the emergence of help from surprising, even unexpected sources.

Richard compares the advances of the next 25 years with the advances in medicine made between 1860 and today. “We will look back on the way we practice health management today, and compare it to the use of leeches and blood-letting of earlier eras,” he says, “And this has major implications for all the players, including governments, patients, pharma companies, and health care practitioners.”  --

What Future Should We Want? What Future Should We Aim For?

That our future will be different from our past is obvious. The bigger question is: What do we do about it?  +

To help create a solution to this question, business visionary and futurist Richard Worzel, c.f.a., will first survey the major forces driving change in the business realm, including:

• How the global economy is changing, why tomorrow’s growth will be slower, and where the greatest opportunities lie:
  
  
• How technology will continue to surprise and disrupt our lives, our social patterns, our ways of communication, and, most especially, our jobs and the industries that survive. This assessment will range from intelligent computers, robots, and automation, to Fog computing, 3D printing, and distributed manufacturing. Indeed, the biggest disruptions are not behind, but ahead of us.
  
  
• How the demographics of America, the developed world, and the developing economies are going to shape tomorrow’s world in very different ways, including pressures on government finances, shifts in geopolitics, increases in government regulation, greater instability among voters, and how consumers and voters will see and respond to business; and
  
  
• How the natural world, and our physical environment, are going to force us to change our behavior, from the kinds of infrastructure we must invest in, to the way we use water, to the kinds of food we grow and eat, to how much disposable income we have.

Once Richard has provided this survey of the forces shaping tomorrow, he will lead an exercise in guided foresight, focusing on the factors that will affect the business world within which X will operate.

This guided foresight will employ elements of scenario planning, but also, depending on discussions with the conference planners, Wild Card analysis and Backcasting. The purpose will be to help X partners to clarify their focus on the future X should want, and some preliminary thoughts on how to start the journey in that direction.  --

Demographics Are Destiny:
How Population Trends Affect the Economy
 
It’s easy to forget that people are the basis of everything relating to economic trends, including consumer demand, housing, tourism, and potentially even inflation and deflation. Or, to put it another way, without people, there is no economy.  +

That being the case, how are national and global demographic trends shaping the destiny of tomorrow’s economy?

• As America’s population ages, its labor force growth falls, which leads to lower, slower GDP growth.
  
  
• An aging population buys replacements rather than increasing demand, hence an aging consumer force leads to lower economic growth and lower demand.
  
  
• Aging boomers will look to sell their family homes, but those who can afford to may wind up with two domiciles instead: one for winter down south, the other for the rest of the year up north. Or one in an urban center, the other in a calmer, more rural setting.
  
  
• Meanwhile, younger consumers, especially Millennials, are finally starting their long-delayed move into their household formation years. This will goose demand for housing, cars (somewhat – younger consumers are less interested in car ownership than earlier generations), baby clothes, insurance, and even the beginnings of retirement planning.
  
  
• Globally, the developed countries will face significant financial problems because of aging populations, established developing countries (except China, which is aging faster than almost anyone else) are burning through into their “demographic dividends”, and newly developing countries, notably in Africa, with their still-growing populations will win their place in the spotlight as quickly as they can develop stable governments and legal systems that protect property rights.

All told then, at every level, demographics is signaling a changing of the guard, with some groups losing influence, and others gaining them.  --

Checking In on Future Profits:
The Potential for, and Possible Problems of, the Hotel & Resort Business
 
The future for the hospitality trade in general is bright for many reasons – and because of that, the level of competition will rise as players expand to soak up the cream.  +

Futurist Richard Worzel is a business visionary, as well as a best-selling author and Chartered Financial Analyst with experience in all aspects of investing. In this overview of tomorrow’s promise for resort and urban lodging, he covers the possibilities and possible problems of the industry over the medium-term future, including:

• The imminent retirement of the Baby Boom generation, and their desire to work through their Bucket Lists. How to appeal to this desire, what Boomers are likely to look for, and what are the massive, but overlooked, demographic groups that will be critical to future success.
  
  
• The exploding growth of Asian tourism, especially, but not exclusively from China. What could set you apart, and how could you exploit this trend?
  
  
• How technology is going to continue to disrupt – and how and where tomorrow’s disruptive technologies will affect hotels & resorts.
  
  
• The future of the cost side of the ledger, from land/lease costs to staffing. Where are the problems, and how can you turn them into opportunities?
  
  
• The future of investment markets – what’s ahead for interest rates, financial markets, and what could upset or accelerate market advances.
  
  
• What are some of the Wild Cards that could produce wrenching change for the industry?

Richard will end with a set of futurist tools that can improve the insight and value of your strategic planning for the future of your investments.  --

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.  --

Strategic Foresight for Risk Management

In an increasingly dangerous world, risk management is a rapidly emerging discipline for large company executives, small company entrepreneurs, and professionals responsible for managing their own career-paths. In this introductory presentation and workshop, Worzel provides an overview of the future our society, the economy, and your organization are facing, and trains your people in tools they can introduce into their existing planning process that will enhance what they are doing, and dramatically improve their ability to anticipate many problems before they occur, and deal with ones that are unavoidable.

The Green Economy: Social Responsibility that Pays Dividends

At the end of the 20th Century, public interest in environmental issues was on the wane. Today, public opinion is well past the tipping point, and organizations are scrambling to catch up. What this means is that leading the field in green issues can be both a strategic and a tactical competitive advantage in tomorrow’s business world. In this broad-ranging view of the rapidly emerging Green Economy, Worzel talks about what’s to come, and how to do well by doing good.

The Real Estate Roller Coaster: What's Ahead?

The real estate industry, after a long and successful run, faces a volatile future for many reasons. In this overview of a national and international industry that is nonetheless driven by local and regional forces, Worzel offers real estate professionals critical strategic intelligence in order to make risk management and strategic foresight clearer and simpler for those intent on not just surviving, but thriving and growing in good times and bad.

Insuring the Future: Insurance Industry

This session is designed to provide agents specializing in life, living benefit, and financial planning products in the insurance industry with a forward perspective on their business, and to give them take-aways that they can use to improve that business immediately.

The Emergence of Alternative Energies

The combination of spiking oil prices and the rising consciousness of global climate change has created a startling demand for new energy sources that is reshaping the economic landscape, and creating once-in-a-generation opportunities. This fast-paced, orbital view of an exploding field will provide you with insights that will help your decisions tomorrow morning, and guide you in shaping your strategies for years into the future.

Farming-Agriculture
How Dairies Can Contribute to a Greener Society: Breaking the Carbon Habit Without Breaking the Bank

With the dramatic fall in the price of oil, it would be tempting to assume that the pressure to go green has disappeared. That would be a mistake, as the facts of climate change are still very much in evidence. This leaves the question: how can we, as individuals as well as producers, contribute to a greener society?  +

Richard Worzel is a Chartered Financial Analyst, a strategic planner, best-selling author, and Canada’s leading futurist. In this presentation, he:

• Outlines the critical issues relating to climate change, and humanity’s part in it;
• Identifies the ways in which we are contributing to climate change; and
• Talks about the ways in which we can change the harm we do without destroying our businesses, of ways of going green while making it a profit-contributing process instead of a profit-draining one.

To finish off, Richard will outline a technique for identifying new ways of improving efficiency, in order to benefit both profits and the environment.  --

Farming-Agriculture
Sunrise or Sunset Industry? The Future of Farms and Farmers

It’s been a long, long time since the American farmer experienced so many changes in so many areas, with the result that agriculture, and the industries that support and work with it, are about to experience the most dramatic revolution since the end of World War II.  +

Richard Worzel is a strategic planner and one of today’s leading futurists. In this keynote presentation he talks about:

• Climate change – what is actually happening, and its possible impact on agriculture;
• New revenue streams that will become available to agricultural producers, and the effects that will have on those industries that depend on agricultural products;
• The emergence of new markets and new competitors at home and abroad for food, and what it implies for producers;
• The Green Economy – has it vanished with the recession, or will it re-emerge? And how could it affect producers’ use of fertilizers, water, and genetically-modified crops and animals?
• Technology; what next? Why the IT revolution is just beginning, and how it will affect agriculture;
• The coming economic recovery, and why there’s bad news mixed with the good.

Beyond describing how these trends will affect agriculture and related industries and communities, Richard will also provide tools to help participants prepare for the uncertainties ahead. “The future will catch us by surprise,” Richard comments, “and those people who profit most from the changes ahead will be those who can recover fastest, and respond most constructively to change.”  --

Planning for the Planners: The Future of Meeting Planning in the Financial Industry

Samuel Johnson once said that the prospect of hanging in the morning focuses the mind wonderfully, and the financial industry is certainly finding its focus. It has received a kicking the likes of which it has not had this generation, and arguably not since the Great Depression. This makes has made it difficult to create meetings that are attractive and relevant to industry players – but what’s to come?  +

Richard Worzel is a Chartered Financial Analyst, strategic planner, and one of today’s leading futurists. In this presentation specifically tailored to meeting planners who work with and serve the financial community, he describes:

• The prospects for the financial markets and the global economy: when will the pain abate?
• The aftermath: who’s likely to remain standing? And how will the major players’ (especially banks and insurance companies) positions change?
• The forces that will drive change in the financial community’s future, including the prospects for new financial instruments and client needs, shifting demographics, rising global competition and opportunity, increased longevity, postponed retirements, and the rapid changes in jobs and work in tomorrow’s world; and
• The changes coming to meeting planners: the inroads and innovations coming from technology, the intensity and intent of younger meeting planners, the changing attitudes of suppliers; and how societal shifts are forcing changes in content and presentation styles.

The times ahead are going to be harder for all purveyors of financial advice and instruments, yet that merely underlines the need for superior preparation. Richard’s presentation provides a roadmap of what’s ahead for the industry and those meeting planners who work with it, and identifies the pivotal issues and approaches the offer the most promise.  --

Dark Clouds & Silver Linings: The Prospects for the Financial Funds Industry

The next 10 years will be significantly different from the 10 years just past. First, the potential remains for nasty surprises that could re-ignite a financial panic, and dump the global economy back into recession. Chief among these is the potential that the U.S. government could become insolvent, with all that this implies. Assuming that this doesn’t happen, then what will happen with the U.S., Canadian, and world economies, and what are the risks and opportunities ahead of us.  +

Beyond this, the technological advances of the next 10-15 years will make the changes of the past pale in comparison, with massive implications for productivity, automation, employment, and the global marketplace that go far beyond most investors’ expectations of “more of the same.” As well, many investors are concerned the the looming retirement of the boomers will drain cash from the markets, leading to another stock market crash – but that’s not going to happen. And finally, investor psychology has undergone a once-in-a-generation shift that threatens to push funds, and fund managers, back to where they were in the 1970s, which GICs were the investment of choice.

Richard Worzel is a Chartered Financial Analyst, a strategic planner, and Canada’s leading futurist. In this presentation, he lays out a road map of the future for the funds industry, and challenges participants to seize the opportunities ahead. The future we are facing will be wild, exciting, and scary; the costs of not preparing for it will be enormous.  --

The Rise of Bioscience

This is the bioscience century, where changes to the tools we use, the things we are able to do, and even who we are and how we function will undergo revolutionary transformation. Knowledge of developments within and beyond your field will be vital to successfully capitalizing your efforts, whether on behalf of a company, a group of investors, or by a government for its citizens. As a professional who keeps a steady focus on developments in the biosciences field, Worzel gives audiences a broad assessment of the biosciences century, and the developments that will shape its destiny.

Responsive Leadership in an Era of Change

Leadership doesn’t happen in a vacuum, but must adapt to circumstances. And tomorrow’s business and social environment is creating novel challenges that past techniques don’t completely answer. As a strategic planner, a Chartered Financial Analyst, and a professional futurist who is steeped in traditional and linear thought, Worzel recognizes the confusion and the problems conventional leadership methods create, and in this keynote builds thought bridges to help people over the inherent conflicts, and into new leadership for a strange, new era.

The Future of Money

Money isn’t everything, but it is central to everything in our economy. Those who plan to thrive in an increasingly competitive world will need to know where money is coming from, where it’s going, how it will influence their company and industry, and what to expect and prepare for in order to be ready for the future. This intriguing and entertaining presentation Richard Worzel will leave your people with take-aways they’ll be able to use tomorrow morning to be more effective – and increase their share of tomorrow’s money.

Critical Care: The Future of Local Pharmacies in Today's Economy

The economic environment we are facing today is dramatically different than any we have experienced in the last decade – and is, in some ways, different from the environment our society has faced in the last 80 years. This means that the ways of responding to it must also be different.  +

Richard Worzel is a strategic planner, Chartered Financial Analyst, and Canada’s leading futurist. In this presentation, he will provide a road map of the future for the local pharmacy/retailer, which will cover:

• What’s happened to the economy, the financial markets, and the consumer, and what’s going to happen next, including the prospects for different parts of Canada
• The prospects for 2017 and beyond, with particular emphasis on retailing
  How the shifts in demographics are going to affect health care in Canada, and how that will affect the role of the local pharmacist;
• Tuning in on what’s going through the minds of your customers, and how to develop new ideas to support and improve your retail prospects in a tough market.

Pharmacies, especially those associated with larger retail outlets, fill a special niche in our society – and one that is, in some ways, one of the most competitive in the economy. Turbulent times are times when market share is up for grabs, and they play to the strengths of those who anticipate the future properly, and plan well for the changes ahead.  --

Corporate Innovation: The Key to Survival and Success

Virtually everyone in the corporate world pays lip-server to the truism that innovation is critical to corporate survival. The bigger issue is how do you create an organization that is consistently innovative?  +

Richard Worzel is a Chartered Financial Analyst, strategic planner, and Canada’s leading futurist, and sees innovation as no less than the engine that carves out a corporation’s future. In this presentation he creates a blueprint on innovation, including:

• What “innovation” actually means in practical terms, as opposed to the motherhood, theoretical concept everyone always talks about.
• What innovation can do, and what it can’t, and how to manage the short-comings.
• What are the pre-conditions for successful innovation – and what are the costs of not preparing properly.
• Why organizations that fiercely proclaim that they are dedicated to innovation secretly despise it.
• What tools you can use to provoke innovation, who should use them, and how; and
• What else you need to do beyond innovating, without which there is very little point in even starting.

The process of innovation is, and should be, never ending, but this one-hour keynote will let you jump-start your organization on the path to innovative future success.  --

The Next Fifty Years in Investing

Because they are inundated with information, investment professionals tend to believe that they have seen and heard it all, and worse, that they know it all. Yet, each of us knows that there is so much more that we don’t know that when a crisis hits the markets, as it has now, we tend to be overly impressed with the urgency of the emergency and forget or overlook the bigger issues.  +

Richard Worzel is a Chartered Financial Analyst, a former institutional investor, best-selling author, and is, today, Canada’s leading futurist. In this long-term overview, Richard points out what’s important, as opposed to what’s urgent, including:

• Where does economic growth come from, and why is it going to be harder to come by? And is there hope we can change that result?
• Which nations have hidden weaknesses that threaten their relative prosperity?
• How will you be able to tell those nations that will move ahead compared to those that merely plod forward? What’s the touchstone of success?
• Everyone knows that technology will continue to be a game-changer; but how? What technological advances are we not expecting, or if we are expecting them, are we not prepared for? And where will they lead us?
• And what’s the one wild card that virtually no one is talking about that will wreck the finances of nations and change the future of society and humanity, gradually at first, and then with gathering momentum?

John Maynard Keynes once famously said that in the long-run we’re all dead, but for a pension fund, which must think in terms of decades, today’s urgent issues must be kept in perspective. This presentation deals with the important issues that will decide the long-term success of a pension fund.  --

Grabbing Change by the Horns: Will Transformation Mean Evolution, Revolution, or Annihilation?

Not only is the rate of technological change accelerating, but the rate of acceleration is increasing. Meanwhile, the ripple effects of technology in social, economic, political, and business affairs are making it harder to foresee and manage change.  +

Richard Worzel, leading futurist and strategic planner, as well as a Chartered Financial Analyst and best-selling author, leads this exploration on the issues and impact of change in technology, including:

• What are the discontinuities ahead in IT, and how will they affect governance?
• How will IT have to change to cope with both new technologies, as well as rising expectations from the general public?
• What non-IT factors will influence the changes ahead, and how will they feed-back into IT management?
• How is government going to change, and how should policy makers prepare for these changes?
• How long will the recession last, what happens afterwards, and how will that affect both expectations and resources in IT management?

You will walk away with a roadmap of tomorrow’s world, one that will help you make the unavoidable transformations ahead be constructive rather than detrimental.  --

What to Do When the Future Looks Grim

Maybe that light at the end of the tunnel is the end of the recession, or maybe it’s a freight train coming your way. Either way, standing frozen in one spot by indecision won’t help, and may be devastating. Yet, many organizations find themselves paralyzed by the threats of the worst recession we’ve experienced since, well, 1991 – which really isn’t all that long ago.  +

Richard Worzel is a Chartered Financial Analyst, strategic planner, best-selling author, and Canada’s leading futurist. In this presentation, specifically tailored to address the problems of this economy and this time, he talks about how to take advantage of the problems ahead:

• Times like these are times when market share is up for grabs. Right now, most organizations have gone into catatonic shock, and are looking for ways to retreat. This makes it an ideal time to look for ways of going forward as there’s less competition.
• Substitute brains for money. In an economy like this, when money is in short supply, you can substitute innovation and creativity for cash. Using structured brainstorming techniques, you can come up with new ways of dealing with problems.
• Don’t run back into a burning barn. Retreating into old habits, just because you’re comfortable with them, is not going to lead you out of your problems, but back into them.
• Look for new opportunities. Using Richard’s own Opportunity Matrix techniques, come up with 2-300 new ideas for generating business, then pick the 10 you like best. Repeat until you have re-engineered your future to be what you want.
• Decide! When you make a decision in this environment, you might be right, or you might be wrong, but if you don’t decide, you will automatically be wrong. That can be catastrophic right now. Decide – and then do course corrections as needed..

There are many things you can do to deal with a future that looks grim – and facing it dead on is the first of these things.  --

Getting Greedy When Others Are Fearful: Linking Innovation, Sustainability, and Profits

Dark times are when the best players make the biggest gains. Everyone else is lying low, resources are hard to come by, and consumers are an endangered species. Richard Worzel, one of today’s leading futurists, sees real opportunities in today’s situation, and this presentation offers retailers insights on:  +

• Why today’s “new” marketing tools – such as Facebook and Twitter – are only the beginning of personal marketing on a mass basis;
• Why getting into your customer’s head is now more necessary and more possible than ever before;
• Why sustainability – today’s environmental issue – will not disappear the way scarcity of resources – the issue of the 70s – did following the previous oil price break in 1980-81, and therefore why working on sustainability now, even in hard times, is critical to future survival and success; and finally
• Why innovation is not popular, and why you need to create a new culture of innovation, starting from the bottom.

In addressing these issues, especially the issues of sustainability and innovation, Richard will provide two sets of tools. The first, called the Opportunity Matrix, offers a means of producing a steady stream of new ideas for incremental innovation. The second, the handbook on Risk Management and Scenario Planning that Richard developed for his consulting clients, is a take-away toolbox that can help you put yourself in your customers’ future mindspace in order to be there, waiting, when she arrives.  --

Dark Clouds & Silver Linings: Tomorrow's Prospects and the Future of Accounting

It’s as if the skies are starting to clear following a major storm; the economy is beginning to look better, and people are once again more hopeful about the future. So, do we return to “business as usual”, or will tomorrow’s economy and tomorrow’s world be different?  +

Richard Worzel is a Chartered Financial Analyst, a strategic planner, and Canada’s leading futurist. In this presentation he assesses the future of business with an eye towards the future of accounting, covering: the outlook for the economy, plus wild cards for which you should prepare; technology, and how it will continue to reshape business; why we are leaving a period of demographic calm, and what we are headed towards; and how globalization and governments are going to change the economic landscape ahead of us.  --

LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOPS:

The Opportunity Matrix: Low-Risk, High-Reward Innovation

Duration: Half Day, Full Day
Target Audiences: Senior Executives, Organizational Planners, Managers, Sales & Marketing Managers & Professionals, Line Employees  +

Everyone talks about innovation, but most organizations would prefer to leave it there: as talk. And the truth is that innovation is uncomfortable, and many organizations shy away from it. This is contrary to what most people and most organizations believe. Indeed, many organizations believe they are innovation tigers, eager and active in inventing a new future on a continuous basis. And innovation is such a consistent hot topic that it’s almost a corporate religion, a motherhood issue with which nobody disagrees.

But innovation is risky, both for an organization, and for the careers of the people within it, for it necessarily embraces the possibility of failure. And failure, as we all know, is an invitation to being laid off. Yet there are ways of minimizing the risks of innovation, and encouraging people within your organization to embrace it by introducing a means of systematic, incremental innovations which, collectively, add up to major improvements. This is the way of the Opportunity Matrix.

The Matrix breaks your industry and operations into bite-sized chunks, and then focuses down to the minute level. It then suggests specific questions that will enable your people to come up with long lists of possible innovations. From these lists, you then winnow them down to the ideas you like best, play best to your strengths, or that you think have the greatest potential for further exploration and consideration. And the process is repeatable, so that rather than a one-time thing, you can create a continuing font of ideas for change and improvement – without the high risks of major changes, but with a high level of results and increased satisfaction on all parts.  --

Unboxed Thinking: Concepts for Innovation

Duration: Half day, Full day
Target Audiences: Senior Executives, Organizational Planners, Managers, Sales & Marketing Executives and Professionals  +

Changes are happening so fast, and the consequences of being left behind are so extreme, that companies believe – correctly – that thinking outside the box is the only way to thrive. Yet most people believe that creativity is only open to the creative few, an artistic elite. The reality is that everyone is creative to a greater or lesser extent, but few ever learn how to exercise their creativity, and fewer practice it on a regular basis, so that they get flabby results when they try.

There are specific techniques, just as there are in art, that can help those who are not practiced in innovating, and can help the already creative individual become even more so. In this workshop, futurist and strategic planner Richard Worzel will introduce you to creative techniques tailored to the needs of organizations and businesses today, and show you how you can create new ideas, new products, and new results. These techniques will include scenario planning focused on product development, and developing an opportunity matrix to identify new needs and ideas.

You will leave this workshop not only with new ideas you can use immediately in your business, but with a toolbox of techniques that you can use over and over again. Included in the takeaways for both the full-day and the half-day sessions will be electronic versions of two handbooks on two completely different sets of innovation techniques for each participant. --

Richard Worzel is represented by K&M Productions. For more information, date availability & booking futurist Richard Worzel contact us