Industry lens
Daily Inspiration often became a place where broad foresight was tested against a specific industry.
For Technology Telecom, the useful material is not simply a list of technologies. The recurring question is how changing science, economics, customer behavior, regulation, skills and digital capability alter the industry’s assumptions.
Recovered industry essays and observations
2023-01-11 — Daily Inspiration: “It’s time to move from triage to tomorrow!”
“It’s time to move from triage to tomorrow!” - Futurist Jim Carroll Next month will mark 3 years since individuals and organizations began to go through the largest disruption they will ever know. With lockdowns, a staggering loss of human life, work-from-home, and the rapid emergence of a digital lifestyle and e-commerce infrastructure - we all had to learn to adapt quickly. As I close out this series of 23 Trends for 2023, I’ve been thinking long and hard as to what the final, all-encompassing trend should be; to be honest, I’ve had several.
2023-06-06 — Daily Inspiration: “You’ll never get to the future if you never attempt the future!”
“You’ll never get to the future if you never attempt the future! ”- Futurist Jim Carroll If you are into that type of thing you might have tuned into Apple’s WWDC event yesterday to get a first look at their new VR/AR headset - or, what they are calling their new spatial computing device. And if you are like me, you would have been pretty shocked by the price at $3,499 (or about $5,000 Canadian, my home country.) You would have been really disappointed in the tether wire necessary for longer-lasting battery power.
2024-01-15 — Daily Inspiration: Healthcare and the Future - “You can always look forward by looking back!”
“You can always look forward by looking back!” - Futurist Jim Carroll “16 years ago, Futurist Jim Carroll spoke in Washington DC on the future of healthcare. He challenged the audience to think about what the world of healthcare would look like one day in the future - picking an arbitrary, random date of January 15, 2020. Now, 16 years later, take a look at how he did with his predictions!
2025-01-03 — Daily Inspiration: (Grading My 2014 Predictions About 2025) - “Sometimes you need not be right you just need to be bold!”
“Sometimes you need not be right you just need to be bold!” - Futurist Jim Carroll Welcome to 2025! Back in 2014, I wrote a series of predictions about 2025 - in a document titled, of all things, ‘25 Trends for 2025’. (Intuitive!) At the time I wrote it, most of the news media were busy, as they are every year, contacting futurists, trend forecasters, and guys like me to bang together their year-end articles about “what comes next?
2025-05-23 — Decoding Tomorrow: Your Daily Future Inspiration – “You can escape the mediocrity you once embraced, but will you ever fully eradicate it?”
“You can escape the mediocrity you once embraced, but will you ever fully eradicate it?” - Futurist Jim Carroll It’s been a wild voyage bringing these two books to print in just a few months, and I’m loving the feedback and comments from those who have picked up copies. (Are you in? You can grab copies at the Mediocrity website !) But while working on them, I’m always thinking.
2025-05-29 — Decoding Tomorrow: Your Daily Future Inspiration – “There is no shortage of big opportunities.. There is a shortage of bold leadership!”
“There is no shortage of big opportunities.. There is a shortage of bold leadership!” = Futurist Jim Carroll One of my fellow futurists recently included this line in a post I read - “We should be pulling more photons from the sun.” He wrote it as an observation when he was flying into an American city, and saw an absolute dearth of solar panels on the roofs of homes and buildings. Solar energy - the infrastructure at least - has become desperately cheap and tremendously productive, and we are missing such a big opportunity.
2025-08-08 — Decoding Tomorrow: 30 Megatrends - #27 America’s Retreat “By abandoning its R&D leadership, the US is ceding the future of global innovation and success to its competitors.”
“By abandoning its R&D leadership, the US is ceding the future of global innovation and success to its competitors.” - Futurist Jim Carroll (Futurist Jim Carroll is writing a series on 30 Megatrends, which he first outlined in his book Dancing in the Rain: How Bold Leaders Grow Stronger in Stormy Times. The trends were shared in the book as a way of demonstrating that, despite any period of economic volatility, there is always long-term opportunity to be found. The book is now in print - learn more at dancing.jimcarroll.com) This is a LONG post.
2025-09-24 — Decoding Tomorrow: The Way Forward: #2 Agriculture- The farmer of the future is part biologist, part data scientist, and part roboticist—but is still 100% an optimist who plants a seed and believes in tomorrow.”
“The farmer of the future is part biologist, part data scientist, and part roboticist—but is still 100% an optimist who plants a seed and believes in tomorrow.” - Futurist Jim Carroll In 2025, the headwinds are severe, and the path forward seems shrouded in fog. We’re living through one of the most volatile and unpredictable periods in recent memory. With that being the case, I am writing this new series, The Way Forward: A Trends and Transformation Series, taking a look at the trends redefining industries, and actionable strategies organizations must pursue to align to these realities.
2025-09-26 — Decoding Tomorrow: The Way Forward: #4 Healthcare: “Yesterday’s medical breakthrough was a new drug. Tomorrow’s breakthrough is the intelligent algorithm that designs the drug, the connected device that delivers it, and the data stream that confirms it worked.”
“Yesterday’s medical breakthrough was a new drug. Tomorrow’s breakthrough is the intelligent algorithm that designs the drug, the connected device that delivers it, and the data stream that confirms it worked.”- Futurist Jim Carroll In 2025, the headwinds are severe, and the path forward seems shrouded in fog. We’re living through one of the most volatile and unpredictable periods in recent memory.
2025-10-06 — Decoding Tomorrow: The Way Forward: #9 Auto & Transportation - “A decade from now, the automotive landscape will be dominated by companies that treated 2025’s reality check not as a crisis, but as the greatest competitive opportunity they ever witnessed!”
“A decade from now, the automotive landscape will be dominated by companies that treated 2025’s reality check not as a crisis, but as the greatest competitive opportunity they ever witnessed!” - Futurist Jim Carroll In 2025, the headwinds are severe, and the path forward seems shrouded in fog. We’re living through one of the most volatile and unpredictable periods in recent memory. With that being the case, I am writing this new series, The Way Forward: A Trends and Transformation Series, taking a look at the trends redefining industries, and actionable strategies organizations must pursue to align with these realities.
2025-12-02 — Decoding Tomorrow: Mastering 2026 – #9: “Know this: if your goals feel ‘realistic,’ you are thinking too small.”
“Know this: if your goals feel ‘realistic,’ you are thinking too small.” - Futurist Jim Carroll We are on Day 9. You’ve committed to the pivot (Day 7), and you are increasing your execution velocity (Day 8). You are moving faster.
2025-12-08 — Decoding Tomorrow: Mastering 2026 - #13 The Wisdom Inversion: “Know when to get your age out of the way.”
“Know when to get your age out of the way.” - Futurist Jim Carroll We are on Day 13. We just spent Day 12 dismantling your personal hubris - getting your ego out of the way. One of the most important aspects of that?
2025-12-10 — Decoding Tomorrow: Mastering 2026 – #15 Escape Velocity “Scale immediately or fail slowly. There is no middle ground.”
“Scale immediately or fail slowly. There is no middle ground.”- Futurist Jim Carroll We are on Day 15! You’ve listened to the edge (Day 13) and filtered out the hype to find a real structural signal (Day 14).
2025-12-11 — Decoding Tomorrow: Mastering 2026 – #16 Scale-blindness: “Your brain is built for addition. The future is built on multiplication.”
“Your brain is built for addition. The future is built on multiplication.” - Futurist Jim Carroll When exponential change arrives, it never goes well. That’s because most people fail to understand what it means and don’t act, which is a problem.
2025-12-17 — Decoding Tomorrow: Mastering 2026 – #20 Network Velocity: “If you are the fastest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.”
“If you are the fastest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.” - Futurist Jim Carroll The 1987 editorial “Tomorrow’s Company Won’t Have Walls” stands as one of the most accurate corporate prophecies of the modern era. And it had a profound impact on my life. It’s probably fair to say that if I hadn’t read it, I wouldn’t have stepped out on my own to start my own company, chase my own career, do my own thing - and become a global freelancer, a nomadic worker, a lone wolf, long before the trend became real and the idea fashionable.
How this should feed futurist.info
These records should strengthen the corresponding Industry Intelligence page. Repeated ideas should become supporting evidence for structural shifts; dated observations should become Signals where appropriate; forecasts should connect to Predictions and Scorecards.
Industry question
Which of these changes alters the industry’s operating model rather than merely adding a new tool?