After 2 years and almost 100 editions of Business Unusual some of the disruptive technologies that have been profiled have either become mainstream like Uber, Facebook and Amazon or hit the skids, Theranos and Fitbit.
We have looked at people like Jack Ma, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and companies like GoPro and MailChimp.
We have covered business principles like publically disclosed salaries and working from home.
Economic principles like patent protection, the new definition of a job and how to get one.
Psychological principles like bias, the half-life of facts, social protests and our use of language. Should we say please to machines and the end of the keyboard and significant changes to how we communicate.
Innovation like editing our own genes and defying death.
We have questioned the future of paper money and even money itself with the rise of cryptocurrencies.
We have pondered if the 4th industrial revolution will see unemployment skyrocket or if there will be so much wealth we can afford a universal basic income.
We looked into the future and our return to space, how cities will be affected by automation and the spectre of cyberwar or robots with the ability to use lethal force or perhaps it will be digital weapons that keep us safe.
We looked at the factors that make disruptive business succeed and looked at how they can fail.
We looked at the crazy history of measurement and how the light bulb became outdated as our symbol for innovation.
We wondered who should have access to our information and why we are so bad at looking after it.
How will we shop in the future, assuming we may still need to.
Will the robots only do the boring jobs or will cyber CEO’s be our boss.
How would government change and would we still need them as companies become bigger and span the globe. If Facebook was a country it would be the largest on Earth.
And we have only just begun. The future may seem uncertain and issues like climate change suggest that not only can we not continue with business as usual, we need to explore and embrace business unusual.
