Daniele Levine, Top Innovation Trends Speaker In Conversation With Futurist Ian Khan
Daniele Levine, Top Innovation Trends Speaker in conversation with Futurist Ian Khan
In this episode i speak with globally recognized Futurist Daniel Levine, also a co-contributor to the recent book “After Shock”.
Bio
Daniel Levine is a trusted consultant to major companies and brands worldwide. He is regularly featured in newspapers and magazines and is often on television and radio including CNN, NBC and others.
Mr. Levine is the director of the Avant-Guide Institute and the global editor of the popular trends website WikiTrend.org where he leads a large international team of trend spotters; over 9000 researchers who chronicle the latest ideas, products and experiences from around the globe.
-Founding Director of the Avant- Guide Institute trends consultancy
-Bestselling Author of 11 books on trends, business, travel and marketing
-Keynote Speaker with over 266 presentations in 37+ Industries
-Corporate Consultant for American Express, Intel, HBO, NBC, BMW & many more
-Global Leader of WikiTrend.org for business professionals
Learn more about Daniel at https://daniellevine.com/
About After Shock
The world’s foremost futurists reflect on 50 years of Future Shock—and look ahead to the next 50
Contributors include:
Alan Kay
Aaron Frank
Adrienne Mayor
Alexander Mankowsky
Alexandra Ivanovitch
Alisha Bhagat
Amy Zalman
Anders Sorman-Nilsson
Andra Keay
Andrew Curry
Andy Hines
Anita Sengupta
Anne Lise Kjaer
Aris Persidis
Aubrey de Grey
Barry O’Reilly
Barry Vacker
Bill Davidow
Bill Diamond
Bryan Alexander
Byron Reese
Carlos Osorio
Carver Mead
Cat Tully
Cindy Frewen
Clem Bezold
Daniel Burrus
Daniel Levine
David Brin
David Guston
David Krakauer
David J. Staley
David Weinberger
Deb Westphal
Diane M. Francis
Donna Dupont
Eleanor “Nell” Watson
Eric Daimler
Erica Bol
Erik Qualman
Fotis Sotiropoulos
George Gilder
Grady Booch
Gray Scott
Hannes Sjoblad
Harish Natarajan
Hazel Henderson
Helen Messier
Ian Khan
Ignacio Pena
Jack Uldrich
James Canton
Jane McGonigal
Jason Jackson
Jason Schenker
Jay Gambetta
Jeff Eisenach
Jeffrey C. Bauer
Jerome Glenn
Jerry Fishenden
Joe Dispenza
Joe Tankersley
Joel Garreau
John L. Petersen
John M. Smart
John Sack
John Sanei
John Schroeter
Jonathan Venn
José Morey
Kaitlyn Sadtler
Kirk Borne
Klee Irwin
Kris Østergaard
Lisa Bodell
Maciej Kranz
Martin Guigui
Martin Rees
Maggie Greyson
Michael Tomczyk
Michel Laberge
Mick Ebeling
Moon Ribas
Naveen Jain
Neil Jacobstein
Newt Gingrich
Patricia Lustig & Gill Ringland
Paul Saffo
Paul Stimers
Po Bronson & Arvind Gupta
Ray Kurzweil
Rebecca Costa
Richard Browning
Richard Slaughter
Richard Watson
Richard Yonck
Rodrigo Nieto Gómez
Rohit Bhargava
Ross Dawson
Ruth Miller
Sanjiv Chopra & Pankaj K Vij
Sohail Inayatullah
Sridhar Mahadevan
Stan Rosen
Stephanie Mehta
Steve Waite
Tanya Accone
Terrence (Terry) Sejnowski
Teun Koetsier
Theodore Jay Gordon
Thomas Frey
Timothy Chou
Vikram Mansharamani
Wolfgang Fengler
Zoltan Istvan
Full Transcript : Hi friends and welcome to the Ian Khan show. You’re listening to a special episode of The aftershock series, which where I interview co contributors to the recent book aftershock. My guest today is Daniel Levine, who’s one of the world’s best known trans experts. He’s named the ultimate guru of cool by CNN, and he’s a frequent guest on TV and radio. He’s the director of avant garde Institute, based out of New York helps people understand the future. Let’s speak with Daniel. Hi, Daniel. Welcome to the Ian Khan Show. Hey, I’m so excited to be speaking with you. Because you are quite the man you are the person who is the go to person for trends. And you’ve been doing this for many, many years. You and I are both part of Aftershock. This is something our good friend Joshua put together. And we’ll talk about that and many other things in the few minutes.
Welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. And I wish we were here in person, but I guess that’s gonna have to wait a little bit. So COVID has changed the world? I don’t know. And I don’t think Toffler wrote about that, among many things that he did, but it’s really I mean, I’ve been speaking with so many different people. Nobody was expecting it. Yes, everybody knows there are many viruses and they are sitting in some labs, but nobody was expecting this kind of change to happen to an everyday world. What are your thoughts off this 2020 being the year off? COVID-19? You know, there’s really only one story this year, right? It’s the main thing that’s affecting so many people’s lives. And it’s where it’s gonna go. I think, you know, a lot of the people who you’re interviewing on your podcast, have a lot of ideas about that. And I’m sure we’ll get into some of those things today, where I think I’m probably different from many of the people that you speak with is I don’t consider myself a futurist. I consider myself a trends expert. And by that, I mean, I don’t look at sort of pie in the sky prognostications about what might be happening 50 years from now, I’m really looking at the next, you know, three to five years and even closer than that, based on things that we’re actually going through right now. So my specialty, along with the avant garde Institute is looking at changes that are happening in culture as we are living them. And then extrapolating what that may look like. And I think that’s important, because it’s really difficult for most people to see where they are when they’re in the middle of it. You know, so many people right now are freaking out about, about the future, the near future, because it’s hard to see what the next few months are gonna look like, when you’re so deeply impacted by what’s going on right now. You agree? Yep. Yeah, absolutely. And bang on you’re you’re right. And I’ll tell you what other people have been talking about. So among all the contributors of Aftershock, I probably have had so far, maybe 80% of all the contributors who I’ve spoken with 80% of them, until now. And these people, some of them are doctors, some of their MD, some of them are specialists, some of them the head of SETI search for extraterrestrial, and doesn’t like people like that. And everybody has a different perspective on especially COVID-19, that we’re all in it together. First of all, nobody was expecting it to happen. Number two, the disruption on common life and all the things that we find are right around us and we have access to them. Seven, you cannot do it. So it’s been a shock for everybody. That’s been a bit of a shock for everybody that you can’t just go out anymore, you can go out and you can go for a meeting. And so that disruption of life, something that Toffler talks in a different way that, hey, the pace of change will be rapid. But it’s more like a direction change rather than an amplification of that what I think is really interesting about one of the things that’s very interesting, about tumblers book was his main thesis was that we’re going through this malaise that we’re going to have because the world is moving so quickly, and you know, we can’t catch up. We weren’t built physically to catch up to how quickly the world is moving right now. But what sort of strikes me and I think sort of taps a hopeful note for us is that the world seems to be moving so much faster now than even Toffler expected. And yet, humans have sort of proven to be adaptable. And we have caught up in many ways. You know, that Malays is I don’t really see that as being a major part of our culture, especially when you look at younger people who, you know, people who who grew up in the were born in the internet era that’s just normal and natural to them and people who who are sort of born into eras that seem natural to them, and their genes are not don’t seem to be holding them back from surviving and thriving in the society. So I think I like that from I think it’s sort of a positive note for us with what’s happening with with the COVID crisis. And I think, you know, when you look at this crisis in terms of like, the next year, your job, my job, and many of your people who are watching this, people are writing them, and rightly so. But if you take a longer term view, if you look at your work and your life over the next 10 years, then I think things become feel feel better, like the world will go back to a semblance of the way it was before. Do you think so? I think we reached you know, top and I’m going to backtrack a little bit you You talk a lot about and I’ve been following your work as well, you talk a lot about the adaptation of trends, you talk a lot about, Hey, this is what’s happening down the line, this is potentially what will happen. Interesting, amazing stuff, I love it, bang on. And here comes COVID-19. It just amplifies and accelerates some parts of our life, for example, web conferencing, or remote work or work from home or whatever you call it. And nobody expected that to happen at such a fast pace. Now, we’re all talking about, Hey, this is the new normal, I don’t think this is the new normal, I think the new normal is coming until we adapt and go through this change. But here we go. We have had rapid acceleration in some things. And some things will be amazing, because now we’ve really found out these cool things to do and better way of doing things. I think the new normal interest me the tomorrow that we will arrive that after we stabilize, and we cannot have this crisis is something that excites me, because that will be a better, faster, more efficient world. And probably this, you know, it’s like going on, it’s like a boost. It’s a shot of adrenaline that humanity’s going through. And I think it’s amazing, it’s taken us out from that malaise and rapidly accelerated what we do. Right? You know, I, I’ve heard people refer to this place that we’re in right now as either the great reset, or the great pause. And I think you probably have heard both of those as well. And many people watching. And to me, those are sort of different ideas, it’s different ways of looking at what we’re going through and how we’re going to come out of it. The great reset, I think is talking about, you know, the kind of thing that you were just mentioning that we’re going to come out of it in a different kind of a world than we are today. And no one’s sure exactly what that’s going to look like. But it will be created. And then the other side of it is it’s the great pause that we’re just sort of taking a few months now to everyone’s stopping their lives. Not everyone, but most people sort of stopping their lives, pausing their lives. And then things after COVID ends, everything will get back to normal. Yeah, yeah, those feel like two different ideas to me. Yeah. And I actually am more of a great pause guy. So I think that there will be changes for sure, of course. But when I look at, you know, humanity, and the basis between the way that we act, it has to do with, you know, who people are, we’re social beings, we’re selfish beings. And all of those sort of core things about humanity don’t change. So I’m reading and hearing so many people talk about, oh, this can be fantastic, we’re going to come out of it, you know, loving our neighbors more and appreciating our lives more. And unfortunately, I think for the most part, Bs, and one of the reasons I see that is when you look at in the United States, the the stimulus money that the government is giving to small businesses is being first of all, it’s being distributed through banks who are distributing it to their biggest clients, because they get the biggest fees on that. And it’s going to publicly traded companies who are giving or giving money to their investors, we’re in the middle of this thing. And it’s not changing people’s behavior, it’s sort of people are talking about, it’s gonna be wonderful. But what I’m seeing is people are people, unfortunately, and in, you know, a few years from now, it’s going to be closer to the great pause than the great reset. Do you think a reason for that is the fact that our world is, let’s say, moving fast, because of technology and all of these things, distractions, and they’ll all of that is still I mean, people are watching more Netflix right now. They’re watching more television and online shows and all of that, right? So they’re distracting themselves with all of these things, despite the fact that we’re all sitting at home. I think there could be a reason for the fact that people will go back to their old way of doing things maybe after six months or a year or two years, is because of the world around them. It’s because that’s what the world around them looks like. And I agree with you that there’s a huge possibility that people will just Come out of this once they go back to their jobs, and they’ll feel good for a month. But then after two months, they’ll you know, it’s like going on a vacation one month coming back from your vacation, you feel you never gone on a vacation. Right. Right. And so it’s possible. Yes, it’s interesting. Let me let me say something about a more sort of positive level, which is that, you know, trends, some, some trends change quickly. And some change, some change more incrementally. And I think there’s a lot of people who are hoping that this is such a big deal, that it’s going to, you know, create a sea change in the way people act and the way the world is. And in some cases, it will. But in some cases, what’s actually I think is going to happen is that more incremental change, and if I look back at 2008, after the Great Recession, it did change the way that people acted in their lives, especially younger people, when I think about young millennials at the time, who felt that maybe it’s not the way that they want to live their lives. It’s not like their parents accruing stuff that sort of led to the so called sharing economy, people not wanting to be indebted, as much, especially younger people, it could change people’s attitudes. And I think this will change people’s attitudes in a similar way. And depending on how deep the economic malaise is, it could change people’s attitudes in the way that our, you know, grandparents and some of your watchers, great grandparents change their attitudes after the Great Depression, they lived in a depression mentality the rest of their lives, that that very well could happen. I think the key is, and I feel this is my opinion, that people who despite these times of whatever change, they’re going through people who continue to invest in themselves, they continue to read, they continue to learn, they continue to do all these things that can so that they are getting ready for when things open up, they can do things better, I think they are, they will get the maximum benefit out of this, we’re constantly on a path of self improvement, because that’s what change creates change. You know, that’s the other side of change is self improvement world is changing fast. You look at yourself and improve yourself faster and faster and faster. So I really hope those are gonna come out on the top. I do believe also that all these stimuluses that governments are giving in Canada, United States, a few other places, it’s going to come back in form of taxes in form of other things. So it’s not free money that’s being distributed. But of course, it’s helping people keep doors open and, you know, small businesses wherever they’re, they’re struggling. So I think it’s a great thing. But But people also need to keep Be aware that, you know, it’s got to be paid back with interest. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. I want to ask you about trends. You know, many times you probably come across people, who are the naysayers who don’t believe in your trends, who say, hey, Daniel, I don’t think that’s going to happen. I don’t think cars will ever fly. Come on, tell us something different. How do you work with those people? Or what’s your response to those people? Well, to be honest, it I actually don’t usually get those responses, mainly, because when I’m talking about things that will happen, I’m informed by things that are already happening. So I’m using those as examples. This is how things morph in the world. So let me give you an example. You know, I’m often asked, What’s the difference between a trend and a fad, because people often confuse those two things. And one of the main there’s a few differentiators, but one of the main ones is longevity. So you know, fad is oftentimes something that happens comes on quickly and leaves quickly. And a trend is something more long lasting, that you can make a business plan around. So when it comes to like wearable technology, is that a trend or a fad? wearable technology? And my argument is that wearable technology is a trend because humans have been wearing technology since almost the beginning of humanity when it was a sword by their side will is any particular product, you know, watch or headset or anything is that the trend probably not the those things. Anything that has a brand on it is usually a fad or part of a bigger trend. So by using examples like that, I think that this is a way that I explain where the world is heading. And that it’s not that that’s why I’m not making these, you know, guesses about 50 years from now. But what some of the things are trends and fads that you’re seeing come out of this COVID-19 crises? Well, I think one of the thing that struck me when you were telling me that you’re speaking to people from all different industries, you know, what I do is I sort of bring those all together to understand the big trends because trends are not siloed by industry trends are about what people are thinking and feeling. And you know, we’re all looking for the same trends to be answered in every part of our lives, the cars we buy the clothing, we wear, the vacations, we will eventually take, again, for ourselves. It’s about it’s about lifestyle and the way that we perceive ourselves and want to be perceived by others. So what struck me when you were telling me this about all these people from different industries is I think one of the things that ties all of that together, is that we’re seeing right now an acceleration of many of the trends that were already in motion. And I think that I’m sure you’re seeing that as well, he and this is sort of a time, this, this, this culture quake that we’re in is accelerating a lot of the things that were already happening. So it’s not necessarily about starting completely new things. A great example is exactly what we’re doing right here talking by video. This is something that was in motion before, but is now on steroids. And there are so many examples of that across the industrial spectrum, Bradley said there’s many industries, Daniels that are that are very slow in adoption, I work across different verticals. And I see some of them being very slow when it comes to adapting to change, for example, financial industry takes a lot of time to do things, because they’re inherently they’re got a complex structure, the accounting world there, they have practices that go 500 years back. And so for these industries, I think it’s, it’s a really great time to look at these new trends that are shaping the world adapt to new ways of working, and use all these things, trends to create more efficiency in business. I mean, that’s what technology does, it creates efficiency, it helps you, you know, reduce whatever expense, so on and so forth. So I think it’s a, it’s a great way to create more value. And to go back to the drawing board, I’ve been telling people, hey, you’re doing if you’re doing nothing right now, then go back to the drawing board, strategize with your team every single day. And think of new ideas that can perhaps make your business different. And I see a lot of companies doing that as well. Daniel, I know we don’t have a lot of time, help us understand the top three suggestions, recommendations, advice, guidance that you would give viewers watching this. And we’ve got a diverse set of viewers watching this, what should they do in order to adapt or look into trends? Or how to implement trends into their businesses? And kind of, is there a step by step approach? Is there a process that you recommend you teach? Thanks, the the, you know, trends are extremely powerful, because they show you what customers are thinking and feeling they’re showing you about the world from a from a market pull perspective, I think I wouldn’t have a job and maybe do and a lot of people who work in marketing and sort of adjuncts to marketing, if people or business people in particular, were really good at seeing themselves from outside of themselves. That’s what marketers are great at marketers, or, in general, I think are the specialists and seeing the business world from outside of the business world from seeing it from the customer’s perspective. And that’s what the power of trends, the trends are like the secret sauce, of understanding getting inside the brain of what people are thinking and feeling and what’s motivating them to act. And so in a case like we’re in right now, it’s there’s a lot of motivators behind what’s motivating, you know, what, why people are acting, that the two most obvious ones concerns about health and concerns about the economy. And those two things are where we’re going to see the biggest changes, just like 911 changed everything. In regards to security, this thing, this crisis will change, you know, everything quote, unquote, in regard to the way we perceive our health, that will be one of the long lasting effects. So a powerful way that your watchers can understand that is by discovering what their customers are looking for, in a bigger sense, not just in their particular business, again, because trends are not siloed. by industry, their customers are looking for the same to buy or the same products and services based on the way that they’re feeling and the way that they are in the world. And as I said, what’s happening, and one way to track those is on trend watching sites. And I’ll just give a little plug for for wiki trends, which is wiki trend.org. It’s run by the avanti guidance Institute, which is the company that I’m the director of it’s a free website that’s updated every day with some of the most interesting and important trends that we’re seeing. Come across our desks every day and working with people like you and people like me who spent what, you know, we spend our lives our business lives looking at the future and what that’s going to bring to businesses. It’s an extremely powerful thing for business to understand. And, and I think it’s a benefit that, you know, it’s sort of a silver lining, if you could call it that of what we’re going through right now is that people like you and me are indemand right now, Daniel again, aftershock is Daniel has contributed to aftershock, I’m in it and we’ve got 50 other plus other people, amazing people who’ve written this book, we came together and wrote this. It’s really thick. It’s a thick volume, but every chapter is different. That’s what I love about aftershock. It’s available on Amazon, please, folks, if you’re listening or watching, buy a copy of Amazon. And also Daniel, tell us where people can find you and check your work that you’ve given us one website, the E trends.org. Tell me more if there’s other URLs that we can visit. Great, thank you, Daniel levine.com. That’s my personal website. But my business I’m the head of the avant garde Institute at avanti guide.com. And yes, you’re all welcome. And I love talking about this stuff. Give me a call and let’s chat. And thank you Daniel. So Daniel levine.com, event guide.com, Vicki trends.org. Folks, Daniel is the person to go to when you want to learn about trends, what’s shaping the world where we’re headed, what you should do what you should ignore what you should pay attention to. My friend Daniel Levine, according to aftershock really amazing, gentlemen, as well. Daniel, thank you so much for your time. I thank you so much for inviting me. And everybody listening, health and wealth and good future thinking. Absolutely. Let’s hope for the best and I know the future is definitely what we created today what we focus on today. So folks get to work, figure out your tomorrow despite the disruption that’s happening, and you will come out shining Thank you so much. Thank you. Hey, friend, this is Ian Khan. If you like what you saw on my video, then please subscribe to my YouTube channel and be inspired every single day with innovative content that keeps you fresh, updated and ready for the future. For more information. Also visit my website at Ian khan.com
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