Your Visible FutureMy IdeaConnection Interview with Vern Burkhardt

“One thing you can know for sure about the future: in any battle with the past, the future always wins” Flash Foresight, page 170

[Vern’s note: Technology forecaster and business strategist Daniel Burrus is offering IdeaConnection readers a free, no obligations 6-month subscription to Technotrends Newsletter, now in its 28th year of publication and read by leaders worldwide. To take advantage of this offer go to this Technotrends site dedicated to IdeaConnection readers.]

[Vern’s second note: Daniel Burrus has said, “For your readers in the U.S. we’ve put together a fun thing to try out. At no cost to them they can text BURRUS to 99000 on their smart phone and they’ll get back a little web app which allows them to see my blogs, access my twitter, look at my videos, and they’ll receive a special handout with my Top 20 Technology Trends for 2012 which I put together for your readers.”]

Vern Burkhardt (VB): In Flash Foresight, you say that over the past 28 years you discovered 7 flash foresight triggers. How did this come about?

Daniel Burrus: After I started Burrus Research in 1983 I developed what I call flash foresight triggers through my own research as well as in working with clients. For the last 28 years I’ve not only been delivering keynote speeches around the world, but I’ve also been doing a lot of strategic advising. This entails working with CEO’s and their direct reports of Fortune 50 sized companies, midsized companies, and even a few startups. I’ve been helping them look at how they can use hard and soft trends to shape their future, to gain new competitive advantages, and to create new products, services, and markets. The triggers started to emerge as I started to come up with ways to help clients create game-changing strategies.

VB: Presumably helping startups poses special challenges?

Daniel Burrus: Whether you are big or small you have challenges.

One of the triggers I came upon early in my thinking was whatever problem you’ve got, that’s not it. After all you’re smart, you would have solved it by now if it were your real problem. You’re working on the wrong one. As I started coming up with solutions that worked for clients I realized it was about discovering what the real problem was.

The trigger of taking your biggest problem and skipping it is about peeling the onion to find the real problem so you can quickly solve it. It’s one of the triggers because once the real problem becomes visible, you will get a flash of foresight which will allow you to see the invisible opportunity and move ahead in a new way.

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