The combined forces of the reinvention and empowerment economies that have dominated recent times spur the rampant need to reconstruct our world. Due to the financial meltdown and consequent world collapse of yesterday, as well as the societal shift in power catalyzed by the all-encompassing democratizing power of the Web, today gives way to a union of these two economies. It also breeds the dawn of an age of triumphant transformation; an era which will be catalyzed by an emerging breed of social capitalism and collective creativity.
The palpable need to reinvent the world’s infrastructure and redistribute the power structure which governs global culture becomes less phenomenon and more accepted paradigm. As a result, the core emphasis of the world’s leading brands and leaders continues to move from re-architected operating platform to re-imagined ideological aspiration.
As this sea change emerges, the world’s infrastructure continues its innovation-spurred reconstitution with next generation technology that can cure modern day ills at its core. We sit upon a revolution analogous to the dawn of the industrial age, and face a society whose currency is creativity. A society arrives, yearning to unleash the creative prowess that can, and will, change the world and enable us to move forward because of the ideas and notions that have the power to change how things are done not the platforms.
In today’s environment, leading brands and visionary luminaries see the metamorphic power of the technology we can avail ourselves, and seek to use it beyond connective agent or business driver, but rather as an organism of true and needed societal change.
They recognize this new paradigm and place creativity and experimentation at the forefront of business advancement. And, they place a willingness to use technology to enable the world to move not only at the speed of business but at the speed of culture and imagination, atop their utmost priorities and areas of focus.
While GE can eco-imagine the smart grid of tomorrow and while Apple can create the computers and applications that will offer a more modern approach to education, the prosperity of tomorrow will not be determined by the new infrastructures put in place to advance a greener or more informed future. Tomorrow’s innovative successes will be predicated on only one thing and that is our world’s ability to transform technology from agent of connection and production to operative of transformative societal and cultural change. We see this in brand efforts ranging from Pepsi’s Performance with Purpose (i.e. Refresh) to Dow’s new global effort to engage the world in a joint movement to recognize water sustainability.
Technology has become our nation’s drug and the future will be predicated on whether that drug is used to fuel revenue driving addiction, or procure creatively induced inspiration.