Thomas Frey’s Futurist Speaking Topics:
1) Business Trends in the Post Recession Economy
All of our markets, systems, and technologies have become incredibly fluid, and much like a floating vessel, we are heading to parts unknown. To most, the chaotic nature of interconnecting trends and the extreme possibilities appear at times like a spinning compass needle. Economic uncertainties create great opportunities for those who can spot them, and that’s where I come in.
This talk uncovers the driving forces behind the turbulence and focuses on where the opportunities lie. It is the perfect opening keynote for an event, setting a positive tone with a message of hope for tomorrow’s business leaders.
2) The Future of Colleges & Universities: A Massive Peeling Apart
As the disruptive forces of the Internet bear down on colleges and universities, everyone is beginning to feel the leading winds of this impending storm, but few have a clear view of the changes to come. Newspapers, travel agencies, yellow pages, and record labels are all industries that have been greatly affected by the Internet, and each foretell a different version of what may lie ahead.
College 2.0 will witness a massive peeling apart process. Learning will become separated from the classroom. Courses will be created organically and formed around an on-demand, any-time, any-place delivery models. Professors will declare their independence and work for multiple institutions rather than just one specific college. Accreditation will shift from the Institution to the course and to the individual. And textbooks, the ink-on-paper version that we know today, will all but disappear.
However, unlike most doom and gloom forecasts, this talk is as much about helping colleges survive as it is about predicting the forces that are intent on unraveling them. -
3) The Future of Innovation
As unemployment hovers at record levels and countries around the world look for new ways to correct the imbalances in their economies, the one current theme hear over and over again is the need for more innovation. But not all innovations are created equal. The world around us has accelerated far past anything that worked previously on the innovation front, and continues to move into virgin territory where old rules no longer apply. So where will the creative minds of tomorrow take us? What are the forecasts for future sciences, talent trends, intellectual property breakthroughs, and societal shifts that will change the way business works in the future? This talk helps listeners climb aboard a fascinating journey into what’s hot in tomorrow’s world of innovation. –
4) The City of the Future
Great communities are founded on great ideas. At the same time, our most admired communities become a magnet, attracting the brightest minds. The relational effect is clear: Bright minds make a community great, and great communities attract bright minds. With this in mind, the city of the future will be designed around eight dimensions of human connectedness, connecting great people with great ideas. A connected community is a vibrant community, Ideas are exchanged, energies are exchanged, and people become extremely loyal to the networks that connect them to the rest of the world. While it is now easy to communicate with people all over the world, we can only physically interact with people and places locally. Human connectedness involves much more than just communication. And its not just about business life, family life, or what we do for entertainment. It is all of that and much more
5) The Future of Transportation
Transportation technology is progressing at a much slower pace than some of the other sciences like information technology, biotech, and nanotechnology. As an example, the world’s human speed record was set in 1969, a full 37 years ago. In the near future, automotive companies will focus on fully automated vehicles where people can “punch in” or “speak” the place they want to go to and the vehicle will automatically take them there. This “control feature” will open up huge additional markets for automotive companies to sell to the elderly and other physically impaired groups. New power systems, social transitions, demographic shifting, and consumer trends have positioned the auto industry for radical change. The Future of Automobile Transportation.
6) The Future of Money – Altering Our Dependencies and its Affect on the Flow of Money
Every transaction involves two sides – the payer and the payee. Throughout history businesses have lived or died on the timing and flow of money and deal brokers place a huge emphasis on controlling both sides of a transaction. All non-cash money transactions in the past involved a time float to allow time for the money to clear their respective accounts, and even cash transactions involved delays in getting posted to a bank account. Future transactions will be real-time and this seemingly minor change will revolutionize the shape and tempo of business
7) The Future of Agriculture – Soon to Become the Coolest Profession on Earth
Can better food create better people? Will a better food supply lead to healthier, stronger, better thinking people? This is exactly the premise that is driving many of the advances in farming today. To understand agribusiness in the future, consider a model that conveniently exists right now – in the human-food interface. Metabolism is a term used to describe the various chemical reactions that take place in every cell of the body. Intermediary metabolism is a vast web of interconnected reactions by the constituent parts of the cell. Every metabolism is different. Gaining an ability to read and monitor a person’s metabolic reaction to the food eaten will cause the agriculture industry to evolve with great precision around the tiny niche demands of consumers.
About Thomas Frey:
Watch Thomas Frey's Futurist Video
The greatest value in understanding the future comes from spotting the major cultural, demographic, societal, and economic shifts early and translating them into viable business strategies,” says Tom.
As the Executive Director and Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute, he works closely with the Institute’s Senior Fellows and Board of Visionaries to develop original research studies, which enables him to speak on unusual topics, translating trends into unique opportunities.
As part of the celebrity speaking circuit, Tom continually pushes the envelope of understanding, headlining events with some of today’s most recognizable figures: Tom Peters, Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammad Yunus; Jack Welch; Rudy Giuliani; Prime Minister of Spain, Felipe González Márquez and Joseph Stiglitz.
His futurist talks have captivated people ranging from high level government officials to executives in Fortune 500 companies including NASA, IBM, AT&T, GE, Hewlett-Packard, Lucent Technologies, First Data, Boeing, Capital One, Bell Canada, Visa, Ford Motor Company, Qwest, Allied Signal, Hunter Douglas, Direct TV, International Council of Shopping Centers, National Association of Federal Credit Unions, Times of India, Leaders in Dubai, HSM ExpoManagement, and many more.
Because of his work inspiring inventors and other revolutionary thinkers, the Boulder Daily Camera has referred to him as the “Father of Invention”. The Denver Post and Seattle Post Intelligencer have referred to him as the “Dean of Futurists”.
Before launching the DaVinci Institute, Tom spent 15 years at IBM as an engineer and designer where he received over 270 awards, more than any other IBM engineer. He is also a past member of the Triple Nine Society (High I.Q. society over 99.9 percentile).
Tom has been a columnist for the Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, and Boulder County Business Report, and is the author of the 1998 book “Inventions of Impact”. He currently writes a newsletter entitled “News from the Future” and has written numerous articles on a wide range of futurist topics. He has also been a contributing writer for The Futurist Magazine and is the Editor of the Impact Lab, an online emerging technology blog which was recently rated by Popular Science Magazine as one of the “top five science blogs in the known universe”.
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