TO LOOK TO THE FUTURE, WE MUST ALSO LOOK TO THE PAST

As I sign off on our final issue of the year, I’m sitting at a café in Tel Aviv, Israel. The stories from here are for another day, but here’s one thing I took away from the juxtaposition of the country’s rich history and present-day innovation culture.

In Tel Aviv, the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation is a space created by the late President of Israel, Shimon Peres, which focuses on nurturing and highlighting Israeli innovation. On display beside a product showcase of some of the country’s most exciting high-tech start-ups – including food waste initiatives, self-driving car sensor technology and more – are ancient relics that look primitive in comparison, but have played a pivotal role in being the early building blocks for these modern-day innovations.

The lesson here? While few of these early inventors could imagine what their creations would lead to in the future, they unknowingly paved the way by creating a framework that people could draw on as the tools they had on hand got more and more sophisticated.

Still, it’s understandable to feel uneasy about imagining what's around the corner. Established businesses are under pressure to figure out how to make the boat go faster, while traditional industries must look at how to reinvent themselves before someone new comes along and disrupts them. Even on an individual level, many people are pivoting into new career paths or upskilling based on the rapidly changing workplace today.

But what makes me relax about the future is that none of the generations before us knew how to predict what was coming. Even Back To The Future’s prediction was laughable, and it was made within this century.

Designer and Massive Change Network founder Bruce Mau shared recently at Semipermanent Auckland that when given the mammoth task of redesigning the Mecca through a 20-year plan, he suggested a revision. He didn’t want to make the timeline shorter. Instead, he suggested a 1000-year plan so it would be open-sourced and adaptable to change, rather than being based on current and limiting technology, like cars.

Based off this thinking, we put it to some of New Zealand’s most inspiring business leaders to imagine what their own industries would look like 500 years from now in 2520 (page 38). We asked them to be as audacious as they wanted, as in 500 years’ time, anything is possible. What came back was some incredibly interesting ideas from the likes of Lillian Grace, Sam Stubbs, Bron Thomson, Damon Stapleton and more. It reassured me that we are more than up for the task of reimagining what the future could look like.

Within this issue, we also look at businesses and individuals that have stood the test of time and often reinvented themselves from Burger Burger (page 57), Garage Project (page 30) and Kris Sowersby (page 66). None of them claim to know what’s next for their sector, but they all know how to adapt a winning formula to a changing world.

We hope it gives you confidence when moving forward into a future where we're being tasked with reimagining everything.

And as for those predictions for what New Zealand’s industries will look like in 500 years’ time? Lets just say we might have to bury this issue of Idealog in a time capsule deep in the ground so that someone, someday can see whether we got it right.