May 2012, Vol. 13, No. 5

• Why Lean and Hungry Entrepreneurs Succeed
• Seeing Coastal Erosion Before It Happens
• The Future of Predictive Analytics Is Bright
• A Futurist's Summer Reading List
• What's new in THE FUTURIST magazine

Why Lean and Hungry Entrepreneurs Succeed

The adage that "success breeds success" may not hold true for new start-up companies. Entrepreneurs starting with less personal liquidity may in fact be more resourceful, cautious, and successful, according to a study of Norwegian entrepreneurs.

Finance professors Jarle Møen (Norwegian School of Economics) and Hans K. Hvide (University of Aberdeen) found that entrepreneurs in the top quartile of personal wealth fared worse in terms of profit than those with fewer assets. They theorize that, because financial freedom offers a buffer against poor performance, the wealthier entrepreneurs are often more experimental and less intimidated by the need for large profits.

Less-wealthy entrepreneurs, on the other hand, work with less room for error. They may also be more receptive to financial advice from investors and from the lenders looking over their shoulders, the researchers suggest.

"Normally, banks and co-investors will serve as a corrective, and the more risk you take, the more critical they will be," says Møen. "If you finance the whole thing yourself, you can simply start up--and are often a bit too optimistic. … It has been normal to see a lack of capital as an obstacle to entrepreneurship and innovation. Our findings nuance this picture. If new businesses are not disciplined by a certain scarcity of capital, both the entrepreneur and investors should be very much on the alert."

Source: Norwegian School of Economics

Seeing Coastal Erosion Before It Happens

British researchers expect climate change to alter Great Britain's coastal areas, but they don't know for sure what the change will look like or how severe it will be. A four-year collaborative model endeavor, the iCoast Project, may provide definitive answers.

The project brings together researchers from across Great Britain to build models that will simulate what Great Britain's coastlines will look like up to 100 years into the future.

Britain's coastal areas are more prone to flooding and erosion than are the shorelines of inland rivers and lakes, according to the researchers, who anticipate even greater wear and tear upon the coasts this century due to climate change and sediment starvation. Science has greatly improved its abilities to analyze and forecast such coastal landscape changes in the last few years, they add.

The iCoast simulations will develop new models that could accurately portray key variables such as the directions of tidal waves, patterns of storm weather, and the overall sensitivity of the shorelines. Researchers will use this knowledge to more effectively manage risks of flooding and erosion.

The project will take an estimated four years to complete and will cost £2.9 million, with funding provided by Britain's Natural Environment Research Council. Britain's Environment Agency (EA) is also partnering on the project.

Source: University of Southampton

The Future of Predictive Analytics Is Bright

Predictive Analytics World kicked off its inaugural Toronto conference April 25 and 26, bringing together data scientists from around the world. "We are in the midst of a paradigm shift from behavior prediction to influence prediction," said conference chair and founder Eric Siegel.

Predictive analytics uses customer monitoring and data collection to improve marketing efforts and profitability. The field has grown steadily as a result of the ease of online tracking, but commercial use of predictive analytics dates back to 1903, when statistician Robert Fisher invented the credit score.

Takeaway findings from Predictive Analytics World Toronto:

• A Norwegian telecom named Telenor used predictive analytics to predict which customers would drop their telecom contract if they were contacted for marketing purposes. The company reduced churn (customer unsubscribes) by 36% as a result, and the campaign return on investment increased by a factor of 11. (Using predictive analytics, researchers also discovered that a cell phone customer is 700% more likely to cancel if someone in his or her social network does.)
• MTV learned to predict which words in tweets and Facebook posts would produce the biggest viral reaction. When it implemented the new strategy around the launch of the Video Music Awards, MTV.com saw a 40% increase in hourly unique visits, a 55% increase in hourly page views, and a 36% gain in video views; it also set a new Twitter tweets per second record on a given subject: 8,868. "Lady Gaga" tweets drove 40% of incremental MTV.com traffic.
• The salary for statisticians will go up two to three times in the next few years, largely as a result in the growth of unstructured data from social media channels, according to IBM.

Source: Predictive Analytics World

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Why Should You Book Your Registration for WorldFuture 2012 Today?

Don't miss your chance to meet visionaries and thought leaders shaping our understanding of the future, such as Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project; Brian David Johnson, Intel Futurist; Geordie Rose, creator of the D-Wave One, the world's first commercial quantum computer, named Canadian Innovator of the Year for 2011 by the National Post; Edie Weiner, president of Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc., and co-author of Future Think; Naveen Jain, founder of Moon Express; Josh Schonwald, journalist and author of the forthcoming book The Taste of Tomorrow: Dispatches from the Future of Food; and John Smart, head of the Accelerating Studies Foundation and the Brain Preservation Foundation.

Get up close and personal with inventions and inventors who are defining innovation for the new decade, such as the makers of the Life Technologies Ion Proton™ Sequencer (pictured), which can read your genome (all 3 billion base pairs) in one day for $1,000.

Learn more or register today!

A Futurist's Summer Reading List

Prepare for WorldFuture 2012 by catching up on the latest futurist books on such topics as education, social networking, resource management, and food technology. Many of the authors of these books will be attending or speaking at the World Future Society's annual meeting in Toronto. Read more about their sessions in the preliminary program, and make sure you're registered for the conference to meet the authors this summer!

Networked: The New Social Operating System
Lee Rainie (Opening Plenary Session: Future of the Internet) and Barry Wellman
Networked takes a look at how social networks enable learning, problem solving, decision making, and personal interaction, as well as at the challenges the networks pose.

Screen Future
Brian David Johnson (Opening Plenary Session: Waking Up the Algorithm)
Screen Future explores how the personal devices we will have in the future are being shaped by people, technology, and economics.

Flash Forward! Rethinking Learning
Karen Grose (Education Summit)
Flash Forward presents educational practices that address the challenges of today's education system.

Reinventing Life: A Guide to Our Evolutionary Future
Jeffrey Scott Coker (Session: Reinventing Life: A Guide to Our Evolutionary Future)
Reinventing Life discusses how society is rapidly—and radically—changing the biology of life and our responsibility as evolutionary stewards.

The Biggest Wake Up Call in History
Richard Slaughter (Session: Global MegaCrisis: How Bad Will It Get? What Strategies?)
The imbalance between our way of life and the Earth's natural limits cannot keep up forever, Slaughter warns in this provocative book.

How Asia Can Shape the World—From the Era of Plenty to the Era of Scarcities
Joergen Oerstroem Moeller (Session: Asian Economies over the Next Decade)
How Asia Can Shape the World details the economic and social impacts of Asia's growth in the coming decades.

Granddad's Farmhouse Porch Stories
Don C. Davis (Session: The Future We Ask For)
Granddad's Farmhouse Porch Stories is a collection of classic faith stories retold with a focus on the technology and global family of tomorrow.

The Taste of Tomorrow: Dispatches from the Future of Food
Josh Schonwald (Session: Cobia or Barramundi? And Other Choices on Tomorrow's Menu)
The Taste of Tomorrow takes a look at the people, trends, and technologies that will create the food we eat in the future.

What’s in THE FUTURIST magazine? (Members Only)

A selection of articles, special reports, and other future-focused material on our Web site that you might have missed. Members may sign in to read and comment. Not a member? Join now at /renew.

A Thousand Years Young

By Aubrey de Grey

An "anti-aging activist" identifies the medical and biochemical advances that could eventually eliminate all the wear and tear that our bodies and minds suffer as we grow old. Those who undergo continuous repair treatments could live for millennia, remain healthy throughout, and never fear dying of old age. Read more.

Engineering the Future of Food

By Josh Schonwald

Tomorrow's genetically modified food and farmed fish will be more sustainable and far healthier than much of what we eat today—if we can overcome our fears and embrace it. Here's how one foodie learned to stop worrying and love "Frankenfood." Read more.

The Future of the Commercial Sex Industry

By Emily Empel

As new technologies impact the products and services of the sex industry, other businesses will find new opportunities in the world's oldest professions. Read more.

Anticipating an "Anything Goes" World of Online Porn

By Roger Howard

Increased exposure to more-intensive pornographic imagery and content online will make future generations less sensitive to its effects. Read more.

What’s in THE FUTURIST magazine? (Public)

VISIONS: Futurists Review the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show

By Patrick Tucker and Thomas Frey

Two Futurist editors rate the gadgets that may soon make a big difference in our lives. Read more.

To Predict or to Build the Future? Reflections on the Field and Differences between Foresight and La Prospective

By Michel Godet

A pioneer from the French school of la prospective discusses the development of futures-studies methodologies and the imperative of making methods accessible to all. Read more.