CEO Futures Briefing: Semiconductor shortages and educators as futurists

Each week Nikolas Badminton curates a weekly list of insights and learnings for progressive executives, world leaders and foresight practitioners – CEO Futures Briefing: Semiconductor shortages and educators as futurists.

This week we look at the Great Semiconductor Shortage, educators as futurists, the power of Hemingway’s prose, George Friedman, stealing Africa and a look at the Doomsday Clock.

Also featured is an insightful interview on the Exponential Minds Podcast with Natalie Nixon who talks about hacking creativity and the power in being a clumsy student.

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If you have questions about these things we’re sharing, or a challenge with seeing the futures for you and your organization? Reach out to speak with Nikolas today to arrange a time to talk.

Three articles to read

Everything You Need to Know About the Great Semiconductor Shortage

Ice storms, factory fires, maritime disasters and earthquakes—over the last few weeks the semiconductor industry has been hit with a near-Biblical series of disasters, causing widespread product delays and worsening geopolitical tensions between the US and China. 

The semiconductor shortage has caused shift cuts at a Ford auto plant in Kansas and a General Motors plant in Brazil, has boosted an eBay scalpers market on the PlayStation 5 and high-end graphics cards, and has forced Samsung to cancel the latest version of the Galaxy Note phone. 

“We’re waiting for the locusts story to break,” jokes Phil Amsrud, a semiconductor industry analyst with the research firm IHS Markit, who recently co-authored a report on how the shortage was affecting the automotive industry. 

Read more at VICE

Educators as Futurists: A Conversation with Stanford d.school Leaders

We recently chatted with Laura McBain and Lisa Kay Solomon of the Stanford d.school. Laura and Lisa bring their experience as educators to help leaders (and future leaders) develop a futurist mindset. Within their work, they are exploring how educators can cultivate this mindset within themselves and their learners to imagine and take action to create a yet to be realized future in which their communities are thriving. 

Read more at Education Reimagined

‘Eliminate Every Superfluous Word’

His poor head, you keep thinking as you watch Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s Hemingway. His poor bloody head. Even the corroded voice of Peter Coyote, whose narration is a study in American understatement, goes up a semitone as Hemingway—in a plane crash in Uganda, this time—sustains “yet another major head trauma.” Nine in total, spaced throughout his adult life. And that doesn’t include whatever shots he may have taken while he was boxing or drunkenly fistfighting. War to war, wife to wife, novel to novel, in all of his adventurings and embracings and abandonings, his most constant mistress may have been concussion.

Read more at The Atlantic

Three videos to watch

Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe | George Friedman

With uncanny accuracy, George Friedman has forecasted coming trends in global politics, technology, population, and culture. Now, in his new book ‘Flashpoints’, he focuses on the continent that was the cultural and power nexus of the world for five-hundred years: Europe. Analyzing the historical fault lines that have existed for centuries within the borderlands of Europe and Russia–which have been the hotbed of numerous catastrophic wars–Friedman walks readers through the flashpoints that are smoldering once again. 

The modern-day European Union was crafted in large part to minimize these built-in geopolitical tensions, but as Friedman shows with a mix of fascinating history and provocative cultural analysis, that design is failing. Flashpoints is George Friedman’s most timely book, delivering an unflinching forecast for the coming years.

Stealing Africa

Rüschlikon is a village in Switzerland with a very low tax rate and very wealthy residents. But it receives more tax revenue than it can use. This is largely thanks to one resident – Ivan Glasenberg, CEO of Glencore, whose copper mines in Zambia are not generating a large bounty tax revenue for the Zambians. Zambia has the 3rd largest copper reserves in the world, but 60% of the population live on less than $1 a day and 80% are unemployed. Based on original research into public documents, STEALING AFRICA is an investigative story of global trade and political corruption where money and natural resources only flow one way, and in the meantime poverty becomes harder to escape.

Rachel Bronson – The Doomsday Clock and the Future

A conversation that counts

Each week we dig into the archives of all of the interviews Nikolas has undertaken with the insightful and entertaining Exponential Minds Podcast. This week we feature Natalie Nixon who talks about hacking creativity and the power in being a clumsy student.

The last word…

“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

About Nikolas Badminton

Nikolas Badminton is the Chief Futurist at futurist.com and a world-renowned futurist speaker, consultant, researcher, and media producer. He helps trillion-dollar companies, progressive governments and the media shift their mindset from “what is” to “WHAT IF…” The result is empowered employees, new innovative products and incredible growth that leads to more revenues and a more resilient future.

Nikolas advised Robert Downey Jr.’s team for the ‘Age of A.I.’ documentary series, starred in ‘SMART DRUGS – a Futurist’s journey into biohacking’, and features on CTV, Global News, Sirius XM regularly. His mind-expanding research and opinion can be found on BBC, VICE, The Atlantic, Fast Company, Techcrunch, Business Insider, Huffington Post, Forbes, Sputnik and Venturebeat. 

Nikolas provides the opening chapter – ‘Start with Dystopia’ in a new book – ‘The Future Starts Now: Expert Insights into the Future of Business, Technology and Society’ for Bloomsbury. He is currently researching and writing a new book that equips executives and world leaders with insights and foresight tools to imagine disruption, strengthen strategic planning, and see unforeseen risks.Nikolas is a Fellow of The Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce – The RSA. The organization has been at the forefront of significant social impact for over 260 years with notable past fellows including Charles Dickens, Benjamin Franklin, Stephen Hawking, Nelson Mandela, and Tim Berners-Lee.