When it comes to innovation, ‘We ain’t seen nothin yet!’. If you are in business, if you live in the modern world, your world is going to be rocked. What’s your attitude toward the future? Are you watching for the big waves at the horizon? Do you know what’s coming?

Innovation can be slowed and dammed but it can’t be stopped. The acceleration in the flow of ideas is the greatest story of our time. Here are the five global surges that will drive innovation for decades to come.

1. Growth of Knowledge
2. Digitalization and Ubiquitous Connectivity
3. Globalization and the Rise of the Market Economy.
4. Rise out of Poverty
5. Rise of Education in Asia

1. Growth of Knowledge

How many books were in Thomas Jefferson’s library?

1815, Thomas Jefferson sold his 6,487 books to the US government to replace the books in the Library of Congress destroyed by fire in the war of 1812. Thomas Jefferson’s personal library was the largest in the US and one of the largest in the world. At that time, it was possible for a single person to own and read all the printed books of your language and time.

Just 8 to 10 generations later, the Library of Congress contains over 13 million books, 100 million other items, and is staffed by 5,000 employees.

Patents

A hundred and ten years ago, some government officials thought we should shut down the patent office because all that can be invented has already been invented. Today, the backlog of US patents is nearing 800,000 and growing at almost 100,000 per year.

Internet

In June of 1993, there were 130 websites and less than 3 million users on the internet. Today there are over 1 billion users. A University of California at Berkeley study showed in 2002, that the Web contained 167 terabytes of data that was accessible to all users, plus another 91,850 terabytes in the deep Web where access is controlled. By the end of 2006, we will send about 60 billion emails a day

2. Digitalization and Ubiquitous Connectivity

Within 10 years,

Nearly every person and man-made thing on the planet will be directly connected to everyone and everything else via the internet. Most will be connected on 24/7, high-speed wireless networks

Content and Communication Digital

Not only are we connected but all content: text, graphics, pictures, music, and movies as well as our communications: email, IMs, phone calls, and video calls will be digitalized.

Video Mobile Phone and Cameras Everywhere

Video cameras will be built into all communication and computer devices. The cameras on the outside of your mobile phone and on the inside flip-up. It’s all the same technology: digital data transmitted instantly through time and space. In addition, you video phone is likely to become your wireless credit card, global positioning device, car key, and remote for your TV.

Cost to Zero

Universal digital content and connections drive down the cost of storing information, accessing information, and communicating among people to almost zero.

3. Globalization, Rise of the Market Economy

Common Languages

If you can speak Spanish, English, and Mandarin, you can speak to 2/3rds of the world’s population. If the internet represents the future, then English and Mandarin will become the languages of business, science, and general information in our future. What’s a world like that we all can directly communicate with each other?

Fall of Communism

We have witnessed the fall of Communism as an economic system. What are the only two countries left with centralized, planned economies? North Korea, Cuba. Even Vietnam has switched to a market economy. In the last five years, China has adopted credit cards, debit cards, personal loans, and mortgages.

Capital Liquidity

We are becoming a single, worldwide capital market, where money flows wherever the best return can be found. For example, in 2005, China passed the US as number one in foreign investment and foreign investment in Research & Development. In the area of R&D, China moved from second place to doubling the level of foreign R&D investment as compared to the US investment in just one year.

4. Rise out of Poverty

For the first time in human history, more people live above the poverty line than below. Today, about 50 million new people escape poverty every year. In 2005, the world gave birth to 100 new baby billionaires

Lifespan doubles

In the last 8 generations, the life span of humans has doubled. If it takes at least 20 years to educate a knowledge worker, then doubling our lifespan has doubled or tripled everyone’s potential contribution.

5. Rise of Education in Asia

China , Communism, and an 8th Grade Education.

Decades ago, China’s communism brought a merit system to education and at least an 8^th grade education to most of the nation’s 1.3 billion people.

Exporting Universities

Over the last 25 years, the US has exported its higher education system throughout Asia and raised the quality of an Asian education. The world’s best technology university is no longer MIT, but IIT, India Institutes of Technology.

More and more top students are remaining in China, Japan, and India for their college education. The ratio of foreign students attending US universities is the lowest point since 1971.

Engineers

Well over a million new engineers and scientists graduate from colleges worldwide every year. By 2010, in just four years, 90% of the world’s engineers will live and work in Asia.

In Closing, In Beginning

All these forces are approaching critical mass. We are weaving together financial and intellectual networks, connecting

• 40 million scientists and engineers
• 100 million business people and inventors
• Digitalized, flowing knowledge, ideas, and communication
• Abundant, liquid capital
• One or two billion educated, long-living consumers
• Speaking common languages

How are nanotechnology, new fMRI machines, breakthroughs in physics, and genomic discoveries going to change our world?

What is the rate of innovation going to be like in 2010, 2015, 2025, 2050?

How are You Going to Think, Feel, and Act in a Globe Gone Wild?

If Ideas are rain drops in the long river of human progress, it’s raining throughout the world, and the monsoons, wave surges, and tsunamis of innovation are coming.

Are you going to duck into a cave and wait it out? Or are you going to make like a duck and wade on out?

Are you going to be whining and crying? Or singing and dancing in the rain?

Here’s What I’m Doing

I’m grabbing my surf board, paddling out, catching a wave, hanging ten, shooting the curl, and enjoying the ride of my life.

Globe Gone Wild!

Innovation surges. Placid waters are turning into the North Shore of Oahu. Surf’s UP!

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Michael Cushman, The Engaging Guru, wants you to master enrolling others in your truth, get the goodies of life, and change the world.  www.engagingchange.com