CEO Tim Vasko's Speaks at Island Tech 2005

Oct 19 2005, Victoria BC

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough. - or so says Albert Einstein

This is good news for procrastinators - though there aren't many in this room.

Today's mass of global trends, new technologies, and blurring horizons, that we will never reach, drive us to ponder three questions:

1. What is our opportunity for technology on the planet today?
2. Where do we fit?
3. Where will we find ourselves in the next decade?

Do these far reaching questions have an answer?

I believe they do, although it's not rooted in predicting the future, but in the past. When looking in our own backyard, we should not ask where technology has come from, but rather where the global economy has led our industry. The world is no longer just organized by countries, but by the formation of trading blocks that have driven technology.

Over 3 decades, this wave has been the driving force carrying technology forward. As unions have formed, and trade blocks have emerged, (to create fewer government based central powers, with greater impact across the globe) technology has evolved, in response, to bridge that information on a global basis empowering trade. Technology has not been a leader, but rather a link. So to accurately focus our energies and innovations, we need to pause for a moment and look at the umbilical cord we have created.

How has trade driven technology?

• I was in China, as a student, in 1980 when the first SEZ's were established to promote foreign trade. Less than a decade later, the world wide web was conceived.
• I was in Berlin in 1992, the year the EU banned trade barriers in Europe; a year before the wall fell.
• In 1993, I was at home when NAFTA became a reality. In 1994 the first WWW conference took place coined "The Woodstock of the Web".
• Four years later, in 1998, XML 1.0 was released. XML is now viewed as the standard way information will be exchanged in environments that do not share common platforms. Trade unions certainly lead technology.
• On August 3, of this year, the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) was established.  Shortly after that, I was in the Dominican Republic launching our first Latin American based technology platform.

It seems that my frequent flyer miles have built up around this phenomenon of technology following trade, not leading it: the emergence of opportunity through the global - or what I call - the Technomic evolution.

What does this leap have to do with opportunity?
 
Governments have gathered data for centuries. Multi-National giants have spun on the wheels of computing power for decades. Yet only in recent history have bureaucratic monoliths, such as these, been surpassed by small startups which become billion dollar businesses in just a matter of a few years. The creation of information networks, that pipe data flows more smoothly than oil, should make us consider where the next great resources lie in defining our businesses. These resources are not in Alberta, and they are not in the ground.

Consider the impact of explored ideas transformed into billions of dollars - ideas that dwarf the oil industry. Yet another wave of capital, more fervent than .com, is forming: based on the Technomic trends of capital shifting to this new pool of technological infrastructure and innovation.

We all have our challenge and chance to expand on this impressive bridge that we started nearly a decade ago, on Vancouver Island. Our island bridge is as impressive as the Confederate Bridge of PEI, if not as visible. Our technology bridge now reaches far beyond the mainland - a bridge I first discussed in 1997, with the Times Colonist, while I was a professor at UVIC. This bridge that we've built carries more traffic, more commerce, and generates more revenue per annum than the $1 Billion cost to build PEI's bridge.

Our opportunity is to refine that bridge in off-ramp like niches, which focus on the data that drives markets, transforms industries. These are soaring at lightning speed towards dominating global Technomics.

What will the next decade bring? Where will your organization be?

In the new global game consider issues such as: HealthCare, education, and the environment, which are of concern to all nations. India and China are like the Hubble telescope, granting us a view of the universe we'll see in the future. Trends are evolving, in these countries, that were once agrarian nations; trends that will shape our futures. These are powerful global forces. Yet we can look in our own backyard and discover start ups in niches which are evolving and driving trends worldwide.

So let's look at our own backyard:

• A thriving company with a global network of some 70 million book titles and vendors: ABE Books has shaped an industry.

• A company that has re-developed the backbone for AOL, one of the largest internet communities in the western world: Mercurial Communications.

• A company that has solved a massive challenge in data and form sharing and has been recently acquired by technology giant IBM: PureEdge Solutions.

Let us consider how we, as entrepreneurs, technology leaders, and innovators, here on Vancouver Island, might use the ingenuity of our own organizations and technology to help solve difficult challenges right here at home.

Has anyone confirmed the rumors that there is a teachers strike in BC?

I wonder if the issues of class size and budget could be solved with technological innovations. Virtual classrooms, for example, will increase classroom capacity through online courses, and video technology, resulting in flexible school hours, and reduced class sizes.

Dr. Carl Rogers once stated:

If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning.

Isn't that the business we're truly in?

Consider the challenges we face, at home: a micron in the evolution of an explosive global environment. Now let's focus on China, our "Hubble", to discover what technology must solve on a much larger scale:

Infrastructure:

• 300 million Chinese will move from rural regions into cities in the next 15 years, driving China to build cities the size of Houston each month
• China's Telecoms are more wireless than wired

Communication:

• More people in China speak English as a second language than there are English speakers in all of the United States and Canada
• More people use the Internet, in China, than in North America
• 500 billion text messages were sent, world wide last year, representing 100 text messages for every person on the planet.  220 billion of those were sent in China alone.

This is an economy of volume that I first observed in 1994, where endless throngs of people compete through a lottery system for just one share of a business.

And here is a statistic that is driving one of the largest niches we've developed at my company:

- In the Health sector 5.5 Billion prescriptions, for medications, were written last year in the United States and Canada.

From each of these mega trends, there are openings and options, connectivity and transformations that I believe are all process driven.  Every industry transformation, whether it be the emergence of Voice Over IP (that has lead to the $4.1 billion acquisition of Skype by e-Bay), or the delivery of medications between doctors, pharmacies and patients, is a process.

The CIA, in their 2020 project, defines a series of world of events as "relative certainties":

• Globalization, largely irreversible, is likely to become less Westernized.
• An increasing number of global firms will facilitate the spread of new technologies.
• The rise of Asia and the advent of possible new economic middle-weights will come into play.

The list goes on to define "key uncertainties"

• Whether globalization will pull in lagging economies and the degree to which Asian countries set new "rules of the game."
• The extent to which connectivity challenges governments.
• The extent to which new technologies create or resolve ethical dilemmas

These points are all summed up by the statement from the CIA's 2020 report:

"We see globalization…..as an overarching "mega-trend," a force so ubiquitous that it will substantially shape all the other major trends in the world of 2020. The world economy is likely to continue growing impressively:  by 2020, it is projected to be about 80 percent larger than it was in 2000, and average per capita income will be roughly 50 percent higher.  The greatest benefits of globalization will accrue to countries and groups that can access and adopt new technologies." 

This is good news for Canada and for Vancouver Island.  We should now focus our macro-scopes on trade around the world, and our microscopes on the issues we all face.  So to discover your path amongst all of this, can you answer these questions?

• What is at your core for delivering your product or service today?
• Where is your focus emerging on the world stage?
• How does your company, your job, your organization's vision tie with trends of the past and today?

If you can, you will have defined your next step, in a uniquely rich environment of niche opportunities, where you will capture the global menagerie of Technomic impact for your company.  

I am an American come Canadian, and have enjoyed over eight years here at home on Vancouver Island.  In summary, I defer to the words of a great Canadian who traveled in the other direction:

"Canadians have an abiding interest in surprising those Americans who have historically made little effort to learn about their neighbour to the North."  - The late Peter Jennings

Let each of us decide, today, where opportunity for our companies, our community and ourselves lie - and continue to "surprise our neighbors …." worldwide by challenging ourselves with the unprecedented evolution we are helping to create. 

Thank you.