You don’t future-proof your business by adapting to the changes around you, you future-proof it by adapting to changes that haven’t even happened yet.

The mark of a creative entrepreneur is in their ability to predict what might come next.

If you can capitalise on the next big thing before it’s even hit public consciousness then you might as well go ahead and place your order for a super yacht right now. Seriously, this is how fortunes are made.

So how do you come up with a multi-million dollar idea?

Read!

No, not The Secret (blergh). Don’t waste your time with airy-fairy hippy thoughts. It’s time to get real, and by real I mean: science fiction.

That’s right, it’s time to get star-trekkin’ and become besties with the best futurists of our times: science fiction authors.

A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile, but the traffic jam. – Frederik Pohl

Writers such as Gene Roddenberry, H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke and Iassac Asimov have conceptualised fantastical ideas that sparked world-changing technologies.

From satellite technology to mobile phones, even the very first tank warfare units can thank science-fiction stories for their conception.

How to find ideas from science-fiction and incorporate them into a profitable product.

As a designer and technologist, Greg Borenstein has ‘borrowed’ from the works of science fiction to help communicate how new technologies might feel and what they might mean to our world. He explains the process of how to think about the world and how to predict the future and the changes that come from science fiction ideas.

In his talk, Greg presents projects that show some of what he has personally learned and he outlines ideas that may be useful in your own search for the next big thing.

Good luck!