No, we cannot predict the future. But we sure as hell can do our best to prepare for it.
Essentially, an aspect of business is the impossible — forseeing the inevitable future. People that are good at it tend to make a lot of money.
A lot of people will tell you that their idea is the next big thing. And that is good — founders should believe in their product beyond belief. But, the reality of the landscape is that this cannot be the case. Not everyone’s brainchild can be the next big Facebook. The reality is that 99% of ideas are bad. Nothing else really matters.
People that are good at “predicting the future” solve important problems. They solve problems that are fundamental to the existence of mankind. Important functions that we were doing 100 years ago and that we will be doing 100 years from now.
It is easy to bet on these fundamentals — we know that we will be doing x 100 years from now. What we don’t know is how we will be doing it.
Humans, instinctually, have a desire to:
- communicate
- survive
- answer problems
The list of course goes on , but the important thing to note is that you should solve important problems.
I see so many products that solve little niche solutions.
While those are great — wooohooo for helping people out — they are not going to be around for 100 years.
So…Let’s make something happen!