Creativity Key To Future Success Futurist Says Baby Boomers Will Demand Unique Products
The Dow Jones Industrial Average will top 8,500 and the economy will grow rapidly through 2010 as U.S. industries satisfy spend-happy baby boomers by rolling out dozens of new products every second, a university futurist told a Spokane audience Wednesday.
Only those with the creativity to offer services and products designed for specific buyers, however, will capitalize on this outpouring of consumer spending, said Lowell Catlett, professor of agricultural economics at New Mexico State University and author of the forthcoming book, “How Many Einsteins.”
“It’s no longer standardized products; it’s customized products made exactly for me,” Catlett told 1,000 people attending the Far West Fertilizer & Agrichemical Association annual meeting at the Ag Trade Center. “This stuff is coming so fast, we got to grab it, go with it. It’s here now.”
Appearing on the second day of Far West’s three-day meeting, Catlett captured the imagination of convention goers with a litany of technological breakthroughs suitable for a Frank Herbert novel.
The military, he said, is experimenting with devices that measuring brain impulses so a pilot can fly an aircraft without touching a yoke. Wheat stubble and yeast cells have been combined to form tiny “biobatteries” which generate enough electricity to power a household appliance.
The advances are driven by the demands from the wealthiest Americans - baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964. To meet the demands, Catlett said, the pace of new products will explode from one every 17 seconds, to 17 per second.
“The 81-million-pound gorilla is loose,” he said, referring to the boomers. “We don’t care if there’s a Republican in the White House, a Democrat in the White House or no White House. We can do anything we want. We’re inheriting $6 trillion from our parents and now we’re going to spend it.”
Catlett said the currency of the future will be creativity. Those with the imagination to constantly create better products and services will be the most successful.
“Do we wake up every morning to try to put ourselves out of business? To make ourselves obsolete with a new invention?” he said. “Whew! Probably not. But somebody is.”
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