By the 1980s the major Japanese brands dominated major markets and product categories and the concept of “Japan Inc.” came into being.  There was much hand wringing in the U.S. about the fact that we had lost technological leadership to Japan, that the large imbalance of payments between the two countries were unhealthy and possibly dangerous.  How to deal with Japanese businessmen and the etiquette of doing so became schooled in American businesses.

Then came the recession of 1990-92 and Japan imploded economically, leading to a decade of deflation now called “the lost decade”.  They lost out to the U.S in the areas of PCs and music players.  South Korea started to make significant inroads on Japanese products in US market share and later the iPod made Sony and its Walkman no longer look cutting edge but dramatically behind the curve and struggling.  America, which at first did not embrace Japanese cars then embraced them, went through the same process with Korean car manufacturers.

So ...]]> In the 20 years after WWII Japan was the source of cheap goods for the U.S. and the world.  In the 1950s, “Made in Japan” meant cheap stuff that was showing up in a lot of product categories.  Then in the late 1960s and through the 1970s quality technology brands emerged; Sony, Panasonic and then Toyota and Datsun [now Nissan].  These brands changed American and global buying habits and often led the way down new paths of consumption such as VCRs, mobile music players and fuel efficient cars.

By the 1980s the major Japanese brands dominated major markets and product categories and the concept of “Japan Inc.” came into being.  There was much hand wringing in the U.S. about the fact that we had lost technological leadership to Japan, that the large imbalance of payments between the two countries were unhealthy and possibly dangerous.  How to deal with Japanese businessmen and the etiquette of doing so became schooled in American businesses.

Then came the recession of 1990-92 and Japan imploded economically, leading to a decade of deflation now called “the lost decade”.  They lost out to the U.S in the areas of PCs and music players.  South Korea started to make significant inroads on Japanese products in US market share and later the iPod made Sony and its Walkman no longer look cutting edge but dramatically behind the curve and struggling.  America, which at first did not embrace Japanese cars then embraced them, went through the same process with Korean car manufacturers.

So here we are in 2010, and, for the past 15 years, China seems to have travelled down the path Japan did four decades ago.  First there was cheap products with “Made in China” printed on seemingly everything..   Then there was a wave of questionable quality – does lead painted toys, deadly milk and toxic pet food ring a bell?  All the time the US was wondering if everything cheap came from China, if the huge trade deficits we were running up with China might be putting us at risk.  American business men were schooled on how to practice appropriate Chinese business etiquette.

The US is now buying high tech products from China such as batteries, parts for wind turbines and soon, cars.  We wonder if we are losing the high tech battle with China, in this case around the next hugely big thing, alternative energy technology.   Does this sound familiar?  Certainly to we baby boomers who have lived through the last four decades of the 20^th century.

Here is the interesting question: will China go the way of Japan?  The centralized authority of “Japan Inc.” is now acknowledged to be one of the causes of the ‘lost decade’ as centralized and insular power listened to its own music and lost its way.  The Google – China situation and the larger Internet censorship issue that China is struggling with certainly feels like institutionalized, nationalistic myopia that infected Japan 20 years ago.  Will this insular, strongly nationalistic process of decision making set up China for a fall?

China of course has 20% of humanity as citizens so it is much larger than Japan.  That said, it is obviously a less homogenous culture than Japan.  It has unique – and large – problems.  All that said it is quite striking how similar, at least from a US perspective, the paths of Japan in the last third of the 20^th century and China now, seem to be.

In the 1990s, the ‘lost decade’ of Japan, the U.S. became absolutely dominant in computing and Internet based technology.  In the 2000s the US led the way with new entertainment gadgets and ways of connected communications. This was due to incredible entrepreneurship and innovation. Will the Transformation Decade of 2010-2020 be the time that China is ascendant?  Will the US step up in the new area of alternative energy technology and continue its dominance in the disintermediating social communications area?   Will the US again have a surge of innovation and creative entrepreneurship?  Will China follow the historical arch of Japan?

The answer will reveal itself in the coming months and years.

Evolutionshift has and will be the place where I take a “future look at today” regardless of topic.  There are many developments, stories and breakthroughs that are worthy of comment here as they reflect where we are and where we are going.  There are few subjects I have not touched upon here and that will continue to be the case.  Energy, connectivity, technology, the media, politics, economics, the Shift Age, the Transformation Decade; all topics that have been discussed here and will be for the coming years.

While I continue on with this blog, I now have an exciting new place where I will also be sharing my thoughts and visions of the future.  I am now a featured contributor at Oprah.com.  This of course is very exciting!

The columns I write for Oprah.com will be different and unique to that web site as the audience is different and of course much larger.  Since they will be different columns than found here, I urge you to also join me there and to join in the conversation that occurs with each column.  The simple link to take you to Oprah.com is www.oprah.com/davidhoule Please make sure when you visit to post a comment and to share your thoughts.  ...]]> This blog is now almost four years old.  Many of you have been loyal readers since 2006 and I deeply appreciate your loyalty and continued support.  There have been many more who have become readers through the years and of course I also appreciate your readership.

Evolutionshift has and will be the place where I take a “future look at today” regardless of topic.  There are many developments, stories and breakthroughs that are worthy of comment here as they reflect where we are and where we are going.  There are few subjects I have not touched upon here and that will continue to be the case.  Energy, connectivity, technology, the media, politics, economics, the Shift Age, the Transformation Decade; all topics that have been discussed here and will be for the coming years.

While I continue on with this blog, I now have an exciting new place where I will also be sharing my thoughts and visions of the future.  I am now a featured contributor at Oprah.com.  This of course is very exciting!

The columns I write for Oprah.com will be different and unique to that web site as the audience is different and of course much larger.  Since they will be different columns than found here, I urge you to also join me there and to join in the conversation that occurs with each column.  The simple link to take you to Oprah.com is www.oprah.com/davidhoule Please make sure when you visit to post a comment and to share your thoughts.  Of course, please continue to do so here too.

Oprah believes that we should each live our best life and has certainly shown us ways to do so.  Since all of us will spend the rest of our lives in the future that is where we will create our respective best lives.  In this Transformation Decade living one’s best life will necessitate a lot of change, shift and of course transformation.

Please also join me at www.oprah.com/davidhoule

On January 1 I wrote a column here called “The Transformation Decade”. It prompted comments and numerous emails and took off on Twitter and the blogosphere.  That prompted me to make it a video.  Let’s go to the video tape!.

As a futurist, particularly since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, I have been called upon to make forecasts.  In the first week of January, I gave my economic forecast for 2010 about this “recovery that won’t feel like a recovery”.  Let’s go to the video tape!

Those of you in the entertainment business, and most of us actually, have all probably spoken the clichéd truism that “content is king” in the past decade or two.  Well, while that is true, it is a most definitely Information Age phrase.  In the Shift Age, “context is king”.Let’s go to the video tape!

Thanks for the phrase Warner.  And of course, for this Transformation Decade, the good old chestnut from Bob Dylan is most appropriate:  “Those not busy being born are busy dying”.  Of course any one of his phrases prompts another to pop into mind:  “The times they are  a’changin”

What do we know at the blocking and tackling level in regards to the Brown victory?

First, the political “pundits” – and that word is always best in quotes – are back.  What did they have to say about Tiger Woods except to speak of a fallen idol?  What could they say about Haiti except to express what an unspeakably horrible tragedy it is?  Ah, but now there is blood in the water!  Political drama of the highest order!  It is so predictable what is going to be said on Fox News, on MSNBC and even CNN in the days, weeks and unfortunately months ahead.  Raised voices!  Pompous posturing and prognostications about the status of health care, the Democratic majority and the Obama Presidency.  How will the Republicans relate to the Tea Party folks?

It is clear that Brown ran a perfect pitch campaign.  Timing, image, message and package were all right on target.  Coakley ran perhaps the most lackluster campaign in recent memory.  What killed her, and is the point of this column is that her campaign, her demeanor reeked of entitlement.  This was a Democratic seat in a Democratic state ...]]> As a futurist, it is imperative to be a student of history.  The macro trends, rhythms, and forces of the past can be of great assistance when trying to see ahead clearly.  In the case of the Massachusetts Senate Election I found myself understanding it within the context of American history.  So, Thomas Jefferson a little bit later in the column

What do we know at the blocking and tackling level in regards to the Brown victory?

First, the political “pundits” – and that word is always best in quotes – are back.  What did they have to say about Tiger Woods except to speak of a fallen idol?  What could they say about Haiti except to express what an unspeakably horrible tragedy it is?  Ah, but now there is blood in the water!  Political drama of the highest order!  It is so predictable what is going to be said on Fox News, on MSNBC and even CNN in the days, weeks and unfortunately months ahead.  Raised voices!  Pompous posturing and prognostications about the status of health care, the Democratic majority and the Obama Presidency.  How will the Republicans relate to the Tea Party folks?

It is clear that Brown ran a perfect pitch campaign.  Timing, image, message and package were all right on target.  Coakley ran perhaps the most lackluster campaign in recent memory.  What killed her, and is the point of this column is that her campaign, her demeanor reeked of entitlement.  This was a Democratic seat in a Democratic state and hey she won the Democratic primary.  Why do I have to shake hands with voters?

This is why the electorate is in revolt.  We voted for change in 2006, change in 2008 and change in 2010.  It isn’t that citizens are voting against health care, though I am sure many did.  It is not that citizens were voting against the Democratic Congress, though I am sure some thought they were.  What the voters were voting against was this entitlement stink of a professional, careerist political class.  Every election from now on out will be about this to some degree.  They got us into two wars, two recessions, historic collapse of housing values, record unemployment and have added 20 trillion dollars  debt and unsecured liabilities and that is just in the last nine years.

In the last four months as I speak to audiences about the trends, changes and transformation that is about to occur in the coming ten years, there has been an emerging consistent point of view and question.  It goes something like this:  we understand that this is coming but will the politicians ever get it?  In Canada they speak about the insular, dull, bureaucrats in Ottawa.  In the U.S. it is about the life-long politicians beholden to special interests for self perpetuation.  If your party is in power you get a job.  If your party is out of power, you become a lobbyist until the revolving door brings you back into the corridors of power.  For two years I have been saying that, increasingly, the phrase “national leaders” is oxymoronic.  It is the people that seem to lead the politicians.

When the founding fathers crafted those exquisite documents and initiated the greatest experiment of democracy in history they never, ever, envisioned an entrenched political class whose sole interest was  perpetuation of their power and their party’s power. Thomas Jefferson was a farmer.  He became a great statesman, a magnificent president and left a towering legacy of compassionate love of country.  Then he went back to being a farmer.  The founding fathers imaged a citizen’s democracy, where service was given and then, private life was resumed.  That was the assumed practice.  Where were political parties mentioned in those documents we revere?

In my current Trend Report and in Q&A with audiences I suggest that by 2016 there could well be a new, third party in ascendency, winning across the map. Both the Democratic and Republican parties feel so 20^th century, burdened by legacies no longer pertinent to the 21^st century and the Shift Age.

The historians of 2020 or 2030 may well point to this period as  a new beginning when Democrats and Republicans were marginalized, giving way to a party tuned to the realities of this new century, this new age, this new decade.  We shall see.

Don’t those definitions feel like what has been already going on in your life and the world?  Many of us have already been living in this state.  Many of us have only recently felt the impending alterations, disruptions and reorganizations that have begun.  Everything seems to be in a transforming state of shift.

We are entering the first full decade of the Shift Age, even though it has already taken root in the last 4 years.  This new age has launched incredible shift and upheaval already. This current Great Recession can only be fully understood when seen as the reorganizational recession between two ages, the Information Age and the Shift Age. It is not unlike the recessions of the 1970s, which was the decade of transition between the Industrial and Information Ages. Almost everything is in a state of shift, in a state of being transformed.

Think about all that is going on in your life and in the world.  The way we communicate has and will continue to change in form, appearance (our gadgets are vastly different than even five years ago) and character (how many of you text or tweet regularly versus even three years ago).  The shape of our relationships is changing.  The shape of how we work,  how we live and how  and in ...]]> This new decade, 2010-2020, will be known as the Transformation Decade. The definitions of transformation are several: the act or process of transforming, the state of being transformed, change in form, appearance, nature, or character.

Don’t those definitions feel like what has been already going on in your life and the world?  Many of us have already been living in this state.  Many of us have only recently felt the impending alterations, disruptions and reorganizations that have begun.  Everything seems to be in a transforming state of shift.

We are entering the first full decade of the Shift Age, even though it has already taken root in the last 4 years.  This new age has launched incredible shift and upheaval already. This current Great Recession can only be fully understood when seen as the reorganizational recession between two ages, the Information Age and the Shift Age. It is not unlike the recessions of the 1970s, which was the decade of transition between the Industrial and Information Ages. Almost everything is in a state of shift, in a state of being transformed.

Think about all that is going on in your life and in the world.  The way we communicate has and will continue to change in form, appearance (our gadgets are vastly different than even five years ago) and character (how many of you text or tweet regularly versus even three years ago).  The shape of our relationships is changing.  The shape of how we work,  how we live and how  and in what we travel are all changing.  The economy and the workplace are changing and being reshaped.

In the next ten years there will be a level of transformation probably unmatched in human history:

- Humanity’s relationship to communication technology is rapidly changing and will bring on-going transformation socially, culturally and economically.

- Media will be completely different that it is today.  We are only at the initial creative destruction phase of it now.

- Economic metrics will need to be transformed, both on national and global levels

-  How countries define defense will be transformed given the shape changing nature of our enemies and the threats that face us.

-Energy and energy use will be transformed from the 20^th century ways we look at it and use it still today.  Alternative and renewable energy development and use will create great new wealth and will transform landscapes and how we live

-Education is no longer serving the needs of people and society; it will be transformed. K-12 education will be dramatically transformed in the next ten years.  For a large part of the population it will become K-14.

- The medical breakthroughs around the corner will make 2010-2020 the most transformative decade in medical history.  This is not just due to the actual discoveries, but to what they will make us face and the moral decisions we will confront for the first time.  We will all have the affordable ability to know our unique complete genetic map.   We will move into the age of personalized medicine as a result.  We will have fore knowledge of probable personal health conditions in the future. That will transform how we live.  The concept of pre-existing conditions will largely go away as we were born with them genetically.  Do you get married if you and your intended partner’s respective genetic maps are not a good match?  Does knowledge trump love?  Who gets to make the decision as to who gets to live forever in an over crowded world? We will have the capability to make such decisions.  How do we develop the ability to do so? There will be transformation across the board in health care and medicine.

-We will undergo personal transformation as well.  Our consciousness will change in dynamic ways.  Our relationships, our work place, our view of life and even the definition of life itself will be transformed

-The workplace will be transformed as the place part becomes less and less relevant.  Human beings will only need to be in the same place to collaborate, as work is increasingly defined as collaborative.

- The Internet and our rapid fire use of mobile digital devices to access it has created a pulsing, synaptic place of unprecedented interactivity that on a global scale is starting to feel like a global brain.  It is a live, morphing place called the Neurosphere that is not only transforming us now, but could well be the technological model for a new level of human consciousness in 10-20 years.  That is an evolutionary level of transformation.  An Evolutionshift. It may be hard for you to envision, but we are rapidly moving in that direction.

The list could go on and on as to what will be transformed. Take a snapshot look at your life now with all your relationships, ways of thinking, ways of living and ways of looking at the world   I promise you that when you take the same snapshot in ten years you will astounded as to the transformation that will have occurred.  The speed of change is now both constantly accelerating and environmental.  It may feel uncomfortable as familiar things and ways of living are disintegrating. Transformation, to varying degrees, is always uncomfortable.  We are and will be transformed in the next ten years.

We have entered the Transformation Decade.