Edith Weiner, president of Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc., brought "Thinking Techniques" to local retailers on March 11, at the RCME program. .

Educated incapacity is knowing so much about your area of expertise that you’re the last to be able to see its future differently. “There isn’t anybody who doesn’t suffer from this,” says Weiner, president of a leading futurist consulting group. “It’s why we would not just go to doctors to find out about the future of health care…army generals about the future of national security…or retailers about the future of retailing.”

“With more baggage, we get paid more and get a higher title. But we also get more educated incapacity, and there’s no way to avoid that. The trick becomes how to see the world through the eyes of an alien, or the eyes of a child,” says Weiner, co-author of Insider’s Guide to the Future.

Psychology’s notion of figure/ ground illustrates the biases we all have in viewing the world and making decisions. Under hypnosis, two people will give two completely different accounts of a crime or an accident. What they see is predicated upon their cultural biases, education, experience, and expectations. “This happens in business every single day,” says Weiner.

World’s most important demographic trend
The single most important demographic trend is the aging of the industrial world. “We have an under-25 developing world and an increasingly over 60 industrialized world,” she says. Only three industrialized countries have youth replacement populations: the U.S., New Zealand and Iceland.

“When you see the figure and the ground differently, everything changes. Everything,” says Weiner. She cites these facts:

• One in nine Baby Boomers is projected to live to be 100 years old.

• The average life expectancy of the adult worker in the U.S. today is 84.

• Fifty-three percent of all U.S. households have a female major breadwinner

• We're extending life in the middle, living the years from 35 to 70 as essentially the same age. We expect that whatever shortcomings there are as we age, we can buy.

Marketers tend to lump people into categories. Yet as we get older, we actually become more multi-faceted, like diamonds. We become more differentiated. “There is no putting us in a particular cubbyhole,” says Weiner. “We are moving targets all of the time.”

“When it comes to the goods and services that are provided to the public, we will have to continue to listen and learn from a multicultural perspective to help shape our institutions,” she says. “Many young people around the world have a love/hate relationship with the United States. On one hand, they see themselves easily blending into our culture because it is an amalgam of theirs and everybody else’s. On the other hand, there is resentment about the fact that there is no purity, there is nothing that holds their own culture sacred.”

Thinking technique: Trend and Counter-Trend
For every trend there is at least one counter trend. “That gives you at least double the opportunity to make money,” by repackaging or using different distribution channels and markets, says Weiner, giving candles, angels, and journaling books as examples.

Some trends/counter trends that we’re heading into:

Big Brother privacy invasions/ Little Brother privacy invasions.
While there are laws to protect us from the government, we have nothing to protect us against the guy next door. Identity theft is one little piece of that. The CIA has concluded that corporate espionage will be a major issue for national security in the 21st century. Blackmail is going to be one of the fastest-growing white-collar crimes.

Work at home/Home at work
The trend toward work at home is increasing. The counter trend is more and more people are living where they work, with enormous implications for retailers.

Workplaces today have microwave ovens, steamer irons, and beds for taking naps.

The information glut / The consumer’s attention
“If information were power, librarians would rule the world,” says Weiner. There is only one source of power: implementation. What the consumer chooses to pay attention to is worth money to the marketer; attention becomes the monetary unit. One of the most significant strategic competitive edges in the 21st century will be actually paying attention to customers.

Thinking technique: Cycles are spirals
Everything comes in cycles: history, climate, the market, and political movements. “The problem is that we tend to envision cycles in terms of a pendulum. Instead, you have to envision cycles as spirals. Things do come back around, but they never come back on the same plane. The winners will be the ones who can figure out what’s different this time.”

Thinking technique: The touchdown strategy
Weiner likened retailing strategy to a football game, with the toughest being the touchdown strategy: relationship. “What is the one thing that all relationships have in common? They cost you something to leave. A true relationship has a barrier to exit,” says Weiner. “Barriers to exit are the real relationship propositions in business.” She gave whole life insurance and Gillette razors as examples. In order to use the Gillette, you have to use the blades. The consumer and the delivering company both benefit from the fact that the customer doesn’t leave. “That is the touchdown, because it costs so much less to keep a customer than get a new one.”

Thinking technique: The right of way
Weiner compares the Internet to the development of the railroad. Both were originated by the government and developed with private investment. What did the railroad truly give up? The right of way—to the telegraph service, telephone service, the mail service. This time around, the Internet companies that didn’t understand right of way were the ones that collapsed. The ones that are still good revenue models are the ones who understand and develop the right of way. E-Bay, Amazon, and Yahoo can carry anything for a toll. “I really do believe the right of way is the most under-utilized business asset in the economy,” says Weiner.

The 21st Century
“In the 21st century, we’re not going to be paying for smarts much anymore, because smart is what’s going onto software. What we will pay for in the 21st century is intelligence, and to a certain degree, sensitivity and intuition: the ability to solve a problem when you’ve never seen it before, when it was never in a textbook, when nobody ever taught it to you. The ability to take each thing as it comes, see it for what it is, and solve it correctly.

"This is really my mantra when it comes to retailing: There is no such thing as overcapacity. There is only under imagination."

The climate has fundamentally changed: Water is going to be a major issue in the 21st century.

The Nerd Market: Nerds are now the gatekeepers in terms of many purchasing decisions. They are the recommenders of a lot of goods and services in the economy, and they become important beyond their numbers. Nobody has really taken the time to truly research them and understand what they could mean to businesses.

Multi-money: "The chance that I paid the same thing for my airline ticket as the person next to me is pretty much zero," says Weiner. The second most circulated currency, next to the dollar? Frequent flyer miles.
The Leasing Economy: Everything is being leased, though home ownership is still seen as the cornerstone of success around the world. In fact, the American dream is increasingly being defined as owning the second home.

Biotech and Brain Mapping: Distinct physiological differences exist between the male and female brain; fragrances and colors have certain affects on people.
Yellow: wakes us up, releases serotonins, increases creativity and innovation
Blue: releases melatonin, quiets us down, lowers blood pressure
Red: signifies danger or power, raises blood pressure, red cars are ticketed more often and cost more in resell
Green: the color of camouflage, safety

Nanotechnology and rapid prototyping: Without question, these have the capability of completely transforming the entire retail landscape. People will be able to do a lot of things on a distributed basis, such as creating their own belts and scarves at home.

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