Who?

Futurist and Strategist

My attraction to strategy started straight out of business school, when I joined a fledgling strategic management consulting group at Price Waterhouse (before the "c" in pwc happened).

Actually, I can date my strategic tendencies even earlier: my favorite professor at Wharton was Russell Ackoff, one of the founders of systems theory, and a superb strategist. Here's an example of his mind at work.

Since those days, I've had many opportunities to influence strategies across industries as disparate as insurance, transportation, telecom, media, health care, retail and the startup economy.

My instincts for what matters are reliable: During the dot-com era, my research pointed the way to online communities, the World Wide Web, weblogs, wikis, smartphones, instant messaging and more.

My strategic advice tends to come from unusual directions, informed by history and perspectives that are often overlooked. Bringing me in is a great way of broadening your strategic options.

I'm also unafraid of saying things you may find uncomfortable, but in a comfortable way. Acting on the most promising advice may require you to confront your own sacred cows, and gore them. That takes courage.

Cyborg?

I have a unique, unfair advantage: an external memory I can consult, one mind map I've been curating for almost a quarter century (I just passed 488,000 nodes). You can browse it, for free, here, and learn more about it at Jerry's Brain.

My external Brain contains everything I've found worth remembering over the last 24 years, all woven into context, from ur plots to the causes of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009, to the reasons we don't trust people.

I'm curious about everything; my Brain probably includes things that matter to you.