Big Think Interview With Paul Saffo | Big Think

Big Think Interview With Paul Saffo

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A conversation with the technology forecaster and essayist.

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Paul Saffo:

Paul Saffo is a forecaster and essayist with over two decades experience exploring long-term technological change and its practical impact on business and society. He teaches at Stanford University and is a Visiting Scholar in the Stanford Media X research network.

He was the founding chairman of the Samsung Science Board and serves on a variety of other boards including the Long Now Foundation, the Singapore National Research Foundation Science Advisory Board, and the Pax Group. He has served as an advisor and Forum Fellow to the World Economic Forum since 1997.

He is a columnist for ABCNews.com, and his essays have appeared in numerous publications including The Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Wired, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, The New York Times, and the Washington Post. He is a Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, and holds degrees from Harvard College, Cambridge University and Stanford University.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Big Think Interview With Paul Saffo.

Question: How can businesses best use your counsel?

Paul Saffo: I’m a technology forecaster, which means I spend my time exploring the intersection between technological advancements and entrepreneurship. Technology advances our conversation between inventors and society. Inventors propose and society disposes and it’s that process that has delivered all the surprises, some welcome some unwelcome, in our lives over the last couple of decades.

What I really am is a historian of technology who spends most of his time looking at technologies that don’t exist yet. Looking at the historic pattern of technology innovation and adaption can tell us volumes about how things will evolve in the future, and in fact you can pull out some very simple rules.

Perhaps the simplest is when it comes to advance technologies. Never mistake a clearer view for a short distance just because the technology looks like it’s about to arrive in the very near future. Chances are there will be some surprises and in the long run even the most expected of futures tends to arrive late and in completely unexpected ways.

Question: What should companies be doing to preserve cash in this economic environment?

Paul Saffo: The most important thing that a company can do in the midst of this economic turmoil is to not lose sight of the long-term perspective. Don’t confuse the short-term crises with the long-term trends. Amidst all of these short-term change are some fundamental structural transformations happening in the economy, and the best way to stay in business is to not allow the short-term distractions to cause you to ignore what is happening in the long term.

Question: How do companies see the long term amidst short-term distractions?

Paul Saffo:There’s a lot of focus on preserving cash and hunkering down at the moment. Sequoia Capital famously sent out a PowerPoint in the fall of 2008 to its company. It basically said, “Look, preserve your bodily fluids. Cash is king. Don’t look to us for help if you get into trouble.”

And of course that’s the main theme. But also I think it’s a very good idea to have a strong contrarian instinct. It’s not just conserving cash at this moment but this maybe the moment in which it is especially valuable to strategically spend some of the cash you’re hoarding in order to set up for what the next order is to come along. So, saving cash is something that is answered in the specific, not in the general, but do not focus exclusively on saving cash, this maybe the right time to spend cash wisely.

Question: What are the effective ways companies can reduce operational costs?

Paul Saffo:We have tended to use new technologies in companies in two ways: either to lower costs, or to create more effective ways of approaching the market. Using technology merely to lower operational costs amounts to standing on a whale fishing for minnows. It just allows you to do the old thing more efficiently, where in this moment of deep transformation, it is much more likely that you should be doing something entirely new in an entirely different way. So if you focus on technology solely as a way to squeeze expense out of your existing business, you’re probably doing it at the cost of ignoring what your future business will be.

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