Latest / King Dems Podcast | Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights / How Leaders Use AI and Foresight to Future-Proof Business with Tony Hunter

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How Leaders Use AI and Foresight to Future-Proof Business with Tony Hunter · King Dems Podcast | Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights

• 0:00
  We are like, ladies and gentlemen, you want again
• 0:03
  welcome to the Kingdom's podcast.
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  And today I've got with me a very, very important guest
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  fighting out of Brisbane, Australia.
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  Mick. Welcome, Tony.
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  The future is Haunter. How are you today, Tony?
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  Good, Adamola, how are you? Very well, thank you.
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  Very well, thank you. And of course, you know, I very
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  much appreciate having you on the podcast today.
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  There's something I always say that when a person shares their
• 0:35
  time with you, they're sharing their life with you because the
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  SI unit for measuring life is time.
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  So thank you once again for sharing your life and your time
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  with us today. And of course, you need to sit
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  back while we read your flowers to you.
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  So, Champions, today's conversation is not about food,
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  it's about the future of survival.
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  Meets Tony Hunter, Global food futurist, strategic foresight
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  advisor. A man who has spent over 3
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  decades at the intersection of food, technology and innovation,
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  Tony does not just study trends, he translates exponential change
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  into strategic decisions that determine whether businesses
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  survive or disappear. From advising global giants like
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  PepsiCo and KFC to shaping boardroom conversations on the
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  future of food systems, Tony's work to lend his leaders to stop
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  reaching, reacting and start designing the future as
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  philosophy is simple but powerful.
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  If you do not know where you're leading, any future will take
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  you there. This episode is a master class
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  in mindset, strategy, and technology reshaping that the
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  world eats. Tony, you once again.
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  Welcome to the Kingdom's podcast.
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  Wow, wow. It's a great well, it's a
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  pleasure to be here. Thank you very much.
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  We're gradually Teddy to a futurist podcast.
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  We had the number one futurist on the podcast a few days ago.
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  And of course, we have a number 2 and award on the podcast.
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  And of course, shout out to your colleague Ronnie William #20 on
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  the podcast as well. So we are gradually becoming our
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  futurist. And of course, we also had Steve
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  Brown, I think about two weeks ago.
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  The Brown is the ex chief futurist for Google DeepMind and
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  Intel. So I guess we need to start a
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  rebranded It's a it's a futurist podcast.
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  Well, but you know, Tony, your journey actually spans science,
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  operations and global strategy. What moment forced you to stop
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  thinking like an operator and start thinking like a futurist?
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  Look, I think that moment for me, Ademola, was back in 2017.
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  I mean, I started my consulting work 10 years before that.
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  And prior to that, as you say, I was in operations general
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  manager of two food companies. And right about 2017, I started
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  to see things in my newsletters that I hadn't seen before.
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  And we all get into industry newsletters.
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  So I'm reading my industry newsletters.
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  So I'm going like, wow, I didn't know you could do that.
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  I didn't know that technology even existed.
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  And look at that consumer trend. Look how fast that's going.
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  And, you know, I sat back and I went, I have never seen in all
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  my 30 odd years in the food industry a rate of change like I
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  was seeing in 2017. So, you know, I'm kind of like,
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  wow, all this stuff's going on. So I go and talk to my executive
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  friends, my clients and colleagues saying how do you
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  keep up with all of this information that's coming up?
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  And the usual reply was I can't, I've got problems to solve.
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  People recruit meetings to go to, strategies to prepare.
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  Tony, you want me to think 5/10/20 years into the future,
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  not going to happen. So then I thought to myself,
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  well, someone needs to do this and to use my wife's most hated
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  phrase, how hard can it be? So I, I decided that I would be
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  the one who would look at all these technologies, look at what
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  was going on and communicate them as part of my consulting
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  business. And then of course, when I'm
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  consulting, I'm only dealing with maybe what, half a dozen
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  people or in an organisation. So the spread that I was getting
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  the, the amount of people I could reach was fairly small.
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  That's when I became a professional.
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  Speaker. World speaking professional.
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  Yep, speaking on on the the future of food.
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  But that was when things changed for me was about mid 2017 and
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  that realising how difficult it is for executives to do their
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  day job to include looking at cutting edge technologies across
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  a wide spectrum and project that 5/10/20 years into the future.
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  Very, very difficult. Extremely difficult.
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  And you know, speaking from the lens, from the viewpoint of the
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  millennial, right? So as a millennial, I always
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  feel that I am in a sweet spot. I'm not too old and I'm not too
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  young, right? And I've been privileged to see
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  the evolution of technology over time, right?
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  I was alive when we were using the, the cassettes, right, the
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  CDs, the BCDS, the tapes, you know, we saw the, the
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  BlackBerry, we saw, you know, Chelsea shut it into the Android
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  phones and you know, the, the iPhones, you know, from iPhone 1
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  down to iPhone 17. It's, it's, it's really amazing
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  what, what, what is happening, you know, seeing blockchain
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  technology, looking at cloud computing, quantum computing.
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  Now we're in the age of the LLMS, who knows what is coming
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  next? We just don't know.
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  And you just have to keep keeping up, right?
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  But you know, you often say that leadership is about foresight,
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  right? But what did you have to unlearn
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  to develop that level of clarity, even in the fast-paced
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  world of technology? Look, I think at all when we're
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  in a business, we look out into the world and we think that we
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  see like, oh, a good 180° I can, I have this wide view of the
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  world. And if you leave that company or
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  particularly if you leave that industry, you find that no,
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  that's how wide your view was. So what I had to sort of unlearn
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  or develop was that ability to have a very, very wide view of
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  food, a very, very wide view of the future, not just any
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  particular segment or industry, but to look at technologies that
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  lie on the fringe, technologies that aren't necessarily in the
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  food industry at all. I mean, you look at some of the
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  technologies like cultivated meat that came from the medical
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  industry. You look at something like
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  precision fermentation comes from pharmaceuticals.
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  So those industries didn't directly interface with food,
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  but they do now. And we're seeing other
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  technologies as well coming up at the cutting edge of various
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  industries that are having or will have a major impact on
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  food. Wow.
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  I, I think having a bit of a background in science, I'm quite
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  curious about the fermentation side of things.
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  Would you give us a brief story about how it came about?
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  Because, you know, it's interesting how some of the
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  world's greatest inventions actually come from unintended
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  consequences. So, for example, the person who
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  invented silk did not go about thinking they wanted to invent
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  silk, it just happened. So I'd like for you to give us a
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  brief story about how about the fermentation process.
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  Yeah. Well, I think if you look at
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  what we're calling precision fermentation now, precision
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  fermentation is where you take the gene for something you want
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  to make, you put it into an Organism.
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  It could be a yeast, a bacteria, A mould, something like that.
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  And then you get that Organism to produce the compound that you
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  want. And that's been very common in
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  the Pharmaceutical industry for decades.
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  One of those factories costs about 2 billion U.S. dollars to
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  to build and Commission. So they're not cheap.
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  And we use that for say, particularly for for medicines.
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  And that industry is fine-tuned for absolutely pure high grade
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  materials because you're injecting it into your body.
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  Now for food, you don't need that degree of purity because as
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  long as the impurities are inert, they don't do anything,
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  then you can then make that product far more cost
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  effectively. And we've seen particularly 2
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  products on the the forefront of this precision fermentation. 1
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  is whey protein because as we know whey protein for is a
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  byproduct of cheese making and it's in so many products.
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  It's everything from protein shakes to protein bars to all
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  sorts of things of fortified use in whey protein and the whey
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  protein demand is doing that. So a company called Perfect Day,
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  they put the gene for casein into a yeast and they use that
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  to make whey protein. Another company called the, they
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  were called the every company at the time and they put the gene
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  for egg protein, egg white albumin into an Organism and
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  they grow egg white products. So that's using a technology
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  richly in for pharmaceuticals to make food products.
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  Wow, amazing, amazing. So for all of the gene bodies,
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  listen to these. Now you know how your whey
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  protein is that's been created. I used to be on whip it is it.
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  I hope it is fine because I used to be on whip protein for some
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  time. So let's contemplate whether
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  we're going back to whip protein or not, or whether we're just
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  sticking to eggs. So you know, you, you actually
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  work with a lot of leaders, right?
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  And a lot of them to see the least are overwhelmed by the
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  rapid change that is happening. Oh yes, in this Asian time.
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  So what separates those who adapt from those who disappear?
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  I think those that get help because it's one thing knowing I
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  can't keep up and then you have a decision.
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  I'm just going to ignore this stuff and hope it doesn't affect
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  me and hope it goes away or acknowledge that you have a gap
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  and you find you get help to fill that gap like you would do
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  with I suppose anything in in business where you have gaps
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  need to fill that gap. The thing with looking at long
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  term strategies, what we call foresight is it is long term,
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  you know, Wall Street quarterly results, you can do something.
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  You'll see the results at the end of the quarter went up, went
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  down, You know the result. With foresight, you're making
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  decisions that will have impacts in five and 10 years time.
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  And the 10 year of most CEOs is what, 5, maybe 10 years at the
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  most, some longer term. But most people, so most CEOs
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  are not likely to see the results of their work in
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  foresight during the tenure of their organisation.
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  That's where it's the responsibility of boards who are
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  responsible for the long term health and welfare of the
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  company to step in and say we want you as CEO to have a 510 or
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  20 year view of the future, even though you might not be here to
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  see it. Wow.
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  Amazing. So that speaks to corporate
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  governance, right? And I appreciate you talking
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  about the importance of corporate governance, but I'd
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  like for you to shed more light on this because a lot of the
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  experts do not, would I say, give it the attention that it
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  deserves. But it is something that is
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  very, very important. So I'd like for you to speak to
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  the importance of corporate governance, right, for
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  organisations and of course for the, the, the progress that is
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  needed in, you know, this current times.
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  We have, you know, a, the proliferation of AI, for
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  example, proliferation of new technologies, right?
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  But corporate governance, how important is it for
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  organisations to stay adaptable and to stay future proof?
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  I mean, I think if you don't have resilience as an
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  organisation in this day and age, you're doomed to failure
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  because we know how fast things can change.
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  We know how disruptive technologies can be if they're
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  not addressed and they're not taken into account.
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  So that ability to be resilient and at board level, setting the
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  tone for the senior management in terms of resilience and in
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  terms of that resilience being the ability to react to
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  unforeseen circumstances in the future or even better, to be
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  prepared for a set of unseen circumstances, or not unseen,
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  but ones that you're not sure of.
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  We call them alternative futures.
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  So some people think that, oh, you know, if you're a good
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  futurist, you predict the future.
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  Now, futurists don't predict the future.
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  They ensure that you're prepared for the future, whatever it
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  turns out to be. So you look at the future and
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  go, given all these technologies, here's maybe 3
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  different ways those technologies could go.
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  And as an organisation, you then say, OK, what do I have to do
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  differently for each of those 3 scenarios?
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  Now you don't put together a 200 page plan for it, but you
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  acknowledge that if this future happens, my core is still OK,
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  but I'm going to need these three technologies for that
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  future. This one happens, cores are OK,
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  but I need 3 different technologies for this future and
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  so on. So that you're prepared to be
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  resilient and you can react in good time when the future
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  actually eventuates. So I think that governance point
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  of view, taking that long term view of the future, because what
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  we're finding at the moment, and I talked to a lot of
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  organisations and they're like, Oh no, we, we haven't got time
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  to think about the future. We've got the affordability
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  crisis, we've got Hormuz, we've got this with that.
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  That's fine. But you need to be able to make
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  decisions today with the long term future in mind.
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  As I say, the reason we explore the future is to make the best
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  possible decisions today. Because if we know what the
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  future could be, we can look back to today and say, well, OK,
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  if the future is going to be one of these, what today is going to
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  be leading us in the right direction?
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  Because you can make short term decisions that take you in that
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  direction. If future turns out to be in
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  that direction, you just wasted a lot of time, effort and
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  resources. So even though the temptation
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  might be no, no, no, I just need to worry about this quarter and
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  next quarter, then I'll think about the future.
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  But if the short term decisions are taking you in the wrong
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  direction, you're wasting a lot of time and effort.
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  And sometimes you have found grown on the wrong Rd.
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  But, you know, Speaking of the future, let's talk about the
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  future of food. You describe food as technology.
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  Are you able to break that down? What does that really mean for
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  business leaders today? Well.
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  I mean, if you think about food from farm to fork, it's full of
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  technology. You look at farming, we have
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  drones on farms. We have robot tractors, we have
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  precision wedding. We have weeders, robot weeders
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  that use lasers to destroy weeds.
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  So technologies everywhere on farms.
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  If we look to the manufacturing side itself, we have what we've
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  talked about, precision fermentation, cultivated meat.
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  We have AI coming into product development.
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  And then you go to the consumers.
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  Consumers, there's technology in their food.
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  They have their smart rings, smart watches, turn them about
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  their health and nutrition and guiding them and guiding them in
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  what they should do and how they should eat.
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  So food and technology, they're just intertwined.
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  You cannot separate food from technology.
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  So I'd say food really is technology.
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  They're one and the same. I mean, we used to be food used
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  to be a sleepy technological backwater compared to the
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  electronics industry, but that's not the case anymore.
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  There's as much technology goes into food manufacture as that
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  goes into any of the electronics technology around today.
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  Yeah, with a lot of organic chemistry at the at the highest
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  level happening right now. I love, I love the concept of
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  the fermentation. Wow.
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  So what are the top three technologies that will redefine
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  the global food system over the next decade?
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  I think the, if we look at it, looking at cellular agriculture,
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  which is not just cultivated meat, but what we're seeing
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  today in the chocolate's a great example.
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  If you've seen the price of chocolate, chocolate keeps going
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  up because we've got diseases, low yields, labour problems, all
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  sorts of things happening to the cacao industry.
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  So we chocolate ingredients are more and more expensive, so you
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  can actually take the cells from the cacao plant, put them into
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  giant stainless steel reactors and make chocolate ingredients.
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  So cellular agriculture can be used for plant products as well
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  as animal products. I think cellular agriculture has
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  got an amazing future. Then as we talked about what's
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  called in general synthetic biology, which includes
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  precision fermentation, that is going to have a major effect.
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  And the last one, of course, is AAI, which is an accelerator to
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  the other two. So it means that you can
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  accelerate the pace with which you can develop your cellular
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  agriculture products and your precision for fermentation
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  products. And those three technologies I
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  really believe are going to drive massively the future of
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  food. Now, I'm not saying in any way
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  that conventional crop agriculture and animal
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  agriculture will disappear. Not saying that at all, they're
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  going to be around for a long, long time, if not forever, but
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  just that these technologies are going to be the most influential
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  on where we see the future of food go in the coming decades.
• 20:18
  Amazing. So alternative proteins, AI and
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  sustainability are major trends. Which one is the most
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  misunderstood and why? I think, you know,
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  sustainability possibly is misunderstood because when we
• 20:39
  think about sustainability, we think, oh, it's sustainable,
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  that's great, but sustainability is keeping the status quo.
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  What we should be looking more at is regenerative agriculture,
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  so that we're getting the outcomes we want in terms of
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  biodiversity, soil health, less inputs like fertilisers.
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  I mean, we're seeing, again, with the current crisis in the
• 21:05
  Middle East, the supply of urea is starting to dry up.
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  So we've got less and less fertilisers that we can use to
• 21:12
  grow our crops. So I think that if we get that
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  regenerative side of things, then that is going to help
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  insulate part of the food supply from shocks like we're seeing
• 21:24
  now. And there's even technology in
• 21:26
  that. There's a company called Pivot
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  Bio, They have a soil microbiome that they've developed.
• 21:33
  They can either spray it on the ground or on the seeds before
• 21:36
  they're planted and it reduces nitrogen usage by about 40 kilos
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  per hectare, which is a lot when you're doing millions of
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  hectares. That's a lot of fertiliser you
• 21:45
  don't need. So you don't get the runoff, you
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  don't get the problems, you don't have to buy as much
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  fertiliser. Very, very cost effective.
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  So those sorts of technologies are also in the mix.
• 21:57
  Again, another example of technology and farming.
• 22:05
  Wow. So, so you talked about how the
• 22:08
  crisis in the Middle East is affecting the global supply
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  chain for food briefly, right? I'll love for you to expand on
• 22:16
  that, right. But also you talked about a
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  component, a chemical compound that is your beer, which is very
• 22:26
  would I say, a stable component of fertilisers, right also?
• 22:33
  It's one of the most commonly used fertilisers.
• 22:37
  Yes, that that I know. At least you know, I do have a
• 22:40
  science background and thinking about it like correct me if I'm
• 22:43
  wrong is, is it not possible to produce urea from what I say
• 22:52
  synthetic chemical reactions? Is is it possible to to to to do
• 22:58
  that? Yeah.
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  A lot of nitrogen is produced by what's called the Harvard Bosch
• 23:04
  process and they use a lot of LNG, which is one of the
• 23:08
  problems that a lot of liquid nitrogen produced in the in the
• 23:11
  Middle East is not getting through.
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  So we can't make our our, our fertilisers.
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  And this is one of the things that we're seeing.
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  If we go back to COVID, we've had the shock of COVID
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  disrupting supply chains. Russia, Ukraine war disrupting
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  supply chains, now Strait of Hormuz disrupting supply chains.
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  As I've been saying for years, this idea of growing stuff or
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  making raw materials on one side of the world and shipping it to
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  the other side of the world is not necessarily the good idea we
• 23:43
  once thought it was. And Hormuz is not the only choke
• 23:47
  point. The Panama Canal, the Suez
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  Canal, the Straits of Malacca, those are all global
• 23:55
  checkpoints. If one of those goes down, then
• 23:59
  we have similar problems to what we're seeing now or, or possibly
• 24:03
  even worse. So countries now need to look at
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  the difference between food security and food sovereignty.
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  Now, Singapore, for example, exports about 90, not 95% of all
• 24:16
  its food. But they're quite food secure,
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  right? They can buy whatever food they
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  like. They're a rich country until
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  either A, you just can't get it or B, people won't sell it to
• 24:29
  you. Malaysia stopped selling chicken
• 24:31
  to Singapore like that at one stage because of their domestic
• 24:34
  chicken market problems. So they couldn't get it because
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  they weren't food sovereign. So they didn't make enough food
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  in their own country. Even though their food's secure,
• 24:43
  they weren't food sovereign. And I think we're going to see a
• 24:46
  lot more returning to the days of, well, OK, even though it's
• 24:52
  cheaper to make it 10,000 kilometres away and ship it in,
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  maybe we're best to make it in our country so that we are food
• 25:02
  sovereign. So if anything happens and the
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  supplies cut off, we can still at least grow a base amount of
• 25:08
  food for our country rather than being at the mercy of someone
• 25:13
  else. And I mean, as as we know,
• 25:16
  food's been a weapon of war for 10s of thousands of years.
• 25:20
  That's what sieges were all about, right?
• 25:22
  Starve people out. Stop them out and you get your
• 25:26
  desired alcohol. Yep, Yep.
• 25:30
  And I mean the rules based order is now dead as everyone says.
• 25:34
  So you really have to start looking at where do you need
• 25:38
  sovereignty and some of these new technologies can you can
• 25:42
  make food without arable land or virtually any fresh water.
• 25:48
  There's a company called Solar Foods based out of Finland.
• 25:52
  They make food from air. They suck air in through their
• 25:57
  machine. They separate out the water,
• 26:00
  carbon dioxide and nitrogen. They split the water into
• 26:03
  hydrogen and oxygen, hence using solar energy, hence solar foods.
• 26:08
  They mix some microbes, a few minerals, they process the
• 26:11
  nitrogen and they grow food from air.
• 26:15
  Comes from NASA technology of the 60s.
• 26:17
  How do we feed astronauts? And they're now commercialising
• 26:21
  their second factory and that product will go mainstream in
• 26:27
  the next decade. And so therefore, in countries
• 26:30
  in Africa, in particular sub-Saharan Africa and other
• 26:32
  places where you don't have arable land or freshwater, a lot
• 26:36
  of it, you can still make food. And the beauty is it needs solar
• 26:39
  energy. Guess where the most solar
• 26:41
  energy is on the planet? Sub-Saharan Africa.
• 26:44
  Africa. Africa.
• 26:46
  That's the equator. That's the technologies.
• 26:50
  Yep, exactly. So those technologies, that's
• 26:53
  why some of these technologies are so good for food
• 26:55
  sovereignty, because you don't have to try and create or you
• 26:59
  don't have to have large amounts of arable land and freshwater.
• 27:03
  Well, I, I, I love the fact that you, you, you touched on
• 27:07
  sub-Saharan Africa. I'm originally from Nigeria.
• 27:11
  And of course that is, that is the hotbed of sub-saharan of
• 27:15
  Africa. And you know, for me, it's crazy
• 27:18
  to think about the fact that we are blessed with the, would I
• 27:22
  say, solar energy, like it is literally free in that part of
• 27:27
  the world, right? But one thing we've always
• 27:30
  struggled with is when I say government policies and of
• 27:34
  course execution by the government.
• 27:37
  So if you we're advising a government today, what would be
• 27:41
  the first move for them to seek your food for the next 50 years?
• 27:47
  Look, I think The thing is Adam Alla is which government are we
• 27:51
  talking the government of Nigeria or the government of the
• 27:54
  US to conquer different ends of the spectrum?
• 27:58
  What I'd like to concentrate on is the countries at the Nigeria
• 28:02
  end of the spectrum up and coming emerging companies with
• 28:06
  huge opportunities and population and everything else
• 28:10
  and say to them, look, you know, if we look, I look at Kenya back
• 28:14
  in 2002, right, they needed to dramatically improve their
• 28:18
  telecommunications. So what did they do?
• 28:22
  Did they go? I know we'll let's have a, we
• 28:24
  have a cabinet meeting. I know, let's buy 100,000
• 28:28
  trenching machines, 2,000,000 kilometres of copper wire, set
• 28:32
  up a local handset manufacturing industry, and in 100 years we'll
• 28:36
  catch up with the rest of the world.
• 28:38
  No, they got cell technology in, they gave people cheap handsets
• 28:47
  and they leapfrogged. Literally 100 years of
• 28:50
  telecommunications technology in a decade.
• 28:54
  So why can't countries like that look at food in the same way?
• 28:58
  Why do I have to import millions of tonnes of fertiliser, grow
• 29:03
  all these cows, do all this stuff to have a food industry?
• 29:08
  Why don't I look at the latest technologies and say how do I
• 29:13
  use those to leapfrog where I am now to where I want to be?
• 29:19
  And again, taking into account that sovereignty is so important
• 29:24
  and the importing fertilisers and other resources is probably
• 29:29
  not a good idea. And if we look at Nigeria by
• 29:34
  just after the early 20 fifties, it will have more people, a
• 29:39
  higher population than the US. So it will not have the same GDP
• 29:44
  maybe, but will have more population, a much younger
• 29:47
  population and probably on a much faster trajectory than than
• 29:52
  than the US. So why don't they take advantage
• 29:54
  of the latest cutting edge technologies rather than going,
• 29:58
  what did they do in the US? What did they do in the UK?
• 30:01
  What did they do in Australia? Let's just follow them.
• 30:04
  If Kenya had done that, they'd still be talking on handsets and
• 30:07
  trying to, you know, connect through the operator.
• 30:09
  I mean, that doesn't make any sense.
• 30:12
  So why can't they leapfrog some of these into some of these new
• 30:16
  technologies? That's what I'd be saying to
• 30:19
  those, to those governments, to the other governments, the more
• 30:23
  advanced governments, I I'd be saying, you know, look at where
• 30:29
  you are and what you can make sustainably.
• 30:32
  Because there's a gap between what we can make sustainably and
• 30:37
  what we're going to need to feed a global population in 2050.
• 30:42
  And what we don't want is to disrupt the current global food
• 30:48
  system. We've seen what disruption does
• 30:51
  to the food system. The last thing we need is
• 30:53
  disruption like short sharp shocks.
• 30:56
  We don't need those. So what we need to do is look at
• 30:59
  how we optimise and make sustainable our current food
• 31:02
  system and on top of that other technologies so that we can fill
• 31:07
  that gap between what we can make sustainably and what we're
• 31:11
  going to need by 2050 and beyond.
• 31:14
  Amazing, amazing. And of course, you have your
• 31:19
  proprietary framework. It very much aligns with the
• 31:23
  philosophy of this forecast because the main philosophy of
• 31:26
  this forecast is mindset, skill set, tool set.
• 31:29
  And of course, you have provided the tool set, right?
• 31:33
  So you have the framework for the future cubed, which is
• 31:38
  trademarked, right? So are you able to what I say,
• 31:43
  give us a brief expose on what the future cubed framework is
• 31:50
  about? Yeah.
• 31:53
  Well, look, I mean, just to go back once to Adam Ola, the the
• 31:56
  reason I developed that was some people look at trying to do
• 32:00
  foresight, trying to look at the future and it's just all too
• 32:03
  hard and all too complicated. So I thought, what's something
• 32:07
  that is nice and easy and simple to follow.
• 32:11
  So obviously the future cubes about the future and the cubed.
• 32:14
  CUBED is the process that you follow.
• 32:19
  So first of all, you challenge your thinking.
• 32:22
  We've talked before about taking a much wider view of what's
• 32:25
  going on, challenging things. The old, we've always done it
• 32:29
  this way or this is the way things happen, or that's the
• 32:31
  only way it can happen. So look at these new
• 32:33
  technologies, some of which we've talked about, and
• 32:36
  challenge your thinking with it. What could that mean?
• 32:39
  And then we call these cutting edge things that we see signals
• 32:44
  of change. They're a signal that things are
• 32:46
  changing. They're not going to be the same
• 32:49
  as they were. And we need to then understand
• 32:53
  that's the UN cube, understand these signals and what they
• 32:57
  could mean. And then we need to from that we
• 33:01
  then go to be prepared. So what we do is we say given
• 33:05
  all these things that we've seen, let's prepare what we
• 33:08
  talked about before and Amola, which is those alternative
• 33:11
  futures. So we can see the future could
• 33:14
  happen in maybe 2-3 or four ways.
• 33:17
  Let's develop an understanding at least on a surface level of
• 33:21
  each of those futures. So then we can have a be able to
• 33:26
  be resilient no matter what future comes to pass.
• 33:29
  We might not pick it exactly even with the three, but if we
• 33:33
  do have work properly, it'll be very close to let's say one of
• 33:36
  those three that we had. Then we need to do a bit of an
• 33:39
  evaluation. We need to dive a little bit
• 33:41
  deeper and go, well, OK, what do each of those futures mean for
• 33:45
  our organisation? Does it mean that we need far
• 33:48
  more CapEx? Does it mean that we need much
• 33:52
  better human resources in R&D? Does it mean we did much better
• 33:56
  marketing department? What do each of these futures
• 33:59
  mean to us? And then the final one, the D in
• 34:03
  future cubed is decisive action because I'm not one of these
• 34:07
  futurists that goes, here's a blue sky view, flying cars,
• 34:11
  robot dogs, this, that and the other, it's like, no, no, no,
• 34:14
  I've been in business. It needs to be something that's
• 34:16
  useful. And then at some point you need
• 34:19
  to take action. You can't just do all this work
• 34:21
  and then say, oh, that was interesting, you've got to go.
• 34:24
  We need to take action. And if you've done the work
• 34:27
  properly, you will take action maybe 12 months before your
• 34:32
  competitors even realise what's going on.
• 34:35
  You've maybe already started building that factory 12 months
• 34:39
  ago, so they're 12 months behind.
• 34:41
  Maybe you've recruited the best people in the world in that area
• 34:45
  of research or product development or whatever, and
• 34:48
  you've deprived the other companies of that expertise.
• 34:51
  So that's the advantage of that, being prepared for what's going
• 34:55
  to happen. And that's what the future Q
• 34:57
  process does. It's a very simple process that
• 35:01
  people can follow to be prepared for the future.
• 35:05
  Well, amazing framework and of course I love the level of
• 35:10
  detail and insight that you provided into the framework, but
• 35:14
  where the companies actually feel right in applying this
• 35:18
  foresight strategy. I think they again they
• 35:26
  concentrate too much on the short term and they don't pay
• 35:31
  enough attention to the long term that it something that goes
• 35:35
  on the shelf that's interesting that's for five or ten years
• 35:38
  time rather than saying no. This is an integral part of our
• 35:41
  strategy that must be considered at every board meeting at every
• 35:46
  quarterly or six months or whatever strategy meeting.
• 35:49
  This needs to be embedded in what we do.
• 35:51
  This the process of looking to the future term as a check
• 35:57
  against what we're doing today. Does it match If we think the
• 36:00
  future is in that direction and this short term decision is
• 36:04
  going to take us in that direction, is that still the
• 36:07
  right thing to do? So not using that and continuing
• 36:11
  to use that knowledge on a continuous basis.
• 36:19
  So how about you know SMEs, that is small, medium, you know
• 36:24
  skilled enterprises, founders without a project.
• 36:27
  So how can you know small businesses use the framework
• 36:30
  without affording a big consulting budget?
• 36:37
  Well, I mean, I, I suppose the easiest way is go to my website,
• 36:39
  there's a few, there's an outline of the future Q process.
• 36:43
  And I think there is no downside no matter how you approach that
• 36:52
  foresight strategy. Even just having a view, looking
• 36:56
  at my process and following it yourself is way, way better than
• 37:00
  doing nothing. If you can look at that and say
• 37:03
  to yourself, I'm going to do this every week, I'm going to
• 37:06
  look at what's going on. I'm going to spend 2 hours
• 37:09
  investigating the future, challenging my thinking and then
• 37:12
  thinking about what that means for my organisation.
• 37:15
  Just that change in mindset without spending a lot of money
• 37:19
  on going through the whole process in great depth and
• 37:21
  detail. Doing that changes your mindset
• 37:25
  because the future cubed is a process, but it's also a
• 37:28
  mindset. It's a way of looking at the
• 37:30
  future. That means that you're far less
• 37:33
  likely to be ambushed as circumstances change.
• 37:38
  That is brilliant. So please what is the website so
• 37:41
  we can have it in the description below?
• 37:45
  It is futurist4food.com and the four is FAOR so futurist FAOR
• 37:52
  food.com and you'll find that there one of the drop downs will
• 37:57
  take you to my process. OK.
• 38:01
  And if you want to follow me on link, link LinkedIn as well
• 38:04
  also, I also feature that on my LinkedIn as well.
• 38:07
  And on the my website there's also blogs frequently on the
• 38:11
  future Q process and things like that.
• 38:14
  OK, yes, we will have your LinkedIn as well, you know, in
• 38:17
  in the description for for the forecast.
• 38:19
  So wherever you get your forecast guys look at the
• 38:22
  description and of course you can connect with Tony Hunter on
• 38:27
  LinkedIn. You can link up with him on
• 38:30
  LinkedIn. So for for for the founders
• 38:37
  listening to us today, right? What's that?
• 38:39
  One simple foresight habits that every founder, every CEO should
• 38:45
  start doing this week. I think, look, just develop a
• 38:51
  deep sense of curiosity about the outside world and what's
• 38:55
  going on outside your own field. I mean, that exposure to new
• 38:59
  ideas and new ways of doing things, I think there's no
• 39:02
  substitute for doing that because we're all tempted as
• 39:07
  senior executives to focus so much on our own business, so
• 39:11
  much of what's going on. And particularly you've been in
• 39:14
  the industry a long, long time, which can be quite an advantage
• 39:18
  sometimes. But at the downside is that
• 39:22
  you're only looking at it through that same lens that
• 39:24
  you've looked at it for the last 5-10, maybe even 20 years.
• 39:30
  Oh wow. Amazing.
• 39:31
  And you know, something just came up on my mind.
• 39:35
  I have been privileged to speak with some of the world's top
• 39:39
  futurists, right? And one word that all of you
• 39:45
  keep saying is curiosity, right? I have never spoken to a single
• 39:50
  futurist who hasn't used that word.
• 39:53
  Curiosity. What's up with being curious,
• 39:56
  right? Yeah, and, and I mean, it's one
• 40:03
  of those things. I I read a newsletter and it's
• 40:05
  amazing. You read a newsletter and you
• 40:07
  see something, then you follow that one and you follow that one
• 40:10
  and you follow that and you go down the rabbit hole and you
• 40:12
  discover things you never even imagined.
• 40:17
  I mean the one of my favourite technologies at the moment
• 40:21
  again, which is at the outside edge of food, but I can see how
• 40:26
  it could be applied to food even though no one's.
• 40:28
  Mention it, to my knowledge, is a company called Koniku.
• 40:31
  What they've done is they've put mouse neurons onto a computer
• 40:35
  chip and it can smell better than a dog's nose.
• 40:41
  And it can be used for detecting land mines, detecting explosives
• 40:46
  at airports. But imagine if you use that
• 40:49
  sense of smell to smell food products and then correlated
• 40:53
  that to what the consumer wants in a smell of a product, and
• 40:58
  then use AI to then generate A formulation that will give you
• 41:03
  that flavour, that smell profile that you want.
• 41:06
  So that could be really, really useful to digitise food smells.
• 41:16
  Amazing stuff. You just never know what you're
• 41:19
  able to create in the age of AI. But, you know, like talking.
• 41:24
  Absolutely. The the the global impact and
• 41:28
  the system of thinking. Now we are heading towards a
• 41:32
  global population of 10 billion people.
• 41:36
  That is insane. That is scary, right?
• 41:40
  So with the world heading towards feeding 10 billion
• 41:43
  people, we need as much innovation as we can get.
• 41:48
  But what are we getting wrong today?
• 41:53
  Look, let me just go back a second.
• 41:55
  I say that we're going to have 11 billion or more mouths to
• 41:59
  feed, not ten. Because besides 9 point, besides
• 42:06
  9.7 billion humans, there will be about 1.3 billion or more pet
• 42:11
  cats and dogs also needing to be fed.
• 42:15
  They can eat as much protein as a human.
• 42:18
  So we have over 11 billion mouths to feed, not just the
• 42:24
  human population by 2050. So that's the challenge.
• 42:28
  And if we look at the coming generations, pets are becoming
• 42:33
  more and more important, more and more part of the family, and
• 42:37
  they want to be fed well, they'll be looked after.
• 42:40
  And so the challenge is going to be feeding these increasing
• 42:43
  number of pets as well as humans.
• 42:48
  Wow, interesting. I know, I know we've touched on
• 42:50
  this before, but I would like for you to expand on this right
• 42:53
  now. Like how does geopolitics and
• 42:58
  the global supply chains, right? How does it shape the future of
• 43:03
  food security? You know, given what we've seen
• 43:06
  recently with the Suez Canal, with the Street of Hormuz, like,
• 43:12
  how does geopolitics and you know, when I say clumsy chances
• 43:18
  in the global supply chain system, right?
• 43:21
  How does it shape the future of food security?
• 43:27
  I think what it means is that as a country you have to realise I
• 43:31
  cannot rely 100% on any country and for a variety of reasons I
• 43:38
  just can't do that. So how do I look at the supply
• 43:41
  chain and that same word we used before, Ademola resilience.
• 43:45
  OK, if I can't get it from here, can I get it from there?
• 43:50
  If I can't get it from there, can I make it locally?
• 43:54
  What should I be making locally? What should I be doing to make
• 43:57
  sure that I have that sovereignty over my food supply?
• 44:00
  Because if I can't feed my population, that's the end of
• 44:05
  the story, isn't it? In the end, that's it.
• 44:08
  So you have to be able to feed your population.
• 44:10
  And one of that's one of the government's prime
• 44:13
  responsibilities is to ensure that their population are fed,
• 44:17
  yes, National Defence and all these sorts of things, but
• 44:20
  there's no good defending a population that's starving to
• 44:22
  death. So you have to be able to feed
• 44:26
  your population. So whatever you can do to ensure
• 44:29
  that is something valuable, it becomes a matter of national
• 44:33
  security. Is resilience and certainty
• 44:38
  sovereignty over your food supply?
• 44:42
  Wow. So what role will emerging
• 44:45
  markets like the countries in Africa play in the future of the
• 44:51
  food economy, the global food economy?
• 44:56
  Yeah. I think again, it harks back to
• 44:59
  what we were talking about before is that if they can adopt
• 45:03
  these new technologies and adopt them fast enough, then they
• 45:06
  become hotbeds of innovation and hotbeds of new technologies, new
• 45:12
  products, And that could give them a competitive advantage.
• 45:15
  Because as we know, generally you look at new technologies,
• 45:18
  they start off expensive and then they drop right in price.
• 45:23
  So if these countries can get in and scale some of these
• 45:26
  technologies, then they actually find that they have a
• 45:30
  competitive advantage against some conventionally manufactured
• 45:34
  products, and that then goes back to their own food supply
• 45:37
  and makes more affordable for them to supply their own
• 45:40
  population. So I think there's a huge
• 45:43
  opportunity for these countries, particularly in Africa, but in
• 45:46
  parts of Southeast Asia and India as well, to really adopt
• 45:51
  these new technologies to secure the future of the food supply
• 45:56
  for their populations. So if the current global system
• 46:02
  collapses, what does the next version look like?
• 46:09
  Well, as I say, I hope it never collapses as such.
• 46:14
  Well, I, I hope that changes are, are manageable.
• 46:18
  The rate of change is manageable because if it were to collapse,
• 46:22
  mass starvation would be it. I mean, if suddenly, not just
• 46:26
  the Strait of Hormuz, but Suez was closed, Michael was closed,
• 46:30
  and we had two or three of these choke points around the world
• 46:32
  closed, that would be disastrous.
• 46:34
  We would see starvation on a level, an unimaginable level we
• 46:38
  haven't seen for centuries. So I think that would be
• 46:41
  absolutely terrible. What I think is that we need to
• 46:47
  look at a rebalancing of our technologies and our food supply
• 46:52
  system to ensure it's at least sustainable, if not
• 46:55
  regenerative, and that we look at these technologies as a ways
• 46:59
  of filling that gap that we know we're going to have between what
• 47:03
  we grow sustainably within planetary boundaries and what
• 47:07
  we're going to need. So that's going to be, I think,
• 47:09
  the big, big effect. Oh.
• 47:12
  Interesting take. You know, let's talk about AI
• 47:16
  and leadership because AI is at the heart of what we do with
• 47:20
  this podcast. So you often times talk about
• 47:24
  exponential change. And of course anybody who
• 47:28
  understands AI understands that AI and exponential change are
• 47:34
  their siblings. But why do leaders consistently
• 47:39
  underestimate the the power of AI and the the exponential
• 47:45
  change it can create? Because I think that seems to
• 47:47
  create that exponential gap. Yep, I think this.
• 47:53
  I forget who it was, but someone said the greatest failing of the
• 47:57
  human race is the inability to understand the exponential
• 48:00
  function. And because what it is is we
• 48:03
  humans, we're linear creatures, right?
• 48:05
  An hour is an hour, a day is a day, a week is a week.
• 48:09
  A week doesn't pass quicker next year than it did this year.
• 48:13
  It's still a week when you're on holidays.
• 48:15
  It might seem to pass quicker, but it doesn't really.
• 48:17
  Still the same way because it was.
• 48:19
  When you're at work, it just seems sure, right?
• 48:21
  So that's the thing. Humans are linear technology,
• 48:27
  particularly things like AI, and most often are exponential.
• 48:31
  They're not linear and we have trouble wrapping a human linear
• 48:36
  minds around an exponential function.
• 48:40
  I think that is why leaders have trouble grasping it.
• 48:46
  And the other side of things is what they so often see is the
• 48:52
  exponential curve, as we know is very, very shallow at its start.
• 48:55
  It looks like a straight line, right?
• 48:57
  So if you're, if you're a leader and you look at those points and
• 49:00
  you put your ruler across them, you can look, that looks like a
• 49:03
  pretty nice straight line to me. It's not.
• 49:05
  It's a very shallow curve. And if you don't act, the gap
• 49:10
  between the straight line and the exponential curve starts
• 49:15
  widening in enormously. So people often they
• 49:20
  overestimate how quickly things will happen.
• 49:23
  So it'll all change in a year? No, it took 510 or 20 years.
• 49:28
  But when it did change, they underestimate the impact it will
• 49:33
  have. So you know, that is one of the
• 49:35
  problems that our our people board members seem second son
• 49:39
  have is they thinking linearly. It's very hard not to think
• 49:43
  linearly to immerse yourself in exponential change.
• 49:47
  And then when you look at it, it seems to be linear anyway at 1st
• 49:51
  until it takes off. And then you find out how far
• 49:54
  behind you really are. Because if you're running your
• 49:57
  business on a linear mode and the real change is that you end
• 50:02
  up with a huge gap and either you never catch up and you
• 50:06
  disappear, or you have to pump enormous resources into catching
• 50:11
  up, that's your only two choices.
• 50:14
  Interesting. Let's say OK, assuming time is
• 50:18
  not linear. They say time flies fast when
• 50:21
  you're having fun. Yeah.
• 50:28
  Time all these slides fast where you have a fun.
• 50:31
  But what might have shift? Most leaders might try to to to
• 50:36
  stay relevant in an AI driven world.
• 50:40
  What's the mindset shift that is required?
• 50:45
  I think the mindset shift is that AI is for use everywhere in
• 50:50
  the organisation, including at their own level.
• 50:54
  AI is not something you delegate to the guys in IT and then say
• 50:59
  good, we've got this AI thing done, the guys in IT are looking
• 51:03
  after it. In Australian parlance, she'll
• 51:06
  be right mate, Don't worry, it has got it.
• 51:09
  We'll just keep doing the way we've always done things in the
• 51:12
  boardroom at the CEO level. No, If you're not embedding AI
• 51:17
  at your own level in the things that you do, then how do you
• 51:21
  expect the rest of the organisation to respond?
• 51:25
  How do you expect them to embed AI in what they do and take the
• 51:29
  advantages of it if you're not doing it yourself?
• 51:32
  It really is a case of leading by example and looking at how
• 51:37
  you can optimise use of AI in your own department and in your
• 51:43
  own job. So if you're not doing that,
• 51:46
  then basically no, you're never going to convince the rest of
• 51:50
  the organisation that it truly is important.
• 51:54
  It just and take. So Speaking of AI in your own
• 51:58
  department, let's talk about AI in the end to end, when I say
• 52:06
  food process from farm to funk. So how will AI receive the food
• 52:11
  industry from farm to funk? I, I think the, the biggest
• 52:17
  impact is probably going to be in the manufacturing side of
• 52:20
  things, which will feedback into what they want from farms feed
• 52:24
  into the supermarkets and, and consumers.
• 52:27
  And that is it's impact on product development and R&D.
• 52:32
  So if we look at if you're a food technologist and someone
• 52:35
  says I want you to make a new food product, you can, you might
• 52:39
  have twenty ingredients and you've got to get the best
• 52:43
  combination of five of those to make your food product the
• 52:46
  tastiest it can be. What's your chance of choosing
• 52:50
  the right five products that are going to be absolutely the best?
• 52:54
  You got to go down the 20 and get get rid of that one, get rid
• 52:56
  of that one. That one's good, that one's good
• 52:58
  and you come up, if you're a good food technologist, you
• 53:00
  undoubtedly come up with a good product.
• 53:03
  Now, if you're using AI, you can say it says 20 products.
• 53:08
  How about you give me 20,000 and I'll give you the best
• 53:11
  combinations and it can come up with an enormous number
• 53:16
  combinations and ways of doing things that we as humans have
• 53:19
  never even thought of and. I'm.
• 53:23
  Not saying it can replace the human, Yep, so that you can.
• 53:28
  So then it can produce some combinations.
• 53:30
  You're like, I never thought of that one, I'll try it.
• 53:33
  And then you look at it. Maybe it's not quite right, but
• 53:35
  again, that feedback loop, you feedback to the AI that wasn't
• 53:38
  quite right for this reason. So next time it's even better
• 53:42
  and you can build up that knowledge base so that you can
• 53:45
  develop products that maybe you never even thought of.
• 53:50
  And it's compressing the time frame from having an idea to
• 53:54
  having the product on the shelf. You go back 1020 years, 18
• 53:58
  months. Here's the idea from marketing.
• 54:00
  Here's all the stuff we've done, It's on the shelf in 18 months,
• 54:04
  in 18 months. Now consumers forgotten about
• 54:07
  that trend. That's long gone. 18 weeks is
• 54:11
  too long now developing a new product, you need to try and get
• 54:14
  that down. If you get into 18 days, you
• 54:16
  probably can't, but you need to get it down to a a few months in
• 54:21
  order to take advantage of a consumer trend.
• 54:23
  Consumer trends are changing so quickly that you need to be able
• 54:26
  to do that. And AI enables you to come up
• 54:29
  with those combinations of ingredients and ways of making
• 54:33
  things and ways of evaluating products that we never had
• 54:36
  before. No substitute for humans in the
• 54:39
  mix because as I say, humans eat food, AI doesn't.
• 54:44
  So the final arbiter has to be a human.
• 54:47
  But I think that's where the big difference is coming.
• 54:50
  And we're seeing companies like AI Palate based out of
• 54:54
  Singapore, Case Wise based out of Israel in America, the
• 54:58
  Institute of Food Technologies have their Co developer AI that
• 55:02
  we're seeing AI come into food products in a big way now and
• 55:07
  making a big difference. All the major companies where
• 55:09
  you're talking Unilever, Danone, Nestle, they are all using AI to
• 55:15
  develop their products. And that is a is having a huge
• 55:18
  effect on how quickly companies can react to changing food
• 55:23
  trends. A while.
• 55:25
  So how do they balance the short term and the long term strategy?
• 55:35
  Well, if you look in in terms of product development or.
• 55:39
  Yes, yes, exactly. In terms of product development,
• 55:42
  because you know you're talking about that rapid change right,
• 55:46
  in consumer behaviour. So how do you get to balance
• 55:50
  that short term strategy versus the long term strategy?
• 55:56
  It's it's very, very good for short term because of course
• 56:00
  then you compress the time it takes from idea to product on
• 56:03
  the shelf. Looking at long term, it's goes
• 56:07
  back to fundamental research, so finding molecules that do things
• 56:14
  that you didn't know they could do or developing new products.
• 56:18
  So looking at genomics, so you can look at, OK, how do I
• 56:23
  engineer this microbe to make that particular product which
• 56:27
  takes a longer period of time? How do I look at this particular
• 56:31
  molecule that we need to make to make it sweeter, to make it
• 56:35
  taste this way, it tastes that way.
• 56:37
  So using AI to develop those products in more an R&D phase
• 56:43
  than an application phase, that's going to affect what we
• 56:46
  what we develop in the the long term.
• 56:50
  Interesting. And you know you've actually
• 56:53
  speaking from the business side now, right?
• 56:55
  You've actually worked with global brands and as well as
• 56:59
  start-ups. I think you would agree with me
• 57:02
  that the start-ups have more flexibility when it comes to
• 57:07
  executing strategy on like the big global brands.
• 57:12
  But the big brands tend to have the advantage in terms of the
• 57:16
  resources that they have control over.
• 57:19
  So what would you say are the biggest strategic mistakes that
• 57:24
  both groups are make? I think The thing is that what
• 57:32
  we're seeing with AIAI is democratising product
• 57:36
  development. So whereas before the large
• 57:39
  companies had the big advantage, they had lots of legacy data,
• 57:43
  they had lots of knowledge, lots of things that their people knew
• 57:47
  that other people didn't know. That's disappearing now.
• 57:51
  We're finding that small companies can have access
• 57:54
  through AI and through some of the ingredients companies to the
• 57:57
  same level of technology as the Nest Lays and Denones and so on
• 58:03
  of this world. So that's what we're seeing.
• 58:06
  And I can visit your day where you can a small company or a
• 58:10
  startup, you can make a phone call or a video call or on your
• 58:13
  watch or whatever we're using in 1020 years time.
• 58:16
  So I want a formulation for a product that does this, this,
• 58:20
  this and this, and I need to make it on these machines and so
• 58:23
  on. And the AI other end goes or
• 58:27
  words that effect and then says here you are.
• 58:30
  I've got three different formulations I think will do
• 58:32
  what you want. You say thank you.
• 58:34
  How much is that? And they say $250.
• 58:38
  So instead of $25,000, it's now $250.
• 58:42
  They say you said your own AI. Just please pay that AI the 250
• 58:47
  please and put the formulations in my inbox or in my file
• 58:53
  folder. Thank you very much.
• 58:54
  And you get the three, you try them, they're 95% right.
• 58:58
  You tweak them and you've got your product.
• 59:00
  You might be a very small organisation, but you're going
• 59:03
  to have access to the same amount of horsepower in
• 59:08
  developing a product as the large companies.
• 59:11
  Because as times are changing and consumers are changing so
• 59:15
  quickly, the advantage of knowing what consumers wanted 20
• 59:19
  years ago disappears. Who cares what consumers wanted
• 59:23
  20 years ago? What they wanted 20 months ago
• 59:26
  might still be relevant, but 20 years ago?
• 59:29
  Forget it. And as we get further and
• 59:30
  further along, that legacy data is likely become less and less
• 59:35
  valuable compared to knowing what's happening now or what
• 59:39
  might happen in three months time or happened three months
• 59:43
  ago. So I think that that's the
• 59:45
  that's the big thing is that's what's going to happen in the
• 59:48
  future is there's going to be this democratisation of the
• 59:51
  ability to develop and manufacture products.
• 59:54
  The big disadvantage for startups is scaling.
• 59:58
  We have the scale up Valley of Death.
• 1:00:01
  So you can get your product, you can prove it at pilot scale and
• 1:00:05
  then you might need a couple of $100 million to commercialise it
• 1:00:08
  and scale it. That's where the difficulty
• 1:00:11
  comes in, because particularly at the moment, AI is sucking the
• 1:00:14
  lifeblood out of venture capital.
• 1:00:17
  Everyone their dog in venture capital wants to investing
• 1:00:20
  somehow in AI otherwise. I need to.
• 1:00:23
  FOMO, fear of missing out on AI. Yep, and food organisations
• 1:00:29
  generally have much lower multiples than technology.
• 1:00:33
  Thing is, we're always going to need to eat.
• 1:00:37
  If you're looking for a long term solid investment, food is
• 1:00:42
  generally far better than any technology.
• 1:00:45
  Might not make you rich tomorrow, but it's going to keep
• 1:00:48
  you in money for a long period of time.
• 1:00:52
  And that's though where you have VC who who can get their fund do
• 1:00:58
  the funding in the short term. Looking to get a good multiple
• 1:01:01
  on exit. You have banks who say show me
• 1:01:04
  your turnover for the last 12 months or two years, so I know
• 1:01:07
  that you can make money to repay the loan.
• 1:01:10
  That's no good because you're a start up and in the middle.
• 1:01:14
  There are very few funders in the middle who will say, well
• 1:01:16
  OK, I'm prepared to take less than the VC, but I'm got a
• 1:01:21
  bigger risk appetite than a bank.
• 1:01:24
  So I will fund you in that scale up phase so you can go back to
• 1:01:27
  the bank in three or five years time.
• 1:01:29
  Say here's my history, here's my profitability.
• 1:01:32
  That's why I think I can borrow 2 or 300 million from you to
• 1:01:36
  build my next factory. And that's that's where the the
• 1:01:40
  problems are for those small companies.
• 1:01:43
  And I think they underestimate how hard scale up is going to
• 1:01:48
  be. I think that's the big issue for
• 1:01:52
  the. Difficulty in scaling.
• 1:01:53
  Start up companies. Yep, it is very, very and you.
• 1:01:58
  Need a different set of skills compared to family.
• 1:02:01
  Exactly, exactly, exactly. But but where should capital be
• 1:02:06
  deployed today for the highest long term return in food
• 1:02:13
  innovation? Well, as I was saying, I can't
• 1:02:18
  predict the future. So because I can't predict the
• 1:02:21
  future, I can't really predict for you 1 technology.
• 1:02:25
  What I would say is take AVC type approach, spread your
• 1:02:29
  portfolio across different technologies and different
• 1:02:35
  companies, different organisations act like a venture
• 1:02:38
  capital, do a deep dive so you really understand not just a
• 1:02:42
  superficial level, but at a deep level the technology you're
• 1:02:45
  investing in. And then invest in a portfolio
• 1:02:48
  of companies because you can look at it and go, well, say
• 1:02:52
  there's our alternative futures, which if, if these futures, one
• 1:02:56
  of them comes off and I've got five companies that future comes
• 1:03:00
  off. All three of them all, all be
• 1:03:01
  successful. That one and three will be
• 1:03:03
  successful. That one, three will be
• 1:03:04
  successful. There might be 3 different ones
• 1:03:06
  in each case. But depending on what future
• 1:03:09
  comes to pass, you will have a portfolio that's going to give
• 1:03:12
  you a good return. So spreading your your risk base
• 1:03:17
  really is what it's about with these new technologies.
• 1:03:21
  Hey, amazing, amazing take. So what are the signals that
• 1:03:26
  tell you if a company is future ready versus if they are already
• 1:03:33
  obsolete? Well, I think looking if they
• 1:03:41
  are future ready, then they are adopting these new technologies.
• 1:03:46
  They're looking at them, they're saying, OK, how do I add them as
• 1:03:51
  an opportunity into my business? So they're looking at it and
• 1:03:55
  saying, well, OK, this could be a competitor, but maybe it's not
• 1:03:58
  a competitor, maybe it's something I can add on to the
• 1:04:01
  organisation. There's a company in Australia,
• 1:04:03
  a dairy company called Norco, and they invested in a company
• 1:04:06
  called Eden Brew who were using precision fermentation to make
• 1:04:10
  dairy ingredients. So rather than circling the
• 1:04:13
  waggons and trying to kill this company, they invested in them.
• 1:04:17
  So that seems to me they're thinking they're looking to the
• 1:04:19
  future, they're looking at the opportunities.
• 1:04:21
  The companies that are already obsolete are the ones that are
• 1:04:24
  going. I need to get my marketing
• 1:04:26
  department to tell people how horrible this new technology is,
• 1:04:30
  how bad it is, why they shouldn't do it.
• 1:04:31
  I need to do everything I can to block it.
• 1:04:33
  I need to speak to my representative in in government
• 1:04:36
  and get them to stop funding for it.
• 1:04:38
  I need and I need to do, we need to do more of my stuff that I've
• 1:04:42
  got because I don't want to change.
• 1:04:44
  I just want to keep doing what I've always done because that
• 1:04:47
  will always make us successful. So I look for those signals that
• 1:04:50
  these companies, those are the 2 ends of the spectrum.
• 1:04:54
  There are ones in the middle, but the people who are really
• 1:04:56
  looking at the future, embracing the future, embracing new
• 1:04:59
  technologies as an opportunity, as an add on to their business.
• 1:05:03
  And those are determined to crush everything new that might
• 1:05:06
  change what they do. I think that is an interesting
• 1:05:12
  take across the Life is harder, or would I say life is the
• 1:05:17
  hardest right now for lobbyists that it has ever been at any
• 1:05:22
  point in time in history, because I think the
• 1:05:24
  democratisation of, of information has just made it
• 1:05:29
  very, very difficult. So we have what is closest in
• 1:05:33
  history to having a perfect market situation like we're
• 1:05:38
  taught in economics class. You know, there's, there's, I
• 1:05:42
  think we, we keep getting closer to the concept of a perfect
• 1:05:46
  market of perfect competition right in, in this age and time.
• 1:05:50
  Many thanks to, you know, the proliferation of our information
• 1:05:55
  by the LLMS, by the AI systems. But we do have what I say, a
• 1:06:03
  large population of founders, entrepreneurs that listen to
• 1:06:08
  this podcast. So if a founder is listening
• 1:06:12
  right now, what is one decision they cannot afford to delay
• 1:06:16
  today? Oh.
• 1:06:21
  Can't afford to delay. I mean it, it is going, I hate
• 1:06:26
  to say it again, going back to what we say, how am I going to
• 1:06:28
  scale this? How am I going to be able to
• 1:06:32
  manufacture this at a commercial scale?
• 1:06:36
  Not just thinking about I need to get this to pilot scale and
• 1:06:39
  then I'll prove I can make it and then everybody will come
• 1:06:42
  running to me with money. No, you need to think way beyond
• 1:06:46
  that into the commercialization side of things and say to
• 1:06:50
  yourself, I've got it up and running, I've got it at pilot
• 1:06:52
  stage. Now how am I going to cross that
• 1:06:55
  scale up Valley of Death to actually get my product to
• 1:06:59
  market to where I can prove sales and I can then prove to
• 1:07:03
  investors, including banks that I am worthy of their money?
• 1:07:09
  I think that would be the single thing I would say to them, just
• 1:07:12
  don't stop at there we are. I've made the product, now
• 1:07:16
  everybody's going to give me money.
• 1:07:19
  Might have worked 5 or 10 years ago, maybe it's not going to
• 1:07:23
  work now. They're, you know, the companies
• 1:07:27
  are far. Even VCs are far more choosy
• 1:07:32
  about what they invest in. You have to have a convincing
• 1:07:37
  point of difference. I was speaking to someone the
• 1:07:39
  other day and they said yeah I've had people come to me with
• 1:07:43
  ideas and they put into ChatGPT and chat GP told told them it
• 1:07:48
  was a wonderful idea and I said to them, well I can, I can list
• 1:07:54
  5 competitors right now. You didn't do your due
• 1:07:57
  diligence. Make sure you have a true point
• 1:07:59
  of difference. If you're just one of a range of
• 1:08:02
  companies done exactly the same thing people have already
• 1:08:05
  invested in, no, you need to have a compelling point of
• 1:08:09
  difference from the other people in that startup and founder
• 1:08:13
  space. And if you've got that
• 1:08:15
  compelling point of difference and you can show how that can go
• 1:08:18
  through to scale up and commercialization, then I think
• 1:08:21
  you've got a compelling proposition for funding.
• 1:08:27
  Exactly, you, you have to prove the innovation and of course
• 1:08:31
  you, you need to prove the differentiation as well in this
• 1:08:35
  age of tax, you know. But let's talk about your
• 1:08:38
  personal philosophy and legacy, right?
• 1:08:41
  What does legacy mean to you in the context of global food
• 1:08:46
  systems? I mean, if you're looking at
• 1:08:52
  from from my personal point of view, from my, my legacy, you
• 1:08:56
  mean at a mother or? Yes, definitely.
• 1:08:59
  When it's all said and done, like what would you like your
• 1:09:02
  legacy to be in the context of the global food systems?
• 1:09:05
  I'd like my legacy to be that I I'd like it to be that I
• 1:09:09
  inspired people to optimism. I am at basis a techno optimist,
• 1:09:16
  not in a political or social point of view, but I believe
• 1:09:20
  there's not a problem in the world that cannot be solved
• 1:09:22
  through the correct application of technology.
• 1:09:27
  I look at it as a technology has solved humanity's problems since
• 1:09:30
  the dawn of time. From the invention of the plough
• 1:09:33
  to grow more food, to antibiotics, to mRNA vaccines.
• 1:09:38
  Technology has always solved humanity's problems.
• 1:09:43
  It always has and it always will.
• 1:09:46
  So I am an optimist. People say oh, we've got to feed
• 1:09:49
  all these people and this problem that probably all we
• 1:09:52
  have a history literally of solving problems through
• 1:09:56
  technology for 10s of thousands of years.
• 1:10:00
  Why we think all of a sudden we're going to come across a
• 1:10:03
  problem that's so insolvable that humanity is going to
• 1:10:09
  collapse. I don't believe that.
• 1:10:11
  And if we look to what we talked about with Africa, of the next
• 1:10:15
  2.5 billion people coming onto the planet in in to 2051 billion
• 1:10:20
  of those are going to come from Africa.
• 1:10:23
  And the young minds that are going to come into society with
• 1:10:28
  their dreams and their ideas and their optimism on life, I think
• 1:10:32
  is a wonderful thing that we're going to see and that we should
• 1:10:36
  be looking to the future with optimism.
• 1:10:39
  I mean, one of the things that saddened me the most, one of my
• 1:10:44
  wife's friends said that she'd had someone come to her and say,
• 1:10:48
  when are you going to give that your kids, you know, I think
• 1:10:52
  you're probably sub 10 years old.
• 1:10:54
  When are you going to give them the talk that basically they're
• 1:10:56
  pretty well doomed and the world's going to burn?
• 1:10:58
  When are you going to tell them that?
• 1:11:00
  I I was appalled and saddened that anyone would think that
• 1:11:04
  that's what you need to tell your children.
• 1:11:07
  No, that's not right. I mean, we see too much
• 1:11:10
  negativity on the TV because if it bleeds.
• 1:11:14
  Sci-fi. We don't see all yeah, it's all
• 1:11:18
  my too much dystopian sci-fi. We need more Star Trek.
• 1:11:22
  We need more Star Trek with that utopian view of what could
• 1:11:26
  happen rather than the dystopian view of things like Blade
• 1:11:29
  Runner, however entertaining they may be.
• 1:11:33
  That's not what we want. We want the utopian version, or
• 1:11:36
  as close to that as we can get. And we can do it.
• 1:11:40
  And yes, technologies can be used for good or evil.
• 1:11:44
  You can take your plough and beat it into a sword and kill
• 1:11:48
  people, or you can keep growing food with it.
• 1:11:50
  Right. No technology can be is solely
• 1:11:54
  for good or solely for evil. We have a choice as human beings
• 1:11:57
  as to how we use these technologies, how we're going to
• 1:12:00
  control them, how we're going to use them to benefit all of
• 1:12:04
  humanity. And we can do that.
• 1:12:06
  I think there's no reason that we can't healthily, sustainably
• 1:12:11
  and fairly feed our 11 billion entities, including our pets in
• 1:12:16
  2050 and the 1314 billion maybe on the planet by 2100.
• 1:12:22
  I don't think there's any reason that we can't do that.
• 1:12:25
  But that future is in our own hands.
• 1:12:30
  Whether we do it, whether we achieve that or not, I take the
• 1:12:33
  optimistic view that that's possible.
• 1:12:36
  That's what we should be going for.
• 1:12:38
  And if I had a legacy, it would be the person that, when they
• 1:12:41
  listen to, came away from our podcast at Amola optimistic and
• 1:12:47
  inspired as to what could happen in the future.
• 1:12:53
  Amazing, amazing stuff. So, Speaking of being
• 1:12:57
  optimistic, when the world looks back at this generation of
• 1:13:01
  leaders, what do you hope they have to say?
• 1:13:09
  I think they will. What would I hope they will look
• 1:13:12
  back and say yes, possibly more than possibly.
• 1:13:19
  This generation created a range of problems, some unintended
• 1:13:24
  consequences, some through lack of care.
• 1:13:27
  But they finally came to the realisation that the future of
• 1:13:33
  the planet and future generations was still within
• 1:13:36
  their hands and still within their grasp.
• 1:13:38
  That it was not at the point where nothing could be done and
• 1:13:42
  it was basically we're all doomed no matter what we do now.
• 1:13:47
  That the leaders took that situation and made something of
• 1:13:52
  it to improve the future of the coming generations.
• 1:13:58
  That's a fantastic take. So when it comes to you
• 1:14:01
  personally, what, what drives you to stay at the forefront of
• 1:14:07
  this space even after decades of experience?
• 1:14:09
  Look. I think it's two things,
• 1:14:14
  Ademola. I am basically an optimist.
• 1:14:18
  I'd like to believe the optimistic view of the future.
• 1:14:22
  And even though I've been around for a few years, that endless
• 1:14:26
  curiosity when I look at something and find something in
• 1:14:30
  my newsletter or in my research and I go like, wow, look at
• 1:14:34
  that. How ingenious are we as humans
• 1:14:37
  that we've managed to do this? And the endless curiosity and
• 1:14:42
  amazement at what we can do. I continue to be amazed.
• 1:14:46
  I continue to enjoy what I do and I find it endlessly
• 1:14:50
  fascinating. And that ability in consulting,
• 1:14:54
  but in particularly in the speaking, to go out and tell
• 1:14:57
  people about what's going on and to spread the word on what's
• 1:15:00
  going on in new technologies and say that that endless innovation
• 1:15:05
  and of, of, of humanity, that's what keeps me going.
• 1:15:09
  I I really thoroughly enjoy that.
• 1:15:13
  I, I, I love that. And of course, you know, there's
• 1:15:17
  something about people who love knowledge, who love to learn.
• 1:15:23
  You always find yourself when I say, running down different
• 1:15:28
  rabbit holes. And of course, you know, you
• 1:15:31
  just reminded me of something like that.
• 1:15:33
  There was a time I was reading a newsletter just in the evening,
• 1:15:37
  only to discover that he, he, he put me on research board into
• 1:15:41
  the midnight. And I asked myself, like, who
• 1:15:44
  sent you to do this? Yeah, suddenly an hour or two
• 1:15:51
  hours gone by. Like good grief, where did that
• 1:15:53
  go? And then you just keep going
• 1:15:58
  down the rabbit hole that it's, it's that curiosity.
• 1:16:03
  And I think it's, it's a common denominator when you look at
• 1:16:06
  people who end up becoming elite level experts.
• 1:16:11
  I tell people the best in the world are the best in the world
• 1:16:13
  for a reason, right? You can't take away the place
• 1:16:17
  of, you know, that hunger. You can't teach a person to be
• 1:16:20
  curious. I, I, I don't know how to teach
• 1:16:24
  a person to be curious. You need to you need to want to
• 1:16:26
  know it by yourself and that's how you know you end up getting
• 1:16:30
  when I say people who become elite level experts at what ease
• 1:16:34
  that they do. I don't know if you ever
• 1:16:37
  intended to become a futurist or to be known as a futurist, but
• 1:16:41
  that curiosity LED you into the research that made you become,
• 1:16:46
  what I say, globally relevant. And of course, I think it's
• 1:16:50
  something we need to tell people listening to us today.
• 1:16:53
  Like, you always have to develop that curiosity, right?
• 1:16:56
  Be curious about something, about something relevant and
• 1:17:00
  something meaningful. And yeah, things will definitely
• 1:17:05
  shake off. Wow.
• 1:17:08
  And I think the other thing is, I think as a futurist, you have
• 1:17:11
  to be part dreamer. You have to dream of the future.
• 1:17:15
  You have to dream of a future that you want to see become
• 1:17:19
  reality and strive to help people to embrace that future
• 1:17:25
  and for that dream to become a reality.
• 1:17:28
  I mean, my, I hopefully I can make it to 2050.
• 1:17:31
  I hope to look back in 2050 and go, yes, that dream of healthy,
• 1:17:38
  sustainable, fairly feeding the global population has come to
• 1:17:42
  pass that dream. So I think you have to be not
• 1:17:46
  just curious that curiosity. I think that's intertwined with
• 1:17:50
  being a dreamer as well. You're so curious that you dream
• 1:17:53
  of how these things can influence the future and how
• 1:17:57
  they could become reality. Speaking of dreaming, I'll give
• 1:18:02
  you this line. I think you'd like it.
• 1:18:04
  You cannot feature in the future that you cannot picture.
• 1:18:09
  How about that? You cannot.
• 1:18:14
  You cannot feature in the future that you cannot feature, so I'll
• 1:18:19
  give you that lie. I like it.
• 1:18:24
  I like it. Thank you.
• 1:18:26
  Thank you very. Much going to make a note of
• 1:18:29
  that one. You cannot feature in the future
• 1:18:32
  that you cannot feature. Guys, you heard it on the King
• 1:18:37
  Goose pockets first before before Tony Hunter.
• 1:18:43
  And I like, well, he's going to want royalties, folks.
• 1:18:48
  He's going to want royalties. Before Tony Hunter takes it and
• 1:18:57
  puts it on one of the keynote speeches.
• 1:19:02
  And then I'll see it and go, where's my royalties?
• 1:19:05
  Where's my royalties? No, no, no.
• 1:19:10
  I started a way for you. That's my gift to you today
• 1:19:13
  before before we heat the quick fire round.
• 1:19:16
  So it's five questions, you know, quick answers, right?
• 1:19:21
  So let me know Are you ready to rumble?
• 1:19:27
  Hey. I'm ready.
• 1:19:28
  I'm ready. Question Nice you were born
• 1:19:33
  ready. Number one question is 1 Food
• 1:19:36
  innovation that will shock the world in the next 10 years?
• 1:19:41
  What is 1 Food innovation that will shock?
• 1:19:44
  The world in the. Next 10 years.
• 1:19:46
  Yeah. I think the innovation that will
• 1:19:49
  shock the world is someone coming up with a product that
• 1:19:53
  will improve our health span towards our lifespan so that we
• 1:19:58
  don't spend 10 to 15 years of cognitive decline and physical
• 1:20:03
  decline. Someone who invents that, that
• 1:20:05
  will shock people. I think I'm shocked already
• 1:20:10
  thinking about it. I am shocked already.
• 1:20:14
  Well #2 #2 is what is 1 belief about food that people need to
• 1:20:25
  unlearn immediately today. They need to unlearn that anyone
• 1:20:33
  diet suits absolutely everyone. We are all highly individual and
• 1:20:39
  we need individual personalised diets.
• 1:20:43
  Wow, please can you repeat that again?
• 1:20:46
  Can you let the people out the back hear that?
• 1:20:56
  Because I think a lot of people need to realise this, you know,
• 1:21:01
  that there's no one-size-fits-all, you know,
• 1:21:04
  plan. And yeah, don't, don't let me
• 1:21:07
  come for some people on the Internet.
• 1:21:11
  Don't let me call for some people because they're people
• 1:21:15
  who I think you've seen them. You've seen them already.
• 1:21:18
  I'm not going to, I'm not going to call them out.
• 1:21:20
  I'll leave that to you to call them out.
• 1:21:28
  Wow #3 is if you had $1,000,000 to invest today in food tech,
• 1:21:35
  where would it go to? I would put it into something
• 1:21:42
  based on what's my one of my favourite technologies, right.
• 1:21:45
  There's lots of technologies, but plant molecular farming
• 1:21:50
  where you put the gene for a compound you want, like casein
• 1:21:54
  into a soybean. You grow the soybeans, take out
• 1:21:58
  the casein to make cheese and process the rest of the soybean.
• 1:22:02
  I'd invest in that technology. Interesting stuff.
• 1:22:08
  What is 1 habit that keeps you ahead of exponential change?
• 1:22:17
  It goes back again, Adamundo, as you said, for all future is
• 1:22:20
  endless boundless curiosity. As I say, if I only knew now
• 1:22:25
  what I knew six months ago, I would be completely useless.
• 1:22:28
  Things change so quickly When I speak, I check my slides the
• 1:22:32
  night before to make sure nothing's changed with the
• 1:22:36
  companies I'm going to use as examples because things change
• 1:22:38
  so quickly. I have changed slides the night
• 1:22:42
  before a presentation because they weren't right anymore.
• 1:22:45
  They changed since I wrote them when I got on the plane a couple
• 1:22:48
  of days beforehand. Wow.
• 1:22:53
  It's, it's, it's, it's quite interesting the, the rapid, you
• 1:22:57
  know, change in technology. We have it.
• 1:22:59
  I, I once spoke with a guy, he, he, he, he was named under
• 1:23:05
  Forbes 30 under 30. Alexandra Hampson, you have from
• 1:23:10
  Canada. And then he was talking about
• 1:23:12
  how himself and his team were developing a tech solution, I
• 1:23:17
  think for the aerospace industry.
• 1:23:19
  And guess what, Just midway in the development of that product,
• 1:23:26
  the technology in this space changed.
• 1:23:29
  And what it is that they were developing became obsolete.
• 1:23:33
  And it's crazy. It's crazy how technology can be
• 1:23:38
  you just midway development of product.
• 1:23:40
  And of course, the product is already out of fashion.
• 1:23:45
  So what would be your final message to leaders viewed in the
• 1:23:49
  future of humanity? True food.
• 1:23:55
  Well, I think there are only two things that you need to do in
• 1:23:59
  order to stay alive, right? Drink and eat.
• 1:24:04
  So you're in the business of the survival of humanity.
• 1:24:11
  That is the business that you're in now.
• 1:24:14
  Food. We have to eat food to be
• 1:24:19
  healthy, but we have to acknowledge as a food industry
• 1:24:22
  that we have caused a lot of the problems that we've seen,
• 1:24:26
  lifestyle related diseases like type 2 diabetes, obesity and
• 1:24:32
  things like that. And as the food industry, it's
• 1:24:37
  our obligation to say, knowing what we now know in terms of the
• 1:24:43
  effects on the consumer, the population, knowing what we now
• 1:24:47
  know in technology, nutrition and everything else, how do we
• 1:24:51
  ensure that our food products are healthy for human beings and
• 1:24:59
  they do not contribute to disease?
• 1:25:02
  That, I think, is something as food executives, we really need
• 1:25:07
  to think deeply about. Maybe we didn't quite know it 10
• 1:25:10
  or 20 years ago, but we do know it now and we can't stick a head
• 1:25:14
  in the sand. We have to say, how do we
• 1:25:17
  change? Wow, interesting.
• 1:25:21
  I think I'll disagree with you on something.
• 1:25:24
  I think I'll say there are 4 things you need to do to stay
• 1:25:26
  alive #1 breathe in oxygen #2 eat food #3 drink water, and #4
• 1:25:34
  listen or watch The Kingdom's podcast.
• 1:25:39
  I missed that last one. I should have got that last one.
• 1:25:47
  Wow, thank you very much. You know, for, for for your time
• 1:25:50
  today, you know, today it has actually been powerful.
• 1:25:54
  And of course, you have given us modern insights.
• 1:25:57
  You've given us golden Nuggets. And of course, you've given us a
• 1:26:01
  lens to see the future. And of course, for everyone
• 1:26:04
  listening, this is your moment. The future is not something you
• 1:26:06
  wait for. It is something you decide.
• 1:26:09
  And of course that's always we build legacy by opening doors.
• 1:26:12
  So from me to the audience, it is, you know, always go for
• 1:26:17
  something in your lives, conceive belief, strive to
• 1:26:20
  thrive and go achieve. And of course, for me, it's
• 1:26:25
  actually goodbye. But from Tony Hunter, do you
• 1:26:27
  have any last words? Do you have anybody to give a
• 1:26:30
  shout out to? And I'll leave you to say your
• 1:26:33
  goodbye. I mean, my thanks, Adam, all
• 1:26:38
  that. Thanks very much for the
• 1:26:39
  opportunity to be on the podcast.
• 1:26:40
  It's been an honour to be on the podcast with you.
• 1:26:42
  Thank you very much. And just basically to my fellow
• 1:26:46
  futurists out there, all the other people on the Global Gurus
• 1:26:49
  Top 30 and others who are out there, keep doing the work, keep
• 1:26:54
  looking to the future because we need to create the future that
• 1:26:59
  we want to see. Because what I always say to
• 1:27:01
  companies, look, if you don't look at what you can do to
• 1:27:05
  create the future you want, someone else will create one for
• 1:27:10
  you. And you may not like the one
• 1:27:12
  they create for you. Wow.
• 1:27:17
  That is deep. That is deep.
• 1:27:19
  So shout out to all of your, you know, futurist colleagues that
• 1:27:24
  that I have interviewed. So for, you know, Diana David,
• 1:27:31
  Brett King, Bronwyn Williams. Yeah, my friend Rohit Tawar in
• 1:27:42
  London. Rohit.
• 1:27:43
  Rohit Tower. Yeah, Rohit Tower.
• 1:27:45
  He's my friend as well. We're connected.
• 1:27:49
  We we should we should we should bring him on the podcast as
• 1:27:52
  well. Rohit Tower.
• 1:27:53
  If you see this, you can see it's it's time for you to be on
• 1:27:57
  board. Who else?
• 1:27:58
  Who else? What names are we forgetting?
• 1:28:00
  And another futurist from Australia called Michael
• 1:28:06
  McQueen, he's a very good trends person, speaks a lot, very well
• 1:28:12
  known globally. So shout out to Michael as well.
• 1:28:15
  Local Australian guy. Michael, I know Michael.
• 1:28:19
  I know Michael McQueen. I think I dropped a comment on
• 1:28:22
  his LinkedIn post yesterday. Yeah, Michael, he always has
• 1:28:27
  like fantastic takes. I think I love futures.
• 1:28:31
  I do love futures. Like you cannot help but love
• 1:28:35
  the futures. Wow.
• 1:28:37
  So once again, for me again, it's thank you.
• 1:28:40
  It's it's a love and respect to you.
• 1:28:42
  And of course, guys, you know what to do, like subscribe,
• 1:28:48
  comment and of course, share, share this share with your
• 1:28:51
  friends and your foes, right. Everybody needs to be future
• 1:28:54
  proof. So goodbye guys.
• 1:29:00
  Uh.