Futurist Mike Walsh is an extremely busy man. The veteran futurist of 13-years and founder of Tomorrow, a research and consulting firm, is constantly on the move, travelling almost 300 days in a year. The Peak managed to catch up with Walsh despite his busy schedule on the sidelines of the Maxis Business Sparx Summit 2019 at Menara Maxis. We asked him what were the notable trends in technology that are currently shaping the world of business today.

The 2010s has been an eventful decade for influencers, craft brewers and vape shop owners – and a disappointing one for retail assistants, journalists and black cab-drivers. At the beginning of the decade, everyone hated the bankers and exalted the tech barons; as it draws to its close, everyone hates the tech barons and ignores the bankers. But amid all the uncertainty, one ancient profession has flourished: the fortune-teller.

Naturally, modern fortune-tellers don’t call themselves fortune-tellers – they prefer “trend forecaster” or “futurologist” or – sorry – “lifestyle detective”. They usually do without the animal entrails and star charts, preferring to read the runes from makeup trends in Seoul, tech start-ups in Palo Alto and genetic experiments in Shenzhen. And they have made themselves as indispensable to 21st-century product designers and brand managers as astrologers once were to generals and kings.

Futurist Mike Walsh has good news and bad news for financial services executives leading and working in the Algorithmic Age. Jobs won't go away, but they will change radically and sometimes the smartest move will be to kill your own job and reimagine the process and your place in it. He discusses his 10 principles for survival in the new digital ecosystem in an exclusive Banking Transformed podcast interview.

Ron Immink, author, speaker and self-described entreprenerd wrote this review of futurist Mike Walsh's new book, The Algorithmic Leader. In his piece, Immink focuses on what it takes for leaders to optimise their decision-making using machines and algorithms. 

Algorithms already control everything from the software in our smart devices to the artificial intelligence in large manufacturing plants. Today’s CEOs must understand how to operate in such an interconnected and digitally driven world, writes futurist Mike Walsh of consulting company Tomorrow. He says, “You need to be a connector, not a controller. You are an integral part of a root system that has no center or edge and that relies on you to feed it nutrients and expand its connections.” As machines take on more jobs, he says, we will still “need real-life humans … who know how to best orchestrate the capabilities of machines that are smarter than us.” CEOs can transform themselves into algorithmic leaders by following ten principles—such as embracing uncertainty, thinking computationally, and solving for purpose. Walsh remains hopeful about the future, predicting that only humans will be able to use machine intelligence to “create experiences, transform organizations, and reinvent the world.”