FINAL DAY – Insane Cyber Deal on My Latest Book

Posted on November 22, 2019 by Braden Kelley

Cyber Deal on Charting Change - Braden Kelley's Latest Book on Digital Transformation and Change

Every so often something comes through your inbox that seems too good to be true.

Today was one of those times when an email dropped into my inbox stating that Palgrave Macmillan, the publisher of my latest book Charting Change is offering it at a ridiculous Cyber Week Sale price of $9.99 on the USA web site.

USA – https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137536952

There is also a European web site offering it for 9,99 Euros if you need it:

EUROPE – https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137536952

Coupon Code: CYBER19PAL

You can either get the eBook with INSTANT DOWNLOAD or the hardcover with FREE SHIPPING – It’s your choice!

IMPORTANT CAVEAT: According to the email, this deal ends December 3, 2019

Here is a blurb about the book from the web site to give you a sense of the value it will deliver to your organization:

Research shows that up to seventy percent of all change initiatives fail. Let’s face it, change is hard, as is getting an organization on board and working through the process. One thing that has been known to be effective is onboarding teams not only to understand this change, but to see the process and the progress of institutional change. Charting Change will help teams and companies visualize this complicated process. Kelley has developed the Change Planning Canvas™, which enables leadership and project teams to easily discuss the variable that will influence the change effort and organize them in a collaborative and visual way. It will help managers build a cohesive approach that can be more easily embraced by employees who are charged with the actual implementation of change. This book will teach readers how to use this visual toolkit to build a common language and vision for implementing change.

Here are the links for you again to take advantage of this offer ending December 3, 2019:

USA – https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137536952 (only $9.99)
EUROPE – https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137536952 (only 9,99 Euros)

Hardcover or eBook!

Coupon Code: CYBER19PAL

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SPECIAL BONUS: Anyone who buys a copy of the book will get FOR FREE 26 of the 50+ tools in the Change Planning Toolkit™ – INCLUDING a copy of the Change Planning Canvas™

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If $9.99 is still too much of a barrier to break through to accelerate your change capability, then go ahead and grab the 10 free tools, including a visualization of the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) Standard for Change Management® and my popular & powerful collaborative Visual Project Charter™.

 

What People Are Saying

Daniel H Pink“There’s no denying it: Change is scary. But it’s also inevitable. In Charting Change, Braden Kelley gives you a toolkit and a blueprint for initiating and managing change in your organization, no matter what form it takes.”

– Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and To Sell is Human
Eric Hieger“Thoughtful, thorough, and practical is the rare blend that Braden has achieved in this Change Management field guide. Much more than a series of tactics, Charting Change will explicitly, sequentially, and visually help users create a diverse set of experiences for stakeholders that will most certainly increase likelihood of success.”

– Eric D. Hieger, Psy.D., Business Transformation and Change Leadership Practice Lead at ADP
Phil McKinney“Braden Kelley and his merry band of guest experts have done a nice job of visualizing in Charting Change how to make future change efforts more collaborative. Kelley shows how to draw out the hidden assumptions and land mines early in the change planning process, and presents some great techniques for keeping people aligned as a change effort or project moves forward.”

– Phil McKinney, retired CTO for Hewlett-Packard and author of Beyond the Obvious
Denise Fletcher“As the pace of change speeds up, the market disruptions and resulting changes can be daunting for all. We all wish we could predict how change will affect our business, our market and our people. No matter what business area you come from, change affects us all and can produce great outcomes when managed well. In Braden Kelley’s newest book, Charting Change, he provides a terrific toolkit to manage this process and make it stick.”

– Denise Fletcher, Chief Innovation Officer, Xerox
Marshall Goldsmith“Higher employee retention? Increased revenue? Process enhancements? Whatever your change goal, Charting Change is full of bright ideas and invaluable visual guides to walk you through change in any area where your organization needs it.”

– Marshall Goldsmith is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Triggers, MOJO and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

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Gotten Your ACMP Standard for Change Management® Visualization Poster Yet?

Posted on November 20, 2019 by Braden Kelley

Project management professionals have the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) maintained by the Project Management Institute (PMI) in support of the certification of Project Management Professionals (PMP) to guide their efforts. Change management professionals meanwhile have The Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) Standard for Change Management, also referred to as ACMP’s Standard.

ACMP Standard Components

The main components of the standard according to the ACMP brochure include:

  1. Evaluating Change Impact and Organizational Readiness
    • Reviews the overall change and how it will impact the organization
    • Establishes whether the organization is ready and able to handle the proposed change

  2. Formulating Change Management Strategy
    • Develops the approach for moving an organization from current state to desired future state in order to achieve specific organizational outcomes

  3. Developing Change Management Plans
    • Documents the scope, actions, timelines and resources needed to deliver the change

  4. Executing Change Management Plans
    • Addresses the implementation processes for performing the change activities by monitoring, measuring, and controlling delivery against baseline plans

  5. Closing the Change Management Effort
    • Documents the actions and resources needed to close the change once the Change Management Strategy is achieved and activities are deemed sustainable and maintainable

But managing change is extremely complicated and there is much more involved in doing it well than can be achieved just looking at these five high level phases, so there is a lot more detail contained in ACMP’s Standard, highlighted for you below:

5.1 Evaluate Change Impact and Organizational Readiness
— 5.1.1 Define the Change
— 5.1.2 Determine Why the Change is Required
— 5.1.3 Develop a Clear Vision of the Future State
— 5.1.4 Identify Goals, Objectives, and Success Criteria
— 5.1.5 Identify Sponsors Accountable for the Change
— 5.1.6 Identify Stakeholders Affected by the Change
— 5.1.7 Assess the Change Impact
— 5.1.8 Assess Alignment of the Change with Organizational Strategic Objectives and Performance Measurement
— 5.1.9 Assess External Factors that may Affect Organizational Change
— 5.1.10 Assess Organization Culture(s) Related to the Change
— 5.1.11 Assess Organizational Capacity for Change
— 5.1.12 Assess Organizational Readiness for Change
— 5.1.13 Assess Communication Needs, Communication Channels, and Ability to Deliver Key Messages
— 5.1.14 Assess Learning Capabilities
— 5.1.15 Conduct Change Risks Assessment
5.2 Formulate the Change Management Strategy
— 5.2.1 Develop the Communication Strategy
— 5.2.2 Develop the Sponsorship Strategy
— 5.2.3 Stakeholder Engagement Strategy
— 5.2.4 Develop the Change Impact and Readiness Strategy
— 5.2.5 Develop the Learning and Development Strategy
— 5.2.6 Develop the Measurement and Benefit Realization Strategy
— 5.2.7 Develop the Sustainability Strategy
5.3 Develop the Change Management Plan
— 5.3.1 Develop a Comprehensive Change Management Plan
— 5.3.2 Integrate Change Management and Project Management Plans
— 5.3.3 Review and Approve the Change Plan in Collaboration with Project Leadership
— 5.3.4 Develop Feedback Mechanisms to Monitor Performance to Plan
5.4 Execute the Change Management Plan
— 5.4.1 Execute, Manage, and Monitor Implementation of the Change Management Plan
— 5.4.2 Modify the Change Management Plan as Required
5.5 Complete the Change Management Effort
— 5.5.1 Evaluate the Outcome Against the Objectives
— 5.5.2 Design and Conduct Lessons Learned Evaluation and Provide Results to Establish Internal Best Practices
— 5.5.3 Gain Approval for Completion, Transfer of Ownership, and Release of Resources

Obviously there is a lot more value in looking at this more complete view of the content of ACMP’s Standard than in looking at the five components of the standard. A number of different people provided input into ACMP’s Standard and so there is a lot of good information in it, and I’d encourage you to download it and check it out. For my part, I’ve been all the way through it as part of the research for my new book Charting Change, in part because I wanted to ensure that my new book and the accompanying Change Planning Toolkit™ are consistent with ACMP’s Standard so that practicing change management professionals can pick up my Change Planning Toolkit™ and begin using it right away to simplify their change planning process and increase their rate of successful change adoption.

ACMP Standard Visualization

Click to access this ACMP Standard for Change Management visualization as a FREE scalable 11″x17″ PDF download

Click to access this ACMP Standard for Change Management visualization as a FREE scalable 35″x56″ PDF poster size download

But the ACMP’s Standard for Change Management, because of its breadth, can be difficult for people to digest and easily access quickly and so to help with that challenge I have created a visualization of the standard (pictured above) as a scalable 11”x17” free download for people to download and share with others or post on their cubicle or office wall for easy reference, with a free 35”x56” poster size version available now too! The visualization will help you see at a glance how the main components and all of their sub-components inter-relate and come together to create a comprehensive approach to change management. I hope you download and enjoy the ACMP Standard for Change Management visualization, share it freely with your friends and colleagues, and get added value from the other free downloads from the Change Planning Toolkit™!

Buy the Change Planning Toolkit™ NowNow you can buy the Change Planning Toolkit™ – Individual Bronze License here on this web site now that the book has launched.

One good place to get it printed at the 35″x56″ size to put up on your wall for your cross-functional project charter collaborative meeting is PosterPrintHouse.com for about $50.00 plus or minus depending on any specials they might be running.

The ACMP Standard for Change Management®:

  • Outlines generally accepted practices, processes, tasks and activities used by change management practitioners across multiple roles, organizations and industries.
  • Provides a clear and consistent vocabulary of essential change management terminology and offers guidance for organizational change mgmt. for any type of change.
  • Supports organization decision making regarding change management resources.

So grab the 35″x56″ poster size free download and get yourself a copy of the book:

Keep innovating and making positive change!

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Join me at the Global Digital Healthcare Innovation Summit

Posted on October 2, 2019 by Braden Kelley

Join Braden Kelley at the Global Digital Healthcare Innovation Summit

Want to learn how to bring a design mindset to healthcare for innovation?

Join me in New York City next week – October 10-11, 2019 at the Global Digital Healthcare Innovation Summit, their annual conference where digital healthcare leaders from organizations around the world will meet to share innovation and transformation best practices.

Download the Agenda

I’ll be doing a keynote and workshop that will give participants insights into how to involve everyone in your innovation efforts, explore the difference between digital transformation and digital strategy, how to incorporate design thinking in a healthcare context, and provide an opportunity to get hands-on experience with The Experiment Canvas™ from my forthcoming Disruptive Innovation Toolkit™.

The Experiment Canvas by Braden Kelley

The Experiment Canvas™ is one of the many tools that I’ve already created for the Disruptive Innovation Toolkit™, and it is an incredibly valuable tool for use by people following Design Sprint, Design Thinking or other innovation methodologies to craft and execute experiments.

If you’d like to get involved as a patron or premium sponsor to help finish toolkit development and distribution, please contact me.

Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you next week in New York City!

Connect with me on Twitter (@innovate) to orchestrate a meetup to learn about my work at Oracle or to sit down with me at the event to explore any of the powerful tools in the Change Planning Toolkit™ or Disruptive Innovation Toolkit™.

Posted in Change, Digital Transformation, Heatlhcare, Innovation | Leave a comment

Are Gas Stations the Future of Starbucks?

Posted on October 2, 2019 by Braden Kelley

Are Gas Stations the Future of Starbucks?

Recently the Seattle Times published an article from the Washington Post highlighting a gas station in Maryland that has made the bold move of turning off its gas pumps and installing electric charging stations in their place. Which got me thinking…

Given that in the early days of automobiles you had to go to the pharmacy and buy gasoline in open containers before an evolution began to curbside gas pumps before finally arriving at the drive thru format we have today, why would it be crazy to think that we are due for the next reinvention of refueling now that electric vehicles are beginning to catch on?

And what might a “gas” station v5.0 look like?
(the first four generations being pharmacy, curbside, drive thru full serve, and self serve)

Curbside Gas Station

Given that it takes 15-30 minutes to quickly recharge an electric car, a “gas” station v5.0 may very well end up looking like a Starbucks.

Are people going to want to hang out in their cars while they recharge?

Wouldn’t they rather chill out in a Starbucks sipping on a latte (or a hot chocolate) while they wait for enough juice to keep rolling down the road?

So shouldn’t Starbucks be considering entering the “gas” station business?

Or is the somewhat random growth of electric charging likely to continue?

The answer for me is of course both…

In urban environments I would imagine the trend of a lot of one-off charging stations to continue.

But if I were Starbucks I would look at the interstate highway system and consciously set up Starbucks locations next to gas stations and install electric vehicle charging stations as part of the design. That way you get business from the large number of internal combustion drivers and the small number of electric vehicle drivers now, while those numbers gradually invert over time.

Starbucks Electric Charting Station

Maybe Starbucks could even do a deal with Tesla Motors like they did with Fred Meyer (a small superstore chain with groceries that is part of the Kroger family). Or maybe Nissan or GM want to get in on the action instead.

What do you think?

Image credits: Starbucks, American Oil & Gas Historical Society, Chargepoint

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Join Me at Innovation Leader’s IMPACT 2019 in San Francisco

Posted on September 18, 2019 by Braden Kelley

Join Braden Kelley at Innovation Leader's IMPACT 2019 in San Francisco

Want to find out how to learn fast instead of failing fast?

Join me in San Francisco, CA next month – October 22-24, 2019 at Innovation Leader’s IMPACT 2019, their annual conference where innovation leaders from organizations around the world will meet to share innovation best practices.

I’ll be doing a keynote and workshop that will give participants hands-on experience with The Experiment Canvas™ from my forthcoming Disruptive Innovation Toolkit™.

The Experiment Canvas by Braden Kelley

The Experiment Canvas™ is one of the many tools that I’ve already created for the Disruptive Innovation Toolkit™, and it is an incredibly valuable tool for use by people following Design Sprint, Design Thinking or other innovation methodologies to craft and execute experiments.

If you’d like to get involved as a patron or premium sponsor to help finish toolkit development and distribution, please contact me.

Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you next month in San Francisco!

Connect with me on Twitter (@innovate) to orchestrate a meetup to learn about my work at Oracle or to sit down with me at the event to explore any of the powerful tools in the Change Planning Toolkit™ or Disruptive Innovation Toolkit™.

Posted in Change, Design, Innovation, Training | Leave a comment

Leading Digital Transformation – The Interview

Posted on September 17, 2019 by Braden Kelley

Braden Kelley interviewed by Rob Llewellyn for the Leading Digital Transformation podcast

Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with Rob Llewellyn for his Leading Digital Transformation podcast, and discuss how most organizations fail at innovation because they fail at change. They may aspire to innovate but often struggle and continue to lose pace along the fast-moving business landscape. During the discussion I share some ways organizations can get better at innovation, change, and transformation.

Click the play button above to listen to what I have to say about innovation, digital transformation and change in my interview with Rob.

Or choose your favorite listening platform for the interview here

You can listen to the interview on Spotify, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Apple or Google and pick up my two books here:

Posted in Change, Digital Transformation, Innovation | Leave a comment

The World is About to Get Smaller

Posted on July 27, 2019 by Braden Kelley

The World is About to Get Smaller

As many of you may already know, recently I joined Oracle to help build a new innovation and digital transformation offering that leverages design thinking and other tools to engage prospective North American customers of Oracle in human-centered problem-solving focused on solving their most pressing challenges.

One of the attractions to this particular role was the opportunity to work for the company with the most complete, modern, flexible and secure enterprise cloud. Oracle Cloud software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications provides customers with the speed and innovation of best-of-breed cloud software in a complete, secure, and connected cloud suite. Our startup within the world’s second largest software company can help reimagine your business, processes, and experiences from a distinctly human perspective.

When we’re not working with customers we’ll be constantly scanning the landscape and looking for opportunities to re-imagine different industries. From time to time, we’ll come across interesting things to share, possibly to provoke a conversation.

Real-time translation is one technology getting closer every year to being ready for widespread adoption. One of the more intriguing recent implementations of real-time translation that moves us closer to the Babel fish holy grail is Google’s Pixel Buds from late 2017.

First let’s look at this video that evaluates how well Google Pixel Buds do real-time translation:

And now let’s look at a real world application test video from Air New Zealand that dives into how the airline might use them in practice along with their ability to handle something like 40 languages:

But Google is not standing still as evidenced by this article and the video below that shows the Google Assistant Interpreter Mode launched earlier this year. Now it is only 27 languages not 40, but it’s a start:

Here’s a full list of languages supported:

  • Arabic
  • Chinese
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English
  • Finnish
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hindi
  • Hungarian
  • Indonesian
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Slovak
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
  • Thai
  • Turkish
  • Ukrainian
  • Vietnamese

The technology is supposed to be integrated into all Google Assistant enabled headphones in the future, but I’m not sure whether that has happened yet or not.

The Interpreter Mode seems to only work on Google Home and some other Google smart devices, but not on phones. You can install the Google Translate application on your Android phone and do some translation, but the experience is not as seamless. You can download Google Translate from the Google Play store.

So, what do you think? Does this technology have value now? How much more time do you think they need to make the technology even better?

Is there a role for technology like this in your business?

Parting Shot

So, if you work for a large company in North America and you’re interested in re-imagining your business, exploring the possibilities of accelerating to the speed of the cloud, or tackling a wicked challenge with our team (on a COMPLIMENTARY basis to select companies), please contact me.

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Going Beyond the Business Model Canvas

Posted on July 23, 2019 by Braden Kelley

Going Beyond the Business Model Canvas

For decades when business people and aspiring entrepreneurs came up with an idea and became serious about commercializing it, they would, by default, create a business plan. Anyone who has ever created a business plan knows they are a LOT of work. And as any innovator knows, most ideas turn out to be garbage. As a result, the creation of most business plans ends up being a waste of time.

All of this wasted time and money in the universes of both corporate innovation and startups was definitely an area of opportunity.

This pain has been solved in part by the Business Model Canvas created by Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, the Lean Canvas created by Ash Maurya, and by minor variations created by others.

The purpose of both at their core is the same. The Business Model Canvas and the Lean Canvas seek to help entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs and innovators quickly explore the desirability, feasibility and viability of their ideas in a more visual and collaborative way, while also supporting much quicker iterations and revisions to both the value proposition and its path to market.

Where a business plan may take weeks to create, a Business Model Canvas or Lean Canvas can be created in an afternoon.

Where a business plan is often created by one person and revised by others in a serial manner, a Business Model Canvas or Lean Canvas is a group activity, informed by a collection of diverse perspectives and experiences, and challenged, evolved and revised in a real-time, parallel manner.

What excites me most as someone who conducts workshops all around the world and teaches people how to use the Business Model Canvas and other innovation & change tools, is that the Business Model Canvas and Lean Canvas have helped to accelerate a transformation in not only how people are taught, but also how they are permitted to conduct business.

Creating a Business Model Canvas as a Team

This transformation is a game changer because it represents a growing integration of methods into workshops and meetings that enable facilitators to engage not only auditory learners, but visual, kinesthetic and social learners as well.

This more human approach to prototyping a business helps to add a bit more structure around an idea, in a collaborative way that will more quickly surface gaps and flaws while also testing assumptions, collecting idea fragments into a more holistic value proposition and creating a vision for how to make it real.

But, as we all know, any new business or any potential innovation will create an abundance of required and necessary changes. Unfortunately, whether you are using the Business Model Canvas or the Lean Canvas, the truth and the limitation is that they are but a single tool and can’t help you walk the rest of the path to reality. To create the changes necessary to realize your vision, you will need many more tools.

“When what people do aligns with what they think and feel, then and only then, will you achieve the outcomes you’re looking for.”

The good news is that this more visual and collaborative way of working helps with two of the most important keys to success – buy-in and alignment – and also helps to align mind, body, and spirit to harness the whole brain and its three constructs:

  1. Cognitive (thinking)
  2. Conative (doing)
  3. Affective (feeling)

Outcome-Driven Change Framework by Braden Kelley

Beyond the Business Model Canvas and the Lean Canvas

Visual, collaborative tools like the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, Empathy Map, Value Proposition Canvas, Experience Maps, Service Design, and even Customer Journey Maps have laid the groundwork for a more modern, more powerful way of working that leverages the whole brain of the individual, and all three learning styles of the collective.

And where these tools all represent the beginning of a visual, collaborative endeavor to create change, they are missing the tools to help plan for and execute the changes that are being proposed.

This is where the Change Planning Toolkit™ comes in. It has been designed with the Change Planning Canvas™ at its core to feel familiar to those already using the aforementioned tools and empower teams to take the next steps on their journey to be successful:

  1. Innovation and Intrapreneurship
  2. Startup Creation
  3. Digital Transformation
  4. Design Thinking
  5. New Product Development (NPD)
  6. Service Design
  7. Experience Design
  8. Customer Experience (CX) Improvement Efforts
  9. Projects (make sure you also get the Visual Project Charter™)
  10. Change Initiatives

Charting Change is Number OneSo, if you’re already familiar with the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, Empathy Map, Value Proposition Canvas, Experience Maps, Service Design, or Customer Journey Maps then you should get a copy of my latest book Charting Change and it will show you the thinking behind the Change Planning Toolkit™, how to use it to maintain the momentum of your team and the energy behind your idea, and how to leverage both to push it forward towards reality.

The Change Planning Toolkit™ will help you beat the 70% change failure rate, create more efficient and effective change initiatives (and even projects), and accelerate your pace of successful change in order to keep up with the accelerating pace of change all around us and to be more nimble, agile, and responsive than your competition.

There is a simple three step process for people to familiarize themselves with the Change Planning Toolkit™ who aren’t ready to get the jump on their competition today:

  1. 10 free tools available to download now
  2. 26 free tools when you buy the book
  3. 50+ tools when you license the toolkit

I’ve invested more than $1 million into the Change Planning Toolkit™ so you don’t have to, and so you can leverage this investment to gain all of the benefits above while also saving yourself thousands or millions of dollars in consulting fees – every year.

And for a limited time, there are some exciting FREE training opportunities available to a handful of organizations who contact me.

 
Get the Change Planning Toolkit from Braden Kelley

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FLASH SALE – 50% off the best book for Digital Transformation and Change – 24 hours only!

Posted on June 28, 2019 by Braden Kelley

Charting Change is Number OneExciting news!

The publisher of my second book – Charting Change – is having a 24-hour FLASH SALE and so you can get the hardcover version or the eBook for 50% off the list price.

I stumbled across this and wanted to share with everyone so if you haven’t already gotten a copy of this book to power your digital transformation or your latest project or change initiative to success, now you have no excuse!

Click here to get your copy of Charting Change for 50% off

Of course you can get 10 free tools here from the book, but if you buy the book and contact me I will send you 26 free tools from the 50+ tools in the Change Planning Toolkit™ – including the Change Planning Canvas™!

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China Plans to Trump Innovation from Outer Space

Posted on June 21, 2019 by Braden Kelley

China Plans to Trump Innovation from Outer Space

First, let me say that this is not a political article, but instead an article about a potential innovation crisis looming just over the horizon thanks to brinkmanship between China and the United States.

Second, let me say this article is not about killer satellites being launched into orbit by the Trump administration or the People’s Republic of China.

Instead this article is about the psychology of a country being backed into a corner, the measures China is likely to take to fight back when they can’t match the United States dollar for dollar in a tariff fight, the current state of the rare earth metals market and its impact on the future of innovation.

Now, some of you might be asking yourself – What the heck are rare earth metals?

Well, as the name might suggest they are metals that are not often found in dense quantities on earth. Some hypothesize that some of the best rare earth metal finds have an extraterrestrial origin. So, some might say that rare earth metals are literally alien, brought to our planet not by little green men (and women) but by blazing hot meteors smashing into the earth. Rare earth metals are so valuable to collectors and to high tech manufacturers that there are groups of modern day Indiana Jones clones out there racing around the world to be the first to claim the next meteor strike before someone else does (see article) and the Chinese government made a conscious choice to invest in trying to corner the market.

Why?

Because rare earth metals are CRUCIAL to all of the technology that empowers the innovation economy.

Here is a 60 Minutes segment from three years ago that CBS recently refreshed and re-aired now that it is again timely given the United States vs. China trade war. It provides a great introduction to rare earth metals and the role they play in the innovation economy:

(updated 60 minutes video available here)

About the only substantial change in the video is that China’s dominance has dropped from 90% of global production to 80% of global production.

Here is a chart showing the production of rare earths in 2018 in the world (data source):

Rare Earth Data

As the chart shows, China has about 40% of the world’s rare earth metals, but is responsible for 75% of the world’s production of rare earth metals. The military machine of the United States relies on rare earth metals to operate, along with green energy, high technology, electric cars, you name it – nearly every innovation direction we’re trying to go in – relies on rare earth metals.

China has cut off countries from rare earth metals before, most notably Japan, and now they are threatening to do it again to the United States (one article highlighting the threat not just to the United States, but to Europe as well). China is also threatening to begin blacklisting individual technology companies not sympathetic to its cause in the battle of egos and stare down between these two economic superpowers. You have to imagine this would include being cut off from rare earth metals.

So, is the innovation train, this pace of unrelenting technological advance and change, about to come a grinding halt?

I guess we’re all about to find out…

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