“The Future Is Here,” Dale Moore Quotes Wm. Gibson

“The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed,” said William Gibson, the “noir prophet” of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction, as described by Wikiquote.

Although it is a favorite quote of his, Dale Moore would more likely be described as an encouraging prophet. Not from a rosy view of the future, which he concurs is now. He knows, in the now, there are ongoing attacks of mythological proportions against the United States, its economy, and its military.

Dale Moore is encouraging, because he believes cooperative effort can prevail against problems of any sort. Indeed, it is the only kind of effort that can prevail in a time technology grows at incalculable rates.

Dr. Moore opened, this month, the re-boot of The Patuxent Partnership’s successful series of brown bag lunch dialogues with the region’s government contracting industry.

He’s recently retired from the Navy as the director of strategy and innovation, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, and launched The Moore Group LLC offering strategy, innovation, and transformation services.

Dr. Moore is committed to maximizing cooperative effort because a singly directed effort cannot respond to the increasingly complex  interconnections of the world, and especially not at the current, also increasing, rate of change. The fourth industrial revolution is the technological revolution.

The brain is a phenomenon, Dr. Moore says, and we haven’t yet learned how to harvest the incredible resources of our brains. That will require better understanding how we learn and think, and collaborative effort. The sheer scale of new knowledge is staggering. In 2016 we were already creating 44 billion gigabytes of data a day. It’s projected to be 463 billion gigabytes by 2026.

This is the way Dr. Moore’s talks range. As he introduces the notion of thinking in futuristic ways, he shows some diagrams as complex as a honeycomb and lists of resources to underpin a graduate degree. But pretty soon, the lunch crowd is tracking with him and beginning to ask pragmatic questions about how to introduce new systems into their businesses.

Because, as Dr. Moore points out, there is never any one person or one organization in the room that can figure it out alone. “The world is big,” Dr. Moore seeks to give perspective. “The Navy is a pretty big bubble. But it is not really that big when thinking globally. When you realize that you have to assume the best and the smartest are not in your company.”

Always seek more. Ask questions. Implement “leading with questions,” he encourages. It is going to take humility to break through the rigid patterns of hierarchy, that worked in the industrial world, but do not work so well in the  knowledge and innovation world, Dr. Moore says. We must be faster and more agile in sensing our environment, anticipating the future, and responding. “Because all of this stuff you hear about is happening,” he warns. And he has charts to back this up.

One identifies 15 global challenges. “Climate action failure,” reads the largest, connected to everything else. “This climate change is really affecting a lot of things,” he says.

“We have to out-learn, out-think, and out-innovate in a collective, collaborative way, for the United States’ economic and military security.”

The military will need to get “lean and mean, get more bang for the buck.” Budgets will shrink in the real future because today the GDP is no longer growing substantially – not in the number of workers or in production. The military budgets will not be sustained at the same pace as the past few years.

Already research and development budgets have fallen far behind private industry, a significant reversal. Meanwhile China is strategically investing in its research and development capabilities and graduating nearly one million engineers a year. “We’re playing an away game with China. They’re playing a home game.” China has a smart plan, he warns, and they’re funded to implement.

To reach Dr. Dale L. Moore, Ed.D, Founder and President, The Moore Group LLC Strategy, Innovation and Transformation Services, email [email protected]; cell 240-682-9077.

The Patuxent Partnership is a nonprofit member organization that fosters collaboration between government, industry, and academia to advance education through STEM-based initiatives; to advance technology through speaker programs, forums, and networking; to advance science and technology transfer through the exchange of ideas, information, and data related to technologies; and to increase workforce development through an array of initiatives.

To learn more about The Patuxent Partnership and its programs, visit its Leader member page.