Reviewed by John Durel

Although Harry Dent wrote this book to help individuals build wealth by taking advantage of the current stock market boom, he offers constructive insights about economic, technological and demographic trends that will impact museums over the next thirty years.

Dent sees two powerful forces influencing how people will live and work in the next three decades. First, the information revolution, epitomized at the moment by the Internet, is changing fundamentally the ways we acquire and act upon knowledge. Power is shifting from those who have information to those who want it. Increasingly, individuals are able to receive information, goods, or services, tailored to their own specific needs and circumstances. In the next decade we will shift from having to search and pull information from the Internet to smart software which knows our needs and preferences and will push appropriate information to us.

One manifestation of this basic change will be evident in the structure of organizations. The current dominant structure, inherited from the last great technological revolution, the Industrial, centralizes power in the hands of those at the top of a hierarchy. Those in charge seek to understand and influence what customers want or need, and design products accordingly. Those further down the hierarchy implement the decisions and deliver the products. Feedback reaches the top primarily through sales figures (attendance records in the case of a museum), and customer complaints.

In the new organizational model, power shifts to clusters of like minded customers, and leadership—which is in the center, not at the top—focuses on designing processes that enable the organization to respond quickly and effectively to the customers' ever-changing needs. With leadership at the core, a ring of back-line "servers" develop products and services. These are the content specialists, the experts when it comes to what the organization produces. Between the specialists and the customers is a ring of front-line "browsers," individuals who really know the customers. This is a new kind of employee, one who works directly with the customers and the content experts, crafting customized solutions to meet individual needs. The browser negotiates the terrain between the customer, who is not fully familiar with the range of products and services available, and the content expert, who does not fully understand the customer. In so doing, the browser begins to reshape the content in response to changing customer needs and interests.

The implications of this organizational model for museums are enormous. Front line staff will have the power to take the museum in new directions. The board, rather than setting direction, will ensure that the core is preserved: the museum's fundamental purpose, financial stability, and strong leadership. CEOs will make decisions about organizational processes, not about individual products. Individualized access to selected content and content experts will be routine, arranged through the front line browsers. Small, focused, short-term exhibits created for like-minded constituents will replace larger exhibits designed for the "average" visitor.

For Dent, the second powerful force that will have a fundamental impact on museums in the coming decades is demographic. The baby boom generation, which in sheer numbers and economic power overwhelms other groups, is reaching a new stage. Not yet retired, but with children grown, the baby boomers are entering a period where they will have an immense amount of disposable income. New technologies in communication and transportation will enable many of them to move from the suburbs to rural towns, small cities, resort communities, or urban villages. The pattern of work will change, from full time at a central office until retirement, to part time in a home office, with no fixed retirement date in sight. Leisure will be spent in chunks of time, from extended weekends to many months, in pursuit of cultural and recreational interests.

Museums would do well to recognize these changes in behavior and plan accordingly. Over the past twenty years we have focused on creating interactive experiences for the young baby boomer families. Over the next twenty we may not want to abandon the next generation, with its own young children, but we also need to focus on creating customized experiences for interested adults. If museums fail to respond to this emerging need, other organizations will.

What You Can Do

Bring together a strategic thinking team to design what a musuem like your would look like if it took these trends very, very seriously. Then decide whether to be that musuem.