A great quote from one of my favorite movies, The Graduate, is centered around the main character Benjamin, who just graduated from college and his parents' good friend, an accomplished businessman, Mr. McGuire:

Mr. McGuire: "Benjamin, I want to say one word to you. Just one word." Benjamin: "Yes, sir." Mr. McGuire: "Are you listening?" Benjamin: "Yes, I am." Mr. McGuire: "Plastics." Benjamin: "Just how do you mean that, sir?"

It's a great line. And when I first saw it in 1973 on TV (on ABC's 4:30 Movie after I got home from school*), I always wondered what was the New Word for my time.

Over the past 40 years, the words have changed dramatically - Oil, Computers, Internet, Clean Energy, etc. What do you think the new word for our era is?

What area should we be pointing to right now to stay ahead of the pack? Where should we be looking where no one else is looking?

As Wayne Gretzky said a number of years ago, "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been."

Where do you think the puck is going to be in the next five years?

This post is dedicated to Marilyn Miller, Owner, of United Obligations. She used this quote in her BNI commercial last week and it brought back a flood of memories and emotions. The funny thing about hearing it — the millenials had no idea what Marilyn was talking about. Thank you Marilyn!

*ABC's 4:30 Show was a mainstay in my early teen years. I used to watch all the great flicks like 'Planet of the Apes' among others. Here's the catch — they would take a two hour movie and cut it mercilessly down to 90 minutes — with commercials. So I would see a normal two hour movie with 50% cut from the show. It was amazing in later years to revisit many of these movies and realize that there were whole characters and scenes missing from my original viewing.