Are you ready for the future? It will arrive faster than you can imagine. Check this* out:

• Within 2 years, 50% of us will work remotely or work using a mobile device
• Within months, wireless will be the dominant channel for tracking investments and conducting online trades
• In 2011, mobile advertising will grow over 50%, to more than one billion dollars
• 4G will put all of our vending machines and appliances online
• App developers are “thrilled” with iAd performance and revenues
• The biggest opportunities for entrepreneurs and start-ups will be for those who develop longer battery lives
• 1% of AT&T customers use 40% of its data services

I hope someone in your company, someone really, really smart about both content and technology, is spending just about all their time thinking about your mobile strategy.

Actually, I hope your company has hired a team of brilliant, young techies, guys who don’t even come close to fitting into your corporate culture, who come into work around 2pm, or 9pm and who leave about the time all the rest of the employees start showing up for the day.

I hope they are “managed” as loosely — maybe “creatively” is a better word — as is possible.

For instance, I would love to see you send whoever manages this group of super-creatives to spend a few days at Zappos, or Google, any successful company that knows how to lead and motivate Millenials.

I don’t think the data-crunchers who now lead Clear Channel and Citadel have any idea how to do this. I could be wrong; it certainly wouldn’t be the first time. The current level of insecurity — whatever the cause — that leads many inside CBS to spend more time looking over their own shoulders than outwards, at what comes next, virtually precludes this there. And Cumulus is preoccupied with distracting financial analysts by buying Citadel, a company in even worse shape than their own.

So, its going to have to be one of the “smaller” companies that leads us into the future, that has the balls to invest in our real future, a future built on growth of audience and sources of revenue, rather than on another round of budget cuts.

I’m interested…

what company do you think will take this challenge?

*Edward Boches, Creativity_Unbound: a GREAT blog.