Dr. Cooper's professional career includes private periodontist, academician, researcher, teacher, practice management consultant, corporateÂ consultant, trainer, seminar director, board director, author, entrepreneur and inventor.Dr. Cooper has studied with masters in many disciplines, participated in formal business educational programs, and worked as an independent contractor with top-flight consulting companies. In 2011, Dr. Cooper was selected as a coach for the prestigious TED Fellows Program.The Mastery Company has been in existence since 1984. Dr. Cooper's client experience in dentistry includes solo private practice, small partnered practices, managed group practices and retail corporate enterprises. Dr. Cooper has worked with numbers of health care entities such as insurance companies, clearing houses,Â bio-technical companies and disease management companies, as well as the senior executives and boards of large hospitals and hospital systems and a number of their related physician groups. In addition, Dr. Cooper has worked with Silicon Valley start-ups and Fortune 500 companies. He has worked with dental clients in the U.S., U.K. Canada, Chile, Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Oman, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and Israel.Dr. Cooper is author of eight successful books; Mastering the Business of Practice, Partnerships in Dental Practice, Running on Empty, SOURCE, Valuocity, Valuocity II, Valuocity III, and The Elder. His electronic newsletter reaches thousands of subscribers in 31 countries. Dr. Cooper also co-developed a suite of online dental practice management assessment tools.Dr. Cooper can be contacted at:info@masterycompany.com

	I interact with dentists from all over the world and for the most part, they sincerely believe the way dentistry is practiced will remain basically the same. Yet, compare dental practice today to a decade ago. The equipment, the IT, the processes, the systems, the materials, the marketing, the financing and the staffing are so much different than they were 10 years ago.

	So, what are the changes the future holds? And if you could understand them today, would you seize the opportunity?

	“Ten years from today, the center of our digital lives will no longer be the smartphone, but a device that looks like ordinary eyeglasses, except those glasses will have settings for virtual and augmented reality. What you really see and what is computer generated will be mixed so tightly together that we won’t really be able to tell what is real and what is illusion.

	“Instead of touching and sliding on a mobile phone, we will make things happen by moving our eyes or by brainwaves. When we talk with someone or play an online game, we will see that person in the same room with us. We will be able to touch and feel her or him through haptic technology.

	“We won’t need to search online with words, because there will be a new visual web 100 times larger than the current internet, and we will find things by images, buy things by brands, or just by looking at a logo on the jacket of a passerby. Language will be irrelevant, and a merchant in a developing world will have access to global markets.” -Robert Scoble, “The Fourth Transformation”

	Those dentists, senior executives and investors who can open their eyes to explore new futures will have a distinct advantage because they will be able to align their thinking and resources to take advantage of the changes made available in the future.

Is your practice prepared for the future?