Posted by Adam Gordon on May 18, 2010 in all, economy & finance, foresight tools & methods, leadership, policy, scenario planning, strategic foresight, systems dynamics
The short-term future in South Africa is the Fifa Soccer World Cup, and at the moment it is really hard to get anyone to see or think beyond it. Football is life. Nevertheless a few hundred intrepid thinkers gathered in Cape Town earlier this month to consider South Africa in 2030, under the auspices of the World Future Society, South Africa Chapter, and its very capable leader Mike Lee.
I was lucky enough to be asked to do the opening address at the conference, and even luckier in that this Web site: South Africa – The Good News summarized some of what I and others said:
“Adam Gordon, Foresight Project Director and author of “Future Savvy” gave us some pointers:
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“The ‘BIG’ question he asks is ‘when do we influence the future and when do we adapt?’ There are big predictable forces out there (like population growth / the diminishing availability of oil etc), and there are big unpredictable forces out there (ja, well no fine!). Importantly, we can design our ability to influence and we can design the way we adapt. It is critical that we are able to do both.
“But managing the future is more than just about scenario planning, it is also about the implementation of the plan. It is about developing a methodology that prioritises, engages with stakeholders, and enables proactive actions on the ground.
So how?
Some important considerations (from various speakers):
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“What is critical is the foresight process, it must be well-informed so that the implementation strategies that follow have buy-in, are doable, are relevant and far-reaching. There is a very real danger of visions being disconnected, unachievable and, at the end of the day, a pipe-dream.”
Dr Elizabeth Dostal talked of a stakeholder democracy in which she promoted the design of a matrix that recognised different stakeholder levels on the vertical axis and different environmental dimensions on the horizontal axis. A multi-level, multi-dimensional model.
“Imagine” she said, “putting four Nobel Peace laureates together and asking them what the causes of global conflict are. One may argue poverty, another ideology, another resources, and another greed. In no time, they would all be in different silo’s defending their view, in one sense they are all right, but in another sense they have not looked at the whole picture. A multi-level, multi-dimensional model would reveal this, the gaps in their logic, and the opportunities for agreement.”
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Mar 16, 2010 in all, economy & finance, forecast filtering, history, policy, social change
Legislation is the route by which ‘the people’ (or powerful sectarian interests, take your pick,) influence the future. It is often underestimated as a future force, or viewed merely as legislators playing catch-up with technology or societal change. But legislation can be far-sighted, and profoundly shape outcomes.
In a fascinating recent development, John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, introduced the Start-up Visa Act to the US Senate, as reported in Inc. magazine.
The legislation is a forward-looking bid to turbo-charge entrepreneurial venturing in the U.S. by attracting foreign entrepreneurs and connecting them to U.S. capital, therein driving new economic growth and local jobs. What’s really interesting is it goes against past common wisdom that recessions are ‘bad for immigration’ (as citizens demand job protection.)
If passed, the bill gives U.S. visas to foreigners who can raise $100,000 from an angel investor or $250,000 from a qualified VC firm. After two years, if the immigrant entrepreneur can create five or more jobs (excluding family), attract an additional $1 million in investment, or produce $1 million in revenue, he or she gets a green card (permanent residency.)
The only current option, the EB-5 business investment visa, requires immigrants to invest at least $1 million in the U.S. and employ 10 people.
Job creation
The National Venture Capital Association says 25 percent of America’s venture-backed, publicly-traded businesses, incl. Google, Yahoo!, eBay and Intel have been founded or co-founded by immigrants. According to Richard Herman, author of Immigrant, Inc.: Why Immigrant Entrepreneurs Are Driving the New Economy, nearly all U.S. job creation in the past 20 years has come from companies less than five years old.
The history of US immigration policy has been schizophrenic to say the least, with periods of great social openness followed by about-face door slamming. The slamming has always corresponded to economic downturns or anxiety thereto. But here we have the opposite effect. And we have legislators taking a forward view! Both proof that the future is sure to surprise us.
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Mar 11, 2010 in all, Future Savvy, policy, strategic foresight, trend tracking
Paul Saffo is always good value, and doesn’t shy from polemic. In this talk at the Foresight Institute 2010 conference, Saffo, emeritus and alumnus of the the foresight industry for over 20 years has a full swipe at ‘futurists’ who participate in ‘future-entertainment’ or profess to ‘see into the future;’ but calls for the broad infusion of foresight into public debate, including the restitution of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) scrapped by Newt Gingrich in 1995.
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“Profiles of the Future” at the Foresight Institute 2010 conference
Says Saffo: “Futurists today are talking to the wrong people, don’t have good methods (for the most part,) and are still doing the kinds of silly things we did (or they did) when futurism got started…We should have an instant prohibition on anyone who writes an article titled: ‘Top 10 Trends to Watch’… We’ve got to get rid of this ‘future entertainment’ stuff and ‘top-10 trends’ stuff, and get serious.”
Part of the raison d’etre of Future Savvy, of course, is to demythologize exactly this kind of self-promoting infotainment foresight, and give real-world managers a way to see through it. Thinking long-term is too important to allow it to be tainted by snake-oil salesmen. Saffo admits he’s ranting on this topic (as I do too.) In a less ranting mode, he would probably admit there are also many high-quality thinkers doing exemplary foresight work. Certainly he’s all in favor of thinking long-term, and doing it better.
Saffo’s solution? “Move foresight to the masses; make policy conversations cool; engage powerful myopics (short-term thinkers on Wall Street and other financial institutions); engage politicians (incl. via the OTA). But he doesn’t say how, and of course therein lies the rub.
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read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Jan 18, 2010 in all, policy, strategic foresight
To misquote Ecclesiastes (Kohelet): ‘For everything there is a season and a time for everything under the sun… a time to think about tomorrow, and a time to think about today.’
Those of you who know this blog know that I try to keep it updated every 7-10 days with real content I have personally written. But this last week I have held back my posts. In the wake of the truly humbling loss of life and human calamity we have seen, somehow no futures posting seemed quite right.
In a foresight community we are, I think, rightly vociferous in getting decision makers to see the benefits of taking a long-term view, despite the systemic short-termism of incentive cycles (annual reports, political elections, and – dare I say it – banking bonuses) that most organizations and human systems use as basis of reward. But at times like this, similar to post-Katrina, post-the 2004 tsunami, and previous epic-scale natural and human disasters, we should not bury our heads in the sand of tomorrow. For now it is the present that counts: focusing on what matters to save lives and give food, shelter, and a modicum of respect to those with shattered lives.
The ‘social’ side of disasters
When the dust does finally settle, and there is time to draw some lessons, there are two future-anticipating principles that apply strongly in the Haiti disaster. The first is that fragile systems are always more likely to have ‘a collapse in their future.’ I’ve been reading Flirting with Disaster by Marc Gerstein, and one of its points (not new, but well described) is the role that human organization plays in facilitating or magnifying a ‘natural’ disaster. Yes, an earthquake can’t be controlled, or even forecast, but what its actual total impact is (the future we should have anticipated) has significantly to do with the efficacy of human organization, including preparedness, robustness, early-warning, and mitigation systems. Where these are in place and working well we should expect a different future.
Put another way: since man has had any say over his domain there have been no purely ‘natural’ disasters, and there will not be any in the future. Every future disaster will likewise be the product of natural forces meeting social organization.
Opportunity jolts
The second principle is that change often happens by jolts, that is, via the application of a sudden and overwhelming force rather than via gradualism. Particularly, a shock from the outside can ‘free up’ a situation and be the catalysing event that sets off wider and ultimately fundamental change. This is (best case interpretation) what the toppling of Saddam was about. Freeing the system. ‘Black Swan –ing’ the system, perhaps.
It the case of Haiti we have, by all accounts, a nation mired in poverty and corruption. What it is going to get from the events of the last week and the weeks to come, is like a punch in the jaw followed by a lot of world attention, solace, and aid. Add them together and it could be a system-busting event, a real opportunity to break out of existing governance cultures and existing global relations. History suggests Haiti won’t grasp the opportunity, but the window will be open for a while, and good foresight would keep this potential upside scenario in mind and even work to facilitate it.
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Dec 15, 2009 in all, economy & finance, emerging technologies, lifestyles & values, policy, politics of the future, strategic foresight, technology change
I have a fond little memory from one of the early multi-candidate debates in the last US election campaign. It was on prime-time TV: there were still about a dozen or so candidates in the running, including Obama and Hillary Clinton, each was standing behind a podium, and as the topic of climate change came up they were asked en masse: “So, who didn’t fly here today in a private plane, raise your hand?” The delegates all sheepishly kept their hands down but one – I forget which – raised his. “I came in yesterday,” he explained. (laughter)
So to the Copenhagen climate change summit, and all the luminaries and dignitaries and celebrities landing at København airport, many of them in private jets.
http://www.cph.dk/CPH/DK/MAIN
This tells us something about the future, and what it says is: ‘needs must.’ What are they going to do, row a boat to Copenhagen? Scale that up and you have the real, actual future. People will fly. In fact the entire new global middle class of billions will fly. And they will heat their homes. And they will eat meat, and so on. And any even remotely democratic system that tries to take away this will be out on its ear.
But we will of course move to cleaner, renewable, sustainable systems. How fast this happens depends essentially on money, which in turn depends on political will, which in turn depends on public concern. Money is required to fund new energy technology research, and — the core issue of Copenhagen this week — it is needed to buy off industrializing countries.
There’s no doubt that climate change (manmade or not) is real, and a real danger. But when scientists and academics are worried about it that means little in terms of changes to human practices. When the public gets concerned — as they now are — we get the possibility of fundamental change. This is true of the future generally, not just climate and the environment.
Between the public sentiment and the money lies political will. Essentially the political will of post-industrial economies on the one side, who find it politically easy, relatively, to pay the price of emissions constraints vs. that of developing economies which will be choked economically and therefore politically by those constraints.
Inequality
Correlating degrees warming with ecological and therefore social upheaval is important. But to think that is what the argument is about is to miss the point. The point is global inequality and its future, and how developing economies are not going to allow emissions constraints to further entrench it.
The future goes always to the most powerful side. That’s what power is for: determining the future. The sides are both strong in this dispute, so this battle will not be won or lost in Copenhagen this week. We are still in its early stages. The effects of climate change are incremental (unlike, say, nuclear holocaust) meaning there is plenty of room for postponement even if the planet can’t and won’t ultimately take it. And those who would occupy the moral high ground have burned public and private jet fuel to be there to do it, and will no doubt indulge in a bit of Smørrebrød and Frikadeller too. Needs must.
So expect the political clock to remain stuck as it has been for a while now, at ’5 minutes to midnight,’ while the issue smolders slowly without definitive resolution — until technology advances get human energy, finally, off fossil fuels and the problem works its way out of environmental and human systems.
read morePosted by Adam Gordon on Jun 16, 2009 in 2025, all, economy & finance, Future Savvy, policy, politics of the future, strategic foresight
Top of the news yesterday along with Iran’s election protest was Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement that he — as leader of the right-wing Likud party — could endorse a Palestinian state. It was framed in conditions on Jewish-state recognition, and requirements on security, borders, refugees and Jerusalem that are, from today’s vantage point, very difficult to imagine Palestinians or Arab states agreeing to. So no change is expected. Even the breaking-story reporters had to admit that, rhetoric aside, this is not a breakthrough.
There’s an old joke in journalism from the 1970s that goes: “You can write the same headline on any and every story about Israel’s relationship with its neighbors: ‘Prospects for Middle-East Peace Dim.’”
Sure, it’s partly Eeyeore-ish journalist wit. But what’s interesting from a foresight point of view is that, running the world forward 40 years shows it was a reasonable understanding of the future. Why? Solid foresight is always predicated on a solid understanding of the forces for and against change. “Prospects for peace dim” acknowledged that forces and enablers of change were overpowered by what was preventing anything fundamental from happening (friction and blockers in Future Savvy terms.)
The basic truth is that Israel-Middle East is a complex situation characterized by a more-or-less equal balance of power. Israel has military and nuclear superiority, and US backing. Arab countries have oil, population numbers and population growth, and a billion more-or-less sympathetic moslems around the world, and therefore time on their side. They also have, particularly in Gaza, relatively widespread poverty and low welfare and educational development, which is a force against moderation and therefore a negotiated settlement.
A genuine balance of power means we have equilibrium, and therefore should expect no change. That’s why we’ve had plenty of skirmishes, but no change in 40 years.
Looking out for the next 40 years, is this still the case? Can we write “Prospects for Middle East Peace Dim” on all news stories for another two generations? Following the foresight logic above, this depends on whether anything breaks the fundamental equilibrium. There are four issues apparently large enough to threaten the status quo:
Water is a favorite of trend-foresight sessions. It sounds like the key issue in a rising-population world. In theory yes, but it’s unclear whether it will lead to anything more than local conflicts or wars, which in Israels case, we have already. On US policy, the Obama administration is attempting to show even-handedness, but its strategic interest lies with Israel as military ally and ideologically temperate (democratic, at least) bastion in the region. So no change there either. On oil, we are definitely in an era where – for security and climate change reasons – fossil fuel is entering it’s twilight phase, which will erode revenues and therefore power of ME Arab states. But, as mentioned earlier, poverty is as great an obstacle to peace as any other. (Remember the Israeli “let’s-grow-our-way-out-of the-situation-together peace platform of the 1990s, seeing tackling the development issues as the root of creating moderate mindsets across the region.)
That leaves Iran which may change the balance if it really goes toxic (develops and uses nuclear weapons in terror strikes.) This is a low futures likelihood – it’s not just luck that nukes have stayed in their box since 1945 – no state wants to carry the stain of the nuclear pariah for all time. There’s a moral blocker on this outcome that has worked for generations. Nuclear powers rattle, but the don’t bite. But … what if the wildcard scenario of a massive nuclear strike on Israeli soft targets were to happen, what then? The current low-grade hostile standoff would become a supernova, but we’d still have power balance, and while we have that we’ll have status quo and journalists can expect to write “Prospects for Middle East Peace Dim” on top of every story about the region for another 40 years.
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