In its own words: “Global Voices is a community of more than 300 bloggers and translators around the world who work together to bring you reports from blogs and citizen media everywhere, with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media. Global Voices seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore. We work to develop tools, institutions and relationships that will help all voices, everywhere, to be heard.”

There are of course other places to get local-blog perspectives on current issues and concerns, but this site appears to be the broadest and best, at least at the moment.

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Why is this important for thinking adequately about the future?

The biggest problem we have in foresight work is the double-whammy that (a) people, on aggregate, choose and make the future, and (b) we don’t know what they will choose because we don’t adequately listen to their concerns and motivations, or worse, are we are deaf to their motivations because they are outside of our frame of reference.

(a) Yes, the future is influenced by new capabilities, driven by new technologies, but technologies come out of societal perspectives (what are we going to invest in or research towards?) and then adoption (which technologies “make it”) is all about social and economic choices. So what defines the future is what most people want. (Not everyone wants the same thing: that’s what politics is about.)

(b) Share of voice is political too, and in our world some people and companies have vast sway over media channels, but most have no voice. But just because they have no voice doesn’t mean they are not making choices as to (a) above. All it means is that if you’re not listening, the future will surprise you.

A “surprise future” = a lack of mental preparation. Without exception.

It is easier both practically and ideologically to listen to ourselves and our micro-communities of associates online or off, which confirms what we think and how we think. It’s much tougher to absorb alternative perspectives. Global Voices is not perfect. It is still, naturally, the preserve of the literate and educated. But it is a first step out of the frame.

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So may I say, this is what I was trying to say: When trying to predict the future, watch for dog poop!

Or perhaps: apparently helpful guides to the future are often dog poop disguised as chocolate, and here’s how to know the difference.

Something like that.

Note that this Greenbang story, below, is damaged by letting the most extreme predictions (the howlers) stand in for the general item. Prediction howler-spotting is sobering, but misses how many people got the future right, or right enough to make excellent decisions, and therefore overly damages the foresight field.

Also, howlers are actually the low-hanging fruit. Being future savvy is ultimately about the more subtle job of correcting weighing apparently very credible and well-founded predictions, some of which are excellent, but others of which are far flimsier than they appear.

There are various other minor problems such as not knowing the difference between the Gartner Hype Cycle and Zeitgeist bias, etc. And I would never call myself, not even in my most self-deprecating moments, a “futurologist.” But anyway, as I said, just a bit of fun:

Greenbang (13th April 2010) by Trish Lorenz & Martin Wright: Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” Niels Bohr’s words are a wise warning to reckless forecasters.

“Combining a nuclear reactor with a home boiler is no longer a problem. It would heat and cool the house, provide unlimited hot water and melt the snow from sidewalks and driveways. All that could be done for six years on a single charge of fissionable material costing about $300.” — Robert Ferry, US Institute of Boiler and Radiator Manufacturers, 1955

“Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in ten years.” — Alex Lewyt, President of vacuum cleaner company Lewyt Corp, also 1955

Lewyt and Ferry both stumbled into a risky habit of all amateur futurists: extrapolating from present trends. In this case, they were caught up in the surge of excitement over the rise of nuclear power. They were not alone. In the tech-fuelled optimism of the ’50s, magazines, radio and the infant TV were buzzing with predictions of flying cars and lunar settlements.

They had fallen victim to what later became known as the Gartner Hype Cycle. This maps the enthusiasm and subsequent disillusionment typical in the introduction of new technology — a useful reality check for those caught up in “irrational optimism.”

By contrast, there are those whose feet are too firmly rooted in present realities, and fail to see how innovation can combine with social changes to speed the widespread adoption of new technology.

“The Americans need the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.” — Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, Royal Mail, 1878

“The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad.” — President of the Michigan Savings Bank, advising Henry Ford’s lawyer not to invest in Ford Motors, 1903

It is difficult to consider any factor that doesn’t apparently exist at the time of making a prediction, but that’s essentially what looking ahead requires. It wasn’t all that long ago when people were predicting a bright future for teletext and fax machines. Few would have anticipated that both would be made almost obsolete by the internet and email. And yet the weak signals were there for those who chose to hear them. A fax machine, after all, is simply a modem with a rather complex print interface attached. It only evolved as it did because people were unused to reading information solely on screen, and computers were too big to carry around with them. Once laptops took off in the early ’90s, the fax was doomed.

“There is no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olson, Chairman, Digital Equipment Corp, 1977

Australian Senator Dr Russell Trood sums it up neatly when he says: ” ‘Nowism’ is a serious occupational hazard for those in the prediction game.”

Today’s futurologists no longer try to predict a single outcome for the future; instead they map a variety of scenarios. For Adam Gordon of Future Savvy, scenario-based thinking gives people “permission to think through alternative outcomes without necessarily predicting them.” Instead of trying to forecast precisely what might happen, he says, “we can ask ‘What if it does?,’ and then explore the outcomes and our responses.” Such thinking characterises much of the strategy adopted by forward-looking governments on tackling climate change.

James Goodman, head of Futures at Forum for the Future, agrees: “People think it’s the output that’s important, but actually it’s the process.” And, he adds, “All future planning has uncertainty at its heart.”

Or as Martin Raymond, Strategy and Insight Director at The Future Laboratory, says, “We always try to spot the dog
poop in our forecast.”

Greenbang Editor’s note: This was a guest article by Trish Lorenz and Martin Wright at Forum for the Future. This piece originally appeared in Green Futures, which is published by Forum for the Future and is the leading magazine on environmental solutions and sustainable futures. Its aim is to demonstrate that a sustainable future is both practical and desirable — and can be profitable, too.

Toyota President Akio Toyoda, Feb 11, 2010. Pic: AP

Lean manufacturing creates efficiencies and shaves production costs by creating just-in-time — no inventory — systems, using common parts and designs across product lines, and generally squeezing materials, processes, and (inevitably) quality controls. This may or may not include pressing suppliers to lower prices, and therefore squeeze their own materials, processes, and quality controls. ‘Lean’ has been very much a core process and operations mantra for about two decades. To misquote a favorite saying, manufacturing companies have been adamant: ‘one can never be too rich or too lean.’

But now Toyota has had a slew of embarrassing recalls — the 2010 Highlander; 2008 – 2010 Sequoia SUVs; and 2009 – 2010 RAV4′s due to gas pedal problems. It has just recalled 437,000 Prius and other hybrid vehicles worldwide to fix brake problems. In 2009 it recalled Corolla, Camry, Vios and Yaris sedans due to faulty electric window-control systems.

The point of the WSJ piece is to implicate lean manufacturing in this. (It’s unclear whether it’s too much lean or too little quality control, but they are clearly connected.) Now, lean as an idea is not going to go away. Nobody is suddenly going to advocate ‘bloat manufacturing,’ but looking at the damage in reputation and bottom line that Toyota has soaked up, the company and others like it will obviously looking across their lines and saying to themselves ‘a bit of redundancy (fat, if you like) in the system will be cheaper than this.’ Thus the pendulum swings back from lean extreme to somewhere a bit more durable. A happy medium.

Maharaj Mac

In the other story, the Times reports how McDonalds is seeing benefits from localization of it’s menu, for example, offering the McItaly in Italy, the (non-beef) Maharaja Mac in India, the McLobster in Canada and the Ebi Filit-O (shrimp burger) in Japan. The pendulum effect here is that McDo became the mega-corporation it is based on global standardization and a ‘one-menu’ mantra from Cleveland to Taipei. It wasn’t just one menu, but each item had to be produced from the same stock, and in the same way. McDo fries were identical everywhere, that was the guarantee (and they were always called ‘fries’ no matter what locals called them.)

It is now become common cause among the global food companies (notably Starbucks and KFC) to work local options into their offering. One may think this is merely ‘think global, act local.’ The point is, it is an about-turn indeed from the ‘think American, act global’ that went before. What works best is in fact a happy medium.

What does this have to do with better future-thinking? Expect a recall sooner or later on forecasts that don’t see change resolving itself around a happy medium.

Well, this raises the question of whether the past tells us anything about the future, and if so what? There’s a common wisdom attributed to Mark Twain (why is it that aphorisms are always attributed to Twain or Winston Churchill?) that goes: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” and this is the position that most educated future-thinkers would hold.

So what would the ‘rhyme’ be? From cases such as Argentina, Russia, South Africa, and many developing world countries over the past 50 years: lenders loose confidence in a country’s ability to repay on its national bonds and stop lending; the country is faced with a choice of drastic spending cuts (great social and humanitarian cost) or major tax increases (pointless, because it stifles business, therefore lowers tax revenue) or default. Going broke, into national “Chapter 11,” suing for time and ‘debt restructuring’ becomes the best among the bad options event though it pretty much ensures a deep and dark recession.
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Thinking the unthinkable

Could this be the future of America? As I’ve written before here and other places, after the ‘unimaginable’ Credit Crunch was ignored due to its ‘low probability,’ it’s a relief to know that remote but plausible outcomes with serious consequences are getting attention, at least in the Washington Post.

Clearly major economies are in a more precarious situation than they were 5 years ago. Too much debt is always precarious, for the smallest household or the biggest country alike. On the other hand, an economy’s size and enduring wealth counts too. As Samuelson observes, it created the unexpected effect in Japan’s case where debt at 200% of GDP (America’s is currently about 40%) should have raised the cost of its debt (lower confidence of repayment) but this hasn’t happened because domestic Japanese households and businesses rather than foreigners have easily (and confidently) bought the debt — and this may well hold true for the U.S. too. In other words, the rhyme may go this way.

The ‘more likely’ future is incremental raising of taxes and lowering of public service provision as Western economies incrementally claw their way back to stability. But at least this default wild card on the margins of plausibility has the oxygen of some attention and this is no bad thing. As with all good foresight work, it predicts nothing, but it does allow us to think through the roadmap to the outcome, and press for the right decisions now, in plenty of time and in a measured way.

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Picture: londonfashionweek.co.uk

London Fashion Week, the UK’s slice of the $300-billion global fashion industry, starts today with flash of couture, whirring of camera and, no doubt, glug of Veuve-Cliquot. All the sass and celebrity pizzaz, and the actual catwalk schedule, can be found at londonfashionweek.co.uk

So… it’s teen giraffes tottering around in outrageous stuff, the watered down version of which will be pumped through the supply chain until it appears at your local department store in six-to-nine months. Same as it ever was, right?

In fact, not really. One of the gathering trends of the current era, across many industries, is the empowerment of consumers as ‘taste-makers,’ circumventing designers and specialist advisers. This is currently putting fashion executives through the wringer as “who decides” what is good, what is made and marketed, is being wrested from the fashion elite and from fashion intermediaries (glossy magazines like Vogue and Elle) by the “woman-in-the-street.”

The industry’s longstanding top-down orientation — where “we” told “you” what next year’s ‘look’ will be — is cracking as consumers who can easily access, share, and discuss every fashion preference, including their own, now get ‘networked affirmation’ rather than affirmation from the top.

Internet and mobile communications, and social networking technologies are behind this, of course. Access to style and fashion advice now comes anywhere, anytime. The stuffy catwalk shows are not open to the public (ah, the whiff of elitism still breathes for now,) but as a recent story in the LA Times points out: “Images can be seen online minutes after a designer shows them… The Internet makes it possible not only to read about fashion but to participate in it. The use of sites that enable users to create their own fashion-spreads, share photos of themselves in different outfits and elicit wardrobe advice from their peers is skyrocketing.”

The news for elite arbiters of taste in every industry in the 21st Century: it’s game-over. You will have to participate with your customers in their socially-networked formation of perceptions and opinions, a process you will be able to sometimes lead, but more often have to follow.

Arsène Wenger

But this was different. Wenger (on the eve of the Arsenal vs Celtic Rangers Champions League match) predicted a “European League” in 10 years featuring the continent’s top clubs – that is, he offered foresight into potential structural, industry-wide change in multi-billion-dollar UK and European soccer industry.

Currently clubs play in their national domestic leagues. And all Europe-wide competitions are cup (pool stage + knockout) competitions.

Although not fleshed out, the form is not hard to see: the top four-or-so clubs from each major country (fewer from smaller countries) in one annual league competition. This means that Manchester United, Liverpool, AC Milan, Porto, Juventus, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Roma and so on would all be playing each other on a weekly basis throughout the year (and, presumably, playing in no other league competitions).

Drivers of Change

The point of Future Savvy is that one can judge the validity of predictions like this before time. In this case, part of the way to assess Mr Wenger’s future view would be to gauge the strength of driving vs blocking forces behind his outcome.

There is evidence of strong drivers in favor of a European Super League. These are:

1. The rise of “super-teams.” In the UK and across Europe the same few teams dominate their domestic league year after year. The reason is a simple reinforcing feedback loop where winning teams get more money (from TV rights, from gates, from merchandising, etc.) which means they can buy better players, which means they win more. Over the last decade the English Football Premier League has become, effectively, a competition between Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Arsenal. (In the US the “draft–pick” system mitigates against any franchise getting too strong in this way, but no such system-balancer exists in European football.)

2. The growing ease and ubiquity of continental travel. Whether fans will follow their teams across Europe is a key issue, but indicators from cup competitions is that fans can and will travel.

3. The growing role of, and technological sophistication of television, particularly Sky Sports. Despite the many who travel, most people these days follow games at home or in sports bars. Television’s coverage and choices (the remote control options “red button”) have exploded, and screens themselves have got bigger and better. And genuine personalization of camera feed and other forms of interactively is emerging. In this, football, and professional sports as a whole, is becoming more about the screen as the stadium, accelerating a long-term trend. The reality is it makes little difference to most fans if the game is being played 50 miles away or 500.

4. The move to high-level, star-packed, events. There’s a clear trend across sports in general for events featuring the best players playing each other in all-star environments, not as a special “all-star” game but as an everyday occurrence. In cricket, for example, the Indian IPL has ridden this trend, offering franchised matches of, effectively, one mixed team of global superstars versus another. The fans love it.

There is also the financial do-or-die logic that soccer clubs face. The money feedback loop means they must continually drive up their revenues. It’s not possible to stand still. A European Football Super League would compel participation from the top teams for this reason alone.

vs Blockers

Adequately assessing the likelihood of the Wenger view of the future further requires investigation of blockers – factors which will prevent the outcome. In this case these may be overwhelming logistics of moving teams around to this extent week in and week out; limits on fans’ travel energy and budget; extent of fans’ loyalty to the relatively minor (non-super) domestic teams; and domestic league administrators’ determination and ability to keep domestic leagues from loosing their cash cows and following their own downward spiral into television obscurity.

These blockers on the European football league forecast are real. The question is whether they stop the future or how long they delay it. I’d judge the blockers as considerably weaker than the drivers and so I’d go with Wenger in predicting a European Super League (even richer and more “glamorous” than anything soccer has seen before) in about 10 years from now.

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 shortages and water conflicts
• Change in US policy
• The end of oil-based transport energy
• Iran going toxic

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.

Pic: thisislondon.co.uk

Google introduced “Google Flu Trends” (US) in November as a way to visualize correlation between flu infections and flu-related searches. It maintains search levels provide early warning of flu spread because search data can be gathered and analyzed almost instantly, unlike traditional epidemiological reporting methods. (More on the goal of the project is in a post on swine flu on the official Google blog.)

The predictive power of Google spikes is hardly clear. Yes, a spike could suggest increased levels of infection. But it could be cause by media coverage and rising levels of pandemic concern.

Google predicts “no pandemic”

More broadly, however, the Google search phenomenon, and information saturation that goes with it is, I believe, highly predictive in epidemic situations. It predicts they are very unlikely. Generally, knowledge is power. Specifically deep and easily searchable public knowledge of where the epidemic is, and what to do to avoid it, and avoid spreading it, is a new condition in human history, one which in fact reliably predicts that no pandemic will happen. Yes, strains become more virulent and dangerous and even drug resistant, and yes, airlines transport it around the world in hours. But the power of knowledge in the labs and in the public at large is immense and ubiquitous in a way it never was before.

One of the debates in futures studies is how much and in what way to look at the past as a guide to the future. Paul Saffo says: look back at least as twice as far as you are trying forecast, and I agree with that. In thinking about a major modern global health epidemic our minds are in fact deeply conditioned by a 90-year-old event: the 1918 Influenza Pandemic that killed an estimated 50 million worldwide. In that epidemic there were particular conditions, not least four year of devastating war where more were lost to disease than fighting; associated drain on resistance and infrastructure; and forced mobiization of troops under poor conditions, that greatly facilitated the spread of the disease. Most importantly, ordinary people were operating in a knowledge vaccum that is unimaginable today.

This is not to say that we should not be vigilant and prepared. But the future that we most likely face is many-and-regular outbreaks like the swine flu, the avian flu, and so on, which we will move fairly quickly to contain. The dystopia of world pandemic is appealing to the health crisis community and its service providers, but the future will not be history (1918-1920) repeating itself.

It was in this spirit that I picked up the UK launch issue (aka May 2009) of Wired. Actually it’s not the first launch. Wired was in the UK ten years ago, but Condé Nast withdrew it in the dot.com crash. In the US at the time, I remember when Wired, the poster child of the Silicon Valley / Nasdaq bonanza, was almost as thick as a phone book each month. But those days were soon over.

Anyway, who could resist an offering that was about to tell me about my “Life in the future. “Fake Meat, Robots and Electro-Sex: the World is About to Change.” On the cover are, I kid you not, flying cars!

Now, I wouldn’t take this stuff seriously for a moment, if everyone else promised not to. But they don’t. So here we go. In the “What’s Next?” cover story 46 experts make 99 predictions about the next 40 years, and none of them will happen, or not in the time frame expressed.

Oh, moon settlement?

I shrink from sharing the list. Meal replacement patches, check. Moon settlement, check. The male pill, check. Every techno-fantasy of the jockish sci-fi world, check. Well, let’s stop on the male pill for a moment. Can we not do it? Sure we can do it – today. What’s stopping it is not technology. It is attitudes (machismo, essentially). So Wired experts are telling us that this will go away in a decade. Puh-leez.

I hardly need mention there’s no method given behind any of these expert forecasts.

Don’t you think Wired should be asking themselves why, in 2009, they are producing 186 pages of dead tree and carting it around the country in carbon-emitting trucks? Technology-vision may lead you to a view of the future. But it’s unreliable. The future is determined by what consumers are ready for. Well, that’s one of the 20-or-so key forecast filtering principles of Future Savvy.

Perhaps we should look at the cover story for what it is really about – which is selling magazines. Because, there’s no doubt that tech is changing, and many new capabilities are coming on stream, and this is very, very fascinating to imagine uses for. And this fascination is what Wired packages and sells. Don’t bet any money on the predictions though, certainly not their timeline.

But sturdy in some areas

Aside from the predicting lark, it’s a good magazine of its kind. The features are well-conceived, well-written, for example, one about how the BBC iPlayer business was built; a feature on sea salvage; a profile of PayPal founder Elon Musk; the David X Li formula and how it mis-calculated risk, and so on. Great stuff. Actually quite a sturdy business-oriented-view of techno-change, if you can get past the boys-with-toys riff of the magazine as a whole.

So, actually, much to like. Just, please, don’t think a lad’s mag is going to tell you anything coherent about the future.

My question, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), and the FTSE100, the DAX, the Hang Seng and so on have hit a decade lows is, what is this predicting, if anything? What is the long-term value of this prediction, and could it be used to make better decisions in the real world?
We know that the value of a common stock – a share in a company – is based ultimately on the returns (dividends) it will bring. Buyers and sellers therefore derive a daily market price based on their views of the share’s expected, that is, predicted future payback. The greater the expectation, the greater the price. A high price vis a vis earnings (P/E ratio) suggests confidence in future earnings, and vice versa.
Therefore the current steep fall in share prices is an expectation of (crowd prediction of) lower future payouts. Of course the complexity in human-prediction situations is that this basic level is also overlayed with a meta-level: people are not only trying to figure out what will happen, they are trying to figure out what others think will happen. So falling PE ratios are an expectation of what others will do (predicting they will continue to sell.)

Madness or not?
One of the perplexing things about the markets is they very often seem to react opposite to what is expected; to what would be common sense. They often fall on good news, rise on bad news, close unchanged on big news, and so on. Although there is – famously much irrational behavior and herd instinct in the market – you don’t get hundreds of thousands of decision-makers wagering significant money not using common sense.
What is going on, of course, is that the market has often already risen or fallen in prediction of the news. When a new condition – an interest rate move, for example – is imminent, the market will move to “price in” the expectation. If market participants as a whole have called the future correctly the market will not move much on announcement.

Pricing-in the future
Because of this predictive component to group decision-making in market situations, the stock market as a whole is a classic leading indicator of the real economy. When prices move they may be taken as the crowd “pricing-in” a future prediction. So markets will fall ahead of real economic problems (they may continue to fall, as now, during steep economic declines.) But they will also turn up well before any real, measurable upturn.

By the way, there is little doubt it will overshoot in this time, as it always does. This is because, as in prediction markets, the wisdom of crowds can predict the trend but not the turn. Trend extrapolation will never show you the key shifts, and this is why predicting the bottom or top of a market is so hard.

The point, for market speculators, is that long before the real gloom is over the markets will be zooming upwards. The point for the rest of us is that recession times will be with us even after the markets move up. In the long term the market will go up. Like death and taxes, it’s the surest thing there is.

The story covers the pilot project of two San Francisco newspapers seeking to create an online edition. The presenter starts: “Imagine if you will sitting down with your morning coffee and turning to your computer to read the day’s newspaper. Well it’s not as far fetched as it seems…”

28 years later it’s exactly what we do. But it seemed far-fetched then, and this was not a misjudgment: it has taken us until now, the full 28 years in most developed countries, to get to the point where mass online newspapers rival mass print editions in the market. What might that tell us about what seems far-fetched now, whether it will happen or not, and how long it will take? How does it improve our foresight?

$10 plays 20c, but not for long
The news clip features early 1980s computers – the text-only green screens – and achingly slow phone-set modems. A newspaper takes two hours to download (with no picture, ads, or comics). So there are technology limitations.

Then there are economic barriers: the local-call hourly charge is $5 (=$10 for the paper) while the print copy costs 20c.

And there are system-wide market-adoption issues: there are only “two to three thousand” home computers in the Bay Area at the time. Home computer penetration is obviously related to utility (usefulness/cost) of the machine.

But in 1981 home computers were about to get a whole lot better for a whole lot less – and with this programmers would be drawn into turning the technology into something we actually need, and ultimately can’t do without – all driving towards the utility jump that signals mainstream adoption. But at the time home computers were an unimaginably small niche of the total media market.

Fast forward to 2037 and what might we be able to say about it? First, that the pilot projects of important new mainstream markets already exist today (along with great business opportunities). The technologies involved are, now, incredibly clunky and expensive, meaning consumer utility is laughably low. But this will steadily unravel to the point where the technology is fantastic and affordable, and voila! We will have fundamental transition and entirely new mainstream markets.

But the most important lesson of all is this: it will take a generation. The future never cuts corners. All fundamental changes in social and market patterns take at least a generation, if not more. There’s a well-known truism in foresight work, which is this: we tend to overestimate the pace of change, but underestimate how all-encompassing it will be, once it comes.

I was reminded of this when, as my wife and I were talking happily about the Obama “Yes-We-Can” victory speech, our 3-year-old daughter piped up: “Bob-the-Builder”! [The economy's in crisis, can we fix it?] “Yes we can!” [The war in Iraq, can we fix it?] “Yes we can!”

If this means nothing to you, see http://www.bobthebuilder.com/ca/english/index.asp

This is not subtle stuff, this speechwriting. And politics is nothing if not the art of appealing to the 3-yr-old in all of us. But, as they say, “a win is a win.”

Anyway, it is for the foresight community to to get past the day’s euphoria and ask, what does this mean for the future? I think the win has trend tipping-point implications and allows some future-thinking insights to be accumulated.

The “Hawaiian” Future

One of the things Jim Dator and the Hawaii Research Center for Future Studies have long been saying is, “the future of the world is brown.” The running, long-term trend they are referring to is the movement of power and money from the white West to the brown East, and (eventually) South. And, on similar lines, we have seen rise in number of inter-racial couples (and more acceptance of), and the strong fashion and pop-star chic-ness of being “mixed” race. This aspect of the world’s future has been more obvious, earlier, in Hawaii than other places in the US (and the Obama-Hawaii connection is pertinent here), but now it’s mainstream. This in itself is a lesson that the future is to be seen earlier in some places than others. Anyway, November 4, 2008, is surely the moment where the trend tips and accelerates.

This is not to be naive. Nothing about the result is going to kill racism or ethnic affiliation. The world is a competitive place, and people organize and identify into groups to compete (and restrict access to benefits) more effectively. Whitey halls of privilege will continue to exist. Islamic identification and action will continue to be a huge force, and so on. But now that there is (and in future always will have been) a black person in the world’s top job, nobody can ever look at another person of color and see an intrinsic limitation on what that person can do, be, influence, or own.

Images of the future

For at least half a century the world has known this in theory of course. But theory doesn’t move the world. Pictures move the world. That is, pictures of the future bring the future closer. Obama making the president-elect victory speech, or seeing him and his family move into the White House, will undo more mental models – more educated incapacity – in the area of race than anything that has gone before. For driving the future, the Obama success image is more powerful than a thousand well-meaning affirmative-action programs.

The ratchet effect

The other, simultaneous, foresight principle at work is that change proceeds by ratchet effect. Sticking with politics, the Suffragette movement gathered momentum and finally swept aside millennia of tradition after women were seen to do traditionally “male” jobs during WW1. Here again we have the change-power of images of the future. After women were seen in these new roles there was no way to put the genie back. Yes, social changes can be reversed or stalled (Roe vs Wade is in the mire) but once the image of the future is out there, and minds have absorbed and habituated to it, it may be opposed but never removed. And this is what November 4 promises: visually ratcheting forward the world-wide acceptance of the potential of all people regardless of race as fact not theory – thereby tipping and accelerating the long-term trend to “The Hawaiian Future.”

1. First, what do you use scenario planning for?
Initially stated everyone did scenario planning, every time you find yourself doing something unusual it implies you’ve done something wrong with scenario planning. We think about the future all the time, constantly making scenarios in head, if move to London think about what need to earn, where live, family, critical uncertainties. We run forward, think about various challenges, we rehearse the future.

CL wondered about ill thought through scenarios?

AG felt it was inevitable that people will disagree. End of day scenarios boil down to politics. Visionary scenario planning gets everyone talking – firstly need to find common threads (if not grounds), that most buy into – even if it is a low common denominator, thus creating a shared vision, then dystopias, but remember the end point is never total agreement.

RS Acknowledgment of importance of politics? Is that your experience of foresight?
AG believes he is a political animal, but no longer involved in protest. Belief is power is absolutely important when thinking about the future. He then amends it to power and money – as often groups without power have public opinions so they can shape the future. There is a danger that they only talk about market forces and technology and that’s it.
RS Is it a struggle working with other foresight groups – is that view not shared?
AG says they can give a shared opinion, but politics mostly overlooked by the groups

RS describes that we all have a political agenda (social inclusion, voices excluded) within this project – it makes it interesting to deal with those who have an economic/gov background, it’s difficult to pretend futures neutral.

2. Could you talk me through a brief overview of your scenario planning method? (How long does each stage take? What preparation is required for each stage? How many people are involved in each step?)

There is an underlying method – but each stage has some degree of flexibility and can use a variety of methods.

A. Handshaking stage
Firstly deciding what you’re doing, basic project stuff – who’s involved, what resources, what deliverables – key is choosing method and who’s involved, may have varying degree of democracy – heads or grass roots, be inter disciplinary or not, have a broad or narrow focus, and what type of input is required. Believes it needs to have mixed agenda. Note that relying totally on academics is bad.
Then you need to decide the dates your final scenarios will relate to – further in the future the more radical but less relevant to other people and harder to action. Most future scenarios are around 10 years ahead – as a rule not less than 5 or more than 20.

To decide the focus you must:
1) Drive management team towards understanding how much influence they have over the future, can they drive future or does external events influence them? Percentage, never exact but idea.
2) Based on the amount of control can decide if creating a visionary scenario or anticipatory (not good word) scenario building. Visionary trying to develop an idea, multiple stakeholders get shared ideal, easier if pressure group, one organisation, as they can develop enrich and jump on to focusing on how we would put this into practice. They create a vision and dystopia. Influence future (money, opinion etc).
In anticipatory, or “Businessy type scenario”, participants don’t mind how things turn out, what they want is to be successful in the world however it turns out. Within organisation goal is to anticipate broad set of possible worlds, particularly critical uncertainties. So they do have research scenarios and different takes on how things emerge, BUT no preferred future. Look at resource and competence so they may have preferences but can adapt. To same extent they look at legacy competencies but this is not a determining factor. Scope alternatives and plan.
The Handshaking stage takes a few meetings to do, small with key meeting, then larger with various stakeholders – perhaps half a day.
In terms of materials one could send out stimulating piece to encourage thought so not stone cold but which doesn’t colour the agenda. Could also have to read a synopsis of what the process is about and the sort of things to think about and expect.

B. Horizon scanning
There are 100s of ways of doing this. Basically need to go into world and do research on what’s going on in key dimensions, technology, markets – broad scan of world relevant to issue area, bring in people outside of own industry. Best tool in this area is “learning journey” – jazzy word for anthropology of own society, structured agenda for talking to people about concerns, what they know, what they’d like, focusing on future – so need to be carefully done to avoid reiteration of now or what they think you want to hear.
Note that you can commission this – but it is not market research.
No answer to how long, dependent on time and resources, but should budget third of total time.

C. Pulling it together
Mulch through the data gathered – preferably in funky creative meetings, collate, output into things like forces, drivers of change, trends, blockers of change, critical uncertainties. What comes out is a picture of world that’s relevant to us.
This activity could be whole group or just the scenario developing team – it’s to pull out what’s important.
The format could be something like workshop, sleep/gap, then another half day or so.

D. Separating critical from predetermined
This could require a Mini Delphi, talk to experts to find out what are the sorts of things in forces of change list that are predetermined – so things we know will happen in 2020, perhaps the number of students, or trends to sustainability.
The various issues will have lifecycles in being a key focus, they’ll always be there but the amount of interest will vary, eg sustainability. In the future sustainability will be less of a concern, but not less important, it will just be integrated into our expectations we won’t focus on it. An example relating to education is how we’ve shifted views on punishment; it was a stick, then detentions, then exclusion…
[Divergent conversation about the failure to correctly predict overpopulation – they just extrapolated – AG argues it was not a failed forecast, just bad forecasting - a failed forecast is interlocked bad assumptions. There was a discussion whether carbon credits will have the same results.]

E. Question all assumptions/Test lists
Note: This stage might highlight the need for more research or stakeholder engagement.
The goal is to end up with two lists that rank for importance. One is about predetermined things – things that we are sure about for our purposes – note that we may, or may not, need to talk about them. Then there are uncertainties (anything we can’t clarify with further research). They are sometimes called “strategic uncertainties”.

F. Create scenarios
These lists form basis of scenarios, they allow us to try out alternate resolutions of the unknowns. AG hates the 2 by 2 matrix approach (from Boston management), but it is sometimes a useful tool. Shell use a fork in the road approach, or possibly a roundabout, where there are clear alternatives. For example, they know sustainability will happen but they have various scenarios predicting the demand for resources. [RS comments that Shell also have a trilemma approach, so deal with three worries.]
More generally scenarios are structured round uncertainties. The van der Heijden approach is to list things and tell stories – NEEDS creative facilitators. He has a pack of cards which people develop stories around. Each group is given part of the puzzle to resolve. Basically you need judgement to choose how.
The groups then write stories and the facilitator ensures the scenarios cover the cone of plausible uncertainties. Note there must be multiple scenarios, a single story is not helpful.
The creation of scenarios will take a minimum of 2 days to talk through, write, draw or tell.

Note: Jump scenarios are conversations over a day. There is no learning journey and it’s hard work for the facilitator. The result is paragraphs rather than stories. These are good for management to emphasis the alternatives and broaden thinking

G. Check and test scenarios
Vital outside people criticise. What could and would work? This stakeholder analysis is meant to be a practical exercise.

H. Put them out
Visioning scenarios (including preferred outcome) get published, they need to get folks on board. Business ones tend to be more internal.
Then test existing strategic agenda within scenarios. They’re a test bed for strategy and choices. How would things work?
Or backcast using the scenarios – so how to reach or avoid scenarios.
AG keen to promote that there needs to be standards, just like testing a pram, you need to exhaust all the things that could happen before it gets its kite mark.
[There was a conversational aside over the time spent on this. AG worried not enough time spent using them and that politics will block change – “if broke don’t fix it”. People need to be desperate to be receptive.]

3. Do you use any tools for scenario planning? If so, can you briefly describe them?

Classic management tools – so getting people to communicate, being experienced based.

4. Are any of those tools online?

Nothing practical is online but there are resources and case studies (see his website). Although then amended that can do Delphi online. Note that learning journey is not market research, not supposed to be investigating people’s mental models – “good foresight is not predictive”.

5. What scenario planning tools would you ideally like to have available?

Something that follows stages explaining steps, timelines, who’s involved, explaining predetermined and uncertainties when listing – basically scaffolding.

6. If time was restricted for a scenario planning exercise, which parts would you keep because they’re the most important?

Would go through all stages (tick all boxes) but go lightly on some. However the less knowledge bought in the more focus on facilitation. The key is to get people to develop interesting motivating diverse stories appropriate to their needs.

7. What tools or approach would you recommend if a non-expert wanted to do scenario planning?

When asked AG said that don’t need a facilitator but would do better if had one. They focus the time and can support the whole process – not just when in workshops. Those involved aren’t experts and have a stake in the present so they’re going to struggle to change their minds.

When asked if it could be done alone AG said yes, BUT that it would be better if one could do at least step G, testing scenarios, with others.

Decision success always implies congruence between decisions and the world in which those decisions play out. If we decide today to launch a product, buy a house, study for a degree, build a new light rail system, or take any similar decision of significance, the environment of tomorrow will be a key factor in the success or failure of that decision. What we do will be tested by the future conditions that emerge. Where there is a good “fit” between the initiative and the environment it plays out in — “the right product at the right time” — we can expect success. If not, we should expect to fail. Our decisions are only as good as the view of the future they rest on. All opportunities and successes and profits are realized in the future. All threats, failures, and losses are in the future.

In a fast-moving world, we know that the future environment will be different to that of today in big or small ways. New technologies, market shifts, changes in legislation, or evolving social values damage or destroy the traditional good fit we have between ourselves and the world. To achieve “future fit” we therefore use forecasts to position ourselves and our organizations, creating (or renewing) the fit between our initiatives and environment. In some cases we may be strong enough also to influence future events and outcomes for our own future benefit, and forecasts help us do this too.

All enterprises benefit from narrowing down what they must adapt to and plan for – all effort spent preparing for a future that will not emerge is a waste of personal or organizational resources. Good forecasts are a key ingredient in limiting the vagaries of uncertainty, and therein working smarter not harder, avoiding surprises, exploiting new opportunities and plugging weaknesses in fitting in with the future, and where possible influencing the future to suit the organization. This is true not only of business. People and institutions of all types position themselves for success by anticipating and adapting to events, or shaping them. Whether it is an NGO raising money for developing-world children, an urban planner advocating a light rail system, a homeowner deciding to sell a house, or a student making a career choice, identical principles apply — a higher-quality reading of the future operating environment in which these decisions will play out is what separates winners from losers. We should all be vitally concerned with forecasts as we are all effectively betting significant resources on their validity.

Chapter 1: Recognizing Forecast Intentions, deals with considerations of how forecasts come about, who makes them, and with what intention. Those who research and produce forecasts, those who invest in understanding trends and drivers of change, and those (including the media) who bring the forecasts and their implications to our attention, inevitably have reasons for doing so – to benefit from the knowledge by seizing opportunities or avoiding threats or by affecting outcomes in the world. Understanding a forecast’s “return on investment” gives us an important vantage point in assessing the merits of a forecast.

Chapter 2: The Quality of Information, shows how a forecast communicates information between forecaster and reader subject to the same standards of accuracy, truth-telling, and bias-control by which one would judge any communication. Forecasts can be very different in methods and goals, but all forecasts lay claim to factual truth, particularly truth in the data, and the argument deals with the various ways in which data can be less solid than it looks, even with the best intentions.

Chapter 3: Interpretation and Bias, considers how data – whether good or bad in itself – can be interpreted or misinterpreted in forecasting, that is, the “political” aspects of forecasting. Just as there is no value-free look at history, so too there is no value-free look to the future and asking the right questions allows us be ready to mentally rebalance forecasts that are presented.

Chapter 4: Paradigms and Perception, investigates how predictive statements are exposed to a broader form of interpretive bias that has to do with the forecaster’s mental model or “paradigm,” and the “zeitgeist” (spirit of the times) when the forecast is made. This chapter investigates situations where forecast failure is caused by failure to escape society’s current mental models – which often do not hold through the forecast period.

Chapter 5: The Utility Principle, considers economic and market forces, and the role of consumers, in promoting or resisting the future. Without reigning in creative thinking, some simple economic filters inevitably apply direction or timing realism to futurist flights of fancy.

Chapter 6: Drivers, Blockers, and Trends, consider drivers and blockers of change, and how viewing these dynamics improves forecast assessment. It identifies the roles of Drivers, Enablers, Friction, and Blockers acting on events to cause change or resist it, and problems in dumbly projecting current trends.

Chapter 7: The Limits of Quantitative Analysis, discusses the role of statistical analysis and quantitative modeling in predicting the future – where this is possible and useful and where it is not, and why not.

Chapter 8: The Systems Perspective, investigates “system effects,” which occur whenever different elements or variables that may appear isolated are in fact linked together, such that changes in one element cause changes in others. Anticipating future behavior of any variable hinges on identifying the broader systemic elements influencing it and failing to do this is a big part of what causes forecasts to fail.

Chapter 9: Living with Alternative Futures, investigates non-predictive ways of approaching change – where the tone is more about managing uncertainty than predicting the future. It acknowledges unfathomable complexity of most future questions and provides perspectives that raise chances of success in an inherently unpredictable future.

Chapter 10: Forecast Filtering in Action, illustrates the processes of the book by applying them in case studies to real-world sample forecasts that decision makers in business and policy areas might find themselves interacting with. This demonstrates how real everyday predictive material may be probed and critically evaluated, following the principles developed in previous chapters.

Chapter 11: A Forecast Filtering Checklist, is a cross-cutting checklist which summarizes the principles of the book in one convenient, thematic list.

Obvious background to all this is that rapid change is a constant, ubiquitous feature of our lives. Important changes across society, technology, institutions, and products and services are constantly occurring. But the future is not merely interesting, it is competitive: the earlier and clearer we see future circumstances, the better we will be able to benefit by changing our current recipes for success – to keep up with the changes in the world. The better managers’ view of the future, the better their decisions will turn out to be. So, change matters, and managers in business or policy realms have to correctly anticipate change. And therefore they turn to and depend on predictions of others. One might say that forecasts are a crucial decision-success resource. But these forecasts are often badly done or done with a purpose to influence the future (that is, not just to predict it). Therefore decision-makers need to be able to judge how good a forecast is – so as to know how to or whether to factor it into their world view. Managers need to be able to critically judge predictive statements to be able determine which ideas are worth taking seriously – worth planning for and investing in.

The book sets out to communicate tools and approaches that the forecast consumer can use to filter and evaluate statements about the future, and thus judge what the real threats and opportunities are. It summarizes and orders the problems common in forecasting, as well as best practices, so that managers and decision makers of all types may be better able to critically interact with the barrage of forecasts that compete for their attention and resources and discriminate between worthy and unworthy ones.