Central banks: four economic scenarios

In a short scenario planning exercise, the Financial Times recently considered the potential impacts on the business strategy and strategic planning of two key transatlantic institutions as they work within an environment characterised by further uncertainty and subject to changeable economic forecasts & market trends.

Titled “In search of the exit“, the article compares the intent and actions to date of both the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank as a key debate emerges on how the world’s two largest central banks will set strategies to ‘unwind’ the measures each has put in place as a response to the financial crisis. Indeed, as the article crucially notes “In coming months, transatlantic approaches to policy will again be tested under different circumstances”.

Four outline scenarios are posed:

• Steady as she goes – inflation and interest rates low
• The only way is up – recovery faster than expected
• Back to the pump – deflation, ongoing recession
• Burnt by hot oil – stagflation

In terms of timescale; no dates beyond 2010 are mentioned.

Lastly, the article makes brief - but significant - mention of the different cultures and perceptions key individuals in each institution have displayed such as “aggressive and experimental” and “adopting unconventional approaches”.  If we dismiss suggestions these are only simple, crude personal characterisations and embrace the idea they may reflect or express the ‘offical’ mindset by which the organisation acts then - normative considerations aside - we should again be reminded of the importance of mental models in addressing business planning and change management issues.

Image credit - flickr / Owen Brady

Coral Cross: Hawaii Research Centre for Future Studies launch new game

Coral Cross has just launched.

Produced by the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies (HRCFS), the project is described as an ‘emergent reality game’ based on the premise that H1N1 ’swine flu’ will continue to move across the globe. The aim of the game - which is open to all - is to see if participants can “help outpace the virus” and ensure their own community can be ‘vaccinated’ in advance with real information.

The design team was led by Stuart Candy who’s previously worked on similar ideas within the ARG (Alternative Reality Game) area - specifically - 2008’s highly successful massively, multi-player forecasting game ‘Superstruct‘ (developed by the Ten-Year Forecast team at the Institute for the Future).

Coral Cross was commissioned as part of a public engagement demonstration project by the State of Hawaii Department of Health (DOH) and funded by a grant from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

(Updates can also be followed on Twitter or UK-specific comment via the #coralcrossuk hashtag).

Exploring Futures Methods: Seminar round-up

After yesterday’s excellent and thought-provoking event, I’ve indexed each individual live blogging summary below:

• Welcome & an overview of futures research methodology
• The deployment of futures tools in the policy-making context
• Using participatory scenario techniques to deal with uncertainty
• Roads less travelled: different methods, different outcomes
• Panel discussion on futures methods: opportunities and new directions

Exploring Futures Methods: Panel discussion on futures methods, opportunities and new directions (#exfume09)

5:17:56 PM: (WS) “the ‘tools’ should not be divorced from the need to establish a solid conceptual understanding or framework” - #exfume09

5:19:34 PM: (RM) “methods are exceedingly sensitive to purpose …” - #exfume09

5:22:12 PM: (SA-M) on the global crisis - “we suffered from paradigm blindness” (our willingness to accept straightline extrapolations) - #exfume09

5:26:55 PM: (SA-M) [futures] “.. is a participation sport not a spectator sport!” - #exfume09

5:29:38 PM: Comments on the role and value of engaging ‘expert’ opinion as the primary means of driving futures work - #exfume09

5:32:18 PM: (RM) “clients need to go through their ‘contingent’ futures, then their ‘optimisation’ futures before they can really engage” - #exfume09

5:34:49 PM: Wide agreement on the importance the role our belief-systems, cultural inheritance or mental models play in colouring ‘futures’ - #exfume09

Exploring Futures Methods: Roads less travelled - different methods, different outcomes (#exfume09)

4:32:11 PM: (WS) A research project that began over drinks & asked the simple question “Does the story you tell depend on the tools you use”- #exfume09

4:35:06 PM: (AC) Background: lots of reviews comparing scenario method typologies but none applying these to the same data set - #exfume09

4:36:06 PM: this is a light-touch experiment … - #exfume09

4:38:32 PM: data set from an exercise looking at “what is the future of civil society in Britain & Ireland between now and 2025″ - #exfume09

4:42:17 PM: highlights the dominance of the 2×2 ‘double uncertainty’ method in use today (and one which companies expect to be used) - #exfume09

4:47:06 PM: causal-layered analysis: you build the scenarios from the ‘bottom-up’ by generating a ‘good conversation’ between layers - #exfume09

4:53:05 PM: third technique used was the ‘Manoa’: “consider cascades-of-impacts creating turbulance” with a view to challenging assumptions - #exfume09

4:57:33 PM: scenario archetypes; used to generate a ‘library’ of generic images via content analysis (scenario pre-fabs, just add data!) - #exfume09

5:01:34 PM: conclusions? a range of side-by-side comparisons (eg depth, development) performed against the outcomes of the four techniques -#exfume09

5:02:55 PM: also; a useful look at the ‘flavour’ of the participation involved … -#exfume09

5:06:49 PM: finally, in answer to the starting question: yes, the outcomes changed according to the tool used - #exfume09

5:13:43 PM: Good follow-on questions on the robustness of the overall research methodology used; ownership; the role of the questions asked - #exfume09

Exploring Futures Methods: Using participatory scenario techniques to deal with uncertainty (#exfume09)

3:21:59 PM: (RM) Will look at the role of anticipation and how we can think about uncertainty as less of an ‘evil’ in itself - #exfume09

3:23:24 PM: Why is our thinking and recognition of uncertainty so important: because of the potential inherently suggested within it - #exfume09

3:28:44 PM: when we consider anticipatory systems; the present does not determine the future due to fundamental indeterminancy & complexity - #exfume09

3:31:00 PM: consider ‘contingency’ futures (eg winning the lottery); also ‘optimisation’ futures (eg working with given rules and goals) - #exfume09

3:35:40 PM: we then get to ‘exploratory’ futures (imagining the potential of the present), that is “arising from inspiration or creativity” - #exfume09

3:38:39 PM: How and why to engage in exploratory futures or anticipation; it helps us to develop our overall ‘futures literacy’ - #exfume09

3:43:23 PM: Suggests we should also consider that we’re entering a transformation based on the emergence of a ‘learning intensive society’ - #exfume09

3:46:27 PM: so we’re seeing the beginnings of a transition away from the (current) simple mass-market and mass-consumption economic model - #exfume09

3:48:20 PM: we’re moving from hierarchy to heterarchy … #exfume09

3:52:22 PM: so, changing the role and nature of identity, choice, customisation: so the context makes a difference to the future envisioned - #exfume09

3:55:13 PM: key theme: futures literacy & how we learn to identify context and use the correct method to best leverage anticipatory outcomes - #exfume09

Exploring Futures Methods: The deployment of futures tools in the policy-making context (#exfume09)

2:48:06 PM: (AH) I want to describe the futures work being done in government at the moment … - #exfume09

2:51:16 PM: Techniques being used: trend analysis, visioning, scenarios, backcasting, windtunelling and more. We also group techniques. - #exfume09

2:53:29 PM: Overall, the approach is to be practical and produce outputs or insights that will actually be used within and across government - #exfume09

2:56:43 PM: How to overcome different departmental policy processes? (design, direction & delivery) Map futures work to related activity - #exfume09

2:57:54 PM: Policy-makers are good at trade-offs between options but not so good at understanding the dynamism that’s likely to be involved - #exfume09

3:01:30 PM: Working on a better process to allow new policies to be tested on a repeatable basis while incorporating known futures methods - #exfume09

3:03:14 PM: Challenges: a range of issues within both the organisational structure and the operating environment involved - #exfume09

3:04:43 PM: Seeking to ehance understanding of the range of techniques and our judgement of their applicability to any item of futures work - #exfume09

3:06:46 PM: Government run on evidence-based policy (but that always references the past) - so how to expand and define ‘future’ evidence? - #exfume09

3:11:58 PM: Suggestion: Taking a futures perspective may promote the strength of any policy position adopted - #exfume09

3:15:01 PM: A question about using the ‘red-teaming’ approach to challenge existing cultural perspectives (from MOD) - #exfume09

Exploring Futures Methods: Welcome & an overview of futures research methodology (#exfume09)

2:03:45 PM: (BB) - Welcome to the FAN Club meeting with the UK Millenium Project node … happy to see a new group of people joining - #exfume09

2:09:20 PM: (MR) The design of the day is mostly around the publication of the 3rd version of the Futures Research Methodology - #exfume09

2:11:27 PM: 3 key questions: 1 - the global crisis, 2- theoretical approach and 3 - the use of futures within government and policy-making - #exfume09

2:13:07 PM: The Millenium Project is open and you’re invited to take part; today represents the start of a new level of UK engagement - #exfume09

2:14:01 PM: MR hooks up via Skype video call to start the conversation with JC - #exfume09

2:17:13 PM: (JC) Offers a history of the Futures Research Methodology: version 3 is the largest peer reviewed source of futures methodology - #exfume09

2:20:57 PM: JC describes the key updates and new inclusions in version 3.0 - the last chapter reminds us to use more than one methodology - #exfume09

2:24:43 PM: Collective intelligence now needs to be considered (as an emergent property resulting from the rise in data and connectivity) - #exfume09

2:26:22 PM: The chapter on collective intelligence includes the design for a prototype - JC encourages us to try it for ourselves - #exfume09

2:29:33 PM: 33 nodes around the world who are involved with the project (individual or group paricipants who also interview and review work) - #exfume09

2:30:05 PM: - #exfume09

2:32:22 PM: There is a chapter that outlines a 26-step process designed to improve the effectiveness of any futures engagement you undertake - #exfume09

2:35:38 PM: What’s next? a revised & upgraded version (to strengthen the peer review process) and work to improve direct gov’t futures work - #exfume09

2:38:13 PM: Further work on middle-eastern futures and also an idea for a global environmental ‘incident room’ are being considered - #exfume09

2:40:54 PM: Questions (from audience to JC): can you say more about the collective intelligence project? - #exfume09

2:43:43 PM: Suggests we envision a series of global, multiple & interconnected wiki-like data stores, producing real-time ‘delphi’ insights - #exfume09

2:44:49 PM: Question 2 - Are you seeing any change in the uptake of futures work by governments or companies in the current circumstances? - #exfume09

Exploring Futures Methods: Royal Society, London

I’m going to try and live blog from the Exploring Futures Methods seminar being held this afternoon at the Royal Society, London.

The event is being organised between four key host organisations: The Centre for Research in Futures and Innovation (CRI-FI), The FAN Club Futures Analysts Network, Glamorgan Business School and The Millenium Project.

The seminar’s programme:

• Welcome & introduction
• An overview of futures research methodology
• The deployment of futures tools in the policy-making context
• Using participatory scenario techniques to deal with uncertainty
• Roads less travelled: different methods, different outcomes
• Panel discussion on futures methods: opportunities and new directions
• Final remarks and conclusion
• Reception

This afternoon’s panellists:

• Brian Bader (BB) - Foresight Horizon Scanning Centre
• Martin Rhisiart (MR) - Director Centre for Research in Futures and Innovation (CRI-FI)
• Jerome C Glen (JC) - Co-editor Futures Research Methodology (V3.0). Further information here.
• Averil Horton (AH) - Foresight Horizon Scanning Centre
• Riel Miller (RM) - XperidoX Futures Consulting
• Andrew Curry (AC) - The Futures Company
• Wendy Schultz (WS) - Infinite Futures
• Rohit Talwar (RT) - Fast Future
• Stephen Aguilar-Millan (SA-M) - European Futures Observatory

You can follow updates on twitter via #exfume09.

Elapsed: 17 million and still counting …

For those of you who saw my post yesterday, I mentioned I’d have the chance to re-check Santiago Sierra’s ‘DeathCounter’ installation in the City of London today.

So, 25, 478, 374 at around 16.30 hrs this afternoon.

An additional total of 17, 013, 062 more ’symbolic deaths’ have elapsed since I last saw the installation back in February.

Although many of the people who past me as I took the photograph either didn’t seem to see the installation (the much more photogenic Lloyd’s building is adjacent) or - having seem it before en route to work or their destinations - hurried on by perhaps feeling they could now safely ignore it, nonethless, it still prompted me to stop for a moment and pause for thought …

Futures coaching: and a wider perspective on scenarios

I’ve a chance to get along to some futures coaching tomorrow - which I’m very much looking forward to.  The event is being run by the TribalGroup and sponsored by the Horizon Scanning Centre and - using scenarios as a backdrop - the aim is for us to concentrate on working with both stakeholder impact analysis and wind-tunnelling techniques.

This prompted me to recall a recent McKinsey Quarterly Survey - published in April 2009. It sought to evaluate any emergent differences in the way companies are devising their corporate strategies in the current economic environment and also specifically looked to comment on the role scenario planning was playing in such approaches. Titled “Strategic planning: three tips for 2009” (registration required) a couple of key insights were presented:

Perspective: There was some concern that a “…new focus on near-term challenges may cause this year’s planning process to overlook long-term trends or preexisting strategies”.

Awareness: It recognised that “over 50 percent of respondents say scenario planning either is playing a bigger role in their companies’ strategic planning this year or has been newly added to the process.”

Utility: “… when asked the element of their planning processes … most valuable in helping them cope with this year’s uncertain environment, more executives mention scenario planning than anything else.”

Do these suggestions reflect your own experience when using scenario planning with your clients this year?

Finally, the event’s to be held at America Square and the last time I went to this venue I took a walking route via the heart of the ‘square mile‘ during which I passed Santiago Sierra’s installation “The Death Counter”. It had rung-up 8, 465, 312 symbolic deaths back in February, I wonder what the figure will be now?

Image credit - flickr / bradlauster

The Future: Kurzweil’s eye and his sense of excitement

Last Saturday’s ‘Interview’ editorial in the UK’s Guardian newspaper featured Ray Kurzweil in a piece titled “The Future is going to be very exciting“.

While most of the descriptions within the article of his innovations and future perspectives will already be understood by those familiar with his work I thought the opening remark of writer - Ed Pilkington - was actually the most illuminating, namely …

“[Ray Kurzweil] has a surrealist’s eye for disorientation.”

To try and break that down: take an ability to discern the way chance effects, unexpected juxtapositions and the non sequitur can be used as a vehicle through which to interpret (or reinterpret?) the “loss of the sense of familiarity with one’s surroundings (time, place, and person); the confusion from the loss of one’s bearings” to produce new insights.

A wonderful allusion to the role our perspectives and mental models play in our approach to future issues.

Image credit - flickr / morganthebetrayer

Population growth: a UK perspective on future sustainability

As a prelude to today’s conference organised by the Optimum Population Trust, titled, “Environmentally Sustainable Populations: The scientific case for population policy - and ways of achieving sustainability“, BBC Radio 4 offers an interview with Professor John Guillebaud (Professor of family planning and reproductive health at University College London) on the issue of population growth, economic development and resource carrying-capacity.

Image credit - flickr / jacobeno

Corporate futures: preparedness or pragmatism?

Stephen Aguilar-Millan (European Futures Observatory) via his “Futurist” blog drew my attention to a recent article in The Economist titled “Corporate planning; managing in the fog” which looks at some of the current responses to planning within an environment characterised by increased uncertainty and risk; specifically, scenario development.

For those that recall, back in December 2007 the magazine was less than supportive of the methods now described as being used (I’ve reproduced my original post on this subject at the end of this comment). In the most recent case, scenarios are being seen as a complimentary planning device when used in conjunction with financial models and operational budget development. As Stephen asserts, these organisations “are embracing the current uncertainty by using the long term technique of scenario building for the short term purpose of constructing budgets.” A pragmatic response to current circumstances.

Leaving aside the interesting ‘clash’ of temporal perspectives, from this, not only is a wider and more diverse set of possibilities believed to be developed, but the article also indicates that a number of companies then intend to add supplementary contingency plans around the range of scenario outcomes. In effect (though perhaps by differing terms) we can see this as an appeal to variants on pre-emptive horizon scanning and - in nascent form - of engaging with a more encompassing ‘end-to-end’ strategic foresight process.

However, what the Economist highlights may not be new but the reflection of a corporate planning trend that - arguably - stretches back to the end of 2001. Back in July 2007, Darrell Rigby and Barbara Bilodeau described in the Harvard Business Review the emergence of what they called scenario-and-contingency (S&C) planning tools. In an article titled “A Growing Focus on Preparedness” they outlined survey results indicating both the increase in the actual use of such tools and in the level of satisfaction with them.

Does this leave an interesting dilemma?

If, on the one hand, the wider corporate world was open to using more ‘forward-thinking’ tools in its strategy development process (as a means of countering a more ambiguous world) then why was the likelihood, impact and scale of the financial crisis - purportedly - such a surprise to so many and with such dramatic outcomes?

Right now, I can think of only two plausible answers - the suitability of (1) the underlying assumptions on which such planning was based and (2) the tools used - but that still doesn’t feel as though it fully or satisfactorily addresses the issues here …

Original response 02/12/07 ——————————–

Futures - It’s about more than just simple prediction

Here we go again.

Robert Cottrell’s article “The Future of Futurology” (as part of the Economist’s ‘World in 2008′ edition) covers familiar ground with the inference that ‘futures’ thinking only has value if it repeatedly demonstrates direct, linear predictive accuracy; without which we should just settle down to small scale, short term trend analysis.

I would broadly agree with Maree Conway’s comments on Cottrell’s article on her excellent Future Think blog, specifically;

“… stop focusing on predictions, which are all about how decisions today will affect us today, and reverse it - start thinking about how our decisions today are going to affect the future.”

So, consider variable, ongoing impact rather than seeking to define singular, deterministic outcomes.

I’d also like to see greater recognition of the role that futures work can play in moving people out of their ‘business-as-usual’ mindsets to enable them to begin conceiving of alternative positions or evolving orthodoxies and become more open to potential insight & the subsequent innovation that can emerge.

One specific issue I have with Cottrell’s position: he uses the thrust of Mark Penn’s ‘Microtrends‘ book as justification enough to direct us to exclusively “think small”. Penn has identified trends that while small - linking, say, 1% of the population - nonetheless can become extremely powerful in our internet era as they allow like-minded people to find each other and collaborate.

So, while such small scale social groups are viable they only become so - in online terms - because of the facilitative nature of the larger system that supports them and of which they are a constituent part. In other words, they fundamentally benefit from the greater effects of a Reedian network: the internet & its Granovetterian social interaction mechanisms. Making sense of this requires us to look at the interaction and interdependencies of both ‘big’ & ’small’. Mr Cottrell - in seeking the simple - hasn’t avoided the simplistic.

For a more robust look at the state of futurology / futures by the mainstream press, consider the following articles from the Financial Times (Note: you may need to register on the site to gain access to them).

1. The Time Lords
2. Didn’t see that coming did you?
3. Management: A user’s guide to futurology

Incidently, although published only two years apart the first two articles differ in their assessment of the state of health of futures thinking: the ambiguity highlighted by Cottrell is nothing new. That’s also partly the point: this is about how we recognise and deal with ambiguity.

————

Image credit - flickr / graphicreality

Food security: first harvests to drive future outsourcing expansion?

In an August 2008 post titled “Food security: the race to strategic ownership” I commented on the emerging desire of capital-rich but resource-poor countries to secure foreign land for agricultural production. Now, the first harvests are being made from some of the initial projects launched.

A news comment by Javier Blas in the Financial Times (”Saudis get first taste of foreign harvest“) details the export of the first Ethiopian rice harvest back into Saudia Arabia, which Blas interprets as meaning “… that the kingdom is moving faster than expected to outsource agricultural production.”

While the longer-term implications of this process - in respect of the new ‘host’ country - are still unqualified (seen variously as either a valuable source of direct foreign investment or, conversely, from a more outright ‘neo-colonialist’ scepticism) Blas believes the process signals both a nearer-term tactical response to potential future food price volatility but also - on a more systemic interpretation - a “… reshaping of the politics of agriculture.”

Image credit - flickr / altus

Post-crisis futures: the shift east

A recent article published in the London Evening Standard offered an illuminating commentary on the recent events at mining company Rio Tinto in relation to its proposed deal with Chin-alco, the Chinese state-owned aluminium producer.

Titled “Shift that’s the real issue at Rio” columnist Anthony Hilton makes a simple case: the events at Rio - while reflecting the apparent failure of previous company strategy - are more importantly seen as a prism through which to begin discerning the emergent, longer-term, post-credit crisis landscape.

Inferring changes within the global economic and geo-political ‘balance-of-power’ are well known approaches to ideas on the continued rise of Asia during the remainder of the 21st century. However, Hilton makes two points I think are significant; (1) the fallout from the credit-crisis will in fact hasten that process (though the rate of change is not investigated) and (2) we (certainly in the ‘west’) are still not mentally prepared for this fundamental shift in focus.

While other commentators - such as Business Week - regard the Rio - Chin-alco controversy as simply a ‘defensive play’ by the Chinese to secure more favourable terms for the supply of raw materials (which of course, would be a useful tactical move anyway), Hilton sees within these events real but weak ’signals’ of the more profound geo-political change underway: that is, we are in the shift right now.

For Hilton - that the deal may be unfavourable to Rio - is simply a reflection of that shift in power and our current unwillingness to frame our perceptions of such issues against this kind of ‘backdrop’ is a dangerous blindspot.

In a related item, the thrust of Hilton’s thoughts resonate with a more recent interview with investor Jim Rogers on British TV’s Channel 4 News programme. While Rogers is regarded by some as a ‘maverick’ or - according to Lord Peter Mandelson (UK Business Secretary) - someone apt to make just ‘foolish’ claims, it should remind us of the importance - however uncomfortable - of listening to viewpoints regarded as unorthodox.

It’ll be interesting to see how such views are reflected in the stated alignments & outcomes of the forthcoming G20 London summit.

Image credit - flickr / AsiaNZ

Scenario development: Natural England vary the format

I had a great day yesterday taking part in a workshop designed to test some initial scenario constructions as put together by Natural England in conjunction with the SAMI consulting group.

Seeking to provide long-term strategic insight for the organisation, the project aims to address the core question of “What could affect England’s natural environment by 2060?”. I won’t go into the detail of the scenarios we looked at here as further testing, consultation and evaluation work is scheduled - the final presentations are due for public release later in the autumn.

One interesting part of the day - highlighted in a conversation with Natural England’s Gary Kass - was the methodology used in the structuring of the scenario development process. Most ‘traditional’ scenario approaches work with the outcomes derived from establishing two independent factors (as ranked against impact & predictability judgements) from which the ‘continuums’ of a 2×2 matrix are created. The latter serving as a means to allow the scoping of the final scenario boundaries.

In this instance, Natural England and SAMI have sought to use a thematic approach based on large scale issues as encapsulated either in the focus of policy or reflecting other ‘high-level’ societal trends and drivers (eg, consumption, productivity).

In this context, this made sense both because it ensured that narrower issues of more immediate organisational concern (and longevity) weren’t allowed to dominate the actual scenario-framing process and also because it forced all participants to consider the likely characteristics and dynamics underlying longer-term, cross-generational change - the latter absolutely necessary to drive participants to work towards a 50+ year view.

I look forward to the final presentations to see what elements of the scenario narrative survive from the work done by the group I was part of.

The marine environment: a narrative scenario

I’ve an opportunity to take part in a scenario building exercise tomorrow (hopefully more details later) in which the future natural environment is the key area of investigation. One of the global drivers identified in the preliminary support materials is the marine environment and I recalled a narrative scenario I quickly put together last year for the Institute for the Future’s Superstruct project that dealt with ideas in this area.

I’ve re-published the full narrative below:

The end of the blue frontier

I was only half-listening when I heard the phrase. Then the streaming news station had all of my attention. I looked down at my plate and stopped. I felt guilty. I knew what would come. I felt time shortening.

Three words. The Tonle Sap.

It hadn’t flowed backwards up the Mekong. It hadn’t created the nursery lakes, hadn’t the volume to form the largest body of fresh water in South-East Asia; a temporary event it normally repeats every year. The monsoon had failed and as a result Cambodia faced the danger of progressively worsening hunger. The trey riel wouldn’t be providing ‘meat and milk’ this year to the four-fifths of the population that relied on the ‘wild’ fish protein gathered from the river.

It had been predicted each time the monsoon stuttered but now the whole social & economic structure of assemblage or ecosystem fishing on the river faced catastrophe. Each year the Mekong flooded backwards up the Tonle Sap creating an amount of water large enough to raise it from the 14^th river in the world by volume to the 3^rd : bested only by the Amazon and the Brahmaputra. It created a vast lake in which up to a thousand species matured until being washed back down into the Mekong and the waiting nets. It was a timeless cycle of food production, perhaps the largest river fishery in the world, but now the mainstay had failed. (1)

Read the rest of this entry »

Futures analysis: a reminder of the personal

As I was returning from the most recent Futures Analysts Network meeting – following a day considering some of the issues around the ‘Future of Leadership’ – I came across an unexpected visual display that caused pause for thought.

Titled the “Death Counter” the installation by Spanish artist Santiago Sierra is designed as a “… reminder of the transient nature of both human life and capital right in the heart of London’s financial district…”. I’ll leave you – depending on your own weltanschauung – to decide whether ‘life’ and ‘capital’ should be so closely aligned here (though given the artwork is displayed on the front of the London headquarters of insurance group Hiscox, we can perhaps better understand the corporate ‘accommodation’ at play).

In similar vein to the US debt clock in New York, the Death Counter is based on a projection - this time a demographic one taken from the US census - with suggests that deaths are “currently estimated at being just over 55 million … per year, at a rate of nearly two a second” according to the official press release. The counter shows that increasing increment in ‘real time’.

I’d have been interested in seeing UK death rates represented; especially for an artwork displayed in London or perhaps even a number of alternative rates made simultaneously available to offer the onlooker a comparison (say, China & India), but after a day discussing systems, boundaries, environments, capabilities, hierarchies etc., it was a timely reminder that our futures are – first and foremost – personal and bounded.

Forecasting: getting your numbers right

Following on from my previous thoughts on the dilemma of trying to understand and meaningfully interpret forecasts removed from their original context or point-of-origin, Alex Steffen at Worldchanging makes a related appeal for numerical and comparative clarity in our forecast data.

In an article titled “Comparative Measurements and Knowing Our Facts“, Alex specifically looks at sustainability comparisons and discusses the key reasons they can lack utility.

Image credit - flickr / momo

30 years of transformative innovation: your thoughts on the next?

When Paul Saffo talks about effective forecasting, he consistently mentions the need to ‘look backwards’, specifically, “… look back twice as far as looking forward”. He asserts that the secret to doing ‘good foresight’ is an appreciation of what’s gone before - of having ‘good backsight’.

As such, a recent historical review of innovations - conducted jointly by US TV show Nightly Business Report (see video) & Knowledge @ Wharton (in an article titled “A World Transformed: What Are the Top 30 Innovations of the Last 30 Years?“) - does remind you of how significant the ‘generational’ change has been during this time and also of the current ubiquity of some of the innovations cited.

Clearly, we may want to consider what we mean by ‘innovation’ and what merit it creates or reveals. Wharton offers a rather broad definition, stating innovations ” … were selected based on how they impact quality of life, fulfill a compelling need, solve a problem, exhibit a “wow” factor, change the way business is conducted, increase efficiency, spark new innovations and create a new industry.”

Perhaps more importantly, this list ably demonstrates the emergent quality underlying Bill Buxton’s ‘Long nose of innovation‘ thesis and also highlights the prominence of the key enabling technologies of the time, namely, the microprocessor and the laser (so allowing the processing and communications ‘revolutions’ we may identify ourselves as having lived / living through).

My question is, what do we collectively believe this list would look like if we repeated the exercise for 2039; that is 30 years hence? Would we declare nanotechnology, biotechnology or robotics to be the future enabling technologies going forward? Or something else?

If we speculated on what the most important, transformative innovations of the next 30 years would be, what would your Top Ten look like?

Unlearning the future: a challenge common to us all?

Lively discussion is sometimes as valuable for the later or secondary comments it brings into play as much as it is for the original ideas it may raise. After following the debate over the likely curriculum of the recently announced Singularity University, Future Blogger’s Alvis Brigis (in suggesting his own curriculum) includes a provocative quote from Jack Uldrich on ‘unlearning’:

“If scientific/technical knowledge is doubling every 7 years that means that everything we know today will represent only 25% of future knowledge in just 14 years. Before we can take advantage of this new knowledge, it will require a great many (and very intelligent) people to unlearn what they spent much of their life learning.”

I think it’s both a fascinating and immensely challenging idea but Jack’s original post of May 2008 -  titled “Unlearning the Future” - doesn’t offer any direct substantiation or attribution for the numbers he’s more recently quoted in his comment above.

Jack, I’d love to know more…

Image credit - flickr / davegrey

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Postscript: Thanks to Jack for his comment on this post.

Fusion: the future of energy?

UK television channel - BBC2 - continues it’s excellent ‘Horizon‘ documentary series with the most recent episode  - “Can we make a star on earth” - looking at the state of nuclear fusion research and development across the globe.

In a well-paced and accessible overview of the subject, presenter Professor Brian Cox seeks to understand why nearly five decades of research have yet to yield viable commercial results.

A couple of sections gave pause for thought:

1 - What do we do if fusion can’t be developed and we need to replace fossil-fuels, specifically oil?

Using chalk & a blackboard (marvellous!) Cox undertook some rough calculations that indicated the scale - and likely impact - of future fuel provision should that situation emerge. Leaving aside for the moment the accuracy of the figures used or the ‘life-style’ power-usage benchmark adopted, it reinforced the overall complexities of understanding the actual issue of demand.

2 - Given it’s significance and potential, are we devoting appropriate resources to its development?

Cox cited the UK’s annual investment of £1 billion and then reminded us we actually spent more on mobile ringtones in the same year…

3 - Assuming we can develop it as a future power source, when will it actually start providing power we can use?

Asking the experts for their prediction. I won’t give the exact years cited, needless to say the range between them was varied: anything up to 30 years. Given the numerous ‘false-promises’ of previous research efforts they could perhaps each be forgiven for facing up to that kind of question with some reluctance. However, a number of key planned tests were indicated - whose success - may offer us a better perspective in the short-term.

Recommended and still available to watch via the BBC i-Player.

Calling the financial crisis: DSI’s 1997 ‘Global Malaise’

A recent post titled “Describing the current financial crisis … in 1997!” from the ‘Strategic Framing‘ blog of Decision Strategies International draws our attention to the outcomes of a scenario development project they undertook in 1997. From this a scenario called ‘Global Malaise’ emerged which cited - eventual - key events of the crisis we’re currently experiencing.

A sideshow by Michael Mavaddat (Executive Vice President) is also included which both describes the project’s parameters and offers a serialisation of what it terms “Events & predictable surprises since 1997″. However, no explicit linkage is provided by which we can match the actual real-world events described with the corresponding part of the relevant scenario projection so it’s a little difficult to draw an inference.

The post is clear in - what it believes - is the value created: “… the [groups] ability to describe a future that few were predicting at the time demonstrates the real power of the scenario planning methodology when done with rigor.” However, it doesn’t indicate if those who either commissioned the exercise or who eventually consumed its insights subsequently acted in ways to position themselves to either mitigate or actually benefit in a more direct fashion from the emerging current disruption.

Additionally, slide #23 suggests that the scenario set has been monitored in some way up to its mid-point in 2009. However, while this looks like one of Paul Saffo’s ‘Cones of Uncertainty‘ it doesn’t explicitly describe what form of monitoring took place or how ‘weak signals’ for the remainder of the projected timescale (up to 2020) will be handled. Granted, that may be proprietary information but I was left wondering whether - after ten years of a roughly 20 year scenario view - DSI have (are) actually working on revised versions of the initial scenario set?

Overcoming orthodoxy: a plea for revolutionary thinking

In a recent article titled “Now is the time for a revolution in economic thought” Times columnist Anatole Kaletsky neatly outlines the role our aquired sense of orthodoxy (and the concomitant working assumptions it fosters) has in delineating our beliefs about how the world does and, indeed, should work.

Citing work previously undertaken - but largely dismissed by ‘mainstream’ economists - that includes both the complex, fractal mathematics of Benoit Mandelbrot through to the psychological perceptions of George Soros, Kaletsky makes a simple case: alternative approaches and insights were both available and could have potentially averted the current crisis but were either derided or just consistently ignored.

In a related article, the FT’s Jonathan Guthrie makes a number of points in “Look out for a rash of new business myths” that starkly illustrates the dilemma that - to me - seems to underlie Kaletsky’s appeal.

While Kaletsky seeks to convince us that - to achieve better results in the future - the academic basis of current economic thinking needs to be challenged, Guthrie adopts a more pragmatic (and worrying) interpretation. Even though agreeing in principle that “… bad times oblige us to recalibrate” he nonetheless believes “we are busy creating a new paradigm of business and economic life as suspect as the past one, bending the evidence to our purposes as we go.”

So, at the same time that Kaletsky gives prominence to emerging ideas such as Imperfect Knowledge Economics (PDF) as the basis for productive new thought because it “… insists that the future is inherently unknowable and therefore that there is always a multitude of plausible models of the way the economy works”, for Guthrie this isn’t enough as he reminds us that - in the ‘real’ world - “bogus certainty is generally preferred to bona fide uncertainty.”

This leaves me with a question: is overcoming the latter - our complex, perhaps poorly articulated individual and corporate attitudes and approaches to certainty - necessary before a programme of strategic foresight can be of any potential value?

Image credit - flickr / cetex