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Th!nk 21CC Bulletin
May 2005

Dear friends,

Dramatic change!!! A term that we hear more and more these days. Driven by such things as the emergence of China and India as leading social and economic powers - both at the low and top end of the technical and technology capability scorecard. The rapid growth in the Western World's ageing population - especially the impact on a capable workforce and of the cost of funding retirees. The shift to knowledge and creativity as intensive means of value adding and wealth creation - more and more we see Western nations stripped of reliance on their industrial economies; and the serious challenges that we face with our natural environment - how long will we just talk about global warming before we get serious? These are just a few of the easier to identify facets of dramatic change presently on our doorstep.

Given the media that these critical events receive on a daily basis it is no secret that the next five to thirty years will be a very rocky road for the unprepared. Having said this, why is there such a lack of preparation by individuals, organizations and communities to meet such challenges? Why don't we prepare for change?

Is it conservatism? Complacency? Disconnection? Or denial? And why in the face of obvious change to people try and interpret and filter signals through the relative 'safety' of the past? Are we scared of change, or is it purely a fundamental lack of foresight capability and the will to engage in the thinking and process of change?

Given the complexity of change experienced since the 80's it is a challenge to NOT be disoriented, tired and confused. But there also must come a time when leaders understand that we are in completely different times and look for different thinking, frames of reference and processes through which to guide and prepare for the future. If they don't, they run the risk of aiding and abetting an environment of discontinuity and disruption for many of our organizations and communities. I would also assert that, in a too broader variety of circumstances, the lack of preparation boarders on negligence!

Does it take a crisis to change, or can we take a more 'elegant' means of transformation through foresight?

As Think 21CC sees it, the fundamental capability required as a first step in preparing for change is Foresight - The ability to continuously and strategically interpret the organization's immediate and emerging operating environment.

Foresight is not about predicting a single or defined future, but preparing for multiple possibilities through designing and building capability to create or adapt to whatever the future might bring. A key starting point of any 21st century capable strategy is to share an intimate understanding of the immediate & emergent conditions or environment that will impact the specific organization or community in question - without it, from the outset you have a disoriented context for decision-making.

In this bulletin we focus on foresight by highlighting a range of articles, papers and sites available through Think 21CC that provide a varied background on foresight thinking, frameworks, process, and the forces and factors of change that will or may be part of the environment that you, your organization or your community will face in the immediate or emergent future.

I appreciate that this is a complex and contentious issue, and would welcome feedback from any readers.

Cheers
Larry

In this bulletin we...

  • Showcase Tom Friedman's article "It's a Flat World, After All". A tale of technology and geoeconomics that is fundamentally reshaping our lives. Friedman explores why it's time to wake up and prepare ourselves for this 'flat world', because others already are, and there is no time to waste.
  • Offer two papers designed to stimulate thinking around the power of foresight in the 21st century:
    • "Disorientation Can Be a Costly State" - A brief look at what happens to organizations when their capabilities go 'out of whack' with their operating environment and they become 'disoriented' - with very costly consequences!
    • '13 mega forces to 2010' - This paper looks to provide clues, signposts, probabilities and possibilities surrounding the question: 'What are the key forces and factors of change in the future business environment?'
      '13 Mega Forces to 2010' provides an overview of some of the possible key universal or 'big picture' forces and factors that organizations may need to consider when building a picture of their specific operating environment to 2010. This paper has already been adopted by some organizations as an essential primer when contemplating strategy.
  • Promote key sites, projects and material on the current thinking and development of foresight, and example of how some organizations and communities are applying foresight thinking:
    • Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Centre
      The Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Centre's mission is to change the way decisions are made in the Commonwealth of Kentucky (USA) by bringing a new perspective to policymaking. This website provides a full overview of the activities and projects undertaken by the Kentucky long-term policy research centre as well as providing access to current reports.
    • Scotland 2020
      The Scotland 2020 project explored the connection between stories and thinking imaginatively about the future. This book attempts to inject a new quality to the debate about Scotland's future - hope. Scotland 2020 contains specially commissioned short stories about the future by leading Scottish fiction writers.
    • AC/UNU Millennium Project
      The Millennium Project of the American Council for the United Nations University is a global participatory futures research think tank of futurists, scholars, business planners, and policy makers who work for international organizations, governments, corporations, NGOs, and universities. The Millennium Project manages a coherent and cumulative process that collects and assesses judgments from its several hundred participants to produce the annual "State of the Future", "Futures Research Methodology" series, and special studies such as the Future Scenarios for Africa, Lessons of History, Environmental Security, Applications of Futures Research to Policy, and a 550+ annotated scenarios bibliography.
    • Futures Matrix
      The Futures matrix provides a range of information on the scenarios, challenges, actions, regional views, indicators and developments of a variety of factors of change including demographics and human resources, environmental change and biodiversity, technological capacity, governance and conflict, international economic and wealth, and integration or 'whole futures'.
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