Hot off the presses is the July-August issue of The Futurist magazine, featuring an article by Social Technologies' futurist Andy Hines.

Entitled "Consumer Trends in Three Different 'Worlds," it is the first in a two-part series in which Hines looks at the big trends in demography, money, and consumerism that will shape the world in the next decade.

From the second chapter of "Thinking about the Future," a book co-edited by Social Technologies' Andy Hines and futurist Peter Bishop, comes this entry: ADOPT A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

Here's why: Strategic foresight needs to consider what is happening in other parts of the world. No situation or system is immune to events and forces elsewhere. Consider changes around the world and how they relate to the client’s overall business as well as to the issue under study. Thinking about the rest of the world should be prominent in research, analysis, or discussion--literally in all aspects of an activity. Modeling this thinking approach will influence colleagues and collaborators to think this way as well.

Key steps: There is no single way to embrace a global perspective. But it is critical to build one into processes specific both to the work and to the larger organizational culture. Ways to do this include:

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Apparently, some old gas pumps are confused: they were never designed to have gas priced over $3.99/gallon. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, the manufacturers could never imagine that prices could go beyond $3.99, so they didn't bother to make the gas gauge go higher.

Oops.

This little anecdote reminded us at S)T how people limit their concept of the future: clearly, back in the 50s it was unimaginable that gas prices would ever be higher than $3.99/gallon.

The bottom line? The improbable can and does happen. That's why we futurists set out to consider all possibilities, and urge our clients to think about the consequences of even the improbable.

Image: Jonny Hunter (Flickr)

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"When I was writing this book, countless people asked me which job I thought was the coolest," explains author Alexandra Levit in her new book, How'd You Score That Gig? -- A Guide to the Coolest Jobs, and How To Get Them. "And while I certainly tried hard not to play favorites, I couldn't help being especially intrigued by this one."

She's talking about the job described starting on page 224: futurist. It's one of 65 gigs she lists in the eight-chapter book, which offers career advice based on seven personality types: adventurer, creator, data head, entrepreneur, investigator, networker, and nurturer.

A futurist, Levit says, is a job for an investigator -- "the ones always the asking the teacher questions, and the ones you wanted to get on your team for group projects because they were so darn smart and motivated."

She starts off the section with a quote from Social Technologies'  futurist Josh Calder.

 A futurist must be inquisitive and open to diverse viewpoints. If you think the world is black-and-white, you will not do very well understanding it, because it isn't. The future is not found in one ideology or one book. You need to be ready to listen, because getting more viewpoints will always improve your grasp of future possibilities. You should be optimistic on some level, so that you can help people prepare for and shape better futures, while not being blind to real problems.

Levit writes:

As a futurist for Washington-based firm Social Technologies ... Josh spends his days trying to discover what is changing in the world and what that means for the future. "I devote part of each day to learning: looking at that day's flow of scan hits to see what they might hint about the future," Josh says. .... "I feel that it is a privilege to know a little bit about the future--with only the slight downside that we sometimes have to wait a while for things we know are coming."

Buy the book.

From Andy Hines and Peter Bishop's book, Thinking About the Future, comes this advice: focus on outcomes, not outputs.

Every organization has a mission to reach certain outcomes--for which society, through its external stakeholders, provides resources and holds it accountable. In fulfilling its mission, the organization engages in activities that produce outputs or results.

Outcomes can be clearly and obviously good in themselves. In the case of schools, this would be student learning. With such outcomes, no one has to ask, “What is that good for?” These are the ultimate purpose of the organization.

Outputs, on the other hand, are the tangible results of the organization’s activities, but they require justification in terms of a higher purpose (the outcomes). They are not intrinsically understood as goals in themselves. An output for schools would be the number of students graduated. While graduation is clearly good, it is a result of the students having learned enough to earn the graduation and be prepared for the next step in their lives.

Analysts need to keep the higher purpose--the outcomes--firmly in mind throughout the activity, to ensure relevant and actionable outputs that truly benefit the client.

Key steps: One approach to focusing on outcomes is to take a step back and question the very existence of the organization. Most people take the value of their organization for granted; for them, it is such an obviously good thing that no one can question it. But question it they should: “Just why are we here?”

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On his blog yesterday, marketing guru Seth Godin raised the generalists-vs.-specialists debate and asked what benefit generalists bring. Before I had time to dash off a response, Godin himself defended the need for generalists, writing,

“It's okay to specialize in being a generalist, of course. By that, I mean that there are many problems … where someone who can see wide and doesn't have an allegiance to a particular solution is exactly the right person to call. I rely on generalists all the time, and so do you.”

To be fair to Godin’s argument, he adds, “My point is that you never call on these people when there's a better specialist available.”

We at S)T pride ourselves on being generalists—our staff of futurists is composed of Ph.D. chemists, historians, English majors, MBAs, and—yes—the occasional trained futurist. Collectively we thrive because we bring a divergent set of training, backgrounds and worldviews to our clients. We are generalists because, as foresight professionals, our job is to look at the big picture and to make the connections that experts often miss. Experts, while knowledgeable, often see trees, rather than the forest, mountain, river etc. We don’t lack for expertise, for in many cases our clients have all the expert knowledge we need and our job is to tease it out of them in order to help them see the larger picture of the future or futures.

My answer to Godin would be that all of my non-futures-trained colleagues combine to create a specialized knowledge base, and that it does our clients no good for us to know everything they do. That is a pointless duplication of resources. The benefit to hiring a firm of dedicated generalists is that collectively we create/own a specialized knowledge. This is reinforced as we bounce from project to project, so that one of our futurists may be writing on mobile telecommunications on Monday and infant formula on Friday. The generalist mindset allows our team to see the connections that exist between disparate businesses, consumers, and technologies. As a result, the sum of the whole is greater than its attendant parts.

That is why we are generalists.

Image: Angelrays (Flickr)

From Andy Hines and Peter Bishop's book, Thinking About the Future, comes this advice: encourage experiments and prototypes.

There is no single best approach to preparing organizations for the future. Choosing the right approach requires getting a sense of all the options--which in turn can be generated by experiments and prototypes.

Key steps:  Ways to encourage experimentation and prototyping are legion. Creativity guru Edward de Bono (1996) recommends first acknowledging that the way things are currently done in the organization is just one way. The current approach may have been the best at the time it was implemented, but circumstances change with time. There is always the opportunity to rethink how things could be done better.

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As futurists in Washington DC, we were struck by the Washington Post's article laying out scenarios for the region's future 17 years from now.

The two scenarios might be called "bad" and "worse":

• In the first, people are fearful and isolated, and the culture is deeply split by class.
• In the second, people are even more fearful and security-obsessed.

We don't want to be Tuesday morning quarterbacks, but my colleagues had these observations:

• Think positive. Scenarios give you the chance to lay out both the bad and the good outcomes, and use the latter to seek out desirable pathways. According to these scenarios, the future is bleak indeed.
• Most change is slow. To begin with, most of the buildings and transportation infrastructures of 2025 are already in place. Cities--outside of China at least--are not remade in a generation.
• Changes in values tend to be even slower. Will American values shift drastically in the next 17 years? It seems pretty unlikely, given that the decisionmakers of the 2020s are already in their thirties and forties, if not older. In other words, we already know about their values and attitudes in large part, barring drastic discontinuities. 
• Consider what is inevitable. The author of this article says that the only point of consensus was that "the haves would have more," but that is a social choice, not a law of nature. Other societies have chosen differently, as have Americans in the past, and the pendulum may swing again before too long.
• More broadly, we get to choose the future. In a democratic, capitalist society, people can shift outcomes with votes and purchases. The people in these scenarios seemed beset by outcomes they would not have chosen. We can, I think, do better.

Image: Joey Gannon (Flickr)

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From Andy Hines and Peter Bishop's book, Thinking About the Future, comes this advice: Create an environment conducive to open an uninhibited thinking.

Strategic foresight requires creative and innovative thinking, which is best stimulated in an environment of openness. The ideal physical space is open, comfortable, and full of stimulus, encouraging the free flow of ideas, risk-taking, and out-of-the-box thinking.

Key steps: Choosing a physical space can be straightforward. In the best case, creativity-inducing spaces will be widely available. Some organizations set up dedicated creativity or ideation spaces. Others have futures rooms, e.g., General Motors and Alticor. Some hire outside experts in creative-space design to customize a venue. In the more usual case, analysts will either have to search for or create the space they need. A space that is a bit isolated, away from the daily hubbub, is advisable. Often, some unused, less-desirable space can be claimed and revamped. One optimal solution is a war room--a dedicated space where team members can congregate and work together for the duration of an activity. They can customize the room to the needs of the activity. Most end up covering the walls with relevant charts, graphs, diagrams, or useful stimuli.

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From Andy Hines and Peter Bishop's book, Thinking About the Future, comes this advice: Include people who do not agree.

Disagreements arise from two sources--differences in information and knowledge and differences over fundamental assumptions or values. Both are important sources of new learning. Including people with access to different information expands the pool of ideas to draw upon. Including people with different assumptions or values expands the range of perspectives that can be accessed. Including both lessens the chances of overlooking a key piece of information or making an assumption that will be at odds with the organization’s value system.

Key steps: The purpose of involving people who disagree is to enable the best possible decision-making. Therefore, include people who can express dissenting views yet work towards a common objective. The first step is to establish an atmosphere in which legitimate disagreements are allowed to flourish, as long as they are confined to the objective at hand. Make it clear that the disagreement is being carried on within the context of a specific objective and timeframe, in order to make the ultimate decision more robust.

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From Andy Hines and Peter Bishop's book, Thinking About the Future, comes this advice: Make strategic foresight as immersive and interactive as possible.

Strategic foresight can tend to be esoteric or intellectual. It involves a lot of conceptual and strategic thinking. It emphasizes future possibilities and what they mean for the present. If the analyst is not careful, it can remain abstract and impractical. A solution is to make the activity immersive and interactive. In other words, make the conceptual and abstract as tangible and concrete as possible. Have participants “get their hands dirty” in order to get to concrete possibilities.

Key steps:  Once the team is set, the choices made early about how to conduct the activity will set the tone for the rest of the activity. A team-building activity early on, for example, sets the tone of participation. Frequent updates and communication sessions will also build in the wide variety of perspectives essential to strategic foresight. Setting a regular communications schedule and keeping to it is a way of keeping participants updated and involved, which in turn increases the likelihood they will be fully engaged.

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While many executives recognize the need to consider the impact of global trends, many companies fail to maximize the benefit of trend assessment and analysis by combining it with a comprehensive look at the business environment. Social Technologies has used this comprehensive approach to analyzing the impact of trends, and now a study by consulting firm McKinsey has provided solid evidence from 416 companies in a broad range of industries that this technique is highly effective.

By assessing trend impacts at multiple levels, business leaders are better able to develop specific strategies that will help their companies ride changes wrought by global trends. McKinsey’s report said:

Companies should navigate important trends by first studying their impact on subindustries, segments, categories, and micromarkets. That kind of analysis breaks down megatrends into microtrends that companies can invest in with confidence.

In other words, the “starting point for…trend analysis is to break down market information into increasingly fine-grained levels.” Focused insights at multiple levels of the business environment will enable better strategic decision making that drives growth, the report said.

At S)T, one of our programs--Futures Interactive--is particularly well-suited to a granular approach to tracking trends across industries, subindustries, market segments, product lines, and other categories.

Beyond trend analysis, it is essential that businesses also have the processes in place to successfully implement the lessons learned from these processes. Check out our list of custom consulting offerings for more.

Image: Olivier Bareau (Flickr) 

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”

From Profiles of the Future (1962), Arthur C. Clarke

That Arthur C. Clarke was one of science fiction’s most profound and prolific talents is beyond dispute. Underlying his genius was not only a brilliant scientific mind, but also a shrewd grasp of mankind’s often tumultuous interrelationship with technology, as well as a grand vision of human potential that still resonates more than half a century on. And it’s through these qualities that Clarke crafted a legacy that defined an entire genre of creative storytelling, a legacy that in turn helped give birth to the futurist movement as we know it today.

During its infancy in the mid-1960s, futurism existed primarily as an obscure branch of game theory and social science, and was the jurisdiction of only a small cadre of dedicated academics and intellectuals. At the core of their beliefs was the idea that humanity was not beholden to fate and uncertainty, and that beyond cultivating scientific and technological knowledge we have an obligation to consciously participate in our own moral and physical evolution.

Successfully communicating this new and magnificent ideal is Clarke’s greatest gift to futurism, I believe. His ability to interweave hard science with the peculiarities of human behavior provided readers with a sobering analysis of our potential to mismanage our technological prowess. Yet, for each cautionary tale of a future dispossessed by our moral frailty, for Clarke there always existed a counter vision of the future championing the immutable human spirit for positive change and transformation.

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From Andy Hines and Peter Bishop's book, Thinking About the Future, comes this advice: Recognize that Strategic Foresight is a Team Sport

A strategic foresight activity will benefit more if it gathers input from a team than from individuals. An interacting team provides diverse perspectives and enriches both the quality and quantity of the ideas considered.

A typical strategic foresight activity involves, from the very beginning, a core team that remains together throughout. The core team should include representatives from key stakeholder groups where practical, and can be enhanced by adding temporary members depending on the activity’s status and what kinds of expertise are needed. Thus, the size and composition of the team will likely fluctuate as the activity progresses, with the core members keeping the key learning intact.

Key steps: An initial consideration in putting together a team is the right size. Research by Richard Hackman (2002) suggests that for a core team, no more than six members are optimal. Once it grows beyond six, the productivity of the group begins to decline. Large groups are not well-suited to reaching closure and delivering an end product. Moreover, since individual contributions are usually less well-recognized in a large group, many people will not see the value of investing their time and effort in the activity if the group is too large. It is best to add and subtract people on an ad-hoc basis.

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From Andy Hines and Peter Bishop's book, Thinking About the Future, comes this advice: Weave “Outside and Then” with “Inside and Now”

Systems theorist Stafford Beer pointed out that organizations tend to focus on “inside and now”--results and improvements in the present and near future. Strategic foresight, by contrast, focuses on “outside and then”--on what could be happening outside the organization and in the longer-term future. The analyst should seek to weave

“inside and now” with “outside and then.”

Key steps: Strategic foresight mediates two types of relationships, which might be termed translation and transformation.

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