Action Foresight

This is the third interview in this series on foresight in the network era. Venessa Miemis is one of the originators of the Open Foresight concept. In some regards it is a re-iteration of an older idea, Anticipatory Democracy, developed by Clement Bezold, Alvin Toffler and others, but the deliberative and generative nature of the anticipation is squarely situated in our current peer to peer revolution. Venessa is an outstanding proponent of developing new anticipatory processes for societal transformation.

In this interview she discusses the origins of the concept, she details the methodological approaches she has used to make foresight a public processes, and she reflects on the deeper principles involved in creating Open Foresight as an inclusive and replicate-able processes.  There is a very strong organic connection between the Open Foresight approach and the drive / listening for societal transformation. As the complexity and challenges of the 21st century deepens, this is one approach that will provide people with ways to make sense of their worlds in empowering and creative ways.

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This is the second part in a series on network based approaches to foresight. I was fortunate to catch up with colleague Jake Dunagan, director of research at the Institute for the Future (IFTF). IFTF is doing absolutely remarkable work bringing together social media, gaming, and foresight (among many other things). Significant is IFTF’s social focus, on addressing sustainability, poverty, security, food, and many other important issues. Jake is a brilliant mind and eloquent voice, and gives us a great window into the work at IFTF. In interviews to come, I really hope to follow up with him on his Doctoral dissertation work in neuropolitics, governance design, alternative futures, and the communication of foresight,  and looking forward to learning about other works in progress.

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This is the first in a series of interviews with futurists using state of the art network based approaches to foresight work. Network based approaches can be seen as those which utilize ICT technologies together with collaborative cultural frameworks (e.g. peer to peer) to co-generate futures thinking, strategy and policy. In this first part, I interview Elina Hiltunen, director of What’s Next Consulting.

I consider Elina Hiltunen’s work outstanding in this regard. In her recent article in the Journal of Futures Studies, called Crowdsourcing the Future, Elina Hiltunen discusses the impressive foresight initiative at Finpro. Finpro has run a crowdsourced foresight program for a number of years, which helps inform decision making for Finnish industry. She writes “When an organisational foresight process is linked to the strategy process, foresight becomes a serious asset.” What I find intriguing are new metaphors and language discussing collective intelligence and the wisdom of crowds:

The wisdom of crowds is a concept that has become more popular in public discussion because of a couple of bestselling books: the Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki and Wikinomics – How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. The idea behind the wisdom of crowds is that a crowd of people, without knowing each other’s opinions, make better choices than selected experts. According to Surowiecki (2004: XVII) “[if] you put together a big enough and diverse enough group of people and ask them to ‘make decisions affecting matters of general interest’, that group’s decision will, over time, be ‘intellectually [superior] to the isolated individual’, no matter how smart or well-informed he is.

In this interview she discusses her work, how she helped create Finpro and the crowdsourced foresight model, its strategy, key principles, the rationale that drives the approach, and the ideas, authors, books, theories that  guide her work.

The consistent question that is raised in my mind and that I raise here is, can such approaches be used to enable popular foresight engagements and channeled into action projects which address the world’s great 21st century challenges? What can we learn here toward building super-charged approaches to large scale collaborative inquiry and action that will help us to navigate a turbulent 21st century?

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This is part three, and the last segment, of this series. In this final and short response to questions about the future, Bauwen’s discusses two possible futures for the development of peer to peer society globally, the ‘High Road’ and ‘Low Road’.

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This is part II of Occupy Wall Street and the Peer-to-Peer Revolution, a discussion with Michel Bauwens, founder of the The Foundation for P2P Alternatives. How does Occupy Wall Street prefigure wider changes? Bauwens talks about the failings of the current system: artificial scarcity and ecological crisis. Peer production prefigures a way of life which is based on sharing and which is situated in communities, which addresses these failings. Bauwens argues thus that peer production is ‘congruent and convergent with the logic of the commons’. A number of existing alternatives outside of the dominant system needs to interconnect to form a system within a system which can resist capture by capitalist commodification and which can change the system from within.

Bauwens’ argument for the development of a system within a system is consistent with my thesis work on Alternative Futures of Globalization, which argued for emerging structural synergies of counter power in the context of the alter-globalization movement.

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Michel Bauwens, founder of the Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives , talks about Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy movement as an example of peer production.

I was fortunate to catch up with friend and colleague Michel Bauwens in Chiang Mai in Nov. of 2011. It was truly inspiring to be with Michel, who I consider one of the most brilliant minds I have come across in my lifetime. For him, Peer-to-Peer is not just a few examples of web2+, but a macro-historical analysis combined with an integrative philosophy. I have met few people who can straddle diverse discourses while maintaining the raw energy of the creative global change agent, and an amazing vision for our common futures. Over the last half year we have had a few opportunities to engage in some of these discourses for global social change, or what I call ‘alternative globalisation’, in the discussion “From the Crisis of Capitalism to the Emergence of Peer to Peer Political Ecologies“. As articulated by Michel, peer production  / peer to  peer is a counter-hegemonic discourse that rests on the ancient and re-emerging philosophy of the (global / human) commons. As such it is squarely aligned with the aims and aspirations of OWS.

This is part one of this series. Parts II and III will come out over the next few days.

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This is the last part of this series. Tim Mansfield talks about the movement toward a 21st century integrative philosophy and spirituality, in particular the shift from pre-modernity to modernity and post-modernity through the threads of ecumenist and religious traditions. I’ve loaded the entire conversation with a better quality audio file. Skip to the last quarter if you have already heard the first three parts, or just listen from the beginning.

José

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This is an audio recording I did of Dr. Jim Ife, professor in Community Development (previously at Curtin University, now at Victoria University), back in 2009. Jim had just completed his book ”Human Rights From Below” on the intrinsic connection between human rights and community development, and was kind enough to spend time with some of my and Charles Mphande’s VU community development students. I put this talk up on another blog, but was closed, so putting it back up here. It is a very candid lecture with a good Q&A with the students.

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I put this together this past year for colleague Dr. Gerry Roberts for the Newsletter of the Australasia-Pacific Extension Network.

In this short piece I tried to make some basic points:

First the importance of the concept of embodied foresight – that foresight is contextually situated. And as such it is ever present (tacit) and expressed differently in a variety of situations. That does not mean we don’t need formal approaches, indeed the scale shift to a planetary civilization is necessitating formal studies of futures.

Second the evolutionary notion of techno-economic shift with its particular qualitative dimensions. The development discourse is a dangerous one and I am no subscriber to the ‘industrial-development’ idea of progress, however I have a weak spot for scientific-progress as one of a number of important views.

Third the fundamentally layered nature of foresight in the “modern” world, which contains older forms.

Comments welcome

Jose

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Strategic foresight is an approach to “forward thinking” that allows groups, organisations, businesses, and people the capacity to develop a grounded understanding of the social change affecting their lives. This allows people to then make decisions and develop strategies based on that “forward knowledge”.  The end result is an adaptive capacity in the face of change, and a heightened awareness of emerging opportunities.

Since the beginning of time human beings have had to think about the future to survive. Indeed, across human history the character of this “forward thinking” has changed depending on the nature of the existences that people experienced.

In paleolithic (stone age) cultures, people’s outlook on the future was likely an expression of the ways of living those people engaged in. “Foresight” may have meant understanding the migrations of animals which were food sources, be this bovine, fowl, and fish. It may have meant understanding where wild fruit, roots and edible insects existed through the year’s cycle. It may also have been expressed through how to survive a very cold winter, a very hot summer, or a period with very little water or food. These people’s foresight allowed them to navigate many challenging environments, by looking ahead for weeks and months. While we may consider this a relatively short time frame, for these people, with their tools and in their environments, this was a formidable capacity.

Herding cultures, which followed and later domesticated animals, developed another way of life. These cultures created a symbiotic relationship with their domesticated animals: such as camel, ox, cow, goat and sheep (and in meso-America rodent, dog and turkey). This way of life offered them a continuous  form of sustenance, so long as their domesticated animals had access to food and water. This then changed the character of the “foresight” these people would express. Their “forward view” would need to be focused on finding and exploiting the the best habitats for their animals. In Eurasia, migrating longer distances would have necessitated a deeper understanding of seasonal changes in various regions.

Subsistence agricultural cultures, which began to create symbiotic relationships with plants and trees, developed another way of life and hence expressed another way of “forward thinking”. These peoples would need to think about seasonal changes, especially the coming of rains, storms, and harsh weather that could destroy crops. In the ancient agricultural societies of Egypt, Babylon, the Indus river (and others) floods had to be anticipated and managed. It is not surprising that these cultures, which could store more foods for longer periods, and which needed to have a more accurate understanding of seasonal changes, began to look at the stars, and create a more accurate understanding of seasonal changes, culminating in the development of the first calendars.

Industrialisation changed the game yet again. Water resources could be pumped using machines. Goods could be transported quickly and cheaply around the world. Fossil fuels could be used for farming, as well as synthesized into both fertilizers and pesticides. The shift from subsistence agriculture to surplus market agriculture would again shift the nature of the “forward view”. New questions emerged: is there a market for this good? will there be a glut in this good? can this good compete against market alternatives?

While these examples from history and pre-history are an obvious oversimplification, and the true nature of foresight in these types of cultures is best understood by the science of anthropology, the main point remains salient. A “forward view” or “foresight” has been integral to the survival of peoples from the beginning of time to the present. I would further argue that developing the capacity for foresight has become more important as well as more complex as time has worn on.

Today the average business is faced with a mind-numbing array of issues to grapple with in considering their business decisions.

• Economic globalization has meant that more people are competing in more markets
• Currencies ebb and flow in a turbulent global financial system
• Sustainability challenges are impacting in a number of areas: land use, climate change, waste management and many other places
• Government policy sometimes stabilizes and sometimes disrupts organisations
• Economic boom and bust cycles affect different industries and sectors
• Technologies continue to have big impacts, such as computer, biotechnology, nanotechnology and renewable energy technologies
• New values are emerging from new generations with new expectations

Faced with so much complexity a common response is to say “I’ll do what I have always done, it has worked before”. However this is a major mistake!  We know from history that human life continues to evolve and change in tandem with changes in technology, culture, etc. Engaging in forward thinking not only allows businesses to adapt to a changing environment, it opens up avenues and opportunities that were previously not visible.

The modern art and science of strategic foresight is a grounded approach to understanding this landscape of social change in ways that open up opportunities to decision makers in every walk of life. An enhanced capacity for foresight has a number of benefits. It allows decision makers to understand what the key issues impacting their sector or industry might be. It provides a strategic landscape where various options for development open up. It creates more clarity where an enterprise should devote time and energy. It provides guidance in respect to the direction an enterprise should innovate.

Strategic foresight provides a number of effective frameworks and tools for providing value to clients. It involves rigorously scanning across relevant data sources to understand the nature of change for a sector or industry. It requires sifting and sorting to come to an appreciation of the key themes and issues that are most relevant. Tools in data analysis and interpretation allow for a deepened understanding of the issues faced.  In can often entail developing a “picture” of one, two or many possible futures, often called “scenarios”. Importantly, it includes making sure that this new understanding of social change is used to ask: “now what”? It helps decision makers re-think their strategies and core assumptions, opens up awareness of emerging opportunities and helps develop more robust and exciting directions for businesses and organisations.

In this third (of four) part of my interview with Rev. Tim Mansfield, he goes into detail re: where the rubber meets the road for him in spirituality – via practice and enactment in the world. He goes on to explain what it means to engage in a post-modern exploration of spirituality at the Parliament of the World Religions. Going into the history and context of the Parliament, he discusses his experience of his ecumenist engagement in radical spiritual diversity. He goes on to discuss what the key priorities are for religion at the Parliament: care for earth, hunger and poverty, peace between people, and respect for indigenous people. He argues the real challenge in a spiritual path is to be inspired and consistent with the ethical framework set out by ones tradition, as well as to be spiritually sustained by it.

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