In their Big Ideas section, McKinsey’s Quarterly taps into the themes of growth & innovation. In times of economic downturn, crisis, extreme market challenges … the mantra to ‘innovate or die’ sounds louder than ever. André Andonian, Christoph Loos and Luiz Pires address the big picture in Building an innovation nation, Amar Bhidé takes a closer look at Where innovation creates value, Alberto Alessi talks about Cultivating innovation, Hayagreeva Rao looks at Market rebels and radical innovation etc.

Succesful innovation depends on how much your innovation efforts are in tune with your changing environment and the challenges these changes pose. On What Matters, McKinsey addresses some of the major challenges (clustered thematically) businesses need to assess when aiming for a succesful future. As such, they look into biotechnology, climate change, the credit crisis, energy, geopolitics, globalization, health, innovation, internet & organization and turn to some of the brightest minds in these areas for reflections on the world of tomorrow.

To mention but a few of the interesting reads to be found on the site: our friend John Thackara points to The innovator next door, Juan Enriquez looks at How biotech will reshape the global economy, Eric D. Beinhocker and Jeremy Oppenheim talk about Building a postcarbon economy, Stephen S. Roach wonders about new times After the era of excess, Andy Grove and Robert Burgelman assess An electric plan for energy resilience, Jacqueline Novogratz looks into Innovative business models for the poor, etc.

The Rotman School of Management dedicates its winter issue (pdf) to wicked problems, a concept not unknown to futuregazers. Jeff Conklin of the CogNexus Institute once characterized wicked problems as follows:

1. The problem is not understood until after formulation of a solution.
2. Stakeholders have radically different world views and different frames for understanding the problem.
3. Constraints and resources to solve the problem change over time.
4. The problem is never solved.

Aside from an interview with him, the magazine is chock-full of insightful articles on topics such as Confronting the World’s Most Important Strategic Challenges: The End of Oil, Strategy as a Wicked Problem, Peter Senge et al. on The Next Industrial Imperative: The 80-20 Challenge, Creativity, Improvisation and Organizations, The Designful Company, IDEO’s Fred Dust and Ilya Prokopoff on Designing Systems at Scale, Managerial Algorithmics: Thinking Strategically About Thinking Strategically, Artistry for the Strategist. Muhammad Yunus shares his ‘point of view’. There are Q&A’s with Prof. William Duggan on strategic intuition, reverse brainstorming etc., with Prof. John Broome on the ethics of climate change, with Prof. Sarah Kaplan on the origin of our cognitive frames, with Nigel Cross on the differences between abstract and concrete thinking, with Prof. Lucy Kimbell on the importance of a ‘design attitude’, with Prof. Dolly Chugh on the human foibles of bounded willpower, bounded awareness and bounded self-interest, with Prof. Ingo Walter on new alternatives for microfinance institutions, with Cary Fowler on protecting the world’s food supply via the Global Crop Diversity Trust. Prof. Heather Fraser shares insights on tackling wicked problems in healthcare.

In other words: an issue to devour.

Buckminster Fuller among others was a firm believer in changing society and people through changing the stuff they use. In similar ways, the Japanese architect Kazuo Shinohara – among others – wondered about the psychological effects of his buildings on people. The psychological and social impact of our designs in general and the built environment in particular, on ourselves and our behaviours is a fascinating theme indeed. Yet, watching some of today’s architectural and urbanistic interventions one can only wonder whether or to which extent the architects behind them have taken such considerations into account. Pondering the future of society, of living in a place, living, working and playing together, etc. as such, begs for a closer look at these subtle yet complex relationships.

‘Building happiness: architecture to make you smile‘, was recently published by Building Futures, the future oriented think tank of the Royal Institute of British Architects, which aims “to create space for discussion about the needs of society from our built environment and, consequently, the built environment professions in 20 years and beyond.”  

“Led by Ed Blake, “Building Happiness” was a project that aimed to use the best research and anecdoctal evidence from across a wide range of disciplines to identify and analyse the most important drivers in the field. How do we construct happiness? What components make for a happy building or space? How do we measure and quantify this response? is it possible? Who is responsible for it? can it be built in?”

MIT’s Technology review‘s March/April issue features their yearly top 10 of emerging technologies. This year’s ‘winners’ are:

• modeling surprise: datamining, human psychology and machine learning is about to help us to deal with surprise (Microsoft’s Eric Horvitz)
• probabilistic chips: uncertainty in computer chips may increase efficiency (GeorgiaTech’s Krishna Palem)
• nanoradio:  nanotube-based radio elements for appliances (Berkeley’s Alex Zettl)
• wireless power: beaming electricity from one place to another (MIT’s Marin Soljacic)
• atomic magnetometers: tiny new magnetic-field sensors for next-generation MRI scans (NIST’s John Kitching)
• offline web applications:  (Adobe’s Kevin Lynch)
• graphene transistors: new carbon for faster, smaller processors (GeorgiaTech’s Walter de Heer)
• connectomics: mapping our brain (Harvard’s Jeff Lichtman)
• reality mining: learning about human and social behaviour using cellphone data (MIT’s Sandy Pentland)
• cellulolytic enzymes: biofuels from cellulose (Caltech’s Frances Arnold)

The UK government’s Foresight programme & the Government Office for Science recently published their full report on the theme of obesity, titled Foresight – Tackling Obesities: Future Choices.

“By 2050, Foresight modelling indicates that 60% of adult men, 50% of adult women and about 25% of all children under 16 could be obese. Obesity increases the risk of a range of chronic diseases, particularly type 2 diabetes, stroke and coronary heart disease and also cancer and arthritis. The financial impact to society attributable to obesity, at current prices, is estimated to become an additional £45.5 billion per year by 2050 with a seven fold increase in NHS costs alone. “

The study arguments for an integrative approach in tackling the issue and notes how the challenge bears resemblence to the societal shift needed to counter climate change. Also regarding obesity, multiple levels of societal scale need to be addressed, i.e. personal, family, community and national. “It requires partnership between government, science, business and civil society.”

Watch the video summing up the 4 future scenario’s here or check here for more background reading.

Forbes.com recently published a special report on the future and futurists as ‘future-professionals’. In a series of articles critical – albeit generally unilateral – reflections are made on the future in general as well as the futurist profession and practice in particular. Furthermore, five authors share their images of a world experienced from the context of an American workplace in 2027, in a world shaped by a financial crisis. Visionaries are questioned to retrospect: what were they sure about that would happen, but didn’t? what surprised them? Forbes editors and writers jump a decade ahead and take a look at what the world could look like in terms of energy, education, health care, the internet, investing, real estate, retirement, sports, technology, travel, video games, Wall Street.

Note: Sometimes the future is now, yet just as often the now is confused with the future.

Image courtesy of Forbes.com

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In his new book, Ian Ayres describes the shift he observes in areas where we previously relied a lot on intuition to number-and-lettercrunching techniques and tools. He illustrates some of the staggering results organizations are achieving and new insights labs are gaining using advanced datamining techniques and tools.

Datamining took off as a hot topic in research labs in the nineties. Gradually more tools became available and more widely spread in the corporate and government world, increasingly powerful, increasingly smart. Successes were celebrated in various fields, it worked better in some  than in others because of the nature of the data, the complexity, descriptive power, completeness etc. Although computers are becoming more context aware, the difficulty still lies in notions such as ‘meaning’, ‘nuance’, ‘ambiguity’, ‘qualities’, ‘perspective’ etc. As in statistics you ask yourself: what does the data tell me and what does it not? How should I interpret what I see obscured as data and is that consistent with the reality it is trying to describe? The path from data to information (to knowledge to wisdom) is long, gradual, difficult and at times mysterious.

Also in trendwatching & patent-based innovation, use of data- and textmining tools is proliferating to enhance grip on the fast and vast global knowledge landscape, as the value of ‘knowing things and recognizing patterns first’ rises further. In futures studies, trends, certainties and ‘predictabilities’ are used, but a stronger emphasis lies on uncertainties and the different directions in which they might push us. Yet also in this area, number-crunching, modelling etc. belong to the favorite toolset of some practitioners.

Via PuttingPeopleFirst

Forbes Magazine runs a special report on the future of our cities and the cities of the future. Several plausible futures pass the review: the future city as a third-world slum, as a surveillance town, ambiguous sprawl, multi-million megacities or ghost cities.

Siemens published another report in their ‘Pictures of the future’ series. Among other subjects, the Spring 2007 issue looks at the following themes:

Livable Megacities: Moscow, St.Petersburg, Chicago, London, Curitiba, … mobility, clean water, lighting, noise prevention, security, households.

Molecular Medicine: microscopic miracles , dissecting disease machines, in vitro & in vivo diagnostics, detecting cancer with ultrasound, molecular therapies, visualizing tumor growth, combining images with lab results, data analysis, interview with Prof. Ralph Weissleder on tomorrow’s treatments

Technology for the environment: persuasion, our vanishing options, sources of greenhouse gases, cutting emissions, energy efficiency saving fortunes for cities, working smart in China, zero-emission power plants, fuel cell power plants, energy from waste,  earth-wind-fire-water energy, green transportation, water treatment solutions

People often associate memory with the past, yet memory also plays a central role in looking at the future. Not only do past experiences or knowledge thereof influence the way people look at tomorrow, also the memory of shared experiences during the process of exploring and/or (en)visioning futures plays a role in how people look at and act upon their views of the future.

At Pantopicon we go about futures exploration and (en)visioning in participatory ways. Time and again we realize how much added value(s) is to be gained in paying qualitative attention to documenting the participatory, often multi-stakeholder, process in various ways (cf. steps, atmospheres, ‘dramatic moments’, products, perspectives, different media, etc.), value for ourselves but most of all also for the client and participants. It allows to increase the group’s mnemonic grip upon the trajectory, makes certain group-dynamic related processes and events explicit, enhances learning (collaboratively and also in terms of methodology),  allows to capture valuable ‘working material’ for later reflection and/or use, helps to manage generated knowledge and share experiences with and beyond the group thereby increasing participatory motivation, strengthening common ground, common purpose,  etc. to name but a few. The trap of classical project management is often to limit documentation of the process to in-between deliverables, often also purely textual or ‘bullets-and-arrows’-prose as a friend calls it. Once beyond that barrier, the notion of ‘seeing is believing’ gets a whole new meaning.

The Ford Motor Company recently embarked on a journey in which the process’ ‘documentation’ was used in such a tool-like, purposeful fashion. FordBoldMoves.com documents a year of ‘open‘ futuremaking, “a year of meeting challenges and creating opportunities” at Ford Motor Company. ‘Open’ – in the contemporary fashion – because the company pulled back the curtain, gives people an in-kitchen view as well as a voice in their journey to answer the question “how can Ford be successful in the future?”

“Ford Bold Moves is a video documentary series that takes you inside Ford Motor Company as it attempts one of the largest corporate turnarounds in history. With candid interviews from Ford executives, employees, industry experts and even Ford detractors, Bold Moves approaches each segment from every angle and keeps asking the question: Will Ford succeed?

Bold Moves also involves you in the actual corporate decision-making process—allowing you to engage, debate and discuss what you think is relevant.”

Although the project received quite a bit of criticism (e.g. being overdesigned/window dressing, too Ford-centric, more campaign than open experiment, etc.), some rightfully, some not, do take a look at a fascinating experiment to document, show, envision, build capacity, involve stakeholders, etc.

In order to trigger people to think about the future from a variety of perspectives, futurists often use the mnemonic acronym steep, which stands for: socio-cultural, technological, economic, ecological, political. A slightly less well known alternative is ‘pinchastem‘, which stands for political / governmental, information / communication / media, nature-related / macro-environmental, conflict, health / biological / micro-environmental, artistic / cultural / recreational, social, technological / electronic / mechanical, economic, moral / ethical / religious.

Last year, the foresight department of the British global design and engineering firm Arup, published a deck of inspirational cards, meant to inspire people to assess how certain developments might change their future. The cards deal with major drivers of change that are likely to alter the face of business in the coming 50 years (time-horizon 2050). They are divided into five subsets, each dealing with a different ‘steep’ category.

Vividly I remember Prof. Stefano Boeri‘s fascinating project (Liquid Europe &) Solid Sea in which he invited people to switch viewpoint and consider the Mediterranean as ‘land’ instead of sea and the land surrounding it as water. In doing so the concepts of migration, roads, ports, departure and arrival, frontiers, that which is fixed and that which is fluid, volatile, moving etc. and consequently planning and design for such an environment change completely.

Now the studio of which he is a cofounder, Multiplicity, is preparing a promising book titled ‘Milano. Cronache dell’abitare’ to be published by Giorgio Mondadori Publishers next month in which the future of Milan (timehorizon 2020) is portrayed and discussed along the lines of 3 possible scenarios:

1. Milan as a city, completely void of fixed residents, with life concentrated around commuters and grand events such as the Salone del Mobile and other fashion and design-related happenings.
2. Milan as an archipelago-like city in which each and every ethno-cultural-economic community has carved out its turf.
3. Milan as a city in which public services are no longer, yet where free agents and entrepreneurs flourish and have taken over ‘management’ of the city.

Via Elle Decor Italy

PBS recently broadcasted the first pilot of a promising new science show titled 22nd century. Only one of a series of three pilots of different show will eventually be continued. The website describes the show as follows:

“Ever wonder what the world is going to be like in the future? Will people routinely live to see their 250th birthdays? Will personal computers be smarter than us? (Or more personable?) Will machines shrink so small they can make repairs inside a human cell?

Science fantasy or futuristic nightmare? 22nd Century takes you to the forefront of technology and hears from people on the cusp of a scientific revolution.”

The pilot can be viewed as a video podcast. The first episode looks at a selection of fascinating technological advancements in neuroscience: brain implants for people with locked-in syndrome, cochlear implants (btw, in Frans Erwin Offeciers we have a top specialist in the field based right here in Antwerp), cyborg extentions, nano-wires to enter the brain from within, braingates etc.

The show highlights not only the technological and scientific advancements, but also possible social and other effects to which they might lead, albeit briefly. From a futurist point of view, it would be interesting to address not only the possible effects of technology on the social, cultural, economic, ecological, political aspects of our lives, but also the effects of developments within these areas on these scientific and technological (r)evolutions, i.e. an integrated, scenario-like view of possible 22nd centuries.

By including a few historical references to the origins of some of the ideas underlying the technological advancements or their possible effects for that matter, a show closely related to the concept of ‘time’ and with a (popular) scientific inclination like this, could gain in terms of depth, contextualization and understanding. For example, in the context of the ‘world wide mind’, think about McLuhan‘s global village or Teilhard de Chardin‘s noosphere or other concepts of distributed consciousness or intelligence etc.

Looking forward to next episodes …

Image from Physorg.com article “Researchers get neurons and sillicon talking”

A while ago, we referred to the British horizonscanning centre. They recently commissioned a set of foresight studies to scan 50 years ahead : the sigma and delta scans, carried out by futures researchers, Outsights-Ipsos Mori and the Instute For The Future.

Both scans are essentially databases of articles on trends, their characteristics and possible implications. The sigma scan follows the STEEP-pattern and looks into the areas of Society, Science & Technology, Economics, Environment and Politics, whereas the delta scan is split up into several outlook categories, mostly along the lines of scientific disciplines.

Our friends over at Experientia compiled a nice selection of trends from the two studies.