FORESIGHT:

Case studies in policy and strategy European Commission, Joint Research Centre

Brussels, November 27, 2014

Sohail Inayatullah

Professor, Tamkang University, Mt Eliza Executive Education, Sunshine Coast University, Meta-

future.org

Learning and the Future

• Zero Loop – overwhelmed, Pretending

• Single Loop – take aways -

Doing • Double Loop – outside of

paradigm learning, entering the unknown –

Knowings

• Narrative learning, finding and creating your story - Being

Challenge Assumptions

Not just observe but transform

See the world differently

See multiple perspectives, and the evolving overall

The future is an asset, a resource and a narrative to be employed.

Joan of Arc and Noah

10% of Americans believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife

(and 12 million believe lizard people

run the country)

CHANGING IMAGES OF THE FUTURE

MAPPING THE FUTURE

Health

Changing images of

the futures

Changing images, changing demographics

Thirty-four percent of Victoria GPs have trained in meditation and

seventy-seven believe it should be federally funded. Eighty percent of

Australian gps have referred patients to complementary medicine.

Mindfulness - meditation

Studies show:

• 87% less heart disease

• 55.4% less tumours

• 50.2% less hospitalization

• 30.6% less mental disorders

• 30.4% less infectious diseases

• Turns “stress” genes off

• Among the elderly, compared to control groups they live 23% longer, 49% less likely to die from cancer, 30% less likely to die from heart disease.

Geomedicine

• Do you live near fast food restaurants

• Chances of strokes go up (association)

• Rise of geo-medicine

2025 health – genomics meets meditation, plus participatory health

• Prediction

• Prevent

• Personalize

• Participate – peer to peer health

Linking the three horizons

THE PROBLEM

• Rapidly changing world, with heterogeneous perspectives and rates of change

• Multiple perspectives, with success often dependent on stakeholder inclusion (but we don’t like the other stakeholders)

• Perception of loss of agency, how to recover capacity to influence

Transformative Futures Thinking

= Regain influence

and capacity by exploring

alternative futures and envisioning

desired

FUTURES IN PRACTICE – FORESIGHT LEARNINGS

CASE STUDIES

1. Old behavior dies hard – the used future

Challenge the “factory”

• Creating digital pedagogies with students as stakeholders instead only principal “in charge”

• Redesign spaces, and

• We are all learners – an ecology of insight and foresight

CLA ON THE KNOWLEDGE REVOLUTION

• Computers per child

• The classroom

• Industrial

• The factory, I am in charge

• Innovation

• Learning and fun spaces

• Knowledge economy

• The playground, we are all learners

E-health Bangladesh – challenge the used future

• Moving the data not the patient

• Local community health workers

• The fly over story

Error 1

• Living in the past,

the used future –

the old behaviour

even though it no

longer serves

current reality or the desired future.

Your used future?

Give one

example of

how your

organization

continues a

used future

Words of Yang Chu, while weeping at the crossroads

Isn’t it here that you

take a half step wrong

and wake up a

thousand miles astray?

2 Scan the environment and make the changes

Are colas the new tobacco?

BECOME A WELLNESS COMPANY BY 2035?

HEALTH INSURANCE

• Move from generic risk profile to person specific risk profile: real time, age specific, monitoring.

• Move from Insurer to Health knowledge services navigator

Insurance to Bio-informatics to

Driverless trucks

Cast away to Casting networks –

use the rivers

International NGOs World Vision, Oxfam, Caritas, Communify

1. Government funded

2. Individual donations

3. Poverty reduction

4. Paternalistic

• We do to you

1. Float an Initial public offering

2. Follow the kiva.model i.e. become a facilitator linking those in need plus quality control e.g. uber for the homeless

3. Disappear

4. Become a social movement

5. The NGO approval check for best practice

• Together we do

Error 2

• Used current uncertainties to

develop their scenarios

• Missed global financial crisis

• Risk – present defines the

future, inattention to

emerging issues, weak

signals. The right answer not

a foresight learning culture.

3 DON’T WAIT FOR THE BAD TIMES

Dubbo, NSW Mayors and Laoag, Philippines

Error 3

ENGAGE IN FORESIGHT WHEN REPTILIAN

BRAIN IS ACTIVE

4 Library futures 2025

Direct brain downloads and the holodeck

“amazing new places”

One stop shop facilitates

“the heart of the community”

The new publisher, using trust to create the new library

“we co-author”

Digital dinosaurs “Libraries quieter than ever”

THE FIFTH SCENARIO what is missing or your preferred?

4a Cairns Airport 2025

Airport City

shared revenue

stream).

It is the

destination

Transform

Cairns –

become a

lobbyist –

change the

culture

Green smart

learning

personalized

airport –

customer

experience – my

airport

Become the

airline – Air

Mackay

LECTURE LEARNING FROM EVERYWHERE

SMART PEDAGOGY WISDOM OF CHOICE

EXAM BASED SELF-DIRECTED PARTNERSHIPS DIRECTED PARTNERSHIPS

CONFORMANCE AND CERTFICATION

DEMOCRATIZATION BLENDED LEARNING WHOLESOME

FORCE FEED EAT ALL YOU CAN (Ala Carte)

OMNIVORE NUTRITUOUS BUFFET

MALAYSIA TEACHING AND LEARNING 2025

Error 4

• Assume there is

only one future

instead of

alternative futures

• Getting it right

versus adaptability

and emergence”

5 Where are you in the macro-pattern?

• CYCLICAL – IBN KHALDUN

• LINEAR – AUGUSTE COMTE AND HERBERT SPENCER

• THE PENDULUM – PITIRIM SOROKIN

• THE SPIRAL – P.R. SARKAR

Present

Future

Past Present

Possible Future

Sensate Integrated Ideational

6 From Vision to Reality

• ICBA – from visions to funded strategy

• CEO – champion

• Engaged foresight process

• Funding

• Link to present and journey to the future

Gold coast 2037

Personal vision

Link with elections

Broad stakeholders, politicians, citizens, experts

New vision budgeted!

light rail

green spaces

family culture

Three national awards for best project

The backcast

• Small shifts leading to major changes

• Quarantining the voices of cynicism (it won’t work), fatigue (I’m too tired) and sabotage (I’ll destroy it)

• Remembering the milestones

Error 6

• Vision not linked to

funding

• Vision not held by

champions

• Vision disconnected from

dominant narrative

• Vision not linked to

milestones through

backcasting

7 Link story to strategy

• Narrative not linked to strategy or vision

• Culture eats strategy for breakfast

• Transform inner story and link it to vison-strategy

Metaphors and crime

Catching and

jailing

criminals

Crime as a

beast

Crime

as a

virus

Education and ending poverty

CRIME DATA PRESENTED REMAINS THE SAME WITH EACH METAPHOR

Castle surrounded by hungry wolves

Policing as a Roman coliseum

Police as

“christians”

Lions as

criminals, getting

faster and more

dangerous

Citizens watching

International policing

Super industry experts to educators and therapists

From the “collection” to the ecosystem of alternatives

Keeper of the collection

Innovator of the gardens

Libraries in transition

Books loaned Visits, workshops, engagement

Organizing and referencing texts Organizing and creating new spaces: physical, digitally amplified and augmented reality

Expert Facilitation and co-curation

The keeper of the collection Innovator of the gardens

Leaking oil tanker to Optimus Prime

Singapore – Ministry of Transport

Oxfam Governance Asia 2030

Rule of the big man -

feudal

Fresh food market – pluralistic,

inclusive, democratic

Cinderella's Alchemy - Milojevic

Deconstruction: Passivity

Reconstruction: Entrepreneurship and gender

partnership,

From the labyrinth to Icarus to Dadealus

Error 7

• Focus on strategy and forget – lack of mindfulness - on culture and narrative

• Engineer the future instead of transforming “bob the builder.”

8 Focus on the change agents

Jenny Brice

Carriers of infection, change agents

Resisters, quarantine

Asleep, wake up

Possible carriers, infect them

Error 8 - overly focused on the resisters

Learning 9 - Include everyone! A world as access-able as a Para-Olympics village Redesign homes, schools, cities to assist inclusion Creating a culture of inclusion, integrating the other Known just as “Julie”

Error 9

• Only include the experts (delphi)

• Or only include senior managers and executives

(strategy)

• Board does not reflect membership - AVA

CLA - CANCER FUTURES

• One out of two will have a cancer incident by 2030

• Chaotic and confused pathways

• Medical

• Death sentence

• Focus on prevention and biomedical advances

• One stop shop, clear pathways for treatment

• Person plus community centred

• As a way of life

TODAY PREFERRED FUTURE

What works 1. Challenge the used future

2. Scan the environment for emerging issues and weak signals

3. Don’t wait until bad times

4. Create alternative futures

5. Find the macro-pattern

6. Make the vision real

7. Link story to strategy

8. Focus on change agents

9. Who is not in the room – learn from all

ANTICIPATORY ACTION LEARNING

• BCC and DAFF - comprehensive

• Mt Eliza executive education – CEO leadership and foresight

• Pearls of Policing – International Policing

• Malaysian higher education leadership academy – strategy and cultural change

Deep learning processes and the challenge of political change

• BCC – vision plus scenarios plus budget discipline plus courses and workshop. Change in political leadership but “city futures” meme spread to dozens of cities and thousands of Mayors.

• DAFF – courses for scientists plus workshops plus pre-border security. Scanning continues and influence at global level even with political change

Multiple perspectives on industry issues - four days with follow up

• Mt Eliza Executive Education

• Futures of wineries, energy, marketing, health insurance, justice, universities, airlines, airports

• Each issue gains insight from others in different industry areas

• Expertise expands instead of narrowing the future

• Action learning – insights plus presentation in

expertise areas and then practice in organization

• Thirteen years

Pearls of Policing

• Deputy Commissioners +

• Anticipatory Action Learning projects

– Learning by doing

– Questioning the future

• Present to Commissioners

• Strategy plus capacity

AKEPT – malaysian higher education

• 40 dvcs, deans and professors each course

• Present to each other

• Filtered to council of VCs and Minister

• Strategy plus capacity – tipping point and the new language of futures literacy

• Year three

Only those who are able to see the invisible are able to do the impossible

Dr. Bernard Lown, developer of the defibrillator and 1985 Nobel Prize

recipient for the international physicians for the prevention of nuclear war

Additional information at

www.meta-future.org

http://mteliza.mbs.edu/fts