Articles

Creating a sustainable foresight practice for yourself or within our organizations can be a challenge. Our outdated systems may be faltering, but they are holding on for dear life.  There are lessons, however, in failed attempts at foresight implementation. In our experience, there are several common pitfalls which should be avoided when pursuing foresight integration.

The adaptive systems within a panarchy are most commonly represented by a figure eight or an infinity symbol. This demonstrates how the various phases within the system alternate in a continual cycle rather than following a straight line that has a clear-cut beginning and end.

Leadership qualities tend to be timeless. It’s why we look back through history at the esteemed individuals who led successful businesses, governments and social initiatives. The thinking goes that, if we can emulate these trailblazers, we will be successful leaders too.

Unconscious bias refers to the stereotypes, both negative and positive, that exist in our subconscious and affect our behavior (including data selection and interpretation). Interest in unconscious bias modeling has skyrocketed over the past decade. As the global workforce becomes increasingly diversified and the speed of change more volatile, our internal blinders to new people, information and ideas have kicked into overdrive.

If you’re in a position of leadership today, then you’ve definitely experienced what it means to be “environmentally challenged.”

In recent years, huge companies such as Google and Facebook have adopted the practice of “Unconscious Bias Modeling,” taking their employees through workshops to uncover hidden biases and assumptions that are impacting innovation, diversity, creativity and decision making.

Early in the 20th century, Austrian-born economist Joseph Schumpeter coined the phrase ‘creative destruction’ to describe the disruptive process of ongoing technological and economic innovation within capitalism.

As futurists, it is our job to help clients to build the future. That may mean that we are helping them to identify potential risks, discover emerging opportunities or simply navigate the unfolding trends.

When sharing this concept with clients from many different industries and sectors, I often begin by telling them that my first reaction to this phrase was probably the same as the one they are presently experiencing: “The only idea that is ridiculous is this saying!

One of the greatest deficits of our time is an impoverishment of “creativity generators” or cultures of creativity within our organizations.