Futures Research and the Millennium Project as Tools to cope with Global Challenges Bled Forum 2006

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Futures Research and the Millennium Project as
Tools to cope with Global ChallengesBled Forum
- 2006

• Jerome C. Glenn
• The Millennium Project
• American Council for the UN University

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Outline

• Purposes of Futures Research
• Overview of Scenarios
• Futures Intelligence Systems
• The Millennium Project as an alternative system
• How to Make Futures Research more effective in
  decision-making

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97 pages in print 3,800 pages in the CD
www.acunu.org
JGlenn_at_igc.org
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Highlights

• Organized crime is more than twice that of all
  military budgets worldwide
• Internet connects 1 billion people - 15 of the
  World
• 60 of the environmental life support system is
  gone or unsustainable
• 24-7 ubiquitous computing accelerates
  decisionmaking
• IQ as competitive advantage in the knowledge
  economy
• Indo/Chinas hightech/low wage forces rest of
  Third World to re-think trade-lead growth
  strategies
• 500 environmental agreement faster implications
  Chart on Page 87 rising global environmental
  consciousness
• Nanotech health/environmental impacts rapidly
  being assessed.

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Purpose of Futures Research

• To systematically explore, create, and test both
  possible and desirable futures to improve
  decisions
• Provide a framework to help understand the
  present and its potential
• Expand mental horizons
• To understand the extent that policies can change
  trends

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Purpose of Futures Research (Continued)

• Enhance ability to act faster or earlier making
  the an organization more effective in dealing
  with changing conditions in the world (media
  lost billions by not understanding its
  opportunities back in the 1980s, and early
  1990s.)
• Get early warnings which in turn give extra time
  to
• better understand threats opportunities
• develop more creative strategies
• create new product opportunities
• create and share vision for organizational change
• To help understand what might be, what could be,
  and what ought to be

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Futures Research Methodology V2.0

• 1. Introduction Overview 15. Simulation and
  Games
• 2. Environmental Scanning 16. Genius
  Forecasting, Vision, and Int.
• 3. Delphi 17. Normative Forecasting
• 4. Futures Wheel 18. ST Road Mapping
• 5. Trend Impact Analysis 19. Field Anomaly
  Relaxation (FAR)
• 6. Cross-Impact Analysis 20. Text Mining for
  Technology Foresight
• 7. Structural Analysis 21. Agent Modeling
• 8. Systems Perspectives 22. SOFI
• 9. Decision Modeling 23. SOFI Software
• 10. Statistical Modeling 24. The Multiple
  Perspective Concept
• 11. Technological Sequence Analysis 25. Tool Box
  for Scenario Planning
• 12. Relevance Trees and Morph. Analysis 26.
  Causal Layered Analysis
• 13. Scenarios 13.5 Interactive Scenarios 27.
  Integration, Comparisons, and
• 14. Participatory Methods Frontiers of
  Futures Research Methods

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Generalizations for judging futurists and their
research
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Definition of a Scenario

• A scenario is a story with plausible cause and
  effect links that connects a future condition
  with the present, while illustrating key
  decisions, events, and consequences throughout
  the narrative.

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A Scenario is not

• A projection although projections are included
  in a scenario.
• A discussion about a range of future
  possibilities with data and analysis It is like
  confusing the text of a play's newspaper review
  with the text of the play written by the
  playwright.

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Classic Herman Kahn Scenarios

• Surprise-free, business-as-usual, reference,
  base-case scenario is a simple extrapolation of
  current trends and their interplay
• Worst case scenario based on mismanagement and
  bad luck
• Best case scenario based on good management and
  good luck.

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Scenario Space Defined by Axes
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Exploratory vs. Normative Scenarios

• Exploratory Scenarios vast majority of
  scenarios are exploratory scenarios, also call
  descriptive scenarios
• Normative Scenarios Middle East Peace Scenario
  set and Normative 2050 Scenario. Can be
  proprietary to an organization (normative
  scenario for corporate strategy) or government
  (Military invasion scenario)

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Scenarios have been developed and utilized to

• Discover what is unknown that ought to be known,
  before making decisions
• Understand the significance of uncertainties
• Illustrate what is possible and what is not
  possible
• Identify what strategies might work in a range of
  possible scenarios
• Make the future more real for decision makers to
  force new thinking and new decisions
• Learn what has to be avoided and discover new
  opportunities

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Weaknesses of Scenarios

• Can limit thinking to the official scenarios
• Writers model of how the world works transferred
  to the reader
• The struggle to be interesting and the dynamic of
  the story can make it difficult to include
  important but boring details of connecting cause
  and effect.
• To be accepted, far out can be edited out

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What we think is possible should change
as change continues to accelerate

• 25 Years ago there was no
• Internet, World Wide Web, PCs, or mobile phones
• EU, WTO, ICC, or NATO in Eastern Europe
• AIDS, talk of globalization, cloned sheep,
  genetically modified food and drugs, and stem
  cells repairing and enhancing the body
• Asymmetrical warfare and most believed that a
  nuclear WW III would have destroyed the world by
  now

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in the next 15 years

• Human intelligence becomes the competitive
  advantage in the global knowledge economy
  (personalized food, regressed stem cells
  re-inserted in the brain, genetic engineering,
  computer enhanced learning)
• Stem cells from pigs, cows and goats to produce
  meat
• Nanotechnology reduces pollution, raises living
  standards of the poor
• Life extension begins to look like a realistic
  option while the aging population increases
  economic concerns
• Genetic engineering and artificial intelligence
  creates new life forms that achieve awareness and
  evolve
• A global brain(s) emerges from Internet evolving
  later into Conscious-Technology

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Conscious-Technology (Post-Information Age)
When the distinction between these two trends
becomes blurred, we will have reached the
Post-Information Age
HUMANS BECOMING CYBORGS
BUILT ENVIRONMENT BECOMING INTELLIGENT
2030
2015
2000
1985
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Simplification of History and an Alternative
Future
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Future Mind Artificial Intelligence
Merging the Mystical and the Technological in the
21st Century
by Jerome C. Glenn
1989
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Futures Intelligence System
Periodicals Press Releases
Key Persons Tracking
Conferences Seminars
Key Word Internet Searching
Monitor Specific Websites
SCANNING
Also called environmental scanning and early
warning systems
Analysis Synthesis
Individual
Staff
Management
Weblog-Database
Feedback New Requirements
Decisions Future Oriented Understanding and
learning for organization
Management
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Millennium Project
May become a TransInstitution
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Millennium Project Nodes... are groups of
individuals and institutions that connect global
and local views in
Helsinki
Ottawa
Berlin
London
Calgary
Moscow
Paris
Prague
Seoul
Washington, DC
Silicon Valley
Rome
Tehran
Tokyo
Istanbul
Cairo
Mexico City
Beijing
New Delhi
Kuwait
Madurai
Caracas
Cyber Node
Sao Paulo
Pretoria/Johannesburg
Buenos Aires
Sidney

• Nodes identify participants, translate
  questionnaires and reports, and conduct
  interviews, special research, workshops,
  symposiums, and advanced training.

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15 Global Challenges

• 1. Sustainable development for all
• 2. Sufficient clean water for all without
  conflict
• 3. Population growth and resources brought into
  balance
• 4. Genuine democracy emergence from authoritarian
  regimes
• 5. Policy-making more sensitive to global
  long-term perspectives
• 6. Globalization and convergence of information
  and communications technologies works for
  everyone
• 7. Ethical market economies reduce rich and poor
  gap
• 8. Threat of new and reemerging diseases, and
  immune micro organisms reduced

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Global Challenges (continued)

• 9. Capacity to decide improved while the nature
  of work and institutions is changing
• 10. Shared values and new security strategies
  reduce ethnic conflict, terrorism, and mass
  destruction
• 11. Changing status of woman improves
  civilization
• 12. Organized crime stopped from becoming more
  powerful and sophisticated global enterprises
• 13. Growing energy demand safely and efficiently
  met
• 14. Scientific and technological breakthroughs
  to improve the human condition
• 15. Ethical considerations more routinely
  incorporated into global decisions?

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Millennium Projects Current Activities

• Global Energy Scenarios
• Futures Research Methodology - V 3.0
• Monthly reports of international environmental
  security issues
• Futures Dictionary/Encyclopedia
• Up-dating Annotated Scenario Bibliography
• Middle East Peace Scenarios dissemination and
  discussions
• National State of the Future Indexes (SOFIs)
• Updating Improving Global Challenges and
  publish 2006 SOF
• Women Issues Organizations and their Research
• Experiments with Collaborative Software

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Making Futures research effective in
decision-making

• Make sure DM understands was FR is and is not
• Formal link to strategic planning
• Work with champion within the organization
• Show complexity to DM via workshops, computer
  models
• Integrate DM into the FR process as much as
  possible
• Make the future more real to the DM via
  subjective descriptions
• Include the full range of stakeholders
• If goals not clear, then add their identification
  in the process
• If actor on FR not clear, then add that to the
  process
• Use at least one formal method all understand
• Demonstrate crisis
• Demonstrate what is possible with success stories
• Connect options to goals in political, cultural
  and social (non-technical) terms
• Show technical feasibility of recommendations
• Connect the costs to the benefits

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Continued.

• If the information and data are inaccurate,
  unreliable, conflicting, and/or insufficient,
  then expose the problem, collect best judgments,
  and suggest ways of making decisions within the
  uncertain environment.
• Include the intended actions of related
  institutions
• Develop and popularize appropriate indicators
• Use testimony of eminent scientists
• Clarify the forecasted condition with and without
  action
• Link to other FR activities so that diverse
  inputs are possible
• Avoid information overload.
• Use workshops to give time to integrate the
  concepts in a group setting.
• Consider how to include the media to popularize
  concepts
• Make the work continuous and cumulative.

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Previous Sponsors

• Corporations
• Applied Materials
• Deloitte Touche LLP
• Ford Motor Company
• General Motors
• Hughes Space and Communications
• Monsanto Company
• Motorola Corporation
• Pioneer Hi-Bred International
• Shell International
• NGOs and Foundations
• Alan F. Kay Hazel Henderson Foundation for
  Social Innovation
• Amana-Kay
• Foundation for Social Innovation
• Foundation for the Future

• Government Organizations
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency U.S. Army
  Environmental Policy Institute
• U.S. Department of Energy
• Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
• Kuwait Oil Company
• Kuwait Petroleum Corporation
• UN Organizations
• UNDP
• UNESCO
• United Nations University

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• The Millennium Project
• WWW.STATEOFTHEFUTURE.ORG
• Jglenn_at_igc.org