IdeaPort : strategic innovation, foresight, and futures thinking.

Over on CNBC, my colleague on Future Agenda - Tim Jones -  presents 20 insights about 2020.  One of the most interesting comments focuses on currency, but not the Euro or the US dollar:

The introduction of a broad‐basket ACU (Asian Currency Unit) as the third global reserve currency will provide the world with the opportunity to balance economic influence and trade more appropriately.

It’s an easy, quick read, and is recommended. Full piece is here…

In the second post subtitled “what has been keeping me busy,” Future Agenda is now live. This is a unique cross-discipline programme which is uniting the best minds from around the globe to address the greatest challenges of the next decade. In doing so, it is mapping out the major issues, identifying and debating potential solutions and suggesting the best ways forward.  We’ve used a website as a centre point for the programme,which in effect is creating a structured open-source approach to foresight.

I encourage you to visit the site and to add your comments.

I’m extremely interested in new methods of undertaking foresight projects, and communicating the output of such work.  I’m also intrigued by the power of prediction markets, so when an idea mixes these ideas together it captures my attention.

It’s no surprise that it came from the IBM Global Innovation Outlook team in partnership with Spigit. The markets are now closed but the results – and the method – is fascinating. Here’s the summary from the site:

Prediction markets are an increasingly popular way to gather collective intelligence for better decision-making and more accurate forecasting. Prediction markets have been widely covered in the media and have been created for topics ranging from Academy Award winners to U.S. Presidential Elections. Enterprises are now beginning to use them, recognizing the potential benefits of prediction markets for scenarios such as prioritizing ideas, forecasting sales, predicting demand, or assessing product deployment dates. When properly executed, prediction markets have proven to be more accurate than many traditional methods of polling, surveying, and equal to or better than expert forecasts which is why IBM is investigating Predictive Idea Markets – a potentially new way to use prediction markets techniques and approaches for gathering consensus on business ideas.

Using a stock-trading format, participants express the strength of their opinions by ‘investing’ tokens in top ideas they believe will succeed, receiving 100 tokens to invest in each market. “Investing” involves selecting a question and “buying” an idea or answer using tokens. “Buying an idea” can express belief that the idea has high potential to succeed. Participants need not invest in all markets but may focus on the ones they have an affinity towards or feel they have some level of knowledge or insight about.

Have a look at the Smarter Cities Predictive Ideas Market to get the full details.

I was intrigued to read on the BBC today that a Western shipping company has successfully delivered cargo via the once impassable North East Passage. The significance of cannot be understated for it’s impact on world trade:

…the once impenetrable ice that prevented ships travelling along the northern Russian coast has been retreating rapidly because of global warming in recent decades. The passage became passable without ice breakers in 2005. By avoiding the Suez canal, the trip from Asia to Europe is shortened by almost 5,000km (3,100 miles). The company behind the enterprise says it is saving about $300,000 per vessel by using the northern route.

One of the ships was named Beluga Foresight.

There is a wonderful story floating around about foresight in the 1300s. Stewart Brand captures it nicely in this video. The story is summed up on the website of New College as follows:

…when the college fellows decided to restore the hall roof in 1862, they were wondering where to get the oak for the beams in the new roof Gilbert Scott proposed to build for them. The college woodsman pointed out that their predecessors had planted acorns in their Buckinghamshire woods in about 1380, so that mature trees would be available when needed for the repair of the buildings.

It is a great story that encapsulates foresight before a time when the phrase existed.  The problem is that it’s not true. The archive of the New College website refutes it in several ways.

However the general theme of the story has historical merit and  on this site there was mention that “oaks in the New Forest (in the UK) are a battleship factory.” This led me to some further research.  It turns out that this has much more substance to it as referenced on the history of the New Forest here:

1698 Enclosure Act “For the Increase and Preservation of Timber in the New Forest” : William III needed timber for the Navy. The Act permitted immediate planting of 2,000 acres, and a further 200 acres/annum for 20 years. In 1776 under George III a further 2,044 acres were planted.

However the foresight behind the continued planting of oaks was flawed and failed to take into account a technology development : iron ships.  This development in ship building meant that oaks were no longer in demand.

In an ironic twist however in World War II some oaks from the forest were used to build minesweepers as wooden hulls would not cause magnetic mines to detonate when the ship passed overhead.

I recently got in touch with Bill Cockayne at Stanford.  The conversation was wide and varied – as you’d expect  – and among other things we discussed the Shell Technology Futures work I’d done with Innovaro. As he lectures at Stanford on foresight and innovation, I was interested in his perspective on some of the issues that I had encountered with various organisations.  With that in mind, I asked him four questions:

1. While a lot of people may describe you as a futurist, your work extends a lot further than that.  Do you have a title that sums up your work?

Innovation is the simplest word.
My team and I take the stance that future that will exist is the one we build.
We’ve developed our tools and methods with the goal of helping potential innovators move from thinking critically about the long-term to building… starting today… the future that will emerge.

2. In my work I see a continuum between foresight, strategy, innovation and design. I expect that you have a similar view, and, if so, where do you see the links between these disciplines?

The links are the most important part, and at the same time the last understood. But they are not hard to understand.

The links exist at the boundaries between “disciplines.” But like the ampersand in R&D, the link is often viewed as a boundary between research and development. I’m sure we’ve all heard the old adage about “throwing it over the wall” as being the biggest problem in actually doing R&D. And at the same time we’ve read the stories of the innovations that can occur when real researchers and developers made the link.

Viewed this way, the links that make the innovation process work — from foresight to the next new thing — are the result of the practitioners. Our tools and methods help, say, a foresight thinker to anticipate the information that the strategist and engineer need, then work hard communicate his learning to them. At the same time, he must play a role in helping the strategist and engineer to understand his needs as a partner in the overall process. So it is with these two pieces — an understanding of how the knowledge I create in the innovation process will be used by others, and a focus on communicating it in a way that they can use it — that the links work.

3. Many consultancies confuse the four disciplines, and try to sell themselves in areas where they lack experience.  For example, I’ve witnessed one of the worlds best design agencies try to sell themselves as strategists. In your experience which organisations have a good understanding of how to traverse the spectrum between foresight and design?

The list of companies that have succeeded in bringing truly innovative solutions to the world span industries, eras, and inventions. So it is from these stories that I’d look for our best understanding of connecting foresight to innovation. The answer to the question of who has the best understanding is the same in each and every story — it is the people who imagine building a better future, and who then take it upon themselves to do the building.

4. Given the current economic climate, what is your advice for an organisation that is toying with the idea of cutting back on strategic innovation?

As we’ve all read, this economic environment is the best time to invest in the discovery and creation of the next big thing. The reasons are well understood, and yet it’s not easy for companies to be thinking and investing long-term when they are so busy delivering the next product. My only recommendation to companies lately is to worry less about “thinking long-term” and more about “planning the next few steps.”

A company knows when it hopes to deliver that new product to its customers. The company is planning for that next new opportunity developing in the marketplace. And it has developed the financial and talent plans for making these events happen. Any company that is thinking ahead, planning, and then making sure to measure how well it performs to plan, is doing exactly the right thing in this and any other economic environment. At which point I might mischievously ask, “if you are happy with your plans… have you thought about what you’re going to do after those plans come to fruition?”

There’s a nice bio of Bill here, along with a video of him speaking at LIFT 08.

In futures thinking there is an increasing level of conversation around sustainability, and the concepts that surround it.  It’s worth a closer look, and with this in mind I asked Tim Nichols to weigh in with his view. Tim came recommended by a colleague and as a recent graduate, brings a fresh and informed perspective (in June 2008, he completed a Masters in Strategic Sustainable Development at the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona, Sweden).  Here’s Tim’s view:

What is meant by sustainability? For many people who work to promote the idea, the essence of the concept is centred on cultivating long-term thinking. The goal is to get people to be thinking about the repercussions of the actions beyond their lives. In essence, think about your grandchildren.

This seems easy enough, but it actually goes against human nature. We thrive on immediate satisfaction; feed me when I’m hungry, sleep when I’m tired, etc. And we have ingrained this methodology for life into the fabric of existence, with everything at our disposal and disposable. The “take, make, waste” mantra of our culture has put us on a speeding train into an unknown abyss. And currently, actions to try to stop the train has had been the equivalent of throwing marshmallows on the tracks, soft, easy to swallow but doing nothing.

Fortunately, sustainability was the buzzword of 2008, so the seeds have been sown. And it is unlikely that the core targets of sustainability: degradation of the environment, pollution from heavy metals and toxic chemicals, and the destruction of humans ability to meet their basic needs, will not be as easily altered as changing buzzwords. The current economic atmosphere offers the perfect opportunity for society to call on business and government to come together to form a model that has a more long-term view.

Without risking being called an alarmist, or underestimating the brilliantly resilient nature of humans, it seems we have been given another, possibly last, chance. With a plethora of scientists claiming that we are pushing the ecological thresholds of multiple natural systems, as well as the ever-increasing population surviving on constantly decreasing natural resources, there’s no time like the present.

Sustainable Futures covers an area too wide to fully define. However, it will require the collaboration of business and NGO, Government and 3rd Sector, communities and business, and on and on to ensure full participation. These groups must come together to establish where sustainability needs to be, and understand where it’s at now. They can then develop a plan to move from where they are to where they want to go, always with that clear, collaboratively formed vision of a sustainable future.

Timothy J. Nichols is an independent Sustainability Strategist for the public, private, and third sector. Current partners include Energizer Batteries, Clarks Shoes, Student Partnership Worldwide and the Brixton Pound, a local community currency to be launched in September 2009. The Brixton Pound is part of a greater movement called Transition Town which seeks to engage communities on how they can move towards becoming low-carbon communities. Tim is also affiliated with The Hub, a worldwide organization which provides a space for entrepreneurs focusing on social and sustainable projects.  In addition to sustainability, Tim is passionate about writing, biking and beer.

From 2006-2008 I spent the majority of my time working alongside the Shell Gamechanger team in The Hague. It was a fascinating exercise on many fronts.

Firstly I was based in New Zealand and working for Innovaro in London for a client which although had some of it’s team in The Hague, could meet anywhere in the world.  Inevitably London and The Hague worked fine for us, although Houston or Bangalore would have equally fine. Personally Europe worked well for me as I could regularly visit Singapore on the way – a city with a firm view on the future (but that’s another story).

Secondly, as an organisation Shell is arguably the best user of scenarios in the world. Innovaro’s Technology Futures programme dovetailed into – and fed – the scenario development.  Innovaro ran the programme in 2004, again in 2007 and there should be another update in 2010.

The Technology Futures programme built a view of the impact of technology on society in the next twenty years. To construct something that was robust  – but still captured enough leading edge thinking – was a detailed process.  the summary is as follows : identify which adjacent sectors can impact upon the core business (either postively or negatively), seek out the subject matter experts in these sectors, gather them together for a week and then synthesise the output of the sessions.

We assembled a huge variety of people – from those who are pioneering the creation of life from scratch, to Mars roboticists and architects that are designing massive new green cities in China (the workshops are held under Chatham House rules which means that I cannot name the people or organisations that were represented). The conversations that resulted were compelling, intriguing, confronting, dynamic and never dull.

From the discussion we created a view of the world in twenty years time.  What is interesting about this view is that we can track everything back to a spark in a peer reviewed journal, or the commentary of a world expert in a certain field.

In this instance there were a series of outputs, the most visible being the book I co-edited and breathed into life (along with Barry Fox of New Scientist fame).  The book is also the only publicly accessible output from the programme, and you can download it here (5MB PDF).

The book is also the only publication to leave Shell without being edited by the PR department and as such is an untouched view of the Technology Futures programme.

The Innovaro Futures programmes are a proven way of seeking out white space opportunities for organisations looking to find new high-growth businesses, but they are also applicable at a macro level.  Innovaro has been talking to Governments about the possibility of running the programme at a country level, and this would be a natural fit for the process.

People get intrigued by the programme, but in the interests of blogging brevity I will close this post.  Howewver if you are interested to know more, please drop me a mail (now *at* rogerdennis.com)

Davison Creators has just published an interview I did with them.  There were some interesting questions, and you can catch the full blurb here.

The company itself has a fascinating 20 year track record of commercialising ideas, and if you have the time, you can dig around the Davison web site where there are some relevant case studies.

From the Dec/Jan 09 issue of Fast Company magazine comes a great article about Cisco.  Several paragraphs of note including:

Get ready for the upturn. “What’s our vision for where this industry is going with or without us?” That, [CEO John Cambers] says, is a five-year horizon. “What is our differentiated strategy within that vision?” That’s a two- to four-year plan. “How are we going to execute in the next 12 to 18 months?”

Chambers is convinced that the role of the CEO has to morph. He recalls a lesson he learned working for An Wang of Wang Laboratories, whom he has often called one of the smartest people he’s ever known: “One person cannot anticipate a market transition. At Wang, we transitioned four times, but we missed the fifth, from mini computers to PC and software. If you don’t catch them [all], you leave your company behind.”

It is Ron Ricci’s (Cisco VP) job to translate Chambers’s ideas into action — as he puts it, “I’m John’s scaling machine” — and he was the chief architect with Chambers of the new quasi-socialist Cisco. They were inspired in part, Ricci says, by management guru Gary Hamel’s ideas about the need to democratize strategy and distribute leadership in order to stimulate innovation.

Full article here.