Category: strategy

IMAJINE: Visions of the Rural in a Globalised World

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In the latest response to the IMAJINE scenarios for the future of European inequality, Professor Esther Peeren of the University of Amsterdam explores the representation of the rural in each scenario, relating these visions back to concerns and challenges in the present day.

Drawing on Donna Haraway’s work, she reminds us that, “Rather than seeking to predict the future or escape from the present, these are ways of ‘staying with the trouble’ in the present, for the future.”

Esther highlights “the dangers inherent to the fantasy of the rural idyll as an isolated paradise shaped by a homogenous community, as well as underlining that such isolated worlds are not exclusive to the rural but may also exist in urban areas and online”; and she reminds us that even when the urban-rural divide seems to be overcome, its inequalities can be displaced “to the global and even interplanetary scale”.

Find Esther Peeren’s response to the IMAJINE scenarios here.

The full IMAJINE scenario set can be found here.

The RURALIMAGINATIONS project “Imagining the Rural in a Globalised World”, which Esther heads, can be found here.

Green, Digital, Inclusive, and Fair: IMAJINE at the 3rd Joint EU Cohesion Policy Conference

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This coming week sees the Third Joint EU Cohesion Policy Conference, “Green, Digital, Inclusive, and Fair: How Can Cohesion Policy Rise To The New Territorial Challenges?”

Professor Michael Woods, principal investigator of the IMAJINE project, will present a paper on “Spatial Justice and Territorial Cohesion in Europe: Scenarios for 2050“, exploring the implications of IMAJINE’s scenarios for European regional inequality.

You can find the full scenario document online as a PDF document, or watch a short summary on YouTube.

See more about the conference and sign up for virtual attendance here.

Preservation for All: Whose Future?

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“We need to meet this inflection point with a more expansive imagination of what conservation work could be…The tools of the conservator can remind us of the fundamental human need for creativity, most especially under difficult or dehumanising conditions.”

In this short video for America’s National Gallery of Art, Sanchita Balachandran of The Johns Hopkins University speaks about “preservation for all” and strategising under TUNA conditions of turbulence, uncertainty, novelty, and ambiguity.

Chessboard Interrobang / Burden of Dreams

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At a recent event, I was allowed just one slide to present an approach to strategic foresight.

Here it is:

Chessboard by Marco Verch CC-BY 2.0 – Interrobang logo from the State Library of New South Wales, Australia

On the left is a chessboard, the setting for a game where all the moves are knowable in advance, and the winning and losing conditions clearly defined. It’s just a matter of which piece goes where and when within the constraints of the rules. (Not that it makes chess easy!).

On the right is an interrobang, an unusual punctuation mark which is intended for use at the end of an exclamatory rhetorical question: Are you out of your mind!? Is this for real!?

To me, the point of manufacturing plausible futures when doing strategy work is more about the right hand side of the image than the left.

It’s not about identifying all the contingencies, or modelling all the ways you think the action could play out according to today’s rules.

It’s about showing you something which usefully pushes the bounds of what you believe is plausible; which uncovers issues previously unseen from your standpoint in the present, and makes you question yourself.

Read more →

Scenarios for the future of civil protection in Germany

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I served as an expert respondent on the pro bono scenarios for the future of civil protection in Germany created by the team at CapGemini Invent.

German speakers (or those of you possessed of a decent machine translation option) can read more about the Katastrophenschutz 2035 scenarios here.

IMAJINE: Behavioural insights and interventions with Stefan Kaufman

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A.I. that is better at exploiting behavioural science than humans are; transformations in land management that enhance the value and sustainability of natural resources; defence of “cognitive sovereignty” in a world of dark patterns and malevolent nudges; the weaponisation of behavioural insights in the service of “socio-technical Darwinism”…

A new response to the IMAJINE scenarios for European spatial justice from BehaviourWorks Australia’s Stefan Kaufman offers a foresight perspective on behavioural science, insights, and interventions in the Europe of 2048.

PUSH SUMMIT Podcast with Rowan Drury, Malin Leth, Anders Mildner

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Altitude Meetings’ PUSH Summit on climate and democracy is currently taking place in the Swedish city of Malmö and online.

I joined sustainability consultant Rowan Drury, Malin Leth from Håll Sverige Rent – the Keep Sweden Tidy organisation, and Altitude’s own Anders Mildner to discuss issues of system change, futures thinking, strategy, and sustainability.

You can listen to the half-hour podcast here and watch my short online presentation to PUSH SUMMIT here.

TAFTIE x IMAJINE: Scenarios, productivity, and innovation policy

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For the Asian Productivity Organization, Alex Glennie of the Innovation Growth Lab discussed the role of innovation agencies in Europe.

Alex’s presentation drew on the collaboration between the TAFTIE network of innovation agencies and the IMAJINE project looking at the future of European regional inequality.

You can watch Alex’s presentation on YouTube, and read more about “TAFTIE x IMAJINE” at the website of the OECD’s Observatory of Public Sector Innovation.

Tomorrow’s Inequalities: Discussion with Mattia Vettorello

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The designer and foresight practitioner Mattia Vettorello generously allowed me to join him for the final instalment of his podcast The Briefing Today.

During the episode, we talked about questions of foresight, changing social values, inequality, and injustice, using the IMAJINE scenarios as a case study.

You can hear previous instalments of the 22-episode series at Mattia’s website.

Time to ask some magical questions? Exploring the future of Europe’s innovation agencies

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Over at the blog of OPSI, the OECD’s Observatory for Public Sector Innovation, Alex Glennie of Innovation Growth Lab, Marie Mahon of NUI Galway, and I have written about our work using the IMAJINE scenarios with TAFTIE, the European network of innovation agencies.

At the OPSI website, you can read our discussion of what happened when we used IMAJINE’s four visions of Europe in 2048 to help innovation agencies ask ‘magical questions’ about what lies ahead and the implications for innovation strategy & policy today.