Category / Futures Thinking

by Roger Dennis

Dow Corning link foresight to innovation (McKinsey Quarterly)

Over the last few years Dow Corning has made a significant push in innovation to strengthen its growth momentum.  The CEO and CTO were interviewed by McKinsey and discussed how the organisation links foresight to innovation:

We are on the lookout for developments that are truly going to be disruptive and try to tie ourselves to them. We constantly challenge ourselves and refresh that list of the large trends that we should be looking at, and then we ask, how can silicon-based materials provide a solution?

Stephanie Burns (CEO): What we’ve been doing over the past four years is to take these megatrends and apply filters that narrow them down to what really could be the opportunity, and identify how best our technology and competencies match that. We’re not just saying there’s a wonderful megatrend out there in the demographic of an aging population and we’re going to invest all our projects against it, but instead, we’re defining where the opportunities are for Dow Corning. We’ve been improving that process and have started to integrate it across the company.

McKinsey: How does the process work?

Gregg Zank (CTO): Our underlying challenge was to improve the way we develop a raw idea into something tangible. The approach we now use is to work very intensively for a highly compressed period of time—10 to 12 weeks. We will take something as large as the societal impact of an aging population and distill that down with numerous interviews outside the company. We dedicate a group of employees around the world to undertake a lot of strategic marketing—both technical people, who are in my opinion very good early-stage strategic marketers because they ask a lot of difficult questions, and commercial folks. Then we have weekly meetings to say, what have we learned about this area? It’s got to be a large opportunity, it’s got to get marketplace acceptance within a certain time frame, and it’s got to be something that is not incremental to what we are already doing. We assess the applicability of our scientific tool kit against the opportunity and create an early proposal.

via Innovation in chemicals: Dow Corning’s CEO & CTO – McKinsey Quarterly – Energy, Resources, Materials – Chemicals.

by Roger Dennis

Rebuilding a city

You may have heard recently that my home town had a devastating earthquake.  The CBD suffered badly with large scale destruction and many deaths.  It is tragic. As you might appreciate my mind is elsewhere at the moment, and I’ll not be blogging for a while.

I did however discuss the long term plan for rebuild on New Zealand’s National Radio programme on Saturday.  You can hear the interview here (MP3)

by Roger Dennis

Things That Should Have Happened By 2011

A lovely post examining predictions that were made about what the technology world should look like in 2011:

When I started to look at predictions for a living back in 2006, I remember how 2011 was this big banner year against which most forecasts were made. I guess partly it was because 2011 was at the end of a five-year horizon, and partly because it was conveniently removed into the next decade. Whatever the reason, I’ve been patiently waiting for this year to arrive to check back on some of the more feisty predictions made in the outset of the 2.0 boom. And now this time has come.

Some of the stuff below has worked out remarkably — surprisingly — well, such as the prediction from Hitachi about commercial availability of mind-machine interfaces (check!). Other stuff — not so much: podcast audience was expected to skyrocket from 11.3% in 2006 to 51.1% in 2010 (eMarketer #084888), but it didn’t, lingering instead at 12% by December 2010 (eMarketer #123668).


Above is Gartner’s Hype Cycle chart for 2006; you will love how tablet PCs sit at the bottom of the trough of disillusionment.

via Advertising Lab: Things That Should Have Happened By 2011.

by Roger Dennis

Future Agenda launch (The Guardian coverage)

The launch of Future Agenda as reported by The Guardian:

The crowd of business leaders, media and government officials has gathered for the launch of a report called Future Agenda: The World in 2020. Commissioned by Vodafone, Future Agenda claims to be the world’s largest “open foresight project”: an exercise in future-gazing involving 2,000 global participants, including the British Council, Google, Shell, PepsiCo and academics, with the aim of “analysing the crucial themes of the next 10 years”.

via The population explosion | World news | The Guardian.

by Roger Dennis

Future Agenda book released (video of key findings)

Over the last 18 months I’ve been working with Tim Jones and a few other key individuals on the Future Agenda programme. It’s the world’s largest foresight programme (with over fifty workshops around the world) and possibly the first open source programme.

It picks up from the work we did for Shell in 2007 on the GameChanger Technology Futures programme.

The book pulls together the key findings from the programe and has just been released. Tim was on CNBC last week discussing some of the trends as we look out to 2020:

by Roger Dennis

Future Agenda – CNBC coverage

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…

by Roger Dennis

Future Agenda now live

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.

by Roger Dennis

Prediction Markets and Foresight

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.

by Roger Dennis

The most appropriately named ship in the world

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.

by Roger Dennis

Foresight in the 1600s

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.