Beautifully written, but you actually outline how foresight professionals have been working... or at least tried to work for decades. I think you'll have a hard time finding a futurist who claims to 'predict the future' or who will say the future isn't plural. The real struggle is what you also point to; the power and politics dynamic and when foresight becomes just another exercise during strategy season, rather than a real exploration of possibilities. I have so many times dealt with clients who hired us to confirm their assumptions about the future and got frustrated when we didn't. Anyway, I don't know if you read how they originally used Scenario Planning at Shell in the 70s. In fact I you haven't read it, I'd highly recommend Pierre Wack's article about how they developed scenario planning, in Harvard Business Review from 1985. It's called 'Uncharted Waters Ahead', and that is not the only echo over time to resonate with your current piece. https://hbr.org/1985/09/scenarios-uncharted-waters-ahead
Anyway, as always... thank you for writing so clear and succinct. Inspiring as always.
Agree, really love the breadth of thinking and the quality of writing Zoe. Thank you for the reminder of the Royal Dutch Shell scenario planning article Cassandra's wastebasket - very useful. This all made me think of a short story I read years ago - The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges - foreshadowed the science of quantum mechanics, entanglement etc by c 40 years. I was in quite deep for a few years in Danah Zohar's world of spiritual intelligence (aka transformational intelligence) and the application of quantum physics to leadership. She went on to be "Entrepreneur in Residence" at Haier - I spent some time with the Haier exec team. Anyway worth diving into, if not slightly bonkers, but very relevant for now.
This feels like the middle ground I’ve been looking for off the doomsday vs same same mindset that everyone is arguing about (reminds me of the nature / nurture debate, or the “brand vs performance marketing- the answer is both / the middle).
A post I read yesterday talked about the dot com boom, and all it did was make people work in slightly different ways, and what you’re talking about is strategy / insight / foresight evolution inside an organisation. Not revolution. Not staying the same. Structural change that we’ll look back on in 10 years and say “can you believe that’s how we used to work!?”
But who are the people / companies doing the digital twin work!??! I wanna work with them!!!
Beautifully written, but you actually outline how foresight professionals have been working... or at least tried to work for decades. I think you'll have a hard time finding a futurist who claims to 'predict the future' or who will say the future isn't plural. The real struggle is what you also point to; the power and politics dynamic and when foresight becomes just another exercise during strategy season, rather than a real exploration of possibilities. I have so many times dealt with clients who hired us to confirm their assumptions about the future and got frustrated when we didn't. Anyway, I don't know if you read how they originally used Scenario Planning at Shell in the 70s. In fact I you haven't read it, I'd highly recommend Pierre Wack's article about how they developed scenario planning, in Harvard Business Review from 1985. It's called 'Uncharted Waters Ahead', and that is not the only echo over time to resonate with your current piece. https://hbr.org/1985/09/scenarios-uncharted-waters-ahead
Anyway, as always... thank you for writing so clear and succinct. Inspiring as always.
Agree, really love the breadth of thinking and the quality of writing Zoe. Thank you for the reminder of the Royal Dutch Shell scenario planning article Cassandra's wastebasket - very useful. This all made me think of a short story I read years ago - The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges - foreshadowed the science of quantum mechanics, entanglement etc by c 40 years. I was in quite deep for a few years in Danah Zohar's world of spiritual intelligence (aka transformational intelligence) and the application of quantum physics to leadership. She went on to be "Entrepreneur in Residence" at Haier - I spent some time with the Haier exec team. Anyway worth diving into, if not slightly bonkers, but very relevant for now.
So excited for the third in the series.
This feels like the middle ground I’ve been looking for off the doomsday vs same same mindset that everyone is arguing about (reminds me of the nature / nurture debate, or the “brand vs performance marketing- the answer is both / the middle).
A post I read yesterday talked about the dot com boom, and all it did was make people work in slightly different ways, and what you’re talking about is strategy / insight / foresight evolution inside an organisation. Not revolution. Not staying the same. Structural change that we’ll look back on in 10 years and say “can you believe that’s how we used to work!?”
But who are the people / companies doing the digital twin work!??! I wanna work with them!!!