Quick Stakeholder Forecasting

Of the many conversations I had yesterday, all of which were quite useful, one was particularly productive with regard to the Infinite Economy.  One of the things to emerge from this particular conversation was a conceptual tool for some quick forecasting.

What you see often in the media, and what most of us are guilty of on a regular basis, is extrapolating the development of a technology or issue with all other things remaining equal.  This is, as I've mentioned previously, a natural but uncritical method of forecasting.  Nothing, in fact, exists in isolation, and most phenomena in which we are interested in fact co-evolve with a great many other phenomena.

But as we were discussing this truth yesterday in the context of forecasting elements of the Infinite Economy (and props to Mr. +Dominic Muren for helping shape said conversation and all of our resulting conclusions), we began applying some structure to our conversation and came up with method/heuristic for quickly challenging our forecast.  In fact, this method looks promising as a simple tool for groups to produce forecasts within larger processes (e.g. scenario planning).

Essentially, this is a heuristic that runs through a set of common stakeholders to either produce a forecast or modify (test) a forecast that someone is suggesting.  The stakeholders we identified include:

1. Physicist
2. Engineer
3. Lawyer
4. Business person/investor
5. Cultural anthropologist/ethnographer

So, given a forecast that someone has suggested (and let's think about a technological forecast for this, just for ease of imagining), we would:

First, consider whether or not a physicist would say that the suggested forecast is prohibited according to our current understanding of the laws of physics/the universe.

Second, given a physicist saying that it's possible, we consider whether or not an engineer could identify current or experimental tools/process to make the forecast real.

Third, given an engineer saying that they could imagine how the developments would be produced, we would consider what a lawyer would see in terms of enabling/constraining laws and how laws might be used in support of or reaction to the developments being forecast.

Fourth, given the lawyer's comments on the broader societal reactions and how that might affect a development pathway, consider what a business person or investor would say about pursuing the developments in the forecast.

And finally, given what results so far, what would a cultural anthropologist say about how the suggested developments would or would not fit within people's lives.

As I said, a quick tool, but one that I think could be very useful for wind tunneling or stress testing (or at least assumption-testing) many of the extrapolative forecasts that people produce everyday.

Hawai'i: Choose your own scenario

Do you believe, like good ‘ole Thomas Hobbes, that people are inherently nasty and evil?  Or do you get all warm and fuzzy thinking about the good deeds that spring unbidden from the minds and hands of humans everywhere?

Beliefs like these are critical to how you perceive the future, and they color every judgment about goals, policy, and strategy that you make.  The four scenarios below, all dealing with the future of Hawai‘i, show how different beliefs about how the world works, from theories about the economy to beliefs about human nature, interact to suggest very different futures for our lovely state.

What do you believe?

Two Axes: Two Spectrums of Theories

Using the well-known “2x2 matrix” process of building scenarios popularized by the Global Business Network, the following four scenarios emerge from a 2x2 matrix formed by crossing two spectrums of beliefs about how certain things in life work.

Economic Change: Do you believe that our current economic and employment malaise will end naturally (it’s just a cycle, silly), or do you think something deeper is going on that’s permanently changing the nature of work and productivity?

Human Nature: will physical tribalism (ethnic and cultural associations) always win out in a contest of identities, or can ideational tribalism (identities based on other common values and interests) take root and trump facial features and living next to each other?

By Gradual Turns (Cyclical Economy + Ideational Tribalism)

The clear and unambiguous signs of energy insecurity and natural resource constraints drive residents of Hawai‘i to gradually form a common set of concerns and a clear sense of “being in it together.”  A rise in fairly traditional, but refreshingly cooperative, politics leads to a surprisingly coherent consensus on Hawai‘i’s best pathways to more energy and food security, a consensus that leads to a common vision for the first time in recent memory.  Rallying around this clear and common vision, community leaders and policy makers pressure business leaders into gradually overhauling Hawai‘i’s industries toward both more sustainability and more community-sensitivity.  The coincident upward turn of the economy, following its cyclical path out of the downswing, provides more resources and “breathing room” for business to buy into these changes, while providing law makers with a broader budget to create state-wide incentives.  In this emerging period of plenty, and building on the common vision that people hold, frank but positive discussions between all sectors of Hawai‘i lead to far-reaching changes in how people are educated and in how businesses are allowed to operate.

Harmonious Dislocation (Structural Economic Shifts + Ideational Tribalism)

Government work, long characterized by an ever-growing administrative bureaucracy, is squeezed between the slow advance of automation on the one hand and shrinking public budgets on the other.  This hollowing out of government employment sparks a crisis of economic confidence as labor unions attempt to rally public support for government workers by raising the specter of mass unemployment.  Instead of mass panic, the PR campaign instead triggers a widespread questioning of the future of employment in Hawai‘i.  Starting with a series of new organized labor agreements, an emergent “New Work” movement leads to an unprecedented renegotiation of social contracts between lawmakers, business, and citizens, redistributing technology-driven productivity gains to offset the fewer hours and lower earnings of many workers, redefining employment standards, taxation, and citizen benefits in the process.  Increasingly freed from “wage-work”, people explore other productive activities, giving rise to non-money forms of economics, a proliferation of arts, community, and culture, and ultimately leading to very different economic lifestyles among different types of workers within the state.  For a decreasing percentage of the population, those employed full-time, life continues to revolve around the ever-increasing competitive demands of office and shop.  For the rest, life is becoming more social.  Hawai‘i’s schools begin to evolve away from each other, specializing in very different types of preparation and providing increasingly distinct pathways to these different economic lifestyles.

Waiting it Out (Cyclical Economy + Physical Tribalism)

Given enough time, the economy pulls itself out of the doldrums and growth returns.  As tourism dollars flow in and government budgets slowly fill out, organizations once again begin to hire, creating an irresistible pull for a workforce long starved for opportunity.  The faith of lawmakers and business leaders in Hawai‘i’s mainstay industries is rewarded and a return to policy-as-usual is welcomed with quiet, relieved sighs in koa-paneled boardrooms across the state.  Without significant change in the state’s economy or industry makeup, patterns of socio-economic distribution continue to be shaped by educational experience and broad cultural affiliations, each reinforced now by the steady drivers of immigration from the Pacific and in-migration from the mainland.  The socio-economic-ethnic lines, long perceived but rarely discussed, harden as economic trends and roles become more firmly entrenched.  As the economy slowly cycles through its ups and downs the best predictors of employment and professional status remain cultural and ethnic identity.

Chasing Growth (Structural Economic Shifts + Physical Tribalism)

After years of ineffectual employment growth strategies for the local economy, policy makers finally accept that “the jobs just aren’t coming back.”  Even as state GDP rises, job demand continues to fall behind productivity and growth, presenting a growing state population with fewer viable employment options.  As competition for jobs intensifies, the unemployment rolls expand, and the population continues to grow, a variety of reactions emerge, in particular a rising anti-immigrant/in-migrant sentiment.  Underground “hire kama‘āina” campaigns proliferate across social networks and many organizations adopt requirements that job applicants demonstrate local “cultural competence.”  But as the economic data gets analyzed, experts find that certain sectors have remained largely untouched by either automation (job loss) or significant productivity gains.  In a flash, law makers start dropping sound bites about Hawai‘i’s future being in “difficult-to-automate” (DTA) jobs, leading local pundits to talk about the “Hands-On Economy,” referring to jobs that require the combination of human problem solving with high dexterity and mobility.  Politicians introduce bills to redefine the service economy into a Hands-On Economy, while labor unions quickly begin calling for recognition and protections for the “vital” DTA jobs their members perform.  Many (but not all) health care workers, mechanics, home repair professionals, construction workers, and small scale farmers all see a boost in their prospects and morale, while those seeking work scramble into the DTA sectors and the educational establishment begins its slow, painful turn to supporting these career paths.

 

Anticipating Economic Change

The Free exchange blog on The Economist recently had the post "The illusion of stasis." commenting on techno-pessimism in other recent writing.  Largely about anticipating the extent or pace of economic transformation, the piece responds to skeptics who, for instance, do not believe that technologies like 3D printing or self-driving cars will be economic game changers.

I'm a big fan of co-evolutionary theories of change, which is why the issue of the co-evolutionary development of a broad landscape of issues lies at the heart of my Infinite Economy concept.  And for that reason I both appreciate and basically agree with the Free exchange author's critique of the current spate of techno-pessimism.  As they say in the post,

In general, a very good way to underestimate the potential impact of a new innovation is to consider its possible contributions all other things equal, that is, assuming that nothing in the economy changes to accommodate or complement the new discovery.

And this is where I have considerable empathy for all those currently looking at digital fabrication (most specifically, 3D printing of plastic) and concluding that most of the excited visions of the future built on extrapolating a future of MakerBot-type appliances are unrealistic hype. The history of economic and technological evolution and revolution shows that concepts and things are involved in oft times intricate interactions with infrastructure, other technologies, social biases, regulatory regimes, and structures like financing regimes. And the essence of co-evolution is that they continually impact each other.

Especially in a globalized, highly interconnected and interdependent world, single-issue or single-technology extrapolation is as bad as single point forecasting.

The Infinite Economy from Richard Lum

Conflicts in Hawai'i: Looking Forward

This is basically a re-post from a year ago, but it's that time of year for prognostication and we feel that the tensions outlined here are still relevant and under-discussed in polite company.  Happy New Year!

"The arrival of a new year inevitably brings the usual raft of predictions and Top 10 lists from media outlets attempting to frame the challenges of the coming year.  As professional futurists, our training is less in making point forecasts for a 12-month period and more about developing a broader and deeper context for change.  Having said that, we can still offer a forecast concerning the social, economic, and political contexts that will be evident in 2012 but which will gain in importance in the coming years.
The following are five key “tensions” that are already evident in Hawai‘i, and which are likely to become more apparent as the current decade unfolds.  Each of these represents differences in values and worldviews that, while often unspoken or unexamined, point to the deeper tensions at work beneath the surface of many community and policy issues we face today.  As always, understanding the deeper motives and differences that exist among us is key to developing truly effective and beneficial strategies.

Generations in Transition: There are now three generations firmly entrenched in the workplace and increasing issues in institutional leadership with the Reluctant-To-Step-Back Boomers, the many Yet-To-Succeed-To-Power Generation X’ers, and the Much-Hyped Millennials.  Many Boomers are not happy with the state of things as they near the latter years of their careers and are not willing to “go quietly into the night.”  GenX has largely been raised to expect somewhat conventional roles and routes to responsibility but have often not been groomed for succession and now wait for their Boomer predecessors.  The Millennials variously expect to have equal voice and recognition as soon as they are invited into the room or are simply charting their own course outside and around the traditional institutions and roles.

Education vs. Training: A key tension that becomes evident in explorations of education in Hawai‘i is the growing divergence between those who believe formal education should be geared toward getting students into college versus those who specifically do not want education to have “college prep” as a formal goal.  From classrooms to boardrooms, there are strong, and growing, differences in people’s beliefs about the formal goals of our education system related in no small part to the social priorities of individuals and communities, expectations about the future of the economy, and differences in the agendas of business, government, and “community.”

Public vs. Community: In many aspects of society today there is a growing disconnect between that which is “public” and that which is “community.”  In the age of the nation-state, “public,” encompassing all citizens of society, was the baseline against which everything was measured or for which things were planned.  Today, in areas stretching from education to economics, there are increasing examples of people defining their interests specifically in terms of community, and sometimes explicitly against the public.  Technology is likely to continue to accelerate this philosophical divergence, allowing communities to act and organize within or without the public or the state.

Widening Cultural Divides: Coming out of the 1970s, people talked about and debated “local” Hawai‘i culture.  Today, the signs point to the continued splintering and hardening of local identities and loyalties, widening cultural cleavages that may have always been present but which we may have not recognized.  We see, and expect to continue seeing, increasingly explicit differences in the cultural outlook and social goals of various Native Hawaiian communities, fragmenting “local” ethnic populations, and the growing populations of in-migrants and recent immigrants.  While cultural “balkanization” need not lead to overt conflict or crisis, cultural differences between groups are important to explore when attempting to craft policy or strategy that impacts society at large.

Diverging Economic Worldviews: There is a growing misalignment between the “economic worldviews” of various groups within the United States and within Hawai‘i.  There are those at the far edge of current thinking, advocating an increasing localization of production and consumption and often intensely interested in disconnecting from the global money economy and seeking various forms of self-reliant and non-money trade economies.  Others see the system-wide redress of the current glaring economic disparities as fundamental to any hope for continued social stability or prosperity, and often identify “big business” and neo-liberal economics as both key symptoms and causes.  Finally, there remain those who seek and/or expect a “natural” rebalancing and recovery of the economic rule set that dominated society coming out of the 1990s and early 2000s.  While those falling in the last group retain the key positions of influence in education, business, and policy, today’s global economic situation is driving those in the former groups to explore and expand their respective worldviews, enabled in no small part through technology and shifting social consciousness."