Moving this blog to a new address
I have moved my blog to www.dominiquejaurola.com
This address has my blogs up to Feb 2009.
Once I got caught…..@ TED2009
My story on TED2009 [technology, entertainment and design] aims to give you a sense of what it feels like to be there. Some of this may seem like an insider story for those who did go and I apologise for that.
For 3.5 days we watched, heard, tasted [those who got the bread and all of us with the Vosges chocolates] and felt many wonderful performances which went well beyond speaking. That chocolate with beer was such a novel taste!
As is now becoming a tradition @TED satellite event we started, carried on and finished on a funny note – thanks to Rives and Kelly and a team of comedians. TEDsters – us community members in attendance – were invited in the beginning to get on stage to get the interactive thing happening. The deal was that we had 30 seconds to tell the audience a story around “Once I got caught….”.
My story was about how I am passionate about understanding what makes us tick and I have now made it my business – Hunome [not yet launched] – to improve that understanding for many; how it is exciting to gain insights to what we are, who we are, why we are – naturally TED is a wonderful home away from home for me on these topics. I then moved on to talk about a milestone in my life that probably has something to do with me wanting to know more about us humans….. I…. once…. got caught…. peering into my parents bedroom……..when they were at it ……………and it was not the missionary —-
All you Pop Psychologists trying to analyse – I was old enough to 1/ know better than to barge in and 2/ not be forever scarred or whatever.
I’ve got a great mum, she laughed when she heard what I had revealed and dad is no longer in any position….to protest. And you know what, it was a good one as the story scored me a spot in the TED finale skit from Palm Springs – one of the AskANinja.com guys mysteriously whispered into my ear the code word Mr Pink…..and that was my entry to some FUN participation.
Nothing much is out of bounds @TED, which is why it is a wonderful place to have a conversation about anything with anyone attending. Despite the occasional disagreements between speakers or audience members – all can be discussed and it would seem to me that views are not held doggedly, or on second thought a few are but that’s ok too. Is this because TEDsters tend to come from a point of emotion and rationale and hence often deep understanding and focus in their fields of endeavour or a verocious curiosity and yearning to learn? Feed me feed me! Amazingly this sense of recognition among the participants extended to rather private conversations about life situations and the like. Fascinating.
This was my second TED. It was different in that this time I knew a number of people already, I knew some basics about how the whole thing works, I could prepare myself beforehand with more ease and TED had thought of ways to assist us get launched into it also. Hmmm the name TED seems to take an embodiment when I say that doesn’t it. I’d say my system was working at a calmer level than last year. Despite the 10.30pm rehearsals for the skit I still got to meet about 10% of the people in Palm Springs whom I had not met before.
Feelings are my filter to make sense of what happened, what impact the performances had on me. The toughest question posed was which one did you like the best? Oh come on how can I possibly distinguish between Elizabeth Gilbert [writer] and Willie Smits [eco revitaliser] and Jamie Cullum [jazz revitaliser], all of whom made me smile – that deep aaaaah smile.
Delight
Artists are so good at leveraging some of the trance inducing language. I was mesmerised by the sculpture world of Olafur Eliasson – “we look at something and our brain is talking back”, “the viewer co-produces and becomes the author, taking responsibility for what we see”, “the waterfall as a means to measure space, giving a city a sense of space and making that space accessible”.
Dan Ariely is a behavioural economist. I met Dan before and loved his talk then and loved this one too. It is not just what he talks about, in this case how we all tend to lie a little as shown through his studies but also how, with humour, he delivers his message. Thanks Dan!
Maestro Jose Antonio Abreu, for El Sistema, is one of the TED Prize winners. He has worked for years on building means to help poor children through music. Around Venezuela he has saved many lives from drugs and misery through his youth orchestras. These kids play wonderfully and the delivery is a joy to watch as the rhythm of the music is infused into the choreography of the players while they play, for some of the pieces. He is looking for assistance to spread the ’system’ around the world.
Writer Elizabeth Gilbert is one of the popular speakers @ TED2009. She spoke to us about the poem that chased the poet who was not quite ready, to illustrate a disembodied genius rather than the genius we ‘are’ or might be, which puts such huge pressure on an artist/creative person that it kills. If we think of the creative spirit something which we welcome when we’re ready it takes some of that pain away. This was not a case of lazy artist waiting for inspiration, as Elizabeth told us she works hard at her art, but rather an artist who accepts that it takes more than hard work. This disembodied source allows us not to get cocky when success hits like for Elizabeth with her Eat, Pray, Love book and also it allows us to be comforted when things don’t go as expected. Keeps a good balance. Very helpful! You need to listen to it.
Enthusiasm
I just sang Happy Birthday to my brother-in-law, as I do. This time I had a special something to add to it, courtesy of Ben Zander who conducted us @TED to sing happy birthday to Ross – an audience member who got to sit in front of a few thousand people while we sang happy birthday, several times. We started off the usual way – barely uttering the words properly. As Ben told us we were crap we got better. And did it again and again. In the end we had a beaming Ross in front of us feeling the luuuuv. [NB In front = as in a screen from PS].
On the last day Kent of AskaNinja fame happened to mention that he needed to go as he had his birthday party to go to. In a matter of seconds we had the room full of TEDsters singing Happy Birthday to YOU, as one should. He beamed too!!!
Gratitude
I am younger than Bill Gates but what can one say but “I am proud of you” or something of that ilk. Here is a man who has had good advice and influencers and within himself has a good sense of meaning and understanding of what matters. So there he is in the early days of his second major contribution to the world. Most of us are happy to have our one living legacy come to fruition but this guy has two. Thank goodness though that I was at the satellite event – as there is nothing worse than trying to concentrate on something so important and be distracted by a mosquito buzzing, let alone being inoculated by one. [follow link provided to see what I mean]
Sadness
When we cannot agree [e.g. science is not 'done' on earth until we're finished] we really should err on the side of caution. No? Whether we’re talking about climate change [Al Gore update], ocean fish depletion [TED Prize winner Sylvia Earle] or poverty. We keep arguing about potentially devastating aspects of human existence. So if the climate change is part man made and part sun spots – just saying – wouldn’t it then be better to take action on the side that says let’s do what we can and enjoy the side benefits, like cleaner air to breathe or variety of fish harvested in a sustainable manner. But unfortunately often short termist excuses or agendas stop us.
Frustration
When one theory is discussed as the answer [ theory of everything included ] I see red. Perhaps this is back to the fact that we learn new things until our existence is finished. In this case it was a presentation on game theory, predictability and claims of success every time. That is not so bad as there is some history to the claims but when there is very little given of a broader context and when the terms predictable future = actionable future are linked in the way they were then I know a few people in this world who’d say come on guy, how about we discuss the other means for foresight too so that we don’t confuse people of the possibilities for dealing with our long term decision-making. To Bruce Bueno de Mesquita’s credit he did say that not everything is predictable, i.e. some things in this world can be set up for leveraging game theory to provide ‘answers’ or predictions, e.g. complex negotiations where stakeholders, positions, engagement level and focus of interest can be clearly laid out. What he did not say though is that there are many other ways to deal much better with the future than many do today. Talk to a professional/skilled futurist around you and you’ll find out more.
Hope
One man gave me more hope that all the other performances put together. That was Willie Smits, a conservationist, who over only a few years altered a whole ecosystem in the Indonesian Borneo. His knowledge of the intricate details, which go into making such a delicate shift happen was deeply felt. Not only did he do this to save his much loved orangutan population but also to make life better for people. He thought carefully about the win-win in the model that would work for all and how to get the engagement and support he needed. Why did this one give me so much hope? There were many other presentations which gave me hope like Bonnie Bassler on bacterial quorum sensing, i.e. bacterial communication which can lead to a novel approach to our resistance to antibiotics and also Shai Agassi with his matter of fact clear program to start transitioning countries to Green Auto. Perhaps the one thing that set Willie apart was the – done it, can be done anywhere, is an answer to the question posed by many and his delivery – so modest and passionate and sensitive to the needs of the community.
Despair
Thank goodness this event was not another woe me woe me we’re doomed event, although there was some urgency around environment and oceans. Davos was enough from what I hear.
That thing about whether we’d rather be pessimists or optimists in this situation and how it is the optimists who get things done. I think it was Craig Venter who said that. Smart man that Craig.
We heard from a military strategist P.W. Singer whose talk was on how to make war better for the soldier, i.e. increasing robotics and the like but what about how to get so clever that we avoid one in the first place?
I wouldn’t mind hearing some well put together alternatives for the broken economic system – no currency, what would that look like, could it work? [not just barter, something else]. Apparently we could end all poverty if we didn’t have our economic system – gosh – that sounds like a pretty good incentive. I know it is not so simple but hey, worth a dig. World currency – how would that work and what would need to change. Perhaps next year under the TED title “What the world needs now” besides smiles, me thinks, it is good for you …. and me.
Love
Besides all the wonderful people @ TED with whom one basks in some form of spiritual love for the potential of human kind, there were some performances around love or related topics.
Jill Sobule’s new CD ‘California Years’ will be released shortly. She sang some of those songs for us. Thanks Jill. Jill has such a wonderful observational skill on the human foibles around love. Love is wonderful and when taken with her humour even the painful aspects become bearable.
Sex
I could’ve spoken about Cindy in the segment on despair. Her experience of the ‘young talent show’ on sex has put her in a state of despair. But fear not, Cindy has decided to do something about her despair and she has founded the site makelovenotporn, which has as its aim to enlighten those who have grown up thinking that sex equals porn or the other way round. In fact this four letter word is popping everywhere.
In twitter after TED @TEDchris “Maybe this is our new mission statement. 
RT@jpsherman have you checked out www.ted.com? Porn for critical thinkers”.
Peter W. Singer was talking about bots at work in war, future of war and our relationship to war as a curious case of ‘war porn’. So if we take Cindy’s message to work on all these other places and ways in which the word is used…what does that give?
Mary Roach was hilarious in her delivery of ten things we may not know about orgasm. Things like we have them in utero, we don’t need genitals. One woman has them when she brushes her teeth and another thinks herself to orgasm, you can have them when you’re dead – huh?, orgasm can cause bad breath and cure hiccups…Then we saw a video of a pig farmer at work, artificially inseminating a sow as it so happens that the chance of conception increases if one – even a sow – has an orgasm. What we did not get to was woman or man first and does that matter, I vaguely remember something on that from when I was in that life stage and in the case of the sow it was a lot of ‘make believe’. I cannot possibly describe the video, suffice to say that it was ‘graphic’….
Beauty
Passionate people talking to other passionate people is a very attractive scene. TED provides much in the way of specifically influencing our sensibility to beauty in movement, in music, in achievement, in nature and in plain old human behaviour on stage and off stage.
Human mind is a wonderous world of beauty even when the source is hallucinations. Oliver Sacks spoke to us about an important syndrome, which is present for some hearing or visually impaired people. It is called the Charles Bonnet syndrome and causes visual hallucinations in 10% of visually impaired people and musical hallucinations in 10% of hearing impaired. The hallucinations take many forms depending on the impairement’s connection in the brain. The sad side of this story is that many who have these hallucinations are afraid of mentioning them for fear of being labeled loopy. “The theatre of the mind generated by the machinery of the brain”.
Surprise
I cannot believe how human robots look or can look now [ David Hanson short talk ]. These robots are conversational and can learn from interacting with humans and so in essence start developing a relationship. The Einstein looking emotion mirror on display in Long Beach was great fodder for the skit later.
Also I was surprised by the complex production of the lead character in Benjamin Button, wow. [ Ed Ulbrich ] The first hour of the movie is computer generated from the neck up. The effort that goes into something ground breaking like that is huge. For example one person focused on the eye system for 2 years. One person focused on the tongue for one year. This is in Ed’s words “The digital botox effect”. It took 155 people over 2 years to create a digital human, including the ticks and idiosyncrasies that make us who we are. And in the case of the digitised Benjamin Button it was a acted idiosyncrasies from Brad Pitt.
How about some kite generated power? [ Saul Griffith ].
Awe
“Naturally seven” is a human voice generated full on band. The seven guys do vocal play to create the instruments. The only way to really understand that this is the case is that they go through a fun process of turning each of the instruments and singers out one by one and back ‘on’ again. Truly awesome!
Herbie Hancock – you rock 
Jamie Cullum – “Imagine” – a new twist is forever possible with imagination, in this case for jazz.
When one is born without arms and one leg only half the length of the other would you suggest that this poses some limitations to the kinds of things one can do in this life and how one feels everyday? Well if you answer was anywhere near ‘ofcourse it does’ go talk to Lena Maria Klingvall a painter, a famous singer and an Olympic athlete. She smiles through her life. Do you?
Cool
JoAnn Kuchera-Morin from the University of California Santa Barbara introduced us to the ‘Allosphere’. They combine teams from arts, sciences, engineering and IT for creating a data immersion environment. Some of the goals are create an ‘Allobrain’ to quantify beauty [well well that'll be the day], research in to self-assembly and finally creating the “ultimate TED machine”, only a matter of time.
I am busting to get siftables from MIT. These are small screen blocks, which can be connected to create a full story. I have so many wonderful uses for those. Hurry up David Merrill!!
Margaret Wertheim, from Brisbane Australia, ‘the figurer’, showed us how she, her sister and a growing collective around the world are crocheting the coral reef. Margaret’s background is in science and she explained to us how crocheting is the only way to recreate the shape of a coral – in hyperbolic geometry. She enlightened us about the failings of the Euclidian mathematics, which this experiment would’ve shown but I guess one could say that helas the women were not in science at the time……
John LaGrou has worked for a number of years on an invention, which he unveiled not so long ago and got recognised with an Innovation award for it at CES. His innovation allows homes to be fitted or retrofitted with a system, which cuts off electricity if it detects overheating. This innovation can prevent 80% of residential fires as that is how many are electrical fires. It also allows businesses to turn off power centrally. Important and urgent!
Quotables – a few among many
“Make technology that makes people more human not less”, Randy Gleason
“Understand the detail the statistics give”, Hans Rosling – I am not a big fan of stats as often they are poorly put together and used but when they are used the way Hans Rosling does, now I am listening! He busted so many myths along the storyline of ‘Africa is like this…..’
“Optimism drives architecture forward, toward complete ecstasy” and “I don’t believe in the idea that simple is good, space is complex and cannot be reduced to the simplicity we tend to admire” and “human heart cannot be simulated”, Daniel Libeskind
“The fear laden approach to creativity has been killing artists” and “the maddening capriciousness of the creative process”, Elizabeth Gilbert
Thank you TED, until next time.
Foresight Identities – a journey of transformation
Just like we are different people to different people Foresight Identities are different approaches for different needs…
I gave a talk on Foresight Identities and my journey through them at the ‘Futures Hot House’ at AMP building in Sydney last week, thank you Janine and thank you audience for the wonderful questions.
The NINE different ‘Foresight Identities’ respond to different foresight needs. Their drivers are different and so are the ways in which the foresight pulls us in, transforms us or the groups or societies where the foresight is applied.
I will start with Intuited Foresight.
Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” eloquently describes how intuition works and how we use it all the time.
The need to measure and the idea that better decisions are ‘rational’ decisions have led to decision-making being equated to 1/ load me with facts 2/ show the many research studies to prove it 3/ show me where it worked before.
All of these are fine qualities for those who make decisions based what others do. As we have to make decisions with less historical facts, then we need to go with what it is that our gut is telling us about the situation. Is it aligned with what and who we are or want to be? Does it feel right? Does it look right? Can we hear the cheers? Is this what we want our future to be?
You may have read Jonah Lehrer’s book: “Proust was a neuroscientist”. In it Jonah Lehrer discusses how several artists in various fields intuited, understood, provided foresight for scientists to research and prove years later. As an example Walt Whitman, the American poet, had insights into the inseparable nature of mind and body. As Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist said: “The mind is embodied”.
Is everyone’s every intuition useful in a business setting or as source for serious consideration? No! What makes the difference? Let me put it this way. An artist whose life work centres around understanding something fundamental about how the world works and expressing it through their art is as valuable to human knowledge of its own condition as a scientist who designs research methods and comes out with results from the research.
The timing of artistic intuition is what makes this Foresight Identity fascinating in business when we wish to draw true insights for differentiated vision.
The next Foresight Identity is Experienced Foresight.
Around the world there are hot spots [and despite being a Finn I am not referring to a sauna], which are a hub of focus for something specific. That focus creates a buzz and competitive as well as supportive environment, which urges for excellence and going beyond. Bay Area, US for Net, Milan for fashion, Nordics for mobile, Renaissance Florence. ……
These hot spots tend to live a step or two ahead of the rest in terms of the behavioural and societal impacts of the focus. A matter of been there done that! You can take that a step further inside the businesses which are within the hot spot…..
William Gibson: “The future is already here it is just unevenly distributed”
We learn from different contexts which brings me to the next Foresight Identity which is Learned Foresight.
Eclectic reading, emulating our heroes or drawing from insights from scenarios are all examples of gaining foresight and inspiration in one’s own life.
These ‘book’ learners can be once removed from actually doing anything about it in a team, group, corporation, nation sense but they are a great source of inputs and insights on how the world works.
In Eric Hoffer’s words, “In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”
A means to put transformation into the hearts, minds and bodies of companies, nations and other groups of people is Internalised Foresight.
Have you ever lived through an experience, which made you look at the world differently and changed you? It perhaps made you change the friends you hang out with. Perhaps it made you take some uncharacteristic steps in relation to some relatives or a job.
I have lived through many such foresight programs where the story line, the narrative of the world brought new context and meaning and the priorities were reset.
There is one caveat in this. You don’t get this from sitting in a boardroom being TOLD in 20 minutes or less what the future looks like. In order for the re-wiring to occur you need to be part of the process.
This mode has great potential for business transformation as long as the executive play ball.
An example of this is Martin Luther King “I have a dream”.
Sometimes this can be one person’s quest or a few people’s quest for the ideal shape they believe everyone should take or have and yet sometimes that model is not liked or followed due to ideology differences, cultural differences or era issues.
This leads to our fifth Foresight Identity, which is Opinionated Foresight.
Nothing wrong with firmly held opinions. Often they are steeped in facts and figures, feelings and experiences, knowledge and understanding, but they just tend to have one significant issue, the opinion is not shared by others as it flies in the face of firmly held beliefs, facts, knowledge, understanding in the other camp. Sound familiar? What can you think of as having been like this lately? [Climate change, Mind/Body, Sexuality, Abortion, Political systems].
The – oh dear – part about Opinionated Foresight is that it might play out well or not and so there could be much to lose. The way to deal with this in business context is to look for the higher ground. Look for the purpose and try to find the common ground above the argument.
The good thing about Opinionated Foresight is that you tend to have very devoted champions behind the activity or movement.
Ideologies – isms – tend to be in this camp. They are not practical philosophies of ways to live life but rather they are often an idealist view to how the society should function, even an extreme view as against the current way. So we go with pendulum swing to antagonism and back again.
Our institutions are based on neatly articulated opinions and judgments of right and wrong. This model is the only way.
Personalised Foresight is a source of transformation for those who proactively seek change or who are imposed change through a crisis. It could also be a person on a mission, who knows exactly what they wish to be and do in life and who are out to make it happen, sending the messages to the universe about their dreams and hopes.
A change is fundamentally a personal matter. If we are not fired up and passionate about it, how hard do you think the change is going to be? Or how effective? This is where many transformation programs fail miserably.
You know how we say Einstein was very intelligent and we assume that was what made him figure out the theory of relativity. When you look at Einstein’s life he was utterly focused on one thing, light and its relationship with time, figuring it out. Wife/wives, family, how he dressed or even whether he’d combed his hair that morning were of no consequence. He had several suits of the same to avoid making wardrobe decisions when time was of the essence. ☺
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Howard Thurman [1899-1981, philosopher, educator, Boston uni, author]
Actualised Foresight is a source of transformation for those, people and companies, who have lived through change from inception to conception to implementation.
Those of us who have had a long career in corporate foresight have been privy to this Foresight Identity. Depending on how the company arranges its strategic foresight input versus taking action and measuring value and follow-through, the engagement may be more or less end-to-end.
The beauty of this identity is that it does not become a story on a shelf but a living and breathing thing, which continuously increases its depth and gathers its own history and understanding as well as holds the red thread from inputs to outputs.
An enlightened organization does not need to prove its foresight program. It knows that without it the company would not have the eyes necessary to be in charge, to lead its own destiny.
To me the most powerful foresight identity from a big picture point of view is Co-created Foresight Identity.
When an organization has created a view of the future they will invariably realise that in order to get there they need to take a number of stakeholders there with them.
Some of these stakeholders may have nothing to do with their current situation and hence there is some tilling the soil that is necessary well before any products/services/experiences/other are being considered.
When this happens right it is an amazing shift and it feels great as all obstacles are taken away.
“The best way to activate your future is to co-create it” [Dominique adjusted from Alan Kay’s quote “The best way to predict the future is to create it”
When things don’t go so well there is a need for something else and this brings us to our final Foresight Identity, which is called SISU Foresight.
SISU is a Finnish word, which means having guts, perseverance and dedication when faced with hurdles. So far I have struggled to find its exact translation in the English language but these words get me close enough.
SISU Foresight is a source of transformation when faced with a crisis either in personal life, in organisations or nations. SISU demands that we dig deeper within our selves to find the strength, to change the situation which carries within itself a gloomy outcome. It is about finding positives from foresight matched with SISU in the make up of the team going after the change or relief.
When you find such a team or such individuals who are capable and willing – hold onto them. These types may be a dying breed, other than in entrepreneurial settings.
Finns fought against Soviet Union in WWII and held back an attempt of invasion leveraging some smarts and lots of SISU. Holding back an army of 50 from Soviet Union to 1 Finn.
Steve Jobs at Apple. He had disagreements with the board and left Apple only to come back and deliver the goods. He may not recognise the word but if he had no SISU would the past allowed him to go back?
Just like with us humans who carry around several identities the Foresight Identities may be a feature of a broader program. Use identity 1 when it is ok not to dive into a truckload of facts and figures but rather to hear what the experienced gut tells the artist, designer, visionary. Use identity 9 when things are gloomy and ‘the rallying the troops’ approach may fall flat on its face – instead focus around some robust SISU individuals and teams.
These NINE Foresight Identities lead to different approaches in the way in which a Foresight program, facilitation, mentoring might unfold. They are different because the need for Foresight is different and the outputs expected as a result are different.
Vignette ‘how to’ on foresight – nay sayers and cynics
CONSULT UNUSUAL SOURCES, PEOPLE, AND PLACES–INCLUDING OUTLIERS, COMPLAINERS, AND TROUBLEMAKERS
One important function of strategic foresight is the opening of the future. The inclusion of different perspectives is one way to assure this opening. Analysts should look for competent people inside and outside who bring a different way of thinking to the table.
Key steps
The selection of these participants should be done with care. Not every unusual or non-obvious individual qualifies. In the first place, they should be selected based on their authority in a particular domain. They should not bring “just another perspective,” but a well-studied and well-articulated different view. The other participants should feel challenged by the ideas they bring in. This sense of challenge can result either from a deeper view of closely related subjects or from a subject that functions by analogy.
The world of business and decision-making favors the rational and bottom-line approach to gathering information. Prusak ( 1998 ) suggests that the higher up in the organization a presentation goes, the blander it becomes. Consulting unusual sources is a way to refresh the information flow by tapping into edgy or offbeat sources that challenge prevailing norms. In fact, many of today’s norms were yesterday’s novel and unusual ideas. The kinds of sources and approaches to look for and identify include:
• Sources at the edge of the organization–Find those in the organization who may be cynical or complaining, but have tried something different, and talk to them to see what they are thinking, reading, and doing.
• Sources outside the organization–Interview young people. Meet with teachers, designers, artists, economists, movers and shakers of the broader society. For example, observing and interviewing tribal elders has been used as a means of raising public interest in traditional storytelling.
• Sources inside and outside the industry–Interview leaders, regulators, politicians, activists, etc., and understand their motivations. Ask them who is doing the thinking at the leading edge.
The approaches for this activity will vary according to the analyst’s ability and willingness to invest time in it. One can go onsite and observe, interview, and then collate the learned insights into a meaningful output. It is helpful to have a partner to make sure all the insights are captured. It is not always easy to consult the outliers–they are typically in that position because they are not easy to deal with. Analysts may need to employ tact and diplomacy if they are to gain anything useful from these encounters.
Benefits
Much as yesterday’s fringe becomes tomorrow’s mainstream, an organization’s edge may someday become its center. Some industries, such telecommunications, transport, and retail, have gone through a dusk-and-dawn shift in the past ten years and are seeing their edges become mainstream while the tried-and-true formulas of the past crumble. Companies including Nokia, Sony, and Casio are redefining themselves and coming up with whole new ways of viewing the role of the industry in our everyday lives. They have incorporated their “edge” into their strategic and tactical behaviors.
Example
The World Water Vision exercise ( Cosgrove, 1998 ) is an example of a global strategic foresight program (1998 – 2000) that used outsiders’ perspectives to show the importance of using a wide scope to understand the world’s water challenges. To initiate several sub-exercises, expert panels were devised blending water and non-water experts. The panels discussed potential institutional shifts and developments in ICT, biotechnology, and energy–four topics very rarely considered among water professionals.
The panels were organized early in the process on a temporary basis of one or two days each. Their output, four small reports highlighting some major ideas, was fed into the overall exercise in order to serve two objectives. On the one hand, the reports made clear the relevance of the four non-water topics for water professionals. On the other, they showed the relevance of a long-term perspective, by elaborating future possibilities and potential long-term developments. As such, they helped to overcome initial skepticism about the value of using remarkable persons and strategic foresight to expand and extend the debate.
Further reading
Collins, J. and Porras, J. (1997). Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. New York: Harper Business.
Cosgrove, W.J. and Rijsberman, F.R. (2000) World Water Vision: Making Water Everybody’s Business. London: Earthscan/James & James.
Kleiner, A. (1996). The Age of Heretics. New York: Currency Doubleday.
Marsh, N., McAllum, M. and Purcell, D. (2002). Strategic Foresight: The Power of Standing in the Future. Melbourne: Crown Content.
Prusak, L., ed. (1997). Knowledge in Organizations. St. Louis, MO: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Steinbock, D. (2001). The Nokia Revolution: Success Factors of an Extraordinary Company. New York: AMACOM.
This vignette [1 of 6 I wrote] first appeared in “Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight”, edited by Andy Hines and Peter Bishop, published in 2006
Hunome – new venture
Shift from intrapreneur to entrepreneur – again
Once a change agent always a change agent. I had a good run with that at CSC and now it is time to pull all my paths together into Hunome, a business which has been brewing for a very long time. It combines my experiences and passions in developing novel approaches to understanding people, my mobile/cellular background over the last 15 years and my Internet biz and foresight expertise.
….and I am very excited about it….and a fantastic team has come together to take a journey with me.
stay tuned.
Vignette ‘how to’ on foresight – modules of goodness
MODULARIZE OUTCOMES–KEEP THE GOOD AND DEAL WITH THE BAD
Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is a self-defeating reaction to negative outcomes. Organizations need to think in degrees of gray. They require an ability to sort thinking into modules, and know what to keep, what to get rid off, and what to deal with immediately. For example, when a product is launched and fails, the organization should aim to understand the components of this failure. When the root causes of a failure, or a success, are understood, it becomes clear that what actually failed or succeeded were discrete elements of the process. This learning enables the organization to preserve and build on valuable information or experience–which is present even in a disastrous initiative–not throw it away because it was part of a larger failure.
Key steps
When assessing an activity, the first step is to identify and assess modules in the larger activity. What were the key elements or actions? Next, interview the decision-makers and other active participants representing each of the modules. The analyst can help build a constructive culture into the interview process by making clear how the information will be used going forward.
Next focus on the modules that appear to contain the issues, and build a deeper understanding of what actually happened. For example, was the market not mature enough? Were the technologies not mature enough? Which ones? Was this offering too much, too soon? Was the organization unprepared to support it? Was the ecosystem not ready for it?
Analysis of the interview results can be sorted into the “good” and “bad” modules, and communicated to the organization. Thus, the entire activity does not to be deemed a failure. Conversely, even successful activities will have their dysfunctional or “bad” elements that can provide opportunities for learning.
A better approach, of course, is to avoid getting into the situation in the first place through greater understanding of the market fundamentals of and organizational readiness. What is emerging in the organization’s external context? What is shifting in the ecosystem? How are technologies shifting? What else is changing? It is not as simple as knowing it all and hence making all the right decisions. It is more about knowing more, and hence making wiser decisions, about the key alternative directions possible and their potential outcomes.
Benefits
The benefit of “keeping the baby” is preserving the good and learning from the bad, which can help the organization gain benefits from good modules sooner than others do and avoid pitfalls that others may experience. The downside of not doing this well is that the repercussions tend to be huge. Misunderstandings abound, and people draw all kinds of wrong conclusions and use those in their decision-making, to the detriment of activities to come. The activity is forever viewed through a myopic lens of failure/success, which can kill benefits that would be clear to those with a broader outlook.
Example
An example is the Apple Newton. The Newton was a pioneer of the “do-it-all” personal digital assistant (PDA), and defined many aspects of future PDAs. Yet Apple stopped its production in 1998. Post-mortem, the market’s actions and numerous articles on the event suggested that Apple made a huge deal of the failure internally, burning many of the people involved. Once burned, twice shy: it became difficult for anyone at Apple to propose anything similar. The baby was tossed out with the bathwater!
What really happened? At Apple’s core is a simple premise of user-friendly products, quality design (technical and industrial), and good purchasing experience. What was lacking in the organization’s processes to enable it to understand the market better and handle the failure better? Judging by the “toss the baby out with the bathwater” framework, there was no module analysis designed to transparently keep the good from the experience and learn from the bad.
Now, the iPod brings new hope. The iPod represents many elements that could have been learned from the Newton project. Did Apple conclude that Newton was too much, too soon, not connected enough to the ecosystem providers, and based on immature technologies–and use that knowledge to strip the iPod down to a palm-size simple solution?
Further reading
Kahney, L. (2002, August 29). Apple’s Newton Just Won’t Drop. Wired.
Marsh, N., McAllum, M., and Purcell, D. (2002). Strategic Foresight: The Power of Standing in the Future. Melbourne: Crown Content.
This vignette [1 of 6 I wrote] first appeared in “Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight”, edited by Andy Hines and Peter Bishop, published in 2006
Vignette ‘how to’ on foresight – people knowledge central
MAKE THE SOCIOCULTURAL CONTEXT CENTRAL
Make the human context central to any strategic foresight activity. Do not be overly enamored with industry analysis, technology, or business trends and forget or overlook the role of people. Many activities produce impressive reams of data but haven’t thought through how the people affected would react or respond in the proposed future. Considering different sociocultural contexts can help the organization respond to a wider range of needs–be they demographic, sociological, ethnographic, physiological, psychological, etc.
Key steps
The analyst can help the organization see the importance of the sociocultural context and how it provides the baseline for understanding emerging needs and opportunities. Some leading organizations are forming Consumer or Customer Foresight/Insight programs. For example, Nokia has for about ten years been proactively using consumer foresight inputs in its development processes. These inputs are woven into the product development, design, and foresight/insight programs. This approach has been cited as one of the fundamental elements in Nokia’s improved position in the mobile phone market in the 1990s. (Steinbock, 2001)
Consumer-centered programs start with identifying trends in the cultural, sociological, psychological, ethnographic, and demographic arenas and exploring their implications for various organizational activities. In other cases, organizations hire firms to help them get a feel for what is going on, ranging from very deep explorations of the cultural context, using tools such as Integral Futures (Slaughter, 2003) or Causal Layered Analysis (Inayatullah, 2004), to the more surface-level approaches epitomized by “cool hunting.”
Several steps need to be followed in providing a cultural context for foresight work. A multidisciplinary “SWAT team” could be established with the skills to understand people, decision-making contexts, and the output context. The team collects trends either by searching themselves or working with one of the many capable brokers of trend information. Next, they analyze and prioritize the impacts of these trends. This information can then be communicated to the critical business processes where it is needed.
Benefits
Grounding the activity in an understanding of human behaviors and societal drivers is an underutilized approach. “Mainstream economics today views production as valuable primarily as a means to satisfy the needs and wants of consumers, but has taken a simple–some say, simplistic–approach to identifying those needs and wants.” (Goodwin, Ackerman, and Kiron, 1995, p. 31). Or as Farrell (1998, p. 14) suggests, “In business, waves of demand must be actively surfed, with an acute knowledge of whether the wave is building up or moving into churning, energy-wasting whitewater. The essence of a good ride is knowing when to get in and out and maximizing one’s advantage along the way.”
Understanding emerging needs as an element of the organization’s business system is crucial to right-timing its outputs and hence benefiting commercially. A challenge is that sociocultural inputs tend to be sourced with traditional market-research methods, which mostly highlight existing norms, values, and thoughts and overlook shifting contexts.
Example
The Beta vs. VHS competition among videotape manufacturers highlights the importance of correctly interpreting the sociocultural context. The Beta format focused on superior technical quality, while VHS focused on the usability of the technology in the broader context of the media industry and its customers. VHS won that battle. One fundamental problem with Beta was that it could not accommodate the length of a movie.
Another good example of inadequately considering sociocultural trends was the case of Nike and its production facilities in less-developed nations. After some of its contractors were found underpaying workers and using child labor, Nike suffered a media backlash and a slew of legal cases. The company’s phenomenal growth in profits in the late 1990s took a hard hit. Consumer backlashes can have devastating consequences, as Nike found.
Further reading
Beyer, H. and Holtzblatt, K. (1998). Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems. Oxford, UK: Morgan Kaufman.
Farrell, W. (1998). How Hits Happen. New York: HarperBusiness.
Goodwin, N., Ackerman, F., and Kiron, D. (1997). The Consumer Society. Chicago, IL: Island Press.
Inayatullah, S. (ed.). (2004). The Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) Reader: Theory and Case Studies of an Integrative and Transformative Methodology. Taipei: Tamkang University Press.
Marsh, N., McAllum, M., and Purcell, D. (2002). Strategic Foresight: The Power of Standing in the Future. Melbourne: Crown Content.
Slaughter, R. (2003). Integral Futures: A New Model for Futures Enquiry and Practice. In Futures beyond Dystopia: Creating Social Foresight. London: Routledge. (Available at www.foresightinternational.com.au)
Steinbock, D. (2001). The Nokia Revolution: Success Factors of an Extraordinary Company. New York: AMACOM.
This vignette first appeared in “Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight”, edited by Andy Hines and Peter Bishop, published in 2006
Vignette ‘how to’ on foresight – fertile ground
SHIFT ATTITUDES TOWARDS RECEPTIVENESS TO CHANGE
George Bernard Shaw said, “You see things and say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were and I say ‘Why not?’”
It is important to cultivate receptiveness to the new: “Let’s try and understand this better.” The new disturbs existing comfort zones and positions and as a consequence is often dismissed or challenged–it just does not fit with the established order. It is important to recognize this behavior and to educate the organization on its potential consequences, and to give specific ideas for better ways to deal with the new and surprising. In an organization this requires some investment in thinking. If the organization is in a hurry to get results, encourage it to invest twice as much–this is the wisest investment it can make.
Key steps
Executives who have grown up in one kind of organization or in one industry are often firmly invested in their opinions. Eventually many of their views become hard-wired into the organization as conventional wisdom. The more firmly invested in these views an organization is, the harder it is for the analyst to help it let go and explore new ideas.
A simple starting point and approach is to gain agreement that it is important to the organization to improve its receptivity to the new. Model the causes and consequences of behavioral differences towards new information and ideas.
Next, research and understand the key areas where the organization is concerned with the new. These might be about industry growth or decline, as an example of areas where blinders are the most expensive to the organization.
Armed with this knowledge, create a few workshops specifically about highlighting the meaning of the program and the methods to get to some change–focusing on the behavior and the selected content elements. If possible, connect this goal into a leadership development program or other similar programs. Push participants to “lead by example,” and model it yourself.
Be sure to connect the behavior-oriented push to a programmatic approach to foresight. Make a concerted effort to show the value. Measure the impacts of these programs through employee interviews, such as a 360-degree assessment specifically on how the key areas of the business are being improved by this.
Benefits
Encouraging receptiveness to the new is a good practice in general, but will likely “stick” better in an organization when change is imminent or taking place. Many organizations recognize the value of strategic programs, which aim to sensitize their people and approaches to the shifts in markets and industries and to better understand the meaning of those shifts. In periods of growth, organizations may try to build innovation programs, strategic foresight programs, or ideation programs, or at minimum try scenario planning. Often the early attempts are sub-optimal in that they lack a programmatic follow-through activity, and thus fall short of the broad impact they could have.
Also, many organizations have established some means to track trends in their environment. If these rely on classical market-research methods alone, the foresight generated tends to be a linear extrapolation of today’s impacts–and hence will most likely miss the opportunities and risks that a strategic foresight program would be able to identify.
Example
Adam Kahane (2002) tells a remarkable story of transformation in Guatemala. The country has the dubious distinction of having had one of the longest-running and most brutal civil wars in Latin America, from 1992 – 1996. More than 200,000 people were killed or “disappeared.” After a truce, the Vision Guatemala project was formed to help vision a new future for the country. A team of forty-four–including political leaders, academics, business and community leaders, former guerillas and military officers, government officials, human rights activists, journalists, indigenous people, national and local politicians, clergy, trade unionists, and young people–were led through a scenario process by Kahane. The key attraction of the exercise was the process of deep dialogue among people who had previously never spoken with each other. It led to the team enrolling sixty “multipliers,” or grassroots leaders, who worked not to disseminate the scenarios but to replicate the dialogue process in local initiatives. This process of dialogue was instrumental in producing the visioning effort’s successful results.
Further reading
De Geus, A. (1997). The Living Company: Habits for Survival in a Turbulent Business Environment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Kahane, A. (2002). Changing the World by How We Talk and Listen. Unpublished manuscript. Beverly, MA: Generon Consulting.
Kleiner, A. (1996). The Age of Heretics. New York: Currency Doubleday.
Marsh, N., McAllum, M., and Purcell, D. (2002). Strategic Foresight: The Power of Standing in the Future. Melbourne: Crown Content.
Ohmae, K. (1982). The Mind of the Strategist: The Art of Japanese Business. New York: McGraw-Hill.
This vignette first appeared in “Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight”, edited by Andy Hines and Peter Bishop, published in 2006
Vignette ‘how to’ on foresight – trends & business-as-usual
ASSESS FUNDAMENTAL SHIFTS THAT COULD IMPACT BUSINESS-AS-USUAL
Fundamental shifts are those external forces that have the potential of shaking the core assumptions of an organization. These forces are referred to as megatrends, discontinuities, tsunamis, or drivers of change depending on the practitioner. Regardless of what they are called, they have the potential to surprise an organization–unless the analyst can help it anticipate and prepare.
A fundamental shift differs from other trends in that it tends to be pervasive to an industry, an existing business model, and an organizational culture. It has the potential to alter the way the world works. Its impacts are rarely white or black, all-positive or all-negative.
Key steps
To identify fundamental shifts, start with the basics. Basic changes surrounding the organization come from a number of sectors, such as the social, technological, environmental, economic, or political (STEEP) arenas. Start by identifying the significant changes underway in these key areas.
Next, create your criteria for a fundamental shift and prioritize the trends according to them. The criteria might be, for example:
• potential for disrupting the existing industry
• potential for diverting part of the revenue stream to competitors
• potential for altering the organizational ecosystem, or how the players interact
Then, study the collision points among trends, as well as potential paradoxes which could trigger explosive shifts in the business model or purpose. Too often, trends are treated as if they exist in isolation, when in fact they exist in an ecosystem of other trends fighting to survive.
Finally, once the fundamental-shift candidates (for example, miniaturization, digitization, globalization, sustainability, convergence, work/life balance, aging) have been identified, assess their meaning for the business-as-usual models and approaches.
Once an analyst has identified a potential fundamental shift, its impacts need to be explored. The initial analysis typically leads to identifying some opportunities and threats to the organization’s business model and purpose. Later analysis leads to a deeper understanding of impacts across many areas of the business.
Ideally this assessment should be part of the strategic foresight process, linked to ongoing strategic decision-making. It should be professionally facilitated by those with expertise in facilitation and foresight. Analysts may be able to do it themselves, or team up with internal or external experts. The key is to provide an approach and tools that fit the context of assessment and the organizational culture. It requires understanding how thinking proactively about the future can best be done according to the organization’s readiness and foresight process status.
A potential caveat: be wary of the organization wanting to use only criteria that fit its business-as-usual model. If this occurs the assessment will reinforce the organization’s existing assumptions about its business, miss potential opportunities, and be vulnerable to potential threats.
Benefits
The time allotted to assessing fundamental shifts will be repaid multifold once the organization starts accounting for these shifts in its business decisions. This work is at the core of the strategic agenda, so analysts must involve and communicate with senior management. Listening to a thirty-minute presentation is not the same as an internalized understanding gained by directly engaging with the material.
Example
An excellent example of assessing fundamental shifts was Nokia’s proactive shift from paper and pulp, rubber boots, PCs, and TVs to a focus on telecommunications and mobile communications. (Steinbock 2001.) Nokia was established in 1865 as a wood-pulp mill and later expanded into rubber products. After World War II, Nokia acquired Finnish Cable Works, a producer of telephone and telegraph cables, which led gradually to a deep immersion in telecommunications. Today, none of its paper, pulp, or rubber origins are visible in the company.
Through its nimble response to changing markets, Nokia showed that assessing fundamental shifts is important both to choosing new strategic directions and to understanding the best timing for them. Some shifts might be placed into the “maybe in ten years bucket,” while others should be dealt with immediately.
Further reading
Collins, J.C. and Porras, J.I. (1997). Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. New York: HarperBusiness.
Marsh, N., McAllum, M., and Purcell, D. (2002). Strategic Foresight: The Power of Standing in the Future. Melbourne: Crown Content.
Nokia: History. Wikipedia. Viewed August 2005, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia.
Schwartz, P. (1991). The Art of the Long View. New York: Currency Doubleday.
Steinbock, D. (2001). The Nokia Revolution: Success Factors of an Extraordinary Company. New York: AMACOM.
This vignette [1 of 6 I wrote] first appeared in “Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight”, edited by Andy Hines and Peter Bishop, published in 2006
TED@Aspen 2008
What is it when your mind is whirling with ideas from many gorgeous passionate performances on stage, you meet wonderful people at every turn, you are in a beautiful location, the sun is shining and your heart says thank you – It’s TED in Aspen Colorado, end of February early March 2008.
As you see it has taken me a while to write about my experience and my take aways. There are many reasons for that, some rather mundane and others emotional and then just that nagging feeling that I would not do it justice unless I processed it a bit. I am not sure I can anyway cause hey these are just flat language signs and what we experienced was a multi-sensory fiesta. This is an account of how I felt, things I knew would fit in my world mental models and conceptual mapping of what goes on, hence enabling me to add my extensions and experiences from other areas of my life. The piece is long!
First I’d like to say thank you Chris [ Anderson , curator of TED]. I found your approach on stage a key to the tone of the conference. Everything came across as a ‘as I feel right now’ and ‘if I can find the right words great’, heartfelt and honest, and yet clearly deeply woven into the lives and pursuits of those on the stage.
You told us that the gang over in Aspen was strangely good looking. We thank you for that too, we think . For those who weren’t there. There were 300 people in Aspen sharing the Monterey conference as it was happening. We got to sleep a bit longer, thank goodness. It was rather amusing as we clapped, cheered, gave standing ovations, sang ‘Ode to Joy’ from the top of our lungs all that to the large number of screens surrounding us at the home of the Aspen Institute, the Doerr-Hosier Center. Of course we were getting each other into a mood of sharing our views by doing that. Imagine 300 people not reacting in any way for 3.5 days. That would have been really strange. We did have the pleasure of having our ‘host’ Walter Isaacson and some of the key artists, sharing their views on the trials and tribulations of humanity on stage in Aspen, like for example the Raspyni brothers, one of whom was not shy with language and the other was not shy about the bare human, thanks guys I finally know what it was….
The stage darkened….a severe man appeared….and gently reminded us of the mortal coil.
….and we were rolling. Not down the inviting powdery hills of Aspen but up and down our own emotions. Awe, fear, disgust, horror, love, romance, passion, joy, sadness, compassion, care, delight, wonder……
Who are we?
We are our collective intelligence, our ability to write things down [ Louise Leakey ] – and now through semantic web among other things able to make better sense of all the writings.
A pattern in the clouds [Jay Walker from the Library on stage], making connections where other people don’t see them and many connections were made during the 3.5 days between the people attending and speaking ….sniff we did not get to mingle with many of the speakers from Aspen. Bob Geldof I do need to speak with you .
And remember that transferring 1M of data equals one lump of coal [ Walker ]. There is no such thing as a free lunch. So have your carbon off-sets been calculated right?
As we look into human existence through the ages and think how cool we are in this particular era/or not, remember that those hunting images in the caves are ‘Postcards of Nostalgia’ [ Wade Davis on Wayne Clayton? ], just like we might draw and write when we feel that way, just the same.
From the different visions of life we have drawn many cultures and created many memories, sharing in the larger human experience. We keep re-creating ourselves as we learn and understand ourselves, gosh that’s hard enough, and others. The Buddhist are seeking to understand existence, practicing in an ongoing empirical observation of the mind, without, mind you, getting stuck with a looped tape.
What we have is a rich tapestry of human imagination of what it means to be alive [ Davis ], expressed in 6000 languages (50% of which are not taught to children anymore), including several meaning systems and dialects and contexts. I mean you do the math. What chances do we have of truly understanding each other? I am hopeful despite the cousin of hope, despair. I learnt many languages at school and Lapp language is still taught at schools and universities in Finland. It was not one of the choices for me though. We did all learn Swedish as our second official language in Finland, rusty, very rusty, I digress.
……”I am just a guy and if I could just corner you with or without pony tail” [ Rives ; poet and 'just a guy']. Sorry, my memory fails on those details. Loved it! ….and what’s more it was performed locally by one of us in Aspen.
What does an artist make of millions of cans rubbished, zillions of sheets of paper used, barbie dolls thrown out, cigarette packets, statistics on cosmetic surgeries done to young adults to augment their breasts – as a 21st birthday gift from no doubt well meaning family……art of course and a message that sticks. A must see in an art gallery to get a good sense of the enormity of the issues we’re dealing with. Thank you Chris Jordan for those tiny people to provide us with a sense of scale, we were visually overpowered.
Have you ever been in space? Do you wish to go to space? I would love to go as far as to see Earth in its splendor and then later I’d like to visit another civilization, but I am told there may not be much hope of that. Who says? Well Stephen Hawking did, on screen from Cambridge, to the TED audience. But he had fun nonetheless on all of the 8 zero G trips of weightlessness as we witnessed.
I remember my lovely but firm teacher Mrs Soveri telling us at school that we’d be foolish and naive to believe that of all the galaxies etc out there we’d be the only ones so lucky to have life. Now it seems that it does really look like the chances of everything being just right for life as we know it are rather small [ Peter Ward - Astrobiologist ].
It seems one problem for that exotic holiday with aliens for me is distance. It was one thing to fly from Sydney to LA and then Denver and drive to Aspen than to go from Earth to a far away galaxy. So there you have it. Just need to work on it some more…..but as aging is a thing of the past, that people living now could perhaps live to be a 1000 years old (earlier TED promise), I might just get lucky about the space travel to another civilization and until then I’ll keep planning my tour of the ancient civilizations on Earth.
But who are we really? Are we what our left brain keeps hammering us about or are we the trip that our right brain would rather have us on? It was one of the most emotional experiences of TED to watch Jill share her experience of a stroke. Imagine she was able to observe and analyze a stroke as a neuroanatomist and then be like a child in wonder about the pixellated and beautiful world, struggling between the left and right brain extremes and moving from one to the other while thinking, I might not survive to tell this story and trying to get help. This is the journey that Jill Bolte Taylor took us on. We were in tears with you Jill. See the full presentation here.
What is our place in the universe?
For Patricia Burchat the trip is to the smallest of the smallest to understand the darkest of the darkest, namely dark matter and energy, to answer the biggest of the biggest of questions and the smallest. And I haven’t got a clue but boy did I listen intently and I really did think I got some of it but to try and put my spin on it, ouch. But wait until I speak about the other particle physicist.
After we dove into the insides of our brain we took another kind of trip to the space through the WorldWideTelescope, a project at Microsoft research lab, which got some noise even before the event in the blogosphere. Roy Gould, a Harvard University astrophysicist and Curtis Wong from Microsoft presented mesmerizing images of space and showed different ways we can leverage the free access to the compiled feed from the world’s telescopes. The tour we were shown was created by a 6-year old space enthusiast from Canada I believe. Let me know if I got the country wrong.
At the end of a day one we were entertained by “the guitar god(dess)” Kaki King. And the guy next to me, yes I know you know I know who you are, was immediately in love.
What is life?
If we are to believe the media, it is all about ‘Britney Spears’. We heard Alisa Miller talk to us about the media and the financial imperative and the fact that covering ‘Britney’ is cheaper, so these are the reasons which shape the way those ‘non existent but worth dreaming about’ aliens view us. Very odd indeed.
Not so in Craig Venter’s opinion. It is not about Britney at all. It is about a new phase in biology. We are at the point of synthesizing life and having biological software capable of building its own hardware, to put into a 21st century language, as Craig did. And by the way, he has a modest goal of replacing the current petrochemical industry with designer fuels. The ones in the industry which have chosen to work with Craig are the lucky ones.
Beware of what you let lose and the repercussions when culture evolves after taking notice of what you let lose. The warning came from Susan Blackmore the author of “The Meme Machine”. Meme = that which is imitated. Machine = that which imitates, us. We are the machine playing havoc with the cultural constructs, like languages. And now we’re getting to the third replicator the ‘Temes’ = copying by machines [with variation, selection, heredity]. The first replicator is the genes, which oh by the way Craig Venter mapped for us, and what a genius, modest and patient man.
Over the Xmas period I read two books on Thomas Jefferson. I had somehow come across quotes and other things by him and decided it was time to understand this American president better. A fascinating character with paradoxes in what his ideals were and what he had to live with. I was rather excited to hear from Doris Kearns Goodwin talk about the presidents on whom she has written: Johnson, Kennedy, Roosevelt and Lincoln. Her story on stage had personal life intimacy with at least one of the interviewees weaved in with her other life experiences.
Is beauty truth?
Learn to enjoy it and temper it. It, what it? Ah the enjoyment….why on earth do we always have to curb the beautiful, the fun, the joy…what’s with that?
I had high hopes for this segment. Unfortunately we missed out on Nancy Etcoff as she could not be there due to illness.
Although I am really tired of human behavior all coming down to a basic biological drive to find fertile partners and for the species to survive, very tired, however ‘true and important’ that might be.
Beauty as complexity shown in a simple model was the message in Garrett ‘the surfer dude’ Lisi’s theory of mathematical shape called E8. That went over my head, but it does translate to beautiful images, so it must be true . Some scientists seem to think that he is really onto a unifying theory. Lucky we’re getting those tapings so I can go over that one again.
What is beauty for a fashion designer? For the first time in TED’s 24 years a fashion designer – Isaac Mizrahi – got on stage to take us through ‘the process’ of his creativity. How likely is that? One thing is for sure, he takes observation very seriously and has an eye for things the rest of us would miss completely. So if you have a man strangely interested in a fold in your blouse it is probably a fashion designer, probably Isaac himself, doing research. No but seriously he uses his understanding of the tricks our eyes play on us as fodder for design ideas and has a keen eye for detail and a very low threshold for boredom driving him to look for new things.
Did you know that we were not sure what painting depicts Leonardo da Vinci, if any, until Sigfried Woldhe showed us in one of the 3 minute segments and through a very convincing argument, which pictures from history are Leonardo and at what age. Neat!
…..and then the question; is truth beautiful? I don’t think it is always very pretty, no, but always worth striving for cause everything else gets very convoluted, confusing and hard to live with. It seems that Richard [ Saul Wurman: founder of TED ] and Chris [ Anderson ] had that conversation and decided it was time to make life easier for them and others and get it all out…..and out it came. Good mates now!
Will evil prevail?
Oh boy. This is where the audience was warned of difficult to view images and given a chance to leave. We got to witness images well beyond those shown at the time of the Iraq US military torture breaking out as a story in the news. The reason we saw those images is that Philip Zimbardo was part of the investigation into what happened and why happened. He says that many of us are capable of atrocities if the system is geared that way. What is needed is to make us more aware of that possibility and to nurture the hero side of us more. He’d like turn us all into heros! So what is your response when someone tells you not to get involved, turn a blind eye to something which is not right? He says, “Humanity is my business” and gets involved.
How can we change the world?
This was a segment where three very hard working individuals got to talk to us about how they plan to change the world. These were the TED Prize winners. Dave Eggers is putting learning and fun into cities around the US – at the moment – but perhaps through the TED community he is now well on his way to many other places too. Karen Armstrong wants to bring different religions around the same table and stop fragmenting the society due to beliefs. She wants to bring about a movement of compassion. Neil Turok, a cosmologist, wishes to bring science to many parts of Africa through AIMS [ African Institute for Mathematical Sciences ]. There is more information on these winners on the TED site so if you are inspired by what these wonderful people are doing you can pitch in.
How do we create?
From an inner confusion which does not match the outer order we see things differently. I think it is true that many TEDsters are somehow a little lost in the world we live in as the world as we see it is a miss match due to its slow moving institutions and poorly conceivable realities of the politically or financially driven discourse.
Yves Behar designed the Jawbone, bluetooth ear piece, ‘one laptop per child’ laptop, leaf lamp, NYC condom [launched Feb 14th]. Yves’s is driven to work on the whole human experience. “The values the designer brings to a project create the value”. “Design is never done”. “Designing from the inside out, no more slapping skins on”. Unlike what the poor designers had to contend with at Nokia at least in the mid 90s….
For Amy Tan it all starts in moral ambiguity. She does not believe in absolute truths she believes in the specifics in the situation and then she also says that beliefs is where the story lies:
….find particles of truths
….not complete answers
….there is uncertainty
….then there is that something, new, different
….there is an answer – of imagination
….imagination is the closest thing to feeling compassion
….then she becomes that story
How about some brain opera? ….and how about producing not the just music but visual images of the music too? Future of an instrument is a compilation of all instruments in one. I saw a great example of this on stage in Melbourne last year when James Morrison composed and played jazz with his electronic “I don’t know what to call it”. At TED we saw Dan Ellsey, a quadriplegic, express his musical genius through the new approaches being developed at MIT in programs led by Tod Machover. Brilliant stuff! The little bit of piano that I play – and want to dive into it more and more – certainly gives me great pleasure. Tod says that music is better if you make it and he is working hard to make it accessible to many. Music is a form of communication and speaks plenty about me and others, it transforms mind, body and our communication. According to the programs on their way at MIT we will soon all be able to create our own personal operas.
What’s out there?
Some unknowns still to be uncovered. Brian Cox, a particle physicist, stepped on stage and with his smiling rock star demeanor charmed us all into the Hadron Collider [ CERN ] looking for Higgs, the ‘missing link’ of the particle world. He quoted, not that Brian seemed to fully subscribe to this, Ernest Rutherford, who said “All science is either physics or stamp collecting”
Robert Ballard, noted for many achievements in our gorgeous guide book and ‘oh, and he found the Titanic’. The ocean explorer presentations given were a beautiful journey into an unknown so very close to where we play and work and yet so little has been really duly mapped or understood of oceans. There are lakes inside the oceans and waterfalls. Don’t believe me? Watch the presentations on TED when they come out. In Aspen in fact we were lucky as we had two top ocean explorers in the audience who gave us a 3 minute look into the wonders of the water world.
Imagine this, mushrooms may just be our saviour [ Paul Stamets ], crows can start to be much more than a pest cause they are rather clever, with some enticements [ Joshua Klein ], there is a whole new world up the top of the Redwood Sequoia trees, which reiterate life of their dying trunks [ Richard Preston].
What will tomorrow bring?
Mediocristan versus Extremistan? Average means nothing, so respect the under served. We need to get the economists feeling again beyond the representation of the graphs. Do you live in the winner takes all world? This is where major upheavals and exception dominates the socioeconomic variables and it is getting worse, says Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
Peter Schwartz reminded us that, “Future isn’t what it used to be”, by Paul Valery did not mean to be a pessimistic outlook on the future but rather that the pace of change is faster and multifaceted.
What stirs us?
Love is in the air…. Always and always. Love is a bummer of a thing and don’t we all know it [ Jill Sobule thank you for those gorgeous songs ]. Helen Fisher told us that no we’re not alone and yes she does go through all the same stuff the rest of us do. She is able to spot it in our brains too. My question is, can she make the pain go away? “The less my hope the harder my love”, is the human tragedy.
“The only way for me to be human is for you to reflect me back to me”, says Chris Sabani. Chris is a novelist who has had to ensure torture in his home land Nigeria when he published his first novel depicting a, too realistic I guess, Nigerian coup. He taught us about optimism through his life story and relationship with mum who among other things said “Anything a man can do I can fix”. Cute!
I have written earlier about Martin Luther King’s motto “I have a dream” – he did not say “I have a problem”, Ben Zander gave another view to the same motto. What if he’d said/thought “I have a dream, but I am not sure they’re up to it”. As a conductor of an orchestra and as a leader of TEDsters into singing “Ode to Joy” at the top of our lungs he believes that the essence of leadership is to believe in the people. He may not always like what he hears, but he orchestrated us all into our best performance yet. Well done!
Go see Johnny Lee show how a wii can be used in amazing and at fraction of the cost for collaboration environments.
How dare we be optimistic?
We need compassion to get started and then we need to be enlightened to get serious is the recipe from Paul Collier who has worked on alleviation of poverty for a long time. The question for him is, “How to give credible hope to the bottom billion?”
Eric Kuhne is working on, among other buildings, the “House of Humanity” in a not to be mentioned nation in the Middle East. He wishes to restore the storytelling qualities of cities that have been stripped bare by modernism.
“To solve the climate crisis we have to solve the democracy crisis” Al Gore.
And the point?
“If you were happy you would not have to say it”, John Francis’s mother
Jonathan Haidt, check out your moral position here
“TED is the Olympics of unreasonable people”, Bob Geldof
To conclude I’ve picked one appropriate quote from the book of wonders which contained everything we needed to know and did not dare ask about our speakers and TED, in fact the quotes in it are a treasure I’ve just uncovered:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you could not live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions.” Rainer Maria Rilke
PS: Thank you for the TED team who, exhausted from the event, either hung around some more or took the trip from Monterey to meet with us in Aspen for the apresTED skiing and party.
I have added a few links to the talks to make it quick to get there but for the rest please go to the www.ted.com site direct. All the videos are being uploaded as production cranks them through.
