For a Futurist, Focus is a Key Issue
What you look at, how you look at it and where you find your information are critical elements for developing far more effective strategy. Futures work is about removing the organisational blinkers to increase awareness of risks and emerging opportunities often through Environmental Scanning (ES). ES comes in all sorts of guises and the key to turning data into information or better yet, ‘knowledge’ requires an effective analysis framework.
Much of my current activity is geared around my co-founding of the Centre for Australian Foresight, a multi sector, cross functional research consultancy. We founded CFAF last year and kicked it off with an AsiaPacific Foresight Conference at the Perth Zoo
The book ‘Killing Trends – the Graceful Art of Innovation’ has been taken out of the freezer and is finally nearing completion! It’s taken me waaaaay longer than expected to finish this one and fingers crossed it’ll be just a few more months. I think 🙂
I’ve put my mind to: How GM Foods can be made to work and How to Stop Japanese Whaling in its Tracks (see articles below); Water Theft Increases – how society is likely to respond to increasing water restrictions, private storage capacity and opportunism; and Customer Service in a time of highly active consumers. I’m still yet to finish the book ‘Killing Trends – the Graceful Art of Innovation’ and have two others in development, so things are heating up!
My focus as a Futurist is also seeing me closely involved with The Australian Strategic Planning Institute which I have founded recently to help enhance the way in which organisations drive Strategic Planning and extract benefits from the process. The link between futures thinking and strategic planning ought to be explicit and unfortunately for most organisations, it isn’t. Other serious issues for strategic planning efforts include poor planning processes and a lack of accountability to the strategic plan the organisation develops. Hopefully TASPI will go some way to developing Strategic Planning into a much more effective discipline. Check out The Australian Strategic Planning Institute for further details. Remember if you’re looking to Find a Futurist, email us here
Over the past year I’ve been part of an advisory board for the Australian Bill of Rights Initiative and recently our group co-authored and submitted a small thought piece on the use of WIKIs as a means of engaging with stakeholders. You can find out more by visiting the ‘Re Public’ website link here Just recently I was asked to join the futures advisory board of the Lifeboat Foundation, a group looking to answer some of the existential problems for the species Homo Sapiens.
A Carbon Free Electricity generator idea is still developing bit by bit. The generator concept is much more fully developed than it was and I’ve met with a business advisor for suggestions and ideas for getting this thing to the market. This includes some very interesting opportunities for capital investment, Venture capital or a sell off/licensing of the IP. And with a chance to present at both the World Future Society in Vancouver in July and the Stockholm International Water Institute in Sweden in August, it’s already an active year
One of the current affairs TV programs did a story recently on the efforts by NSW police to crack down on ‘hoon’ drivers through a specific squad targeting them. The Victorian Police recently announced a similar project with the squad headed up by one of Victoria Police’s most effective senior officers, Inspector Bernie Rankin. Unusually…
Read More >Lewis Hamilton, the former automotive Formula One ‘number one’ had his car impounded on Friday night for alleged ‘hoon’ driving, having been spotted by police spinning his wheels at a busy intersection in St Kilda. Whilst many character witnesses have already jumped to his defence, with one interesting observation from Mark Webber suggesting we have…
Read More >Following on from the highly rated ‘Skimming the Cream’ forum in Brisbane on the 9th of February, members of the Young Dairy Network and SubTropical Dairy groups reconvened to consider the impacts of Climate Change on the dairy sector in Australia using the high-impact ‘Accelerated Scenarios process’. The ‘2030 Dairy Scenarios’ brought together the members…
Read More >Queensland is one state that leverages its weather to the hilt – and the fact is the ‘Sunshine State’ earns its reputation. The odd thing is that in the past week I’ve spent in the Gold Coast experiencing the warm, humid and often wet weather it has occured to me that Queensland might be missing…
Read More >In a recent article in The Age, Clive Williams of Macquarie University’s Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism suggested that athletes booked in to attend the Commonwealth games in India need to consider a terrorist attack as a potential wildcard. Whilst an interesting perspective, I’d like to suggest that a potential terrorist attack at…
Read More >If my information is correct, the 14th of February is the start of the New Year and instead of the usual flowers and chocolates, you might be wise to invest in another gift for your heart’s desire Because Feb 14 is the start of the Chinese New Year – the year of the Tiger. So…
Read More >Had any thoughts yet? I have – plenty and judging from the number of media inquiries it appears lots of other people are also curious to know what might lie ahead in the next year or next decade. I’m putting my thinking hat on so that we can consider what 2010-2019 might hold, the second…
Read More >I’m tipping that Consensus will be reached at Copenhagen this week. Alas it will be a consensus for more talking, thinking and commitments to agree to a proposal to set a time for a discussion around more concrete targets. In otherwords, a commitment to not commit. The politicians waver whilst our planet is being poisoned.…
Read More >The cycle of consumption rears its head as it has done for quite some time. Consumption is neither good, nor bad, it ‘just is’ and right now the majority of media exposed potential consumers are being lured, enticed and occasionally conned into parting with their hard earned money to satisfy needs and whims. Some consumers…
Read More >Our son has just celebrated his fifth birthday and although we don’t make a huge fuss about milestones (the kids get a party every second year), there’s no doubt that he is learning about desired future outcomes and goals. I doubt he is different from most kids in his ability to spot something and declare…
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