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
If an ‘Inconvenient Truth’ raised the profile of global warming to the general population, it appears that a willingness by political leaders to take appropriate action to mitigate the possible ramifications is still very much lacking. It is such a pity. No one who holds the Global Warming scenario close to heart wants to be…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will join Tim Cox on 774 ABC as part of the conversation hour next week Tim is filling in for Jon Faine whilst he takes a well deserved break and Marcus will join him for the conversation hour kicking off at 11am on Thursday the 13th of December, where they’ll discuss…
Read More >At the AustForesight 2007 Conference, Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber and fellow Futurist Steve Tighe presented their take on what is required to enable futurists to be seen as more relevant to the Corporate world. Drawing on their shared experience as facilitator and client, they detailed the journey of foresight and futures across the past 50…
Read More >Futurists often get asked things like ‘Okay then – who’s going to win the ‘flag’ this year’. In Melbourne Cup time most of my friends ring me asking for a hot tip. Given my consistent poor form at selecting a winner, why they would ask me is anyone’s guess (unless they are working out who…
Read More >Does your organisation suffer what Futurists call ‘Operational Sleepwalking’? That most organisations (and people) willingly sleepwalk their way into their futures is not all that surprising. What is surprising about that however is that those people and those organisations are: * Surprised when something unexpected (and not to their liking) happens and, * Claim they…
Read More >Maree Conway, of ‘University Futures’ has joined the Australian Strategic Planning Institute as a lead facilitator for the Institute’s programs. Maree’s experience in policy development, planning and strategy initiatives provides additional weight to the sessions on offer. TASPI now have three key facilitators that cover critical steps in the Strategic Planning Process – Enhanced Awareness…
Read More >The latest edition of Fast Thinking has hit the streets and includes another tool for those seeking to develop innovation and strategy. Marcus Barber explains how to use, what he calls an ‘iiBubble’, a process that helps capture an idea to see if it has innovation ‘legs’. As one of the tools unique to Barber…
Read More >Looking Up Feeling Good would like to wish the very talented and focused futurist, Sophie Barber a happy birthday today. Sophie’s amazing talent at suggesting the possible future for a positive outcome is a true inspiration and we look forward to many more insights as the complexity of challenges continues to test our understanding, commitment…
Read More >The CoreNet Global Melbourne 2007 Summit incorporated a thought provoking Hypothetical panel discussion on the future of corporate real estate and the drivers for sustainability. With an economic futures framework provided by Melbourne University Professor of Economics Neville Norman who moderated the discussion, the panel included Aggie Aitken, Head of Workplace Development at ANZ; Strategic…
Read More >Among other great articles, the winter 2007 edition of Fast Thinking magazine highlights the ‘8 Factor’ model for effective employee engagement, created by strategic futurist Marcus Barber. Using the model he shows how organisations can develop greater flexibility when it comes to providing incentives as a means for improving productivity and ensuring longevity for staff.…
Read More >