Using Foresight Thinking to Enhance the Productivity of Nations
As Nations look to develop their understanding of Productivity and more effective planning, National Productivity Councils are often the first point of call for Governments looking for ideas. The Asia Productivity Organisation has been running since 1961 helping its member countries develop more effective approaches. I’ve just spent a week in Tokyo helping a group of them think about the future
The APO https://www.facebook.com/AsianProductivityOrganization/ hosted Maree Conway of Thinking Futures and myself exploring the application of futures thinking to National Productivity. Graciously hosted by Dr Santhi Kanoktanaporn and his excellent team here in #Tokyo and attended by all the NPO heads from #Vietnam #Malaysia #SriLanka #Thailand #India #China #Indonesia and the #Philippines. We’re very much looking forward to the next phase working with each Country to build their futures thinking and strategic planning capabilities.
We introduced the group to #StrategicForesight, provided them with a series of frameworks for establishing their #ForesightDepartments and showed them how to jump the persistent and debilitating gap in most approaches to #StrategicPlanning
Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will be kicking off proceedings at the 2008 Regional Produce Summit in Wangaratta on the 20th of October where he’ll detail some of the emerging issues likely to impact upon the tourism and food sector in the foreseeable future and suggest ways that businesses in the sector might be able to…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will both key note and act as Master of Ceremonies at the Lockhart Industrial symposium on the 9th of October, in Lockhart NSW. Marcus will discuss the clear business advantages that Eco Industrial parks provide to businesses, the way that symbiotic supply chains work to improve business resilience and the way…
Read More >Marcus Barber joined host Tim Cox and co-host, author and writer Andrew Peglar on the Conversation hour to muse about the types of futures one might expect to see in coming years. After Tim asked for clarification between a General, Theoretical and Strategic Futurist, Andrew kicked off with a question over the singularity. The…
Read More >Members of the Futures Foundation and the AFFA will be congregating in Pearl Beach in the coming weeks to consider the state of play in the Australian Futures community. Given the emerging challenges in Australia and around the world, the futures community requires just as much serious contemplation and forethought as does any one …
Read More >One of our many Nordic watchers, Are Thorsteinsson, has posted the Future Matters segment looking at the future of robotics, along with marking up full language captions in Danish. Although a couple of years old now, the early signs listed in this segment are only now coming into more mainstream focus Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber has contributed a chapter to Volume Five of the ‘Death and Anti-Death’ Anthology which has just been published by Ria University. With contributors including Aubrey de Grey and Kevin Kelly and edited by Dr. Charles Tandy, Volume Five in the series is dedicated to the memory of Loren Eiseley, the renowned…
Read More >One of the challenges for one aspect of the world is fuel and the price of fuel used for private transportation. I use the word ‘aspect’ quite deliberately because the ‘aspect of the world’ that seems to be making the most noise about rising fuel prices is by and large the ‘westernised’ world – that’s…
Read More >With the theme ‘Moving Forward, Supply Chains of the Future’, Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will open the Australian Supply Chain and Logistics Conference in Brisbane in July on behalf of the Supply Chain and Logistics Association of Australia. Details for the conference can be found below. The focus on the future of supply chains…
Read More >When it comes to quality strategic futures work as part of making the pragmatic decisions that shifts beyond theoretical futures work, I encourage my clients to question the assumptions they make about the information they have available to them. Which is why I am recommending the book ‘Gang Leader for a day – a rougue…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber was well and truly forced to justify the existence of his profession when venturing along to Jon Faine’s Conversation Hour last week. Co-hosted by Cath Pope the discussion looked at the role of Futurists, the Australia 2020 Futurists Summit and Jon’s scepticism around the role of futurists.. Along with Janoel Liddy,…
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