Proutist Economic Development Futures Thinking

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Proutist Economic DevelopmentFutures Thinking

• Dada Maheshvarananda
• Dr. Michael Towsey

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Futures Thinking

• A recent development in corporate planning
• Origins in 1950s-60s an alternative to
  traditional (military) command and control
  planning
• Known as scenario planning
• Attempt to cope with complexity and surprise in
  the modern world
• Paralleled development of complex systems and
  chaos theory
• First used commercially by Shell oil company
  during 1972 oil crisis
• In 1980s-90s developed into Futures Thinking
• "Futures" is plural to indicate there are many
  possible futures

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From Scenario Planning ...

• Purpose is NOT to predict the future but to
  understand the possible alternatives
• Understanding alternatives opens up choices and
  planning options
• Psychology if a possible scenario has previously
  been discussed it does not surprise
• Successful scenario planning depends on
  non-traditional, imaginative thinking
• Must dare to think the unexpected

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... To Futures Thinking 1990s

• Traditional scenario planning tends to be passive
  
• Attempts to anticipate the future but not to
  shape it
• Futures thinking takes next step
• Planners are asked to envisage their ideal world,
  then create strategies to realise that world
• Psychology as you think, so you become
• An organisation or nation without a compelling
  vision of the future will decline
• Traditional planning 3-5 years
• Futures planning 5-50 years

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An example Vision Brazil 2020

• September 2003, organised by Economic and Social
  Council
• Chaired by Minister Tarso Genro
• 200 participants from business, labour and civil
  society
• Purpose to envision Brazil in the year 2020
• To develop scenarios around the goal of
  sustainable development
• E.g. "We are a nation without poverty in which
  education is a priority".

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Visioning the future

1. Business as usual
2. Collapse - catastrophe
3. Back to the past
4. Transformation

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Forces acting on the future
Visions (pull)

• Future

Traditions, habits (inertia)
Events(push)
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Four levels of social analysis

• Level 1 Litany
• day to day events
• front page news
• Level 2 Social, cultural economic trends
  (social causes)
• editorial content
• TV documentaries
• Level 3 Structural analysis (discourse,
  worldview)
• looks at power relations, center-periphery
• usually an emerging world view
• Level 4 Metaphor (and myth)
• looks at macro-history, mythology, archetypes

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Causal layered analysis

• A new futures research method
• Its utility is not in predicting the future but
  in creating transformative spaces for the
  creation of alternative futures
• Challenge is to conduct research that moves up
  and down layers of analysis and is inclusive of
  different ways of knowing
• http//www.metafuture.org/Articles/CausalLayeredAn
  alysis.htm