the future of Futurist Tools

the future of Futurist Tools
how to improve your strategy and planning processes

Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Registration: 16:00-16:30, Conference: 16:30-19:15



Michael Jackson
Business Futures in a Digital Age
Increasing complexity, uncertainty and disruptive change is provoking a surge of interest in longer-term thinking, better tools and early and broader warning systems. Dr. Mike Jackson will share his extensive knowledge of the changes being made to strategy and planning systems by forward-thinking organisations and how leading edge suppliers are delivering new capabilities to make the processes quicker, all-encompassing and collaborative.

Patrick Crehan
The Death of A Strategist
A context of complexity, uncertainty and rapid change for both private enterprise and public life will lead to a steady increase in the delegation of responsibility for decision-making away from traditional centers of control. This will create the need for organisations to continuously re-visit, re-vise and re-envision their plans and strategic positions. Decisions large and small will be made using participatory approaches. They will incorporate the latest information available. This will create a burden of work for which existing tools are inadequate. It will lead to a re-distribution of responsibilities for which most organisations are ill-prepared.
Patrick Crehan looks at how the nature of decision-making is changing and how it will continue to change in the future. He looks at associated changes in the burden of work, shifts in the location of responsibility that this implies and the challenges that decision support systems of the future will need to address. He provides a vision of the future of decision-making in both private enterprise and public life.
Related Reading: 'The Wisdom of Crowds' by James Surowiecki. The subtitle of this book is 'Why the Many are Smarter than the Few' and 'How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations'. The final chapter is especially interesting in that it considers the future of democracy as a form of collaborative decision-making.

George Pór
The New Wave of Futuring: Co-Sensing –> Co-Presencing –> Co-Creating This will be an experiential introduction to the "U model" featured in Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future, co-authored by Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue Flowers.
Suggested Reading: Introduction to THEORY U: Leading from the Emerging Future Presencing as Social Technology of Freedom by C. Otto Scharmer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology www.ottoscharmer.com