Category Archives: News

September 1, 2016

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What does Geelong’s future look like?

The City of Greater Geelong will shortly start community consultations on what you think Geelong’s future could look like. This session is the perfect kick starter for you to become a future creator!

Professor Sohail Inayatullah will speak at the event and focus on:

        • Emerging issues and trends that will change our daily lives in 20 years
        • Why thinking about the future is important to us
        • How changes might impact you, your family, your community, your industry.
When:
01 September 2016, 05:30 PM – 07:30 PM
Next on:
01 September 2016, 05:30 PM – 07:30 PM
(View other upcoming dates and times)
Where: The Playhouse, GPAC
50 Little Malop St Geelong
Costs:
Free
Facilities:

Further Information

http://www.geelongaustralia.com.au/calendar/calendar/item/8d3c121ce4aa0ef.aspx

Contact: Bonnie Lanham
Phone: 5272 4800
Email: blanham@geelongcity.vic.gov.au

June 27-28, 2016

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Business model innovation for NGOs

This groundbreaking five-day programme will support leaders to create innovative, future-fit business models. It combines the expertise of leading futures thinker Sohail Inayatullah, strategy and innovation specialist Ian Gray, and the Bond futures team.

June 27-28, 2016, London, England.

More information: https://www.bond.org.uk/learning/business-model-innovation-for-ngos

Futurist Advocates for ‘Strategic Foresight’ in Corporate Planning (2015)

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By: Natalie Greve, Creamer Media Contributing Editor Online

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation chair in futures studies Professor Sohail Inayatullah has touted the adoption of “transformative and strategic foresight” by companies in future scenario planning, telling a workshop that this approach creates flexibility in decision-making by moving from a focus on one inevitable future to an analysis of several alternative ones.

This methodology was used by organisations such as the World Economic Forum, which used it to reframe challenges, analyse assumptions about existing organisational challenges and clarify future options for strategic decision-making.

The foresight approach, Inayatullah explained, encouraged a shift from focusing on the day-to-day operational considerations of management to the longer-term transformative dimensions of leadership, introducing broader systematic and transdisciplinarian perspectives and solutions.

“This approach allows [companies] to anticipate emerging issues and weak signals that may derail strategic plans and policies. Through environmental scanning, strategic foresight intends to solve tomorrow’s problems today and discover opportunities early on,” the futurist outlined.

Importantly, the foresight approach changed the temporal horizon of planning from the short term to the medium and long term, while reducing risk by emphasising the positions of multiple stakeholders.

“Often, strategies fail not because of an inaccurate assessment of alternative futures, but as a result of a lack of understanding of deep culture”.

“Blind spots – which are always built into the knowledge framework of each person and organisation – are addressed by including difference. This makes implementation far easier,” said Inayatullah.

Future-based studies and transformative insight in organisations were based on six pillars, the first of which involved the mapping of the past, present and future.

Mapping sought to identify the historical factors and patterns that had created the present, which was itself mapped through environmental scans.

The second pillar saw the anticipation of the future through the identification of emerging issues, while the third pillar sought to “time the future” through an analysis of previous patterns in history.

Inayatullah’s fourth pillar was based on “deepening” the future through an analysis of the deeper myths and world views present beneath the data of the “official” future using causal layered analysis.

A series of alternative possible futures were then created through scenario-planning and an analysis of the critical uncertainties driving the future as well as the archetypes of personal and societal change.

Lastly, through the application of backcasting, visioning and action learning, the future was then “transformed” through the articulation of a preferred future and the development of critical pathways.

Edited by: Chanel de Bruyn Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor Online

http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/futurist-advocates-for-strategic-foresight-in-corporate-planning-2015-12-04

Featured Book: What Works (2015)

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What Works: Case Studies in the Practice of Foresight

By Sohail Inayatullah

Tamkang University Press, Tamsui, Taiwan, 2015

 

Book Cover of What Works: Case Studies in the Practice of Foresight

What Works furthers the practice of foresight in organizations, institutions, cities and nations. Divided into three parts, What Works moves from theorizing the future to case studies of foresight in action and concludes with innovative futures methods.

The first part introduces futures studies — its principles, theories and methods. The second and main part of the book presents case studies. Chapters include:

  • Deep inclusion in a digital era: democratic governance Asia 2030
  • Leap-frogging the West: e-health futures in Bangladesh
  • From the lecturer to the murabbi: the alternative futures of higher education in Malaysia
  • Leveraging development: the alternative scenarios for BRAC University
  • Transforming agriculture: from salinity research to greening the desert
  • Cities as agents of change: emerging issues and case studies
  • Going beyond the thin blue line: the futures of international policing
  • From the collection to co-creation: the futures of libraries and librarians
  • From crops to care: the changing nature of health care in rural Australia

The third and final section focuses on methodological innovation. These chapters explore the implications of forecasting the long-term future, the use of the Sarkar game in foresight workshops, and how causal layered analysis has been used to transform personal and institutional stories. The conclusion evaluates the use of futures thinking for strategy development.

Purchase: Paperback or PDF

Featured Book: CLA 2.0 (2015)

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CLA 2.0: Transformative Research in Theory and Practice

Edited by Sohail Inayatullah and Ivana Milojević, Tamkang University Press, Tamsui, Taiwan, 2015

CLA 2.0 consolidates the latest in scholarly research on layered approaches to transformative change by thinkers and activists from around the world.

The authors use CLA to investigate topics such as:

  • The Global Financial Crisis
  • Global governance
  • Ageing and the changing workforce
  • Educational and university futures
  • Climate change
  • Water futures in the Muslim world
  • The alternative futures of China
  • Agricultural policy in Australia
  • The new national narrative in Singapore
  • Terrorism futures
CLA 2.0 book cover

Contributing authors: Mariya Absar, Marcus Anthony, Brian Bishop, Åse Bjurström, Peter Black, Lauren Breen, Robert Burke, Marcus Bussey, April Chin, Maree Conway, Andrew Curry, Peta Dzidic, Niki Ellis, Gilbert Fan, Nauman Farooqi, Tom Graves, Sabina Head, Jeanne Hoffman, Bai Huifen, Sohail Inayatullah, Anita Kelleher, Patricia Kelly, Noni Kenny, Adrian Kuah, Saliv Bin Larif, Aleta Lederwasch, Ian Lowe, Ivana Milojević, Jane Palmer, Jose Ramos, Yvette Montero Salvatico, Miriam Sannum, Wendy Schultz, Umar Sheraz, Lynda Shevellar, Frank Spencer, Debbie Terranova, Pham Thanh, Joonas Vola, Gautam Wahi, Cate Watson, and Tzu-Ying Wu.

Causal layered analysis can be used not just to deconstruct the future but to reconstruct the future, to create whole-of-worldview and narrative solutions to the complex problems humanity faces. This volume will be useful to theoreticians and practitioners who seek to use the future to change the present.

Purchase: CLA 2.0 Paperback, CLA Reader (2004) and CLA 2.0 (2015) Combined PDF, or CLA 2.0 PDF

Featured book: Asia 2038 (2018)

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Asia 2038: Ten Disruptions That Change Everything

By Sohail Inayatullah and Lu Na

Graduate Institute of Futures Studies, Tamkang University, Tamsui, 2018

Using insights from hundreds of foresight workshops in Asia, ASIA 2038: Ten Disruptions That Change Everything explores ten key disruptive emerging issues. These include:

  • The rise of Asian women;
  • The new extended Asian family;
  • The end of the God King and the Big Man;
  • New facilitated models of learning and teaching;
  • The wandering societies of Asia;
  • Climate change leading to institutionalized foresight;
  • The great migration to Asia;
  • Towards an Asian confederation;
  • Asia leading in the transition to a spiritual post-capitalist society; and,
  • An Asia that says yes to itself.

Along with an analysis of these disruptions, stories are used to illustrate these new futures.

Inayatullah and Lu Na argue that Asia is in the midst of a major and foundational shift. The shift is not only related to the spheres of economy, technology and geo-politics; equally important are current and coming social and cultural changes.

But this book is not just about what is likely to happen, it focuses more on using the future to create desired visions, since what we can foresee and imagine, we can also create.

Asia 2038 highlights ten interrelated emerging issues or disruptions that point towards multiple possibilities for Asia. The book intends to provide a working map of the nature of both the disruption and the many possibilities ahead, so that wiser decisions can be made as we create futures. In addition to these many possibilities the book also outlines a number of shared desired visions for Asia 2038, based on decades of conducting workshops and interviews with a range of people across the region.

Emerging issues are credible, potentially high impact occurrences which may be of low probability at the time they are identified. However, if and when they become the new norm, they ‘change everything’. What appears impossible can suddenly become the plausible.

Certainly, in the next twenty years and beyond, many things will remain stable. At the same time, we can also expect dramatic changes. As to which Asia actually emerges, while there are signs enabling “Continued Asian Miracle” and flatter, greener, more transparent, equitable and confederate Asia, other futures, such as “Asia in Decline” or perhaps “Fortress Asia” are equally possible. Whichever future results, the emerging issues and trends suggest more, not less, disruption in the decades to come.

However, Asia 2038 is thus not only about emerging trends and disruptions to come or about possibilities and scenarios for the future. It is also about imagining the best version of Asia, an Asia that continues to innovate and flourish in ways that benefit current and future generations. In sum, Asia 2038 as it could be.

Length: 142 pages

Purchase: PDF or Paperback