Notes

Some chapters begin with a brief quote from Ursula K. Le Guin’s new English version of the Tao Te Ching. My intent is to link thought about the future to wisdom from the past. As Le Guin says in her introduction: “I wanted a Book of the Way accessible to a present-day, unwise, unpowerful, and perhaps unmale reader, not seeking esoteric secrets, but listening for a voice that speaks to the soul. I would like that reader to see why people have loved the book for twenty-five hundred years. It is the most lovable of all the great religious texts, funny, keen, kind, modest, indestructibly outrageous, and inexhaustibly refreshing. Of all the deep springs, this is the purest water. To me, it is also the deepest spring.” Ursula LeGuin, Lao Tzu:Tao Te Ching (Boston: Shambhala, 1997), 3.

Introduction

1. Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003).

2. Although the Foresight to Insight to Action Cycle was developed at IFTF, we are not arguing that this is the first learning cycle. Certainly, there have been many other learning cycles that take similar approaches, including David Kolb’s Kolb Learning Cycle, OODA Loops (for Observation, Orientation, Decision, and Action) by Colonel John Boyd, and the PDCA Cycle (for Plan, Do, Check, and Act) that was first developed in the 1930s by William Shewhart and later adapted by W. Edwards Deming in the Total Quality movement. The big difference in our approach is that we add a ten-year perspective to provoke strategic insight and innovation. Our approach can certainly be used in concert with other learning cycles. There is a basic truth in learning cycles: learning is an ongoing process.

Chapter 1

1. Roy Amara’s initial idea was to regularize the institute’s base forecasts, to provide grounding for the more specific forecasting projects that had been done by IFTF since it began in 1968. Gregory Schmid, a globally oriented economist who joined IFTF from the Federal Reserve, became the leader of the Ten-Year Forecast, and he continued in that role until 2003. Kathi Vian is the current leader; she is a communications researcher and an information designer. It was Kathi and IFTF’s digital graphics lead, Jean Hagan, who made the Ten-Year Forecast visual, adding to its grounding in text, analysis, and data.

2. Herman Kahn was a very provocative guy. I met him once when I was invited to a weekend workshop called “Prospects for the Year 2000,” held in 1972 at the Hudson Institute in Croton-on-Hudson (aka “Herman-on-Hudson”), New York. At the time, I had just finished my PhD and was teaching introductory sociology, sociology of religion, and sociology of the future. I was intrigued by this 300-pound giant of a man, Herman Kahn, who had a mind that was as large as his size. In talking informally with his staff that weekend, I learned that the draft program for Prospects for the Year 2000 weekend workshop had Herman Kahn presenting all the lectures, in spite of the incredible range of the topics. In the end, he backed off on playing such an all-inclusive role, let other researchers lead some of the sessions, and did only about half of the lectures—which was still amazing.

Herman Kahn was provocative in many ways. I felt his provocation personally that weekend, since he argued that shallow thinking by young untenured sociologists had caused the student revolts of the 1960s, and I was the only young untenured sociologist present at the workshop. I squirmed in my chair, fumbling with what I might say in response. I cannot even remember what I said, but I doubt that it was very profound.

Herman Kahn’s most influential books are Thinking about the Unthinkable (New York: Horizon Press, 1962) and On Thermonuclear War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960).

3. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) was developed by Katherine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers and was first copyrighted in 1943. For information on the MBTI visit www.myersbriggs.org or see Isabel Briggs My-ers and Mary H. McCaulley, Robert Most, ed., Manual, A Guide to the Development and Use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press, 1985).

4. Institute for the Future, Science and Technology Outlook: 2005–2055 (Palo Alto, CA: IFTF, May 2006).

Chapter 2

1. Beyond ethnicity is a term coined by David Hayes Bautista from the Center for Latino Health and Culture at UCLA. Intermarriage is the big driver taking us beyond ethnicity, and this shift means that ethnicity becomes even more important. The population cannot be segmented in traditional ways, since there are so many mixes of ethnicities. Los Angeles County and the Houston metropolitan areas are two of the most likely models for future ethnic mix in the United States.

2. Peter Drucker, interview by author, Claremont, CA, July 26, 2001.

3. Robert D. Hof, “The Power of Us,” BusinessWeek Online, June 20, 2006, http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_25/b3938601.htm.

4. William Gibson, Neuromancer (New York: Ace Books, 1984).

5. Institute for the Future, 2006 Map of the Decade, SR-997 (Palo Alto, CA: IFTF, 2006).

6. Chris Anderson, “The Long Tail,” Wired Magazine, October 2004; Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (New York: Hyperion, 2006).

7. Howard Rheingold, Smart Mobs (Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2002).

8. The terms connected core and nonintegrated gap come from Thomas P. M. Barnett’s book The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty- First Century (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2004). The central argument is that the connected core regions have great economic and social incentives to cooperate, or at least to not go to war. On the other hand, the nonintegrated gap regions are characterized by unbalanced extremes.

9. Institute for the Future, “Extended Self,” Technology Horizons Fall Exchange (Palo Alto, CA: IFTF, 2005).

Chapter 3

1. The idea of reframing the dangers of the VUCA world in a positive way first arose in a workshop I was leading at George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch. This was a workshop on external future forces around learning, hosted by the George Lucas Educational Foundation. I believe it was Milton Chen, the George Lucas Educational Foundation’s executive director, who first suggested reimagining VUCA as a positive acronym.

2. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (New York: Ballantine, 1937), 60.

3. Alan Jolis, “The Good Banker,” The Independent, May 5, 1996.

4. Ishaan Tharoor, “Q&A Muhammed Yunus,” Time (October 23, 2006), 20.

5. Tom Shanker, “A New Enemy Gains on the U.S.,” New York Times, July 30, 2006.

6. Joe Pine and James Gilmore, The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre and Every Business a Stage (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999).

Chapter 4

1. Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, trans. Ursula Le Guin (Boston: Shambhala, 1997), 52–53.

2. Towne v. Eisner, 245 U.S. 418, 425 (1918).

3. Webster’s Online Dictionary, s.v. “dilemma,” http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/dilemma (accessed January 3, 2007).

4. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, s.v., “Dilemma,” http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dilemma&oldid=92850225 (accessed May 2006).

5. MSN Encarta Dictionary, s.v. “problem,” www.dictionary.msn.com.

6. Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity (New York: Pantheon Books, 1951)14–16.

7. Institute for the Future, Toward a New Literacy of Cooperation in Business: Managing Dilemmas in the 21st Century, SR-851 (Palo Alto, CA: IFTF, June 2004), 1.

Chapter 5

1. Joe Lambert and Nina Mullin are master storytellers for the Center for Digital Storytelling at UC Berkeley: www.storycenter.org.

2. AnnaLee Saxenian has compared the cultures of Silicon Valley and Route 28, near Boston-Cambridge. She has pointed out that Silicon Valley is distinctly more open, more willing to share ideas and to trust that all will benefit in the long run. AnnaLee Saxenian, Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).

3. Karen Miller-Kovach, Weight Watchers Family Power: 5 Simple Rules for a Healthy-Weight Home (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2005).

4. Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, “The Making of a Corporate Athlete,” Harvard Business Review (January 2001), 120–128.

The program is managed by the Human Performance Institute: www.energyforperformance.com

5. Cait Murphy, “Secrets of Greatness: How I Work,” Fortune, March 16, 2006.

Chapter 6

1. John Raser, Simulation and Society: An Exploration of Scientific Gaming (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1969), ix.

2. David Ignatius, “Lessons for Iraq from Gettysburg,” Washington Post, May 4, 2005, 19.

3. Peter Drucker, interview by author, Claremont, CA, July 26, 2001.

4. Serious Games Initiative, “Serious Games Initiative: About Us,” Serious Games Initiative, http://www.seriousgames.org/about2.html.

5. Ibid.

6. Henry Jenkins, quoted in Clive Thompson, “Saving the World, One Video Game at a Time,” New York Times, July 23, 2006. Also see Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York, New York University Press, 2006).

7. See www.peacemakergame.com. Many of these games are either in development or are likely to change online locations, so I recommend the the reader simply Google any games listed in this chapter to find appropriate information.

8. See www.darfurisdying.com/.

9. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Charles River City (CRC),” MIT Teacher Education Program and the Education Arcade, http://education.mit.edu/ar/crc.html (accessed January 3, 2007).

10. Jane McGonigal and Ian Bogost, “Cruel 2 B Kind: About the Game,” Cruel 2 B Kind, http://www.cruelgame.com/about/ (accessed January 3, 2007).

11. Reena Jana, “Taking the Pulse!!! of Medical Training,” BusinessWeek Online, April 6, 2006, http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/apr2006/id20060410_051875.htm (accessed January 3, 2007).

12. Rob Swigart, “Satisfying Ambiguity,” Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science 1, no. 4 (2001).

13. James Paul Gee, quoted in Thompson, “Saving the World, One Video Game at a Time.”

14. Robert Johansen, Jacques Vallee, and Kathleen Spangler, Electronic Meetings: Technical Alternatives and Social Choices (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979), Appendix.

15. Garry Shirts, “Ten Secrets of Successful Simulations,” Training Magazine, October 2002, accessible online at http://www.stsintl.com/articles/tensecrets.html.

16. Will Wright, quoted in Steven Johnson, “The Long Zoom,” New York Times Magazine, October 2006, 55.

Chapter 7

1. The father of modern group graphics and mentor to many of today’s practitioners is David Sibbet. Sibbet is also the founder of Grove Consultants International, which does content facilitation and offers graphic templates for use in workshops. For information, see the Grove website at www.grove.com. These templates allow some of the advantages of a live graphic artist, but normal people can fill in the templates to create the group memory graphic.

Chapter 8

1. The wonderful title of Peter Schwartz’s book The Art of the Long View (New York: Currency Doubleday, 1991) picks up this same theme. This important book brought the perspective of scenario planning into wide use in the world of business.

2. Willie Pietersen, Reinventing Strategy: Using Strategic Learning to Create and Sustain Breakthrough Performance (New York: John Wiley, 2002).

3. Ibid., 145.

4. Roger Martin, “Why Decisions Need Design,” BusinessWeek Online, August 30, 2004. http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/aug2005/id20050830_416439.htm (Accessed January 3, 2007)

5. Devin Leonard, “The Only Lifeline Was Wal-Mart,” Fortune, October 3, 2005, 80.

6. Ibid.

7. Jimmy Wales, “Vision: Wikipedia and the Future of Free Culture” (lecture, The Long Now Foundation, San Francisco, April 14, 2006).

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, s.v. “C. K. Prahalad,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ C. K. Prahalad.

11. See Kenan Institute, “Case Studies,” Kenan Institute, http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/ki/cse/newcasestudies.cfm.

12. See http://www.ashoka.org

13. Pierre Omidyar, quoted in Connie Bruck, “Millions for Millions,” New Yorker (October 2006).

Chapter 9

1. Robert Johansen and Rob Swigart, Upsizing the Individual in the Downsized Organization: Managing in the Wake of Reengineering, Globalization, and Overwhelming Technological Change (Reading: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1994), 8.

2. Ibid., 15.

3. Institute for the Future, Toward a New Literacy of Cooperation in Business: Managing Dilemmas in the 21st Century, SR-851 (Palo Alto, CA: IFTF, 2004). The primary researchers leading this work are Andrea Saveri, Howard Rheingold, and Kathi Vian.

4. Dexter Filkins, “Profusion of Rebels Helps Them Survive in Iraq,” New York Times, December 2, 2005, A1.

5. Dee Hock is the founder and former CEO of Visa International, which he argues was the first “chaordic” organization. Dee Hock, Birth of the Chaordic Age (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1999).

6. Ellen Galinsky, Ask the Children: The Breakthrough Study That Reveals How to Succeed at Work and Parenting (New York: William Morrow, 1999).

7. Malcolm Gladwell, “The Cellular Church: How Rick Warren’s Congregation Grew,” New Yorker, September 2005, 62.

8. I first heard the term officing from Duncan Sutherland in the early days of office automation. It was a term that was ahead of its time. Now, officing is actually possible.

9. Carol Hymowitz, “Have Advice, Will Travel: Running a Virtual Company on the Fly.” Wall Street Journal Online, (June 5, 2006) http://www.careerjournal.com/myc/officelife/20060607-hymowitz.html.

10. Mary O’Hara-Devereaux and Robert Johansen, GlobalWork: Bridging Distance, Culture, and Time (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994).

11. William Mitchell, phone interview by Alex Pang and Anthony Townsend, November 10, 2005.

12. See Hof, “The Power of Us.” See also David Kirkpatrick, “Money Makes the World Go Round—Or Does It?” Fortune (June 2005) on the “contribution economy.”

13. See Robert Grossman, “The Truth about the Coming Labor Shortage,” HR Magazine 50, no. 3 (March 2005).

14. Ibid.

Chapter 10

1. Larry Huston and Nabil Sakkab, “Connect and Develop: Inside Procter & Gamble’s New Model for Innovation,” Harvard Business Review (March 2006).

2. The Social Venture Network, “Social Venture Network: About SVN,” http://www.svn.org/organization.html (accessed October 25, 2006).

3. Hock, Birth of the Chaordic Age.

Chapter 11

1. Department of the Army, A Leader’s Guide to After Action Review, U.S.

Army Training Circular 25–20 (September 1993), 4.

2. “After Action Reviews” (lecture, Army War College and Columbia Business School Strategic Leadership Forum, July 19, 2006).

3. Bill Drayton, quoted in “What Is a Social Entrepreneur?” Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, http://www.ashoka.org/social_entrepreneur (accessed November 4, 2006).

Conclusion

1. Rick the peanut vendor is a great example of what Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore call the “experience economy,” where we see an evolution from products to services, to experiences to transformations. Joe Pine and James Gilmore, The Experience Economy.

2. Peter Drucker, interview by author, Claremont, CA, July 26, 2001.

3. Frank Stockton, “The Lady or the Tiger?” east of the web, http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/LadyTige.shtml (accessed January 3, 2007).

4. This hint originated with Rebecca Henderson’s observations based on her studies of high-conflict cultures in successful companies.

5. For a convincing case regarding the need to constrain extreme negative behavior, see Bob Sutton, The No Asshole Rule (New York: Warner Business Books, 2007).

6. I first heard the term “urgent patience” from Bill Walsh, the former San Francisco ’49ers football coach, in a late 1980’s conversation.