Entrepreneurship and Innovation Today

The Future Just Ain't what is used to be?

Are entrepreneurs and business people scared off by futurists and strategic planners? and their version of the future?

While research material for a Futures project for a client last week, I ran across this well-written anecdote.

Irving Buchan posses the question in a witty humorous article called Finding time for the future and overcoming future avoidance, in Foresight Vol 7(6) pp-3-7 (2005)

He writes in one section:

… Far from eliciting the self-righteous indignation of futurists and strategic planners about not being listened to, futurists perhaps need to recognize that it is partly or largely their fault.

There is complicity here.  We are not totally innocent.  Indeed, we scare people.  We often browbeat or scold audiences or students on their short-sighted myopia.  We breathlessly trot out a barrage of trends that are overwhelming and intimidating.  We impatiently leap ahead to a future which is so totally discontinuous from the present and worse from past futures that it reads like the science fiction profile of an extra-terrestrial civilization.  In short, inadvertently perhaps futurists may have given the future a bad name or rap.  In the process, we also inadvertently may be creating or widening a futures gap which ironically is our task to bridge.

To be sure it is partly excusable.  The future we faithfully portray is often diabolically disruptive.  For example, it generally has wrecked the basic assumptions of strategic planning.  Many constants are now variables.  Narrow parameters have been forced to be more inclusive, even global.  The planning environment itself has been made so complex and volatile that only computer modeling and simulation offers mastery.  Risk analysis and management has been factored in and in the process compelled planning to be at least fifty percent contingency.  Early warning sensors have been introduced to such an extent that planning in many cases is largely a lit-up 24/7 monitoring screen.  The net result is the embarrassment of generating contingency plans which define the long term as six months.  It is like the oxymoron of another futures creation: crisis management."

Quote of the Day-Small Business

"I would much rather have ten 100-person companies in my state than one 1,000-person company."

Angus King | former governor | Maine

Green Is Gold, According to Goldman Sachs Study

A new report by investment bank Goldman Sachs found that companies that are considered leaders in environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies are also leading the pack in stock performance—by an average of 25%. In an analysis of more than 120 ESG leaders from five different industries—energy, metals and mining, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals and European media—Goldman found that companies in four of the sectors for which it had published reports (energy, mining and steel, food and beverages, and media) outperformed the MSCI world Index by an average of 25% since August 2005.

see here>>[...]

Blind Spots or Why Smart People do Dumb Things Part 1

I’m sure most of us have been in a similar circumstance...

"When our son-in-law Salvador visited the United States for the first time, we drove around my hometown to show him a little of Middle America. Nearing my bank, I remembered that I needed some cash and entered the lane for the ATM machine. While we waited for the transaction to be processed, I gestured towards the monitor and said to Salvador: “We’ve become more sensitive to the needs of handicapped people in the United States. See the instructions here in Braille?” I waited a moment while his wife Kalyn translated what I had said, feeling a bit smug. I was proud of the sensitivity that this feature of our bank demonstrated. Salvador murmured something in Spanish, and then he and Kalyn burst out laughing. Miffed, I waited to hear what was so funny. Then Kalyn translated: “Salvador just wondered how many blind drivers you have here in Elmhurst.”

The Braille instructions that I had been pointing out with such pride just moments earlier now appeared totally idiotic. Even as I grasped for straws, offering the idea that a sighted driver could be driving a blind individual to the bank, deep down I knew that it made little sense to have Braille instructions on equipment at a drive-through facility. I felt stupid for not having seen how foolish those instructions were in this setting and for touting them as evidence of our cultural superiority. Salvador’s point was glaringly obvious. How could I have missed it?"

Source: Excerpt from Chapter 1 of Blind Spots, Why Smart People do Dumb Things. 2007

I ran into a similar but reverse situation. While in the subway system of a foreign capital about ten years ago, I was waiting for the next train to arrive. Looking down the platform, I noticed the digital clock that was running backwards. My first immediate thought was My ! My ! how backward of a country this is. They can’t even tell time right!!... till I noticed when the clock hit zero, low and behold the train arrived. At that point I felt really stupid and I was so glad that I didn't publicly point it out to anyone.

When have you been "blind spotted" by the obvious?

Post your example in the comments section below

Source: "15 blind spots that most start-up entrepreneurs encounter" in the Certificate program in Entrepreneurship & Innovation; University of Toronto, School of Continuing Studies, St George Campus.

© 2005-2007 Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"©

Walter Derzko teaches at the Certificate Program on Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Toronto, School of Continuing Studies, which starts in the Fall of 2007

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

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