Jerome C. Glenn The Millennium Project American Council for the UN University

1. Futures Research and the Millennium Project as Tools to cope with Global ChallengesBled Forum - 2006 Jerome C. Glenn The Millennium Project American Council for the UN University

2. Outline • Purposes of Futures Research • Overview of Scenarios • Futures Intelligence Systems • The Millennium Project as an alternative system • How to Make Futures Research more effective in decision-making

3. 97 pages in print 3,800 pages in the CD www.acunu.org JGlenn@igc.org

4. Highlights • Organized crime is more than twice that of all military budgets worldwide • Internet connects 1 billion people - 15% of the World • 60% of the environmental life support system is gone or unsustainable • 24-7 ubiquitous computing accelerates decisionmaking • IQ as competitive advantage in the knowledge economy • Indo/China’s hightech/low wage forces rest of Third World to re-think trade-lead growth strategies • 500 environmental agreement; faster implications – Chart on Page 87: rising global environmental consciousness • Nanotech health/environmental impacts rapidly being assessed.

5. Purpose of Futures Research • To systematically explore, create, and test both possible and desirable futures to improve decisions • Provide a framework to help understand the present and its potential • Expand mental horizons • To understand the extent that policies can change trends

6. Purpose of Futures Research (Continued) • Enhance ability to act faster or earlier making the an organization more effective in dealing with changing conditions in the world (media lost $billions by not understanding its opportunities back in the 1980s, and early 1990s.) • Get early warnings which in turn give extra time to: • better understand threats & opportunities • develop more creative strategies • create new product opportunities • create and share vision for organizational change • To help understand what might be, what could be, and what ought to be

7. Futures Research Methodology V2.0 1. Introduction & Overview 15. Simulation and Games 2. Environmental Scanning 16. Genius Forecasting, Vision, and Int. 3. Delphi 17. Normative Forecasting 4. Futures Wheel 18. S&T Road Mapping 5. Trend Impact Analysis 19. Field Anomaly Relaxation (FAR) 6. Cross-Impact Analysis 20. Text Mining for Technology Foresight 7. Structural Analysis 21. Agent Modeling 8. Systems Perspectives 22. SOFI 9. Decision Modeling 23. SOFI Software 10. Statistical Modeling 24. The Multiple Perspective Concept 11. Technological Sequence Analysis 25. Tool Box for Scenario Planning 12. Relevance Trees and Morph. Analysis 26. Causal Layered Analysis 13. Scenarios 13.5 Interactive Scenarios 27. Integration, Comparisons, and 14. Participatory Methods Frontiers of Futures Research Methods

8. Feeling Powerful Feeling Powerless Pessimistic Studies the Future to avoid it Rejects Study of the Future Optimistic Takes Futures Research seriously Pursues as Academic Interest Generalizations for judging futurists and their research

9. Definition of a Scenario: A scenario is a story with plausible cause and effect links that connects a future condition with the present, while illustrating key decisions, events, and consequences throughout the narrative.

10. A Scenario is not: • A projection – although projections are included in a scenario. • A discussion about a range of future possibilities with data and analysis – It is like confusing the text of a play's newspaper review with the text of the play written by the playwright.

11. Classic Herman Kahn Scenarios • Surprise-free, business-as-usual, reference, base-case scenario is a simple extrapolation of current trends and their interplay • Worst case scenario based on mismanagement and bad luck • Best case scenario based on good management and good luck.

12. “Scenario Space” Defined by Axes

13. Exploratory vs. Normative Scenarios • Exploratory Scenarios – vast majority of scenarios are exploratory scenarios, also call descriptive scenarios • Normative Scenarios – Middle East Peace Scenario set and Normative 2050 Scenario. Can be proprietary to an organization (normative scenario for corporate strategy) or government (Military invasion scenario)

14. Scenarios have been developed and utilized to: • Discover what is unknown that ought to be known, before making decisions • Understand the significance of uncertainties • Illustrate what is possible and what is not possible • Identify what strategies might work in a range of possible scenarios • Make the future more real for decision makers to force new thinking and new decisions • Learn what has to be avoided and discover new opportunities

15. Weaknesses of Scenarios • Can limit thinking to the “official scenarios” • Writer’s model of how the world works transferred to the reader • The struggle to be interesting and the dynamic of the story can make it difficult to include important but boring details of connecting cause and effect. • To be accepted, “far out” can be edited out

16. What we think is possible should change as change continues to accelerate 25 Years ago there was no • Internet, World Wide Web, PCs, or mobile phones • EU, WTO, ICC, or NATO in Eastern Europe • AIDS, talk of globalization, cloned sheep, genetically modified food and drugs, and stem cells repairing and enhancing the body • Asymmetrical warfare… and most believed that a nuclear WW III would have destroyed the world by now

17. … in the next 15 years • Human intelligence becomes the competitive advantage in the global knowledge economy (personalized food, regressed stem cells re-inserted in the brain, genetic engineering, computer enhanced learning) • Stem cells from pigs, cows and goats to produce meat • Nanotechnology reduces pollution, raises living standards of the poor • Life extension begins to look like a realistic option while the aging population increases economic concerns • Genetic engineering and artificial intelligence creates new life forms that achieve awareness and evolve • A global brain(s) emerges from Internet evolving later into Conscious-Technology

18. Conscious-Technology (Post-Information Age) When the distinction between these two trends becomes blurred, we will have reached thePost-Information Age HUMANS BECOMING CYBORGS BUILT ENVIRONMENT BECOMING INTELLIGENT 2030 2015 2000 1985

19. Simplification of History and an Alternative Future

20. Future Mind: Artificial Intelligence Merging the Mystical and the Technological in the 21st Century by Jerome C. Glenn 1989

21. Futures Intelligence System Periodicals Press Releases Monitor Specific Websites Key Word Internet Searching Conferences Seminars Key Persons Tracking SCANNING Also called environmental scanning and early warning systems Analysis & Synthesis Individual Staff Management Weblog-Database Feedback & New Requirements Decisions Future Oriented Understanding and learning for organization Management

22. UN Universities Organizations Governments Corporations NGOs Millennium Project … May become a TransInstitution

23. Millennium Project Nodes... are groups of individuals and institutions that connect global and local views in: Nodes identify participants, translate questionnaires and reports, and conduct interviews, special research, workshops, symposiums, and advanced training. Helsinki Ottawa Berlin London Calgary Moscow Paris Prague Seoul Washington, DC Silicon Valley Rome Tehran Tokyo Istanbul Mexico City Cairo Beijing New Delhi Kuwait Madurai Caracas Cyber Node Sao Paulo Pretoria/Johannesburg Buenos Aires Sidney

24. 15 Global Challenges 1. Sustainable development for all 2. Sufficient clean water for all without conflict 3. Population growth and resources brought into balance 4. Genuine democracy emergence from authoritarian regimes 5. Policy-making more sensitive to global long-term perspectives 6. Globalization and convergence of information and communications technologies works for everyone 7. Ethical market economies reduce rich and poor gap 8. Threat of new and reemerging diseases, and immune micro organisms reduced

25. Global Challenges (continued) 9. Capacity to decide improved while the nature of work and institutions is changing 10. Shared values and new security strategies reduce ethnic conflict, terrorism, and mass destruction 11. Changing status of woman improves civilization 12. Organized crime stopped from becoming more powerful and sophisticated global enterprises 13. Growing energy demand safely and efficiently met 14. Scientific and technological breakthroughs to improve the human condition 15. Ethical considerations more routinely incorporated into global decisions?

26. Millennium Project’s Current Activities • Global Energy Scenarios • Futures Research Methodology - V 3.0 • Monthly reports of international environmental security issues • Futures Dictionary/Encyclopedia • Up-dating Annotated Scenario Bibliography • Middle East Peace Scenarios dissemination and discussions • National State of the Future Indexes (SOFIs) • Updating & Improving Global Challenges and publish 2006 SOF • Women Issues Organizations and their Research • Experiments with Collaborative Software

27. Making Futures research effective in decision-making • Make sure DM understands was FR is and is not • Formal link to strategic planning • Work with champion within the organization • Show complexity to DM via workshops, computer models • Integrate DM into the FR process as much as possible • Make the future more real to the DM via subjective descriptions • Include the full range of stakeholders • If goals not clear, then add their identification in the process • If actor on FR not clear, then add that to the process • Use at least one formal method all understand • Demonstrate crisis • Demonstrate what is possible with success stories • Connect options to goals in political, cultural and social (non-technical) terms • Show technical feasibility of recommendations • Connect the costs to the benefits

28. Continued…. • If the information and data are inaccurate, unreliable, conflicting, and/or insufficient, then expose the problem, collect best judgments, and suggest ways of making decisions within the uncertain environment. • Include the intended actions of related institutions • Develop and popularize appropriate indicators • Use testimony of eminent scientists • Clarify the forecasted condition with and without action • Link to other FR activities so that diverse inputs are possible • Avoid information overload. • Use workshops to give time to integrate the concepts in a group setting. • Consider how to include the media to popularize concepts • Make the work continuous and cumulative.

29. Corporations Applied Materials Deloitte & Touche LLP Ford Motor Company General Motors Hughes Space and Communications Monsanto Company Motorola Corporation Pioneer Hi-Bred International Shell International NGOs and Foundations Alan F. Kay & Hazel Henderson Foundation for Social Innovation Amana-Kay Foundation for Social Innovation Foundation for the Future Government Organizations U.S. Environmental Protection Agency U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute U.S. Department of Energy Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Kuwait Oil Company Kuwait Petroleum Corporation UN Organizations UNDP UNESCO United Nations University Previous Sponsors

30. The Millennium Project WWW.STATEOFTHEFUTURE.ORG Jglenn@igc.org