9/9/08 Chris Luebkeman
New, Now, Next: Harnessing the Drivers of Change
Seeing and responding to the forces that will shape tomorrow
For thirty months, Chris Luebkeman conducted workshops on five continents, eventually involving more than ten thousand people. He asked them what they understood to be the forces driving change in their businesses and their lives. He tabulated the responses to identify the world's biggest social, technological, economic, environmental, and political drivers of change.
In the first part of this session he'll offer some crucial future-oriented questions for you to consider, and show some of the startling ways that organizations around the world are responding to them. He'll show the novel innovation practices his firm has developed to help decision-makers respond to change in three time dimensions concurrently: now (things that need immediate attention), new (things with three-to-five-year time frames), and next (things that are over the horizon but must be faced).
In the second part, which begins with a vivid multimedia presentation, he'll show how the future is oversold by a handful of so-called experts but under-imagined by those who will actually live it and lead it. Sustainability in many forms appears as a primary concern - the sustainability of our current carbon-based energy strategies, of world water supplies, and of urbanization, for example. He will close by demonstrating an interactive, broadly-inclusive methodology through which any organization's future can be imagined in actionable ways.
From this session, you will learn, among other things, how to:
- The big trends shaping our futures.
- The provocative yet practical questions that arise from the trends.
- Ways of innovating in three time dimensions concurrently - now, new, and next.
- How to use your foresight and that of others to envision desired futures in actionable ways.
As head of the Foresight and Innovation Group at Arup Group, Chris Luebkeman has led projects to envision the home of the future, retailing of the future, transportation of the future, schools of the future, the airport of the future, the city of the future, the hotel of the future, and the hospital of the future, among others. Arup is a leading international engineering consulting firm based in London with offices around the world; it is designing the new Olympic Stadium and other key facilities for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
Luebkeman's education includes degrees in geology, structural engineering, and architecture. He has taught in the departments of architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, the University of Oregon, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and at MIT.
Some of his thoughts:
"If we're not pausing periodically to think about twenty years from now, to think about where we would like things to get to perhaps, or acknowledge the plausible futures, then we're not making the decisions that will get us into that sweet spot where we want, hope, need, desire things to be."
"Foresight is not about crystal ball gazing, it's not about prediction, it's not about trending. It's really about helping others frame their thinking about what might, or what could, or what would happen given certain circumstances. This is very important because foresight brings out knowledge that already exists within a group of individuals."
"It has been said that if every Chinese citizen drove an automobile like the average American, the world's oil supply would be consumed in six months."
"By 2020, the 60-plus age group will most likely reach a count of one billion. 75 percent of this group will live in the developed world. . . How will we need to change the design of products and services, places and environments, to make their urban areas more familiar to, and more familiar for, them?"
Some questions that provoke him and could reorient your strategic thinking:
For how long will cities remain habitable?
How large will the wealth gap - throughout the world and also inside companies - be permitted to become?
How long will we continue to flush our toilets with drinking water?
How long will we continue to extol capitalism when we practice it but resist it when others do?
To Learn More:
Chris Luebkeman's bio and a brief interview with him can be found at the Arup website, where you can also learn more about this industry-leading company: www.arup.com/arup/people.cfm
Interviews with him on a variety of topics related to this presentation can be viewed at www.hoxtonstudios.com/arup