MISC: Prepping for the Next Economy(s)

 

I am pleased with the Houston Foresight program’s collaboration with the elegant and informative MISC: A journal of strategic foresight and insight. There has been a void in the foresight space for an attractive magazine-style publication with concise, sharp and relevant pieces — the kind of publication you bring on a plane trip, or with morning coffee. I am also pleased that they are asking for our contributions. I’d like to tease my upcoming piece on the next economy theme that I’ve been exploring since our 2012 Annual Gathering explored “After Capitalism.” We anticipated sorting through a few concepts and then focusing on how they might be implemented – but we quickly learned that there were far more than “a few concepts.” This cornucopia of interesting and often radical concepts does portend significant change ahead. The time to prepare now. Develop, build, or enhance your scanning capability now to track these [and other] emerging changes. Change is indeed brewing on the economic front! [PS: Almost regardless of one’s political viewpoint, last night’s election could be seen as a strong signal that the current system – of which the economy is a central component — is broken]

My collecting of next economy concepts is informal. I’m not searching them out or screening them rigorously. Admittedly, my current count is 35 next economy concepts is a bit of a grab bag — subject to debate – nonetheless we’ll sort them into four categories to be more helpful.

• Umbrella concepts are the broadest type in that they attempt to characterize a new economic system or era at the highest level — they seek to explain the new economic order.
• Sources of new value are narrower in that they explain an important new economic development, but don’t necessarily address the entire system – it’s a key piece of the puzzle rather than the whole puzzle.
• Sustainability and moral imperatives are something of a hybrid of the first two, in that they address the motivation of a new economic order in terms environmental or moral stewardship as both the source of new value and the overall economic order. The sheer number warranted a separate category.
• Drivers, enablers, and mechanisms describe key features of the new economic order without characterizing the overall system.

It is worth noting that these concepts raise the question of whether it’s really “just” a new economy that we’re talking about. I would argue that they are really suggesting a new paradigm in the sense that they cover not just economic questions, but social, political and environmental ones as well.

But let me encourage you to read more in the next issue of MISC. —  Andy  Hines

 

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