by A couple of weeks ago in World Futures, we had a class on wildcards. Yesterday, I just had a client conversation about the degree to which a project to explore the future of a topic would “immunize” the client from surprises (immunize was my interpretation). And on Friday, I’m giving a talk to the APQC Knowledge Management conference on surprises in the future of work.”
My sharply-honed futurist instincts tell me that when a topic is hitting you from multiple sources, and directions, something is afoot and one must pay attention.
Let’s start with the client conversation. We discussed whether the hotel industry was caught by surprise by airbnb, or saw it, but wasn’t able to do anything about it. It seems to me that it is often the latter. When you read Clay Christensen’s work around the Innovator’s Dilemma, those being disrupted typically saw the potential threat, but they initially under-estimated how big it would be, and then when they realized the full extent of it, they were unable to mobilize in time.
I had worked on a project exploring the future of lodging several years ago, so I looked to see if we talked about something like airbnb, and indeed it was there. Granted, we did not shout from the rooftops about it — it really wasn’t in the scope of the project (I know, how can a potential gamechanger not “be in scope?”). The point I was trying to make in our discussion was that a good scanning process should catch at least the indicators of any potential surprise, depending on the timeframe. Put another way, if we are doing a ten year forecast of the future of a topic, I would feel pretty confident that our scanning would capture at least some indication of any major surprise within that timeframe. In other words, I don’t think we’d be completely surprised by any development in that ten-year period. We surely might miss the degree to which an event “explodes on the scene” so to speak. With the airbnb example, for instance, I recall us framing the discussion more around the “couchsurfing” phenomenon, noting it of interest, and keeping an eye on it in our consultancy.
On this point, of seeing at least the signals. I’m also revising Thinking about the Future for a second edition (frantically trying to get it done before the print supply runs out), and came across an example we used about how Shell had once considered the fall of the Berlin Wall during a strategic activity. It was judged highly unlikely =even impossible, at that moment in time, and ultimately abandoned in the strategic decision process. But its inclusion helped widen the decision-makers’ scope of what was possible, thus they were not surprised when it happened.
There’s more to say on this topic….we’ll at least do a part two. Andy Hines
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