Atelier WeekNotes w/c 15 April 2024
IN THE ATELIER. Imagining Influential Trajectories. OUTPUTS. Powerful Times: Alex Evans. ReadingNotes: 'Roadmapping for strategy and innovation'; 'On order and complexity in innovation systems'.
I am writing newsletter of #weeknotes of starting the Atelier of What’s Next (a studio for initiatives at the frontier of generating a better future). For my rationale for starting the Atelier see here.
Minor announcement: Exploring What's Next has reached 100 subscribers. Tiny in the scheme of things, but I appreciate each one of you. The act of writing a (mostly) weekly update has forced me to get my thoughts in order, and ways to myself accountable (like the intentions for 2024). I also enjoy the occasional feedback I get, whether it is appreciating the quality of insights or pointing out tipos typos.
This week covers:
IN THE ATELIER
Imagining Influential Trajectories.
OUTPUTS
Powerful Times: Alex Evans.
ReadingNotes:
'Roadmapping for strategy and innovation' - Phaal et al
'On order and complexity in innovation systems' - Grubb et al
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IN THE ATELIER
Imagining Influential Trajectories
Step: 4/DEVELOPING. Theme: Method; Sectoral Transformation; Governance; Futures.
One line: An approach (currently in a development stage) to accelerate change by understanding what is happening now, identifying what will make a difference and inducing coherent action across stakeholders.
Aknowledgment. Very grateful for the opportunity provided by Sustainable Shipping Initiative, and funding from Lloyd's Register Foundation, for the first pilot use in the State of Sustainable Shipping (SoSS).
This week has been about designing the nuts and bolts of the method, and getting some early feedback.
One part of that is learning what others have been doing. Below are the summary ReadingNotes from two key texts (one on technology roadmapping, the other on innovation for system transformation), which add to the ReadingNote I did last week (on Transformation Outcomes).
Other reflections:
It has been tough going. Partly that is because my family crisis has become a chronic situation which required a lot of attention and emotional bandwidth this week. (I am gong to put some specifics in a future WeekNote but when the resolution is clearer.) Partly it is because I easily slip into the attention economy of distractions of contemporary life.
Also, it is that coming up with stuff is tough, in and of itself. I have a sense of something great, but hazy, The first version on the page / post-it note / flipchart looks so...feeble in comparison. Lots of negativity capability, sticking with the confusion and working onwards, in the hope that the direction is forwards, in the the hope of creating something that is good-enough to be improved.
Peer support is vital. I've benefited from two groups' support this week. First, a twice-weekly writing group, formed around Jean Boulton, who this week submitted her first draft of The Dao of Complexity: Makeing Sense and Making Waves in Turbulent Times (congrats, Jean!). Second, a bi-monthly peer-learning group that was formed around International Futures Forum's Competence in Complexity course.
Three things which came out of those conversations.
1."But, how is it different from [favoured futures method]?" Both groups asked this, usually with scenario planning as the [favoured futures method]. The simple answer is:
Yes, there are family resemblances to other futures methods, and some of them could be inputs. So, it is a valid question. More specifically:
Technology roadmapping:
The similarity: agency -- the world will respond to our attempts to shape it (which can drift into a presumption of control, which is obviously a risk for Influential Trajectories).
But: tends to be focussed on a single innovation, have rather mechanical view of causality, and rather blind to power, politics, culture and other non-technology factors.
Scenario planning:
One similarity: a presumption that many futures are possible from here. also, that the outputs could be used for on-going tracking of what is happening now. My experience is that rarely happens in scenario planning, so clearly that is a risk for Influential Trajectories.
But tends to focus on the future worlds as destinations rather than the paths to them, and has a presumption that the future doesn't respond to your actions, you just have to prepare to respond.
"Imagining". In principle, all futures methods require some creativity. In practice, the quantitative models, and desire for clear, explicit, simple logic can squash out all the space in which imagining might happen.
Predicting vs Sensing. In Riel Miller's Futures Literacy language, most futures methods people use are ones where the future is assumed to be a goal to attain, and so narrows human agency to presume the fundamentals of the future are not different to today. The Influential Trajectories is trying to be different: using the later-than-now as a disposable construct that helps us to sensing what is emerging now. This is a hard difference to convey, especially as Influential Trajectories does use future milestones, which look like a goal with which to fix the future.
I'll be adding a FAQ to my collateral to deal with these (and other) questions.
2."What is the next level of detail to give enough scaffolding for abundance?" A key challenge in the design of Influential Trajectories is to have a robust method that can be applied very broadly. First use is shipping industry (SoSS). But, I also am having conversations with an impact investor, a government department, an indigenous foundation, and a think tank.
Also, I'm trying to put into practice two design principles from the STEPS Centre), which are important as part of social justice in use:
‘Opening Up’ to different kinds of inputs and unusual methods of analysis.
‘Broadening Out’ recommendations and outputs to be more plural and conditional, reflecting assumptions, circumstances or perspectives embedded in conclusions.
The breakthrough this week was that the next level of detail that ives enough scaffolding can be: output templates for each step. That way there can be many methods that generate content in each step. But the key thing is the output covers certain aspects and can demonstrate how the content was generated (with strengths and weaknesses of that generation, because all methods have strengths and weaknesses).
3.How can I ensure the Influential Trajectories is 'complexity literate'? Over the last 2 years, I've been Jean writing her book on the Doa of Complexity. That has reminded me of how easy it to slip into a simplism of mechanical causality, as if Newton was right. A flatland of two dimensions, when there are more in play.
An on-going challenge is to preserve a sense of depth. If Futures Literacy is one foundation for the Imagining Influential, then a parallel coinage is wanting Influential Trajectories to be 'Complexity Literate', the putting into practice the complexity ontology. A big ask.
WHAT NEXT
Output templates for each step.
A small test.
OUTPUTS
Powerful Times: Alex Evans
Alex Evans is Founder and Executive Director of Larger Us, a "community of change-makers who share the aim of using psychology for good – to bridge divides, build broader coalitions and bring people together" (Alex's LinkedIn and Twitter).
Alex set up Larger Us to flip society from a breakdown dynamic and into a breakthrough dynamic. That means paying attention to how the state of world impacts our state of mind, how our state of mind how we show up, and how we affect others through our behaviour, especially in a primed and fast-hyper-connected world.
We were speaking a month on from Hamas attacking Isreal, adn the Isreali response. Alex had written a fantastic blog post on how to make sense and respond without just accelerating the conflict.
In the interview he talks about how the real tussle of our times is between those two ways of looking at the world: are we nudging things towards zero-sum outcomes ('for me to win, you must lose') or nonzero sum outcomes ('for me to win, you must win also'). If we want contribute to towards nonzero sum outcomes, and avoid feeding conflict, then it starts with managing our own mental and emotional states."
Listen on my website, Apple, Spotify and so on
ReadingNotes
These posts are part of the #ReadingNotes series, see here for more.
'Roadmapping for strategy and innovation' by Phaal et al
'Roadmapping for Strategy and Innovation - Aligning technology and markets in a dynamic world' is the classic text book, co-written by Dr Phaal, who also coordinates the Strategic Technology and Innovation Management (STIM) consortium programme at the Institute for Manufacturing at the University of Cambridge. As a textbook it is admirably thorough, a necessary, rather than a good, read.
It explains how roadmapping grew out of technology roadmapping and can serve different purposes, including: aligning commercial and technical strategy; and identifying new business opportunities.
Schematically, roadmaps have the same structure: time (horizontal) vs hierarchy of systems (vertical).
My view is that roadmapping is useful because it explicitly considers time, and how there are cumulative, inter-linked developments at the different levels. One important chapter in the summarises different perspectives on S-curves (or near-equivalent dynamics) at different levels: technology; application; business; and, industry.
When it comes to a roadmap itself, the claim is that all are underpinned by 6 questions:
Where do we want to go?
Where are we now?
How can we get there?
Why do we need to act?
What should we do?
How should we do it?
Four core roadmapping principles:
Timeframes should reflect the rate of change associated with the topic and time horizons that are of importance.
The structure should match the particular use. Typically:
Top: Trends and drivers that govern the overall goals.
Middle: tangible systems that need to be developed in response to the trends and drivers.
Bottom: internal and external resources that need to be marshalled.
The process to develop and maintain the roadmap should fit the need.
Key output is in a visual format.
The book also reminds us that process can be most important (through the communications and consensus generated). I had thought it might focus on the content. Interestingly, the book also advocates rapid prototyping on the basis that getting to a draft roadmap quickly generates insights which then start to get used.
Also interestingly, the book gives 2 processes (to the level of detail of draft workshop agendas: strategy (or 'S-Level') and technology (or 'T-level'). I was surprised how, well, obvious the steps are, a combination of forecasting (trends from now) and backcasting (working back from long-term aims).
The key thing I hadn't come across were linking grids, which give a systematic way of working from priorities at the top level (eg market trends) down to the bottom level (technologies) by playing out how each affects the middle (product or application level). I read this as a way of working through the hypothesis of how macro-level factors drive micro-level importance.
As criticism, not surprisingly, this is a an analytical and technocratic approach. It implies technology-led change (technology pushes into the market). There is little on the cultural context in which all of this happens, especially the micro-culture of the business and industry. (Think of how the culture of Silicon Valley has percolated out in how its technologies are developed and used.)
Citation: Phaal, R; Probert, D; Farrukh, C., 'Roadmapping for Strategy and Innovation - Aligning technology and markets in a dynamic world'. Here
'On order and complexity in innovations systems' - Grubb et al
'On order and complexity in innovations systems' has has been part of the foundations to my understanding of innovation and systems change (partly as a stand-alone paper, partly as a sorta summary of the book Planetary Economics).
The diagnosis is that there is a need for a bridge between the mainstream innovation-economics (which puts huge emphasis on market prices) and systems-innovation/evolutionary literatures (which focusses on niches and market developments).
The way the paper does that is through a series frameworks:
Three Domains, which applies different economic theories to different situations (a bit like physics has quantum for the small, special relativity for fast and so on). In this case:
First Domain. Behind the productivity frontier. Key theme: Satisfice. Key thinking: Behaviour Economics. (Because orthodox economics believes that Homo economicus is laways rationally maximising benefit, it cannot easily understand why people and firms stay behind the productivity frontier. The paper argues this is a systematic feature of human psychology and organisations, not some anomaly or irrationality.)
Second Domain: At the productivity frontier. Optimising. Classical economics. (Key belief: the market is right, and the state should only intervene when there is a market failure.)
Third Domain. Trying to shift how the productivity frontier is moving. Transforming. Complexity and evolutionary economics. (Key belief: the market is useful, but not the only way of setting the direction of the economy.)
Policy pillars, which relate the importance of certain policies (1.Standards and engagement; 2. Markets and prices; 3. Strategic investment) for addressing the challenges in the different Domains.
The Innovation chain, which simplifies the phases of maturity of a technology: invention; development; demonstration; commercialisation; market accumulation; diffusion. This is presented as a useful heuristic, knwing that any particular technology will not go on a simple straight journey.
The Multiple Journeys, which show the co-evolving of various sub-systems so that the technology can mature. The sub-systems (in growing scale and complexity): Organisation and supply chain;Â Customers and standards; Financing; Market regulation; Institutional structures; and, Infrastructure.
This is a paper (and the Planetary Economics book) is something I return to as a useful set of frames for understanding innovation and system transformation.
One critique is that the Multiple Journeys framework only hints at the dynamics in the regime receiving the innovation. Maybe there is a tight and effective bundling, which is successful enough at the moment to ignore 'superior' technologies.
Other critiques are the usual ones for this field. Where is power, politics and culture? These are hinted at Multiple Journeys, but for me, under-emphasised.
Even so, I look forward to using this in the 'Imagining Influential Journeys' method.
Citation:Â Michael Grubb, Will McDowall, Paul Drummond, On order and complexity in innovations systems: Conceptual frameworks for policy mixes in sustainability transitions, Energy Research & Social Science, Volume 33, 2017, Pages 21-34, ISSN 2214-6296, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.09.016