'We upgrade how decision-makers understand tomorrow, so they act differently today. Our name is...'
Help us give a good trading name to ACDB Limited (the AI-enhanced futures approach, previously known as 'The Fizz').
Slightly unusual post today. Below is a brief to come up with a name for ACDB Limited, the AI-enhanced approach to futures, previously known as ‘The Fizz’. We’d love your ideas!
More updates on the Atelier of What’s Next, the initiatives it is supporting and the doctorate (aka DOC) in the coming days.
Look forward to hearing your ideas! — David
Help with a trading name for ACDB Limited / The Fizz
Background.
The brief:
What we think we need: punchy (2 word?) name that works with our strapline and qualities.
Our current strap line: Upgrade how decision-makers understand tomorrow,
so they act differently today.
Qualities we are aiming to embody: leading-edge; responsive: impactful: deep expertise in ‘futures’; and, playful.
Other things worth knowing (like key audience).
ACDB’s Foundational Philosophy.
Help with a trading name for ACDB Limited / The Fizz
Background
Over the last year, Andrew Curry, King Canute (Peter Curry) and I have been exploring the next version of horizon-scanning, and creating stretching depictions of the future, with the support of the Chatham House Sustainability Accelerator (CHSA).
The CHSA has a research programme on “what happens when we view our current moment as the first years in a new reality?” — what they are calling “The Rift” between the failing status quo and whatever might happen next. They were wondering how AI can be used well, to augment human abilities and spark the making of new meaning.
Andrew and I were happy to join in, partly because we’d already been speaking with the Centre for Understanding Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP) about taking on their bulletin.
In March, Andrew authored this launch blog on the CHSA website, showing some outputs we have been creating and the underlying rationale.
In my last Atelier Update, I gave the happy news that Andrew, Peter and I had formed a company called ACDB Limited, and had signed a contract with CHSA to supply futures services for the next two years. Hurray!
Since then we have conducted our first ‘proof of concept’ workshop, and been developing more on the technical side of the AI-enhanced futures. All of which proceeding well.
We’ve also been working on what the ACDB business would need to be like, for us to succeed. Which brings us to having a good name.
The brief
What we think we need: a punchy (2 word?) name which conveys the essence of what we are trying to be.
Our current strap line:
Upgrade how decision-makers understand tomorrow,
so they act differently today.
Qualities we are aiming to embody in our work (and evoke through our name):
Leading-edge: being an early mover in the use of AI to enhance futures methods, and best-in-class using cognitive science. Plus at the leading edge because of our scanning gives us exposure to emerging issues.
Responsive: in our fast-adapting methods and our situating ourselves in the need and the working context.
Impactful: changing what organisations do, towards a better world.
Deep experts in ‘futures’: significant experience in using engaging with different possible tomorrows in order to influence today.
Playful: we do things for fun and with curiosity.
More is in our foundational philosophy (see below).
Other things you might find useful:
Our primary audience will be:
Senior decision-makers who know that they are struggling as the world is changing around them.
Advisors to those decision-makers, who would use us to provide futures stimulus and methods.
Digital use: we’d like it to be the name of our website, and emails.
So far, we have called one of our products ‘the Fizz’, in the sense that it fizzes up the imagination.
One of the founders (me!) has an organisation called ‘The Atelier of What’s Next’.
Avoid using ‘future’ (or variants), as it narrows things.
Please send us your ideas, either using the button below or davidbent@atelierwhatsnext.org
ACDB’s Foundational Philosophy
In five bullet points:
People construct their social reality with other people.
Good futures processes challenge the habitual ‘scaffolding’ people use in their decision-making.
“We make our own futures but not under circumstances of our own choosing”.
Those circumstances are going to get worse.
Which means, we all will need to do things faster, and continuously adapt to ongoing turbulence.
Each bullet point is unpacked below:
People construct their social reality with other people.
Unlike much mainstream futures, we believe that ‘futures’ is a process of social knowledge production, moving from abstract to usable symbolic knowledge.
As such, ‘futures’ processes do not predict the future, but shift people’s understanding of, and relationship to, the present. From this new position, they can be and act differently than they had been, which affects what is now possible going forward.
Good futures processes challenge the habitual ‘scaffolding’ people use in their decision-making.
unlike much mainstream futures, we use findings on how cognition works to lift people out of their default into the active engagement.
Co-creating new social realities is easier when people are in the same room.
Online calls, and text messages, have their uses. But people are better able to adjust their habitual scaffolding when in-person.
“We make our own futures but not under circumstances of our own choosing”.
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” ― Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
Andrew Curry adapts this to “We make our own futures but not under circumstances of our own choosing”.
Unlike much mainstream futures, we believe that people have agency, and we believe you can’t just start with a blank sheet of paper.
Those circumstances are going to get worse.
Unlike much mainstream futures, we believe that societal collapse of some kind is coming, and that a better version of the current status quo is not viable.
We are all going to have to deal with disruption, dislocation and disorder. An orderly transition is no longer available.
Which means, we all will need to do things faster, and continuously adapt to ongoing turbulence.
Unlike much mainstream futures, we will choose methods which fit the situation (which means basically ruling out scenario planning).
Our use of Artificial Intelligence can help increase the pace, for instance by producing quality stimulus material faster.