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The New Future of Marketing – The Future Now Show
with Mylena Pierremont During the months of lockdown and self-isolation, we have been, in fact, writing a new future. This has important implications for marketers trying to build lasting relationships with customers. In depth monitoring of data and trends in consumer behaviour has always been fundamental to support innovations. Given the unprecedented nature of the pandemic and the profound changes it is causing, we believe that harnessing imagination will be just as critical. Right now, there’s a great opportunity to revolutionize visibility, reach, and trust. Social media that is based on community and intimacy between brand and consumer communities generate a higher degree of trust. The exact same is true in terms of marketing strategies and within the grand scheme of the omnichannel. New technologies have made a new level of connectedness and intimacy possible, and it’s time to start. The Future Now Show CreditsMylena PierremontFounder – Connected Circleshttps://www.connectedcircles.net <
Report: Meetings in 2020
by Christine Perey, AMI Consortium Technology Transfer This white paper is provided to the members of the Club of Amsterdam and the members of the Community of Interest by the AMI Consortium as part of an ongoing initiative to increase global study and understanding of the human-to-human communications and the future of technology-assisted meetings using automation and intelligent agents in an environment of virtually unlimited processing and bandwidth resources. This white paper is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard of the future of meetings. It is made available by the AMI Consortium, with the permission of ParkWood Advisors LLC, with the understanding that the intent is not to render legal, investment, accounting or other professional advisory services. If investment advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Requests for permission to reuse the contents of this document or for further information about its contents should be addressed to John Parkinson at ParkWood Advisors LLC. PrefaceSpeaking and digitally publishing about a subject are two very, very different things. In the case of predicting the future, however, the tangible results may be the same. When speaking about meetings in 2020, a presenter has a lot of liberty because chances are relatively high that no one in the audience will remember what he or she said about the subject by 2020. And, in contrast with what you might expect, a digitally published/stored archive of the same concepts will probably also be “lost” for all intents and purposes. For John Parkinson, Chairman and Managing Partner of ParkWood Advisors LLC, the risk of his words fading and disappearing long before the accuracy of his predictions are tested just comes with the territory. Parkinson introduced his talk, a keynote address at the Wainhouse Research European Forum 2006 in Berlin entitled “Meetings in 2020,” with a touching reminder that predictions of the future-even the future of technology over the past 50 years-have more frequently been wrong than right. All predictions/forecasts and recommendations made in this paper are the rights and responsibilities of ParkWood Advisors LLC. Only time will tell how well the words of 2006 will fit the future. Download the report as *.pdf click here
Innovation – a hybrid connection between old practices?
by Humberto Schwab, Director Club of Amsterdam, Innovation Philosopher2007 Club of Amsterdam: Humberto – you are an Innovation Philosopher – most people hardly see a connection between philosophy and daily life and even less between philosophy and business. What is the added value? Why has philosophy something to say? Philosophy is the body of experimental and theoretical knowledge collected and shared by humanity since the invention of this specie. It is the richest fountain of wisdom about our selves as human beings, our needs and aspirations, our world outside and inside us and most of all about our values. In philosophy we investigate falsehood and truth, the permanent and the temporarily, good and bad acting, good government and bad societies, beautiful and ugliness. Most of all we have gathered wisdom about the quality of life. We try to make our daily life every day an experience of quality. At least many people try to reach this. This striving for quality is what connects our life with philosophy. Essential in our daily life is that we have our eyes wide open to see the right elements in their right relation; this is where philosophical methods are. We need to get rid of prejudice and false presumptions. In business – more and more – the essence lies in the ability in enhancing the quality of life, in part or as a whole. This quality is related to issues of ethical policy and sustainable business. Sustainable is not only a matter of the natural environment, more and more we realize that sustainability concerns the quality of our communities. The pursuit of the good life is more and more the frame in which innovation in the experience economy is moving. Last but not least, philosophy contains all the possible concepts, approaches, notions and strategies to frame productive ways of reasoning. Innovation is essential the rethinking of tradition, tradition as recipes for life. Taking traditional steps over again leads to new insights. That is why innovation is often a hybrid connection between old practices. Innovation sometimes demands new paradigms; philosophy is the producer of new paradigms. You have been involved in large-scale educational programs. Can you give us an example of what you did and what the outcome was? We managed to position philosophy in the official juridical structure of the secondary school system in the Netherlands. This old philosophy was recognized as one of the strongest innovation in Holland. I designed a complete program for the schools. A big innovation was the transformation of 100 excellent Dutch teachers from different disciplines into real Socratic teachers. That means wise people who put forward the right questions and not the answers. At the moment I am involved in fundamental innovations of education in the Netherlands and in Spain. In our society of the future learning is a value as such. This demands a totally different perspective on education and schooling. In an i-society learning has a different place then in the past hierarchical society. We need business, ngo-s, academies, citizen’s organisations and local government to co-create a challenging learning landscape in Europe. In your EuroLab you use a special combination of techniques – some have been widely used in industries. Can you tell us why you choose them and how you adapt them to your projects? The most used techniques are used instrumental while I always want to work in dialogues. A dialogue involves the total presence and commitment of the individual as reflective being. This means maximal awareness and maximal responsibility. We cannot oppose general techniques on humans, without losing their individual strength. The Appreciative Inquiry method is very strong dialogue method in business, especially when – like the present situation – the relations between the stakeholders become totally different. The Appreciative Inquiry (AI) bring to light all the hidden good practices and experiences of all the individuals involved, emerged from their personal life. The top down model of the expert above sending his missives down kills the experience wisdom present in the whole organization. This AI method is fruit of a bunch of scientific insight on the effects of positive psychological approaches. The Socratic method I have adapted to learning situations in school and business is the strongest context I know. Fundamental in this method is the key role of the good question. Putting forward basic questions is the art of collaboration. It gives new air to breath new ideas. People hardly share basic questions, let alone basic assumptions. Yet they work in contexts as if they share assumptions, values and concepts. The deconstructing of a basic question and the reconstructing of a shared answer uses collective intelligence as a rich fountain and provokes strong bounding on crucial challenges. In the Socratic discourse, the philosophical tradition serves as a support system, it helps to articulate good intuitions, good arguments and good ideas of all the participants. The Socratic chair (trained philosopher) represents the tradition and embodies it in a supportive way for each participant. In a Socratic discourse the group transform in a natural way into a reflecting body that emerges a higher intelligence and a higher responsibility. It exercises human collectively at his best. It has strong rules that forces people to rethink other positions and to rehearse steps in thinking taken by others, it forces people to listen and repeat and to clarify all concepts used. The strong authoritative way of safeguarding the rules by the Socratic chair, gives rise to a real strong participation of all in an egalitarian way. The strong relation between flourishing business and democratic cultures lies precise in the opportunity to put forward any valuable question of the quality of human life. The dialogue starts with the rethinking of standing practices and will virtualize new possible worlds and actions. Good business ideas are in fact very often philosophical brainwaves! More and more good business and good government are critically checked on qualitative grounds, from citizens perspectives. From the Socratic brainstorms we have to come to a stage of productive planning. The future scenario methods are excellent in binding people on shared visions of the future and on shared actions to realize desired scenarios. Good dialogues generate an emergent intelligence that will give complete new frames and horizons. Yet scenarios without value dialogues are blind. That is why in my EuroLABS the basic structure is the embedding of the personas in a value dialogue context. The revitalization of the basic existential questions generates an energy that also creates strong creative content. I often hear that there has been enough talking and we should act now. Why do you put dialogue into the centre of your labs? And how does it relate to Do-Tanks? There has definitely been enough talking, but then we talk about talking in the one-dimensional level we are used to do. Besides this talking is mostly discussions without any check of concepts, understanding of each other or reflections on principles or presumptions. This talking is often a chat between deaf people, they afterwards will follow their own routine in the way of thinking they were used to do. The Club of Amsterdam LABs lead to a change in internal dialogue; people really need a strong dialogue with other beings to change their internal reflections and dialogues. This will directly lead to action, when you make shared action plans and design a sustainable dialogue with the stakeholders. To shift from a money driven society to a value driven society needs a new way of talking: the real human dialogue. Action is always for a crucial part guided thinking or unconscious frameworks of meaning. The Socratic dialogues make sharing intelligent action possible.
Elements of Success
by Nisandeh Neta This book reveals the ingredients that make up every successful result. It offers a five-step process of creating success, with in-depth explanations on each step and tips how to work with them.It teaches you how to manage every step of the way to your personal success, with little effort and maximum results. Often we are not aware of what the elements are of the process of creation. Once we’re good at something, we think it is because of our talent, or because of being lucky, without investigating what the process was that moved us from the state of “hunger” to the state of “fulfilment”.If we don’t know what the recipe for success is, it is difficult to repeat it. The book “Elements of Success” teaches you all you need to know about the recipe for success. Becoming successful is easy, if you know what to do…https://www.facebook.com/pages/Elements-of-Success-van-Nisandeh-Neta/175832529156094
Creative Leadership
by Sooraj Mittal, Hedda Pahlson-Moller, Evalueserve Is leadership limited to the ability of a person to influence other people in getting things done, above their normal standard and quality, or does the society need a new breed of leaders who can evolve on a continuous basis, addressing new challenges? Traditionally, leaders have been known to possess the ability to motivate people, identifying their strengths, nurturing them and making their team function in a synthesized manner, thereby delivering up to its true potential. However, over a period of time societies and systems evolved and so have the dynamics of leadership. Over a period of time, many nations have struggled for independence, apartheid, etc while, most resorted to violent means to achieve their cause, leading to mass destruction on both sides. But, only a few creative leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela resolved such issues through their revolutionary idea of non-violence. Thereby, not only helping attain the objective but also creating an example and inspiration for the coming generations that there is always a non-conventional and perhaps a less traveled path. There are three sets of situations from where a leader can be identified or nurtured: A person possessing a certain skill set and has the ability to take up the leadership role Lack or absence of proper leadership or certainly a crisis situation brings out extraordinary leadership skills to handle the situation People who choose to become leaders constantly try to develop the required skill set As the world becomes flat, it has become a level playing field for all the players, irrespective of the geography, cast or creed. The availability of similar tangible resources to all the players has made the environment into a place of cutthroat competition. In order to develop in such a competitive environment companies have to heavily rely on the intellectual capital, primarily present in the form of its employees. They need leaders who can guide and bring out the best from its human capital. Their role is not limited to merely guiding people in the right direction. They require creative leaders, who do not only limit their role to addressing problems through novel solutions, but by giving new viewpoints on how to resolve problems in the future as well. This brings us to a pertinent question – can someone be taught how to think creatively? Organizations spend heavily on training their employees, especially training potential leaders and inculcating leadership values. However, this does not ensure imagination, creativity or ethical behavior in the audience. These qualities develop over a period of time with experience and exposure to various kinds of problems. In addition, it also requires a conscious effort on the part of the individual to grow in that direction. Creative leaders can be broadly segregated as Re-definers and Re-directors. The former being those who introduce a new dimension to existing ideas (such as Bill Gates redefining the computer), while the latter could be those who find a new way of working (like what Henry Ford did when he introduced the assembly line production system). Before any organization/society demands for a creative leader, it should ensure that an environment is created, where such a leader can be identified and groomed. Society needs to be flexible in terms of accepting new ideas. For instance, at 3M, scientists spend almost 15% of their time on personal activities. As a result, Fry, one of the scientists, invented the simple, yet innovative, ‘Post-its’! During his free time, Fry used to sing at the church; however whenever he used small paper pieces as bookmarks, they would invariably fall. Fry recalled a weak adhesive developed by his company – he used it to develop easily detachable bookmarks, which we now see at homes and offices alike. Essentially, the difference between a leader and a creative leader can be compared to the difference between Subash Chandra Bose, an extremist, and Mahatma Gandhi, a Moderate. They hold a significant place in the history books, as both had fought against the colonial rule of the British Empire. Yet both had adopted different ways to address the problem. While, Bose believed in the conventional way of violence (an eye for an eye), Mahatma addressed the problem by means of non-violence and non-cooperation movements. As a result, the approach adopted by Bose, resulted in fear amongst the British for some period of time and had a short-term impact on the people. While, the approach adopted by Mahatma Gandhi had a long lasting impact on British as well as the common public, leading to a united effort to achieve independence for the nation. A society, as we know it, combines the likes of people from varied backgrounds, having differing skill-sets and divergent thoughts. Collective leadership ensures that this multicultural society moves in a cohesive and collective manner to attain the defined objectives into realistic and attainable goals. Today’s world is very chaotic and complex. The skill set required to address these problems are not present in one person. Moreover, the problems are not just limited to one system or society. Therefore, in order to address such problems a collective effort is required. For instance, the war against terrorism has to be a collective effort on part of all the nations across the globe, as the problem is not just limited to the US or India. It has an equal chance of striking any nation at any given moment. For instance, the defense force of a country would comprise of the Army, Navy and the Airforce. All have their own skill set and strategic importance to the security of a nation. Yet, when it comes to a war, a collective effort is required from all the three arms of win the battle. If the role of the leader has evolved, so have team dynamics. No longer can a group/department of people be necessarily classified as a team. These are a set of individuals, who are doing the job assigned to them. Essentially, a team is a group of people who collectively collaborate to achieve one predefined objective. The relationship of a leader with his/her team has evolved from a supervisory role to a multi-tasking role. The leader is a guide, mentor, motivator as well as a team member. Instead of moving ahead of the team, he/she has to move along with it. More than dependence, it is now a question of synergies and inter-dependence. The only thing, which is constant, is change, over a period of time societies have evolved and so has the way in which people think and see each other. Yet the same old concepts still exist, although the ways they are handled and demanded by the society have evolved. From a leader who leads from the front and keeps people motivated, to a leader who can provide innovative solutions to new set of problems.
Religion and state in the candidate countries to the European Union
by Balazs Schanda Issues concerning religion and state in Hungary ECCLESIASTICAL SITUATION OF THE CANDIDATE COUNTRIES TO THE EUROPEAN UNION At present there are 12 countries that are candidates for inclusion in the European Union. Negotiations were opened with the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia in 1998, after the Luxembourg European Council of December 1997 established the accession and negotiation process. The Helsinki European Council of December 1999 decided to open negotiations also with Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Romania and Slovakia in February 2000. The status of Turkey as a candidate country, with all rights and duties and its full participation in the accession process, was recognized, although there was no decision on opening negotiations. The Nice European Council of December 2000 endorsed the strategy proposed by the European Commission in its Strategy Paper and the target date for membership of the most prepared candidate countries was set as 2004. The Commission insisted that no further obstacles should now be put in the way of the process of expanding the Union. It specifically reconfirmed the European Parliament’s view that the best-prepared candidate countries should be able to participate in the 2004 European Parliament elections. At the same time, the Commission endorsed the distinction that had been made between the candidates, while confirming the ‘catch-up principle’–that those countries which were most qualified should be allowed entry, and those not yet adequately prepared would have the opportunity of preparing themselves for acceptance at a later date. According to the present stage of negotiations, ten countries will have an opportunity to join the EU in the near future (according to the schedule in 2004). In the Commission’s view, Bulgaria and Romania will definitely need a longer period before accession and, as mentioned above, negotiations with Turkey have not yet been opened. In my paper I shall focus on the Central European region–Cyprus and Malta are in a very different situation from these countries. With the exclusion of the two Balkan States from the first round, all the candidates (except for Cyprus) have a history and an identity linked to Western Christianity (the largely secularized countries, such the Czech Republic, are also affected by this affiliation: or, rather, a rejection of it). Throughout their history, these Central European countries have striven to be recognized as belonging to the western part of the continent. Their inclusion in an enlarged Union is not for them the result of a cost-benefit analysis but, rather, a moral issue. The average size of the candidate countries hoping to join the EU is less than the present ELI average. The population of Poland is more than the total population of all the other nine countries put together. All the candidate countries of Central-Eastern Europe suffered communist governance for over four decades. Religious freedom was curtailed in them all. Certainly there were significant differences between countries and periods. Probably believers in the former Soviet Union suffered the most. The record for Czechoslovakia is definitely worse than that for Poland. Practices varied from open persecution to administrative harassment and discrimination with one common element: there was no religious freedom as such. Historical backgrounds, and the process and effects of imposed secularization of the various societies show great differences. In Poland and in Lithuania, Catholicism played a significant role in safeguarding the national consciousness; the same was true for Croatia, which is to become a candidate for inclusion in the European Union in the near future). Slovenia also is predominantly Catholic. Hungary and Slovakia have a Catholic majority, with firmly established Protestant minorities (Calvinist in Hungary and Lutheran in Slovakia). Estonia is the only candidate that is predominately Lutheran; and Latvians are divided between Catholics and Protestants. Orthodoxy in the candidate countries is linked to national minorities, especially the Russians in the Baltic States. In the Baltic States, as well as in other countries (such as Hungary), a jurisdictional conflict emerged between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, raising difficult issues concerning the limits of legitimate government involvement in inter-Church disputes. Denominational and ethnic affiliations also overlap in Romania, where members of the Hungarian and German minorities are either Protestants or Roman Catholics, while the Romanians are predominantly Orthodox (or, in parts of Transylvania, Greek Catholics). The Czech Republic is probably the most secular country among the candidates, and would in this way become the most secularized country within the Union. But Estonians and Latvians are not particularly devout either (not to mention the new German “Lander”). Taking the expanded Union as a whole, it can be seen that the incorporation of the new countries would result in a rise in the overall proportion of Roman Catholics. Apart from Bulgaria, none of the candidate countries has a significant Muslim population. Hungary is the only candidate country where the Jewish community has remained a significant mainstream religious community. New religious movements were active throughout the region in the 1990s, but their presence has not brought about significant changes in the denominational landscape
Religious Freedom and New Religious Movements in Europe
by Merudevi Dasi IntroductionEveryone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This is guaranteed in several legal documents, most importantly in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) (UDHR) and in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). These articles allow us to hold any beliefs we desire, whether they are theistic, non-theistic or atheistic. The right to manifest these freedoms is only restricted in order to protect the fundamental rights of others. The emergence of ‘new religious movements’ (NRMs) in the West since the 1960s has put these articles to the test. Are all expressions of faith acceptable in our society, and how should we react to them? European countries have chosen to interpret freedom of religion and belief in diverse ways, and have adopted different strategies on how to deal with these NRMs. In this article we look at some of the developments in Europe in this regard, particularly in France. France is by no means unique in its approach towards NRMs, but it is well ahead in introducing restrictive legislation against them. According to Abdelfattah Amor, the Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance at the UN Commission on Human Rights, while Western Europe has previously been exemplary in the development of international and regional norms and mechanisms to protect religious freedom, its present practice is unsatisfactory. This was Amor’s opening message at a UNESCO meeting in Paris earlier this year. He spoke at the conference ‘Human Rights and Freedom of Religion: Practices in Western Europe’, which was attended by many experts in the field. Amor commented that many religious and spiritual communities ‘have been labelled as cults by parliamentary reports or inter-ministerial commissions’, and that ‘this generalisation and amalgamation’ has led to a situation where ‘movements that are perfectly respectable and sometimes very ancient’ are finding themselves in the same category as ‘cheaters and criminals’.[1] It is a common argument among those who oppose ‘new religions’ that these are not de facto religions but mundane movements hiding behind a religious label. That may be true about some groups, but it becomes problematic when a large number of religious and spiritual groups are put into that category without thorough research on the matter.
Limits to Knowing
October 2011 By Patrick Crehan, Director, Club of Amsterdam, CEO and Founder, Crehan, Kusano & Associates The way we think about the future has immense influence and impact on both our professional and personal lives. This is especially true for those who work in positions of responsibility for organizations and the people in them. They are the ones who decide on a regular if not continuous basis what time and money, human and material resources should be allocated to which activities so as to ensure optimal outcomes for themselves and their families, for their organizations and society as a whole. The tools we employ to think about the future are constantly evolving. Our ability to gather store and process information about the past and the present state of the world is expanding at an extraordinary rate. Several pas Club of Amsterdam events have looked at the extraordinary pace of progress in sensing, connecting and computing. These have helped our members explore the consequences of how our ability to sense the present, combine it with knowledge of the past and simulate the future, has expanded at an extraordinary rate. But it is worth while taking a look at the limits of our knowing about the future to see if we really understand how to use these powerful tools and ask if we really are on the right track, if we really are mastering the tools required to help us design and build the better worlds we want to create. Swept up in the euphoria of technological progress, there is a risk of “irrational exuberance”, that we might overlook small issues of great consequence. For this reason it is useful occasionally to go back to basics and take stock of where we are and try to filter what is real from what is mere illusion. The first reality check concerns the nature of our ability to model the world, simulate it and make predictions. Despite the extraordinary progress we have already made, and the very reasonable expectation that by the end of this decade we will have succeeded in feats as complex as simulating the workings of an entire human brain, there are real limits to what we can simulate and what we can predict. So far I am aware of at least 3 hard barriers to success in modeling and simulation, and there may be many more. The first is a demonstration by the philosopher Carl Popper, about the impossibility of predicting the future. His argument is very elegant and relies on special relativity. Effectively he provides a proof that if the world is governed by the principles of relativity, then even if we have perfect theories, and infinitely fast computing capabilities, we will still never have enough information available to always make accurate predictions even arbitrarily small times into the future. Of course we will get away with ‘good enough’ most of the time, but he explains that there is a hard barrier between that and being able to guarantee getting it right every-time. The second barrier has to do with the discovery of quantum mechanics and has to do with the ‘knowability’ of nature. The initial insights came from the work of Heisenberg and have been debated ever since. The general consensus is that it is impossible to simultaneously possess knowledge of arbitrary accuracy about the state of the physical world. In physical terms it means that we may know the position of a particle with arbitrary accuracy at a given time, but only by sacrificing accuracy in our knowledge of its state of motion. This is a hard limit on what we can know about the world and seems to be no way around it. Once again we can get by pretty well for most intents and purposes but bear in mind that many modern engineered products rely on relativity and quantum physics for their operation. Both relativity and quantum physics have left the realm of science and entered the realm of engineering many years ago. So these limits we refer to are real, impact our work and are faced by engineers every day. The third major barrier is one which only really emerged or became clear in the 1970s with the discovery of what is called ‘deterministic chaos’. This has to do with a form of ‘unknowability’ that afflicts even old fashioned Newtonian systems. It does not rely on artifacts of relativity of quantum mechanics. It would exist even if quantum mechanics or relativity were not true. This insight into the limits of ‘knowability’ go back to the discovery of dynamical systems that can be modeled perfectly, for which solutions can be shown to always exist, but which can never be calculated by any algorithm with any degree of accuracy. These systems often appear random or chaotic, when they are absolutely deterministic. Even though we know everything about what drives these systems, we also know that we cannot simulate them in any reliable way. In practice what happens is that arbitrarily small errors in the measurement of the parameters of the system lead to arbitrarily large errors in the results of a simulation. These are three hard barriers to what we can know from measuring modeling and simulating the world. There are others. Despite these limits we do pretty well and simulation can be a very useful tool when used in the right way. The spectacular collapse of Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) run by Nobel Prize wining economists is the text-book case of what can happen when the models are applied outside of their domain of applicability. We could move on from discussion about errors in simulations based on models to the impact of errors in the model itself, but that is a subject for another day. Instead it is interesting to look at issues relating not so much to our ability to predict the future, but to our ability to control it. The future is highly subjective. No one creates it alone. Chance requires the cooperation or complicity of a great number of actors. It is an iron rule of change and it is true whether we are talking about change on the level of the global economy, a business unit or our personal circle of family and friends. To affect change it is not enough for one person to know about the future, they need to bring along everyone else by forming change-coalitions for want of a better word. The starting point is creating and sharing relevant knowledge. This touches upon the philosophy and mission of the Club of Amsterdam, and there are many techniques for doing this. But even this is not enough. Given all the knowledge and understanding in the world, people may then need to act. This is the real barrier to making change happen, especially when we are looking at long-terms issues that do require an immediate solution. Such issues tend to get put off until it is too late. Making change happen requires not so much progress in simulation but progress in understanding factors such as motivation, confidence, courage, the will to act in ones own interest. This was why it took about 50 years before clear and overwhelming evidence linking smoking to lung cancer became generally accepted. It is why even today people do things like smoking that they know will shorten their lives and limit the time they have to enjoy the good things of this life. Arguable it is also one of the reasons why progress is so difficult on issues such as climate change. Despite the incredible progress we have made in out ability to collect and analyze data, model and simulate the world, make predictions about the future, we are still very poor I moving from knowledge to action. The future of the future needs to include initiatives that more explicitly not only the barriers to knowing but the barriers to acting when the knowing battle has been won.