The motif of change

Over the weeks learning and reflecting about Tech & World Change (TWC), my appreciation for looking into the future and preparing for technology advancements has grown tremendously. Before, my mindset was a passive one, I always thought that I was in no position to evaluate current research because I did not have the expertise needed to be a strong influence in cutting edge technological fields. I realised that this thinking was nonsense! Thankfully, great scientists need great people around them, including businessmen, patent lawyers, sales and marketing people, investors etcetera. As reading 2 brought up, even the imagination of sci-fi writers could be the inspiration for world change. Also crucially, TWC is not just about high-tech. Just as often the most influential thinkers in the world use simpler ideas (“lower tech”) to better the way we live and work in massive ways. These ideas include design and infrastructure.

With this newfound clarity, I began to question last week how we could predict the most promising drivers of change. Reading 1 opened my eyes to the fact that there is no one way of undergoing tech assessment; that there is a whole variety out there waiting to be used. Prof also stated that each specific tech would require a judgement on which assessment techniques would best be used.

Some techniques that I found interesting were the Delphi technique and the use of scenarios. The former is under the subset of opinion measurement, in which one records the forecasts of experts, known as “Genius Forecasting”. The problem that arose was that these experts regretted what they said in recording most of the time, and disparities in viewpoints were difficult to resolve. The Delphi technique also involves a pool of experts but there are rounds of iteration added on to the process. At the end, data analysers would find the median of all the viewpoints. Secondly, I also found imaging scenarios to be a highly effective way to think about how people would respond to new tech that are introduced into the market. It reminded me of how technology does not exist in a vacuum, but is intricately interknit with all other aspects of society like politics, economy, social, ethics, philosophy, environment etcetera.

In class, Prof showed the video “Future, tech and the next 50 years megatrends” in which the narrator runs through a substantial list of some of the most exciting and promising technologies that we have discussed previously. At the end, Prof posed to us “Are you ready for the future?”, which I found to be thought-provoking. What does he actually mean? My interpretation is: Have we bothered to look at all the future possibilities and thought about where the world is headed? Are we positioning ourselves at the forefront of change and are we the ones who will try and safeguard the world from adverse side-effects of change? After giving it some thought, I found that it is true that people are most often getting stuck in past or present problems, and in effect they fail to see how much more hopeful and exciting the future is so long as they pay more attention to getting to that desired future. We can solve present problems and not repeat the same past mistakes if we were to carefully consider and bring about desirable change for the future!

This idea reinforces the class discussion about the need for change in organisations through paradigm shifts and strategic visioning. Prof gave the example of FedEx to illustrate paradigm shifts. FedEx started out as a delivery company aiming to provide the fastest and reliable courier service. Now, it has changed its self-image into that of a logistics firm. Paradigm shifts are an important means to restructure and move forward. As companies interact with so many “outsiders” like consumers, suppliers and potential shareholders, they need to change in accordance with all these peoples’ needs and preferences. If they do not constantly adapt to the rapidly changing world, they will stay stagnant or even more likely, become irrelevant and die out. In the class discussion about strategic visioning and the video shown just before that, the message that we should work back from the future rather than work from the past and present was emphasised. The speaker in the video states that the latter is a form of “corporate madness”, because reliance on the past is a poor and inaccurate indicator for the future. There is a need for organizations to break away from today’s thinking and foresee future developments.

That being said, the past and present comparison is useful for us to understand how we got here in this first place; the trends that are currently changing the world. But beyond that, being constrained by present challenges will restrict the world from achieving a possible ideal.