T r a p

Traps in Futures Thinking – and How to Overcome
Them?
By
Dr. Mika Mannermaa
Futures Studies Mannermaa Ltd., Finland
Futures thinking – a merit list
Despite the fact that systematic futures research is a phenomenon born and strengthened only after
the Second World War, futures thinking has a long history. Actually it is as long as is the known
history of human beings. How good are we in thinking of the future(s)? Here is an incomplete merit
list of our competencies in this field:
“Inventions have long since reached their limits, and I see no hope for further developments”
-- Roman engineer Julius Sextus Frontinus, A.D. 10
“Heavier than air flying machines are impossible”
-- Physicist Lord Kelvin, 1895
“1930 will be a splendid employment year”
-- U.S. Department of Labor, 1929
“The Japanese don’t make anything the people in the U.S. would want”
-- Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, 1954
“By the turn of this century, we will live in a paperless society”
-- Roger Smith, chairman of General Motors, 1986
“I predict the Internet… will go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.”
-- Bob Metcalfe, InfoWorld, 1995.
The history of unsuccessful forecasts is a massive cornucopia offering a wide variety of juicy
examples. Wallowing in them is, however, useless, if we do not learn from our mistakes. Our
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abilities to think of the future credibly is limited by many factors, like inadequate basic data,
knowledge and wisdom, bad methods or bad use of good ones, but also some specific traps of
futures thinking. The most common of them are “This is it!” thinking, Paradigm blindness, Trendfaith, Cultural contempt, Over-enthusiasm and Disparagement of everything new.
”This is it!”
When the Roman engineer Frontinus announced already 2000 years ago that everything, which
there is to be invented, has been invented, he fell into the trap of ”This is it!” thinking so familiar to
us all. It is tempting to think that some technological or other development has come to the end of
its path, and “nothing new under the sun” is left to be expected.
The collapse of the biggest societal experiment in the world history from 1989 was a surprise to all.
During the decades of the Cold War after the Second World War people learnt to think that the
existing status quo in world politics would be forever. Not a single futures researcher, political
scientist, historian, politician or business leader made a protest, when the leader (or dictator, if you
wish) of the German Democratic Republic, Erich Honecher, announced in the beginning of 1989
that the Berlin Wall would stay upright for at least the next hundred years. It doesn’t help much, if
you in parenthesis in a subordinate clause in one of your six scenarios wrote that ”something like
this might happen.” But nobody made a clear statement, with a loud voice, that ”Hey guys, listen to
me, from 1989 the socialist block will start collapsing!””This is it!”, when it came to the global
political status quo.
But then the world changed. The collapse of the socialist block was interpreted by the well-known
societal philosopher Francis Fukuyama so that it was the end result of the evolutionary battle
between the two great ideologies, the Western market liberalism and Socialism. Survival of the
fittest meant that the Western view was the winner.1 In his own way Fukuyama, too, fell into the
trap of ”This is it!” thinking. As it must have been obvious, Fukuyama’s theses were opposed by
many. Perhaps the best-known is Harvard professor Samuel Huntington’s article in the journal
Foreign Affairs.2 His main argument was that the great civilizations –
Western Christianity,
Orthodox world, Islam, Confucean philosophy (China), Japanese culture, Hinduism, African and
Latin American cultures – are fundamentally different to the amount that the future is featured by
tensions and conflicts between them. Issues related to cultures bypass economic factors in
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importance, which at the moment operate as the most powerful actors globally. Encounters of
cultures strengthen their inner cohesion and emphasize differencies between them. Ideas of a single
common world culture, meaning the dominance of the Western thinking or a birth of a new culture
as a result of some sort of melting process of the present cultures, on the other hand, are
implausible. The World Futures Studies Federation arranged a world conference on the theme
Coherence and Chaos in Our Uncommon Futures –
Visions, Means, Actions in 1993. 3
”Uncommon” referred both to the unknown nature of the future and to the varied concepts of reality
expressed by the different cultures, which are strange to each others. Different interpretations and
educated guesses about these questions were presented in the conference, but eg. the idea of a
global uniform culture was commonly considered both as implausible and undesirable.
Democracy – or in more general terms: how taking care of societal affairs and decision-making
concerning them should be arranged in the future – is an obvious example of ”This is it!” thinking,
too. Political parties, regular elections, parliaments, governments, presidents, etc. These systems’
rituals continue to take place in an unchanging manner seemingly forever. That is, so we think.
Most people never even start thinking of questioning whether things could be differently, some
others are denying the whole discussion. People do not only think that our model of democracy has
come to the end of its development – ”This is it!” –
but many think that it is politically
unacceptable to question the present model of democracy. Futures researchers have repeated some
general slogans about the strengthening of “direct democracy”, but concrete models of how eg.
decision-making at the levels of states and global community should be organized in the future are
vague, to say the least. Although there are severe shortcomings in our models of democracy, and the
potentials of information and communication technologies, real-time voting and virtual governance
are mostly unused, democracy is a taboo. One is not allowed to discuss its weaknesses. But, believe
me: ”This is NOT it!”
Paradigm blindness
The claim of the famous physicist lord Kelvin that flying machines, which are heavier than the air,
like aircrafts, are impossible, represented a mode of thinking, which might be called paradigm
blindness. Thomas Kuhn presented his well-known concept of paradigm originally in his book The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions in the beginning of the 1960’s.4 The word paradigm comes from
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the Greek word paradeigma, which means a mode or pattern of thought. To Plato paradeigma
meant the real world of ideas, of which the visible world is only a reflection. Kuhnian concept of
paradigm is related to scientific problem-solving, which becomes a guiding thought-model in a
certain discipline, and which creates a new research tradition (eg. Darwin’s theory of evolution or
Einstein’s theories of relativity). The idea of scientific revolutions used by Kuhn has to do with
paradigm shifts: For example Einstein gave birth to a revolutionary paradigm shift with his theories
of relativity. In between paradigm shifts there exists, according to Kuhn, a period of “normal
science”. During those periods the scientific activities stick to the predominant paradigm. 5
Experts in a discipline learn the existing wisdom, paradigm or doctrine telling them, what is the
predominant way of thinking accepted by the scientific community in the field at a specific time.
How do you make science, what are the accepted methods, what kind of empirical data is to be
used, what is the nature of the results, what are the dominating results now, into what direction new
research should be directed and how the students should be guided, which are the leading journals,
and who are the biggest gurus.
The idea of paradigms can be generalized outside of the domain of science, too. Similar pressure to
stick to one’s own paradigm concerns industrial leaders, who have run their factories for 30 years,
city mayors with same life and work experiences, members of all informal “jolly good fellows”
networks, like freemasons, rotary clubs, feminist groups, religious sects, factories for raising
‘political broilers’ for parties and other clubs for elevating the spirit and feeling of togetherness
among their members. Common education, work career, sources of information, industrial or other
branch, shared experiences, the desire to look for the company of the people alike also outside
office hours (motorcycling, playing golf, sailing, skiing, etc.) are all promoting the development of
paradigmatic “we belong together” communities.
This phenomenon can also limit our thinking and prevent us from seeing essential factors outside of
our paradigm. The pressure to think in a similar way with our fellowmen and women, and pure
paradigm blindness is lurking us all constantly and everywhere.
Paradigm blindness is common in futures thinking, too. No wonder that one experienced airplane
engineer forecasted in the 1930’s that the speed of a passenger aircraft in 1980 would be some 180200 kilometers per hour. In reality, already in 1965 one was able to build a supersonic airplane, the
speed of which was multiple compared to the forecast of the engineer. The engineer was a member
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of the “propeller paradigm community”. When making his predicition, he probably thought of how
much you can increase the rolling speed of the propeller, how the aerodynamic properties of the
planes can be improved, etc. In the beginning of the 1960’s, however, a new technological
paradigm, aircrafts using jet engines, had been developed. The engineer of the 1930’s was not an
expert of the new paradigm, and he was unable to take into account the possibilities of the new
technology outside his domain of competence.
Marshall McLuhan once thought that “We don’t know who discovered water, but we are pretty sure
it wasn’t a fish." Every now and then it makes sense to take some distance from your normal
paradigm in order to see better – and further. It may pay off to make a visit eg. to the seminars,
meetings and web pages of “others” – even “enemies”. One may get good ideas and new
perspectives even to familiar issues.
Trend-faith
In 1929, just before the Great Depression, when announcing that the next year will be a great year
for employment (implying good prospectives for the economy in general, too) the U.S. Department
of Employment made a gross forecasting mistake by leaning on trend-faith. Believing in trends is a
natural and typically human way to think of development and future. If an object of observation has
changed according to a certain pattern – eg. followed linear or exponential growth, cyclical
fluctuations or some combination of them – people easily think that the same pattern will hold true
in the future, too. For example econometric models using several variables, parameters and
equations, express this message in a more complicated way than straightforward trendextrapolations, but basically the question is about the same thing: continuing the pattern of change
discovered in the past into the future. Unchangeability must be included in these patterns, too. If
some thing has not changed in the past, and you believe that it will not change in the future either,
you apply one special case of trend-thinking.
Basic postulates in trend-faith are thus unchanging change and unchanging unchange. One
important expression of unchanging change is the idea of cyclical variations – seasonal fluctuations
or long-waves (Kondratieff). These variations are identified from the past data, and it is thought that
they will continue to exist in the same way also in the future. At least implicitly, several ceteris
paribus assumptions are made. It is thought that factors, which are outside of the research topic, like
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environmental issues, values, global factors or technologies in economic forecasts do not produce
surprises: their impacts remain the same as they were in the past. Another way to put this is to say
that in trend-thinking you believe that the structures do not change. Structural changes or breaks are
clearly outside the reach of trend-thinking.
One version of trend-faith is the so called railway thinking. It has been applied ao. in the home
country of the author of this article, at least in politics in the 1970’s. The easiest and cheapest way
to see the future of Finland was thought to be making a trip to Sweden. After coming back to
Finland one could tell the laymen, what is the future of Finland after ten years. At that time it was
considered that nations are like trains following each other on the same tracks. Some nations were
further in their development, but all of them were supposed to follow the same path. And the “big
brother” of Finland, Sweden, was ten years ahead. A modification of railway thinking called the
model of flying goose was adopted in Japan after the World War Two. According to it the societies
are following each other on the same development path, but those late-comers come closer and
closer to the leading ones. The Japanese were cleverly applying the “second best” strategy, copying
technologies developed in the leading-edge countries, and finally became number ones in some
branches and innovations.
For example in the 1960’s many societally important trends in the Western countries were ”wellbehaving” in the circumstances of strong economic growth. At that time trend forecasts didn’t fail
always, at least not in the short-run. Since that period the economic environment has been more
turbulent, and at the moment the credibility of economic trend predictions becomes close to zero, if
the forecasting perspective is longer than a few months.
Let’s take an empirical example from Finland. Professor in Economics Jaakko Pehkonen made an
empirical study on aptness of the economic forecasts.6 In Finland in the Spring of 1996 forecasts on
the growth of gross national product made by different economic research institutions for the year
1997 varied from 2,5 to 3,5 percent per year. Afterwards, it was discovered that the real growth in
1997 was 6,3%. Even the forecasts published in the Spring of 1997 were between four and five
percent for that year, which was already passing by.
Sometimes the forecasts have been somewhat more successful, but a cool-headed conclusion,
however, is that it is primarily an accident, if an economic prediction hits even close to the target,
even though the forecasting perspective would be only six months or so.
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As all trend forecasts, econometric models are especially incapable of anticipating quick seasonal
turns, and even more so, when it comes to structural changes. Actually, if the market economy
operated effectively, a forecast, which includes a known turn in seasonal cycles, would be internally
contradictory. Simplifying a bit: it is a self-destructive prophecy. From the point of view of futures
research, in principle, bigger structural changes and breaks in economy, society and technology
could be tackled by non-linear chaos mathematics. So far, however, it has been able to produce
mainly theoretical results and simulations.
It should be noted that the biggest problem related to the economic trend forecasts has not to do
with the model makers and forecasters. They are usually well aware of the limitations and
weaknesses of the models as well as of their intuitive and speculative assumptions. The problems
are those economic actors, who uncritically believe in the forecasts produced by the models.
Economic forecasts are, however, necessary even though you should not believe in them! The
reason is that they express the self-understanding of the economy at a specific point of time. It is
important, but instead of the forecasts themselves one should focus her attention to the assumptions
behind the models.
Nowadays, trend-thinking can be used for producing kind of reference scenarios, business as usual
descriptions of the future. After producing them, one can start constructing the truly interesting
alternative scenarios.
Cultural contempt
U.S. Secretary of State John F. Dulles expressed cultural contempt, when announcing in the 1950’s
that the Japanese will never make anything, which the Americans would like to have. As we know,
he was totally wrong. During the last decades, Japanese high-tech products from Panasonic, Sony,
Toyota, Nissan, etc. have conquered the world of the American consumers.
Generalizing somewhat, it seems so that the danger of falling into the trap of cultural contempt is
directly related to the past success of the actor in question, like a government, national culture, a
dominating company, even a single person: “We are so good that we don’t need to try!”
Correspondingly, sensitivity to one’s own vulnerability seems to be inversely related to the issue of
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how great future it used to have in the past. The hungriest for change and development are usually
those, who have not yet reached success – in economy, politics, culture, science, sports, etc. Perhaps
it wasn’t an accident that the losers of the Second World War – Japan, Germany, Finland – created
the best economic success stories after the war.
In economy, the trap of cultural contempt can go off in a situation, which Harvard professor
Michael Porter has called a phase of wealth-centered economy. 7 In that phase the growth of
economy is based primarily on the prosperity created earlier. It is tried to be maintained by
purchases of companies and mergers, not by investments into production capital and by
innovations. One chases for quick profits, and industrial activities with their entrepreneural risks are
left to the background. Companies and other economic and societal actors are trying to hold on to
the positions achieved in the past, competitiveness is weakening, motivations among the business
leaders and employees are lowering and salaries are rising more rapidly than productivity. The
economy drifts into a state of under-investments and scarce innovations. In the international
competition those companies possessing real competitive advantages make successes and buy
companies from countries having a wealth-centered economy. Actually a wealth-centered economy
is the beginning of national decline. If a society is staring into the past and sticks to the benefits
achieved earlier and does not create anything new, it cannot maintain its prosperity in the long-run.
Philosophy of wealth-centered economy and cultural contempt among the leading economic and
political actors is a destructive combination. An important question is, whether it is even in
principle possible for national economies, sectors, clusters or companies, which have matured into
wealth-centered economic phase to ”take a step or two backwards,” ie. to recreate investments and
innovations. Mature companies and branches as well as other mature organizations like political
parties, labor unions and administrative bodies of the Industrial Age are usually able to carry
through only cosmetic changes in their strategies and operative actions, and very often it is not
enough. What is needed, could be called ‘chaos’.
New society is created by new organizing principles and actors. Multimedia software and
applications are not produced in refrigerator factories or paper mills. Free market economy, at least
in theory, takes care that the companies falling into the thinking trap of cultural contempt and
rigidity (wealth-centerd economy) face serious troubles in confronting the future. Societal
organizations are able to live longer “over their age” than economic ones. That is the basic reason,
why we still have eg. political parties born from the tensions of a primitive industrial society even
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though we live in an Information society. Naturally, this situation cannot last forever, and we will
see new societal actors, solutions, models of democracy, etc. in the future.
Sometimes we come to a situation, where we have to conclude that a barn is a barn, and it does not
turn into a skyscraper, no matter how much colour we paint on it. If we don’t realize it, and stick to
the thinking trap of cultural contempt, someone else will take care of the job of structural change
for us.
Over-enthusiasm and disparagement of everything new
If Roger Smith and many other prophets of the 1980’s had been right, we should not have any
papers on our desks, in our briefcases, seminar halls, offices or elsewhere in the society. On the
other hand, according to Bob Metcalfe, who still acts as a big ICT guru eg. in the MIT’s Technology
Review, there should be no Internet after 1996.
Smith and Metcalfe failed badly, but due to different reasons. Over-enthusiasm and disparagement
of everything new as attitudes towards the future represent the same false thinking-pattern,
exaggeration, but, however, the opposite extremes of it. When a new technological or other
development is in its embryonic phase, especially, if it is understood as being something promising,
it is easily hoped and believed to come true more rapidly than what will be the case in reality.
Paperless office is a good example. Expert systems based on artificial intelligence are other ones.
There was much expectations concerning the development of these systems in the 1980’s, but still
we are waiting for the clever virtual assistans to come. They will substitute virtual lawyers, doctors,
engineers, etc. for the human ones.
The possibilities of expert systems are huge, and they will come into our use some day in the future,
even though the speed of development has not been quite as high as the most eager optimists
thought some twenty years ago. And we do work more and more virtually, using less paper in the
future, too.
Opposite to over-enthusiam is disparagement of everything new, of which Metcalfe made himself
guilty. It happened during a time, when the Internet thanks to the new world wide web technology
had just started to spread out from the academic world to other spheres of society.
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In addition to pure technological problems both over-enthusiam and disparagement of everything
new are related to the problematique of how to identify, out of the new possibilities offered by
technological development, those ones, which satisfy our real needs in the long-run, as private
consumers, business leaders, experts, in our hobbies, etc. Which technological – and in principle,
economic or societal – innovations will become parts of our consumer and other behaviour patterns,
improving our life-quality, increasing the effectiveness of our work and making our businesses
successful, which will only be passing fads, if even that much.
For example, mobile phone is an innovation, which indisputably has been useful for us and
increased our feelings of comfort. In only a little more than ten years it has changed our everyday
life and work so deeply that it makes sense to speak of a clear cultural change. The key word here is
attainability. Our employer, colleagues, family – everyone – assume that we can be reached by
mobile phone all the time. If we insist not to be involved in this new culture, we will become
disabled as workers, and ‘odd fellows’ as members of a family or in a tribe around some hobby.
E-mail and Internet have reached a similar status. Accordingly, it is pretty safe to evaluate that those
technological innovations, which essentially promote mobile culture (no wires anywhere in the
future!) by making communication between people easier, more effective and user-friendly, will be
successes in the future. This means ao. breakthrough of fusion technologies: In the future we will
have a computer, net, e-mail, tv, dvd player, fax, printer, radio, video camera, genetic passport,
drivers licence, etc. in a single wireless device.
As important as it is to identify those technological and other ’weak signals’, which satisfy our real
needs in the long-run, as important it is to understand, which of the many offerings of technologies
and salesmen do not fall into that important category. Who still remembers tamagotchis?
The wisdom of hindsight is sweet – but not everything went wrong
Above some traps in futures thinking into which it is easy to fall were presented. The description
was not exhaustive. As examples of other thinking problems, into which, however, we will not dive
more deeply in this article, the following can be mentioned:8
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An estimate of the future (possibly a forecast) has an impact on the real development and on
itself in a self-fulfilling or self-destroying way. It is very difficult in advance to evaluate
these kind of consequential influences as well as impacts of second, third, etc. degrees and
the significance of feedback loops – future happenings have impacts on the new statements
of the future.
The future is not made only by prime ministers and business leaders but by housewives and
by others, too. Putting together all the possible actions of the potential futures actors creates
a mass of futures alternatives, which is impossible to totally ‘govern’ by any means
available.
Subjectivity, even total irrationality, in addition to all rational planning has its impact on
how the future realizes itself, no matter whether we like it or not. There exist feelings, selfcensorship, lying, religious and ethnic fanaticism in economy, politics, and culture.
Terrorists are there, shaping the future, independently of how lunatic we consider this
phenomenon to be. There is no rational way to mentally control irrationality.
Even the most “objective” researcher possesses many indirect, even unconscious, values and
hypotheses in her/his studies. One can never get rid of them totally, and one should make the
adopted values as explicit as possible.
Data is always inadequate. We should remember, what Karl Popper wrote about future
inventions: they cannot be known in advance. The same is inevitably valid, when it comes to
their consequencies. Many research technicalities are related to the empirical data. With a
large empirical survey we may achieve some generality, but surveys are superficial. Making
some in-depth interviews helps us reach deeper understanding, but the problem is in
generalizing it. And, no matter what is the nature of the empirical data, it is always
restricted.
As we all know, evaluation on how good a statement of the future (not necessarily a forecast) is in
relation to the real development can only be made afterwards, a posteriori. It may take decades
before we can consider, whether a statement of the future was good or not. People love to practice
hindsight of wisdom, because we are so good in it.
The rapid spread of the Internet in the 1990’s was not clearly foreseen either. Marshall McLuhan
described the birth of a global village already decades earlier and Buckminster Fuller built his
network-like models already in the 1960’s, but neither of them could predict that approximately
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starting in the early 1990’s and thanks to the www technology the true global village would really
start to develop itself in the form of the Internet.
Due to the traps in futures thinking and other reasons, estimating happenings in the future has often
been quite unsuccessful. Everything, however, didn’t go wrong. At best futures studies have shown
convincing long-term perspectives and probably had impacts on the societal development processes.
Futures researchers can also take some credit for self-torturing themselves pretty adequately on the
failures in the field, in conferences, articles and books. We keep constantly saying that the future is
unpredictable and that it should be thought of as alternatives only. We can construct an amount of n
scenarios based on varying key assumptions, but we know that the one, which realizes itself into the
present reality at some point of time in the future is # n+1. Practically always. Why, then, spend
time and money for this seemingly useless effort to understand the future? My answer is that by
thinking of those n possibilities you will become better prepared to the unknown, truly realizing
one, too. And one thing is certain: the future materializes itself into the present somehow.
During the past decades there has existed scepticism towards futures studies even among the
experts. We have always been able to present numerous rational arguments for practising futures
research. For example, thinking of the future systematically gives you evidently a better basis for
making important decisions at present than drifting into the future without a faintest idea of
alternatives, threats and possibilities offered by it. Still, during the over twenty years, which I have
spent in the field, I have probably experienced at least 50 identity crises: “Is this something real,
after all?”
Even in futures studies accumulation of knowledge and understanding may be real, even though we
cannot know the essential facts of the future.9 If you have read hundreds of reports, articles and
books of the future, and made them yourself, too, you should have learnt something, both
methodologically and substantially. You ought to have a broader perspective and deeper
understanding of what might be essential in the future than eg. a business leader or an engineer,
who both have their involvements elsewhere. After practicing his profession for 20 years, a
carpenter is justifiably proud of his professional skills and experience. Why don’t we, are we
somehow more stupid, unable to learn or something?
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There are fortunately examples of phenomena, which were spoken among the futures researchers
long before public political, economic and other debate started – and actions were taken, too. In the
following, two examples are shortly described.
One of the best examples is related to the relations between human activities and the nature (which
we usually call the environment due to our self-centered attitudes), and the limitations of these
relations. One of the pioneers in the field, Bob Jungk, published his book Tomorrow is already here
already in the 1950’s. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring came out in 1962 and the research team in the
MIT led by Dennis Meadows published their work Limits to Growth in 1972. The problematic
relationships of our economic, societal and technological systems to the natural ecosystems were
tackled from different angles in these works as well as in other discussions, meetings and writings
of future-oriented researchers and activists. It was not until the United Nations’ Commission of
Environment and Development (the so-called Brundtland Commission) published its report Our
Common Future in 1987, when the establishments (governments) in many countries really started to
take these extremely serious questions into their agendas. Our Common Future started a boom of
ecologically sustainable development. Actually, the concept has become so popular that it is
nowadays used not only related to ecological issues, but people speak improperly also of economic,
social and cultural sustainability.
Another good example is the information society. In the technologically most advanced countries –
like the Nordic countries and the USA – the idea of the information society did not struck the
establishment, political discussion and media until in the 1990’s. The European Union started a
project called eEurope, and in my own country, Finland, strategies, programs and projects for
advancing the information society in all societal spheres and at all levels were plenty at those days.
Japanese professor Yoneji Masuda, however, started to use the concept of the information society
already in the 1970’s. It was widely discussed among futurists and other researchers in the early
1980’s, ie. long before it really started to ‘catch fire’ in the public at large. An amusing feature in
this discussion was that it took some years before the information society was understood deeply as
a big societal development phase, comparable to the agrararian and industial societies. At first, the
information society was understood technically, not societally. It meant mainly more computers,
mobile phones and net connections and other technical devices to schools, workplaces, etc. The idea
that information society brings with it true societal changes, like conflicts of interests, power
struggles, ‘powershifts’, if we use Toffler’s terminology, etc. came only later. Now it is pretty
widely known that more information does not mean less value conflicts. The earlier future-oriented
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discussion probably had an impact on the present eagerness related to the idea of information
society.
At this point it should be remembered that the only purpose for presenting statements of the future
is not to make self-fulfilling prophecies. The other important motivation is to construct futures
prospects in order to start processes, which prevent those prospects from coming true. There might
be other motivations, too, like an attempt to mess up things.
It is extremely problematic and often practically impossible to measure the influences of futures
statements on the real development. For example, it is very difficult to say, what was the impact of
the theories of one of the most influential futures researchers of all times, Karl Marx, on the societal
courses of events during the last 150 years or so. How much his theory on impoverishment of the
labor class effected in the birth of the labor movement and in the birth of the Nordic welfare
societies? What if he had never presented his theory publicly? This question belongs to the domain
of contrafactual study of history. What about his theory on the accumulation of capital? At least we
are witnessing it to happen every day during these days – just think of the mergers of the global
giant companies in the field of media or the role of Microsoft.10
Conclusion: How to overcome traps in futures thinking
A Quick guide for avoiding traps in futures thinking:
”This is it!”: Simply don’t ever think like this! Evolution on the globe has no end station, at least
not as long as the sun keeps on heating us. Even though in the cultural evolution we are able to
destroy much of our environment, cause the extinction of thousands of species, fight against each
other, etc., still we are probably not able to destroy all the life on the earth. When thinking of the
minor issues, like global economy or ideologies, development is going to continue generations from
our times.
Paradigm blindness. Take care that you don’t read only journals, magazines and web pages of your
own discipline. In scenario and strategy groups, use as multivaried expertize as possible. Visit the
domains of the ‘strangers’. If you are a business director, do something stupid: take part in a
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seminar of a feminist activist group, go to a Britney Spears’ concert, read some Charles Bukowsky.
Every now and then: avoid your colleagues, don’t take part in futures studies conferences only…
Trend-faith. Don’t ask, whether an important trend is going to break down. Ask, when the breakdown will take place! You can start by making a list of trends, of which you think that they have
been ‘well-behaving’ during the let say last 30 years. If you are able to name any such trend, keep
on asking yourself, do you believe that it is going to behave well in the future, too. For how long?
And based on what assumptions? If you after this process still believe in the continuation of this
trend, be sure that you make some checking after half a year or so.
Cultural contempt. Is your company overwhelmingly superior compared to all the competitors, are
you the greatest and most successful, are you happy, yes or no? If yes, start thinking quickly! Others
are not that bad. If you fall into your self-satisfied sleep, the others will be awake and lurk behind
your back. They are greedy for success, which they haven’t experienced yet. Sergei Bubka wan
seven World Championships in pole vault between 1983 and 1997. Was the first Championship in
1983 the reason for winning the rest six ones, or did he do some work for them?
Over-enthusiasm and disparagement of everything new. Everyone, who has spent some time in a
work community, can probably name some overly enthusiastic persons eager to grasp to any
exciting idea, as well as persons, who seem to have adopted as their life mission an attitude, which
says that you have to disparage every new idea presented by someone, especially, if the idea
somehow differs from the normal way of thinking. Actually, both of these extreme attitudes may be
valuable in eg. a strategic scenario project in a company, if you take care that neither of them starts
to dominate the thinking of the scenario group. A group consisting only of neutral well-behaving
bureaucrats will probably not produce anything interesting.
In every organization trying to avoid traps in futures thinking and being thirsty for success, whether
operating in business, administration, education or in the academy, it would be good to have a kind
of disturbance generator (DG) to keep you awake in front of the turbulent future(s). The tasks of a
DG include asking odd questions concerning the basic assumptions and modes of operation in the
organization from the futures perspectives, identifying new important weak signals in the operating
environment – in the economy, technology, world politics, societal issues, environment, values etc.
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– having potential impacts on the organization’s development, and producing innovations related to
products, services, customers, modes of operation, strategies and scenarios.
A DG can be a person, a propeller head hanging around and reporting on interesting phenomena to
the top leaders. It a can also be formed of regularly organized futures studios at the top level of the
organization in question. In some bigger companies a DG has been organized more systematically
using eg. company’s Intranet system for collecting new megatrends, weak signals and other
important futures phenomena. The system also applies tools for organizing and prioritizing these
phenomena, and the results are being used in the systematic scenario and strategy work of the
company (see the figure).
Calendar
(months)
3
6
9
12
15
Activities
Top
Mgmt
output
Scenario
report
Report
-w.s.,
-megas
Output
Scenario
report
Report
-w.s.,
-megas
Process
Forum
Futures
Studio
Futures
Studio
InfraInfrastructure
INTRA
-toolbox
INTRA
-toolbox
Constant
monitoring
Report
-w.s.,
-megas
Futures
Studio
INTRA
-toolbox
Report
-w.s.,
-megas
Futures
Studio
INTRA
-toolbox
Report
-w.s.,
-megas
Futures
Studio
INTRA
-toolbox
Weak signals
Megatrends
Figure. Monitoring system of weak signals and megatrends in a company
It is important to understand, however, that a DG is not as much a business unit, person or
procedure as it is a new culture in the organization. It represents shifts in cultural thinking: from
trends to breaks, from past to future, from sleep to awareness, from hierarchies to networks, from
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machines to organisms, from arrogance to sensitivity – and from unchange to change. “Long live
the Disturbance Generators!”
Literature
Bell, Wendell (1997) Foundations of Futures Studies. Vol 1. Transaction Publishers, New
Brunswick. 365 p.
Fukuyama, Francis (1992) The End of History and the Last Man. New York. Free Press.
Godet, Michel (2001) Creating Futures. Scenario Planning as a Strategic Management Tool.
Ecnomica, Paris. 269 s.
Gordon, Theodore J. (1992) The Methods of Futures Research. The Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science 522, July, 25-35
Huntington, Samuel P. (1993) The Clash of Civilizations? Foreign Affairs. Vol. 72, No. 3, pp. 2249.
Kuhn,Thomas S. (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago Ill. University of Chicago
Press. Chicago.
Kuhn,Thomas S. (1979) Second Thoughts on Paradigms. In The Structure of Scientific Theories, ed.
Frederick Suppe. University of Chicago Press. Chicago, London, pp. 459-499.
Mannermaa, Mika (1986) Futures research and social decision-making. Alternative Futures as a
case study. FUTURES, Vol. 18, Oct, pp. 658-670.
Mannermaa, Mika (1991) In Search of An Evolutionary Paradigm for Futures Research. FUTURES,
Vol. 23, May, pp. 349-372.
Mannermaa, Mika (Ed. 1992) Linking Present Decisions to Long-Range Visions. Selection of
Papers from the XI World Conference of the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF).
Budapest. Vols. I and II, 511 pages.
Mannermaa, Mika (2000) Multidisciplinarity, Methodologies and Futures Studies. Futures
Research Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 2000, pp. 5-20.
Masini, Eleonora (1993) Why Futures studies? Grey Seal Books. London.
Porter, Michael (1991) The Wealth of Nations (Kansakuntien kilpailuetu.) Otava, Keuruu.
What’s up in Science (Tieteessä tapahtuu) 3/2002.
1
2
Fukuyama 1992.
Huntington 1993.
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3
Mannermaa - Inayatullah - Slaughter 1994.
Kuhn 1962.
5
Margaret Masterman calculated that Kuhn had used the word paradigm in 22 different meanings in his influential
book. So, the concept is apt to many interpretations, see Kuhn 1979, p. 459-460.
6
What’s up in Science 3/2002.
4
7
Porter 1991.
Cf. Bell 1997, 243-246, Gordon 1992, 26, Masini 1993, 47-53, and Godet 2001, 20-31.
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Something we do know. Eg. there exist true statements of the future. I can say: “In 2045 a hundred years have gone
since the establishment of the United Nations.” There are also statements, which are true now and in the future, too: “In
a certain algebra 1+1=2,” is true in 2004, but also in 2500. In principle, historical statements, when being true stories,
are as true in 2100 as in 2004, but here we cannot be sure. We cannot go back and make empirical observations on, how
eg. the Second World War really happened. Many of us have roughly similar understanding of those happenings, but
there are differences, too. It has also been pointed out that the history has usually been written by the winners, and very
often by males. We can be pretty sure that Saddam Hussein’s story of the Iraq War is quite different from George
Bush’s view. Finally, natural laws, like gravity, should hold true in the future, too (even though we cannot be sure in
the deepest sense). It makes it possible to predict for example the timing of solar eclipses hundreds of years before their
happenings. But all these examples are pretty trivial, when it comes to our task as futures researchers to say something
essential of the future(s).
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Taking up Marx in this way should not be interpreted as giving support to the marxist parties in politics. On the other
hand, Marx should not be condemned as guilty to all of the stupidities, in which the real socialism fell. In the similar
way one should not consider the father of liberalism, Adam Smith, as responsible for all those stupidities, which the
Bush’s regime is causing.
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