Episodes
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Winning in a Downturn - Using Future Insights to Succeed in Turbulent Times
We have entered an age of turbulence where the certainties of the past decade will be 'unsystematically' overturned. Old assumptions about how to govern, educate, lead and succeed in business are being challenged and abandoned. In the search for new solutions, businesses and government alike are seeing the importance of future thinking and preparing for a range of possible scenarios. in this session Global futurist Rohit Talwar will draw on an international research study to introduce practical strategies for using future insights to help organisations survive and thrive in turbulence. He will highlight real world examples of how business models, value chains, service, innovation strategies, people development and new product development are being transformed through the practical application of foresight. -
Islamic Banking and Islamic Investment
In the midst of the current financial crisis, Islamic banking & finance stands at a crossroad. After at least a couple of decades of its close association with the Western capitalist institutions, Islamic financial thinkers are questioning close cooperation between Western investment banks and Islamic financial institutions. While, in theory Islamic banking and finance has a lot in common with Western movement of ethical finance and socially responsible investing, Islamic finance in practice has chosen to be in bed with the mainstream Western banks and financial institutions. There is a growing realisation that this trend is not sustainable in future. -
Episodes manquant?
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Touchstones: Conceptual Products for Sustainable Futures
ImaginationLancaster is a new creative research lab at Lancaster University that explores futures for people, products, places and systems. Stuart will introduce this initiative and present recent work in which he combines theoretical critique with speculative objects to probe the meanings and implications of design for sustainability. Notions of localization, distributed enterprise, and flux lead to product concepts based on re-seeing, re-valuing, temporary arrangements, and evolving permanence. -
Future of Lifestyles
The Philips Design probe programme is a far future research initiative attempting to develop lifestyle scenarios 10 - 20 years ahead. Design "provocations" are created with the purpose of stimulating debate and critique from which they work backwards to materialize nearer term scenarios. Clive will talk about emotional sensing, electronic tattoos and high rise sustainability as examples of past probes and refer to the recently published work on the future of food. -
Desert Tech. Clean Power from the Sahara for Europe
The DESERTEC-project offers the opportunity to exploit the inexhaustible clean solar energy from deserts mainly by proven solar-thermal technologies. Only 1,7 % of all desert areas around the world is needed to cover the overall energy demand of humankind. Thus, we have an viable option for climate-, energy- and water-security (sea-water desalination) â indispensable factors for shaping a sustainable future for humankind. -
The Futures of Technologies and the Technologies of the Futures
Change is not constant, in fact, change is accelerating very fast. Some technologies are radically changing humanity, in general, and also changing human beings, in particular. Many experts now talk about the four sciences and technologies of the future: NBIC (Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno). Furthermore, the NBIC fields are rapidly converging and they will help to transcend many human limitations and to improve human lives all around the world, and beyond. -
Turning to the Future after the Age of Easy Growth
The need for transformation beyond the turmoil is particularly acute in the ânewâ member-states of the European Union, which have been hit the most in the current crisis. For several past years, it used to be that growth came easy and future was wide open. Even if not much effort was put into thinking about this future and leading the way towards it â things went well as they were. The case of Baltic States is an especially good example of this.
In order to get back to success track from being a current basket case of Europe, we need to change our mindâset and do this in two ways. First, more future-oriented thinking should arise into (economic) policy-making. Second, this should be accompanied by a relevant rethinking of the stateâs role in the economy of the future. With foresight we might have a chance to start the winning streak again. -
The Transformation of Europe: Future challenges of the Union and the States
Although deeper than many before, the current crisis may be seen as just another cycle of capitalism. The author believes, however, that its roots are deeper and very much related to the challenges the world and Europe are facing at the beginning of the millennium. The response to the crisis should be coherent to the addressing the long term challenges. The crisis is accelerating the wheel of history and after the world will be different in many ways. It took many great visions, many years and a lot of political effort to make the European Union what it is today. We have a good institutional toolbox in place. We will need every piece of this toolbox and also allow it to funcion, if we want the #1 economy in the world to prosper in the future and have a say in how the world will be reshaped at the beginning of the third millennium. -
Is it really good to know the Future? How expectation, chance and error make the world go round
Why we can predict more and more things - new developments in probability sciences and data management
The future of Futurists: How we can survive and thrive in the ever growing market of predictions -
Eckard Foltin - Head Creative Center, Bayer MaterialScience AG
From Visions to Products - Future Living 2020
Bayer MaterialScience defines a strategy and taps into new business, both in existing and completely new markets. The objective is to be the solution supplier of choice around the globe with raw materials and technologies for key industries of the future. One primary task is to identify future consumer needs and new market trends (market pull) as early as possible and to match them up with technological developments (technology push) at precisely the right time.
The speech shows practical examples on the network projects and visions of the Life in 2020. -
Ciaran McGinley, Project Initiator EPO Scenarios for the Future, European Patent Office
Open Innovation - Do we still need Patents?
In a world where knowledge is increasingly shared and innovation becomes a collaborative process, are traditional forms of intellectual property protection still appropriate? This presentation explores how the paradigm shift to open and collaborative innovation which is already eminent today will impact the role of patents and intellectual property tomorrow. By applying the scenario methodology and using the four "EPO Scenarios for the Future" as different possible environments, the potential drivers which might encourage the development of open innovation models are identified. How businesses and other stakeholders might adapt their IP strategies will also vary substantially from one scenario to the next. -
Dr. Ulrich Reinhardt (Stiftung fĂŒr Zukunfsfragen)
Europe 2030: What Europeans Expect from the FutureMore than 11.000 Europeans from nine countries were asked about their views of the future in eight different fields (from future of work or integration up to future of consumption or education). The results prove that people have many fears â e.g. old age, poverty, rising costs of everyday goods or increasing crime. But the representative study also shows that the future can be bright: less working hours, most trash will be recycled and more women in leading positions. Together with other future scientists the BAT foundation will present the results from different perspectives and give first hand information on how the Europeans see the future.
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Dr. Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey
Methuselah Foundation
A True Cure for Human AgingIt may seem premature to be discussing approaches to the effective elimination of human aging as a cause of death at a time when essentially no progress has yet been made in even postponing it. However, two aspects of human aging combine to undermine this assessment. The first is that aging is happening to us throughout our lives but only results in appreciable functional decline after four or more decades of life: this shows that we can postpone the functional decline caused by aging arbitrarily well without knowing how to prevent aging completely but instead by increasingly thorough molecular and cellular repair. The second is that the typical rate of refinement of dramatic technological breakthroughs is rather reliable (so long as public enthusiasm for them is abundant) and is fast enough to change such technologies (be they in medicine, transport, or computing) almost beyond recognition within a natural human lifespan. In this talk I will explain, first, why (presuming adequate funding for the initial preclinical work) therapies that can add 30 healthy years to the remaining lifespan of healthy 55-year-olds may arrive within the next few decades, and, second, why those who benefit from those therapies will very probably continue to benefit from progressively improved therapies indefinitely and thus avoid debilitation or death from age-related causes at any age.
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Prof. Dr. Konstantinos Boulouchos
Chairman of the Board of Energy Science Center of ETH ZurichA long-term vision for a sustainable energy system needs to address a multitude of challenges. Policy and socioeconomic aspects are crucial but the contribution of science and technology will be of paramount importance as well. The talk will present and discuss a robust transformation path over the next 50-100 years that can ensure economic development worldwide and access mitigation through a consistent decarbonization of all energy sectors. Associated pitfalls and risks will be also included in the discussion. Setting the right priorities, making tough decisions and starting immediately are thereby a must.
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Anders Berntell (Anders Berntell, Executive Director Stockholm International Water Institute) - The Water Crisis
The UN, World Bank and world leaders have warned that the lack of water resources will lead to global crisis this century. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon called securing safe and plentiful water for all "one of the most daunting challenges faced by the world today." Like oil, some speculate we may in future hit "peak water." There are key differences though. For one, there is no substitute for water; no growth â economic, human, or ecological â comes without it. Will there be enough water resources in the future? Unless major improvements are made to better manage and efficiently use water in agriculture, industry and by consumers, the answer is no. However, opportunities for improvement are as great as they are urgent. -
A new class of global actors is playing an increasingly important role in globalization: smugglers, warlords, guerrillas, terrorists, gangs, and bandits of all stripes. Since the end of the Cold War, the global illicit economy has consistently grown at twice the rate of the licit global economy. Increasingly, illicit actors will represent not just an economic but a political force. As globalization hollows out traditional nation-states, what will fill the power vacuum in slums and hinterlands will be informal non-state governance structures. These zones will be globally connected, effectively run by local gangs, religious leaders, or quasi-tribal organizations – organizations that will govern without aspiring to statehood.
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Life After Wall Street â
Indicates the finance crisis the end of globalizations?Recent turmoil in the global financial markets has often been described in the media as a tectonic shift in the global financial system. Prof. John L. Casti, a former researcher at RAND Corporation and member of the external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute suggests that an asteroid impact or a super volcano would be a better metaphor. The financial crisis that began in October 2007 is far from over, and represents just one manifestation of the increasingly negative social mood gripping the entire world, a mood change that will last many years, if not a decade or more.
Casti is convinced that we look here at some of the types of events likely to be seen in the economy, finance, politics and general social trends during this bleak period, including the end of the phenomenon of âglobalizationâ as itâs been since the mid 1970s, the unraveling of the European Union, and the end of financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.Casti will discuss his forecast with Professor Markku Wilenius, Vice President Allianz SE, member of the Club or Rome and Vice President of the Advisory Board of the European Futurists Conference Lucerne.
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The 32 nodes of the Millennium Project around the world have invited voluntary participation of over 2500 futurists, business planners, policy analysts, and scholars who have participated in the production and updating of 15 global challenges over the past 12 years. These provide a framework for understanding the global strategic landscape and focus for the collection and assessment of strategies to improve the human condition. We will share key insights from these assessments and methods used.
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Ian Pearson, BT - The Future of Life on Earth
Life on earth is all still based on the same shared biological life processes. This will change dramatically over the next century, as humans discover how life works at the most basic levels, how to replicate and manipulate it, and how to create new life forms from scratch. New life is not necessarily restricted to conventional biology, even if it is inspired by it. It might be electronic, conventionally biological but of a new design, or based on new types of synthetic biology, or any combination of these. The scope for totally new life forms once cyberspace is added into the mix of electronics with synthetic and real biology will be enormous. For example, we could design and build a networked organism that physically spans the whole world, which exists partially in cyberspace and partially in the real physical world. How far can this all go, and what should we do about it?Ian Pearson graduated in Maths and Physics from Queens University, Belfast. He currently works as BT's futurologist, studying the future of technology and its likely implications across the whole of industry, government and society.
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Dr. Peter Maskus, Acabion TM Visionary Motion and MIKOVA Systems Consulting Mobility of the 21st Century
History of mobility is easily narrated: 1800 came with the railroads. 1900 came with cars. The 21st century will come with another fundamental innovation. Even though almost no one knows today, how the longterm future of earthbound global traffic will look like, it anyhow is already defined. It will look very different to what we are used to today. Beautiful, surprisingly elegant, "stretched out in the winds of change" and adapted to nature, instead of offending and plundering it. âšAnd it will be extremely capable, offering 400 mph on elevated tracks, powered by solar electricity, fully automated and extremely safe. The presentation will show it, and it will elaborate on why it it is already defined.
Dr.-Ing. Peter Maskus was an engineer and strategic consultant at companies like Porsche, Ariane Aerospace, BMW or Mercedes-Benz. Later he joined Masaaki Imai's Kaizen Institute in Tokyo and became one of Imai's top experts in Toyota Production and lean management. Assuring progress in management and production, he anyhow did not see consequent innovations coming up on the product site. Hence he decided to generate sophisticated product innovations by himself. Two decades of international top management consulting plus decisive endeavor for sustainable new technologies make Dr. Peter Maskus one of the soundest international strategic consultants in success factors, creativity and innovation, today. - Montre plus
