by Thanks to UH Strategic Foresight Certificate Alum Satyamoorthy Kabilan for starting a conversation on The Future Of Everything According To Ford published in Fast Company, which included a highlight of the role of Ford’s in-house futurist Sheryl Connelly. It reminded me of a Hinesight column I wrote back in 2000 on How Foresight Is Being Positioned in Today’s Organizations. I identified five roles that organizational futurists were taking. I noted that one in particular was both extremely rare and very promising for the foresight community – the public voice. The idea is that the futurist publicly shares the company’s vision of the future as a way to promote its thought leadership and inspire others, such as developers, to implicitly or explicitly work toward that vision. At the time Ian Pearson of British Telecom was the lone representative of the “public voice” that I was aware of.
It’s great to see “another” emerging at Ford – actually, she’s been out there for a while now. Brian David Johnson at Intel is another who comes to mind. And futurist Ray Kurzweil is now with Google (although it’s not yet clear if his primary role will be engineering or public voice – or both). Admittedly, this is a tiny sample, but there may be more who are not yet as publicly prominent, or have simply escaped my radar. I’d be glad to hear about anyone I have missed.
Is it possible we’ll see more? I think so, particularly given the growing attention being played to thought leadership in the knowledge economy. Stay tuned. Andy Hines.
“The others are for those more politically inclined, those who prefer working within the system.” I read the article from 2000. It addressed the question I asked myself when looking at the program. I thought companies might look at Foresight as a “basket weaving” degree that’s not to be taken seriously, as you implied with the crystal ball analogy. I want to say the preceding statement describes me. I don’t like the spot-light and I really don’t care for accolades and praise. I guess I’m satisfied just by knowing my ideas are spurring a debate or being implemented.
I’m also a huge fan of Ray Kurzweil (took me like four times to spell it right). Transcendent Man is a great futurmentary (made it up). Siri, other voice assistants, and touch interfaces owe him a lot of respect for what he has done to make life easier for the blind and deaf. He’s also a huge supporter of AI independence and integration. He’s pushing for true autonomous robots. He also believes we could one day download our consciousness into machines. Google just bought DOD robotics company Boston Dynamics to build a full-scale machine. A few days ago they also purchased Deepmind, an AI system that has a unique algorithm to learn search patterns. I want to say that is Mr. Kurzweil’s doing, but I could be wrong. He seems like a behind the scenes quiet type of guy, but he has some star-power.
A great feature of this field is that there is room for lots of types and viewpoints. One can be a “down and dirty” insider, advocate of the Singularity, a more neutral applied futurist, etc. etc. A big tent.