Polycrisis Analysis | Hinesight....for Foresight

I’m usually not very timely here in terms of commenting on hot-off-the-press type of events, but I’m going to do it today! Canadian futurist Ruben Nelson shared a piece from the Cascade Institute called “Introduction to Polycrisis Analysis.” I have not reviewed it yet in the appropriate detail it deserves, but my initial reaction is — get this piece immediately!

I’m not sure what it says about me that I got goosebumps of excitement in reading through a paper that explains polycrisis. But do we not need more effective ways of thinking about just this thing? Yes! Right? We are seeing more attention to risks. In fact, the paper does a nice comparison of the various prominent publications covering risks and relates them to the framework they have developed. But it is the frameworks that we are in dire need of. As regular readers know, I’m a sucker for a good framework. And we have one here! Let me pull out a quote that is just beautiful:

At the core of our framework is the stress-trigger-crisis (STC) model, which depicts crises as the product of slow-moving stresses that interact with fast-moving trigger events to push a global system out of its established equilibrium and into a state of disequilibrium (systemic crisis) that causes major human harm.

The paper goes on to explain how to do polycrisis mapping. The explanation is simple and elegant, which suggests to me that they really, really put a lot of time into thinking it through. Such a handy approach — it immediately went into my folder for the next time time I teach World Futures class. And for fans of After Capitalism, this surely aids our understanding of how the baseline is crumbling and how the transformation may unfold.

I didn”t know about the Cascade Institute, but I am a big fan of one of the author’s previous works, Homer-Dixon’s The Upside of Down, which I blogged about way back in 2012. In other words, the authors are not new to this game. It is clear they have been thinking long and hard about what they call the polycrisis. Bravo, well done, and thank you for this wonderful contribution. — Andy Hines

About Andy Hines

Dr. Andy Hines is Program Coordinator at the University of Houston’s Graduate Program in Foresight, bringing together the experience he earned as an organizational, consulting, and academic futurist. He is also speaking, workshopping, and consulting through his firm Hinesight.

Before that, he was Managing Director of Social Technologies/Innovaro, and served as an Adjunct Professor with the university since 2004. Hines enjoyed earlier careers as a consulting and organizational futurist. He was a partner with Coates & Jarratt, Inc., a think tank and consulting firm that specialized in the study of the future. He was also Futurist & Senior Ideation Leader at Dow Chemical with a mission of using futures tools and knowledge to turn ideas into new business opportunities. Before that, Hines established and ran the Global Trends Program for the Kellogg Company.

Hines is motivated by a professional hunger to make foresight practical and useful, and he believes that foresight can help deliver the insight that is so needed in today’s organizations and the world. His goal, he says, is to infect as many change agents as possible with this message. Thus, he has honed a skill set designed to make foresight more actionable in organizations.

In this pursuit, he has authored five books: Teaching about the Future: The Basics of Foresight Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); ConsumerShift: How Changing Values Are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape (No Limits Publishing, 2011); Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight (Social Technologies, 2007); 2025: Science and Technology Reshapes US and Global Society (Oak Hill, 1997); and Managing Your Future as an Association (ASAE, 1994) and has another in the hands of publishers: Teaching about the Future: The Basics of Foresight Education. He has also authored dozens of articles, speeches, and workshops, including the 2003 Emerald Literati Awards’ Outstanding Paper accolade for best article published in Foresight for “An Audit for Organizational Futurists” and the 2008 award for “Scenarios: The State of the Art.” He has appeared on several radio and television programs, PBS Houston, KRIV-26 News, and the CBS “Early Show.” He also co-founded and is former Chair of the Association of Professional Futurists.

About Andy Hines

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