Dear Colin

Citation

Sparrow, O. (2009), "Dear Colin", Foresight, Vol. 11 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/fs.2009.27311aaa.003

Dear Colin

Article Type: Letters to the editor From: foresight, Volume 11, Issue 1

This text is a personal reaction to the edition of foresight dedicated to an evaluation of something called the “European Foresight Monitoring Network”, published as foresight, Vol 10, No 6. I have spent over 30 years in this field – and six years on the steering panel of the UK Foresight activity – and I was distressed by what I read.

All complex projects set out with both implicit, culturally defined goals and with the headline deliverables that they are supposed to create. The explicit deliverables of foresight activities are surprisingly complex and context-dependent, and reviewed below. The cultural determinants of such projects are, however, less subtle.

Governments – and more specifically, middle rank civil servants – need to ground their decisions in facts of structures of insight that are in some sense independent of their personal opinion. When asked, “who says”, they need to be able to point to a process, expert panel or weighty report. Regrettably, therefore, one has to note that enormous amounts of wheel-spinning are dedicated to providing these figurative or literal information door stops. The documentation of such programs in foresight shows how firmly these cultural factors have grasped the many, expensive projects that have been assessed.

Much of the analysis is concerned with the methods rather than the aims of these projects. Analysts have carefully recorded when this that or the other methodology has been employed: a brainstorm here, an expert panel there. (One has to presume that the brains so stormed were inexpert, or they would have been counted twice.) What is less recorded is what problem these processes were intended to solve.

Studies of the future are rooted in models of the present, and in how that model may have to be changed in substance or emphasis to take into account events in prospect. Much work that is called “futures” is in fact an attempt to understand the present and extrapolate what has been learned so as to see what happens if this or that principal component becomes more or less important, takes on this or that value from a plausible range. The projection into the future merely allows one to view the present in a form caricatured for clarity, or to project the issues out from current political polarisation. It is an attempt to understand what is going on, and what this implies. As an example, consider the enormous amount written about the emerging Internet in the 1990-1998 period, as to whether there was a New Economy, what its rules were to be, what would happen if this or that form of social or technological graft were to be applied to this. The basic question that is being answered is this: what is going on? How am I to understand all of this?

A second step, usually undertaken when the model is clear and seemingly robust, is to explore the strategic implications of variations in the model. That is, we can see a plausible range of events embedded in a space the principal components of which are this, that and the other dimension. (For example, such dimensions might be evaluated as the extent of socio-political tensions, the potential military options, the consequent geopolitical responses around a current focus of international concern.) The work would then look at how the various agents in the model would react to these generic outcomes. The basic question being asked is, in this instance, much as follows: I understand what is going on? What can I do about it, and what are the risks of taking a position on this? Such assessments seldom reach the light of public scrutiny, notably when they have been done formally and at some cost and for proprietary or political advantage.

The third step, seldom achieved in any formal way, comes from bringing together institutions and, more specifically, people who have got all of this firmly under their belt. They live and breathe this stuff, and have done so for a long period. This is the social context in which it is useful to ask for creative synthesis. I will use energy as an example of this.

In advance of this, however, permit a digression. Many readers will have experienced disappointment with the output from meetings that were supposed to focus on strategy. A random array of issues – many lifted from recent headlines, popular books and management fashion – have been tabled. The most talented and motivated groups generate such material, despite their best efforts.

Why does this occur? I suggest that such meetings conflate the three phases of thought that I discussed above.

1. 1.

   First, one has to generate a model that relates what this group should care about to what is happening that affects this, and how all this may change.

2. 2.

   Second, given that the group has grasped this, then it has to ask itself what levers it has to make changes; and what it would like those changes to achieve. That is, it has to address what it wants to become and avoid becoming, to define its values and balances and from these, its potential options.

3. 3.

   Third, given the solution to the preceding two issues, the group needs to think of responses that are rich, capable of resilient evolution and, above all, practical given resource, political and time constraints.

Meetings tend to seek the third outcome without the bother of going through the first two stages. Values are assumed, models are borrowed off the shelf. The consequence is usually cliché: every foresight process seems to identify the same issues, very few open new territory. In the energy world, hydrocarbons are deemed a moribund technology, something called the hydrogen economy is often brought forward as a solution, and the word “renewable” is used as plaster to cover economic, technical and social cracks.

Consider the following. Hydrogen is a carrier, not a source of energy. However, it is an absolute pig of a fuel to move, store or indeed use. What is the best way of moving hydrogen around as a fuel? Plainly, as a hydrocarbon. What are trillions of dollars invested in handling safely and effectively? Hydrocarbons. Generate hydrogen if you are able, therefore, but attach it to a carbon chain to stabilise and store it. Do we know how to do this? Indeed we do, as it is done daily in refineries all over the world.

Biofuels have, to date, largely consisted of burning food or fermenting food and then burning it, usually at a net energy loss when cultivation and fertilisers, transport and so forth are taken into account. However, a centuries-old technology allows one to break any – any – hydrocarbon to syngas, a name applied to a mixture of carbon dioxide plus hydrogen, and stick these gases back to paraffins, such as diesel. Adding a hydrogen stream allows a “whiter” product, such as petroleum or LPG. It is well known and proven that this can be done at around US$ 50 per barrel of crude equivalent.

Why is this not repeated at every energy colloquium? I had the opportunity to ask several thousand chemical engineers this question at their conference at Aachen in 2007. Not one person in the room admitted that they had been consulted by the European Union in advance of the now-notorious directive on biofuels. However, the issue is broader than this. When people are brought together in a room to think about “energy futures” they are confronted with a social conundrum.

• •

  First, all of the issues of group dynamics: who are these people? Why should I expose my ideas to potential ridicule in front of them? Beyond that, who are the client base and what would be useful to them that I am prepared to deliver?

• •

  Second, they have to address the three issues that were outlined above: the model, what matters in the model to the client base, what solutions are “ingenious”, original.

It truly does not matter what set of tools are used in such meetings: scenarios or brainstorming, open outcry or sub-group focus. If the socially-structural issues are not solved, contributions will consist of isolated chunks that seem peripherally relevant: “The hydrogen economy”. There will almost always be enthusiasts at such meetings who have particular ideas to push. This is particularly true of state-sponsored meetings, where “spokespersons” are included in the guest list specifically to establish the output as coming from a “diverse community of opinion”. The same names, issues and messages therefore tend to re-occur on the foresight circuit. Prepared positions tend to drown out any attempt by the group to work its way through the various social and informational issues outlined above. Further, the moral high ground tends to be captured when the premise is that “the answer is sustainability – inclusion, competitiveness, power projection – so what was the question?”

In common with many readers, I have yet to read a report from a piecemeal technology foresight activity that I found illuminating. It may well be that this or that chip technology is practical by 2025, but frankly, without a clear view of what it might be able to do, who cares? By contrast, I find some of the more narrative and socially realistic work that is done to envisage how a meal might be delivered, travel accomplished or health maintained quite riveting, entirely because it poses a set of issues which strict technology then has to solve through ingenuity and innovation. Such studies rivet to the direct proportion to which their authors are broadly familiar with the art of the possible, embracing everything from human resource development to social acceptance, industrial infrastructure and international affairs. Such studies rarely make it into public domain.

The occult nature of excellent foresight is a great pity, as it is states which most need long-term insight. It is states which take the longest term and most structural decisions. Unhappily, it is states which are most prone to following the organised claque, not least when its narrative has been translated into popular terms and in common usage. The everything-and-nothing use of the word “sustainability” is a good example of this. If this quality can be assigned to an idea, then it acquires moral wings. Indeed, many states require that ideas pass test for this or that buzz phrase: social inclusion, competitiveness.

How could policy be best informed by the long view? Alas, by giving its development more time and making it considerably harder work. It would take more time because the various stages of an assessment need to be managed carefully and documented, such that those who take on the subsequent stages are properly educated – indoctrinated – in what has gone before. (It is a mistake to believe that each stage can be staffed by random individuals who have broadly the right qualifications: aptitudes and experience count very greatly towards a successful outcome.) Second, the output from such a process is necessarily deep and potentially difficult, and policy makers would need to accept the requirement to immerse themselves in something that is not readily amenable to being rendered down into bullet points.

It struck me as remarkable that the dedicated edition went into considerable detail as to the goals and methods of the various foresight processes, but that it did not attempt to assess the success, impact or general usefulness of state foresight processes. This may be equivalent looking for the lost car keys under the streetlight (because only there can you see, and to look elsewhere is fruitless) or it may be academic reluctance to assert where one cannot metricate. It would have been useful to know if decisions were taken that otherwise would have been allowed to lapse for want of this analysis. My own approach to this has always been to seek a list of areas of ignorance, areas in which further research could answer questions that affect resource allocation, prioritised by the potential tractability, urgency or importance of the issue in question. I can then assess if the teams have delivered clarity, if this clarity has taken us forward and, if it has not, what is holding us back.

Yours sincerely

Oliver SparrowDirector, The Challenge! Network