May I offer some bad advice about the future?
At times, it seems repetitive to tell people how to look at the future. In many ways, like golf, it’s a simple process you must practice. No shortcuts. Giving the same advice time and time again can feel like a nag.
However, how about giving people bad advice they can ignore? This is a new pedagogical approach, one I am working on for my next book. The power of negative thinking!
I am partially inspired in this effort by this all-too-true blog post on how to lose wars American style.
If you really want to lose a war, follow these easy steps:
- Underestimate the enemy.
- Avoid learning anything about the enemy.
- Explain the invasion to the American public in simple moral terms suitable for middle-school children at an evangelical summer camp.
- A misunderstanding of military history helps. Besides, comprehension would only lead to depression.
- Do not forget that a military’s reason for existence is to close with the enemy and destroy him. An army is not in the social-services business.
- Intellectual insularity should be a primary goal, as it avoids distraction.
- Keep up to date with the latest nostrums and silver bullets. Organize your military as a lean, mean, high-tech force characterized by lightning mobility, enormous firepower, and extraordinary unsuitability for the kind of wars it will actually have to fight.
- It is a good idea to bracket your exposure. Be ready for wars past and future, but not present.
- Insist that the US military never loses wars. Instead, it is betrayed, stabbed in the back, and brought low by treason.
- Avoid institutional memory. Not having lost of course means that there is nothing to remember.
Mindset is more important than capital, more important than information.
Will bankruptcy result in banks owning major media?
The United States is facing a difficult situation. It is no secret that all too many of our major organizations function not by the value they produce, but by the debt they take on. Last year’s financial armageddon was the result of too many banks leveraging themselves against assets made of completely fictional, and declining value. Debt was laid on top of more debt, until the whole thing melted down, and the only “fix” was to have the U.S. Federal Government take on even more debt. At no point has productivity or value entered into this debate, just debt, invented from thin air, helping nobody and shackling future generations to our poor management.
Coinciding with our failing banks is the failure of American media. Information is going online, content is free, attention is scarce. As advertising revenue shrinks, media companies are going into default. But in the event of failure, who gets the assets?
Banks.
And major media companies are financed by major banks. This brings us to the incredible situation of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan inheriting so many media companies, that they are running afoul of already-weak media ownership laws.
So, to recap, banks that failed last year are only around due to the American taxpayer. Those taxpayers can only keep tabs on such organizations through government agencies and news outlets. The banks are now so big that they essentially in direct partnership with the United States government, which cannot let them fail. (Or at least protest that it would be too dangerous.) And now, those banks will begin owning an increasing percentage of the major media which most Americans use, rightly or wrongly, to derive information about the economy.
Our institutions are becoming intertwined at a level where a dialogue is nearly impossible. For every conversation, you need at least two people. What are the differences between the banks who control money, the media telling their story, and the government offering to prop both of them up?
The answer may have to do with large organizations in general. Major media need huge advertisers to pay for their conglomerates. Small, niche, local media? They can survive on engaged, passionate niches. Major banks need huge customers for their debt. Small regional banks can survive helping local businesses actually provide value.
Maybe the problem isn’t banking or media or government, but the BIG versions of all three.
Competitive Analysis: A Primer
Courtesy of intelligence thoughtleader August Jackson, here are slides from his recent guest lecture at Johns Hopkins about all the various kinds of analysis you can and should be using.
This is a great jumping off point for anybody getting started in intelligence, planning, or just plain thinking.
And as we say here at Competitive Futures, KEEP THINKING.
AT&T ads from 1993 describe services we use today
by Eric Garland
Further to our series of “Forecasting Works” blog posts, dig these ads for AT&T from 16 years ago, 1993. They forecast, based on their own knowledge of technology and some educated guesses:
- E-books
- Telepresence
- EZ-Pass digital toll collection
- Online concert ticket sales
- In-car GPS navigation
Were they completely accurate in these visions? Not entirely, but you’ll have to admit that it is all frighteningly close.
They engaged in a rational process of thinking about the impact of current trends, and it helped light the way.
You can do likewise.
A proposal for an Intelligence Collaborative
Originally posted over at the Competitive Intelligence Ning forum, our intention is to bring forth a collaborative of people who use intelligence for more than just creating value in businesses. More on this idea to follow.
WE NEED EACH OTHER: A Proposal for a Collaborative of Intelligence Professionals
We live in an era of transforming economies, simmering terrorism, transitioning institutions, and few historical analogues to guide us. As such, intelligence, in all its manifestations, is a matter of life and death, prosperity and poverty, reason and superstition, light and dark. It is our profession and our passion, and we must support it now, more than ever. We must come together for dialogue, education, and mutual support.
RECENT FAILURES OF INTELLIGENCE
Intelligence has never been more important, yet it finds itself on hard times. In the past few years, the word itself has suffered a number of scandals. At the government level, America’s national intelligence apparatus missed the weak signals leading up to the greatest attack on its soil since Pearl Harbor, if not 1812. Shortly following September 11, the architects of the war in Iraq used an incompetent reading of Iraq’s military capacity to justify a war that has proved immeasureably costly in blood and treasure.
In the private sector, nearly every purveyor of business analysis was caught flatfooted throughout the 2000s, failing to understand or foresee the bursting of an economic bubble from which we suffer today. At the center of this catastrophe were financial analysts who judged, using their own intelligence methdology, that a large group of financial instruments were AAA-grade debt, despite being composed of nothing but fantasy and fraud. Instead of recognizing the failure of their intelligence, the cataclysmic (yet predictable) event is portrayed as an act of God, totally random, and business resumes as usual, plus or minus a few trillion in bailouts.
In all of these catastrophe’s, where was intelligence?
Read more
Pricing oil for the future
“To run a pricing market for a non-renewable resource off rationing short-term supply and demand makes no sense.” – Gregor MacDonald
One of the worst traps in thinking about the future is assuming that your images of 20, 30, or 50 years ago are still likely, or even possible, in the future. Gregor illustrates this beautifully in his post “Jett Rink’s Speedboat,” about how today’s major oil finds will never lead back to some cheap oil pseudo-paradise of the 1950s and 60s. They cannot. Because this world is so very different.
Notice also his comments on how hyperbolic oil companies are becoming from oil field “discoveries” that sound dauntingly difficult – and how the market responds anyway.
Interview with Arik Johnson on the future of competitive intelligence
by Eric Garland
It is more than enough work thinking about how the world is changing. Exceedingly few people think about how people think 
about the changing world. I’m proud to say I know some great folks who are on the cutting edge of understanding intelligence and decision making. Here, we’ve got a copy of the latest Competitive Intelligence Podcast, the brainchild of August Jackson. This time, he’s interviewing our friend and colleague Arik Johnson of the intelligence consulting firm Aurora WDC, on his view of the present and future of intelligence and its effect on leadership. The interview is broad ranging
- A new paradigm of intelligence: scarcity of analysis instead of scarcity of information
- The “perpetual beta” mindset, one of rapidly-changing technology and reduced barriers to entry
- The next decade of competitive intelligence: CI 2020
- CI’s evolving role as a mechanism and process to correct for cognitive bias
- The importance of a customer-centric model in delivering intelligence
It’s a great year to revisit our assumptions on how decisions are made. This is a great discussion to get you kicked off.
One out of six construction loans in trouble – still a sunny forecast?
Many of my colleagues have been recently wondering how the media regarding the American economy could be so sunny in the face of increasing unemployment. 
Indeed, how could any recovery happen having doubled the unemployment rate? The U-3 unemployment rate hovers around 9.7%, while underemployment is at a record 16.8%. How can an economy supposedly based on consumer spending come back with twice as many people unable to spend?
Americans have a strong bias toward good news. We are historically, as a people, motivated and entrepreneurial, so rather than dwell on things like history or future trends, we would prefer to get right back to work. This is an admirable trait in general. So long as you are focused on the right things, unthinking hard work is preferable to endless bureaucratic meetings in which you decide a suitable course of action, only after multiple hearings from all parties, et cetera.
There are moments where a sunny disposition is the wrong thing. To be sure, there’s no point in whipping people into a depression-related psychosis, causing a run on the banks and prodding people to fling themselves off bridges because the end is nigh. And economics is at the end of the day a social science; sometimes when people simply think positively, things turn around.
Forecasting works: Functional foods 1999 – 2009
by Eric Garland
Today, the airwaves are filled with advertisements for consumer foods that aren’t simply nourishing but portrayed as practically medicine. A slew of softdrinks are marketed as hangover cures, energy, memory enhancers, cognitive enhancers, help with clairvoyance, and fuel for flight. Fish isn’t just fish, it’s OMEGA-3 FATTY ACIDS. And somewhere along the way, trans-fats replaced “Ebola virus” as the world’s deadliest substance. Is this random or could you see it coming?
Food as medicine was a theme we predicted for 2010 way back in 1999 when studying the future of food and health for a group of global consumer product manufacturers. The world seemed to be at a turning point at that moment, with a number of trends appearing to collide in the decade to come:
- Super-size and family value packs had reached their apex, due to increasing penetration of fast food and big-box retail throughout the world
- Obesity epidemic reaching a pitch, not only in America but also in unexpected places like France, Greece, China
- Litigious American culture had finally apexed with its war on cigarette liability, and a new target was likely to be next
- Biotechnology was promising new technological abilities for all plant life (this was the era of the Human Genome Project and techno-positive rhetoric was off the chart)
- Boomers were aging, and increasingly interested in immortality on the cheap
- Sustainability was increasing as a concern, and farming would be one of the most effected industries
- The “Slow Food Movement” was beginning to point back to heirloom breeds of livestock and produce and encourage local diversity in favor of industrial solutions
About Eric Garland
Eric is one of the world's pre-eminent thoughtleaders in forecasting and strategy. He helps leaders of business and government make critical decisions about their futures.Connect with us
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