We are on the cusp of a wave of strategic change unlike anything we have managed in the past several decades – are organizations prepared to collect and analyze information about those changes? That is the question I pose to you in this Benchmarking Study about the state of strategic intelligence.

If you would like to participate, this simple, anonymous survey will cover a few multiple choice questions about what kinds of strategic information you see in your career, how often it comes by, who uses it, and the culture around it.

Please feel free to share this link, and when we have a significant enough sample size, I look forward to reporting the findings publicly. I look forward to your participation and to what will no doubt be fascinating results.

Aurora WDC Partners with Competitive Futures to Make Organizations Future-Ready

Aurora WDC announces the expansion of its strategic alliance with international trends forecasting and futures intelligence firm, Competitive Futures.

Aurora WDC, based in Madison, will offer Competitive Futures’ consulting and training services to its worldwide executive clientele in concert with Aurora’s Global Primary Research and Virtual Analyst Team. Competitive Futures clients will gain priority access to Aurora’s industry-diverse menu of strategic intelligence research and analysis capabilities covering more than 80 countries worldwide. Shared clients will also benefit from Aurora’s new learning, training and development offerings, led by the legendary scholar of intelligence analysis, Dr. Craig S. Fleisher, and focused on achieving “analytical fitness” by applying development methods similar to the techniques used by world-class coaches to prepare elite athletes for international competition.

Competitive Futures offers advice to business and government on competitive strategy, economic development and opportunity assessment to equip decision-makers with technology foresight, future customer profiling, competitive positioning and investment due diligence needed to act with greater confidence. The application of Competitive Futures professional services have grown in importance as global competition, accelerating rates of industry change and conditions of intense operational uncertainty have become the norm.

Eric Garland, Managing Partner at Competitive Futures commented, “We bring our clients the best possible information and when we need competitive intelligence, there is no finer firm than Aurora WDC when it comes to global primary research. As the firm moves in the direction of further elevating this profession through training, events, and media production, we could not be more excited to be official partners of Aurora.”

Aurora WDC CEO Derek Johnson added, “We’ve worked together with Eric and his team at Competitive Futures for years now to build the Intelligence Collaborative with the goal of uniting the analytical profession. Now, as Aurora WDC moves more into the vitally important space of intelligence education, we are excited to partner with the world’s leading firm in training executives in the area of foresight.”

The leaders of both companies will appear together at the Special Libraries Association (SLA) conference in Philadelphia, June 12-15, where the theme of “Future-Ready” has become a central priority on the agenda of information centers, corporate libraries and strategic knowledge professionals worldwide.

Sure Ross Dawson is a futurist and lives in Sydney, New South Wales – but don’t call him an Australian futurist. In his view, future-focused mindsets had best not get hung up on terms like “domestic” and “international” if they want to see what’s coming.

In this episode of the podcast, Ross shows us how being in Australia gives a perfect vantage point on global strategic trends, maybe even better than those in “major” economies. We also touch on why nations accustomed to immigration – such Australia and the U.S. – will have competitive advantage over more xenophobic nations. This leads to a discuss on how the Japanese are planning on using robots to take care of their aging populations. Not just any robots: robot dogs and seals.

Yes, folks: the future is in robotic seals emotional companions. Not kidding.

Stick around for the end of the interview, in which Ross makes an impassioned case for why the world “futurist” is just fine, thank you very much – a noble and honorable profession for a world in constant evolution.

For the readers of the Competitive Futures Blog, we would like to update you on some of our changes here in cyberspace.

Starting today, Eric Garland is getting a new home on the web to launch his next book entitled “How to Predict the Future…and WIN!!!” His thoughts will be updated on the homepage at http://www.ericgarland.co.

Here at the Competitive Futures Blog, we will continue to update clients and readers on the strategic trends we are identifying in our work for businesses and governments around the world. And there is plenty to cover.

Bookmark both pages!

Dateline Boston, July 5, 1776:

Well, they’ve done it now. The former English colonists of the New World have led a popular uprising against their king. Naturally, this business of civil disobedience has a rich history…but now what?

First, they have no history of democracy. These people have a centuries-old history of slavery and royal absolutism. A high percentage of the “nation” didn’t even want to revolt. Why, even that quote-producing smooth talker Benjamin Franklin attempted to keep the place English until the last minute – and his son remains a royalist to the core. They have no international support, no flag, no currency, no treaties with the various hostile foreign powers in the region.

Somehow, some way, we are expected to believe that this defenseless group of farmers and traders, led only by a handful of generals from the French and Indian War, will defeat history’s greatest navy and the world’s strongest army.

Let us say, however unlikely, that they do. Then what? They have nothing but raw materials and a couple of cash crops to offer the world. Ignorance is widespread, their educational institutions are few indeed. The Spanish and French will no doubt encroach their borders, perhaps making them a puppet state.

This business of “American states” as a free nation, is wonderful for idealists, but a rational look at world tells us to expect a quick end to the celebrations tonight in Philadelphia.

When forecasting what could happen next, it’s important to remember that this is a social science, the study of how people are likely to behave. The wildcard in all of these prognostications is that the moment people no longer agree to a certain standard of behavior, the world changes. Geopolitical analysts, economists, futurists – everyone would do well to remember this.

Stability, then, is an illusion.

Wouldn’t you agree?

Perverse incentives are leading to more and more “graduates” from American universities leaving without learning to write or think, according to this report from NPR.

“Competitive Futures – We expected the Spanish Inquisition.”

It’s just an idea.

Because of some of our ahead-of-the-curve research into the talent crunch, Competitive Futures follows trends in careers and education quite closely. One of the issues we see as particularly interesting is the tension between pervasive unemployment and a shortage of crucial skills. We may end up with lots of people unemployed while businesses are simultaneously clamoring for ready-to-go individuals who can replace the aging Baby Boom population.

Adding another layer of complexity to this dynamic is the massive debt bubble created by all of the individuals in the United States paying inflated prices for educational credentials that are in no way a guaranteed path to a lucrative career. The National Inflation Association has written a compelling analysis of this debt bubble, which we include in its entirety. (With a h/t to Zero Hedge.)

The National Inflation Association believes that the United States has a college education bubble that is set to burst beginning in mid-2011. This bursting bubble will have effects that are even more far-reaching than the bursting of the Real Estate bubble in 2006. College education could possibly be the largest scam in U.S. history.

NIA’s advice to the youth of America today is to think for yourselves. Don’t get suckered into overpaying for a college degree that is worthless because everyone else has one. College is only worth attending if you plan on actually learning something there. If you are only going to college because you think a piece of paper is going to help you find a job, you would be much better off skipping college and entering the workforce right now at any entry level job. Your experience will benefit you more than any piece of paper.

The median U.S. home price is currently $170,600, down 26% from its peak of $230,200 in July of 2006. The Dow Jones is currently 11,672, down 18% from its peak of 14,198 in October of 2007. Oil is currently $91 per barrel, down 38% from its peak of $147 per barrel in July of 2008. After the financial panic of 2008, the U.S. saw a collapse in the prices of just about all assets, goods, services, and commodities. Between lost stock market and home equity wealth, Americans lost $10.2 trillion in paper wealth in 2008, and have only recouped a fraction of it since then.

College is the only thing in America that never declined in price during the panic of 2008. It actually rose in price substantially. The annual tuition for a private four-year college was $21,235 in the 2005-2006 school year. Despite Real Estate beginning to collapse in late-2006, college tuition rose by 4.6% in the 2006-2007 school year to $22,218. Despite the stock market beginning to collapse in late-2007, college tuition rose by 6.7% in the 2007-2008 school year to $23,712. Despite oil and other commodities collapsing in late-2008, college tuition rose by 6.2% in the 2008-2009 school year to $25,177. Even after the Dow Jones crashed to a low in early-2009 of 6,469, college tuition still rose by 4.4% in the 2009-2010 school year to $26,273.

Annual tuition for a private four-year college in America is now $27,293, up 29% from five years ago. Meanwhile, the employment situation in the U.S. has deteriorated. There are currently 130.7 million non-farm jobs in America, down 3% from 134.5 million U.S. non-farm jobs in December 2005. 3.8 million jobs have been lost, while the U.S. population has grown by approximately 14 million people during the same time period. We would need to have seen the creation of 6.7 million non-farm jobs just to stay even, but now we are 10.5 million jobs short.

All across America, thousands of students are graduating law school each year with $250,000 in debt, but with no jobs at law firms available to them. 15,000 attorney and legal staff jobs have disappeared since 2008, yet 43,000 law degrees are being handed out each year. Law degrees are losing their value faster than the U.S. dollar is losing its purchasing power. Lawyers are non-producing workers that do nothing to create any real wealth for society. The artificially high incomes of lawyers are made possible entirely by inflation, which steals the wealth from hard working goods producing middle-class Americans and transfers it to those who add no real value to society.

The service sector currently makes up 76.9% of the U.S. GDP. Agriculture, which in 1933 made up 28% of GDP, currently makes up only 1.2% of GDP. The wealth of any country is primarily created at first from the production of food, oil, and precious metals. Secondly, wealth is created from the manufacturing of real consumer goods. After a country generates wealth by producing real things and builds a large domestic pool of savings, it can begin growing a service based economy, just so long as it has enough savings to support it.

During the past decade, an unprecedented number of Americans went to school to become lawyers, because they thought if they became a lawyer they would immediately become rich. 60% of the U.S. Senate and 37% of the House of Representatives are lawyers. The reason we have so many lawyers in Washington is so that they can pass as many new harmful laws and regulations as possible, in order to provide enough work for all of their lawyer friends. All of the needless legislation that is passed each year in order to provide work for lawyers, has the devastating unintended consequence of destroying what little is left of the free market. Small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy, but it is now nearly impossible for a small businessman with limited financial resources to build a large successful corporation in any sector, because their legal costs would eat up all of their profits.

Many law students got suckered into going to law school due to deceptive marketing practices. Some law schools are advertising that 90% of graduates are employed within one year of graduating. Sure, maybe 90% of law school graduates were employed a year later, with half of them working at McDonald’s, but no law school degree is required for that. Schools are using dozens of unethical tactics to manipulate their numbers while encouraging alumni to falsify the surveys they fill out about their employment situation. Just like we are now seeing countless class action lawsuits against mortgage companies that misled customers about the loans they signed up for, we will soon see a massive number of lawsuits filed against colleges that lied about their job placement rates and average starting salaries of graduates. (At least there will be some work for law school graduates.)

Most Americans today are sheep who believe that the key to success and happiness in life is following the same career paths as everybody else. While everybody went to school to become a lawyer, nobody went to school to become a farmer because Americans didn’t see any money in farming. With prices of nearly all agricultural commodities soaring through the roof in 2010 and with NIA expecting this trend to continue throughout 2011, the few new farmers out there are going to become rich while lawyers are standing at street corners with cups begging for money.

The college tuition bubble has been fueled by the U.S. government’s willingness to give out easy student loans to anybody who applies for them. If it wasn’t for government student loans, the free market would force colleges to provide the best quality education at the lowest possible price. By the government trying to make colleges more affordable, they have actually driven prices through the roof. Colleges have been encouraged to spend recklessly on wasteful construction projects, building new libraries, gyms, sports arenas, housing units, etc. Colleges spent $10.7 billion on construction projects in 2009. Although this is down from an average of $14.7 billion per year colleges spent on construction projects from 2005 to 2007, colleges are still struggling to pay off their old construction related debt. When interest rates start to rise, it will add further upside pressure to college tuition prices.

College students borrowed $106 billion in total student loans for the 2009-2010 school year, up from $96 billion in 2008-2009, $94 billion in 2007-2008, $87 billion in 2006-2007, and $83 billion in 2005-2006. Total student loan debt in the U.S. currently stands at $830 billion and now exceeds credit card debt. President Obama’s new student loan bill that was passed last year now makes the government the primary lender to students. By taking the free market out of the student loan business and allowing students to receive loans from the government at artificially low interest rates, colleges will be encouraged to spend more recklessly than ever. None of this wasteful spending is doing anything to improve the quality of education in America.

Over a year ago when NIA was filming ‘The Dollar Bubble’ in Los Angeles, violent riots broke out at UCLA over a 32% increase in college tuitions (from $7,788 to $10,302). We went to the protest in order to video tape the shocking footage to show you. While we were there we remember thinking to ourselves, why on earth are these students protesting at all? If tuitions are rising by 32% and they are unhappy about it, why don’t they quietly and peacefully enroll someplace else for college next semester. If not enough students enroll into UCLA, the university will be forced to either dramatically cut their costs or shut down. UCLA decided to completely ignore the riots and went ahead with the 32% rise in tuitions. Did the students decide to enroll someplace else? Nope, most of them simply took out larger student loans and went back to UCLA. In fact, UCLA reported that they received a record amount of freshman applicants for the next semester.

With all of the technological advancements taking place around the world today, the cost for a college education should be getting cheaper. Americans today can purchase just about any type of product they want over the Internet for substantially less than they can find it in a retail store. When the U.S. dollar collapses and the college bubble bursts, NIA predicts we will see a boom in online education where Americans take all of their courses over the Internet from the comfort of their own home at a fraction of the cost of traditional college.

Later this year, NIA is going to be producing a documentary about America’s college education crisis and the college tuition bubble that is about to burst. In the weeks ahead, NIA is going to begin searching for people who deserve to be featured in our documentary. If you are a college student, a recent college graduate, or a current or ex-college professor with an extremely shocking, interesting, and important story that the whole world needs to know about in what will be the most viewed college documentary in world history, please send an email to collegebubble@inflation.us. We would also love to hear from any NIA member who has any ideas of topics that we should cover in this new documentary. Please send all ideas and suggestions to collegebubble@inflation.us.

This will truly be one of the most important documentaries NIA has ever produced. We need to change the mindset in America that only those with college degrees have any chance of becoming successful. Americans have become so brainwashed that even after graduating college with over $50,000 in debt and not being able to find a job, many of them are wasting even more years of their life and getting even deeper into debt to attend a graduate school, for a master’s degree that is just as worthless as a bachelor’s degree. It is like comparing a $10 bill (master’s degree) to a $1 bill (bachelor’s degree), they are both worthless pieces of paper with no intrinsic value.

NIA believes that any recent high school graduate with $30,000 saved for college who invests that money into silver and becomes a minimum wage apprentice for the next 4 years, will likely have enough money in 4 years to buy a median priced U.S. home. Not only that, but they will have work place experience that is far more valuable than the worthless college degrees of any of their friends. We must work hard to educate America to the truth if our country is going to have the wherewithal to survive the upcoming bursting college bubble and Hyperinflationary Great Depression.

The New York Times has a nice piece on futurism entitled “Why do we need predictions?” which features several compelling voices on the subject. Some are new to the futures debate such as Robert Shiller of home price analysis fame and Stacy Schiff, author of “Cleopatra: A Life.” Others are the “Usual Suspects” of the futures field, Jaron Lanier on computers and Ray Kurzweil speaking on the singularity for the billionth time.

Speaking of forecasts, this series of articles follow what I’ll call “Garland’s Law” which dictates that every 18 months a news organization will denigrate the notion of foresight only to praise it a year and a half later like nothing happened. See the Economist, WIRED, TV news, major papers and many others for this schizophrenia.

After all, what was hotter in 2009 that proclaiming that nobody should care about the long term future, as banks still teetered on the verge of armageddon? And now it’s 2011…right on time to act like its OK to think beyond next quarter. Again.

See you in late 2012!

Afraid of making forecasts? Think there’s risk in being wrong?

Give it a try. People with very important jobs don’t necessarily have a better track record.

I remember forecasts back as far as 1999 that by 2015 or 2020, the biggest user of the Internet by far would be other machines. Medical diagnostics, vending machines, cars – they numbered in the billions and all would have great reasons to share information – to say “I’m broken,” “I’m out of soda” or “Hey, you have early signs of cancer – go to the doctor.”

Now that we have WiFi throughout the industrialized world and emergent adoption of IPv6 (offering unlimited discrete IP addresses) this future Internet of Things could be right on schedule. Cisco’s chief futurist discusses this in a recent live broadcast, in addition to some basic ideas for how innovative companies use futurists to drive growth and profit.

Venezuela has become something between a Kundera power struggle with subjective jurisprudence and lack of freedom of speech and a Garcia novel where everything is unbelievable anywhere except for in the state of magical realism. As food shortages in Venezuela are aggravated by rotten food on the Colombian-Venezuelan border—a major blemish on Chavez’s ability to provide rations to the poor even if he had the oil money of the 2005 era—his saber-rattling begins once again. Chavez, with Argentine futbol superstar Diego Maradona at his side, has now severed relations with Colombia after Colombian President Uribe asked the OAS to look into Chavez’s relationship with the infamous left-wing narco-terrorists FARC and ELN. Although out-going President Uribe’s demands overstep his sovereignty, Chavez is not as innocent as he wants to be. He claims that the FARC and ELN should not be defined as terrorist organizations while there are links between Miraflores and FARC rebels. This is all happening as the Venezuelan economy is crumbling on top of the weak foundation on which it is based. In the midst of this, Chavez has exhumed the body of national independence leader, Simon Bolivar (who was more akin to Napolean than to Chavez), due to a Chavez-created conspiracy of a capitalist assassination of the Venezuelan idol 180 years ago.

The absurdity of farce and fiction in Caracas brings way too many questions as to the future stability of Venezuela. Reality has become subjective to the caprice of an authoritarian who has lost his ability to buy his political power. While Chavez’s friends (Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador, Ortega in Nicaragua, and to an extent the Kirchners in Argentina) may empower some of the poor, Chavez is leading Venezuela—and its poor and its rich—to the slaughter. For this egotistical bullishness, he will become a hero in the quixotic stylings of Ernesto Guevara, who is better remembered for an amorphous philosophy, a motorcycle bildungsroman, and mythical tattoos on Hollywood starlets, rather than the reality of suppression and corruption that appears to have been forgotten by history.

I am very excited to have discovered a new group of future-focused intellects in Quebec. I was recently invited by Michel Dumais, a venerable media figure in Montreal who deals with technological trends from a social perspective, eschewing gadgetry in favor of a wise, humanistic view of where the world is going. We’re going to have many more dialogues where this one came from.

The following excerpt is from our discussion this past week in which I explain the basics of “la prospective” how it’s used in organizations, and how it differs from classical, 20th century, technophilic futurism.

Have a listen, though I warn you in advance that this is the genuine article, 200 proof Canadian French accents, right from my homeland of northern Vermont and southern Quebec.

Enjoy.

Well, social media isn’t the problem – but social media DOES disrupt what passes for authoritative information, and that concerns us as intelligence professionals and as leaders.

These slides are from my Pecha Kucha style presentation for the Intelligence Collaborative, a group that considers such issues.

Hello intelligence mavens and followers of foresight based competitive analysis! If you are subscribed to the Competitive Futures blog on a reader, then you’ll find that after today, the RSS feed will no longer work.

Kindly sign up for the new feed at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/competitivefutures/jjFJ and enter your favorite reader.

More trends and analysis to follow in 2010.

Great analysis from Paul Denlinger at The China Vortex about the upcoming Apple Tablet, and what its real impact will be on the market.

As Denlinger points out, most people assume that the secret of Apple’s success is their reliably sexy user interface. Sure, that’s a critical factor in its dominance of the premium computing market – the stuff works and is beautiful. What makes Apple so influential as a company is its ability to change business models, making everyone else a follower.

Sure, iPod was a great little device, but others had portable MP3 devices, however ugly. It was iTunes that got people thinking of MP3s as legitimate purchases instead of illicit stolen files. The music publishing world is still reeling, and Apple is the number one music retailer in the world. The iPhone is not only cool, it introduced the App Store that allows each phone to be user-customized, with prices set by the free market. They don’t yet own the market, but the word “app” is now an accepted concept in the business lexicon. Sexy brings you to the dance, and wonky, quantifiable, innovatively-engineered business models take you home.

And so what awaits the Tablet?

Now, in order to make the Apple Tablet a real success, it has to have certain functionality which will not cannibalize iPhone and Mac notebook sales. This is why it’s point of attack will have to be on books, magazines and the publishing industry. It will offer developer tools for Apple’s digital publishing solution. Already there is talk about Apple’s new SDK for this new platform.

My prediction is that this new SDK will make it apparent why Apple has not been friendly about offering Adobe’s Flash access to the iPhone, since Apple’s solution will offer much of the same feature set as Adobe Flash, but will be more tightly bundled in on the front and back ends to the device and to the store. (Steve Jobs likes closed ecosystems where he controls the whole experience.) Tough times for Adobe’s Flash and Microsoft’s Silverlight: all dressed up and nowhere to go.

Speaking as an author, the industry is ripe – no, begging – for disruption. And as usual, it’s the Googles and Apples who notice first.

This will be fun to watch.

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.

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?

OUR VALUES MUST PREVAIL

Given these unfortunate developments, if the general public is skeptical when someone calls themselves an intelligence professional, it is probably not their fault. We have much to answer for. We have these failures to answer for. Despite these knocks, we cannot abandon intelligence, especially at this moment in history. Our role in society has never been so important. The changes that await us in the 21st century require foresight and decisive action, and only a rigorous methodology can provide it.

The values of intelligence are those that make a free society; a sound company; a competent government. Those values are:

• Reason
• Rigor
• Open dialogue
• Diversity of opinion and expertise

These values are so critically important because they are the opposite of brute force, superstition, cult of personality, dogma, absolutism, violence and tyranny, where an elect few tell us what the world looks like. In a world guided by the values of intelligence, we see the world for what it is, and have the free will to make rational decisions. The values promised by intelligence are democracy itself. They link our profession directly to Voltaire’s Enlightenment. Those men and women of the Enlightenment fought, suffered and died for the triumph of science-based liberal democracy over absolutist theocracy. They grew up in a world where reality was decreed from on high, and if you disagreed, you were imprisoned or tortured until your opinions were judged to be acceptable. The Lumières were surrounded by the teachings of Newton, Lavoisier, Coulomb and hundreds of others, and envisioned a world of reason, scientific method, and progress away from the violent domination of tyrants. Their adoption of reason as a guiding value led directly to the American and French Revolutions, and has subsequently led representative government to triumph over domination almost everywhere on Earth.

Thus, we cannot give up on intelligence due to the recent failures of a few; it would be like giving up on freedom itself.

A PROPOSAL FOR AN “INTELLIGENCE COLLABORATIVE”

The skills and values we promise to the world’s organizations could not be of greater importance, and that is why we must continue to grow and thrive in spite of recent failures and misunderstanding of intelligence. We need a fraternity to unite us beyond the simple expediency of our jobs of the moment, our clients of the day. We need each other, now more than ever. We need to share our experiences and points of view, for mutual learning and support, for the public support of our discipline. Intelligence professionals from around the world, calling themselves a variety of titles and holding a wealth of different skills must come together to advance our shared discipline.

The intelligence profession requires a COLLABORATIVE with standards, priviliges and obligations akin to masons, carpenters, and especially physicians. There is currently no group that occupies this need for people with various skill sets and the common desire to help leaders of all kinds make more enlightened decisions. We must meet together for mutual learning and support, to advance the cause of our profession, but this cannot possibly happen under the roof of any group whose goal is anything other than the improvement of the profession itself, for the benefit of all.

A next-generation collaborative for intelligence professionals should do the following:

Bring together a wide range of professionals who are sensing, analyzing, understanding, and discussing the world around us. It is time for the walls to fall between business intelligence, competitive intelligence, marketing, strategy, librarians, etc. We should bring together a great wealth of diverse views on the same goals. We can focus on professionalism and not dogma. We can learn from each other and support each other.

Educate aspiring professionals in the state of the art of the discipline. A collaborative can select the best original research and training for professionals in the intelligence field, without a profit motive as a corrupting influence.

Improve the public understanding of intelligence. A collaborative should present a coherent view of what intelligence is, how it is practiced by the preeminent professionals in a variety of fields, and why every organization should understand and use the skills of professional intelligence. This way, some leaders cannot abuse intelligence, confusing it in the mind of the public for the dogmatic absolutism it really is.

There are variety of techniques that will make this possible. Modern information technology can unite us with minimal cost. Bureaucratic overhead and expense can be kept to a minimum. Dialogue and openness can take the place of central control and secrecy. We can all work together to support the field, include the world in our dialogue, and evolve our shared work as information professionals.

We can then focus our energy on improving the world as a whole.

Sincerely submitted,

Eric Garland

Just checked the stats and it’s our biggest month ever on this blog – 15,000 visitors this month alone.

We’re glad you’re listening, and hope to hear from even more of you in our Disqus comments section, which can automatically link to your Twitter account.

Lots more discussion about the future to come. Enjoy the last weekend of summer!

The vast majority of the media reported economic activity only in terms of gigantic institutions and abstract numbers. We hear about the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, and the rates they charge mega-banks to borrow imaginary money. We hear about unemployment rates, though those statistics rarely include those underemployed, running their own business, or those who don’t participate in society enough to work at a company. Then we hear about the stock market indexes, which is a tabulation of what a tiny group of gamblers in New York, Tokyo, and London were willing to hypothetically pay to own a chunk of some companies’ future earnings. (Actually, it’s not even gamblers, but computers programmed to think like gamblers.)

You may notice, that at no point have you heard about people. Your friends and neighbors and not covered by this analysis. When you provide each other child care, it doesn’t hit the books. Build a barn yourself out of lumber you purchased directly from a mill? GDP will go down. Start a foreign language club? Sorry, it’s not educational sales, and we don’t count that. Grow your own food and eat it? Sure, you may be eating delicious food and cutting your risk of heart disease and diabetes, but all you’re doing officially is taking potential revenue away from companies we measure (and tax.)

When we don’t measure this activity, it’s hard to tell when a trend is happening. When I need help getting reliable trend data, I do what every good analyst should: I go and ask my Dad.

My father still lives in our hometown of Rutland, Vermont. Yes, yes, I know you’ve been skiing nearby, and it’s quite lovely. Well, the state nearby is lovely; the town is generally on hard times. Due to a completely nihilistic policy of zero economic development, Rutland, and indeed most of Vermont has shed jobs at a terrifying rate. (One of the local heads of economic development once confided to me that what the place needed was more gift shops, “So the tourists really know we’re ‘open for business.’”) Average age of the county is around 53. The kids are gone to Boston and New York and Washington in search of work, except for those who make up our growing heroin problem. Those kids are hanging out near the collapsing downtown of boarded-up former retail space. Pretty bleak, really.

Except my Dad has never had it so good. He’s running the local farm and garden store, and after surviving an onslaught from Home Depot, Tractor Supply, and Wal-Mart (retail stores designed for MUCH larger markets) he’s having his best years ever. The reason: GARDENS. As soon as that economic disaster hit and fuel oil went through the roof, Vermonters wasted no time in getting back to their birthright of bringing up their own food in our frigid, rocky soil. Speaking as a native Vermonter, when you tell us we’re headed back to the agriculture age, threatening some scary pre-industrial nightmare, it just wasn’t that long ago for us. The last town in America to receive rural electrification was Victory, Vermont in 1967, about five miles east of where I grew up.  The idea of a 19th century lifestyle is simply not that terrifying for Vermonters.

Today, despite the meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming declaring the whole financial crisis “over,” people in Rutland are still planting gardens, chopping logs for firewood and going back to more self-reliance. This is good news, the sign of a civilization that may not crumble over some fruity derivatives sold by financial companies that didn’t understand them either. In the end, the word economy comes from the Greek for “how you run your house.” Our major institutions sure help run the larger picture, gluing together discrete economic activity into a global picture that could ostensibly be managed. In the end, gardens are necessary and they aren’t. With all the scandal and backroom dealing and intrigue, it’s comforting to know that when push comes to shove, people can and do plant their own gardens, look after each others’ kids, build each others’ houses. The fate of central banks are not the fate of people in general. This should give cause for optimism.

We all have our reasons the future turns out a certain way.

Did we not anticipate the adoption of new technologies that would erase our competitive advantage? Yes, well you see, we had our reasons. We were amortizing old technology, and besides everybody knew that those upstart companies weren’t really serious. Yes, we’re in the red, but if you look back, we had our reasons for making those decisions. Now, let’s not get into the blame game.

Sure, we encouraged a speculative bubble in housing that has destabilized everything that uses a dollar sign: households, banks, cities, the whole national economy. But we had our reasons. GDP was increasing and people were getting monster bonuses! You can’t fool around with the genius of the market. And sure, those regulations on banks had been there since the 1930s, but as you can see, there was no way we could know they were still useful. In retrospect, you can see what we were thinking, right?

Are all the young people and businesses in our state leaving? That’s because of structural factors that are beyond our control. We didn’t necessarily encourage economic development or give reasons for the next generation of talent to stay, but that’s not actually in my job title. We can’t be held responsible for the “foot loose and fancy-free” young kids who don’t even have loyalty to us! Why are they leaving? I don’t know, but I’m sure they have their reasons…

Why did companies like Google create new ways of using information while using new, massively profitable business models? Why do some nations invest for their futures while others consign themselves to the also-rans of history?

Why do some leaders think about future trends and act early?

They have their reasons.

Only few hours following my post on statistics, I was sent this YouTube piece from the BBC questioning the veracity of claims in a video entitled “Muslim Demographics.” It illustrates pretty wonderfully the care we need to take in examining our biases whenever we get talking about numbers. Also, it is probably the most downloads any piece on demographics have ever received, and so I’m sure a lot of demographers are pretty excited.

Clearly, the following two videos are pretty different in their aims. The first one, viewed over 10 million times I might add, is a call to evangelical Christians to get having more babies, because demographics indicate that the whole world is going to be Muslim in a generation or so. When you hear the ominous, dark synthesizer in the background, rattling like Satan with emphysema, you get the picture quickly that this isn’t purely an objective statistical analysis. No matter – it’s attempting to tell a story, and laying out fairly clearly its assumptions for which fertility rate is “required” to sustain “a culture.” Most analyses never go this far, so it makes for a good comparison.

Now check out the riposte from the BBC. It presents another set of assumption on demographic forecasting, as well as direct interviews with demographers from the European Union. Asking experts is always an important phase of the methodology of quality futures work. They do lots of basic fact checking, too, such as the fact that Belgium’s Muslim population is 6%, not 25% – a pretty key distinction.

Key point here from the Beeb: “Population projection is an inexact science.” That’s the soul of the future – a blurry view is better than none, but the whole thing requires professionalism and an open mind.

You can believe either one of these videos you’d like, in the final analysis. The most important thing is to simply ask where statistics come from, and why these were chosen instead of others.

My friend and colleague August Jackson says that in most management contexts, fake numbers will win out over real logic. Pie charts sound warm and delicious, while cold hard facts sound like they are tasteless with an unpalatable texture, which is often the case. So deep is our attachment to numbers that often, we don’t even care how they were calculated or what they mean.  At least statistics count as “quantifiable,” which for many is superior than common sense that lacks numbers.

And yet I love statistics, any form of abstraction that helps us understand a rapidly changing world. They often help us understand more about the analysts and what they chose to study, but it’s usually better than nothing. And when they are really useful they help us unpack dangerously inaccurate beliefs that we hold, usually from listening to media stories picked for their sensational value rather than their informational content.

Example: If you listen to the major media, you will think that the United States is at an all-time peak of violence, a cesspool of shootings and abductions and freak crimes. A quick look at statistics will show you that actually, violent crime has dropped in a statistically-significant way since 1993. News reportings of violent crime are up, but the actual numbers are down.

That’s useful to know. Now we can stop feeling like the world is out of control and that humans are getting worse, and we can start asking why our TV stations and newspapers are invested in us feeling scared. By looking at some simple statistics, our understanding of the world just got a little better. Isn’t it cool to be an analyst, and not just accept other people’s view of the world at face value?

As a competitive intelligence aficionado, this dynamic tension is my life - how do we use numbers, understand what they mean, and see beyond them, while thinking clearly and logically? It’s not easy, but it’s what makes being an analyst both an art and a science.

Not all sets of statistics are useful in helping us understand our world. I got thinking about this when the guys at Fark pointed me to this graph of the Forex for pounds sterling/US dollars under the caption “This will make it all clear.”

OK, kinda funny. What is this stuff? Is it about money? Wealth? Life getting easier or better? What will it help you predict?

This is my tension with a LOT of numbers bandied about these days, especially on the subject of the putative economic recovery.

The questions are in no short supply.

• Is the stimulus working?
• Are we seeing green shoots?
• Is the bottom in in real estate?
• What about stocks?
• When can I get back to the business of ignoring the wider world, giving money to banks, and expecting my retirement to show up when I need it?

These are all questions being asked incessantly these days. The answers are typically being given in number form. BIG number form. Well, this bank owes five trillion in derivates, so we spent two trillion in borrowed money to stimulate other numbers, especially stocks and housing prices. So, um, we know lots of you don’t have jobs and find your wages dropping, but here are some big numbers to look at to make you feel like a recovery is in the works. You want this to recover, don’t you?

Here’s the problem: I don’t really understand what a trillion is, and neither do you. Moreover, I’m pretty sure I don’t understand that Forex chart above, and for that matter I’m not sure why stocks are up.

Here’s another, bigger question: What does any of this matter? At the end of the day, these numbers are here to serve human beings, not the other way around. Their adoption less than 100 years ago was supposed to bring a scientific bent to management and make things more efficient. However, these days our statistical measures have less to do with actual human behavior than ever. Sure, perhaps they describe the behavior of a few thousand people in Manhattan, London City, and Tokyo, but they have less and less to do with people waking up, making coffee or tea, leaving the house and working with fellow humans to provide value to each other. Our statistical measures are supposed to help us better understand our relationships with one another, but they are rapidly become a self-justifying system of overcomplex gambling. We watch these numbers with baited breath, but I am less and less convinced that the return of our numbers will mean a return to a pleasant humane life.

As such, perhaps some non-statistical questions may be the only ones that suffice on the subject of the global economy. Instead of waiting for irrational and abstract statistics to show you what the world looks like, try these non-quantifiable measures:

• What kind of food are you eating? Is it good?
• Do you get to eat with friends and loved ones?
• How many hours a week are you working?
• Would you prefer to work more or less?
• How many of your family and friends are sick right now?
• Can they get the care they need?
• How often can you take part in some form of leisure activity – camping, dancing, music, polo, whatever?
• How much time will it take you to get to the beautiful space (park, museum, mountain range) near your home?
• Do you know your neighbors?

Yes, you can makes these questions into statistics, but I dare say they are less abstract than the S&P 500. They will skip the phenomenon of “numbers for numbers’ sake” and ask about how we are doing as human beings, relating to one another, even in an economic sense. So it’s not the numbers that are the problem, but the relationships they are describing.

As analysts, let’s make sure we’re trying to understand the right relationships.

In the spirit of openness and new challenges ahead, we are making some of our old syndicated reports available to the general public. We can use all the foresight we can get these days.

One of my favorites from the days of the Competitive Futures STEEP Report was our look at the future of infrastructure. Great empires were always defined by the great works they built, demonstrating to all their engineering genius while providing the support for economic and cultural activity that would be impossible without it. For most of the halcyon days of America’s 20th century industrial economy, you could see the nation’s investment in bridges, roads, rail, and airports weld together its disparate regions, connecting the coasts, bringing its economy to a world-class standard, launching thousands of new businesses. Our competitive advantage came largely because this was the only nation that didn’t have to rebuild following the second World War.

Today, it is difficult to see what we are building, while the rest of the world surges ahead. One looks at this development with excitement for South America and Asia, and more than a little doubt about North America.

Let us keep thinking, building a brighter future for all.

One of the main reasons given for not studying the future is that it is inherently difficult and inaccurate. After all, we don’t have any FACTS to rely upon, no hard data collected that can show us what’s next, only fuzzy forecasts, unrelated statistics, and cultural bias. Therefore, it’s easy to understand why we have a history class, one that helps us understand our place in time, and not a future class, which could ostensibly do the same thing. History has facts, data, and minimal bias – we’re not guessing…right?

Actually, there are probably as many potential scenarios in history as there are the present, and the data is no more compelling. My favorite quote on history comes from the Irish: “Historical facts are like cows. When you try to look them in the eye, they walk away.” (This makes total sense if you grew up in Vermont around cows, incidentally.)

An argument can be made that we need to re-examine what we think of history, since the data presented on it seems to be weighted heavily toward empires, their leaders, and the wars they got themselves into. Instead, we might also focus on the history of economics, philosophy, religion, science, and ecology, which arguably had a much larger impact on how our ancestors actually lived their lives.

Some wonderful people are doing this right now. I’d like to point you at a class to be taught in Delaware by my mentor, colleague, and friend, the economic-philospher-spiritual-historian-awesome-guy Chris Largent, author of such books as The Soul of Economies and The Paradigm Conspiracy.

Chris argues that in the midst of the hysterical blaring of our terrorize-for-profit media we ought to ask if perhaps human history isn’t a non-stop orgy of violence, power-mad dictators, and child abductions, and maybe instead involves a constant progress toward enlightenment, justice, cuisine, art, and getting along. OR, maybe it’s a mix of the two – but if we want to know our future, we should ask these questions about our past.

Why Bother With History?  The Reason for the Seventh Academy’s ‘Big Picture

Many historians point out that the way we look at history is the way we look at ourselves.

History presents the human drama to us, and the way historians present that drama determines whether we see it as a comedy or a tragedy, as meaningful or meaningless, as a development or a descent.  And that is how we see our own lives.

How we see things is, of course, a philosophical matter, and each of us is a philosopher of sorts.  So we as philosophers want to know just what history is up to.

History itself hasn’t always fared well among philosophers, even among historians.  While Voltaire called history “no more than the portrayal of crimes and misfortunes” and Carlyle referred to it as “a distillation of rumor,” even the brilliant historian Will Durant commented in the first volume of his masterwork, ‘The Story of Civilization,’ that “most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice” (‘Our Oriental Heritage,’ p. 12).

But history won’t go away.  And philosophers — whether we’re professional or forming our own philosophies — need to be clear about how it impacts our worldviews and our world.  And we need to be clear for three reasons:

First, history suggests what humanity is like.

• A history full of wars and cruelty gives us a picture of ourselves as brutal and destructive, scarcely fit to live, much less occupy such a nice planet.
• A history that excludes meaning determines that we’ll be nihilists about ourselves as well: we’ll think there’s no point to our lives.
• A history that doesn’t put art, music, literature, or philosophy on its “front page” diminishes our sense of ourselves as creative, artistic, or contemplative.
• A history that takes the opposite stance of all of these presents us with a humanity that seeks meaning, expresses itself creatively, and contemplates higher ideas.

In short, the way history is reported shapes what we think about human nature — and thus about our own nature.

Second, history suggests the factors that shape our world, the forces with which we have to deal.

• Are we the result of some plan, or are we here by chance?
• Do we deal with mindless forces (of history, economics, or politics), or are there designs behind how history has unfolded?
• Is “nature” for us or against us?
• Is “human nature” for us or against us?
• Are there other natures involved here that we don’t know about?
• Are we among friends or enemies?

Third and finally, history proposes images that form our impression what’s going on here.  Does history present life as a game?  a battle?  an invasion?  a schoolroom?  a joke?  an experiment (good or bad)?

The popular “liberal” position is that history is a struggle of humans to rise above their Freudian drives and to progress toward some higher state of society, mostly defined by humane values — resisted by “reactionaries” who aren’t intelligent enough to grasp progressive values and who aren’t humane enough to be humanitarian.

The popular “conservative” position is that history is a struggle to retain traditional values despite the “barbarians,” those less civilized in some way (those “others,” who are of a lesser religion, a lesser political system or party, a lesser culture, or even — in its most obnoxious form, a lesser race or sex).

But it’s possible, even desirable, to take a different look at history’s events.  And this is what a careful study of history does: it invites us to rethink what the world is about – and thus, what our lives are about.

So, in autumn of 2009, historical explorers joining the  ‘Big Picture’ study will venture into a deeper history.  We will take a more profound look at the world we inhabit and ourselves.

And we will discover that history is full of surprises.

Please join us!  Thanks!

Chris

It is becoming increasingly clear that most major sources of media feel invested in getting Americans to believe that the economic crisis is “over.” The far more likely reality is that our economy is in a major transition stemming from a variety of social, industrial, commercial and technological trends. In that scenario, it is unlikely that we’ll ever get back to “normal.” Instead we can keep an eye on what’s really happening and decide for ourselves, rather than pursue an illusory status quo.

In that spirit, you may enjoy this presentation by the hardcore investment punks over at Zero Hedge.

Keep thinking!

The End of the End of the Recession

So Google is coming out with its own operating system, which shouldn’t really surprise anyone. It will likely be lightweight, simple, cool and functional like pretty much everything they do. And also evident is the fact that Microsoft should now be hyperventilating, as this development takes direct aim at its aging business model while also pointing at the future of computing.

Google is now threatening to bust the trust owned by the world’s richest man. You may remember a fantatastic, precient essay by Neal Stephenson entitled “In the Beginning Was the Command Line,” in which the author of Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash pointed out the near absurdity that the world’s wealthiest businessman made his money selling operating systems, as opposed to chemicals or railroads or minerals or something real and industrial. The untold riches in the production of user interfaces really did seem surreal at the time.

If you think about it, though, their business model was strikingly industrial in the Henry Ford, mass market vein. In the Golden Age of Microsoft, computers all hungered for standardization and interoperability if they were to function as something other than an electric paper weight. Whoever could forge that infrastructure could make stupid amounts of money – not unlike the railroad or the telephone. Not only did the infrastructure model pay off for Microsoft, they also harnessed Henry Ford’s mass production model, shipping out millions of individual boxes of “software” to individual users about the globe. It “scaled up” but at massive profit to the manufacturer.

And now you can officially say the 20th century is over. Even Microsoft, a digital age company, has succumbed to the new business models of the future. Google’s new operating system is harnessing all the aspects of the next generation business model. Google OS will be free, perfect for a variety of small, light devices intended to access the internet and cloud-based services. It’s not that you won’t be able to run Microsoft’s operating system and software tools – it’s just that they will no longer be the only game in town. Their competition will need to come from innovation, customization, and service rather than size, exclusivity, and scarcity that stems from limited technologies.

Record companies have learned this the hard way.

Newspapers are learning this the hard way.

Telecom is learning this the hard way.

No doubt, large and unwieldy, Microsoft will learn it the hard way as well.

Now…what about your industry? What will it need to learn? And will you be proactive, or will you be happier learning it the hard way?

Ron Paul says we can’t just create capital nor simply reinflate the bubble.

Is it the end of the Federal Reserve system?

A couple months old, but as we anxiously wait the ultra-scientific “stress tests” on banks, we need to consider whether banking as a system is at the end of an era.

From the insightful analysts at CNBC:

At 10:14am:”Stocks Slide on Swine-Flu Fears”

At: 11:21am: “Stocks Rebound as Traders Find Flu Trade”

No further comment is required.

The Onion explores forecasts in outsourcing:

More American Workers Outsourcing Own Jobs Overseas

We’re currently in Chicago at the 2009 annual meeting of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals. It’s nothing compared to the environment of being here live, but feel free to enjoy the Twitter feeds of CI professionals posting with the tag #scip09.

If you’re in Chicago, stop on by!

Western Massachusetts has been hedging itself against globalization with “BerkShares.”

Late-edit: Mr Keen has pointed out that the title here is not entirely accurate – he doesn’t think we’re doomed to fascism, but that it is a risk – a point with which I agree.

>>>>>>>

I have to give it to Andrew Keen to be willing to give an interview while pounding rum and coke. Keen is well known for his book The Cult of the Amateur, which decries the loss of professionalism in the public marketplace for ideas. In this frank (to say the least) interview, Keen is in Amsterdam (hence rum & coke) discussing the next web. His views seem to be increasingly dire on the future of services like Twitter, saying that the feudal lords are going to make Web 2.0 even more elite than the supposedly democratic market of professional broadcasting and publishing.

I always value what Keen has to say. He is dramatically wrong in this case, falling for his own confirmation bias toward experienced, “talented,” official sources of media and away from the ignorant masses.

• The goal of Twitter and related Web 2.0 is not to generate the most audience, as it was in the TV days, and as Mr. Keen suggests now. The point of these technologies is to reduce the distance and cost between connecting niche markets to ZERO. I don’t care that Ashton Kutcher has a million followers, I don’t even WANT his followers. I want my followers. Florists want flower freaks. @NJHockeyMom wants to connect with New York area hockey fanatics.
• The recent economic crisis has shown us what happens when all of one kind of information – in this case, economic and commercial – is broadcast exclusively by experts. That expertise came by way of conflict of interest and isn’t necessarily more reliable. As a result, I’d rather be listening to @GregorMacdonald, @HowardLindzon, and @StockTwits
• In the video he talks about Web 2.0 being more fascistic than “the democracy of industrial media.” WHAT? are you kidding? Six billion people talking peer-to-peer versus a view white guys sitting on top of the capital required for broadcasting? This is ludicrous logic. Information is more free than ever, and young people have less interest in hierarchical institutions than in the last five centuries. But we’re headed for Mussolini 2.0? You’ll have to back this up.

The idea of Social Media is that for once, have more followers is not necessarily a judgment on your worth as a human being, but how much you interact with a certain group. Try pushing that philosophy in a Hollywood pitch meeting. It’s show me the numbers or HIT THE BRICKS.

Web 2.0 won’t be perfect, but it’s already great. And sorry Andrew, not headed toward fascism.

Andrew Keen: Web 2.0 Is Fucked (The Next Web 2009) from Robin Wauters on Vimeo.

I’m glad to offer up this dialogue between myself and August Jackson in which we explore the uncomfortable questions about the future of competitive intelligence after the Great Recession.

What good is CI if we can’t even get out of the way of crises like the one we’re in?

Will people still respect intelligence departments?

Is it our time to shine, or will we be relegated to obscurity for the foreseeable future?

I think this has a happy ending, but we have lots of soul searching as a profession in the meantime. I hope you’ll tune in.

Don’t you lose your New Age/futurist/liberal street cred for coming out against ethics and ecological sustainability in business? Isn’t that like coming out against puppies, Christmas and grandmothers these days? Also, in the gruesome carnage of the Ponziconomy, wasn’t it the spectacular greed of, well, EVERYBODY that led to this destruction of all that is holy? Shouldn’t we then progress to a land of ethical business and ecological sustainability, one where Wall Street bonuses don’t seem ridiculous, solar panels go up everywhere, and everybody finally sees their way to acting nice?

Sorry – this week’s excitement about business ethics is a PR whitewash, at least as much, or moreso as that other canard, green business. Don’t bet a single dollar on ethics or the New Shiny Green Sustainable Niceness Economy.

But hear me out.

I got fired up about the notion of ethics this morning upon reading Umair Haque’s post entitled “Why Ideals are the New Business Models” in Harvard Business Publishing’s “Edge Economy” blog. In it, Haque extolls the virtue of ideals over business models claiming:

• Business models aren’t today’s fundamental economic challenge.

• Creating something valuable in the first place is.

• “Monetizing” + “business models” = zombieconomy

“Monetizing” toxic junk — from CDOs, to Hummers, to McMansions, to Big Macs – is how we got into this mess.

• Forget business models. Focus on ideals.

Reconceiving value creation depends on new ideals. Ideals shape what we wish to achieve in the first place: freedom, peace, fairness, justice — all are ideals vastly more powerful than mere business models. That’s because they are what ensure the value we are creating is authentic, deep, meaningful value — not just the shabby, threadbare illusion of value.

First, Umair Haque is right as an individual in this philosophy he espouses. This is all really good thinking, good values. I want him to be my neighbor, my business partner, maybe even my Congressman. This is precisely the thinking that lacked from the vast majority of business planning, and what got us into this mess. And he’s right, it’s the kind of thinking that will get us out of this catastrophe toward something ostensibly better.

The second, more important thing is that this idea doesn’t scale up whatsoever. In a practical sense, it is a complete pipedream, if you expect global capitalism to follow along. The concept of idealistically-driven, ethical business is utterly incompatible with the current system of business management and the globalized economy in general, which is why Harvard Business School, oddly hosting this idea, has taught the polar opposite of this thinking for years. People want cash, ROI, and they want it in a certain, reliable timeframe. The capitalist economy has functioned for centuries now on the notion that you put cash in the hands of a productive few, and with very little connection or effort of your own, it turns into profit. You invest in a company from New York with operations in China and Africa and Europe, and your cash turns into 107% of itself – magic! Bonuses are handed out, dividends paid, stock prices go up. Business cases would be created, and Harvard Business School would begin teaching them. (Ahem)

This magic is fundamentally at odds with the very notion of ethics, which requires some form of relationship. Global finance capitalism is about the neutralization of relationships. After all, part of the reason we’ve been ripping jobs up out of the United States and Europe and sending them to India is that we as consumers don’t care about 1,200 poor folks in Ohio or Alsace, and we ALSO don’t care about the wages of the people in India. Problem solved! Prices go down, wages go down, profits go up, stock goes up – magic, plus no messy relationships or ethics to worry about.

Now, if this was done locally, it would be another deal entirely. If you tried this same sort of operation in a small community – Padua, Italy; Eugene, Oregon; Kathmandu – the game would be completely different. There would be relationships at stake, small groups of people dependent on each other for income, possibly members of the same church, liable to run into each other at the grocery store, highly likely to slash each others’ tires at a bar. In a local context, the numbers on the spreadsheet detailing profit and loss would be important, but ethics would come into play – relationships would need to be tended, or there could be a serious downside to the transaction, a measureable downside. In local economies, ethics aren’t just a way to prevent bad public relations and a public harrumphing from Barney Frank, but are a necessary value in order to keep prosperity going.

This is entirely unoriginal thinking on my part. It was first advanced by a guy named Adam Smith, a Scottish philosopher who disliked the abuses of the royal system of mercantilism, underwhich oversized corporations, operating with the king’s good grace, abused suppliers, distributors, and consumers. Smith’s view of capitalism, explored in his book The Wealth of Nations, was one of small, entrepreneurial players, unable to effectively lobby the king, operating within sight of one another. Minimal secrecy would lead to a better understanding of supply and demand, and the general openness would keep members of a community conducting business in an ethical way – for reputations and cash were on the line.

Actually, capitalism at its most fundamental is automatically ethical, because it never would accept five conglomerates per industry operating over and above the authority of nation-states. Actual capitalism, in the Smithian sense, requires smaller players operating above board, improving communities. Yes they make money, but they also improve the community socially, culturally, and even ecologically. There’s no cheating, there’s no getting away with much, because ultimately, the people to whom you relate economically live within walking distance.

This is why monetization, good business models and ethics aren’t at odds. Ethics are great, but you still can’t eat ethics; business models and motility of capital will probably still run things. Planning a business without some form of cashflow-positive business model will be impossible.

UNLESS we are also transitioning to predominantly local economies. Then you get major changes. You won’t need that fake “green” business anymore either – because you won’t be able to steal ecological resources from surrounding communities without putting them back; the debt machine that made that possible will be broken down. And you won’t need ethical business either, since a lack of ethics will require you to repaint your car, which will suffer from keys, cans of coke, and other hazards of bad local PR. But that will be a major change, more significant than any changes in tax structure or regulation we’ve seen recently, because it will reshape global economics from the ground up.

The point is, don’t fall for a change in language to make yourself feel better about the necessary changes – wait until you see the actual change.

I’m excited to offer up a podcast about the role of competitive intelligence in the rapidly changing economic environment. I had the pleasure of talking with August Jackson, intelligence thoughtleader, competitive intelligence practitioner at Verizon Business, chapter coordinator of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals, and probably the world’s expert on Simpsons references, quotes, and trivia.

A long-time intelligence professional, August has a view on the future of decision making that is breathtaking in its global scope and intellectual rigor. Plus, there are plenty of Simpsons references to keep things lively. Here you’ll find views on:

• The global economic crisis and what it means for intelligence professionals
• Why excutives are now ready to hear bad news
• The end of the primacy of numbers-driven management – why creativity, entrepreneurialism and scenario thinking will carry the day
• Mental models, psychology, confirmation bias – how to accept them as part of human nature, and still build a smarter organization

Enjoy.

Those of you who read Future, Inc. know my special love for beer. It’s a magical substance for oh, so many reasons, but among its many mystical properties is that it’s RECESSION-PROOF.

This is a simple local news story about a Carolina brewer starting a business in a down market. The punchline is that it’s almost always safe to start a business doing delicious craft brew beer, since sales of alcohol are the last to slump, and since the segment is still growing 14% a year.

One of the things we discovered about local beer was that it ends up being the flag for local economic recovery. So, neighbors out of work? Tough times ahead? Drink your local beer with your friends – it may be the signal of economic vitality right around the corner.

I recently became a fan of Gary Vaynerchuk, along with about 74% of the entire Internet population. His real business is specialty wines, which he sells through his passionate mix of New Jersey culture, extreme hard work, and expert use of social media. Speaking as a lover of fine wines, any oenophile who uses a New York Jets bucket to spit in has got to be all right by me.

His videos on wine are fun, and highly recommended, especially for those who want an impartial at look wines in all price ranges and styles. Gary has a knack for picking out the Next Big wine varietals to hit, and also has many trenchant things to say about Brett Favre.

Speaking of foresight, I find myself in a bit of a quandary with Gary’s most recent video. In it he promotes “Reactionary Business” not predicting the future,” and “talks about how important it is to see things early on and not obsess over predicting the future which so many in social media do way too much of!”

There’s a kernel of truth here – at the end of the day, it comes down to investing early in new lines of business and executing your vision quickly and professionally. The money doesn’t get made in the next 20 years, it gets made when the cash register rings.

But otherwise this message seems to miss the spirit of the times. We are in this current financial crisis precisely because people stopped thinking about the long-term implications and focused on making short-term gain. Without a long-term strategy, your short-term tactics will likely meet an abrupt end one day. Disruptive technologies. Population migration. Draconian regulation. The banks ultimately fold and put most of New Jersey out of work, and then there’s nobody with enough money for a bottle of the really good Pouilly-Fuisse. Big trends ultimately impact the tiny details.

It’s all about combining long-term strategy with short-term execution.

This guy put a lot of effort running freely-available economic data through Excel. Check it all out.

We’re doing additional research to support our upcoming webinars and live events, particularly in the macroeconomic area. It’s a great time to get back to basics and work more off reality than emotion, since panic won’t likely help our situation.

One of the statistics that interests me the most is total debt compared to gross domestic product. In other words, how much our economy is being financed by credit at any one given time. Check out this image, and tell me what you think:

This is the total amount of debt as a percentage of the total economy, tracked starting in the 1920s. You’ll notice a couple of features:

1. Hey, the first time it goes nuts is around the Great Depression!
2. Hey, it’s REALLY high starting in 2000, and is heading for Mars or Jupiter or something.

Let’s work on some scenarios: let’s assume that has to come back to Earth, that we can no longer juice our GDP with borrowed money.

What are the implications of that one transition?

People have short memories and think that 2003 was really “normal,” and that one day we’ll get back there, returned to those halcyon days of rising home prices, American Idol, and magically increasing lines of credit.

What if instead, equilibrium is a lot closer to the debt levels of 1950 – 1980, a period of stable economic growth?

The economy isn’t going to hell, it’s going to the 1970s.

Far be it from me to criticize the man who made Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

Still, I am a struck by this interview of Quincy Jones discussing the next few decades of the music industry. It shows how often, when transformative change is upon us, the obvious answer can be impossible to see. Listen to “Q” discuss how the distribution system must be “fixed,” since in his mind, the population increase of the United States and China ought to result in an increase in the old business model. He seems to expect that one day, we will bend the new technology to the old way of doing things.

I have extraordinary respect for Quincy. He will go down in history as one of the five major figures in popular music for his playing, composition, arranging and visionary production skills.

The future, however, does not respect past achievements. It simply forges on, shaping the world using the forces at play in the moment. Cruel, but fair.

Pharmaceutical market intelligence expert Sally Church took my bait over at the Competitive Intelligence Ning group and has offered up a matching set of her own ideas for what good strategic moves in pharma would look like. Many people are pretty skeptical about the Pfizer-Wyeth merger – but if we’re going to criticize, we have to be prepared to offer solutions as well.

Me? I’d like to see companies:

• Admitting that giant R&D is insufficiently productive, and working to leverage Open Source research business models
• Basing its future business model around the fact that the U.S. private healthcare system is going to fold in the next few years, and thinking up innovative pricing models
• Focusing on deep expertise in certain diseases, especially chronic disease
• Pioneering new ways to relate to doctors, accepting that the sales rep/advertising model is close to extinct

Sally says her wish list is:

• Greater involvement in health and medical education
• Rekindling sponsorship in basic research and science, which leads to greater innovation and better, more targeted therapies
• Reducing bureaucracy; as companies get bigger systems and procedures often grind creativity and innovation to a halt
• Smaller, more nimble business units with greater integration from bench to bedside. Scientists, clinicians and marketers can all learn together and work as fully functioning team rather than being bogged down in silo and turf protection mentality
• Less ‘me-toos’ and more risk taking
• A sharper focus on strategy and not size for the sake of it

Size for its own sake is the key takeaway. Nobody argues against size categorically. There are no Mom-and-Pop aerospace companies, and there never will be. Pharma is always going to involve a certain amount of resources. But giant bureaucracies for their own sake seem dangerous in light of the complex problems of this moment.

I have just become aware of Google’s new Latitude service. What really surprises me is how major a moment this is for human society, and how much we let this kind of thing blend into the background of all the other digital services to which we subscribe.

What we are now assenting to – with less than 0.001% of people asking about the legal rights associated – 24/7 monitoring of our location, our purchases, our communications.

It’s neither bad nor good – it’s merely change, and change of all sorts requires leadership. But it is our job as futurists to mark these moments clearly. This is something completely unprecedented in history.

We covered future forecasts around this issue in greater depth last year.

There are LOTS of bubbles that are still out there – housing, finance, healthcare, and this one: education. Forbes does some much needed journalism on what it dubs the “education industrial complex.”

“As steadily as ivy creeps up the walls of its well-groomed campuses, the education industrial complex has cultivated the image of college as a sure-fire path to a life of social and economic privilege.”

The article goes on primarily to describe the vast chasm between the promise of higher education and its financial reward, specifically for those who finance it with debt. People all over America are risking $150,000 of capital with the upside of making a few extra thousand per year.

You would balk at that figure if you were really investing in a business, but our culture has passed off the story that if we just do whatever this particular institution wants, we’ll all be better off in the long run. Americans are learning quickly that this is simply not the case. And when the job market contracts further, thousands of young people will realize what has happened, and the backlash will be sharp. People are going to feel swindled, yet again.

Spending $50,000 a year for an undergraduate education simply doesn’t make sense. New social institutions will arise to get people the skills and knowledge they require. I doubt they will involve acres of land, football teams, and cavernous marble buildings.

Yesterday, the Washington Post Express featured a story with an original angle. According to the paper (not an editorial, reported as news) Americans anxious over economic turbulence are starting to save their money for a time without healthcare, food, and other luxuries. The bad news is, this may defeat the purpose of the stimulus bill, to get people to SPEND SPEND SPEND, thus Americans will be ironically wrecking the economy through their careless “saving.”

Let me get this straight: our growth-at-all-costs economy has hit a ditch after Americans began purchasing homes they couldn’t afford and running up massive debt. But the worst thing would be to slow down and reconsider our habits, and live within our means?

I can’t find the link to this story. That’s probably for the best.

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Atul Gawande is unquestionably the best medical writer in the world. His book Complications is essential reading for anybody who has ever been to the doctor or ever plans on going – a stunningly detailed look at the art of surgical medicine, written with love of the craft and compassion for humanity.

His new article in the New Yorker should be your next click, an analysis of how to move American healthcare to its next state. As companies come crashing down in this economic shift, the secondary implications will be hundreds of thousands of uninsured Americans flooding the private healthcare system. The current structure of public health likely will not survive, leaving today’s leaders to move a multi-trillion dollar organization to the next level of sophistication.

The question is do we “start from scratch” or build on what we have. Gawande’s analysis must be considered by anyone who is making the case for change to their colleagues, convincing them of a painful transition and why they must make it. There is such a transition in the future of healthcare, the question is how can we envision it and guide it carefully along the way.

I thoroughly enjoyed the NPR segment yesterday entitled “Obama tests Keynes” in which a couple of young guys dig into the often-bewildering rhetoric of the economic stimulus package. Funny, relevant, and worth a listen.

It’s important that in this case it’s young journalists taking a fresh approach to the economic arguments of Baby Boomers. I don’t think the Boomers at the head of our institutions often recognize that the political ideologies discussed were born long before we arrived on the scene, and often have no connection to reality for Gen X & Y. The snarkiness between taxcutters and economic stimulators often generates as much deep-seated passion as comments about “Hanoi Jane” Fonda – it’s a reference to a fight that started well before our births, and may need minutes of explanation to even make sense.

Case in point: the radio program deals primarily with the multi-decade conflict between Keynesians, who believe that well-timed government spending can save flagging economies, and market fundamentalists who belief that the entire economy can be managed through tax cuts and manipulation of the interest rate. The Keynesians protest, “government spending led to winning World War II and got us out of the Depression!” Market fundamentalists tend to argue that the slump of the 1970s proved that it’s not a cure-all – and that only deregulation, tax cuts, and Greenspan’s masterful operation of the interest rates saved us from big government stagnation.

The radio program concludes by saying that after all the discussion about this once-in-a-lifetime event, the Obama plan is basically pure Keynesian economics. After this, we’ll be able to see once and for all if it works or if we were imagining it the 1940s. The exciting bit is, this may be the first verifiable test of classical economics!

This kind of thing makes me insane.

Here we are, heading straight into the meaty part of the 21st century, experiencing an economic emergency that could only be created by a combination of today’s special mix of globalization, Internet, post-hegemonic power vacuum, unchecked assumptions, and 6.8 billion people at an unprecedented moment in history. And the only topics our elites can discuss is:

“So should we spend a lot of money on credit or fool around with the interest rate?”

Every day, people wake up and turn on the television or radio or Web site of their choice and begin worrying about a select group of numbers that are forced at them daily. We hear these measures so often, people are mistaking them for important or relevant.

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average – a collective of large-cap equities, and the prices that Wall Street gamblers are willing to pay that day to take part in their eventual earnings
• Housing starts – the number of new suburban homes under construction, with the assumption that all human housing should eventually stretch to the planet Mars
• Consumer spending – The amount people spend on Guitar Hero and couches and other goods for their new suburban homes
• Interest rates – The rate at which money can be borrowed from banks to the Federal Reserve, to other banks, to people, through credit, through…oh cripes I have a master’s degree and still don’t really get it. Suffice it to say that the interest rate policy appears as logical as Aztec shamanism, and about as transparent as the election of the Pope
• Stimulus packages – The amount of fake money spent on real things, supposedly to be paid – with interest! – by future generations, who will repay this through all the fantastic, super-paying jobs that are right around the corner…so…uh…just let us retire in peace, um, and keep paying your taxes…

We follow these things excessively, and to the untrained eye, they don’t seem to be leading to better management of the world economy. In fact, the world has been managed exclusively through these kinds of measures, and our policymakers are stuck arguing on the radio about whether KEYNES got us out of the GREAT DEPRESSION using these numbers.

GUYS – CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE NEW STUFF HAPPENING?

U.S. manufacturing now resides in China. Our kids are in debt. The Internet is making new companies possible and other companies obsolete. Science and technology is rolling onward. This is probably just another phase of Kondratieff cycles or Schumpeterian creative destruction. We’re looking at a huge change of management between the Boomers and Gen X. The Boomers are going to start going to the doctor a LOT and will crush the private healthcare system. Mass media is about to go extinct. Europe is out of kids, while the average age of Iran in 24.

Now, how is it that the argument can still be down to deficit spending versus interest rate policy?

Here’s some new measure to try out on the TeeVee, just to inject a bit of new debate into the public sphere:

• The Gig Rate: Measure the percentage of people who just graduated with expensive student loans and got a job that pays for rent, food, and debt repayment
• The Grandma/Doctor Ratio: Percentage of grandmothers able to get to their doctors appointments as scheduled, not left at home, letting their prescriptions go out of date, because they can’t get transportation
• The Ebay Entrepreneur Stat: Number of cash flow-positive home-based jobs created through Internet technologies, allowing people to make money and still raise their kids
• The Youth Diabetes Drop: Number of young people diagnosed with Type II diabetes mellitus able to reverse their disease through diet and exercise, thus saving society billions in the long-run
• The Volunteer Volume: Number of people financially secure enough in their lives to donate time to a local charity, improving their communities at no cost to taxpayers
• The Revitalization Rate: Dollars generated through the repair of our natural and built environments, from wetland and waterways to city centers and school districts, creating economic prosperity while giving future generations even more opportunity

I don’t care if you use these – invent your own. Find a way of discussing economic prosperity in a way that doesn’t use these same, tired, busted statistics.

It’s time to leave John Maynard Keynes where he was: a Cambridge elitist who bounced around the London dinner party circuit, hating the working class and delivering all kinds of new, interesting ideas just for shock value. I think he’d be sorely disappointed in us if he thought that in 2009 we hadn’t moved past him, despite having gone to the moon, defeating communism, and inventing about 1000 new world changing technologies.

KEEP THINKING.

The Greeks, who at one point invented literacy and philosophy and math and engineering, think we should give all college students e-books so they can benefit from all the world’s knowledge at once.

Who are we to argue?