International Futures Forum

According to its website: 'The International Futures Forum exists to develop the capacity to sustain human aspiration, realised through wise action, in a complex and challenging world.

We were established in early 2001 with a generous grant from BP to explore how to take more effective action in the face of the complex looming issues that threaten our future.

We work in areas where there are no easy answers, where existing models fail to make sense of our confusing reality, where we are in over our heads, where we face an unacknowledged ‘conceptual emergency’.

We have developed a body of theory, practice and wide experience in taking on seemingly intractable challenges and developing the capacities in individuals, teams, organisations and communities to flourish in today’s powerful times.'

Funding

According to the IFF website: 'We now enjoy a variety of productive and mutually beneficial relationships with sponsors, clients, subscribers, research funders and others.

We are grateful to the following organisations for their core support

• BP
• BT

These are some of the organisations we have worked with:

• Diageo
• Foreign and Commonwealth Office
• Scottish Parliament
• Scottish Executive
• UK Nirex Ltd
• Scottish Enterprise
• World Economic Forum
• Tayside Health Board
• Glasgow Centre for Population Health

Our subscribers include:

• World Economic Forum
• Henley Centre
• Diageo
• Falkirk Council
• Audit Scotland
• AOL (Europe) Ltd
• Cultureshift Co-operative, Australia

We have enjoyed research funding from:

• Scottish Enterprise Glasgow
• Society for Organisational Learning (Scotland)'

Activities

Also, in 2001 the SCF established The International Futures Forum (IFF)86 ‘to bring international thinking to bear on our work’[1] (Accessed 17 February 2005), i.e. to promote policy ideas derived from policy transfer. Today, the IFF is independent of the SCF and it seems as if it has not proven particularly valuable to the SCF’s rather pragmatic approach to public policy. The IFF, which tries to bring together so-called "deep thinkers" in order to ‘examine[s] deep structures in the modern global system in its search for a second enlightenment'[2] (Accessed 17 February 2005), has rather obscure aims and purposes. With support from BP it ‘explore[s] new ways of operating effectively and responsibly in a world of boundless complexity, a world we no longer fully understand and cannot control’[3] (Accessed 17 February 2005). This world is seen as a challenge for business, government and society and confronts them with the task of ‘restor[ing] the capacity to act effectively and responsibly and thereby revive and foster a culture of human aspiration’. Based on this view of today’s world, the IFF seeks to create a new ‘paradigm’ by renouncing ‘traditional’ ways of making sense of the world. How does the IFF view its role in the spread of the Second Enlightenment? A diagram in

one its first reports shows a "dialogue" between a variety of actors90. ‘Core dialogue thinkers’ disseminate knowledge, specialist information and support to a ‘tier of converters’, who ‘convert the insights from the dialogue into practical form and who disseminate it to a wider audience’. This group is composed of a broad variety of organisations and actors, such as the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI), business corporations, artists and writers, the BBC, unspecified ‘social entrepreneurs’, policy makers, the OECD and also BP. Finally, a further group of agents, who will ‘make things happen on the ground’, should use the information provided through the dialogue. In spite of the emphasis on ‘dialogue’, the IFF appears to see its role almost in a Hayekian tradition of ‘original thinkers’ who inform policy entrepreneurs or ‘second hand dealers in ideas’91 with their theoretical and rather abstract knowledge so that they can utilise it to influence the wider society, including policy-makers. And, in fact, the IFF makes ‘no apology for taking seriously Margaret Mead’s conviction that a small group of individuals can change the world’92. This small group convening for the IFF’s first meeting in April 2001 included among others former Director of the OECD International Futures Programme and ‘futurist’ Wolfgang Michalski; Kees van der Heijden (director of the scenario and strategy consultancy Global Business Network, Emeritus Professor of General and Strategic Management at Strathclyde University, former head of the Business Environment Division in Group Planning at Royal Dutch/Shell, London), Arun Mairo from Boston Consulting Group India, Biologist Brian Goodwin, Pat Kane from the Sunday Herald, and Mark Woodhouse, a philosopher interested in ‘scientific, spiritual, and healing communities’93. Rather than being a permanent think-tank, the IFF is an attempt to facilitate an international network of thinkers, businesspeople and policy makers. During a case study trip to BP’s Grangemouth refinery – the IFF group also conducted case studies on the ‘learning society in Dundee’94 and on health provision for ‘deprived individuals and communities in Fife’95 – the IFF came up with a "vision" for the future of BP and Falkirk/Grangemouth. When BP asked the IFF how it could combine the challenge of adjusting the plant to global competition bearing on mind the responsibility of BP to all local stakeholders96, (page 2) the IFF responded by proposing to understand the downsizing of the plant, which culminated in the lay off of about 1000 employees, as a creative act. As BP is a ‘different kind of energy company, radiating energy of all kinds – intellectual, physical, creative – into the community’, the sacking of workers equals ‘releasing high quality resources into the community’97. This rather interesting take on unemployment and economical restructuring is part of the IFF’s attempt to create new management and organisational approaches. It wants to act as a kind of "spiritual management consultancy" – although behind the airy language of challenges and creativity we find statements with stark consequences if put into practice: for example, the IFF’s stance on the NHSgenerated ‘entitlement culture’ which should be transformed into a more creative ‘gift culture’, would lead to significant changes in the allocation of resources, as gift cultures rely on their reciprocity rather than on solidarity and social contracts98.

89 IFF. Online available from

90 http://www.internationalfuturesforum.co.uk/reports/IFF1_prospectus.pdf. [Accessed 17 February 2005] 91 Hayek, Friedrich A.; Feulner, Edwin J. and John Blundell. The Intellectuals and Socialism. London : Institute of Economic Affairs, 1998 92 IFF. Project Prospectus. December 2000, p. 5. Online available from http://www.internationalfuturesforum.co.uk/reports/IFF1_prospectus.pdf. [Accessed 2 March 2005] 93 http://www.markwoodhouse.com/01_index.html 94 IFF Learning in Dundee. A Second Enlightenment View. Online available from http://www.internationalfuturesforum.co.uk/reports/case_encounter_dund ee.pdf.[ Accessed 4 March 2005] 95 IFF Entreprise in Falkirk. Online available from http://www.internationalfuturesforum.co.uk/reports/case_encounter_fife.p df. [Accessed 4 March 2005] Copyright©PSA 2005 22 96 IFF. Health in Fife. Online available from http://www.internationalfuturesforum.co.uk/reports/case_encounter_falkir k.pdf, page 3. [Accessed 4 March 2005] 97 ibid p.18 98 IFF. Health in Fife. Online available from http://www.internationalfuturesforum.co.uk/reports/case_encounter_fife.p df, p 19. [Accessed 4 March 2005]

Contact

International Futures Forum PO Box 29207 St Andrews Fife KY16 8YU UK T: +44 1334470090 E: editorial@internationalfuturesforum.com

External Links

International Futures Forum website [4]