The trouble with the future

Working on issues of policy and strategy at the national level you have to at some stage get involved in futures exercises. Delphi, scenarios, projections, the whole kit and kaboodle that people use to try to frame and structure how they think about the future. Lots of post-its and paper covering the walls of workshops around the world, attempting to build compelling and consistent narratives about possible futures.

Part of this world is the grand vision book, the accessible reader that will let you in on the mega trends for the coming 40 or 50 years and paint you a picture of the world as it unfolds. I'm in the middle of one such book, Outrageous Fortunes by Daniel Altman. Subtitles tell you a lot and his is "The twelve surprising trends that will reshape the global economy" which lets you know early on that he's swinging for the fences. So far, so usual in this world. However the book has been a real disappointment for me. Maybe because he was a writer for the Economist and the New York Times I'm expecting too much, but as well as being fragmented the prose is lacklustre and the book never really shines. It feels like this is a book that had some great ideas behind it, access to data and people, but was rushed either to be part of the post crisis discussion or just because there was too much else on.

Which is a pity, as what we need more than anything else are new narratives of the possible in the global economy. It might be that I'm being naive, but more pieces from within economics, or from a decidedly traditional economics foundation, is not going to help us right now. We need to look outside of economics, cut across boundaries and be willing to challenge all of the assumptions of the discipline to make progress and to be able to do what Daniel Altman tried to do, but for me came up short in the execution.

Best

Finbarr