Emerging Issues
Intro to Futures, Week 10
This week was focused on finding and analyzing emerging issues. These are called “emerging” because they are much more nascent than the trends discussed last week. Jim Dator gives a great overview of these in a paper that lays out the intellectual debt the idea owes to the work of Graham Molitor mentioned several times this semester. These potential trend-precursors or trend-disruptors are so early in their lifecycle that most people would have no idea what you’re talking about if you brought one up, and an expert in the area might dismiss it as ridiculous and/or offensive. These aren’t completely made up - there’s evidence for the issue but not really any data. Because they are so early and speculative, it’s likely many emerging issues will fizzle out early1. The value is to find them so early that helping leaders think through one will expand their strategic horizons and prepare for the opportunity or challenge before it (potentially) arrives, so that the plans that are developed don’t become completely irrelevant once the future interferes.
The trick to finding evidence of emerging issues is to look on the fringes of culture for things that are novel (new words, new ideas, new experiences) or to see new patterns that are emerging across society. Once an emerging issue is identified, make a provocative statement about what might happen and by when, for example, “by 2050, only owners of Bored Ape NFTs will be allowed to vote in the United States” or “by 2040, Cape Town will run out of water and be abandoned”2. Once the statement has made an emotional impression and sparked curiosity, show the initial evidence of the issue and then build out a possible chain of events showing how things could plausibly progress from the current emergence to the future state.
If this sounds like an art, and not a rote process that can simply be applied, you’re right! Also note that emerging issues are dependent on context, both in terms of the milieu of the change and also the cultural appetite for imagining and accepting the possibility of change. For example, take this report about the future of the workforce in Bhutan. The emerging issues on page 42 include things like “mechanization of agriculture” and “rural-urban migration” that have been happening in the United States for over a century and are well-documented trends in Bhutan, even if the process started later. It’s an art knowing how far you can push your audience, and even if you write up a great provocative emerging issue, it may not make it into the final government/corporate publication.
EDIT: Bonus content that I totally forgot about when initially publishing: another way to find emerging issues is to look for surprising potential interactions at the intersection of two or more trends. Generative AI isn’t an emerging issue by any means, and neither is political polarization, but what happens when they collide - could national brands disappear as companies have to pick sides but are vulnerable to deepfake reputation attacks? What about migration caused by climate change and the rise of driverless vehicles - what will the loss of Uber and taxi driving as potential sources of income mean to migrant communities, especially considering the demographic trends in the most common origin and destination countries? This technique is profitable because the intersection of trends naturally pushes your mind to the margins.
The metaverse running out of steam in recent months is a good example of this.
To be clear, I fabricated both of these as illustrations and refuse to be held accountable for them.