World Economic Forum Meeting in Abu Dhabi Developing New Models for Understanding Complexity

I'm enjoying participating in this week's meeting of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Councils.

The Network of Global Agenda Councils constitutes the intellectual brains trust of the World Economic Forum. This year more than 750 Global Agenda Council Members from all walks of life and from more than 80 countries have gathered in Abu Dhabi for a global brainstorming to develop the new models for global decision-making.

Obviously the world is a very volatile place and this is a great time of change. There are countless new risks coming from unpredictable places and the old rules and mechanisms for global cooperation and problem solving are not up to the challenge.

In his opening address, Klaus Schwab, the Forum's founder and executive chairman, noted that these are times of unprecedented transformational changes in social values, resource needs and technology. The speed of change continues to accelerate, fuelled not only by globalization but also by the increasing sophistication of technological progress. Across the world, decision-makers are struggling to take action on critical economic, political and societal issues, because the appropriate conceptual models are lacking from which to develop a systemic understanding of the great transformation.

This conference is exploring four sub-themes.

Growth and Employment Models

The policy prescriptions, industry models and performance incentives that emerged from an era of consumption and debt-driven growth must be transformed to deliver quality growth. Growth that is sustainable, entrepreneur-driven and employment-creating should be the outcome of the rebalancing and deleveraging of the global economy.

Leadership and Innovation Models

The leading countries and global governance institutions of the Cold War era must create space for major emerging economies, private sector institutions and multi-stakeholder partnerships. These new actors should have the responsibility not only to address important global and regional challenges but also to introduce innovative solutions.

Sustainability and Resource Models

The realization that human activities have a major impact on Earth's ecosystem must drive future changes in behaviour and policies. Our ecological footprint will have to be fully internalized in business models.

Social and Technological Models

The next wave of technological innovation, particularly in life sciences, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, will not just deliver productivity gains but will also transform us by adding new dimensions to our lives. As the "Internet of things" that connects billions of sensors and devices becomes a reality, stakeholders should work together to safeguard the knowledge, data and networks that are critical resources for our future development.

There are a number of working groups at this meeting. I'm on the group entitled Informed Society. The fast-moving complexity of contemporary global issues means that individuals and societies need to be much better informed. But the idea and reality of an informed society is changing radically as new technologies and social trends bring threats as well as new opportunities for mediation. We are exploring the idea of global 'media citizenship.'

I'm personally convinced that we need to rethink and rebuild many of the organizations and institutions that have served us well for decades, but now have come to the end of their life cycle. The Internet is the most powerful platform ever for bringing together the people, skills and knowledge we need to ensure growth, social development and a just and sustainable world.

 

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Comments

[falco]

05:58 PM on 10/11/2011

Same players. A quick google of this group's leadership will show it's the same tired players from the same schools and corporations in an attempt to re-package the same tired system whose game is to keep money (prosperity) away from you and me, all the while blaming people and not corporations for mucking up the eco-system. There is abundance for all on this planet, it was designed that way. We don't believe words anymore. Nor secrecy, nor groups who elect themselves to brainstorm and re-package the same system with different toys under the auspices of it being more benevolent. I don't know exactly what the solution is, but I don't believe it is going to come from those who created and sustain the current system.

[globalagoras]

09:03 AM on 10/11/2011

This gathering sounds very much like an emergent convening of a new Club of Rome. Aurelio Peccei was the Klaus Schwab of 1969, and gathered the world's most thoughtful and engaged systems and social scientists, business and organizational leaders, and other new thinkers for the purposes of an extra-governmental decision body that could recommend a serious change agenda to the changing world of its time.

The Club published the Limits to Growth, as a result of very early System Dynamics modeling, a rather famous but underconceptualized modeling process. The assumptions they made then were not based on good data or modeling, and the model's failure became a reason to ignore resource conservation well into the 21st century.

What people don't know is that the Club of Rome was presented with a second proposal for mapping the Global Problematique and recommending solutions based on true collective wisdom. Hasan Ozbekhan's Prospectus for the Predicament of Mankind was rejected by the Club as being confusing - but there has been a continuing practice of normative planning using Ozbekhan's methods since then. Dialogic Design helps multi-stakeholder, cross-power groups representing a complex system to identify the deep drivers in a complex societal system, and to take highly targeted actions to make human progress toward resolving the Problematique. http://globalagoras.org

There are excellent ways to convene wisdom, but people usually reinvent and look for new ways to engage, or rely on facilitation that eventually maintains the same power base that led the process.

[skeptical2]

08:09 AM on 10/11/2011

The globalists are at it again. Their solution for "sustainability" has been to increase poverty for the 99% of us while making themselves richer.

[StefanPasti]

07:42 AM on 10/11/2011

The many critical challenges ahead are not something experts will resolve while the rest of us are doing something else. All of us have important responsibilities associated with resolving a significant number of very serious challenges in the months and years ahead. An essential question to answer is how to address the uncertainty which is causing much hesitation at a time many may regard as one of the most critical crossroads in history.

Community Visioning Initiatives can be described as a series of community meetings designed to facilitate the process of brainstorming ideas, organizing the ideas into goals, prioritizing the goals, and identifying doable steps. One of the main goals of Community Visioning Initiatives is to maximize citizen participation in identifying challenges, and in solution-oriented activity.

The job fairs which come at the end of the Community Visioning Initiative process provide opportunities for all key stakeholders in the community to demonstrate their upgraded awareness—and their interest in the welfare of the community—by offering and facilitating new employment opportunities.

This approach emphasizes “asking for ideas” and “giving people an opportunity to become actively involved in a solution-charged environment”, and is especially appropriate to the goals of creating large numbers of solution-oriented and sustainable jobs.

1000 time-intensive Community Visioning Initiatives, in communities around the world, would create an exponential increase in solution-oriented investment, an exponential increase in solution-oriented employment, and an exponential increase in our collective capacity to overcome the challenges of our times.

[straightuptalker]

04:34 AM on 10/11/2011

This year more than 750 Global Agenda Council Members from all walks of life and from more than 80 countries have gathered in Abu Dhabi for a global brainstorming to develop the new models for global decision-making.

Is this the beginning of the New World Order we've been hearing about?

[HamletsMill]

12:35 AM on 10/11/2011

Unless Bill Still and Ellen Brown are there you are completely wasting your time. Every thinking person knows that we have come to the end of the road in the worldwide plutocracy.

A PIIGS collapse will start to take European banks with it and contagion panic will start to spread just like the events of May 11, 1931 when the Rothschild Vienna Credit-Anstalt Bank failed and REALLY STARTED the Great Depression.

No real measures have been taken to change the fundamental underlying system of interest usury that at this point cannot ever be paid. The structural systemic problem is the "Money-As-Debt TOTALITARIAN USURY Fractional Reserve Banking System" invented by the Bank of England in 1694.

The Secret of Oz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swkq2E8mswI

Ellen Brown - Web of Debt (1 of 5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU0XiklHPMc

The 50 U.S. State Infrastructure Banks Possible Solution (1 of 5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2atnm1oTjJ8

"LIFE INC." Douglas Rushkoff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOBWhVe68os

These people at this conference are looking in the rear view mirror. Where were they over the last 40 years? It is now FAR TOO LATE.

It is only a matter of time. The U.S. Federal Reserve and Treasury have given $16 Trillion Dollars to the banks since 2008 and it is NOT going to save the System.

The system is bankrupt. The Titanic is going down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH-_9cwdLug