Think Forward EP 132 - Disruptive Futures with Roger Spitz

Welcome to episode 132! We sit down with Roger Spitz of the Disruptive Futures Institute.

Roger Spitz brings a refreshingly different perspective to the future of business and leadership. As the former global head of Tech M&A who pivoted into professional futures work, Roger's journey represents exactly the kind of transformation he advocates for—bold, purpose-driven, and responsive to a changing world.

What sets Roger apart is his holistic approach to disruption. While most futurists focus narrowly on technological innovation, Roger delves into the systemic changes reshaping our entire landscape. His Triple A framework—Anti-fragile, Anticipatory, and Agility—offers a practical operating system for navigating uncertainty that goes beyond standard playbooks.

The concept of "meta-eruptions" that Roger introduces challenges conventional thinking about trends and forecasting. As he explains, we're living in a world where "unprecedented" has become the norm, requiring fundamentally different approaches to preparation and response. His global perspective, having lived across nine countries by age 18, combined with his unconventional study of disciplines like improv comedy alongside traditional futures methodology, creates a unique lens for understanding adaptation and resilience.

In this fantastic talk, we cover:

• Developing the Triple A framework: Anti-fragile foundations, Anticipatory thinking, and Agility to reconcile long-term vision with immediate action
• Understanding "meta-eruptions" as constant, often surprising systemic changes that require a new approach beyond traditional megatrend analysis
• How global perspective and varied experiences (including studying improv comedy) enhance futures intelligence and adaptability
• Creating the Disruptive Futures Institute to address the gap between specialized fields and build a new operating system for decision-making
• Applying futures thinking to complex challenges like climate action and sustainable market transformation
• Emphasizing relevance as the ultimate test for individuals and organizations in a rapidly changing world
• Recognizing our agency to create virtuous tipping points even amid accelerating disruption

Find Roger Spitz online through LinkedIn, the Disruptive Futures Institute website, or his book "Disrupt with Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World."

Order your copy of SuperShifts: www.bit.ly/supershifts

Real Talk About Marketing

An Acxiom podcast where we discuss marketing made better, bringing you real...

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

ORDER SUPERSHIFTS! bit.ly/supershifts

🎧 Listen Now On:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-forward-conversations-with-futurists-innovators-and-big-thinkers/id1736144515

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0IOn8PZCMMC04uixlATqoO

Web: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/

Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Think Forward Show.
Let's explore the futuretogether.
Welcome to the Think ForwardShow.
Today we're diving into thefascinating realm of disruptive
futures with a guest who's beenliterally everywhere in the
future space these past fewyears.
Roger Spitz isn't your typicalfuturist.
He comes to the field from acompletely different angle.
As the former global head ofTechM&A who made a bold pivot

(00:23):
into professional futures work,roger founded the Disruptive
Futures Institute and wrote theacclaimed book Disrupt with
Impact.
It's where he introduces agame-changing framework called
the Triple Approach.
It stands for anti-fragile,anticipatory and agility.
While most of us futurists talkabout technology disruption,
roger takes a broader view,focusing on systemic changes and

(00:44):
meta-eruptions that arereshaping our world at an
unprecedented pace.
From his unique globalperspective having lived in nine
different countries by age 18,to his unconventional study of
improv comedy to enhance hisfutures thinking, roger brings a
refreshingly different approachto navigating uncertainty.
We'll explore how his financialbackground gives him a special

(01:06):
insight into board-leveldecision-making, sustainable
futures and how organizationscan help develop futures
intelligence as an operatingsystem for the 21st century.
So get ready for amind-expanding journey where
we'll discover why unprecedentedis becoming the norm and how
you can prepare yourorganization to thrive amid this
constant disruption.

(01:26):
This is episode 132, disruptiveFutures with Roger Spitz.
Roger, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Hey, steve, great to be on.
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
So, roger, you've been seems to be everywhere
these last few years.
You and I met at the.
You've been seems to beeverywhere these last few years.
You and I met at the Universityof Houston Foresight Program
and I've just seen yourtrajectory has just been awesome
.
You know, you really kind ofcaptured a part of the space.
You know, I talked to a lot ofdesigners, talked to a lot of

(02:00):
different futurists, innovators,different parts of the field.
You come at it from a financebackground and economics, but a
lot of people may not know whoyou are.
So why don't you?
Let's just start kind of withyour journey, like, how do you
go from being like a global headof tech and tech M&A to being a
futurist?
You know your focus on systemicdisruption, so how does how of

(02:24):
accidental futurist journey comeabout?

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yeah, yeah, no good point.
It's probably not super commonof the different things.
I'm not sure there are many orany ex-M&A bankers that are kind
of professionally qualifiedfuturists or what have you.
I kind of stumbled upon it andthen connected the dots in
certain ways.
That seemed to make sense forme.
I was interested in variousthings other than the city and

(02:53):
banking and finance.
Um, initially I was interestedin philosophy and various things
at school in the frencheducational system which I did a
few years of it's.
It's broader than just kind of,you know, sometimes the us or
uk.
So I did study philosophy andall that at a very basic level.
But at some point one has tomake choices.
And certainly when you go I wasin London when you go to move
into investment banking, likeyou know from your own

(03:13):
consultancy work and that it's200% right, you have very little
if no time for anything.
So at that point you makechoices.
You sell you know there's anice book and opera and
everything called Faust aboutthat and it was.
You know these are goodprofessions and M&A is quite
forward looking and you'rethinking about the future.

(03:34):
I was global head of M&Acovering tech, so advising CEOs,
boards and investors on theirmost strategic divestments or
acquisitions, covering itglobally.
Initially in London, and in2017, I was asked to sort of
reinforce and kind of developthe team in San Francisco and I
promised myself to go down therabbit hole of things that are
starting to notice, and the mainthing was what was keeping

(03:56):
clients up at night was nolonger the conventional
playbooks or cookie cutterstrategy or market share or what
have you.
It was something which I calldisruption.
It's not a word I like,although I haven't found a
better one, so I do use it, butthen we'll come back to it but
it's really non-linear, complexchange.
It's systemic disruption.
It's something else which overthe past five, 10 years, I think

(04:20):
has exacerbated although that'sa negative connotation has kind
of reinforced, and I decided togo down that rabbit hole of
change.
So indeed, we met at Houston.
I did another course inForesight as a Institute for the
Future.
I did some courses at Santa FeInstitute of Complexity, courses
on stand-up comedy and thingslike that, courses at the D

(04:42):
School in Stanford on designthinking and AI and strategy,
and I basically did 10 to 12micro learning courses over a
period of four or five years.
When I moved to the US in 2017.
And at some point, I realizedtwo things.
One is that things werechanging a lot and probably the
assumption the world was makingof a stable, linear, predictable

(05:04):
, controllable world.
Not only was that assumptionwrong, but the cost of relying
on that assumption wasincreasing for humanity, for
companies, for countries, andthat's basically one realization
.
The second realization is Ifelt that I was very interested
in these topics and that carvingout 10% of my time didn't cut
it anymore, so I took the braveor stupid decision to

(05:25):
professionalize it a few yearsago, to move full time into
spending time thinking aboutthese topics, writing about it
and what have you, and we canunpack that and the journey
since, but that, effectively, iskind of the trigger and
inflection point, if that makessense.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
For those who are listening along those micro
learning things you mentioned.
You did a comedy, so youusually get the.
I did the business education orthe futures courses or this or
that, but I think you're thefirst one that mentioned comedy
or improv.
So can you explain that and whyand how it's benefited you,
especially public speaking too,I would gather?

Speaker 2 (06:07):
Yeah, these are great interventions, or whatever the
word is.
Yeah, no, and like a reaction.
No, you're right, maybe it isan intervention, but no.
The thinking was the followingIn Silicon Valley and many

(06:27):
places, when you think aboutchange or disruption, you
immediately bring it down to atechnocentric product,
innovation or technologydiscrete, and we can talk about

(06:48):
that separately.
And I was sensing that thechanges that I was observing
were much broader and I wasinterested in taking different
vantage points and benefitingfrom different vantage points
around change.
And stand-up, comedy or improvare different aspects of looking
at surprise, at discontinuity,and I thought that it would be
interesting to add that to thevarious ways of perceiving and

(07:12):
experiencing change.
More specifically, when I didthe dschool in Stanford, I did a
one-week executive education.
Again, these are not realdegrees or anything.
This is like micro-learning anddabbling and just planting
seeds to then connect the dotsand that.
But in D school I was verylucky to have, and also at
Singularity University, I had anexecutive program.

(07:33):
I was very lucky to have aprofessor from Stanford on
improv and I, you know, I did afew hours, no big deal.
But I just thought it'd beinteresting to do a bit more of
that in a more structured way.
And you're right, it helps withpublic speaking although in
investment banking you're quitefamiliar with that but it kind
of broadens it.
It helps with thinking aboutdiscontinuity and change and

(07:53):
disruption, for want of a betterword.
It helps how you respond andthe yes and mindset and it
really brings a lot of thingstogether.
And the most interesting thingfor me maybe and we'll unpack
that with maybe some othertopics around our work and that
is improv, intuitively, when youfirst think about it, or for me
anyway, I imagine that it wassomething which was completely

(08:17):
you can't practice it and itdoesn't help with new situations
because, by definition, it'snovel and it's improvised.
But what's interesting is thatit has this kind of paradox and
tension and contradiction whichis, yes, it's novel because it's
improv, it's a new situationconstantly, but by virtue of
improvising more, you somehowget better versed at dealing

(08:41):
with the unexpected anduncertainty.
And I felt that actually theconnection with foresight and
with what's happening in theworld and the areas of interest.
It was extremely useful, Iwouldn't say more than some of
the tools, but certainly upthere in terms of relevance and
usefulness.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
Well, you had a recent keynote in Paris and it's
interesting.
You brought up the unexpectedand you talked about how
unprecedented is becoming thenorm.
I see COVID is a I would callthat a major trigger, because
everyone had everything goingalong for decades and then
everything is completely justupended and we realize how

(09:18):
fragile things are.
But is it always kind of in astate of unprecedented?
I mean, obviously, look at thelast few weeks when this is
being taped about AI and deepseek in China, all kinds of
things that just seem to bepopping up.
So could you unpack that a bitLike how you think it's becoming
that norm?

Speaker 2 (09:38):
There are two aspects to it, I think.
One is what is or isn'thappening and two is how one
perceives it and reacts to itand prepares for it right.
I'll start with what I think ishappening, which we can unpack

(10:00):
if we wish, and which createcascades which have more
extremes, not just polarization,but just simply because they're
exponential.
It can be positive, it can benegative, it can be the speed
with which you discover thingsor have great ideas.
It's not necessarily a negativeconnotation per se, but
effectively a combination ofdrivers of change which we can

(10:20):
unpack are leading to what I seeas constant change, cascading,
greater speed and frequency ofinflection points and where
things are systemic, so youcan't separate a specific event,
so you know climate then leadsto to social, then can lead to
wars, to lead to inflation,pandemics, and that basically at

(10:48):
some point I think, for societyor decision makers or anyone,
when you're reading aboutunprecedented never happened
before, daily for differentthings, you have to ask yourself
whether you need to reframe theway we think about the meaning
of unprecedented.
Is rare, becoming less rare, ifextremes are becoming more

(11:10):
common.
What does it actually mean?
The never happened before andunprecedented Does it help with
you prepare that, it's justunlikely.
And I think what's importantfor humanity is to observe that
actually there's no such thingas being protected from these
things, and therefore that leadsyou to, if you sort of think,

(11:31):
ok, actually change is quitefrequent and quite surprising,
and more and more so.
Maybe the issue is how you seethe world, and then how you see
the world will inform, how youprepare for it and then how you
respond to it, and maybe theissue is not necessarily per se
what is happening in the world,but the way we see it, prepare
for it and respond to it.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
So you've lived in multiple parts of the world, and
does that influence yourperspective on this?
Does it modify that versusthose who maybe have just lived
in the United States or lived inEurope or lived in I don't know
China?
How does that influence yourperspective on things when you

(12:14):
look at it?

Speaker 2 (12:18):
I think, the two aspects which for me were
instrumental.
I can't comment on how it mighthelp others, but for me, the
two aspects that wereinstrumental, I think one is the
specific fragments of life andlived experience, which may
potentially be more variedthrough broader exposure.

(12:38):
So, whether it's Africa,western Europe, some aspects of
Asia in terms of philosophy, interms of philosophy in terms of
mindset, in terms of culturalreferences, in terms of just
accepting that things aredifferent, et cetera, so there's
the lived experience of whatyou observe and the dots you may
or may not connect.
And then the other thing Ithink and this is probably

(13:00):
builds on that and it's prettyfundamental is that in a way,
change is a constant, because Ilived in probably eight or nine
countries by the time I was 18and nothing horrendous, I mean,
I wasn't a victim of anything.
I just had a father that wasvery international and doing
well and you know absolutelynothing untoward.

(13:23):
But it it does mean that whenyou're eight and you have to
move schools and completelycountry and lose all your
friends and build from scratchand go to a place with a
different language, you adaptdifferently, you see change in a
different way, you mightconnect things in a different
way in terms of the read across.
So I think that in environmentswhere I believe that change is
a constant and systemic, in thatthe varied experiences whether

(13:48):
it's living in different placesor changing ecosystems or
whatever it is, there are manyways of achieving the same thing
are probably helpful in termsof dealing with the linear way.
As humans, we don't like change, we like things that are quite
predictable, etc.
I'm not saying that it makesyou like them, but you're

(14:09):
certainly more used to dealingwith them, if that makes sense
absolutely.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
I mean you moved a lot, I mean that disruptive to a
child especially.
Just you know making friends,getting you know social circles
and things like that, but at thesame time you now have a.
You have a global perspectivethat many children do not and
would not.
It, by by the time you werecaught, you know time for

(14:33):
university.
I mean, did that?
What are the?
What are the major places thatyou move that you were kind of
remember the most that kind ofhad impact on you?
And there's a lot of places Iknow you did, but what are some
big ones?

Speaker 2 (14:49):
yeah, I think I left south africa at the age of six
and my father moved back there.
Um, he passed away a few yearsago but he had moved back there.
Our parents divorced and so Ispent the past, you know, 15
years reconnecting with southafrica, going there, you know,
yearly at least that.
And I think it's a part ofAfrica which is very important,
first of all for most people,just knowing that it exists and

(15:10):
the virtues of it and theamazing richness and all aspects
.
But then culturally, and then,whether it's music or philosophy
or just a million things arethe humanity of it, the
potentiality even from abusiness perspective, and of
course the sadness and you knowthings one sees and the tensions

(15:31):
and that.
And then I didn't spend tons oftime in India but it kind of
influenced me a lot visits andexposure in different places
which weren't necessarily Asiawas then Buddhism and some of
the Indian philosophy andSanskrit, and I think those are

(15:51):
kind of also linked to changeand different perceptions on
change and transience and that.
And you know I spent a lot oftime in France as well and of
course there's some stereotypesyou have of France, but as a kid
, for me one of the biggestthings was the educational
system.
Right, because you spend a lotof time at school and when

(16:11):
you're at school in Houstonwhich I was at the age of eight
or nine and you're asked to domultiple choice set of questions
and spend all Wednesday on abaseball, it's not the same as
having to write a four-houressay on God is dead comment or
something like that Exactly.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
Can you tell me the inner workings of Dumas', both
the Musketeers and the kind?

Speaker 2 (16:38):
of Monte Cristo.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
Yeah, I can imagine as a kid that would be like no,
I know, I think it would be fun,but I'm not.
It's not for a 12-year-oldprobably.
But yeah, no, it's interesting.
You bring up those veryparticular countries.
I've personally been to themand I love South Africa.
I spent a good deal of timethere and you're right, there's

(17:17):
such a tapestry of differenthistory.
You think about the thousandsof years that even the French is
a country, is a nation.
It's changing borders, but howthat changed, but the work
you've done.
Why does someone say like Imust start an institute, like

(17:39):
I'm going to just start aninstitute?
What motivates you to have theDisruptive Futures Institute,
tfi?
Like, so what for you is this?
What was that drive?
Like you know, you've, you'vegot this background, you've got
all this experience and you'veseen all these things and you're
like, did it?
Did it?
Just kind of come to you, justwhere did that kind of like I

(17:59):
must?
What's what's driving you right?
What is the calling to do thator something?

Speaker 2 (18:05):
yeah, so there are a few things and I'm just going to
make one one wrap-up comment onthe different cultures.
That because yeah which thenfeeds into to your question now
and some other things, is, ofcourse, in France you have some
of the stereotypes and thatwhich many of which are true and
justified around you know foodor cultural intellectualism, et
cetera.

(18:25):
But one of the things inparticular for me which was
striking was it allowed me toget exposure to existential
philosophy.
And existential philosophy isone where you sort of prime in
particular Jean-Paul Sartre, andwe can talk about that later
existentialism prime agency,freedom and choice and the
agency you have, you exist andyou create yourself, and so that

(18:47):
strong sense of agency issomething which I've kind of
felt very assimilated to.
And coming back to your questionaround, what was the impetus to
suddenly start DisruptiveFusion Suite or what was the
vocation or what have you, whenI went through that rabbit hole
around different micro and thenI took the decision to move out

(19:07):
of investment banking I meaninvestment banking, as you know,
these are pretty good,well-paid jobs and these are
sort of what Bezos calls one-waydoors.
Right, you don't kind of leaveM&A after 20 years and just
pitch back up a few years laterbecause you think, oh, it was
actually quite good.
So when you move you thinkabout it very hard.
But one of the reasons Idecided to move is because one I

(19:34):
earned okay, although I stillneeded to earn a living and be
sustainable.
It's one thing to have somesavings, another thing to live
for decades on end and that.
So I needed something that Ithought I could make a living
out of, but I saw a gap.
When I went through that rabbithole and that micro learning, I
thought the courses I did wereall extraordinary, but I saw a
gap.
I saw the gap, which is thefollowing One, which is they
were quite specialized.

(19:55):
It's interesting because, youknow, things like foresight are
multidisciplinary, but itdoesn't mean that they're
necessarily connecting the dotsand that they're really
transdisciplinary and thatthey're sort of capacity
building for a particular way ofthinking.
They're still relying onspecific playbooks, and
interdisciplinary doesn'tnecessarily mean
transdisciplinary.
And then the other thing is Iwasn't always so.

(20:18):
They were a bit specialized.
And then there was a so whatquestion?
What do I do about it?
So I think foresight andfutures is a bit different.
I think there's a lot of veryimportant tools in that, but
some others not necessarily.
But I still think, even whenthey're multidisciplinary, some
of these can be slightlydogmatic.
In other words, this is theplaybook, this is how to think
as a futurist, or how to dodesign thinking or how to do

(20:38):
whatever.
And I felt that in the worldwhich I perceived it as
constantly changing, wherepretty much the whole world was
making the wrong assumptions,relying on them, and that the
cost of relying on those wrongassumptions was going to
increase.
I felt that you needed a newoperating system.
You needed a new operatingsystem in terms of how to make
sense of the world, how to makedecisions, and that was from a

(21:00):
governance perspective boards tostrategic, to energy,
transition, it's, you know, toreally pretty much, to education
, to everything, and once youthink systemically, none of this
is is separated anyway, as asyou know no, very, you know,
even better than meso I saw this gap for a system
of content, from education topublications, to executive

(21:21):
programs, to thought, toexecutive programs, to thought
leadership, to basically, youknow, help the world with new
paradigms, knowing that bothleadership programs, incentives,
governance structures andeducation were failing humanity
in terms of what it is to berelevant in the 21st century and
I'm not saying that alone, andthat the Institute is able to

(21:43):
address that.
But I did feel that thepotentiality of it was important
, both in terms of what theworld really needs and aligning
with interests I have as well asareas.
I thought I had a point of viewand could contribute, as well
as something which had abusiness potential.
So it was reconciling sort ofyou know what does the world
need, what interests?
You know it's the ikigai, whatdoes what?

(22:09):
Can I be paid for what?

Speaker 1 (22:10):
I forget the three you know the ikigai and what's
you know interesting before isthat you mentioned and I've had
this conversation and it's beenon.
It's a couple of differentepisodes with different people,
is it's um, and there's aupcoming episode with dr alex
frignani, or maybe one of whatalready been out.

(22:30):
There is we talk about thedifference between futures and
foresight.
You mentioned that.
What do you see as thedifference between that?
And I think people use themkind of interchangeably and I
think more academia they try anddifferentiate that.
But what's your take on that?

Speaker 2 (22:50):
I mean, listen, I know some people try to be quite
structured and academic arounddistinctions of that and I don't
intend to at all.
But I would say that futuresthinking in terms of futures
intelligence, in terms of beingfuture prepared and building

(23:12):
resiliency, in terms of beingfuture prepared and building
resiliency, is really a capacityand an operating system and it
can take absolutely any shapeand it doesn't rely just on the
future studies of foresight perse.
That's why we can talk about itif you wish.
I have things like the AAA andthings which are not just
relying on foresight.
I think foresight, in myinterpretation of it, tends to

(23:35):
be slightly more structured,slightly more specific tools
which we're drawing on, oftenaround scenario building, often
around strategy, sometimes on asort of institutional or
corporate plane than necessarilyindividual, whereas I really

(23:57):
think that there's a capacitybuilding and an operating system
and a futures intelligencewhich helps one be future
prepared, future savvy and buildresiliency for shocks, future
savvy and build resiliency forsharks, as well as seeing gaps,
which may not necessarily fit ina specific box around certain

(24:20):
of the foresight tools orapproaches per se.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
But listen, I know it's a live debate, even within
the field and outside, and mostpeople don't care or don't know,
but yeah, anyway, anyway yeah,I always differentiated futures
and foresight is um research andthinking or, you know, theory
uh to application, like useright, the and and different

(24:47):
kinds of foresight.
But you have within the dfi andwith you just with your book,
you know you've got some reallyinteresting frameworks and I
think people should be really ifthey're not aware of them
already.
I think it would be reallygreat to just kind of get a
little nerdy for a minute, kindof talk about some of the terms
you've kind of coined which arebeing used in a lot more places.
I think the term meta,meta-ruptions, it's like meta,

(25:12):
could you kind of go in thatLike, because I know you've
linked it to like megatrends andthings like that.
But it's like, how do youdifferentiate, like what is?
It's an interesting term,especially in the world.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
Thanks for picking up on that and listen, we all have
.
You know, again, it boils downto language and semantics and
perceptions.
You know, again, it boils downto language and semantics and
perceptions.
But the way, the way I kind ofthought about it is, initially,
when I entered the futures field, I felt that the big aha moment

(25:44):
and distinction, which wasextremely valuable and still is,
it's really the differencebetween, you know, strong
signals and weaker signals andhorizon scanning versus
environmental scanning, so thehorizon being broader and you're
trying to pick up very specificearly signals and that.
And then you move to performinga view and building different

(26:07):
plausible scenarios and all thatis extremely essential and
frames how I think a lot in thatand in that I was trying to
kind of think for myself theconnection between the signals,
whether stronger or weaker, thetrends, and what we do with that
.
And I know that in the futuresfield we consider trends to just
be the starting point andbecause they evolve and once

(26:30):
they're already trends it's notnecessarily the same as a
scenario which would be moresurprising than just the trend.
So I got all that, but I stillfelt that when you look at you
know, I think it was JohnNaisbert in 82, in the 80s that
wrote megatrends.
And then there's also sometimeslike metatrends, reading those

(27:08):
books for myself and looking atthe definitions and the future
in terms of a direction andtrajectory, because you're
aggregating a number of thingsand putting together, putting a
label on it and that kind ofsaid OK, this is what is going
to happen, but it's just abroader category as opposed to
just a specific trend or whathave you.
The second thing is that I feltthat these megatrends or

(27:30):
metatrends, in the way I readthem and again might be a
misinterpretation at my end isthat even when they're unrelated
the individual constituents orthe different megatrends, the
way they're presented and used,is often on the basis that they
will interact in a predictablemanner.
So you bundle them, you kind ofproject some direction that

(27:51):
will probably continue, and thenyou consider that a bit like
the risk, like you know if youtake the 10 biggest risks or the
World Economic Forum riskreports, and that these are very
substantial, real, relevant etcetera.
But the real trick is how dothey interact and what that
creates?
And the fact that you kind ofhave them in a sort of siloed
and specific way might give theimpression that you can just
take them one by one and look atthe ramifications of them in

(28:12):
their sort of siloed andspecific way might give the
impression that you can justtake them one by one and look at
the ramifications of them intheir own right, each megatrend
or metatrend.
And the third element is thatthey don't necessarily take to
my mind the second or thirdorder implications of change.
So when you look at the blackjellyfish and some other things,
we all know that what we and Iknow that a mega trend is

(28:33):
already meant to embed some nextdegree implications, but with
the understanding we have atthat point in time, at some
point you don't know what, howit unfolds to second or third
order implications.
So, long story short, I feltthat in the end it was slightly
a little bit like looking in theback rear view mirror.
Once you could define it,articulate it, understand the
implications, project it,understand the ecosystems, put

(28:57):
labels on it, I felt that thatgave some degree of continuity
that was probably greater thanthe reality of our world, where
change is a constant, and so, tocontrast it, I put a lot of
emphasis in our work on systemicdisruption.
I just felt well, maybe it'smeta-eruptions.
Maybe it is often surprisingRares, as we discussed earlier,
becoming less rare, you know,never happened before, et cetera

(29:20):
is happening quite a lot, andmaybe that's what meta-eruptions
are.
Maybe we should think about notlabeling what a meta-eruption is
.
Now, don't get me wrong.
It doesn't mean that there arethings in the future that will
continue.
I mean, I still believe in thethree laws or what have you,
that things that are in thepresent will continue in the

(29:41):
future.
Then the third thing isthere'll be new things and
things will drop.
So I'm not suggesting thatthere isn't value in history and
in some understanding offundamental drivers
understanding of fundamentaldrivers but that is in parallel
to meta-eruptions, and themeta-eruptions might dominate
what stays absolutely the sameand constant, and so I felt that

(30:02):
it was potentially a healthierway than the obsession we all
have at the beginning of theyear of thinking what are the
latest meta-trends and what doesthat mean, and just taking
those as kind of that will helpme derive my strategy.
No, maybe to help you derivethe strategy should be change as
a constant.
Yes, there's certain thingsthat are probably kind of safer

(30:22):
than others to assume somedegree of continuity.
Anyway that was kind of therationale around that.

Speaker 1 (30:28):
It's really good because it links to I think when
you and I were, you were firststarting out with this and you
kind of launched dfi and one ofyour first things out of the
gate was the triple a frameworkwas anti-fragile, anticipatory
and agility.
I remember that because it'slike I was like that's clever
triple a.
I'm like who hasn't?
Why didn't they come up?
Hasn't anybody talked abouttriple a?
I was like because it'severyone's got the framework,

(30:48):
everyone.
There's so many things outthere.
Everyone's kind of got theirapproaches to it.
But because of your economicsbackground and your finance
background, I thought it wasinteresting because you're
instead of kind of the techfuturist route or even I'm a
design future, so I'm lookingabout how to synthesize
prototype, like I want to pay, Iwant to help people touch,
taste, feel it.
What I love about your approachis that you really get into the

(31:08):
boardroom like people are likethe anti-fragility message.
You People are just reallytrying to deal with digital
transformation initiatives.
They're trying to deal withconstantly shifting sand and how
it happens, and this reallygoes to the heart of it and I
think it's a really resonantmessage.

(31:30):
I've always wanted to ask youlike where that kind of came
from?
Where did it incubate in yourbrain?
Did you see things happen Likeyou just explained it really
beautifully about meta-eruptions, like did it just kind of pop
in your head?
Were you just playing withwords Like where did that really
?

Speaker 2 (31:48):
come into play for you.
Yeah, like many things, it's ajourney right, and then at some
point, you connect the dots andAAA came afterwards in terms of
the labeling, and I discoveredto my horror that there were 8
million AAA frameworks of somesort out there.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
No, no, no, I know what you mean In the model of
like in the futures, futures,foresight, innovate.
You know kind of this part ofthe space, yeah, there's AAA
everywhere and I'm going to useAAA if I get my tire goes flat.
But in terms of, like you know,everyone's got this method or
that method, I just thought itwas fresh.
It was fresh, it's just kind ofit was a really nice framing.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
So I literally spent probably, you know, let's call
it half a decade reading amillion things and doing the
micro learning, and all that ina concentrated way.
Not that others don't and that,but one thing that I think
there was actually an inflectionpoint, if I had to label it,
when I started doing a fewcourses on foresight and futures

(32:51):
.
Foresight and futures, where Ithought it was the field, was a
little bit dogmatic in terms ofyou know, those who believe, you
know, you do scenarios,long-term planning, and those
who believe it's emergence andyou know, and no criticism,
because these are phenomenalbrains and academics and better
than I'll ever be.
But but who who believe veryfirmly around you know, like,

(33:11):
take the Kinevan framework withDave Snowden or Riel Miller,
it's very much emergentserendipity and how to manage
that, and nothing wrong withthat.
These are frameworks I abide byand the uses are infinite.
But what I didn't fullyunderstand and took me time to
grapple with it is why did wesometimes need to have either,

(33:31):
or why was it sort of?
Did we, you know, not just thisfield, but why is it sort of
you know more emergent andcomplex systems and this, and
therefore you shouldn't botherabout scenarios because it's too
long-term or therefore, youknow you should think more about
scenarios and we spend lesstime worrying about the here and
now, because only the presentexists.
And that is something I wasjust struggling with in my mind

(33:55):
in some of the master's course,some of the modules of the
master's courses and others.
I just struggled with that.
And then the other thing is, ifI come to kind of our discussion
around meta-ruptions, it's fineto tell people, listen, it's
all unpredictable, anything canhappen, enjoy life.
It's like well, okay, but whatdo you do about that?
How do you build that in?

(34:16):
Because you know you can'tprepare for that.
So what does it mean?
And so, long story short, itmeant for me, in my mind, three
things.
It meant these are not eitherall decisions.
First of all, you needfoundations that are resilient,
or maybe even better, to shocks,because you can't predict.
It's unpredictable for some ofit.

(34:37):
You need that and therefore,having read Nassim Taleb's five
volumes of Concerto and focusingin particular on anti-fragility
, I thought that makes sense.
Those are the foundations weneed to find ways of applying
whether it's institutions,companies, your personal life
some degree of resiliency oreven maybe better.
And you need antifragilefoundations.

(35:00):
You don't know what happens,simple as that.
And that's not necessarilyforesight or futures or anything
, it's just that's intelligence,antifragility.
And then I thought it's usefulto think long-term, it's useful
to do visioning.
It's useful for all the reasonswe know and for you and I,
having studied all this andapplying it and being interested
in it, it has a million useswhich we can talk about.

(35:21):
But there is legitimacy in thedebate of only the present
exists and the here and now andthe emergent and the unknown and
unknown and how to respond.
And somehow I felt you neededsomething to reconcile the
long-term thinking with the hereand now.
It wasn't necessarily justapply this OODA loop or whatever

(35:42):
you know feedback loopframework or it was something
else.
And in my mind I thought, well,so thinking long-term is
anti-sympathy, the foundationsare anti-fragile.
You need that cognitive,strategic and emergent agility
to reconcile that long-termfuture with the here and now,

(36:04):
because only the present exists.
And that's where I kind ofthought of agility.
You need that agility which Idon't use in the design sense,
or you know another word that'sused in many different contexts.
For me, agility is cognitive,emergent and strategic agility,
to reconcile the longer-termvisioning with the here and now,
how do I make decisions?
How do I use OODA loops,feedback loops, kinvan

(36:24):
frameworks, different thingsthat are emergent in the here
and now not to the exclusion oflong-term thinking and scenarios
and the anticipatory and how doI make sure that I have the
right foundations so thatwhatever happens because of
meta-eruptions and the world,basically it's okay, it doesn't
matter.
And not only does it not matter, but maybe you can strengthen

(36:45):
and benefit from that.
And so that's effectively why Ithought AAA is antisubitry and
anti-fragile and agility.
And then I thought of twoenablers to be AAA+, what we
call being AAA+, which is Ispoke earlier about agency and
existentialist philosophy andthat and I sort of thought, you
know, having the rightfoundations and all that, it

(37:06):
doesn't really necessarily orthinking longer term, or it
doesn't necessarily help unlessyou have the agency to exercise
it.
It's like an option.
Unless you exercise it and dosomething and have the agency,
it's worth nothing that option.
So I thought agency wasimportant as an enabler and so
it's like a fourth A in a way,and alignment.

(37:27):
It doesn't mean that you needto agree with everyone.
You need dissonance anddisagreements to kind of be.
You know, think of new ways ofdoing things, etc.
But somehow you need enoughalignment for it not to be
polarized and dysfunctional.
And so I sort of thought that'sa AAA framework anti-fragile
foundations, anti-supertree, theagility to reconcile the longer

(37:50):
term with the short term andthen the two enablers, or you
need agency and some alignmentfor the AAA to be of any value
and effective.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
That's great.
I mean, it leads me to kind ofthe book which you released a
few months ago, but youmentioned Jean-Paul Sartre and
all the other existentialists.
Which is you use the termexistentialism?
which is you use the term, uh,texastentialism which is another
, another nice fusion and uh, solet's talk about the book.

(38:18):
So, and give it to that term aswell so like, where did the
kind of you know you speak a lot, you talk, work a lot of
clients, did the book kind oforganically evolve?
You're like I must kind of putall this together so that people
can consume it.
That maybe couldn't bring me in.
You wanted to kind of democratall this together so that people
can consume it.
That maybe couldn't bring me in.
You wanted to kind ofdemocratize it, evangelize it.
Where did the idea for the bookcome and what's it about?

(38:43):
Let me start with that.
What's the title of the book,what's it about and where did it
come from?

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Yeah.
So the title of the book isDisrupt with Impact Achieve
Business Success in anUnpredictable World.
Disrupt again is not usednecessarily in the technocentric
sense.
It's really just change eitherjust the status quo as it is for
humanity, or for what have youto get out of our most complex

(39:08):
challenges?
The status quo is probably notgoing to fly.
So the idea of disrupt is weneed to drive change and be able
to sustain change, whether welike it or not, unless people.
You know we feel the status quoas it is in the world is great,
but I personally don't.
So you need to change, and withimpact.
It needs to be effective.
You don't want, you can't havejust change for change.

(39:31):
You know, like it or not, manythings that one does, even
well-intentioned, are justsimply not effective.
So disrupt with impact simplymeans that how do you drive
change in an effective mannerand then achieve business
success in an unpredictableworld?
It's come back to themeta-ruption.
Business is because, like allpublishers, they kind of put you
in a box and so that they feltwas more of a business book.
I personally like to think ofit as more smart thinking and

(39:54):
broader and applicable to anyone, but effectively.
That's the name of the book.
Now, maybe just as a kind ofbrief intro, I introduced my
personal life and the Institute.
But basically I have aforesight practice called Tech
Essential, which is foresight,advice.
I work with organizations, thedecision makers, and that is

(40:16):
advisory.
It's real world, it's everyday.
I'm on situations and then theinstitute, the Disruptive
Futures Institute, is content,education et cetera, and the two
inform each other.
So the idea is that I think weshould never be disconnected.
I think anybody who works inthese fields and interacts
should have real world practicalcase studies and feedback loops
and see what works doesn't work, whether people use it.

(40:39):
And I was fortunate a few yearsago when I started the Institute
and with the pandemic and allthat, that there was a lot of
demand for our courses and so Ihad written four volumes, quite
detailed, slightly arrogantlycalled the Definitive Guide to
Thriving, on Disruption.
And there were four volumes oneon frameworks, one on you know,
et cetera, and that was all B2B, it was all enterprise,

(41:01):
corporate, doing very well.
It still is, it's scaling likecrazy and it helps build
capacity for futures,intelligence and resiliency with
organizations and drivingchange, et cetera.
But during that journey, whichcontinues, I constantly get
interest and a lot of followingfrom individuals, and so this
book was basically a way of kindof updating some of the ideas,

(41:24):
putting some of the real worldcase studies, introducing what
we call the disruptive thinkingcanvas in a way which, if people
are interested, they can get itfor 20 bucks or whatever it is,
as opposed to having to spendthe time or the money on
executive education programs iftheir company, you know, because
we don't today have a B2Cprogram offering.

(41:45):
We get a lot of demand and we'lllaunch it within the next 12,
18 months and we're doing one inBrazil on climate, but we don't
today have much B2C and a bookis a way of, to your point,
democratizing it, sharing theideas, and that the important
thing for me is really that it'sapplied, that there's nothing
there that isn't from myexperience, from situations we

(42:08):
get involved in, from advicewe've done, we've given, from
mistakes we made.
Most of it is kind of you know,fed from concrete real world
case studies and and things thatyou can you know, touch and
feel the audience for this bookis.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
You says is it really b2b?
Is it anybody like it's afuturist?
Is it anybody in the thebusiness uh, executive space
like who would be the targetsthat really would this?
You think this uh has appeal,it has appeal to.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
Or you think it's it's it's uh designed to so, so
deep down, it's everybody, it'seight billion people, because
the fundamentals eight billionpeople's not a bad market.
Even $1 or $2 per person is nota bad market for some, but the

(43:08):
fundamentals of buildingresiliency, being future
prepared, are essential foreveryone and I think that,
whether you're an organization,institution, personal, thinking
about your career, most peopleneed some way of reconciling.
It's not a bad word to realizethat we need to have some
monetary exchange or value toearn money.
Unfortunately, that is theworld we live in.

(43:31):
So most people, even if you'rean individual, a kid at school,
just thinking about careers oranything you need to think about
how is the world, whatopportunities are there, where
is the world going?
These, for me, are allfundamental and the business in
the label achieve businesssuccess is just because

(43:51):
publishers push you into aparticular box.
So there are slightly moreexamples and case studies that
have business applications.
But the way I approach thewriting and the interests I've
seen more importantly, peoplebought on that has been pretty
broad.
I mean I have a lot of people Iknow who said that.
You know I bought it for myfriends or I gave it to a
student or I read it for this,and the reviews.

(44:14):
I was, you know, very pleasedwith.
The reviews Also seem torecognize that it is not another
book on disruption, innovation,product development or Silicon
Valley, 10 books a day kind ofthing.
They see that it's broader andmore applicable to really what

(44:35):
it is to stay relevant intoday's world for the better and
the worse in today's world, forthe better and the worse.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
You mentioned in this explaining the book, explaining
the courses, that you're doingsomething in Brazil around
sustainable futures.
I know that's a rapidly growingspace.
I think in the last two yearsespecially, I think the ESG has
kind of burned everybody outbecause of the requirement, but
the core essence of it is likeusing anticipatory and

(45:05):
participatory foresight methods,futures methods.
What do you see as this kind ofintersection between like we'll
call this hard kind of nosedesg thing which I think is
really gone from the, themessage?

Speaker 2 (45:27):
so explain.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
Yeah, kind of, can you break that down?
People like sustainable futures, I think, make people feel like
, well, isn't everything justwouldn't it?
Wouldn't it be naturallysustainable?
But this is, this is a bitdifferent in that yeah, no,
listen, I mean these are.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
These are extremely important topics, and especially
in today's kind of environment,you know political and you know
these are funny and verychallenging times.
So let me take a step back andmention one or two things.
I should have maybe mentionedthat around the book.
So the book there are four mainsections.
One is why is change differenttoday?
You know change has alwaysexisted.

(46:01):
Why is it different today?
Change has always existed.
Why is it different today?
The second run is around systemsinnovation and transformative
change, and that's where climatefits in and we'll talk about in
a minute.
So what is systems innovationand transformative change?
Ai and technology.
And here, when I say the futureof decision-making, I'm not

(46:21):
meaning to algorithmizedecision-making.
On the contrary, I'm thinkingabout what humanity needs to do
to stay relevant and to makedecisions and not delegate to
machines.
So the future ofdecision-making and AI.
And then the final section isreally what we call the
disruptive thinking canvas.
Now to your question onsustainability and sustainable
futures, and that you're right.

(46:43):
It's one of those terriblesituations where 50 years ago,
when the limits of growth andall these books came out and
they were kind of killed by thethink tanks and oil and gas
industry and everyone todiscredit it.
It was easy for the world to,unfortunately, to kill because

(47:09):
it wasn't tangible enough.
People did not notice it, seeit relate to it.
There was no legislationforcing organizations to do
anything, so you could kind ofjust sort of say you know
rubbish.
Now, what happens over the past10, 15 years was encouraging.
You had, you know, the biginvestment funds, the Black
Rocks and others that were sortof you know the Paris Accords,

(47:30):
sort of saying you know, no,it's serious, people are
starting to relate to it more,it's more tangible and so the
urgency is there.
You know it's kind of burning,but you don't notice it in your
backyard, but it's kind of likehard to dismiss.
And then, indeed, over the pastyou know year or two for some
things and past week for otherthings it's almost been like

(47:52):
it's a U-turn.
It's like you know the world'scompletely blind to the central
reality of some of these.
You know existential risks, notleast climate and biodiversity,
and that my hope and mypersonal view is that two things
.
One is that and I was in LAwhen the fires broke up Once you
start reading about somethingand I wasn't directly affected

(48:15):
or anything, but just it's still.
You see things in differentlight.
Once you read about potentialthreats and then you see it on
TV, and then it's in somewhatever country, and then
you're the one filming it onyour iPhone or seeing it from
your kitchen.
You kind of start seeing thingsin a slightly different way.
And when it's your house that'saffected and where your kids

(48:35):
are going to school, et cetera.
So I think you know, eventhough we have a problem with
disinformation and denialism andsome of our leaders,
unfortunately, and corporates,my hope is that the reality is
that it's so urgent and burning,pun intended that somehow you

(48:56):
can't not do anything.
The second hope and this is thefocus on the book is that you
can have sustainable valuecreation.
You can find ways of doingeffectively, of driving change.
That is a huge market becauseyou know sustainability will be
the new digital.
It already is.
There is some legislation.
Some legislation will stay.

(49:17):
There'll be some requirements,some legislation will stay.
There'll be some requirementsand the world will need to
transform the way it operates,the way it produces, the way it
consumes in ways that aredifferent and it's not just
going to be a tick the box, esgor whatever it's going to be, I
think, less news flow, yes, lessfuss, but still fundamentally
it's not going to be acceptableto a lot of the customers who

(49:38):
buy and that to just letcompanies do whatever they want
and there's a certain degree ofscrutiny, et cetera.
So my hope is that, despite theyou know we often push things by
extremes around certain things,you know, rights and wokeism
and et cetera but things alsoswing back.
And my hope is that, eventhough we're at an extreme in
terms of pushing back againstregulation and government in the

(50:05):
US, etc.
Is that that is not necessarilya reflection of the reality of
some of the fundamental changesthat I'm seeing take place, and
so the only thing is that itjust will take shape in a
different way, it will createvalue in a different way, it
will be enforced in a differentway, there are certain choices
that will be made differently,it will be communicated and

(50:25):
shared in a different way, etc.
But it doesn't mean that it'sdisappeared and that the world
is off the hook, in terms ofboth the urgency of the matter
and what organizations willchoose to do or need to do or be
required to do to transition.
So the sustainable futures isreally thinking about some of
the risks and challengeshumanity has for which we have

(50:47):
agency and the ability to change.
We can't necessarily easilychange an asteroid falling on us
, although we do have technologyto deflect a bit, but some of
the risks if there's a majorearthquake or whatever but some
we really do have control and wehave less and less scope for
mitigation for climate, but moreand more scope for adaptation
and resiliency and soeffectively sustainable futures

(51:10):
and climate foresight isthinking about what is
anticipatory governance.
What is it?
To be a bit more resilient interms of adaptation for humanity
, for cities, for buildings, forfactories?
How do you still createsustainable value, meaning you

(51:31):
still create value in the sensethat moves the world, whether we
like it or not, which is acapitalist world where people
need to write checks and beprepared to invest in things,
but in a way that is more likelyto work in the longer term.
Sustainability intentionallyused both for climate, but also
just simply sustainable overtime.
Not a quick fix Now.
Just to kind of wrap up veryquickly on that, just to give a

(51:53):
very concrete example of some ofthe work we're doing and it's
one of the topics in the book isit's really looking at how do
you drive change in complexsystems.
It's education, it's structures, governance, regulations,
incentives.
It's disclosures, it's the wayyou produce things.
It's a number of things.
You have different levers forchange, as you know from the
studies in systems thinking, andsome are more effective than

(52:16):
others.
And there's a company, forinstance, full disclosure in the
south of Brazil, in Blumenau,called Lux Carbon Standard,
which is the first carbon creditcertifier in Brazil and the
carbon credit market, as you andmany of your listeners will
know, is a little bitdysfunctional today.
There's, first of all, thebelief that it doesn't serve any
value because you're just kindof offsetting carbon.

(52:37):
It doesn't mean it's actuallyeffective in terms of supporting
the energy transition.
And then there's a lot of fraud, because unfortunately there's
fraud in many parts of the worldnot only the Amazon in Brazil,
but everywhere.
And then if you're not pricingthe assets properly, then the
people who are buying thecredits and can't trade them.
They're liquid, they'redysfunctional, so it basically

(53:03):
is a problem for all those sortof parts of the value chain.
Now this particular companystarted working with me two
years ago and they're building ahigher integrity carbon credit
certification and the questionthey had and the work I've been
doing for the past few years,which we use as Climate
Foresight or Sustainable Futureswith them, is how do you apply
those levers for change whenyou're not just trying to do
something better yourself andthe sort of conventional

(53:25):
strategy, but where you'retrying to transform the carbon
markets?
And basically, long story short, you know we went through
exercises of looking at thefutures wheels.
What are the sort of possiblenext door implications of
certain things happening?
What are the stakeholderdynamics?
In whose interest is it todrive change, to accept change?
Who are the people who have theweight, not the weight, et

(53:47):
cetera, in terms of decisions?
We went through exercisesaround looking at the different
levers for change, fromeducation to structures.
To you know where can weintervene and how, with what
constituents?
With the human and financialcapital that the company has,
you know it can't just doanything right.

(54:08):
It's not a government, it's not, and we took that on us.
And you know we're seeing earlyways of it working and the
objective is higher integrity,carbon credit.
So you're monitoring theprojects after you've certified
it.
So you're monitoring theprojects after you've certified
it.
So there's something untoward.
People are aware of it.
You have more scrutiny and carearound the projects you take on

(54:28):
so there's less likely to befraud.
You're using some technologylike blockchain for it to be
transparent and you can't tamperwith the rights of the land.
You're democratizing it so it'smore cost effective and
indigenous populations andothers are cared for.
They have an alternative tojust selling to the biggest,
highest bidder of the land.
They have an alternative thatcan monetize.
You're working with the banksand the legislators on future

(54:51):
legislations and this companyhas certified its initial
credits.
It has its own triple Cprotocol, which is a much higher
integrity carbon standard.
But, most importantly, the worldis paying attention.
Brazil in December, weeks ago,just put through legislation
huge fundamental change inlegislation around carbon
credits and all these topicswhich will force higher

(55:14):
integrity along the lines of thethings we're talking about and
basically this is a concretecase where you know Brazil will
start having high integritycarbons and the banks will be
expecting that, and the tradingmarkets and the buyers and
sellers and, little by little,the whole world, because once

(55:35):
you're changing one country andyou're changing the market, you
know no bank is going to acceptto buy a carbon credit that's
kind of dysfunctional, illiquidand ill-priced, when they could
have something of high integrity.
And then you bring in thingslike anti-fragility.
You know we brought in the AAAframework.
We worked with them, withthinking about the AAA framework

(55:56):
.
Like you know, they're doinglike conservation and
nature-based solutions in termsof just preservation.
They're looking at some of thecomplex systems and the
biospheres and the six biomes ofBrazil.
It's like how do you do for theproject so that you're not just
preserving or ticking a box ormaking sure that you don't burn
or deforest, but actually havethat project benefit from the

(56:21):
carbon credits?
And what happens then is thatonce you start doing that,
carbon credit offsets can beeffective because they can be
regenerative and we all knowthat it's better not to pollute
and emit carbons or have afactory that is sustainable and
net zero but that doesn't existand not everybody is going to
replace the factory and net zero, but that doesn't exist and not

(56:42):
everybody is going to replacethe factories.
So what happens is thatcountries will have regulation
for certain targets of emissionsand the only way to get there
will be that there will be somebuffer which will be requiring
carbon credit.
So that will happen anyway.
Companies and organizationswill need to use that.
So the question is do you thenhave just a tick the box or do

(57:02):
you have something that might beeffective?
So, anyway, it's a slightlylong kind of story, but I hope
it makes it more relatable interms of some of the tools from
Foresight and the AAA framework.
In terms of, literally and thisis not the same as a dating app
you can write a $300 millioncheck and sort of say, the best

(57:23):
measurements for carbon orwhatever is not the same as
transforming a market in complexsystems, and that's where you
need to understand systems andforesight and do things
differently from it's not.

Speaker 1 (57:43):
No, that's interesting the way you use
tinder.
It's like going to swipe rightfor for a clean environment, for
um exactly, you can't no, your,your point is well taken,
because I a lot of times we'lltalk about theory or, you know,
we'll talk about in, you know,approaches, innovation or just
just the way people think aboutthings.
But this is a really excellent.
It's a real application of it,right, and then of your work,

(58:04):
your book, and I think what itis is.
You know, in the innovationspace and any, especially in the
future space.
We're looking at possiblefutures, right, these there's,
there's things you can control.
There's external factors, right,regardless of your politics, or
like here in America, we maytake a regulation but we can't
control what China does.
Like China might do things withtheir coal and it's going to

(58:27):
the atmosphere is going to beaffected, it's going to drift
this way, like, how do we dealwith that?
Right, if we do the things wedo and the things we can control
to make, because people willmake that in their purchasing
decisions, they'll make it intheir, obviously the
shareholders and the things thatthey the values of the company.
But at the same time, it's likethe climate may, the
temperature may go up, I mean it, it's, it can be man-made

(58:50):
things that we can't affect.
There's can't change solarcycles, like that's in pots,
just the universe and that canalso like so at the same time,
if these, these things, thesepossible futures or outcomes,
how do we maneuver?
And that speaks directly tofutures and foresight.
So it was a beautiful wayyou've explained that and I

(59:30):
think you know, as we kind oflike move toward, you really get
through, like how leadershipand how you can get into the
what you would call like kind oftalk about, get into our kind
of rapid fire thing is lookingahead, what do you think people
should prepare for?
I mean there's so much to lookat.
I mean sustainability, I meanyou've seen a broad spectrum.

Speaker 2 (59:59):
What do you think people should be really kind of
taking the time right now toreally, you know, to use futures
, foresight, work to prepare foryeah, I mean, this is where I
was, you know, interested in thework I'm doing, not just from
an economic perspective, but Ihave a deep conviction that

(01:00:23):
we're at inflection points where, you know not without wanting
to sound too too kind ofstereotypical cliche where the
future is now, and I think thatwhen it's a very, I think.

Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
I think what's happening is before.
Things would happen slower, therate of change would be slower
and we'd be able to have someretrospective look at it in
terms of the impact or theextrapolation in possible
futures and the rapidity of itis.

(01:01:00):
You feel it directly.
So you're not wrong, it's nothyperbole.
I think anyone listening woulddefinitely agree that things are
shifting fast.

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
And in that you know, for which, you know 100%
there's the multiplicity, howsystemic it is.
So, instead of having, just youknow, tech crash or COVID or
financial crash, these are notisolated events.
That's why our focus is so muchon systemic disruption and,

(01:01:40):
effectively, what it means isthat that future is now means,
in a way, it's kind of bothpositive and negative, and one
of the things about disruptionand change and a lot of things
we're talking about is actuallythe duality of it.
Right, and what I mean by thatin terms of the future is now is
that there's also things fromthe opportunity.
You know I'm not the biggestfan of AI and techno.

(01:02:04):
You know, despite being inSilicon Valley and involved in
some of these things, I see alot of challenges with them.
But, yes, drug discovery isincredible and AI platforms that
can develop drugs in, you know,a few months as opposed to a
few years is incredible, andthere are potentiality for some
incredible advancements arounddisease and around cures and

(01:02:32):
around many things.
And it's not an accident thatDeepMind got a Nobel Prize in I
forget what chemical science orwhatever a Nobel Prize in I
forget what chemical science orwhatever Because these
intersections.
But at the same time, when itcomes to this, there's some
existential problem, other riskswith AI, and then there's
climate, and then there's wars,and then there's nuclear and all

(01:02:53):
these things.
So in the future of now is now.
The good thing is that some ofit is opportunity and it raises
the urgency.
Humanity no longer has theoption they had 50 years ago,
with the limits of growth, tosort of park it, because you're
seeing it every day in front ofyou.
So that urgency, my hope isthat while some of it is

(01:03:16):
frightening and a lot of it isfrightening, is that it also
forces the kind of agency and torealize that we do have agency
and that we can actually drivevirtuous tipping points.
Tipping points don't have to bejust negative.
The same features that createinflection points can also be
used for virtuous things.
And anyway.

(01:03:37):
So that would be the kind ofmessage you know, if you ask me
for me.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
No, that's great.
It kind of makes me look alsolike when you started this, even
your career.
Like what do you wish you knew?
Like if you could tell youryounger self I always love it's
a question we hear a lot butlike what do you wish you knew
when you started all this?

Speaker 2 (01:03:56):
I think it's this thing about specialization and
expertise.
Think it's this thing aboutspecialization and expertise.
You know, for me I come from aworld where a lot of my family
are academics and phds andprofessors and also
practitioners, and father was atax attorney.
But, but I valued and I thought, you know, the more experience
and expertise I developed, thethe more value and more and more

(01:04:19):
as I think more systemicallyand I think about the
limitations of knowledge andwhat we don't necessarily know,
and more and more as I thinkmore systemically and I think
about the limitations ofknowledge and what we don't
necessarily know and emergenceand unknown unknowns, and that
the more I realize.
That you know, to our earlydiscussion on improv, that that
specialization and expertise isuseful in certain configurations
but but in many others is notactually of benefit in unknown,

(01:04:40):
unknown situations.
Uh, what we call advice somespecial, you know it's not
actually of benefit In unknown,unknown situations.
What we call advice somespecial, you know relying it's
not that it's not useful, it'sjust that you can't rely
exclusively on specialization.
And because to solve ourcomplex, unknown, unknown
challenges, if we knew how to doit, we would have done it, and
so you need new ways of thinkingabout things and that is not
coming from additional year toexperience, and so you need new

(01:05:17):
ways of thinking about thingsand that is not the, the, the
sort of uh, biggest value, andhad I done that 20-25 years
earlier, I think I could havebenefited from it and I, but who
cares about me?
But to your question, I thinkthe read across for others is
not to rely so much on on justthat expertise and narrowness

(01:05:37):
and all that and they'rewonderful books of written about
these things and studies and amillion other things.

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):
Well, what continues to inspire you, like you know,
as you're kind of moving in this, you know the book is done,
you're out there like whatinspires you in general, like
beyond the confines of businesstoo, that included, but what
gives you that purpose andinspiration?

Speaker 2 (01:06:01):
I mean, the biggest thing is really the potentiality
and pathways for being achangemaker and multiplying that
for others right who go throughcourses, the feedback I get or
read our stuff, or the ahamoment for individuals,

(01:06:21):
organizations, in terms ofopening the door to what I think
is a survival mode for today'sworld, the changes we're making,
companies like Lux, CarbonStandards or others we're
working with.
For me, this is what gives mehope and, to be honest, it's
hard every day.

(01:06:42):
Right, I mean, you know as muchmuch not better than me.
It's hard to write.
It's hard to get people to read, to sign up for courses, to pay
for whatever you know.
Every day is a ginormouschallenge, but the thing that
keeps me going is to realizethat it is so needed and that it
can be helpful, if notnecessary.

(01:07:03):
And I wish it wasn't, becauseI'm not saying that I'm doing an
amazing job to change the world, but I wish that the governance
systems, incentive structures,the educational systems meant
that you didn't need to go tosomeone who just discovered this
five, 10 years ago and who'strying to roll it out.

(01:07:23):
I wish that most people in theworld would simply go to school
and work for companies and readthings and be aware of what
operating system is required tostay relevant in today's world.
But the reality is that for anumber of reasons we can unpack,
that is not the case, and so itdoes keep me going to see that

(01:07:44):
hopefully it helps in a smallway, and yeah, over.

Speaker 1 (01:08:01):
You know, kind of now , let's, let's flash forward, we
flash backwards, kind of what'sin the, in the present and, uh,
the ghost of christmas future,um, what is um looking back on
on what you've like done, what?
What's the impact?
What do you hope?
What do you hope it'll have onthe world?
Like, what do you want, how doyou want to be remembered with
the work you've done in the life?
Like that reflection, it's notjust this epitaph, but it's more
of just like you know thefavorite beverage, just really a

(01:08:24):
life well lived, you know, a, apurposeful career.
Like what?
What are the things that youwant to be remembered for and
when you want to be proud of?

Speaker 2 (01:08:35):
you know, there's a word which I I fell in love with
, um, which I think is moreimportant than anything.
You know, you come across wordslike innovation and disruption
and successful and whatever youwant, and the word I think which
is really very meaningful to meis relevance.

(01:08:56):
Not just for me, but forhumanity, for whatever, and to
be and to stay relevant isdifficult, right, it's a
Darwinian world.
It's like Alice in Wonderland.
You know the Lee Choo.
So for me, that is really theword If I can do something that
is relevant for me, for my ownsustainability, for my own
economics, for my mindset, forthe things I enjoy thinking

(01:09:19):
about, and then also relevant interms of relevance for the
world.
That is the biggest litmus testof anything.
Are you relevant, are yourideas relevant?
And if you're not today, youcan still be tomorrow, but if
you are today it doesn't meanyou are tomorrow.
So it's a brutal test thatconstantly needs to be rolled

(01:09:40):
out, tried, tested.
It's a constant challenge.

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
Relevancy- yeah, it's a great perspective because I
think relevancy I don't thinkI've heard that from people.
I've asked this question to alot of people and you're right.
I see a lot of friends in thedesign space and other spaces,
especially with automation, ai,that they have to retrain.
What is their relevancy to thenext five, 10 years of their

(01:10:05):
career?
Maybe it's toward the end oftheir traditional career, maybe
it's a new one.
It's interesting.
I think that's a great way offraming it.
So, as we kind of wrap it up,where do people find you?
There's a lot of differentthings and how can they learn
more about the work and the newbook, like an order.
That, which I think, is awonderful.

(01:10:26):
It's a great, great book.

Speaker 2 (01:10:29):
So thanks for asking.
I think so.
The book is called Disrupt withImpact.
If anybody Googles it, they'llfind easy ways of buying it.
If you want to learn more aboutit, there's a website which is
disruptwithimpactcom, which hasreviews, a synopsis by chapter,
a lot of articles, media.
If people are just interestedin learning about the topics,
whether they wish to buy it ornot, so that's Disrupt With

(01:10:58):
Impact.
Linkedin is probably not a badsource for me.
Follow the Disruptive FuturesInstitute or myself, or both,
and then, if you GoogleDisruptor Futures Institute,
you'll stumble upon the website.
We have a YouTube channel.
We have offerings.
One thing I try to do is tohave a lot out there that can be

(01:11:18):
consumed for free, for whateverlevel people wish.
It can be an image, can be avisual, can be an illustration,
can be a short post, can be afree article.
So in our model there is anelement.
I'm not pretending to be MotherTeresa or the Red Cross or
anything, but there is a modelwhereby we generally try and
share, on the more generous side, some of our ideas and tools

(01:11:41):
and and have them available forwhoever wants at any point.

Speaker 1 (01:11:45):
Um, that's great, roger.
Thanks so much for uh being onthe show today.
It's been great having you onand I know we have so much more.
We didn't even really get toanother conversation.
It's definitely in the futurefor us, um, but uh, but, uh
thanks and uh thanks for beingon.

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
No thanks.
I think Ford podcast is is is aabsolute favorite.
Steve, amazing what you'redoing and, uh, my wish is that
when we launch our own, to haveyou on, because the richness of
your own experience and ideasand thoughts and your own
upcoming books and a millionother things, um, so hope to
reciprocate very, very soon.

Speaker 1 (01:12:21):
Very kind of you and I look forward to it.
So thanks a lot and we'll talknext time.

Speaker 2 (01:12:26):
Thanks, Thanks for listening to the.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
Think Forward podcast .
You can find us on all themajor podcast platforms and at
wwwthinkforwardshowcom, as wellas on YouTube under Think
Forward Show.
See you next time.