Citation
Cordeiro, J.L. (2013), "The Millennium Project and beyond", Foresight, Vol. 15 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/FS-03-2013-0008
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
The Millennium Project and beyond
Article Type: Guest editorial From: foresight, Volume 15, Issue 5
The Millennium Project was founded in 1996 after a three-year feasibility study with the United Nations University, Smithsonian Institution, Futures Group International, and the American Council for the United Nations University (UNU). It is now an independent non-profit global participatory futures research think tank of futurists, scholars, business planners, and policy makers who work for international organizations, governments, corporations, NGOs, and universities. The Millennium Project currently manages a coherent and cumulative process that collects and assesses judgments from over 4,000 experts from close to 100 countries that have contributed with their views to The Millennium Project since its inception.
This valuable research is selected by nearly 50 “Nodes around the world, including both physical nodes in every continent and also virtual nodes like a Cyber Node and a Global Arts/Media Node. The work is distilled in the annual State of the Future (SOF), the latest version of the Futures Research Methodology (FRM), the new online Global Futures Intelligence System (GFIS) and additional special studies:
The State of the Future (SOF) (Glenn et al., 2012) has been analyzing the 15 Global Challenges, year after year, besides other special studies and the State of the Future Index (SOFI), which monitors the variables that are getting better and the ones that are getting worse. The SOF print edition is just an executive summary with over 10,000 additional pages of accumulated research over the years.
The Futures Research Methodology (FRM) (Glenn and Gordon, 2012) is now on its third edition and it includes 39 chapters with over 1,300 pages describing the most important methodologies on futures research. The FRM version 3.0 was sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and it is the largest internationally peer-reviewed collection of methods to explore the future ever assembled in one source.
The Global Futures Intelligence System (GFIS) (The Millennium Project, 2013) is a new collective intelligence system that integrates all of the information, groups, and software of The Millennium Project in a single location. The GFIS is novel way to participate with and have access to a general overview of major global issues that can be read and understood in just 15 minutes, including historical data and future forecasts.
The Millennium Project is not a one-time study of the future, but provides an on-going capacity as a geographically and institutionally dispersed think tank. It was selected among the Best 7 Foresight Organizations by US Office of Energy, and it was a 2012 Computerworld laureate for its innovations in collective intelligence systems. Most annual State of the Future reports have been selected by the publication Future Survey as among the years best books on the future, the international journal Technological Forecasting & Social Change has dedicated several entire issues to the annual State of the Future., and foresight reviewed the 2012 State of the Future as “strategic planning for the planet.
This special issue of foresight on The Millennium Project is therefore very welcome. We began its preparation with an open call and invitations for papers in December 2011. A total of 15 abstracts were received by March 2012 from individual participants of The Millennium Project, seven were selected by June 2012, and six are published here now. This special edition was an undertaking that shows some of the newest and most relevant work done by futurists around the world. Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, has said that the work of The Millennium Project offers “invaluable insights about the future, and the papers included here certainly add even more invaluable insights about the future. These articles are summarized here, in no particular order:
Heiko A. von der Gracht and Inga-Lena Darkow (Institute for Futures Studies and Knowledge Management [IFK], EBS Business School, Wiesbaden, Germany, and members of the German Node of The Millennium Project) analyzed “The future role of logistics for global wealth: Scenarios and discontinuities until 2025. Von der Gracht and Darkow researched global logistics scenarios with focus on the future contribution the logistics industry can make to the triple bottom line – people, planet and profit. Over 200 experts were asked to share their visions via a real-time Delphi (RTD) study. The results were further examined in futures workshops according to World Café methodology to developed 20 key Delphi projections for global logistics in 2025.
Aharon Hauptman and Yair Sharan (Interdisciplinary Center for Technology Analysis and Forecasting [ICTAF],Tel-Aviv University, Israel, and members of the Israeli Node of The Millennium Project) analyzed “Foresight of evolving security threats posed by emerging technologies. Hauptman and Sharan consider the overlooked “dark side of new technologies, and their potential abuse by terrorists or organized crime. The EU-funded project FESTOS assesses security issues following a horizon scanning and a Delphi expert survey to rank the “abuse potential and “threat intensity of 33 emerging technologies. “Weak signals, “wild cards and a variant of the “futures wheel method were used to construct four “scenario sketches considering potential future threats.
William E. Halal (George Washington University, Washington DC, USA, Bangkok University, Thailand, and participant of the Cyber Node of The Millennium Project) wrote “Through the megacrisis: making the passage to global maturity. Halal used an online survey to assess attitudes toward four scenarios defining the range of possible outcomes of the “global megacrisis, with an improved Delphi method to estimate when emerging technologies are likely to enter mainstream use. An evolutionary perspective and “collective intelligence methods helped to understand how the world could make the passage through todays “global megacrisis to a more sophisticated level of development by about 2020.
Tony Diggle (independent consultant, London, England, and member of the UK Node of The Millennium Project) worked on “Water: how collective intelligence initiatives can address this global challenge. Diggle analyzes online collective intelligence systems that make it easier to set practical goals and monitor progress to send, receive and act on the latest research and new information. Recent developments by the World Water Assessment Panel (WWAP) of UNESCO, the International Water Association (IWA), and the IWA WaterWiki are considered, and then potential future developments are examined from a collective intelligence viewpoint dealing with water challenges.
Sven Hirsch, Paul Burggraf and Cornelia Daheim (Zpunkt the foresight company, Köln, Germany, and members of the German Node of The Millennium Project) consider “Scenario planning with integrated quantification – managing uncertainty in corporate strategy building. Hirsch, Burggraf and Daheim present a practical methodology for establishing quantitative scenarios in a participative process within a business environment. Their method follows the classical scenario design process of key factor analysis, projection design, interaction analysis, and scenario selection. Each step helps to consolidate the qualitative and quantitative description of the strategic scenarios.
Pavel Nováek (Palacky University, Olomouc, Czech Republic, Czech Association of the Club of Rome, Prague, Czech Republic, and member of the Central European Node of The Millennium Project) considered “Thinking oriented towards the future: key to prosperity and sustainable development? Nováek proposes a new methodology called the Future Oriented Thinking Index (FOTI) using 23 indicators. The FOTI is an approach close to the State of the Future Index (SOFI) developed by Theodore J. Gordon and the Millennium Project, but the FOTI should focus more on identifying how people are able to take into account future challenges and behave according to them, and less on the “state of the future (measuring whether the indicators will improve or deteriorate).
Futurists often explain that the purpose of thinking about the future is not to predict what will happen, but rather to visualize possibilities and consider plausible alternatives. These papers are an important starting point to consider some of those possibilities and alternatives. Although we cannot know or determine the future, our aim with this Special Issue is to promote dialogue, facilitate creative thinking, and provide an additional platform for voices from The Millennium Project. We hope this special issue “The Millennium Project and Beyond contributes to this important dialogue to create better futures for humanity.
Acknowledgements
The Guest Editor wants to thank personally three senior staff of The Millennium Project: Executive Director Jerome C. Glenn for his leadership, Senior Research Fellow Theodore J. Gordon for his wisdom, and Research Director Elizabeth Florescu for her diligence.
José Luis Cordeiro
Director, Millennium Project, Venezuela Node, Caracas, Venezuela
References
Glenn, J.C. and Gordon, T.J. (2012), Futures Research Methodologies, Version 3.0, The Millennium Project, Washington, DC, available at: http://http://millennium-project.org/millennium/FRM-V3.html
Glenn, J.C., Gordon, T.J. and Florescu, E. (2012), 2012 State of the Future, The Millennium Project, Washington, DC, available at: http://millennium-project.org/millennium/2012SOF.html
The Millennium Project (2013), Global Futures Intelligence System (GFIS), The Millennium Project, Washington, DC, available at: https://themp.org