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| Fort Lauderdale, FL |
IRI2038 facilitated four workshops at the ROR Winter Meeting, held in Fort Lauderdale, FL, to begin development of 3-4 inductive scenarios in which we will explore the management of R&D and the role of IRI later this year.
Each team was given ~50 cards showing potential future impacts of 2-3 major trends (from the Futures Audit) and several weak signals (from the Weak Signals Environmental Scan). These were first clustered based on possible interactions and affinity. The teams then built influence diagrams connecting the most important cluster elements. These diagrams were completed Monday and the facilitation team spent the next several days developing these into simple systems maps. Four high level systems maps were created from the influence diagrams as shown below.
Africa Leapfrogs Developed Markets
Increasing demand for more customized products drives flexible and localized manufacturing processes. With less of an installed asset base, Africa jumps ahead of the developed world in meeting customer expectations for more personalized products.
The Death of Distance
Technology and connectivity make distance irrelevant at last. MOOC's raise the education level in developing countries and mega-cities faster than any time in history. Access to resources, not level of education, drives stratification of societies.
The Hollywood Model
Research project management as we know it today is over! With the growth of freelance R&D and citizen science, the project manager's role will resemble that of a Hollywood producer today: temporarily assembling the talent and physical assets required on a project by project basis.
Everything's in Beta
The manufacturing ecosystem collapses as open hardware platforms and new apps flood global markets with products of questionable quality. Local manufacturing and city based markets emerge to reclaim quality, creating new opportunities for new and smaller business entities.
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While this is very much a work in progress, we want to thank everyone who participated in the workshops and begin reporting progress toward the final scenarios. The IRI2038 team will continue to complete these stories by adding in other related signals or trends not necessarily included in the workshop. Research reports and future narratives for each scenario are targeted for review at the Diamond Jubilee in May. Finished scenarios, including multimedia illustrations will be complete for the Future Summit in November.
We also want to thank our external facilitators Wendy Shultz from
Infinite Futures in Oxford, England and Emily Empel from
Disney, Orlando.
All IRI2038 project reports to date are available online. These are accessible by all IRI members plus others who participated in the project:
