Where are We Going?

Comment

Comment by Steven M. Willis on February 4, 2008 at 10:37am

What do we have here in Indiana that no one else has? How are we different than all other states? Are we a 'me-too' state? If we are not different, then in what business sector do we excel? How do we define excellence; sports, sales, net, popularity, profit, stock price, sustainability, quality of life, etc.?

Who are we? What do we do? What do we want to do? Where is the vision? Is the vision unified? How do we implement a vision? Is that state government, think tanks, social networking? Can we get a unified vision from social networking or colaborative efforts? If we don't have a unified vision, then we risk appearing or feeling undefined, scattered, and/or conflicted.

Does the community like what we have now? If the community does not see what we have now as a problem, then the community will not see a need to change anything.

Comment by Bruce LaDuke on February 3, 2008 at 2:01pm

FYI...After researching futuring as it currently exists in Indiana, I've revised the vision of Future Indiana to meet this need for a 'big picture view' of Indiana's future and to build master capacities for futuring across futurists, long-range planners, and researchers.

http://www.futureindiana.com/

Comment by Bruce LaDuke on February 2, 2008 at 9:46pm

Pat,

The strength of interative and emergent approaches to change is that you develop a constant state of change readiness that can react to large shifts in the external environment....all good things. This kind of short-range goal setting and execution is a huge part of future readiness and I agree that Smaller Indiana is poised to take on this role.

But the danger of a purely interative or emergent approaches is that it is easy to get mired down in details and lose sight of what direction you are going, trends and weak signals (of emerging trends) in the external environment, and integral aspects of the larger 'system' that is being constructed.

Yes, the direction of any complex system is difficult to envision, but it is quite possible to establish a vision for the entire state, and it's not that difficult to create.

A "State of the Future Index" or SOFI is one method that could be used to do this. Take a look at this page explaining the U.N. SOFI that was conducted using modified Delphi method by the Millenium Project: http://www.photius.com/rankings/sofi_2007.html

And here's an example of someone applying the data from this report to a specific industry. In this example, it is being applied to the communications industry: http://www.newcommblogzine.com/?p=347

And here's an example vision paper from the Kentucky Long-Range Policy Research Center: http://www.kltprc.net/books/2006/trends.pdf

But look at the U.N. SOFI thinking about interdependencies and cascade effects of actions taken. For example, literacy levels in education may impact industry which may impact economy, which may impact quality of life for individuals. Or increased industry might impact the environment which then might impact parks and recreation.

When we build the future of Indiana, we're building it all together. All of the parts are interdependent...and it pays to make decisions based on vision.

I went to a futuring workshop last year and a futurist from IBM had done a sophisticated futuring study on Middle East conflict and they found that one of the key issues from which all others emerge in the Middle East was infant mortality rates. They proposed that by focusing on this somewhat obscure issue, many larger issues would be solved in the cascade affect stemming from improvements in that one area. Said that to say that it is possible to do 'all the wrong things right' and not get at the core of local and state issues or move forward in a progressive way.

I'd contend that part of the current "State of the State" in Indiana can be attributed to a poor vision and that if we keep doing the things we're doing today, we're going to get the same kinds of results we've gotten in the past. And it's important to note that I'm not talking about government here, I'm talking about the entire system.

I was born and raised in southern Indiana just across the river from Louisville. As such, I was more tuned in to KY news than IN news. I remember a time when I was in my early twenties that the whole state was going into a downward spiral very fast. But today it's thriving on many levels. It is growing in business, establishing a defining culture, and has a thriving artistic community. I believe the difference between yesterday and today for KY was strong vision. San Antonio, TX is another example of a community success story derived from solid vision.

Granted, we can have the best vision in the world and not be able to implement we're still going nowhere fast. But I believe it's a partnership between visioning and initiatives (e.g., within governement, industry, or grassroots, like Smaller Indiana) that will set our state up for success. In my opinion, the most successful enterprises and communities have established this kind of partnership.

Comment by Pat Coyle on February 2, 2008 at 3:48pm

Bruce,
It seems to me there is no way an elected official can set a comprehensive vision that will take us beyond next week. We are all of us too fickle and there are too many issues. You cannot please all of the people all of the time. That said, I hope we can pick one issue at time (here in Smaller Indiana), find people who want to make a difference tackling that one thing, form vision and get to work. When the first initiative is sailing well, we can start a second, and so on. If we get started doing good things, I think we will find ways to get the resources of our government and industry to back us.