As a founder and managing director of Global Business Network, James Ogilvy helped develop the technique of scenario planning, which has become an integral part of strategic thinking in both business and government. Now Ogilvy shows how we can use this cutting-edge method for social change in our own neighborhoods. In Creating Better Futures, Ogilvy presents a profound new vision of how the world is changing–and how it can be changed for the better. Ogilvy argues that self-defined communities, rather than individuals or governments, have become the primary agents for social change. Towns, professional associations, and interest groups of all kinds help shape the future in all the ways that matter most, from schools and hospitals to urban development. The key to improvement is scenario planning–a process that draws on groups of people, both lay and expert, to draft narratives that spell out possible futures, some to avoid, some inspiring hope. Scenario planning has revolutionized both public and private planning, leading to everything from the diverse product lines that have revived the auto industry, to a timely decision by the state of Colorado to avoid pouring millions into an oil-shale industry that never materialized. But never before has anyone proposed that it be taken up by society as a whole. Drawing on years of experience in both academia and the private sector, where he developed both a keen sense of how businesses work best and an abiding passion for changing the world, James Ogilvy provides the tools we need to create better communities: better health, better education, better lives.
Customer Reviews
Why Progress & Freedom are Possible in the Postmodern Age:
This book is mistitled, in my opinion. It is less a business book (on the technique of scenario building as an adjunct to strategic planning). It is mostly a philosophical critique of the idea of human “progress” and “betterment” in the postmodern world. Ogilvy shows how it is possible that we can still believe in progress and that we ought to strive to create better futures, even when our traditional standards of “good,” that we formerly took from religion and science, no longer stand solid.
Ogilvy’s argument is a wonderful marshalling of philosophy, literary criticism, anthropology, social theory, and psychology with the emphasis on the “interpretive turn” in philosophy. (Early in his career, Ogilvy taught philosophy at Yale.) In clear writing and unmatched erudition he shows that despite the loss of these universal and absolute guidelines, there are ways “forward” available to us if we choose to use them.
One of his main points, in fact, is that it is precisely this unprecedented range of choice before us that measures our freedom. As a species, we have never been as free or as mature as we are now. And while these may be difficult times due to the inherent ambiguities of the loss of absolute standards, we are poised, each of us, to live even freer than ever before. The ambiguity of what is good, and the inescapable fact that we choose how to interpret our world and circumstances (and not have it interpreted for us by religious dogma or not at all, as in the case of science), is exactly the measure of our freedom. Yes, it is confusing; yes, it is messy; yes, there is the possibility of evil. But this is the “price” of freedom.
The “choosing of better futures” is where Ogilvy places the practice of scenario building. This practice can be done across the spectrum of organizational “units” from corporations, to businesses of smaller numbers of people, to government agencies and non profits, to community groups. For the actual techniques and specifics of facilitating the scenario process, Ogilvy dedicates only one chapter. In the other 12 chapters, he fits the importance of the scenario practice to the larger philosophical points he raises. Readers who want more detail on how to facilitate scenario workshops are directed to other texts, especially the one by his colleague Peter Schwartz (with whom, along with Stewart Brand and two others, he co-founded in 1988 the consultancy, Global Business Networks, GBN). Also, I was happy to discover many PDFs that can be downloaded from the GBN website that discuss details of the scenario process.
The majority of Ogilvy’s book, therefore, is the philosophical underpinnings of why scenario building should be considered the logical locus for individual and collective choice of social alternatives. Or as Ogilvy likes to call it, the “moral fulcrum for lifting the better over the worse…and prying the present toward a better future.” (p. 16 and p. 153).
This is the juice of the book. And Ogilvy presents many great things to think about:
Theory of the “some.”
Not the individual (the “one”) nor the entire collective (the “all”), but communities of people (the “some”) are the appropriate “units” of socio-political discourse, meaning and power. These may vary in size and numbers according to the scope of the issue(s). “The nation state is too big for the small problems [e.g. education], and too small for the big problem [e.g. global warming],” says Ogilvy. P. 54
“The community, the corporation, and the company are the subjects of social history, the creators of alternative scenarios, and the choosers of paths into better futures,” says Ogilvy (p. 67). These groups are “limited communities of interest defined by geography or by profession or by any or a range of other criteria.” P. 54
Ogilvy says, “Neither the Individual nor the Collective is ontologically given…[but if they] are seen as possible achievements…then their advantages are complementary rather than conflicting. The collective needs the spark of creativity and autonomy [of the individual]. The individual needs language, community, and all the rest of the benefits of society [the collective]” P. 86 “The social philosophy of the `some’ finds in groups a useful synthesis of creativity [and motivation and freedom] attributed to individuals and the power attributed to collectives.” P. 101.
Ogilvy goes on to show how the theory has implications for “representative” government. He makes a very cool analogy between representation politically and representation epistemologically. The two thorny issues are similar in many aspects, and now, with current paradigm shifts in the philosophy of knowledge (epistemology), particularly the demise of the “copy theory of truth,” we can rethink our conventions around sampling and representation in politics. “Communities [are] the appropriate units of representation - the players - in representative democracy.” (p. 67) “We ought to be able to learn to live together in communities of communities.” P. 224 He also links the psychological concept of individuation to the issue of representation and sampling. (p.64)
Finding Ethical Norms in Groups.
The philosophy of the some is also the linchpin of how we find meaning in our lives in the absence absolutes. While we no longer can resort to truths that transcend time, for all human beings, everywhere, we don’t necessarily have to fall into the utter subjective relativism where each person is free to do his or her own thing. We can derive moral norms by which to live from the friends, families and communities in which we live. They may not be as all powerful and eternal as the religious ones that humanity used to go by. But they certainly can be powerful enough - in terms of having obligatory sway on the person - than mere personal whim. There is an in-between place - pragmatic and practical - where norms have force, even if they are not absolute.
“Just because there is no universal code of ethics for everyone everywhere, it does not follow that we have to submit to a subjective relativism that says anything goes. The slope is slippery, but we can stop short at cultural (not subjective) relativism. The unit of moral integrity is not one (the individual subject), not all (everyone everywhere forever), but some (a corporation, a company, a community, a culture).” P. 126
Ogilvy cites Jurgen Habermas’ important distinction of “natural law, which is the object of our theoretical interest, and conventional law, which is the product, not the object, of our practical interest.” P. 96. In other words, as humans, we have different classes of interests: the theoretical, which when we pursue this interest, we generate knowledge that is the basis for science and technology; and the practical, which we face day to day in how to live our lives and whose `knowledge’ includes shared ethical norms and meanings, which are co-created thru interactions with others.
Scenario building is the deliberate pursuit of practical interest. Groups of people come together to articulate the norms and shared hopes for the future. This future is near-term - i.e. not eternal - about which participants agree, more or less, as to what is desirable and good. “Habermas and his forefathers are the closest thing we have to an honorable ancestry for scenario planning,” according to Ogilvy. P. 97.
Part of the shift is the legitimization of other intelligences besides the purely mental-rational. These are intuition, emotional, social, empathic. (p. 25) To pursue our practical interests, i.e. finding meaning and `doing the right thing’ in our day to day living, we turn the old scientific humanism paradigm on its head. “There is more room for emotion …than the bloodless objectivity of the scientific worldview.” (p. 35 ) Today, says Ogilvy, “We must not be afraid to use our minds on behalf of our hearts.” P. 97
The “relational worldview,” ethical pluralism and `heterarchy.’
Ken Wilber and Deepak Chopra are great for shining light on subjectivity and interpretation in human understanding, and in particular, how this applies to getting your own life together. Ogilvy is equally great unpacking all this but focuses on its implications for social activism, organizational development, and politics and economics.
Our `understanding of understanding’ is changing: away from the laws-and-causes scientific explanation (where observer and observed are distinct) and towards the interpretive study of meaning (where observer and observed are aspects of a single consciousness gestalt).
In much of his book, Ogilvy describes what he calls the “relational worldview.” This is a shift from a focus on things and absolute truth, to a focus on symbols and interpretations of them for meaning. It is a shift from identity to a focus on difference. It is an emphasis on relationship - among people, among symbols and interpretations, among subpersonalities within the individual - as the focus for finding meaning and understanding of life. It is a shift from scientific, cause-and-effect, mechanical explanation to narration of history and the telling of stories. It is a falling into time and historical drift, which implies that progress will not necessarily happen of its own accord, that there are competing histories, i.e. a contest of interpretations of whence we come, where we are, and whither we go,’ and that we must get together and collectively choose what we want. There is a democratization of meaning; an ethical pluralism; and the necessary, if uncomfortable acceptance of ambiguity in our lives - because this comes, part and parcel, with freedom to choose.
Finally, according to Ogilvy, a relational worldview includes recognition of a new aspect to our understanding that impacts our ethics. `Heterarchy,’ according to Ogilvy, is not hierarchy nor anarchy but in between. It is not that only one thing or nothing is good but that too many things are good. There are circularities in preferences, and first principles, which require us “to serve several masters” not just one.
Given this relational worldview - where human, group interpretation is central to living the good life - scenario building is a foundational practice. It is the creation of multiple scenarios, and then evaluating strategies to deal with them, that people share their values and hopes with each other. This kind of conversation is profound because it is an act of courage and freedom, a building of solidarity, and a giving of meaning and worth to the individual person who participates.
“Where meaning is concerned, it is not a matter of getting closer to the “truth.” Where meaning is involved, alternative contexts can determine widely divergent significances for the same [thing].” P. 126 For example, we can view the rise of information technology as an instrument of big brother and the loss of privacy. Or, we can consider it as the means for true democracy, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly.
The leitmotif of scenario building is this: with a group of people you spin out possible scenarios for the future regarding some thing or issue (e.g. a company, community, region, organization). Then, the group discusses and formulates strategies for dealing with each future possibility. In the discussion, the values and preferences of the individuals come to the fore and are made explicit. A person’s conversation might take the form of, “If such and such happened, then our organization might have this happen, and, in my belief system, this would be bad because…” Scenario building is a structured speculative conversation of a group of people that allows them to tell each other what is important to them.
“Power, leadership, property, consumer, health, and education [for example] might take on very different meanings in the different contexts of scenarios,” says Ogilvy. (p.130)
Ogilvy’s discussion of how groups make history is much more explicit than Flores et al in Disclosing New Worlds (which Ogilvy nonetheless references in his book p.105). “Communities create history by framing alternative scenarios, identifying a range of strategic options appropriate to those scenarios, and choosing among them.” (p.105)
Scenario building is how to deal with the fact that we as free agents drifting through history must interpret our world (and not apprehend it deterministically or by commandment); that we do this interpretation with others; and that there is no absolute quality to things independent of our interpretations. The qualities of things are aspects of our interpretations and relationship to them.
Humanity is a work in progress, there is no resting place, all meaning and interpretation is contestable. There is ambiguity and uncertainty. “We are a bootstrap phenomena,” he says. (p. 95) Ogilvy suggests that we can deal with the perceived nihilism of this in two ways: “God is dead. The self does not exist. O woe. We are doomed…Or … God is dead. Daddy’s gone. Now we can play.” (p. 87)
Reframing government and the private sector.
Ogilvy sees privatization and the rise of markets as inevitable. It is a historical movement, he claims, that is of comparable epochal import as the separation of the nation state from the all encompassing polity of the Church (in European history). Just as Locke, Hobbes and the rest had to construct philosophical legitimacy for the existence of the State (i.e. they had to look elsewhere beside theological arguments - because now the state was a new authority in opposition to the church), so too do we need to develop a new legitimacy of the market (because it is a new social-organizing principle whose legitimacy is not given by the state). Ogilvy says that this is not a blanket endorsement of privatization across the board. There are certain public goods such as health, education, public safety, and others. We have to take a case by case - i.e. “industry by industry” - look to separate the public from the private sector.
In his interpretation of the long view, the long time in coming of the primacy of the market, Ogilvy comments how it is a relatively benign institution. “Passion is so much safer when sublimated through the displacements of the marketplace than when it erupts though the sublimations of religion and politics,” he says. (p. 36)
This reminds me of Jeremy Taylor’s claim (in The Living Labyrinth: Exploring Universal Themes in Myths, Dreams, and the Symbolism of Waking Life) that the marketplace was the compromise and somewhat awkward cultural institution adopted by humanity when the patriarchal, marauding, pastoral tribes of central Asia started pushing up against the matrilineal, settled civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean. Marketplaces and trade are better solutions to inter-cultural conflict than territorial warfare and pillaging. But, some may say, compared to the old days, they are boring. All the passion’s gone!
Ogilvy points out that, with the rise of middle-class civilization around the world now, with marketplace as norm, it confronts us with a question of legitimacy. “Precisely in the modesty of its mission, the marketplace appears to be heartless and bloodless,” he says. (p. 35) We are seeking more room for emotion in the emerging millennia. (p. 35)
Ogilvy then cites that we consumers are moving away from buying material goods per se, and are seeking experiences and services. The “experience industry” is now the vogue of market economy. “The marketplace provides a place where consenting adults can get together for safe passion,” he says. (p36) This has to be sorted out regarding the public goods that marketplaces do not effectively provide.
Individuation, the information economy, and the end of mass production.
“The quest for vivid experiences,” says Ogilvy “is part of the sublimation of the economy, part of the shift from the solid goods of the industrial economy to the intangibles known as information and services.” (p. 30)
Ogilvy ties the information economy to personal individuation and maturity. The customization of products (and the demise of mass manufacturing) is allowing each person to be who they truly are and still be served by the market.
“The old shell of oppressive conformism is breaking … One by one, individuals are emerging from the realm of necessity - what nature or nurture tells them they have to do - and stepping forth into the realm of freedom toward what they want and hope to do. A new technology, an information technology whose essence is to differentiate, will be there to greet them.” (p. 223)
I like this book a lot. I found insights on just about every page, even in material that I thought I already had a good grasp of. It is a rewarding read.
Nevertheless, I do have some residual skepticisms:
Ethical pluralism is incompatible with and does not address religious fundamentalism. There will be this face off and tension. Fundamentalists will not embrace scenario building. To put my complaint another way, the only absolute that ethical pluralism requires is that everybody acknowledge that there are no absolutes. Ogilvy mentions the difficulty of cross cultural scenario building and common cause. He mentions Salmon Rushdie as a case of someone who has got into trouble living in two cultures. Ogilvy, appears to be saying, oh well. This is an upper limit to scenario building. It can’t solve everything. My issue is that in this post 911 era, where the extremists seem to be setting the agenda for political discourse, and are framing things in terms of a clash of civilizations, scenario building doesn’t have much to say and flatly doesn’t work in this discourse. It doesn’t apply here. Ogilvy’s book was published on the eve of i.e. before 911.
Ogilvy’s endorsement (or, at least, claim of inevitability) of the market economy, privatization and the information economy, while very nuanced and carefully argued with many caveats and qualifications (e.g. we still have public goods and mandates, there are known limits of the marketplace, etc.), is incomplete, I believe. He does not squarely address the debilitating, system-changing tendency in free market economies of concentration of wealth and power. He may be committing an ontological error of his own around such symbolic things as “public sector” and “private sector,” “consumer” and “producer.” For example, there is quite a plurality of interpretations about where the line can be drawn between the Federal Government and the military-industrial complex. There may be tremendous fragmentation of consumer tastes reflecting the individuation and emerging sense of freedom of expression of consumers. And this may be happily met by the information technology of producers to deliver custom goods. But there is also a self-amplifying consolidation of power by large producers in merchandise, financial and labor markets. This consolidation is often abetted by the very same information technology. The range of choice, of which Ogilvy speaks, is superficial. The consumer may have greater selection of merchandise to purchase, but fewer vendors from whom to purchase it, and fewer employers by whom to earn the money to spend for it. Ogilvy seems to minimize the importance of social equity, seeing the main limits of markets being the lack of access to them by lower income folks. I see the limits of markets being the other way around: that, over time, the highest income folks (including corporations and `regulator/regulatee shapeshifters’) get all the goods, property and resources. There is a structural and emergent quality of markets - concentration of wealth and power and out-and-out cheating - that Ogilvy does not address. (He has written an essay on Greed, that I have yet to read and where he, perhaps, addresses this.) In any event, I don’t see how scenario building addresses these aspects of markets.
The sufficiency of scenario building in general. I may be misreading Ogilvy, but it sounds like he claims that scenario building is all that it takes to create better futures. To me, it is necessary, but not sufficient. It is the necessary first step in a many phased process that is followed by execution and management (to use business terms). In other words, the main part of better futures is the working, playing, and living in them - not just the brainstorming of them. Ogilvy seems to be saying that all you need to do is get together with your group, brainstorm and discuss various possible futures, and agree on what you want. With that, your work is done. Ogilvy does address the issue of “what next” in several papers that are available, as I said above, from the GBN website (in particular the one called, “After the Scenarios: Then What?”
All in all, this is one of the most inspiring books that I’ve read in years. I feel `straightened out’ by Ogilvy’s masterful pulling together of the several philosophical, psychological and social strands of thinking. While I was familiar with most of this material, I lacked a coherence and cogency that Ogilvy’s book now provides. Whole new and better futures are opened to me by this one book.
Close but no cigar:
This is a rambling leftist monologue (and I am a Democrat!) that is purportedly about scenario planning, save your money, you are much better served by purchasing “The Art of the Long View” by Peter Schwartz.
The book is short on meaningful case studies and examples, it is more about political and philosophical ideas. That isn’t necessarily bad, even if you disagree with the ideas. However what is lacking is using scenario planning to accomplish something, to bring your ideas into fruition
Scenarios of better futures — “democratically endorsed hope”:
Jay Ogilvy begins this book by observing that “There is nothing inevitable about better futures. We have to create them.” This is a powerful early statement of his approach toward the yet-to-be, which repudiates a singular and predictive mode of knowing. That is, he argues, we co-author the future through our actions, and we must take responsibility for that process. The burden of the book is to explain how and why we can coherently do so.
So although it may seem at first to be a methodological work, this is more of a philosophical meditation on what lies behind the scenario planning methodology; an exposition of the worldview which informs and makes scenaric thinking, especially normative scenarios, viable. For detail on how to actually do scenario planning, we are referred to previous, more manual-like works by such authors as Kees van der Heijden and Peter Schwartz. Ogilvy’s focus is different, and he shows how scenarios provide the catalyst for a conversation among communities about what they want to become. Rather than holding the perils of judgment or moral commitment at arm’s length, then, as much academic work modeled on supposedly “hard” science wants to do, in this arena he argues for its importance. “World-weary pessimism seems so much more intellectually respectable than even the most educated hope. However, I would argue…that the fashionable face of all-knowing despair is finally immoral. Granted, the bubble-headed optimism of Pangloss and Polyanna are equally immoral. A refusal to look at poverty or oppression can contribute to their perpetuation; but so can a cynical commitment to their inevitability.”
Ogilvy takes it upon himself to show how the practice of normative scenario planning anticipates a paradigm shift currently occurring in the “human sciences”, by embracing an interpretive, relational, ethically pluralistic - but not shallowly relativistic - worldview. He situates this thinking in the broad currents of contemporary thought by reference to literary criticism, anthropology, psychology, sociology and other disciplines. Rather than claiming entirely original scholarship, then, here he joins “familiar dots in relatively unfamiliar ways”. The book ranges across a vast and various intellectual territory in search of a sound basis for normative futures work. In my view he finds it, and presents it, extremely well. For example, he suggests an intriguing parallel between the trajectory of literary criticism and that of studying the future. In interpretation, the tendency has gradually shifted from an original emphasis on the author’s intentions, to the text itself, and finally to the role of the reader in constructing her own meaning. Similarly, studying the future was long conceived as an attempt to reveal “God’s intentions”, after which it became mainly a scientific attempt to trace the story etched in the patterns of history, or reality itself; and finally it has emerged as a matter of creating worlds and meanings for our own purposes. (Rather than being merely “readers” of the world, though, we can now see ourselves of the authors of our own story, thereby closing the interpretive loop.)
This philosophical approach may sound specialized, but in fact it reads as a startlingly clarifying and accessible portrait of the best practice in thinking about possible futures; things that haven’t happened yet. Rather than writing an instructional guide to scenario planning he takes the trouble to explain how and why the worldview underpinning this strategy makes sense, and how the whole philosophical current of the West of our age is tending in this direction. It is therefore suitable and relevant to a far broader possible audience. Ogilvy’s philosophy experience allows him to understand complex writers and thinkers, but his business background has forced him to avoid the communicative obscurantism that accompanies them. He wants to use the ideas, but extracts these from their ugly and intimidating packaging for use in a purer and more potent form. He navigates us through the dilemma of relativism (anything goes) vs absolutism (My Way, My Tradition…) and comes out with a relational worldview and an endorsement of pluralist ethics.
Ogilvy describes the book as an “odd mix of philosophy and consulting”. The book is indeed a rare hybrid, like its author, part-academic and part-consultant. And it may equally puzzle purist philosophers and dedicated profiteers. However, for anyone interested in being able to bridge the thought-worlds of academia and business (or thought and action; principles and profits), this combination is not only refreshing to read, it’s a definite strength. Ogilvy has had a chance to “test in the marketplace” the ideas he picked up in philosophy, and the test has made them stronger. So, an odd mix it may be, but it’s one pulled off so persuasively and elegantly that the book warrants the close attention of not only those already concerned with futures studies, but more broadly, anyone concerned about how quality thinking about the future ought to look. In this respect I am reminded of The Ecology of Commerce, by Paul Hawken, a former colleague of Ogilvy. (They were two thirds of the team that wrote Seven Tomorrows, an early scenarios book; the third musketeer was fellow GBN Peter Schwartz, who provides a brief but helpful foreword in this volume.)
Overall this is an excellent, erudite and very well written contribution to the thinking behind scenario planning, and is highly recommended to those in search of a comprehensive, theoretically informed account of that methodology, or indeed a broader sense of the importance and value of a normative orientation in discussing possible futures in any community.
A new paradigm for shaping our future:
How do we achieve our futures? Is our future predetermined? How much of our future can we extrapolate from our past and our present? These are questions which James Ogilvy addresses in this book.Ogilvy has an impressive background in both academia and the business world. Before co-founding the Global Business Network, he was a Professor of Philosophy at Yale and Williams, and a social researcher with the Stanford Research Institute (Values and Lifestyles Program). In Creating Better Futures he draws on all his experiences in these fields to outline what he sees as an emerging paradigm of how we view and shape society. This paradigm he calls the ‘relational worldview’: a view of the world which highlights relationships and interdependencies across and in spite of differences.
Ogilvy devotes a large part of the book to outlining his worldview - he identifies social structures which were dominant in the past & explains why they are no longer sufficient to provide us with the futures we want. Then he relates his argument for a new world view to shifts he sees in other social sciences, namely anthropology and literary criticism: the shift from objectivity to subjectivity, from things to symbols and relationships, from determinism to ambiguity and the existence of many different but equal possibilities which arise from meanings created and shared by and within groups.
Ogilvy points out that we already have at hand the essentials for creating a better tomorrow; the three key elements of players, values and tools we need are easily identified once we look at the world through the new paradigm of the relational worldview. He rejects the Religious Institutions of past eras, and the Governments and Marketplace of the modern era, as major players in future society. Placing individualist and collective societies at two opposite ends of the same spectrum of social organization, he identifies individuals within communities as the new actors in making decisions.
Similarly, the social values of this new paradigm are not found in the absolutism or determinism of religion, or the scientific objectivity of modernism. Nor are they found in the subjective relativism of postmodernism. Rather, values are found in the ethical pluralism of interrelated communities - an ongoing process whereby communities share their hopes and negotiate meanings as they try to get along with each other.
Recognizing that in an increasingly interdependent world there are a multiplicity of religions, races, standards, norms and values, Ogilvy’s worldview identifies scenario-building as the tool best suited for creating better futures. Scenario-building is a process which provides a venue for a individuals and groups within a community to assess, articulate and negotiate its hopes and values for a better future. In the final chapters of the book Ogilvy gives a brief outline and some illustrations of the practice of scenario planning.
This is stimulating, though not easy, book to read. Adopting a new perspective is always challenging, and Ogilvy has included a lot of abstract philosophical, sociological and literary theories as he builds his case for a new worldview. However I chose this book because I wanted to read more than another “How to ..” book - I wanted a book that would situate the technique of scenario-building in a wider social and global context. Ogilvy’s well-considered paradigm provides a very good starting-point for us to contemplate as we try to negotiate our shrinking and increasingly interdependent world.
Determinism dies another little death:
Compiled in part as a rebuttal to those who see the future through a dystopian lens (i.e. Orwell and company), Ogilvy offers this book as a refusal to accept either the notion that we are a doomed people, or that we must settle for “good enough” in contemplating progress and the future. He offers scenario building as the premiere tool for creating multiple, multicultural futures, based upon a “relational worldview”. In doing so, Ogilvy tackles positivism and relativism, values and ethics, and the importance of true pluralism to creating better futures.
Ogilvy is well equipped for the task. With a doctorate in philosophy from Yale University, he has taught at that venerable institution, as well as at the University of Texas, and Williams College. He has been interested in the relationships between human values and consumer societies, and headed the “Values and Lifestyles” research project at the think tank, SRI International (formerly known as Stanford Research Institute). He worked in scenario building with Peter Schwartz for Royal Dutch/Shell, and later co-founded Global Business Network (GBN) with Schwartz and others. At GBN, he specializes in corporate scenario planning and research on futures in business environments. He has also authored, Living Without a Goal (1994), China’s Futures (with Peter Schwartz - 2000), and Many Dimensional Man (1977), as well as numerous other publications through SRI.Ogilvy fleshes out his relational worldview in the first part of the book, where he traces the move from mysticism to rationalism, and the evolving recognition of the inter-relatedness of the world today. Emphasizing the growth of elaborate networks of information and obviously competing visions of the future, Ogilvy constructs an extremely useful framework for beginning to consider potential futures in the world at large. He considers changing relations in religion, politics, and economics, in the struggle between individual and collectivist posturing and power, and weaves together multiple, shifting disciplinary views in the human sciences, and interprets these into a new view of the world that avoids the excesses of zealots and nihilists alike.
Ogilvy takes a chapter to discuss the application of particular features of this new world to normative scenario building. Recognizing the philosophical shift from things to symbols, the growing emphasis on relationships, the shift to narration from explanation, and the questionability of “timeless norms”, Ogilvy cautions against wholesale subjective relativism, and instead holds out the possibility of what he calls the democratization of meaning, and paths towards ethical pluralism, that strives to unite the normal, or what exists, with the normative, what ought to be. In this model, ambiguity is always present, and the potential for multiple interpretations is rife - and a source of welcome creativity. Likewise, the idea of heterarchy, a sort of hyperlinkish anti-hierarchy, creates opportunities for multiplicity as well. Rather than trying to devise the One True Path based on immutable “laws” of nature, multiple paths are carved out that represent the shared hopes and dreams of community and communities.
By Part Four, entitled New Rules, New Tools, it is quite obvious how scenario building works hand in hand with the relational worldview and ethical pluralism Ogilvy has discussed. The rest of the book is devoted to the use of the scenario building tool, with examples of scenario building in action in first an educational context, and then a healthcare context. He closes by reiterating why even thinking about one best future is no more possible that thinking about one best way of being human, and encourages the visualization of a “rich ecology of species in the gardens of the sublime.”
The strengths of this book are many; it is an extremely enjoyable read, with just enough additional sources to round it up to a “scholarly” tome. In the best scenario building tradition, the thesis of the book is cohesive and plausible, and is an especially refreshing departure from much of the scenario building literature, that too frequently focuses on business applications and barely questioned assumptions defined by buzzwords. Ogilvy stresses the need for passion and pluralism to co-exist, reminds us of the true potential of communal/social creativity, and suggests the possibility of exhilaration in imaginations unfettered. Creating Better Futures is aptly named, and offers an “Etch-a-Sketch” blueprint to be used over and over to do just that.
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