We are at a point in history where radical change is inevitable – either forced onto us or chosen by us. A perfect storm of issues is brewing which is telling us that our economy needs a serious adjustment. Just as in biblical mythology an Ark was needed, so today.
But we see this not so much as an imminent apocalypse but a huge opportunity to shift our way of living to be more in tune with the wellbeing needs of both ourselves and our planet.
ARKISM uses a simple but far-reaching methodology for preparing your organization to not only survive, but thrive, in a very different world where climate change, peak oil, scarce raw materials, capital market meltdown, super storms, ethical consumer- and political challenges, vastly different (quasi wartime) regulations and so on… mean that the context in which you do business could change beyond recognition. Not only is it a good idea to have developed a robust plan, for your business to be resilient under such extreme (but entirely realistic) medium term threats. But it can prove an opportunity to invent viable alternatives for today, breakthrough business concepts which were not considered because of the mental prison of present day assumptions. Our enterprise is founded on a number of simple beliefs about the best way to prepare your business or organization for a very uncertain future:
- things are worse than we expected (much worse)
- the next ten years or so, society will go through a great transition
- no organization or current business model is exempt
- a combination of government regulation, consumer/NGO pressure and no-longer sustainable business models in the economic sense (eg raw material and fuels prices) will force the pace
- anything you can imagine in your industry, quite probably will happen
- many of the solutions, however, are things we haven’t imagined yet
- if you don’t come up with the killer-app someone else will - a disruptive innovation in technology or culture which the myopic would miss
- there is no point in reacting piecemeal, only holistic thinking will work and you need to overcome the limitations of disjointed incrementalism and partisan mutual adjustment
- we cant rely on untried technologies and future miracle techno-fixes alone
- rather we need to make more ingenious use of what we have
- the sheer ingenuity that got the human race into this mess may well get us out of it
- while things may look a bit bleak, there is no evidence that it’s too late (yet)
The four step G.A.I.A. process we have developed is not just about auditing risk, ensuring that worst case scenarios are covered. Nor is it about hollow utopian thinking that ignores all the very real constraints and limits to change. It is about re-imagining the present as just a stepping stone to a different future. What use can we make of all of our capabilities, freedoms, resources can we make now? How can we make the best of things as they are, or could be?
The Road Ahead
“There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.”
William Shakespeare
Without wishing to be gloomy, it is common knowledge that the world faces an increasing array of fundamental challenges for which business, society and individuals are almost wholly unprepared.
The starting point is recognizing that we are entering a period of rapid and radical change. In this period some companies, both existing and new, will jump the right way and others the wrong way. If enough of the economy jumps the right way then the pain for society will be less. One of two things will deliver this huge change:
- Either as a society we realise the urgency and scale of change and our political, financial and corporate systems will respond by putting in place the economic, regulatory, fiscal, cultural and communication/behaviour-change shifts needed. These shifts will have to deliver the radical infrastructure changes needed to ease transition to a zero carbon, post oil and capital/resource constrained economy. Within such change lie potential business opportunities for the clever and innovative. The earlier such response happens the smoother the transition and easier it will be for all. Progressive companies will need to lobby governments and educate consumers to demand these changes.
- Or we do not respond or do so too late and a combination of the shocks we detail below could cause ecological and economic collapse and global societal meltdown from which it will be much harder (but still necessary) to recover. How bad this will be no one knows but we hope Cormack McCarthy’s The Road is not the route we chose...
The mid case – as suggested by Thomas Homer Dixon in “The Upside of Down” is that while absolute ‘synchronous failure” of the whole capitalist system can still be avoided - there will likely be a series of shocks which literally shake up markets and societies; creating the opening for radical alternatives to thrive. This is hardly speculation; for instance the last three months, the equities markets have already suffered a severe ‘correction’ and meantime the price of rice (the basic foodstuff of 2.5 billion people) as a commodity has doubled.
Here are just some of the headlines coming soon to a newspaper near you:
Global ecosystems in 'meltdown'