The Dehumanization of Entrepreneurship Part 01: Context

 ”Mainly they were worried about the future, and they would badger us about what’s going to happen to us. Finally, I said: ‘Look, the best way to predict the future is to invent it. This is the century in which you can be proactive about the future; you don’t have to be reactive. The whole idea of having scientists and technology is that those things you can envision and describe can actually be built.’ It was a surprise to them and it worried them.” – Alan Kay

In the 18th Century, just 3 decades prior to the birth of Leland Stanford, Adam Smith defined “entrepreneur” as a person who acts as an agent in transforming demand into supply. This specific definition, the concept of an entrepreneur as a supplier of what the customer wants, is in agreement to many definitions that preceded Smith. However, this was not a philosophy that remained a static definition of the practice. In his book, The Design of Business, Roger Martin speaks of entrepreneurship and innovation as a way of seeing the world “not as it is, but as it could be.” The book goes on to argue that true innovation stems from the exploration of problems that can not actually be found in history, or proven by data. Perhaps in a more extreme use of language, Erik Reis offers up another take on the practice defining entrepreneurship as the act of creating something new under “extreme uncertainty.” From juxtaposing the 21st Century definition of the field with the 18th and and early 19th century definitions, it might seem as though entrepreneurship has evolved from a practice that supplies a demand to a profession that creates demands – from a field of regurgitation to a practice of innovation. However, I argue, these theories are not honest representations of the true landscape of contemporary American innovation.

Numbers are a hindrance on history-making. Prescribed methodologies, or the templatization of innovation, yields expected results. Changing history through the production of cultural shifts, an ambition at the heart of entrepreneurship, is an act that is far too radical for a quantitative practice. Entrepreneurs often turn towards numbers to see how coordination or reallocation can be optimized to provide a great benefit to either corporate or social entities. A quantitative and theoretical stance like this is actually crippling to the radical thinking an entrepreneur is capable of, limiting their ability to innovate that which does not exist and change the way we, as consumers and human beings, perceive the world around us on both a macro and micro scale. Peter Lunenfeld, a pioneer in the digital humanities, states that we need to “move from P&L to V&F—profit and loss to vision and futurity—from ROI to ROV –the Return on Investment to a Return on Vision.” A shift in entrepreneurial intention from one that is quantitative to one that is qualitative enables innovators to lessen their concern around the production of profit, and instead focus efforts toward designing a future they would like to inhabit. I argue that these kind of values and aspirations were common amongst 20th century innovations, but has been lost in post-internet entrepreneurial endeavor, a practice that has suffered from a disability that has crippled the ability to discover new problems to design solutions for.

 ”The husband and wife who open another delicatessen store or another Mexican restaurant in the American suburb surely take a risk. But are they entrepreneurs? All they do is what has been done many times before. They gamble on the increasing popularity of eating out in their area, but create neither a new satisfaction nor new consumer demand… [...] Indeed, entrepreneurs are a minority among new businesses. They create something new, something different; they change or transmute values.” – Peter Drucker

Instead of changing or transmuting values, entrepreneurs are focusing energy towards making the old better, feeding off of that which preceded as opposed to laying ground work for that to come. This methodology results in a loss of disruptive tendency within the practice of entrepreneurship.

Works Cited:

1. Kay, Alan. “Predicting The Future.” Ecotopia, 20 May 2011. <http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/futures.htm>.
2. Eric Ries, The Lean Startup (New York: Crown Business, 2011), Cover Jacket
3. Lunenfeld, Peter. “Bespoke Futures: Media Design and the Future of the Future,” Think Tank: Adobe Design Center, 2007. 20 May. 2011 <http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/thinktank/lunenfeld.html>
4. Peter Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (New York: Harper, 1985), 21-22

The Dehumanization of Entrepreneurship (MFA thesis paper) on Scribd

I have uploaded the paper on my Scribd page to allow for easy downloading, sharing, and reading. I am currently working on creating a few other versions of the paper in the form of: a series of blog posts, a keynote presentation for an upcoming lecture at UCLA, and a “tweetable” version. More to come…

View this document on Scribd

Bespoke Futures

The key to creating a Utopian vision of the future is community engagement and the collective agreement of the masses. As Peter Lunenfeld highlights in his book, “The Secret War of Downloading and Uploading,” a Dystopian vision, “Mutants in the Rosebowl,” is the default answer from designers of the future because utopia can not be agreed upon. Utopia is different for every individual, like a fingerprint, no one person’s perception of utopia can ever be the same and another’s. Dystopia, on the other hand, is widely agreed upon. How can we start planning for a more ideal future, designing one that we would actually appreciate engaging in dialogue around? How can we, as designers of the future, design “utopia” for a wide demographic that extends beyond ourselves? How can an entrepreneurial method / approach to thinking engage a wide audience, or at least one that is bigger than ourselves?

“These bespoke futures go beyond profit and loss statements, to create an opportunity space for the imagination, enabling individuals and independent groups to create visions of the future that inspire them. The point is to move from P&L to V&F—profit and loss to vision and futurity—from ROI to ROV –the Return on Investment to a Return on Vision.” – Peter Lunenfeld

Could we ever possibly design an ideal future for more than just ourselves? Can a non-bespoke future be of value in understanding what we do not want?

Futuring Practices: Tools, Terms, and Perspectives*

While approaches to futuring vary from institution to institution, a multitude of continuities, themes, and terms transcend. These elements consist of a series of tools, terms and perspectives that work together to guide the envisioning process. While my own research has sustained a primary focus on the research and processes of institutions and individuals, I will also highlight “theologies” of the future – how different backgrounds can breed different kinds of approaches to futurist theory.

Futuring Tools:

“10 Year Forecast”, IFTF, 2010 (left) vs. “Avatar”, James Cameron, 2009 (right)

 

Futuring practices rely on a series of tools. These tools are useful approaches to the envisioning of a future, as well as the communication of these ideas to the inhabitants of that future. Scenario development, a tool used throughout a multitude of disciplines and fields, is a great asset to any futurist’s tool-box, allowing for “fictional prototypes” of sorts. The design of scenarios, and, most importantly, the design of ourselves within those scenarios allows for a deep understanding of our potential, preferred, probable, or plausible futures. Scenarios are crafted in varying levels of detail – they can result in designed environments (like what we see in Minority Report or Avatar), they can be imagined in literature, they can be illustrated in a series of diagrams… the possibilities are open to the creator’s judgement, inspired by the content of the scenario, and the community they are engaging with the vision. While scenario development is a crucial aspect in the “prototyping” and portrayal of our future, a few other tools can be implemented prior to this hefty process: signals, r&d, and design fiction. Each of these make up the pieces of a finished scenario: inspiration, people, and prototype.

Examples of Quantitative approaches to “Signal-finding.” via PBS.org and GOOD.is

 

A signal, such as child obesity or air pollution, is an objective observation of the current environment, it’s inhabitants, and the relationship between the two. Often stemming from a whole lot of numbers, conversations, and observations, a signal serves as a piece of evidence that allows us to better understand the ramifications of today, on tomorrow. Signals can be seen as a piece of inspiration for humanists, inventors, and entrepreneurs to work towards in crafting and designing our world. In a trip north to the Silicon Valley, I met with author and entrepreneur, Jon Gillespie-Brown. Brown refers to a business idea as an “itch.” An “itch,” in business, like a “signal” in futuring, is an annoyance (or a need) that is shared by the majority of human beings. To predict the success of a business, or the success of a future, the itch, or signal, must be shared. Therefore, the next piece of the “futuring puzzle” is people.

“Designs for an Overpopulated Planet: Foragers”, Dunne + Raby, 2009 – design fiction

R&D is a corporate method that leverages a team of designers, engineers, and researchers to innovate products and conduct user-studies. When applied to the field of futuring, an R&D team can serve as a great asset in the sense that the team can leverage design-fiction methodologies to create diegetic prototypes while simultaneously testing those prototypes on people, through ethnography and people-knowing. By developing R&D teams that create designs for people, inspired by signals, we can begin to craft futures that go beyond “me.”

“New York Times Special Edition”, The Yes Men, 2008 – a prototype of a “preferred future”

FUTURING TERMS:

Many terms are used within the community of futurists, but I have collected major and frequent ones here. These terms are a result of my research of language used by The Institute for the Future, and Stuart Candy of both The Long Now Foundation and Arup.

• Forecast: A forecast, often used for business planning and innovation, is commonly the result of quantitative research  and is used to describe a prediction or estimate that can take place anywhere from tomorrow to roughly two years in the future.

• Outlook: An outlook, like a forecast, is also often the result of quantitative findings. However, an outlook refers to a longer timeline, roughly 10 years and up, and is often used to focus on large-reaching issues like health, for example. An outlook allows us to predict on the basis of current information.

• Horizons: A horizon, unlike an outlook or a forecast uses qualitative research methodology. Referring to a mid-level timeline (about 3-10 years in the future) a horizon is the limit of a person’s mental perception, experience, or interest and is often used for business planning and technological innovation.

Stuart Candy presents at Long Now. via Sascha Pohflepp’s flickr.

• Possible Future: A possible future is everything that might happen, un-edited. This means that all of the wild cards and unlikely situations, like an airplane crash, are included in the scenario.

• Probable Future: The probable future is what is likely to happen because of our current  situation – an extension of today’s trends. While the probable future does commonly consist of the highly likely, predictions of these sorts may or may not become a reality.

• Plausible Future: The plausible future is everything in-between the possible and the probable futures.

• Preferable Future: The preferable future is what we want to happen, it is a future scenario that serves as an inspiration for each of us to individually work towards. It does not just happen, it requires action.

FUTURING FRAMING:

“Zombieland” Directed by Ruben Fleischer, 2009 – “mutants in the rose bowl” example.

Peter Lunenfeld has a great way of describing / framing the future in two well designed descriptors: “bespoke futures” and “mutants in the rosebowl” – perhaps more generally referred to as “utopia” and “dystopia.”

“One reason we have so little faith in the future is that the shape of things to come has never been so inadequately imagined. We tend to see utopia as relentlessly personal, while the apocalypse is one of the few shared universals. In other words, while we can posit a future for ourselves as individuals (and even as members of a family) we have little in the way of positive imagination for the realm of the social, much less the political.” – Peter Lunenfeld in “Bespoke Futures: Media Design and the Vision Deficit”

SUCCESS MEASURES:

To judge the outcome of a vision, it is beneficial to define a series of success measures to ensure that the scenarios being produced are contributing to the development of a world we wish to inhabit, or a direction we wish to work towards. The Institue for the Future provides three of these success measures: Happiness, Legacy, and Resilience.

• Happiness: Will this envisioned future create happiness? Can a moment of well-being be constrained and reproduced? Is there a possibility for a collapse in bio-chemistry? Has the futurist accounted for this collapse, and prepared for the ramifications?

• Legacy: What will my great-grandchildren say? What can I do to make that statement true?

• Resilience: Is the future evolvable in the sense that it encourages rapid innovation? Does the scenario include ambient collaboration, environments designed for positive feedback? Is there a plan for using renewable sources as rewards – reverse scarcity? Are awe, wonder, and appreciation used to build strategic advantage – adaptive emotions? Is an infrastructure in place to find and link super-empowered hopeful individuals to create an amplified optimism?

FUTURING PERSPECTIVES:

Though many of the practices that have analyzed and described in this article have primarily focused on the tactics of specific futuring institutions and individuals, it is important to consider the role of futuring in other disciplines and belief systems outside of the “futurist circle,” including the historical, religious, and scientific.

Further reading on alternative futuring perspectives:

• Judgement Day Math: The Numbers Behind Harold Camping’s May 21 Claim – Scientific American.http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=judgment-day-math-the-numbers-behin-2011-05-19
• Some Patterns in World History and How they can be Used to Predict the Future.http://www.worldhistorysite.com/prediction.html
• Predicting the Future – Alan C. Kay. http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/futures.htm
• Predicting the future: it’s becoming a science – Cosmos Magazine.http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/672

CONCLUSION:

Great opportunity resides in the futuring practice to create a model of innovation and communal participation that prescribes to the concept of “preferred futures” while going beyond the self. Is it possible to design an ideal future for more than just ourselves?

Inspiration, sources, and further-further reading- in no particular order:

• The Long Now Foundation. http://blog.longnow.org/
• Bruce Sterling. http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/
• Julian Bleecker. http://www.nearfuturelaboratory.com/
• Stuart Candy. http://futuryst.blogspot.com/
• The Institute for the Future. http://iftf.org/
• Arup. http://www.arup.com/
• Peter Lunenfeld. http://www.peterlunenfeld.com/

*This article was originally written for “Micro Meta Mega,” a research project sponsored by the graduate Media Design Program at Art Center College of Design. It is a design-driven inquiry into the future of humanities research and scholarly production. Through the creation of speculative environments and interfaces, the project aims to provide an alternative to the information environments envisioned through popular media and corporate promotions that tend to emphasize military, scientific, and business applications.