How To Change the Future

Pioneering transformative scenario planner Adam Kahane visits the RSA to outline a powerful new methodology for dealing with some of the world’s most intractable challenges.

RSA Keynote

How can we solve the seemingly intractable economic, social and environmental challenges we face in the 21st century?

People who are attempting to tackle these huge global problems often find themselves frustratingly stuck. They can’t solve their problems in their current context, which is too unstable or unfair or unsustainable. They can’t transform this context on their own—it’s too complex to be grasped or shifted by any one person or organization or sector. And the people whose cooperation they need don’t understand or agree with or trust them or each other.

Transformative scenario planning is a powerful new methodology for dealing with these challenges. It takes the well-established methodology of adaptive scenario planning—rigorously constructing a set of stories of alternative possible futures—and turns it on its head. It uses scenarios not only to understand and adapt to the future but also to challenge and change it.

Speaker: Adam Kahane is a leading organizer, designer and facilitator of processes through which business, government, and civil society leaders can work together to address their toughest challenges, and has worked in every part of the world, with executives and politicians, generals and guerrillas, civil servants and trade unionists, community activists and United Nations officials, clergy and artists.