International Futures Forum - History

History

In 2001, the Scottish Council Foundation (SCF), a think-tank based in Edinburgh, undertook an interesting move by founding a new organisation called the International Futures Forum (IFF).

It was established in 2001 to explore alternatives to the defensive approaches that leaders in any sector tend to hold to in the face of what IFF calls "powerful times". Its first two years of start up were funded by a generous grant from a BP foundation with an open brief essential to attract the range of international thinkers that became its initial membership. After the initial two years IFF continued developing through its members voluntary work and occasional assignments.

Today, the IFF is an independent registered charity with independent trustees and with a portfolio of support from foundations, research bodies, local authorities, commercial organisations and individuals.

Its current description and brochure can be found at www.internationalfuturesforum.com

IFF has over the last few years gained experience exploring transformative action not only with its original sponsor, BP with other organisations including BT, Diageo, Shell, Carnegie Uk Trust, Jerwood Charitable Foundation, the Esme Fairbairn Foundation and with communities ranging from Falkirkin Scotland to Varanasi in India.

This world is seen as a challenge for business, government and society and confronts them with the task of 'restor the capacity to act effectively and responsibly and thereby revive and foster a culture of human aspiration'. Based on this view of today's world, the IFF seeks to create a new 'paradigm' by going beyond'traditional' ways of making sense of the world.

How does the IFF view its role in the spread of the Second Enlightenment? A diagram in one its first reports shows a "dialogue" between a variety of actors:

'Core dialogue thinkers' disseminate knowledge, specialist information and support to a 'one member has a role designated converter', who 'convert the insights from the dialogue into practical form and who disseminate it to a wider audience'.

Individual members are drawn from a broad variety of organisations, business corporations, artists and writers, the BBC, unspecified 'social entrepreneurs', policy makers and researchers.

IFF sees itself not as an expert think tank but a network of learners who acknowledge that, whatever expertise they may have achieved professionally, the challenges we face, locally and globally, require a learning and discovery rather than the application of known solutions. The emphasis is on joint exploration in an interdisciplinary way with those who invite them to explore alternate views to intractable problems. IFF does not function as a consultancy.

This small group convening for the IFF's first meeting in April 2001 included among others former Director of the OECD International Futures Programme and 'futurist' Wolfgang Michalski; Kees van der Heijden (director of the scenario and strategy consultancy Global Business Network, Emeritus Professor of General and Strategic Management at Strathclyde University, former head of the Business Environment Division in Group Planning at Royal Dutch/Shell, London), Arun Maira from Boston Consulting Group India, Biologist Brian Goodwin, Pat Kane from the Sunday Herald, and Mark Woodhouse, a philosopher interested in 'scientific, spiritual, and healing communities'.

Responding to the Conceptual Emergency

Rather than being a permanent think-tank, the IFF is an attempt to facilitate an international network of thinkers, businesspeople and policy makers. During a case study trip to BP's Grangemouth refinery - the IFF group also conducted case studies on the 'learning society in Dundee' ('IFF Learning in Dundee. A Second Enlightenment View' and on health provision for 'deprived individuals and communities in Fife' (IFF Entreprise in Falkirk - the IFF helped stimulate a "vision" for the future of Falkirk/Grangemouth.

When BP asked the IFF how it could combine the challenge of adjusting the plant to global competition bearing on mind the responsibility of BP to all local stakeholders The IFF responded by proposing to reframe the downsizing of the plant, which culminated in the lay off of about 1000 employees, as a creative opportunity. As BP is a 'different kind of energy company, radiating energy of all kinds - intellectual, physical, creative - into the community', the sacking of workers equals 'releasing high quality resources into the community' BP is no longer owner of the refineryand Falkirk has gone on to attract large scale of inward investments to place its economy on a different path through "My Future's in Falkirk"

In 2004/05, IFF / Praxis was commissioned by Nirex "to provide corporate communications advice in relation to the Managing Radioactive Waste Safely (MRWS) consultation programme". IFF is neither pro nor anti-nuclear and its interest was in exploring perspectives on how the transient nature of cultures and civilisations could be recognised with hazards that lasts for tens of thousands of years.