“In God we trust; all others must bring data.”
William Edwards Deming
- Instructor: Thierry Warin
- Semester: Fall 2021
Description
This seminar is titled Futures and foresight. In some ways, it could also be titled planetary economics or Intelligence Economics.
This seminar is a reading seminar. It serves multiple purposes. First and foremost, it is about developing scenarios to construct a data-driven understanding of the future. As a manager in a company, it is important to be able to measure the different categories of risk: political, economic, environmental, technological, etc.
In this seminar, we will think in terms of proxies to be able to have a quantitative approach to these global risks.
We will also bring the geopolitical context of the firms and develop a political economy perspective on future issues.
In terms of operational mode, after a short exposé from the moderator, the group participants will bring their understanding, their cultural background, and their experiences to the conversation. and these conversations will be data-based.
We will use www.mondo.international with other databases to back our collective narrative. Our approach will be evidence-based.
We will also follow the Chatham House rule.
Topics
See the “syllabus” menu for further details.
Session 1. Structural forces [Click here]
- Demographics and human development
- Environment
- Economics
- Technology
Session 2. Terrorism as a paradigm shift in the early 21st century [Click here]
- September 11th
- Afghanistan
- Future geopolitical forces
Session 3. Populism across the world [Click here]
- The question of populism and nationalism in the future.
Session 4. Global flows: International trade, finance and migration [Click here]
- State of globalization: where will we be in terms of global movements: goods and services, capital and people.
Session 5. The elephant in the room: the environment [Click here]
- GIEC
Session 6. Scenarios for 2040 [Click here]
- Renaissance of democracies
- A world adrift
- Competitive coexistence
- Separate silos
- Tragedy and mobilization
Course schedule
| Session 1 | Session 2 | Session 3 | Session 4 | Session 5 | Session 6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thursday, September 9 | Thursday, September 23 | Thursday, October 7 | Thursday, October 28 | Thursday, November 11 | Thursday, November 25 |
| 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM | 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM | 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM | 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM | 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM | 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM |
Material
- Our book (in the making) here
- Global Trends 2040, A publication of the National Intelligence Council
- mondo.international
- Tech Competition Simulation - Futures DLC
Community values and Honor Code
In this course, you will have access to some of the tools we use on our data science platform in our lab http://lab.warin.com. The use of these tools requires adherence to our Honour Code. This comes on top of the school’s regulations [here]
Community Values
It is essential to foster a supportive (e-)learning environment.
In our lab, we believe it is essential that all participants embody and uphold our community values in order to foster a supportive online learning environment where individuals can have open discussion, reflect on their thinking and learn from each other.
Our laboratory’s Honour Code
A code of honour, ethics and respect.
Our Honour Code complements the Community Values Statement and reflects the commitment of participants as members of the learning community to participate in, foster and sustain the learning model of our laboratory.