Business in Vancouver column, September 20, 2011
A tool you may have used in strategic planning, and which is often used in sustainability planning, is backcasting. You envision the future as you want it, then work backward to determine how to get there.
But what about envisioning the future you don’t want, and trying to figure out how to avoid it?
This summer I read a novel that had me backcasting furiously. Set in Bangkok a couple hundred years from now, The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi painted a picture that felt all too uncomfortably like a future we would never choose, but may be heading smack into. And the book gave plenty to consider about the role of business in shaping that future.
It’s a great read – good characters, compelling plot, intrigue and drama. (It also won five awards and dozens of accolades from respected reviewers, so you don’t have to take my word for it.) The story and characters take precedence over the apocalyptic backdrop; far from preaching, this book leaves you wishing for more detail about the author’s well-imagined future world.
It’s not a pretty one, unfortunately. But it is painfully believable: cheap, plentiful oil is a thing of the distant past… Read full column
