"We should try to be the parents of our future rather than the offspring of our past" Miguel de Unamuno (Spanish literary figure, 1864-1936)

Reported by BACC Director David Wegge

Is the future so bright your organization has gotta wear shades? Or are your shades blocking you from seeing the future?

Let’s start with some not-so-simple questions: How do you envision your organization in 2025? If you know where you want your organization to be in 2025, how do you plan to get there? What internal and external changes will take place that may disrupt your envisioned organization either positively or negatively? 

We live in an era of massive and rapid change. In the next few years, artificial intelligence and machine learning will create significant disruptions in the workforce and how organizations conduct business. Just these two change agents alone will create substantial risk to organizational survival. Drop on top of that bio-engineering, robotics, climate change, autonomous transportation, block-chain and the significant demographic wave of change emerging in the U.S., and you have a recipe for challenges the likes we have never seen before. 

Experts in several areas tell us the Midwest is not as prepared for these changes as are organizations on the Coasts. Yet many of the organizations in the Midwest compete nationally and globally. How will we meet the challenges that are being created at accelerating speed? Are our organizational leaders prepared for the future? Do we have the tools to see around corners or over the horizon at what is coming at our organizations? 

Leaders play the key role in helping our organizations answer these questions. In The Truth About Leadership, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, two prominent leadership experts, conclude that one characteristic that sets leaders apart is their focus on the future. 

Using Futuring and Strategic Foresight Tools to Gain Insight and Meet Challenges

Assessing the future is not the same as trying to predict it, which would be folly. Instead, it involves using systematic approaches to provide insights regarding how the future will be different than the present. It requires collecting information, identifying trends, analyzing the trends with the future in mind, and crafting scenarios that enlighten and move people to action. 

Organizations and communities that incorporate futuring and strategic foresight analysis into their planning processes will have a much better chance of reducing risks and maximizing opportunities. Watching for signals of change, monitoring trends and identifying tipping points, are crucial steps in the futuring process. To maximize the value of futuring, organizations must engage in these foresight tools on an ongoing basis. This produces a continuous process of assessment and reassessment about the future.

What is the BACC Doing to Advance Futuring and Foresight Analysis in the Greater Green Bay Area?

The BACC started this process with a basic question, "Why are some communities vibrant and successful, while others stagnate and fail?" Many factors influence the success or failure of communities. We believe one critical factor is having a core of community leaders who look into the future by using foresight analysis. Training leaders who can infuse futuring and foresight analysis into their organizations can significantly impact the success of business, not-for-profits and governmental bodies, thus boosting the quality of life for all. The BACC's futuring project has a goal of doing just that.

In September 2017, the BACC sponsored the “Envisioning the Future” conference key noted by futurist Garry Golden. As a follow-up activity to that conference, the BACC piloted a workshop in September 2018 – also led by Golden – for 10 local business, not-for-profit and governmental leaders representing the Green Bay Packers, Brown County, New North, Greater Green Bay Foundation, Wipfli, MasterFleet, Bellin Health Systems, Howard-Suamico School District, Nature’s Way and Live 54218. Participants spent one full day learning about various futuring tools and how to employ them in their organization. The full day session will be followed up by three half-day video conference sessions in addition to one-on-one sessions with Garry Golden. Participants will utilize the futuring tools within their organizations to better understand how the trends will affect their workforce of the future. In December, the participants will report out how their organization utilized futuring and what value it brought to them personally as leaders as well as to their organization. 

The entire four-month futuring project focuses on four outcomes in which the participants will learn:

1) How to apply foresight tools, techniques and frameworks centered on the theme “Future of Work,” and how to analyze the resulting implications for their organization or industry;

2) How to develop the ability to scan for signals of change and then imagine the disruptive implications for their organization or industry;

3) How to ask key questions that assess assumptions toward change, transitions, uncertainty and the role of leadership;

4) How to apply foresight techniques to both personal and community futures thinking. 

This pilot workshop will lay the groundwork for other programs that the BACC may offer to assist leaders and organizations as they confront the challenges of a rapidly changing future. 

Answering the call of de Unamuno, we want the BACC and our community leaders to be the parents of our future.

The BACC welcomed its first futuring workshop cohort, pictured below, at St. Norbert College on Sept. 14, 2018

(Fourth in a series of BACC director responses to the BACC’s community summit report, Greater Green Bay: Envisioning the Future Report to the Community . )

Support for Entrepreneurs, Innovation, and Capital…their respective roles in the growth and sustainability of communities

Offered by BACC Director Randall Lawton

That was Then

Greater Green Bay has a proud tradition of spawning entrepreneurial companies that have been very innovative and successful--Hoberg Paper, Northern Tissue, Ft. Howard Paper, Green Bay Packaging, Paper Converting, Schneider, Schreiber, Green Bay & Western railroad, and many more. They all succeeded and became large and successful companies because they invested and executed on their core competencies and capabilities (such as design, manufacturing expertise, logistics, technology application, and product marketing) that created competitive advantage. These businesses often started from local investors’ capital support combined with a willing and able entrepreneur, and grew steadily by providing customer value and the reinvestment of their earnings. The real opportunity and the pace of change and development was generally in line with the technology advancement, consumer demand, and the speed society and the economy was moving at the time. This writer honors those legacies, but also recognizes that our business community is discovering what it takes to create a new type of success model in this era. It takes the same raw talent and entrepreneurial drive, but different infrastructure support levels driven by differences in technology, demand, and the speed our global society/economy is moving.

Northeastern Wisconsin for many reasons has struggled to adapt.

Example: In 2008 an Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation was established at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay (UWGB) in order to satisfy the demand for entrepreneurial services. The rest of the world was embracing, implementing, and funding these constructs with the intention of stepping up the growth of high quality jobs and creating a capital base for the future. It turned out this area did not have the depth of understanding and appreciation for what impact these initiatives could deliver to the local economy. Additionally, the funding was not aggressively supported by UWGB and the project was abandoned. We knew that the more dynamic US coastal areas and even Madison were creating successful start-ups at ever increasing levels, and we knew we had the raw capability, but we also recognized that our wonderful steady-state region was not quite ready to make the necessary changes and commitments.  

This is Now - Fast forward to today

Advance almost ten years since the Institute was attempted and we are in the midst of a second start at creating foundational infrastructure for an entrepreneurial and innovative ecosystem. And this time our community is a good deal more prepared. We have a vision of the architecture, and leaders who are more savvy, which provides a far clearer mental model of the desired future state. The increased number of people and organizations both for-profit, not-for-profit, and educational that are working, learning, and committing to entrepreneurship and innovation is staggering compared to 2009.

A core tenet of this era is that we are a digital world, and our future growth will come from technology. Another equally key tenet is global economy; our ability to create global competitive advantage requires being good at innovating in this digital world.

Titletown Tech, the new joint venture between Microsoft and the Green Bay Packers, is designed to be the cornerstone of an incredible start-up and innovation breakthrough that we are witnessing in northeast Wisconsin. The three areas that need to be covered if development is to move rapidly are start-up numbers, risk capital, and large corporate connections. All three are being covered with this initiative. This should be the gravitational slingshot that our regional start-up ecosystem needs to reach self-sustaining growth. 

Titletown Tech is focusing on regional business strengths including sports media, digital health care, supply chain operations, advanced manufacturing, and agribusiness/environment/water. To win in modern technological innovation, networks of talent, experts, and capital are required. Titletown Tech is organizing access so their supported ventures have the best chance of success. They are also structured so that in most circumstances the investment capital will remain or be reinvested to benefit northeast Wisconsin, even if a start-up is sold and moves out of the area. The goal is not just start-up businesses but scalable on-going ventures that make impact and offer high quality jobs and a sustainable economic future that bring prosperity and wealth to the area. 

One could easily believe that the near simultaneous groundbreaking of UWGB’s STEM Innovation Center/College of Engineering and the announcement of Titletown Tech was just a coincidence. I believe that it was our institutions developing common-sense solutions to an observable problem and the timing just happened to coincide. There is now a confluence of organizations such as NEW North, NEW Venture Foundry, Kinnektor, Advance, Launch Wisconsin, Angels on the Water, Winnebago Partners, Wisconsin Technology Council, Rise & Grind, Fast Forward 3.0, Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., t2 Accelerator, and many more that are now part of this NEW infrastructure.

Given what is going on, I like our odds.