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"Another perspective that I believe is missing from Bruce Nussbaum's critique of the design thinking movement is a deeper analysis of why design thinking was believed to be a compelling process in the first place. If we think about its popularity as a design solution to a societal problem, we can critique it as we would a prototype. I believe design thinking attempts to respond to a series of current societal aspirations. This week's blog will look at aspirations on a collective basis and part two will look at those on an individual basis. "

There is a crisis of meaning in the world of business, especially for millenials.  They're asking the question, "Why am I doing this?"  And I think businesses are not providing great answers to those questions, and I think that's why you're getting more and more talented millenials picking a career that is non-business or quasi-business in part for foundation or some NGO.  And I think it's partially tied into this whole shareholder value maximization theory.

"Foresight's Horizon Scanning Centre has built this toolkit: Exploring the future: Tools for strategic thinking for anyone who uses, or would like to use, futures thinking and analysis to make better decisions today. The toolkit is intended for futures analysts, policy-makers, strategists and people managing a futures process. The toolkit draws extensively (but not exclusively) on the approach that Foresight's Horizon Scanning Centre (HSC) takes in its own futures work. "

Scenario Thinking for Small Business Survival with Professor George Cairns, RMIT University.Thursday, September 01, 2011 from 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM (GMT+1000)Melbourne, Australia

Forum for the Future is a non-profit organisation working globally with business and government to create a sustainable future. We have 15 years' experience inspiring new thinking, building creative partnerships and developing practical innovations to change our world. We aim to transform the critical systems that we all depend on, such as food, energy and finance, to make them fit for the challenges of the 21st century.

In his short treatise On Bullshit, the moral philosopher Harry Frankfurt gives us a useful theory of bullshit. We normally think of bullshit as a synonym-albeit a somewhat vulgar one-for lies or deceit. But Frankfurt argues that bullshit has nothing to do with truth. Rather, bullshit is used to conceal, to impress or to coerce. Unlike liars, bullshitters have no use for the truth. All that matters to them is hiding their ignorance or bringing about their own benefit. Gamification is bullshit.

"It all started with Steven Ing's counseling practice. He was working with all sorts of people who were dissatisfied with their lives in one way or another. A man and wife who couldn't talk to each other about their problems, a woman who felt depressed but didn't know why, an older man who seemed to hate the world. And then there were the people who had committed sex crimes who were court ordered to go through therapy with Ing. As Ing went on with his practice, it became apparent to him that his "regular" clients and his "sex-offender" clients all had similar problems that stemmed from the same place. The problems all came back to their individual sexualities and inability to cope with them. Ing then went further and realized that these problems were societal, no one seemed to be able to have an open and honest conversation about sex. But it was not just because in his own backyard that struggled with this aspect of their lives, it was people and cultures all over the world as well. So Ing decided to start a community called "sexual futurist." He wasn't trying to solve everyone's problems or tell them what to think, he just wanted to encourage people to start having intelligent and logical conversations about sex to ultimately lead to change for the better. If we are able to have these intelligent conversations about sex using reason and logic, perhaps one day we'll start being more comfortable with the topic and therefore able to respect sex as an important aspect of our lives. Perhaps we will be able to encourage the United Nations to help people all over the world by enacting our "Sexual Bill of Rights.""

Thought leaders in the field - including Bruce Sterling, Jamais Cascio, Bill McKibben, Witold Rybczynski and Jay Oglivy - will kick-start the launch by blogging about what "prevailing" means to them. Readers will be encouraged to become authors and help direct the discussion in groups devoted to everything from "Creating Stronger, Faster Communities" and "Human Enhancement" to "Revolutionizing Learning" and "Foresight - How Can We Think Critically About the Future?" "Prevailproject.org will be a place for everybody from my mother to technologists inventing the future to grapple with some of the most pressing questions of our time: How are the genetics, robotics, information and nano revolutions changing human nature, and how can we shape our own futures, toward our own ends, rather than being the pawns of these explosively powerful technologies?" said Joel Garreau, the Lincoln Professor of Law, Culture and Values at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, and director of The Prevail Project: Wise Governance for Challenging Futures.

In the first years of the 21st century, our capacities for imagining new realities have proved inadequate. From Madrid to London, Bali to Mumbai, from Katrina-ravaged New Orleans to the tsunami's devastation all around the Indian Ocean, to the most recent financial crisis, the alarms went unheeded until after disaster had struck. Now, as the first decade of the century has drawn to a close, its many shocks make plain that we are living in a world with greater potential for surprise, uncertainty, and threats to resilience. In a time of poorly understood interacting causes and consequences, we require new habits of thinking, new approaches to assessment, and new ways of engaging with the world. Emerging is a world filled with just as much opportunity as risk, but seeing both of those forces and appreciating their interrelatedness requires new lenses and an unflagging awareness of diverse perspectives. It means investing all of our energies to profoundly challenge the status quo.

It's hard to think of a more attention-grabbing title than Robots, Men, and Sex Tourism - especially in the academic world. Written by researchers from New Zealand's University of Wellington and published recently in the journal Futures, the paper predicts that in the decades to come, humans will patronise robot-staffed brothels, freeing them from the guilt associated with visiting a flesh-and-blood prostitute.

Psychologists and other social scientists (most economists excepted) have learned a lot in the last few decades about what makes us happy. They have taught us that, in affluent societies, money doesn't buy as much happiness as people think. Indeed, for people living above subsistence, it may buy very little. They have also taught us what affects well-being more than money: close relations with family, friends, and community; meaningful work; security (financial, job, and health); and democracy.

Africa still evokes in the minds of many some mix of corruption, disease, war, and poverty -- the Four Horsemen of Africa's Apocalypse. Indeed, the economic crisis has fueled a whole new round of such worries. But the perpetual hand-wringing over the continent's dreadful state misses a broader trend: Africa is rising, and it could emerge from the crisis stronger than most people think.

Maybe this is a kind of thing we should think about...

"AAM's Center for the Future of Museums (CFM) helps museums explore the cultural, political and economic challenges facing society and devise strategies to shape a better tomorrow. CFM is a think-tank and research and design lab for fostering creativity and helping museums transcend traditional boundaries to serve society in new ways."

"Global Foresight Associates is a futures research and consulting firm that offers ideas and insights about the future to help our clients determine the strategic implications of change for their business and industry. Our uninhibited thinking offers a unique perspective - a big picture view of the future that explores the current trends and emerging issues reverberating throughout society and business. This view from the "outside in" helps clients innovate existing products, identify new areas and markets for growth and explore the possible, probable and preferable futures for their business."

""We want to demolish museums and libraries," the fevered Italian aesthetic revolutionary F.T. Marinetti declared in his 1909 Futurist Manifesto. "Museums, cemeteries!" Maybe so, maybe no. I'll vote no -- and so, I think, would photographer Richard Barnes, whose fascinating exhibit "Animal Logic," which documents the Smithsonian and other natural history museums as containers of imagined histories and outrageous dreams, is on view this month at Blue Sky Gallery. "

Keep a gratitude journal. Write down and record what you are grateful for, and then when you need to reaffirm your good lot in life, look back on the journal.Remember the bad. If you do not remind yourself of what it was like to be sick, unemployed, or heartbroken, you will be less likely to appreciate health, your job, or your relationship.Ask yourself three questions every evening. Fill in the blanks with the name of a person (or persons) in your life. What have I received from ___? What have I given to ___? What troubles and difficulty have I caused ___?Learn prayers of gratitude. One Emmons suggests in his book from the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh: Waking up this morning, I see the blue sky. I join my hands in thanks; for the many wonders of life; for having 24 brand-new hours before me.Appreciate your senses. One approach: Practice breathing exercises.Use visual reminders. For example, Emmons has a refrigerator magnet in his home bearing this quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery … today is a gift."Make a vow to practice gratitude. "Swearing a vow to perform a behavior actually does increase the likelihood that the action will be executed," the psychologist notes.Watch your language: It influences how you think about the world.Go through the motions. Research shows that emotions can follow behavior.Be creative. Look for new situations and opportunities in which to feel grateful, especially when things are not going well.Though he practices these techniques, Emmons acknowledges that maintaining an attitude of thanksgiving is hard work even for him."Most psychologists study what they're bad at," he says.

"The Future of Humanity Institute is a multidisciplinary research institute at the University of Oxford. It enables a select set of leading intellects to bring careful thinking to bear on big-picture questions about humanity and its prospects. The Institute belongs to the Faculty of Philosophy and the Oxford Martin School."

"The Foresight for Development initiative is being piloted in Africa by the South Africa Node of the Millennium Project, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation. Foresight for Development is accountable to the directors of the South Africa Node of the Millennium Project. We support the effective use of foresight for Africa's future by aggregating, enhancing and promoting futures thinking and practice in Africa."