Cicero Challenge 2023: Day 20/90

“Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goes out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: Read to Lead.” - Marcus Cicero

These words from Marcus Cicero, Roman philosopher, educator, orator, ring as true today as they did over 2000 years ago. Though we live in an age of constant change, accelerating trends, technological disruption, and endless click-bait distraction, Cicero's wisdom reminds us that a vigorous intellect requires discipline, diligence, and devoted learning if we want to manage through increasingly chaotic times.

That's why Charles Plath & I launched the Cicero Challenge: 90 Days. 90 peer-reviewed journal articles. 90 reflections. (You can read more here.)

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“The future is there... looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become.” ― William Gibson

Cicero Challenge: Day 20/90 “Story thinking for technology foresight” by Helen Marshall, Kim Wilkins, and Lisa Bennett, Futures (2023). Foresight is crucial, but imagination lags. As Marshall, Wilkins, and Bennett argue in the article, storytelling techniques from science fiction and fantasy writing can unlock creative thinking about technological futures for better strategic foresight. Their article outlines a practical model called "Story Thinking" to enhance foresight via narrative tools.

Story Thinking focuses on four key domains:

• Inhabit – Immersively building detailed worlds and scenarios where technology innovations play out. This contextualizes systemic impacts, constraints, and consequences. Writers' worldbuilding skills aid inhabiting unfamiliar futures.
• Empathize – Deeply imagining diverse characters, beyond simple personas. Exploring alternate psychologies and motives expands perspectives on technology adoption and ethics. Writers' character development techniques enable multifaceted possibility thinking.
• Envision – Extrapolating events through plot, revealing plausible chains of cause and effect. Narrative conflict uncovers risks, unintended effects, and turning points influencing technological trajectories. Writers' plot craft envisions dynamic trajectories.
• Engage – Using language, metaphor, and tropes to build shared understanding across disciplines. Writers' stylistic flair facilitates connection, cohort cohesion, and memorable scenarios.

The authors test Story Thinking via workshops between university researchers and military leaders exploring AI applications in Australia. A matrix game simulating a geopolitical crisis engages participants, revealing communication and trust challenges technology could address. Worldbuilding, character perspective exercises, calibrated imagination activities, and translation of insights into pitches enhance creative, collaborative foresight.

"Just as storyworlds provide contextual rule sets, so too do character archetypes offer “systems of meaning” that can provide audiences with a viewpoint for perspective-taking: for seeing and making sense of the world."

Story Thinking then complements scenario writing and forecasting by harnessing imagination to open up possibilities for abductive ideation / design studio methods to generate multiple options. Narrative techniques contextualize technology in rich, human-centered settings. And structured storytelling fosters cohorts co-creating nuanced visions of preferable, plausible futures.

In short, Story Thinking activates untapped skills from science fiction and fantasy writing to enable more expansive ideation of future potentialities. The approach galvanizes trans-disciplinary/cross domain imagination essential for technology foresight - that is imagining the future potential impact of technology, converting constraints into opportunities by infusing analytics with story craft. Let narrative transport your leadership team to futures worth striving toward. The journey begins with "once upon a time..."

In the citations, I came upon "Building Possible Worlds: A Speculation Based Framework to Reflect on Images of the Future", which might be another good article to add to the #CiceroChallenge to discuss with Charles Plath ...

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