For Creatives Seeking Emergent and Regenerative Future Foresight
Thought this week
Revolutions happen in 2 phases:
1. realisation something has gone wrong
2. everyone realised the other person has realised the same thing. People talk more about it.
Brian Eno
What do you do when you exist within a system you know is not working, yet you feel powerless to change it?
Looking back at the last 20 years, this is the question I set out to answer when my work in fashion design and fashion forecasting didn't feel right anymore. It was a ‘slow burn’ at first riddled with cognitive dissonance I didn’t have words for. I can remember the point I could no longer ignore my discomfort in 2007 when I took a break between design jobs and went to volunteer in Tanzania for a few months. But it wasn’t until the early 2010’s I became much more vocal and clearer about the unsustainability of fashion.
The journey of pealing this onion has not stopped, evolving into questioning how we forecast the future to all too often serve a set of complex and interdependent systems that hinder our planet and people.
I decided I needed more systems change training. I looked into Transition Design, a practice created by Terry Irwin, but the programme I applied for was sadly cancelled at the start of the pandemic. So I took a course in Biomimicry, whilst exploring a few things my father had shared with me when he was training to become an organic farmer, studying biodynamics. I was fascinated at how these solutions that were based on biology, natural cycles and ancient wisdoms could be applied to future foresight, frustrated by a future foresight field I think overserves an outdated set of systems.
Equipped with grand ideas and some knowledge of natural systems and flows, I introduced corresponding principles into new foresight methodologies and curriculum with the Trend Atelier.
But these methods and principles were still somewhat surface level. I knew I had to dedicate time to intense studying with experts and mentors as well as a community to deepen these regenerative futures methods, in order for them to be an integral custodian of biomimicry and life’s principles.
I am not going to deliver you an overconfident report or a framework with fancy words and infographics.
I am a part time student at the moment, and sharing my own learning journey as I’ve embarked on becoming a Biomimicry Educator with Learn Biomimicry's school and community endorsed by the Biomimicry Institute.
I'm integrating Biomimicry in my strategic foresight ecosystem to work in unity with nature's intelligence and life’s principles, as a force for systems change and innovation. Here’s some additional context in my theory of change as a regenerative futures architect.
This all stems from a belief that the creative and foresight industry, as a force for systems change and innovation, must reappraise their vision and role, to guide solutions in harmony with nature’s intelligence, not in service of systems that hinder our planet and people. To intervene in this insane system we’ve built, one solution is to radically slow down.
One of the first requirements in the Learn Biomimicry program
It is to quiet the cleverness. It’s telling the systems thinking and innovation training that requires me to work more closely with nature’s genius than ever before, requires me to do the most counterintuitive thing (in our current operating system):
- Slow down and quiet my own cleverness and desire to rush to solutions.
Quieting the cleverness asks us to embody the mindset of nature’s intelligence, as we learn to emulate her genius, working (amongst other things) with Life’s principles and the 3 seeds of Biomimicry thinking – Ethos, (Re)Connect and Emulate.
This is about approaching systems change and innovation from your soul and natural flow, not an algorithmic approach to success.
There are quite intensive aspects to the training, including the most recent deep dive into biological models whilst simultaneously digging into learning theories. But today I want to zero in with you on quieting the cleverness because this process has been deeply liberating:
- For how I nurture my gaze and understanding of foresight and systems thinking as a futurist and regenerative futures architect.
- It’s changing my centre of gravity in a way that does not hinder my ‘efficiency’, it amplifies it because I am learning to work according and with nature’s intelligence, and how it’s all there for us to reconnect with the soul of innovation and systems change.
Your invitation
If you haven’t been able to tell yet, today’s Futuring dispatch is an invitation for us all to consider what quieting our cleverness means. Welcome to part two of my series on slowing time (part 1 here), which inherently demands quietness.
I invite you to rethink the rushing and scarcity mindset we’ve been sold, so that collectively we can feel powerful again to create the change we want to see. By reconnecting with the flow and intelligence of nature, we can reignite our future-making mindset. This is the foundation of innovation and making visionary connections.
Here’s the breakdown of what I share in today's piece, starting with the context, the issues and then the solutions:
- Quieting the cleverness
- Radical Efficiency Rationalism
- What is the philosophy behind quieting the cleverness?
- If you choose the path of quieting the cleverness, here are inhibitors to look out for
- Practical first steps to quiet the cleverness
- Parting Thoughts
Quieting the cleverness
Perhaps a good place to start is the origin journey, not just for context, but to potentially illicit similar feelings/ experiences you might have had.
I used to be a fashion designer and design director managing collections for multimillion dollar international brands, experiencing first-hand how broken and wasteful the fashion system was for 12 years and left that career in 2010. You could say I’m a ‘recovering’ fashion designer (a term I’ve stolen from Amanda Johnston) .
Very much still wanting to be in the fashion world I loved to my core (I banned my mother from dressing me at age 2 for some context) I started working for the biggest fashion foresight agency in the world. I learned a lot and worked with great people. But quite quickly, I saw that we were stuck regardless of the quality of our teams and our work. We were ticking boxes.
- This many trends in the seasonal report - tick.
- These many colours are needed in our forecast - tick.
- This many images in the forecast – tick
- These many silhouettes – tick
Regardless of whether we actually needed them. Regardless of how innovative these trends were. No questions asked. Only because this is how it was done and this is how the game was played. We worked in futures but forgot to do the one essential thing in the act of ‘futuring’: QUESTION and CHANGE THE RULES. It was a form of box ticking I had experienced on the fashion design side of things. Except in some ways worse - because we were supposed to be the future forward ones working in forecasting!
Since leaving the corporate world in 2013 I’ve advised some of the world’s leading consulting, media, creative, foresight and strategy agencies, as well as big brands and institutions. I’ve spoken on world leading stages and teach foresight methodologies at universities and in my own school Trend Atelier.
And I can tell you one thing for sure:
- The soul of innovation is in crisis.
Creatives are suffering. Many forecasters and strategists are miserable. Leaders feel lost. Because we all know the system we serve is broken. There’s no shortage of amazing visionaries and pioneering ideas here to change our broken operating system. It’s not hopeless, things are changing, but much slower than they can or should.
What I've observed throughout my journey — from fashion design teams to forecasting agencies to teaching foresight methodologies to advising — is a consistent pattern that transcends individual organisations. It's a systemic philosophy that has infiltrated our entire approach to innovation, one that prioritises a particular type of cleverness over genuine wisdom. This is what I've come to call 'Radical Efficiency Rationalism'.
You could say it’s because of the current socio-economic and technological climate and the complexity of the dynamic changes happening. But here’s one of the root causes of the problem and what has been plunging innovation and innovators into an existential crisis.
Radical Efficiency Rationalism
The Perils
We live in an era that glorifies speed and the relentless pursuit of the next big idea disguised as cleverness. How this manifests:
- We need to be fast at publishing opinions, turning thought leadership into self-promotion not idea promotion, at a time when pundit culture prevails.
- We now seem bent on proving humans are replaceable. We have AI. Tech will fix it all including us faulty humans. Radical Efficiency Rationalism.
- We have all the frameworks. All the diagrams. All the data. All the mental models and productivity solutions. All the insights and reports. All the information we could ever dream of having access to - and a click away.
The possibilities are limitless right? We've never had so much technological innovation, media. We've never had so much access to collaborative tools as well.
We are so clever, aren’t we?
Radical Efficiency Rationalism, at any cost, is the name of the game. If we’re not able to 'bend the will of the market toward your brand' as I recently read in a report on a new ‘architecture of belief’ by a leading brand strategist, this is a failure. The idea is that brands (and people who see themselves as personal brands) can control everything and 'decide how everything plays out' in culture, in consumption, in technology, in innovation.
The issue is that in order for this 'architecture of belief' to work, scarcity is the root emotion because you, or the brand are being told that you need to be ‘cleverer’ and if you’re not ‘bending the market’ and the consumer and/ or audience’s cultural desires and perceptions, you’re a loser. That’s Radical Efficiency Rationalism for you.
My question to this is: you’re a loser at what exactly?
If Radical Efficiency Rationalism is the way, then why are we facing the biggest crisis of imagination we’ve seen in centuries?
It’s a crisis felt by the youth all the way to leadership and across many sectors. This crisis doesn’t discriminate, it’s generous.
Our idea of cleverness and efficiency, and the game to play and win, have become highly inefficient.
