Every organisation needs to imagine what the future will be like and plan both for the good times ahead and the bad. As we are buffeted by changes in technology, customer behaviour and expectations, and by black swan events such as Covid 19 or a war in Ukraine it becomes vital that we plan for… Read More Building future scenarios and worlds
To start to solve big problems (in the world or in business) we need to zoom out and consider the systems in which the problems occur. To build rich convincing worlds we need to take a similar connected systems view. Perhaps a world building approach will help provide new perspectives on big problems. Everything is… Read More Thinking in systems while building worlds
As I get deeper into World Building I have been looking for tools and ideas that can help me. In this post I want to explore Place Making; the study of how to turn physical built spaces into living communities. There is no guarantee that a set of homes, shops or industrial units will become… Read More Making places inside worlds
We know a lot about consumers online and through data we can watch them behave. When we do, what we see is huge variety. They don’t conform to easily identifiable patterns and in particular we don’t see them behaving as the famous marketing funnel would suggest. Marketing funnels have been around for years and encourage… Read More Digital marketing funnels need to go in an omnichannel world
As part of my world building experimentation, I want to start thinking about brands and how they might build worlds for their customers (and non-customers) to explore. I chose to illustrate my thinking using, Starbucks, where there is rich digital activity and where the business is relatively easy to understand. The way most of us… Read More Exploring the world of Starbucks
The idea of imagining and creating new worlds does not immediately make us think of business. Most world building books are about games, fantasy or science fiction and most of the online world building communities discuss swords, orcs and distant planets. There appear to be at least three possible applications of these same ideas, however,… Read More World Building for Business Transformation
I have devised a lightweight framework for designing new worlds and in this post I want to see how well it works and identify what is lacking. This is part of a bigger project to design a curriculum for world building particularly suited to companies and organisations to offer them an alternative to scenario planning.… Read More World Building: Sleep Clinic
We build worlds for lots of reasons: to tell stories, to build brands, to explore future scenarios, to invent games, to change cultures or just to take a journey away from our current lives. Everyone has many worlds inside them and I’m excited to start to bring some more of mine to life. Imagining the… Read More World building: a structured approach with 10 steps
I wonder what 2022 has in store. I’m certainly looking forward to teaching new students and meeting my colleagues again after a couple of months away in Europe. But it’s also time to make some predictions for the year ahead. Here, then, are ten technology trends that I think we be important for me this… Read More Technology trends to care about in 2022?
In my last post I said I had been inspired to explore World Building in more detail. I’ve been building worlds throughout my career but not by that name. This post will try to explain why I am so (re)energised by the idea. We live in a world of complex problems and ideas and many… Read More World Building: Why build worlds?