The last couple of weeks have been fascinating. Last week in Bavaria with the editorial board of E:CO, this week in Singapore for the IRAHSS seminar. In both cases it has been a chance to get together with some really intelligent people who care about the way the world is going. OK there have been a few frustrations with the odd speaker (see past posts) but overall its been a chance to learn and think. I have a host of material as a result and some will feed into the blog over the next week. One of the interesting themes which came up over the last couple of weeks in Singapore is the ethical dimension to managing risk. Singapore rejected derivatives (something that the rest of world may wish they had followed) in part on ethical grounds. The subject came up a lot the last two days and one of the arguments I and others made was that making decisions under conditions of uncertainty on ethical grounds was not just right, but a method of risk mitigation. Either way my thanks to the University of Augsburg and the Singapore Government for allowing me to participate in two weeks of deep intellectual stimulation.
And for those who worry about ethics, Dr Vaine has finally granted me the great honour of a specific mention (well he uses Dennis, but slips to Dave two thirds of the way through). Great satire and a timely reminder of the absurdity of the carpet baggers who populate the management space.
Comments (2)
Coincidentally I'm just reading Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett - one of my very merry favourite authors - for the second or third time now. Pratchett often kicks my brain into places I forgot, which is why I keep reading him.
Risk mitigation. I love the phrase. But I have this unsettling feeling that we're sometimes besides the point when we use these kinds of concepts. Risk is something like bending down to stroke your cat and not looking up again because of this block of concrete which happened to be in the same place somewhere in the very near future. Yes, we can mitigate these risks by forbidding cats in urban environments or by banning concrete cast in cubes. But how about meteorites, impacting the whole world? We can see them coming nowadays. We know exactly when they are going to hit. Doing something about these kinds of events is not about risk mitigation. It's about being realistic and about facing up to the occasion. And yes, this is Cohen speaking, Boy Willy, Truckle, Caleb, Mr Saveloy and so on. The Horde.
We need to develop a very new perspective on things very fast indeed. A kind of Rincewind kind of fast. Even at 3% global growth, which is at the border of recession, we will globally consume and produce 8 more times more than now in only 70 years. 800% of what we consume and produce now, in only 70 years, one life time, while people shout murder because of recession.
Or am I mistaken? I hope so. Please watch this video (it's quite decently cut up in only eight – 8 – parts): http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY.
Posted by Mireille Jansma | October 14, 2008 10:23 PM
Posted on October 14, 2008 22:23
I ckecked the link above and it doesn't work. So go yo YouTube and search for "The most important video you'll ever see". (Whether it is, is up to you to decide.)
Posted by Mireille Jansma | October 15, 2008 10:03 PM
Posted on October 15, 2008 22:03