Several things struck me as a drove north through the Greek landscape.  Firstly radio remains one of the great mediums to communicate ideas and thinking.  It is much more powerful than television.  Secondly podcasts, and the willingness of broadcasters to make their material available is providing a wonderful new way to access this material. Thirdly, radio is the last refuge of the generalist and all round thinker, where intellectual is not a dirty word and you can avoid the soundbite culture of the trivial.  Radio, combined with podcasts mean that I can listen to the latest on cognitive science as I walk between meetings in London and the wonderful Phil Adams whose views and passions I largely share, can keep me motivated through the most tedious of tube journeys.  I just wish the BBC showed the same generosity as the ABC who make all of their material available on line, not just the most recent edition.

Back to scenario planning tomorrow when I have calmed down.

Members of the Boston Knowledge Forum and the ActKM listserv get a 10% discount. If you have been on an earlier programme and want a refresher then let us know and we will cut you a deal.  The 10% discount also applies if you are nominated by an existing member of the network.  For those of you interested in starting a project we are developing a new offering which uses the course as a kick off, so if that is of interest email me and we can discuss.

Linda Popova, the blog author, correctly spots that while Conway quotes me on the irrationality of human decision making, he fails to see that I argue that reality exists (I remain amazed that you have to argue this with some post-modernists) and the tensions between perceptions and reality provide an important tool for thinking about the future.    Linda concludes her blog by saying: I would not apply scenario planning to my national security issue as long as I’m doing a situation assessment. However, I do believe scenario planning as a technique could be a valuable addition to long-term strategic analysis, especially when used to challenge assumptions about rational choice whether on an individual or a collective level. 

Now I have a lot of sympathy with that but not complete agreement, so I thought I would use the stimulus to blog some thoughts on scenario planning as a technique.  I will do this in the form of a series of statements.

• The nature of evidence and the method by which we capture or generate it not only for what has happened in the past, but also the different perspectives on that past, and possible developments that can take place in the future. This includes the key question of granularity of source material.
• The method by which we carry out a situational assessment, how we describe the current state of affairs, and how do we generate different perspectives, including ones which are not our own.
• The method by which we determine our next actions, the immediacy of those actions, the risk/confidence level that we apply and also the way in which we monitor for weak signals which would indicate that we need to reset those actions, or even reset the situational assessment.

I am leaving out a range of issues relating to operational deployment, instead I am concentrating on the strategic elements.  My overall argument is that scenario planning as traditionally understood, has some utility, but also severe dangers.  I also find a lot of the hype around it dubious.  So far there seem to be two good case studies: one at Shell and the other in South Africa.  Given the number of scenarios created and the money made in creating them I would have expected more.  I am also dubious when people say "Ah but if it is done properly" or "You have not worked with me" or variations thereof.  A technique, if it has utility should not be totally dependent on the process facilitator no matter what the ego needs of said facilitator, and some of the players in this space have significant egos!

Now this is a big post, so I plan to do it in three blogs over this week, one for each of the points above and possibly a fourth as conclusion.  I will also be teaching the subject in part today at a Grande École so I may create a pod cast.  I am then moving on to Greece for a meeting on a major academic project using SenseMaker which links to the first point.  So overall strategy is going to be on my mind this week.

Any specific questions or comments leave a comment or send an email and I will attempt to deal with them as I post through the week.  I've even created a new category!

Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in

However in wider use the term also means the creation of shared content, which is freely available to all generally under the various legal structures available under the creative commons.  Now there are ideological approaches  which argue against any concept of ownership or control.  There are also general phrases such as open source intelligence which simply indicate that material is publicly available.

The arguments for open source (generally) and open source software (specifically) are in the main a mixture of the pragmatic and the ideological.  The one thing that is clear is that all successful open source movements make money somewhere in the system, and until the fall of capitalism and/or the availability of unrestrained resource (neither of which are likely) this will remain the case.  On the side of pragmatism the concept of large numbers of people testing and working on something is advanced as improving quality, and the same is an argument for increased likelihood of innovation.  At the same time, such an approach also means that many views are taken into account, which can also lead to bland conformity with the orthodoxies of the present, or of the interest group who engage; become an active editor in the Wikipedia if you want examples of this.

Open source software models in the main switch from license revenue to service revenue.  You don't have a lock in on the software (anyone can access it) but attempts to lock in on service fees (installation) or by licensing specific applications or bundles with proprietary software.  Some models seek to dominate a space with huge Venture Capital investment, and then use the platforms they create to make money through advertising and other services.  This is not always visible, frequently not transparent and is anyway subject to the needs of the VC community.  Even Angel investmentors are not immune to commercial gain.

Making choices, but money has to come into the equation somewhere

Now there is a hidden assumption here, namely that one needs to make money.  I will freely admit to getting irritated with academics and public servants who from the security of a monthly salary, pension and other benefits criticise those of us who, in order to create something new, have had to work for ourselves or create start up companies.

Anyone doing this faces a series of choices.  In Cognitive Edge we decided that we would retain license fees on the software, but we would not restrict access to that software other than a requirement to attend a training course.  Services are thus "free" and unrestricted but the software is not.  Other groups would reverse that position.  Neither is right or wrong per se.  However to say that there is a contradiction between open source methods and proprietary software is to display a woeful ignorance of the open source movement and economics in general.

There is also a question of focus.  Sometimes, to establish a novel or different way of doing things it is necessary to keep a tight focus.  Once a core way of operating has been established then it is possible to change the nature of models.  For example making API's open so that other people can develop software which links and connects is a logical and allows a broader community of developers to engage.  However to get there requires investment and time.  It doesn't happen overnight.  Mixing open source and proprietary models of software development is also increasingly attractive, as a product matures and its user base increases.

If you are developing software against a known need with a large body of people who already understand the principles then a "pure" open source method might work.  However something novel, where the concept as well as the software has to be sold requires a very different approach.

Other business models give everything away on the basis that money can be made through advertising.  This is a common one, but increasingly subject (as Doc Searls points out) to control by a reducing number of players.  I previously referenced the danger here if you look at history.  I am not sure how long the advertising model, with its high wastage can survive, it shows all the sigh of a bubble, and when that bubble bursts we are likely to see a field dominated by a limited number of strong players with large capital bases.  Often the business models here are not transparent and as I said earlier I think its the transparency of the business model that counts, less than its nature.

There is also the question of time and place.  I love the concept of Linux, partly because I don;t like Microsoft.  However I use OSX because I only want to use an operating system as a tool to achieve other purposes, I am not interested in operating systems per se.  We are undergoing an period of extreme turbulence in technology coupled with economic, political and environmental uncertainty.  There is no guarantee that current models will persist or scale.  Sometimes it is necessary to create a proprietary approach to make progress in a unique field in whole or in part, and wait for critical mass to buy into the approach.

So its not a simple open source good, proprietary bad position.  It is far more complex, with many a difficult choices to make.  In Cognitive Edge we chose not to restrict access to the methods (anyone can be trained and then contribute), or (other than through training) to the right to use the software.  Other than for charity cases or future research we do not discount or differentiate fees - we keep a level playing field for all practitioners.  Critically we also, through revenue share, allow those practitioners to create sources of income that will free then from the constant tyranny of utilisation.  By providing tools we give them a means to survive outside the structures of large consultancy firms.  We also provide people in government and industry with access to that network and its tools to again reduce the dependency on manufacturing models of consultancy.  Not only that we have managed all of that todate without selling a large part of the company to a VC who might well have very different objectives.

So I don't take offense at remarks such as the above mentioned tweet, it's a simplistic comment based on a naive perspective from a protected position on what it takes to create software tools these days, particularly ones that challenge management orthodoxies.  The one thing I can tell said Tweeter is that IBM never got it, and never will. 

At the same time there were several statements with which I profoundly disagreed.  This includes: Centralisation for the greater good and the incredible proposition that If it is not in the data warehouse then it can't be true.  A lot of people seem to want to fit things into comfortable rather than challenging models.  We were told that ECM (Enterprise content management) is the latest buzzy think.  From what I can see there is no difference between ECM and ERP which only partially succeed and CRM where it abjectly failed.  Business intelligence was raised, but I could have made the same statements about its utility and tools eight years ago as I would make now.  In effect any new requirement or need was being interpreted within the constraints of an older model of the ICT function.  New wine was being poured into old wineskins.

Having spent three hours either side of midnight getting 7 photographs printed for my daughter's A level project, you had all better appreciate the selection I am publishing today.  The above is Avebury Church with the sun setting; on the established church of course, nothing like the young for symbolism.  She then took the 4,500 year old Stone Circle at dawn with the Tolkein Tree in the background so you can see where her religious sympathies lie!  One of those is below with another shot of said tree from the village.

There will be a fair number of people from a Systems Thinking background there so there will be some interesting discussions.  The session is in  Room 213 in the Graduate School of Business, Curtin University. This is situated on the corner of Pier and Murray streets in the east end of Perth.  I am told it's diagonally opposite Miss Maud's restaurant and that every taxi driver knows where that is.  Drinks will probably follow, location to be determined.

I will also be keynoting that morning on the future of Information Management in organisations at this conference along with the hon. Francis M Logan, Robert Eames, Kemal Hasandedic, Robert Mackinnon and Yathin Naidoo

Views of Llyn Clywedog