Lessons from the COVID-19 crisis: invest in foresight!
by Philippe Vandenbroeck, shiftN, and Christophe Kempkes, Fingerspitzen Kollektiv
This contribution was published as an opinion piece by the Belgian daily De Tijd on 26 March 2019. It was co-authored by Christophe Kempkes from Fingerspitzen Kollektiv.
Many lessons will be learned from the corona crisis. A very important one is that governments and companies need to invest much more in capacity for foresight.
A number of opinion makers have come to the conclusion that, with the corona crisis, we are ‘run over by a train we saw arriving from afar’. Signals that the virus could cause many victims were not picked up or ignored. It was only when the situation in Italy escalated that the seriousness of the threat became clear to our authorities. This framing of the corona crisis suggests that this is an exceptional failure, and that our authorities are usually alert to worrying signals. That picture is not correct.
Just look at the discontinuities that have come to our totally unprepared leaders in recent years. That climate change is serious is undeniable, but the phenomenon has been on the radar for 50 years. Only now is the EU coming up with a Green Deal in response to this existential crisis. Against the background of the measures taken in recent weeks, it becomes clear that the Green Deal is a cloth for the bleeding.
And there is more: the financial tsunami of 2008, the Arab Spring, the Syrian conflict, the acute migration crisis, the growing populism, the far-reaching erosion of democratic processes by ‘fake news’ and sophisticated social media strategies. These are disruptions and megatrends that our policymakers took by surprise and to which they responded only with a mix of draconian ad hoc interventions, fatalism and improvisation.
This is not surprising when you consider that governments invest very little in horizon scanning and foresight. Usually such an antenna is set up in three layers with a difference in scanning frequency and range. First an ‘emergency radar’, a frequent scan that looks three months ahead, then a classic ‘horizon scanning’ that looks three months to three years ahead and finally a systemic foresight of 3 to 30 and even 300 years.
At the end of the legislature, the previous Flemish government proposed the creation of a Flemish Future Council. The operating budget was barely 500,000 euros a year, a legacy compared to the destruction of capital in recent weeks. Meanwhile, those plans seem to have died a quiet death. There is hardly any foresight capacity at the federal level. Even the European Commission does not have a well-equipped unit with sufficient resources for a structured foresight in breadth and depth. The existing capacity is fragmented and hopelessly underfunded. Worldwide, only a few governments are seriously engaged in foresight. Singapore is one of them.
Governments then look to the business world for support. The ‘wisdom of the crowd’ that manifests itself in the dynamics of the financial markets has indeed picked up the seriousness of the corona threat somewhat earlier. But markets remain too opaque and irrational a medium to be of much use to policymakers. In any case, their signals come too late.
What about capital-intensive companies that make risky investments in the long term? A few decades ago there was indeed a culture of long-term strategic planning there, at Shell for example. The company’s future scenarios allowed it to turn the oil shocks of the early 1970s into a huge strategic opportunity. Which companies are at the forefront of foresight today and would like to share these insights with a wider field of societal actors? It is a domain for meaningful expansion of corporate social responsibility and stewardship.
Finally, we must not forget the role of civil society. These include organisations that work internationally and have a great deal of experience in crisis response. They can contribute to a foresight antenna.
The corona crisis makes it clear that investing in foresight is not a luxury, but a bitter necessity. This is a responsibility of the government, in an active partnership with other societal players. ‘Unknown unknowns’ will always be there. But the insouciance with which we navigate a turbulent time window today amounts to gross negligence. As the world evolves, strategic thinking has to move in sync. Then we no longer need tape or instant glue to seal critical cracks.
