For those interested in public policy, strategy or futurology, Matthew Sweet's piece Blue Skies: Thinking the unthinkable in today's Sunday Independent is worth reading.
In the offices of the Global Ideas Bank, its director, Nick Temple, is marshalling the thoughts of an online community of thinkers that stretches from Brighton to Bhutan. At the London School of Economics, Professor Ian Angell is preparing a presentation for a corporate audience. His contention? That democracy should be dismantled for the benefit of the rich. ...In the north London offices of her organisation New Integrity, the creative consultant Indra Adnan is "re-imagining social work". And at Civitas, a think tank in a quiet corner of Westminster, the deputy director Robert Whelan is pondering how to persuade a local authority to turn over a tower block to his management.
There's a phrase that unites the work being pursued by these figures, and it's not a popular one with the British public. "Blue-sky thinking" was recently voted the 10th most disliked expression in the English language, just below "ballpark figure" and "it's not rocket science". It brings to mind policy wonks in cheap suits plotting the dismemberment of the welfare state; tanned charlatans with pinball machines in their offices, jotting down meaningless jargon on their whiteboards. But, for want of a better word, "blue-sky thinking" also describes the production of initiatives and ideas that have already wrought subtle changes in our lives. It will - if its practitioners get their way - soon transform Britain in ways that most of us have yet to consider.
How important and widespread is this activity? It's hard to measure. Statistical information on original thought is rare, and anecdotal evidence can be used to argue both ways. On the negative side, the University of Leeds recently closed down its MA course in futurology (no cracks about unforeseen circumstances, please), and Orange's so-called Imaginarium, an oval office off Baker Street in which the telecommunications company's employees were invited to think wild thoughts, has recently been restructured out of existence.
On the positive side, it's undeniable that policy ideas that would have been considered outré and eccentric 10 years ago are now being chewed over by government ministers, and innovative grass-roots schemes such as the Coffee House Challenge - a project established by the Royal Society of Arts to encourage small groups to solve local problems by addressing them over a cappuccino - are beginning to have a measurable effect. (In Bristol, the focus has been on reducing waste and, thanks to the RSA initiative, 7,000 local householders have taken in furniture that would otherwise have gone to landfill sites.) Other catalysts for original thinking are about to be put into action: the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust is in the process of recruiting six "visionaries", to whom it will give office space and a £20,000-£40,000 salary. Their brief? To create "a world made better by your vision".
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