“None of these were “Black Swans,” which is the “go to” taxonomy for C-suites and policymakers justifying their surprise in the face of the assumptions they made about the world, signals they chose to ignore, and preparation they decided to skimp on.”
Source: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume II - Essential Frameworks for Disruption and Uncertainty
“Building antifragile foundations is like building an immune system.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“Whether personal or organizational, building capacity to effectively deal with change creates resilience, and without exceptional resilience there is no antifragility.”
Source: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume III - Beta Your Life: Existence in a Disruptive World
“The objective is not to get the future right. Rather, our work spurs better preparation for any of the futures which may arise.”
Source: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume II - Essential Frameworks for Disruption and Uncertainty
“The issue with uncompromising reliance on flawed assumptions is not being wrong, but being unprepared for alternative outcomes.”
Source: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume II - Essential Frameworks for Disruption and Uncertainty
“If we are to remain relevant, we need to build antifragile foundations to prepare for disruption and benefit from any disorder.”
Source: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume II - Essential Frameworks for Disruption and Uncertainty
“The imagined suppression of uncertainty is nothing more than a mirage… The future is unknown, and we all constantly make assumptions. But to rely on assumptions as if they were certainty is irresponsible.”
Source: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume II - Essential Frameworks for Disruption and Uncertainty
“This need for humans to enhance their capabilities to become AAA is relevant in the context of machines learning faster, with increasingly higher-level human functions.”
Source: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume I - Reframing and Navigating Disruption
“To remain relevant in the age of AI, we must actively build antifragile foundations that are resilient under stress, and strengthen with shocks.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“This asymmetry means that the fragile suffers a disproportionate amount of downside from shocks.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“Decentralized systems can offer more resilience and antifragility, as this single point of failure does not exist.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“Developing antifragility means focusing on the amplitude of potential consequences, not the probability.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“Resilience is a prerequisite to antifragility.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“Human and intellectual capital may be the most important intangible assets.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“What is our UN-VICE in the context of Disruption 3.0?
To sum up, UN-VICE is an updated way of capturing the state of the world. Framing the dynamics of systemic disruption as UNknown, Volatile, Intersecting, Complex, Exponential enables an empowering response. We are not helpless victims unable to make decisions. With UN-VICE, we have the power to shape our own futures.
KEY POINTS: OUR UN-VICE ACRONYM
- UNknown: Uncertainty becomes our comfort zone. Recognize you can’t know anything perfectly and many decisions are based on assumptions. Increased uncertainty lowers the value of advice and requires increased self-reliance. Learn how to respond regardless of the lack of precedents.
- Volatile: Harness change for gain. Our world, and change itself, is evolving faster than ever before. Volatility is not new; we simply can’t ignore its impact. In volatility, we see the shifting speed and texture of the changing environment.
- Intersecting: Everything connects to everything else. The broader our lens, the greater the insights gained from realizing how boundaries are disappearing.
- Complex: Notice emergent properties and adapt. In complex environments, inputs do not map clearly to outputs. Practitioners must acknowledge emergent properties and reconcile the immediate with the indefinite. Such systems require critical thinking, experimentation, and judgment. Evaluate emerging issues, build resiliency, and learn to adapt to expanding complexity.
- Exponential: Pay attention to nonlinear types of change that increase in growth rate. Notice rapid acceleration of seemingly small shifts. Monitoring early on will mean fewer surprises.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“Over the past 35 years, the percentage of intangible assets almost tripled. While indispensable for value creation, the potential speed of obsolescence can dampen the resilience of intangible assets.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“Technology consultancies that design and sell these advanced AI systems may have difficulty being objective about the potential job displacement caused by those very tools.”
“Fast-changing environments drive new opportunities and gaps. Agility means finding those gaps and exploring them.”
Source: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume III - Beta Your Life: Existence in a Disruptive World
“In an era of predictable unpredictability, agility allows us to emerge in the here and now, while at the same time bridging our longer-term strategy with the present.”
Source: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume II - Essential Frameworks for Disruption and Uncertainty
“In a VUCA world, if you’re not consciously confused, you’re ignorant. If you’re not preparing, you’re negligent.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“The Red Queen Race necessitates being fast and astute. Speed alone is insufficient.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“Be agile in decision-making - there may be no right answers.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“In the age of AI, we explore the agility needed for humans to stay relevant in the decision-making process.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“Healthcare is shifting from diagnosis to prevention and augmentation, blurring the line between human and technology.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“The eventuality of a global pandemic was certain, leaving uncertain only the timing and impact.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“While futurists imagine multiple possible futures, quantum physicists research multiple present realities.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“Rare is becoming less rare.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“The value of intangibles derived from intellectual property rights and trademarks from brands, inventions, software code, and programs has never been higher.”
Source: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume IV - Disruption as a Springboard to Value Creation
“For businesses to survive, they will need to build organizational resilience for climate change, cyber, technology, and space as part of a broader existential risk management strategy.”
Source: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume I - Reframing and Navigating Disruption
“Governments and organizations that fail to build strong cyber capabilities will be particularly vulnerable in this new era.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“The difference between a Black Swan and another Complex Five lies in the extent of our preparation, assumptions and imagination.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“Loosely coupled systems enable experimentation and learning, benefitting from feedback loops.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“A single triggering phenomenon can generate an avalanche of disproportionate - and seemingly disparate - impacts when the simultaneous ripple effects collide.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“A feedback loop is a process in which the outputs of a system are cycled back as inputs.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“In these paradigm shifts, addressing individual parts of a problem will not resolve anything.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“Consider systemic interconnections and next-order implications from initial change.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“With complex, systemic challenges, there are no individual winners. Collectively addressing these means we all win; failure means we all lose.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“The single most dangerous mistake is looking at disruption as isolated, special cases or independent single episodic events.”
Source: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume II - Essential Frameworks for Disruption and Uncertainty
“AI won’t replace humans, but people who can use it will.” This sounds reassuring, but it oversimplifies the complex future of work and AI integration. Experts predict a surge in opportunities, but the intricate interplay between cognification, mass automation, and how we work remains uncharted. The net effect of AI on employment is unknown - we have no data on the future.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“The companies, institutions, and governments relied on assumptions about the predictability of the world, and they were wrong. As their assumptions had worked in the past, they are now blaming the nature of the world (not the erroneous assumptions they made).”
Source: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume IV - Disruption as a Springboard to Value Creation
“In a systemic world, there is no such thing as discrete or isolated events - impacts cascade and spill over. Drivers of disruption collide, intersect, and amplify.”
Source: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume IV - Disruption as a Springboard to Value Creation
“You can’t rely on modeling uncertainties to deliver certainty.”
Source: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume I - Reframing and Navigating Disruption
“Systemic disruption requires us to accept that there may be no measurable data to fully substantiate our understanding of those disruptions. Imaging and exploring the multiplicity of potential futures which may arise from disruptions is a creative exercise, not a number-crunching one.”
Source: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume II - Essential Frameworks for Disruption and Uncertainty
“If we are to remain relevant, we must create innovative social and economic ecosystems that become stronger under stress and through shocks.”
Source: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume II - Essential Frameworks for Disruption and Uncertainty
“Maintaining sustainability (in its broadest sense) may be contingent on humanity’s ability to manage and problem-solve ourselves out of the most complex, systemic, and existential risks.”
Source: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume IV - Disruption as a Springboard to Value Creation
“Climate-aligned interventions at the levels of education & mindsets, foresight & visions, and structures offer the most leverage for systemic change.”
Source: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume IV - Disruption as a Springboard to Value Creation
“Pre-defined boxes and categorical, rigid sub-segments do not reflect our complex systemic world, where everything is interrelated and interconnected.”
Source: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption: Volume IV - Disruption as a Springboard to Value Creation
“Certainty is fleeting, but through experimentation, systems innovation and trial-and-error, instructive patterns emerge as guidance.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“The true impact of innovation isn’t in its disruptiveness; rather, it lies in its ability to ignite hope, unlock new possibilities and catalyse positive transformations across systems.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World
“The world is not made up of isolated controllable parts. And so the strings, wires and controls used to manage this illusionary world are obsolete.”
Source: Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World