Bill Sharpe – författare

Properly researched and intelligently deployed, scenario planning is today’s most powerful tool for understanding and preparing for an uncertain future. Yet it remains a niche approach, poorly understood by leaders at large. To bring it into the strategy mainstream, leaders need advice on how to turn concepts (scenarios) into actions (strategy). Scenarios for Success delivers a unique and coherent account of the state of the scenario planning art. It is aimed particularly at those trying to implement its findings. Striking a balance between theory and practice, the contributors show how and why the core techniques of scenario thinking have endured and are still valuable, while bringing new tools and processes that keep scenario planning in touch with modern realities.

Properly researched and intelligently deployed, scenario planning is today’s most powerful tool for understanding and preparing for an uncertain future. Yet it remains a niche approach, poorly understood by leaders at large. To bring it into the strategy mainstream, leaders need advice on how to turn concepts (scenarios) into actions (strategy).

Scenarios for Success delivers a unique and coherent account of the state of the scenario planning art. It is aimed particularly at those trying to implement its findings. Striking a balance between theory and practice, the contributors show how and why the core techniques of scenario thinking have endured and are still valuable, while bringing new tools and processes that keep scenario planning in touch with modern realities.

Economies of Life argues cogently that there is a 'default assumption that there is only one economy in our lives - the economy which is the one based on money. Our position is that there are many economies, of which the one based on money is just one, and that they all contribute to the health and sustainability of our shared lives'. To extend this thinking, money is the currency of trade, and art is the currency of experience. In his collection of five essays, Bill Sharpe uses the principles of ecological thinking to redefine our hitherto narrow understanding of terms like economy and value. The essays consider - with poetic sensitivity and intellectual clarity - what keeps each economy healthy, what sort of wealth each one accumulates and what sort of policies are most supportive of innovation and sustainability in a changing world. Bill Sharpe and a small group of other IFF* members, working with the Watershed Media Centre in Bristol, took as the starting point for their inquiry the question 'Can we help people who fund the arts develop better policies if we use ecological thinking to understand how the arts work in society and in the economy?'The resulting parallel publication from the Watershed - Producing the Future: Understanding Watershed's role in Ecosystems of Cultural Innovation - catalogues the thinking undertaken by the IFF and the Watershed in order to understand what makes for a healthy, creative, innovative ecosystem. It offers as a case study the experience of putting these emerging ideas into practice at the Watershed. The insights resulting from both Economies of Life and Producing the Future offer an ecologically informed and dynamic framework for understanding creativity, the arts and how the arts should be funded into the future.

Don’t adapt to the future of higher education. TRANSFORM IT.The rise of online courses, growing costs, declining completion rates, increasingly diverse student populations, disruptions from outside innovators—as the leader of a higher education institution, you’re facing unprecedented upheaval. Rather than simply managing this change, you can harness it to dramatically improve the future—for your students, for your institution, for society at large. It’s about bringing together the complex array of stakeholders in higher education—including administrators, faculty, boards, regents, and directors—to engage in honest and creative conversations about where the system is and where it ought to be. Transforming Higher Education provides what you need to face the future head on. Through its proven “Three Horizons” framework, you will:* View today’s disruption not with fear, but with curiosity and courage* Initiate and manage difficult strategic discussions among all stakeholders * Build the future into your planning, while respecting current governance* Create and implement a new strategy that makes the future part of the presentTransforming Higher Education provides three plausible scenarios for the future of higher education. By exploring what the future might bring, you can better prepare for your role in creating it.Right now, you’re looking at unparalleled opportunity. We all are. Whoever seizes it with courage, wisdom, and an effective, inclusive strategy will be at the forefront of education innovation—and will shape the lives of generations to come.  

Don’t adapt to the future of higher education. TRANSFORM IT.The rise of online courses, growing costs, declining completion rates, increasingly diverse student populations, disruptions from outside innovators—as the leader of a higher education institution, you’re facing unprecedented upheaval. Rather than simply managing this change, you can harness it to dramatically improve the future—for your students, for your institution, for society at large. It’s about bringing together the complex array of stakeholders in higher education—including administrators, faculty, boards, regents, and directors—to engage in honest and creative conversations about where the system is and where it ought to be. Transforming Higher Education provides what you need to face the future head on. Through its proven “Three Horizons” framework, you will:* View today’s disruption not with fear, but with curiosity and courage* Initiate and manage difficult strategic discussions among all stakeholders * Build the future into your planning, while respecting current governance* Create and implement a new strategy that makes the future part of the presentTransforming Higher Education provides three plausible scenarios for the future of higher education. By exploring what the future might bring, you can better prepare for your role in creating it.Right now, you’re looking at unparalleled opportunity. We all are. Whoever seizes it with courage, wisdom, and an effective, inclusive strategy will be at the forefront of education innovation—and will shape the lives of generations to come.