MEET DR. PETER ELLYARD
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Dr Peter Ellyard is Australia’s most prominent futurist. He is also a strategist, speaker and author. Peter is particularly known for his highly original, challenging and inspirational ideas on shaping the future, and for his motivational addresses on future-making.
Peter is a graduate of Sydney University and of Cornell University (Ph.D). He is currently Chairman of the Preferred Futures Institute, which he founded in 1991, where he assists individuals, families, organisations, communities and nations to chart and implement visions and strategies to ensure success in an emerging, twenty-first century integrated, interdependent, global society. Peter has a distinguished record in public sector leadership and administration, including three years as Executive Director for the Australian Commission for the Future. He held CEO positions in a number of public sector organizations over 15 years, including two associated with environment and planning and one with industry and technology, and was also Chief of Staff of the Office of Environment Ministers in Canberra for three years. He is Adjunct Professor of Intergenerational Strategies at Curtin University, and is a Fellow of the Australian College of Educators, the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand and the Australian Institute of Management. He has been a Senior Adviser to the United Nations system for more than 40 years, and was involved in the 1992 Earth Summit as a Senior Advisor on both the climate change and the biodiversity conventions. In his other work for the UN system he has been a senior consultant to the UNEP, UNDP and UNESCO. Peter is the author of three books: Ideas for the New Millennium (1998, 2001), Designing 2050: Pathways to Sustainable Prosperity on Spaceship Earth (2008), and Destination 2050: A Concepts Bank and Toolkit for Future-makers (2013). |
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SUGGESTED SPEAKING TOPICS
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Peter can give addresses to public or corporate audiences and run workshops on some or all the following topics, depending on the needs of the client. Many of the workshops can utilise Zing technology, a collaborative form of computing that facilitates collaborative brainstorming, decision making , envisioning and strategic planning.
The World in the Year 2050 Can you imagine the world in the year 2050? This is the world of your children in midlife and your grand children as adolescents. Most of us would want to create a legacy for the future that is better than that we inherited from our parents. Can you imagine a global society that is simultaneously prosperous, sustainable, harmonious, secure and just. We cannot work to create a future that we do not first imagine. Would you believe that current global trends are already taking us there and that this is a totally realizable destination by the year 2050? The markets of the early 21st century are already demanding the products and services that will help to create this future and the emerging 21st century economy will provide more and more products and services to realize it. Peter describes these products and services so that innovators and entrepreneurs can create success for themselves by getting to the future first. The Emerging Integrated Interdependent Global Society What are the long terms trends shaping society and how will they shape global society over the next 40 years. In 1964 Marshall McLuhan predicted the coming global village. We are realising this in the early 21st century. Kenneth Boulding in 1967 predicted the global transformation from a Cowboy to a Spaceship economy. This is also being realized in the early 21st century. What products and services will global markets demand in the next two generations and how can organizations, and individuals position themselves to ensure that they achieve success in this emerging interdependent global society? Building Successful Life Paths and Career Paths in 21st Century Society As our young leave school and contemplate their future how can they prepare themselves to maximise their chances of success in a dynamic and rapidly changing global society. Our young have more options for career paths than any time in human history. However most of these young people do not have the mindsets and tools to ensure their future success in a world where more than 70% of the jobs, products and services a generation hence have yet to be invented. Besides assisting our young to become 21st century successful adults, there are many second-chance people who can be assisted to become 21st century successful people. These include prisoners post prison, refugees arriving in a new homeland, mid-career people who become unemployed or who are seeking new career paths, and people who have been disabled or disadvantaged by trauma or illness and are seeking to make a new start. All of these people can be provided with new mindsets and toolkits to enable them to become resilient future- takers and be purposeful future-makers of their lives and careers in a globalising interdependent 21st century society. Leadership and Management for 21st Century Success Most of our so-called leaders are really managers. Generally speaking we are over-managed and under-led and too-often we put managers into positions of leadership. What are the essential differences between leadership and management? How can all of us become better leaders-of-self and managers-of-self as well as becoming better managers and leaders of others . Leadership and management are just two of the six means we use to shape the future. These six means re: leadership, management, design, planning, innovation and learning. Good leaders utilize all of these to most effectively shape the future and to ensure success in a global interdependent 21st century society. Leadership and management ask different questions about, and have different visions of, the future. Leaders and managers also construct strategies to realise the future. Well lead and managed organizations are the ones that will be the resilient future–takers in, and the purposeful future-makers of, emerging 21st century society. Creating a Sustainable Society in The 21st Century A sustainable society is one that knows how to thrive indefinitely and without undermining its capacity to renew itself. It can create sustainable prosperity for itself. It does economically well by doing social, ecological and cultural good. It lives within perpetual solar income, turns its waste into food, and acts to ensure there is zero net collateral damage to others and the environment, including to the planet's atmosphere and oceans. We have no option in the 21st century other than to invent our way to a global sustainable society. This is a 21st century global equivalent to the Apollo mission. However the good news is that we are already half-way to knowing how to realize it. The industries and innovations needed to realise a global sustainable society by the year 2050 can be described today and therefore we can create a framework and road map for innovators, entrepreneurs, investors and public policy makers who would like to leave a legacy of a sustainable global society to their children and grandchildren and their generations, and prosper by doing so. The Planetist 21st Century Tribalism involves giving first allegiance to tribe. Nationalism involves giving first allegiance to nation. Planetism involves giving first allegiance to planet. Planetism is the product of paradigm shifts that commenced with modernism in the mid 20th century , through post-modernism after 1970, finally delivering planetism in the early 21st century, which will dominate and shape global society around the year 2020. Most educated young people today are already planetists, as are most educated middle class people. The birth of the paradigm of planetism has involved the transformation of nine values compared with the modernist values present in the mid 20th century. Because values shape markets, from the values of planetism we can predict markets of 2020 and beyond, and the products and services that will be in demand by these markets, and we can predict the ethics that will guide investment and determine behaviour in the years beyond 2020. Remaking Communities for 21st century success Everywhere there are communities that are succeeding and there are others in long-term decline. The ones that fail are in the main dominated by future-taking mindsets, and are poor at adapting to change. They face crisis when a major component of its economic base collapses or they are devastated by a natural disaster such as an earthquake, cyclone, tsunami, flood or drought. We can encourage and assist these communities make a new start through developing a 21st century relevant vision and then implementing a strategic plan to realise this vision. However there is no reason per se that a community should fail with changing economic conditions. It is possible to embed into communities future-making mindsets and toolkits to replace their future-taking mindsets, that enable communities to thrive continuously. The creation of purposeful future-making communities involves understanding what emerging 21st century opportunities best fit their destiny- their innate natural and developed advantages and new advantages they can develop. Nowhere is this clearer than in rural and regional communities. While many cities are thriving, rural communities everywhere are failing, and as they fail their most motivated and able youth, the very people who could rescue them, leave to seek opportunity elsewhere never to return. Peter conducts dialogues with these communities to develop long-term strategic visions and action plans to realize a new vision. . Designing 2050 Narratives This is fun learning. The 2050 Narrative is a collaborative theatre game similar in nature to the hypothetical as devised by Geoffrey Robertson. It focuses on long-term envisioning and strategic planning .These Narratives can be conducted in a structured conference environment or in a particular community or organisation. They can be conducted on an audience wide basis or with a small number (up to 12) on a stage in front of an audience and with or without an additional audience participation process. Many Designing 2050 Narratives are set in the year 2025 and simultaneously look forward to the year 2050 and back to the present. Therefore they contain elements which involve insight, foresight and hindsight – and forecasting and backcasting . They usually last between 90 minutes and three hours. Peter conducts Designing 2050 Narratives utilising Zing collaborative cybertechnology that is used to collect and organise contributions for subsequent inclusion into visions of the future and strategic plans to realising these envisioned futures The aim of Designing 2050 Narratives is to encourage the development of long term envisioning and strategic planning and thinking skills, and to encourage the development of a sense of responsibility to work for the success of future generations (including our own children and grandchildren) and the sustainability of our planetary home. If warranted some individuals will be given a brief to represent particular vested interests in order to create a more dramatic atmosphere and remind the audience that at times finding successful outcomes will require 'mutual coercion mutually agreed upon.' |
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