Last word:

Creating a Vision for the Future.

You heard about this here first! John O’Brien tells me his landmark book “Visions 2100”, with contributions from 80 authors around the world – 33 from Australia, 16 from Asia, 16 from  Europe and 15 from the Americas – will be launched first in Brisbane, Australia on 12 November, followed by Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne and Hong Kong.

Among the leading global contributors are Mary Robinson, Special Envoy on Climate Change, United Nations and Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Yes, yours truly was invited to make a contribution in the book, too.  So you can look forward to the Ken Hickson vision for a New World Order for 2100. A glimpse of a few of the visions – including mine – can be found on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/visions2100

So there is a lot more to discover. Besides the essays/articles from the global 80, John is also inviting everyone to contribute their vision online. What would you like – or expect – to see when we arrive at the year 2100?

Find out more here and as the website is now up and running, go directly to:  www.visions2100.com There will also be plenty of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn activity. And the book can be ordered online now.  Read More

Visions 2100

‘The future is a beautiful, if challenging, partner. Your choice is whether you take the risk in having a first date or whether you are happy to accept a life of regret.’

The book tells the power of Visions and invites the reader to participate in the VISIONS 2100 Project by creating and sharing their own vision of life in 2100. The aim is to get widespread engagement and interest in comparing and telling visions of a better future and to drive ‘water-cooler’ discussions globally.

The context of the book is around the challenges presented by climate change and environmental issues, but concept is wider and is about how to change community, and then government, perceptions of how to approach long term global problems. Human psychology is not designed to cope with long-dated problems. We are very good at solving immediate crises but often fail to act on gradual, complex challenges – such as climate change – until catastrophe looms. For environmental problems, the standard approach is to try and get people to worry about the looming disaster but that fails to engage the majority of the population. The telling of visions enables people to engage with and be excited by what is possible – by the opportunities that change can provide.

The book balances worries about catastrophe with social and environmental improvements by referencing psychology, management thought, case studies and personal anecdotes. In also references the parallels between the world’s journey and coping with the chronic illness of the author’s wife.

“Having a vision of a better world is likely to result in the world being better.”

The book is framed around eighty short visions by some of the world’s leading environmental thinkers and influencers including those leading the process of making global agreements on climate change. The visions are all written from viewpoint of the year 2100 looking back over the last century. They consider what life is like in 2100, the uncertain journey to get there, the fears and hopes for human activities and the benefits of their envisioned worlds. This picture of the future provides an important marker to head towards as we navigate the changes to our society that will occur during the coming century.

The narrative weaves the contributions together and provides a coherent picture of how the century will unfold and where we will end up. It ends with a call to action to get readers involved in creating their own future through writing and sharing their own visions for a better world.

About the author

John O’Brien is the founder of Australian CleanTech and Sino CleanTech, research and advisory firms that assist cleantech industry growth across Australia and Asia.John delivers programs on innovation systems, entrepreneurship and authentic leadership.  He publishes both the Australian Cleantech Index and the annual Australian Cleantech Review.

John also lectures in Leadership and Entrepreneurship at the University of Adelaide and is a member of the South Australian Premier’s Climate Change Council. He is on the board of cleantech companies involved in wind farm development, biosensors and plastics recycling in China. Previous roles include being on the Board of Renewables SA and as a member of Innovation Australia’s Clean Technology Innovation Program Committee.

He has engineering degrees from Oxford and Trinity College Dublin and an MBA from Adelaide. John lives in Adelaide, Australia with his wife, Kate, and two tall teenage sons.

Source: www.visions2100.com