Solving Big Challenges Fast
We take as our starting point that the world is going through a transformation on a scale that none of us has ever lived through before. The technological changes of the last several decades, particularly the ubiquitous use of computers and the spread of the internet, have come to a head and are remaking how just about everything gets done. The inexorable march of globalization during that same period is now fully breaking down the old ways of organizing the economy and society around nations to a much more globally integrated whole. Events of the last year or two – from the collapse of global finance, the American auto industry and whole media industries – show we are in the midst of a system change with only a handful of historical precedents.
We now face a range of totally unprecedented 21st century challenges. The mother of all these is climate change, the most daunting and complex challenge humans have ever faced. But there are all kinds of sub-challenges under that, including the need to shift all the world’s energy sources away from carbon. The list of challenges that people of the last century did not have to face goes on and on – from genetic engineering, to global pandemics, to the threat of networks of terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction.
In short, the world can be seen as going through a complete system change from 20th century ways of dong things to those of the 21st. People in 50 or 100 years will fully understand the magnitude of these changes, the building of a global, sustainable system that will work over the long-term. It’s our lot to live through this traumatic transition now.
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Dramatically Accelerate Problem-Solving with More People
In a world going through that kind of system change, the traditional means of 20th century problem-solving are simply overwhelmed. No one person, like the U.S. President, or his cabinet, or committees in Congress, or blue ribbon task forces are nearly up to the task. Think tanks focused on public problems with paid fellows working in buildings in Washington can make come headway, but not nearly enough. The elite groups of consultants focused on solving private problems for companies are also no match. All these methods of the 20th century that focused on an elite guard empowered with figuring out the solutions to problems simply don't have the scale and speed needed for the new problems facing us now.
In a tumultuous world like this, we need widespread innovation happening all over – not in the hands of a few. We need some structural shifts that dramatically improve our ability to solve problems. Luckily, there are two key structural shifts ready to happen, just waiting to be leveraged. Next Agenda sets out to tap both.
We must involve far more people in solving problems. America, and for that matter other countries in the world, have never had so many highly trained, hugely knowledgeable, wildly innovative people in our ranks. You can take any measurement of human resources and today blows away all past eras. Take the percentage of college educated people in the United States. In World War II, FDR and company could draw off less than 5 percent of the population with degrees, or about 5.5 million people. Today 30 percent of our much larger population has degrees – or 86 million people. Yet our governments and all organizations geared to problem-solving function as if only those who can fit in the committee room or corporate board room can solve problems.
Scale Up Problem-Solving through Technology
Even more importantly, we now have the technological tools to harness the input and creativity of this large pool of human resources. This has only just become the case due to developments in the broadband Internet and the latest generation of online computer tools. Finally technology can be directly applied to problem-solving. Finally, three of the core characteristics of information technology can be leveraged in this important space.
Technology brings the ability to scale.
Information technology applied to almost anything allows many more people to do it. One of the core principles of the Internet is the “network effect.” The common sense way to explain this dynamic is to think through what happens when you set in motion an easy way for one person to connect up two other people. Then those two people can each connect up two more, then those people can do that same. That dynamic is increasing in exponential fashion – so when the number hits 1 million, then the next iteration of doubling goes to 2 million, then 4 million. Those numbers soon get very, very big – like what has happened to Facebook, which now has more than 350 million members, larger than any country in the world save China and India.
Technology brings the ability to deal with complexity.
This is related to the scaling phenomenon because larger numbers of people can take advantage of parallel processing. In the computer world, parallel processing is what makes internet searches go so fast. A search query breaks the problem down into smaller problems, and then distributes them through a network of computers to each do part of the work. Then the answers are reassembled into an ordered list for the original query. This all happens in the blink of an eye because the computers are all tied together with telecommunications moving through fiber optics, literally moving at the speed of light.
This parallel process can be applied to more human-based problem-solving. If you have enough people, then each of them, or small groups of them, can work on smaller parts of the problem in parallel. They can then reassemble their work and make much greater progress than any one group trying to do all of it in a linear fashion.
Technology collapses space.
Information technology shrinks distance by allowing people to work together from afar. Everyone has experienced this with phones over long distance. Now we have Skype video calls that allow two people across the world to interact with great nuance all day long for free. We also just now have a next generation of collaborative tools that allows large numbers of people to work together at the same time as though they were in the same room. This ability has big ramifications on problem-solving because nuanced interaction does not have to be relegated to periodic and expensive physical gatherings. It can happen much more frequently. The other way to flip this is that those periodic physical meetings do not have to end in the same way. They can carry on with substantial collaboration long after everyone flies home.
Next Agenda’s New Approach
Next Agenda is out to harness those three big characteristics of technology and apply them directly and single-mindedly on problem-solving. We want to leverage those generic technology capabilities to connect up far more people for solving big challenges. The overall effect will be to speed up the process of problem-solving. Properly applied technology almost always leads to doing things quicker and easier. In other words, technology leads to productivity gains. That’s why businesses in all industries invest in technologies in the first place. We expect applying these new technological approaches to problem-solving will make that process more productive and effective as well.
Which brings us back to where we started off. The world needs to greatly accelerate its ability to solve the great challenges facing us on all sides. And private organizations of all sorts face their versions of huge challenges. We think the most promising place for answers is to look to technology to leverage the abilities of far more people. Next Agenda has a process and technological platform to make great strides toward that goal. We don’t have the specific answers to any individual public challenge or big problem faced by a private organization. But we have a great way to help figure out those solutions in the end.
