GBN Causes - Cultural.change

Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change
A GBN WorldView Meeting Report
GBN Global Business Network

a member of the Monitor Group
INTRODUCTION
Developing a better understanding of Culture and Value Systemsand their implications for the business environmentemerged as a top learning priority during GBNs 2001 Forum, which took place soon after September 11. In response, GBN held Converging & Diverging Cultures, the first of several WorldView meetings on this theme in July 2002 in London.* That meeting revolved around Learning Journeys to more than twenty places in London where early and unexpected signs of the tension between cultural convergence and divergence are emerging. One conclusion reached by the WorldView members, as they made sense of what they had seen and learned, resonated on both the organizational and personal levels: Building on this experience, GBNs subsequent meeting on this theme explored culture and values through a different lens: The Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change. Given that most WorldView members do not have the time to do extensive fieldwork, we gathered together a variety of GBN Network members who do spend a great deal of time studying cultural change, and even live in other (sub-)cultures as well. Our aim was to hear and discuss their stories of the future and glean insights into how cultural changes might interact and affect business and society. If the London meeting was about gaining and interpreting a unique firsthand experience, then this meeting was about listening to, and engaging with, some of the leading thinkers in the GBN Network. We met in Los Angeles in December 2002 for a day and a half. Alex Singer kicked off the meeting with a multi-media presentation on cultural change as reflected in, and signaled by, film. The next morning, we heard stories from Network members Mary Catherine Bateson, Joel Garreau, J.C. Herz, Betty Sue Flowers, and special guest Van Jones, each of whom told a tale of how culture might change, looking back from 2015. With such excellent grist for our collective mill, enriched by our own ideas and experience, we developed a quick set of scenarios of cultural change to 2015. These four challenging worldsEvangelical Corporation, GATTACA, Bio-Cyberpunk, and Learning Worlddiverge along two axes of uncertainty: the interplay between humanity and technology, and the relationship of corporations to cultural change. Brand strategist Chris Riley then focused our final conversation on the implications of cultural change for business in each scenario world. The insights that emerged are predominantly about people: how they relate to each other, to groups, and to companies; and how they behave as both individuals and members of society as customers, employees, and leaders. Our insights into the future, as seen through the lens of cultural change, ranged widely, from the effects of shifting generational patterns to new notions of identity, and from the impact of biotech to emergent cultural practices and social structures in human networks. Finally, we made the report in a new, larger format to feature the graphic recording done at the meeting. Enjoy.
We realized that you couldnt truly observe a culture without becoming part of it. On the days journey, we scratched the surface of issues and our cultural antennae became a bit more attuned. To truly learn about another culture or set of identities, as individuals, we need to go back and visit these places on their terms, not ours.
*See Converging & Diverging Cultures: A GBN WorldView Meeting Report by Jonathan Star for full details.
Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
The Meeting Agenda

Monday December 9 Welcome Reception & Dinner Defining Culture and Cultural Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Signposts of Cultural Change: A Hollywood Perspective . . . . .7 Tuesday December 10 Causes and Stories of Cultural Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 Creating Scenarios of Cultural Change to 2015 . . . . . . . . .13 Consequences and Implications of Cultural Change . . . . . . .23
Who Was There?

WorldView Members & Guests Heather Ainsworth Kodak Nancy Bambic DuPont Erika Brockhouse Coca-Cola Dionne Colvin Toyota Christian Crews The Waitt Family Foundation Todd Egeland CIA Nicole Gilbert Nissan North America Anne Messbarger CHRISTUS Health Marcia Daley Herman Miller Stan Rosen Boeing Gary Wright Proctor & Gamble Jennifer Wright Nissan North America Network Mary Catherine Bateson anthropologist Betty Sue Flowers poet & educator Joel Garreau journalist J.C. Herz online & interactive media expert Van Jones community activist Chris Riley brand strategist Alex Singer film & tv director GBN Lynn Carruthers Napier Collyns Eamonn Kelly Sophia Liang Jay Ogilvy Diana Scearce Erik Smith
SETTING THE CONTEXT Defining Culture

Our first step towards a better understanding of the causes and consequences of cultural change was to define what we were talking about. Arrayed around the border of the box are definitions drawn from academic textbooksthey are comprehensive, valid, and, quite frankly, dry. So at the start of the meeting, the participants offered their own perspectives on what culture means to them. Some of these definitions aligned closely with the academic ones, others were more personal and visceral. What would you write?
to think like a human being is to think in terms of stories, and I tell my students that they can set aside all the fancy definitions of culture they may have learned in anthropology or the humanities and think of culture simply as those stories that we tell one another to make sense of our lives.
Jay Mechling, Professor of American Studies, University of California, Davis
Picturing Cultural Change

The term culture is slippery: we all experience it everyday in extremely personal ways, yet it is difficult to capture in words. As participants explained I cant describe it, but I sure know it when I see it! Others noted that often knowing culture is much easier once youve gotten out of your own and have spent time in another. Since changes over time are easier to identify, we invited the participants to bring and post some images that represent specific changes in culture. What images capture the idea of cultural change for you?
Initial Questions
Each participant found one of these question cards beneath their dinner plate. To guide conversation, we asked participants to answer their own question and then respond to those of others at the table. How would you answer? What have been your experiences of cultural change?
How has your organization effectively respondedor not to cultural shifts?
What is an important How have you detected cultural change? source of cultural change that your organization is not paying attention to?
Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003 5
Some Revelations
Not surprisingly, these conversations were both animated and wide-ranging. Each table shared highlights of their dinner conversations, and some major issues emerged: the difference in culture between for-profit and not-for-profit work environments the place of the individual and the group in different cultures the importance of the cultural relationship between the U.S. and other parts of the world, and the necessity of forgetting as a step in the cycle of cultural change, i.e., one must forget in order to changea positive amnesia. Several of these themes would echo throughout the meeting.
Film and Cultural Change

Being in Los Angeles, what could be more appropriate than an opening presentation by Alex Singer on the role of entertainment, media, and cultural change. A member of both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Alex has been a GBN Network member for 15 years. In his presentation, he tracked several dimensions of cultural change using film clips from four countries. Women, Men, and Sex 1937 1991 2002 It Happened One Night Jungle Fever Y Tu Mam Tambin
Humanity, Technology, and Cultural Icons 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey
Control and Manipulation of Time 1999 2000 2001 2002 Run Lola Run TimeCode Memento What Time Is It There?
Signposts of Cultural Change

Alex kicked off the presentation with a sure way to get an audiences attention: sex. He moved from a risqu scene in 1937 showing Clark Gable without an undershirt, to an interracial affair, to a nearly comicalyet graphicscene of afternoon sex between two teenagers. Films separated by nearly 70 years highlight and reflect the massive cultural change that has happened in this arena. What will shock us next? The second themehumanitys relationship with technologyis seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey. This also raises questions about the iconic and mythic nature of some films: Are they doing more than simply reflecting cultural change? Do they show the way ahead? The final theme revolves around time, and our relationship to it something that Alex considers a central issue we are grappling with today: Are we not enslaved by time? Can we be in charge of it? How malleable is it? What films would you have selected? Why?`
STORIES OF CULTURAL CHANGE
Mary Catherine Bateson

A cultural anthropologist both by birth and training, Catherine has done fieldwork in the Philippines, Iran, and Israel. More recently she turned her eye to the U.S. with such books as With a Daughters Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson; Composing a Life, Peripheral Visions: Learning Along the Way; and Full Circles, Overlapping Lives.
Joel Garreau
A journalist, Joel has a regular column in the Washington Post. Author of Nine Nations of North America and Edge City, he is now writing a book on the technology-enabled transcendence of human nature.
J.C. Herz
An expert in online communities and gaming, J.C. has her own design and R&D practice. Author of Surfing on the Internet and Joystick Nation, she lectures at numerous universities.
Its 2015, and were looking in as three generations celebrate Nanas 100th birthday party. Nanas son, Fred, and his wife, Marywho are both in their 70sare there. Fred and Mary still work and are quite busy. But they make some time to visit Nana. Freds health is starting to decline, and Mary has made it clear that when he goes, shell go to the departure clinic. They have two daughters and a son: Dana, Leigh, and Roger, none of whom are at Nanas party. Roger embraced conservative religion some years ago and disapproves of the rest of the familyparticularly the lack of guidance he feels he received while growing up. Leigh is a lesbian, and Nana doesnt accept her partner. Dana is married to Saman interracial marriage which Fred and Mary completely accept. Theyre taking two years off from their careers to volunteer overseas, and their children will go with them: growing up multicultural, multilingual, and showing their parents how to swim in seas of information.
What will be the effects of moving from a society that is organized for three generations to one where four is the norm? The role of grandparents is shifting to great-grandparents, and traditional guidance no longer flows from older to younger generationsit is reversing. Will this result in more generational conflict? New phases of the lifecycle? Changing attitudes towards death?
Its 2015 and youve got a fourth-grade daughter. Shell be coming home for Christmasfrom her first year of law school. You ask her how her classmates are. Great, she replies, but how can she explain them? Some dont sleeptheyve had the beds removed from their rooms. Some have amazing cognitive abilitiesphotographic memory and total recall, faster and more creative than anybody shes ever imagined. Theyre physically beautiful, though they never seem to exercise. Theyll live a very, very, very long time. One friend has been vaccinated against pain. Theyre always on, connected through implants seemingly telepathic. They call themselves enhanced and call your daughter natural because she doesnt believe in using embedded technology. Those who dont have the education or the money to even consider keeping up with enhancement technology are simply called the rest.
Where is the impact of the GRINgenetic, robotic, (artificial) intelligence, and nano-technologyadvances of the 1990s? Are the 90s akin to the 50s, to the 20sthe decades just before cultural revolutions? Will the 2000s be an era of major cultural impact akin to the 60s and 30s? Culture and values influence the timing and meaning of other changes we experience. Are we simply hearing the same stories told and interpreted in different ways (evolutionary cultural change) or are the stories really new (revolutionary cultural change)?
Start with Napster and Google today: no one really controls either, yet each has a dynamic of its own. So does the blogworld. What does SETI evolve into? Ostensibly it was a search for extra-terrestrial intelligencewhats out therebut what weve ended up doing is creating a new form of collective human intelligence that didnt exist before. Already there are emergent social structures inand frommassively multi-player online games. The largest guild in the online world run by Microsoft has over 5,000 people, all led by a 25-year old. On eBay, there is an exchange rate between Everquest platinum pieces and U.S. dollars. Combine this with years of philanthropic efforts to wire the Third World, along with World Bank microcredit schemes, until finally one day a kid in rural India can sign up for a PayPal account. He starts earning more real-world money than anyone he knows by collecting rare items in Diablo II and selling them to people in developed countries. More years pass, and suddenly youth bulges are an assetbecause this is the core gamer demographic, and they are generating foreign currency reserves. Its an economic event. The realization dawns that these hundreds of thousands of young people have de facto freedom of assembly in the virtual world. The economic event becomes a political one when a guild flips a government.
Games tend to be four to six years ahead of other expressions of human organization. This is where the people are organizing and actuating in virtual space, and it is blurring over into the real world. Its about the last meterbetween the brain and computer screen. As more people connect in more ways, the networks of humans become self-aware. The network is the singularitynot a technological one, but a social singularity. For business, this means a massive reformulation between a company and its marketthe network that is the market decides what your brand means, and where it goes.
Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change: A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
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More Stories of Cultural Change
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Van Jones
A social activist and an attorney, Van is the founder and national executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, a San Francisco organization dedicated to the human rights crisis inside the U.S. criminal justice system.
Betty Sue Flowers

A poet and a professor at University of Texas at Austin, Betty Sue has written about cultural myth with Bill Moyers, Joseph Campbell, and others. She is the current director of the LBJ Presidential Library.
For ordinary people who happen to be at ground-zero of overpolicing and overincarceration, say a 16- or 17-year-old African-American or Latino child, the world looks like this: I go to school. When I get to school, the police cars are already there. There hasnt been a fightthe police cars are always there. I get into a push-and-shove match with somebody in the hallway, and I dont go to the principals officeI go to the precinct, in handcuffs. Thats called a strike. In the police car, there are better computers than in my classroom. While Im at the juvenile detention facility, there are better paid and better trained personnel than at the high school I just left. If Im worried about my cousin, who has asthma, choking on chalk dust at the high school, I need not because the schools dont have chalk after October. And that cousin of mine is sitting in a classroom with 27 students and only four books. This is right now, not the future.
In 2002, the United States is the number one incarcerator in the world in per capita and expense termsmore than China, more than Russia. We imprison a bigger percentage of our black male population than the apartheid South African government did. In 1992, there were one million people in U.S. prisons. Eight years later, by 2000, this had doubled to two million. Here are four current cultural myths: crime is going up, prisons work, African-Americans commit more crime, and the profit motive does not operate in the U.S. criminal justice system. And here are five costs of todays incarceration system: budgetary, democratic, social cohesion/stability, workforce readiness, and opportunity cost. What will be the longterm and unintended consequences of putting so many people behind bars? What other myths are prevalent in our society?
Ill weave my story with the others. In 2015, the thing we really have to look for, and its already beginning, is a huge crisisor opportunity, or challengearound what we mean by identity. Identity at every level: brands for business, our identity as a country, as individuals. Part of this is the breakdown of the old ways we were related to each other, and Mary Catherine hit on this. Usually you get your identity through four major ways: through authority (told who you were because of your gender, race, class, country of origin, etc.), through the story people told about what that particular who you were meant, through your relationships with family and community, and through your own experiences. All of these have shifted enormously in the last 20 years. In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam talked about the breakdown of institutions. But he missed the new ways in which we are connectedvirtually and, as J.C. pointed out, their profound effects, including the capacity to assume multiple identities. We have multiple lives now, whereas we used to have one life where we were known and recognized. But human beings can only recognize a limited number of people, so there is some point at which we cannot know all of our stories, and our identity cannot be held by the group. Freedom of choice drives this, and well have more in 2015. One way forward into the future is for people to become more and more their own brand, picking and choosing what identity they are: this hair color, that enhancement, this place to live, that family, these groups of friends to have Christmas with.
The other way is to have these choices made for you to the extent that you see a group that has already made all the choicesthe fundamentalism option. You join the group, and once you make that single choice, all the other choices are made for you. Each of these assumes a different purpose for being in the world, a different identity, and a different view of the future. This is part of what 9/11 is about, but it is not just Islam versus the West. Issues and fluctuations of identity even the choice to have a different human nature a l Joels storyare taking place at every level of culture, throughout our globalized world. Just in the next 10 years, as Van told us, the one million people we put in prison in the 90s, mostly young men who had not finished high school, are going to come out with no education, no capacity to be hired, no sellable skills, will be released. What will their identity be in our culture? Companies face this crisis internally too, balancing four aspects of business identity: mission, business model, audience (community and tribes), and the operating myth. One way to look for cultural change is to pay particular attention to your visceral responseswhat makes you really, nearly physically, uneasy, and uncomfortable? Most often this indicates a deep shift underway.
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SCENARIOS ON THE FUTURE OF CULTURAL CHANGE TO 2015 Predetermined & Uncertain Forces
Starting from these provocative ideas and insights about causes and consequences of cultural change, we brainstormed forcesuncertain and predeterminedthat would drive cultural change between now and 2015. Uncertainties are exactly that: dependent upon other forces, they could play out in a variety of ways. Predetermineds are deep trends, probably already evident today, that will play out in a relatively certain way. After the brainstorm, we voted on which forces of cultural change would be most relevant for business. All of the uncertainties and predetermineds are listed here, along with the votes each received. What would you add to these lists? Which do you think are most relevant to business? Which ones would you vote for as most relevant to the way your organization relates to and handles cultural change? One participant asked an interesting question that received a high number of votes: What is beauty? The question is too open-ended to be easily framed as an uncertainty, yet it resonated extremely well with everyone in the room because it got at both the subjective and normative aspects of culture while also capturing the aesthetic element. So we set it aside to ask later when we thought through the implications of each scenario world. Votes 12 9 6 6 5 5 4 3 3 3 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Predetermined Current value systems that are driving most global corporations render them incapable of contending with these issues of cultural change Aging population Importance of China Importance of India Increasing levels of connectedness Identity determined by more than age More & more urbanization More & more myths & conspiracy theories & widespread belief in them Increasing diversity Global warming, and other global problems Continued growth & expansion of networks: both formal & informal Religious diversity Acceptance of authority and hierarchies (esp. by Millennial Generation) Neurosis is perennial Economic globalization Technology & communication will continue to make the world a smaller place American hegemony A more painful world in 15 years
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Votes 12 12 10 10 11 10 10 9 7 6 5 5 4 4 4 3 2
Uncertainty Techno-centric vs. human-centric expansion of technology Top-down vs. bottom-up leadership Reconfiguration of generational pattern, i.e., relationship between age and authority Global governance or global markets? What is beautiful? Interactions between hierarchies & networks Cultural hegemony vs. cultural diversity Centralized vs. decentralized technology Increasing friction between American hegemony and a European model, esp. related to leadership Will there be change in incentive programs of businesses to take cultural change into account? Reliance on fossil fuels vs. alternative sources of energy Nature vs. nurture assumptions Will growing Circle of Empathy continue, or will it be a U.S. vs. Them globalization? What are we willing to go to war for? Strengthening of special interest groups as agents of social change, or weakening of national American government as resource for social change Development of strong global or international institutions Cyberculture: how it defines itself? what it means?
Votes 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Uncertainty Where will the locus of the voluntary choice be: individual, group, state, world? Does increased connectedness make people more or less responsible? What happens when there is no meta-narrative? Working at for profits vs. working at not-for-profits, esp. motivation How fast technologies, particularly biotechnologies, come along And is there pushback to new biotechnologies? Continuing American cultural hegemony How necessary will experience in virtual world be for leadership? Meta vs. individual narrative: how does it influence behavior? Will it be the voluntary or the involuntary future? And what is the metric? Optimistic or pessimistic world? How much shared experience do we have? TOE: Theory of everything Degree of & response to globalization Do we like the future or not? Does the world feel good? Who is having fun? Will a religious revival show up? Stronger social institutions developing, or not How we define culture, identity, connectedness Will we engage some of the disenfranchised?
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Axes of Uncertainty
The next step in developing a set of scenarios was to create axes that expressed particular dimensions of uncertainty about the future. We clustered uncertainties and a few predetermineds that received high numbers of votes and that were similar in content into the axes below. Many different axes of uncertainty could be created from the list above, and those below reflect the most compelling themes that surfaced in our brainstorm conversation.
nature2: biotech determinism
Interplay between Humanity and Technology nature + nurture
The Technology Axis captures the relationship between technological developments and the dominant understanding of human beings, i.e., how we learn, how we realize potential. At one end is the view that people grow through a combination of nature and nurture, where breakthroughs in technology are fewer, and perhaps less welcome. At the other end is the view that people are essentially determined by their biology, and that this caneven shouldchange through technology. The Globalization Axis focuses on the cultural side of globalizationwill U.S. domination move beyond military to cultural hegemony? Or will cultural diversity flourish around the world? The Innovation Axis lays out one of the fundamental tensions of change: where and how it originates. At one end is the classic command and control hierarchy with innovation and leadership flowing down from the top. At the other end is a more flexible and distributed model of change, with innovation and leadership emerging from the bottom. The Corporation Axis forms the crux of the cultural lens: whether corporations play more of a leadership role in cultural change, or if they find themselves more often than not following cultural change.
global markets: U.S. cultural hegemony
Nature of Globalization
global governance: more cultural diversity
Sources of Leadership, Change and Innovation bottom-up & networked Relationship of Corporations to Cultural Change follow lead top-down & hierarchical
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The Scenario Matrix

After discussing several possibilities, the group decided that combining the first and fourth axes into this matrix would make for the most relevant and interesting set of scenarios. Small groups then developed each scenario more fully. The templates with the original data are shown on pages 1922. After the meeting, and with time for some more reflection, GBN made a few additional refinements to the scenarios in order to make the set more divergent, challenging, and relevant.
nature + nurture
Humanity and Technology
Learning World
Evangelical Corporation
follow
Relationship of Corporations to Cultural Change Interplay between
lead
Bio-CyberPunk
GATTACA

The Scenarios in 2015

Each scenario has a vivid, yet believable, endstate that expresses how it feels to live in that world. Each scenario also has a set of underlying drivers that could plausibly move the world from where we are today into that future.
nature + nurture
Learning World
Imagine a world in whichnetworks of networks create the platform for distributed accountability. Reputation is very important, both for individuals and corporate organizations. Individuals are hyper-empowered to learn, to act, to have impact. It is a world of many niches and porous networks: individuals group with their hobby-tribe. Such a world could unfold ifboth bandwidth and transparency become ubiquitous. General belief in-and social support ofthe power of learning continuously throughout the life of an individual and organization holds sway.
Imagine a world in whichcontention and competition are the norm, corporations wage culture wars for talent and to determine which direction cultural change will go. Individuals group with their colleagues; companies have a town hall feel. Work really matters. Parts of the public good are privatized to corporations. The arts flourish, but the potential for a dark side looms: how much power should corporations have in leading cultural change? Such a world could unfold ifemployees are hyper-empowered and talent is everythingcorporations take on a socially nurturing role because the most talented employees demand it.
follow
lead
Bio-CyberPunk
Imagine a world in whichtechnology is a runaway train, with the pace constantly accelerating. This world feels out of control for both individuals and corporations. No one is minding the store, or taking ownership for the whole. Along with corporations, government is in the back seat of technological change. In this bio-engineers paradise, traditional religion is marginalized and the Cult of Science rules. Such a world could unfold ifscientific breakthoughs cement our ability to alter basic biology. No clear principles emerge about secondary implications: moral neutrality prevails. Unlike the infotech bubble of the 1990s, the biotech boom of the 2000s does not burst.
GATTACA
Imagine a world in whichthe division between haves and have-nots is clear and expansive. Its what youre born with-or how your parents can change what you are born with. A Big Brother-like world. Pockets of havenots actively search for vulnerable points in the well-oiled and efficient organizational machinery, to tap in and disrupt it. Such a world could unfold ifdrive for efficiency and productivity dominates. Government is mainly hands-off in the marketplace, yet protective of intellectual property rights. Most public goods are privatized, along the lines of healthcare today.

Implications of the Scenarios for Business and for Beauty

The point of creating scenarios is not just to tell interesting stories about the future. The point is to tell stories that can be used to talk clearly about the implications of each world, to think about what organizations would do to survive in each world, and to provoke a conversation about strategies that businesses could use to thrive in each world. To get our heads further into each scenario world, we returned to the unexpected question that came out during our earlier brainstorm: What is beauty?
nature + nurture
Learning World
Implications for Business Command and control style meets with difficulty here. Open-source becomes an important metaphor for how work gets done, and most projects are accomplished through a Hollywood ad-hoc production style. In this scenario, beauty isdiversity, a mix & match collage, energetic creativity, connectivity.
Implications for Business A clear sense of organizational values is absolutely necessary to attract both talent and customers. Customers are more demanding on more fronts. Product packaging is extremely importantthe product is a whole lifestyle, not simply an item. Teamwork is emphasized, somewhat like corporate culture in Japan. In this scenario, beauty isin the eye of the employee. An individual selection of enhancements, both biotech and developed through personal effort.
follow
lead
Bio-CyberPunk
Implications for Business Corporate opportunism and flexibility is key. Keeping options open as long as possible. Speed to market is critical. Markets are more fragmented and product lifecycles faster. Capability to rapidly prototype is very important. In this scenario, beauty isindividually interpreted biotech enhancements. They can be home-made or bought. No universal agreement: a lot of creativity, though not always for the better.
GATTACA
Implications for Business Brands remain very strong. The dominant aesthetic is well-defined and nearly monolithic. And customers want the image. Individuals surrender themselves to the well-oiled, efficient organizational machine. Hierarchical, rigid. Yet there is a sense of underlying instability and fragilitysecurity is a major concern. In this scenario, beauty ispurchased. Bio-engineered perfection enabled by elegant code.

Scenario Templates* Evangelical Corporation

The axis endpoints are corporations leading cultural change and an interplay of humanity and technology characterized by a nature + nurture understanding of people.
* These are reproductions of the actual scenario templates completed by the participants at the meeting.
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GATTACA
The axis endpoints are corporations leading cultural change and an interplay of humanity and technology characterized by a nature2, i.e., bio-deterministic, understanding of people.
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Bio-Cyberpunk
The axis endpoints are corporations following cultural change and an interplay of humanity and technology characterized by a nature2, i.e., bio-deterministic, understanding of people.
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Learning World
The axis endpoints are corporations following cultural change and an interplay of humanity and technology characterized by a nature + nurture understanding of people.
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CONSEQUENCES AND IMPLICATIONS What Would Armani Do?

GBN Network Member Chris Riley, founder of Studio Riley, played a unique role at this meeting. Drawing upon a decade as head of strategic planning at the brand and advertising agency Weiden + Kennedy, Chris was charged with acting as an implications provocateur to focus the groups attention on the so what aspect of cultural change. He began by observing how the conversation at GBN has changed in the last decadefrom one where economics and technology dominated, to one where culture has moved far up the agenda. Its a more difficult conversationbecause issues of cultural change open a door into everythingyet understanding and insight into culture and values are more and more important. Chris has a clear point-of-view:
I believe that culture is ideas, the way we live, the humanity of our world. Economics and technology are mechanics. But culture is about people, about the way we feel, the way we think, the attitudes we adopt. And that infiltrates every single aspect of what we do. So if youre in business, culture affects every single action of the business: baked-in assumptions, ideals, beliefs, personal contextall affecting the work you do.
Chris turned to our four scenarios with an unusual example to illustrate implications for business: What would Giorgio Armani do in each world? This brand is fundamentally about cultureelegant, sophisticated tailoring in Milan, Italyso Chris sees Giorgio doing well in worlds where corporations lead cultural change, especially in the Evangelical Corporation where the nurture idea plays. In GATTACA, Giorgio takes advantage of biotech advances by offering a line of Armani Enhancements. On the left side of the matrix though, the brand runs into difficulty because the corporation is reacting to cultural change. In Bio-Cyberpunk, customers create their own image of Armani, while Learning World is a crisis for the brand. In closing, Chris posed three questions for finding business implications of cultural change: from a cultural point of view, how does your company learn? Formally and at a distance? Without relationships? Or through close relationships? Secondly, how do you communicate your product, your brand, your company? And finally, how does your company relate to other human beings in the world, and how do you relate to people in your organizations?
Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change: A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003 23
Issues and Opportunities on the Strategic Horizon

By the end of our intensive day-and-a-half meeting, it was clear to all involved that we were leaving Los Angeles with a better understanding of cultural change. We hadn't pinned down the definition of "culture," but we had realized that culture is multifaceted and highly dependent upon individual perspective and experience. We also made significant headway with the notion of "cultural change," creating a collage of numerous examples from our own lives. But how much had we actually illuminated the "causes and consequences of cultural change"? First, the GBN Network members who were featured at this meeting introduced provocative content about causes of cultural change. Alex Singer showed us through film how the control and manipulation of timeessentially our relationship to timeis a cultural issue currently on the table. Mary Catherine Bateson pointed to the myriad cultural implications, including breakdowns, that we'll face as we move from a three-generation society to one where four is the norm. Joel Garreau is waiting for the cultural impact of all the technological advances of the 1990s to really come home: he sees this happening during the 2000s, with embedded biotech enhancements pushing the very limits of what a human being is. J.C. Herz opened a window for us into the massive world of online gaming, and how a new connected, collective human intelligence could emerge there. Van Jones directed our attention to another window, this one covered by bars: the extent of incarceration in the U.S., what that means today, and what it might mean in the next decade. For Betty Sue Flowers, the key question of cultural change between now and 2015 revolves around a crisis of identity: what determines it, how, and for whom. Finally, Chris Riley finetuned a cultural point of view for us by adjusting the focus primarily to people and their relationships, instead of economics or technology first. One of the biggest takeaways, quite literally, from this meeting was the set of scenarios we produced. Many of us were struck by the fact that we had consciously aimed for a scenario matrix about cultural change, yet the role of technology had crept back in along one of the axes. The subtlety, however, was that the axis is not technology per se, but the connection between technology and humanity. These rich and divergent scenariosalong with the brainstorm of drivers provide a solid and fertile framework for thinking more deeply about the future of cultural change for business. We concluded the meeting with a conversation about consequences of cultural change. We agreed on the need to refocus the business conversation on people. We realized that if the meaning of identity changes at an individual and group level, then the identity of business is certain to change as well. And if there is a significant change in how people understand themselves, especially in terms of nature vs. nurture, then the structure of business would have to change too: how it's organized, relates to its employees, and understands its customers. Another issue turned on the importance of cultural awareness: that even in a highly networked and decentralized world, culture will be no less important. New ways of making meaning will emerge; the question is how will they be similar and different to what we saw before, and what will they imply for business? The discussion also addressed leadership and cultural change: What will it take to be a leader in the future? Which cultural understandings will be most important to business leaders? What cultural rights of passage will be necessary for leadership, especially in light of, for example, the blurring between the virtual and physical world, the breakdown of generational relationships, or the convergence of ultra-dense mega-cities? So had we answered any questions? Clearly yes. (Un) fortunately, these questions brought forward additional questionsbut the point is the depth of questioning, for without having answered the first set, we could not have asked the secondor the third. What questions about cultural change would you ask now?
24
Where to Watch and Scan for Cultural Change

Converse and listen wherever I go, especially with young people Ethnic media: newspapers, radio, hip-hop stations Art: galleries, music, literature, film, poetry, painting, theaterespecially experimental Have friends in different worldsyou have to get completely outside your world. Amazon purchasing circles really dont surprise you because youre still in your circle Anything that my kids are into. Ask them why is it such a big deal? They know the kind of thing Im looking for, so they bring things to my attention. Im constantly asking them about music, about movies Book reviews in Science, Nature, and JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) The International Herald Tribune Smaller stories can be more important than bigger ones, for example the random place journal in the first few pages of the New York Timesits a kind of information collection that I wouldnt normally do Watch an hour of television a day, usually the network news, sometimes a morning show Meetings where people are thinking about the future: these can be one-offs or on-going committees, but the better ones have a very diverse set of people and views The advertising world Jails Listening to people talk about their spiritual journeys There are people who are always too soonmuch to their detriment. I pay attention to them Urban public junior high and high schoolsgo outside at 3 oclock. Some public universities Record stores that dont sell any mainstream labels: get to know the clerks there Low-income neighborhoods Blogs are fast and outward lookingthey all point to something. A sort of hyper-media, at least for a certain section of people who are net-connected. The Blogdex project out of MIT Media Lab. Also www.boingboing.com Where doand willyou watch for cultural change? List-servs: an hour every morning going through the take from various ones. Two of the best above-ground are www.aldaily.com and www.kurzweilai.net Others are private, and the most interesting are highly-unauthorized, probably even illegal. Another good place for good discussion about cultural revolution is www.gbn.org/members/talk/link2bb.pl Media that builds whole worlds, i.e., Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, The Sopranos Pay attention to whats going on in the streets while youre walking (doesnt work by driving)
List compiled from Alex Singer, Mary Catherine Bateson, Joel Garreau, Betty Sue Flowers, Van Jones, J.C. Herz, and Chris Riley
25
Acknowledgements
Eamonn Kelly Diana Scearce Erik Smith WorldView Meeting Directors Sophia Liang Meeting and Report Producer Erik Smith Report Author Lynn Carruthers Visual Recorder Nancy Murphy Editor Kelly Kaufman Designer
2003 Global Business Network. This publication is for the exclusive use of Global Business Network members. To request permission to reproduce, store in a retrieval system, or transmit this document in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recorded, or otherwise, please contact Global Business Network. Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change: A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003 26
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Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change

A GBN WorldView Meeting Report

GBN Global Business Network

The Meeting Agenda

Who Was There?

SETTING THE CONTEXT Defining Culture

Picturing Cultural Change

How has your organization effectively respondedor not to cultural shifts?

Film and Cultural Change

Humanity, Technology, and Cultural Icons 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey

Signposts of Cultural Change

STORIES OF CULTURAL CHANGE

Mary Catherine Bateson

More Stories of Cultural Change

Betty Sue Flowers

nature2: biotech determinism

Interplay between Humanity and Technology nature + nurture

global markets: U.S. cultural hegemony

global governance: more cultural diversity

The Scenario Matrix

Humanity and Technology

Relationship of Corporations to Cultural Change Interplay between

nature2: biotech determinism

The Scenarios in 2015

Relationship of Corporations to Cultural Change Interplay between

nature2: biotech determinism

Humanity and Technology

Implications of the Scenarios for Business and for Beauty

Relationship of Corporations to Cultural Change Interplay between

nature2: biotech determinism

Scenario Templates* Evangelical Corporation

CONSEQUENCES AND IMPLICATIONS What Would Armani Do?

Issues and Opportunities on the Strategic Horizon

Where to Watch and Scan for Cultural Change

5900-X Hollis Street Emeryville, CA 94608 510.547.6822

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