Strategic Approach to the Future

Last Saturday, February 24, 2013, a seminar was held at the De La Salle University-Manila, Yuchengco Hall, Y507-Y509 seminar room. I attended a seminar entitled Strategic Approach to the Future: Knowledge Creation and Exchange Propagated by Technology, the seminar was divided into two parts, the first part was a talk on two speakers namely Dr. Adrew Lian and Dr. Marcus Bussey both an Australian. The talk was divded into two parts, the first one was discussed by Dr. Andrew  Lian.

The first topic was about The Reflection on Intellectual and Strategic Educational Development in an Exponentially Expanding Technological World. He opened the seminar by talking about Google. The speaker asked the audience if one day Google will stop the flow of information, some said no but most said yes.

Dr. Andrew Lian discussed a lot of topics such as Social and Intellectual trends, the Great Change in the modern ICT World, the Moore's Law on Technological Growth Rate, 21st Educational Paradigms, the Rhizomatic Approach, etc. The topic that really got my attention was about the "Google Effect" and the Asian/ ASEAN Century.

The “Google Effect” is the tendency to forget information due to the easy accessibility in search engines such as Google, which can be found in the Internet. People tend to look for information in the Internet because the Internet offers a lot of information they need on a faster time. Information availability and accessibility is convenient, with just a stroke of a person’s fingers on the keyboard, all of the information they need is their which makes people more reliable and comfortable in using search engines to the point that he people think that they need not remember it.

The Asian/ASEAN Century talks about the present period where the Asian countries strarts to dominate the world in terms of business growth. Countries in Asia such as Japan and China are some of the tiger economy in Asia. Philippines is also predicted to rise in the next few years.


The next speaker was Dr. Marcus Bussey who talked about Education, his topics are Scholarship and Biography, Sustainability as Co-creativity, Kim and Dator's Second Law of Futures, etc. The topic that made me interested was the Utilization of Strategic Foresighting.

           Strategy Foresighting is the practice of creating a functional view of the future, events, opportunities, possibilities, and adversities in such a way that a person or an organization can harness its advantages. Establishing a certain response to a certain event, will make a person or an organization to be more effective since they are prepared on most cases especially when things go south. For example, in terms of business, if an organization utilizes strategic foresighting then they may be able to forecast and detect adverse market conditions, as well as identifying new potential products or services as countermeasure. 

      The second part was the Panel talk, which involve the two speakers, Dr. Andrew Lian and Dr. Marcus Bussey, and the Panelist which are professors from different universities in the Philippines such as Mr. Glenn Sipin from De La Salle University. The discussion was cut short because of the lack of time. Over all, the seminar was very helpful to us students since the topics that have been discussed is very applicable and is undoubtedly happening in the real world.