Flickers of (Applied) Hope: on alchemy, adjacencies, peripheral vision and the future
“If it exists, it’s possible.” That quote by John Grier, a legendary Forbes editor, has served as a mantra for me this year. In the face of so many tipping points that seem not only to be accelerating, but colliding (combinations of name-the-problem + climate change), this defiant little truism pierces the existential bleakness with what Amory Lovins calls “applied hope.”
I work at a company that works with companies to envision futures. Through strategy, design and storytelling they make the abstract tangible. Through sheer visual brawn the possible becomes real. And then it becomes inevitable.
There is an alchemy to this that astounds me every time.
It isn’t.
It isn’t.
It isn’t.
Until suddenly there it is, clear as a bell.
My contribution to the mix is looking elsewhere: I focus more on stakes than stakeholders, listening for what isn’t said, exploring the edges for the “adjacent possible” (hat tip to biologist How Stuart Kauffman via writer Steven Johnson).
Futures can be found anywhere, but the ones most likely to break new ground thrive in the amorphous, liminal space between the known and the novel: the arc connecting data and dreams; the almost imperceptible atomic tipping point of a phase change. It is here that combinations never before tried can play out, rippling with potential.
“What else can it do?”
“How would it scale?”
“If this, then what next?”
Let me clarify: Annie’s right. There is always tomorrow. The future happens no matter what. Even dinosaurs continue to have a future, though these days mostly as fossils. That said, they also live on in the structure of birds.
The question is whether tomorrow will be a repeat of today. Or whether it will be worse, riddled with mistakes of the past. Or possibly, just possibly, better.
I look for evidence of all three, always hoping for signs of the latter.
And today, in a December mood, reviewing the tens of thousands of words I have written over the last year (on integrative design, wellness, finance, real estate, energy, green chemistry, the metaverse, AI, regenerative agriculture — mostly for an internal company audience), I see flickering signs of better.
The “better” may not be enough, or scale fast enough, to slow a proliferating, Loki-style multitude of doomsday clocks: Nuclear threats. Climate change. Ecological destruction. Resource depletion. Pollution (air, plastic, chemical). Disease.
This is where “applied hope” comes in. Without the effort defy the odds, the stacked-against-us odds will surely win. Game over.
••••••••••••••••
My colleague, Brian Collins, is famous for his “101 Design Rules” — maxims on business, life and work that often have relevance beyond design and designers. One of my favorites is about being a “problem-seeker” rather than a “problem-solver.” The subtle reframing demands not only an ability to see patterns of cause and effect, but also the imagination to anticipate pot-holes and the creativity to invent ways around them. Problem-solvers react. Problem-seekers open doors.
Below are three examples technologies and models quickly moving from the edges of the adjacent possible to become givens of daily life.
This is how Future becomes Present.
I have written about all three over the last year, mostly for company backgrounders. There are many, many more examples. I chose these three because though none has yet to reach critical mass, all will soon.
MICROGRIDS
As the name suggests, a microgrid is a small electric grid that can separate (“island”) from the big grid during a power outage. Ideally, electricity is generated by renewables (solar, wind, green hydrogen), with battery backup. The combination of climate change-amplified extreme weather and an aging, crumbling, vulnerable and costly-to-maintain electric grid is spurring on adoption. Utility companies that once saw microgrids as a threat are embracing them. In California, PG&E is encouraging their adoption, particularly in hard to access mountain communities. In Chicago, ComEd, working with the Illinois Institute of Technology, built the country’s first neighborhood migrogrid on Chicago’s South Side. But it is in Florida where adoption of microgrids could quickly go mainstream.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, Babcock Ranch, a 100% solar powered community near Tampa (so close to where the Ian made landfall), weathered the weather as designed without ever losing power. Dozen of smaller microgrids throughout the region also fared well. One in particular, also near Tampa, caught my attention because it prototyped a new business model and was located in an subdivision by Lennar, the second largest homebuilder in the US.
Instead of homeowners footing the bill for solar panels and batteries, the local utility paid for the installations. While the homeowners continued to be ratepayers, thus providing the utility a way to recoup its costs, the solar installations increased home values while also providing reliable power. Meanwhile, the utility drastically cut its storm repair costs: It’s a lot cheaper to put back or even replace a blown-off solar panel than it is to fix a downed power line.
Reliable power is table stakes for an internet-dependent economy. You can’t run a business — or work from home — without it. Which is why the recent take down of a substation in North Carolina by a few well-aimed gunshots is so disturbing, underscoring the vulnerability of the grid. A distributed, “Lego-style” system made up of microgrids is far more secure.
Renewable power generated closer to where it will be used cuts the need for central power plants burning coal, gas or nuclear fuel. That means a dramatic reduction in carbon pollution. Given that roughly 40% of CO2 emissions come from buildings — nearly 2/3s from building operations — this is a big deal. It upends the need and expense of storing spent nuclear fuel.
It also cuts demand for fracked gas, pipelines, and open pit coal and uranium mines.
But wait, there’s more! Buildings and communities with microgrids are cheaper, cleaner and more robust to operate. And for those same reasons also easier to insure and finance. A Boulder, Colorado-based developer with whom I spoke told me that he gets 20 basis points off of construction loans for his “Net Zero” buildings—which effectively zeros out any additional upfront costs to build green. That means the energy efficiency dividend starts paying off from Day 1.
From a bank’s perspective, the loans are easier to sell because energy efficient, resilient buildings perform better over time. The income generated by premium terms on loan sales more than make up for those discounted basis points.
The conversation is no longer about capital costs. It’s about the cost of capital.
EV CHARGING INFRASTRUCTURE
Two photos of a New York street taken about a decade apart: The first, from the 1910s, shows a busy thoroughfare filled with horse-drawn buggies, trucks and wagons. By the 1920s, the same street is jammed with gas guzzling “horseless carriages,” with nary a horse in sight.
Change happens fast, right? Well, yes and no. It can take years, decades, even centuries for all the parts what seems like a blink-of-an-eye transformation to come together. People began experimenting with steam-powered cars in the 1700s — and electric cars in the 1800s. But it wasn’t until 1913 that a paradigm shift in production — Henry Ford’s assembly line — made motorized transport for the masses a viable option.
Until the first gas station opened in St. Louis in 1905, drivers bought gas from “hardware stores, general stores, pharmacies, and even blacksmiths.” These business also sold kerosene for stoves and lighting, so supplying gasoline was a no-brainer. Fuel was poured — not pumped — from a five-gallon can, using a funnel.
As the number of cars began to grow exponentially, the infrastructure for gas stations, many of which also offered car repair services, sprang up in a blink. The first traffic light in the US was installed in 1912 (in Utah). But it wasn’t until 1935 that the first parking meter went into operation (in Oklahoma).
Electric vehicles (EVs) are finally having their moment, after two centuries of tinkering and policy wrangling. Cars. Trucks. Buses. Motorcycles. Bicycles. Scooters. If it has wheels, someone has figured out how to attach a battery.
Concern about fossil fuel emissions is definitely a part the attraction. But so is efficiency. A 2023 Toyota Corolla gets 32 mpg in the city and 41 mpg on the highway. The top 10 2023 EVs rated by EPA for comparable fuel efficiency (MPGe) do 3x to 4x better.
While still only a sliver of the overall market, adoption of EVs is ramping up fast. Utility companies and gas stations are battling for control of the recharging business. Into the fray come retailers — including Walgreen’s, Wal-Mart, Starbucks and Taco Bell — installing chargers, hoping to lure in customers who will shop, drink and dine while their cars sip electrons. There is now an app-controlled robotic, portable charger—Ziggy—that will save a parking space, then wait for the car that needs charging to arrive. Charging outlets are quickly becoming standard in the garages of high-end new home builds.
In Maryland, solar panels installed on top of a bus depot parking shed provide power for a fleet of 70 electric buses: a microgrid for transportation. The local utility can tap into the power supply, using it as a de facto “peaker plant” during times of high energy demand. Not only does this bring more clean energy into the mix, but it saves the utility — and ratepayers — money. The utility has an alternative to using, or building, a pricey, fossil fuel-powered peaker plant.
Last week, ComEd selected my community, which borders Chicago, as one of 16 in Illinois to prototype EV infrastructure.
The Future on my doorstep.
PARAMETRIC INSURANCE
In a world where risks only get riskier, insurance has become a frighteningly risky business. Thanks to climate change (or climate “weirding” as some call it), what once were rare, “billion dollar” disasters have become “the new normal”: flash floods, mega-wildfires, record snow storms, crop-annihilating derechos and tornados, amped up hurricanes, rising seas. News footage of cars bobbing along flooded streets no longer shock. In the saddest of ways, flattened neighborhoods all look alike.
There are only so many insurance adjusters to assess Armageddon. It can take months, sometimes years, to settle claims.
Enter parametric insurance. Like EVs, parametric insurance is not a new idea, but rather one whose time has finally come thanks to advances in tech — in this case the internet, satellites and AI.
Where conventional insurance payouts are based on assessed damage, a parametric payout is triggered by pre-determined criteria. For example, if it rains 3” in an hour within 100 feet of a property, or if a 5.0 earthquake strikes within a x miles, a check will be on its way. Typically, parameters can be verified by a third party data from National Weather Service or agencies tracking seismic activity. Payouts are issued regardless of whether or not there is any actual damage.
With a little AI-assisted number crunching, policies can be priced for almost anything, including insuring coral reefs against hurricanes. Working with reinsurance giant Munich Re, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) created just such a policy for a reef off the coast of Mexico in 2019. The following year, Hurricane Delta triggered a quick payout that made an enormous difference for speeding up restoration efforts.
Retailers in Japan have used it as a hedge against business disruptions due to earthquakes.
Closer to home, Arbol, a leading US-based startup, settled a $10 million reinsurance claim within weeks of Hurricane Ian’s landfall. This enabled the insurance company to, in turn, accelerate the settlement of homeowner claims. (Reinsurance is the the insurance insurance companies buy.)
Ten million dollars, of course, is a rounding error in the $50 billion+ tally for insured Ian damage. (Uninsured damage could double that figure.) But the speedy payout is a powerful proof point. Parametric insurance will not replace traditional insurance, but instead can serve as a supplement: a monetary lifeline to help survivors begin to put their lives back together as soon as possible.
Parametric insurance, although still a small subset of the overall industry, has a market value of about $12 billion, which is expected to grow to nearly $30 billion within a decade.
Like microgrids and EVs, parametric insurance is positioned to play a critical role in navigating the many intricate and increasingly knotty challenges linked to climate change. What is currently cutting edge is poised to become table stakes. Tires instead of horseshoes. Cell phones instead of landlines. Microgrids, EVs and speedy insurance payouts instaed of power outages, tailpipe emissions and waiting for damage assessments
The Future. Arrived.
THE VIEW FROM THE EDGES
Peripheral vision—more than 90% of the human visual field—operates on a level just this side of awareness. It is what allows us to integrate changing contexts seamlessly into our plans: to anticipate what we need to do next.
Vision is mostly about the edges.
The metaphor of focus — the narrower the better — has been a “go to” business trope forever. Silicon Valley glorified this blinkered perspective, conflating a “move fast and break things” ethos with the faux heroism of founders racing to invent the Next Big Thing.
Focus in business is important. But without peripheral vision, it is also nothing. Actually, it is worse because it blocks awareness of both consequences and possibilities.
Physically, it is almost impossible to move forward without all the data provided by peripheral vision. Likewise, peripheral vision is essential for businesses to succeed. The ability of companies to transform and adapt to meet the ever-evolving needs of the market is the difference between profit and loss.
My job and my nature take me to the periphery often. It is a chaotic, wondrous place where the fantastic, the outlandish, the ridiculous, the impossible and the inevitable all gather. It is where problem-seekers go for inspiration. It is where to “think different,” as Steve Jobs put it, is simply “thinking.”
As 2022 winds down, the excitement builds for the imminent arrival of the Future. A giant, glittery ball will “drop” in New York’s Time Square. Champagne corks will pop and bubbles flow as we raise our glasses and steel ourselves for whatever comes next.
But, of course, the future never stops arriving.
From my perch on the periphery, I will look for patterns and delight in the novel, the odd, the enchanting. I will scan the horizon for those shimmery, shining flickers of hope. There are so many.
“If it exists, it’s possible”
Yes.
And you’ll never guess what else is possible, too.
