Tuesday, April 27, 2010

21st Century Dilemma Management

A report from the Brookings Institution and the Center on International Co-operation at New York University, "Confronting the Long Crisis of Globalization", download here, discusses that the sort of problems governments will face in the 21st century will be unpredictable versus those faced during old great power rivalries.  Concerns related to demography, climate change and shifts in economic power build up quietly for a long time and finally trigger sudden, disruptive shifts.

The authors suggest institutional level changes and changes in the frame of mind in solving the needs or crisis.  They recommend risk mitigation and resilience to shocks - "Resilient systems are those that can absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change, so as to retain or enhance effective function, structure, identity and feedbacks."

The days of narrow focused, blinders on, problem solving are over as the deeply interconnected world continues to grow to be more so.  This is the century of the "butterfly effects".

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