In simple terms, because our future depends on our ability to solve wicked problems. The scope and importance of wicked problems are growing faster than our ability to resolve them, and we need to advance things pretty quickly.
There are at least threereasons why messy problems are more frequent, bigger, and more important:
- The products, services, and systems (the “things”) that make up our civilization are becoming increasingly complex. The design, production, and distribution of any one utility exceeds the ability of a single human to understand, let alone master. Consequently, any changes to these things require consideration of many moving parts.
- The interdependency among all these things is also growing, both economically and in people’s minds. Consequently, there is a growing scope of problems that can’t be solved in isolation from other problems.
- These are not problems that resolve themselves. Instead, they just get worse and result in a crisis in which the resolution might be worse than anyone feared to begin with.
In other words, and in all modesty, this is a worthy undertaking.
Some notable examples of wicked problems:
- Health care in the United States, and actually all around the world.
- Climate crisis and economic growth.
- Future of publishing anything.
- Arab-Israeli conflict.
- Future of rural Norway.
- Most of Africa.
- Future of financial intermediaries and service providers.
- Marriage and the nuclear family
- Pandemics
These are well-known examples of macro problems, but there are plenty of micro problems that cause just as much anxiety and uncertainty. Corporations often face wicked problems, and their main characteristic is that any course of action yields unacceptable outcomes. Families often get stuck in intractable situations that don’t appear to have happy outcomes. And so on it goes.
The hard part is getting past the belief that somewhere out there – if you wait long enough and search hard enough – there’s a simple and good solution a wicked problem. To be sure, there are simple solutions (a meteor the size of Texas hits Earth and nobody has to worry about anything anymore), but these are rarely the kind that people want to contemplate.
Comments