Creating the present by imagining the future: The power of science fiction

Technological progress is growing exponentially and we hazard that the so-called obsolescence of the law attributed to Moore will have no consequence whatsoever on this surge. We are experiencing a tremendous cultural shift in the way we adapt to technological changes. We are pushed to turn our relation to time around and consider the future as preexisting the present. Rapid and non-linear as technological innovation is, any attempt to predict the future based on the observation of the present proves pointless. We now ought to proceed the other way around and draw up today's priorities based on what we picture as foreseeable and desirable for the future. Imagination is now a key asset to make our way through this bewildering context. In a world where no one can predict what the future holds, the winners will be those who managed to sketch it beforehand.

The Americans understood this before all the others and it is thus hardly surprising that they emerged as the country of prime science fiction. When Isaac Asimov wrote his "laws of robotics" and applied them to all the robots filling his novels, not only did he define what would be considered possible or not but he also influenced our comprehension of the robots which are about to become part of our daily life thanks to technological progress. Even more striking is the text he published in the New York Times on the occasion of the 1964 World Fair where he described the world in 2014. Indeed, he depicted our daily life with exact details, from flat screens to smartphones or frozen food. If Asimov is no soothsayer, he enables the future by giving complete leeway to his unrestricted imagination. Imagination is a key element of the Silicon Valley's entrepreneurs' success: they picture their final goal and then build the technologies to reach it. It is actually no accident if the epicenter of trailblazing technologies is only some 350 miles from the Dream Factory city of Hollywood.  

Chinese imagination in power

However, the United-States are seemingly losing their monopoly over imagination, an asset which fueled their growth during the 20th century. As proof, the Chinese movie The Wandering Earth filmed after Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin's novella which went on screen for Chinese New Year has quickly become the highest-grossing of the global box office and even received Barack Obama's praise. Netflix announced it had acquired the rights of the movie to propose it in 28 languages on its platform. The watershed is tremendous: the possible futures for our humanity are no longer built on exclusively American cultural standards and it so happens that Chinese Sci-Fi has a very different frame of reference on a wide range of subjects.

At first, the plot of The Wandering Earth can appear quite hackneyed. The sun has disappeared, leaving planet Earth frozen. Humans are thus forced to live underground. However, unlike Americans, who would probably consider taking over another planet, the Chinese undertake to remove Earth from the Solar System. The underlying message is thus not to leave Earth but to save it, as humans are ultimately dependent on their planet. The other major difference from American Sci-Fi is that success will be achieved through collective action and not thanks to a providential hero. It is the "United government of the earth", or the ONU of the future, which takes the decision of propelling Earth outside the Solar System. Moreover, all countries join forces in building the vehicles which will be able to ship citizens during this journey. Admittedly, it is a Chinese member of the International Space Station along with a Russian colleague who will decide to contravene the orders spoken in French when Earth risks collision with Jupiter, thus avoiding disaster. The implicit geopolitics is worth noting! However, in the Chinese vision, it is solidarity which will save human beings.

When Sci-Fi meets strategy

Far from being a minor detail, this movie tells us that imagination is nowadays a key strategic asset and that the Americans are not its only recipient anymore. This shift in paradigm has a major impact on businesses' strategies: with high technological growth, priorities are turned upside down. Planning ahead to three or five years now proves useless as we have no clue what technological tools we will have then. On the contrary, we ought to picture the desirable future to set up our list of priorities. That is what the Chinese government is doing in a projective program they launched in 2013. With "China 2049", the Central Kingdom imagines its own future.

Design fiction allows companies to explore different possible scenarios for the future to come and different solutions correspond to each of these scenarios: which products or services should we provide according to the world we have pictured or the available technologies? Which jobs should we create? Which markets should we address? Among all the possible scenarios, which is the one we would like to see become real? Design fiction is based on geopolitical and socio-economic approaches (strong signals) and the identification of emerging cultures and technologies (weak signals). To these analyses, we add what constitutes Sci-Fi's biggest strength: the power of imagination to better understand our current situation. Roland Berger is currently developing its expertise on this topic as we are convinced it constitutes the future of consulting. Today more than ever, imagination is in power!