Date, Time and Location: Friday October 18, 2019 [1300-1600] DMS [link to map] 4165
Slides: DJI FSN Wicked Problems Revisited Oct 18 2019
| Foresight, Behavioral Economics and Wicked Problems Revisited – Nepal as a Wicked Foresight Problem |
Abstract: On April 4 2017, Derek Ireland made a presentation to FSN on Foresight, Behavioral Economics, Disruptive Technologies, and Other Wicked Problems. For those who could not attend the earlier presentation, this one on Wicked Problems Revisited will begin with an updated and hopefully improved version of the initial 20 or so slides on definition, the wicked problems from the literature, and the differences between wicked and tame problems and their implications for foresight and policy formulation. The presentation will provide a case study of Nepal development as a wicked foresight problem. The presentation will close with some summary comments on power, the powerful, and the wicked problem of the crisis of democratic capitalism – which will be linked with earlier FSN presentations advanced information technologies and governance of the state.
Over the past two years, Derek Ireland has completed two major consulting assignments in Nepal on economic development, policy, legal, and regulatory reform, and urban corridor development. At the outset, it became very clear that Nepal has many complex and inter-related “wicked” characteristics that can greatly complicate foresight and related analysis and the preparation and comparison of development scenarios. At a time of dramatic growth and change in the Asian economy and quality of life, the growth of the Nepal economy has been sub-standard for over five decades. The political economy of Nepal is now going through a dramatic constitutional transformation from a unitary state dominated by its capital Kathmandu and the Kathmandu Valley to a federal system of seven provinces that in many ways is quite similar to Canada, Australia and India. For these and many other “wicked” reasons, the past in Nepal provides very little guidance to the future. This case study will address how the consultants addressed this and many other foresight, scenario, and development planning challenges, and how transformative change, wicked development challenges, and national economies with wicked characteristics can be addressed by foresight analysts in the future.
Brief Bio: Dr. Derek Ireland has been a senior economist and manager in the Canadian public and private sectors for over five decades. He has a BA in Economics and Asian Studies from the University of British Columbia in 1968, and an MA in Economics from Carleton University, which he received in the mid-1970s. He returned to university in the Fall of 2003 as a student in the PhD program in Public Policy at Carleton University in Ottawa Canada, and received his PhD in February 2009. His area of specialization over the last two and a half decades has been the interactions between law and economics with emphasis on competition policy and law; regulatory reform and impact analysis; consumer policy and consumer protection law; trade policy; intellectual property and innovation policy; urban, regional, rural and infrastructure development; and public administration.
His international experience includes more than 30 major consulting assignments in China, as well as research and policy development work in several other developing countries such as Nepal, Malaysia, Yemen, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, the Mongolia Republic, and in Botswana working with the Secretariat of the Southern Africa Development Community on competition and consumer protection policies and laws in the SADC Member States. He has been a member of FSN for over a decade and has made previous presentations on: marketing foresight to the boundedly rational; uncertainty, novelty, innovation, Canada’s innovation challenge, and the consumer; and, foresight, behavioral economics, disruptive technologies, and other wicked problems.
Foresight Synergy Network (FSN) 