One of my favourite organisations is the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC).
We have been exploring how UKGBC might leverage the OnePlanet platform across their organisation and membership, not least with their Regenerative Places framework.
One-way the UKGBC team are looking at the future is using the Three Horizons framework. The Three Horizons framework encourages organisations to examine possible ways forward, classified into three “horizons”: Horizon 1 for the world as it is; Horizon 3 for the world as we might like it to be; Horizon 2 for the transition, taking us from Horizon 1 to Horizon 3.
It made me think about transition and the challenge of the paradigm shift we need.
Three Horizons can be an incredibly useful way to think about what we might do and how we can understand how different people can have different perspectives, even within the same organisation, and how each can add value.
How do I see this from a systems perspective, or more specifically, from a system-of-systems perspective?
Let’s take the example of cars in the context of climate change and the need to reduce carbon emissions. A Horizon 1 solution might be to increase the efficiency of internal combustion engines. A Horizon 3 solution might be for all cars to be electric. A Horizon 2 solution might be Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs). Each has its advantages and disadvantages when looked at from the perspectives of commercial viability, customer acceptance and carbon reductions.
It is with Horizon 2 solutions that we probably need to be most careful. They can be particularly problematic as there is a big danger of falling into the trap of accumulating the disadvantages of Horizon 1 and Horizon 3, rather than supporting a transition. It turns out that carbon savings from PHEVs are nowhere near predicted and instead maintain the disadvantages of internal combustion engines without harvesting the benefits of all-electric cars.
Sometimes we have no option but to take the leap and to commit to a new paradigm or Horizon 3.
Why is transition (Horizon 2) often so challenging? It is because no solution can be considered on its own, in a silo. Every solution sits not only in a system, it sits in a system-of-systems. A car solution is not something that a car company can consider in isolation. It sits in a transport system, where things like charging infrastructure are relevant. But it also sits in financial and cultural systems.
When we take the broadest possible system-of-systems view, we might even see what we might call Horizon 4 solutions: for example, creating places where people don’t even need to use cars. We then see benefits also accrue in health systems (by encouraging walking and cycling and eliminating micro-plastic pollution from car tyres which are also released by electric cars) and to community systems (by creating better public realm by pedestrianising streets).
My advice: yes, look at all Three Horizons but always be guided ultimately by a big picture ‘system-of-systems’ Horizon 4.