Opening Remarks & Keynotes

Main Stage K6

Alicia Shao: Why Every Leader is a Futurist

The future is a collective political space that impacts every aspect of our lives. To head toward a better future and to create for the greater good, leaders must be accustomed to thinking, learning, and playing in the future. But what is the future, and how should we lead for it? In my research, I propose the future is at the intersection of speculative design, storytelling, and system thinking. Each discipline offers a unique perspective on the future and unveils an underlying truth of how we should respond to it.

Speculative design shows that the future is non-anthropocentric. We are bound by human conditions and our own temporality and fail to grasp the interconnectedness from a human-only perspective. Phenomenology in storytelling tells us the future is not always a logical place, our emotions and dreams also plays a part in colouring the vision of the future. System thinking shows us that the future can be anticipated, and it can be moulded by our experience of time and understanding of the systems around us. So the truth about of future is this: the future is selfless, to lead for the future is to make decisions for non-humans as well as us. The future is not bloodless, so we cannot rely on numbers alone; instead, we make sense of the future through the colours and warmth of our stories. The future is rooted, and to build for it, we must embrace holism as our paradigm, especially in the way that we view time.

But the most important thing leader needs in order to lead for the future is urgent optimism. Optimism is a skill, that can be built by thinking, learning, and playing in the future. It is through these actions that we increase our future literacy, and democratise the future so we shape it into one which we want, and deserve.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciashao