The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Create It

The following are edited excerpts from a conversation with Larry Kopald and Wendy Bromley Bodden, October 6, 2010, shortly after the annual IVOH World Summit. Larry Kopald is a partner at Kopald/Stranger, a change agency that brings global business development and strategy to organizations engaged in Ethical Progress.

WB: What brought you to the Summit?

LK: I've been aware of IVOH for two years. It deals with issues I live and breathe; that we need to change the dialogue and the message.

WB: Did anything stand out for you at the Summit, or inspire you?

LK: The totality of it: it's one thing to see one approach to the subject; another to see 30-40. There were games; technologies; social media applications connecting corporations to a positive message. I walked away thinking "tremendous", yet interestingly, "not well known". How do we change this?

WB: Any new insights or ideas you came away with?

LK: IVOH is an enabler of people to come together, to work and share; the organization is behind-the-scenes - not on the frontline. The people attending are on the frontlines. And the question is how we make those frontlines cohesive. What becomes apparent quite quickly is how many fantastic efforts are happening, but how collectively we are missing out on leveraging synergy.

WB: Any new questions that you are puzzling over?

LK: Tons. I liked looking at how people are using different forms of media to try to have impact, such as the Palestine-Israeli game. This creates all kinds of ‘what if' questions. It's all very proactive.

WB: You posed the question at the Summit, "how do you build your own castle"? Tell me about that metaphor and why I should want to?

LK: The exact phrase, passed down by a friend's grandmother, was "People who don't build castles in the air don't build them anywhere". It's about dreams. It's about having focused hopes. It parallels another line that we have based our company on: "The best way to predict the future is to create it".

WB: You said "When you accelerate hope you have to accept an elevated responsibility: fear gives you a sense of relief; hope raises expectations". Talk a bit more about this, and the key factors in managing that responsibility.

LK: All messages create expectations. If we run fear-based messaging, and the fear is not realized, people are relieved. Relief is a good thing. So there was not real risk. If you instill hope, and the hope is not realized, people are at best disappointed, and at worst disillusioned. As we have learned with Obama, virtually all of his supporters agree that we are better off than we would have been had he not won. But we are way worse off than we had hoped we'd be. Therefore, instead of celebrating our success, we are disappointed. Again, be careful about the expectations you create.

WB: You use a term "Applied Hope". What does that mean?

LK: This is a term coined by Amory Lovins, and it basically means that we will have much greater success at creating hope if we tie the effort to tangible successes. Don't simply talk about

what we might do. Talk about what we have already done, and use it to increase confidence that we can do more. The level of hope one has is correlated to the number of people he or she feel share that hope, so reminding people of progress is critical.

WB: What are you most passionate about making happen?

LK: My greatest hope is that we can solve some of the more serious issues before we pass the point of no return. In terms of the two systems I am most dependent upon-the environment and the United States, where I reside-we are very close to that tipping point. In fact, arguments can easily be made that we are past that point on both fronts.

WB: Where do you find the inspiration for your own work?

LK: A few places: Nature, for one. I was raised Jewish, but I'm basically a pantheist. Nature is the most remarkable miracle. It's perfect; healing; the systems are amazing. It has no waste. It rebounds with speed when allowed to heal.

Youth is another cause for hope. People under 25 today are engaged in causes, not traditional leaders. They look at solutions-focusing on renewable energy, for instance, instead of global warming.

And finally, I achieve optimism from the timeline. While we hear about the end being near, and it may be, there is another way to look at it. Humans have been around a very, very small part of history. And, more importantly, it's only been 50 years that we have had to realize our power, and our ability to destroy the systems we depend on. That's less than 1/10th of 1% of the time we've been on the planet. And already we have learned to feed billions and capture the sun and wind to light our homes. If we can hold on for another 100 years, especially as we harness the power of computing and connect it to the emerging grid of humanity, we might just find the utopia we know is possible.