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Causes and Consequencesof Cultural ChangeA GBN WorldView Meeting Report
GBNGlobal Business a member of
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WorldView Members& Guests
Heather Ainsworth
Kodak
Nancy Bambic
DuPont
Erika BrockhouseCoca-Cola
Dionne Colvin
Toyota
Christian Crews
The Waitt Family Foundation
Todd Egeland
CIA
Nicole Gilbert
Nissan North America
Anne Messbarger
CHRISTUS Health
Marcia Daley
Herman Miller
Stan Rosen
Boeing
Gary Wright
Proctor & Gamble
Jennifer Wright
Nissan North America
Network
Mary Catherine Bateson
anthropologist
Betty Sue Flowers
poet & educator
Joel Garreau
journalist
J.C. Herz
online & interactive media expert
Van Jones
community activist
Chris Riley
brand strategist
Alex Singer
film & tv director
GBN
Lynn Carruthers
Napier Collyns
Eamonn Kelly
Sophia Liang
Jay Ogilvy
Diana Scearce
Erik Smith
Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
The Meeting Agenda
Monday December 9
Welcome Reception & Dinner
Defining Culture and Cultural Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Signposts of Cultural Change: A Hollywood Perspective . . . . .7
Tuesday December 10
Causes and Stories of Cultural Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9
Creating Scenarios of Cultural Change to 2015 . . . . . . . . .13
Consequences and Implications of Cultural Change . . . . . . .23
Who Was There?
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Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
SETTING THE CONTEXT
Defining Culture
Our first step towards a better understanding of the causes
and consequences of cultural change was to define what we
were talking about. Arrayed around the border of the box are
definitions drawn from academic textbooksthey are compre-
hensive, valid, and, quite frankly, dry. So at the start of the
meeting, the participants offered their own perspectives on
what culture means to them. Some of these definitions aligned
closely with the academic ones, others were more personal
and visceral.
What would you write?
to think like a human being is to think in terms
of stories, and I tell my students that they can set
aside all the fancy definitions of culture they mayhave learned in anthropology or the humanities
and think of culture simply as those stories that
we tell one another to make sense of our lives.
Jay Mechling,
Professor of American Studies,
University of California, Davis
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Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
Picturing Cultural Change
The term culture is slip-pery: we all experience it
everyday in extremely per-
sonal ways, yet it is difficult
to capture in words. As par-
ticipants explained I cant
describe it, but I sure know
it when I see it! Others
noted that often knowing
culture is much easier
once youve gotten out of
your own and have spent
time in another. Since
changes over time are eas-
ier to identify, we invited the
participants to bring and
post some images that rep-
resent specific changes inculture.
What images capture the
idea of cultural change
for you?
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Each participant found one of these question cards beneath
their dinner plate. To guide conversation, we asked partici-
pants to answer their own question and then respond to tho
of others at the table.
How would you answer? What have been your
experiences of cultural change?
Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
Initial Questions
How have you
detected culturalchange?
How has your
organization effectivelyrespondedor not
to cultural shifts?
What is an important
source of cultural
change that yourorganization is not
paying attention to?
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Not surprisingly, these conversations wereboth animated and wide-ranging. Each table
shared highlights of their dinner conversa-
tions, and some major issues emerged:
the difference in culture between for-profit
and not-for-profit work environments
the place of the individual and the group
in different cultures
the importance of the cultural relationship
between the U.S. and other parts of the
world, and
the necessity of forgetting as a step in
the cycle of cultural change, i.e., one must
forget in order to changea positiveamnesia.
Several of these themes would echo through-
out the meeting.
Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
Some Revelations
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Being in Los Angeles, what could be more appropriate tha
an opening presentation by Alex Singer on the role of ente
tainment, media, and cultural change. A member of both
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and the
Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Alex has been a
GBN Network member for 15 years. In his presentation, h
tracked several dimensions of cultural change using film
clips from four countries.
Women, Men, and Sex
1937 It Happened One Night
1991 Jungle Fever
2002 Y Tu Mam Tambin
Humanity, Technology, and Cultural Icons
1968 2001: A Space Odyssey
Control and Manipulation of Time
1999 Run Lola Run
2000 TimeCode
2001 Memento
2002 What Time Is It There?
Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
Film and Cultural Change
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Signposts of Cultural Change
Alex kicked off the presentationwith a sure way to get an audience
attention: sex. He moved from a
risqu scene in 1937 showing
Clark Gable without an undershirt,
to an interracial affair, to a nearly
comicalyet graphicscene of
afternoon sex between two teen-
agers. Films separated by nearly70 years highlight and reflect the
massive cultural change that has
happened in this arena. What will
shock us next?
The second themehumanitys
relationship with technologyis
seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey.This also raises questions about
the iconic and mythic nature of
some films: Are they doing more
than simply reflecting cultural
change? Do they show the way
ahead?
The final theme revolves aroundtime, and our relationship to it
something that Alex considers a
central issue we are grappling with
today: Are we not enslaved by time
Can we be in charge of it? How
malleable is it?
What films would you haveselected? Why?`
Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
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Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
STORIES OF CULTURAL CHANGE
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Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
More Stories of Cultural Change
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Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change: A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
SCENARIOS ON THE FUTURE OF CULTURAL CHANGE TO 2015
Predetermined & Uncertain Forces
Votes Predetermined
12 Current value systems that are driving most global corporations render them
incapable of contending with these issues of cultural change
9 Aging population
6 Importance of China
6 Importance of India
5 Increasing levels of connectedness
5 Identity determined by more than age
4 More & more urbanization
3 More & more myths & conspiracy theories & widespread belief in them
3 Increasing diversity
3 Global warming, and other global problems
2 Continued growth & expansion of networks: both formal & informal
0 Religious diversity
0 Acceptance of authority and hierarchies (esp. by Millennial Generation)
0 Neurosis is perennial
0 Economic globalization
0 Technology & communication will continue to make the world a smaller place
0 American hegemony
0 A more painful world in 15 years
Starting from these provocative ideas and insights about causes and consequences of cultural
change, we brainstormed forcesuncertain and predeterminedthat would drive cultural
change between now and 2015. Uncertainties are exactly that: dependent upon other forces,
they could play out in a variety of ways. Predetermineds are deep trends, probably already evi-
dent today, that will play out in a relatively certain way. After the brainstorm, we voted on which
forces of cultural change would be most relevant for business. All of the uncertainties and pre-
determineds are listed here, along with the votes each received.
What would you add to these lists?
Which do you think are most relevant to business?
Which ones would you vote for as most relevant to the way your organization relates
to and handles cultural change?
One participant asked an interesting question that received a high number of votes: What is
beauty? The question is too open-ended to be easily framed as an uncertainty, yet it resonated
extremely well with everyone in the room because it got at both the subjective and normative
aspects of culture while also capturing the aesthetic element. So we set it aside to ask later
when we thought through the implications of each scenario world.
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Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
Votes Uncertainty
12 Techno-centric vs. human-centric expansion of technology
12 Top-down vs. bottom-up leadership
10 Reconfiguration of generational pattern, i.e., relationship between age and
authority
10 Global governance or global markets?
11 What is beautiful?
10 Interactions between hierarchies & networks
10 Cultural hegemony vs. cultural diversity
9 Centralized vs. decentralized technology
7 Increasing friction between American hegemony and a European model, esp.
related to leadership
6 Will there be change in incentive programs of businesses to take cultural change
into account?
5 Reliance on fossil fuels vs. alternative sources of energy
5 Nature vs. nurture assumptions
4 Will growing Circle of Empathy continue, or will it be a U.S. vs. Them globalization?
4 What are we willing to go to war for?
4 Strengthening of special interest groups as agents of social change, or weakeningof national American government as resource for social change
3 Development of strong global or international institutions
2 Cyberculture: how it defines itself? what it means?
Votes Uncertainty
2 Where will the locus of the voluntary choice be: individual, group, state, world?
2 Does increased connectedness make people more or less responsible?
2 What happens when there is no meta-narrative?
2 Working at for profits vs. working at not-for-profits, esp. motivation
2 How fast technologies, particularly biotechnologies, come along
1 And is there pushback to new biotechnologies?
1 Continuing American cultural hegemony
1 How necessary will experience in virtual world be for leadership?
1 Meta vs. individual narrative: how does it influence behavior?
1 Will it be the voluntary or the involuntary future? And what is the metric?
0 Optimistic or pessimistic world?
0 How much shared experience do we have?
0 TOE: Theory of everything
0 Degree of & response to globalization
0 Do we like the future or not? Does the world feel good? Who is having fun?
0 Will a religious revival show up?
0 Stronger social institutions developing, or not
0 How we define culture, identity, connectedness
0 Will we engage some of the disenfranchised?
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Interplay betweenHumanity and Technology
Nature of Globalization
Sources of Leadership,Change and Innovation
Relationship of Corporationsto Cultural Change
The Technology Axis captures the relationship between te
nological developments and the dominant understanding of
human beings, i.e., how we learn, how we realize potential. A
one end is the view that people grow through a combination
of nature and nurture, where breakthroughs in technology
are fewer, and perhaps less welcome. At the other end is th
view that people are essentially determined by their biology,
and that this caneven shouldchange through technology
The Globalization Axis focuses on the cultural side of
globalizationwill U.S. domination move beyond military to
cultural hegemony? Or will cultural diversity flourish around t
world?
The Innovation Axis lays out one of the fundamental ten-
sions of change: where and how it originates. At one end is
the classic command and control hierarchy with innovation
and leadership flowing down from the top. At the other end
is a more flexible and distributed model of change, with inno
vation and leadership emerging from the bottom.
The Corporation Axis forms the crux of the cultural lens:
whether corporations play more of a leadership role in cultu
change, or if they find themselves more often than not follow
ing cultural change.
Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
Axes of Uncertainty
nature2:biotech determinism
global markets:U.S. cultural hegemony
bottom-up & networked
follow
nature + nurture
global governance:more cultural diversity
top-down & hierarchical
lead
The next step in developing a set of scenarios was to create axes that expressed particular dimensions of uncertainty about the
future. We clustered uncertainties and a few predetermineds that received high numbers of votes and that were similar in content
into the axes below. Many different axes of uncertainty could be created from the list above, and those below reflect the most
compelling themes that surfaced in our brainstorm conversation.
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Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
The
ScenarioMatrix
Learning World
nature + nurture
nature2: biotech determinism
lefollow
Evangelical Corporation
Bio-CyberPunk GATTACA
After discussing several pos-
sibilities, the group decided
that combining the first and
fourth axes into this matrix
would make for the most rel-
evant and interesting set of
scenarios. Small groups
then developed each sce-
nario more fully. The tem-
plates with the original data
are shown on pages 1922.
After the meeting, and withtime for some more reflec-
tion, GBN made a few addi-
tional refinements to the
scenarios in order to make
the set more divergent, chal-
lenging, and relevant.Interplaybetween
Humanityand
Technology
Relationship of Corporations to Cultural Change
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Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
Implications
of theScenariosfor Businessand for
Beauty
Learning World
Implications for Business
Command and control style meets with difficulty here. Open-source becomes
an important metaphor for how work gets done, and most projects are
accomplished through a Hollywood ad-hoc production style.
In this scenario, beauty isdiversity, a mix & match collage, energetic
creativity, connectivity.
Evangelical Corporation
Implications for Business
A clear sense of organizational values is absolutely necessary to attract
both talent and customers. Customers are more demanding on more fron
Product packaging is extremely importantthe product is a whole lifestyle
not simply an item. Teamwork is emphasized, somewhat like corporate cu
ture in Japan.
In this scenario, beauty isin the eye of the employee. An individual se
tion of enhancements, both biotech and developed through personal effort.
Bio-CyberPunk
Implications for Business
Corporate opportunism and flexibility is key. Keeping options open as long
as possible. Speed to market is critical. Markets are more fragmented and
product lifecycles faster. Capability to rapidly prototype is very important.
In this scenario, beauty isindividually interpreted biotech enhancements.
They can be home-made or bought. No universal agreement: a lot of creativ-
ity, though not always for the better.
GATTACA
Implications for Business
Brands remain very strong. The dominant aesthetic is well-defined and
nearly monolithic. And customers want the image. Individuals surrender
themselves to the well-oiled, efficient organizational machine. Hierarchicrigid. Yet there is a sense of underlying instability and fragilitysecurity
a major concern.
In this scenario, beauty ispurchased. Bio-engineered perfection
enabled by elegant code.
nature + nurture
nature2: biotech determinism
lefollow
Interplaybetween
Humanityand
Technology
Relationship of Corporations to Cultural Change
The point of creating scenar-
ios is not just to tell interest-
ing stories about the future.
The point is to tell stories
that can be used to talk
clearly about the implica-tions of each world, to think
about what organizations
would do to survive in each
world, and to provoke a con-
versation about strategies
that businesses could use to
thrive in each world. To get
our heads further into eachscenario world, we returned
to the unexpected question
that came out during our
earlier brainstorm: What is
beauty?
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The axis endpoints are c
porations leading cultura
change and an interplay
humanity and technology
characterized by a natur
+ nurture understanding
of people.
* These are reproductions of the
actual scenario templates com-
pleted by the participants at the
meeting.
Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
Scenario Templates*
Evangelical Corporation
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Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change: A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
GATTACA
The axis endpoints are coporations leading cultura
change and an interplay o
humanity and technology
characterized by a nature
i.e., bio-deterministic,
understanding of people.
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Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
Bio-Cyberpunk
The axis endpoints are co
porations following cultu
change and an interplay o
humanity and technology
characterized by a natur
i.e., bio-deterministic,
understanding of people.
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The axis endpoints are cporations following cul-
tural change and an inter
play of humanity and tec
nology characterized by
nature + nurture under
standing of people.
Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
Learning World
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Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change: A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
CONSEQUENCES AND IMPLICATIONS
What Would Armani Do?
GBN Network Member Chris Riley, founder of Studio Riley, played a unique role
at this meeting. Drawing upon a decade as head of strategic planning at the
brand and advertising agency Weiden+ Kennedy, Chris was charged with act-
ing as an implications provocateur to focus the groups attention on the so
what aspect of cultural change. He began by observing how the conversation
at GBN has changed in the last decadefrom one where economics and tech-
nology dominated, to one where culture has moved far up the agenda. Its a
more difficult conversationbecause issues of cultural change open a door
into everythingyet understanding and insight into culture and values are
more and more important. Chris has a clear point-of-view:
I believe that culture is ideas, the way we live, the humanity of our world.
Economics and technology are mechanics. But culture is about people,
about the way we feel, the way we think, the attitudes we adopt. And that
infiltrates every single aspect of what we do. So if youre in business, cul-
ture affects every single action of the business: baked-in assumptions,
ideals, beliefs, personal contextall affecting the work you do.
Chris turned to our four scenarios with an unusual example to illustrate implica-
tions for business: What would Giorgio Armani do in each world? This brand is
fundamentally about cultureelegant, sophisticated tailoring in Milan, Italyso
Chris sees Giorgio doing well in worlds where corporations lead cultural
change, especially in the Evangelical Corporation where the nurture idea
plays. In GATTACA, Giorgio takes advantage of biotech advances by offering
a line of Armani Enhancements. On the left side of the matrix though, the
brand runs into difficulty because the corporation is reacting to cultural
change. In Bio-Cyberpunk, customers create their own image of Armani,while Learning World is a crisis for the brand.
In closing, Chris posed three questions for finding business implications of
cultural change: from a cultural point of view, how does your company learn?
Formally and at a distance? Without relationships? Or through close relation-
ships? Secondly, how do you communicate your product, your brand, your
company? And finally, how does your company relate to other human beings
in the world, and how do you relate to people in your organizations?
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Causes and Consequences of Cultural Change: A GBN WorldView Meeting Report GBN Global Business Network 2003
Acknowledgements
Eamonn KellyDiana Scearce
Erik Smith
WorldView Meeting Directors
Sophia Liang
Meeting and Report Producer
Erik SmithReport Author
Lynn Carruthers
Visual Recorder
Nancy Murphy
Editor
Kelly Kaufman
Designer
2003 Global Business Network. This publication is for the exclusive use of Global Business Network members. To request permission to reproduce, store in a retrieval system, or transmit this document in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recorded, or otherwise, please contact Global Business Network.
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