Solutions‘ readers and contributors share some common traits, which I’ll call “Solutions skill sets and aptitudes,” that enable us to detect problems, explore approaches, design solutions, and produce viable real-world policies, practices, and products. The evidence is right here in this issue of Solutions (as well as any back issue you might peruse):
- An interdisciplinary water-energy nexus initiative at Xavier University.
- An inexpensive device that radically increases the efficiency of a three-stone hearth.
- Embracing sustainability alliances with new and “unlikely” partners from the Pope to Chinese entrepreneurs.
- Protecting water supplies in Honduras for current and future generations through common asset trusts.
- Betting successfully on sustainable home-building in Texas.
These are just a few of the initiatives and approaches that are attributable to Solutions skill sets and aptitudes like the following:
- An adaptive mindset – the ability to pivot quickly in the face of new evidence and opportunities
- Signal to noise recognition – the ability recognize real trends and therefore opportunities
- Scenario foresight – the practice of playing out the consequences of multiple possible futures
- Systems thinking – understanding the world through the flow of energy, materials, and information
- Design doing – finding solutions through problem identification, brainstorming, prototyping, and iteration.
These skill sets allow Solutions‘ contributors and readers to incorporate new evidence into our thinking, rather than clinging to outdated dogmas. When corn-based ethanol was proposed as a potential energy solution, agricultural ecologists ran the numbers and found that the energy return on investment was barely break-even at best, to say nothing of the effects on food systems. Most of us collectively did a quick pivot and moved on to other solutions (venture capitalists were slower to react—they lost millions).
Solutions skill sets allow us to recognize the broad spatial and temporal challenges of prospective climate change, without for example, dismissing future climate scenarios because of a winter cold snap or a mild summer. This is the same kind of pattern recognition that successful long-term market investors use. (Disturbingly, prescient investors have been buying up coastal areas in the Arctic, recognizing the potential of an ice-free polar region.)
Solutions skill sets allow us to see multiple possible opportunities and try them out in “what-if” models. The history of prognostication is littered with laughable predictions (so far)—flying cars, one world government, nuclear power too cheap to meter—and the power of scenario thinking lies in its ability to test scenarios as the future unfolds before us. We can see which assumptions are playing out, which ones aren’t, and incorporate new information iteratively.
Solutions skill sets allow us to see connections between ecological, social, and economic systems. For example, connections between “apparently” unrelated things like educating girls in developing countries, global population, and climate change. They allow us to see negative and positive feedback loops (most disturbingly, cascading effects), and critical leverage and intervention points.
And finally, Solutions skill sets help us design solutions more efficiently and effectively. Again, the evidence for that is right here in this issue of Solutions. Udaykumar et al. have employed a design doing methodology—problem identification, brainstorming, prototyping, and iteration—to develop multiple potential solar cook stoves to replace wood stoves. But perhaps more importantly, their adaptive mindset allowed them to recognize a more immediate design solution: a simple, low-cost device that can be placed within existing traditional stoves, reducing wood use, smoke, and soot, and to increase thermal efficiency within cultural norms.
This adaptive mindset may be the most important, as we’ll certainly face new information and unforeseen setbacks as we collectively pursue a more sustainable future; we’ll need to make lemons out of lemonade, or penicillin out of fungus, or microwaves out of magnetron vacuum tubes, or Viagra out of a failed angina drug (okay, maybe that’s a solution we could have skipped).
These are just the five Solutions skill sets at the top of one list. Perhaps Solutions contributors and readers have others. If so, we’d like to hear from you. So here’s a two-fold challenge:
- Suggest the top five Solutions skill sets and aptitudes (and your rationale of course) that you think are needed to foster a more sustainable future. We’ll compile and synthesize your replies and get back to you in a future issue of Solutions.
- But wait, we’re not done. Tell us how these Solutions skill sets might be promoted to less solution-minded global citizens. As the reality of ecological, social, and economic disruption is not enough to convince some of us to pitch in, maybe the intrinsic individual and small-group benefits of a Solutions skill sets will bring more people on board.
