Wild Card (futurology)

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As wild cards in the are foresight unexpected events referred to, which have a low probability, but they occur attracts strong change on.

definition

Karlheinz Steinmüller defines wild cards as "rare and surprising events with massive effects". An international group of researchers characterized wild cards in 1992 as “a future development or event with a relatively low probability of occurrence but probably a high impact on what happens.” Mendonca et al. mean by wild cards singular (historically unique), sudden (abrupt), surprising and shocking (shattering) events.

Examples

A distinction must be made between examples of conceivable future events that are considered improbable from today's perspective and events from the past that were considered improbable before they actually occurred. A wild card in the first sense is z. B. the first contact with an intelligent, extraterrestrial species. The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 are often cited as an example of a wild card in the latter sense . The 1973 oil crisis is also used as an example in the literature in this category:

“Sometimes wild cards also lead to economic gain. In the early 1970s, for example, a research team from the multinational oil company Shell prepared a study of the consequences of a development that was considered very unlikely at the time: sharply rising oil prices and rapidly falling production volumes. According to the researchers, this crisis would lead to long idle times for the oil tankers and the expensive port fees could increase transport costs. As a preventive measure, the Shell lawyers have now included a passage in the contracts with the shipping companies that exempted the oil company from paying high charter fees in the event of long, crisis-related lay times. The shipowners considered this part of the contract to be a quirk of overly cautious lawyers and signed it without hesitation. When a really serious oil crisis suddenly occurred in 1973, Shell had an inestimable advantage over its less forward-looking competitors. "

Related terms

The concept of the wild card is very close to Taleb's concept of the "black swan" . Taleb understands a “black swan” to be an event that firstly runs counter to previous expectations (outlier) , secondly unfolds enormous effects (high impact) and thirdly can only be explained in retrospect (makes us concoct explanations after the fact) .

See also

literature

  • John L. Petersen: Out of the Blue: Wild Cards and other Big Future Surprises . Arlington Institute, 1997, ISBN 9780965902724 .
  • Reinhold Popp: Thinking in advance: ways and wrong ways into the future . Lit Verlag, 2011, ISBN 9783643502735 .
  • Karlheinz and Angela Steinmüller: Wild Cards. When the improbable happens . Murmann Verlag, 2004, ISBN 9783938017128 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Elina Hiltunen: Was It a Wild Card or Just Our Blindness to Gradual Change? In: Journal of Future Studies 11, 2006, pp. 61–74 ( PDF; 218 kB ).
  2. ^ Karlheinz Steinmüller : Wild Cards, Weak Signals and Web Seismographs . In: Wolfgang J. Koschnick (Ed.): Focus Yearbook 2012 . ISBN 9783981088793 ( PDF; 404 kB ).
  3. ↑ BIPE Conseil, Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, Institute for the Future 1992: Wild Cards: A Multinational Perspective. Institute for the Future, Palo Alto / CA. In the original: "A wild card is a future development or event with a relatively low probability of occurrence but a likely high impact on the conduct of business". Cf. Karlheinz Steinmüller: Wild futures . In: Swissfuture - the magazine for future monitoring . 02/07, pp. 4–10 ( PDF; 1.3 MB ).
  4. ^ Sandro Mendonca et al .: Wild cards, weak signals and organizational improvisation . In: Futures 36, 2004, pp. 201-218 ( online ).
  5. ^ Karlheinz and Angela Steinmüller: Wild Cards. When the unexpected happens. Murmann Verlag, 2004, pp. 90/91.
  6. ^ Sandro Mendonca et al .: Wild cards, weak signals and organizational improvisation . In: Futures 36, 2004, pp. 201-218 ( online ); Elina Hiltunen: Was It a Wild Card or Just Our Blindness to Gradual Change? In: Journal of Future Studies 11, 2006, pp. 61–74 ( PDF; 218 kB ).
  7. ↑ Reinhold Popp: Thinking in advance: ways and wrong ways into the future . Lit Verlag, 2011, p. 12f.
  8. ^ Nassim Nicholas Taleb: The Black Swan. The Impact of the Highly Improbable . 2008, ISBN 978-0141034591 .