How networked ideas can help manage a networked world

Can we produce 70 per cent more food by 2050 to make sure we can feed a world of nine billion people? Can we raise $1 trillion (Dh3.67 trillion) a year to build infrastructure that connects the least connected? Can we create 470 million new jobs by 2030 to satisfy our growing global labour force, all without tipping the balance of our ecological systems and making meaningful progress in the fight against climate change?

Such global challenges — and the above list is far from comprehensive — are extremely hard to solve in their own right. What makes matters worse is that obvious solutions to one often tend to exacerbate or make it harder to solve others. This is the reality of the kind of complex interdependence that has come to characterise our globalised international system.

It is a complexity that is about to increase exponentially. The confluence of rapid technological change in a variety of areas, from the internet of things to genome editing, also referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is fundamentally transforming the scope of these challenges. These technologies will play a role in helping our current challenges, but they will without doubt create new challenges of their own, for example the impact of artificial intelligence on jobs markets and income inequality levels.

Challenges

This puts to test our existing governance structures. It is clear that the traditional hierarchical model of governance based on nation states and intergovernmental organisations has limited effectiveness in dealing with the networked challenges of today. At the heart of this is a double disconnect effecting both governments and international organisations: a disconnect in speed — traditional hierarchies make them slow to react — and a disconnect in structure, with traditional “reward and accountability” structures preventing us from conceiving and implementing more creative and less siloed solutions.

There are signs that this is changing. New and innovative coalitions between public and private sector actors are increasing and may prove more effective in overcoming these two disconnects. These multistakeholder coalitions are no panacea, though: what is needed most is fresh thinking based on a common appreciation of the complexity and interdependence of these issues. If national and organizational boundaries are preventing effective collaboration, we need to allow ideas and knowledge to step out of these traditional boundaries to develop networked solutions for a networked world.

This is where the Network of Global Agenda Councils comes in. Our philosophy is simple; bring the brightest minds in the world from all sectors and areas of expertise and get them to bring their collective intelligence to bear on finding new ideas for action or defining the problem. We have been doing this in the UAE now for eight years, and have been shaping global, regional and industry agendas ever since. Some of our work tackles the big problems; how to make leadership of international organisations more effective and more accountable, for example. Other times we look at the nuts and bolts of our international system; how to encourage invention and innovation in countries where patent protection does not exist, for example, or use technology to deliver more effective, transparent and accountable government services.

Fourth industrial revolution

At this year’s Summit, we will look more and more to the future as we try and understand just what complexity will be unleashed by the interplay of these global challenges and the rapid technological change of the fourth industrial revolution. What will happen when neuroscience meets artificial intelligence, for example? Or when governments start using big data to collect census records, or the blockchain to gather taxes? We’ll also be looking at what makes cities smart, from vertical farming to smart sewerage “waternets” and street lights that monitor cities’ health.

Much of this innovation is driven by creative individuals that step out of their own boundaries and connect the previously unconnected. But just as technology entrepreneurs demonstrate vision and leadership in building for the future, one thing that is abundantly clear as we stand on the threshold of the fourth industrial revolution is the need for a similar vision in global governance: allowing these networked solutions to play a role in addressing our global challenges.

Stephan Mergenthaler is Head of Knowledge Networks and Analysis at the World Economic Forum and responsible for the Network of Global Agenda Councils.