Engaging with any Global Challenge

Global Challenge of the Global Challenge (Part #11)

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A major difficulty for the selection process is that everyone who has thought about the matter has insights on how to "fix the world". All claim that they are not appropriately heard and that their proposals are blocked in a variety of ways -- a systemic condition worth studying in its own right. More provocative is the paradoxical sense in which all problems would supposedly be resolved if everyone were to accept the value of everyone else's proposal. Really?

As implied by the above-mentioned reluctance to assess the many efforts to articulate and respond to global challenges, this factor merits being borne in mind with respect to the Global Challenges Prize in quest of "A New Shape". But who would bother to do so, and why? For many the focus could simply be on producing a credible response for those selecting the prize winner.

Focus was given to the climate change issue through the documentary film by Al Gore titled An Inconvenient Truth (2006). The more fundamental question with respect to the global challenge (of the global challenge) is whether there are other inconvenient truths to which collective groupthink avoids according attention, as argued separately (An Inconvenient Truth -- about any inconvenient truth, 2008; Possibility of other shocking challenges to groupthink? 2016).

Cynicism aside, there are additional learnings from the manner in which winners of any "design" competition are selected, as illustrated by the dynamics associated with:

• Nobel Prize Awards, and especially the controversy associated with the Nobel Peace Prize process
• the many international architectural design competitions (see Wikipedia List of architectural design competitions) -- especially in the light of the undeclared agendas and constraints of the organizers
• the many landscape design competitions (see Wikipedia Landscape architecture design competitions)
• the many literary awards (see Wikipedia: List of literary awards; List of poetry awards and data base on Book Prizes and Literary Awards)
• the many music, song and film awards
• the responses to the many "calls for proposals" from international institutions, most notably the European Commission (Calls for Proposals and Tenders)

Some of these could be understood as a quest for a "new shape" -- understood as a new look, a new sound, or a new trend, replacing those of the past perceived as "outmoded". Entrants are encouraged to focus on: designing a decision-making structure or framework that could galvanize effective international action to tackle these risks. The proposed model may encompass an entirely new global framework or a proposed reform for existing systems

With respect to the Global Challenges Prize 2017, such considerations give focus to questions such as:

• the manner in which submissions will be assessed by the Board and by a panel -- especially in the light of the composition of either or both as gatekeepers of creativity and innovation. In other contexts such concerns focus on issues of representativity by expertise, culture, ethnicity, gender, age, and the like. Given the composition of the Board, a particular concern would be the question of gender, as separately argued (Women and the Underside of Meetings: symptoms of denial in considering strategic options, 2009).
• resolution of disagreement amongst assessors, notably as it constitutes a metaphor of the appreciation subsequently accorded to the selected "New Shape"
• why the assembled expertise represented by the assessors has as yet been unable to engender a decision-making framework without the recourse to outsiders (as implied by the Prize process). Is this suggestive of a form of tokenism, the preferred framework having been decided in advance by the selection of assessors?
• whether those assembled would be able to recognize viable proposals of sufficient promise given their collective biases, inhibitions and ideological disagreements? Will what passes such gatekeepers be distinguished by what is described mathematically as lowest common denominator or greatest common divisor -- and how is whatever is rejected to be contained (Reintegration of a Remaindered World: cognitive recycling of objects of systemic neglect, 2012)?

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