Strategic Latency – Foresight to Avert Disruption

July 24, 2014

Over the years as I have thought about strategic foresight, I have often coupled the idea with the notion of latency. To me latency implied the time it took for an enterprise to respond to a contextual shift or event. Built into that idea was the notion that the concept of latency differs from enterprise to enterprise and that enterprises can be designed reduce their latency to foreseen events and contexts.

Military Image of Ukraine

I came across an article this morning in the Diplomatic Courier, that talks about China’s efforts to reduce its strategic latency, particularly with respect to defence technologies, and its drive to innovate.

Indeed when it comes to responding to threats, it is absolutely critical to reduce the latency if in fact you cannot anticipate.

However, I wonder if today there is a specific technology that you can innovate for in preparation. It is no longer a technology by itself that is a source of a security risk. Each technology brings with it a certain complement of capabilities and these can combine in myriad ways. Individually each technology can be applied for positive or negative outcomes. One can easily understand and prepare for negative outcomes, intentional or inadvertant.

The task of anticipation however becomes onerous when these technologies are used in combination with others and uniquely in particular contexts. Sometimes the technologies used for such purposes are in themselves not particularly sophisticated, but combinations can be devastating as we have seen in recent experiences.

The road to reducing strategic latency therefore is as much a task of systematically practiciing Technology Foresight as is it is one of practicing Strategic Foresight, imagining potential scenarios and plausible misuses leading to potential security threats. If one must innovate, it must be in the domain of responding to potential negative or inadvertant uses of extant or future technology developments.

Even when the context is not one of assessing for and preparing against security threats, every enterprise must strive to reduce its strategic latency. The term has a very reactive connotation – often it is very hard to respond to a disruptive innovation after the fact. While it seems commonsense, it bears repeating, that the ideal response is only possible when one has anticipated adequately.

Disruptive innovations are around us for a long time in a form we might term ‘weak signals’, and they have not yet become significant enough to show up on our radars. It is our task to sharpen our senses so we can notice them through the noise and give ourselves the time to react – a systemic challenge that requires time.

Better still is to imagine disruptive possibilities, and shift the challenge of reducing strategic latency to the other.