A 15 Minute Foreplay™ Conversation with Tim Stock

In this conversation Bronwyn Williams and Tumelo Mojapelo talk to Tim Stock about the semiotic-driven social science method that analyses language and subcultures as an index of change. 

Bronwyn Williams: Hi, I’m Bronwyn Williams and we’re back with our Flux 15 Minute Foreplay™ Conversations. Alongside me is my colleague Tumelo and today our guest is Tim Stock from Scenario DNA. 

And Tim, I wanted to ask you a bit about your way of making sense of the chaos in the world, your patented model for looking at the stories and sentiments around us and trying to make some sense out of it. 

Tim Stock: Well, it’s a wonderful question and it’s great to be here. I would say that our method is something that has evolved over the last 20 years in response to models that were falling short in understanding the complexity, in which how society was changing. The models that we had were demographics and psychographics and when we came into developing this patent, what we were looking at especially was how many companies and organisations were misunderstanding this new cohort which were millennials. They were very interested in the potential of that cohort/generation, but they were missing the complexity of the relationship between smaller and larger signals. They were allowing their bias to get into how they read what would happen next. 

So our model in culture mapping doesn’t look at sort of statistics or asked and answers kind of approaching polling, typical kinds of demographic modelling. It’s more looking at the words and the relationship between language, between explicit and implicit meaning, to understand how that language is telling us how society is changing and different parts of society are changing before it’s completely obvious. 

So one of the main things when we were doing that development of the patent, it was, we were looking at the relationship between millennials and their attitudes towards privacy. This is at the birth of social media. Every company would say linearly that the growth of social media would continue, it would grow, everybody would accept this. We were saying, no, there’s a pattern to that, there’s a language to that. Understanding that less known area I think is really… it’s why many companies are moving over to really recognising the value of foresight. And our model is a living foresight model. So it allows us to be able to take this linguistic data, pattern it, map it, put it in the context of these social groups, these subcultures that make up this whole piece of culture that we call culture, and be able to ask really, really tough questions about more complex questions of sustainability, privacy, all these other kinds of more ambiguous kinds of questions I should say. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: Could you give us an example? Because I mean, for this is very, I mean, I’m new to this. So an example of how you would go about, like you said, using language to map cultures and sentiment and so on. 

Tim Stock: Well, one of the things is that you need to always be recognising and studying all of these different subcultures. So for any particular topic, I mean, the obvious example is that our model is very much a power system. So essentially, language eventually becomes the law, it becomes the rule, it becomes the way in which we sort of regulate ourselves as a whole society. But the assumption is, is that that’s how all of society is functioning. It’s not. The descent of that, that to language are, you know…  you start seeing it in protest movements, you start and it’s not even just an obvious kind of people who are out on the street protesting, it’s people who start making things differently. I mean, one of the simple examples is, you know, we see these things much more clearly when big events happen, like recessions or pandemics, you know, Etsy emerged during the recession. I mean, Etsy is a business, but that kind of code of relationship between consumerism, that DIY kind of like local, you start seeing codes of behaviour, were being affirmed with a lot of other things that were changing. We were looking at the other externalities like people moving to cities becoming more collective minded. But you need to be able to understand this, this living foresight model of language to be able to say, like, how is it all changing? Otherwise, if we looked at it demographically, we’d say, well, people in cities believe this and people who don’t believe in cities believe that. That’s really not what it is. It’s a mix of these things and they have particular taxonomies and codes and we can ask, you know, we can ask better questions. I think that something about the process is not about answers so much as, being in foresight, is about being able to ask better questions, to be able to sort of probe more deeply, because we’re trying to move past our existing bias of what we think is going to happen. 

I always just want to sort of touch quickly on that point, is that most, I think until recently, we’ve missed sort of the difference between what is uncertainty and ambiguity. And I think it gets to this issue and the pandemic really helped us, is that we talk about being in uncertain times and I would argue we’re not in uncertain times, we’re in ambiguous times. You know, being, you know, blind spots to the future are not unknowns completely. They’re just that we’re not looking in the right places. And so our model is very much about helping companies and organisations look to where they’re not looking, but also bring evidence to that process. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: Can you just explain that difference between, especially for our viewers, between ambiguity versus uncertainty? So, like, what is, like, how would you define the difference between the two? 

Tim Stock: Well, if you look at it from a dictionary definition, the uncertainty is really, I mean, and it tends to sort of be associated with anxiety. It’s like, well, I can’t know that. And a company would say, well, these are uncertain. Well, so we’ll just stop doing that. Ambiguity is actually that you don’t have all the information. And actually, the other definition of ambiguity is that there could be two answers or multiple answers to the same question. 

So when you start speaking of blind spots, it’s that, you know, a company might say, well, we can’t know that. I would argue that you’re not looking in the right place because the answer that you have is this other place, but you’re, you know, and in the case of very specifically within organisations, they tend to look internally with what their company does or their competitors. Then it’s like, well, what does their category do? And then even beyond that, they’re saying, you know, what are we doing in the relationship to society? 

Every company through the pandemic was forced to rethink issues of localisation. You know, we see trends in nearshoring and reshoring of manufacture and so forth. These are big topics, but they relate to understanding changes of the relationship between consumers and organisations, you know, and the value chain that have to do with who they’re getting their information from. Like, we’re social creatures and we’re trying to, like, how do I understand what I think I’m going to value? What would be something if we move a culture to being on-demand, for example, on-demand manufacture? It doesn’t just happen. It has to be coalesced amongst groups of people. I would argue that there are groups of people who understand those codes of behaviour now. We’re just not paying attention to them. And so it’s bringing in that social data earlier, being able to answer those tough questions and invest better in terms of the future that we want. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: And is there a classification for the social data? So like these blind spots, like, are there, like, different kinds of blind spots now? Because now you’re talking about, when you say ambiguity, it’s like, basically, it’s like a bit of a haze, you know? You don’t see clearly these certain areas with a bit of a fog, you know? So like, are there, is there like a classification? Are there degrees? Really, is that from blind to for me to blurry to as far as, you know? 

Tim Stock: Yes… Yes definitely. You’re touching upon exactly what our model does, which is it’s a semiotic model of developing four story spaces, which is residual, which is where sort of the order of society is. Dominant space, which is where many trend people look, which is things that are being shared. And they’re, you know, we’re beginning to change our behaviour. But it’s very obvious it’s still on the surface. These are sort of the… you know, the above the fray. They’re kind of like clearer to see. Underneath the… underneath that surface art is an emergent space where there are new techniques that are being contextualised, you know, in the case of fashion, it’s like we’re moving towards being net zero and lossless manufacturing. But I can’t understand that from a consumer dominant space. I need to understand that from a designer space, like what’s the purpose of making. And so, and then in the disruptive space, it’s, it’s that space that’s going, you’re doing it all wrong. We need to completely rethink the system. And so all of those, all those play a role. 

And I would argue that when you’re working with an organisation, it’s not working in any of these spaces. It’s working in all of these spaces and trying to enable a company to move into the disruptive space earlier, because every company needs to make those 20, 30, 40 year out investments now. But they’re… but it’s difficult because they don’t see how it’s going to actually change. But when you start seeing your market as a, as the living foresight model, you can start saying, well, if I make those investments, I see how it’s going to affect those behaviours. I see that it’s tied to these social groups in that particular way. So it’s a way of modelling in that way. 

It’s, it’s something that was developed, you know, that we, you know, all, all methodologies build on other methodologies. It’s built on a semiotic methodology called RDE, residual dominant emergent. And what we did is we added an extra space, which is disruptive. But then we’re using a social science method. We’re using computational linguistics. We’re using Bayesian modelling. It’s… there’s, there’s, there’s a way, you know, you can measure language and you can, if you can understand that social groups have distinctions and they have just… you know, they’re trying to tell you something that isn’t working. 

Our world is a biological system, you know, it isn’t random. There’s… we’re trying to work through things. It’s… are we paying attention enough? And that’s really, sort of, what I would say. We, you know, we make that case when we’re, when we’re speaking to our clients, it’s like, you want to be better connected. You want to be ahead. That’s the point. Pay attention to those signals earlier. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: So then how do you get better connected then? Like, so how do you, like I say, like, how do you go from like slightly dazed and confused to like clear crystal, like, you know, vision, like, you know, I don’t know if I’m making sense, like, from driving in a foggy place and then it’s all clear, birds are chirping and the sun is shining and it’s great. 

Tim Stock: It’s… it comes down to having a, an evidence, an evidence-based model. I mean, we, you know, this is a social science model. There are, there are approaches to trend analysis that are purely, you know, they believe it’s sort of scanning and kind of going, I believe this is going to happen, but you can’t, you have to base it on, I can show you the groups, I can show you the language that’s developing that particular narrative because trends are narratives, they’re stories, right? You know, we understand our world through narrative. And so if we’re, if we’re going to analyse trends, we have to say, well, they’re stories and then stories are made up with language. So there’s taxonomies to those stories. And then there isn’t just one story, there are different stories and their patterns to them. 

You know, when I mentioned that difference between uncertainty and ambiguity, I would, I would point you to, you know, something called the Rashomon effect, which is from the film  Rashomon, which is there’s, you know, many people are telling the same thing that’s happening as we’re going through this experience. Understanding the patterns between those narratives is going to give you a better picture of what’s happening as a whole. It’s a collective intelligence as opposed to one, you know, a company intelligence or a government’s intelligence. You have to understand something as a whole. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: So then this is, how do you think, as an individual, after you just told me it’s a collective intelligence, then how do you use an individual thing? Because I feel like it’s another count, it’s very counterintuitive. It goes against the way we think and see things, because it’s normally the things that are, like, prominent or dominant in, you know, and residual that we actually focus on. We really get to the, like, say, like under that surface, that, that area, how do we nudge ourselves towards that? Like what are certain practices that would, you would advise someone like me, walking down the street, looking at not uncertainty, ambiguity, and say, these  are the things that you have to keep in mind. These are, this is how you would frame a question for you to be able to get deeper, you know, to explore under the surface to actually be able to have more clarity?

Tim Stock: I would say that, you know, the obvious case to make, which is in trend analysis, is that, you know, the failure of sort of like, sort of our kind of little history of, kind of, modern trend analysis has been like chasing signals, and then sort of bringing them in and copying them, and then wondering why they don’t work so well, is that our, because of the nature of technology and media, our society is changing so much more rapidly, it’s becoming more subversive, it’s harder to see things as they actually are. So when you see something, you know, you know, brat summer that’s been happening here in the US, it sort of is misinterpreted as being something

that is a, you know, is a trajectory, when in fact it’s a response to something else, and it’s actually a signal to something else that’s going to be proceeding. So the point would be is that

when you find these signals, you don’t go, oh, I found it, I have the information, as you say,

I know what that’s related to, and I can imagine, I can do analysis to show, I can see how that

language is going to continue to evolve, and I could say, I know who is going to contribute to the evolution of that story, I can map those subcultures, and I can understand how they’re

dealing, and if the context change, for example, I’m basing it on what I know now, but for example, what if we dip into a an entrenched recession that wasn’t predicted, though I’m going to still be able to model that from a social science perspective to say those externalities within how the language was changing now gives me an updated hypothesis. 

If you were doing it in the last way, in sort of the typical traditional way, you would have been like, oh, well, that’s not popular anymore, let’s go find what else is, and it’s going to take you quite some time to be able to see how people are kind of expressing sort of a obvious way in which they’re processing things that are changing under the surface. I would say that we’re becoming so much more stealthy as a society. If you talk to people, and I know that all of you talk to youth quite a bit, and you understand this, it is not, they are not signalling in obvious ways. And so part of it’s being able to decode so many different layers of signification that’s going on. They are all semioticians. They’re kind of like the gen, this generation has become sort of like sort of natural semioticians, because they were raised in a highly technological media-centred society. They understand how media works in that way.

So I would say recognise how to grasp those signals at that moment, and know, it gives you that confidence of what you know you can do next, and the other sort of investigation you can go on from there. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: Well, I could ask you so many questions, especially about this specific topic. But I mean, it’s a fifteen minute conversation. But thank you so much for your insight, especially around, and I like the issue about the signal. I think you’ve noticed me nodding about how we normally spot the signal, and you want to drag it and make it like internalise it, bring it to our company. And I guess it’s the nature of the world we live in now. It’s interconnected. It’s got media all everywhere. So I mean, there’s suggestions. You’re not really sure what you’re seeing. And if you what your seeing is really what you are interpreting it as it is. So I think this model really helps get underneath the surface to ask the kind of questions, like, is this really a trend? Or is this really a signal? What does it mean? What is it related to? What came before? What came after? What are the subcultures or subgroups that actually link to it? So it makes us flesh it out more deeper. But I think also this approach helps us see blind spots. And also define what the kind of blind spots we actually see, like, is this, like, I’m completely blind? I can’t see I can’t do anything. Or is it just like, you know, a haze or is it just a few sparkles? And I can still see a bit of the picture. Thank you so much for, like, unpacking this. And I know it’s a very limited amount of time to just get into this model in approach. But for those who are watching, please continue to subscribe, check previous videos, look at other models. This is just adding on to a body of work that you’re doing. Share with your friends, share with your networks, read up more on the stuff so that you can also be able to spot signals, use foresight in a way that’s actually beneficial not only for you, but for your organisation. Thank you so much, Tim, for your time. 

Tim Stock: Thank you so much. Thank you.

By Flux Trends 

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