Chapter 2: Learning our way through the future

If, as we asserted at the end of Chapter 1, every problem presents an opportunity, then how do we make the best of the situation? Albert Einstein is quoted as saying ‘We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them’. Of course, Einstein was an inspiring example of someone who was able to think differently about cosmology. But we do not need to be a scientific genius to think differently – we just need to develop a disposition to be receptive to it.

A problem is a doubtful or difficult question. Managing our infrastructure is full of problems, and therefore is potentially full of opportunities. But we also know that, like people, problems come in all shapes and sizes. Yet, despite this, most of us have a tendency to look for a single method to ‘solve’ them because that is how most of us were educated and brought up to think. It is entirely possible, for example, that some of our most intractable problems do not have solutions – perhaps all we can do is ‘steer’ them in the direction we want to go.