مقاله سال ۲۰۱۷

Howard Gardner, famous for his seminal work that explores the range of “intelligences” that we humans may possess, went on to develop “Five Minds for the Future” (۲۰۰۹) with a view to encouraging us as students, teachers, practitioners and citizens to cultivate the types of thinking and behaviour that he believes will enable humans to continue to thrive into the future. His “five minds” are “disciplined”, “synthesizing”, “creating”, “respectful”, and “ethical” (Gardner, 2009) and are seen as necessarily complementary, all to be acquired by each of us, rather than acquired separately. They are prescriptive in that they are not reflective of current norms. Instead, they are put forward in recognition of their absence in today’s society and their importance in our collective, not our individual, future. Further, they are based upon Gardner’s speculations about the directions in which society is headed with the purpose of equipping us “to deal with what is expected, as well as what cannot be anticipated”.

A key point that Gardner makes is that in an interconnected world we cannot continue to be individualistically narrow in our work and living; we must think beyond our own personal and institutional silos and re-embrace a more respectful, ethical and inclusive lifestyle. The public relations field is certainly no exception, and indeed, at least through its claim to the practice of issues and crisis management, it has an obligation to raise its awareness of future conditions and demands for clients. In this paper, I relate Gardner’s “Five Minds for the Future” to the future of public relations in order to generate what I call, with due respect to Gardner, “Futures Intelligence”. To do so, I first give an overview of the limited attention paid so far to an open-minded look to the future for a public relations industry that it is not restricted by current norms, expectations and biases. I then examine Gardner’s five minds from the perspectives of public relations practise and education, before bringing the two discussions together. By way of both illustration and advocacy for change, I also describe our conscious development of futures intelligence through the teaching that we engage in with our public relations students.