As a leading edge independent business think-tank, the Australian Business Foundation chose to undertake a scenarios building project, exploring Australia's alternative business futures and asking the "what if" questions.

The project was conducted with the help of GBN Australia, one of whose team was Susan Oliver, the MD of Futures Alliance, who was a key author of the Australian Business Foundation scenarios.

These are documented in a publication called Alternative Futures: Scenarios for Business in Australia to the Year 2015. (An overview of the project is attached to this workshop report.)

Our aim was to give Australian businesses some foresight about how the future might impact on them. So, they could prepare themselves for different outcomes, rather than being at the mercy of the volatile unpredictable winds of change.

More importantly, by thinking about different possible futures, we hoped that Australian businesses could find ways to become effective global players in the new industries and re-invented businesses of the 21st century.

This would not only benefit those individual businesses, but it would build Australia's national capability leading to jobs, prosperity and increased living standards for the widest reach of the Australian community.

My task today is to quickly introduce you to the four different pictures of the future we imagined, with the help of short video stories scripted by Richard Neville.

The four scenarios are:

1. First Global Nation – characterised by the globalisation of business and the wired, interconnected, online economy, where Australia successfully finds itself a place. Australia shows leadership in this "silicon valley" world of knowledge industries, global peace, open markets and economic growth. A vital young country reinvents itself to capitalise on the massive transformations of business and society. Our cyber-savvy firms sparkle on Wall Street, wealth is shared, and the arts flourish.
2. Sound the Retreat – the story of the backlash and consequent decay of globalisation, forcing Australia to revalue its bilateral business relationships as multilateral ones become impossible in the face of trade barriers, capital and immigration controls and nationalist and protectionist policies of all sorts. There is economic downturn, a widespread capital retreat and loss of investor confidence. We forge commercial partnerships with key nations and drawing on our melting-pot past, create a cultural and business gateway. Australia as the Switzerland of Asia.
3. Brave Old World – where Australia rests on its laurels of strong economic performance and sound social protections and does not see the need or the urgency to pursue the emerging opportunities of the globalised knowledge economy in any systematic fashion. Over-reliant on tourism and glamorous yet scant biotech breakthroughs, we miss the global tide. Introspective and smug, the lopping of tall poppies continues, fed by a "she'll be right" complacency. The economy falters, outskills erode, few new start ups or emergent technologies survive here and major brands are lost offshore.
4. Green is Gold – eco catastrophes, feasible clean technologies, and more environmental information and activism brings environmental sustainability to the fore. Skyscrapers sprout trees, goods are produced from renewable resources with zero emissions. Profits and lifestyles are enhanced by a "whole systems" economy designed to restore the balance of nature.

Environment issues become mainstream, bottom line business issues and Australia gets caught up in the strengthening of international environmental regulations and agreements, with varying consequences for business. After hard times for Australia so reliant on fossil fuels, some businesses capitalise on their global environmental management acumen and open up opportunities for Australia.

Several key themes played out in all these scenarios, but with different effects; among these were:

• increasing globalisation and its effects on national boundaries, political decisions, cultural identity and the speed and ease of business imitations;
• the unprecedented transformations being wrought on business and commerce by online, wired, networked technologies and by technology advances and breakthroughs; and
• the rise of the knowledge economy and the ascendancy of intangible assets, where what you know is more important than what you make.