Today I'd like to pitch an idea to you. Much of what I am going to talk about is old hat - you know it, it's been said a thousand times. But how do we make sense of it? I'm proposing we take action and strategise our way forward.

Mega trends. This is how Deloitte sees it - from the NSW Agribusiness: positioned for prosperity report from 2016.

The world, in particular Asia, is expanding. Not only are there going to be more people, these people are going to be financially better off and as history has shown they will want more protein. What we have seen recently is a trend towards more a more conscious consumer - one that asks questions about what else are they buying besides the product and what are the implications of their consumption on them as well as for others

Slide 3 of you've seen it before
Mega science. It's big extremes here. Big opportunities and big risks. Will robots take over our jobs, will thieves find us easier and be hard to find in a digital world, will Dr evil develop uncontrollable mutants? The mind can boggle and worry. But then there are also the opportunities. Big opportunities to solve a whole host of constraints that limit our enjoyment of life from health, to decision making, to automating tasks you do not want to do and so on...

While we know it all. I'd like to take a moment to pause and question this idea.

Do we really know it all? Has it really all been said before?

Who knows what the path is to get there, who knows what are the stumbling blocks along the way. Who knows the risks involved? Who knows what role government should play or what are the policy settings that will enable the gains and mitigate the losses?

Given it is uncertain, it is unknown we need to think deeply. Think strategically and find clarity.

Next few slides cover the why, the who and the how

Why do we want to priotise this work?

Three key reasons:
1. position DPI as a global thought leader. Not just in agriculture and primary industries but also so too in policy making, in looking to the future and setting ourselves up for success and importantly as leaders in government

(bit controversial but GM is an example where we did not build an operating environment and the opportunity was lost. Instead of being a leader we just shut it out)

2. redefine what citizens or industries relationship with government might look like. Shift it from get out of the way ideology to help me get there
3. This aligns perfectly with our strategic goal. Too often low resilience is a function of poor planning. And on productivity it's a bit like farming. There can be long lead times - you have to sow the seeds well before the harvest.

Make a point about Innovation being well suited to leading this strategic thinking for DPI

Talk about 'the way we work'
- collaborative
- user centred
- creative
- early adopters/forward looking

Explain why these behaviours are integral to this work.
- collaborative - we do not have all the answers.
- user-centred - .convincing industry and stakeholders that looking ahead is a good idea requires this
- creative - this is uncharted territory so it is by nature creative
- early adopters - this is what this is about

How. We do not know exactly how. But we are good at experimenting and learning.

What we propose is future thinking with a policy focus. What we mean is we will focus on:
- high impact future developments
- that are driven by rapid change
- in order to seize the opportunities and mitigate the risks
- by strategically thinking through future scenarios

To guide us we are developing a process. We have investigated options for future thinking and none quite fit. What we propose is a combination of horizon scanning and future thinking.

Horizon scanning is working out what about the future you may be interested in.
Future thinking is - scenario based analysis aimed at discovering what policies you need

However, we are not beholden to these and will update and adapt if they are not working.

The other high level point is that it will have structured thinking. We will use a set of structured question to ensure consistency and fairness in thought as well as creativity. We will also apply filters to our work to focus our efforts. For example, we will use the strategic vision for 2050 to prioritise our efforts

The topics and issues we choose to investigate will need to meet a certain criteria. At a high level, we will focus on issues that are important for policy-making now or likely to be in the future as a priority, as well as topics relating to long term trends that concern primary industry production, like climate change, artificial intelligence, and renewable energy.

These can be broken up into two main areas: 1. things that affect the technical production of primary industries - or the science and technology 2. things that affect the choices we make in primary industries - user trends, peoples values, desires, demands.

Scenarios are our way of getting to what we want. We first want to start to explore what is possible before we can define what is preferable. Diverge then converge.

To do this we will need
1. problem discovery. Suggest human centred design to understand how users relate to the issue or may possible relate
2. modeling to understand how the problems may manifest over time