Ecosystemic Futures

Dyan Finkhousen: CEO of Shoshin Works
  • 4.8 (29)
  • SCIENCE
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Ecosystemic Futures engages with the world’s elite thought leaders who are researching and leading meaningful development in areas that could impact society in the next half century. Provided by Shoshin Works in collaboration with NASA Convergent Aeronautics Solutions Project - Ecosystemic Futures explores technological advances and structural patterns that will help us better innovate, operate, and navigate in our increasingly connected world. Join the conversation as NASA leaders, and industry and policy luminaries share their perspectives with host Dyan Finkhousen, a leading strategist and global authority on ecosystemic solutions, and brilliant co-hosts.

  1. 12/18/2025

    116. The Gulf as One System: Bahrain's Aerospace Ecosystem

    The Gulf as One System: Bahrain's Aerospace Ecosystem Many organizations get too big to succeed. Bahrain is small enough to call the minister and align an ecosystem over coffee. That's not a limitation—it's infrastructure. Leena Faraj spent a decade proving that relationship density beats bureaucratic scale. One island. Neighbors who outspend you ten to one. The puzzle: how do you win when you can't win the resource game? The answer: don't fight for the whole trip—win the increment. For some, Bahrain may not be big enough for two-week stays. But "pop in for a couple of days" works when the Gulf operates as one system. Regional partnerships turn constraints into market expansion. The method: incubate what government can't control, prove it works, and hand it back. Tamkeen for SMEs. Mumtalakat—the sovereign fund whose subsidiaries now include McLaren. Airport operations are separated from the regulator. Ten years of lobbying later: Bahrain's first National Aviation Strategy. Paradigm Shifts: 📌 Too Big to Succeed: Giants have resources. Small nations have relationship density. Boardrooms ratify what coffee conversations already decided. Informal alignment is infrastructure. 📌 Incubate → Prove → Hand Back: Strategic incubation isn't empire-building. Build entities that demonstrate the model, then reintegrate. Success is measured by handoff, not headcount. 📌 Win the Increment: Can't capture the whole market? Capture the margin. Micro-stays, seamless visas, regional coordination. Partnership expands the pie; rivalry fights over crumbs. 📌 If It Were Your Money: One question transforms ecosystem accountability. Subsidies create dependency. Investor mindset builds muscle. Operational Impact: 📌 Plans Are Hypotheses: Paper lies, ground reveals. "The plan is not a Bible." Implementation challenges often turn out to be opportunities paper couldn't predict. 📌 Private Sector → Ministry: Bahrain rotates private sector leaders into government. They know what went wrong. Execution DNA cross-pollinates. 📌 Common Sense Isn't Common: The gap between what's obvious and what organizations do—that's where orchestrators create value. 📌 Failure as Curriculum: "Failure is part of your learning journey." Build tolerance into entrepreneurial development. Muscle grows under load. Strategic Reframe: Constraints aren't obstacles to strategy—they are the strategy. Forced niche clarity enables differentiation that giants can't match. As organizations scale, those who preserve informal alignment out-execute those who rely solely on governance. The future belongs to ecosystems small enough to align and networked enough to compound. Guest: Leena Faraj, Head of Strategy, Bahrain Airport Company | Vice Chair, ACI Economic Committee Host: Dyan Finkhousen, Founder & CEO, Shoshin Works Series Hosts: Dyan Finkhousen, Founder & CEO, Shoshin Works Vikram Shyam, Futurist, NASA Ecosystemic Futures is the Shoshin Works foresight series with NASA heritage.

    48 min

  2. 12/11/2025

    115. The 'D' Got Deleted: How VC Funding Broke the Innovation Ecosystem

    The 'D' Got Deleted: How VC Funding Broke the Innovation Ecosystem Last week's whitepaper isn't production-ready. But someone's already pitching it to your board. Kence Anderson has deployed 100+ autonomous AI systems for Fortune 500 companies—and watched venture capital create a research-to-PR pipeline that skips development entirely. The 'D' in R&D got deleted. Hype cycles got amplified. Rule-based AI—systems encoding expertise as decision logic—was the 1980s breakthrough. Overhyped, then abandoned when it couldn't do everything. But engineers kept deploying it where codified rules excel: industrial controls, diagnostics, compliance. It's running critical infrastructure today. Every AI wave follows this arc. For leaders, the lesson: stop asking which technology wins. Ask what each does well—and build modular systems that match capabilities to tasks. The fix: if AI can learn, someone should teach it the right way. Machine teaching—goals, scenarios, strategies—creates modular agents that compound capability through orchestration. Paradigm Shifts: 📌 Components > Algorithms: LLMs excel at language. Reinforcement learning excels at practice. Engineering matches superpowers to tasks. 📌 Methodology Before Platform: Databases required relational algebra before SQL scaled. Autonomous AI requires machine teaching before platforms compound. 📌 Teaching > Training: Every intelligence requires instruction. Practice without pedagogy is noise. 📌 Swarms Beat Battleships: In an AI naval competition, one giant ship won—then got banned. The algorithm responded with 100,000 tiny ships and overwhelmed everyone. Distributed beats concentrated. Shopify vs. Amazon. 📌 Distributed but Interoperable: Winning economies build decentralized, self-healing innovation units. Losing economies calcify around monoliths. Operational Impact: 📌 Research-to-PR Pipeline: When government labs led innovation, development preceded deployment. VC filled the gap but deleted the rigor. 📌 Hierarchical Orchestration: Supervisor agents directing specialized agents produce explainability swarms can't. Top-down orchestration enables traceability. 📌 Human-AI Teaming: Teams of agents and humans beat both alone. Experts teach agents; agents teach novices. Capability compounds bidirectionally. 📌 Space Forces the Issue: Harsh environments demand self-healing, modular systems. Manufacturing principles translate to orbital operations. Strategic Reframe: What's the superpower of each component? How do modular pieces orchestrate into systems that perform? Restore the 'D.' Ecosystems that develop escape the trough. Hype machines fall in. Guest: Kence Anderson, CEO & Founder, AMESA | Author, Designing Autonomous AI Series Hosts: Dyan Finkhousen, Founder & CEO, Shoshin Works | Vikram Shyam, Futurist, NASA Ecosystemic Futures is the Shoshin Works foresight series with NASA heritage.

    46 min

  3. 12/03/2025

    114. Stack or Stall: Why Credentials Collapse but Ecosystems Compound

    Stack or Stall: Why Credentials Collapse but Ecosystems Compound Last year's Chemistry Nobel went to non-chemists. The lasting power of domain-specific credentials is collapsing - but David Julian has seen this pattern before across four technological revolutions and knows what compounds instead. From Hotjobs.com to Google's global EdTech partnerships, Julian identified what separates transformative innovations from footnotes: they teach users something new, reduce friction, and fundamentally improve lives. Now on Harvard's Galileo Project steering committee, he's applying ecosystem logic to AI-powered astrophysics - and discovering why stacking beats selecting. The insight: Skills stack. Modular, complementary, and interoperable capabilities stack. Liberal arts + AI certifications compound income dramatically. Universities aren't obsolete - their business models are. Survivors become platforms for compounding, not gatekeepers of credentials. Paradigm Shifts: 📌 Stack, Don't Select: Psychology degree + data analytics certification = dramatically higher median income. Critical thinking + immediate employability. Ecosystems reward combination, not specialization. 📌Outcomes > Access: Measure completion, not enrollment. 📌Curiosity Compounds: Space, science, and AI unify across divisions. Galileo Project inspires regardless of conclusions - serious anomaly inquiry advances physics, materials, and propulsion. 📌Revolution Patterns: Search democratized information. Smartphones democratized computing. Social democratized community. AI democratizes research-grade analysis. Each wave rewired ecosystems. Operational Impact: 📌 Pre-K to Gray: EdTech isn't digitizing classrooms - it's lifelong capability building across universities, companies, and workforce organizations. 📌Global Context: Limited broadband markets require light apps. Infrastructure constraints determine adoption - not features. 📌Ecosystem Leverage: App stores became digital malls. Platforms that enable third-party value to outlast those that hoard capabilities. 📌Validation Gap: AI democratized skills, not credentialing. Universities still provide third-party validation that employers trust, but that trust is eroding. Whoever solves verification at scale wins. Strategic Reframe: Today's AI gold rush mirrors the dot-com era: everyone senses transformation, few recognize patterns. Then, as now, credentials collapse when they can't compound. Ecosystems compound when they enable stacking. The question: are you building stackable value into interconnected networks, or hoarding static credentials in isolated silos? Guest: David Julian, Former Head of Industry, EdTech, Google | Steering Committee, Harvard Galileo Project Host: Dyan Finkhousen, Founder & CEO, Shoshin Works Series Hosts: Vikram Shyam, Founder, Vik Strategic Solutions Dyan Finkhousen, Founder & CEO, Shoshin Works Ecosystemic Futures is the Shoshin Works foresight series with NASA heritage.

    46 min

  4. 11/25/2025

    113. Engineering Heritage: Transforming Departing Expertise into Operational Capability

    Operators with 30 years of pattern recognition leave for competitors. Engineers carrying legacy system intelligence depart. Everyone understands the risk. Few solve the execution: Systematically extracting tacit intelligence that experts can't articulate because it operates below the conscious threshold. Dr. Refiloe Mabaso and Wisdom Ndashe architected what many struggle to build - knowledge-capture systems that function independently of voluntary participation. At ATNS, harvesting is mandated by policy and embedded in workflows. Their "Legends and Beneficiaries" program identifies critical expertise five years before departure, mapping tacit intelligence to next-generation operators through structured protocols. The execution breakthrough: embedding capture into SOPs makes retention automatic. Travel with Purpose demonstrates strategic reach - converting unaccounted expenditures into documented intelligence acquisition with measurable ROI. Cost centers become intelligence operations. Paradigm Shifts: 📌 Policy-Mandated > Voluntary: Board-level reporting makes knowledge infrastructure non-negotiable. Embedding capture in SOPs makes participation a requirement. 📌 Five-Year Windows: Identify critical expertise years before departure. Tacit knowledge requires time to extract through storytelling and observation. 📌 Workflow Embedding: Built into inductions, reviews, and meetings. Automatic retention scales independently of KM capacity. 📌 SLAs + Metrics: Department-specific dashboards eliminate generic buy-in. Performance metrics make KM measurable and competitive. Operational Impact: 📌 Integration Architecture: FAQs mapped to SMEs. Lessons learned feed dashboards. Domain validation. Systems inform each other, intelligence compounds. 📌 Risk-Based Focus: Stakeholder engagement identifies highest-impact domains - concentrating resources where loss matters most. 📌 Knowledge-to-Operations: Expertise flows into training curriculum, OJTI programs, technical manuals - not static repositories. 📌 Travel Intelligence: TWIP transforms unaccounted budgets into strategic acquisitions with documented ROI - proving value to leadership. Strategic Reframe: Organizations recognize the risk of knowledge loss. Few execute systematic knowledge capture at scale. The differentiator: architecture making harvesting automatic through workflow embedding, policy mandates, and integrated systems that compound intelligence. Five-year windows + department SLAs + competitive metrics = self-sustaining infrastructure. Guests: Dr. Refiloe Mabaso, PhD, Head of Information and Knowledge Management, ATNS Wisdom Mcebo Ndashe, Knowledge and Content Management Specialist, ATNS Host: Dyan Finkhousen, Founder & CEO, Shoshin Works Series Hosts: Vikram Shyam, Founder, Vik Strategic Solutions Dyan Finkhousen, Founder & CEO, Shoshin Works Ecosystemic Futures is the Shoshin Works foresight series with NASA heritage. Futures, Foresight, Technology, Industry, Society, Policy

    42 min

  5. 11/06/2025

    112. Accelerating the Hydrogen Stack

    Hydrogen infrastructure requires billion-dollar cryogenic systems. That's the conventional wisdom keeping hydrogen grounded. Dr. Jalaal Hayes proved it's wrong—and the implications for expeditionary operations are immediate. Hayes developed Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carriers (LOHC) technology, which stores hydrogen at ambient temperatures using existing fuel infrastructure. No specialized equipment. No cryogenic vulnerability. Combined with biohydrogen production, delivering three times the energy density of JP-8, this isn't an incremental improvement—it's an operational paradigm shift. When you orchestrate complementary technologies instead of betting on single solutions, you eliminate infrastructure dependencies that constrain deployment. For institutions like the DoW, that means hydrogen propulsion without forward-deployed cryogenic facilities. Paradigm Shifts: → Applied Budgetary Exhaustion: LOHC eliminates billions in cryogenic infrastructure by using existing petroleum systems—the same asymmetric strategy Ukraine uses with $10K drones vs $100M platforms. Attack the cost structure, not the capability. → Infrastructure Independence: Biohydrogen becomes deployable when paired with ambient-temperature LOHC storage. No cryogenic vulnerability. No specialized tankers. Existing logistics networks carry hydrogen in chemical form—released on demand at the point of use. → Regional Stack Control = Supply Chain Security: Hayes built his entire prototype with suppliers within driving distance. That's not convenience—it's strategic autonomy. When you control the full stack regionally, you eliminate foreign dependencies and supply chain vulnerabilities. Operational Impact: → Space-to-Ground Dual-Use: Same hydrogen stack enabling Mars closed-loop life support runs ground ops at forward operating bases. One R&D investment, two critical applications. That's how you maximize constrained budgets. → Technology Intersection > Selection: Stop forcing teams to pick biohydrogen OR storage OR production. The breakthrough lives where they integrate—each solving the other's deployment constraint. Complementary systems outperform optimized components. → Compressed Innovation Cycles: Hayes's students solve real commercial prototypes in semesters, not years. Academic-entrepreneurial integration accelerates the transition of capabilities from the lab to the field. Strategic Reframe: Infrastructure dependencies limit operational flexibility. When you orchestrate technologies that leverage existing systems, you eliminate deployment barriers. The question isn't "which hydrogen technology wins?" It's "what combination removes infrastructure constraints from our operational calculus?" Guest: Dr. Jalaal Hayes, CEO & Founder, Evince Inc. | Associate Professor of Chemistry, Lincoln University Host:  Dyan Finkhousen, Founder & CEO, Shoshin Works Ecosystemic Futures is the Shoshin Works foresight series with NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration heritage.

    55 min

  6. 10/28/2025

    111. Engineering Velocity: Unlocking Value Constellations

    The most transformative strategic leaders understand that building ever-larger organizational infrastructure is counterproductive. Instead, they leverage resources and achieve impact by engineering robust, trust-based networks. Jane Wei-Skillern, a Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business whose network leadership research has been downloaded over 31,000 times, reveals the four counterintuitive principles driving systemic success. This is a complete contrast to conventional growth thinking. Learn how to use decentralized influence to maximize resource effectiveness and generate sustainable, scalable impact. Paradigm Shifts: → Mission before Organization: Success is achieved by prioritizing a shared strategic objective over traditional organizational metrics, such as budget or internal infrastructure growth. → Trust not Control: Shifting from seeking headquarters dominance and enforcing internal hierarchy to establishing deep, relational foundations with trusted peers and collaborators. → Humility not Brand: Rejecting centralized brand management and resource accumulation in favor of leveraging shared intelligence across the broader ecosystem. → Constellations not Stars: Systemic impact is maximized when leaders work alongside peers as equals to build robust, enduring networks, rather than seeking individual organizational dominance. Ecosystem Impact: → Large, brand-driven organizations often struggle with internal politicking and learning barriers between headquarters and field offices. → Network leadership eliminates resource redundancies and increases efficiency, making limited resources "go further, go faster". → Leaders who reject the status of being the single "founder" or having the "best ideas" are better positioned to listen and observe intelligence from every corner of the world. → Robust networks generate organizational success more efficiently, effectively, and sustainably. The Innovation: Recognizing that scalable impact is achieved not by accumulating static resources or internal power bases, but by actively building an ecosystem of high-trust peer relationships. This approach fosters continuous collaboration and system-wide leverage. Strategic Application: Executives must audit whether current investments prioritize institutional growth or the engineering of high-trust, decentralized partnership ecosystems. Success hinges on designing a constellation structure that optimally distributes effort and knowledge. Strategic Reframe: In complex, hyper-connected systems that punish resource waste, ask: "Are we building a resource-draining institutional empire, or are we engineering a scalable, high-impact constellation structure built on leveraged peer-to-peer trust?" The most resilient Ecosystemic Futures are driven by influence through connection, not dominance through control. Guest: Jane Wei-Skillern, Senior Fellow, Center for Social Sector Leadership, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Host: Marco Annunziata, Co-founder, Annunziata Desai Advisors Series Hosts: Vikram Shyam, Lead Futurist, NASA Glenn Research Center Dyan Finkhousen, Founder & CEO, Shoshin Works Ecosystemic Futures is a Shoshin Works systems foresight series with NASA heritage.

    55 min

  7. 10/21/2025

    110. Ecosystemic Infrastructure: Unlocking Complex Systems Intelligence

    Information management delivers data. Knowledge management unleashes organizational intelligence - transforming how multi-stakeholder ecosystems coordinate, decide, and optimize performance across dynamic and complex networks. D. Jasen Graham, Director of Enterprise Risk and Knowledge Management for VA's $400M+ Financial Management Business Transformation program, achieved 50% improvement in risk mitigation efficiency and 40% reduction in decision cycle time. Paradigm Shifts: 📌 Strategic Slowness as Advantage: Federal AI adoption lags commercial - Graham argues this is "just fine." When governance matters more than velocity, deliberate implementation prevents catastrophic failures. Counter-intuitive: being behind can be strategically correct in multi-decade ecosystems. 📌 Permanence over Projects: Without leadership champions, "you're dead in the water." But the more profound shift is that successful KM requires permanence, not complete projects. Organizations treating KM as finite initiatives architect their own obsolescence. 📌 Behavioral Architecture Over Training: Knowledge hoarding is evolutionary. Don't train it away - architect around it. Public recognition systems (dashboards, gamification, "Kmart Blue Light specials") hack human psychology more effectively than cultural programs. 📌 The Unsolved Ecosystem Problem: The private sector achieves velocity through tiny decision cycles, while the public and commercial sectors have protracted cycles due to stakeholder accountability. The trillion-dollar question is: How do you architect private velocity into public-commercial ecosystems without sacrificing governance? Graham identifies the problem; solutions are elusive. 📌 Living Knowledge vs. Dead Archives: Most organizations confuse documentation with KM. Graham: "It's not about storing it away in some share file, buried six clicks deep that no one looks at." Knowledge must be living, constantly updated, readily accessible - or it's information management, not knowledge management. 📌 Organizational Depth Over Stars: The "Next man up" philosophy states that bench depth matters more than key personnel. When "the one guy everyone goes to" retires, what happens? Systematic knowledge transfer builds resilient ecosystems that survive personnel transitions. The Graham Framework: KM succeeds when culture converges with a systematic process. It requires unwavering leadership support, recognition systems, hacking psychology, and permanent continuous assessment. The result: ecosystems that adapt, learn, and optimize under uncertainty. Guest: D. Jasen Graham, Director Enterprise Risk & KM, VA Host: Marco Annunziata, Co-Founder, Annunziata Desai Advisors Series Hosts: Vikram Shyam, Vik Strategic Solutions   Dyan Finkhousen, CEO, Shoshin Works Ecosystemic Futures delivers complex systems foresight by Shoshin Works with heritage from NASA's Convergent Aeronautics Solutions Project.

    58 min

  8. 10/15/2025

    109. Mission as Organizing Principle: How Purpose Shapes Ecosystems

    Mission functions as a powerful organizing principle in market-based ecosystems. Faisal Hoque, a three-time Deloitte Fast 50 winner and transformation partner to DoD and CACI, reveals how architecting purpose into systematic structures creates a gravitational pull, drawing diverse actors into a coordinated flow. Key insight: exemplary architecture doesn't constrain innovation - it releases latent organizational potential into directed motion. Faisal Hoque, founder of SHADOKA and bestselling author of ten books, including Transcend and forthcoming Reimagining Government, has transformed Mastercard, GE, DoD, DHS, and IBM. His framework shows how leaders architect purpose into systems, generating gravitational force across agencies, partners, and collaborators. Paradigm Shifts: 📌 The Personality Paradox: Charismatic leaders' transformations vanish when they leave. Sustainable change embeds innovation into portfolio structures, federated governance, and systematic processes. 📌 Architecting Mission as Gravity: Faisal's "why" question reveals the organizing principle that must be architected into structures. NASA, DoD, and space partners coordinate through strong mission alignment. 📌 Innovation Funnel Inversion: DoD and NASA balance structure with innovation through enterprise portfolios, enabling bottom-up ideation within top-down guardrails. 📌 Architecting Trust Through Mission Gravity: Government ecosystems operate on different physics. "Country first" ethos, architected as gravitational center, enables coordination across clearance levels and international partners without traditional controls. Ecosystem Impact: 📌 Space Economy Architecture: NASA, Space Force, and commercial operators architect networked collaboration replacing hierarchies. Technology convergence (AI, quantum, autonomous systems) creates gravitational pull across mission partners. 📌 Ripple Effect Principle: Innovation cascades across interconnected networks. Responsible transformation requires understanding systemic ripples through the workforce, economy, security, and geopolitical relationships. 📌 Generational Convergence: Multi-generational programs face simultaneous workforce transitions and technology shifts. Leadership balances human values with AI-enabled workforces, combining systemic thinking with emotional intelligence. The Hoque-Finkhousen Synthesis: Start with "why" to identify the mission. Then, design it as a gravitational force: systematic structures that enable diverse actors to self-organize around purpose rather than hierarchical control. Guest: Faisal Hoque, Founder SHADOKA, Author, Transformation Partner DoD & CACI Host: Dyan Finkhousen, Founder & CEO, Shoshin Works Series Hosts: Vikram Shyam, Founder, Vik Strategic Solutions Dyan Finkhousen, Founder & CEO, Shoshin Works Ecosystemic Futures delivers complex systems foresight by Shoshin Works with heritage from NASA's Convergent Aeronautics Solutions Project.

    54 min
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About

Ecosystemic Futures engages with the world’s elite thought leaders who are researching and leading meaningful development in areas that could impact society in the next half century. Provided by Shoshin Works in collaboration with NASA Convergent Aeronautics Solutions Project - Ecosystemic Futures explores technological advances and structural patterns that will help us better innovate, operate, and navigate in our increasingly connected world. Join the conversation as NASA leaders, and industry and policy luminaries share their perspectives with host Dyan Finkhousen, a leading strategist and global authority on ecosystemic solutions, and brilliant co-hosts.

Information

  • Creator
    Dyan Finkhousen: CEO of Shoshin Works
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2025
  • Episodes
    131
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Shoshin Works
  • Show Website
    Ecosystemic Futures

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