Economic recession or depression is imminent. We have even seen something rolling on the horizon. But this recession or depression is and will be different. Different because it is not caused by predictable cycle. Different because this is unprecedented, since none of currently living creators in the world can claim having experience in dealing with such a great uncertainty. You need to live over 100 years to claim you have experience from 1918 pandemic, for example. Even if you are 150 years old and was there in 1918, the world was a different world then. It wasn’t a connected world like today. So let’s forget about talking past experience, and learn from the future instead.

What make this recession or depression will be more challenging is due to the fact that all countries have been beaten up in attempt to fight the pandemic. Government’s spending has been allocated to non productive expenses, like direct cash assistance, to help people from dying in hunger, where most of the source of cash assistance is from loan.

On business sectors, the easiest way to escape from deeper losses is terminating employees, cutting all developments and capital expenditures, down to reducing the office space and to the extreme, stopping business activities. Some of them were forced to stop and some of them on will.

We all know it, hear it every day, or even dealing and struggling with it as you are reading this. So let’s cut the crab and talk about solutions. A familiar words from your subconscious.

Learning from the future, therefore, is a strategical foresight approach in dealing with such a great uncertainties, where no past experience or data could be pulled down to draw the path.

It is a systematic approach based on present reality with an integrated strategical foresight, executed with great focus on what could be done now. Forget about traditional and conventional ways of looking forward using past datas.

Certainly every government will eventually issues economic growth strategies, a.k.a stimulus, followed by regulations and tax reformations. In Indonesia, particularly, Jokowi’s administration has formed a committee or task force with President Regulation, PP No. 82 Year 2020, to start looking at how to recover from this Covid-19 pandemic. Shortly we will start seeing new regulations to provide a new economic fundamentals, to help business recovery and eventually grow.

This government initiatives will open new opportunities or will even emerge completely new business world. It is the nature of human being moving from survival mode to creativity mode. At this point in time will then natural selection will do its power, often in brutal of no mercy.

Collaborations is the key to be successfully cheat this natural selection. Every government administration must collaborate to hand in hand create a holistic longterm cooperation with mutual commitments, beyond traditional G2G signing ceremony which was only good for headlines and front page of newspapers and medias.

Great focus on present actionable ideas with persistence execution and cost awareness in mind to avoid bleeding. Live and act in present time and reality to reach the future now.