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The May 2023 Horizons, Envision’s bi-monthly newsletter, features Board member written articles about the exciting future of Green Bay Botanical Gardens, how a Green Bay area company helped disable the Chinese surveillance balloon, and several articles about addressing addiction and housing challenges in our community. Click here to read the issue.

Susan Garot, Envision Board member FarmWise weeding robots are a game-changer, as they use artificial intelligence to identify and remove weeds from fields without harming crops. The robots are equipped with hundreds of tiny blades that cut the weeds out, leaving the healthy plants untouched. The robots are autonomous, but human supervision is also available […]

Judy Nagel, Envision Board member and Upward Mobility Signals Team Here in our United States, one important step toward upward mobility is meaningful participation in our democracy, and that usually begins at the ballot box. But how smart are we able to be as voters? What do we really know? To what extent are we […]

Phil Hauck, Envision Board member and Economic Transformation/Artificial Intelligence Signals Team We all know where the infamous Chinese spy balloon ended up – in the Atlantic, off the coast of South Carolina. And now we all know it came from China, as suspected. But who actually tracked that balloon back to its origins and proved […]

Tom Schumacher and Fr. Paul Demuth, Envision Board members and Housing & Safety Signals Team “I didn’t want to have, like, any emotion, so I thought, like, the best way to, like, put it down would be to do more and more and more drugs.” So begins the opening convocation in a “recovery high school” […]

Fr. Paul Demuth, Envision Board member and Housing & Safety Signals Team January’s “Point in Time” count of homeless persons in Green Bay discovered 41 unsheltered persons living on the streets — the highest winter number counted in three years! People who are chronically homeless often deal with long term mental health and addictive behaviors, […]

Dave Wegge & Randall Lawton, Envision Board members and Strategic Foresight Consultants This month the Green Bay Botanical Garden will welcome the community to its new Carol and Bruce Bell Children’s Garden, five times the size of its predecessor! The 47-acre, community-owned garden is open daily for a variety of activities that connect people with […]

Nan Nelson, Envision Board Member As you explore creating scenarios to introduce possible, plausible futures to your organization, consider how award-winning professionals — science fiction writers — do this. Not the folks who write Star Wars-type space operas or the sword and sorcery fiction of novels like Game of Thrones. Rather, consider Horizon 3, near-future “hard” science […]

Steve McCarthy, Envision Executive Director, 2022- March 31, 2023 When I was asked in late 2021 to become Envision Greater Green Bay’s first executive director, I was of course honored. The organization’s mission and vision — centered on expanding strategic foresight throughout the area — is unique in North America. No other organization is attempting […]

Phil Hauck, Envision Board President As they complete their Strategic Foresight training with Garry Golden, our graduates recognize the value of staying in touch and continuing to support each other. A number of workshop participants have asked us to create such opportunities to get together with like-minded former participants to discuss trends they are watching and […]

No topic received more attention than artificial intelligence as our winter 2023 cohort shared their finalpresentations and received their certificates of completion. Representatives of the followingorganizations completed their Strategic Foresight training on March 31: St. Norbert CollegeGreen Bay Police DepartmentHSHS WI/Prevea HealthBellin HealthFoundations Health & WholenessGreater Green Bay ChamberNortheast Wisconsin Technical CollegeBay Towel, Inc.O’Connor Connective […

Chris Davis, Envision Board member and Green Bay Chief of Police High-profile incidents involving police use of force over the past several years have increased scrutiny of police policy, culture, and training. A February 15 piece on ABC News highlights the stark difference between police training in the United States and that in other developed […]

Heidi Selberg, Envision Board member Upward Mobility Signals Team Access to transportation has been identified by the Urban Institute and others as a critical factor in boosting upward mobility. But what happens when the definition of access to transportation changes? How do cities and rural areas respond? What infrastructure is necessary, and what becomes obsolete? And […]

Explore Envision’s newsletter, the March 2023 Horizons. We highlight the successful March 1 World Futures Day celebration with Thomas Frey, “gifts from the pandemic,” and other forward looking insights from Envision Board members.

By Devon Christianson, Envision Board member and Health and Well-Being Signals Team Younger generations are challenging companies to put their diversity and inclusion policies into action. According to a 2021 study by Deloitte, “it’s not enough to just market inclusiveness or diversity, as our results also show 57% of consumers are more loyal to brands that commit to addressing […]

Nan Nelson, Envision Board member and Economic Transformation Signals Team Envision’s Economic Transformation Signals Team has been looking for signals related to the future of our local economy. Among the issues on our domain map are: We’re finding a great many signals of big change on the far horizon! In fact, so many that the […]

By Judy Nagel, Envision Board Member and Upward Mobility Signals Team Could the Indian and Chinese economies outpace the economies of the United States and Western Europe? Economic analysts say yes. Projections show the U.S. percentage of world GDP shrinking from 16% to 12%, with China’s share growing from 16% to 27% and India’s GDP growing from […]

Both our keynote speaker, Thomas Frey, and the representative of our lead sponsor, Brian Stuelpner of Schneider, opened their remarks on March 1 with references to the 1960s animated cartoon series, The Jetsons. We were reminded that the Jetsons lived in something looking suspiciously like the Seattle Space Needle (which didn’t yet exist), used robot […]

Randy Van Straten, Envision Board member and VP, Business & Community Health, Bellin Health “What we have before us are some breathtaking opportunities disguised as insoluble problems,” said John W. Gardner, former United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. This quotation aligns perfectly with my experiences in health care over these past three-plus years […]

Jim Golembeski, Envision Board member It started in the paper industry, a mainstay of the northeast Wisconsin economy. In 1996, the Scott paper company in Oconto Falls closed. That was followed by closings and mass layoffs at many area paper companies. The number of affected workers was soon in the thousands. Then the layoffs hit […]