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| Francis Eric Knight Britton
Managing Director |
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Le Frene, 8/10 rue Joseph Bara 75006 Paris, France Voicemail/Fax + 331.5301.2896 Email: eric.britton@ecoplan.org |
Introductory summary
The principal challenge of my work lies in scanning and organizing incomplete information and insights on complex technical and socio-economic topics so that informed decisions can be taken, for better or worse, in an ever-moving complex world rife with contradictions, conflicting interests and more forms of prejudice and denial than even God could shake a stick at. Virtually all of my work has been consistently marked by a handful of persistent central themes:
- A driving long-time interest in better understanding technological change as it impacts on people in their daily lives -- and then, based on that understanding, turning it into a better and safer reality.
- A life time commitment to the concept of sustainable development, which I see as the main challenge of business, government and us all as we move along in this new century.
- Dead certainty that the principal concomitant of sustainable development is social justice, without which there can be no sustainability.
- The vital importance of using market forces and entrepreneurship in as simple and uninhibited away as possible, but under the aegis of a wise public policy frame.
- A firm belief that all real progress in human affairs comes from the direct involvement and empowerment of people (all while finding ways to get a lot more women into the decision stream).
All my activity is resolutely international and cross-disciplinary, and has been from the beginning. My work is about evenly divided between public sector and business assignments, with a good dose of public interest activity with the volunteer sector. It is invariably heavily cross-disciplinary and calls for real communication skills to get the message across.
To get the job done, I am a team builder and team worker. I rarely work alone and never in a corner. The challenges of everything I do require cooperating with, listening to, learning from, and if I can manage it inspiring and helping others to do useful things for people and our planet. And oh yes, I only work with people whom I like and admire. (For a note on my working style, which may or may not be your cup of tea, please click here.)
While completing his doctoral courses at Columbia, Eric taught economics and statistics at New York University and Mills College. From 1962-1965 he worked as partner to Wolfgang Zuckermann in a three year project which resulted in the creation and running of Sundance, a summer festival for the chamber arts in Bucks Country Pennsylvania. He spent two years in the US Army, Infantry/Medical Field Corps/Special Services, and later (1967/68) put some of this background to work during a public health assignment in Vietnam with USAID and the World Health Organization. As a child he grew up with the intention of working with the United Nations because of direct family involvement with the organization at its founding: an interest which conditioned his education in many ways, has led to a number of UN assignments, and which continues to this day.
Eric founded EcoPlan
in 1966 to provide an independent international forum of observation,
reflection and counsel on issues involving technological change as it
effects people in their daily lives.
Over the years he has initiated, participated
in, and carried to completion a fair range of international advisory
assignments and research and demonstration projects aimed at providing decision counsel
to government, business and the volunteer sector on thorny issues of technology,
economy and society. A common theme in all this work is the need to gain a better understanding
of technological change as a prerequisite to the strategic adaptation of products, services, business procedures, and institutional
structures.
In an attempt to advance the agenda of sustainable development and social justice in very specific ways, he has spent a lot of time and effort in order to create a cycle of international problem-solving networks linking outstanding thinkers, researchers and decision-makers from diverse disciplines, countries and points of view. You can see some of the results of this open knowledge-building approach if you turn to the website of The
Commons (www.ecoplan.org). In his attempt to get across the message of social responsibility, at a time in which other values and priorities often appear to be pushing it aside, he and his colleagues around the world have taken active roles in defining and supporting demonstration projects that show how new and more responsible forms of organization can be created and made to work, not only on paper but in the real world.
Britton has a couple of theories about doing better with our lives in this new century: one being that there are a lot of smart and capable people around who are prepared to participate in governance and specific real world initiatives, including in entirely new ways. The second is that the so-called "new technology" provides some of the means of this new era of knowledge building and governance. And the third is that people, you and I, are at heart profoundly inertial and as such largely unwilling to tread the icy waters of change. Unless, of course, we can put our toe in first and assure ourselves that it is not going to kill us. Thus, one of the main barriers to change is our collective inability to envisage, with confidence, a different and possibly better future. To this end, he has a long term interest in identifying, promoting and then as possible demonstrating what he calls "pattern breaks": i. e, means by which we may with a certain amount of comfort and confidence move to a rather different future - and, it is to be hoped, perhaps even one that is more just socially and more sustainable in every sense of that good word.
Eric is an aggressive user of the full range of media to get the ideas across where they can influence views, choices and behaviour. He has thus produced a steady stream of
articles, op-ed pieces, and reports of widely varying quality in support of his work and chosen causes, as well as several books for adults, intellectuals and children. His challenging 1994 thinkpiece, Rethinking
Work: New Concepts of Work in a Knowledge Society (http://ecoplan.org/new-work/), originally published
by the European Commission, Brussels in Nov. 1994, is slated to appear shortly in
an expanded second edition. Another, The Information Society and Sustainable Development, was eventually published both by the European Commission and as a special edition of the Journal of World Transport Policy and Practice .
Short mention might be made here of the process that he and his colleagues have engaged over the years to put technology to work in very practical ways to advance the work of the group. A list reviewing IT and Communications Hallmarks can be see here, and another showing a Sample of Websites here.
In June 2002 Eric was awarded the prestigious World Technology Network Prize for outstanding achievement in the intersect of technology and the environment, cited as "one of those outstanding innovators doing work which will have the greatest likely future significance and impact over the long-term.. ... and likely become or remain "key players" in the technological drama unfolding in coming years". In 2000 he and Enrique Peñalosa, then mayor of Bogota Colombia, were co-awarded the Stockholm Challenge Prize for 'outstanding socio-technical innovation' which led to taking 850,000 cars off the streets of the city for one day and inviting the public to observe and function as on-street consultants to the city and its planners. The result: what has since become without any doubt the Third World's leading alternative urban transportation system in process.
From Summer 2002 through 2003 Britton served as interim CEO leading a major strategic restructuring of the Swiss engineering technology group, GS-Automation S.A., with whom he continues to be affiliated as MD of the Holding and member of the Board. Part of his assignment involved performing a Due Diligence on a troubled sister firm in the fast breaking RFID technology area, Tagtronic S.A., which he decided to close down for reasons of insufficient funding and in-house technical expertise in this tough business area.
Britton is a founding editor of the Journal of World Transport Policy and Practice, Senior Partner and Board Member of New Mobility Partnerships Inc. in New York, and its affiliate Leber Planificación e Ingeniería in Bilbao Spain.
Founded Rethinking Work and Access Planners Bookshelf electronic libraries and forums on ECTF/CompuServe. Created WWW sites on numerous technology and society issues under The Commons (see below).
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Born in Mississippi and educated in New England and Europe, Eric Britton studied science at Amherst and Columbia College, and later the PhD program of the Graduate Faculty of Economics at Columbia University (PhD Can., development economics), with work on a dissertation on technology, development and job creation as Fulbright Fellow in Italy. At various times he has been awarded grants and fellowships for his work from the Ford Foundation, MIT, the Salzburg Seminar, and the International Fellows Program.
Career Synopsis Background Academic
Honors and Awards
Memberships/Associations
Languages
English mother toungue. Fluent French. Operational: Italian. Spanish. If needed: German. Portuguese.
Publications and media
Author, co-author or contributor to more than two hundred reports, books and articles. Served on editorial/advisory boards of World Transport Policy Journal, Traffic Engineering & Control and Mass Transit journals. Latest books: Rethinking Work: New Concepts of Work in a Knowledge Society (Nov. 1996, CEC Brussels) and The Information Society and Sustainable Developmentt (MCB University Press, Bradford, UK, March, 1996). An extensive list of past project reports is available here.
Exemplary web sites
The goal of a good website goes well beyond serving as a passive postcard or one way announcement system and our web sites have long targeted and achieved increasing levels of interactivity to get the job done. They are also increasingly designed to be used as management and communications tools for a wide variety of tasks.
Everything I have done with the web over the last decade has been achieved through team work, most often with very young (and very smart) associates who handled above all the niceties of originally coding where it got beyond my competence (often). Here are a handful of sites that you may want to check out to see how we have handled these challenges. They are arranged here in chronological order by date first brought on line, which makes for some interesting comparisons. But I can leave you to have a look at some of these and make up your mind for yourself.
Specialized professional competences
Problem-solving means and methods
Personal information summary
WHO/USAID, Vietnam, 1967/8: Public health
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Working style
There is quite a body of material, disparate and not all of necessarily highest quialy, bearing my name that can be found on the Web. This is not surprising since I have been an active user of the internet since the mid eighties and an earlier practitioner of the Web since 1994. If you click here, you will see what I mean. (For better or worse.)
Miscellaneous (from the World Wide Web)
These are going to be among my most creative years, and I want to be very sure that I make best use of them in order to make a useful contribution in the broad area that is the core of my twin interests and, I believe, my competence: (a) managing the impact of technology on people in their daily lives, and (b) in the process advancing in significant ways the agenda of sustainable lives and social justice. For further information concerning my current thinking on how to advance this agenda, please have a look at the short piece 2004-2010 Strategies that is intended to compete this introduction.
Looking Ahead: 2005-2010, and beyond
After three challenging years with Stockholm Partnerships and then GS-Automation to open the century, and with the mix of experience of hands-on industrial management, international consulting, academia, writing, and public interest work, as well as observing the unfolding of the interaction between technology, society and individuals, I am now looking forward. We are living in an era of many challenges, and many opportunities, and I have now set out to exchange ideas with friends, colleagues and contacts around the globe to see how I, and we, can best contribute to ensuring a bright future for our children and all of humanity. Starting today. If you wish to contact me, I will be eager to hear your idea and suggestions.
Upon request, at appropriate stage in screening process.
References
PS. You can get a very rough machine translation of any of the materials set out here by clicking the Translate button and indicating the language you would like to see. Not very pretty, but if you are willing to work with it, quite useful.
Quick machine 'translation'
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Le Frene, 8/10 rue Joseph Bara
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Last updated on 19 December 2004
