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WW 12: Why the French Armed Forces Hire SciFi Writers

Hello, Wondering People!

“Soloprenneur.” The word makes me think of Red SOLO Cups. As much as I love the freedom and autonomy of being self-employed, the word “soloprenneur” also feels lonely to me. As someone building a one-person consulting business, I think nostalgically about the teams of my past. I don’t miss the headaches of managing other people’s work product, development, and billable hours, but I do miss collaborating with people.

In the movie About a Boy, Hugh Grant joins a support group for single parents because he thinks it will be an easy place to pick up women. Classy. The name of the support group is “Single Parents Alone Together,” which is an oxymoron and a punchline. But when I think about my desire to be a sole proprietor with a team to fall back on, I think that’s exactly what I need: Single Entrepreneurs Alone Together.

I was already thinking about teams and the value of diverse perspectives when I heard a fact on a podcast that blew my mind.

So, are you ready to wonder?

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The Small Idea: Your Team Needs More Diverse Voices — Way More Diverse.

The Spark: No Such Thing as a Fish, Episode 601.

What if the perspectives you're missing aren't just "diverse" in the conventional sense; they're from entirely different worlds?

Nancy Martira Clew Strategy

If you’re a lover of obscure facts and you’re not familiar with the podcast No Such Thing as a Fish, you should be. I love that it’s chock full of oddities and esoteric knowledge, but it moves fast. I was listening to Episode 601 when I heard something that made me hit pause and run to Google. According to the podcast, some private companies like Hershey's hire science fiction writers to help their workforce imagine future states and challenges. The French Army does the same thing. At first, this sounded nuts to me. I had to learn more.

In 2019, France's Ministry of Armed Forces created the Red Team Defense, comprised of science fiction authors, illustrators, and designers supported by scientists and military experts. The Red Team is tasked with imagining threats and challenges for the French armed forces over the 2030-2060 period. Emmanuel Chiva, Director of the Defense Innovation Agency, explained that the idea is "to imagine the distant future (2050, 2080...) and anticipate future threats".

To a jaded American, it sounds like a publicity stunt, but it appears to be in earnest: The Red Team selected 10 members from over 600 applicants from the cultural, scientific, and academic world. Part of the work is strictly confidential and is conducted under the aegis of France's Defense Innovation Agency. The scenarios they've created include everything from conflicts in space to armies created using brain implants that inject skills instantaneously.

And France isn't alone. Military institutions, including NATO, have deployed similar approaches. And it's not just governments‌ — ‌major corporations are doing the same thing.
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The Corporate SciFi Industrial Complex

In 2011, Ari Popper founded SciFutures, a foresight and innovation firm that works with large companies like Visa, Hershey's, and Ford. [Props to the Fast Company columnist who opened this article with the line, “Do Forture 500 CEOs dream of electric sheep?”] SciFutures has a network of more than 300 science fiction writers around the world who write for them to help their clients solve their innovation and transformation challenges. In fact, you can apply to join their writer’s panel.

SciFutures’ clients share the long-term business concerns that keep them up at night with a team of sci-fi writers, who churn out insightful, future-minded narratives. For example, in 2014 SciFutures helped home improvement brand Lowe's conceive of and create the HoloRoom, a 20-by-20-foot physical space in which shoppers can see how various Lowe's products would look in their own homes using augmented reality. And the list of companies working with science fiction writers keeps growing: Google, Microsoft, Apple, Visa, Ford, Pepsi, Samsung, Nike, Boeing, and Hershey's, have all employed sci-fi writers to do 'sci-fi prototyping'.[I’m DYING TO KNOW the Hershey use case … ]

Why does this work? Science fiction writers and futurists are free from restraints when it comes to imagining the future, and can also offer an outsider's view. Tim Maughan, author and sci-fi writer used by engineering consultancy Arup's foresight team, explains: "My job as a writer is to encourage critical thought about the future. The easiest way to address concerns about the present is to look at them in the future". Even stodgy consulting giant PwC published a paper describing the potential for business innovation through science fiction.​
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“ ​ ​The secret of innovation, according to SciFutures, can be unlocked by understanding how the realities, the knowns, of the present logically move toward the as-yet-unknown realities of the future.​ ​ ​ — Mark Sullivan, Fast Company

The Homogeneity Problem

Most teams suffer from "mirror syndrome"‌ — everyone on the team reflects similar backgrounds, similar educations, similar ways of thinking. We hire people who went to the same schools, worked at the same companies, read the same books. We call this "culture fit," but what we're really doing is building echo chambers. And now that the Trump Administration is targeting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives across the public and private sectors, many companies have stopped even paying basic lip service to diversity in hiring.

Large organizations are often locked into concrete short- to medium-term goals, and these structures lend themselves to conservatism, making it extremely hard to innovate and disrupt the status quo. When telecommunications companies had the technological know-how to create services like Skype and WhatsApp, they resisted because they were making money from text messages. Startups swooped in instead.

This is where unconventional team members become essential. Science fiction writers aren't constrained by quarterly earnings reports or existing business models. They can imagine what happens if current trends continue unchecked, or what becomes possible if we make different choices today.

​Alex Kantrowitz, author of Always Day One, believes every tech company should hire a science fiction writer if they're interested in keeping their products safe, noting that "a void of creative, dystopian thinking has caused serious problems in the tech world, especially among the tech giants".

Beyond Sci-Fi Writers: Other Unconventional Perspectives

Science fiction writers aren't the only unconventional voices companies are bringing onto teams. The practice of hiring people with entirely different ways of seeing has been growing across industries for decades.

Companies like IBM, Xerox PARC, and General Mills have hired anthropologists to provide ethnographic insights. PARC was a pioneer in tapping anthropologists, hiring its first one in the late 1970s. Susan Squires, an anthropologist hired by General Mills to study breakfast habits, discovered that while people said they viewed breakfast as a "family event," when observed in their homes, breakfast was usually eaten on the go. Her work led to the development of the popular portable yogurt, Go-Gurt.

Tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Intel hire anthropologists to understand how people interact with technology, so they can design more user-friendly products. At Whirlpool, anthropologists who spent time with people in their homes discovered it was difficult for families to find time to cook at the end of the work day, leading the company to develop the "refrigerated oven" which keeps food cold until it's time to cook.

The pattern is clear: when you bring someone onto your team whose job is to see things differently, you unlock insights that homogeneous teams miss entirely.
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Here are two small experiments to try: ​

The Gap Audit Make a list of everyone who currently influences your work‌ — ‌your team members, advisors, mentors, the people you turn to when you're stuck. Now answer these questions honestly: What industries are NOT represented in this group? What types of expertise are missing? If you described your current challenge to each person on this list, how many would give you essentially the same advice? Identify the biggest gap‌ and invite someone with that background into a single conversation about your current challenge. ​ Genre-Shift Your Problem Think about your favorite kind of novel or film — something where you’re familiar with genre conventions like science fiction, mystery, romance, Western, horror, or fantasy. Now consider a current challenge you’re facing and ask: How would a writer in this genre solve this problem? Gun fight at high noon? Meet Cute in the Frozen Foods Aisle? A Charasmatic Cleric joins your party? Spend 20 minutes writing or talking through your problem from a completely different angle. If you start with tropes, move towards specific details. Unless your current challenge is about how to restore law and order to the O.K. Corral, the goal isn't to find the "right" answer. The goal is to unstick your thinking and break out of well-worn ruts by approaching it from an unfamiliar direction. ​ ​ ​ ​

The Wonder of Diverse Sense-Making

What surprises me most about companies hiring sci-fi writers and anthropologists isn't just that they're getting different perspectives: it's that they're acknowledging the limitations of their own. They're saying, "We're too close to this. We need someone who sees the world completely differently." In my experience, only the most self-aware teams recognize that truth.

There's profound humility in that acknowledgment. And there's practical wisdom, too. Stories of corporate downfalls are often stories of entrenched mental models,like Kodak observing rising demand for digital photography but responding by doubling down on its core business rather than embracing the opportunity to capture a new market [some of us were in the room when this happened. We tried.]
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Your team​ — whether it's a Fortune 500 company or just you and your laptop​ — gets stronger when you stop only talking to people who already think like you do. The best ideas rarely come from consensus. They come from the productive friction of different minds colliding. So, the next time you want to hire a new team member or bring in an outside consultant, let your thinking be as broad as the universe.

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The Question

What voice is completely missing from your team or network? Not just "diverse" in the conventional sense, but genuinely different, someone who would look at your work and ask questions that have never occurred to you? What would change if you actively sought out that perspective?

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And now for the Mystery Link!

You did it! You've made it all the way to the end of this essay. This week, we have innovative ways to explore the concepts of space and size without leaving your chair. So, which will you choose: Door Number One or Door Number Two?

​ Door Number One

​ Door Number Two

Work with Nancy and Borrow My Wild Brain (or buy me a coffee.) ​ ​Meet Nancy Martira. ​ I'm a brand strategist and communications consultant who brings endless curiosity to every project. If you've got a challenge that needs a fresh, unexpected perspective, let's talk! How I Can Help →

"To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for it."

​ ​ — Bill Watterson

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