Why are the world’s problems so insoluble, dragging on from one year to the next, with no sign of any fresh ideas to resolve them? It’s because of their very nature, says Prof. Susan Krumdieck of Heriot-Watt University: our increasingly complex society is producing problems that have no straightforward solution.

There was a time when problems like lead in petrol harming health or refrigerants damaging the ozone layer could be solved by scientific analysis and then engineers designing practical solutions to simply remove the substances causing the problem. But now technical problems are interlinked with social and political and economic issues in an interlocking web.

Their sheer complexity is leading to them to be recognised as coming into a new category – called wicked problems; and the solution to them is much more than a straightforward technical one.

“For example, systemic problems such as fuel poverty are unlikely to be addressed by technology improvements, when the problem involves markets, regulation, policy, infrastructure and socioeconomics.”

But, she says, ideas are starting to develop about general approaches to tackling wicked problems – with the first step being to face up to the full scale of what they involve. The Heriot-Watt group in Orkney have been finding that this can lead to fresh insights and will give a workshop in Stromness on Saturday morning..

And once we learn about wicked problems, the question for each of us is – can we identify some examples ourselves, whether locally or nationally?