The historic Global Pound Conferences in 2016 and 2017 evaluated all forms of dispute prevention and resolution in a worldwide effort, forty years after the first Pound Conference, to find ways to improve the future of dispute resolution. In the final voting by thousands of delegates to 29 conferences held worldwide, In answer to the question “What innovations/trends are going to have the most significant influence on the future of dispute resolution” the delegates’ top choice was “Greater emphasis on collaborative instead of adversarial processes.” And in the voting on “Which processes should be prioritized to improve the future of dispute resolution?” the delegates’ top choice was “Pre-dispute or Pre-escalation processes to prevent disputes.”
The article, “Forty Years on, Practitioners, Parties, and Scholars Look Ahead,” presents the most definitive report on those historic voting results from the Global Pound Conference, which decisively endorsed modern dispute prevention practices.