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Foresight glossary

Act(ion): something done or performed
Alert: alarm or warning
Alternate future: a possible future which never comes to pass
Alternative futures: see scenario
Alternative history: a subgenre of speculative fiction that is set in a world in which history has diverged from history as it is generally known
Ambiguity:communication interpreted in more than one way
Analogy: the cognitive process of transferring information from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another particular subject (the target)
Analysis: examine in detail in order to discover meaning
Analytical hierarchy process: a structured technique for helping people deal with complex decisions
Anticipation: forethought
Assumption surfacing: reveals the underlying assumptions of a policy or plan and helps create a map for exploring them
Archetype: common system structures that prodice characteristic patterns of behavior
Baby-boomer: a person who was born during the post-World War II baby boom between 1946 and the early 1960s

Backcasting: working backwards from a vision to the present day
Balanced feedback loop: a stabilizing, goal-seeking, regulating feedback loop, also known as a "negative feedback loop"
Bellwether: any entity in a given arena that serves to create or influence trends or to presage future happenings
Benchmarking: a process in which organizations evaluate various aspects of their processes in relation to best practice, usually within their own sector
Bounded rationality: the logic that leads to decisions or actions that make sense within one part of the sysyem but are not reasonable within a broader context or when seen as part of a wider system
Bibliometrics: a set of methods used to study or measure texts and information
Brainstorming: intensive discussion to solve problems or generate ideas
Butterfly effect: encapsulates the more technical notion of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory. Small variations of the initial condition of a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system
Causal attribution: a necessary relationship between one event (called cause) and another event (called effect) which is the direct consequence (result) of the first
Causal models: techniques used as a means to inquire into the causes of social phenomena and to generate a set of forecasts as to the future course of the phenomena
Change agent: actor, influencer
Change management: to make or become different by systems engineering
Chaos: complete disorder, utter confusion
Chaos theory: describes the behavior of certain dynamical systems - that is, systems whose state evolves with time - that may exhibit dynamics that are highly sensitive to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect)
Citation analysis: the examination of the frequency and pattern of citations in articles and books
Citizen panels (juries): virtual or conference-based activity to uncover public concerns on critical issues
Cohort: a group of subjects with a common defining characteristic - typically age group
Conjecture: a mathematical statement which appears likely to be true, but has not been formally proven to be true under the rules of mathematical logic
Constructive technology assessment: studies the process of technological change
Content analysis: (sometimes called textual analysis) a standard methodology in the social sciences for studying the content of communication
Correlation: indicates the strength and direction of a linear relationship between two random variables
Co-incident indicator: an indicator that reflects changes happening in the present
Collaboration: to work with another or others on a joint project
Complexity: used to characterize something with many parts in intricate arrangement
Convergence: the blending of culture and ideas into a single product
Context analysis: see Environmental Scanning
Commentator: classifies commentators by whether their focus is on far, medium, or near term horizon
Complexity theory: the study of complex systems
Correlation: indicates the strength and direction of a linear relationship between two random variables
Critical technologies: evaluates the future impact and potential of super new and emerging technologies
Cross-impact analysis: analyses of conditional probabilities of events or issues and their impact on each other
Cost-benefit analysis: a term that refers both to:
- a formal discipline used to help appraise, or assess, the case for a project or proposal, which itself is a process known as project appraisal; and
- an informal approach to making decisions of any kind
Counter-intuitive: counter to normal expectations
Decision: judgement, conclusion, verdict. The act of making up one's mind.
Decision analysis: the discipline comprising the philosophy, theory, methodology, and professional practice necessary to address important decisions in a formal manner
Delphi method: a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of independent experts
Diffusion: denotes the net motion from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration
Dimensional analysis: a conceptual tool often applied in physics, chemistry, and engineering to understand physical situations involving a mix of different kinds of physical quantities
Discontinuity: major shift in a trend that is so drastic it cannot be accounted for by normal variation
Divergence: separation of culture and ideas into many products
Divination: the art or practice of discovering future events or unknown thingsthe act or state of expecingor the state of being expected
Driving force: a cluster of individual trends on the same general subject moving trends in certain directions, broad in scope and long term in nature (for example, globalization)
Dynamic equilibrium: the condition in which the state of a stock (its level or size) is steady and unchanging, despite inflows or outflows; this is possible only when all inflows equal all outflows
Dynamics: the behaviour over time of a system or any of its components
Dystopia: any real or imaginary society with many undesirable features
Effects: all the linked changes that change itself causes
Emerging issue: emerging issues reflect the potential impacts of changes and trends occurring in the wider business or policy context. They are often unclear, complex, and uncertain; may reflect conflict or differences across values or priorities among different groups; can shift in focus, priority and awareness – from fringe to mainstream - rapidly depending on the context within which they are occurring
Endogenous: means "arising from within," the opposite of exogenous
Entropy: the amount of disorder or randomness present in any system
Environmental impact assessment: an assessment of the likely positive and/or negative influence a project may have on the environment
Environmental scanning: process of collecting information to carry out a systematic analysis of the forces effecting organizations and identifying potential threats and opportunities with a view to generating future strategies
Episteme: the "apparatus" which makes possible the separation, not of the true from the false, but of what may be from what may not be characterised as scientific
Ethnography: a genre of writing that uses fieldwork to provide a descriptive study of human societies
Event: something happening in the internal or external organizational environment which can be observed and tracked; usually documented as a "scanning hit"
Evolutionary development: a field of biology that compares the developmental processes of different animals and plants in an attempt to determine the ancestral relationship between organizms and how developmental processes evolved
Exogenous: see Endogenous.
Expectncy: someting expected esp. on the basis of a norm or an average
Expert: knowledgeable person
Expert panel: a committee or jury used to decide some matter
Extrapolation: extending a trend into the future by assuming the variables will continue to behave as they have in the past
Failure mode: procedure for analysis of potential failure modes within a system for the classification by severity or determination of the failure's effect upon the system
Feedback: a process whereby some proportion of the output signal of a system is passed (fed back) to the input
Feedback loop: the mechanism (rule or information flow or signal) that allows a change in a stock to affect a flow into or out of that same stock
Field Anomaly Relaxation Method: identifies key drivers for change and produces a set of possible future states
Flow: material or information that enters or leaves a stock over a period of time
Focus group: a form of qualitative research in which a group of people is asked about their attitude towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging
Folksonomy: unstructured and uncontrolled arrangement of things using no classification system other than by the self-interested user
Force-field analysis: provides a framework for looking at the factors (forces) that influence a situation, originally social situations
Forecasting: an estimate of what might happen in the future
Foreknowledge: knowledge of an event or thing before it exists, prescience
Foresight: encompasses a range of thinking approaches that combine futures thinking, planning, and networking
Future: the time yet to come
Future history: a postulated history of the future that some science fiction authors construct as a common background for fiction
Future present: the present-day of the future any image describes, or the future considered as if we were living in it now, with our present its past
Future shock: too much change in too short a period of time
Future studies: the study of future possibilities
Futures thinking: see Futurology
Futures workshop: enables a group of people to develop new ideas or solutions of social problems
Futures wheel: an instrument for graphical visualization of direct and indirect future consequences of a particular change or development
Futuring: the act, art, or science of identifying and evaluating possible future events. see Futurology
Futurist: a person who engages in a great deal of futuring or otherwise demonstrates a serious rational or scientific concern for the future
Futuristics: see Futurology
Futurology: the study of the future postulating possible, probable, and preferable futures
Futuribles: see Futurology
Gaming: participation in particular kinds of future orientated games
Genius forecasting: see Technology Forecasting
GenX: term used to describe generations in many countries around the world born from 1965 to around 1982
GenY: refers to a specific cohort of individuals born from around 1981-2001
Gestalt: a German word for form or shape. It is used in English to refer to a concept of "wholeness"
Hierarchy: systems organized in such a way as to create a larger system; subsystems within systems
Historic analogy: using past events to create similar mental images of an updated potential future
Horizon scanning: the initial and continuing process of reviewing and analyzing current literature, web sites, and other media to identify and describe noteworthy trends and their possible development and future
Image of the future:an imaginary description (in any format or media) of a possible future outcome for a given item of interest: a person, a community, an organization, nation, society, bioregion, planet, etc.
Impacts. See Environmental scanning
Industry: organized economic activity
Innovation: refers to both radical and incremental changes in thinking, in things, in processes, or in services
Innovation stage: tracks the line of progress of an innovation from the creation of an idea to its development
Input-output model: uses a matrix representation of a nation's (or a region's) economy to predict the effect of changes in one industry on others and by consumers, government, and foreign suppliers on the economy
Insight: an observation or manifestation of change
Institutional analysis: that part of the social sciences which studies how institutions, i.e., structures and mechanisms of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of two or more individuals, behave and function
Interview: a conversation between two or more people (the interviewer and the interviewee) where questions are asked by the interviewer to obtain information from the interviewee
Integral futures: seeks a comprehensive understanding of humans and the universe by combining, among other things, scientific and spiritual insights
Intimation: hint, suggest, proclaim, make known
Issue trees: logical structuring of issues
Judgemental forecasting: see Forecasting
Kondratiev wave: regular, sinusoidal cycles in the modern (capitalist) world economy
Lagging indicator: an indicator that reflects warnings that have already occurred
Law of diminishing/accelerating returns: in a production system with fixed and variable inputs (say factory size and labour), beyond some point, each additional unit of variable input yields less and less additional output. Conversely accelerating returns exhibits the opposite effect
Leading indicator: an indicator that reflects early warnings of change
Lead time: the period of time between the initiation of any process of production and the completion of that process
Lifestyle: the way a person lives
Likelihood: probability
Limiting factor: a necessary system input that is the one limiting the activity of the system at a particular moment

Limits to Growth: a book modeling the consequences of a rapidly growing world population and finite resource supplies
Linear relationship: a relationship between two elements in a system that has constant proportion between cause and effect and so can be drawn with a straight line or graph. The effect is additive
Literature review: a body of text that aims to review the critical points of current knowledge on a particular topic
Macrohistory: see Social cycle theory
Manifestation: see Insight
Media type: formats of resources
Megatrend: a widespread (i.e., more than one country) trend of major impact, composed of subtrends which in themselves are capable of major impacts
Modelling: system representation of indicative relationships allowing for hypothesis testing
Mitigation analysis: see Risk Management
Monitoring: continuous (or ongoing) observation of certain aspects of something
Morphological box: multi-dimensional, non-quantifiable problems where causal modelling and simulation do not function well or at all
Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis: a discipline aimed at supporting decision makers who are faced with making numerous and conflicting evaluations
Narrative analysis: making meaning out of fragmented, user-generated, and shared information
Nightmare (scenario): an image of the future which articulates an individual’s or group’s greatest concerns, worries, and fears, in a negative statement of a highly feared future outcome
Non-linear relationship: a relationship between two elements in a system where the cause does not produce a proprtional (straight-line) effect
Normative: generically, it means relating to an ideal standard or model. In practice, it has strong connotations of relating to a typical standard or model
Observation: see Insight
Organizational network analysis: a method for studying communication networks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_network_analysis
Organizational storytelling: development of evocative narratives to convey core messages
Paradigm/Paradigm shift: a pattern or model (shift)
Path dependence: means simply "history matters" - a broad conception - while others use it to mean that institutions are self reinforcing - a narrow conception
Pattern: a theme of reoccurring events or objects, sometimes referred to as elements of a set. These elements repeat in a predictable manner
Pattern language:a structured method of describing good design practices within a field of expertise
Penetration: the proportion of the total number of potential purchasers of a product or service who either are aware of its existence or actually buy it.
PEST analysis: stands for "Political, Economic, Social, and Technological analysis" and describes a framework of macroenvironmental factors used in environmental scanning
Plan(ning); a detailed scheme or a method
Polling: voting systems
Possible: a future capable of being achieved
Potential: possible but not yet actual future
Precursor events: an event necessary for another event to occur
Prediction: a specific statement that something will happen in the future
Preferable: preferred or more desirable future
Premonition: an intuition of a future, usually unwelcome, occurrence or forboding
Presentiment: a senseof something about to happen
Primary/secondary/tertiary effects: order of magnitude ripple effects on a system
Priority: right of precedence over others, something given specific attention
Probable: likely to be or to happen future but not necessarily so
Probability: the likelihood or chance that something is the case or will happen
Prognosis: term denoting a prediction of how a problem will progress, and whether there is chance of recovery.
Project management: discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals
Projection: a forecast developed by assuming that a trend will continue into the future
Qualitative: qualitative research, featuring a high degree of subjectivity
Quantitative: an atribute that exists in a range of magnitudes, and can therefore be measured
Quantitative scenarios: allows users to input alternative assumptions to generate alternative results
Regional potential: analyses change by both physical and virtual zonal impacts
Reflexivity: an act of self-reference where examination or action "bends back on," refers to, and affects the entity instigating the action or examination
Reinforcing feedback loop: an amplifing or enhancing feedback loop, also known as a "positive feedback loop" because it reinforces the direction of change; these are vicious cycles and virtuous circles
Relevance tree: an analytical technique that subdivides a large subject into increasingly smaller subtopics
Requirements analysis: encompasses those tasks that go into determining the needs or conditions to meet for a new or altered product, taking account the possibly of conflicting requirements of the various stakeholders
Resilience: the ability of a system to recover from perturbation; the ability to restore or repair or bounce back after a change due to an outside force
Risk: Risks which may develop, or which already exist, that are difficult to quantify and may have a high potential impact. Further, risks are marked by a high degree of uncertainty; even basic information, which would help adequately assess the frequency and severity of a given risk, is often lacking. Such risks can occur as a result of economic, technology, sector specific, social changes, etc.
Risk management: a structured approach to managing uncertainty related to a threat, through a sequence of human activities including: risk assessment, strategies development to manage it, and mitigation of risk using managerial resources. Risk is a concept that denotes the precise probability of specific eventualities. Technically, the notion of risk is independent from the notion of value and, as such, eventualities may have both beneficial and adverse consequences; however, in general usage the convention is to focus only on potential negative impact to some characteristic of value that may arise from a future event. Risk can be defined as “the threat or probability that an action or event will adversely or beneficially affect an organization's ability to achieve its objectives"
Role playing: Acting out a future scenario
Scanning: see Environmental scanning
Scenario: a predicted sequence of events that might possibly occur in the future
Scenario planning: a strategic planning method that some organizations use to make flexible long-term plans
Self-fulfilling prophecy: a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true
Self-organization: the ability of a system to structure itself, to creat new structure, to learn, or diversify
Sigmoid curve (S curve). a curve where the rate of growth is rapid and then the growth rate declines
Shifting dominance: the change over time of the relative strengths of competing feedback loops
Signal strength: measure of incitement to action
Simulation: imitation of some real thing, state of affairs, or process
Social change: examines change from the perspective of individual needs
Social cycle theory: argues that events and stages of society and history are generally repeating themselves in cycles
Social network analysis: views social relationships in terms of nodes and ties
Sources: the point or place from which something originates
Stakeholder analysis: connecting the dots and ranking the influence and power of stakeholders over each other
State of the Future Index: a measure of the ten-year outlook for the future
Stock: an accumulation of material or information that has built up in a system over time
Strategy: the art or science of planning
Strategic foresight: the planning that results when future thinking is applied to existing, real-world situations
Suboptimization: the behaviour resulting from a subsystem's goals dominating at the expense of the total system's goals
Sustainability: a characteristic of a process or state that can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely. The term, in its environmental usage, refers to the potential longevity of vital human ecological support systems, such as the planet's climatic system, systems of agriculture, industry, forestry, fisheries, and the systems on which they depend
SWOT analysis: acroynm for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
Synchronicity: the experience of two or more events which occur in a meaningful manner, but which are causally un-related. In order to be "synchronistic," the events must be related to one another temporally, and the chance that they would occur together by random chance must be very small
System: a set of elements or parts that is coherently organized and inter-connected in a pattern or structure that produces a characteristic set of behaviors, often classified as its "function" or "purpose"
Systems analysis: characterises and links systems and properties into a coherent whole
Systems dynamics: an approach to understanding the behaviour of complex systems over time
Systems thinking: a framework that is based on the belief that the component parts of a system will act differently when the system's relationships are removed and it is viewed in isolation
Taxonomy: structured, semantic arrangement of things using deterministic, rule-based classification systems
Technology acceptance model: an information systems theory that models how users come to accept and use a technology
Technology forecasting: potential characteristics of technology, such as levels of technical performance
Technology roadmapping: roadmapping aids planning and placing products with the use of scientific and technological resources
Technology sequence analysis: statistical combination of estimates of the time required to achieve intermediate technological steps
Terminal scenario: an end state from which there is no perceived future change
Time-frame. the period of time that one is assuming for the purposes of decision making and planning
Timeline: chronological ordering of a sequence of events
Time series: a sequence of data points, measured typically at successive times, spaced at (often uniform) time intervals
Time series analysis: methods that attempt to understand such time series, often either to understand the underlying context of the data points (where did they come from? what generated them?), or to make forecasts (predictions)
TINA: (T)here (i)s (n)o (a)lternative
Trend: general tendency or direction evident from past events increasing or decreasing in strength of frequency of observation; usually suggests a pattern
Trend impact analysis: collecting information and attempting to spot a pattern, or trend, and assess its influence from the information
Trend extrapolation: using the past and present to project likely tomorrows
TRIZ: a methodology, tool set, knowledge base, and model-based technology for generating innovative ideas and solutions for problem solving
Uncertainty: state of having limited knowledge where it is impossible to exactly describe an existing state or future outcome, or more than one possible outcome
Urgency: requiring speedy or compelling action
Utopia: any real or imaginary society with many desirable features
Variable: a quantifiable subject of study, the value of which can change over time
Visioning: a vivid mental image produced by the imagination
Visualise: to form a mental image
Volatility: measure of the state of instability
Weak signal: the sources of change - the first case; the original idea or invention; the watershed event; the social outliers expressing a new value
Wild card: an unpredictable event or situation
Windtunnelling: testing chosen objectives against alternative futures
Worldview: the framework of ideas and beliefs through which an individual interprets the world and interacts with it. How one sees the world and makes meaning of what is seen; also influences what one ignores or doesn’t see when scanning
Zeitgeist: the spirit of the age
Zero-sum game: describes a situation in which a participant's gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the other participant(s)

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thryller	Latest page update: made by thryller , Aug 9 2009, 5:21 AM EDT (about this update About This Update Edited by thryller 70 words added view changes - complete history)
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Changing Futures	Future Challenges	Strategic Thinking
Futures networking	More foresight resources	References
Networking	Horizon Scanning	Futuring Methods
Scanning funnel	Visual models

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