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Becoming a futurist

thryller — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:52:39 CST

How do I become a futurist?
This is a question we are regularly asked. Hopefully, this short piece will help you.

First, you are already at the right place. Read our Practical Foresight guide here, and you’ll quickly gain a broad appreciation of what futuring is all about. But, futuring is a very broad subject with many ways of seeing and creating the futures we want to achieve. So, visit the "Further References" when you see them on individual pages because they will increase your breadth and depth of view.

Then browse "More Foresight Resources" here, where you will find comprehensive links to the best introductions on futures studies, events, futuring organizations, and educational courses, etc.

Join Shaping Tomorrow's Foresight Network to see the types of people already practicing as futurists. Their biographies will help you see how they found futuring and how their careers have progressed. They may also be willing to give you free advice and suggestions if you ask them nicely.

In a few hours you will have gained a rapid appreciation of the field of futuring and where to find help. Use it wisely by writing down what attracts and detracts you from being a futurist and ideas and places that you want to revisit. Then, use these lists to see what areas of futuring you would like to explore, and begin asking around or join one of the several foresight teaching programs.

Go to some of the key conferences such as the World Futures Society in North America. Find futurists at Poptech, TED, SXSW, and the European Futurists Conference at Lucerne, Switzerland or other events that attract forward thinking people. Upcoming events are advertised at Shaping Tomorrow's Foresight Network above.

And, don't forget Shaping Tomorrow is always looking for volunteers and interns with a view to offering paid work when it arises. Contact us at our main site if you would like to work with us.

Further reference

An Audit For Organizational Futurists: Ten Questions Every Organizational Futurist Should Be Able to Answer

Next: Personal Futures Back: Overcoming Roadblocks To: Shaping Tomorrow

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Quantitative evaluation

thryller — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 03:49:07 CDT

External assessment
The next step in completing the brief is for the author and/or evalation team to assess the signal strength, timing, and likely public response to the issue from an external assessment perspective. Indicators include:

Change type: improvement | discovery | event | perspective | policy | trend | transformation | uncertainty | wild card
Time frame: now | 5-9 years | 10 -14 years | 15-20 years | 20+ years | never
Penetration: non-existing | trial | niche | widespread | ubiquitous
Potential: very high | high | medium | low | very low
Likelihood: very high | high | medium | low | very low
Urgency: very high | high | medium | low | very low
Complexity: disorder | simple | complicate | complex | chaotic
Controversy: very high | high | medium | low | very low
Geography: local | national | regional | global cyberspace | outer space
Rate of change: instant | days | months | years | decades |
Maturity: weak signal | emerging | growing | maturing | declining

Internal assessment
Then the client evaluation team should complete an internal assessment of the opportunities and threats faced by the organization in confronting the issues raised in the brief. Indicators include:

Decision: tier 1 | tier 2 | tier 3 | tier 4
Opportunity: very high | high | medium | low | very low
Motivation: legally must do | time constrained | high value | scarce resources | growth
Cost savings: very high | high | medium | low | very low
Difficulty: very high | high | medium | low | very low
Risk: very high | high | medium | low | very low
Cost: very high | high | medium | low | very low
Approach: lead | exploit | adopt | also ran | just in time
Prepared: very high | high | medium | low | very low

Stimulus and evidence
A good discipline is also to evaluate the stimulus offered by the brief to readers as follows:

Inspiring: very high | high | medium | low | very low
Engaging: very high | high | medium | low | very low
Enabling: very high | high | medium | low | very low
Novelty: shock | surprise | new news | old news | none

And to assess the quality of the evidence taken in the round:

Credentials: expert | professional | pundit | amateur | fringe
Bias: very impartial | somewhat impartial | balanced | somewhat partial | very partial
Methodology: robust analysis | partial analysis | commentary | opinion led | speculative
Assumptions: accurate | specific | deduced | faulty | inaccurate

Completing this assessment for all briefs then gives the decision and policy makers clear distinctions as to which briefs:

Possess the most external potential.
Must be acted on now, managed, watched, or left on the shelf for another future review.
Represent the biggest stimulus and challenge for change.
Are robust or which have only rudimentary evidence.

Further reference: How to Evaluate Science and Technology Forecasts

Next: Reporting Trends Back: Classifying Trends To: Shaping Tomorrow

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Counter trends, wildcards & black swans

thryller — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 03:26:52 CDT

As well as looking for trends and emerging issues, you should also be alert for counter trends and wildcards. As you identify a trend, ask what the counter trend might be (the opposite trend). Do some scanning to see if such a counter trend is obvious – it might be, it might not be. If you find some evidence of a counter trend, record that. Counter trends can derail a trend’s future trajectory, and you need to be alert to alternative outcomes if a counter trend gets stronger over time.

Wildcards are low probability, high impact events that have the potential to change the world overnight. Some sources like the Arlington Institute (http://www.arlingtoninstitute.org) explore wildcards. Identifying their potential impact has a lot to do with your ability to ask "what if" questions around trends that might seem highly improbable today. Integrating wildcards into your strategic thinking requires an open mind.

Black Swans are highly improbable, impossible to anticipate events. For example, extraterrestrials contact us, other forms of life and dimensions discovered.

You may not find any counter trends, wildcards or Black Swans but stay alert for them. They will often be weird and wacky, and you will be tempted to dismiss them as irrelevant. Explore first before you dismiss.

Because wildcards in particular are improbable, you will need to resist the voice in your head that tells you that you that it will never have an impact on your work. You will be tempted to ignore it because it seems unlikely to ever help you get your work done today or tomorrow. But, strategy is about the future, not the short term “tomorrows." Use the wildcard to explore questions like, “if this did happen, what opportunities or challenges would our organization face?”

References
A Vision for 2012. Planning for Extraordinary Change, John L. Petersen, 2008, Speaker's Corner
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2007, Allan Lane

Next: Recording Scan Hits Back: Discovering Trends To: Shaping Tomorrow

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Selecting trends

thryller — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 02:57:06 CDT

The next step is to make an assessment of the likely impact of your identified trends over your scanning period.

The process of interpreting your scanning hits for your organization is a pivotal step in environmental scanning. This is a step where you also add your judgement and perspective to the mix, and where you add meaning in the context of your organization’s strategic focus and priorities.

Your assessment of scanning hits is the first step in developing robust strategy and action for your organization.

Your aim here is to identify trends that might be critical in terms of your organization’s sustainability, but which are uncertain in terms of the exact nature of how they will have an impact on your organization into the future. Identifying what these trends mean for your organization, and how you might respond over time is part of the next phase of strategy development (what might happen). Right now, you are looking for possibilities, not answers.

The objective is to select trends and issues for further research by first using the series of filters below to narrow down to the vital few.

Tier 4 Undirected viewing > Unselected trends
A simple sight (eyeball test) is applied to filter out extraneous, non-interesting themes and issues against a pre-determined topic(s) or question sets. This reduces a database of potentially thousands of interesting trends to just the relevant 100-300 issues in a couple of days or less.

Tier 3 Informal search > Selected trends
Strategists and policy makers then apply a combination of urgency, likelihood, and impact ratings to these remaining issues and determine which should be moved to Tier 2.

Your assessment covers a number of categories:

Timeframe: when will a mainstream impact begin to appear?
Scope: how widely will the trend be accepted/adopted?
Impact: how strong will the impact of this trend be?
Likelihood: how quickly might this trend have an impact on the organization?
Urgency: what is the required speed of response by the organization to the trend?

You do not have to use this type of quantitative approach, but most find it helps them think through, and rank trends in a logical manner. The critical element here is that you explore implications of the trends you have identified over a longer term period. A trend that is certain today may well be very uncertain in five years time.

Tier 2 Conditioned viewing > More alerts
Executives, strategists, and policy makers determine the Tier 1 Key alerts from the remaining 50-60 issues by in-depth discussion leaving 40-50 in Tier 2.

Tier 1 Formal search > Key alerts
The remaining highest ranked 10-15 issues are assigned to Tier 1. Normally, this as many issues that any size of organization can realistically manage to success at one time.

You can carry out this process using Shaping Tomorrow's system which is pre-populated with all the general global trends and any you have added yourself.

The table below (adapted from Shaping Tomorrow) shows a framework for assessing trends to help you identify critical trends for your organization to address now and into the future.

Assessing Trend Relevance

Consider trend impact globally						Consider trend impact on your organization
Timeframe		Scope		Impact		Likelihood		Urgency
When will trend begin to have an impact?		What is likely future uptake of this trend?		What is likely future impact of this trend?		What is the likelihood of the trend having an impact on your organization?		How quickly does the organization need to respond to this trend?
Assessment	Rating	Assessment	Rating	Assessment	Rating	Assessment	Rating	Assessment	Rating
1-4 years	5	Global	5	Significant	5	Almost Certain	5	Now	5
5-9 years	4	Widespread	4	Major	4	Likely	4	Within 3-5 years	4
10-14 years	3	Niche sector/market	3	Moderate	3	Possible	3	6-9 years	3
15-20 years	2	Organizations	2	Minor	2	Unlikely	2	10-15 years	2
20+years	1	Individuals	1	Insignificant	1	Rare	1	16-20 years	1
Never *	0	Non-existing*	0					20+ years**	0

*Before you assign “Never” or “Non-existing” to a trend, make sure you have tested your assumptions, and identified your blind spots. Ask what would have to happen to make the trend a reality? Only then should you feel comfortable assigning these categories to a trend.
** Even though the urgency to address these trends is long-term, consider keeping them on your scanning "watch list."

Assessment Total	Decision What might you do now?	Comment
Between 20-25	Act now	You need to make a decision now about whether or not your organization needs to respond to this trend. Consider how to respond and include in your current strategic plan if appropriate. If you decide not to include in your plan, then add to your watch list.
Between 15-19	Manage	You need to consider now how you might respond to these trends as they continue to emerge. It would be a good idea to include actions in your plan that allow you to act quickly if you need to.
14 and under	Watch	These trends are unlikely to have an impact on your planning in the medium term. To prevent future surprises, keep these trends on your scanning watch list.

There are several other possible strategies for carrying out this selection process. For example:

an expert, research-based approach, wherein scanners nominate candidate themes and issues for promotion to Tier 3, “Selected trends.” Nominated trends would either be submitted to the project team for review and confirmation, or would be part of a workshop discussion, as relevant opportunities arise.
nominations of interesting themes and issues could be requested from executives and policy makers allowing individual evaluation and polling. This can occur on-line and asynchronously, or as an electronically mediated part of workshop activities.

Next: Classifying Trends Back: Assessing Trends To: Shaping Tomorrow

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Rating trends

thryller — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 02:55:14 CDT

Assessment
Creating a large inventory of identified Trends requires a highly effective assessment system and methods to quantify and qualify their impact.

Various models exist to assess trends and evaluate their impact (ranking, rating, change type, decision, etc.). For example: The analytical framework described in John Petersen's book - "Out of the Blue" (Arlington Institute).

Quantitative assessment for decision-making
Establishing a trends database and evaluating individual potential outcomes based on impact, urgency, likelihood, speed of arrival, and time-frame, means that one can determine which are the key drivers of change that will affect particular organizations
The future is not a single destination. The further out we look, an increasing number of different possible outcomes can be foreseen. Some will influence a particular organization more than another.
We find that none of our clients determines the same key drivers and rarely includes the top ten current trends appearing in newspapers in their current form. Through this approach organizations can map out their own destiny, unique selling points, and solutions to solve real issues.

Qualitative assessment for decision-making
At the same time decision-makers need to know that the quantitative assessment has been based on sound qualitative assessment of the source material available. Qualitative assessment includes evaluating the source material on the basis of relevance, controversy, credibility, and stimulus value.

Next: Evaluation Back: Selecting Trends To: Shaping Tomorrow

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Benefits

thryller — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 04:53:43 CDT

Several key benefits to the ultimate success of a robust Horizon Scanning system accrue from adopting all four modes of continuous scanning and a robust, collaborative framework.

Users can find much more relevant material to their everyday work, thus encouraging greater usage of the Horizon Scanning system.
Users can comment on and tag upcoming change creating a people-driven view of expected future change.
Researchers can quickly see new serendipitous discoveries of previously unseen linkages between factors.
A wider range of material can be sourced and time-lined to provide evidence of the issue's changing signal strength.
Conditioned viewing is improved by the earlier addition of new factors, modifying existing issues, and the retirement of old ones as things change dynamically.
It becomes far less likely that narrow searching in only one or two scanning modes misses major issues and innovations and therefore reduces potential for future criticism or threat.
The system can be kept continually up-to-date and remain topical.
The resulting knowledge base brings an integrated approach to Horizon Scanning and improves an organization's ability to offer a comprehensive futures intelligence service to its management.

Next: Scanning Challenges Back: Maximizing Value To: Shaping Tomorrow

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Scanning challenges

thryller — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 04:16:12 CDT

Information Overload
There is a lot of information out there. How do you deal with it so you don’t go into information overload?

Remember your scanning focus, but follow-up leads that look as though they might be useful.

Look for credible sources
You will soon learn how to identify these. Trusting your expertise and insight about what is credible and what is not is essential.

Stretch your thinking (or my brain hurts!)
It will probably be necessary to re-train your brain to shift the patterns of the past to be more open to what you are seeing as you scan, and to shift from an operational to a strategic focus. Your brain will probably start to hurt!

You will be dealing with complexity and uncertainty. You will be faced with an overwhelming amount of information when you start out. What you think is impossible now just might be plausible in the future, and this challenges – in a big way - what you believe to be true about the world. That is a truly uncomfortable process, so expect some "cognitive dissonance."

If your brain doesn’t hurt, you are probably not stretching your thinking enough! Scanning becomes easier over time. If you scan regularly, you will become an "unconsciously competent" scanner.

Information sharing
The people of an organization are some of the best sources external information, but sharing it remains a major challenge:

Lack of awareness that information is useful to others.
Lack of trust and concern information may be misused.
Organizational structure blocks information sharing.
Organizational culture rewards owning information, not sharing it.

Source: Scanning the Environment, Chun Wei Choo, University of Toronto

Next: Strategic Thinking Back: Benefits To: Shaping Tomorrow

Source: With the kind permission of Maree Conway - Environmental Scanning, What It Is and How To Do It.

Recognising dysfunctionality

thryller — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 03:18:28 CDT

Un-aligned people and organizations
Dysfunctionality in teams is rife in many organizations, yet to achieve major change organizational alignment towards common futures is essential. Teams exhibit these dysfunctionalities as follows:

Lack of trust: Team members who are not genuinely open with one another about their mistakes and weaknesses make it impossible to build a foundation for trust.
Fear of conflict: Teams that lack trust are incapable of engaging in unfiltered and passionate debate. Instead they resort to veiled discussions and guarded comments.
Lack of commitment: Without having aired their opinions in the course of passionate and open debate, team member rarely, if ever, buy in and commit to decisions, though they may feign agreement.
Avoidance of accountability: Without committing to a clear plan of action, even the most focused and driven people often hesitate to call their peers on actions and behaviors that seem counterproductive to the good of the team.
Inattention to results: team members put their individual needs or even the needs of their divisions above the collective goals of the team.

Individuals display these response states all of which impact on attention to desired results:
Abstainer: Denial
Denying the need for change is a defense mechanism in which a person is faced with facts too uncomfortable to contemplate. They deny the truth in the face of incontrovertible evidence. Denial expressses itself as:

Denial of fact: where someone avoids a fact by lying
Denial of responsibility: involves avoiding personal responsibility by blaming, minimizing, or justifying
Denial of impact: involves a person avoiding thinking about or understanding the harm their behaviors have caused to themselves or others
Denial of awareness: People using this type of denial will avoid pain and harm by stating they were in a different state of awareness
Denial of cycle: where a person avoids looking at their decisions leading up to an event or does not consider their pattern of decision making and how harmful behavior is repeated
Denial of denial: involves thoughts, actions, and behaviors which bolster confidence that nothing needs to be changed in one's personal behavior

Abstainer: Acknowledgement
Expresses it self as 'I'm too busy' or 'It is not a priority for me

Adopter: Acknowledgement
"I see that others can do this but show me what I can do"

Adventurer: Acceptance
"I can see how I can contribute and am strectching myself to do all I can!"

Knowing which state(s) a person, or a group of people is exhibiting, and responding appropriately, can help overcome their roadblocks to acceptance far faster and less painfully than denying their state and ignoring their difficulty.

A good exercise is to assess your people using a four box model. On the y axis assess each of your people on whether they can do or can't do what you are asking of them. On the x axis assess your people on whether they will or wont do what you are asking of them.#

Can and will (~20% of the people) : These are your adventurers. Promote and reward them publicly. Give them opportunities to shine and grow etc.
Can't but will (30% of the people): Train them, put more experienced people with them, let them see others doing good work etc.
Can but won't (~30% of the people): Manage them up or out
Can't and won't (~20% of the people): Let them go, now

Further reference: Denial

Next: Getting Buy-In Back: Preparing for the Future To: Shaping Tomorrow

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Changing Futures

thryller — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:13:32 CDT

The world today
The most significant changes affecting organizations know no borders or markets and affect every part of society today. Global trends, uncertainties, and surprises have the potential to significantly change the way the world works tomorrow. Countries, governments, businesses, and institutions continue to witness ever increasing surprise as complexity increases. New surprises impact us far faster, and more profoundly, than we might think, e.g., pandemics, changing weather conditions, terrorist events, health crises, social values, economic and political uncertainties, and technological advances.

Organizations, too, face additional new challenges including:

severe competition
market convergence
new entrants
high volatility in all aspects of their activities

The world tomorrow?

Greater prospects for global, national, and local disruption and shock are increasingly in evidence.
Forecasting models projecting past patterns can therefore no longer be relied upon to predict the future.
An increasing number of drivers are reshaping companies' business contexts.
Drivers include climate change, globalization, new technology, regulatory change, demographics, and new consumer values.
Shaping the world we want to live in means being more aware of the future and seeking better approaches.

Those who spot new trends and exploit them early have competitive advantage over their less prepared rivals. Studies show that those that create or join and leave a new market just before it peaks are those achieving the best performance. How do they do that?

The answer lies in their drive for a more agile and resilience-focused approach to being smart and forward-thinking. They have learned that continually searching for emerging trends, tipping points, and weak signals is a vital intelligence tool to help them survive and thrive in an ever more competitive future. And, looking further afield for experts in academia, NGO’s, commerce, government, and futurists for that intelligence gives them greater insight and earlier warning than their less prepared rivals. Sharing what they know now, in a co-operative manner brings another level of resilience and agility to their organizations tomorrow.

Periodic and episodic analysis is no longer enough to cope with rapid change; real-time recognition, interpretation, and action on issues are required to reduce roadblocks to ongoing competitiveness. Consider those who were prepared for the financial crisis and those who were not!

The prepared and thoughtful sail on, with hardly a mention in the media, while the high profile failures and troubled short-sighted organizations get maximum coverage and brand damage, or are forced to merge or close.

The agile organizations recruit, train, and expect their managers to develop fresh insights about new opportunities and threats. This is done by systematically finding weak signals and amplifying their effect on the future. For example, recognizing that mobile phones will allow society to increasingly communicate with inanimate objects through artificial intelligence means that organizations can use this knowledge to create new products and services and refresh or displace existing offers.

Forward-thinking organizations do not attempt to predict the future but are putting in place holistic systems and processes that anticipate possible futures and determine their response to them. That's because deep understanding of changes across the political, economic, social, and technological fields are required to derive deep understanding and interpretation about future consumer and societal expectations and desires. By better preparing their organizations for change they continuously enhance their agility, capability, and robustness to withstand emerging change and future shocks.

Driving this shift are:

increasing capabilities to monitor, sense, and interpret weak signals.
recognition that more intelligence is less as computing power makes it possible to aggregate and drill down into change observations made by the many.
knowing that the same change observations are collected by organizations and analyzed in almost identical ways even if the emphasis and outcomes of the analysis are entirely different.
the desire to overcome the silo effect of different teams in different parts of the organization not contributing to overall organizational intelligence.
the desire to improve greater efficiency and effectiveness of horizon scanning.
benefits to be had from Web 2.0 technologies in creating collaborative, dynamic, analysis and subsequent innovation.
a need to rapidly respond at the right time to a far wider array of threats and risks.

Cost-effective tools now provide continuous anticipatory intelligence but do not replace sound analysis. Instinct and sound thinking is still required but with a much improved lens and less drudgery than traditional methods.

Agile organizations use what they can see in the fog of the future to determine their way forward, avoiding risks, or using them to advantage, and seizing opportunities ahead of less far-sighted rivals. They continually ask themselves strategic questions to stay ahead of the game such as:

how are customer values changing?
where are the new opportunities for growth?
who might be their new competition?
what competencies will be needed tomorrow?
which capabilities need modifying/strengthening or divesting for the future?
when is the right time to move?

They know that by looking further ahead they can change a vicious reactive cycle to a responsive virtuous circle making their work more satisfying and less wasteful of time and resources.

Common traits across future thinking, innovative, risk aware organisations include:

Strategically and simultaneously focusing on innovation and risk
Systematically gathering fresh insight of the world around them
Collaborating and partnering far beyond traditional commercial boundaries
Using simple, quick processes to reduce cycle times
Measuring and rewarding on a few vital organisational-level metrics.

These leading organisations perspectives on the future assume that:

Greater prospects for global, national and local disruption and shock are increasingly in evidence and will continue for the foreseeable future.
A rapidly increasing number of global drivers are reshaping organisational context.
Forecasting models projecting past patterns can therefore no longer be relied upon to predict the future.
Market convergence, high volatility in all aspects of their activities, severe competition, new entrants, changing societal attitudes and technological progress have great potential to sink the unprepared or represent the next wave of opportunity for leading organisationShaping the world they want to live in, and their organisations role in achieving it, means being more aware of the future and seeking better approaches.

They have learned, over many years, that systematically searching for and analysing emerging trends, tipping points and weak signals is a vital intelligence tool to help them survive and thrive in an ever more competitive future. And, looking further afield for experts in academia, NGO’s, commerce, government and futurists for that intelligence gives them greater insight and earlier warning than their less prepared rivals. Sharing what they know now, in a co-opetitive manner brings another level of resilience and agility to their organisations tomorrow.

Further References
1998: Globalization ... 2008: Continuous Change

Making Complexity Manageable
Bringing Order to Chaos
Foresight and Business Futures (Slideshare: registration required)
Outside In (Slideshare: registration required)
In a Recession Consultants will have to Deliver Almost Instant Results
The Crash Course
The New Age Of Innovation, Driving Co-created Value Through Global Networks; Prahalad & Krishnan 2008, McGraw Hill
A Vision for 2012, Planning for Extraordinary Change; John L. Petersen, 2008, Speaker's Corner
What's Next, Rowan Atkinson

Next: Future Practices Back: Home To: Shaping Tomorrow

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Learning from the past

thryller — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 02:48:41 CDT

What can we learn from our history to help us understand the future?
Examining history can teach us much about the future:

History often repeats itself or shows how the future evolved in similar circumstances to today's world.
History, too, is littered with tipping points, surprises, shocks, and human advances that we can learn from.
History is as much unknowable as what we perceive is the reality of today or what the future holds.

Historic surprise has manifested itself in many situations including:

The thought that everything that could be invented had been invented at the end of the 19th century.
IBM's prediction that the world would need only 7 computers to run its affairs.
Western Union predicting in 1876 that "the telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication."

We now know these predictions and ideas were extraordinarily fanciful. The 20th century, far from being benign, saw man fly both terrestrially and in space, discover nuclear energy, design personal vehicles for mass human transportation, link almost everyone through global telecommunication systems, and significantly improve both health and longevity. These discoveries completely changed the world. And, of course, "the war to end all wars" was followed by the Second World War and hundreds more since.

NOTHING IS FOREVER AND THE ONLY CONSTANT IN LIFE IS CHANGE!

The same human opportunity to change the world again, for better or worse, in this century, presents itself through advances in robotics, remote sensoring, artificial intelligence, anti-aging, sustainable practices, and energy transformation, etc. Yet new threats present clear and present danger such as financial chaos, climate change, pandemics, natural resource shortages, new wars, and as yet, new, unforeseen wildcards.

Examining history shows us that the pace and nature of change is accelerating more rapidly than ever before. The outcome of this acceleration has been to make the world increasingly more complex and uncertain. We can expect even greater complexity and uncertainty as ever more sophisticated responses to improving the human condition and solving today's issues create new surprises tomorrow.

Driving forces
Two driving forces have been instrumental in accelerating change:

Globalization: markets have progressively moved from local to national, to international, to multi-national, to truly global, and soon to be virtualized systems. This expansion has lead to increasing sophistication, rapid product and service diffusion, and innovation and learning on a global scale.
Techological advancement: The technological revolution (Internet, PC's, Mobile phones, E-mail, Office software) has been a key driver of this diffusion, and in making the world a far smaller place through dramatic improvements in transportation and the arrival of near-instant communication.

And these driving forces have created further negative forces for change in the form of increasing terrorism, crime, conflict, financial crises, and health threats, among others.
Knowing the future is impossible – yet essential, not least in business. The right decisions offer huge opportunities, the wrong ones, huge risks. Watching the unfolding effect of these and other key driving forces is therefore an essential element of spotting emerging opportunities and threats. Historical analysis of how an issue has developed, and considering this in the context of parallels and precedents, is an essential part of practical foresight.

Counterpoints
Two counterpoint maxims for you to consider:

"Those who drive their car through the rear-view mirror will never see the future."
"Those who don't read history are doomed to relive it!"

A good futurist is therefore most likely a good historian, too, through acquainting themselves with the broadest reading of history. By going back in history twice as far as looking forward, knowing the potential outcomes of the past, applying these to emerging issues, and considering potential futures in equal measure futurists develop considerable foresight .

Further references: A Brief History of the Future
World Transformed: What Are the Top 30 Innovations of the Last 30 Years?

Next: Overcoming Roadblocks Back: Learning Organization To: Shaping Tomorrow

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Modelling, simulation, gaming

thryller — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:34:31 CDT

Modelling, simulation and gaming are techniques to help the user see the effects of their decisions in advance. They help to describe the behaviour of complex systems in a safe and dynamic environment. All are driven by the pre-defined structure of the design and the chosen set of rules applied to each iteration. Therefore understanding the rules and their limitations is key to obtaining useful results that emulate the real world.

Modelling, simulation and gaming has grown in influence as computerisation of the structure and rules allows complex systems dealing with many variables to be presented dynamically and graphically. As computer gaming technology becomes more sophisticated and monitoring devices become ever more ubiquitous we can expect these foresight methods to become ever more pervasive and exciting to use.

Further reference

Causal Layered Analysis

thryller — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:33:44 CDT

Causal Layered Analysis, or CLA for short, identifies the forces that underly a trend.

Brainstorming

thryller — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:33:07 CDT

Brainstorming attempts to draw out peoples creativity through idea generation. It is a good way to quickly identify the key opportunities and risks inherent in an issue and to determine different future possibilities and alternate long-term strategies.

Brainstorming usually involves four principles:

o Developing a lot of ideas in a short space of time around a chosen issue
o Deferring discussion and judgement until the idea generation phase has completed
o Encouraging out-of-box-thinking
o Building off one idea to create others

The facilitator of the brainstorm encourages the participants to offer solutions to the issue at hand.
All ideas are encouraged however, seemingly off the wall. Criticism of ideas offered is strictly not allowed.
Ideas are recorded without regard to ordering.

After the idea gathering process is exhausted the participants sort, order and rank according to priority. Duplicate and similar ideas are consolidated. The finalist is then used to determine next steps and actions.

Further reference: Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques, Michael Michalko, Ten Speed Press, 2006

Relevance trees

thryller — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:32:27 CDT