Foresight toolkit. Foresight strategies, tools and techniques to anticipate future scenario's

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE FUTURE OF WORK CENTENARY INITIATIVE

FORESIGHT

TOOLKIT

FORESIGHT STRATEGIES, TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES TO ANTICIPATE FUTURE SCENARIOS

Case Studies

FORESIGHT

TOOLKIT FORESIGHT STRATEGIES, TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES TO ANTICIPATE FUTURE SCENARIOS

By DELTA, ITCILO | Distance Education and Learning Technologies Applications 1st EDITION © 2017 PRODUCTION TEAM Tom WAMBEKE, Fatma FEKI (DELTA, ITCILO) Wendy SCHULTZ (Infinite Futures) Victoria WARD (Sparknow)

SUPORTED BY

IN COLLABORATION WITH

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INTRODUCTION Organizations and institutions adapt, innovate and renew themselves in an environment of continuously unfolding change. The unexpected, novel or intractable challenges that such an environment inevitably produces cannot therefore be addressed by solutions that are only based on an understanding of what may have worked in the past. To create ways forward that are informed by the continuously emerging future as well, the ILO and ITC-ILO are helping ILO staff and constituents to become familiar with well-established futures, foresight and horizon scanning tools and methods.

In this toolkit, you will find a variety of tools and question sets to help you think more effectively about emerging change and uncertain futures. We have organized these futures research and foresight tools around six activities critical to futures thinking: The fifty-year-old field of futures research has collected, developed, and refined a wide range of analytic and collaborative tools for each of these key foresight activities. The different futures methods featured in the above present an illustrative (not an exhaustive) list of futures methods.

SIX CRITICAL ACTIVITIES TO FUTURES THINKING

FRAMING

AWARENESS

IMPACTS

OF

OF

CHANGE

CHANGE

ALTERNATIVE FUTURES

PREFERRED FUTURES

STRATEGY &

CHANGE MANAGEMENT

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CONTENTS*

Tools ……………………………………………….

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Case Studies ……………………………………..

77

Software …………………………………………..

107

* Updated table of contents when the toolkit is finalized

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TOOLS

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AWARENESS OF CHANGE

THIS PHASE WILL HELP YOU ANSWER What changes do you and your team currently track?

What emerging changes have you noticed?

How do you track and document trends and emerging changes?

What methods do you use to organise and make sense of emerging change?

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Tools: Awareness of Change

 Three Horizons  Horizon Scanning  Emerging Issues Analysis

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Tools: Awareness of Change

THREE HORIZONS

Thinking about the future means learning to think differently. Emerging change will challenge our current assumptions, and over time today’s decisions, policies, and products will become obsolete. How can we futureproof our thinking and planning?

The Three Horizons Framework (3H) helps by asking people first to make their assumptions explicit, and then to explore emerging change as a way to reframe what they think, what they want, and what they do. The final step looks back at history, forward at the possibilities, and creates actions that bridge from today to tomorrow.

OVERVIEW "Three Horizons" ... connects the present with desired (or espoused) futures, and helps to identify the divergent futures which may emerge as a result of conflict between the embedded present and these imagined futures1.

3H maps overlapping waves of change visible in the present as mindsets: managerial, visionary, and entrepreneurial.

Three Horizons was developed by Bill Sharpe of International Futures Forum as part of work for the UK Foresight Programme’s Intelligent Infrastructures Project2. Sharpe wanted initially to depict overlapping waves of technological innovation and change more realistically than traditional technology road-mapping. Three Horizons has proven widely useful as a conceptual model to aid people thinking about current assumptions, emerging changes, and possible and desired futures. It is constantly evolving and a sizeable library of case studies now exists.

1.

2.

Curry and Hodgson, “Seeing in Multiple Horizons: Connecting Futures to Strategy” in Journal of Futures Studies, August 2008 Sharpe and Hodgson, UK Foresight Programme, Intelligent Infrastructure Futures Technology Forward Look

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Tools: Awareness of Change

What it is

an approach to sense-making overlapping waves of uncertain change in the context of our current assumptions.

What it needs

knowledgeable facilitator; diversity of contributors; scan data.

Mode

mixes logical, intuitive (pattern identification), and creative thinking.

Strengths

helps staff spot vulnerabilities in current assumptions, opportunities for strategic action.

Weaknesses

qualitative approach; people mistake it for a simple timeline.

Cost

knowledgeable facilitator; participant time; cost of scan data.

WHEN TO USE IT Three Horizons is an adaptable futures tool, and has several uses:  Providing a simple introduction to futures thinking It helps participants inventory their tacit knowledge and basic operating assumptions about an issue, or their organization, and then explore the impacts of short, medium, and long-range change - and how they might react to those impacts.  Sense-making trends and emerging changes If participants are reviewing data on trends, emerging changes, and potential impacts, the 3H framework of overlapping changes can help them sort critical changes by how mature they are, and when their impacts are likely to be felt in relation to current projects.  Providing internal structure to scenario narratives Because 3H depicts overlapping and often competing timelines of unfolding change, they can provide a narrative ‘backbone’ of the change patterns driving a given scenario.  Generating innovations : new products, services, policies, or initiatives The 3rd horizon changes challenge the assumptions of the first. Those challenges, and resulting conflicts, emerge in the 2nd horizon. That means the 2nd horizon presents an opportunity to discard the old and take practical steps to create something new using emerging changes as building blocks.

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Tools: Awareness of Change

HOW TO APPLY IT Setting Three Horizons ideally requires a large room with one blank wall (no windows, paintings, blackboards, etc: empty wall space), in order to create a large, long wall mural on which to draw the three overlapping curves depicting the three horizons. This wall mural becomes the workspace on which participants brainstorm, using post-its. Because participants will be standing in front of the mural, clustering post-its, moving them around, and discussing them, the wall should have plenty of open space immediately in front of it: at least five feet between the wall surface and any chairs or tables.

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Tools: Awareness of Change

Materials  4’ X 12’ banner paper for the wall mural (or multiple overlapping flipchart sheets to create the same amount of workspace on the wall)  water-based chisel tip magic markers to draw the 3H graphic  large post-its for participants to use  sharpies to write ideas on the post-its Ideally the post-its should be in three colors: yellow for 1st horizon current assumptions; blue for 3rd horizon emerging changes; and green for 2nd horizon entrepreneurial activities. You will also need a “trends and emerging issues” deck a set of pre-printed cards summarizing emerging changes for people to think about. This is usually in addition to asking people to brainstorm what changes they have noticed, to expand their sense of what is possible. Multiple online sites offer trend lists [NEED LINKS HERE], or of course you can create a list from original horizon scanning and emerging issues research. [NEED hotlinks to those tool pages]

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Tools: Awareness of Change

START Introduce the Three Horizons framework (see attached slides), describing the horizons: First Horizon – current context and conditions; the focus is maintaining stability, and the mindset is that of the manager.

Third Horizon – transformative emerging changes, ideas about possible futures, and visions of preferred futures; the focus is on transformation and disruption, and the mindset is that of the visionary.

Second Horizon – actions taken in the present to resist change, to adapt to change, or to build on change; the focus is on creating and managing change, and the mindset is that of the entrepreneur.

STEPS Ask participants to work in pairs. Distribute the yellow post-its and sharpies.

Horizon 1 What does now look like?

20-30 min

We start the 3 Horizons tool with Horizon 1 – “the current state of play.” Ask all the pairs to brainstorm as many responses as possible to the question: What are the current working assumptions about production, services, resources, staff, customers, capital?

What is the current state of play?

What are managers taking for granted when they make decisions?”  15 minutes brainstorming in pairs, jotting each item down on a separate orange post-it; facilitators help participants add post-its to the mural  15 minutes clustering, discussing, filling in the blanks.

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Tools: Awareness of Change

Horizon 3 What’s changing?

45 min

The next step is to identify emerging changes that represent transformational shifts from the present.

Ask questions like: What changes are emerging as completely new paradigms and novel means to understand and undertake various human activities?

What new issue or invention has you worried - or excited?

What are visionary leaders saying?”  15 minutes brainstorming in pairs, jotting each item down on a separate orange post-it; facilitators collect post-its to display on mural.

Thinking about the future may be new to many of the participants. They may not have been collecting information about emerging change (as futures researchers do), so it is likely there will be fewer ideas generated in this round.

In order to expand the possibilities considered, and expand everyone’s thinking, it is useful to come prepared with a deck of ‘change cards’ that describe various trends and emerging issues.

Spread the change cards out on a work table, and ask the pairs to review the cards, cluster them into related changes if they like, and choose what they feel are the most significant to post to the 3rd horizon on the wall mural  15 minutes reviewing the change deck cards, clustering, and posting on the 3rd Horizon  15 minutes to review all the changes posted on the 3rd horizon and discuss

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Tools: Awareness of Change

Horizon 2 What assumptions are challenged by those changes, and how can we respond to the resulting opportunities and risks?

45 min

Pairs should join at a table to create a working group of 4-6 people. Review the assumptions on Horizon One and the emerging issues on Horizon Three.

Which assumptions will be most challenged by change?

Which are most vulnerable to these emerging changes?

Are there any which are being strengthened? Pick one highly vulnerable assumption.

How can you use the emerging changes to create entirely new products, services and markets?

Is there another business model that could replace a challenged model? Other production process(es)? New sources in the supply chain? Emerging customer segments?

Choose two or three emerging changes that could be used to build entirely new business models, source raw materials, build new production processes, or open up entirely new markets or means of advertising and distribution.

Each group use emerging changes to create an interesting transition idea for your business/industry that helps successfully bridge from Horizon One to Horizon Three.  25 minutes to create an entrepreneurial initiative  20 minutes for all the groups to share their ideas in plenary

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Tools: Awareness of Change

Debriefing What have we learned?

15 mins

In plenary, participants discuss key highlights from the exercise: what current assumptions will be most challenged by change? will any become obsolete in the face of the changes we’ve identified? what changes offer the most promise and immediately actionable opportunities? which innovations or initiatives hold the most promise?

Example Simple Three Horizons showing Horizon One traditional business paradigms and operating assumptions, and Horizon Three emerging issues.

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Tools: Awareness of Change

TIPS Keep emphasizing the particular mindset of each horizon when participants are working in that horizon:  1st horizon emphasizes what’s known, what’s taken for granted, what we assume ‘will always be with us,’ and focusses on maintaining stability  3rd horizon emphasizes the new, the transformative, the visionary, the break with past traditions and current assumptions  2nd horizon emphasizes incremental adaptation, actions resisting change, and practical new innovations to create opportunities from change

HOW TO ADAPT IT 1. Blend it with the Gartner Hype Cycle

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Tools: Awareness of Change

2. Blend it with Carlotta Perez’ work on historical eras, surges, and change

3. Use Causal Layered Analysis [need link to tool page here] as a discussion prompt for each horizon - this works especially well to dig more deeply into the assumptions on Horizon 1.

4. Use the Verge Framework [need link to tool page here] as a discussion prompt for each horizon - this works especially well to dig more deeply into the assumptions on Horizon 1.

EXAMPLES OF USE  Case study: Scottish Education [need link to this]  Case study: Pepsico [need link to this]  New Philanthropy Capital - Commission on the Voluntary Sector and Ageing

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Tools: Awareness of Change

RESOURCES       

Facilitator’s Grid Slide deck and Worksheets Readings Sharpe and Hodgson, UK Foresight Programme, Intelligent Infrastructure Futures Technology Forward Look Curry and Hodgson, “Seeing in Multiple Horizons: Connecting Futures to Strategy” in Journal of Futures Studies, August 2008 Bill Sharpe, Three Horizons: The Patterning of Hope, International Futures Forum, Trends decks: UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology; Forum for the Future, The Futures Centre

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Tools: Awareness of Change

HORIZON SCANNING Also called “Environmental Scanning”

The bedrock of futures research and foresight is data about change.

Foresight begins with heightened awareness of change. Change erupts everywhere, so we need to scan everywhere if we want to spot it. As with radar and sonar, scanning requires a 360 degree sweep of the horizon to spot change.

OVERVIEW Horizon scanning is a primary futures tool for identifying and monitoring emerging change. The tool provides high quality scanning and is able to identify an emerging issue that is objectively new even to experts. It has been identified in time for social dialogue, impact assessment, and policy formation.

What it is

Comprehensive change identification – How change itself changes (aka. environmental scanning)

Strengths

Comprehensive overview of landscape of change; early warning indicators

Weaknesses

Change data problematic; cost in time

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Tools: Awareness of Change

START "360 scanning" reviews any relevant media covering the social, technological, economic, ecological, and political (STEEP) environments -is a foundation skill in futures research, and a survival skill for any forward-looking person. The best way to create a shared environmental scan resource is to first organize a team of scanners.

Their assignment:

STEPS Scan the entire set of periodical shelves in the library, looking at the covers of all periodicals, and browsing those that might have particular interest to you and relevance to the future you expect to pursue. ALSO pay attention to journals from the fields you think of as farthest from your own interests and expertise. That is, if you are an engineer, consider reading Women's Wear Daily or Art in America. If you are a manager, consider Astrophysics or a similar technical journal. Include both general and technical titles.

Select 7+ 2 periodicals or websites which you will scan several times through the semester, looking for interesting articles that indicate a "change-driving" factor of importance. The Economist must be one of these. You may also note scan items from sources on the radio, on television (e.g., CNN or the Discovery Channel or PBS, etc.), or in conversations. Just cite them to the best of your ability to pin down source and date.

What are you looking for? Changes, innovations, value shifts, new ideas, program, policies, businesses, consumer goods -- anything new, or any change of which you were not previously aware. When you first begin scanning, you will discover it easy to find changes or innovations new to you; what will be more difficult is finding changes and innovations that are new to everyone, even to experts in the field from which the change is emerging. Only practice, and a continually widening awareness of change, will allow you to identify the emerging edge of change. So keep at it.

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Tools: Awareness of Change

Report on what you find in the periodicals or at the websites both verbally (in the informal "scanning" discussions during each class) and in writing, using the following format: Title/Date

Source/ Author

Substance and Significance

STEEP Category /Impacts

"Limits to Growth, revisited" February, 1992

In Context (magazine)/ (staff).

Donella Meadows, et al, have updated their 1972 computer simulation of how the carrying capacity of the earth may be over-reached.

Conclusions of the 1972 study still considered valid, and even more timely. These conclusions are still controversial, and are rejected by many "positive extrapolists."

Steep category: primarily environmental.

Impacts: continued green value shift? more environmental policies/regulations?

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Tools: Awareness of Change

TIPS  Sell-by date: robust evidence loses freshness fast – rolling updates are critical: scanning must be an on-going process.  Ubiquity and diversity: change erupts everywhere, and most surprisingly from the fringes – so including the outliers, marginalized voices, and tail ends of the bell curves is a must, even if embarrassing. Learn to manage the risk of the ridiculous, because you need the ridiculous.  Downside of density: constantly refreshed scan data from broadly diverse perspectives, coupled with conceptually robust analytic tools, is an ideal – but too much data is indigestible without analytic tools which often render the scan usable only to experts.  Curation is critical: people create sense, and triage and sense-making, performed continuously, can help manage data density via triage and pattern formation – provided the theoretical and conceptual tools are explicitly designed into the scanning and futures process.  Training, training, training: this is the only path to consistent, high-quality scan input – and output. After all, what does the ‘expert’ in ‘expert model’ mean – topic expert, or futures expert? The greater the topical expertise, the less likely that someone is a useful futures thinker – disciplinary blinkers get in the way. Scanning requires mixed discipline team coordinated and trained by a futures researcher.  Where’s it going? Scanning only makes sense in the context of an integrated futures process – scan data exist to generate impact cascades, cross-impact matrices, transformations to systems maps, scenarios, visions, strategies, and innovations. If the scanning system doesn’t have throughput to all of these tools built in, it will not succeed.

RESOURCES  Facilitator’s Grid  Worksheets  Readings

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Tools: Awareness of Change

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Tools: Awareness of Change

EMERGING ISSUES ANALYSIS

Identifying significant change starts with trends, but must also encompass getting early warning of potential change by spotting weak signals of change - the first hints that a transformational change might be emerging.

OVERVIEW Emerging issues analysis (EIA) is the core component of horizon scanning. EIA aims to identify initial sources of change, that is, the very first instance of a change - when was the first rave? the first flash mob? the first use of a cell-phone to transfer money?

It does this usually by monitoring outliers - people who are early adopters; people who are brilliant innovators or paradigm-busters; people who are rebels. As it focusses on spotting first cases, EIA reports are generally qualitative, describing initial instances of change as case studies, not as statistically significant trends.

Needs

access to multiple sources / feeds from outlier / fringe communities

RESOURCES  Facilitator’s Grid  Worksheets  Readings

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IMPACTS OF CHANGE

THIS PHASE WILL HELP YOU ANSWER How do you identify and map potential impacts of those changes?

How do you determine what those changes might mean for you, your team, your organisation, your community, your nation, or the world?

Who will enjoy the benefits of those changes?

Who will feel the impacts?

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Tools: Impacts of Change

 Verge General Practice Framework for Futures and Foresight  Futures Wheels

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Tools: Impacts of Change

VERGE FRAMEWORK

The most useful approaches to thinking about the future ask critical questions, and dig below events to uncover assumptions, paradigms, worldviews, and interconnections. The Verge framework gives you a set of questions that help you consistently focus on the impacts of change on human activities. Verge assumes awareness of change is important because change will affect people’s daily lives.

OVERVIEW What it is

conceptual framework that systematically assesses the effects of change by their points of impact on people.

What it needs

understanding of the concepts, diverse points of view.

Mode

usually qualitative; participatory.

Strengths

can add structure to various foresight techniques, makes impacts on people, values, paradigms, systems explicit.

Weaknesses

somewhat complicated to explain initially.

Cost

researcher/participant time.

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Tools: Impacts of Change

WHEN TO USE IT 1 Verge is a general practice framework in the sense that it can be used in just about any aspect of futures work. As a set of lenses, it can be used to filter or search. As a categorization scheme it can be used to organize results. To date, the most common types of use have been in activities like implications discussions and “incasting.” For our purposes here, typical applications are grouped into three basic activities: scanning, forecasting, and analysis.  Scanning The most straightforward use of the framework is to use the Verge domains as an alternative to the traditional STEEP categories for research. Used in scanning, its original application, the Verge domains are used to organize an environmental scanning research effort, using the domains as research areas, within which researchers hunt for weak signals. Similarly, the Verge domains can be used to “bucket” the results of scanning and research, regardless of the organization of the research effort.  Forecasting Verge is often used in various ways during forecasting exercises. Two methods include emerging issues analysis and interaction analysis. Often related to a scanning effort, the Verge framework has been used to direct efforts to identify and forecast potential emerging issues. Verge interaction analysis involves forecasting the impact of changes in one domain as they cascade across other domains. This method can be used to generate entire scenarios.  Analysis The Verge domains are often used to look at the implications of trends, emerging issues, scenarios, and other forecasts. To do this practitioners will modify an implications wheel to use the Verge domains to “slice the pie” rather than using the traditional STEEP categories. Alternatively they might build a matrix with the Verge domains to explore implications. Interaction analysis, mentioned earlier, can also be used to reconsider an existing scenario or forecast by exploring logical crossdomain impacts that might alter the basic trajectory of the forecast.

1.

VERGE: A GENERAL PRACTICE FRAMEWORK FOR FUTURES WORK (2014, September 15), richardl91, [Blog post].

Retrieved from here

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Tools: Impacts of Change

STEPS Define – The concepts, ideas, and paradigms we use to define ourselves and the world around us. This includes things like worldview, paradigms, and social values and attitudes.

What concepts create new paradigms and values in your topic?

Relate – The social structures and relationships which organize people and create organizations. Here we look at things like family structures, business models, and governance structures.

What concepts transform how people, organisations, and communities interact?

Connect – The technologies and practices used to connect people, places, and things. Connect looks for things like information technology, urban design, and language.

Create – The technology and processes through which we produce goods and services. This is all about things like manufacturing, efficiency, and rule-making.

Consume – About the ways in which we acquire and use the goods and services we create. This domain is about issues like modes of exchange, consumer preferences, and marketing.

Destroy – About the ways in which we destroy value and the reasons for doing so. Here we are concerned with phenomena like violence and killing, waste, and attempts to undermine rules and norms.

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Tools: Impacts of Change

TIPS  Walk people through the six different Verge categories, and make sure you offer vivid, simple examples of each (see attached slide deck for an example).  Create a large worksheet / game board, with the category icons and the questions for each category repeated.  Give the exercise a simple, clear focus topic.

HOW TO ADAPT IT Verge can be used in almost all futures activities as an organizing framework or a set of provocative discussion questions. The six Verge questions can be used to probe for a more complete range of possible impacts in brainstorming futures wheels, or they can be re-phrased from questions about what could happen to questions about how we should change, to expand visioning dialogues.

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Tools: Impacts of Change

EXAMPLES OF USE Case study: Natural England

RESOURCES  Facilitator’s Grid  Worksheets  Readings

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Tools: Impacts of Change

FUTURES WHEELS

You’ve spotted provocative emerging changes. Now what? Answering the ‘so what?’ question is a critical next step after identifying trends and emerging issues. Futures wheels provide an engaging participatory process to map the cascades of impacts that a single change might generate.

OVERVIEW The Futures Wheel is an instrument for graphic visualization of direct and indirect future consequences of a particular change or development. It is a structured brainstorming tool to explore the future of a specific change and to capture the consequences and interactions of impacts.

Jerome Glenn invented futures wheels in 1971 as a method for policy analysis and forecasting. Futures Wheels are also called Impact Wheels, Consequence Wheels, Implementation Wheels, and are similar to Mind Mapping and Webbing. Joel Barker has elaborated the notion of “cascade thinking” and developed the i-Wheel software to assist groups in creating extensive maps of impacts, implications, and consequences of change. A useful feature of Futures Wheels is creation of counter-intuitive outcomes: mapping impact cascades out through primary, secondary, and tertiary outcomes often generates surprising possibilities

.

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Tools: Impacts of Change

What it is

explores and maps successive cascades of impacts created by a single significant change; helps extrapolate surprises, disruptions, and backlashes as well as emerging opportunities.

What it needs

basic change data, conceptual structure, diverse contributors.

Mode

usually qualitative and participatory

Strengths

can help identify unexpected impacts, ‘black swan’ events, and areas of potential backlash or constraint.

Weaknesses

not seen as authoritative; can lack rigor.

Cost

researcher/participant time.

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Tools: Impacts of Change

WHEN TO USE IT Futures Wheels are a simple and versatile foresight tool:  Introducing people to foresight Because it is a simple process, people new to foresight can easily engage in exploratory think about how changes might unfold.  Mapping detailed impacts of change over time  Exploring what innovations could emerge as a result of change  Identifying areas where backlash or resistance to change might arise  Spotting potential for ‘black swan’ events to emerge

HOW TO APPLY IT Setting Work in small groups (3-5 people) Materials  Flipcharts  Post-its  Sharpies or A3 paper with blank futures wheel template (worksheet)

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Tools: Impacts of Change

STEPS State the emerging change, trend, proposed strategy, or innovation in the inner circle of the flipchart sheet. Describe it as if it had already happened, as an established condition: eg, instead of “increase in use of AI in the workplace”, write “AI in common use in most workplaces.”

Ask participants to imagine possible impacts of this change “If this is true, what are the immediate impacts - what are the first changes we would see?” (first layer) Participants should write these around the focal change, or write them on post-its and arrange them around the focal change. BE as SPECIFIC as possible about the impacts: make them concrete, make them real-world, make them changes we would see in daily life (see “Tips” below).

Build the futures wheel by creating cascades of impacts and thus an expanding wheel “Which of these are immediate or primary impacts? What are the impacts of these?” (second layer)

Share with others.

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Tools: Impacts of Change

TIPS  When introducing Futures Wheels, show two or three examples (see case studies and readings), and always demonstrate the process by leading a quick example futures wheel with all the participants, before breaking up into work groups.  Stress that the more specific the impacts, the better: not, “increasingly powerful tablet computers lead to impacts on education and impacts on research” - ask how, specifically, do powerful handheld computers change education and research? E.g. increasingly powerful laptop computers lead to: o (instead of “impacts on education”) accessing lessons anywhere; lessons throughout the day as students make mobile inquiries; neighborhood as a classroom; short certificates in specific sub-disciplines or skills; microcredentialing; and o (instead of “impacts on research”)  Ask people to focus on listing all the most immediate impacts (the primary impacts) first, before thinking about what cascade of secondary impacts might be. Finish the secondary impacts before brainstorming the third-order impacts.  Remind people to consider what backlashes might emerge - who would resist the change, and how? These activities are also impacts.

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Tools: Impacts of Change

HOW TO ADAPT IT Use the STEEP categories [Social, Technological, Environmental, Economic, Political] as a brainstorming prompt to ensure participants explore all the places impacts might fall.

Use the Verge Framework [need link to tool page here] as a brainstorming prompt for additional impacts, and to ensure a broad range of impacts is considered.

Change the shape of the wheel - emphasize its implicit timelines (first the change happens, then the primary impact, then sometime later the secondary impact, then after that the tertiary impacts) by stretching them out to the side, as illustrated here.

Suggest people add a time horizon to their impact post-its - how long do they think it will take for the impact to be felt after the change that prompted it?

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Tools: Impacts of Change

EXAMPLES OF USE  Case study: PepsiCo [need link to this]  Implications Wheel: Youth, Alcohol, and Drugs  Implications Wheel: Flu Pandemic Preparedness

RESOURCES  Facilitator’s Grid  Worksheets  Readings J.C. Glenn, “The futures wheel,” in J.C. Glenn, T.J. Gordon (Eds.), Futures Research Methodology. Version 3.0. With support from the Rockefeller Foundation. Millennium Project, CD-ROM (2009), p. i-17; Joel Barker, “Why the Implications Wheel?” (video) and software David N. Bengtson, “The Futures Wheel: A Method for Exploring the Implications of Social-Ecological Change,” in Society & Natural Resources, 29:374–379

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Tools: Impacts of Change

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ALTERNATIVE FUTURES

THIS PHASE WILL HELP YOU ANSWER How do your goals, and the strategies to meet them, play out in different given conditions?

What are your assumptions about your initiatives, policies, goods, or services?

How innovative are they?

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Tools: Alternative Futures

 Incasting / Scenario Archetypes  2X2 Uncertainties Matrix  Mānoa Scenario Building  The Thing from the Future

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Tools: Alternative Futures

INCASTING Also called Hawai’i “Four Futures”

Working with pre-written scenarios and scenario archetypes It’s not always necessary to write your own scenarios just to explore alternative possible futures. Novelists and dramatists say that there are only a few basic stories. In foresight, the infinite future outcomes possible can be clustered into families of storylines about change: stability, growth, collapse, and transformation.

OVERVIEW In scenario incasting, participants think up the specific details of a possible future based on a more general scenario description. Incasting begins with an array of possible futures: several different scenarios, all based on observed trends and emerging issues in society, the economy, technological innovation, the environment, and political activity.

What it is

explores and maps successive cascades of impacts created by a single significant change; helps extrapolate surprises, disruptions, and backlashes as well as emerging opportunities.

What it needs

basic change data, conceptual structure, diverse contributors.

Mode

usually qualitative and participatory

Strengths

can help identify unexpected impacts, ‘black swan’ events, and areas of potential backlash or constraint.

Weaknesses

not seen as authoritative; can lack rigor.

Cost

researcher/participant time.

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Tools: Alternative Futures

WHEN TO USE IT Scenario incasting is a useful introductory exercise for people who are new to foresight. Because it uses a pre-existing set of scenarios, it can be implemented quickly. As long as the scenarios are sufficiently different from the present, they will provoke discussions and help people identify assumptions and built-in biases about change.

Scenario incasting is also a rapid approach to “forecasting the future of anything.” Starting from a base of archetypal, or generic, future scenarios, you can quickly adapt them to suit your issue or strategic question, and get much of the exploratory benefit of bespoke original scenarios with much less time and funds invested.

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Tools: Alternative Futures

STEPS Descriptions of five different POSSIBLE futures have been distributed. You and your working group have been assigned ONE of those scenarios.

N USING SCENARIOS for this exercise, it is important that you suspend your disbelief. Do not ask HOW this scenario came to exist; do not question its fundamental assumptions: you have awakened to find yourself living in it.

What is your life like?

Given the characteristics of this scenario, and following the rule of logical consistency, what would the following be like in this future?

• • • •

Commuting to work Health care Leisure activities [what do people do for fun?]

Education [what skills or substantive knowledge do people need most, how is that passed from one generation to the next?]

• Crimes [what would be illegal given the values and perspectives of this future?]

Report your findings as a series of headlines in the news media appropriate to this future [and tell us how news gets disseminated].

Imagine what political controversies, international events, critical issues, awards, celebrations, sports events, and other newsworthy items might occur in this future.

Take details to their logical, if extreme, conclusions. Remember that some traditional activities, offices, organizations, and lifestyles may disappear entirely in your scenario. Some lifestyles and activities may be transformed, existing in this future in an entirely new form. And this future may compel the creation of entirely new offices, services, businesses, schools, and activities.

Exceed the boundaries of the present wherever it seems logical given the context of the scenario: your suggestions only need to be logically consistent with the assumptions of the scenario.

Be prepared to present your headlines and cartoons to the group as a whole.

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Tools: Alternative Futures

EXAMPLES OF USE  Incasting for the US EPA  Incasting for the National Extension Leadership Development Program  Incasting for libraries and librarians - Special Libraries Association  Incasting for National Public Health Leadership Network  Incasting for Pacific Island leaders - Pacific Coastal Zone Management

RESOURCES  Facilitator’s Grid  Worksheets  Readings

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Tools: Alternative Futures

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Tools: Alternative Futures

2x2 UNCERTAINTIES MATRIX

Leaders want to improve their ability to manage uncertainty. Spotting the change as it emerges is one thing; knowing what to do in response is another - especially as change itself is volatile: we’re never sure what twists and turns it might take as it evolves. This approach to scenario building addresses uncertainty directly.

OVERVIEW Developed by Jay Ogilvy, made popular in Peter Schwartz’s book The Art of the Long View, and spread around the world by the Global Business Network.

What it is

chooses two highly important but highly uncertain drivers of change, and creates a 2X2 matrix by expressing each driver as a continuum between two opposite uncertain outcomes.

What it needs

clearly stated decision focus and drivers inventory.

Mode

usually qualitative and participatory.

Strengths

very focused on outcomes; best for 10-20 year scenarios; highly structured.

Weaknesses

often fails to question assumptions or current paradigms that may be overturned by turbulence.

Cost

data; facilitator; participant time.

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Tools: Alternative Futures

WHEN TO USE IT The 2X2 scenario building approach is best suited to shorter time frames - 10 to 20 year time horizons - and very specific strategic questions.

EXAMPLES OF USE Case study: Natural England

RESOURCES  Facilitator’s Grid  Worksheets  Readings

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Tools: Alternative Futures

MANOA SCENARIO BUILDING

Change is not binary - it is not an either/or proposition. The present we experience evolved from multiple overlapping changes and their colliding and interconnecting impacts. The Mānoa approach to scenario building reflects that understanding of multiple overlapping changes.

OVERVIEW

What it is

multiple emerging issues generate potential impacts and crossimpacts; these are woven into a narrative depicting a possible surprising, transformative, or disruptive future.

What it needs

3-5 changes for each scenario generated; knowledge of futures wheels, influence mapping, and cross-impact analysis.

Mode

merges logical/intuitive/creative; participatory.

Strengths

helps map surprising outcomes and ‘black swan’ events; generates nuanced detail; critiques assumptions.

Weaknesses

takes more time to generate four scenarios; rigour dependent upon structures included by facilitator or researcher.

Cost

scanning data; research and participant time.

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Tools: Alternative Futures

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Tools: Alternative Futures

EXAMPLES OF USE Case study: Seeds of the Good Anthropocene [need link to this]

RESOURCES  Facilitator’s Grid  Worksheets  Readings

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Tools: Alternative Futures

THE THING FROM THE FUTURE

Engaging people in exploring their futures helps them create their futures. More and more futures work is focusing on experiential activities - games, immersive scenario environments - and futurists are blending foresight methods with design thinking. Design games help people imagine specific impacts and implications of change for futures at the dayto-day level by expressing possible futures as artefacts they might experience then - and can explore now.

OVERVIEW “The object of the game is to come up with the most entertaining and thoughtprovoking descriptions of hypothetical objects from different near-, medium-, and long-term futures. Each round, players collectively generate a creative prompt by playing a card game. This prompt outlines the kind of future that the thing-to-beimagined comes from, specifies what part of society or culture it belongs to, describes the type of object that it is, and suggests an emotional reaction that it might spark in an observer from the present. Players must then each write a short description of an object that fits the constraints of the prompt. These descriptions are then read aloud (without attribution), and players vote on which description they find the most interesting, provocative, or funny. The winner of each round keeps the cards put into play for that round, and whoever has the most cards when the game ends is declared the overall winner.” from Situation Labs, The Thing from the Future

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Tools: Alternative Futures

What it is

combines futures concepts with design thinking to explore change outcomes, expressed as artefacts.

What it needs

diverse participants, ideally mixed arts and sciences backgrounds; innate understanding of patterns of change.

Mode

qualitative, team-based, participatory.

Strengths

creative, playful, energizing – can produce unexpected insights into problems, and innovative solutions; makes possible future outcomes concrete.

Weaknesses

without clear goals for the exercise, can lack connection to aims, outcomes, or action.

Cost

game cards (US$40, plus shipping); facilitator; participant time.

WHEN TO USE IT The Thing from the Future provides a fun, creative, exploratory introduction to thinking about the future in a way that’s easy to understand and engaging. With clear instructions, it can be used for schoolchildren as well as adults.

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Tools: Alternative Futures

HOW TO APPLY IT Setting A large room with multiple work tables seating 4-6, and arranged with at least 5 feet between tables. If possible, a room with a lot of art, photographs, graphics, or playful objects in it: the object is to stimulate creativity.

Materials A deck of The Thing from the Future cards, a worksheet for each discussion group, like the one below, blank index cards, and a pen for each participant / player.

STEPS For detailed instructions, please see the illustrated step-by-step guide at Situation Labs.

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Tools: Alternative Futures

HOW TO ADAPT IT Adding visual prompts, such as a random assortment of photographs, art images, or postcards (e.g. this postcard set [need link]), produces an even richer set of ideas.

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Tools: Alternative Futures

EXAMPLES OF USE  Classes at Johns Hopkins, MIT Media Lab, and Parsons Mumbai  Gatherings such as the World Future Society annual conference in San Francisco, 5D's transmedia "Science of Fiction" shindig in LA, and the United Nations Development Programme's annual strategy meeting in New York  Festivals including IndieCade (LA), FutureFest (London), Hot Docs and Maker Festival (Toronto), Amplify (Sydney), and the Berlin Film Festival  Design jams resulting in popup artifact exhibitions at OCAD University, NYU, and Stanford d.School

RESOURCES  Facilitator’s Grid  Worksheets  Readings Stuart Candy, The Thing from the Future  Short video with Stuart Candy on the process of designing the futures game “The Thing from the Future” on Vimeo

Purchase game decks here OR print and play the decks from here.

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PREFERRED FUTURES

THIS PHASE WILL HELP YOU ANSWER What is your vision?

What are your preferred outcome, the future you most want, and the goals specific to that vision?

How do you engage people to articulate a preferred future as a collaboration?

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Tools: Preferred Futures

 Casual Layered Analysis  Appreciative Inquiry

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Tools: Preferred Futures

CASUAL LAYERED ANALYSIS

“Thinking about the future problematizes the present.”

Sohail INAYATULLAH

Foresight work runs the risk of being superficial, of being too focused on surface trends and events. Digging beneath the observable events uncovers the systems and structures driving events and changes; analyzing worldviews, paradigms, and cultural structures uncovers the internalized assumptions that create the systems and structures. Causal Layered Analysis systematically takes participants down through successive analytic layers to expose leverage points for change.

OVERVIEW What it is

a four-level analysis exploring the litany, systems, worldviews, and myths / metaphors associated with an issue.

What it needs

experienced facilitator and cultural and professionally diverse contributors.

Mode

qualitative and participatory, although desk analysis is possible.

Strengths

gets beneath surface buzz and expert analysis to cultural structures defining and driving them.

Weaknesses

difficult to do well without multiple cultural perspectives present.

Cost

facilitator, and participant time.

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Tools: Preferred Futures

Sources: Sohail INAYATULLAH, Dennis LIST, Andy HINES

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Tools: Preferred Futures

STEPS Defining in clear terms the “Litany” related to your topic, outlining its causes, analyzing its paradigms and finding metaphors and myths that relate to it

Using the metaphors and myths of the original problem, extract their antonyms and build one or two scenarios going bottom-up in the CLA chart

Sharing scenarios with the group

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Tools: Preferred Futures

RESOURCES  Facilitator’s Grid  Worksheets  Readings

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Tools: Preferred Futures

APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY

The best way to predict the future, it is said, is to create it. Collaboration to articulate a vision of a preferred future is the first step. One approach to visioning is to begin with past successes and current strengths - and appreciative inquiry is designed to do just that.

OVERVIEW What it is

change management approach that focuses on identifying what is working well, analyzing why it is working well and then doing more of it.

What it needs

experienced facilitation and an atmosphere of candid assessment and exploration.

Mode

facilitated, participatory dialogue.

Strengths

celebratory approach to goal articulation strengthens team.

Weaknesses

no links to trends of change or emerging issues.

Cost

trained facilitator, staff time.

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Tools: Preferred Futures

WHEN TO USE IT For Visioning activities.

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Tools: Preferred Futures

STEPS Discover What has inspired you to do the work that you do?

What do you most value about your contribution?

What do you most hope you can contribute to the theme?

Dream Imagine a time in the future when people look to your topic as an exceptional example of a thriving entrepreneurial spirit.

In this exciting future, what is going on in your topic?

What is true of leaders? What is sustaining their dedication?

What kinds of systems and structures are most encouraging your topic?

What are you most proud of in having helped accomplish these goals?

Design What exciting and promising ways are we already applying resources that we can build on?

Destiny What small changes could we make right now that would be a first step towards that future?

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Tools: Preferred Futures

EXAMPLES OF USE 

Imagine Chicago: A Chicago Case Study in Intergenerational Appreciative Inquiry (1995)



"Igniting Leadership at All Levels: Working Together To Ensure The Earth's Vitality" A Leadership Summit (2003)

RESOURCES  Facilitator’s Grid  Worksheets  Readings David L. Cooperrider, The Appreciative Inquiry Commons - extensive resource for readings, facilitation guides, worksheets, and tips, and case studies of Appreciative Inquiry in action. This is the online AI toolbox.

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STRATEGY & CHANGE MANAGEMENT

THIS PHASE WILL HELP YOU ANSWER How do you “become the change you want to see in the world?”

How do you identify key stakeholders?

• Do a strengths / weaknesses / opportunities / challenges assessment?

• What steps are needed to ‘get from here to there’ in achieving your goals?

• Are your strategies robust in the face of uncertainty and turbulent change?

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Tools: Strategy & Change Management

 Back-casting  Wind-tunnelling

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Tools: Strategy & Change Management

BACKCASTING

Envisioning better futures isn’t difficult. Achieving them is difficult. Truly transformative, audacious visions can seem too idealistic to accomplish. Back-casting helps you stand in your preferred future, and create a bridge of practical steps from your vision back to the present. It is sometimes called “Apollo forecasting” - because it designed the path from Kennedy’s speech to Armstrong’s first steps on the Sea of Tranquility.

OVERVIEW What it is

logical mapping of necessary steps to create a specified outcome, working backwards from the future outcome to present conditions.

What it needs

good understanding of the systems, resources, and processes involved..

Mode

usually qualitative; often participatory.

Strengths

fosters a logical perspective that prevents ‘it’s never been done’ thinking.

Weaknesses

difficult to create logical sequences backwards.

Cost

time for sufficiently knowledgeable staff with diverse expertise.

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Tools: Strategy & Change Management

STEPS Dream (See: Appreciative Inquiry) Imagine a time in the future when people look to your topic as an exceptional example of a thriving entrepreneurial spirit.

In this exciting future, what is going on in your topic?

What is true of leaders? What is sustaining their dedication?

What kinds of systems and structures are most encouraging your topic?

What are you most proud of in having helped accomplish these goals?

Work backwards using the “dreams” developed to answer the following question: “What do we need to do today to reach that vision of success?”

Debrief with the group

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Tools: Strategy & Change Management

RESOURCES  Facilitator’s Grid  Worksheets  Readings

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Tools: Strategy & Change Management

WIND-TUNNELLING

You’ve identified some significant changes and mapped potential impacts. You built scenarios to explore alternative outcomes, envisioned to create transformative goals, and have even come up with some strategies to reach those goals. How can you be sure those strategies will work well in whatever future they might face on the way to creating your dream? Wind-tunneling tests your proposed strategies against the future conditions suggested by a collection of scenarios - and helps make strategies more resilient.

OVERVIEW What it is

evaluating strategies against conditions across alternative future scenarios, rating them for potential effectiveness and robustness under different conditions.

What it needs

a ‘library’ of relevant images of alternative futures.

Mode

usually qualitative; often facilitated dialogue.

Strengths

applies a consistent, and systematic assessment of actions against possible future conditions – helps refine strategies for resilience.

Weaknesses

relies on well-researched scenarios.

Cost

scenario library; facilitator and participant time.

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Tools: Strategy & Change Management

STEPS Get a set of scenarios you developed (See “Alternative Futures” methods) or from a scenarios’ bank.

Pick a strategy you came up with.

In each scenario, imagine you are facing its specific conditions.

Blast your initiative/strategy with winds from different futures (the different archetypes) by answering these questions: What would that initiative look like if we were in each of these scenarios?

Is one of these futures more supportive to our initiative?

How well my strategy will perform across any one of these scenarios?

Are there ways you could elaborate your strategy to fit in to that future better?

In each of these scenarios, will this initiative be a success? Will it fail under the conditions of this futures? Or will we have to adapt it? Will it be contingent with some of the characteristics of these futures?

If you got an initiative(s) that only works in one scenario and fails in all the others, go back and reframe your initiative(s).

If you got one that works across all the scenarios, do it now; it is robust, resilient, it will work well no matter what conditions it faces in the future.

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Tools: Strategy & Change Management

RESOURCES  Facilitator’s Grid  Worksheets  Readings

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CASE STUDIES

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Case Studies

EUROPEAN REGULATOR CASE STUDY DEVELOPING A BLUEPRINT FOR STRATEGIC FORESIGHT

AIM The regulator had experienced various restructurings over the previous decade in a complex and constantly changing environment, where the pendulum of regulator swings back and forth between light and heavy regulation, influenced by political, economic and environmental factors.

They had also been heavily criticized for not anticipating sudden shifts in the environment. To stay relevant the organization needed to define it’s own purpose and justify it’s existence. The regulator already had pockets of futures thinking and activity across the organization, but it wanted to find a way to structure this work, and utilize the knowledge and expertise that was being created.

The critical question for the project was: “What are the options for us, as a regulator, to develop foresight function and organizational capability to inform our strategic thinking?”

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SUBSTANTIVE FOCUS The regulator operates in a rapidly changing, highly regulated and competitive environment. In order to carry out its role and serve its stakeholders it needed to sharpen the organization's eyes on the future and to become more resilient in the face of long-term challenges. They know that in order to build their agility, responsiveness and insight they need a way of identifying emerging future risks at the earliest warning signal. So they asked Sparknow to:  help them shape a new approach to futures  determine the extent to which future scenario planning could be used to shape longterm strategy and help prioritize their work, role and remit - they had a particular interest in 2x2 scenarios but wanted to explore beyond this  bring expertise to the table that would guide them in building their knowledge and understanding of futures methods  remove the ‘smoke and mirrors’ sometimes associated with futures work by showing its practical application  create a strategy around capacity building and promoting a different type of thought and evidence to inform their regulatory work  understand implementation options in the context of their particular culture, mission and assumptions about different kinds of knowledge - as a policy-driven organization their default is to prize analytical ‘evidence’ over more creative approaches to knowledge production, and it’s a challenge to strike a balance between short-term, more reactive time horizons and the need to push thinking out over years and decades to future-proof or anticipate or have more resilient choices about how to act in different scenarios.

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Case Studies

METHODOLOGY Where the other case studies account for the specific experience of the use of a tool or method, this study is about a shift in mindset required to embed futures work and capability. Sparknow took a participatory approach to the work to begin to shift notions amongst staff of what knowledge and evidence is valuable in making strategic decisions. Throughout we intentionally looked to identify members of the organization at the forward edge of futures thinking so the work could continue when Sparknow’s project was complete. In brief, Sparknow worked with the organization to:  Explore and analyze their culture and their ways of working, to identify current values and discover where there may be room for new types of knowledge.  Conduct paired interviews with staff to stimulate new connections and understanding in the organization. This helped to build awareness and buy-in for the solution, paving the way for embedding the change.  Use information gathered from this process to create a systems map of forwardlooking activities already in existence in the organization.  Identify an emerging network of ‘foresight champions’ who could help to embed this type of thinking and promote futures work. Working with the critical few who will magnetize networks and sustain forward momentum is central to our approach This first phase of the work culminated in an interim report on the culture and challenges to embedding foresight capability within the organization.

Three events were held with key staff;  A ‘Jigsaw’ session with senior leadership to introduce and explain a number of futures methods and tools  A Three Horizons session to explore a different type of thinking and to experiment with looking into the distant future. To discuss how this tool might contribute to strategic thought and disturb the present.  A private round table with external foresight experts who shared practice and experience-based insights on how to make the most of applying futures and foresight tools.

To complete the work Sparknow produced a ‘blueprint’ setting out how to implement a distributed model of foresight, where embedding a new mindset within existing processes would make the organization more resilient.

To effectively promote and engage people in the idea of futures work the Sparknow/ Infinite Futures team paid particular attention to visualizations of a distributed foresight function. Learning from previous work that the visuals could play a key role in helping the outputs of the work to travel and act as inputs to start new conversations and actions.

The detailed visual for the front page of the Blueprint sits below. It outlined visually a distributed model of futures.

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Case Studies

IMPLICATIONS AND APPLICATION OF THE SPECIFIC PROJECT The organizational context changed in many ways while we were doing the work in 2015 - 2016. A new political situation meant that the context, role and remit of the regulator in the eyes of the public changed.

A futures conference planned for 2016 was deferred and is now taking place in the spring of 2017, following on from detailed work to rethink mission and values after a new leader took over. Across the organization schemes of futures research projects have been started to inform the conference.

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The central aims of the work to reposition the regulator as futures capable, resilient and prepared remains much as it was when Sparknow undertook the work. Under new leadership and changed priorities the organizational structure is now more aligned to achieving a shift from being preoccupied with the present, to looking up and out.

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RELEVANCE TO ILO PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS Formal training needs to be supplemented with culture shift This case study is an example of how building futures capability is not just about formal training in a series of specific methods and tools, but that in order to become truly foresight enabled a change in mindset and what the organization values is necessary.

Being able to value a different type of knowledge, discussion and challenge as part of existing operational processes means that futures work is more readily engaged with a source of evidence for business planning. This case study shows the value of probing the degree to which futures work goes with, or against the current culture, particularly in the context of a policy-driven organization where the knowledge that is authorized and prized is not generally knowledge generated by creative approaches.

Inviting people in Foresight work should be an endeavor to engage people in seeing the present differently by looking to the future. That learning journey required to make futures work stick, is best undertaken as an engaging discussion, and one that is shared. The more participants in that discussion, the more insights generated, and the more creative the insights generated.

Identifying from the beginning those who have a talent to look at the bigger picture or take a longer view can be invaluable. When you have the right champions for futures work and initially engage those who want to engage, foresight functions are more likely to succeed.

Changing mental models An implicit goal of futures work is to open minds and extend ideas about the kinds of knowledge, sources of knowledge and process that are credible for generating evidence about the future. We live in a world where immediacy is the norm. Most of the time people can access the knowledge or information they need readily.

Time and evolution It takes sustained effort, leadership and energy to bring in and embed this kind of evaluative thinking and it’s likely to evolve over several chapters in both intended and unintended ways. Maintaining commitment to futures work and its value in operational processes is difficult in this context. For this client the tensions between being a day to day regulator who is assessed on being effective in very short term, with a 6 - 18 month time-horizon and giving up time and resources to have a dialogue with others about long term horizons, using imagination not evidence and a valid process.

The invisible competence that is built Sponsors and advocates need to be aware of how much of the shift in mental models builds up invisibly over time and not seek immediate performance and results (or use immediate performance and results to protect and incubate the longer term shifts in mental models). For example, sometimes-small events or a trend present over many years could end up having a cumulative impact on an organization. Undertaking foresight work would contribute to combatting that.

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OTHER FIELD NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS How does this connect to on going activities, other projects, and other critical issues?

One thing we anticipated, and which the client confirmed, was the spark that is brought by having external voices involved within a structured participatory process: ‘Understanding the impacts of the future on the decisions we make today sits at the heart of being an effective and responsible regulator. Our work with Sparknow has enhanced the way we both think and talk about futures internally and how we engage with those externally. Having the expertise of the Sparknow team really galvanised interest and credibility in futures work – in a way that internal peer-to-peer conversations were likely to have been less successful and inspirational. Sparknow have provided a great platform on which to continue to build’. Client lead

Lessons learned: what would you do the same again, and what would you change?

Taking a participatory approach works, but the link with the most senior sponsor, the head of strategy was never really established. Losing that line of sight meant that we were not sitting down and having robust conversations directly, but through intermediaries. Over again, insisting on setting up strategic dialogues with key leading sponsors and advocates is a must.

The original work coincided with changes in leadership, structural changes and shifts in political priorities. We’d had an eye on this likelihood from the beginning and aimed to future proof the key reports so that they could be revisited, or continue to travel, and find the right time to come back into the focus of attention for the organisation. This is very much a lesson we’d learned from work with Defra, where the interim reporting assets turned out to have a longer-term relevance than the final toolkit. We would do this again.

Finally the combination of Sparknow (expert in cultural organisation, and very competent in both regulation and in the sector) and Infinite Futures (expert in foresight), combined Sparknow’s strengths in cultural narrative and knowledge management with Infinite Futures’ deep expertise in futures research methods to provide lively and engaging design, practice, and ‘lessons learned’ sessions that informed the regulators choices in building their strategic foresight capabilities. We’d partner again as often as possible.

Sparknow and Infinite Futures convened a roundtable on foresight for a regulatory client seeking to set up a strategic foresight unit; the insights consolidated from that roundtable, as well as tips drawn from other projects, are presented as the “ILO FORESIGHT TOOLKIT LESSONS LEARNED.” [HOTLINK TO THAT PAGE.]

What tips / hints would enhance use of this approach and ensure good foresight practice?

As this case study does not refer to the specific use of a tool or method there are not any specific hints or tips.

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Case Studies

Keywords and links to related methods Blueprint, 3 Horizons, Systems Mapping, Jigsaw Link to the Natural England case study in respect of how they’ve connected knowledge and foresight.

Who participated?

Sparknow and Infinite Futures.

Internal participants are confidential; external participants included Andrew Curry, Director of Strategic Futures at The Futures Company, Ivana Gazibara of Forum for the Future, Anna Beckett, Horizon Scanner at the Care Quality Commission, Sarah Bardsley, Evidence Advisor in the Environment Agency, and Wendy Schultz, Director of Infinite Futures.

Suggested reading Andrew Curry ‘Understanding Best Practice in Strategic Futures Work’, A Futures Perspective Reprint by The Futures Company.

Defra toolkit extracts Graphic map of tool use (clickable, connected to Wordpress tool pages)

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Case Studies

SCOTTISH EDUCATION THREE HORIZONS

AIM

What was the project’s aim or objective in choosing foresight to explore an issue?

This started out as an exploratory workshop following a policy publication. It evolved into a foresight toolkit to create and foster dialogue and transformation in Scottish education.

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Case Studies

SUBSTANTIVE FOCUS “The world is changing four times as fast as the classroom”. The uptake of a futures tool, 3H was motivated by a want to support the practice of people seeking to ‘carry on making a difference in the face of all that stands in the way of making a difference’.

This they termed the practice of ‘transformative innovation’: which they defined as helping to grow new patterns of future viability rather than simply propping up or ‘improving’ the old.

This emerged from a partnership between International Futures Forum, Scottish Education and HM Inspectorate for Education.

In 2006 the IFF was approached by a head teacher following publications of policy framework for education for Scotland called Curriculum for Excellence.

The IFF introduces 3H. In early 2007, an exploratory workshop into the subject led to rich picture of emerging policy landscape. This reached the attention of HMIE (Inspectorate of Education), they were interested to start a dialogue about the future because Chief Inspectors were observing the pace of change in education and in the world. It begged the questions: • How to bring future into the conversations about school improvement' and • How can the Inspectorate fulfill a role of ensuring performance and stimulating innovation?

• How can we both inspect and inspire?'

The Three Horizons Framework (3H) was used to frame the conversation. Because it 'allows the future into the dialogue, and locates pockets of the future in the present', 3H naturally allows both interpretations around maintaining quality in H1 and encouraging inspirational activity towards H3 via H2.

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Case Studies

METHODOLOGY IFF and HMIE developed a Kit to allow SMT at schools to have 3H conversations 'Opening up Transformative Innovation': Phase 1 is an initial 3H conversation where a set of prompt cards, a 3H chart and three key questions guide discussion. This first phase enables an open conversation about the future involving a diverse set of prompts covering the changing world, changing policy and practice and changing young people.

The kit is based on IFF’s “three horizons” framework which encourages groups to experiment with three modes of thinking – managing the existing system, brainstorming promising innovation, and aspiring to something better in the future Three questions to start the conversation were: 1. Is it happening now or might it in the future?

2. Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

3. Is it something we are taking into account or should be?

Phase 2 a ‘processing phase’ seeks to translate earlier conversation into implications for longer term improvement planning as vision for future and identify 'hope and encouragement' from existing system that suggest future can be achieved. This process is focused on how to shift the system towards the emerging Third Horizon.

Questions in this phase are like: 1. Where is the desired third horizon happening already, where is the practice that inspires and encourages us to think that our desired future is possible?

2. What are the more generic pathways to the third horizon that emerge 3. What are the values tensions that are evident between the dominant values of the existing H1 system and the values of the emerging H3?

All releases pent up energy, supplemented by Inspectorate own desire to shift own role from monitoring to supporting and inspiring so Inspectors trained in Jim Ewing change management tools to help understand, communicate and engage others with change, plus deal with fear of failure.

Education Scotland took the step of identifying an initial cadre of inspectors to be trained in the use of a powerful set of change tools (developed by my IFF colleague Jim Ewing) that they can now use to support schools in the implementation of radical innovation.

The approach is cascading through the whole organization. From inspectors to change agents: that really is transformative.

A year after first introducing it, signs of shift in mindset - it's possible to innovate, new leadership capacity, confidence and skills and school pupils themselves taking to the tools, 3H being used in classroom.

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Case Studies

Graphic by Amal

IMPLICATIONS AND APPLICATION OF THE SPECIFIC PROJECT “The world is changing four times as fast as the classroom”, said one, “If we are going to catch up we need to be enterprising, creative, innovative and inspired.” we need to create a legitimate space for visionary, aspirational, butterfly thinking The early results are very encouraging. Participating schools show a shift in mindset to believe that it is possible to implement radical change; a new capacity for leadership at all levels (including pupils) now that people can get a sense of where they want to go and how to get there An example of a specific school that took up foresight thinking ‘Monifieth High School: Doing School Together’. The school has used 3 Horizons and Implemento to help transform its leadership culture. All-age Pupil Leadership Teams now work alongside staff on aspects of school improvement, while senior pupil leaders have named responsibilities for developments within the School Improvement Plan.

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RELEVANCE TO ILO PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS The structure and design of the 3H kit allowed for multidisciplinary convening and evolution from workshop to toolkit, plus the ability for people from all kinds of backgrounds to have these conversations and feel they have agency in the solutions.

Inviting in a multitude of voices serves to strengthen futures insight. which seem relevant to me - i.e. the conversation can include policy makers, inspectors, school senior leadership teams and pupils and finding transformative actions in the second horizon is an activity that everybody can participate in.

Day to day operational business and futures work require very different states of mind.

The 3H kit created by the IFF and Scottish education in this case creates a separate space and time to have a conversation about the future and look up and out. For futures work to be successful it has to be undertaken in a separately to conversation about dayto- day.

This case study shows the value of futures thinking in creating new types of knowledge and insight, that can lead to innovative strategy; “When all three voices (which we all have) are respected and given free rein in the discussion, what emerges is a very different map of the landscape revealing, often for the first time, a pent-up visionary energy in our school system”.

Actively seek out diverse – even disagreeing – perspectives on emerging change generally, and emerging changes or visions specific to your issues and sector.

Connect to explorations of using 3H in the context of EYE: Ensure that the outputs become inputs, both within this phase and for future phases Using 3H to frame the conversation; allows the future into the dialogue, it serves to locate pockets of the future in the present naturally and enables both interpretations around maintaining quality in H1 and encouraging inspiration activity towards H3 via H2.

The advantages of using 3H as a method is also evident in fostering:  An understanding of the three mindsets of steward, visionary, entrepreneur, as a way of looking at, and acting, in the world  A rich, focused dialogue which is open to people of many views, ages, backgrounds  The action space in the 2nd Horizon: identify and priorities actions in the 2nd Horizon (the entrepreneur horizon) which hold the promise of identifying pathways from the 1st to the 3rd Horizon [Link to the evolving thinking about EYE from the Amal notes]

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OTHER FIELD NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS How does this connect to on going activities, other projects, and other critical issues?

There are specific school cases where 3H as a tool for strategic planning for the future of education and to identify the future challenges faced by young people. These show the success of this approach.

For example: ‘Balfron High School began using the 3 Horizons and Implemento frameworks in 2010 when some promoted teachers used 3 Horizons to have conversations about future planning. Staff began to see the value of this framework for opening up discussion, and identifying priorities that would better meet the needs of young people for their future. The use of these frameworks has expanded over the last two years with it becoming ‘the way we do things’.

Mindsets are shifting. Teachers are better able to embrace change. Young people and teachers are taking on more leadership roles. Young people feel empowered to be part of future planning, developing skills that will they will be able to take on into their adult lives.

What tips / hints would enhance use of this approach and ensure good foresight practice?

• Evolution in waves, emerging from energy, not with large ambitions to start with...long narrative thread • Having a simple framework for the use of a futures tool allows it to be used in numerous contexts, with multiple stakeholders, from very different backgrounds but with a shared primary task • Inviting in multiple perspectives and stakeholders allows for sight of emerging change across all sectors and issues. It let’s the crowd work for you. Create a community platform or open space that allows people to contribute and share observations about emerging change. It will also help ensure that you are ‘using new lenses’ and getting diversity of perspective.

• Futures is typically a marginal practice in organizations. This means that knowledge about it tends to decay unless it is actively maintained. This kit makes the use of 3H a more repeatable task [probably more to follow after further research]

Keywords and links to related methods 3 Horizons, culture change, education, innovation, dialogue, participation, future, Scotland

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Who participated?

• HMIE • Scottish Education • International Futures Forum Graham Leicester International Futures Forum looks like the person to contact.

Long list of other people here: plus tons of references in the wikipedia footnotes.

Suggested watching http://www.slideshare.net/grahamiff/sharpe-and-hodgson-3h-presentation http://www.iffpraxis.com/tie-resources http://www.internationalfuturesforum.com/s/412 http://www.internationalfuturesforum.com/transformative-innovation http://www.internationalfuturesforum.com/three-horizons&ns=1 http://www.internationalfuturesforum.com/p/three-horizons-the-patterning-of-hope http://www.internationalfuturesforum.com/three-horizons https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/glowblogs/PIPTC/ http://www.understandingglasgow.com/using_the_data/glasgow_game/card_games http://www.slideshare.net/grahamiff/iff-three-horizons-slides https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/media/4934472/nu-tackling-poverty-and-innequalityevent-18th-feb-2015-three-horizons-notes.pdf

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UK DEFRA HORIZON SCANNING

AIM

What was the project’s aim or objective in choosing foresight to explore an issue?

The Project commissioned a contractor to develop, in association with leading experts and stakeholders, three ‘Land Use Futures scenarios’. These explore different ways in which the pressures and forces acting on UK land use might play out over the next fifty years. In doing so, they offer insights into different policy choices and challenges that the UK might face in the future.

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SUBSTANTIVE FOCUS The project explored the following questions: • What land use challenges could the UK face over the next 50 years?

• Will existing structures and mechanisms help us to meet those challenges?

• What opportunities are there to use and manage land differently now so that UK society continues to enjoy a good quality of life in the future?

Foresight worked with leading experts to assemble the latest evidence and research on land use topics.

The project covers the whole spectrum of land use from urban to rural and is sponsored

by Defra and CLG.

METHODOLOGY The scenario process began by considering how drivers of change affecting land use might interact with each other. The drivers were identified via a series of workshops, as well as from the project’s systems analysis, existing scenarios, and the project’s evidence reviews.

• Three critical uncertainties for UK land use over the next 50 years emerged from the drivers and uncertainties workshops, focus group discussions and the review of the systems analysis: the rate of climate change, and the degree of adaption to environmental change – the key uncertainty whether the extent of adaptation to environmental change will be high or low • The degree of societal resistance to change, including at the global scale – the key uncertainty is whether societal and institutional resistance to change will be high or low • The concentration of people and economic activity within the UK – the key uncertainty is the degree of demographic and economic change and whether spatial concentration of people and economic activity will be high or low.

The ‘trilemma’ scenario framework combined the three critical dimensions of uncertainty by assuming each scenario would emphasize contrasting ends of only two of the three axes. This provided the basis for three scenarios.

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IMPLICATIONS AND APPLICATION OF THE SPECIFIC PROJECT The Foresight Land Use Futures project was devised to explore potential pressures and challenges facing UK land use especially in the given “perfect storm” of population pressures, resource constraints, and climate change forecast to emerge in the next twenty years.

These scenarios were designed to “highlight difficult policy dilemmas that government and other actors may need to consider in the future [and to] play-out courses of action that may lead to some positive and some less positive outcomes.”

They are available as policy and planning resources not only for the project’s clients – Defra and DCLG – but also for other departments, agencies, and local government organizations exploring future land use challenges.

RELEVANCE TO ILO PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS Patterns of land use will both affect the natural environment, and be affected by it. These scenarios explore different planning and regulatory approaches to managing land use in different economic contexts and with different social priorities. They offer a useful deep dive into a particular economic and social aspect of work, labor, and employment.

The methods chosen provide two useful tool examples: First, in-depth systems mapping of a complex issue (see results here); and second, use of an unusual scenarios framework, the ‘trilemma’ three-driver approach, which in this case also illustrates exploring a very long time horizon, almost five decades into the future (2060).

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OTHER FIELD NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS How does this connect to ongoing activities, other projects, and other critical issues?

“This UK Foresight Land Use Futures project was one in an ongoing series of issuesfocused futures projects sponsored by the UK government. Within that series, this particular project drew upon insights from preceding projects such as the UK Foresight Flooding and Flood Defences project, and the UK Foresight Intelligent Infrastructures project.

In addition, the Land Use Futures project was produced at the same time as Natural England’s Scenarios for England’s Natural Environment 2060, which explicitly chose a different methodological approach in order to cover a similar project with distinctive value add from the perspective of investment of tax dollars (see Natural England’s Scenarios Compendium for the comparison of the two projects).”

Lessons learned: what would you do the same again, and what would you change?

“Where this fell down > little framing of an initial critical question; insufficiently diverse lead expert group (no anthropologists), and incomplete understanding of the futures tools involved - horizon scanning and scenarios use, in particular.

The result was confusion over how to use the highly detailed systems maps that resulted from an excellent series of mapping workshops; an excellent horizon scanning study that was produced after the scenarios had been written, rather before in order to feed data into the scenarios; and an excellent set of scenarios that the lead expert group was ill-equipped to use to explore policy alternatives, with the result that they were sidelined into an appendix.

What would have helped > a more focused framing on a problem or issue (rather than an entire economic sector, “land use”); better care in choosing lead experts that were actively interested in taking a foresight approach to the issue; better briefing of the lead expert group on the use of foresight methods; and more logical design of when and how the foresight tools chosen were used.”

What tips / hints would enhance use of this approach and ensure good foresight practice?

Frame the project with a tightly focused question that poses a problem or challenge for the future; choose project leads who are enthused about the idea of exploring uncertainty and opportunities using futures tools, and brief them extensively in how futures tools are used; devise a logical design in terms of the flow of data through different steps of the futures process.”

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Keywords and links to related methods Systems thinking; systems mapping; horizon scanning; scenario building; trilemma scenarios.

Who participated?

See participant lists in appendix of Executive Summary, here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/fi le/288845/10-634-land-use-futures-summary.pdf

Suggested reading UK Land Use Futures Project Report UK Horizon Scanning - UK Cabinet Office Analysis and Insight Team blog Foresight UK Land Use Systems Maps by shiftn Trilemma scenario building:  The Shell Global Scenarios to 2025  A Foresight Scenario Method for Thinking About Complex Sustainable Development Interactions

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LESSONS LEARNED FRAMING FORESIGHT EFFECTIVELY

Sparknow and Infinite Futures convened a roundtable on foresight for a regulatory client seeking to set up a strategic foresight unit; the insights consolidated from that roundtable, as well as tips drawn from other projects, are presented here.

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Lessons Learned

INVEST YOUR FUTURES WORK WITH A SENSE OF PURPOSE What do you want to create for the future? What difference do you want to make? How specifically will each piece of futures work contribute to furthering your core responsibilities?

TARGET CAREFULLY Be absolutely clear what you want the futures work to deliver: policy recommendations? Shift in perspective?

Transformative action? Identifying the question you want answered.

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UNDERSTAND HOW THE OUTPUTS WILL BECOME INPUTS If you do a one-off piece of futures work to explore some issue for the organization, you need to know how and where it will reconnect, and what with. Organizations often use futures and get to an idea about the future, which they can’t bring back in, for reasons of resource, time, culture or process. Positive examples: Wales Tourist Board used scenarios to identify and agree a preferred strategy with stakeholders that they could take back to the Welsh Government; a rail project about “sustainable rail” that framed the requirements for a technology/innovation road map; a regulator that wind-tunnelled preferred policy options to stress test them.

LAYER FUTURES METHODS AND TOOLS Scenario building is a distinctive futures process and is probably over-used. To use it well, you need a question of sufficient complexity that it needs structured thinking about a range of possible futures; people who understand the benefits and limits of scenarios; and good processes to link it to policy questions.

Futures work and the context in which it is undertaken are complex. Layering futures tools and methods, is sometimes necessary to produce the right outputs that answer the question the futures project is seeking to answer.

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Lessons Learned

REMEMBER TO START FAR ENOUGH BACK You need to look back twice as far as you look forward (Robert Textor; Paul Saffo) ‘Nobody is an expert on the future, everybody is an expert on the past’. By re-examining history (with political sensitivity) future solutions can be discovered in past events.

BEG, BORROW, STEAL – AND RECYCLE! Futures research and foresight projects do not always need to be built new from the ground up. Extensive foresight research has already been completed, including in your area of interest. Look for ongoing horizon scanning, scenario building, or other futures work by other organizations in your area. It is useful intelligence to know what changes your peers identify, what scenarios they have explored, and what preferred futures they have envisioned.

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USE NEW LENSES Actively seek out diverse – even disagreeing – perspectives on emerging change generally, and emerging changes or visions specific to your issues and sector.

SEEK EXTERNAL INSIGHTS Crowdsource your intelligence!

Keeping an eye out for emerging change across all sectors and issues is highly time intensive – let the crowd work for you. Create a community platform or open space that allows people to contribute and share observations about emerging change. It will also help ensure that you are ‘using new lenses’ and getting diversity of perspective.

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WORKSHOP WELL AND WORKSHOP OFTEN Futures thinking and foresight are at core endeavours to engage people in seeing the present differently by means of exploring emergent change and possible futures. That learning journey works best as an engaging discussion, and one that is shared. The more participants in that discussion, the more insights generated, and the mFutures thinking and foresight are at core endeavours to engage people in seeing the present differently by means of exploring emergent change and possible futures. That learning journey works best as an engaging discussion, and one that is shared. The more participants in that discussion, the more insights generated, and the more creative the insights generated.ore creative the insights generated.

DON’T BE AFRAID OF MESSY HUNCHES OWN THE UNEXPECTED AND UNPLEASANT Your scans or scenarios may highlight unpalatable messages; that’s part of their purpose. If you find yourself thinking, ‘but that could never happen,’ ask yourself what embedded assumption is being challenged. Don’t be frightened of your data: it’s telling you something.

Embedded successfully futures work should alter perspectives of disruption as a constant feature of the changing world.

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CREATE SEPARATE TIME AND SPACE FOR FUTURES THINKING Day to day operational business and futures work require very different states of mind. For futures work to be successful it has to be undertaken in a separate space to conversation about day-to-day work.

ENLIST A KNIGHT – AND MULTIPLE ESQUIRES – TO EMBED IT IN YOUR CULTURE Have a champion at a high level, and supporting champions distributed throughout the organization. The high-level champion can both give permission to think transformatively and disruptively, and the supporting champions can act as role models, futures thinking coaches, and discussion starters to keep the conversation about emerging change rolling.

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SPREAD SEEDS OF CHANGE Use your network of champions and foresight enthusiasts to broadcast outcomes of your foresight activities throughout the organization – update people regularly on interesting facts and possibilities that are emerging; start debates on what impacts might arise.

EMBED IT IN YOUR PROCESSES When working in the Performance Innovation Unit and Cabinet Office in the early 2000s, Geoff Mulgan agreed five “big trends” that Departments needed to review as part of their planning processes. The five were: Ageing; Digital; Globalization; Climate Change; and Security. If departments didn’t take the request seriously, it had an adverse effect on their budgets. Similarly, following a scenarios process, the Army put in place a trends monitoring process that informed its annual planning process. There’s no reason why commercial businesses shouldn’t do the same thing.

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Lessons Learned

SIMPLER IS BETTER Futures work can involve complex methods that are hard to integrate into day-to-day organizational processes. The learning and cognitive effort required is too great for nonspecialists. There is a particular danger: that the participants in the process have had a rich experience which has led to changes in the way they see their organization and its future, but they find the *reasons* for this difficult to communicate to people who are just looking at the outputs. Practitioners talk about “scenarios as learning” for a reason. Generally, alignment is a greater virtue and produces better outcomes than complexity. A food company client, for example, removed its relatively complex trends programme and replaced it with three easy-to-remember (and uncontroversial) trends that could be used by staff and business units as guiding principles around innovation.

FIND WAYS TO MAINTAIN THE KNOWLEDGE Futures is typically a marginal practice in organizations.

This means that knowledge about it tends to decay unless it is actively maintained. For example, the Army process mentioned above survived four years, given the two-year career rotations in the Army, before the organizational memory of why they had originally implemented it was lost.

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SOFTWARE PLATFORMS

FOR FORESIGHT

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Software Platforms for Foresight

ABOUT At the Professional Members’ Forum of the World Future Society in July 2015, we asked the assembled futures researchers two questions: What challenges in data collection and sensemaking do futures research and foresight pose for the practitioner?

Which of these challenges in futures practice could be addressed by crowdsourcing, asynchronous feedback or brainstorming, emergent impact and systems mapping, etc?

These were leading questions - the focus of the session was software to support futures research and foresight, and to enable wider engagement and crowdsourcing of futures and insights. The participants provided a list of challenges that will be familiar to anyone who has engaged in futures research:                 

Information overload; being able to categorize, store, retrieve Scanning for appropriately weak signals out of the mass of signals Cross checking Continuous environmental scanning and categorizing, and help to make some sense out of it Big data somehow - how do we really use big data in foresight?

Disconnect in the data collection process Easier to collect, harder to see patterns Being able to find other people’s analysis of the trends Not having a sense of what you have missed, despite the mass of data available Holes in data Identifying the main emerging issues all over the world Global map with bubbling emerging issues, kind of real time To be able to sort and link the data you already tag/find To be able to map it More and more big gaps between those with big data and those that don’t Able to coordinate between different outlets Able to collect ongoing data

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We then asked them, if we were to envision our ultimate futures research and foresight software platform, what would it look like? What should it be able to do?

• Find breakthroughs in evolution • Deal with timelines, trends and changes visually on the same timeline; building timelines • Collection priorities • Analysis priority • Something that culls stories, lets you move stories around • Neural net software that would scan all available news sources for weak signals • Software like personal brain, picks the best from all of our information platforms • Anyone using Watson to do some of this stuff?

• Identify experts related to the scan hits that we get • Have something that can do a form of archeology [to unearth older but good ideas that have fallen out of fashion] • Something to do normative futures; to make collaborative work easier and to put it in front of everyone (on the screen) What software packages exist to help foresight researchers address these challenges?

Do any software packages fulfill these wishes?

The following brief list describes some existing social media software that can be adapted for futures research and foresight, as well as software designed specifically for foresight.

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Software Platforms for Foresight

EXISTING SOFTWARE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS readily adapted for foresight use

Easy capture via browser button widgets



Get some random into your life

twitter StumbleUpon

Collect, compare, and converse with your community

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ONLINE GAMES used for foresight - great for participatory assumption rearrangement

Online MM Card Decks

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