The Futurist’s Toolbox

My colleague at the University of Houston, Peter Bishop, and I recently co-authored Thinking about the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight, a book that culls the wisdom of three dozen leading futurists from around the globe. Our question to these futurists was: What are the best ways to do foresight? Their answers yielded 115 guidelines which we feel concisely capture how executives and analysts can successfully apply foresight.

We then organized the guidelines into six steps fundamental to application (see The Foresight Framework). Our goal was to provide a handy reference guide to what professionals should be thinking and doing to effectively apply foresight. We also asked our contributors to explain the key benefits of the 115 guidelines. This yielded 316 benefit statements, highlighting the multiple ways organizations can benefit from

My next column will focus on how to apply foresight, but for this Premiere Issue of Change)Waves I will address the benefits of foresight. Something I like to call: “What’s in it for me?” To illuminate this point I did a cluster analysis on the benefit statements—tying similar benefits together until themes emerged. (Yes, this took awhile!) Ultimately the process produced a dozen themes, which sorted nicely into the six steps of

the foresight framework (see list below).

1. Framing: Scoping the project

2. Scanning: Gathering relevant information

3. Forecasting: Describing most likely and alternative futures

4. Visioning: Choosing a preferred future

5. Planning: Organizing to achieve the vision

6. Acting: Implementing the plan

I ask you: Who wouldn’t want to do these things for their company?

Space doesn’t permit me to list all 316 benefit statements, so a few high-level observations are in order.

This brief analysis highlights the benefits of foresight and puts some data behind them. My hope is that every businessperson and analyst will take advantage of the opportunity that foresight, with its unique blend of rigor and creativity, offers to help make organizations more effective. So if anyone ever asks you: “Why should we think about the future?” you now have a dozen answers—or if you’d like, we can send you all 316!

Note: The number in parenthesis shows each item as a percentage of overall benefits. Thus, 22% of the benefits statements related to framing, 9% related to “Thinking more diverse….” etc.

This piece was published in the January 2008 issue of Changewaves. For a free copy of the issue, visit http://www.socialtechnologies.com/ChangeWaves/Default.aspx

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