Foresight - Looking Ahead

-- a university of arizona course on methods and approaches for studying the future

Related links on this site

Foresight links

Trends and Outlook

Book reviews on foresight

Book reviews on forecasting

Strategic Planning

 

Introduction

 

The whole point of better understanding the future relates to looking ahead. Some call this predicting (something futurists don't do) or issues management (an older term) or environmental scanning (a term often used in strategic planning). The term "foresight" includes all these definitions.

 

Some definition and approaches

Predict

To make known in advance a SPECIFIC statement about an event in the future (e.g., which horse will win, what the interest rate will be).

 

Forecast

To make and ESTIMATE of an event in the future (e.g., the economy will grow at 3.5% to 3.5%)

 

Issues management

Joseph Coates: The purpose of issues identification and management is clear -- to anticipate and identify unfolding trends and developments likely to have significant impact on the organization and to frame a positive response that serves the organization's needs in the new reality engendered by the trend or issue.

 

Environmental Scanning

A process of gathering information about the "environment" that you are operating is. This might include the broader context setting environment as well as topic-specific that are most relevant to your organization. It might include major paradigms and driving forces or it might be more specific in listing trends and emerging issues.

 

Foresight

Lindsey Grand: Foresight is simply a systematic process of bring lateral and long-range implications into policy decisions.

John Slaughter: Foresight is not the ability to predict the future (thought in some circumstances predictions can be useful). It is that human attribute that allows us to weigh up pros and cons, to evaluate different courses of action and to invest possible futures on every level with enough reality and meaning to use them as decision-making aids. The simplest definition is: Opening to the future with every means at our disposal, developing views of future options, and then choosing between them.

 

Why do it

Everything you do in futures stuff could be defined as making better decisions TODAY. Find sleeper issues where no one is watching, be more prepared than others for POSSIBLE changes.

 

Why not do it

People tend to target near term problems and have less interest in the future, you may find it lonely, good organizations will do it. Slaughter's barriers are a good listing of why we don't do foresight (see book reviews above for reference):

1. Practice of future discounting - not all that important to know

2. Empiricist fallacy - only thing that counts is what you can measure

3. Sense of disempowerment - problem is so big you cannot address it

4. Time and space perspectives are fixed - short term focus is so great you don't bother looking ahead

5. Fear of foresight - results can be wrong so why trust them

6. Cost of foresight - it is too expensive and not that important related to other things that need funding

 

Foresight techniques

Develop and understanding of futures techniques, especially those dealing with foresight

Understand paradigm shifts and driving forces

Review trends (but look for real trends, not bandwagon effect or fads)

Consider scenarios, uncertainties, hidden biases, group think

Build strengths and understanding in futures perspectives before emergencies hit, so have some responses

Question everything - remember the ignorance discussion, big changes can happen

 

Methods

 

Write information for others to read -- engage them in futures thinking

Provide seminars, on futures issues, to slowly stimulate thinking by involving others

Use some external consultants - this voids the group think problem but you need to be receptive to advice

Watch leading indicators - the financial community does this (hard to define what is "leading" in changing times)

 

Looking for emerging issues by wide reading, brainstorming, trend watching

Use focus groups selected to have participants that have thought about the future but have different perspectives

One common method is to collect tons of information and catalog it. Then you search it as needed. A variant on this is to have various people thought the organization "scan" the literature in selected areas and then share and catalog the results. My view is that this process is not useful - it takes too much time and the information gets stale too quickly. This is especially true today, as the relevant information changes rapidly and Internet searching capability and content is very good. Of course, there are still key references or reports that are not on entrant and need to be discovered and acquired.