Making Futures Work

Chapter 7. Fundamentals of Foresight

In this chapter I’ll discuss some of the fundamental theories, principles, and methods used in Strategic Foresight, a discipline that has been around since the 1950s and that has been used primarily for scenario planning and long-term strategic initiatives. Foresight is a form of futures work and has its own collection of tools and frameworks for analyzing patterns around us so that we can project a perspective of possible future scenarios.

In his 1999 book, Futures for the Third Millennium: Enabling the Forward View (Richmond), Richard Slaughter describes Strategic Foresight as

the ability to create and maintain a high-quality, coherent and functional forward view, and to use the insights arising in useful organizational ways. For example to detect adverse conditions, guide policy, shape strategy, and to explore new markets, products and services. It represents a fusion of futures methods with those of strategic management.

Strategic Foresight

In a traditional design-driven approach (such as Design Thinking or Service Design), you might consider as this similar to the first half of the first diamond in the Design Council’s Double Diamond diagram (Figure 7-1), the Discover phase, which illustrates the divergent research phase. In foresight, we use research tactics to understand the trends, patterns, history, and current perspectives of today. We gather as much information as possible to fully understand the scope of the problem space. Then ...