Foresight in Challenging Environments * Journal of Futures Studies

When it comes to big social and economic shifts, no one can predict the future; the level of complexity is just too great. Scenarios let us construct plausible, internally consistent visions that help us frame the range of possibilities and the kinds of issues we are likely to confront along the way.

Most critically, these roles tend to be self-reinforcing. Organizations using fear-based future narratives often develop risk-averse cultures that further reinforce defensive positioning. Conversely, organizations with aspirational future narratives tend to attract optimistic, innovation-minded talent that strengthens their future-positive culture.

This is where Strategic Foresight comes into its own. It builds on (and around) the more structured frameworks to help you to discover, assess and map the uncertainties that are part of your system.

Strategic Foresight is open to alternative futures, that is, you work with several futures (certainly more than one!) because you know that you can’t predict the future and it most certainly won’t be an extrapolation from the past. It can evolve in different directions and, using Strategic Foresight, you can determine which are possible, which are

• Foresight has an action problem (too quick to action before considering alternatives, possibilities and consequences due to our preference for short-termism, quick wins, productivity, efficiency, etc.)


• Foresight has a “past”problem (assuming that the future will always mirror the past and present, when both the nature of the future is changing and o