How to Future

Figure 1.1 details The details of the different levels are as below: Anticipate: Prediction, early warning, quantification, identification of risk and opportunity. The question is, ‘What can we expect from X in the next five years’? Envision: Exploring how current trends and new possibilities might shape what comes next. The question is, ‘What migh

Most people don’t want to read hundreds of pages of analysis. A well-crafted narrative that builds in the most salient takeaways in story form can be an effective way of communicating complex futures simply.

Mapping in this context is a kind of graphing. In most cases, it can be useful to begin mapping with time and certainty as your two starter criteria. This

George F P Box wrote on multiple occasions, ‘all models are wrong, but some are useful’.

The sense-making phase is about moving from noise to insight.

For example, Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman and professor Dan Lovallo identified the concepts of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ views, describing how individuals process information about the future.2 According to Kahneman, people taking the inside view follow information and experiences that seem directly relevant to a prospective questi

Patterns are just that, however. They need to be formed into a narrative that shares a richer sense of what might happen in a particular future.

For our purposes, we look at scenarios as a means of depicting a ‘slice’ or portion of a future. To be useful, scenarios should be plausible in the sense of not being so exotic that they’re unthinkable or alienate the audience to the point of rejection (note that ‘unimaginable for the organization’s current mission’ shouldn’t be a criterion for rej

This more aggressive approach of ‘making the future happen’ has become the mantra of more and more companies and organizations that feel the competitive pressure to determine the landscape of change, ahead of their competition.