An overview of key activities in a complete futures / foresight study, with a 'shopper's guide' to relevant tools and methods to suit each activity. Use it to compose an integrated futures research project, soup to nuts.

1. Methods Overview| 9 September 2015
This slidedeck provides an
overarching framework for designing
integrated, systemic futures research
and foresight processes.
It begins with an overview of five key
activities of futures research, and
reviews an illustrative list of methods
suitable for each activity.
The resulting ‘jigsaw inventory’ of
core futures research and foresight
methods creates a design menu.

2. A tour of key futures research and foresight methods
Five key activities, and a palette of tools
Methods Overview| 9 September 2015

3. Methods Overview| 9 September 2015
What’s the focus?
A surprise?A worry?
A goal?
Awareness
of Change
Impacts
of Change
Alternative
Futures
Preferred
Futures
Strategy
and
Change
Management
Infinite Futures

4. What’s the focus?
A surprise?A worry?
A goal?
Awareness
of Change
Impacts
of Change
Alternative
Futures
Preferred
Futures
Strategy
and
Change
Management
Infinite Futures

5. What’s the focus?
A surprise?A worry?
A goal?
Awareness
of Change
Impacts
of Change
Alternative
Futures
Preferred
Futures
Strategy
and
Change
Management
Infinite Futures

6. What’s the focus?
A surprise?A worry?
A goal?
Awareness
of Change
Impacts
of Change
Alternative
Futures
Preferred
Futures
Strategy
and
Change
Management
Infinite Futures

7. What’s the focus?
A surprise?A worry?
A goal?
Awareness
of Change
Impacts
of Change
Alternative
Futures
Preferred
Futures
Strategy
and
Change
Management
Infinite Futures

8. What’s the focus?
A surprise?A worry?
A goal?
Awareness
of Change
Impacts
of Change
Alternative
Futures
Preferred
Futures
Strategy
and
Change
Management
Infinite Futures

9. Awareness
of Change
The first step in foresight is noticing change. The
various methods available address different types
of change, at different stages of maturity:
• Horizon Scanning – comprehensive change
identification strategy – how change itself
changes
• Datamining – best for extensively observed,
measurable trends
• Trendspotting – used for qualitative mapping of
social and cultural trends
• Emerging issues analysis – identifying change as
it first creates social impacts
• Wild cards ID – spotting potential for emerging
change or low-probability, high-impact change
Infinite Futures

10. Awareness
of Change
HORIZON SCANNING
What it is: comprehensive change identification – how
change itself changes (aka environmental scanning).
What it needs: data sources across multiple fields of
study and points of view.
Mode: quantitative and qualitative – includes both
statistical trend patterns and case studies; 360 degree
view (STEEP/PESTLEC/EPISTLE).
Strengths: comprehensive overview of landscape of
change; early warning indicators.
Weaknesses: change data problematic; cost in time.
Cost: high in staff time – currently requires
considerable human curation / filtering, although some
‘auto-scanning’ experiments in natural language
processing for text mining show promise.
Infinite Futures

11. Awareness
of Change
DATAMINING
What it is: an analytic process designed to
explore data in search of consistent patterns and/
or systematic relationships between variables.
What it needs: access to large databases;
statistical/analytic software.
Mode: usually quantitative; natural language
processing will increasingly allow text mining.
Strengths: numerical / statistical data easy to
store, organise, access, visually display; perceived
as highly authoritative.
Weaknesses: can lack nuance; hidden assumptions
Cost: data access; software; advanced statistical
expertise in staff.
Infinite Futures

12. Awareness
of Change
TRENDSPOTTING
What it is: monitoring and identifying shifts in social,
cultural, and political attitudes and behaviour by
various segments of the population.
What it needs: ethnographic, social, and historical
frameworks; team of observers (increasingly
crowdsourced, eg, Springspotters).
Mode: usually qualitative; often participant
observation.
Strengths: captures cultural / social nuance, good for
spotting outliers.
Weaknesses: too much reliance on case studies and
single observations.
Cost: time-consuming; anthropological or ethnographic
expertise often required; increasingly crowdsourced.
Infinite Futures

13. How to Scan Outside the Box…
1. Diversify: Expertise limits -- go outside your industry or field.
2. Go Global: escape the familiar -- tap another worldview with
sources from other countries.
3. History is the Future: look at the past to find the future -- cycles,
ideas that finally matured.
4. The Year 2020: search on your issue plus 2020 and see what Google
finds.
5. Follow the Futurists: get newsletters from various futures groups to
hear their buzz.
6. Join the Dialogue: Look for communities / blogs on your issue(s) and
join the discussion / catch the commentary.
7. Go Ahead, Contact Them: email or call a leading thinker or
advocate you’ve identified.
Courtesy Future Think LLC, from a presentation by Lisa Bodell.
Infinite Futures

14. 6. Be a Customer: Use a product or service from your client’s industry --
get the end-user experience.
9. Advisory Boards: ask an eclectic group for review / input in your scan.
10. Search the Patent Office: what’s in the pipeline for development?
11. Take a Different Route: break your own path habits walking to work.
12. Keep an Idea Journal: discipline yourself to capture your own ideas.
13. Get the Newsletter: sign up for the newsletters of organisations related
to your scanning issues.
14. Look at Unrelated Industries: look at everything tangentially linked to
your issue, and scan industries in those areas too.
15. Activate your Toolbar: put your favourite sources and blogs in your
browser’s toolbar and take a quick scan break.
…15 Tips from Future Think
Infinite Futures
Courtesy Future Think LLC, from a presentation by Lisa Bodell.

15. Awareness
of Change
EMERGING ISSUES ANALYSIS
What it is: identifying initial sources of change,
usually by monitoring outliers.
What it needs: access to multiple sources / feeds
from outlier / fringe communities.
Mode: usually qualitative; based on spotting first
cases.
Strengths: advanced warning of impending
change; opportunities to manage and take
advantage of emerging change.
Weaknesses: outliers as sources often seen as
lacking credibility; not all changes emerge.
Cost: very time consuming – spotting first cases
means sifting through masses of observations.
Infinite Futures

16. Life-cycle of Change
Life Cycle of Change
Schultz, adapted from Molitor
Developmentofanissue
Time
3rd horizon
scientists; artists; radicals; mystics
specialists’ journals and websites
laypersons’ magazines; websites;
documentaries
newspapers; news magazines;
broadcast media
institutions and government
local; few cases;
emerging issues
global; multiple dispersed cases;
trends and drivers
system limits; problems
develop; unintended impacts
Infinite Futures

17. Sources of Change Data
Infinite Futures

18. Awareness
of Change
WILD CARDS
What it is: exploration of possible high impact /
low probability events (‘black swans’).
What it needs: explicit comprehensive review of
assumptions; application of logic and imagination.
Mode: usually qualitative.
Strengths: wild card / black swan explorations
help reduce conceptual / perceptual blindspots.
Weaknesses: exploratory; based on critique and
Socratic dialogue, not evidence-based.
Cost: staff time allotted for assumption-mapping,
assumptions reversal, connections to emerging
issues data.
Infinite Futures

19. Wild Cards: Assumption Reversal
Assumptions?
You go to eat
Building / site
Staff: chef makes food
Staff: servers bring food
Wholesale suppliers
Customers pay
You go to socialize
Eg, restaurants….
Opposites?
?
Mobile, nomadic: hot air
balloon, treehouse
Food printer,
collaborative co-cooking
Robots, dispenser
Customers bring own raw
ingredients
Barter, in-kind
?
Data/emerging?
Pop-up shops; tree-house
restaurant (Aus)
MIT; Cornell; …
Japan
Forage (LA)
Infinite Futures

20. Impacts
of Change
The second step is critiquing the impacts of
change. What will change affect first? Who
will it affect disproportionately?
• Futures Wheels – map cascades of
change
• Verge – explores impacts of change on
people and social systems
• Cross-impact Analysis – catalogues
effects of change on each other
• Influence Mapping – shows how multiple
changes connect and interact
• Three Horizons – shows how different
mindsets approach change
• Gartner Hype Cycle – maps difference
between enthusiasm and actuality
Infinite Futures

21. FUTURES WHEELS
What it is: explores and maps successive
cascades of impacts created by a single
significant change; helps extrapolate
surprises, disruptions, and backlashes as well
as emerging opportunities.
What it needs: basic change data,
conceptual structure, diverse contributors.
Mode: usually qualitative and participatory.
Strengths: can help identify unexpected
impacts, ‘black swan’ events, and areas of
potential backlash or constraint.
Weaknesses: not seen as authoritative; can
lack rigour.
Cost: researcher/participant time.
Impacts
of Change
Infinite Futures
Futures Wheels developed by Dr Jerome Glenn of the UNU Millennium Project

22. Futures Wheels
Infinite Futures
Futures Wheels developed by Dr Jerome Glenn of the UNU Millennium Project

23. VERGE
What it is: a conceptual framework that
systematically assesses the effects of change
by their points of impact on people.
What it needs: understanding of the
concepts, diverse points of view.
Mode: usually qualitative; participatory.
Strengths: can add structure to various
foresight techniques, makes impacts on
people, values, paradigms, systems explicit.
Weaknesses: somewhat complicated to
explain initially.
Cost: researcher/participant time.
Impacts
of Change
Infinite Futures
Verge was developed by Dr. Richard Lum of Vision Foresight Strategy

24. Verge – exploration of change focused on people
The processes and
technology through
which we create
goods and services
The ways in which we
acquire and use the
goods and services we
create
Social structures and
relationships which link
people and organizations
The concepts, ideas
and paradigms we use
to define the world
around us
The technologies
used to connect
people, places and
things
The ways in which we
destroy value and the
reasons for doing so
Infinite Futures
Verge was developed by Dr. Richard Lum of Vision Foresight Strategy

25. CROSS-IMPACT ANALYSIS
What it is: qualitative exploration of
emerging changes’ intersecting impacts by
systematically comparing individual potential
impacts against each other.
What it needs: careful focus in choosing
relevant issues / changes; software.
Mode: can be quantitative or qualitative.
Strengths: quantitative versions can be
modelled; qualitative versions can add detail
to exploring change interactions.
Weaknesses: based on intuition.
Cost: researcher/participant time; software.
Impacts
of Change
Infinite Futures

26. Cross-impact Analysis
Source: Discover Your Solutions
Infinite Futures

27. INFLUENCE MAPPING
What it is: identifying relevant variables,
drawing influence connections, and spotting
feedback loops that might accelerate or
constrain change.
What it needs: knowledgeable facilitator /
systems mapper; diverse contributors.
Mode: logical / intuitive – some results can
be modelled dynamically.
Strengths: explicitly identifying relevant
parts of the system, and in identifying
accelerators, brakes and backlash.
Weaknesses: difficult to do well; can
generate ‘spaghetti’ of detail.
Cost: knowledgeable staff/facilitator; time.
Impacts
of Change
Infinite Futures

28. Influence Mapping
Infinite Futures

29. THREE HORIZONS
What it is: 3H maps overlapping waves of
change visible in the present as mindsets:
managerial, visionary, and entrepreneurial.
What it needs: knowledgeable facilitator;
diversity of contributors; scan data.
Mode: mixes logical, intuitive (pattern
identification), and creative thinking.
Strengths: helps staff spot vulnerabilities in
current assumptions, opportunities for
strategic action.
Weaknesses: qualitative approach; people
mistake it for a simple timeline.
Cost: knowledgeable facilitator; participant
time; cost of scan data.
Impacts
of Change
Infinite Futures
Developed by Bill Sharpe of International Futures Forum

30. Infinite Futures
Developed by Bill Sharpe of International Futures Forum

31. GARTNER HYPE CYCLE
What it is: analytic framework that
separates expert and popular enthusiasm for
an innovation from its actual level of
deployment and market penetration.
What it needs: specific data on illustrative
cases making up an emerging issue or trend.
Mode: observational/historical; qualitative.
Strengths: excellent for hindsight analysis;
past studies provide cautionary pattern for
emerging change.
Weaknesses: identifying time frame and
current position of a live trend difficult.
Cost: data, staff time for analysis.
Impacts
of Change
Infinite Futures

32. Gartner Hype Cycle
Infinite Futures

33. Alternative
Futures
The third step is imagining possible
outcomes of change. What futures might
the combined effects of change generate?
Futures thought experiments.
• 2X2 Scenario Building – focuses on
managing uncertainty for decisions
• Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) – focusses
on diversity of points of view.
• Morphological Analysis – focuses on
managing multiple interacting variables.
• Inductive Scenario Building – focuses on
layering change impacts into narratives.
• Scenario Archetypes – quickly explore
boundaries of thinking about change
• Manoa Scenario Building – focusses on
understanding turbulent surprises.
Infinite Futures

34. 2X2 SCENARIO BUILDING
What it is: chooses two highly important but
highly uncertain drivers of change, and
creates a 2X2 matrix by expressing each
driver as a continuum between two opposite
uncertain outcomes.
What it needs: clearly stated decision focus
and drivers inventory.
Mode: usually qualitative and participatory.
Strengths: very focussed on outcomes; best
for 10-20 year scenarios; highly structured.
Weaknesses: often fails to question
assumptions or current paradigms that may
be overturned by turbulence.
Cost: data; facilitator; participant time.
Alternative
Futures
Infinite Futures

35. The “Scenario Cross” Method
2X2 scenario table
Generated by ‘axes of
uncertainty’
Chosen from most important,
most uncertain drivers
Deductive
Infinite Futures

36. CAUSAL LAYERED ANALYSIS (CLA)
What it is: a four-level analysis exploring the
litany, systems, worldviews, and myths /
metaphors associated with an issue.
What it needs: experienced facilitator and
cultural and professionally diverse
contributors.
Mode: qualitative and participatory,
although desk analysis is possible.
Strengths: gets beneath surface buzz and
expert analysis to cultural structures
defining and driving them.
Weaknesses: difficult to do well without
multiple cultural perspectives present.
Cost: facilitator, and participant time.
Alternative
Futures
Infinite Futures
Developed by Dr. Sohail Inayatullah of Metafutures

37. Sources: Sohail Inayatullah; Dennis List; Andy Hines.
Problem
Causes
Worldview
Metaphors & Myths
TIME SCALE
OF CHANGE
Continuous
Years
Decades
Societal /
Civilizational
The “Litany”:
official public description
of issue & the public buzz
Scientific & Systemic Analysis:
short-term historical facts &
technical explanations
Discourse Analysis:
paradigms, mental models,
culture, & values
Image Analysis:
myths, archetypes, visual
images, emotional responses,
& metaphors
Causal Layered
Analysis (CLA)
Infinite Futures

38. MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
What it is: combines permutations of
different outcomes across a range of
variables; logically inconsistent combinations
are disallowed.
What it needs: highly structured dataset and
support software.
Mode: mixes quantitative and qualitative
forecasts.
Strengths: highly structured, rigourous
approach perceived as credible; includes
multiple variables and combinations.
Weaknesses: highly combinatorial approach
requires software support.
Cost: dataset; software; experienced staff.
Alternative
Futures
Infinite Futures

39. Source: Parmenides Foundation EIDOS Software Suite
Infinite Futures

40. INDUCTIVE SCENARIO BUILDING
What it is: building scenarios from the
ground up, compiling changes, impacts, and
patterns of details into systemically coherent
narratives .
What it needs: scan data and impact
assessments; organising conceptual
frameworks.
Mode: usually qualitative; participatory.
Strengths: closer to how change actually
emerges (multiple, overlapping, systemic);
nuanced; detailed; change theory-based.
Weaknesses: intuitive ‘soft’ approach; needs
strong theoretical underpinning.
Cost: data, staff time.
Alternative
Futures
Infinite Futures

41. Inductive Scenario Building
Infinite Futures
Source: Vision Foresight Strategy for Kamehameha Schools

42. SCENARIO ARCHETYPES
What it is: ‘incasting’ an issue into a set of
stories common in people’s thinking about
the future, eg, continued growth, collapse,
transformation, and discipline.
What it needs: a library of pre-prepared
scenarios.
Mode: usually qualitative and participatory.
Strengths: rapid turn-around; using classic
scenario archetypes, captures possible future
diversity easily.
Weaknesses: lack of ownership of scenarios.
Cost: preparation time to tailor archetypes;
facilitator and participant time.
Alternative
Futures
Infinite Futures

43. Scenario Archetypes
Infinite Futures

44. MANOA SCENARIO BUILDING
What it is: multiple emerging issues
generate potential impacts and cross-
impacts; these are woven into a narrative
depicting a possible surprising,
transformative, or disruptive future.
Alternative
Futures
What it needs: 3-5 changes for each scenario generated; knowledge of futures wheels,
influence mapping, and cross-impact analysis.
Mode: merges logical/intuitive/creative; participatory.
Strengths: helps map surprising outcomes and ‘black swan’ events; generates nuanced
detail; critiques assumptions.
Weaknesses: takes more time to generate four scenarios; rigour dependent upon
structures included by facilitator or researcher.
Cost: scanning data; research and participant time.
Infinite Futures
Developed by Dr. Wendy Schultz for the Hawai‘i Research Center for Futures Studies

45. Manoa Scenario Building
Infinite Futures
Developed by Dr. Wendy Schultz for the Hawai‘i Research Center for Futures Studies

46. Preferred
Futures
The fourth step figures prominently in
leadership literature: working to identify,
analyse, and articulate images of preferred
futures, or ‘visions’ – goal setting; BHAGS
Appreciative Inquiry – articulates an
organisation’s preferred future based on its
past successes and current strengths.
Future Search – brings together
organisational staff and stakeholders to
suggest transformational preferred futures
based on history and emerging change.
Also, Future Workshops, Community
Visioning, Integrated Visioning
Infinite Futures

47. Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline
Organisational Capacity for Vision Creation
telling
selling
testing
consulting
CO-CREATING
required
capacity for
direction-
setting and
learning
degree of active staff involvement
LOW
HIGH
HIGH
Infinite Futures

48. Strategic Design Trade-offs:
Visioning as an Example
Degree of difference from present
Time horizon
LevelofParticipantRisk
Future
SearchNanus
Appreciative
Inquiry
Boulding-
Ziegler
Futures
Workshops
Manoa
Infinite Futures

49. Preferred
Futures
APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY
What it is: change management approach that
focuses on identifying what is working well,
analysing why it is working well and then doing
more of it.
What it needs: experienced facilitation and an
atmosphere of candid assessment and exploration.
Mode: facilitated, participatory dialogue.
Strengths: celebratory approach to goal
articulation strengthens team.
Weaknesses: no links to trends of change or
emerging issues.
Cost: trained facilitator, staff time.
Infinite Futures
Developed by David L. Cooperrider

50. Preferred
Futures
FUTURE SEARCH
What it is: a 3-day organisational planning
meeting that focussing on stakeholders’ past
experiences together and their future
transformative goals.
What it needs: trained facilitator, historical data,
scan data, space and teim.
Mode: facilitated and participatory.
Strengths: unites a community of action around a
common understanding of shared history, current
context and change, and resources for the future.
Weaknesses: stakeholders must have historical
relationship; difficult to get time commitment.
Cost: knowledgeable facilitator; staff time.
Infinite Futures
Developed by Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff

51. Strategy
and
Change
Management
The final step in foresight is creating change. The
various methods available address different types
of change, at different stages of maturity:
• Backcasting – working backwards from a
specified future to determine actions and
resources necessary to create it.
• Early Warning Indicators – identifying and
monitoring for emergence of relevant change.
• Roadmapping – inventorying the
interconnections between resources and
people necessary to create an outcome.
• Windtunnelling – using alternative futures as a
robustness check for proposed strategies,
programmes, or products.
Infinite Futures

52. Strategy
and
Change
Management
BACKCASTING
What it is: logical mapping of necessary steps to
create a specified outcome, working backwards from
the future outcome to present conditions.
What it needs: good understanding of the systems,
resources, and processes involved..
Mode: usually qualitative; often participatory.
Strengths: fosters a logical perspective that prevents
‘it’s never been done’ thinking.
Weaknesses: difficult to create logical sequences
backwards.
Cost: time for sufficiently knowledgeable staff with
diverse expertise.
Infinite Futures

53. Learning and performance enhancements
of all kinds in high demand
The economy and the realities of
“employment” continue to change
Ubiquitous mobile computing makes
assistive intelligent agent software
commonplace
Digital and automated “instruction”
will exceed live human instructors
Perceived performance and economic gaps will
further drive automation and tailoring of learning
Our understanding of human behavior and cognition
will continue to improve
Employers will be seeking
new skills and worker
profiles
Schools will wholesale dismantle
birth-year-based organization
Human enhancements will driver
performance escalation
A new generation of leaders will support
broader transformations in education
The physical classroom is supplanted for most
by persistent, digital gaming/learning
augmented reality layers
Personal learning experiences are
continuously captured, inventoried,
and shared with others
Access to information (internet)
becomes a common civil right
NEAR MID LONG
Digital and autonomous anticipatory
learning systems are common
components in all digital
technologies
Learning
Proliferating Digital and Online Tools for Learning
Big Data
Evolving Human Enhancement Ubiquitous lifelong learning
Evolving World with Mobile Digital Gaming
Advances in Neuroscience Paving the Way for
Brain-Inspired Technologies
Trends in Cognitive Systems:
Redefining Consciousness
B2M interfaces are common
in high risk industrial settings
Digital Equality
Future of Jobs and New Welfare
Models
Super-centenarian Societies
Cheap online educational alternatives
enroll more learners in F2F courses
Society will formally recognize
new credentials and standards
The spreading “internet of
things” continuously “teaches”
people about their surroundings
Learning Backcast from EU Futurium
Infinite Futures

54. Strategy
and
Change
Management
EARLY WARNING INDICATORS
What it is: identifying precursor changes that could
trigger or evolve into a significant strategic change
or scenario, in order to monitor their emergence as a
trigger for action or resource allocation.
What it needs: ongoing horizon scanning / change
monitoring capacity.
Mode: quantitative datamining and qualitative
trendspotting.
Strengths: gives decision-makers time to create
responses to opportunities and vulnerabilities by
triggering an alert based on incoming scan data.
Weaknesses: not easy to determine what an ‘early
warning signal’ would be for a specific issue.
Cost: part of ongoing scanning.
Infinite Futures

55. Strategy
and
Change
Management
ROADMAPPING
What it is: systematic identification of the dynamic
set of technical, policy, legal, financial, market and
organisational requirements for the development of
a technology or innovation.
What it needs: knowledge of the resources, systems,
and stakeholders involved or potentially required.
Mode: analytical.
Strengths: useful structure for rigorous inventory of
required systems, resources, and actions.
Weaknesses: can become formulaic, may miss
constraints, backlashes, social/cultural/political
responses to steps along the map.
Cost: staff time.
Infinite Futures

56. Roadmapping
Source: EFP Foresight Guide
Infinite Futures

57. Strategy
and
Change
Management
WINDTUNNELLING
What it is: evaluating strategies against conditions
across alternative future scenarios, rating them for
potential effectiveness and robustness under
different conditions.
What it needs: a ‘library’ of relevant images of
alternative futures.
Mode: usually qualitative; often facilitated dialogue.
Strengths: applies a consistent, and systematic
assessment of actions against possible future
conditions – helps refine strategies for resilience.
Weaknesses: relies on well-researched scenarios.
Cost: scenario library; facilitator and participant
time.
Infinite Futures

58. Wind Tunnelling – Analytic Approach
Orange
SCENARIO
Blue
SCENARIO
Green
SCENARIO
Yellow
SCENARIO
Policy
Option
1
Policy
Option
2
Policy
Option
3
Implications
q Success
q Failure
q Contingent on
scenario
Action Plans
q Do Now
q Reject
q Monitor future
events &
Contingency
Planning
Martin Duckworth, SAMI Consulting, 2011
Infinite Futures

59. Choosing the methods that will work best for you
Augmenting and amplifying your current futures research and foresight work
Infinite Futures