Strategic Foresight

This chapter presents relevant foresight tools for policymaking: horizon scanning to identify emerging issues, megatrends to understand implications of long-term developments, scenario building to deal with uncertainty and develop a systemic understanding of complex issues, speculative design to illustrate possible future applications, and serious games to experience consequences of possible futures.
Chapter 12 - Science for Policy Handbook, 2020

This Primer is meant to be a readily accessible and 'easy-to-use' guide on strategic foresight, that attempts to clarify what strategic foresight is and, when and how to use it, and what the advantages and limitations of the different methodologies are.
European Political Strategy Centre, 2017

This study aims to provide an overview of regional foresight studies to evaluate their merits and defects and direct future studies in this field. In addition, a domain map of regional foresight was drawn, which includes five main clusters of research areas or intellectual bases for regional foresight: 1) normative forecasting, 2) participation, 3) foresight in policy and strategy, 4) innovation systems, and 5) multi-level governance.
European Journal of Futures Research, 2021

This paper examines the influence of the foresight horizon on local energy systems using the model DISTRICT. Results show that, with the advantage of a significantly reduced run-time, a limited foresight yields fairly similar results when the input parameters show a stable development. With unexpected, shock-like events, limited foresight shows more realistic results since it cannot foresee the sudden parameter changes. These aspects should be considered when choosing the foresight horizon.
Energies, 2021

This report has been commissioned by the Federal Commission for Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection (ComNBC) and the Federal Office for Civil Protection (FOCP). It reviews strategic foresight methods that can help organizations to deal with and reduce uncertainty. The report uses several examples from the Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) domains and discusses some caveats, such as information hazards (box 4) that are particularly relevant to this context. However, the overview it provides can be useful across a wide range of strategic decision-making processes.
Kevin Kohler, 09-2021

This article focuses on how foresight narratives have impacted policymaking as related to the COVID-19 pandemic. More specifically, it provides an overview of the use of foresight within the public sector prior to the pandemic and it investigates the key foresight narratives in circulation during the implementation of governments’ strategic objectives and the realization of visions of a ‘pandemic-free’ society. The goal of the article is to ascertain which lessons we can learn in terms of successes and failures of narrative ‘foresight in action’, so as to be able to utilise this knowledge for future global problems.
Journal of Futures Studies, 2021

This study develops an algorithm for strategic planning of rural development based on the foresight methodology and by the formation of a set of practical recommendations for the use of foresight tools at the municipal level of management in rural areas. After analysing foresight projects and programs used in the rural management and development forecasting, the research concludes that foresight technologies should be used as a system tool for the formation and implementation of the strategy of the sustainable rural areas development.
Hindawi Scientifica, 2020

This article contributes to emerging hybrid design/futures practices by offering an orienting framework making images of the future more legible and concrete. The Ethnographic Experiential Futures (EXF) Cycle provides, practically, a way of inviting engagement with diverse participants, and methodologically, a generic process drawing on two traditions of foresight (ethnographic and experiential futures), with a view to promoting a more diverse and deeper array of scenarios for public consideration.
Journal of Futures Studies, March 2019

Written as an action learning practitioner inquiry, this article explores four arenas where the practice of foresight is particularly challenging. These are (1) Hearing the trauma, (2) Risk aversion and the role of narrative, (3) The Monday morning question and action learning, (4) Nothing can work here and finding the zone of control. Methods for successful foresight are suggested.
Journal of Futures Studies, June 2018

The book focuses on the extreme impact of rare and unpredictable outlier events and on the human tendency to find simplistic explanations for these events, retrospectively. Taleb calls this the Black Swan theory.
The book covers subjects relating to knowledge, aesthetics, as well as ways of life, and uses elements of fiction and anecdotes from the author's life to elaborate his theories.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, April 2007

Set in the near future, this novel follows a subsidiary body, established under the Paris Agreement, whose mission is to act as an advocate for rights of the world's future generations of citizens. While they pursue various ambitious projects, the effects of climate change are determined to be the most consequential. The plot primarily follows Mary Murphy, the head of the titular Ministry for the Future, and Frank May, an American aid worker traumatized by experiencing a deadly heat wave in India. Many chapters are devoted to other (mostly anonymous) characters' accounts of future events, as well as their ideas about ecology, economics, and other subjects. With its emphasis on scientific accuracy and non-fiction descriptions of history and social science, the novel is classified as hard science fiction and it is also a part of the growing body of climate fiction.
Kim Stanley Robinson, October 2020